Tales from the Frostplains, Chapter 3: The Flight. By Violet LaFleur

Marie hauled the mansized fuel line under her arm, carrying it across the enameled concrete floor towards the rear of the plane. Rubber gaskets squeeked as they dragged by, the segmented mechanical snake slithering between ladders and boxes and assembly tables towards the prize. O'Higgins Requelme, a military base masquerading as anything else. Once respected by the international community, the Chilean territory had largely become unrecognized, hanging precariously on the peninsula within a thousand or so kilometers of the South American coastline. It was the closest out of all the colonies to the Calamity Gray, somehow clinging to life while stations in far safer regions perished. Depending on the perspective, it was difficult to say where the forlorne chain of ocean islands ended and where the proper Antarctic peninsula began. Teetering between worlds, such was the fate of the formerly contested dirt paved outcrop. All of the petty squabblings of latin land disputes seemed to die overnight one day, the Gray was dropped on their doorstep as the universal unwanted neighbor. On the right days, The citizens of O'Higgins would leave the doors to their habitats wide open, enjoying above zero heat flowing from the wayward gales that once only carried the Antarctic spray.

The base was unremarkable by design. A smattering of freeze-proof dwellings and a collection of bare minimum rusted out scientific playtoys. Their purpose more symbolic than anything else, the real prize lay in the civilians gangpressed and shanghai'd from their impoverished ranches to lay the foundations for Antarctic claimship. The airstrip, the hangar, the surplus of fuel oil and hastily converted station rooms into churches and classrooms. A centralized, agenda driven idea of civilization. The few dozen citizens who would soon evacuate this simulacra were the only things present keeping O'Higgins from turning into one of many empty cities that now dotted the New Earth.

Hallways stretched lazily in long insulated rectangles. Waning fixtures glew dimly, shadows dominant in crescent moon circles. Boxes clogged up the sides and propped against the closed doorways, eager to be boarded for a flight off the islands. Dust-deprived squares on the wall bore the evidence of plaques, maps, documents of incorporation. Figures and photos, meteorology equipment, guitars and tablets, clothing and toothbrushes. They all sat in anonymized boxes against the walls. The emptiness of O'Higgins was interupted from time to time, a nervous researcher pacing down the halls, or an antsy group of civilians double and triple checking empty rooms for their valuables. All distractions were packed neatly away, the only thing in plain sight was the eating anxiety to leave. The civilians walked with their heads cast down, like defeated soldiers of war. It wasn't their choice to come here in the first place, and now it wouldn't be their choice to leave either. All outstanding circumstances seemed to fall on them. And all they could do was timidly wait until they passed.

The dashboard gauges sat silently in their enclosures, dotting in rows and scores in the plane's cockpit. The needles reflecting a wall of zeroes, patiently waiting their resurection. This was to be the second to last flight before they would all board the hold and leave O'Higgins for good. From there on forever an empty shell, fragile and worn as a sandalled foot shatters it on the beach. The Belgrano team scuttled away in the hangar bay, prepping the vessel for another long haul flight.

"Alright, hooking up the fuel, hows the hold?" Marie asked outloud, locking the fuel line into the tank up above. Leo emerged from the hold, unloading extra seats and superfluous equipment, anything that wasn't immediately vital that could lessen their sky weight.

"Just about empty. This is the last of our cargo." He looked up and down the hold, trying to spot if there was something he glanced over, something to tug on that wasn't bolted down. "Alright. How long you think till we head back up?" Maria asked, shifting the lever into place with a metallic thud of the lock. Automatically, fuel began to chug through the hose in a steady heartbeat. "I dunno. We'd have to ask Tomas. Or Emilia, she probably knows more."

On cue, the hangar doors opened with the relatively gentle whisper of the Antarctic breeze, Tomas and Emilia entering from the direction of the laboratories. Emilia didn't bother to make for greetings, instead rushing over to the hastily set comms table at the far side of the hangar. From her duffelbag she laid out all sorts of gizmos. Handheld computers, holotablets, meteorology equipment, signal relays, a smattering of tools commandeered from civilians who seemingly didn't need them. All who's purposes flew over each head in the hangar except for hers.

"Hey Tom, are we...?" Marie began to ask before trailing off, Tomas making his way towards the plane in a serious stagger, sliding off his jacket and tying it around his waist. He walked with purpose, a kind which made noisemaking questions seem obvious in their wastefulness. Pausing, he stared at the stairs up to the fuselage, standing at the first step. Staring like there was something brewing in his mind, he turned to Marie with a sigh.

"They're angry." He said flatly, returning his eyes to the stairs. "We're gonna have to leave soon before we have any problems." He said with dissapointed words. He lifted himself up the steps one at a time, easing slowly into each one up to the pilot's chair. As he dissapeared into the cockpit the faint clickclack of levers and knobs echoed out of the metal tube, whirs from the electrics boards and metallic hums buzzing rhythmically. In between the soft analog chirps, an organic groan, tobacco stained lungs squeezing out their displeasure. "How long have the lines been running?" He asked outloud in a gristled tone.

"I don't know, a few minutes?" Marie replied, glancing at the line, certain she hadn't made any mistakes.

"Hmm." Tomas sounded, the air humming with the work of the fuel hose. "The pressure is weak, their reserves must be low." He let the statement waft in the air, letting it bake into the team. "Its gonna be a while until we're topped up, everyone get comfortable." A muted score of electric chirps rang out from the front of the plane, Tomas operating some kind of invisible flight crew to run electrons down the treetrunks of bundled wires beyond the dashboards. Marie looked around the hangar bay as the line of fuel gently chugged along into the tank. Leo was in the back of the cargo hold, still searching for some ounce of stuff to unload. Emilia fiddled silently with her setup, running spindly wires from terminal screens to oblong instruments. She kept glancing around, desperate for someone to occupy the silence with. But it was like everyone was unsure of their direction, picking this or that to occupy themselves with; to keep themselves busy with a wall of errands. Or maybe their twiddles were just that important to the mission, she wouldn't know. She sighed, sitting down on a toolbox on the outer edge of the staging grounds. The fuel line was connected, she didn't want to annoy Leo by butting in, and she had no clue how to hook up Emilia's equipment. Not that she would even ask for help in the first place. She sat lonesomely, staring out into nothing in particular, silently waiting for anyone to need something.

The knock came suddenly, interrupting the machine rhythm throughout the hangar. First suddenly, then aggressively. From knuckles to fists, a rap to a bang bang bang over and over. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to the source. Even Tomas's face peeked out from around the doorway, the clicks and hums continuing unsupervised.

"Hmm? What do they want? Tom, do you know?" Marie rose from her chair, turning to face her body to the door. "I told them not to come in." Tomas said aloud, taking careful steps down the stairs to solid ground. Emilia's eyes came up and then back down to her setup, quick in her disinterest. Leo on the otherhand began to take apprehensive steps towards the noise along with Marie, a noise which grew more and more frantic as the moments went on. Closing the distance, they could hear faint yells from beyond the door, shouts thrown back and forth at eachother. Emotions and exchanges that remained seperate from them only by a thin plate of steel.

"Maybe someones hurt?" Leo said unconvincedly, lifting his tout of medical supplies off a nearby stool. Marie didn't say anything, stopping at the door and lifting an apprehensive hand towards the handle. Everyone else stared at her, Leo a few steps behind holding his instrument bag with both hands, counting his bandages and alcohol swabs. She could feel the eyes on her, visible and tangible to her back as the knocks and cries met her at her front. A slight slickness, greasy remnants of human oils on the handle, cold in the sickly way only a doorknob can be. With a grimace, she twisted it open.

Seven people, several more out of sight, their bodies and heads clipping into the doorframe as panicked words tumbled out of their mouths. One could hardly see the rocky peninsula hills behind them, much less focus on them as the crowd's cacophony broke through the steel door mute. Their yells were flippant unfocused things, each pitch and octave trying to overpower the other. The only focus given was towards the Belgrano team, shouts pined and tuned in their sole direction.

"Calm down, we're not leaving anyone behind!" Marie put up her hands, trying to simmer the raising tempers, picking to quell the single legible anxiety she could hear repeated over and over by man and woman alike.

"Liar! He said you're not going to Belgrano!" An anonymous voice cried out from the mob, shakily pointing a boney finger to beanie clad head in the crowd, eyes peaking above jostling shoulders.

"Look we can't let you in, we're prepping the plane. Leo, a little help!!" But Leo had no idea what to do, the shouts hitting his senses as he clutched the medical supplies tighter and his eyes darted from face to face. The screams of a wounded soldier were approachable, it was only one set of lungs to focus on mending. But ten, twelve hysterical pairs, none which morphine and tourniquets could temper? He wracked his brain for solutions only to find none. Marie stood desperately, doing her best to pepper in Its Not True's and You'll Be Alright's in between the crying faces. A hasty levy of woman stemming the tides, one to a few dozen. But their yells only became more and more frantic. The glimpses of the wings and equipment from the doorway emboldened the bolder of them as it became clear that no one in the hangar was qualified to temper the tempest. They erupted through the doorway, their numbers finally coming into full view, contrasting their fevered anger with the ineffectiveness of the Belgrano team. Leo and Marie were powerless to stop them, they could only retreat closer to the plane as the crowd grew into the space, expanding as running water on a kitchen floor.

"Listen here! We made it clear on the radio, we're flying all of you to Belgrano once we get back!" Tomas stepped up to them, speaking slowly. Stating things definitively and methodically, as one would to a listless toddler that just barely has a grasp of language. But the crowd would have no part of it.

"And where are you going anyway? Why won't you say? You have any idea how that makes you look!" Another voice shrieked, trying to lock Tomas into saying something truthful. The three of them broke their gazes towards the crowd to look at eachother, unsure of what else they could reasonably break without consequences.

