Mari:

  Despite the circumstances, Mari found a part of her attention devoted to keeping a stupid grin off her face.

  She felt incredible. Sure, she still had the cut across her abdomen, and that would definitely leave a scar, but Fivefold Harmony of Life had a downright euphoric feeling. So yes, despite monsters roaming the halls, a cadre of insurgents trying to hopefully revive their long-dead emperor, a horrific disease ravaging her bloodstream (that one wasn’t new), and plenty of political and social problems that had made her a pariah for over a decade, she felt damn good.

  All of that was despite the fact she had almost died. Anyone else almost certainly would have died if they’d been tossed with such force into a wall like she had been. Mari was willing to admit that the experience had made her afraid, but more than that, angry.

  What if it had been Kris? There would be nothing to truly protect her from that. One instant, and the blossoming emotions between them could be snuffed out. Just like Sylvia. The burning colony emerged into her thoughts again, and she shivered involuntarily.

  Therefore, she was resolved.

  Mari would protect Kris through the trial ahead of them, and then she would tell her new lover about everything she knew. Cultivation, Medjay, Ivan—all of it. And then she would help Kris become stronger alongside her.

  Mari refocused on the stairs, and mounted the first one with her weapon aimed upwards, checking the path ahead. At the same time, Vilke had his rifle aimed below—towards sublevels five and on.

  “We have a lot of ground to quarantine.” Vilke grumbled with displeasure, but kept his voice low.

  “Not quite as bad as you’re thinking. This is the administration district. There are no sublevel connections from this district to the outer ones. Beyond that, the academy, hospital and Citadel are only connected to one another on this sublevel.” Relkur assuaged their fears a little, and Mari realized he hadn’t been speaking all along for a reason. Relkur’s voice sounded heavily strained, almost like a hissing whisper. It sounded painful for him to speak at all. At her expression, he filled in the blank, “I was in a mining accident. Chemical fumes burned my throat pretty badly.”

  Mari nodded, and Kris decided to take over explaining in his place. “That separation underground is because of the security risks. The original designs were made with defense in mind, so having as few connections as possible was important, and sublevel four was meant to be an escape route. The ten layers below us will take time to clear out, but they’re all emergency supply rooms, and each is smaller than the one below it.

  “The bottom floor is the only departure from that. It pumps excess water out so the rest doesn’t flood. That’s the machine we based the bottom floor of modern underground apartments on. I’ve only been down there a few times when I was younger, when we tapped into the supplies to keep people fed.”

  “Neat. So now we have a bunch of potentially contaminated emergency supplies?” Mari climbed a few more steps as she responded, watching the blood splatters vanish as she approached.

  “No. Each storage floor is sealed and has a decontamination chamber before you can enter. When I say long-term emergency supplies, I mean that there’s a whole high-tech facility down there.” Kris followed her up, while Vilke descended a bit further to check for trails outside Mari’s radius.

  “Wait.” Vilke called out from the floor below.

  Mari and Kris descended to join him, and he pointed to some devices in the four corners of the stairwell just below them.

  “There’s nothing past these. There was no blood or signs at all.”

  Mari turned her attention to the device, then studied it with her HUD.

  Her display flickered as the equipment within switched to other vision types she had no idea she even had, and then it stopped.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  [Frequency Wave Barrier.]

  Then her vision turned back to normal, and an analysis was displayed that went way over her head. Galileo knew far more about those things than she did, so she assumed the following string of numbers would’ve meant something to him. She had no clue, though.

  “Something that prevents the bio weapon from entering, I guess.” Mari tried to step down, and the moment her foot reached the layer the devices were on, her foot began to itch.

  [Warning!]

  [Warning!]

  [Do not proceed!]

  Her eyes lit up with alerts and she stepped back and grimaced in pain.

  “Everything all right, Major?” Vilke held her by the shoulder to keep her steady.

  “It felt like my blood was boiling in my veins! That was unbelievably uncomfortable.” She set her foot on the solid step, turned, and strode away as fast as she could.

  ‘Frequency Wave,’ my ass. How do frequency waves even make a flat plane for a barrier? That isn’t even how frequency waves work! Not that she knew much beyond that, though.

  “Hey, Mari?” Kris’ concerned expression was swiftly overwritten by a questioning tone in her voice. “Didn’t we notice before that Sylphariens have the bio weapon in their bloodstream? Why put their emergency supplies in a place they couldn’t reach?”

  “Hubris.” Relkur shook his head at them from where he’d remained at the top of the stairs. “Humans built this place long before Sylphariens existed. The fools thought after hundreds of years that nobody would ever actually threaten this place, so they wouldn’t need it.”

  That was enough of an explanation for the rest of them, so they turned back towards the upper floors. Vilke took the lead as they reached the broken doorway into the first server corridor.

  “Our first target location.” He nodded to the Anvien, then took a knee in the cover of the doorway, peering inside.

  Relkur immediately set down the metal traps he was carrying as he moved to the wall of the stairwell, just outside the corridor, and sank his fingers into the stone like it was made from putty. Mari shifted her focus and moved to the stairs leading above, flicking her eyes further up to see if there was anything descending from sublevels one or two.

  She could make out the signs of blood that was scattered high on the walls, then remembered the stairwell they were on connected towards the place where the flying creature had killed the three people at ground level.

  Mari frowned at the problem she had just encountered. “How are we planning to keep anything above from coming down and into our rear support?”

  “I was just thinking about that. I think we should have mom remain on sublevel four and hold that position.”

  Mari nodded at Kris’ suggestion and watched her partner head down to relay the decision. “Make sure they know to retreat below the barrier if they get attacked by something problematic!”

  She saw a thumbs up before turning back to Relkur, who was sealing the stone back into place. He seemed out of breath.

  “You good?”

  “Hm. Yeah. High pressure system. Hard to turn the valve.” He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck.

  “Shh.” Vilke cut a hand through the air, then aimed down the scope attached to his rifle. “Major, that a person, or infected?”

  Mari smoothly slid up to the doorway, then peeked inside, taking in the long hallway of black metal racks lined with server switches and blinking lights. Twenty meters away, she saw a tall blonde woman with quivering fingers, her eyes wide with terror.

  Her HUD allowed her to improve the magnification, and she saw with more clarity as the woman’s face twisted with pain.

  Then she turned away, and they could see the deep bite marks into her neck from behind.

  [Affliction: 13%]

  “Definitely infected. She seems to be fighting it, maybe?”

  “Just kill her. She’s obviously a Sylpharien. Even if she isn’t a monster yet, she’s still an insurgent.” Relkur hiss-whispered from behind them.

  “Silent shots. Let’s wait for Kris to handle it.”

  “Can’t.” Kris surprised them with her response.

  “Why not?” Vilke didn’t take his eyes off the shivering woman down the hall.

  “The range parameter of the weapon I made. The max is twenty meters, and I haven’t tested it without a solid surface as a backstop.”

  Mari shrugged. “Loud it is.” Without another thought, she leaned out and lined her aim up with the woman’s head, then pulled the trigger.

  This is a mercy, she told herself internally as she watched the high powered projectile decimate the poor girl’s skull.

  The noise was a different problem from the unfortunate need to put down a person.

  Shrieks and other disturbing sounds echoed from all around the server corridors, which formed a grid pattern of hallways for a hundred meters ahead and to their left.

  Worse still, there were more sounds from above.

  “I mean, I knew it was going to happen, but this is about to be a fucking party.” Vilke didn’t bother lowering his voice. “We’re on the clock. Let’s keep moving, and handle whatever screws with us!”

  Patreon!

  discord server is the best place to get in touch with me!