Chapter Nine

Antlers

 

Mai woke up with a searing pain in her right shoulder, back, and stomach. If she had to measure in meters of height, she probably would have had to put it on the stratospheric scale.

The clothes she always wore were the best for the kind of job she had, as they were flame resistant and thermal, with a smart fabric system with memory to protect her in cases of gunshots, stab wounds and some types of shrapnel caused by explosions. Of course, that did not protect her from the inertia of cars or the onslaught of whatever had enough force to send her whole being flying through the air.

But what was worse, the night had come.

How long had she been unconscious? She checked the local time clock in her mind, and it was nine o'clock at night. It couldn't be possible. She had forgotten to check her watch at the last moment but it couldn't be more than five or six in the evening.

She moved slowly, as she sat up on her left side and moaned about the pain. She had bruises all over that side that had hit the tree, and she discovered that her right shoulder was dislocated. She pressed her lips together and tried to move the shoulder in circles, when a sound indicated that the bone had returned to its place and finally, she opened her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut in a muffled moan.

She looked around as the snow had begun to fall and also, not without some disgust, she found that those slimy fungus were on her face, stuck to her cheek and forehead where she was hurt. She removed them with a grimace of distaste and threw them beyond where she stood. With the back of her other hand, she wiped off the sticky film they had left behind.

"Shin," she said quietly. "Can you hear me, Shin?"

There was no response and, slowly sitting up, she pulled the gun out of the leg holster again, as she leaned against the same tree she hit. Her shoulder was stinging but she could still handle the weapon with some ease. And, even though it was night, a certain clarity could be seen due to the moon illuminating the clouds, and together with the presence of the snow turned the landscape into a spectral semi-darkness.

"Shin, can you hear me?"

She walked a few meters in the direction of the lake and realized that something had changed. Either she had moved while unconscious or the landscape had changed abruptly in just a few hours. She remembered the drones and called them mentally to order them to illuminate the place. Almost instantly the drones came buzzing in, from the nearby trees and turned on their lights.

Mai opened her mouth in surprise, and saw her breath freeze at the same time that all the logs they had crossed earlier had vanished. She called aloud once more to her partner but there was no response.

She did not understand why he was not at her side when she awoke. She expected to see him there, surely beside her, but he wasn't and, not only that, she was still in the same place. The drones did not have the recording system activated, so she could not know what had happened. Something must have happened.

"He must be, he's fine," she tried to calm herself and, with a firmer voice, she said. "This is Mai Izumi, badge 0000515 Miko, Alp, India. Requesting backup at my current location."

Silence.

She repeated the message one more time but there was no response.

That was impossible. Nevermore's encrypted communications were above military level, not even a coronary mass discharge from the sun, or an EMP, could knock out a field agent's communication system, let alone in an emergency, let alone hers.

Mai touched the wound on her forehead. The stinging and the cold made her teeth grind but then she understood.

A cerebral concussion, and the rapid movement of the blow, perhaps had not given the Neurowire circuits time to activate the shock-preservation system. This system received signals through what she was seeing and immediately activated a shock safety system, but in this case the attack on her had been so sudden that it probably hadn't had time to activate.

Mai checked the commands and detected a repeating reboot signal. Digging, into the analysis of the circuit status, she found what she was looking for, although that didn't make her feel any better.

[Self-repair for support system, 6 minutes. Self-repair for communication system, 8 minutes].

The seconds seemed to tick by slowly for her in that situation, when she again heard a sound behind her back of something walking heavily through the trees. She raised her weapon and put aside what she was doing. This was no time to worry about communications if something decided to attack her again.

The sounds of heavy footsteps multiplied through the forest and the sound of the branches of nearby plants rustled, causing a sound like the crackling of wood in a campfire. Something was approaching and seemed to be coming from all sides of the forest.

The sound stopped.

The drone lights illuminated the scene with a ghostly light, and she saw that about three meters away from where she was, and at a height of about another three meters, small clouds of mist were forming, coming from an invisible source in several directions and at a different rhythm, lasting only a couple of seconds before disappearing into the darkness. It was almost like being in the presence of the forest's own breath.

There was something breathing there.

Almost at the same height as the mist, there were slight and tiny sparkles similar to those produced by light illuminating the eyes of certain animals in the dark. The snowflakes stopped their path a few centimeters above the sparkle, forming a film of irregular size and remained there floating in the air.

