Chapter Ten

Illusion

 

As Shin had said, not far away, they found the precarious new log bridge to cross. It wasn't the safest, but they were both light on their feet and were able to cross it without any difficulty, jumping over several sections. They were again on the west side and Mai wondered how well the base was hidden so that they could not see it earlier in the day.

The darkness did not help them much on that side. The lake filaments were again multiplying everywhere and the foul smell was increasing by the minute, making Mai's stomach churn.

"How did you know about the creature?"

"The soldiers were talking about it. Apparently they're not happy that they're going to have to wait longer until shows up again," Shin paused for a few seconds looking at her suspiciously. "Also about the cult, you're going to find something familiar when we get there."

The walk continued and they went deeper into the forest. Mai began to see some clarity in the forest, not far from where they were, and it seemed to increase with every step they took. The branches that made it difficult to pass seemed to increase, but the fungus strands had already disappeared from sight, not so the stench that seemed to increase even more.

The cold was also no longer felt too much, although the probable cause was that they were on the move.

"They'll hear us if they have motion sensors," she said as the rustling of branches echoed loud enough to wake anyone around.

Shin turned to her and watched her for a few seconds.

"I don't think they have them. At least, I haven't seen any around there."

"Really? They must have them what's the point of a base if they don't have perimeter security?"

Shin looked at her quizzically for a moment.

"Don't blame me, I'm not the one who made the rules."

"..."

A few feet ahead the branches stopped appearing to cut off their path and now they were walking on the muddy ground. She tried to remember if they had walked nearby before, but didn't want to activate the map assistant in case the connection to the Neurowire could be detected.

The lights grew brighter, and Mai turned off her night vision, as they moved closer hiding in the trees. The fog was going to help hide them but it also prevented them from fully seeing the location.

The structure of the base reminded her a bit of one of the huge hangars on the island where the Nevermore SID base was located, and the lights inside were bright enough at night that it could be detected by satellite. But Mai could recognize almost none of the machines outside. Perhaps some kind of prototype? She didn't know, but it was certainly strange. There were several armored trucks and some cars, but they were civilian. One of them was incredible similar to the one they saw earlier, on the hill above the lake.

Some soldiers, carrying tactical rifles and wearing the same uniform as Ruslan, the soldier at the entrance, were there. She couldn't see their faces completely because of the caps and thick coats, but she could swear that even their faces were a bit similar. That was the detail Mai was paying attention to, when she heard a pitiful bellowing coming from inside the hangar and several soldiers' voices giving orders. She would have liked to go and see what they were doing there but they had to stay low and watch.

Shin tapped her shoulder, indicating something.

On some of the trees, around the base, were carved the strange figure they saw on the other side of the forest. She looked at him quizzically and he simply shrugged. But it was true, Zejho had lied and had not given them any details of the place. Or was it possible that Shin was wrong and Zejho didn't know about the location either and Komarov had simply been killed for not cooperating? Had he been forced to record the strange message, cut his Neurowire signal to simulate his disappearance along with the others, and also as a decoy for them? All the other people had cut their Neurowires before disappearing, but that had not been the case with Komarov.

Mai was confused, too many questions had popped up and she didn't have the answers yet. "We could introduce a request for investigation by pretending we received reports of hikers in the area. That might give us enough to bring in more investigation teams."

"What hikers? Hardly anyone visits this place."

"The drones have been taken out of service, we could make out that someone or a group came in through some other access. We could even say that it was a report of hikers entering through the border simply because they wanted to see the lake."

"Border..." repeated Shin and stared at her for a few seconds. "Yeah... maybe it could work. Anyway we've seen enough, we should go and try to leave as soon as possible."

They watched for several minutes, but the situation did not change. The same routine guard movements, soldiers coming and going from inside the hangar.

Mai rubbed her eyes a couple of times, she wasn't sure why but something was wrong with her vision. The edges of the image seemed to blur from time to time. They took one last look at the place and set off on their way back once more. Mai felt that, even though they had been out for hours, she hardly felt tired, it was a relief, in a way, because they still had a few more kilometers to go to get back to the cabin. They reached the shore of the lake and continued on their way south for a couple of kilometers, in almost complete silence.

"Border..."

Shin for some reason repeated the same word a couple of times since they started on the road and had slowed his pace. Maybe he is tired? Mai thought. Had he ever felt tired?

