Diaz

The grey chamber was unchanged, sans the lack of mystery package laying on the slab pedestal where he had left it. Without the thick mists, the atmosphere had gone from eerie to unsettling. The difference between a funerary hall and an empty grave waiting for him to topple into it. The improved visibility had its perks; more subtleties were revealed and discarded. Scratches and scuffs mostly. This room was highly traveled, which was an interesting but ultimately useless fact. Pebbles and stone flakes littered the floor, not dense enough to leave the trail of a passersby while not sparse enough to hint at an isolated cause.

"Anything seem different here?" Diaz asked, hoping he had missed something, irritated he had to ask because the other two weren't offering. The one time he wanted Tony to speak and he seemed to adopt an oath of silence.

"I wasn't really paying attention last time we came by." Nye confessed. Of course she wasn't. She was probably daydreaming about how she'd piss away her pay on some pointless game. Bloody amateurs. Stone crunched underfoot as they kept searching.

"These rocks are about the same, but this is new." Tony said while pointing upwards with his pulse repeater. A single black crack was the object of his interest.

"Fascinating, and this is useful because…" Diaz probed the crack with his own lights. Wherever they touched the break it seemed to drink in the light, devouring it like a tiny self-contained black hole. Again interesting, but ultimately useless in his eyes.

"No, right here." Tony indicated again, and this time he saw it. A single impact crater. Half a lifetime as a dog of war flashed through Diaz's mind as he cataloged the crater for what it was. A bullet impact, flat ball at low speed, definitely not designed to punch through armor or stone.

"Recheck the floor," He said. "There should be a spent bullet nearby. If it was Shores, we won't find a casing. He uses a WK-ten pistol." More light and more time found the mushroomed bullet, which he knew belonged to Shores. "We know he was here and he felt like letting off a shot. It doesn't look like a struggle or a gunfight went down. Any thoughts?"

"Boomer said he was gassed, right? Maybe he's all fuzzy and tried to spook something off. One round might have been a warning shot." Tony said.

"Did he get hit in the head?" Nye offered. "He might have grabbed his pistol and squeezed one off by accident." It was a valid theory but still a stretch. If anything, he should only be dizzy or sick. Whatever was wrong with him was worse than either of those options.

"He could be getting chased by some slow monster like in a movie. Or he's brainwashed and fighting it. Wouldn't that be something?" Tony said.

"If it was brainwashing, he should have put that shot in his attacker if he was fighting it, or his head if he wasn't." Nye replied.

"He probably couldn't see them in the fog. So then he puts the gun to his head but they stop him from popping his grape and take him as a mindless thrall so they can extract his precious, bodily fluids." Tony retorted.

"I'd play that game." Nye said.

"Both of you, knock that off! Let's put a pin in the crazy talk. The way I see it, we have three choices." Diaz said while indicating the three other halls exiting the chamber and excluding the long twisting corridor they'd entered from. Nye walked to the far door and sighted back up to the impact point. Then she moved to the center and did it again, and then again at the rear door.

"I say center. The crack has the best angle from there."

Diaz was unconvinced but had no better choices. Nye had good spatial awareness when she focused, and it wasn't like they had any better leads. He looked to Tony for a second opinion and received an indifferent shrug from his plated pauldrons.

"How can you tell?" Diaz asked.

"There was a level in-"

"A game," Tony interrupted. "She's betting Shores's life on something she learned from a game."

"First off, Silent Grave Hillock is a horror survival simulation, not a game. Second, you're an asshole. Third, you got a better idea?" For an entire minute, Tony was as quiet as nine feet and nearly four tons of weaponized metal could be.

"Well, what are we putzing around for?" He said. "We've got a deranged—and possibly brainwashed—pilot to save. Haven't we?" Despite calling for action, Tony didn't make a move to head the next leg of their advance. Shouldering his rifle to a low ready, Diaz took point and the others followed.

"Let's hurry up and catch him before he hurts himself worse. If he's this far out to lunch, we need to treat him like a little kid. He might try to run from us."