"We'll be dead by the time you come back!!! Look at the way the Gray is moving, it won't even leave any bones to bury!!" A tall man yelled with jeers of agreement, screams and calls bouncing back and forth against the sheet metal walls. "Are you really heading into it? You're gonna burn up!!! You're leaving us to die!!!" A woman in a worn pink puff jacket cried out, eyeing Leo directly as he averted his gaze, refusing to confirm or deny anything for fear of the guilt and awkwardness of it nestled in his heart.

"Heading into what?"

"They're heading into the Gray!"

"The Gray!?"

The crowd gradually built itself ballistic, spreading out, their anger wrapping around the staging grounds and pushing the team closer and closer to the plane. Even Emilia couldn't ignore the chaos, impatiently tapping on her desk as she stared at the group of annoyances. They ignored her, passing over as she lazily stared daggers at them for interrupting her work.

"C'mon!! Theres only three of them! They can't make us stay, we're getting out of here now! Send the kids to get the boxes, start loading em up!!" The crowd began to close the gap meter by meter, growing closer as their demands became less and less ignorable. Tomas, Marie, Leo, they all came to the same realization independently: their will was moot in the face of twenty others.

The crack of thunder. A strike of gale in the temperate hangar, sending a shiver in every spine. Reverberating without any place to go, the shot magnified upon the eardrums with a deafening pop, trailing as the ripples of a pond. He stood at the foot of the cargo hold. His arm high in the air, the pistol in his hands hot with combustion and smoke. It was the button of a time machine, everyone stopped and froze in their tracks.

"NONE OF YOU ARE GOING ANYWHERE." He shouted as loud as the gunshot. Additional armaments dangled loosely from his chest above black and blue fatigues. A rifle, a machinegun, another pistol at his thigh, bandoleers of ammunition across his chest that dangled and clinked with brass against brass. An embarassment of deadly riches, life-enders of the old world. CABO ROMERO definitively above his breast pocket. He had seized the moment entirely, intending to make it fully worth its while. He grabbed the machine gun that dangled from his side, sweeping the muzzle across the crowd beligerently and slamming down the bolt to fire, as if his towering physique and loudspeaker voice weren't enough. The mob, who just seconds ago were shoving their way onto the flight deck, recoiled. Their knees bent and spines taken at new strange angles, the gun a sacred object spreading an invisible barrier between them and him.

"Each and every one of you is trespassing on government property. You are ALL in violation of martial law!" He stepped forward, still brandishing at the crowd. They scurried like animals, moving as a single amorphous entity towards the door, not even listening to his barking orders; acting only on their instinct to survive another minute. Trampling over eachother in silenced chaos, their breaths taken by Corporal Romero: Conductor of the Choir of Death. In seconds, he could take their heartbeats too.

"Doesn't he know were all thats left??"

"He just doesn't care!"

"He wouldn't hurt us, would he?"

"Oh he'll hurt us alright, he's crazy!!! They're all crazy!!! run!!"

Scattered whispers flailed against loose limbs in a mad dash towards the exit until every spec of flesh had flown out the door. The last arm out grabbed the handle and slammed it shut, as if to impede the warpath of a rampaging bull. And then silence. The Corporal kept his gun trained on the entrance, waiting for a curious head or eyeball to creak open the door so he could open fire. His eyes were locked, twitching for the littlest bit of movement.

"You God damn animal!!" Tomas rasped out, stomping towards him, his moustache snarled up to his nose. Romero still hadn't moved, his mind too high off the threats to hear him. Seasoned hands full of life and death grabbed the muzzle, slamming it downwards and clear out of his grip. "The hell is wrong with you?! You people haven't murdered enough, huh? Is that it??? Killer!!" Tomas got nose to nose with him as Romero's mind slowly geared towards this new source of anger. The mechanical curchunks of his brain struggled to establish a new vector, a new pacification route. Instinctively he put his hand on his hip at his holster, going all too noticed by Tomas.

"You sonofa... well C'mon! What are you thinkin huh! Put a bullet in my head you goon, I dare you!!" He swung out his arms to the side as Romero stepped back like a grizzly bear in shock, hands still trained on the pistol at his side. Marie and Leo looked on silently, quietly hoping for some sort of resolution that didn't require their intervention. They continued to watch as Romero now froze in place, eyes twitching involuntarily as Tomas made himself big in front of him. Emilia glanced up before rolling her eyes, bringing them back to her machines. Romero was without anyone, the lone pillar surrounded by nothing. A boon in the heat of riot control and overwhelming force, a hindrance for anything else. His eyes gave to nervous scanning, Leo and Marie looking away as not to meet his stare; to not give the false hope that they might do something to help him out of this situation. Finally, he let his arms down and turned back to Tomas. "Crazy old man... touch government property again and I'll put you on the floor." He said pointing a finger at his face. Their foreheads came to a few centimeters of eachother, ragged skin to diamond jaw.

"You won't do a damn thing Matias." He turned his back and walked into the cockpit, walked like he had the Grace of the Lord protecting him, some kind of shield between him and the bundle of metal death that screamed silently to claim him. "Unbelievable... why can't we just tell em the truth..." He sighed above his breath as he walked up the stairs. Matias could only stare daggers at the man's back as he rounded the corner back to the pilot's seat. As action oriented as he was, even he knew that no one looked good pummeling an old man, much less gunning down one of a handful aironauts left on Earth.

Tomas sat in the pilot's seat, unbothered and out of sight. With a flick of his wrist he flipped up several switches, green lights awash on the dash. "We're ready. Everyone get geared up, ten minutes till we're up in the sky."

Marie and Leo rushed to the cargo bay, walking swiftly past Matias without giving him so much as a word. Leo looked back at the foot of the hold, eyes trailing upon him, scanning him for no particular reason other than detatched curiousity, intrigued on some level by the lethal mindset of an army grunt. Not for long though, he quickly slinked into the bay with the whirl of the engines covering his retreat. Matias was left on the staging ground alone, no one to hurl threats at and no one to foil him. Only him and his dandling armaments, hanging like beard moss off an oak tree. The typing from Emilia's desk didn't break the silence, as it was always going on in the theater of conflict, but now it was much more noticable. He turned to her, pinpoint eyes locked on some kind of baromatic detector from behind a pair of rectangle glasses. One boot after the other, Matias made his way to her setup, unholstering his second pistol.

"Finished cleaning it, Ma'am."

Emilia looked up from her terminal, eyes above her glasses. Doubtful, uninterested eyes that looked him up and down as he laid the gun next to her mousepad. She didn't speak a word to him, only telling him to get lost with a glance of her pupils towards the cargo bay. It was all the signal Matias needed, the jingle of his bullet sashes jingling farther and farther from the impromptu command deck. The hum of the plane's mechanicals surrounded him, stepping up and onto the cargo ramp with the rest.

The ramp closed up behind them with the hydraulic buzz of automated pistons, O'Higgins aircraft hangar becoming smaller and smaller through the ever decreasing slit of vision. Matias, Leo and Marie stood in the middle of the hold, two mounted seats on one side and a single one on the other. The rest were sitting in a haphazard pile on the staging grounds, worn outlines along the walls evidence of a previous capacity. The door to the cockpit entrance was open for now. An airlock door ajar, giving the team a well enough glimpse into blinking levers and control boards. In the small hallway between cockpit and hold were a few metal storage crates, nondescript except for their emblem. Stenciled across the lids were big block letters: BELGRANO III RESEARCH LABORATORY. PROPERTY OF THE ARGENTINE ARMY. Leo crouched down to open them up, fingers clicking free the metal rung locks. Foam inserts were cut to accomodate sets of bright silver, armor plated 21st century hazard suits. They were one of only a few to even be aware of their existence, freshly manufactured and custom designed for their purposes. He opened them one at a time, handing them to Marie and Matias before grabbing one for himself.

They were bulky, double layered with flat rows of conduits and hexed patches weaved into the fabric. Unwrapping them, they looked as if they could have been built for far flung galactic warfare, chromeshined shoulders and reflective dotted wristpads deflecting incoming lazer barrages from some unforseen alien menace. The shine of the synthetic silver plates mounted to a snow white flexi-fabric rigid as woven steel. Matias dropped his extra armanents in an open box, closing it with a click and forcing an arm through the suit. He struggled to fit his fingers through the embedded gloves, grunting as the suit did its best to contain the thick phalangic sausages at the ends of his hands.

"These aren't gonna rip, are they Leo?" He groaned as he fought to get his foot through.

"pull at them all day and night, stab em if you want to but they're not coming apart." He held up his own, inspecting it as if to make sure the truth was still the truth.

"God, how much does this thing weigh?" Marie whined, arms straining to unzip the back of her suit while keeping the rest from the ground. She slid one leg through the bottoms, snaking her feet through the linings as they found the boot sections.

"Each one is about ten kilos. Fifteen when finished." Leo explained as he handed out spine-molded oxygen tanks, headset comms and hexidome glass helmets to the two of them. His words strained slightly under the pressure, as the set of equipment grew larger and heavier.

The suits formed to their bodies slowly, expanding with their pulls and then gradually tightening back up. The thick sheets of fabric seemed to move on their own as the inner layer closed in tighter and tighter. Like an intrepid mycelium searching for food morsels beneath the earth, closing in on a suspected source of detritus.

"Everyone ready?" Tomas asked, turning his head from the pilot seat with a face full of nav goggles. The wires ran up and above his skull like a ponytail that defied gravity, anchored into the ceiling in thick rubber clad gauges while neon red eyeglasses glanced back at the Team.

"Ready, its all yours Tom." Leo replied. Tomas nodded and gave him a thumbs up before turning his attention back to the dash, flipping several switches as airpumps began to pressurize the cabin. Leo turned back to the hold, joining the other two spacemen to take their seats. The two of them sat across from Mat, watching him strap into the seat with a learned familiarity. The Argentine flag danced on the side of his arm, the stark little sun staring at them as it bobbed up and down to his maneuvers. They followed suit, repeating his movements until each of them were securely locked down. From the open door, they heard Tomas speak.