The image of the night landscape was like looking at the reflection of an image through a broken or frosted glass. The light from the drones illuminated several meters beyond, but something distorted the image in certain parts. Mai quickly checked and the link to the drones were still working and connected to their thermal vision, but she still couldn't see what it was. Instead, she gasped when she saw an image similar to her in the thermal image. It was like a blurred reflection of herself. It was true that thermal cameras could not pass through certain elements, but whatever it was had to have a layer of some material good enough not to allow the thermal image to penetrate. She sighed in resignation and disconnected the drone vision.

It was as if a sort of faint light of pale blue and turquoise appeared from her head. From both sides of her head, as if they had been hidden in the abundant hair all along, long, filamentous antennae appeared and moved slowly. Both sprouted in a forward curve and, in the middle, twisted backwards again and in spite of their shape they had a certain movement as if they had a life of their own.

They were like the antennae of a moth.

Mai closed her eyes and the antennae this time took on a more rigid aspect, although only in appearance, since the filaments of these feather-light antennae produced a vibrating movement in the air. Her sense of smell expanded and her sense of hearing, thanks to echolocation, improved so much that she could even hear the brush of light snowflakes on her clothes. She opened her eyes and this time she could finally see what had sent her flying through the air.

Her vision, combined with echolocation, created in her brain a slightly phantasmagoric image of the place.

All around her, and looking straight at her, was a huge group of gigantic looking stag. Mai had seen huge animals throughout her long life, of all types and colors, but this was almost ridiculous, she didn't remember those animals growing so big and, what was much more obvious, she was almost sure that invisibility was not among their natural characteristics either.

She gulped and tried not to move a muscle, while she thought of a way to escape. The one closest to her was the largest of them all. And it could easily be over three and a half meters tall with its huge antlers.

Mai thought quickly about what to do.

Run into the lake? No. She didn't know what she might find there.

Fight the animals? No matter how many fights she had been in in the past, or how strong she considered herself to be, Mai didn't feel she had the upper hand against the huge animals at the moment.

But fleeing into the forest seemed the most obvious possibility and seemed the quickest way to save energy while the system finished repairing itself. Ending up under hooves was a risk, but she was light and could do it if she moved fast enough. The trees would make it difficult for the animals to move and she could use the drones to throw them off by making them move randomly with their lights.

But first she had to try to get them off her back. Mai pointed up and fired the gun.

It was a mistake.

The sound broke the monotony of the place, but the animals did not move for a few seconds. Then, instead of darting off in all directions as she expected, they rushed towards her.

Mai moved like a flash, to her left, and passed underneath one of the animals. The sound of the water, which until then had been the only thing that had broken the stillness of the night, was replaced by the sound of the animals' paws and their bellowing as they moved in all directions trying to reach her.

Mai ran among them hiding and occasionally making use of the trees as cover. The sounds of antlers crashing against the trees was deafening and the snow and branches were falling to the ground. It had been easier thought than done. She had to have her antennas producing vibrations and the faint turquoise and blue chemical light was like having a target over her head in that situation. The drones moved back and forth zig zagging between the trunks and seemed to help as some animals tried to reach them, but others including the giant in front of her seemed to follow her like hunting dogs.

She hid behind a tree for a few seconds while she caught her breath. The herd was leading her away from the shore, she should not stray too far from the lake in case Shin was nearby, so she ran in a southerly direction around a bend to try to get back to where she was first.

Again, she stepped between the legs of the huge animals and rolled, only to stand up and continue her escape. She found that, although they were running along the shore, the stags did not even want to go near the water. She should try to jump into the water and swim to the other shore or maybe get close enough to the water so they wouldn't touch her.

No matter how she looked at it, it almost seemed like the animals also wanted to keep her away from the water for some reason.

Again the giant stag cut her off and it went into the water until its hooves sank about three feet. Mai dodged it and turned back, trying to go deeper into the forest again. She didn't get more than five meters when a much younger animal than the others and smaller, but almost the same height as her, hit her in the ribs and sent her rolling several meters on the ground.

This time she did not fall unconscious and, in the last turn she sank one of her knees into the snow, adopting a position ready to shoot. She would have fired earlier but she wasn't sure she could do it at all. The last thing she needed was for the animals to get even more enraged. The adrenaline must be doing its job, because she barely felt any discomfort in her body this time.

 

"Tranquilizer mode, level 6."

The stags quickly surrounded her and she tried to figure out whether to shoot the one that had nudged her, or hit the big one first who looked like the leader of the group. The position she was in, certainly prevented the larger ones from approaching with their antlers.

The giant bellowed and his companions quieted down, but did not look away.

