Chapter 9: Vol.1/ Chapter 7: The Woods

Chapter Seven

The woods.

 

  Despite what Mai had said, it took them another thirty minutes to get ready to head out into the woods.

  Shin was busy gathering up all the instruments from his mobile lab, putting back all the tools he used in his analysis, and shrinking his cubes, leaving the samples taken in a state of suspended animation for a detailed examination that, he hoped, could be completed later, when they returned to the capital. Although, about the latter, that would be as long as Arsen didn't complain about it.

  Then they cleaned the place of their footprints, it didn't take them more than a few minutes since after all they hadn't touched the place too much, besides Shin, who was rattling back and forth all morning with his equipment. Even so, with the cleaning tools carried in the mobile lab case it was more than an easy task.

  They could not leave anything to chance, in case they had to leave unexpectedly if something went wrong. They had permits and false identities, and while they had been more than careful to hide the data of the fictitious IDs in the database, it wouldn't take more than a fourth or fifth check by a technician to see that the information had been altered the day before.

  In case things went worse than expected, Mai would probably have to give several explanations as to why they had falsified information to the military and get into a diplomatic mess, which was sure to end up in a paperwork for the next days and weeks. On the other hand, if they discovered something really big that warranted SID's intervention, things would be easier, but it was better to prepare for the worst.

  And there was also the issue of time. If what they had gathered was anything to go by, it was certain that they might not be able to find the reason for the lights if they appeared for only a few days at first. They hoped that Ruslan's words were true.

  Mai's plan was simple. Search the surrounding area during the hours they had daylight, in the hope of finding Komarov's body, and stand guard in the car during that night, in case the lights appeared. If they couldn't find, or see anything, they would wait until morning and try another drive around as long as their cover was not blown.

  Mai took care of erasing the last traces of their presence in the room. But not before preparing herself, most of all her long silver hair. She put on her head a small device that she kept in her coat, and it extended thin appendages, similar to the legs of a spider but much longer, and in less than twenty seconds it combed the long hair, from the top of the head to the ends, to finally leave it tied in a long braid.

  From the black case, that Shin had given her earlier, she took out a tactical archery glove of fine workmanship, black in color and topped on the back with a sort of turquoise stone that emitted a faint flash from time to time, she put it on and put the thicker gloves back on. Mai certainly judged it useless to carry, as it was a special weapon and in the current conditions it was deactivated, but a part of her was also relieved to have it in her hand.

  Shin simply put his trench coat back on with his holster gear and needed no further preparation. They loaded the suitcases back into the car with what they had collected and pulled some small tactical emergency backpacks out of one of the other suitcases along with a pair of trekking poles for the road.

  The SID tactical backpacks were specially designed for risky missions. Manufactured with Fragment technology, they could carry several times their weight, which allowed to include not only a first aid kit but also to facilitate the loading of weapons and ammunition, that in a static compressed only had about five percent of their real weight. The different instruments in the backpack were loaded with a code that, when recited by the user, allowed the object in question to decompress and appear in the place configured by the user. The backpack itself was small and black in color, with a shape almost like a nanocarbon shell, which is why many in the SID team called it the turtle backpack.

  Both configured some emergency weapons in the respective places in the backpacks and some supplies in case of emergency. Then Mai moved the car to hide it near the trees and activated the optical and thermal camouflage in case any prying eyes discovered it.

  They left in a northerly direction, following the western shore of the lake, walking through the snow and mud that made it difficult to pass. They were followed by two of the drones that Mai had deployed earlier, one in front and one in the rear, the other two remained in the vicinity of the cabin. Mai, who had the map in her Neurowire, had already marked the way and the drones followed her orders floating slowly, while marking the trail.

  The passage was difficult not only because of the snow. In several parts, thick trunks cut the way and they had to make detours uphill, slipping from time to time between the snow and loose soil, to pick up the trail on the other side. In other places they encountered the repulsive, fetid goo of the fungus Shin had encountered, but this time in the form of thicker webs of mycelia.