"Set for takeoff. Emilia, you're good to open the hangar doors."

They couldn't see much from their bindings, but the metallic droning from outside and the cool bright ambient light flowing in told them that the flight was soon to begin. Mat made eye contact with the both of them and tapped the side of his head. Hurriedly, they both readied their headsets and powered them on, little affirmative beeps signaling that relay contact was made.

"Check one two, clear?" Mat grunted, both of them nodding their heads as they felt the momentum shift backwards and forwards. The landing gear began to roll, bringing them out of the hangar and into the winds of the Peninsula.

"Final check before takeoff, conditions fair Emilia?" Tomas came in, his analog voice fading in the hum of machinery, the digital voice creeping to dominate. "Winds are low from the Northeast, clouds are behind us. This is as high as the pressure is ever going to get. You are clear for takeoff." Emilia spoke with a firm urgency. A tone that demanded its respect from what it conveyed. The team faced forward, their bodies rumbling as the plane taxi'd through and around the hangar, out into the open air.

"Clear. Preparing for takeoff." The lever was firm in Tomas's hand, moving by microns as rows of needles rose shakily from zero. The trio felt the acceleration grow by the second, shaking the teeth in their gums as the plane sped faster and faster, launching them across the peninsula's bare earth quicker than any animal could hope to keep up with. Leo swallowed nervously, his leg shaking involuntarily as he craned his neck to get as good a look as he could get out the doorway, desperate to glimpse something out the cockpit windows that might ease his tremors. He could only see the back of Tomas's headgear, shaking and swaying, the visible specs of human head lazer focus'd on the task at hand as stems of wired insulation bobbed overhead. Marie and Matias sat still in differing forms of cope, Matias stone solid in his seat as Marie flowed givingly with the tumbles. The tremors continued, reaching a penultimate shake until finally, the floor ceased to move. "Airborne. Proceeding with the calculated course. Arrival to destination: 5 hours."

The Petra II Hazardous Environment Hardsuit betatype 2a wrapped tightly around Leo's limbs, fresh out of what was left of military R+D. Standard envirohazard suit reworked for use in abnormally high temperatures. Synthetic fibers and cured animal skins, lab grown cells of volcanic vent dwelling bottomfeeders sewn into a membrane sheath between the plastisteel and polyurethane. The heating elements replaced with tubes of refridgerant, pumping through the conduits in a steady hum as the onboard condenser pumped it up and through the veinous insides. He followed the spoken overhead instructions to a T, only imagining the medical nightmare that would result upon failure. exploding ocular blood vessels? Instant flesh burns? Multiple communited high pressure skeletal fractures? There was an ocean of horrible opportunity that could befall him, it would only take a few saltwater drops to cripple him permanently. The quiet rhythm of his breathing, measured and disciplined. Conscious overwrite of base instincts: panic, fear, apprehension. Such instincts would only race his heart, make him sweat, make him hot. Make more work for the suit. More work, more stress, more points of failure. More opportunity for an uncarried Zero during production to spell a spectacular end or a fate worse than death. Stand still, breathe stiller, death will pass over none the wiser. Was it really voluntary if no one else volunteered?

Minute 10. Minute 20. Minute 30. 40. 50c. 100c. 200c. He kept waiting, expecting a breech. Expecting a sudden hotspot in the crease of his elbows, around the knees, at the heel. An implosive rush of heat racing to greet his corpus. Emergency button slammed as his screams shoot through the microphone. Pacing around the belly of the beast, a 4x4 meter concrete room barren of anything, not even a window for observation.

Minute 65. A Hiss out of his left arm. He felt it, the crack in the crink of his elbow as refridgerant burst out the seams. Before he could process it the embedded guidewires cracked and tripped, alarms pouring through the room in two as the space rapidly depressurized and icecold air flooded the chamber.

"Leo."

Emilia walked in with a clipboard in the crook of her arm. Eyes piercing behind tiny glass rectangles above a tight ponytail as she probed the crease of his elbow with her pen. He continued to stand still, fearful that if he so much as moved an inch it would skew the results and force a total reset. A return to the Oven at 200c for fifteen minutes until golden brown. Emilia's hand became Marie's, reaching through his synapses and tugging on his shoulder.

"Leo?"

He opened his eyes. The room was gone, steel beams covered in thumbsized rivets formed reinforced metal walls into a loose cylinder around him. From one reality to another, he slowly adjusted.

"Uh, what?" He asked, looking around the hold with a series of fluttering blinks, making sure it was still there.

"I said, can these suits really stand up to whats out there?"

He stared at her for a second, the back of his throat dry, his neck in crooks from the sleeping angle. Suddenly the hold began to creak, groaning metal that sent the two of them wideyed and clutching their restraints, clinging to them with little shakes from the hinged metal pipes as components clinked into eachother. "The hell was that?!?!!?" Marie shouted, Matias wincing with the pierce through the speaker.

"Its just a cool spot." Emilia came through the comms, speaking with the authority as if she was in the hold right next to them. "We've modified the outer layer to warp to the elevated heat, that ticking is the frame returning to standard operating temperatures." On command, the groans gave out to ticking creaking all around them. A massive animal's paw was screeching against the warping metal, tapping on it intermittedly, scanning for weakpoints and finding little success.

"Theres nothing to panic over." She added quickly, almost sounding reassuring if it wasn't for the clinicacy of the words. Redhot platemetal continued to tick and bend at the microscopic but wholly auditory level.

"So when should we panic?" Marie heard nothing back from Emilia, nor Leo. The comms were cold with their absences, as if to say: should that situation arise, there wouldn't be time to panic. The thought struck her, swimming in its unapparence between the three. She too joined into the cold silent comms band, ticktickticks filling the void.

"Reminds me of Europe." Matias spoke suddenly and quietly, words stringing in unpleasant bulbs as they pulled like strands of hair from his mouth. Leo saw him as he had left him hours before, rigid in his posture with deepset eyes faced forward. His lips moved silently, the headsets filling in as the thrown voice of a ventrilequist, lagging behind in milliseconds.

"You were in Europe, Mat?" Marie asked. He nodded his head. "Pan American Coalition, Operation Seaside Sunset." His eyes scanned to the left and right of the hold, either reminiscing about the past or preparing his mind for haunted ghosts coming back through riveted steel beams. "Our plane was a lot bigger though. About a hundred of us. everyone side by side." He patted down the metal restrains assuredly, trailing off in no particular direction. "Leo too?" Marie glanced at him to the side with a smirk. Leo looked away, clearly not wanting anything to do with the subject. "Hah! Leo's too chicken. Even with the doublepay he still wouldn't volunteer." Mat ribbed. "Bet it was nice and cozy back home..." He said with an exhale, his tone half accusatory. But Leo still didn't respond. "Anyway. We had no idea what we were heading into. Kinda like right now." He spoke softly, familiarly, like he was midway between a memory and a waking dream. The rumbling and creaking continued outside, slowly becoming less and less as the plane entered another stretch of red hot dust. In tandem Mat's demeanour followed, his shoulders returning to a soldier straight position.

"You must have been happy when the ceasefire was declared, huh?" Marie spoke cheekily. He grunted, snorting like a rhino blowing a fly off his nose. "Damn Saudi's... we could have taken Libya like Algers if they didn't fuck everything up." His nose and eyes scrunched up. "Nothing but ashes by the time we were done with it." Mat glared out towards the cargo bay door, talking more for himself than for anyone else. "Nothing but ashes, huh? Prepared for the end of the world then?" Marie asked. Mat turned his head on a slow swivel from the door. "I was in Dubai with the Americans, Marie. I've already seen the end of the world."

"Clear comms." Emilia's voice cut through, halting the three of them into an immediate halt.

"Tomas, explain the change in vector." Emilia said hot and accusedly. He stumbled with his words, dangling unexpectedly at the sudden call out. "Huh? I... I need to come from the East if I'm landing at the International. I can't get any readings from the West."

"Negative. Negative to everything. Stay on course. Do not approach the International Airport repeat do not approach the Airport. You are landing at the naval airstrip to the North."

"The Naval Strip? Why?"

"Do not stray from the calculated course, do not disobey my orders. Understood?" Emilia's words came both as a threat and a warning. One note in their delivery, uncaring and unflinching. Tomas paused for a moment, eye twitching at the nerve of the young woman to talk to him like that. "got it." He spit through his teeth. The three felt the plane pitch sharply to the left, chrome slick shoulder pads and wristguards knocking lazily into the restraints. "One hour till landing" Tomas spoke out to the group and Emilia, the three of them flowing with the directional changes as he continued to adjust the course back to the typical. The plane dipped back into its gentle rumble, navigating the whirlwall of kilometer high debris.

"Alright well, can you tell me now, Emilia?" Marie asked her. "You've got me all the way out here and haven't even told me what we're looking for yet."

"Its what Corporal Romero is looking for. You're to assist in whatever he asks. You and Private Guerrero." Every sentence spoke was definitive, unwelcoming to any further questions with the slambang of an invisible steel door. They were sent into silence, but this did nothing to disuade Marie. For the randomness of her selection only served to bolster her curiousity. "Okay, so what is Corporal Romero looking for?" The line went flat, sans even any static. For a moment Marie felt as if she should give up this pettiness entirely, the coldness of the Antarctic seeping in through the comms making the line thinner and thinner. But whatever the reason, she had the suspicion that she was needed, even barring her relatively small contribution to the journey at hand so far. Leo retreated with this knowledge, nestled firmly in the niche he saught. But Marie's absence from the heirarchy sprinkled onto her that littlest particle of agency, accelerating into prods and nudges to a groaning wall that she was certain would not collapse on her. Finally, static returned to the line.

