The Quicksand Singularity ArQive: Array.init:0

A0T4.2 The Ëchüha Incident (Parts 2+3)

"Sure you ain't shell-shocked!?" Ichika joked.

"Shut up!" Hvórþ fired back.

Maybe I am a bit, Hvórþ thought to himself as he descended the mound of rubble.

He'd been in warzones most of his life, seen a lot of soldiers come home with Old Pete. Maybe he'd been in the game too long, and Old Pete had dropped by for a visit.

No...it's not that, Hvórþ dismissed. The buzzing in his brain was still there. He could feel it, a primordial urge, a festering rot. Gnawing, biting, gnashing, thrashing about, it wanted out, it wanted to be free.

"It's nothing," he muttered to himself as he watched his team poking through the ruins. "I'm just fine. It's all in my head."

"Which way, boss?" Lìngbi asked, once Hvórþ had joined them on a low mound of rubble.

Looking around, Hvórþ couldn't even tell where their landing zone was supposed to be. He brought up the map Katzali had given him on his TacPad. No use.

"Nobuo!" Hvórþ barked at the squad's sniper. "Want you to glass bearings 240 through 265 for fresh demo."

"On it," Nobuo responded, dashing up a pile of rubble.

A few seconds passed as the sniper surveyed the area with his binoculars, before Nobuo replied, "I got something! Looks like our LZ fell apart like a sodden maxi pad! Bearing 253, three hundred metres!"

"Copy! 253, 300!" Hvórþ barked, marking the location on the map.

"See that..." he continued, gesturing toward what may have been a hab-block or any number of things at some point, "...oh...what the fuck is that anyway? That thing! Go scout it out!"

"What thing?" Nobuo responded, jokingly.

Hvórþ glared at Nobuo.

"On my way!" Nobuo grinned, making for the ruined building at a trot.

"What in all hells happened here?" Lìngbi asked, picking up what looked like a shard of metal wrapped on one end in strips of tyre.

"That's what we're here to find out," Hvórþ answered.

"Isn't it obvious?" Ichika responded. "Fucking Incursion came back. Dusted the whole place."

"You see any xeno corpses lying about?" Tüanmv fired back.

"Well...no..." Ichika admitted.

"Yeah, neither do I!" Tüanmv cut off. "Got any more genius ideas to share!?"

"This was self-inflicted," Hvórþ said, matter-of-factly, "some kind of anticog got hold of everyone."

"How do you know?" Ichika questioned.

"We're not wearing rad suits," Hvórþ answered.

"Hey! Boss!" Nobuo shouted from inside the nearby maybe-hab-block. "Come take a look at this!"

"Stay here," Hvórþ ordered to the rest of his squad.

He didn't need their usual antics right now, not with a creeping malaise buzzing about in the back of his mind. Hvórþ took his weapon in both hands and trotted across rubble mounds and a wreck or two—it was impossible to tell what was what—toward the building.

"What?" he asked as he entered the building, ducking through a doorway half-blockaded by a concretion of indistinguishable substances.

"Look at this shit," Nobuo said, gesturing toward a corpse leaning against one wall with his torch.