  They sprouted from the lake and the earth and got lost in the forest or sometimes climbed up the trunks to get lost among the higher branches. Shin could hardly believe it was so scattered all over the place. It was barely growing noticeably, but it was becoming more and more apparent that it was everywhere. And what made Mai even more astonished was that she could also see that this grassiness was the cause of the black trees they had seen from the car.

  The webs of filaments coiled in various parts around the trees, taking on a more gelatinous and transparent texture in some parts, red or black in others and stinking. Shin occasionally took some samples that he put in small thin Teflon evidence cans, that he carried in his backpack, as he discovered that the trees, which the nets reached, were giving off a warmth that made the snow at the base and the layer of frost on the upper branches thaw completely. Not only that, but these trees were also suffering from clear signs of disease. The bark was black and rotten, and they were oozing a red-colored sap from the gills, droplets of which ran down and melted with the viscosity.

  They had already walked almost two and a half kilometers from the cabin and Mai looked worriedly at the sky. It was now three o'clock in the afternoon and they would only have three or four more hours of daylight. The lights of the drones were powerful enough to illuminate even a hundred meters in the dark, but it made her feel uneasy that the night would catch them halfway back if they took more time in the forest. And there were still about two kilometers to the place where the scientist had disappeared.

  Both carried a trekking pole each and used it more for poking the snow whenever they found a lump than for walking on the ground.

  They tried to hasten their pace a bit but found it difficult as they had to keep an eye out for any details that the drones might miss. The drones were equipped with scanning and pattern recognition systems, but even so, three more eyes to search the path was better than just the two of the drones. On top of what they had already seen of the site, they had enough evidence to at least open an investigation.

  The corruption of nature in the place was more than enough reason to alert any health authority to send out investigation teams. But even if they did, what chance did they have that whatever happened to the previous victims wouldn't happen to them as well? That question was enough for both to continue on their way in search of a possible explanation for the disappearance of Komarov, Ivraeva and all the victims who had lost their lives at the site.

  The trees became more thicker as they advanced and the branches, as if they were long famished hands, seemed to stretch out wanting to cut them off, as if they already knew what was ahead. The presence of the cabin on the shores of the lake, and the view from the air, when they arrived, had deceived them. The place was much more inhospitable than they had thought, not only the trees, but the mud seemed to want to swallow their boots, and even the icy wind hitting their cheeks like hundreds of needles was trying to delay them

  Nature had reclaimed the place that had originally belonged to her. It did not want movement there. It was an insult. Only animals that had evolved at the rate of thousands of their kind could survive in the cold, while others were leaving their bones on those slopes, and then descending to the lake as their final resting place.

  And there was the environment. Shin didn't know why, but ever since they had left the cabin, he had felt something strange. It was a tingling sensation that was fixed on the back of his neck, he knew that something had detected his presence and it wasn't the drone behind him. It was not fear either, but rather uneasiness. But as he was used to feeling haunted, he certainly felt that he would alert Mai for no reason. The small back of Mai, with her long braid moving from side to side, was what worried him.

  She was... or rather had once been more human and could be hurt. He would never forgive himself if anything happened to her. She had entrusted her whole being to him.

  Him.

  It.

  An outsider. An alien, in a land he had never belonged to in the first place, but which he had decided to call home anyway. Over the years he had seen many things, but now he could finally embrace something resembling happiness. Even if he had to continue to risk his life for a world that often seemed absurd to him with its wars and intrigues. Even if when he arrived months ago, he didn't even think he would be joining Nevermore, although at the time he didn't think trouble was waiting for him as soon as he arrived. Had it been worth so many years, centuries, lost on the other side?

  Shin looked again at Mai's back. Yes, it was worth it. Everything else was already a thing of the past.