"What about the border?"

Shin kept walking without turning around with his gaze lost somewhere ahead.

"Nothing. I was just thinking. Certainly the world is a big place."

"...?"

“So many places. So many people.”

"Did you hit your head when you fell into the water?"

A faint murmur came out of Shin's mouth and Mai couldn't understand what he was saying. They were walking close to the shore, too close. So close that the smell of the fungus was almost unbearable and Mai had to jump over some parts to avoid tripping in the large nets. The unintelligible words kept coming out from Shin's mouth, numbers, disjointed phrases.

She stopped and watched her partner's back move a little away.

He turned around and stared at her with a strange smile. At that moment no matter how much Mai tried to remember, her partner and lover had never smiled at her like that. The mouth of it seemed to be smiling in a sincere way but it was his features and his look that sent a chill down her spine.

"Shin?" she said with a slight tremble in her voice as she frowned.

"You want to be a part of this?"

I want to be a part of this.

"...!" Mai remembered Komarov's words in his message to Amir Zejho.

She jumped backwards, trying to keep a safe distance by bringing her hands to her leg holster.

The being in front of her no longer showed Shin's face, what was there instead was the face they were there for. His face had transfigured into that of Sergey Komarov. Some parts of his body moved with an unnatural and repulsive movement, while his physiognomy changed rapidly. The clothes had disappeared and in front of her stood a completely naked middle-aged man with an unhinged look and from whose eyes tears were streaming down.

"Wh-What are you?"

The figure changed once again this time showing the naked body of a woman who couldn't have been more than a few years older than Mai. The same blank stare with eyes wide as saucers and a Gioconda semi-smile looked back at her. It was the figure of Rayana Ivraeva as she was at the moment of her disappearance.

Slowly she began to walk towards her, and Mai drew her ACM34 weapon without a second's hesitation and pointed it at the head.

"Stop and put your hands in the air!"

The woman took a few steps towards her, not even flinching at Mai's words.

"Ma'am, stop where you are and put your hands in the air!"

"What is it? It's me."

The woman's figure changed once twisting around and again took the form of Shin. This time, he was naked and had a worried expression on his face.

"Stop!"

An expression of fury appeared on Mai's face, and she shot twice towards both shoulders of that thing that had dared to take the form of her partner. The sound broke the monotony of the night and spread across the valley. But to her surprise Mai could feel her vision clear.

Darkness and mist.

Shin's figure faded but this time no other appeared, plunging Mai into the darkness again. She was alone and in the thick fog the night had suddenly become darker.

Too dark, almost as if there was something in front of her. It was Mai's thought when several tentacle-like appendages appeared in front of her, emitting a vivid scarlet glow.

Mai shot towards them and they retracted for a moment, only for a few more to appear. They all came from the waters and from a stronger glow hidden in the mist.

She sent mental commands to the drones to get the light back, but found that they had simply disappeared. She thought of the filaments on her waking face and gritted her teeth.

How long I have been under that thing's spell?

Was it since the moment Shin had appeared from the waters? The animals had fled at that time.

Or what happened on the other side was also an illusion when she woke up?

Thoughts swirled in her mind as she searched for answers. But one thing was clear to her. All that had been nothing more than an illusion.

Shin had never been there. Neither had the base with the soldiers. Her vision problems were due to illusions caused by the fungus. While she was unarmed the filaments had come close enough to her body, and through the wounds they must have penetrated her body injecting some kind of hallucinogenic component.

She pulled the trigger four times and each shot hit the target. The tentacles wiggled like snakes but didn't seem to stop their advance and she backed up a few more feet.

"Mv44."

The gun changed the bottom and top shape of the barrel, becoming larger. Small Fractal cube patterns appeared over the surface for a couple of seconds as the gun changed its shape. It a sort of mechanical sound at the same time as the rear widened backwards. Mai pulled the trigger once more but this time she pointed it at the source of the tentacles, at the scarlet glow behind them.

A roar, like thunder, filled the air and the snow and fog dissipated for a moment and Mai finally saw what was attacking her. An expression of surprise and horror filled her face as she saw a creature several meters tall, its face stretched forward and with two pair of antlers, one above and the other below its head approaching her with a gaping mouth full of sharp teeth.

“Ah, shit.”

