Quota 0/391 — Only 3 days left
Victor had to admit he would've preferred the manor's familiar hush. The sheet metal lining these walls didn't absorb the sound of their footsteps; it seemed to fling their echoes across the entire complex.
The ent
Victor had to admit he would've preferred the manor's familiar hush. The sheet metal lining these walls didn't absorb the sound of their footsteps; it seemed to fling their echoes across the entire complex.
The entry hall wasn't as spacious as its New York counterpart: a big square room only a few meters wide, with an opening in each wall. The fan he kept hearing hummed behind a metal grille above their heads.
"We'll need to work carefully," Nathaniel announced, his voice muffled by the thickness of the orange suit. "We may run into monsters very different from the ones of our previous expedition."
No one could be sure the creatures they'd seen in New York could survive underground in the heart of Siberia. The alien Shirley had met earlier in the engine room was concrete proof that an unknown creature could jump at them at any moment.
'I still bet that bastard Jester could survive on the ocean floor or on the surface of the moon,' Victor thought while getting through the doorway ahead.
He was walking on a metal grating suspended over open space with yellow security rails on either side. The material under his boots looked like the same stuff used in industrial staircases, the kind of see through that no one liked to have with a gaping void beneath their feet. Victor wasn't afraid of heights, but he didn't exactly enjoy crossing catwalks at least fifty years old while being unable to see what laid below the darkness.
'Especially if something can come up from underneath', he thought, flicking a quick look at the ceiling for some alien visitors.
The more cautious they were, the slower the exploration would go. All of that without knowing how big these tunnels were, how many items they needed to retrieve, or how little time they had. Nobody wanted to be pinned at the bunker's exit by a giant like in New York, especially with so little cover to break line of sight. In the end, the slower they were, the more risk they would have to undergo. The question was now to know how vigilant they could afford to be.
'Once again, don't have any answer to this one.'
At the end of the corridor, Victor stepped through a doorway into a small, cramped room. The sheet metal on the walls had given way to a kind of decrepit yellow paper, and the floor, a tired old carpet, swallowed the sound of his steps.
It was a dead end, but an item was laying near the entrance.
V-type engine: x1 — value 38
He slipped it into his bag and turned back, careful to grab something on the catwalk he'd missed on the way in.
Cookie mold pan: x1 — value 12
Neither was worth much, but together they matched the missile's value while being only a fraction of its weight. After making sure he hadn't missed anything else, Victor returned to the entry hall to drop off the goods.
To his right, Olivia was coming back with a full bag.
"If you can help me shuttle back some loot, I found some lockers with a lot of stuff inside," she said, dropping her bag down in a metallic bang.
Victor had already finished his section so he had nothing better to do. He nodded and followed her into a maze of corridors identical to the one he'd just searched.
'This does not make me eager to wander the labyrinth. All these identical catwalks are the perfect way to get lost,' he thought, trying to keep pace with Olivia. Her legs were very short, but she was still moving faster than him. After only a few minutes of navigating through the corridors, they had reached a large room. Victor could now finally see the lockers she'd mentioned.
The room was split into two levels, with a staircase up to a sort of lookout catwalk. Below, the center of the space was a perfectly squared hole ringed by railings, while a line of gray lockers waited near a corner. Up top, the catwalk circled a massive concrete pillar that nearly touched the ceiling.
While Victor was busy scrutinizing every centimeter of the ceiling, for absolutely no reason at all, Olivia had already moved up to the lockers, pulling out items and dividing them between two empty bags.
After grabbing one of the bags, Victor left the room with Olivia at his side. They hadn't bothered to climb to the upper catwalk; you could see if there was any items through the grating anyway.
Even without having any luck on the upstair part, the room had already paid off.
Back in the entry hall, Olivia and Victor met up with Shirley, who had just finished a run. Her visor was still in rough shape, her breathing ragged as if she'd run a marathon, but she didn't seem to have run into trouble this time.
Before they could set down their bags or ask if she needed help hauling loot, a deep piercing sound rang through the facility's walls.
It didn't sound like anything a living creature would make.
The deep noise was... mechanical... like a machine winding up.
As the trio exchanged confused looks, the sound cut off abruptly.
Victor only had time for a single heartbeat before...
...gunfire rattled through the sheet-metal panels, the sound slightly muffled by distance.