  It was not the wild time of the 20th century of the Ancient Era. Even if the world had become an even stranger place than he remembered, this time it was different. Nevermore was different from when he and a group of madmen believed they could solve the world's problems by creating a secret organization dedicated to studying Dark Events.

  Nevermore had a solid infrastructure in the world, which was more than he could say for the futile attempt that had been Tempus Fugit. So many lives lost chasing an insane dream.

  "What is that?"

  Mai's voice snapped him out of his musings and he nearly tripped over one of the filthy fungus strands coming out of the lake. She turned and looked at him with wide eyes then looked back at the lake, to her right. Mai stopped and gazed as if in rapture at the lake. The drone that had been going ahead of them up to this point was now about ten meters away but almost skimming the surface of the water.

  "What?" he turned around too.

  Shin couldn't rely on his right vision due to his blindness, but he felt that somehow she was looking almost in the direction he felt he was being watched.

  "Mai?"

  She kept looking in the same direction, her gaze lost in the waters. The drone's eye was facing the waters as well but slightly tilted downward. Whatever she was seeing was through the connection to the drone.

  "Hey!" Shin reached over and swiped at her shoulder.

  Almost instantly, she came to herself as she frowned and blinked a couple of times in confusion.

  "What just happened?" asked Shin.

  "No... nothing, but I'm sure I saw something moving there. I wanted to be sure it wasn't a body but... maybe it's just a fish." She meditated for a few seconds and Shin looked at the waters.

  The clarity was getting darker beyond five meters, it was not like the other part that had a gentle slope, perhaps this part of the lake in its entirety was much deeper.

  "How much further to the place?"

  "Just two hundred meters." She said and pointed ahead.

  They set off again as Shin glanced back at the lake from time to time. Before they reached the two hundred meters indicated she stopped and pointed again to the area where the lake became much narrower and the hills became a narrower gorge.

  It was almost as thick and muddy as the others but it had a small stretch of higher ground on the shore that allowed one to see a little further into the depths. Further north, almost half a kilometer from where they were, they could hear the water changing its speed and, if they were not mistaken, it was the area where the landslide had made a kind of natural dam, dragging hundreds of trees down the hill.

  In ancient times that part was only a small tributary of just a few meters or centimeters in some parts that connected both lakes. Now however it was a river of almost sixty meters thick, whose waters flowed furiously down to the north lake to then die between the hills and mountains around feeding the subterranean reservoirs.

  They both walked in silence to the area where Komarov's signal had been lost.

  "The search team made it this far?" asked Shin looking at the terrain.

  "At least that's what they said in the report."

  "Didn't they see all that stuff?"

  Mai turned to Shin quizzically. "There's no mention of this or any of the other anomalies."

  "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked. "What if the search and rescue group somehow was affected by the same thing as the doctor and his girlfriend?"

  "This place seems to affect those who come near it, but only for a few weeks at a time," Mai said.

  "Prior to the Big War there were never any reports of anything strange going on?"

  "No, only that this was a tourist area."

  They walked down to the waters and looked but there were certainly no markings of any kind on the ground, at least human ones. The filaments coming out of the water seemed to be the only things that had almost imperceptible movement and left a crawling trail over the muddy silt. They were much thicker in this part and were lost among the trees, almost as if whatever they were feeding on was more abundant in the area.

  "If the Neurowire location signal ended up here, and if he really did commit suicide as he said in the message, he could only be in the water or in the forest." Shin said.

  "The problem is, if he did commit suicide by throwing himself into the waters, we would have to go further down. Maybe there is something the search party missed. It's been a week already. If he didn't sink, he can only be in that log dam," said Mai pointing forward with her trekking pole.

  At that moment Shin sniffed the air and turned looking to his left in the direction of the forest uphill. Above the stench of the fungus, he had caught a whiff of something else. It was a smell that he knew quite well, much to his dismay. Mai, noticing the strange attitude, tried to sharpen her sense of smell. She also knew that smell. It was the smell of decomposition. Shin slowly drew his weapon from his shoulder holster and in the other hand he held his trekking pole in case he had to use it as a weapon as well. If there was something dead further up, there was a chance that there might be an animal ready to attack too. He started walking up the slope slowly when Mai caught his attention.