"The University of Ushuaia." Emilia sighed out to her in a pitched, annoyed tone. Marie froze, the mention of that place stopping whatever floating levity was presence within her. She whispered to herself "Ushuaia..."

"We picked up a signal there. A distress beacon. We know that you spent two years there for your degree, its all in your report." Emilia stopped, this time expecting a reply; some sort of confirmation. But Marie only continued to look forward, adjusting to the new information. When no reply came, Emilia continued. "We've pinpointed it to the Geology Department's Southernmost lab, across from La Posta Apart hotel. Accompany Corporal Romero and locate the source. Thats all you need to know."

"And rescue the survivors." Matias added, a slowly emerging five o'clock shadow surrounding his mouth. Emilia nodded silently on the other side of the headset. Solemnly. "The American's said there aren't any survivors." Marie finally spoke, staring directly at Mat.

"The Americans are Liars" Emilia replied, full of authority on the matter. Matias shifted in his seat. "I wouldn't say that Ma'am, they just have bad intel." Matias spoke gingerly when to her, tiptoeing like a frightful child. "All the more reason they shouldn't be making the decisions." It felt like she would finally begin to go on, to brandish her thoughts after hiding them away in glares of classified documents. Even with the recent revelation, Marie couldn't help but anticipate it in some small way. That is until Tom's voice interupted the rare disclosure of info. "My God." Was all he said, coming in weakly but noticably. His eyes were naked, neon lenses retracted to give a wide unabated view, bereft of any heads up display to shade it. "The dust cleared, didn't it?" Emilia spoke with confidence ill-befitting someone so far away. She spoke with her mind already having seen what was a thousand kilometers away, a set of datapoint holographs mathematically predicting scenes from the future. Matias didn't bother asking for an Allclear. He eased the restraints off his chest in the flush of creaking metal and rose to his feet. They both watched him as he stumbled towards the cockpit. "Oh fuck." He stopped in the doorway clenching the supports, mouth hanging dumbly open with his eyes locked forward. He walked slowly, deeper into the cockpit as one possessed by the unknown. Marie looked to Leo, in tandem they both released their restraints and hurried through the door.

The Gray, for as much calamity as it brought to Earth, atleast kept the exploits of its conquests hidden from view. Shielding, the great cloud hung precarious on the horizons of the stations. Impenetrable such that no human to date could pluck them to the side and peak behind the curtains. No human known, until the Belgrano team reached the end of the world.

Ravaged was no appropriate word. Villages were ravaged, ravaged implied a point of reference that no matter how small a sliver still lingered in the new destroyed form, ready to be brought back to life. Algiers and Madrid and Dubai and Venice were ravaged. The first thing the four noticed was the mountains. Barren completely of snowy peaks, they stood as uniformly empty voids against the sky. A sky teeming with white hot fire, coming down in long arcs towards the ground. Cloudsized roaving pillows of burning embers swirled with the wind, highlighting the hijacked winds in a bright yellow glow. Electromagnetic storms raged throughout the air, cutting daggers of lightning behind the mountain ranges and replacing the sun entirely with a violent luminescence uneven in its cover. The daily rays which landed on the North plains were no where to be found, now completely incompatible with the terrain at a base level. A fairy tale in an alien language, laws of physics from another universe, subplanted by chaos. An ember cloud rushed up from nowhere and encircled the plane, red hot debris glancing harmlessly off the metal plates and tempered glass, hiding four pairs of eyes that viewed foreignly the new natural habitat. The Hadean Era had come once more to Ushuaia.

Looking to the ground, it was torn asunder in deep cragging valleys, their depths descending out of sight even from thousands of meters above. Newly formed cliffsides raced along the valleys, rising and falling randomly without a care for the shells of houses that sat upon them, hanging at awkward angles. Streetlights had been replaced with streams of molten rock that cut across homes, swallowing up buildings. Leaning and waning, vainly crawling away from the vector of their impending doom that slowly disintegrated their bricks, their panels, their foundations. Some were trickles that snaked through remaining streets. Some looked to be a hundred meters wide, glowing red lava churning lazily as it consumed more and more of the Earth. Color had become another foreign concept in this land, none could be discerned except for a filthy dark earthen tone that covered anything that wasn't glowing with heat. Whatever still stood had been mummified by the volcanic ash. Sheol had risen beyond its bounds. No one spoke. Their eyes stayed glued to the windows, unable to look away. "The University is untouched. Relatively." Emilia informed them, breaking the mesmerizing hold of the terrain. No one responded, only continued to look out at the new Earth.

"Whats that..." Marie raised a shaky finger towards the International airport. "Its shooting out from the ground..." The airport lay in two sections, vivisected across the middle with ocean water flooding into the opening. A plume of white smoke suddenly erupted from the wound in a rapidly rising pillar. Then another one, this time from closer to what used to be the city center.

"Aquifers most likely, water trapped in between the rock way down below. The temperature and pressure are boiling them up to the surface." Emilia rattled off definitions that washed against the minds of the Belgrano team without settling. "Watch out for any cracks in the ground. There are likely to be more and they are going to be random."

Out of it all, the Naval airstrip was surprisingly empty. No debris, no vehicles, not even any planes. The strip was nothing but a long stretch of dirt, the least desolate piece of the entire area. The plane dipped forward, the three of the Belgrano team stumbling slightly as they recovered their footing. Mat turned to Tomas, the ruby red glass of his flight lenses were back down over his face, hiding whatever may have been unsettled. "we're pulling in. Get back in the hold and screw down the airlocks." Tom's hand wrapped around a throttle, flipping a switch on the way and pulling it down towards himself. The landscape of Ushuaia grew closer, the details of the carnage becoming clearer by the second. "As soon as we come to a stop, I'm opening the bay."

Leo double checked and triple checked the cockpit door, pulling on the lever with all his might, rubber gaskets squeezing against eachother in an airtight grip. He motioned over Matias who was staring at his helmet, holding it between his hands contemplatively. His arms wrapped around the handle, creaking it a few more millimeters. He went to repeat the action on the second door before Leo stopped him. "Lets pick up what we need before you lock it down." He motioned to the boxes in the hallway. Crouching down to grab his medical supplies he slid the red crossed canvas bag into a sleek silver carrying case, locking it up and getting a feel for the weight. Although she had nothing to bring, Marie stepped in and looked around the hallway anyway. As she turned to Mat, she rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Do you really need to bring that?" She glared at the machine gun hanging around Mat's chest as he looked at her with annoyed eyes. "Who knows what we'll find out there." Mat checked over the weapon, setting the safety before putting it aside and sliding on his helmet. Marie broke her glare and did the same.

They took their seats as Matias heaved the second airlock door into an unmovable position. The familar rumble of the descending plane soon shook through the hold yet again as he sat himself down, but none of them moved to secure their restraints. They all seemed to understand independently of eachother that the moment they land, an invisible timer would begin. Counting down from an hour, from ten hours, maybe ten minutes or ten seconds. But it would be counting. And every second out that ramp would count. If they didn't need to waste a minute unhooking their restraints then that was a minute they would take. The hold shook up and down, Marie grabbed the bottom of the seat and held on, Mat keeping his feet planted firmly to the floor. Leo did his best to stay keep from falling off. They could feel the wheels, spinning against dirt in firm contact. The seconds ticked by at double speed, before they knew it the rumbling had ceased. The plane had come to a stop, and a brief silence returned to the hold. The calmness of one final breath before the marathon gun fired, they held it collectively. "Okay, everyone ready?" Tomas asked. "ready" said Leo. With a creaking hiss, the cargo ramp sank down, and the firey glow of Ushuaia creeped in.

Sensing the temperature rise, the Petra II hardsuit systems tripped automatically. Tubes began circulating ice cold freon through the wirey veins and thick arterial conduits as the onboard compressors pumped the inner layer full of conditioned air. They puffed up slightly with the air bubble, exterior layers rubbing into eachother as they took intrepid steps out the hold. The air was the first thing to attack them. A heavy, concentrated sheet that slammed into them as the door opened to the world's largest oven. They didn't feel a thing temperature-wise, but the weight of its strength hit them square in the chests as they tried to adapt to the new pressure. They braced themselves into the dirt, digging their boots into dry sandy earth as they adjusted themselves.

From the ground, they could notice things more clearly now. The ocean had become a velvety, cosmic mirror. Midnight black as an oil slick, mirroring the swell of lightning fire above and around them in starlight sparkles. It seemed that the sky and ocean had switched places. "Mic check." Emilia said. "Loud and clear" replied Leo. The three glanced at eachother confirmationally. "Won't be for long, you'll be stuck to local comms once you get out of the plane's range. Corporal Romero, I've loaded a flat map into your suit. See it?" Mat tapped on the control panel at the base of his neck and ears, which brought a high contrast map up in front of his eyes. The blinking red crosshair glew against the bright white vectors of the map, glitching in and out. "Ya... hold on." Mat slapped the side of his helmet until the picture tuned steady. "I see it alright." A thin strand of red appeared on the map, threading through the former roads and barren paths. "I've highlighted the safest route to the University. Follow it until you reach the objective, I'll reach you with more instructions then. Over and out." The line went dark, and the two turned to Matias. "Okay, keep close." Mat kept his machinegun tight in his hands as he took point West, the others followed cautiously.