"Sounds like an old machine gun," Olivia said aloud. According to their weapons expert, it wasn't one of the guns she'd packed before the expedition.
Even if it had been, Victor doubted their bag held that many rounds. The burst had been going on for several seconds already with no sign of stopping.
Olivia pulled the walkie-talkie from a pocket of her suit and switched it on. The screen took a long two seconds to glow green; the radio was live.
"I'm with Shirley and Victor in the entry hall. What's happening on your end, Nathaniel?"
A heavy wash of static was her only answer. It was still possible Nathaniel was switching on his own radio after ducking out of the line of fire, but Olivia decided they'd lost enough time already.
If Nathaniel had been hit by one or a few rounds, suit or not, he'd need immediate care. There were no hospital so deep in Siberia and so, they had to make every seconds count.
Shirley had hugged the right-hand wall after the opening to the left, while Nathaniel had taken the left side. The trio hurried down a stairwell. At the bottom, the first open door was a dead end, only a few meters long, so they didn't have to waste time exploring it.
'What's the point of a room that small? A pantry?' Victor wondered.
They wheeled around, crossed through the door behind them, and moved toward the gunfire. As soon as they were over the threshold, Olivia, Shirley, and Victor pulled out the flashlights they'd stowed in their packs. They'd needed them inside the bunker but had put them away once they entered the facility. In the rooms, corridors, and stairwells around the entrance, yellowish strip lights in the ceiling had lit everything just fine.
But down here, in this labyrinthine section of the complex, darkness had crept back in. The lights barely reached across the vast corridors, and at certain junctions, huge metal pipes threw long shadows across the floor and walls.
Speaking of walls, the sheet metal had been replaced by bare gray concrete blocks like the ones in the abandoned bunker.
As they moved on with flashlights in hand, Olivia's radio crackled and growled.
"Nathaniel here. I'm safe in the east wing of the maze. A black turret opened up on me and didn't stop even after I ducked behind a door—as if it could see through it. I'm short of breath and having trouble walking, but I should be fine in a few seconds."
His voice faded into static for a moment.
"The room I'm in has three catwalks that seem to lead deeper into the complex… I can already see several heavy items we'll need to haul, and I'm going to need help."
They were still walking, listening to Nathaniel over the radio, when Olivia suddenly stopped. Ahead of them stood a turret on three metal legs, nearly a meter tall. Its dark gray color barely contrasted with the lighter gray walls, so it could easily pass unnoticed to the naked eye.
Under the beam of a flashlight, though, its long barrel filled Victor with unease. If, in the movies, even the nastiest monsters went down under the bullets of some gravel-voiced American badass, then he had zero interest in tangling with real American, or Russian as it stood, weaponry.
Especially when the turret could move arround like a shark.
'"Move" is quite the big word,' Victor thought, watching the almost hypnotic sweep of the muzzle.
The turret could rotate through a total of 180 degrees. It tracked slowly and smoothly across the arc—right or left depending on its starting point—then slid back at the same steady pace.
Which meant it could fire into the half-circle in front of it but, crucially, couldn't shoot behind itself.
These old machines had a blind spot the group could exploit to get close and take a look.
Victor still pulled a shovel from his pack, ready to shield his face or counterattack if something went wrong. His trusty metal companions had never failed him when he needed them, and there was no reason they would start today.
Olivia studied the turret for several minutes, asking Nathaniel a few questions about his run-in with it. Apparently, the deep sound the group had heard in the entry hall was the machine gun charging up after Nathaniel stepped into its field of view.
He'd had just under two seconds to dive behind a metal door about five meters away. Victor was genuinely impressed with the dark and less mysterious man because Victor himself could never have covered that distance that fast, especially after being caught off guard.
Their crossing would be easier: they could wait until they were in the turret's current blind spot, then slip past. Even if it detected them before they reached the door, the time it took to flick toward them would give them a little margin.
Hugging the right-hand wall while the turret scanned to its far left, the trio sprinted to the door and slammed it shut behind them. They'd been quick enough that no detection chime triggered, and silence settled over the complex again.
They pressed on toward the huge room Nathaniel had mentioned, entering from the far end: two long catwalks separated by a chasm stretched out before them. At the other side rose a platform a few meters higher, giving access to the back of the room and another catwalk a little above.