  "Let me send a drone first," she said and the black sphere behind Shin set off up the hill, emitting a faint buzzing sound with choppy tones as it passed him.

  Through her Neurowire, Mai could see what the drone was seeing live.

  Ten seconds passed, then twenty, until it seemed to have reached its destination. Mai put a displeased expression on her face.

  "Is it Komarov?"

  "No… it's just a bear, and it's dead," she said and began to climb.

  Shin followed her, once again watching as the filaments climbed upwards as well.

  He thought he imagined what they would find.

  About seventy meters up the steep path, at the foot of two hundred-year-old fir trees, they found the unfortunate animal. It was lying on its side. If they had to judge by putting an expression on the animal, it would have been that of a scream of horror. The jaw lay dislocated on its side on the ground, with shreds of black flesh and bone visible, a bruised tongue and empty eye sockets.

The stomach was swollen. But what had made Mai nauseous was something else. In the mouth of the animal, eyes and back, the putrid-smelling fungus was penetrating into his body. The smell was unbearable, despite the cold, and Mai put a hand to her nose.

  Shin, on the other hand, didn't seem too bothered by it, as he squatted down to better examine the animal. He paid special attention to the mycelial filaments that seemed to be feeding on the carcass because of its fatness. It gave him a bad feeling, because it was likely that the bloating was not due to gas, but rather that it was full of the fungus. Then he looked under the animal and beyond the spruce trees and noticed something else. More filaments were coming up the path but these were different, they weren't coming straight from the lake, they were sprouting from the ground and were getting lost higher up, where the stench was getting stronger.

 

 

  This time he did not wait and walked the few meters uphill to what appeared to be a ledge of the hill with a small treeless plain. Daylight was streaming into the treeless area and Shin realized why. The surrounding trees were just as withered as many of the others in the area, but the sliminess had taken its toll. Not only that, several goat carcasses and a huge dead elk were also there. All the animals were found with the same characteristics as the bear, had no attack marks from any other animal. All had succumbed to the fungus.

  "Well, with this we have enough for the cavalry to come up. I don't know if we have a new species but what is clear is that thing is dangerous." Shin said looking at Mai who was at his back but again looking down in the direction of the water downstream.

  "But we have no news from Komarov," she said and turned to look at her partner. "The map Amir gave me with the supposed location of where all those people died sixty years ago is nearby."

  "Yes, but is it on the other side?"

  "I'm looking through the other drone and we can cross over the logs in dam like you said."

  "You want to check it out?" he asked.

  "I was just thinking in case Komarov and Ivraeva were in the same kind of cult maybe they may have gone there. What do you say?"

  "That's fine with me. We still have a couple of hours of daylight."

  Mai sent the data with photographs of what they had obtained to Nevermore's main Kazakhstan station, located in Astana. Arsen was probably going to be more relieved, now that they had reason to set up a formal investigation.

  The descent down the mountain was more difficult than the ascent, even though it was only a short distance. They would have continued from where they were to the dam had it not been for the fact that beyond the ledge, where the dead animals were, there was no path, only the steep and slippery slope and the branches that would make their way difficult. Once they descended, they resumed the path towards the dam.

  The path became easier in that part once they were a hundred meters away from the place where Komarov's signal was lost. They still encountered the same obstacles, but in a way, they could feel that the place was different. The stench was no longer felt in the air, and even the filaments were decreasing in quantity. Until they reached the dam and barely found a few here and there. It had to be true that whatever was happening seemed to concentrate more on the larger water reservoir.

