《The Labyrinth of Earth: Progenitor》


 Homebase

    The canvas of marque tent flapped and cracked in the midnight breeze, bringing a welcome chill into the claustrophobic space, made hot by the heavy breath of men in padded military attire. Theo stood lazily at military rest, his wandering gaze desperately trying to latch onto anything of significance in the grey and uniform space, beside his squad shifted nervously. Big meetings like this always meant trouble. What would it be this time, he wondered? Another surface excursion, no doubt. A sombre affair that was just as fruitless to the community as it was terminal to squad that attempted it. Theo didn¡¯t wander too long about this as he stood in the cramped and ragged ranks of men and women. Unlike most of them, this was the only world he¡¯d ever known, he had never seen a cloudless sky or a world without sickness, he only knew this place in all it¡¯s lost and lonely glory. A Stirring among the ranks centred his vision and he saw an imposing figure ascend to the stand at the end of the room. Hagiel, the leader of the military branch of the Perdix Alliance and sometimes its sole source of civic pride, was about to talk. He reached the podium and faced his assembled audience, Theo fancied he could see a small, almost sadistic grin flash across his face before he began speaking.


    ¡°In the year 2199 a biological weapon ravaged the earth. Detonating squarely over the Australian outback, the high yield Nuclear bomb, since named ¡®the Daedalus progenitor¡¯ exploded in the upper troposphere of the Earth¡¯s Jet stream with a virulent bioengineered organism as it¡¯s ultimate payload, seeding the earth with a devastating radioactive virus.


    The irradiated the contents of the canister of biologically hazardous material, were mutated beyond predictable parameters whilst simultaneously spreading it across nearly 70 percent of the Earth''s atmosphere, following both the trajectory of the Jet stream and spread even further by the blast radius of the mushroom cloud. The Result was the mass release of a sickness known as Labyrinth Syndrome, named as such because of the maze of copper coloured marks that would erupt on the flesh of those afflicted by the virus, marking them as carriers and the dead. Attaching itself to the hypothalamus of its victims, it often resulted in massive mutations before the eventual death of its victims, often driving them mad and causing their bodies to grow and their urges for food and water to decrease or intensify to dangerous levels before eventually burning itself out.


    It¡¯s academic which nation fired the ¡®Daedalus¡¯ Bomb, as there were no nations left by the end of the week.


    Now, sixty years on, the only survivors are those who inhabited the very corners of the world, we are only safe because our forebears were able to hide out in the closed off environment of the Andes. For a brief time we were in contact with Members of the New Russian Alliance, who were able to whether the worst of the sickness by simple fact of their climate preventing the Labyrinth sickness from surviving. But as many of you know we lost contact with them some years ago. For all we know and it is not unwise to assume this, we are the last of humanity to escape the terrible plague that still haunts the land below, the last not to be driven mad or to the grave. We may sometimes think of ourselves as the forgotten embers of a dying light, but I prefer to think of our society as an enduring spark that will one day burn away this infection and reclaim our planet. We are Perdix, and we will live on!¡±


    There were some ¡®hurrahs¡¯ from isolated corners of the room and a general consensus to clap, but for the most part, the men sighed and began to file out of the structure, eager to divest themselves of their gear and enjoy some downtime, which included mostly farming what they could to feed the meagre populace or visiting the ¡®ashram¡¯ as it was nicknamed and seeing about getting a girl or two for the night. ¡°What a load of absolute shite¡± a familiar husky voice said behind Theo, causing the young man to grin despite himself.


    ¡°If you say so, Ignacio¡± said a somewhat more weather worn sounding voice nearby in a tone that was both diplomatic and amused in equal measure. ¡°Well it is! It¡¯s absolute bullshit, this is all we¡¯ve got, there¡¯s no chance of getting down this mountain scouting trip to get the scraps of the old world, beyond that, we¡¯re just pissing in the wind!¡± Theo turned around to see his older friend staring daggers at the older man, their commanding officer, Sergeant Milton Rodriguez. Theo new the drill in this situation, indeed the sergeant had rehearsed the necessary steps for these moments when Ignacio got ¡®all existential¡¯.


