Chapter XVII: Losing Control

Diary of Corporal Dimka Torodov, day 19:

The elevator doors slid open and locked at their maximum reach, opening the way to the laboratory. I took a deep breath and stepped in. Sevka followed suit. Some sort of ghostly scream came from further in, startling us slightly. The place was dark, there were some dim yellow lights scattered around but they really struggled with the overall darkness levels. The room ahead was dusty, but the most striking feature was the cluster of electric anomalies in the middle of it.

I threw a bolt around them, but it triggered them all the same. Sevka threw another one towards the door, and it simply rolled on the floor. Sevka looked at me smugly and I shrugged:

  • Fool's... Erm, beginner's luck, I commented, and Sevka scoffed.

The door led into a train hangar. Or metro tunnel. Hard to say for sure. It was a spectacle, with a thick, white mistcloud hanging between sparkling Electros, some of the floating on the surface of old metro traincars. I was mesmerized by the scene for a few seconds, staring at the anomaly cloud and a weird will-o-wisp pulsating inside another railcar. The crackling and humming inside the tunnel had disoriented my hearing for a blink of an eye. But once our ears adjusted, we could hear the grunts and wails of brainscorched husks coming from up ahead. Sevka pointed for me to climb on top of the will-o-wisp carriage silently, and I nodded, following his orders. I slipped past the red orb, it didn't seem to be hazardous. First time that had happened.

Peering out of the window of the driver's cabin, I could see the squad of brainless former stalkers shamble about. Nothing my DVL could not handle. I took aim and dispatched the first one with a single shot, making sure not to alert the others. One cycle of the bolt and another shot, quite quiet, another zombie down. I repeated this process with the others quickly, and the entire squad soon lay dead, big holes in the back of their heads or foreheads. Sevka moved on and took aim at the door nearby while I climbed down and reloaded my gun. He held a finger to his lips and kept the shotgun towards the door, I immediately assumed there would be enemies ahead. I took out my Ruger, more suitable at this range, and we waited.

  • UMIRAI!, came a shout from the side corridor and three Monolithians in light combat gear charged through guns blazing, only to be met by a hail of gunfire from both our guns.

They did not stand a chance. I'm pretty sure they were rookies or something, as they charged us like headless chicken. Sevka's Saiga sang a bloodthirsty tune and the slugs struck like bricks, tearing the patrol to pieces. The final Monolith soldier collapsed to the ground slowly, and for a second I saw a look of disbelief on his face. Perhaps in their last moments they had some clarity in their actions. Who knew, but it sure was disturbing to see a man realize his position as a slave the second he dies.

  • Damn, I've fought religious fundamentalists before, but these guys really creep me out, Sevka muttered.

  • No wonder the anarchists at Army Warehouses looked so beat up. These guys are a regular occurance to them, I said.

Sevka nodded and let out a small whistle as a sign of respect for them and to signal his bemusement. We checked the bodies, found some ammunition and medicine, Sevka also managed to grab a few grenades off the corpses. I found two PDAs, one was encrypted but the other had a short written message from someone called the Adept. I read the message out loud to Sevka.

  • It says: Brothers, we have lost the lower floors to controllers. Unlike before, they no longer respect the holy Monolith. They have taken over our lesser brothers as well. Brothers Georg and Dima, join me on a quest to purge the lab from them. If we do not return, there are psi-block pills in the safe, take them in case a controller manages to get here. May the Granter of Wishes guide your path, brethren.

  • Ay dios mios, what utter clowns they are with all that medieval-speech. But what the hell is a controller?, Sevka asked.

  • And what is a lesser brother? Man, I wish we had a native with us, these terms are bizarre...

  • No idea, maybe some sort of mutant? Let's check that safe out though, Sevka propsed and we explored a small barracks room at the end of the corridor, the Monolith squad had apparently been here for a while.

