“Come on, come on!”A not-so wise lady shouted hesitantly. “Work up you fucking bucket of bolts.” As the sound of knocking and cranking could be heard from a corner-side of this gigantic room filled with dead roots and strange tendrils laying about. As she used up her strength to work about some strange technology, she worked up her teammates who were annoyed by the sound of tinkering.

“Katherine, could you please lay it down. What’s the matter?” Annoyed and frustrated by the metal scrapings cracking up, she sighs in pathetic annoyance as she watches and waits for her colleague to reply back.

“Goddamn bitch navigator isn’t budging up.” Katherine replies as pools of sweat drops off from her forehead, trickling down onto her camouflaged muddy blue cargo pants, leaving more darker tones of grey and black blotched onto the array of patterns.

“Right, so you have to swear and smash it up even more? Leave it alone, maybe the others can fix it up.” The colleague replies as she crosses her arms and rests herself by a wall, leaned and eyes shut, to concentrate in ones mind.

“Leave her be, Sher. Katherine is probably just stressed out.” Their medic worn out from sterilising her medical equipment replies as she closes off a briefcase and zips up her medical supply bag. Watching the tinkering stopping, she just sighs out in relieve and turns her head to the other direction, only to see an even more worn out partner of hers already deeply sleeping, attention unscathed.

Hearing echoing knocks from the door beside the wall Sherrinford was leaning on, the doorknob turns slowly before making off a clicking sound. “Wait up, the doors locked. Who is it?” Sherrinford questions as she walks towards the door, waiting for a reply.

“Duh, it’s us. Team One.” A masculine voice replies as the door unlocks with the help of Sherrinford’s nimble fingertips and left to the voice to reveal themselves.

“That’s not how you introduce yourself, idiot.” Captain Shanina replies as she guides her subordinate in after slapping the back of William for fun.

“Goodness gracious~” He whispers softly in pain as he rubs his exposed back which was ripped from an earlier encounter on their way towards the greenhouse of sorts.

“Great, welcome back, safe and sound.” The medic happily calls out as she sits on her chair while waving her legs back and forth childishly, as if waiting for a treat or some sort of reward.

“Barely actually, we had to deal with some more infected on the way out. The whole fight with some weird enraged lady apparently awakened some eggs that were secretly hidden in the walkway upstairs.” The male replies as he holds onto the pain at his back, holding a grin to adjust to the striking pain.

“Yeesh, that's pretty deep, Chau, I think Will here needs a little of your attention.” Speaking in a rather teasing tone, Sherrinford smiles before winking at Chau to give him some of that special treatment she was teasing through.

“Hay!” The medic agrees. Swooping up her medical supply bag, she gestures Will to sit down on the ground, as she inspects the wound and wonders how to treat it.

Unzipping her bag, she has to make use of her available tools once more, having to dirty it once again for the young man, she applies a gauze filled with yellowish substance and swabs it carefully and gently on the ever bleeding cut. Making sure its cleaned and sterile, she then hooks up a needlepoint and a small machine, similar to a nail gun and carefully injects staples onto the wound, making sure it is firmly held in place.

Meanwhile, The scientist who was being escorted alongside them was sitting on a chair nearby a small tent they build up. Watching what was to happen soon, she just relaxes herself as she rubs onto her fingers worriedly with sweat. “…ah..” She whispered to herself as she thought of something to say, but due to all the commotion, no one heard her trial.

“Hey, could you help up with the navigator please? I think it is broken.” The old-fashioned Katherine calls out to Captain Shanina and Colonel Bridgette as she wipes her sweat with a cloth ruined with black dust and small blotches, similar to dark coloured oils.

“I am no engineer, but I can take a look up.” Bridgette chuckles out as she heads towards her. “Navigator huh, sure, what’s up?”

Checking up on the latest in brand military made technology, she twists it left and right and fiddle with every button surrounding it before pulling out a screwdriver and unscrewing the cell port of the device.

Pulling out a small flap loosened by the removed screw, she was surprised to notice suck a thing. “Ughhh, the battery is busted up. Not busted up, but rather exploded. Why haven’t you thought of that first?”

Laughing in a dumb manner, Katherine facepalms herself as she exhales out annoyed. “Ahahaha…. About that.”

Shaking her head, Bridgette then pulls out the busted up battery cell and the unzips her torso and fidgets about the containment in it, making sure she got the proper sized cell, she pulls out a brand new replica of the same brand and slots it into the casing before covering the flap up and screwing back the lock. Flipping it back to the front, she then presses the big green button on it, before the screen lights up and acts a little glitched before working out a normal start-up.

