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eridanidreams · 5 months

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Text Dump Thursday

Since I got tagged for extra content by @bearlytolerant... grins

from an upcoming chapter of Deus Ex: The Odysseus Gambit

It was the second day of their hastily improvised wilderness vacation, and they’d had to circle far to the south of their intended route to avoid a nasty hotspot. The detour had already added a day to their travel time, and Sloane could only hope they didn’t have to go too much farther out of their way. She chanced a glance at Jensen, who was carefully watching where he put his feet. City boy learns fast, she thought wryly. Then again, once you knew how to move with stealth, it was just a matter of figuring out what to watch out for.

The forest here made her uneasy. For the hundredth time, she reminded herself that the Red Forest wasn’t normal. Once, it had been a mixed-growth forest, pines and birch intermingled, but conifers were more susceptible to radiation than deciduous trees. The pines had died within a year of the meltdown; the rust of their needles had given the area its name. The dead pines had been long since buried, and the forest was more birch than pine now, but the name remained.

It was the absence of birdsong, she decided. Another casualty of the meltdown; although a wide variety of animals had moved into the area after people moved out, the bird and insect populations had been badly affected, and even now were much lower than normal. The silence that in any other forest would have meant danger was simply a sad fact of life in this blighted place.

Damned if she could tell her instincts that, when every instinct she had clamored that this was a place of death, and she had no business being here.

Sloane’s nerves were wound tightly enough that she actually jumped a little when Jensen’s voice crackled through her infolink. “Got something here. I think… you need to see this.”

She picked her way through the closely-grown birches to join Jensen; “this” was the wreck of a wood cabin, no more than five meters by five meters. The ground beneath the cabin had collapsed, taking half the building with it. Its one remaining wall leaned precariously, held mostly vertical only by a conveniently-placed tree. Splintered wood hung like teeth against the dark maw of the cavern, but—“Do you see that?” she asked, indicating an angle that was far too regular to be natural.

“Huh. Why would a forest shack have a cellar?” Jensen asked, logically.

“If it was built over a zemlyanka…” He frowned, clearly not recognizing the word. “Dug-out shelter, sometimes concrete-reinforced. Partisans used them to hide during World War II. This would have been a good place for one when Operation Barbarossa was in full swing.” Absently, she rubbed the back of her neck. “What the hell would anyone want out here, though?”

“Only one way to find out,” Jensen said. She shrugged agreement, and the two of them advanced carefully upon the ruin. The ground surrounding it was torn and trampled, and the Geiger counter at her wrist rattled angrily.

“Looks like something’s exposed the radioactive sediments,” Sloane warned. “We shouldn’t stay here more than an hour.”

Jensen’s eyebrows had a distinctly sardonic quirk. “If we’re here that long, we’re probably in bigger trouble than just a little radiation.” He broke off a length of wood, propping it under a particularly precarious-looking part of the ruin. While he did that, Sloane took a better look at the immediate area. She saw animal tracks galore—mostly deer, if she was reading them right—but what she didn’t see were human footprints.

“Right,” he said, having set a few more props while she was studying the ground. “That’s about as stable as it’s going to get.” He turned his head toward her. “How do you want to do this?”

“One of us should stay up top,” she responded immediately. “That way, if it collapses, we aren’t both trapped.” She chewed her lip in thought. “I’m a little smaller, so I should probably go.” She tried for a smile, but it felt odd on her face. “Good thing I’m not claustrophobic.”

“Makes sense,” Jensen said. “I’ll keep watch up here.”

Sloane slid out of her pack—it wasn’t large, but she wasn’t taking any chances—and hunted around until she found the stairs down. The concrete hadn’t crumbled, but the steps were short and shallow, slick with mud and half-rotted leaves. She placed her feet carefully with each step, making sure she was stable before taking the next. It took what seemed an eternity to reach the bottom, but the clock said it had only been about a minute. “Okay,” she murmured into the infolink, “I’m down.” The sun didn’t penetrate this far down. A chill ran through her—it must have been due to the cold. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, then gave up the attempt to chase away the chill and pulled out her flashlight. “Fuck, it’s a mess down here.” It looked like part of the concrete ceiling of the zemlyanka had collapsed—in fact, that might have been what brought the whole thing down. She turned slowly, making sure that her eyes were set to ‘record’. “They were monitoring something down here. Lots of screens, all smashed to shit.” Something flashed white under her boot; she bent down and pulled a crumpled, torn piece of paper out of the muck, but it was totally illegible.

“Anything like an OSD down there?” Sloane didn’t want to admit it, but the sound of Jensen’s voice was reassuring. “They had to save the data somewhere.”