The safe had a small plastic canister with red pills, as well as some 5.56 ammunition of armour-piercing variety and a crudely constructed IED. Sevka took the ammunition and the IED, while I took the pills and examined them. I placed them into my front pocket and we left the room, eager to get out of this place. The hallway didn't have an obvious exit, and we spent a few minutes scouring the place, tugging at the locked doorhandles of the trains and the few doors at the side of the room. It was useless, everything was locked. I was getting more and more frustrated, and paced around the hall looking for places to go when the ground suddenly disappeared from below me.

At first I thought it was an anomaly of sorts, but in reality I had dropped into a ventilation duct. Luckily I didn't manage to twist my ankle in the landing. After a brief few seconds of disoriented scrambling to regain my footing, my headset crackled to life:

  • Torodov, where the hell did you go?, Sevka asked via the radio.

  • I think I fell into a ventilation duct. I might get somewhere through here though, wait a sec, I explained.

  • Watch out for tushkanos, Sevka muttered into his mic.

I didn't bother answering. The duct was narrow and cramped, and I had to focus on navigating it slowly. Thankfully it was clean enough. I passed over a broken grate, which was just intact enough that I couldn't fit through but I did see a dead Monolith soldier below. He had a pistol in his right hand, and from the wound on his temple it was obvious how he had died. Odd, I thought to myself, how did a brainwashed lunatic commit suicide? I puzzled it over as I crawled onwards and came to the conclusion that perhaps he had managed to free himself for a moment and decided that death was better alternative to mindless servitude.

Ahead, the duct seemed to have partially collapsed. I crept closer, until I saw sickly green light glow from the hole. I threw a bolt towards it, and it disappeared downwards until I heard sizzling. Chemical anomaly. I turned left instead, continuing down the vent. Claustrophobia was settling in, I wanted out soon. Few more minutes crawled by as slowly as I did, but eventually I found a way out. I asked through the radio if Sevka had found anything, and received a bored grunt.

  • I found another floor. Come on over here, just don't crawl into the hole with the anomaly, turn left instead. I'm dropping down. If it's a dead end, you'll help me back up, I replied into the radio and dropped down.

  • Great, now I need to raise your arse up when you inevitably get stuck, Sevka replied snarkily.

  • Quit crying and start crawling. I'm going in.

I dropped on the floor below and swung my revolver from one side to the other, prepared for anything. Or so I thought. What I was not prepared for was an angry voice booming inside my head, ordering me to leave. It addressed me as "human", in a manner so degrading that I shuddered. But it was not the worst thing. The headache I had felt before, first in Jupiter factory and then in the underground near the dead mutant, appeared out of nowhere and started pounding my head. My vision grew blurry and colour seemed to become diluted and less vivid. The voice ordered me to leave its home or suffer the consequences. I could hear something akin to Sevka's voice coming from the headset, but it was distant, as if coming through a thick layer of water.

I struggled to regain some form of conciousness, but it was becoming impossible. The voice commanded me one last time before thundering that I would now suffer. I barely registered my hand rising, the Ruger in it slowly inching its muzzle towards my head. I fought back with every shred of my remaining strength. And then I saw it. The mutant I had seen in Jupiter underground, but this one was alive. It had rounded the corner and now stood right in front of me, hand pointing at me. I heard a sort of tinnitus growing louder in my ears, inside my head, but this seemed to lessen the impact on my revolver. In a desperate last chance, I swung the Ruger towards the monster and used every bit of my willpower to press the trigger.

The gunshot rang out, and last thing I saw before a cloud of blood burst out from the monster's forehead was a look of surprise. The bullet struck the humanoid's skull in and made it stagger backwards before slumping down to the ground. I slumped to the floor as well, utterly exhausted and horrified. The situation turned to worse soon however, as Sevka chose this moment to drop down and almost flattened me.

  • Mierda, what the hell are you doing? After all the siesta jokes I've had to endure, you decide to take a nap under the one place I can get down from?, Sevka roared in anger.