“This will take some time, heck why didn’t you get the [REDACTED] brand? Not only it is more portable but it doesn’t need something like an old-fashioned battery to work out.” Bridgette gives her opinion as she looks towards Shanina and shrugs.

“I am not too keen in Guardian made technology and it is not like they are sold in black markets anyway, or if they were, it would be overpriced. “ Katherine replies as she presses a strange combination of buttons which causes another screen to pop out in the start-up menu. Written big, ‘Bios Technology [REDACTED]’ she adjusts the settings that was given and tries to overclock the system by removing a certain part of the device by jamming a screwdriver in a self- drilled hole by its side.

“Now you are probably going to make it worse.” Shanina replies in a very monotonic way.

“No” The maiden replies back before updating the device into a newer system by adjusting through its older firmware to a newer one. “Better than purchasing a newer chip-data card. By overclocking it, I can make it run smoother and leave more opportunities to my care without the point of nullified access.”

Confused, Bridgette shakes her head. “Whatever that means. As long, as you don’t cause trouble to out intel gatherers. They do need to transfer files to it from the collected data from the pylons.”

Shrugging her shoulders, Katherine cracks her neck to loosen it before resting herself onto her chair, staring up the screen and continuing her fiddling business. “Shoo shoo now.” She says in a joking manner as she gestures them away.

“Hah hah, no thanks?” Bridgette laughs softly before walking away. Shanina followed, only to stop halfway and sit on the ground waiting for her next order from their General. Opening her satchel’s zip, she pulls out a snack from her partially opened MRI Ration packet, and then pills off the covering and taking a munch from it. It tasted of granule filled with dried raisins and chocolate rubbed around it, similarly to an energy bar but better in all aspects of it.

“And there we go, good as new.” Chau-Min replies as she washes her gloves with some sort of clear liquid that smelled of ethanol and some other mixture alongside it. The blood dripped off quickly but not the smell, it smacked the room full of it, causing most of the sensitive nasal users to feel the aching pain of it through their nostrils.

“Oh, goodness gracious, that is strong as heck.” William replies as he covers his nose with his left index and thumb. Sounding like a clown, he explains his disgust of the smell.

“You will get used to it, it ain’t that bad compared to rotten wounds or darkened blood.” Chau-Min replies as she snickers like a little mouse, amused by his strange new tone.

“Yeah right… Where's General anyway and the others? I thought they were suppose to be here before us?” William asks as his voice still acted unusually funny.

Cringing in delight, Katherine taps on her navigator pad and scrolls through some pages before double tapping on the screen. Pulling the tab down her face, she explains to them that are on their way. “They just had some trouble. General haven’t fought quite much so she had to endure some physical injuries, but she is overall fine. Apparently, her guardian can shield and heal wounds. The pilots are still outside, they aren’t suppose to come in, though they did escort out some remaining saviours, though a miniscule number.”

“How many?” Shanina asks curiously.

“Three unfortunately, the others were either sacrificed in their own will to save their colleagues and some others were manipulated by the corruption of the Bio-Mother like the rest of the infected.” Katherine explains.

“Could they be possibly related to the scientist and her other partner she was with in the embassy?” Bridgette points out to Doctor Augustina who was listening keenly on their conversation.

“Probably...” Katherine shrugs before crossing her legs and putting it onto a broken off coffee-table. Relaxing herself while trying to gain intel onto the database of the facility.

“Wait, since you managed to hack onto the device, could you try to pry into the CCTV’s and reverse it back before it was enveloped by the black things? Because its best to know, how the Bio-Mother managed to get all the way here from England.”

“Wait up, the machine takes long to load up that much information.” Katherine explains as her Denmarkian (Danish) accent slowly breaks through her chapped off lips. “Come on, hurry up.”

“I do have some audit logs, want to hear?”

“Anything works as long as we know how to cure or get rid of her.” Sherrinford replies back, relaxing herself by the wall once more.

Scrolling through her tablet, Katherine nods to herself before pulling it down from her face, looking towards them with some small peeks towards the information given. “Says here, she was originally not corrupted and volunteered herself as an experiment due to the strange markings that started popping out onto her skin. She wasn’t the only Guardian who had strange markings like this, there were quite a few actually. Though, they never really decided to publicly announced it due to the aftermath and the secret before The Happening.”

