EPISODE 3 - PART 2

- UNDERGROUND -

[BLACK]

Deep in the forest, a rectangular ramp enters on its soil to an underground bunker, the vines on the side walls being stopped by a great dark-grey gate. On the touch, the gate lights up with a blue energy, allowing for the visitors to enter without much of a difficulty.

The walls inside are of concrete and metal, they look to crumble by the old age and the plants forcing to grow its roots from outside, but the only sight of SAE is following the short corridor, where an enormous hall is placed. The sunlight illuminates the center of what it seems to be a giant thick glassed cage.

In this cage, a small forest is placed over the fallen roof, with just a big tree and multiple vines intertwining with the environment, with what looks to be a mold covering all the plants' surface, giving the scene a light green color.

“Oh, my!” Penelope says amazed. “What are you carrying?”

Penelope is guarding on the cage’s entrance, which one-to-two people could pass on the open frame, near the back wall of the hall.

“This is food!” Kat grins, carrying what appears to be a coconut, but with ten times its normal size and less round.

She passes through hopping.

“Hold on,” Zack sign her to stop, ”it’s enough that you brought a SAE in our base, now you’re taking strange fruit from the trees as well? Are you planning to eat that?”

“Hm? Don’t worry!” Kat puts the giant fruit on the floor. “I’m not crazy to eat it.”

She goes to Stella that was near the glass wall and taking something from her hands.

“I’m going to give him the food…” Kat raises the grey fluffy ball. “…then if he dies, I’ll know it's poisonous.”

The fluffy ball starts to shriek, trying to run away, but there’s no use, Kat’s evil claws are stronger than his entire body.

“C’mon now, say ‘ahh’…” Kat cut a small cubic piece of fruit and is waving it on the creature’s face, as it shrieks in horror. The fruit's peel is green while the flesh is white.

“I think it’s best to just kill it right here and now,” Fenik says, with one hand gripping his undrawn knife.

“Easy there, it’s actually not a bad idea, so let’s trust Kat for this,” Zack reassures.

“Yes, Yes! Trust me for this.” Kat grins, as she forces the fruit piece into the fluffy ball’s mouth.

“Zack!” Ray's voice comes from behind, at an open door to a small room with a lot of cabinets and papers on the ground. “Come look at this.”

Both Zack and Fenik walk there, Ray and Kyle are in the room, the only pieces of paper in order are the ones above the big desk on the left side, at the back of the room.

“It looks like this bunker is from somewhere called ‘England’, but I can’t remember where that name comes from…”

Zack thinks for a moment.

“That’s an old human territory, a country.” He answers.

“Yeah, that’s it! A country. The thing is, this lab is from more than a century ago.” Ray says excitedly. “They made a bunch of experiments here that involved Vis.” She looks around.

“And, so?”

“So, there’s a lot of things here that neither I nor Kyle knew,” She goes to the desk, where Kyle is on a metal seat. “Here it tells that Vis actually could control time, like, they were testing it out.”

She searches for a file in the middle of the mess.

“What do you mean by that?” Fenik asks confused.

“It’s like Vis somehow changed the flow of time,” Kyle answers seriously, landing the page to Ray.

“This is it.” Ray looks for the right part and then starts reading.

“’Vis can be gathered by the transformation of material in the environment. Whatever the great amount of living beings infected with SAE actually takes it from somewhere else: the future‘”

Ray flips the page, looking for another interesting part.

“What that mean?” Zack rubs his hair, trying to digest that information.

“’Because Vis has the potential to control all characteristics of the universe, it also can pull energy from the future.’” Ray looks to Zack. “They never taught us that.”

Zack shrugs, “Maybe it’s not true? Isn’t the idea of Vis being overpowerful just a rumor?”

“Yeah, I thought that too, but look at this room.”

There are more than thirty cubic metal cabinets around them, each one having about a couple of thousands of files and folders. Looking back at the hall, that isn’t poor technology either, this is way better than the labs they had on Windcut, if this hasn't been abandoned that is.

“Besides,” she continues. “Do you remember what Ms. Moran told us in one of her classes? That when we use Vis, people could actually both sense it coming before and after it got triggered?”

“Yeah… that always made me a little lost, but I just accepted it.”

“Right?” Ray puts the paper back to the desk. “It’s almost as if the simple fact of it being active, it changed something in time on the past and in the future, and we can sense it.

“And that’s exactly what all this tells.” She ends.

“So why this information didn’t go outside? They got overrun by SAE here?”

“Not that,” Kyle waves a piece of paper. “A command order told them to go back to…” he looks again to see if he got it right. “…somewhere called Europe.”

“Yeah, that’s… I think that’s another country, not sure though.”

“Maybe they got killed going there?” Fenik says thoughtfully.

“If we don’t know these, then probably.” Kyle keeps looking at a page on the table. “If we could bring this information to Liberty, we could advance our researches on Vis by a lot.”

“Alright. Both of you continue to look at those, and separate some of the files for us to bring, we don’t know how are we going back, so it’s best to have the basics with us.”

“OK!” Ray's eyes brighten.

“Wait!” Kyle raises his hand, gazing at the command note. “They always write Vis as an acronym, like ‘V.I.S.’, is that the scientific way to write it?”

Zack scratches his head. “I don’t remember seeing it like that in any books.”

Kyle hums, “Must be the old way to name it then.”

Zack waves to them, exiting the room, Fenik follows and pulls his watch out.

‘2:35 evening.’

The military crates from the aircraft were all there already.

The base has been moved. Tyler, Vincent and Fritz are on the aircraft protecting Nora, which is trying to fix the radio, but the ship has already lost a quarter of what it was before, the rope ladder that stood a foot or two above the ground is now laying its ends on the grass.