    ¡°Hey Iggs, how Ellen doing these days?¡± Theo casually said as he gracefully moved in between the two men. Ignacio¡¯s expression immediately softened and his fists slowly unclenched,


    ¡±She¡¯s doin well Theo, the doctors say she¡¯s recovering real well, even though the birth was hard on her¡± The tall and muscular man who could strip a sub-machine gun in under a minute couldn¡¯t hold back a smile ¡®and the little one is almost sitting up I tell you, you can see it in the her eyes¡¯ he said excitedly. At that moment a whistle blew and the crackly P.A. system came alive briefly. ¡°Squad Exodus 7 will report to Commander Hagiel¡¯s office immediately for assignment into the field¡± it announced in clipped syllables and a cheerful tone. ¡°Well that¡¯s cocks for the chop!¡± Swore Ignacio, his good mood blackened once again. Theo looked briefly to the Sergeant who was fiddling with a small portion of his dinner that was stuck in his tobacco browned teeth. ¡°You know the score boys, let¡¯s move out and see what the big man wants from us today¡± He casually hoisted his rifle onto his back and set an easy stride in the direction of the office, but anyone could see he was nervous, his eyes would linger on the exits to the marque just an instant to long and the thumb on his left hand shook perceptibly. Theo saw all this as easily as a veteran of battle, he¡¯d been here his whole life and he knew these men better than his own mother, whoever she was. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    The Squad of three stood motionless in front of the heavy oak desk and Hagiel regarded them critically. ¡°You three have been designated the honour of a high priority mission, the outcome of which may decide the future of not only this community, but humanity as a whole.¡± He sat back slowly and looked at the three sets of eyes in the room in turn. They did not react overmuch, they¡¯d heard the rhetoric that he gave out to the suicide squads that he¡¯d send out to retrieve some small piece of seemingly useless data as part of one of his pet projects, the few that returned alive spoke about it often when they¡¯d seen the bottle of one too many bottles.


    The men were called out of these morbid thoughts when Hagiel once again, began to speak.


    ¡°During the time before the bomb, when civilization wasn''t the aim, but the existing ideal, men wanted more than this planet, lush and vibrant though it was.¡± At this close range the men fancied they could the commander¡¯s eye¡¯s glaze over as though he could see the grandeur of the past that they had forgotten


    ¡°They hoped to leave this world and begin anew on others, however it was only in the years just before the bomb that men of science caught up to this dream and so was born the Icarus Vt orbital satellite. A space-station the likes of which you cannot imagine, full of the best and brightest who were working in collaboration to achieve one aim, to terraform and colonise the planet Mars!¡± He looked expectantly at the morose squad once again and was disappointed with the lack of wonder in their eyes, Theo was especially confused as tried to predict where this tale might lead to include them. The commander resumed his monologue without comment ¡°at any rate when the bomb came it knocked out most satellites in the vicinity which just happened to include the Icarus and it crew. The exact sight of this crash has been unknown for many years, until now!¡± With a theatrical flourish that he produced a small device that looked like a bulky cellphone of the old-world, heavily encased in plastic and metal strips. ¡°This¡± he whispered, his eyes gazing almost lovingly at the strange device ¡°Is the Ariadne, it houses a one of a kind quantum entanglement device that will lead us directly to the crash site of the ¡®Icarus Vt¡¯ and the treasure trove of terraforming and bioengineering technology that is housed within!¡± He beamed at the other men and saw their eyes finally light up with recognition at their objective.