A lifetime ago, back when his only prospects for the future had been a life as a faceless farmer, Diaz had known a dog like that. Whenever it escaped the tiny stack apartment its owner kept it locked in, it would tear through the halls at full tilt. It was never aggressive, at least not to him, but it wasn't exactly a social dog. It would snap its jaws and scratch and bring him to the ground just to lick his ears, but it was never mean. The adults couldn't catch it because it didn't want to go back to its cage. It wanted to play. The cheeky mutt would even wait for folks to get close enough to see it up close before dashing away, hoping they'd come chase it.

Diaz couldn't remember how many years ago it was, those few fleeting moments he had of a proper childhood, but he remembered how it ended. A dog that just wanted to play got nearly thirty hands worth of kitchen knives buried in it one night, and by morning, the scent of meat charred black had greeted him for breakfast. Like the rest of his childhood, it was a memory he'd rather forget.

If this went on, Shores was apt to be found dead or made dead by someone who didn't want him skulking around. They'd been warned of what would happen if they strayed. The Client had gunned down his own bot the instant it got out of line. Diaz didn't even humor the idea that the Client wouldn't butcher Shores the second he made his intrusion known. He gave his head a shake, switching from realistic pessimism to mission-oriented pessimism.

Even if they did find Shores, the real challenge would be catching him without hurting him. Power armor wasn't well renowned for its gentle touch— quite the opposite in fact. Once they caught sight of Shores, he wouldn't be able to outrun them. No normal person could without some mechanical assistance. Aside from the obvious benefits of wearing powered armor, standing above the suit's feet—partway up its shins—did more than just make the wearer taller. Without trying, the longer stride let soldiers make better time on the march and in a fight. When it felt like he was taking baby steps, troops in conventional body armor would be jogging to keep pace. Tony was dragging his feet in the rear as he asked the question Diaz was waiting for.

"What do you think he was shooting at?"

"I say zombies." Nye said, her voice uncharacteristically terse.

"No point thinking about it now," Diaz said. "You can ask him when we find him, or better yet, back on the Shadow after he's had some time to get his head sorted out."

He didn't have enough facts to make an educated guess, and neither of his current guesses boded well for Shores. He had either been shooting at nothing in particular for no real reason, or he had missed his mystery target by a very wide margin and couldn't get off another shot. Of the two, he was hoping it was the former.

When some soldiers march for hours at a time in enemy territory without seeing a foe, they relax. They get complacent that the ambush won't come. Diaz wasn't one of those soldiers. Every step he took without something trying to kill him could have been a warning klaxon screaming in his head. He knew that for every peaceful second he spent on this station, the enemy was conglomerating their forces into a massive hammer blow designed to crush him.

At least he was moving. If he'd had to sit on the defensive, waiting for an attack that might never come, he'd probably think himself crazy within the day. His brain wasn't wired for complacency— for meek patience while danger gathers. He was a hunter.

"Looks like Nye's brilliant deduction was a bust." Tony said as the trio's path ended in a wall of polished black stone. And Tony was an eejit.

"This isn't the first dead-end we've hit." Diaz said, "Fan out, check any open rooms you find and look for a terminal or blueprints. Something!" The frustration in his voice audible, but he couldn't be sure if it was apparent to them. He fought it back down, burying it beneath a grimly hollow smile that never reached his eyes.

"Or maybe a guest map, with a nice big red 'you are here' arrow." Nye said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

She silenced herself under his hostile glance, then with a shrug and a girlish chuckle, she did as he'd ordered. His empty smile gained a note of warmth before her cute tittering was devoured by the fog hanging in the thin atmosphere. How many people just like her had I killed?

The thought struck Diaz like a brick to the jaw. His muted emotions fled before a rising storm of blood-drenched half-memories from a younger man at war. He shook his head, looking for a fixed point in the present, something his eyes could latch onto to keep him steady when the storm of yesterdays crashed into him. In the swirling mists, he found only the faces of the unforgotten dead, and in the black mirror before him, he saw himself. Alone and unarmored, he was a desiccated husk of crudely stitched flesh around a tortured soul. The twisted essence of his being exposed by the rictus grin he hid behind.

