Crysis: Escalation (12 page)

‘We rotate whomever’s on that fat fuck so Safiya’s skin doesn’t crawl off on its own.’ There were a few more chuckles. Safiya’s laughter seemed forced.
‘Six on, three off, staggered sixteen hour shifts,’ Now there were groans. ‘The three off sleep here in the main cavern. The other six work in two patrols of three, working round
all five sites. None of us go anywhere unless we have two others with us, clear?’ There were nods from the others.

‘That’s still pretty thin,’ Alan pointed out.

‘Give me an option. I’m guessing that Sam and Walters were both on their own?’ There were nods from around the circle. ‘What are comms like?’

‘They’ve got transceivers attached to the walls of the tunnels. Basically you’ve got good coverage at the five sites and the tunnels directly between, but get off the beaten
track and it’s for shit,’ Hank told her.

‘You thinking cameras?’ Daniels asked. Amanda nodded.

‘And I want the cameras streaming to phones carried by each patrol. Can you do that?’

Daniels was nodding.

‘I should be able to sort something, though I can’t promise total coverage.’

Amanda knew it was busy work. She was just giving them something to do. They were glad that someone was here making decisions, and that that person could do a good impression of competence.

The cameras might help but she was of the opinion that it would be the Stalker, or whatever Ceph monstrosity that was down there with them, that would set the tempo of their hunt. Unless they
could divine a purpose and work out its whereabouts, or when it was going to strike, they were just going to be reacting.

Amanda was of the opinion that she might be able to do something if Asher would pull everyone back into Site A in the main cavern. With them spread out like this, people were going to die.

The light started to shake. Everyone looked up. Amanda realised that it was the ground shaking. The lights toppled over and smashed. Around the cavern similar things were happening as the dig
personnel staggered around. Some of them were grabbing lights and other pieces of equipment trying to steady them.

There were explosions of rock all around the cavern. There were cries of pain as sharp fragments of flying rock hit people. It looked like the seams of metal in the stone had come to life. The
organic, almost bone-like metal was pushing through the stone like the tips of claws. It was glowing with some kind of internal light.

This is it,
Amanda thought,
they’re waking up. We’re dead.
She felt the same terror she’d felt in New York grab her. Then, as quickly as it had started, the
shaking stopped. Amanda could hear the moaning and whimpering of frightened and, in some cases, wounded people in the main cave.

They were all looking to her now. She was desperately trying to hide her fear.

‘Mikey, Schmidt, stay here with Coyle. You do not help these people, even the wounded, you stick together and work the perimeter. Alan, you take Okobe and Safiya, check sites B and C.
Daniels, you and Hank are with me.’

She ignored cries for help. She ignored Asher shouting at her as she headed for the tunnel, the Jackal held tight into her shoulder. As Amanda scanned left and right she noticed that the
internal light from the metal was going out. It was as if it had become inert.

‘Where’s Kearney?’ she asked. Nobody had an answer.

Amanda swallowed hard. This wasn’t what she had expected. The lights had gone out in site E. Like site D it was a much smaller, irregularly shaped cavern worked smooth by
water over its millennia of existence. The floor of the cavern was a series of rough, narrow trenches chipped out of the stone. As in the main cavern, it looked as though the segmented, bone-like
Ceph tech had momentarily come to life and fused together, breaking through the rock. Also like the main cavern, the process seemed to have been interrupted. Unlike the main cavern there looked
like there was something wrong with the visible protrusions of the Ceph tech. It looked sick somehow, or perhaps even dead.

Kearney’s corpse lay on the floor but she didn’t have time to check it yet. First they had to secure the site as best they could.

The beam from the flashlight attached to the barrel of her combat shotgun shook as she searched for the alien killer in the pitch darkness of the cavern, over a mile beneath the surface of the
Earth.

They had found nothing. After the chaos and the panic things had calmed down enough for them to get light back on in Site E. After significant reassurances that it was as safe
as it was going to get, a very angry Dr Asher had joined them. He assured Amanda that she would be held responsible for her incompetence in allowing the site to get damaged. He didn’t say
anything about the corpse lying on the floor. Amanda had to stop Daniels from tearing into Asher.

‘So what do you think happened here, doctor?’ Amanda asked once Asher had finished admonishing her.