From the back of its throat there was a glow and tentacles moving like vipers. Tiny eyes above its fleshy head and three pairs of arms. The monster's skin was dark red like the fungus and had several parts with blacker spots that looked like pustules to Mai.

The creature's fetid breath almost made her faint, she felt nauseous and a sour taste coming up her esophagus. That thing could swallow her in one bite very easily.

The creature went after her, moving with its huge arms, and Mai twisted her way into the forest. The sounds of the trees being uprooted was incredible and the tremors on the ground made her fear that if it wasn't that creature, maybe a landslide from the top of the hill would end up burying her.

She ran through the trees under a rain of dirt, snow and splinters, which rose from the movements of the creature seeking to hunt her. She dodged it several times but the fact that the darkness and the mist helped to hide it did not help her. She wondered how it had been possible for that thing to fool her echolocation, she should have been able to see what it really was.

Shin, where the hell are you?

But it wasn't time to hide everything anymore, that creature was dangerous enough to call in a whole heavy tactical team to attack, and the Neurowire system had already been restored some time ago. She ran into the trees and hid behind a thick log as she sent out new orders.

"This is Mai Izumi, badge 0000515 Miko, Alp, India. I have a BEC3 Yellow-red. Requesting support from an Orbital Knight at my current position," she said quietly.

She glanced around the sides of the tree and then remembered something important.

[The signal from you two is at the station so in case this gets out of hand you have to let me know first].

"... Damn it," Mai thought.

She had just sent an order to Carissia to leave its stationary orbit and enter the atmosphere at its current location. It was not the physical position where she was, it was the bluff position they had left at the Astana station.

Mai cursed her luck and was about to run again, when she felt that she could not move one of her feet. She looked down and found that one of the fungus strands, coming from the ground, was holding her ankle. She tugged a little but the thing squeezed tighter as it swelled. Finally she gave a hard kick to the ground and stepped on the bottom part of the filament which popped with a sickening sound.

"This can't be good."

That was her thought as she had to move her neck back. More of that goo, now from a nearby tree, shot out and almost caught her again. The creature was approaching again attracted by all the noise and she had to make a mad dash once more, this time not only dodging, the creature's claws, teeth and tentacles but also the filaments that now seemed to leap up from the ground in an attempt to cut off her escape.

Mai had been able to feel that although it retained its gelatinous mass to move, the tips of the filaments that were being thrown towards her had a much more solid texture as if they were needles. She remembered the images Shin had shown her where the spores had a sort of micro-skeleton to protect themselves.

"Seriously?"

She ran and ran, feeling like her lungs would explode if she tried to go any faster. She occasionally turned around to shoot with her weapon, but she returned it to her holster after several failed shots. She needed more firepower.

"TS.C5. TFF12."

The small shell-shaped backpack on her back emitted a faint flash from one of its right edges. The flash traveled down the straps of the holster to and just as the gun did when it changed shape, again hundreds of thousands of tiny cubes took shape and formed a new weapon that Mai instantly grabbed. It was a tactical shotgun for plasma ammunition and traditional or variable 12-gauge ammunition with two individual loading barrels located under the main cannon.

Mai didn't wait any longer and gritted her teeth, turned around and fired twice, jumping back as the creature's mouth opened to engulf her. The first recoil reminded her of the pain in her shoulder but at the second shot it didn't matter. Two incandescent blue glows contrasted against the red produced by the beast and hit the upper palate.

The scream of pain pierced Mai's ears, but she knew it wasn't enough. She fired two more shots, hitting it in the side of one arm and the other was blocked by the animal's antlers. Mai switched to the second ammunition and fired. This was incendiary ammunition and hit the animal's face. New screams and howls. But Mai saw how the creature's flesh moved and almost instantly only traces of the wound remained.

From what little she could analyze in the dark about the beast's physiognomy, Mai could see that the second and third pair of arms were smaller.

A third pair of arms. And she remembered the sculptures. That did not appear in the sculptures. There were only two pairs.

She dodged new bites and pieces of wood that flew in all directions. At the same time, she shot a couple of times more towards the creature that again burned for a few moments and then the fire was engulfed by the flesh.

She switched back to the first barrel and fired several shots at some of the filaments that darted like spiders at her. These ignited with an electrified blue glow for a millisecond and then twisted and stopped.

"ARPTP."

There was a new glow from her backpack and a metallic sound from inside the weapon. It was the automatic point-to-point reload system so as not to waste time doing it manually.