  The dam was simply a pile of hundred fallen trees interconnecting those on either side. The rolling of the trunks down the mountain had torn away parts of the thicker branches and simplified the passage without having to cut or dodge branches to cross. But, even so, it had to be done carefully. They were not sure how firm it would be for the passage. Even though they were both light, the parts where the branches were torn off showed long sharp splinters capable of penetrating flesh like butter. Not to mention that the speed and pressure of the water coming down was a hazard to be considered.

  The thaw of the Tian Shan Mountains must already be occurring in the south, and the water was passing with unusual fury under some trunks and spitting out of holes several meters away in others, as if the liquid element itself wanted to run away from something.

  They both looked around the dam for a few minutes, in case Komarov's body was there, but the search was in vain.

  "I'll go first," Shin said perching and leaping like a freerider over the logs. "Are you going to be all right by yourself? Or shall I carry you?"

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  "We're not in the middle of the sea," she said mimicking him.

  "Let me go first just to be safe, the last thing we need is for the logs to get loose and drag us downstream."

  "You're too cautious."

  "You can never be too cautious."

  Shin began to cross and stopped halfway across to survey the view from those vantage points. To the south, losing himself in the mountains, he watched as a layer of mist advanced in the distance over the lake. He finished crossing followed by the drone and in a few seconds he was on the other side of the lake. The logs had passed the endurance test. Mai did the same almost instantly, but not before doing the same as her companion by looking into the distance.

  "There's a mist coming down."

  "Yeah, we'd better hurry," she urged.

  The east side of the forest looked much the same as the west side, with hills and spruce-studded mountains stretching as far as the eye could see. But what caught both of their attention was when they headed south again, following the shore, the layer of mushrooms on the ground were much less in quantity and the passage was not as difficult as on the other side.

  "Come here. It's this way." Mai said, marking the path once again.

  She pointed to an area that was lost in the trees and they entered the forest, tracing an oblique line in a southeasterly direction. The snow was a few centimeters thick and did not hinder their passage and the slope of the mountain was much lighter, the wind from the lake pushed them up so, beyond worrying about not slipping, they had no major problems.

  The amount of filaments had almost completely disappeared in that stretch and the change was evident in the environment, and they had barely seen any trees affected on that side, but the snow increased in small amounts as they walked a few tens of meters.

  Shin began to scratch the back of his neck. Again he had the feeling that something was following them but it was different this time, it was something more threatening. As if something didn't want him on the spot.

  "I think you'd better draw your gun, just in case," he said.

  "Why? Did you see something?"

  "Don't you feel anything weird in here?"

  "No, and it smells a lot better than the other side," she said, as she filled her lungs.

  She decided to draw her gun just the same, Shin was much better at sensing when something might be wrong.

  With the gun drawn this time it was Mai who experienced a strange itch on the back of her neck and this was heightened when they heard a sound of something cracking in the trees, not too far away from them, but they were sure they had heard the sounds of an animal's paws on the snow.

  It was true, now, for some reason, she felt watched by something although it was not a sense of threat like Shin felt, more just alertness. She moved her ears several times, trying to pick up some sound but nothing else was heard. The drones equipped with thermal vision could not see anything either, but the sensation continued all the way until they reached the place they were looking for.

  The spot marked on the map was a place where the trees spaced out considerably and the mountain terrain steepened into a slight counter-slope, which stretched almost fifty meters wide until it began to rise again. On both sides the counter-slope extended as far as their eyes could see, getting lost in the thicket and the snow, which had almost melted, except for the frost on the branches.

  They both exchanged glances. They realized that the unpleasant smell had returned, although much lighter. The fungus had appeared again from the ground and Shin kept wondering how widespread it could be. There were systems that could cover miles, but if it was as dangerous as it seemed no one had ever reported it before.

  "This was the place?"

  "Yes," Mai replied.

  If they expected to find any trace of Komarov at the site, they were disappointed. Only the trees with their mute presence were there. The snow hid parts of the ground, but if there had indeed been a body there they would have found it without difficulty, for the layer was not thick enough to cover a grown man.

  "Is it colder here than on the other side, is it just me?" asked Mai.

