Genesis (Man vs Machine #1)

18 | SMOKE SCREEN

They returned to the underground building late in the night. Cress, yawning, gave him a smile and the squeeze of his hand before she retired to bed, promising she would see him in the morning. But Warner wasn't ready to sleep just yet. Responsibility nagged at him, and for the second time in two days he headed down to Alder's lab.

Inside, he wasn't surprised to find the tech hard at work in front of his holo screen. Alder immediately turned around when he heard Warner enter, and gave his Lieutenant a bleary-eyed, almost half-crazed smile.

'Hey,' he said, cracking his knuckles.

'Hey,' Warner replied, sitting down. 'Any breakthroughs?'

"Yeah,' said Alder, his face turning serious. 'You see, I was getting some interference, so I tracked it.'

Warner leaned forward to take a closer look at the screen. 'And?'

'The interference is coming from the MCS. Here.' Alder opened a map of the facility, and on it, the wing where the chip department was blinked bright red, signaling heavy data transfer. The rest of the map was shrouded in a pale green. 'And it's going to the Core. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?'

'Yes.' Warner said, staring blankly at the map. 'Yes, I believe I am.'

∞

When Warner finally retreated to bed, he was exhausted, his head pounding, his limbs shaky. It was well past midnight, and the entire facility was silent and dark, the only lights coming from the pulsing lamps on the walls that cast a gentle bluish glow through the hallways.

There, in the quiet permeated only by the silent blips of machines in the distance and – as he entered the dorms – more than a few snores, they day's guilt and uncertainty began to weigh on him again.

You saved four lives, the memory of Cress's voice reminded him.

Yes, Warner agreed. I saved four lives, but not the fifth. Would he ever forgive himself for being the cause of someone's death? Maybe, he mused, as he lay down in his hard, synth-fiber mattress – it would take a while, but maybe he would get over it.

On the other hand, there was still a war to be won, and who knew how many deaths would follow? How many deaths would be because of him?

Tomorrow, Allen would introduce him to the Special Unit's newest recruits. They would be fresh from the cadet ranks, inexperienced, unprepared for the missions IntelOps would need to send them on now. With all the recent developments, they'd need to send more people to increasingly dangerous locations, and he was almost sure that the new recruits could be slaughtered ever faster than the present unit had been today.

Soon, Alder would find the Core's backup, and once he did, they would need to go find it.

And then he'd see how things turned out.

∞

The next morning, he slept in. Nobody had come to wake him, and his holo-pad was free of comms, so he concluded that they were on an unofficial rest day.

Scratching the scruff on his chin that had grown a bit more than he'd wanted, he lazily slid out of his bunk, stretched, and stumbled into the bathroom. Pushing the door open, he all but tripped on thin air, smashing his nose into the shower door.

'Shit. Ouch. Goddammit.' He swiped at his now bleeding nose and looked at his scraggly self in the mirror – hair clumped to one side, eyes devoid of life, unruly patches of scruff layered over his chin. He dropped his head and sighed.