Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 98/?] (Patreon)

92 Hours After the First Round of Interloper Interrogations. Signal Station. Atrium Entrance.

Lysara

Fear. 

That’s what first hit me.

What was an assured and seemingly smooth start to the operation came to a screeching and unwelcome halt at the foot of a twenty meter door.  

Anxiety quickly gripped me after the proverbial and literal dust had settled.

But not panic.

Panic never really seemed to take hold, not when my training kicked in, and recent experiences coupled with rational thought overpowered whatever base fears existed within my Vanaran mind.

My first order of business, or rather the first three sets of actions I committed to concurrently, simply took too much precedence for anything other than focus to really take center stage.

“Squad, on me! High alert! Weapons free!” I shouted, prompting both the aerial and bipedal drones to pull back into a tight formation around both me and Evina.

“Evina, stay close!” I continued, feeling my heart racing as my eyes quickly glanced to the top right hand of my HUD, in an attempt to address the final order of business.

“Vir, do you copy?” I shot out with a steady breath… only to find the line empty, and any and all signals to the outside completely dead on all channels.

I should’ve expected that though.

Because if the deep surface scanners found it difficult to make heads or tails of this place, then that meant that there was little chance for a stable line of communication to break through.

Seconds passed by, but still, absolutely no action was taken on the part of the facility and its operators. 

It was around that point that I began feeling a tentative wave of relief washing over me, as I turned back towards the door with a hopeful gaze.

If the facility wasn’t going to proactively take the first move, then my worry was now rapidly shifting from that of our own safety, to that of the facility’s. 

=====

92 Hours After the First Round of Interloper Interrogations. Signal Station. Atrium Entrance.

Evina

Having a door slammed in your face was a sure-fire way of reducing your chances of survival by a good fifty or so percent. 

Having a bunker door slammed in your face on the other hand… was an entirely different ballgame. 

Needless to say, my objectives were clear… and being ordered around certainly didn’t help matters, as my instincts told me to run, leap, and to just keep moving.

I pulled out my gun even before Lysara’s orders, holding it steady and aiming down the ever reliable scope I’d spent months tuning for them to be just right. 

My eyes began darting left and right, scanning the expansive atrium, focusing on the two doors ahead of us and what looked to be a larger sealed cargo door to our left and right. All of them were sealed, but I was just waiting for the moment one of them opened up to reveal some hidden irradiated horror. 

So with that in mind, I felt the compulsion to just… keep moving. 

Staying put wasn’t part of the survival guide, not especially if you’re in unknown territory on what was clearly someone else’s home turf.

But I had to fight those inclinations, I had to block out those screams from my prior two iterations to ignore the alien’s orders. 

I had to learn to play ball, even if it meant going against everything I knew.

Because unlike the typical wastelander crisis I often found myself in, where I was almost always on the backfoot in every conceivable metric, I now had practically every other advantage aside from home turf. 

I had tech, weapons, armor, and even numbers. 

It was time to think differently, act tactically, because unlike every other situation before this, I was now in a position where thinking with conventional tactics was actually possible.

“Right, okay, this is bad.” I finally managed out after convincing myself to finally commit to playing ball. “So what’s the plan, chief? The way I see it, there’s only one way from here.” I shrugged, then pointed at the two doors opposite of us, and the two cargo doors to the left and right of the room. “We need to double-down, and just go all-in. Because if this bunker is like any other bunker on the continent… there’s sure to be, like, an emergency exit or some service tunnel to the surface. So my advice, as the resident bunker-expert, is to choose one of the two main doors there. I’ll let you pick which one since we don’t really have much to work on, not even signs, which I admit, is kinda weird.” 

Lysara seemed to ponder that option for a moment, before gesturing back towards the bunker door that’d just sealed shut behind us. “I believe that one will do.” He offered after a few moments of thought, prompting me to cock my head in abject confusion. 

It was around that point where I started seriously reconsidering my faith in the alien’s abilities to actually translate his book smarts into field smarts. 

Moreover, I started to actually worry once again, as questions over the alien’s ability to hold his own entered front and center.  

Did he lose it? Did he seriously just lose it on the first hurdle of the whole operation? I thought to myself darkly, letting out an exasperated breath that was probably quite audible over the intercom.

“To clarify, I don’t think we have much to worry about considering we’ve lost contact with Vir. He’s proactive, and considering the tools at his disposal I actually worry more for the facility at this point in time.” The alien spoke in a way that conveyed a sense of caution and concern… though it was clear now that it seemed to be a concern for our opponents rather than us. 

“What the heck do you mean-” I paused, as it finally hit me.

“If we don’t regain contact in the next five or so minutes, Vir will probably take it upon himself to either retry the manual override, or try a more… forceful approach.” Lysara quickly added, prompting me to crack a nervous smile, as I promptly shook my head in disbelief. “But I’d still advise that we stay sharp just in case the greeting party’s just a bit late. I don’t want to be caught off-guard just because we might be dealing with some delayed offensives.” 

