Isolation & Fear (Damned of the 2/19th Book Seven)

Mission First

Time/Date Stamp Error
Warning CPU Voltage Error
All Systems at 50%+

I led the way into the hallway, the flashlight on my LBE flashing out, the red lens over the lamp turning everything bloody. My breath steamed out barely past my lips, I breathed through my nose and it felt like the cold was slashing my mucus membranes apart. My eyes hurt within seconds, forcing me to blink faster than normal. The cold immediately began trying to claw its way in through my clothing.

We needed to get to the arctic survival gear cache, and quickly. The cold was already deadly, and the atmospheric pressure wasn't anything to write home about.

We needed O2, extreme cold weather gear, and someplace to lair up.

"Where are we going, Ant?" Little-Bit asked from behind me.

I just made a sharp chopping motion to shut her up.

The logic chains and predicitve analysis chains were all running. Slowly, but still running. The weeks and months that had gone by my body and my damaged cerebral wiring had healed up better than I'd felt in years. The lizard was small again, largely watching and handling little things, not in full control like he'd been so often.

It might slow me down, combat-wise, but I felt more human than I had in quite a while as I moved down the dark and icy hallway. There was 7.62mm NATO and Soviet scattered all over the place, along with frangible links from the M-60. Most of the debris was locked in the ice at the edges floor, ice that was often stained by blood.

I moved carefully, but ignored it. It was the building trying to mess with my head, and I did my best to push it away. The lizard still tracked it, but it was a distant same.

I was focused on the fact that we needed to relocate at one of the worst times possible.

My internal clock was off. The days and nights blurring together even before Little-Bit had bewitched me and shut down most of my brain.

Part of me was angry with her for turning me into that. For "dociling" me. But only part. She had, to use Aine's words, warned me thrice and her duty had been done. I could be angry later, talk to her about it later.

She should have never sacrificed to me what she had.

Wind whipped down the hallway as we passed the 3/4 mark of Far Hammerhead Hall, slicing through my clothing and sapping my body heat. I was glad for a full stomach, knowing that my body would need the calories and carbohydrates to keep my core body temperature up.

I heard Little-Bt stumble behind me but didn't bother to look. Either she could keep up or she wouldn't.

I was clicking through the possibilities.

Heading down the mountain was an option. Running the numbers showed me that my chances of making it down where significantly less than Little-Bit's had been coming up. Even if her cache was intact, the mountain didn't like people trying to escae.

The War Fighter Tunnels were a no-go. Cromwell was in there. The Preggos were in there.

Our Bolthole didn't have the food we'd need to make it till spring, and I wasn't sure how well we could weather out the freezing temperature. It would work for a few days, maybe a few weeks, but to make it until the snow melted? I couldn't be sure. We'd stolen and stacked over two hundred cases of MRE's, but that was four days of food with three meals each, a total of eight hundred days of food for one person, and sure, that left over a year of food for Little-Bit and myself, but could I be sure the place was survivable for the entire time.

The Airfield had a good building and a small War Fighter Complex, but... the idea of locking myself in a place I had only visited twice was a bad idea. I had no idea if it was only an impact survival shelter, or what. Plus, it meant getting to the air field, which might as well be on the moon as far as getting there safely.