The worse is that we also lost a safe place to scout for Liberty’s rescue aircraft and use the flare gun to alert them. We made a wood wall right in front of the bunker’s front gate, but It’s not as safe as looking through the cockpit’s glass and firing by opening the emergency trapdoor on the ceiling of the ship.

In some minutes the fortresses radio communications open, if everything goes smoothly, they can be rescued with not much as a drop of sweat in this bunker.

The only problem by far is the glass cage, an open entrance to the outside, there’s some wood inside to use as a barricade for the night, but they look frail.

If nothing really dangerous comes attacking them, like a tier four or above, they still had a chance.

One hour passes by, and no signal of the radio team.

Then two hours. When the night comes, the next day our ship will be completely gone.

The only jungle food we had was being tested by a furry SAE, no running water nearby, at least there’s two days of supplies, so no worrying about that.

Besides the first floor, the bunker has four floors in total, each one being connected by staircases. A scout team checked each floor; besides the abandoned old furniture and some dust, they were clear. On the second floor is where people used to sleep in, having four big joint rooms for twenty-six people to sleep in each, together with another seven private rooms, but we decided to sleep all together in a single big room, so we barricaded the entire place up. And the other floors were full of rooms for storage or testing, either way, they are empty now.

Fenik looks outside through the glass, the place is quite silent, they did everything they could today, now they need to survive the night.

Kat passes by, carrying another giant fruit. The furry ball didn’t die yet, it even calmed down after being feed, so it might be eatable.

‘6:05 sunset’ it wasn’t seven hours after all, just now Zack remembered something called “time zone” and that in different places of the world the sunset time changes, and here it would take a little less than an hour for that to happen, such a strange thing to think about.

Nora and the others came into the bunker, she was sobbing because she couldn’t fix the radio or bring it. She apologized to Zack dozens of times, but if she couldn’t do that, nobody could.

The night came, it had so many stars, more than on the fortress’ sky, the others can’t see it, only the one in patrol outside.

Fenik analyzes the wood wall they improvised. It’s beginning to get colder and colder, as the wind makes the trees canopy to dance.

Everything is dark, no lanterns or flashlights, so your retina can get used to it, and to not get unwanted attention from the creatures outside. Luckily, it’s a full moon.

The rescue aircraft is really going to fly on the dark night?

The tiltrotor aircraft was first planned to fly on the night, but with the pass of time, researches and diplomacy made it to be obligatorily only on daylight. Any aircrafts flying in the forbidden schedule would be put down after a single warning.

Chances are slim, but they aren’t null, so one person should always patrol the skies at night.

For now, the platoon is on the first floor, hiding the inside lights, if something attacks the patrol, they can back him up.

“Fenik,” Vincent whispers crouched at his side. “My turn.”

Fenik nods. “Just remember, if you see anything dangerous just retreat and regroup.”

“Right, right.” Vincent pats Fenik’s shoulders.

Going down the bunker entrance, a soft yellow light brightens on the end of the corridor, each step echo on the flat walls. Everyone is seated on crates or in the ground on somewhat of a circle, with a lamp on the center of it.

“It’s good, I promise!” Kat offers a giant fruit’s conical piece, like a watermelon, to Stella, which refuses and goes back a little.

“Where’s the furry thing?” Fenik looks around.

“Hm!” Kat swallows the fruit she bitten. “It’s on my bag sleeping, it already befriended with us.”

“I see, just don’t let it free when we sleep.”

“Shure fing!” Kat speaks chewing with her mouth full.

Fenik goes to the cage’s glass, looking at the strange plants outside. There’s a lot of those fruit on the giant tree foliage, it’s base warped between the upper floor and the bunker’s ground, some are on the ground with what appear to be giant seedlings with vines hanging from the top of the first branches, together with some of those fruits on the grass.

The group talks in the background about the findings on the file room, Kyle explains everything in detail, about the possibility of infinite Vis by pulling it from the future, and the changes in time by using it.

It became a classroom of some sort, but Fenik isn’t interested in it, for him that wasn’t useful unless he could use it somehow, so he kept gazing inside the glassed cage.

“Hey…” Ray comes to talk with Fenik. “So, why you alone?”

He looks to his right ready to say something, but he sighs. “I guess, just looking at how different all of this is.”

“The SAE?” She starts to look at the vines and fruits outside.

“I always imagined SAE were dangerous monsters,” Fenik looks to the oak of the giant tree. “Even so I knew the different species cataloged, in the back of my mind I thought SAE were… something worse.”

Someone laughs in the group, Ray looks at them, Kat’s forcing Stella to eat the strange fruit and everyone else is bursting into laughter.

“So,” Ray interlaces her fingers. “Fenik… do you… like someone?”

“Huh? What do you mean?” Fenik looks confused at her blushing.

“Like a crush, someone you would be with, you know…”

“Hm, yeah, I have someone like that.” Fenik voice didn’t change a tone, like that didn’t matter much, as he continues to look at the scattered fruits outside.

Ray get surprised, “I didn’t know that, so who’s she?”

Fenik doesn’t respond, so Ray quickly continues, trying to keep the smile.

“She’s probably very pretty, right?...” Her voice fails for a second. “Is she from the academy? Maybe on our platoon?”

Suddenly, Fenik starts walking away.

“Fenik?”

He goes to the cage’s entrance, opening the wood barricade.

“Stay there,” Fenik says with a stern face.

Some of the group sees him going outside, and start to ask what was he doing.

“I don’t know…” Ray answers, completely lost.

Fenik walks to one of the strange big fruit, and another soft blue light flashes in it, followed by a movement.

It was hard to see through the dirty glass, but now it was easier, a scaly tail of a creature moving inside the liquid within, it turns showing its face, staring back with its four black eyes.

These aren’t just fruits, they are eggs.