  "I'm not sure. I've got a few pounds of metal on my body." he replied as he examined the place.

  The years since Ivraeva's disappearance and the death of the strange group of people at the site had passed and the weather had altered the shape of the terrain. If they wanted any evidence of it, after all this time, they would have to bring in more people and comb the terrain with the medico-legal investigation team from Nevermore Station. They already had more than enough material to do that anyway.

  They checked as much as they could and Mai recorded several times and took photographs of the site sending orders to the drones, which were then sent almost immediately to the central station.

  They walked another hundred meters inspecting the place until they finally reached a clearing in the forest, where they could see some old stumps of several destroyed trees. They formed a ring, and towards the center, they saw four thick fir trees that must be as old as their already withered peers around. There were no collapsed trunks to be seen, probably, if there had been any, they must have slid down the mountain long ago.

  They approached to examine the standing trees and to their surprise found that the slimy fungus sprouted from the base of them again, coiling in a spiral around the thick trunks with thicker snakelike parts and thinner ones forming some kind of nervous network whose tiny tips ended in tendrils. But those trees were in good condition and curiously showed no sign of the pestilence of the others on the other side of the lake, despite being covered with the same slimy film. However, although the discovery could be of great scientific interest, what attracted the attention of both of them was something else, and that was that the network of filaments seemed to stop at a specific point.

  On the bark of the trees, at the height of the eyes of a person of average height, they found carved a kind of elongated faces, three in bas-relief and one in high-relief, which watched them like silent guardians of a time already forgotten. Each one was different and three had their gazes fixed towards the forest while the one in the west, in high relief, looked towards the lake. The northern tree's face showed some rough feline features, the western one was a horned animal and the southern one was a bird stabbing its own chest with its beak. All the engravings were made in a rustic style and reminded Shin of those of some tribal cultures he had seen in person long ago. However, it was the one facing west towards the lake that caught their attention.

  That one was different.

  While the others were simply engravings that sunk into the wood, this one had been carved in high relief on the knot of the tree. The shape of the knot and how it had been engraved gave Mai the feeling that the creature was almost intent on escaping from the tree. It had the same appearance as the hated figure they had been seeing for the past few days. There was that sort of beaked head protruding with its four horns forming a sort of hood and four arms with bony hands and elongated fingers that embraced the thin stomach, and the lower part of the body extended forming a thinner line that was lost at the base of the tree. The filaments around it drew a more defined outline but without touching the high relief and almost gave the appearance that the creature had broken through an unknown threshold and entered the reality of this world.

  Mai recalled the image Naomi had sent them of the two-meter figure and wondered which one was closer to the true appearance. This one was much more grotesque than the one they had seen and the miniature representations. She wasn't sure if it was because of the lighting that left the place in a semi-darkness but, depending on how one looked at it from different angles, the head almost seemed to be in seriousness at times and at other times as if, at the level of the mouth, it made a grimace that twisted into a slight smile.

  Yet they found no sign of Komarov there either. They went a little deeper into the trees looking in case there were more signs in the trees but the search proved fruitless.

  "We know that this Bicini guy did the carvings in '64, but now we know he was here sometime before or after the '65 incident."

  "How do you know?"

  Shin knelt at the foot of the high relief and pointed to the creature's hands and then upward.

  "They are two different carvings. The four faces are older but have the same style, time hasn't erased that. But the bottom part of this one is much more recent. My suspicion is that this bottom part was made by Komarov. You see these fingers? These are much more rustic, and the carving doesn't have to be more than a few years old. Do you remember the image of the figure he had in his possession? The one Zehjo show us in the hologram? Well, it's almost the same style."

  And it was true. There were certain lines, edges and parts that contrasted with the head, as if they had been made with an unskilled hand.

  "What about the other three?"

  Shin shook his head.