The pumping of their suits buzzed at them, swaying in pitch and tone as the neutral air within their suits compressed and wheezed with every step. Theirs were the footsteps of explorers on a vile, ancient planet far away. Each direction they looked was the blindingly bright and deepest void, pockets of one in the other. Errant fires on the nightblack mountains, twinkling reflections in the midnight bay. Leo and Marie tried their best to keep their focus on Matias, marching along the soot and dirt, and off the grotesqueness which surrounded them. Their suits kept their promise, after a while of walking none of them had broken so much as a sweat. In fact it was quite cold at its most active. The automatic regulators would shut in and out of action, the air steadying and becoming still at irregular intervals in a primitive method of climate regulation. They continued along the backdrop, crawling maggots along the carcass of bone dry flesh scorched by a sun long departed. There was nothing to gain from staying and ruminating, vomiting and lapping up the excretion of their witnessings. Leo tried to stare out in recognition, surely he was one of a handful of human beings to do so. Thus by its rarity it must be important. Its fury demanded their attention; an obvious declaration that One Shall Know What Has Been Wraught here. But the carnage was so uniform in its chaos. The longer he looked around, the more it became another faraway terror, seperated from them by the thin layer of puffed air between their suits. The route was set, as long as they continued by it then the distant plumes of fire were as distant as the Gray off the coast. He turned his helmet back to Marie and Mat, cutting through the dirt.

Emilia's projections were holding steady, the route took them down dirt roads of the least affected portions of Ushuaia, off from the side of the main show. The ground beneath them gave easily, dry and silty in the orange ambient glow. After an hour, the residential portions were finally in view. Mat paused in the march, looking down at a small stream of lava a few dozen meters down the hill. Cutting right through their route.

"I thought this was the 'safe' path" Marie glared with her words.

"Shutup" Mat snapped. His head moved side to side, nose upturned like a bloodhound searching for a convict. The rubble surrounded them on either side, broken rectangles jutting out from the barren earth. They were all covered in spackles of dust, sprinkled stalagmites like an upright popcorn ceiling. He let his machinegun droop down to the side, wiping off the dust from one like a learned archeologist.

"You. Grab the other side with him." They both approached as Mat heaved the concrete slab up off the ground, grabbing the otherside and lifting it fully into the air. They waddled towards the stream, stopping and breaking as the loose ground caused them to slide under the weight. "Stop. Move." Mat barked at them as they stepped away with a pant. Relegated to pushing the slab himself, Leo and Marie watched silently as it glided across the silt, sliding down the hill and at the foot of the stream. As they approached, the buzzes on their suits reached a fevered pitch, doing their best to combat the ambient glow before them. Another shove, and Mat had bridged the two sides of the shallow valley.

"Okay, one at a time. No sudden moves." As if to prove his hypothesis, Mat set his hulking figure onto the concrete as it held firm. One by one they crossed the makeshift bridge. The speeding fans whirred at top speed, nearly deafening as they stood meters above the active flow. Upon crossing to the other side, Marie hesitated. The suits strained with the added power, clattering and whizzing unevenly. It felt as if they were at a breaking point. Leo hadn't sai anything, Matias neither. But how sure was the army that these were safe? There were only three of them, they were all prototypes. The buzzing kept on, even a dozen paces from the flow. Were they stuck? Were the jerry-rigge little tickers and spinners going to fast to stop? What then? Would they burn themselves out?

"Marie?"

Or would this simply be the new operating standard? How hot was it beyond the suit? There wasn't anything to check. Emilia said this is the only window they would have for years for a walk beyond the Gray. How would they know if that window was already closing? Everything looked identical, weather it was two hundred degrees or two thousand.

"MARIE!"

An arm snatched hers, pulling her hard to the side. Marie couldn't see it if she tried, her faceplate fogged up with boiling hot steam that sent her stumbling backwards, guided loosely by the sudden grip. She hit the ground hard, climbing up Leo's arm in a scramble. She got up and turned her head towards the quickly fading geyser, sputtering above the crack where she had just stood.

"Idiot!" Mat yelled as he stomped towards them. "Don't going dying before we get to the college!!" Marie's face furrowed. She wiped her faceplate clean and stepped up to him. "And why is that, huh?? What the hell is at the college?? Why the hell am I here??" Mat turned and continued on the route, leaving Marie to scold his back.

"Because I was there twenty years ago! You people... I studied accounting for God's sake! You grunts drag me out here for that??" She gestured wildly with her hands, to no witnesses. "You think I'm gonna know anyone at the distress beacon?? Look around! Everythings dead! There aren't even any bones!" No one replied to her.

"Go back to the plane if you're gonna cry about it. I'm sick of you." Mat didn't even turn around to face her, just kept stomping down the dirt under his boots, growing farther away as the seconds ticked. Leo turned as if to say something, but he quickly returned close to Mat. Go back to the plane? Mat knew she didn't have a map. That she'd wander into another Geyser and burn up into dust. That mob of Chileans were right: he doesn't care. "Just do what he says Marie. We'll be done sooner that way." Leo finally spoke, words wedged firmly in the chain of command, stuck to the side of the Corporal. Reluctantly, Marie followed. Out of spite if for anything at all.

Each step formed identical to the last. Before long their stomps brought them out of the dusty plains and into the carved through streets of the residential outskirts. Each house was more adobe structure than of concrete and glass. Caked in a thick layer of soot and dirt, Marie swore she could feel the fans of her suit quiet slightly. As if the risen earthen pillars on the streetside insulated them from the ambient heat, like igloo walls keeping the subzero out. The path they followed held steady, whatever intel the army was working with was so far reliable. Clastic gelatenous blobs of black and orange swallowed up whole houses to their left and right, meanwhile their steps were as solid as back on the ice. Marie tried to reckon some familiarity out from the streetsides. It had been so long, the streetsigns had all perished along with any recognizable storefronts. Rough across evenly, spackled like a uniform layer of popcorn ceiling. It covered any indication of society, leaving only an ugly textured mess. Marie returned her eyes to the marching heads of Leo and Mat. Periodic howling winds winding through the streets was the only thing to break the dreary monotony. That and the odd geyser in the distance spitting out boiling hot puss from deep in the ground. As they crossed the Eastern roadway back towards the coast, the pillars became sparse. Then all at once, earthen mounds several stories high in a appeared in a deliberate pattern. Marie's eyes adjusted. "Wait a minute, is this-"

"The Southern Labs" Mat cut her off, finishing her words. They were built up, much more than what she remembered. Towering things reaching from the groundfloors she once knew. Built up only to be mummified in their new forms. tall glass windows had long blown in, making skinny hollow indents in the structures. "Don't stray" Mat took point once again, weaving inbetween broken piles of debris. Some of the buildings had been vivisected right down the middle, the lower halfs sinking down into the ground at odd angles. The rooms inside were cells of a dessicated tissue. There were the shapes of chairs, the blur of desks, tiny upright blobs that might have been computer towers. But in the low orange light of new Earth, there was little to say concretely. The burr of recycled air floated up and around her face, smelling of nothing. Mat signaled them to stop, right at the edge of another blown out pillar. He armed his machinegun, peering out around the corner like he was expecting combatants. After a moment, he gestured them to come around. Leo and Marie turned the corner, neither of them knew what to expect. The wall had crumbled away, revealing the dried out guts of the building up close. Upon first inspection it was nothing special, indistinct from the myriad of identical dirtscape in their trek. But it stood there, a sharp rectangular glitch among a sea of uniform ash and pockets of dusted metal. Embedded into one of the walls at the bottom of a slight ramp downward, stood an immaculately shiny steel door. Marie and Leo almost couldn't believe it, there were even faint signs of running electricity, barely perceptible from fading diodes running along sleek silver edges. Marie approached it, looking it up and down.

"The hell is this?" Marie asked. "The distress beacon" Mat said flatly. The hardsuit hums retreated noticably, as if they could detect a source of civilization nearby. "Okay. Marie, I need you to start sp-" a crash. Splitting the space in two with a loud bang. "WHOS THERE?" Mat yelled, drawing his gun and sweeping behind them. But nothing happened, everything stayed silent. Mat and Leo looked back at eachother, then to her. Then all at once explosions, dozens of tiny pops started streaming from Mat's chest.

"SHIT, GET DOWN" he screamed, grabbing madly at the bandoliers trying to rip the magazines off his body. Ultrahot ammunition discharged in random directions, the heat finally bringing them to their cooking point. Leo lunged towards Marie, slamming her down with a muted thud into the dirt. Mat danced around, tripping over himself trying to disarm in a flurry of yelling and deadly combustions. Amidst the cacophony he stumbled back, his foot buckling and slipping into an unseen crevace.

"MAT" Leo yelled, bolting up from the ground towards him. But it was too late, Mat's foot had cracked the earth. It sank, quick in its swiftness but slow in its consumption. Agonizingly slow, sinking inescapably into the syrupy plasma of the new Earth in a single languid motion. His screams ripped into their comms, instinctively he put out his hands to catch himself from falling any further. One hand caught solid Earth, towards Leo's direction. The other plunged right into the ground as if it wasn't there at all, going all the way up to his elbow. The first human sounds to barrel across the crackling streets of Ushuaia were miserable screams of torture. The laughter of children, Revelery of returning tourists, all of it was erased for this was all the streets would recieve. The wind carried the Corporal's agonizing wails, pitching up and down the whole human frequency range. Leo grabbed at his helmet, then his shoulders, scrambling to get a grip under his armpits. He continued to sink slowly into whatever was underneath, his cries begging them for help in a desperation they never before heard. Marie scrambled up, grabbing Leo's waist doing her best to pull him back with Mat. The silt under their boots and knees gave carelessly, with every heave they flailed around themselves to not get sucked into the invisible vortex below, knees and elbows colliding with eachother as they did whatever they could to save him. Eventually they found a foothold, and with a few more frantic pulls they brought Mat back to solid ground. Relief hit only for a moment, vaporized upon seeing the damage. He no longer had any legs. Mat's helmet pointed down. He tried to reach down to touch them, only to find he was missing his left arm too.