Nathaniel stood on that platform, having piled several items together for a quick haul when they were ready to leave.
As they edged along the catwalk to join him on the concrete platform, his voice crackled over the radio.
"Has anyone found a key?"
ry hall wasn't as spacious as its New York counterpart: a big square room only a few meters wide, with an opening in each wall. The fan he kept hearing hummed behind a metal grille above their heads.
"We'll need to work carefully," Nathaniel announced, his voice muffled by the thickness of the orange suit. "We may run into monsters very different from the ones of our previous expedition."
No one could be sure the creatures they'd seen in New York could survive underground in the heart of Siberia. The alien Shirley had met earlier in the engine room was concrete proof that an unknown creature could jump at them at any moment.
'I still bet that bastard Jester could survive on the ocean floor or on the surface of the moon,' Victor thought while getting through the doorway ahead.
He was walking on a metal grating suspended over open space with yellow security rails on either side. The material under his boots looked like the same stuff used in industrial staircases, the kind of see through that no one liked to have with a gaping void beneath their feet. Victor wasn't afraid of heights, but he didn't exactly enjoy crossing catwalks at least fifty years old while being unable to see what laid below the darkness.
'Especially if something can come up from underneath', he thought, flicking a quick look at the ceiling for some alien visitors.
The more cautious they were, the slower the exploration would go. All of that without knowing how big these tunnels were, how many items they needed to retrieve, or how little time they had. Nobody wanted to be pinned at the bunker's exit by a giant like in New York, especially with so little cover to break line of sight. In the end, the slower they were, the more risk they would have to undergo. The question was now to know how vigilant they could afford to be.
'Once again, don't have any answer to this one.'
At the end of the corridor, Victor stepped through a doorway into a small, cramped room. The sheet metal on the walls had given way to a kind of decrepit yellow paper, and the floor, a tired old carpet, swallowed the sound of his steps.
It was a dead end, but an item was laying near the entrance.
V-type engine: x1 — value 38
He slipped it into his bag and turned back, careful to grab something on the catwalk he'd missed on the way in.
Cookie mold pan: x1 — value 12
Neither was worth much, but together they matched the missile's value while being only a fraction of its weight. After making sure he hadn't missed anything else, Victor returned to the entry hall to drop off the goods.
To his right, Olivia was coming back with a full bag.
"If you can help me shuttle back some loot, I found some lockers with a lot of stuff inside," she said, dropping her bag down in a metallic bang.
Victor had already finished his section so he had nothing better to do. He nodded and followed her into a maze of corridors identical to the one he'd just searched.
'This does not make me eager to wander the labyrinth. All these identical catwalks are the perfect way to get lost,' he thought, trying to keep pace with Olivia. Her legs were very short, but she was still moving faster than him. After only a few minutes of navigating through the corridors, they had reached a large room. Victor could now finally see the lockers she'd mentioned.
The room was split into two levels, with a staircase up to a sort of lookout catwalk. Below, the center of the space was a perfectly squared hole ringed by railings, while a line of gray lockers waited near a corner. Up top, the catwalk circled a massive concrete pillar that nearly touched the ceiling.
While Victor was busy scrutinizing every centimeter of the ceiling, for absolutely no reason at all, Olivia had already moved up to the lockers, pulling out items and dividing them between two empty bags.
After grabbing one of the bags, Victor left the room with Olivia at his side. They hadn't bothered to climb to the upper catwalk; you could see if there was any items through the grating anyway.
Even without having any luck on the upstair part, the room had already paid off.
Back in the entry hall, Olivia and Victor met up with Shirley, who had just finished a run. Her visor was still in rough shape, her breathing ragged as if she'd run a marathon, but she didn't seem to have run into trouble this time.
Before they could set down their bags or ask if she needed help hauling loot, a deep piercing sound rang through the facility's walls.
It didn't sound like anything a living creature would make.
The deep noise was... mechanical... like a machine winding up.
As the trio exchanged confused looks, the sound cut off abruptly.
Victor only had time for a single heartbeat before...
...gunfire rattled through the sheet-metal panels, the sound slightly muffled by distance.
"Sounds like an old machine gun," Olivia said aloud. According to their weapons expert, it wasn't one of the guns she'd packed before the expedition.