‘Isn’t it obvious? A Ceph bioform, probably a Stalker, came in and killed your man.’

‘Weird damn way to kill him,’ Hank said.

‘You do know what the word alien means, don’t you?’ Asher asked scathingly.

‘He was killed with what looks like a bladed weapon through the base of the skull and up into the brain . . .’

‘A Stalker bone spur . . .’

‘Maybe, but with a full investigative team here I might be able to find out more . . .’

‘What more do you need to know? You have a Stalker . . .’

‘Stalkers don’t kill like that,’ Daniels told him from his position, where he was watching one of the dark tunnels. Asher looked like he’d been slapped.

‘Keep your men under control!’ he spat, genuinely offended.

One day we need to examine the basis for your apparent superiority,
Amanda thought.

‘He’s right, they slash, like with a sword,’ she told him.

‘You need to stop thinking so narrowly. This species isn’t like us, they adapt reactively between generations. Given time, and they don’t need that much, they develop the tools
they need.’

‘So we could be dealing with something new here?’ Amanda asked.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Does it have anything to do with the Ceph-tech initiating?’ Hank asked. Asher looked angry that the bucktoothed southerner had dared speak to him.

‘Perhaps, or perhaps it was just reacting to the presence of a Ceph-bioform. Now as much fun as trying to teach monkeys algebra is, I have work to do.’ Asher turned to leave,
motioning Safiya to join him.

‘What’s wrong with the Ceph tech in here, Asher?’ Amanda asked. She watched him swallow hard.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he finally said.

And that’s a fucking lie,
Amanda thought,
but that’s all I’m going to get out of you, isn’t it?

‘Okay doc, thank you, we’ll call if we think you can help any more,’ Amanda told the piggy-looking scientist. Asher opened his mouth to protest being dismissed by a
subordinate, but Amanda had already moved on. ‘Mikey, get your people’s heads down, try and get as much sleep as you can because you’re on again at 1600 zulu,’ she said over
the tac radio, pausing for an affirmative. ‘Alan, I want your people doing sweeps, leave the main cavern, it’s going to hit us where we’re lightest. Concentrate on sites B through
D, I think it’s finished with E.’ Amanda glanced up at Asher, looking for a reaction. He looked angry at his dismissal but he turned and left Site E. Safiya followed him.

‘Poor kid,’ Daniels said looking down at Kearney. ‘He was a little shit but you could see something worthwhile in him trying to get out.’

I didn’t even get a chance to know him,
Amanda thought. She couldn’t muster up much feeling. She’d seen young lives wasted before. It was clear that Daniels had liked
the kid, however.

‘What do you think?’ Daniels asked looking away from Kearney’s body.

‘I don’t think it’s a Stalker,’ Amanda said. The British engineer was nodding in agreement.

‘You even think it’s Ceph?’ he asked.

‘Has to be,’ she said sounding not entirely sure.

‘The tech’s initiating for a reason.’ She pointed at the trenches full of inert Ceph tech fused with the rock. ‘No reason to do that unless it’s Ceph. If it
isn’t because of this killer then we’ve got bigger problems.’

‘What, then?’ Hank asked.

‘I think it’s something higher up the squiddies’ evolutionary chain and that makes me nervous,’ she told the Georgian. He nodded and then looked troubled. ‘Spit it
out.’

‘I don’t mean to offend you none . . .’

‘Something that’s almost always said before someone offends me.’

‘I’ve come to terms with how CELL left us in the shit in New York. That wasn’t you people’s call but I heard stories about you. Abandoning your post, deserting your
people.’

Amanda glanced over at Daniels. He shrugged.

‘We told him to talk to you about it,’ the Brit told her.

‘Look, you seem cool and everything, but I just want to know who I’m working with.’

‘Fair enough. That’s exactly what I did in New York,’ she told him evenly. Hank just watched her, saying nothing. ‘I had family in New York. The whole place was crawling
with Ceph, there was the virus and there were CELL units brutalising and executing refugees and people suffering from the virus. I left my people to go and try and get my family out. Same thing was
to happen, I’d do it all over again.’

Hank nodded.

‘We would have gone with her,’ Daniels told him. ‘We were all going to desert but Amanda knew it’d sink our careers, such as they are. She slipped away when we
weren’t paying attention.’