    ¡°You three will be the vanguard of the expedition to the site, where you assess the viability of the materials within and set up a small convoy t and get the most relevant materials out to see where you and the technology will be air lifted back here to safety while I remain here and martial the bulk of our scientific division to decontaminate the salvage and begin work on re-purposing the technology for use on Earth.¡± The commander stood up and treated the men to an encouraging smile. When it was not reciprocated his expression turned sour


    ¡°Is that understood?¡± At this point the somewhat more savvy Sergeant Rodriguez placed a firm hand on Ignacio¡¯s shoulder, who had gone very still apart from the clenching and unclenching of large fists and said ¡°Orders received sir¡± in as mild a voice as a man can give his executioner. Hagiel, refusing to notice the tension in the room merely sat down and said ¡°Good, the site of the crash is, as far as we can ascertain, Lake Macleod in the most western half of the Australia. You¡¯ll be dropped outside of the nearby city of Perth as this is the nearest area where air drops are possible without malfunction due to Radioactivity and residual magnetism disrupting our instruments¡± At this all three men in the squad let out a small hiss of shock, Australia was a no fly zone, the radiation was strong here and the Labyrinth virus was rampant in more strains that anywhere else on the planet.


    ¡°You will of course receive the very finest we can assemble in the way of equipment including 3 salvaged Graphene Radiation suits that will protect you from any bacterial or radioactive damage. You will also be outfitted with any weaponry you require as I can imagine you may need to deal with some of the surviving local populace¡± Theo bit back a curse as he thought of what that could mean. Those afflicted by the labyrinth syndrome always died, in the best case scenario. In the worst case scenario virus attached itself permanently to the host and maintained an uneven balance of chemical within the body that prevented the host from dying but jacked up their pituitary gland and caused them to go insane with hunger and thirst, these hulking and crazed beings had been nicknamed Minotaurs by the Perdix military, due to their size and tendency to charge head first at anything they thought they could eat. All told, the Perdix had encountered maybe thirty of these poor individuals in the last sixty years, but in the heart of the explosion, where the virus would have been exposed to prolonged bouts of radiation, Theo shuddered at the possible corruptions to nature that might exist in that heart of darkness. Hagiel looked pensively for a moment at some paperwork on his desk and without taking his eyes of the lines of typeface he announced ¡°Dismissed¡±


    That was 12 hours ago.

 Theo and the Minotaur

    Flying high over the ruined city of Perth in an old Hercules carrier jet, the men sat in their heavy duty rad suits. The Graphene suits had been looted from an old atomic power plant nearly 20 years prior and retrofitted with heavy duty seals to protect against new aggressive forms of foreign bacteria. Requiring a constant power source the suits were manufactured at the atomic scale to trap invading radioactive particles and then using tiny controlled electro-magnetic pulses to ablatively bleed the radiation into a heavily shielded vial of heavy water, held on the right hip of each suit, each man was equipped with seven vials that would ejected and replaced as needed, depending on when the Geiger counter within the hip device would register them as harmfully saturated. ¡°Ten Seconds until drop¡± said pilots voice over the P.A. ¡°Remember to set up a flair when you land so I can drop the buggy near your location, otherwise you¡¯ve got a one hundred mile trek in the fucked up waste¡± The Sergeant tactfully responded with an affirmative call sign on his wrist mounted computer and then hastily cut of communications with the cabin before Ignacio could respond. ¡°Fuckin asshole¡± said Iggs disgustedly over their suit com, his eyes ringed with darkness due to lack of sleep as he looked out at the rubble they were about to leap head long into. No one had anything comforting to respond. Theo simply sat there and waited for the pounding in his eyes to subside. He was a salvage tech and he was being flung into this box of shit with only his wits and his side arm. The other two men would have their heavy duty weapons, Ignacio with his Assault Rifle and the older Sergeant with his Sniper. Provided that they were able to land safely on the outskirts of this death trap of a city they would have to navigate their way through the alleys and broken building until they found a space clear enough to light a flair to receive their small buggy, a lightweight solar powered vehicle that would be there only transport in this place as all other machinery would have been fried by the initial EMP of the Nuke. A harsh siren sounded and a green light appeared over the open back of the ancient Hercules. There was little time for a few half hearted ¡°good lucks¡± between the three men but they did so anyway as they flung themselves into the open air and trusted in their parachutes now to fail them as the fell from over a mile above the broke world below. Having agreed to find different areas to land in the hope of at least one of the squad finding a safe point of ingress, Theo watched carefully as his other teammates'' coms slowly drifted into the red on his heads up display, both times this was accompanied with a high pitched mechanical whine from in his ear that he heard over the roar of the wind as the computer in his headset seemed to protest the plan. Landing was simple enough, Theo found that he was able to navigate his decent in his parachute with surprising ease, landing in a street that seemed to be less filled wrecked vehicles. Once on the ground he began to hear the steady whine of his Geiger counter increase in pitch. He checked the vial of heavy water on his hip and saw that it was undamaged and that the small display on the device registered it as working and slowly collected the already assembled background radiation.


