pg. 159 in the kindle version
PG. 159
The view of Bates during that first mission into Rorshach
“Another spike, ” I warned as tesla and Sieverts surged on my HUD. “Hang on.”
This place was not only giving me the creeps but playing havoc with the equipment. I was beginning to wonder if Sarasti really gave a shit about us at all, being the calculated son of a bitch that he is, he must have known all this EM interference would leave the grunts half blind and more likely to kill us than the aliens. All these fucked up readings were beginning to play tricks on my vision. As I turned to see the Argonaut secure the spring line to the wall, my stomach churned hard for a tenth of a second, I could swear the wall moved. Just as quickly as I was sure that I saw something, the sensation faded and I thought I must have imagined it. At the same time the walking lobotomy shot backward to the center of the hall in a stiff fight or flight stance, which told me he saw it too. Fuck this place crawls.
“They’re here,” James whispered.
Something was. Training super seceded the speed of my rational thought and I swept the tunnel with the grunts sensors on instinct. I knew they were doing this all on their own from the beginning but I wanted to examine the data again myself to see if I had missed something. I knew in my gut something was there and that we were being watched, hell even the fucking grunts who don’t really have emotions felt something. They’re crude stimulus responses hardwired through me told me they were on edge too and that their active processes were straining to find the same enemy that neither of us could actually see. I heard James say something but it sounded a hundred miles away and I just couldn’t connect the dots to understand what he said. My body however parsed the information much faster than my conscious mind and I locked up like I was having a seizure, then a second later the data arrived at my logic center and I understood what she had said.
“They’re beautiful…” James said. There was no fear in her voice at all. She sounded awestruck.
“WHERE!?” I hadn’t seen them approach at all, I was still searching the passage for about 10 seconds looking for them, trying to match the line of sight of James’ camera. I spun trying desperately to locate the targets and the grunts moved with me in our own little waltz, setting up firing lanes and interlocking fields of fire to fight an enemy we had missed, and a schizophrenic had seen clear as day. I strained hard at my feeds in all directions and saw nothing “What do you see?”
“Not out there. In here. Everywhere. Can’t you see it?”
“I can’t see anything,” Szpindel said, his voice shaking.”
“It’s in the EM fields,” James said. “That’s how they communicate. The whole structure is full of language, it’s—“
“I can’t see anything ,” Szpindel repeated. His breath echoed loud and fast over the link. “I’m blind.”
“Shit.” I swung around to see Szpindel and double check his camera feed, I half expected to see him surrounded by whatever monsters lived in this hell. “How can that-the radiation-“
“I don’t think that’s it…”
Nine Tesla…, the walls were crawling more than usual and I was starting to see movement out of the corner of my eye constantly. I tried to focus and dispel what was beginning to seem obviously just the effects of the EM and then I began to smell asphalt and apple pie.
“Keeton!” I called. “You with us?”
“Y-yeah.” The man was clearly running on his back up brain as I kept tapping him on the shoulder to get his attention off the damn radiation bell.
“Leave it! Get him outside!” I was beginning to become panicked but not completely out of control, now to just get my team out mostly alive if I could.
“No!” Szpindel floated helplessly in the passage, his pistol bouncing against its wrist tether. “No, throw me something.”
“What?” I thought I was stressed out but clearly he’d really fucking lost it.
“Throw me something! Anything!”
I could not understand it, his voice quivered slightly with fear but it was only the fear of blindness and he seemed otherwise calm. Well as calm as he could be under the circumstances, so why the fuck does he want me to throw something at him. “You said you were bli-“
“Just do it!”
I tossed a spare battery off my belt and Szpindel reached for it like he could almost see it coming towards him then he fumbled and the battery glided past him and bounced off the wall. That same sensation again as the wall seemed to move where the battery struck.
“I’ll be okay,” he gasped. “Just get me into the tent.”
I ordered everyone into the tent and began to survey the tunnel again looking for whatever was in here with us. I knew from my training the effects of radiation on the brain and how it can trick itself but something about these hallucinations didn’t match up. Maybe it was because everyone in the party was some fucked up super genius, but something felt sinister about it like each effect was meant to specifically debilitate or distract that person.
I heard the tent inflate like a balloon and the movement as people were getting inside but someone was missing. I realized a moment later that James was not getting into the tent. “James! Get down here!”
“James! Are you-“
“Get it off me!” She sounded scared and oddly male for being a woman, which meant one of her numerous alternate personalities was in control. “Get it off”
I glided over to James and the sensation of something being with us was unmistakable. I sent two grunts in both directions of the passage looking for whatever was adding to this hysteria, and swept the area around James with every form of sensory detection at my disposal. Nothing. There was nothing around her that suggested even a trace of a being. Then I began to notice what it was that James was trying to get off her. “Holy shit! Stop James! Stop!”
Susan James was gone and in place of her an instinct driven little child that was trying to remove her protection suit in the most dangerous environment of all time.