Hank was nodding.

‘If it’s kin I guess I can understand.’

‘If I’d still been in the army it might have been difficult but frankly, fuck CELL . All they are to me is a rapidly shrinking monthly pay packet. In fact if you were in New York
under Barclay I’m surprised you joined up with CELL .’

Hank shrugged.

‘Times is tough. I got kin as well.’

Daniels and Amanda nodded in agreement.

‘Let’s get these cameras up and running,’ Amanda said. She glanced down at the corpse. It would be sent up in the elevator like Walters had been, to be disposed of in the most
cost-effective way possible. Until that happened it would be stored in one of the caves, one that wasn’t imbedded with Ceph tech, close to the main cavern. His next of kin would be notified
via text over the Macronet, maybe. ‘Poor kid,’ Amanda echoed Daniels.

C site was a long thin cavern. The floor was crisscrossed with trenches, like all the other sites. One of the light rigs had been broken when the ground had shook and as result
the end of the cavern opposite the exit was in darkness. The eight workers in here were staying close to the light and the exit that led to the tunnel, which in turn led to the main cavern.

Amanda didn’t know much about archaeology or recovering ancient alien tech that fused with rock, but the workers chipping away here didn’t look like they were doing a particularly
good job. Several of them either were or had been crying. A number of them were still shaking badly and all of them kept looking into the darkness at the end of the cave.

The workers looked like poor locals who had been given minimal training and less pay. They slept down here on floor mats and in sleeping bags, huddled around the heaters in the main cavern. They
looked at Amanda, Daniels and Hank like they were their prison guards.

We’re not the enemy, kids,
Amanda thought as she and Daniels moved past, weapons at the ready, the flashlights attached to the barrels of the weapons stabbing into the thick,
inky, seemingly total darkness. Hank covered them from further back.

‘Clear,’ Amanda said as they finished checking the cavern. The word felt like a lie. There were so many caves and so much darkness down here that whatever was killing people
didn’t have to be very far away from them for it to be impossible to find.

Asher didn’t seem to understand that the dig workers were not going to be very productive just because he had told them to be and because it was their poorly paid job to be so. He
didn’t understand why people couldn’t or wouldn’t just do what he told them to. He couldn’t understand that the fear, exacerbated by the dead bodies that they had all seen
dumped just outside the main cavern, was going to impact on productivity. Asher couldn’t understand that in the long run he was more likely to achieve what he wanted by rolling up the
operation, having the threat dealt with and then coming back. In other words, it didn’t matter how much of a martinet Asher was, they were always going to be more scared of the alien creature
killing them silently than they were of him.

One of the workers had, in broken English, accused Amanda of using them as bait. If she’d had her way she would have evacuated everyone, and as
de facto
security chief it was her
call under CELL operating guidelines, but the reality of the situation had prevented that. So she had to work with what she had. If she was honest, the worker hadn’t been wrong. Her best
chance of finding the thing was when it was in the act of either killing people or trying to initiate the Ceph tech.

As she exited site C she glanced down at one of the workers. She was gaunt, haggard and probably not even out of her teens. The look the worker gave her back was resentful to the point of
hatred.

It’s not me,
she wanted to tell them, but she knew she was part of the problem now.

‘Boss?’ Daniels said, out in the tunnel leading back to the main cavern. Amanda didn’t like the frightened tone in the Brit’s voice. She looked around to see what was
bothering him. The tunnel wall was glowing with shifting symbols made of neon light. It looked like the walls were alive with some sort of circuitry, clearly Ceph tech.

‘Another activation?’ Hank asked. He was covering one way up the tunnel. The tunnel lights, the ones put there by humans, started flickering. The three of them switched on their
flashlights, though there was a lot of light coming from the alien-tech in the tunnel walls.

‘Mikey, where are your people, over?’ she said into the tac radio. Alan, Okobe and Safiya were getting some rest. Amanda was exhausted, she had managed to get some sleep on the
flight from Lagos but she was nearing the end of sixteen hours on. Between a long shift and the nervous tension, she knew she was too fatigued to be thinking clearly. Amanda didn’t want to
start on the amphetamines as she would never get to sleep when her shift ended and she didn’t want to go there again, at least not unless she had to.