A man like that doesn't deserve happiness. See how it still pretends to be a human? That wretched thing should die alone and save others the misfortune of laying eyes upon it. They all know what you truly are. Butcher of bodies. Feaster of flesh. Slayer of souls. You'll always be the one who slaughtered them all. You'll always remember what you did. You will never change.

WHAM

The sound sent a bolt of lightning up his spine. His flesh already moving as it savagely snatched his mind from the haunted reflection in the black mirror. His eyes spun around his suit's HUD, taking in the information even though his brain wasn't processing anything yet. He could sort through the facts of his existence later— if he was still alive to do so later.

He saw a suit, Tony's suit, storming through a breeched door in slow motion. Rifle raised, ready for combat but not firing. Further down the hall, Nye was doubling back to offer support. Somewhere between a handful and a million half-formed thoughts all surged to be noticed by his active mind at the sight of her. Repressed emotions fought with fresh ones to penetrate the shroud of tactical apathy around his brain.

His suit smashed into the wall adjacent to the doorway with enough force to crush a man. A half breath to steady his flesh. He thunders into the room, ready to loose a storm of leaden death from his rifle's underbarrel submachine gun. Tony to his left, he presses right, scanning the room.

It was equally devoid of life or death.

"It's empty," He said, and at that moment, his flesh and mind re-synced. "I said to check rooms, not kick down doors! The entire point of this little rescue op is to get Shores out without the Client finding out."

Tony reached a hand into the billowing vapors that were pooling into the room. Great. First Nye, and now Tony was kicking in doors to snoop around. Did they have a bet that he didn't know about? Soft red floor lights came to life while their overhead counterparts remained dark as Tony entered the vacant room. We're already breaking, so we may as well enter.

The room was shaped similar to the head of a three-pronged fork, with a wide-open entry area and two thick dividers creating three short halls. The entry area had a few tables built out from the walls, and the halls further down had bunks cut into the walls stacked three high, two long. A single terminal was built into an alcove near the door, and as Nye approached, it flickered to life with a dull hum he felt in his teeth rather than heard.

"Yay, another collectible," Nye said under her breath, but it was still noticed by her squadmates. She answered his unasked question with a sigh. "No sever access here either."

"I'd assume it's not a map?" Tony sounded groggy. That moron better not have replaced his water for hooch again. If he was in his packs, that might explain his violent outburst, but what about Nye's?

"No, it's journal entries from the people who lived here," Nye said while scrolling through the logs, flagging them all to be copied before inserting her data spike and selecting one at random to play as the data was extracted. "Might be useful. Listen to this."

"Today we had mashed potatoes. I couldn't believe-" A young-sounding man, probably still in his teens, started.

"Okay... Let's try this one then." Nye said, queuing another log to play.

"I don't think I learned anything from the thermodynamics lecture-" Nye skipped to another file.

"I saw eighteen and six making out behind-"

"Another day, another math exam bombed-"

"Meat stew with no meat! Guess it's-"

"I'm starting to think I'm not meant to-"

"Was this some kind of school?" Tony asked.

"There's gotta be a thousand hours of this crap on here," Nye said. "Let's just skip to the end."

"-n'twanttodie. Idon'twanttodie. Idon'twanttodie. Idon'twanttodie. Idon'twanttodie. Idon'twanttodie. Idon'twanttodie. Idon'twant-" The log clicked off and the silence of the room grew.

"Well, that took a dark turn," Tony said. "I wanted to hear more about that meat stew."

"What were they doing to people here?" Diaz asked.

"To think, if Shores hadn't wandered off, I would have never found this. This has to be the find of the century! Relic station of the synthetic revolution caught up in human experimentation only to be ousted by the strappingly handsome hero and his flunkies. Station scum like Jhordan would line the rings twice around to hear that story." Tony spoke passionately now as he wandered deeper into the room, sifting through those scant personal belongings left behind by the occupants.

"Did you just call us flunkies?" Nye asked without turning from the terminal.