    He scanned the street for alley ways that would lead him further into the city. They had agreed to assemble together at the ¡®North Inch¡¯ which was once a scenic park and by far most devoid of rubble, making it an ideal spot to drop the buggy. Once there, Theo would use several remote detonators that he carried in his pack to clear a large area of debris, which they hoped would just be trees and await the arrival of their transportation. Theo pulled out his side-arm and slowly made his way through the alleys. Theo checked his compass but found that it was malfunctioning, the needle going haywire ¡°Residual magnetic disturbance¡± he mumbled quietly before carrying on. He would have to find a point to get a bird¡¯s eye view otherwise he would wandering aimlessly. The only thing that could track something in all the radioactive chaos was the Ariadne, which could keep in contact with an area the size of a couple molecules through the heart of a star and it was safely held in the buggy that they had to find a space for, meaning that if Theo and his group didn¡¯t survive they could always try again from this point.


    ¡°Clever tactic you old bastard¡± Theo mused under his breath. He began to jog quickly among the ruined buildings looking desperately for a possible point to climb and see his position. Finally after nearly an hour of frantic searching among the rubble he came across an old apartment building that looked structurally sound. After a minute he found what looked like a fire-escape at the side of the building that seemed to have stood the test of time. Theo found himself begrudgingly thanking Hagiel for the lightweight rad suit as he easily hoisted himself up onto the rickety metal, which squealed ominously underfoot but held for his ascent. By the time he reached the top of the fire escape, Theo was out of breath and sweating profusely in the bio suit that allowed neither breeze nor un-recycled air inside. He looked out over the sullen vista and then to the un-breaking clouds above and fancied he could see the faces of smiling devils held within the vapours, blocking out most of the sunlight over this region and most of the Earth for many years. Shaking himself from his reverie, he looked back out at the city scape and almost at once saw the direction he needed to go, the North Inch was only a few streets away, he could see the mottled wood of a hundred dead trees, many of whom were still standing despite life leaving them to long ago. Sheepishly, Theo slowly climbed down the fire-escape, gritting his teeth at every moan of metal, before reaching the relative safety of the street below and heading in the direction of the Park. As turned down the nearest street heading in the direction of the park, Theo heard something, a scratching noise that echoed from an alley nearby, Theo ducked down low pulled his side-arm from his holster only to turn and see the massive unfolding shadow of a creature in the alley standing up unsteadily on two unnaturally large legs. Theo¡¯s moth went dry and his heart began to race. If it was what he hoped it wasn¡¯t then he was in trouble, the only possible inhabitants of this ruined city besides himself and his team mates would be the afflicted and of those, the only ones that would have survived until now would be the Minotaurs, rampant creatures that attacked and devoured any possible source of food they came across and if it was one of them, he was already in its sights, their hearing was unnaturally good as their pituitary gland not only caused their bodies to grow as a whole but also their ear drums and vocal cords to the point where these massive creatures were capable of finding prey by sound alone and only capable of a malevolent bovine wail, however the effect of this also produced a swelling in the ocular canal of the afflicted, and in most cases, rendered them blind. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Theo¡¯s only chance was to soundlessly move away from this monstrosity and meet up with his team mates. Slowly, ever so slowly Theo began to move down the down the street and away from the beast, his gun levelled at all times in its direction. As he was rounding the corner and no longer directly in the creatures line of sight he slowly relaxed and stood up straight, intent on jogging quickly and quietly to the park and finding his team mates, who would most likely have made it their by now. As he turned around his foot accidentally collided with a fallen piece of rebar that clanged against his metal clad foot and scraped noisily across the ground.


