The Will To Live✔️

Chapter 17: Uplink

When they got back to the snow hog, which they did as quickly as possible, Greg and Izzy sat together in the front in silence for several minutes. Eventually, Izzy reached forward slowly and started up the vehicle.

"We need to...um...get to the comms tower, and fix," she said quietly.

Greg just nodded. After another moment, she got the hog turned around and began making her way back to the trail that would take them there.

After a bit longer, she finally spoke again. "What are they?"

"Monsters," Greg muttered.

"You said they were like a virus or something? Could we turn into them?"

"No," Greg replied, running everything Payton had said to him through his head again. "No, when I was talking to Payton about them, he said it was really fast. Like, less than a minute. So we already would have turned. And he said, it wasn't like a virus, not exactly, like...they had to jump onto you or something. Damn, what did he say? He was vague about it after that initial part. I think he was paranoid, like worried someone would overhear him."

"If these are real hostiles, why haven't we been briefed on them!?" Izzy asked, suddenly angry.

"I don't know. He seemed to think they were only on Delta Halo. Maybe...they were too scared of spreading word around? These things seem really dangerous, like zombies or something. And obviously they aren't just on Delta Halo."

"Why do you call it Delta Halo?" she asked suddenly.

"What? I don't know, that's just what he called it. He kept calling it Delta Halo."

"So there's more than one of them?"

"I...guess so," he murmured.

"Dammit. Here we are, cut off and under-prepared, and now we're facing these things! What if more of them show up?"

"We'd better get that radio fixed pronto," he replied, and she nodded tightly in response.

A few moments later, they had the snow hog parked and were making their way back up the trail. As they made their way up it as fast as they safely could, Greg found himself more paranoid than ever. The mystery had finally been solved, and it was far worse than he thought it was going to be. Ever since hearing about them, a dark seed of worry relating to the Flood had been planted somewhere in the darker trenches of his mind.

Now that plant was in full bloom and slithering out into the light, and he hated it.

He'd had a few nightmares about facing them, even when he'd never seen one before. And now he had, and he knew a lot more nightmares were in his near future. They were horrifying and he was honestly having trouble with truly coming to grips with their reality. He couldn't stop seeing the mutated things, the beasts that once been human beings. Their decaying, leathery skin, their misshapen bodies, the tentacles, the sounds they made. What were they? His mind was going to the same place Izzy's had gone.

How did you become one?

Because what if he was wrong? He wasn't sure if it was airborne or bloodborne, like a traditional virus or infection, but he couldn't be sure because he didn't know. All he had to go off of was what he'd heard, which wasn't much, and what he'd seen so far. But despite his increased paranoia, as he scanned the frozen landscape of the island he and Izzy occupied, he saw nothing moving down there but the occasional varg or drub or alien deer. Although now he was less sure about the more distant shapes. They looked like they were moving like animals down on all fours but...

He wanted to use his zoom function built into the helmet, but it was too dangerous at the moment, what with walking up a mountain path. Finally, they reached the top, and he was extremely grateful that they'd thought to bring all the parts and tools with them from the base when they'd initially gone to the mine. Oh how he hoped they never had to go back into that mine. What if there were more openings? And how widespread was this whole situation?