“Wait, wait, you are telling me, the explosion in my father’s research lab was only one of the Guardians who caused that?” William asked in a confused manner. “Not the Bio-Mother?”

“Yep, so it is basically confirmed now that it was another Guardian that caused the explosion, not the Bio-Mother. Which makes sense, as the Bio-Mother was still near that mountainside alongside the General’s Sister and her contracted guardian, codenamed ‘Vaelency’, who was one of the higher ups, called Elders.”

“Makes sense, so the reason why they couldn’t respond for the past three years was because of the whole secrecy they were keeping with the experiments. So this markings, what were they then? Is it something that causes their corruption or is it just like some progress to it?”

“Apparently the Bio-Mother was the first known experiment. She had the most markings before others decided to make their appearance. She had a meeting with the other elders and the other staffs that were involved in it. But due to the contract of secrecy, they really had no choice but to not explain it out.” Katherine replies as she scrolls lower down.

“Apparently, her conditions got worse. Before they could initiate The Forest of Rehabilitation, whatever that means, she started losing contact with the people involved in helping her and soon after that went into hiding. Which is then confirmed with the document you guys found out back in the mountainside place, which I totally wasn’t spying you guys on, caused the whole population there not only annihilated but also the guardians turning into mindless beings who attacked anything in a very aggressive fashion and turning their contractees into zombie-like beings who were being used by Patient Zero, aka The Bio-Mother to work its biddings”

“That's when she was forming the Axis and was somehow manipulated by the General’s Sister.” Chau-Min mumbles out.

“Exactly. Using her new-found powers, she then pretended to need help in this research lab by controlling some higher ups in both their Guardians and Humans to form what happened to this lab today. But because of the secrecy and the loss of contact, no one really knew what was happening. Even the elders had no say or were introduced to this lab, so they didn’t know what was going on either.”

“That’s just stupid.” William revolted before sighing out in annoyance and frustration of knowing what happened, the truth so to speak.

“Well, that's the contract for you.” Katherine replies back as she grinds her molars together, making a really annoying grinding noise that was barely heard. “The manipulated scientists followed her plans wrote this notes and the few sane ones had no choice but to try to revolt, but to no avail, failed , like rats in a maze.

“So from finding the cure firstly for the strange markings that caused spontaneous acts of suicide or even some sort of aggression, Patient Zero decided to then make use of it and turned it into a biological weapon?” Chau-Min asks as she notes down the findings.

“So that means the explosion that caused the Endicrites Perfume Lab was obviously one of the controlled or soon to-be controlled Guardians then.” Sherrinford wondered as she thoughts up a theory for the reason the whole lab exploded first.

“So I was lied about the incident from my own mother and her staffs then. Because from what I remember, they said, it was one of the scientists who gone mad and decided to blow up the whole factory lab using strange chemicals.” William asked surprised and intrigued to learn more about his past but also his involvement in the whole reasoning of The Happening.

“Wait, you are an Endicrite? You are related to the current CEO Miyami “Agnes” Endicrite?” Katherine asked with a strange look on his face. Perhaps it is the flabbergasting of a person who doesn’t look fair nor gave a form of erecting certain features that made her curious about his so-called outburst of identity.

“Seriously, you didn’t know?” Bridgette snickers in a short breath of laughter as her cigarette smoke that was exhaled lingered off her nose and mouth as if a dragon breathing out a litre of undiluted magma. Grunting in an awkward way, she gives a grin afterwards and closes one of her eye in embarrassment of her own colleague who wasn’t well informed about the guy living among them.

“How the fuck should I know? Considering a lot of people can have the same surnames.” Katherine shouted back, overreacted in anger as she pauses her scrolling from her holographic yet physical tablet.

“Well, duh. Its obviously him. He can’t just be alive coincidentally with the same surname. You should have looked deeper into his Biodata earlier back at home-base.” Bridgette replies back as she rolled her eyes in annoyance.

“Yikes...” William whispered off his mouth as he suddenly felt a brush of wind hitting him from behind, nearby the door. Alerted, he swoops to the side as the door swung open and a group of shadowed assailants entered without any worries.

“Alright, ready to head off?” A coarse voice calls out to them. A figure, eyepatch worn with old yet cleanly maintained clothes, similar to a soldier’s uniform came out from the darkness. With a smile off her face that lets out a motivating feeling, she greets the others as her partners stood behind her, maintaining a strict yet informal behaviour not normal for a mercenary based occupation.

“Already? That was quick.” Chau-Min blurted out in surprise as she finished sterilising once more her tools.