    For moment there was nothing and then there was a noise like a fleshy foghorn only one street away from the terrified Theo. From around the corner came the monster. Standing at 8ft tall its vacant eyes unnaturally centred on Theo¡¯s lone and shocked form as it barrelled towards him. There was no time to think, Theo was already running when he fired the first round the clipped the side of the beast, barely making it dent in the thick and callused hide, by the time Theo fired the second he could see the thickened maze pustules that ran along the bare and muscular arms of his attacker, his round his the monster square in the shoulder, causing the monster to change momentum and collide with a nearby car for a moment before it as up again and coming at him with renewed speed. By This time Theo could see the edge of the park, but it was to far to reach in time. The Minotaur was within 50 metres of him and gaining speed so Theo did the only thing he could do, he fired jumped to the side of the road behind cover and took careful aim at the creature. It was 30 metres away now as Theo levelled his weapon, naturally aiming at the head before rethinking at the sight of the thick, almost Neanderthal skull. Instead he took a precious second to think. The creature was 20 metres away, Theo¡¯s mind was unnaturally calm as he felt adrenaline and fear crystallise his focus. The Snorting monstrosity was 15 meters from Theo as he took aim. Ten metres away, Theo would have be able to see the jagged teeth on the gaping maw if that¡¯s where he was looking. 5 meters, Theo fired and jumped into the middle of the road. The bullet passed straight threw the creature left knee, shattering the knee cap with the residual shock cracking thigh bone which was then broken in 6 places as the beast collided with the car at nearly 30 miles an hour that would have also caused the car to smash into Theo had he not jumped out of the way at the last desperate second. Theo stood and stretched his bruised arm before walking carefully up to the dazed creature and firing 3 bullets, point blank into the creature¡¯s skull. The 1st 2 merely bounced of the thick skull, but the 3<sup>rd</sup> found its mark, driving itself into the centre of the brain and silencing the poor unfortunate forever.


    Dazed, Theo walked slowly towards the park and seeing that the rest of his squad had not made it yet sat at a decrepit park bench, waiting for his team. They arrived roughly an hour later, Theo¡¯s reckoning, having landed relatively close to each other, Ignacio and the Sergeant had been able to establish radio contact quickly and met up before moving towards the park. Ignacio looked relieved to see Theo and clapped the boy on the back before noticing his pale face. ¡°Don¡¯t be going wandering man. It¡¯s just trouble¡± He said through a forced smile. Theo responded with a quiet nod.


    They managed to find a mostly clear area, and Theo was able to take down most of the surrounding trees with a series of small scale explosion, but his eyes always darted around, looking any more monster-men that might be in this decimated city. After their work was finished they signalled the Hercules that was still circling the city to drop the buggy and the precious Ariadne Device. After all that had happened it struck Theo as oddly anti-climactic as he saw the small fold out buggy float almost silently into the clearing as the Hercules disappeared over the Horizon.


    ¡°It¡¯ll be smooth sailing now, boys¡± said the relieved sergeant as he climbed into the buggy and acquainted himself with the odd control.


    Theo just sat in the back with Ignacio, looking out at the dark clouds above and thought about the sharp sound of a bullet breaking through bone and dull smack as it lodge itself in brain tissue.


    </a> ¡°Maybe.¡± He said, to no- one in particular as the drove silently out of the park and onto the highway ¡®60¡¯ that would lead them along the coast to Lake Macleod


    ¡°Maybe.¡±