Mai noticed something. The giant stag was certainly looking at her, but the others were not. The rest of the group was watching something else. It was her weapon. Their eyes were on the weapon, not on her, or her antennae.

The drones were still buzzing around in a vain attempt to attract attention. She then remembered the picture Amir Zejho showed them of the bodies and the dead stag along with the empty guns and cartridges.

Perhaps, she wasn't the problem there.

She slowly loosened her left hand while her right released the pressure of her finger in the trigger, that was about to fire.

Mai had forgotten, she had long ago gone through a similar situation.

She was a fey. By the standards of ancient fables, she could be considered a creature of the woods. After all, fey was just a word under which a whole bunch of subcategories were included like a catch-all. Fairies, elves, gnomes, dwarves, monsters, anthropoid creatures but with animal characteristics as well. However it was, many of the beings classified as Feys sometimes had certain characteristics that linked them to certain places, whether they were forests, lakes, the sea, the mountains. And in Mai's case, she had always felt a kind of communion with the forests.

She sat up slowly and returned the gun to her holster. The air pressure disappeared almost instantly and the animals moved around, but this time no longer threatening.

The giant's eyes were still on her and in that moment lowered its head..

Mai walked slowly and cautiously, approaching and carefully touched the nose of the huge animal. Mai couldn't be sure how it felt to touch the animal through her gloves but she could feel that the animal's skin was almost like some kind of metal or something. Maybe glass? if so, that would explain why the thermal cameras hadn't detected anything, and also explained the reflection she had seen of herself. A polished metal or glass acted as a mirror for the infrared radiation.

The animal did not move and just stood there looking at her. To anyone passing by at that moment the scene should have been most picturesque. A girl with elongated ears and antennae in the middle of the darkness with her hand outstretched as if grasping the darkness.

But no one passed by.

No one had passed that place in a long time. Perhaps the last one to cross to that part of the lake was Komarov. Maybe he also knew that the animals wouldn't do anything to him if he had no weapons and that's why he had been able to carve his part of the high relief in the trees.

I want to be part of it, was what he had said in the message.

Part of what? The cult? The forest? Or something else? thought Mai.

The giant finally turned away from her and walked a few meters away with the herd. The situation left Mai with her head full of questions even though she was relieved not to have to run anymore. Those giant stags had wanted to take her away from something

From the water? From the other side they came from? Or from her partner?

“I like it here, it's a pity the world does not. Every part of this planet doesn't want me here. It's one of the reasons why the Dark Events have sometimes passed near me, and it's also the reason why I avoid going to places where there are many people.”

The words that Shin uttered when they first met, the past year, echoed in her head at that moment.

A bellow that could only be interpreted as terror was heard again in the direction of the lake and Mai let go of her thoughts. She thought she heard a voice reverberating in the distance of the waters calling her name.

"Shin?" she asked, trying to raise her voice above the noise of the animals.

"MAI!"

She smiled and started, walking back towards the lake.

Other bellow of fury made her turn around. The giant stag was staring at her and pawed at the ground. The other animals stampeded off in the direction of the trees. They were moving away from the lake at lightning speed. The animals passed around Mai without even touching her and, when the last of the young ones passed, the giant stared at her for a few seconds, and he finally gave a snort that sounded more like a resignation and walked away with the rest getting lost in the darkness of the forest.

"MAI!"

She took one last look towards the trees and ran in the direction of the lake with the drones following her.

She was relieved to see him approaching her walking from the waters.

He was without his backpack and only his tattered shirt covered his torso. His pants were torn and he must have lost his boots somewhere since he was barefoot. On one of his arms he was holding something red.

"Are you all right? Where were you?" asked Mai as she caught up to him and walked a couple of meters into the water.

"I'm fine, you?" he asked. He was breathing heavily as if he had come a long-distance swimming.

"Yes," Mai said and she touched Shin's frozen chest. He was really soaking wet, but she was pleased to feel the throbbing in her partner's chest.

"Damn it. I got carried away when that thing destroyed the bridge," he cursed, and then with a more serious look added. "You're not going to like this. Did you send a distress signal?"

"N-No, why?"

"It's a trap."

"What's a trap?"

"The whole thing … The case, the deaths, Zejho."

"What do you mean?" she asked, confused.

"The military has never been able to find this thing that's why they needed us here," Shin said and raised up the red bundle he was carrying. It was a jacket, Mai recognized it from the description, it was the jacket Komarov was wearing the day he disappeared. "Who better than people from Nevermore to try to find this thing. They've been looking for it for years here but have never found it because it disappears in a short time."

“The what?!”