  “I have no idea. Maybe other deities? But it seems like the only one they were paying attention to was this one,” he said indicating the horned head and stood up. He walked over to the others and looked at the more feline looking one. "Maybe this cult has worshipped animals from the park, this one I'm pretty sure is a bobcat and that one over there is a deer."

  He walked around the logs pointing to the respective ones and when he came back in front of the high relief almost carelessly looked up. There, almost five meters high, there were some large marks on the bark of the tree, with a concave aspect, some higher and some lower, as if something had hit hard that part.

  "What about the bird? I think I've seen other similar depictions." Mai asked pulling him out of his reverie.

  "Yeah, that one is weird, different style. It's been used in heraldry, on ancient seals and even some secret societies used something similar. I'm not sure what something like this would do here," Shin said, after thinking about it for a few seconds, he added. "After World War II, I spent some time traveling around America. Once in Panama I remember Leon and I found a clue of some kind to a group that worshipped a strange jaguar-like idol that had been found at a dig. The thing is that somehow the animal's eyes produced a kind of hypnagogic hallucination in its worshippers, that they interpreted as out-of-body experiences."

  "Let me guess, you two ended up destroying the idol?"

  "No. It didn't have any side effects or turn its followers into maniacal killers. It was all because of the trance of looking too much into the eyes. But I wondered if what happens with all the people here isn't the same thing. Whatever these people saw, they kept coming back to them as if they couldn't escape it. Komarov, Ivraeva, the people with psychological disorders who came here, all of them. Do you remember what Zejho told us? He couldn't move either and doesn't remember how he got back to bed. Sure, in case that's true."

  "Do you think he kept something from us?"

  "No, I don't. But in case these people have been influenced by something it wouldn't be unusual for them to have memory gaps. I'm not sure if you could even pull anything concrete out with a deep dive into the memory. It's basically an unconscious memory, something kept them coming back. When they send out the research teams tomorrow I'd like to take samples of this stuff back to the island lab," he said, pointing to the filaments on the tree. "The ones here are a little different than the ones on the other side."

  "We'll see… " Mai said, looking sideways at him.

  She hoped Shin wouldn't think of taking the whole trees back to the island. She sighed as if a weight was lifted off her shoulder and added. "Tomorrow we can bring a team to investigate further, this time with an official order. The only thing… we have to come up with the why."

  "Why? The glows should be enough to draw attention. First the glows, then Komarov, and when the team arrives, wham! They figure these things here, along with the fungus, and there, you've got the why."

  "I hope it works."

  Minutes passed and while they continued their search, it proved fruitless. They found no trace of Komarov anywhere. They had found more than enough, but still there was no trace of one of the main reasons they were in the place. Mai hoped to find something, even if it was only a simple clue to the scientist's whereabouts.

  "Some people who want to disappear, just really do, you know?" Shin said

  "There is no such thing as a mysterious disappearance, only poorly investigated cases," Mai said, sighing wearily.

  "You were humans and yet you disappeared before you became feys."

  "Yeah, but that's different. If Komarov had been abducted to some parallel dimension, we wouldn't have to be looking for him in first place, because his entire existence would have disappeared and no one would know he even existed. Ergo, this a normal case of alleged suicide."

  "Yeah… I wouldn't call any of this normal."

  The sound of something cracking, a score of meters away from where they were standing, made them turn around once more. They had not forgotten what they had been through only minutes ago and both drew their weapons once more.

  They had certainly been able to see animal tracks in the snow, but none had made an appearance and the fact that Mai could not see them with the thermal cameras through the drones made her uneasy, but not too much. Accustomed as she was to her work, she simply judged that perhaps the local animals were frightened to see them.

  They stopped talking and continued on their way almost in silence until they returned to the shore from where they had come. A light mist already covered the surface of the lake. The other side of the lake was still visible but they had better hurry. The sound of the water rushing down practically erased their worries and they reached the dam once again.

  "Do you think they are lynxes?" she asked, looking once again at the forest.

  Shin did the same and shook his head.