More screams ripped across the valley as reality set in with the weight of a meteor. Leo flung around his pack and flicked up the locks, revealing a folding set three shelves deep filled with medical equipment. Bottles and ampoules and tools that flew directly over the head of anyone without the training. Marie watched his gloved hands tear a wild syringe out of the pack, slamming it into the exposed flesh and injecting it with a heavy palm. Blood continued to pour from the severed portions, the jagged cauterization leaving arteries and veins still weeping through blackened cracks into the open air.

"MARIE! Get the door open NOW!" Leo ordered her as he tore open a tourniqet set. She hadn't a thought for how, she only rushed towards and started slamming on the gates with her fists. Kicking, punching, screaming, clawing at the miniscule gap between the panels. It did no good. They buzzed indifferently as Mat lay loudly dying.

"Its welded shut Leo!! Theres no way to-" "FIND A WAY" He screamed back, working with a pace she'd never seen before. She looked back at the door with her heart racing, bouncing up and down from the top of her throat to the bottom of her stomach. It had only taken a few seconds, and now Mat's life had been dropped into her hands. "I...I need something to open it! do you-" Suddenly, an electric humming hissed above the door, amplifying the ambient buzzing. A gray panel above that none of them had noticed slowly glew in, turning a dim teal and blinking several times. A robotic voice came from nowhere, tuned text to speech. "VOICE MATCHING ALUMNI RECORDS. WELCOME TO USHUAIA UNIVERSITY SOUTHERN LABORATORIES: MARIA FONTANA." The steel doors opened with the rush of a conditioned atmosphere. Pressurized light streamed in as a thin mist of air quickly vaporized against the heat. There was no time to think, the two rushed in dragging the third as the panels closed behind them. The teal light above once again returning to a dull grey.

"THERE, UP THERE" Leo screamed as he clutched what was left of Mat's legs. Marie held him up by his upper arms, limp things covered in exploded divets that clacked together hollowly. He groaned in desperation, remaining hand reaching up effetely with no clear objective, torn vocal chords against their comms. even with the two of them they struggled to heave his body through the airlock and past the bathed white hallways. They ducked into the first room they saw, some sort of administrative office with a large metal desk covered in tablets and papers. Leo set down his legs and sweeped everything off the table with a loud crash, broken glass and clattering stationary. Marie dragged his body up on the table as Leo immediately went back to work, laying his tools out where Mat's legs should have been.

"Damnit." Leo cursed as his gloved hands fumbled with a syringe. With a few clicks he detatched his helmet and unzipped his hardsuit halfway, tying the arms around his waist. "Alright, lets get you some air bud." He said as he did the same for Mat. The two looked at him, his face naked to the world. Eyes bloodshot, darting and twitching erratically. Mucus snivelling down his chin below quivering sharp breaths caught on rough patches of stubble. His pupils squinted and strained, a mind in shock trying to process the world as he now knew it. Marie put her thumbs against her neck clamps and copied Leo. Immediately she regretted it, the stench of burnt smoke, dry on the nosehairs, sickly sweet. She reeled back, hand shooting out to cover her face. Flesh burnt to charcoal, a mass grave set on fire, smoldering sinew and bubbling fat rendered in high oven temperatures. She turned to face Matias again but he had passed out, head lobbing lazily to the side as Leo prepped him for triage, unaffected by the smell or sight.

"God... I shouldn't have opened up the kit out there." Leo sighed to himself, rummaging through his supplies. He shook and inspected various vials, setting them aside in two different groups. "Can you go find a medbay, a nurse's office, something? He's not gonna last long without donor blood." Squishing a clear IV bag back and forth, he hooked it into a vein and held it up with his free hand.

"Leo, what is this place?" Marie asked, looking around at the ceramic walls and brushed metal conduits running down the corners. Even the floors were pristine, Mat's blood and their dusted footprints the only intruders to an otherwise sleek vinyl tiling. "I Have no idea." He said, ripping open another sterile package with his teeth. "But whatever it is, Its got to have a medical ward." Cautiously, Marie backed out of the room, Leo never looking up once.

The world that they had entered was a gentle one. After hours on the new earth, stepping on artificial ground was like learning to walk again. The contrast would have weighed more were it not so tranquil, but even still the blankness creeped upon her as she peered down the empty hall. Wheezing ambience of the suit was replaced with the monotanous humming of conditioned air and the glow of hospital lights down open walkways. Gingerly, Marie put her bare hand on the wall, half expect it to clip right through. But it was real, and it was cool to the touch. The five building college she once called home had grown its roots deep, veins of mechanical coolant operating undetected on the inflamed epidermis.

The walls slanted in after the first few feet, angled downward. Tubular on the sides like the results of a great boring drill. At the end of the hall was a set of double doors, open doorways lining the curved walls. Silent, except for the ticktack of Leo's instruments rustlings behind her. It was a construction built for humans with what seemed like only two operating within.

Peeking through each doorway, she prepared herself for startling some deep in thought grad student who hadn't heard Mat's screams through dubstep headphones. Or a team in hazard gear debriefing, jumping in surprise at her head leering around the corner. Even a body would have atleast explained something. But each room was only occupied by maintenance equipment or stacks of papers, sitting soundlessly on tile floors and brushed shelves. After two or three doors she gave up, continuing right past most of them to the double doors. As she approached she stopped for a moment. Were the three of them really the first to enter this place? There wasn't so much as a handprint on any handle, bootprints on any tile. Who launched the distress beacon, then? Looking at the spotless walls, There weren't much signs of distress that she could make out. It was still, a straight juxtaposition to the goings on topside. But that juxtaposition didn't lead to any evidence of life, not as far as she could feel.

She grabbed the handles of the double doors and shook them. They stayed shut, much to her unsurprise. "great" She thought, putting her hands on her hips and looking side to side. Her eyes paused for a moment. In one of the doorways, she could spot a massive, floor to ceiling terminal in the far end of a nearby maintenance room. Far larger than anything she saw back in Belgrano. It was the kind of size that could only spell enormous processing power, the monitor sticking out from the wall by a good half meter. An abandoned office chair sat quietly in front of an embedded keyboard, the back draped over with a forlorne labcoat. The nametag read CASSANO in large letters, a name she did not recognize. So she turned her attention back to the monitor. She didn't know much about computers, certaintly not nearly as much as Emilia or the other programmers back at Belgrano. But maybe a bare operational knowledge would be enough to gleam something.

"MARIE" Leo yelled out from down the hall. She snapped out of her thoughts and bolted down the hal in the second, boots slamming loudly against the tiles until sputtering to a sliding halt in the doorway. "Hold him down!" Leo shrieked, gripping Mat's arms. He was convulsing, arms flailing out wildly as his leg stumps hit the table over and over again, squelching with dull thuds. His whole corpus had been gripped by involuntary movements that would have been agonizing had he been conscious. Marie ran over and threw her weight over his torso, grabbing at his thighs and trying her best to pin down his right arm with her elbow. Even puppeted by primitive electrons, the hulking mass of human was far too strong for what he should be. Regretably she glanced up at his head during the commotion. A mangled mess of features possessed by a revenant, mouth snarling haphazardly, eyes opening and closing rapidly. The whole machine was on a dirty irregular current. She closed her eyes, trying to bury the sight, burying them in his torso as she used all of her strength against him.

"Keep him steady, don't let him fall!" Leo yelled as he left her to wrangle the beast herself. His body kicked and bucked like a rodeo bull, she swung a leg over the table desperate to keep him in place. Finally, Leo returned, diving over her and stabbing something into his neck. The muscles relaxed instantly, and silence returned once more to the facility. "Okay, you can let go now." Leo breathed heavily. "What was that??" She asked as she shakily lifted her hands from his torso. "Seizures. His brain isn't getting enough oxygen." Leo fell down into an admin chair, elbows on his thighs, hands hanging between his knees. His eyes were tired, cast down to the floor, hope in his abilities dwindling. "find anything?" He asked.

"Nothing that was unlocked." She sighed, looking once more at Mat. "We need to get him out of here." Leo glanced up. "Ya, how?" He said with a dry, cynical exhale of a laugh. "Couldn't we put him on a stretcher or something?" Marie asked innocently. But he just scoffed at her. "And then what, huh? Fuck." Leo looked down at his arms, cursing. He hooked a finger and slipped off the two bright blue nitrile gloves on his hands, letting them fall to the ground silently. His hands pruning, logged with sweat. "Even if he was well enough to move, which he isn't. Three traumatic amputations, 4th degree burns everywhere, shrapnel wounds up and down the torso. We'd be lucky if he survived a fucking helivac." Buried frustrations finally came through in the tired curses of a combat medic. "Nevermind that his suit is covered in holes." He said definitively. A great wall of boundaries, each one higher than the next. His knowledge as a shackle against hope. Marie looked at the both of them worriedly, eyebrows scrunched as they approached the pathetic reality. "I saw a computer near the end of the halls. I'm gonna see if I can get the doors unlocked. Maybe there's something that can help him." She said. He stood up, humming in agreement as he began looking through his medkit again.