Nodding towards the medic, the General heads towards the tent, beside Doctor Augustine before bending down and dragging out a strange strongbox from the inside of it. Unlatching the holds and then inputting a strange code which emitted a beeping noise, she then scanned her handprint before the locks of the metallic rims let off a smoky emission which when pulled open was seeping about everywhere. The contents were unknown, only the General and the Doctor were the only one in close proximity, a visible device useful for the last battle, one suppose. “It is all there..” She mutters to herself before looking towards the doctor.

“Are you ready, Doctor?” She asks in a calm and assuring way. With her one eye, she watched keenly into her, wondering if the doctor was absolutely truthful to her words

Looking left and right in a nervous way, the doctor exhaled softly before looking back at the General. “Yes, ma’am.” The words echoed across the room as she smiles at William who was making a sad face to himself but with shiny clear eyes which looked back at her with confidence.

“I see.” The General replies back before pulling out the device from the box. Pulling off a latch from the strange metallic frame of the device, the device unleashed and created a strange webbing of devices. Unusual to sight, for something that wasn’t seen before made in the public eye, it was definitely not an exo-skeleton, it looked more like a device to hold something, perhaps the guardian crystal? No, it can’t be. It looks like a pole of sorts.

Wandering gazes locked onto her as the General held the device on her prosthetic arm which exposed the metallic components that was inside its rubbery mould. An old memory of a fight which started the whole incident.

“Alright then, troops. Prepare yourself...” The general called out to them in an affirmative tone. “Time to call out our friends now. This is the last we would probably see them anyway, we may not know of the outcome but whatever happens, make the right choices...”

“Play the right cards!” She raised her voice as she pulls out a small box that held her Guardian’s Key Crystal before dropping it into a small slit that acted as a slot to hold the reason behind the strange device’s model of invention. Slapping the latch shut, the device started glowing bright blue through small emission holes before a strange auric energy formed about it, like some sort of shield.

As the sound of a strange beep activates in their Ear Comms, a familiar pair of voices sounded out as they gave out their order and information of their current situation.

“Good Day lads.” Substitute General Mia talks through the speakers as they noticed every remaining spotlights and electrically powered devices started to make mechanised sounds and turned on.

“Thanks for the help with pylons. Now, General Mirabella here would be incoming in a few seconds, she’s turning something on to help ensure your safety, especially when things get rough.”

“I know, I know. Most of you folks don’t like getting your hands on this wondrous stones filled with amazing minds, but hell, at-least let them help you. Ha-ha.” The General with her Australian Heritage showing, was letting off a dare devilish behaviour which only sprouted a strange thought of excitement to the young adults and the elders who decided to guide them along, more experienced in their military and scientific walkabouts.

“Alright, it is almost done.” A faint voice could be heard, close to Substitute General Mirabella. As she said that, the pylons among the machinery stared to whisk in a circular motion, rotating 360 degrees indefinitely before a gate of sorts started forming about the outer edges of the room. But soon it spread towards slits, throughout the area, maybe the whole building as it created a strange grid of sorts which acted as some sort of protection device?

“Alright, Protection Grid activated, I am pretty sure no faults are made. Unless we need a Faraday Cage in-case the electrical currents started ticking your devices off like time bombs.” Being sarcastic, she started joking about as a crystal came out from William’s crystal hold and waved in a circle before making a portal of sorts.

A sound of steps could be heard, before a person came out of it, in a strange formal attire, not normal to current situations or era. It was Elder Shimaya, coming out of Shin-ae’s crystal, interesting. As she was suited in a kimono of sorts and adorned with thin pieces of old sheeted metallic armour, she whisks out with her blade holstered to her waists as the portals then closed up and the crystal dissipates into a small spark.

“Oh yeah, not to forget. The elders would help too.” General Mia blurted out suddenly as their eyes were already fixed towards the beautifully and elegant figure emerging out of thin air.

“Yeah, I think we are already notified of that.” Major Demonia replies as she holsters her weapon to her back as she picks herself up and looks towards the entrance door, guarded by the light of electrical grids and the small glows that blared the room with angelic light from its pitch black darkness. “General, shall we call it a start?”

“Yes.” General Shriway replied before gesturing her troops to follow. “Come on soldiers. Today, we are making something. Not a cake, but something better. It will taste as good as it begins, and will remain in your gut when it ends. Elder Shimaya, lead the way.”

“Sure, milady.” She spoke in a strange accent before snapping her fingers quickly. Causing the group to dissapear in a flash, somewhere.