Even if it had been, Victor doubted their bag held that many rounds. The burst had been going on for several seconds already with no sign of stopping.
Olivia pulled the walkie-talkie from a pocket of her suit and switched it on. The screen took a long two seconds to glow green; the radio was live.
"I'm with Shirley and Victor in the entry hall. What's happening on your end, Nathaniel?"
A heavy wash of static was her only answer. It was still possible Nathaniel was switching on his own radio after ducking out of the line of fire, but Olivia decided they'd lost enough time already.
If Nathaniel had been hit by one or a few rounds, suit or not, he'd need immediate care. There were no hospital so deep in Siberia and so, they had to make every seconds count.
Shirley had hugged the right-hand wall after the opening to the left, while Nathaniel had taken the left side. The trio hurried down a stairwell. At the bottom, the first open door was a dead end, only a few meters long, so they didn't have to waste time exploring it.
'What's the point of a room that small? A pantry?' Victor wondered.
They wheeled around, crossed through the door behind them, and moved toward the gunfire. As soon as they were over the threshold, Olivia, Shirley, and Victor pulled out the flashlights they'd stowed in their packs. They'd needed them inside the bunker but had put them away once they entered the facility. In the rooms, corridors, and stairwells around the entrance, yellowish strip lights in the ceiling had lit everything just fine.
But down here, in this labyrinthine section of the complex, darkness had crept back in. The lights barely reached across the vast corridors, and at certain junctions, huge metal pipes threw long shadows across the floor and walls.
Speaking of walls, the sheet metal had been replaced by bare gray concrete blocks like the ones in the abandoned bunker.
As they moved on with flashlights in hand, Olivia's radio crackled and growled.
"Nathaniel here. I'm safe in the east wing of the maze. A black turret opened up on me and didn't stop even after I ducked behind a door—as if it could see through it. I'm short of breath and having trouble walking, but I should be fine in a few seconds."
His voice faded into static for a moment.
"The room I'm in has three catwalks that seem to lead deeper into the complex… I can already see several heavy items we'll need to haul, and I'm going to need help."
They were still walking, listening to Nathaniel over the radio, when Olivia suddenly stopped. Ahead of them stood a turret on three metal legs, nearly a meter tall. Its dark gray color barely contrasted with the lighter gray walls, so it could easily pass unnoticed to the naked eye.
Under the beam of a flashlight, though, its long barrel filled Victor with unease. If, in the movies, even the nastiest monsters went down under the bullets of some gravel-voiced American badass, then he had zero interest in tangling with real American, or Russian as it stood, weaponry.
Especially when the turret could move arround like a shark.
'"Move" is quite the big word,' Victor thought, watching the almost hypnotic sweep of the muzzle.
The turret could rotate through a total of 180 degrees. It tracked slowly and smoothly across the arc—right or left depending on its starting point—then slid back at the same steady pace.
Which meant it could fire into the half-circle in front of it but, crucially, couldn't shoot behind itself.
These old machines had a blind spot the group could exploit to get close and take a look.
Victor still pulled a shovel from his pack, ready to shield his face or counterattack if something went wrong. His trusty metal companions had never failed him when he needed them, and there was no reason they would start today.
Olivia studied the turret for several minutes, asking Nathaniel a few questions about his run-in with it. Apparently, the deep sound the group had heard in the entry hall was the machine gun charging up after Nathaniel stepped into its field of view.
He'd had just under two seconds to dive behind a metal door about five meters away. Victor was genuinely impressed with the dark and less mysterious man because Victor himself could never have covered that distance that fast, especially after being caught off guard.
Their crossing would be easier: they could wait until they were in the turret's current blind spot, then slip past. Even if it detected them before they reached the door, the time it took to flick toward them would give them a little margin.
Hugging the right-hand wall while the turret scanned to its far left, the trio sprinted to the door and slammed it shut behind them. They'd been quick enough that no detection chime triggered, and silence settled over the complex again.
They pressed on toward the huge room Nathaniel had mentioned, entering from the far end: two long catwalks separated by a chasm stretched out before them. At the other side rose a platform a few meters higher, giving access to the back of the room and another catwalk a little above.
Nathaniel stood on that platform, having piled several items together for a quick haul when they were ready to leave.
As they edged along the catwalk to join him on the concrete platform, his voice crackled over the radio.
"Has anyone found a key?"