The monitor towered above her, casting down a gray uniform glow. She glanced to either side, half expecting someone to pop out and chastize her, tell her that only engineers are allowed terminal access. But the room only continued to stay still. With a curious finger, she tapped the spacebar. The screen flashed into being, a cold two tone UI of sky white and teal accents. It was an older model, judging by the lack of holo-emitters. The kind of no-nonsense solid steel dinosaur fit to manage nuclear armaments and government systems. 'Security' She tapped into the searchbar, preparing for another stonewall. But to her surprise, the query returned results. She sat down and began to scroll, trying to find anything mentioning "doors" or "locks". Scanning down, none popped out to her. It seemed like the only thing in this machine were dozens and dozens of video files, each with blank thumbnails and generic titles: 2049-07-01_222052.mkv, 2049-12-25_085219.mkv, 2050-01-05_184503.mkv. Searching for answers, she clicked on a random one, dated to last year. It was of a great room, an atrium. People were walking back and forth under the grainy full color camera in leisurely paces, walking in and out of frame, through doorways. Some wore collared shirts, others simply jeans and tshirts. Squinting, she spotted a couple in labcoats walking through an automatic door. She looked back over her shoulder. It was the same door that she couldn't open, she could even see a corner of the very room she was sitting in. Onto another, it was the same room. A bunch of labcoats were huddled around eachother, celebrating something just off camera. The sight made her smile instinctively. Memories filtered through gently, the tempo of academia was one that held firm through any decade. All candidly captured, a snapshot into days long past. She went to another one from early this year, post-calamity. It was relatively unchanged, save for a few figures in light blue padded armor and 3/4ths helmets. Some walked alongside the students, others stood standing at doorways, talking amoungst themselves. Some carried batons, others had bulging smudges that must have been holsters at their hips. She closed that one and clicked on a new one. Recorded: four days ago. She jumped at the sight, it was a young man's face within an inch of the camera. He looked frazzled, his hair unkept and facial hair rough and jagged. The nametag on his coat was visible: CASSANO. And when he backed away, he was sitting right where she was. An unknown dread began to seat within her heart as she watched the young researcher typing wildly into the keyboard, looking over his shoulder every few seconds like something loud kept grabbing his attention. His eyes looked like they hadn't seen sleep in weeks. Finally, he pressed a key and relaxed into the chair for a moment. Before rising up, taking off his labcoat, and calmly walking back through the double doors, gripping something unidentified under his arms. The replay button was plain and stark against the teal white backdrop, pitched above the file explorer. That last one didn't give her any well feelings. It felt more like something she shouldn't have seen, something voyeuristic that hid behind the doldrums of the academic minutia captured so far. It laid a blanket over everything else, coating it in a doubt of one's own perspective. Cautiously, she selected a new video: 2050-01-07_101223. Recorded a few days ago.

Piles of bodies laid motionless on the atrium floor. Not a single pixel moved in the frame but the video was still playing, seek trickling on forward, second after second. Her dread had shot up to the lids of her eyes, pupils rocked open. Labcoats, collared shirts, padded armor. No blood on the walls, no perforated torsos or signs of struggle. It was as if each one had their soul lifted from them at the same time. Replay button. January 8th, 9th, 10th. Every video after that showed the same exact scene, their bodies suspended forever under sunwhite lights like stuffed hunting trophies. A few feet from her was a mass grave. She glanced back at them, some insepid paranoia telling her that the doors just opened. That whatever killed the inhabitants had just strolled out to kill them too. But they were shut. As motionless as the bodies. Her hands were shaking as she lifted them from the computer. There was only one thought on her mind.

"LEO!" He was slumped over in the chair that she left him in. A tube ran from his arm across and into Mat's. Dark red, flowing lazily. She ran up to him, eyeing the tube, mind racing whether she should even touch it; if Leo was still alive at all. "I'm awake, I'm awake." He groaned, slowly rubbing his face with his free hand, looking up at her blearily. "Is that um, safe?" She asked, pointing to his needletapped vein. He looked down, then up at Mat's still pale face. "No." He responded horsely. He looked back up to her "So, Anything?" eyeing the direction of the hallway. Marie took a seat, explaining everything she saw. By the time she was done Leo had sat up in attention. Each thread of info like another cup of blood back into his system. "She didn't say anything about this. I didn't know anything about this." He breathed out, color flushing slightly to his cheeks. "So she sent us here with no one to help." He looked back at Matias, heaving his chest up and down in unconscious impulse. Each rise of his chest another shred of doubt in his mind. "I don't like this Marie." He said. "Me neither." They sat in silence for a few minutes, neither knowing what to do. "How could they have died like that? All at the same time?" She asked him. He looked up to the ceiling, as if expecting answers there. "I don't know, carbon monoxide poisoning? But then we would be dead by now too. Unless their filtration system restarted. Which is unlikely, in the event of everyone dying. Unless its an automatic trip." He wracked his brain as his blood continued pouring into Matias. "Maybe the air is poisoned? Like a self destruct?" She said, but Leo waved his hands in dismissal. "Thats just in movies Marie, we wouldn't do something that stupid. I hope." He looked back towards the hallway doubtfully. "But if you're right, then theres no way we can open that door. Our suits have closed system, but Mat's doesn't anymore." He sighed. "He'll be dead either way."

A loud buzz interrupted them, taking their attention from eachother. Shrill, sharp, a series of beeps that paused before beginning again. Marie stood up, starting out the door. It was coming from down the hall, in the direction of the terminal room. She looked back at Leo. "I'm fine. go, see what that is.". The ringing bounced off the tubular walls, waves echoing back into eachother, growing louder and louder as Marie drew closer. The double doors were still closed, but a new tab had opened on the monitor screen. INCOMING TRANSMISSION: SOURCE UNREGISTERED. A map of Argentina had been blown up across the screen, same color scheme as the explorer. Several labeled squares were grayed out across the map. Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Estero, Malvinas. The only two squares that glew pale teal were to the south: Ushuaia and Belgrano 3. But the call came from neither. Instead, a small ripplewave crosshair vibrated in time with the ringing, right above the very tip of the Peninsula. Where O'Higgins would be. It was clear who it was. She took a breath, and hit the recieve button.

"ROMERO" the voice split through the speakerholes. "you were supposed to make contact immediately after entry, whats the holdup? that civilian better not be making trouble." Emilia's voice came in crisp. Clean, much cleaner than their onboard comms. Marie froze in place. It felt childlike, finding your way somewhere that you absolutely had no business in. Knowing that the calls of adults would spell your discipline should they figure it out, knowing that you were in no way equiped for whatever you had found yourself in. So instead she said nothing. "Hello? Are you recieving Corporal? The command terminal gives you full root access to the entire Sentinel System, if you can hear me restart it from your end and-"

"I can hear you, Emilia." Marie spoke out flatly. The clanks of instruments came in from the other side. "Marie? How did you get this line? Put Romero on right now, you don't have clearance for-"

"He's dying Emilia." She said through gritted teeth. "The gun he brought, it started exploding. And he fell into a lava flow." The line went silent for a moment. "Corporal Romero brought firearms to the objective? Is that what your saying?" She sounded half surprised, half accusitive, trying to catch Marie in a lie that she couldn't believe. Something that only built Marie's frustration. She didn't respond. "Okay, put Private Guerrero on."

"Tell me whats going on first." Marie said. "No. Put Private Geurrero on the line." Marie's anger was slowly boiling, rumbling beneath the skin. Had it not been for the softness of her voice, it may have already began to erupt. "He's busy keeping Mat alive, Emilia." The line went silent again. If she concentrated, she swore she could see Emilia sitting in O'Higgins hangar bay, grabbing the bridge of her nose and cringing. "Emilia, whats the Sentinel System?" Without her blessing, Marie keyed the word into the explorer. Instantly several dozen results showed up. instruction pdf's, text logs, miscellaneous looking support files. "I don't care if he's with Corporal Romero. Put. Geurrero. On the terminal. Tell him its an order." Her arrogance was noticable, becoming apparent. She didn't make note of it before, not even when she was pressganged into this mess. But now that she was sitting here, five meters below the new earth in all its hellfire with a man burnt to ash and another drained of blood. It became all too apparent.

"No. He's going to keep treating Mat." It went silent again. A dreadful kind of silence, she felt that stone wall could collapse at any moment. But she contined to pick apart the pebbles available, digging into them and skipping through the search results. Beneath her mind, she hoped that Emilia could hear the tapping on the keyboard; to surmise what was going on beyond her control. The logs and crash reports, instructions and boot files, it all went over her head. But whatever it was, it was embedded deep in the workings of this place. Every file lead to a new directory, each carrying the brand 'Sentinel' somewhere deep in the code. "Whats Sentinel, Emilia." She asked again. "You should know. You're already looking it up, aren't you?" Emilia accused her like a stern english teacher trying to sus out a troublemaker. She didn't answer, only continued to skip down the results. "Fine. Its... Its a computer program. A .bzk file, the only one. It was supposed to be here, it never made it to Belgrano." The batch file was near the top of the results, Marie had glanced over it before. "Your suit has a panel under the rubber stoppers at the neck. Find a wire and download the file to your suit. Do the same for the flatmap in Private Romero's helmet. Then head back to Tomas with Private Guerrero." Marie looked back at the call icon, seconds ticking by steadily. She couldn't pin it down, but there was a change in how Emilia spoke. A change that she picked up on. "What does it do?" She asked as she scrolled. "The sooner you download the program, the sooner you can get out of there." She continued ignoring her, a newfound kind of freedom. "The rubber stopper on your control panel, underneath is a usb outlet. find a wire, transfer that packet into your suit. Do the same thing for Corporal Romero's helmet, it will download the route back into your display. do it now." She said again, orders on repeat. "Emilia, What's Sentinel?" She asked, meeting Emilia's own repetition of phrase. "We don't have time for this Marie. Download it." Finally, she reached the end of the explorer results. Command history, it sat there at the very bottom of the scrollbar. Hovering over, she double clicked and opened it, bringing up a white on black textlog.

A command branded Sentinel was the last program to be executed on this system.

She stood in front of the terminal. hands over the keyboard staring at the history log. Nothing came together cleanly, it was all far too jagged, far too little information to work with. And yet, the striking blow was clear as day. Even to someone like her. Through all the misdirection, all the lies by omission. Something was finally clearly cut. There was no icon for the file. Everything else had one, but this was just blank. centinela_TF_alfa.bzk. modified a few days ago. staring her back in the face. "Download it, Marie." The voice came in again, strong over her left shoulder.