I nodded in acknowledgement at this as we held our position, and my eyes remained peeled, taking careful note of everything around us. “If he forces his way in, wouldn’t that be completely against our whole, you know — unlock the facility carefully so we don’t disturb anything — plan?” 

“Potentially.” Lysara nodded. “But at this point our assured security should take precedence. We can’t continue the mission if we’re dead after all, and so-”

“-maximize our chances of survival, gotcha.” I nodded in confident agreement. “That works for me, chief.” 

A few minutes passed, and not a single movement came through from within the facility. 

However, just as we were starting to get acclimated, my eye caught sight of something on the blast door. 

It was difficult to spot at first, and with my attention focused almost squarely on the other entrances in the room, I’d almost missed it.

There were… what seemed to be etch marks on the surface of the door. 

This prompted me to investigate, completely breaking rank with Lysara prompting an immediate reprimand in the form of a yell. 

“Wait, Evina, what are you-”

“Oh, sorry. I’m still not used to this whole squad thing.” I stopped mid-stride, reaching for the back of my head nervously; resulting in an unsatisfying bonk of my armored hand against my helmeted head. With a sigh, I eventually pointed at the faint discoloration on the protective coating of the door that clearly wasn’t due to simple wear and tear. “There’s something on the door that I wanted to investigate.” 

“Well it’s not safe to go too close to the door. Vir might be tearing that thing down at any moment so it’s best to stay away.” Lysara cautioned. “So let me just have the suit’s cameras zoom in a bit here…” He trailed off, managing to superimpose a picture-in-picture view of the mystery etching on the bunker door.

It didn’t take us more than a few moments for us to register exactly what those etchings were after just a single glance. 

Though it took several more seconds for the ramifications of what exactly we were looking at to truly sink in.

Moreover, this proved to spark something in the self-purported xeno-anthropologist's mind, as he ordered a robot over to take a closer look. Under more intense scrutiny, it was clear that the door wasn’t weirdly splotchy because of some strange pattern of wear and tear. Indeed, there were actually portions of it that looked crudely touched-up, painted over using thin coats of paint that made certain areas darker, or lighter, compared to the overall original coat of paint that we saw on the outside of the door. 

The robot soon pushed further, actually scraping off these patches of thinly applied paint. 

And once enough of them were scraped off, our macabre suspicions were confirmed. 

Beneath the thin paint, were more of these ‘etchings’.

Though it was clear at this point that calling it that wasn’t accurate anymore.

These were claw marks. 

“Felinor claw marks.” I finally remarked, taking a few steps back. 

“Did… did someone manage to make it inside and get trapped and-”

“No, no.” I answered confidently. “I’ve been visiting this area of the forest for ages. Absolutely no one comes here, and I would’ve noticed some disturbances or at the very least some signs of the door being moved since then. Even if I haven’t gotten close, the door is very much still a prominent feature of the landscape. Never once have I seen the vines, the leaves, or any bit of the foliage being disturbed. We’re the first to have entered this place.” 

“Which means these claw marks must have been made by whoever was already in here, trying to get out.” Lysara concluded, eliciting a nod from myself.

“Yeah…” I acknowledged darkly, my features scrunching up in the process. 

“Is… is it common for bunker-dwelling felinor to-”

“No.” I interrupted Lysara before he could go any further into that train of thought. “At least, nothing to this extent.” I gestured towards the door again. “What… what the fuck is going on in here.” I muttered out, just as the door itself began to glow…

“WATCH OUT!” Lysara shouted, pushing me further away from the door’s line of sight as in a matter of seconds, the world around me erupted into a violent display of lights. 

Thankfully, we weren’t really directly in front of the door anyways.

But being extra cautious wasn’t a bad idea either. Especially as I saw what Vir had done to the door. 

It looked as if a massive, perfectly circular hole had been cut straight through the thick metal. Moreover, there were now streams of molten slag melting from the very top of the hole, dripping superheated globs of what had formerly been indestructible metal.

“STATUS REPORT?!” I heard a familiar voice blaring through my helmet, as Lysara began the process of reassuring the flustered AI as to our safety and the continued viability of the mission.

As that conversation continued however, a series of loud, high-pitched screeches emerged from within the atrium. 

“The PA system.” I announced confidently. “I can recognize that sound from a mile away.” 

We quickly regrouped back into formation, with the bots taking point, and Lysara and I standing side by side; weapons at the ready.

A flurry of noises erupted from the PA system, all of them entirely unintelligible, until finally… a distinctly felinor voice managed to break through. 

“WAIT!” A male voice managed out through sheer panic. “Please! Don’t go! I… That was a mistake on my part, please! It’s… it’s just been so long since, well… I… heh. Correction. It can’t be so long, since no one has ever actually gotten in. B-but now you’re here! And I… Oh I…” The voice ‘stalled’, stopping mid sentence as if overtaken by its own manic undertone. “P-please…” It offered again, this time, followed up by the unnerving sound of centuries-old pneumatic doors unsealing themselves for the first time in forever. 

A single door to the far side of the atrium had opened.