“If there was, it’s either buried in the muck or resting in pieces,” she replied tartly. “I’m not kidding when I say it’s all smashed; someone really did a number on this place.” She turned toward the half of the cellar with the collapsed roof. “I’m going to see if anything survived under the roof.”

“Try not to get yourself crushed,” Jensen advised, irony infusing his voice.

“Number one on my to-do list,” she replied, equally ironically, making her careful way through the bunker. “I think I can—fuck!” She shifted her weight backward, barely managing to avoid stepping on the pale, vaguely luminescent leg sticking out from beneath the wreckage.

“You okay?” Jensen actually sounded concerned.

“Yeah,” Sloane said. “Got a body here.” She pulled out a flashlight and crouched next to it. The faint glow was washed out by the brighter light; what she could see of the limb was covered in a grey, greasy-looking wax. “Fucking hell,” she muttered, “this thing’s saponified.” She leaned back on her heels and wracked her brain for anything related to—

“Saponified?” Jensen sounded simultaneously wary and curious.

“It’s a soap mummy. The body fat turns to soap. The conditions have to be right, but I can’t remember details other than the soil has to be pretty alkaline. You get soap when you combine fat and something alkaline, like lye.” Sloane realized she was babbling and snapped her mouth shut, annoyed that she was letting her nerves get the best of her. “He’s been here for a few months, at least. I don’t remember how long it takes for saponification to start, but it’s not that long.” She straightened up, took a step back, and played the beam around. “Got the stock of a weapon here—looks like a rifle.” She edged over, trying to find decent footing. The rifle was half-buried under concrete and wood, but it slid easily at even a tentative pull. “Ok, guy’s military or paramilitary. Got an AK-27 here.”

“So, Russian military,” Jensen said. “Have those even had time to hit the black market?”

“I wish,” Sloane grumbled. “I hate the FR-27. It’s not a combat rifle, it’s a PDW with delusions of grandeur.” Jensen made a noise that might have been a chuckle. She was tempted to claim it like she had the Aspid, but without ammo it would just be an awkward club. Instead, she turned her attention back to the corpse. From where she was, if she angled the beam just right, she could see—

She swallowed hard. “Cause of death is pretty obvious. Gross injury to the lower abdominal region, resulting in partial evisceration.” It was a clinical way of saying that his abdomen had been savagely ripped open enough for the guts to spill out. “Can’t determine if there’s thoracic involvement due to the wreckage.” The darkness pressed in on her; the flashlight was a frail defense. Her mask couldn’t block the dank and fetid stench of stale mold and rancid pork, all underlain by a heavy, musky odor she couldn’t identify. Her heart pounded in her chest, racing to the clack of the Geiger counter; she overrode it, but it was no help against the feeling of dread creeping up her spine. She spoke rapidly to try to cover her discomfort. “This is a bust; I can’t go any deeper. Coming out.”

“Copy that,” he said, as she suited deed to word, climbing out of the broken bunker with a distinct feeling of relief. As she emerged into the thin sunlight, his eyebrows lowered behind his eyeshields. “You look spooked,” he said bluntly.

Pride tempted her to deny it, but honesty compelled her equally blunt reply. “I am.” She holstered the flashlight, giving Jensen a sidelong glance; she wondered if she was going to regret her candidness.

“Huh. So it’s not just me,” he replied, giving her what she thought was a thoughtful look—like her, Jensen wore a full-body Tyvek suit (wood camo pattern) and high-filtration mask; with his shades up, that was all she could really see of his expression. “What’s bugging you?”

Sloane blew out a heavy breath. “My brain knows better than my gut, but my gut’s not listening.” She slung her pack back on and jerked her head eastward to indicate they should get going.

Jensen fell into step beside her. “You always listen to your head over your gut?” he asked, sounding dubious.

“When my head has more pertinent information,” she said tartly, “Yes. I just wish my gut would get the message and turn the damn volume down.”

He grunted, if not assent, at least acknowledgment. They moved in silence for a few minutes, then he asked, “What the hell could have done that?” From the tone of his voice, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

“That live around here? Bison, maybe. Or bear. Lots of wildlife moved in here after the meltdown.” The ironic twist of her lips, invisible under her mask, seeped into her voice. “Turns out people are worse for wildlife than radiation.” Her mind was still going over what she’d seen down there. Jensen’s shoulders were tense. “Probably not a bear. No claw marks.”

His head turned toward her for just a moment. “Wish I could find that reassuring,” he growled.

“So do I,” Sloane sighed. “So do I.”

#eridani writes #adam jensen #fanfic #odysseus gambit #deus ex mankind divided #sloane delacourt #chernobyl #red forest

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