Earth Year 2840. The Mystic Island, Cave System.
"We leave the tank here to hold the entrance,"
Commander Maroon ordered racking the bolt of his kinetic rifle.
"Eva, you take point and the rest of us will move in a diamond formation so check your corners,"
Maroon commanded as his cybernetic eye glowed a harsh crimson.
"Sarah, who is Sarah."
Ruby Kept muttering as she stares at N032 leading the way.
Ten minutes into the descent, voices echoed.
"Zeon... it is so cold down here,"
A frail familiar voice drifted from the shadows ahead.
"honey, please come back to me, find me,"
his mother’s voice pleaded.
"Mom?"
Zeon whispered as he took a slow hypnotic step out of formation.
"Hey, keep your eyes on me!"
Ruby snapped, pulling him backward with brutal force.
"Ruby, my mom is down there, I have to help her!"
Zeon argued blindly.
"Your mom is on Platform 9 in Ark City, Zeon!"
Ruby interrupted as her voice cutting through the psychic fog.
"Whatever is waiting for us down in the dark is wearing her voice,"
Ruby stated offering cold reality instead of empty comfort.
"What are they whispering to you?"
Zeon breathed out blinking away the suffocating pressure as he noticed her trembling hands.
"They’re telling me the Enforcers are coming for my little brother,"
Ruby replied, drawing her humming vibro knife with a clenched jaw.
"But my brother died five years ago, meaning whatever is down there is a liar, and we kill liars,"
Ruby declared fiercely.
"We keep each other anchored down here Zeon, that is the deal,"
She reminded him, bumping her shoulder pauldron roughly against his.
"Yeah, thanks for reminding me, favorite babysitter,"
Zeon exhaled, gripping his rifle tightly as the illusion lost its paralyzing grip.
"Commander, halt! We found the 43rd squad’s camp,"
Captain Eva said, raising her flashlight to show a massive barricade of overturned supply crates and titanium plating.
The subterranean chamber was a perfect natural fortress but it was empty, bloodless and devoid of any struggle.
"They didn’t fight, a squad of thirty elite federation marines doesn’t just evaporate into thin air without firing a single shot,"
Maroon stated stepping past the unrolled sleeping bags and fully loaded rifles resting neatly against the walls.
"They weren’t taken by force,
"A squad of thirty elite federation marines doesn’t just evaporate into thin air without firing a single shot,"
Maroon stated, his organic eye narrowing.
"They walked willingly into the dark,"
N032 spoke up, pointing down a narrow tunnel leading deeper into the mountain’s core.
"Commander, I found a cracked datapad on this medical cot,"
Daniel called out, playing the holographic video log.
"The jungle outside is just too loud, but down here... it’s quiet,"
Sergeant Hayes’s whispered to the camera.
"Jenkins heard his mother and went down there an hour ago without his gun and now they are all doing it,"
Hayes confessed to the recording.
"The dark is calling them and I can hear my daughter telling me it’s warm down there,"
Hayes smiled a vacant terrifying smile before wandering off screen.
"This is a massive cognitive hazard,"
Maroon stated coldly, furious at the realization of a psychic predator luring its prey.
"Commander, we need to fall back!"
Eva argued.
"We are pushing a squad of exhausted recruits into a localized psychic anomaly, and if their minds break in a firefight, then we lose everyone!"
Eva warned.
"A tactical retreat is the only logical play here, Sir,"
she insisted, her military professionalism cracking to reveal her fiercely protective nature.
"If we retreat, we lose the only defensible bunker in a twenty mile radius!"
Maroon countered, his voice hard as iron.
"And if that thing is left alive, it will crawl up the tunnel and lure us into the dark while we sleep, so we kill it right now,"
Maroon finalized.
"They are just kids Maroon, and pushing them won’t win us this war!"
Eva hissed.
"The Captain is right to fear the breaking of the mind,"
N032’s cut through the argument.
"A broken soldier is far worse than a dead one because they become a weapon for the Abyss,"
N032 said, drawing his heavy crude sword.
"But the Commander is also right about survival, because if you do not burn the rot out of the foundation now, then the entire house collapses,"
the armored man added.
"Stay close to my aura and if the whispers get too loud, just look at the Light,"
N032 ordered stepping into the mouth of the nightmare.
The air was clouded with a pale violet mist as the rocky walls gave way to a weeping biomechanical biofilm.
Dozens of tentacles stretched down to connect into the spines of thirty suspended federation marines whose mouths hung open in silent paralyzed screams.
"Open fire and burn that parasite!"
Maroon roared as the squad unleashed a torrent of plasma and kinetic rounds but the parasite fused its tentacles into the marines’ flesh.
Bone spikes erupted from the marines’ arms and their jaws unhinged.
Then the assimilated 43rd squad dropped to the floor and charged their rescuers as the parasite unleashed a telepathic shriek that tore through the room.
Commander Maroon stumbled to one knee as the electromagnetic interference short-circuit his cybernetic eye.
"I’ve got your blind spot Commander!"
Eva shouted, blasting an assimilated marine in the face.
Then Maroon adapted using her physical position to orient his rifle and fire over her shoulder in perfect unspoken synchronization.
"Watch your right flank, Zeon!"
Ruby called out, fighting back to back Zeon in a survival rhythm.
Then Ruby swept a mutated brute’s legs with a kick allowing Zeon to drive a superheated plasma burst into its exposed chest.
Suddenly the parasite shrieks which made Zeon forced to his knees with a bleeding nose from the psychic attacks.
"Cover your ears, now!"
N032’s voice boomed with the absolute authority of a god as he slammed his heavy sword into the fleshy ground and summoned the pure, pitch black miasma of the Abyss instead of his holy Light.
N032 drew the parasite’s hallucinogenic frequencies into his own mind shielding the fragile squad from the cognitive hazard.
The armored man staggered under the mental burden of thirty dying marines, a weight that would shatter any normal human but N032 had already survived a thousand years in a shattered world.
"Burn in the Light,"
N032 declared ripping his sword from the floor and blurring mid air.
The Dark aura shifted into blinding holy Light as N032 launched himself at the glowing brain.
With a two handed overhead strike, N032 cleaved the parasite in half and vaporized it with his aura into foul smelling ash.
Then the assimilated marines to collapse into the mercy of true death.
"Is everyone intact?"
Zeon asked, wiping the blood from his nose.
"We kept our deal,"
Ruby replied, giving him a small exhausted nod.
Commander Maroon slowly stood up and gave Captain Eva a firm nod of profound gratitude.
"Gather their dog tags and we bury the fallen,"
Maroon ordered softly, the harshness completely gone from his voice.
"Then we move the Behemoth inside and seal the entrance,"
The Commander added looking at his battered but unbroken recruits.
"From this moment on, this cavern is Forward Operating Base Aegis, so rest up, Marines, because we are going to be here a while,"