"The creature that emits the red lights over the lake. It's just a new species that lives in the middle of this part, but it doesn't emit any kind of light, those are the lights of the search team that comes down here every time looking for it. The network of fungi we've been finding are just a defence and feeding mechanism."

Mai looked at him in confusion. "H-how do you know that… and what do you mean when you said it's a trap?"

"Komarov didn't kill himself, Zejho probably killed him when he refused to lie one more time."

She frowned even more confused.

"Komarov didn't forge the papers with the tests of his own free will. All these years he, and his team, have been forced by the military to lie so as not to draw attention to themselves and thus try to find out what lives here. When they couldn't find it, they brought us in."

"W-wait, wait. I'm not understanding anything."

Shin pointed to the opposite shore hidden in the mist. "On the other side of where we were, if we had gone into the forest a little further we would have found them. There's a military hangar in the trees. When we got there we couldn't see it because of the trees, and because I think they have some kind of camouflage system, but when I got out of the water and walked around I saw the lights in the trees and several soldiers on guard."

Mai looked the other way. He could not make out the shore because of the fog. He lifted up his jacket and showed her better. On the side of the back there was a small bullet hole.

"Did you find Komarov?"

"No, but I found the clothes not far away."

Mai gawked at him.

"There's something else. The reason they asked us to keep this quiet, is not just because they wanted us to find this thing. If you'd made a call for a station team to come up here they'd probably already be raiding it."

"You think it's to get us in some kind of trouble?"

"We don't have a warrant for this case. We got here solely by following leads Zejho gave us asking for discretion, violating I don't know how many jurisdiction laws, hacking into a military database and a soldier's Neurowire."

"I've known General Zedenov for a long time, I don't think he would do something like that. What about all those deaths?"

"Of that I am not sure. But what I can tell you for sure is that at that base they have a few of those invisible things in cages, so they are aware of them too. If they didn't tell us about the base and they have those things, what else are they hiding from us? What if when lvraeva died it was simply Zejho who killed her to show Dr. Komarov how far he could go?"

"Zejho was only at the academy when Ivraeva disappeared."

"Oh, right! Because spy recruitment never starts before that, does it?"

Mai pondered for a moment. Could it be possible that they had been lied to simply to get Nevermore in trouble with the World Security Council? As much as it pained her to admit it, it was a possibility to be considered. The organization was under constant attack by certain parties. But they had found too much data for it all to be simply a ruse to attack the reputation of the SID.

"We have the evidence of the cult."

"It's just a cult, nothing more, it's been 60 years since that. More than enough time to erase the evidence. What if all those people died because they were just here at the wrong place at the wrong time? Bicini, the sculpture artist, never returned to this site in his later years. He seemed to want to avoid it at all costs."

Mai looked back toward the misty shore.

"If so, we'd better get the hell out of here right now," she said, with a frown. "If you got swept away by the current and went to the other side how did you get here?"

Shin leaned on his knees catching his breath and pointed to his left into the darkness.

"The dam was destroyed, but the logs have stagnated a little further downstream. I woke up almost two kilometers downstream an hour ago. And when I came running I saw the base and got close, then I found the logs."

"But you came swimming."

"I saw the light from the drones moving around and heard those things screaming and decided to cut it short."

"They're stags. They're scared of the water."

"And of me, probably..."

Mai looked back into the forest, but could no longer see or feel the animals.

"Do you think we can get out without them seeing us?"

"Maybe... but first you're going to have to shut down the drones lights and hide the antennas or they're going to be ratting us out."

"Right," she said and just as mysteriously as they had appeared they went out and went back to hiding in the hair.

The drone lights went out and Mai sent new commands to the drones to turn on the night vision but found that no matter what commands she sent it didn't seem to turn on.

"...This is weird were you playing with the drones yesterday or today when I was out?"

"No, why?"

"The night vision isn't working, and now neither is the thermal camera. It was working just few minutes ago."

Shin frowned and looked at her with a strange expression as he tilted his head to the side and stayed that way for a few seconds.

"Just try again."

"That's what I'm doing..."

Mai tried again, and this time the image appeared. But it was different from what she was used to, it wasn't the sharp visualization she was used to. The edges seemed too blurred, but it was still enough to see the road. Probably with all the ruckus with the stags the drone's viewfinder must have been too dirty. They both set off downstream in search of the new bridge to cross.

"Only you could think of jumping into the icy water," Mai said, running alongside him.

"It's not like it could do anything to me anyway."

Slowly the animals emerged from the forest and watched the fey girl and her partner leave, almost as if they feared something that Mai could not see.