Death is Inevitable (Higgs Monaghan X F! Reader) [UNDER EDITING]

Chapter 13: Crossing the Tar Belt

A/N

There's talk of suicide and self-harm in this chapter. Please read with caution if this could trigger you.

~four hours later~

[Name]'s POV

"Much appreciated, friend," the paleontologist says after Sam delivers the antimatter bomb. "Thanks to you two, we can finally move ahead with the dig. I swear, this place is bad enough without having to worry about getting asphyxiated."

The man wearing a grey jacket over a t-shirt with his hair covered by a beanie turns around and crouches down. He examines the bomb we delivered before nodding and standing back up to face us.

"Not that I need to tell the two of you. You did it, after all- though I can't for the life of me imagine how," he states before his hologram is replaced by the results screen.

The details on the page show up, and it calculates it together to show we got an S-rank. The connection level rises to just over two-and-a-half stars before the screen disappears. The hologram of the paleontologist shows back up, and he looks at us.

"You can set up the chiral network while I work," he tells us before disappearing again.

Sam takes off the Q-pid around his neck and places it in the terminal, causing a blue glow to cast out while several holographic equations appear. The chiral density in the room spikes, lifting us off the ground before placing us back down once the place is fully connected. A map of the United States appears with the added strand before disappearing, revealing a clearer hologram of the paleontologist.

"Anyway, as it turns out, I have a favor to ask of you two. A local porter was on his way here with something very valuable, but dropped it en route. It's a two hundred million-year-old ammonite which looks, he says, almost as if it were still alive. He apparently stumbled across it in a boulder field which had previously been hidden beneath a glacier, but... that's not the half of it. The man claims his ammonite has an umbilical cord- an umbilical cord!

"Color me skeptical, but the specimen merits study- and I wasn't about to leave such delicate work to an amateur. So I asked him to carve out the whole surrounding chunk of rock and bring it here to me. Naturally, I wanted to compare it with contemporary specimens in the vicinity, which is why I had him excavate a number of those in addition to the one he told me about.

"But what does the dumb fuck go and do? He loses the whole shipment! Didn't even have the good sense to mark which container had the ammonite with the umbilical cord. The cargo was supposedly lost in the area to the southwest, where toxic gases have a tendency to build up. Ol' Mr. Reliable claims his cargo scanner is broken, and there's no way he can recover the shipment. But you two- you two could track it down.

"To protect you against the fumes, I'll provide you both with an oxygen mask, just to be safe. You can pick them up when you accept the order," the paleontologist tells us before waving and disappearing.

Heartman's hologram shows up with a small frown. "That fossil could represent an epochal discovery. While there are examples of viviparous fish, an ammonite with an umbilical cord is unheard of. And if it is indeed two hundred million-years-old, it would also correspond with the end-Triassic extinction. Another one of the Big Five!

"Could the umbilical cord be connected to the Beach? We must recover that cargo at all costs. It could provide a vital clue to the mechanisms underpinning the Death Stranding. We're so close. So very, very close to grasping the true nature of the phenomenon. Hurry, [Name], Sam. We cannot risk that ammonite being lost!" he tells us before disappearing.

"We'll rest after retrieving the ammonite. It sounds pretty important, so letting it go until later isn't an option," I tell Sam, and he nods.

We accept the order on the delivery terminal, grabbing the oxygen masks the paleontologist has for us before leaving the shelter. 'The location isn't too far out, so this shouldn't take too long,' I hum while setting a waypoint and getting on my trike.