Mai continued for a few minutes shooting and sneaking around, until she could finally see what she was looking for. She had been trying to see what the back of the huge beast looked like, looking for any vulnerabilities. After the third pair of arms the shape gradually became thinner and thinner until it ended in a long tail that was lost in the mist. Mai circled around the trees, dodging obstacles, and managed to get on the beast's tail and this time shot at its back and tail, then she quickly moved out of the way in case the monster could move it and send her flying away in one hit.

The beast turned quickly but did not move its tail, as if there was something preventing it. While even the thinnest part seemed to be a meter thick, Mai wondered how long it could be as it only trailed it in a zigzagging, snake-like fashion. The opportunity to shoot again from that position proved in vain. The beast this time knew that it could be attacked from there and took care to block her way every time she tried to approach it again.

She made several attempts to approach from above. Using the tree trunks as a foothold and dodging the filaments that were thrown at her. Although the shots were accurate, she did not manage to cause any significant damage. On more than one occasion, she had to run away dodging the huge trunks that were knocked down and thrown into the air as if they had no weight. She tried to get under the beast and shoot with the second type of incendiary ammunition but it didn't work and, rolling to the side, she was almost crushed by one of the huge hands.

 

She had to admit that her stature helped on occasions like this, added to her incredible agility to slide and jump in the air through the gaps made by the falling logs.

She ran down the slope in a new attempt to reach the tail of the beast and realized with astonishment that there was a new scarlet clarity in the place coming from the fog in a southerly direction.

"It can't be!"

Her first thought was that it must be another creature, but it remained motionless and almost gave her the feeling that it must be much farther away probably underwater but certainly the glow was much stronger.

She was very close to the shore again dodging the teeth, tentacles, and stinking piercing filaments, when something else happened.

A dry roar and one of the beast's sides almost flattened, and then flew several meters into the air and was thrown into the water. Several tons of water rose into the air and Mai was almost soaked from head to toe, as a roaring sound was heard where the blow had occurred and the mist was torn through, indicating that something else was there.

Mai couldn't see what it was, but she knew the sound. From her head the antennae came back up, and she could see a group of three of the stags she saw on the other side. The giant was in the middle and, after letting out another shout, he charged with his companions at the beast.

The roars of clashing antlers and grunts were deafening, and with each strike and attack the fog dissipated several meters around allowing Mai to better see the colossal battle. With the mist being torn by the shock waves she estimated that the slimy monster must have been at least six or seven meters tall by at least another fifteen meters wide with its main arms outstretched.

It would have been no problem for one of Nevermore's Orbital Knights, but she had no support, she was alone with the beasts at the moment.

She still couldn't see the end of the tail that was sinking into the waters, almost as if it were some sort of umbilical cord connected to something else. She recalled the strange sculpture of the forest once again, the lower part of which became thinner until it widened again to form a ball.

"Is there another part in the water?" Mai wondered and looked at the farthest glow in the lake out of the corner of her eye.

She wasn't sure the stags could beat the huge monster. As two of them continued the fight pushing the monster back, Mai heard a pitiful noise from the third one that had been left behind.

Huge, thick, and gelatinous filaments surrounded its legs and began to climb up its body. She didn't hesitate for a second, the animal's shock power, while not enough, was strong enough to drive the creature back and keep it at bay for at least some time.

She jumped over the tentacular filaments, while dodging several of it, and when she approached the animal and it raised its front legs in a new attempt to get away she fired her shotgun blasting the goo into the air. She did the same procedure with her other leg and the huge stag with both forelimbs already freed jumped up and tore off the rest of the other two.

Mai spent the next few moments trying to offer some support to the huge animals while planning a strategy. She could launch an orbital tactical strike from one of Nevermore's armed security satellites but that wasn't an option.

She needed permission from the Council and who knows if what she would do wouldn't end up vaporizing the waters of the lake. She cursed not having brought more weapons or at least grenades, but she never imagined the situation could come to this. They were just supposed to do some research and try to find clues to Komarov's whereabouts.

She was deep in thought when she began to notice how the fog around her began to decrease and move towards the middle of the lake, in the direction of that kind of glow, and her mind filled with foreboding.

The filaments around her seemed to be traversed by a red light that moved and pulsed as if they were veins.

Shin, where the hell are you?