  • I... I think I now know what a controller is. That thing tried to make kill myself with its brain, I managed to murmur.

Sevka noticed the now dead mutant and stared at it for a little while. Then he looked at me, and saw that my nose was bleeding and my eyes were bloodshot. He was feeling the headache caused by the residual psychic energy too. He shook his head and helped me up. My legs still felt wobbly and weak, my headache was still pounding on even if it was growing less painful by the second. I cleaned off the trickle of blood coming from my nose and pulled out the pills I had found in the safe earlier.

  • Take one of these. If I understood correctly, these will give us some protection from those horrors, I said and gave Sevka one of the pills.

  • Thanks, let's hope they stop our brains from getting boiled. If we still get mindfucked, I've got some tinfoil in my backpack, we'll try that, Sevka said with a grin and I chuckled at the thought of us wrapping our heads in tinfoil.

We downed the pills, leaving with them a bitter aftertaste. After a brief wait for them to take effect, we rose up and continued. The difference the pills had made was almost night and day, headache was gone and I felt much stronger now. It was a good thing too, as when we rounded a corner a sort of ringing begun loudly in my head, a tinnitus if you will. It was similar to what I had experienced with the controller, but before I could properly react my vision blurred and it was as if I had fixated on a point in the dark. Like my field of view was being sucked towards a single point in the room. It was the most disorientating feeling ever, and the tinnitus was now so loud it physically hurt me. And then, two eyes lit up at the point where I had been tunnel visioned towards. I saw a figure in a trenchcoat, outreached arm, long thing fingers.

  • Obey me, human, a voice, similar to what I had heard before, boomed in my head.

  • Eba si maikata!, I cursed the thing out loud, and the resistance given to me by the pills made it much easier to resist.

Sevka had taken cover already and begun to fire at the monster while I still fought to free myself. My hand shook like hell, but I managed to grab my Ruger, pull it out and fire five consequtive shots in desperation. They hit absolutely nothing but did startle the creature enough for me to get to cover. I no longer heard the ringing, and this made an idea pop into my head as I slowly refilled the cylinder, my hands still not really fit for such a duty. I turned towards Sevka, who was ducking in and out of cover, his Saiga on the rare double-fire mode.

  • Sevka! It can only use its attacks when it has visual on you. Keep popping in and out, I'll cover soon, I shouted and the beast growled in frustration.

  • Roger, keep it busy, I need a new magazine!, Sevka yelled.

I put my theory to test and leaned out, taking quick aim. The ringing began once more, but this time I was ready. Smell of smoke and cordite filled the air as my revolver spat out its contents, piercing the abnormally shaped skull of the mutant. It groaned once more before falling to its knees. Its hand landed on the concrete, followed by the caved-in skull of the mindwarper. I felt great satisfaction from the sight. Rarely did I feel good about killing, even when killing mutants, but this thing... It had an aura of malice to it. Perhaps they couldn't help themselves, perhaps they were victims of their condition, I did not know. Whatever the answer was, they deserved a bullet for all I cared.

  • I now understand why you froze under the landing spot. That thing is terrifying, so human yet so alien, Sevka said.

  • Indeed. It gets inside your head, and it tries to force you to your knees. I think some of those zombies we've seen are made by those things, I replied and shuddered at the thought.

  • Holy Mother..., Sevka whispered.

We had a short break, didn't speak much during it. I was exhausted mentally, like my psyche had been run over by a 70-ton tank. Sevka downed a bottle of vodka, normally I would've been against drinking during combat but here... Anything that can keep you sane is needed. I dreaded moving onwards, but I knew I had to do it. This was far too important, something was telling me that this place would have answers. And if I valued one thing in my life more than freedom and adventure, it was truth. Even if it meant crawling through controller-infested labs. I got up and helped my companion to his feet as well. It was time to go deeper. 

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