"Regardless, we still need to find Shores and leave," Diaz said. "So if there's nothing useful on that terminal, we need to keep pushing on."

"Maybe mister hero should take point this time." Nye said, her dataspike withdrawn and her laser repeater held ready. The terminal flashed in a pixelated seizure behind her then went black.

"Now's not the time to be petty. We have a damsel to save," Tony retorted. "Besides, every story needs its supporting cast. Lead on Diaz." Diaz didn't move, instead motioning with his rifle for Tony to march ahead like a prisoner heading for a shallow grave.

"I've spent my time as the hero. It didn't agree with me." Diaz said. Blood-stained memories of the warpath he'd carved in the miles between cities tried to resurface, but he managed to smother them before they took root.

"Like working with toddlers." Tony sighed before stomping out the door and leading them straight back to the dead-end they came from.

"What's the matter Tony?" Nye asked.

"Shut up." He said wearily before humbly backtracking to the last junction they'd walked past.

They pushed onwards, deeper still into what should be the heart of the asteroid. The mists were thinner in this part of the station, much to his unspoken relief. He was tired of running blindly through the tunnels, a thought that put a disconcerted smile on his face. He'd gotten spoiled by years of suited combat, that wasn't like him. Experimentally, he toggled his suit's comm suite back on.

Whatever this chemical mix was, it hated the EM spectrum almost as much as the visible one. Radio returns across the spectrum were filled with white noise, sounding like a cross between a heretical preacher undermining a broadcast sermon and the undulating howls of those left for a slow death on the battlefield. There was more to the sound, almost as if it was just outside his suit's ability to reproduce and pitched barely beyond the range of human hearing. The closest comparison he could think of was it felt like he was listening to someone else's migraine.

He gave his head a shake and toggled off his comm suite. Just when he thought he'd adapted to the tricks in the mist, a new one would catch him unawares. His inner cheeks were chewed raw, but he kept gnawing them to avoid the vapors' hypnotic effects, along with the unheard sound that now echoed in his mind. He double-checked that his suit wasn't receiving any hails, then cocked his helmet's binaural inputs—his armor's ears—to see if the sound was coming from any one direction.

"Do you guys hear that?" He asked in a low whisper.

"You're the first thing I've heard in an hour." Tony said.

"Same." Nye added.

"It's like a sonic ringing whistle kind of sound." Diaz said.

"Probably just tinnitus." Nye said reassuringly. A single rap on his backplate rung through his armor, the mechanized equivalent of a steadying hand on the shoulder.

It was a plausible answer. She was probably right. Despite himself, Diaz was glad she had his back. But she was also dangerous to him. She was a living reminder of what he'd done, the people he'd slaughtered in war a half-decade ago. She was a trickle of water down his bastion of professionalism. A pleasant balm at times, but one that would erode his defenses until they collapsed. That couldn't happen.

He couldn't be weak, not again.

Diaz lengthened his stride, putting some more distance between Nye and him. He couldn't blame her for what she was. Behind the armor, in a fight, on the Shadow… He wouldn't remember for a time. But like every other good thing in his life, those times never lasted. He would never truly forget in the end.

They were finally closing in on Shores's trail, a line of spent bullets here, a dropped magazine there, but no battle damage other than the glossy black walls being cracked or chipped. Whatever was wrong with him was severe.

Diaz was annoyed by the prospect of trying to talk Shores into handing over his pistol up until they found it on the ground. Evidently, Shores had spiked it into the floor for all he had. The near priceless wooden grips were in splinters. He stowed the ammo-starved pistol in a magazine canister and kept moving forward. Shores's holster wasn't much further than that. Then his hydration pack, then his ration bars, then finally his depleted battle belt.

"We'd better not find his clothes after this." Nye said, her forced mirth putting him more on edge than off. Shores had run out of things to throw, instead leaving behind blood, first in splatters, then in pools mixed with watery bile. Diaz doubled his pace into a quick jog, the path so easy to follow now there was no need for closer examination.

"At what point do we just accept he's a goner?" Tony asked. Of course Tony would ask that.

"We don't," Diaz growled. "Not without a body."