  "No. Probably a deer or something bigger. They barely moved while we were there, but I assure you it was something bigger." he said and climbed into the trees of the makeshift bridge. As he crossed he looked south again and could already see that the thickest fog was almost upon them.

  "We'd better hurry we have less than an hour before it's dark, if the fog doesn't catch up with us first." Shin looked at her and found that she was still looking in the direction of the forest. "Hey!"

  Mai turned around and looked at him this time smiling, Shin shrugged his shoulders looking at her in confusion.

  "I would have liked to see a lynx."

  "You want to play with a wildcat in the middle of nowhere, and I'm the weird one for playing with a drone. You're going to get eaten alive," he said. "Come on."

  Mai smiled at him, put the gun back in the leg holster and grabbed one of the thick roots of the tree to climb up and put her right foot on the trunk pressing up.

  Everything happened so fast that they didn't have time to react.

  Shin looked south again, towards the mist, when Mai felt a piercing pain in her right shoulder followed by a cracking sound on it, it was the one she had grabbed the roots with, and she screamed in pain seeing how she was lifted several meters in the air by something that had snagged her clothes. She was shaken a couple of times and then thrown more than ten meters to the left, in the direction of the forest. Her back hit the thick trunk of a spruce tree and she fell unconscious, at the same time as some of the snow from the branches was dislodged by the jolt. A wound began to ooze blood from her forehead.

  Shin opened his eyes and began to run back down the trunk in direction to Mai, shouting her name, but he couldn't get very far. It was a sudden tremor and he saw the trunk where he was standing begin to tilt to the side he had just come from, at the same time as the part of the trunk where he was standing began to lift into the air. He slowed his pace almost losing his balance for a second and looked ahead.

  There was something between him and Mai and even though he couldn't see it he knew it was big and heavy enough to lift the part where he was.

  Suddenly the part where Shin was standing on fell back down, faster than it had risen, producing a thud. Over the sound of the water, he could hear the logs underneath begin to creak. That had released his weight, but it wasn't for more than a few seconds. More crunching and Shin then knew that the dam was going to succumb.

  The invisible mass between them struck once more, and the dam gave way. The blow delivered this time was as loud as if someone had thrown a fragmentation grenade followed by a loud bellow that could be heard for miles around.

  A shower of splinters, tree bark, water and mud filled everything for a second like a shockwave. Shin was thrown into the air to the side as the logs gave way and the water finally released from the pressure and violently destroyed the remnants of the huge dam.

 

 

  Shin fell into the water and tried to grab one of the logs but another one passed right over it squeezing his arm as if trying to crush it, as it sank under the weight. The hundreds of logs floated and sank passing over each other, blocking any exit to the surface. Shin gritted his teeth and pushed one up almost as thick as a small car. But the fact that he had no footing made it difficult to move. He clenched his bony fist and, despite the force against the liquid element, directed a blow toward the logs.

  It was as if a squid had arrived on the scene. The moment his knuckles collided with the logs, a dark cloud like ink appeared from his fists and enveloped his hand. It was as if that kind of darkness had come from him. Black veins appeared under his shirt and began to slowly climb up his neck. On his hand that darkness took a definite shape despite the water, almost as if it were a ferrofluid material and adhered to his hand forming a black metal glove. Again Shin hit the trunk and this time it leapt into the air a couple of meters while releasing splinters everywhere.

  "MAI!"

  He shouted with all his might as he came to the surface and that was the last thing that came out of his throat. He saw a huge log coming, bouncing over the others and, with its most splintered part, at a dizzying speed, crushed his head.

  The water turned red for a moment and Shin disappeared into the darkness of the depths.

  All was silence, broken only by the rushing of the water and the sound of trees crashing, as they headed downstream.

  The snow had begun to fall again over the place and Mai was lying on the ground, while the wound on her head was still bleeding.

  The fog had already reached them and began to spread its mantle over them, as if it were a veil trying to cover the terrifying scene that had taken place.

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