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Chapter 7

"Not our Biogen, assclown," Ulises told Oberon.

"Ulises," Micah warned.

The three of them peered over the monstrosity's head. Its face held a mask of terror. Or was it of excruciating pain... Micah couldn't tell.

He recalled how the enemy seemed to have... vanished, about a month prior, right before he was informed of his assignment to this neck of the woods. None of the enemy had been seen again after the last incursion, none alive. There had been very few corpses, adding to the mystery. The enemy had outnumbered them before and during the war, so where did they all go? Micah had found it quite odd, but he simply kept following his orders.

And now this. He also recalled the enemy bodies clad in his unit's uniforms. They also lay before them, everywhere. Micah began to have terrible, impossible thoughts.

Oberon seemed to have read his mind.

"I'm sorry," he started, "so very sorry, but all of your fellow soldiers have turned into... your enemy."

Micah and Ulises looked at him.

"Fuck you," Ulises spat. "No. How is that even possible?"

Micah walked to his comrade. "Look around."

Both he and Ulises did just that.

"The bio-bombs," Micah said. "The enemy went away, but left us with these weapons of biological mass destructive... something."

"They didn't go away," Oberon announced in a dark tone. He was now looking over a smaller enemy corpse.

"It looks to me," Oberon continued, "that the Biogen mutates other organic matter to conform to its own genome. And somehow, the Biogen was merged with... the enemy."

"What?" Ulises said, bewildered.

"The Biogen has seemed to absorb the genetic code of your enemy and now mutates any other biological life to match it..." He started fiddling with some type of foreign device he pulled out of his pocket.

"And how in blazes did it absorb a whole race of people?" Ulises demanded.

"Not sure quite yet," Oberon replied a bit tersely. "A little quiet would help me concentrate, please?" He looked back down at his device.

"Oberon," Micah pressed, stepping towards him. "What you're saying is incredible. The Biogen was manufactured by the enemy."

"Yes," Oberon replied, looking up, looking Micah directly in the eye. "It now is them."

Micah had about a thousand more questions, but also found himself marvelling at the irony. It was a fleeting satisfaction; the evidence of Oberon's claim lay all around them. All of his fellow soldiers lay before him, dead, turned into... Micah grimaced and closed his eyes in a futile effort to block the reality out.

Despite the enemy having been eliminated, they were still winning.

Micah twirled his finger in a gesture.

Another twenty minutes went by; they now had his CO's bunk secured. Micah retrieved the storage module from his own bunk that contained the enemy data he had collected only days before.

Oberon had spent the time explaining how the disastrous fractures from the other dimension must have somehow merged the enemy's biomatter, all of it, into the very weapons they had created.

That was why the bio-weapons were hundreds of times more lethal now. That was why millions had died instantaneously, and why countless more others will die as well in the near future. It was too late for Micah's base.

"What if it had been our biomatter it had absorbed, instead," Micah remarked, shuddering.

"Your fellow soldiers, here, were... I'm sorry to say, lucky to have perished," Oberon said. "Deducing from what you've told me, the Biogen is highly and swiftly adaptable. These soldiers died..." he looked down and around him, "but had they continued living, the virus would have never stopped mutating. It will grow better, and even more dangerous. This here, my friends, is merely the beginning of it for your world."

Micah lifted his left wrist. He looked down at the newfangled device endowed to him that allowed him something... powerful.

A rudimentary plan began to form in his mind.

* * *

Micah's Commanding Officer himself was no where to be found. He knew the CO would likely have the face of the enemy now, but they hadn't found any identifying insignia or dogtags either.

Oberon had pulled out two more devices from his pack. Ulises and Oberon himself were now also equipped with the ability to stop time.

Ulises had questioned the allowance of a device for Oberon, but Micah reassured him. "We aren't his CO, soldier," he told him. "Besides, they're his. Relax."

Ulises had brought the CO's laptop online and had identified the coordinates of another base not far from theirs. They began their journey west.

Two hours later, they arrived at their destination.

The sister base was thriving. Lights were on everywhere. No fires. A cacophany of voices could be heard from behind the base's fortified walls. No trace of the Biogen could be detected outside.

"Stop right there!" a sentry called as they approached the entrance.

They stopped in their tracks. The sentry walked to them, hand on her rifle. "Identify yourselves, soldier."

"Unit Lead Micah, from New Ulilat 4," Micah announced. "And my best soldier, Ulises. And... a civilian. Dr. Fleishman."

"Civilian?" the sentry said as she darted her eyes at Oberon. "From where? We are smackdab in the middle of red enemy territory."

BOOM.

"Aw shit," the sentry viciously cursed. "Inside! All of you! Now!"

The dark desert had flashed green all around them.