"No." The line was quiet, like it cut out completely. Marie sat there, still staring at the file. A mysterious packet of data, ominous in its obscurity. "No? What do you mean 'No'? It should be right there, try clicking on-"

"I see it Emilia. I'm not downloading it."

Emilia's eye twitched over the comms. The silence returned coldly, full of weight and volume. amplifying the abscence, betraying her silence.

"Marie, I'm not asking. Thats an order. Download the sentinel program into your suit." Her tone betrayed her too, small whisps of what lay beneath the military professionalism: Bitterness. Hatred. Violence.

"I'm afraid I can't do that Emilia." She turned in her chair, away from the screen. "I'm not a soldier. Your only soldier is lying comatose with all his limbs missing." And like that, crash.

"Listen to me you little shit: I'll cut off your comms. I'll rip them apart the minute you leave the labs. I'll shut off your suits and tell Tomas all of you died and to come back to base. You are walking around with millions of dollars of government property on LOAN. You think I don't have remote access? You think I can't overload the vacuum pumps from here? I built the damn things and they're the only reason you're even alive right now. You want to be responsible for Leo's death too Marie?" The vitriol inched itself through the cracks, water seeping and saturating. But it was a double sided effect.

"Leo's a medic. Are you stupid enough to kill a medic, Emilia? After you've already killed one of your last soldiers?" A piece of the clastic flow had stuck with her, embeded in her mind like shrapnel in Mat's chest. On the rubber of her boots, up through her soles and into her nerves. Marie glanced back at the door. Burnt charred smoke rot flesh death. It flashed by her retinas and nostrils, she shut her eyes for a moment before opening them again, continuing. "Would Tomas even listen to you? He's not your soldier either. How convincing of a Liar are you Emilia? If I could pick up on it then Tomas definitely can." Marie spun back in her chair and gripped at the terminal table, holding Emilia hostage. "Maybe he believes you. Maybe he flies right over your head back to Belgrano. Do you have enough bullets in your gun? if I were you I would wrap my mouth around the barrel and pull the trigger. Before the Chileans realize no ones coming back to save them." The malice of new earth had gripped her, harnessed and directed. The dread had left her heart, replaced with fire.

"Marie: Listen to me. Sentinel is the key to everything. It was on its way here before this happened, it will automate the entire station. Everything. No more running across the base plugging leaks. It took us three months to make three hardsuits? That program will take three DAYS. We will be LIGHTYEARS ahead of McMurdo. WE wont have to answer to the Americans. We wont have to beg them for anything once we run out of fuel. But ONLY if we bring it back. We don't have a future without Sentinel." A desperation in her voice, something new.

She looked back at the door. "You knew they were all dead. Didn't you?" Emilia didn't answer.

"There was never a distress signal, right? You just wanted this computer thing. One that can kill a lot of people at once?" Her silence denied nothing.

"You're a bad liar Emilia. You're a bad liar and you don't know how to talk to people."

"You're only delaying the inevitable Marie." She spoke again with the cold, calculating logic of an officer now. A machine mind for a machine woman. "We're going to do this all over again. More hardsuits, more soldiers. Download the file."

"Its gone Emilia." With a few clicks, Marie sent the data to be deconstructed, bytes returned to blank storage at the command of the head terminal. Sentinel, whatever it was, would never see the light of day again. The line went completely cold, shrouded in new reality. After a few moments, even the ambient static ceased. The dread of a final decision settled flatly in her stomach. The line remained dead. Slowly, like the last five minutes were a waking dream that could be shattered, Marie stood back up. Walking back to Leo and Mat.

She could hardly believe her eyes. Mat was awake. His stumps stirred slightly, perched atop the table like a surgery theater. "I don't want to die Leo, I don't want to die." An emission through slick, mucusy lips. So so weak, worms wriggling through collapsed termite eaten debris. She rushed over to him. "Can he hear us? Mat? Mat its okay." She began. "Stop. Don't." Leo cut her out cooly, leaning against a nearby wall. "He shouldn't be conscious, not with this dose." And yet he was. He kept repeating it, over and over again. "I don't want to die. Leo, Marie. I don't want to die. I don't want to die Leo. Please..." His lungs wheezed painfully with every breath, audible in its grinding. There was no more soldier left in him. Only a man.

"Where are we? Marie? I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." She could hardly bare to meet eyes with the man, her gaze betraying to him how broken beyond repair he must have looked. She swallowed hard, crouching down to meet his face. "Don't worry Mat. We're back at Belgrano. We made it." She said, doing her best to creak out a smile. Leo only stood there, his wishes defied.

"Sentinel, did we get Sentinel?" He croaked out between wheezes. Marie paused. "Ya, we did. Emilia is uploading it into the mainframe right now. We did it." She took his remaining hand in hers. He was working hand in hand with Emilia, sure. If all went to plan, it might be them lying on the floor of Belgrano 3 motionless as well. And even still, there was no reason to antagonize a dying man.

"So, I was finally able to do something to help everyone." He smiled weakly under ghostly cheeks, a short laugh followed quickly by gutteral coughs. "This is gonna change everything. We're gonna be in charge now. Us." She nodded her head, grasping the broken man's hand with both of hers. "Thats right Mat." She felt her eyes welling up, fallen upon the littlest smile across Mat's lips. "we're gonna be in charge." He said with a finality. Slowly, his eyes closed once more. And his head fell to the side. And so did Marie's tears.

"Its like you're falling asleep. And thats the last thing you remember." the two trudged along, suits buzzing in their workload. They were halfway back to the plane. They could see the lava flow that they had crossed before, the slab that Mat helped them move was still in place. "You stayed with him? You made sure?" Marie asked. He nodded. "Leo, did you...?" He cut her off. "No. I didn't know anything. But I heard everything. I heard everything from down the hall. I heard everything she said." Riskily, they crossed the slab together, Marie propping up the weakened Leo by his shoulders. Save for the crash of lightning far away or the screams of the wind, they continued in silence together. The ground's peculiar softness continued to meet their bootprints without drama, propping them up one step after the last as they made their way to the plane. Then, at the base of the hill, overwhich they would see their escape, Leo stopped.

"FUCK HER. FUCK EMILIA FOR DOING THIS. ITS ALL HER FAULT. FOR WHAT? FOR NOTHING. I HAD TO STRIP THE SUIT OFF HIM LIKE HE WAS A DEAD RABBIT. GOD FUCKING DAMNIT, I'LL KILL HER MARIE." He screamed at her, ripping the commwaves in half, falling to the dirt on his knees. Unconcerned with whether they were in range enough for her to hear him, no care for the traitorous court martialed execution that lay in his future should he be in transmission range. "We have Mat's guns. Lets do it Marie. First thing when Tomas opens the door, lets kill her." He pleaded with her as she crouched down, doing her best to support him from laying on the ground completely. "I'll kill her for what she did to Mat. I'll kill her."

"No you won't, Leo." She craddled him in her arms as he buried his helmet against her. "You're not like her." His sobs were too quiet to pick up on the mic. But she could feel his body shivering against hers, shaking infrequently with the pulse of tears. After a minute, he stood back up, Marie guiding him up by his arms. "The ground is hot." He said. She nodded. "Then lets keep moving. No telling how much longer these suits will last."

They half expected the plane to be gone, or tipped halfway into the New Earth, swallowed by a fissure. But it was there, exactly as they left it. "Bahh, I knew she was lying!" Tomas's voice crackled to life through their helmets, relieved at the sight of of their blips on his radar. "pff, hasn't even been four hours yet. C'mon! I'm opening the cargo bay door, lets get the hell out of here. Hope you found what you were looking for." They closed in, hearing the familiar sound of the pneumatic pistons pushing against eachother. The light of the cargo bay creeping in, showering them as they boarded. "Hey wait, wheres that bastard Matias?"

Tomas glared through his redbathed headset, taxiing the plane into the open hangar. The flight back had been uneventful. Once they were out of the initial zone, Marie had explained everything to him. But he didn't show his true feelings, only grew more and more angry in the muscles of his arms and twitches of his eyelids. But it wasn't him she'd had to watch out for, he knew far better than her that his age would betray any move against the officer. So instead he only sat there in a spiteful grip. The plane was stable enough to walk around, now. Marie walked into the airlock hall. Unlocking Mat's locker, she brushed his rifle aside, picking up the pistol and hiding it her back pocket. Proportional defense, she thought. Against one who has already tried to kill them twice. She looked back at Leo, eyeing the rifle greedily. "Done. Opening the door." Tomas spoke his first words since they had left Tierra del Fuego. As the cargo door slowly opened, they could hear commotion. Screaming and thrashing. Cautiously, Marie reached behind her, keeping her hand behind her back, preparing for whatever was on the other side.

"YOU'RE A BITCH CLARA. YOU FUCKING APE." They would have never believed it if it wasn't happening right before their eyes, confirmed by a double continuity of perception. Emilia was screaming into the phone, as if she were an irate shopper on a customer service line from old earth. "YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE BALLS TO BLACKMAIL THE ARGENTINE ARMY? WE'LL TURN MCMURDO INTO RUBBLE. WIPE YOU SHITSKIN MUTTS OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH. WERE GONNA FLY OVER AND DROP BOMBS TILL THERES NOTHING LEFT. WHATS A CHIMP LIKE YOU DOING IN A RESERACH BASE ANYWAY? FUCK YOU. THIS IS WHY THE WHOLE WORLD HATES YOU."

she slammed the reciever down, throwing a barometer across the bay and sending it shattering into the sheetmetal wall in a high pitched crash. Her tight ponytail had become undone, strands flying everywhere. She stormed past the team, straight to the hold and into the cockpit without even acknowledging them. "Tomas, We're making a stop at Vernadsky." She said, her tone unraveling. "Why?" He asked wryly. But she didn't answer. He sighed, and shook his head. Marie set Leo down to rest on a nearby case, making for the door to the outside. To gather the others.