The Will To Live✔️

Chapter 16: Return to Darkness

"Okay, moment of truth," Izzy muttered as she crouched before the military outpost's main power distribution network. She was finishing up some minor repairs to one of the junction boxes. Greg waited impatiently, standing behind her, glancing occasionally into the hallway beyond and out the window directly across from them. He'd caught movement there a moment ago and it had turned out to be something he hadn't seen yet. Basically this world's version of a deer. Its fur was pale gray and its four eyes were tinted green. It lacked any kind of antlers, though. He'd pointed it out to Izzy, who said she'd encountered some already and they were harmless, pretty much acted like real deer, ran away at the slightest hint of trouble.

It was back now with a friend, poking around out there, looking for food probably. In a way, they were good warning indicators. They wouldn't be so chill if they were vargs or drubs about. Greg suppressed a sigh as he felt a wave of intense lethargy roll through him. He was exhausted, and it wasn't even dark yet. Izzy had managed to make the power station run, and they'd found basically a giant, glorified switchboard. They'd shut down everything except for the military outpost and the comms tower, which they still didn't know where it was, although Greg was positive it was perched somewhere on the mountain.

Izzy closed the little door on the junction box and stood. She reached out and punched a few buttons on one of the control panels, hesitated, then threw a switch. The distribution network hummed suddenly to life.

"Yes," she whispered, and immediately moved over to a small workstation and began typing rapidly at it. Greg waited further, thinking about their next move. They were going to search the outpost's database, if that was an option, to discover what the hell had happened here, and figure out if the comms tower was available. A few moments passed, and Izzy finished her work.

"Okay, status report. The outpost has power and I've shut off all the extraneous stuff. So most of the base still won't have lights or heat, but our bedroom will."

"Major bonus," he said.

"Yes. I've also powered up the database and the main control room. It's also talking with the power plant, so I've got a decent estimate of how much power we have left. Which is to say: not much. Even running at minimum, we've got maybe two days left to power both the base and the comms tower. So, let's go see if we can pull anything from the database," she replied.

He nodded and they left the power distribution room, then quickly navigated the outpost. Despite his intense lethargy, Greg was at least in good spirits. He always felt good when progress was being made. Although he was getting dizzy, and a headache had been coming on for about an hour now, and it wasn't going away. He was genuinely not looking forward to having to leave this base. Although if all went well, they might not have to do for the rest of the day. Of course, when was the last time all had went well?

They came to the control room and Izzy immediately settled in at the primary work console. Greg sat down heavily in the nearest seat.

"You doing okay?" she asked. "You look really bad, Greg."

"Just a headache," he muttered.

"Headaches don't make you pale and jittery. I think you need to rest. You went through the ice, on top of all the other crap that's been happening."

"Well, let's just see what's ahead of us," he replied.

She grunted in reply and kept working. When she spoke up again several minutes later, Greg had actually been in the process of dozing off, and wondered if he really did need to rest. As in, needed to rest.

"I've got something, but unfortunately it's hardly anything. There was an evacuation order issued about two days before we arrived, but the actual order itself was really vague. Probably not to freak people out. So that sucks for information. Unfortunately, whatever hit us also hit this base at least partially. Either that or the power outage and maybe all the crap weather corroded something crucial. The point is: a lot of the data is lost or scrambled. I can try and sort through it, but it'll take time," she explained.