Gathering Darkness✔️

Chapter 19: Terror

The bunker turned out to be worse than it sounded.

As he came at last through the trees and the dark rain, Kane found himself staring at a squat, instacrete structure. Caught in the white glare of the Warthog's headlights, it almost looked like a tick, hunkered down, head buried in the earth, leeching off the land itself. Goll stood just inside the entrance, which was nothing more than an empty square cut into the instacrete. Kane jogged up to join him, getting in out of the rain.

"You got a cig on you, Kane?" Goll asked.

Kane hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. Found a pack."

"Spare one? I could use a goddamned smoke break," Goll replied.

"Uh, sure." He opened up his visor, then fished the pack and the Zippo out of his pocket, tapped two out, passed one to Goll.

"I never found out where you got that lighter from," Goll said around the cigarette after Kane had lit up. He lit his own, snapped it shut, and passed it to Goll.

"Had it custom-made when I became an ODST," Kane replied. "Figured, 'why not?' Cost about a hundred credits, but it's a really nice piece of work."

"It is," Goll agreed, holding it up, studying it intently. He passed it back and took a long pull on his cig as Kane pocketed it. "So...you and Hendrix," he said.

"What about us?" Kane replied, wondering where this was coming from.

"You two are together."

"Maybe. Diaz and Thompson were together."

"Don't worry, I'm obviously not going to throw the book at you. I don't give a shit." He frowned, fell into thought for a moment. "My father was a police officer, on Earth," he said. "He told me a lot of things, but something that really stuck was, 'You need to know when to apply the law, and when to apply common sense.' If I thought either you or Hendrix couldn't handle the relationship, I'd've thrown the book at you. I'm not an asshole, but I am a hardass. And with good reason. Same with Diaz and Thompson."

"I'm not sure it worked out too well for her," Kane muttered.

Goll's frown deepened. "Yeah. But she was...a little unstable. She'd been reprimanded before for rash actions. I think she would've done that for any of us." He shrugged. "Staring down the barrel of extinction, you don't really get to pick and choose who you get fighting beside you. We need all hands on deck for this war."

"Yeah," Kane said quietly, taking another long pull on his own Yeheyuan.

"And then there's this," Goll muttered, gesturing back into the dim interior of the bunker. "This whole damned mess. How are we going to explain any of this? Did ONI expect this? Did anyone expect this crap?" He shook his head. "God, I'm tired." He finished off his cigarette, dropped it, and crushed it under his boot. "Let's get this over with."

"Seems we've been saying that a lot lately," Kane replied, doing the same. He lowered his visor and readjusted his grip on his shotgun.

"Yep."

The pair of ODSTs steeled themselves as they moved deeper into the bunker. The first minutes went by with a painful lethargy, apprehension and anxiety filling every room. They stuck together, moving slowly and cautiously through the derelict structure. There was hardly anything left, and it was difficult to determine what each room might have once been. Mostly they were just empty, dusty rooms of shadows and cobwebs. He wondered what had happened here, why it had been abandoned. It felt like an evil place.

Like something terrible had happened here.

Maybe that's why the Proxies were here. Maybe they were drawn to it. It was a good place for an ambush, since it was freaking him out. But they cleared the entire first floor and found nothing. The pair of them ended up at a descending stairwell. It was even darker down there. They would be underground, with no light sources but their own. With Proxies. Kane could feel his heart beginning to thump harder in his chest, but made himself relax. Or tried to. He was having a particularly difficult time with that right now.