Luca DR
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Edge of apocalypse 41
🕑 Added 2023-05-29 11:58:56 +0000 UTCBurst of chapters incoming! I finally got around to proofing and fixing up to chapter 50 ^^
Enjoy
41 – Too Easy
There were many ways to access the CARF. Some of them were proper, controlled and regulated, while others were less conventional and reserved only for situations that needed them. Others still were totally secret, known only to a handful of people. The one that the Cromwell-Grassman family decided to use, which was deemed the safest, required them to go through the Quadrangle. Which, considering that the Quadrangle was entirely under PsyOps control, went a long way towards explaining just how unsafe and risky the other methods were.
They had opted to move together for the most part, resorting to splitting up only when strictly necessary. It didn’t matter if they needed to break their covers this time around either, because they were going to redo the whole thing another time anyway after Albert rewound time with the Hazegem. This was a trial run, to figure out the extent of the measures set in place by the rogue operatives and the response of whatever form of hierarchy was still functioning as it was before most of the command structure got compromised.
The trip by car took a couple of hours. It could not be skipped, however, since the teleportation device Albert got from the System was still in the process of being studied, and also because he had never been to the Quadrangle himself. He sat in the rear seat of grandpa’s yellow sports car, feeling like he was on one of those family trips he remembered from his childhood but never managed to recall quite well enough. The ‘adults’, if one wants to define them that way even though Albert was an adult himself, were discussing ways to access the security measures of the Quadrangle without triggering the alarms, and making a list that would be then sent to him via text message. This way it could be preserved through time travel.
As they did so, he fiddled with the piece of junk that once was the PTD, or the teleportation device. He had no dreams of repairing it in the two hours he had, but any headway he made here was less work he would have to do later, and one never knows when yet another piece of magic could come in handy. Eventually though the Quadrangle was finally visible at the horizon, and Albert lost all interest in fixing the small circular device.
“That’s the Quadrangle?” He asked, excited. “Holy shit.”
“Oh yeah, kid.” His grandpa replied from the driver seat. “Pretty cool, eh?”
Indeed, it was like he was seeing something straight out of a science fiction movie. The Quadrangle had tall, black walls that sported a multitude of tiny windows, probes and antennae, balconies and small structures that seemed to grow out of the concrete without rhyme or reason. As they got closer, Albert realized that the structure itself was not made of concrete, but of a strange composite material that was sleek and shiny under the rays of the morning sun. Then, the structure faded from view as the family ditched the road and ventured towards a deep gorge in the desertic landscape.
Admittedly, it wasn’t much of a desert. The rains of the last few days had meant that all the greenery – plants and flowers whose seeds had been dormant in the ground for years – had bloomed and the later frost had sealed the verdant carpets of plants into a tomb of ice. The road was not well maintained at all, but Lloyd’s skilled driving meant that they reached their destination without much delay.
There were two guards standing before a steel door built in the side of the rock at the bottom of the gorge. They wore standard military uniform, their mimetic patterns adapted to the desertic landscape painting big targets of the men standing amidst the greenery and the ice. Before the car was even close, in fact, and before they could even take out their weapons, they were shot with deadly precision by Samantha poking out of the passenger window, and dropped to the ground.
“Huh,” Albert’s mother hummed, examining the weapon in her hands with interest. “Your enhancing magic really did a number on this thing. I’m impressed.”
Albert smiled, proud of his work. He had turned a simple tranq gun into a veritable assault weapon-slash-sniper capable of putting down targets from impressive distances. It cost him a lot of mana, but his regeneration was high enough that he could refill his pool in less than an hour.
“Okay. Onto the door. Usually there would be a passcode, but if we use it, they will know we are here. I’ll take care of disabling the security, Lloyd you stand watch. Albert, you do… stretching or whatever, but be ready.”
As soon as Mother gave the signal, Albert approached the door with heavy steps. His feet sunk into the ground slightly, and his body struggled to carry the heavy steel bar he took from the trunk of the car even with [Strengthening] at full power. Once he was close enough, he inhaled and charged. The thick metal bar was like a sieging ram, hitting the door with incredible force. It only took a handful of hits, and a lot of sweat on Albert’s part even in the arctic temperatures for the hinges to finally give way, and another good hit sent the door sprawling open.
Albert rushed in, right as a smoke grenade exploded at his feet, hiding him from sight. He barreled through in the accelerated speed of [Bullet Time], the shield granted to him by his ring shimmering around him to keep the smoke out, until he felt that he had seen enough and disappeared. When he reappeared from teleporting out of the tunnel, all the targets he had painted for his mother and grandfather to shoot were already down.
“Good work.” Samantha said. “Let’s go.”
***
“Don’t kill them!” The man shouted, looking at the screen. It was surrounded by other screens, all black from when the video feed was cut. “Wound them. Tire them out. But don’t kill them. I want her for myself.”
“But sir, your orders—”
“Ha! You obey me, not them.” The man said. “Your orders are the orders I give you. Nothing else. You understand?”
Beside the man, another man covered from head to toe in small trinkets made of brass and glass stood a full head shorter than him.
“Let’s go,” PsyOps said. “We have stuff to do before she arrives at the CARF.”
***
Getting to the Quadrangle was the easy part, really. It was once they got there that things became suddenly a lot more difficult. The improvised team had to traverse at least two full sides of the structure undetected, reach the secret access point to the CARF, and then hack it as to make it work without a code. Fortunately, a strange event happened as soon as they emerged from the service tunnel they used to reach the structure.
“A notification. From… the Quadrangle itself?” Samantha said, a bit shaken.
She pulled out her phone and looked at the live video feed of the room they were. There were squares painted around their heads, displaying their name and designation, all marked as friendlies. There was a square for Albert too, but instead of being green it was black with white borders, and there was no designation at all. It was disconcerting, considering that they were sure they had cut the feeds when they hacked the cameras, but even more unsettling was the message that came with the video.
>I can help you reach ACCESS:CARF#03
“Is that the Quadrangle speaking to you?” Lloyd asked, peeking at the footage on the phone. “The literal brain of this place? Geez. I’m a bit mad it never happened to me. Lucky you.”
Samantha frowned. “Never happened to me either, before now. I was the one talking to it, not the other way around. This turn of events is worrying to say the least.”
“Should we trust it?” Albert said.
Lloyd shrugged. “I say yes. We get a redo in case it was a trap.”
Thus, the hard leg of the journey became unexpectedly easy. They navigated through the complicated and dizzying maze of corridors following the instructions of the all-knowing sovereign of the place, who instructed them on which routes to take, when to stop and hide, and when to shoot their way through. No alarms were triggered during the whole journey, and although Samantha never felt quite at ease at the thought of the unexpected helper, nothing happened to make her think that she was being played.
However, things were looking a bit too easy for her tastes. And she knew full well that there was no such mission as a perfect mission. PsyOps and SpaceOps were completely missing from the picture too, which was very suspicious. Something was bound to go incredibly wrong.
***
“Albert, if you ever need to rewind, rewind back to this moment. If you do that we’ll see you disappear before our eyes and then teleport in, right?”
“Yes, that’s how it looks from the—”
Silence. Suddenly Albert looked distressed, as if in a state of panic.
“The Hazegem. It’s gone.”
