Chapter 173: Chapter 168

Dr Madison Li, head of the Nexus Occult Department, sniffed not for the last time as the coarse air of West Virginia antagonized her sinuses. As much as the Head of Occult loathed being beyond the Nexus’ clean air, the nature of the so-called ‘mothmen’ had forced her to leave the comforts of home. At least the quarantined sites were extensively renovated to suit occult testing, like an air-conditioned tent, and having trenches be dug around the hibernating bodies so that nobody had to endure squatting for too long.

 

Yes, she was getting old. Madison was not so delusional like some people to deny that fact.

 

With her portable scanner in her left hand and a Tiberium crystal shard in her right, the head researcher checked the readings of the mothmen as she waved the green crystal closer to their forms. The readings showed negligible changes; these things were so deep in their hibernation that their emissions were just barely above ambient levels.

 

Then she instructed a Mr Brainy to lift a body, and was disappointed at the lack of reaction in the emissions. After having the mothman placed back on the dirt, Madison called for an assistant to break out the tools. They’ll have to cut one open after all.

 

Why must the metanatural be such a pain to study? With beasts and natural phenomena, you could make educated guesses on the functions of their anatomy or the effects of their occurrence. A doomgoose’s fanged, mutated beak could tell you plenty about the animal’s nature before you had to dissect it, a radstorm’s birth could be predicted and guided.

 

Metaphysics on the other hand made far less sense, and it was utterly frustrating to her. X-rays had confirmed that these mothmen had no organs or bones, yet they somehow had enough strength in their flesh and skin to maintain structural integrity, let alone showing the sham of breathing. The wings wrapped around each of them should be too thin to do anything, yet Madison wouldn’t be surprised if they actually granted these mothmen flight, just because metaphysics overruled conventional physics. 

 

The metanatural often did not care whether something’s wings were functionally too small or too weak, all that mattered was that the wings existed, because wings equals flight. Just like the Atom cultists of Far Harbor, who barely had a single sperm to share between them, yet managed to impregnate their victims, even if the poor women were themselves infertile. Through the arbitrary rules of metaphysics, sperm in womb meant baby, as long as some unknown checkboxes were ticked off in the process.

 

Madison sometimes felt that she’d get better results studying the occult after a lobotomy, so that she could finally delve into the subject without the chains of common sense holding her back.

 

“Preparing for dissection,” she announced to the gaggle of assistants around her whose names she couldn’t really remember. “Someone keep an eye on the ambient readings, and let me know if anything changes in the other bodies.” There’d been enough cases of shared senses or linked life essences that Dr Li had noted it down as part of the field testing SOP.

 

Wielding a scalpel, Madison cautiously cut at the chest, only to yelp in surprise and jerk back as a burst of brown miasma burst out. The mothman quickly deflated like an untied balloon and turned into a pile of skin. As Madison cursed, she saw the cloud of gas flow out the air conditioning. Against the damned air current, because of course it can.

 

Then the alarms in the tent went off, as the eyes of twenty-six mothmen shot open and they immediately unfolded their wings to take to the air. Madison instinctively went for her coat’s communicator. “Euclid anomalies in Site Alpha!” 

 

As the scientists hurriedly moved to make as much distance as they could, the Mr Brainy bots went into subduing mode, their eyes glowing green while their metal claws sheathed back to reveal Tiberium ones. Madison ushered the assistants out of the tent as her gaze was locked on the fluttering anomalies. The gas cloud had escaped, but the awakened mothmen flew about chaotically at the tent’s ceiling, ramming into the thick fabric and its metal frame repeatedly.

 

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She noted how the mothmen now were free of wrinkles, and dust flaked off them like scales from a butterfly’s wings. Their eyes were massive, solid things, more like a spider’s instead of the compound eyes of most insects. The x-rays had not given any indication those bulging eyes existed. They glowed too, flickering between red, orange and purple. She also noted that the x-rays missed the long proboscis flicking out of their abnormally small mouths. The mouthpieces darted out to stab at the tent, poking holes in the fabric and shaving off metal.

 

Before she could worry about the creatures escaping, the Mr Brainy robots engaged them. Grasping crystal claws yanked each mothman by their legs or arms to drag them back down. The mothmen struggled against their captors, kicking and flailing and flicking probosci futilely. The robots’ eyestalks then focused Tiberium-tinted light at them, and Madison had to close her ears as their probosci retracted and their mouths opened far wider than she thought possible to let out a piercing shriek.

 

The head researcher of NOD keeled over as the metanatural sound stabbed into her brain. She was vaguely aware that blood was trickling out her ears, eyes, nose and mouth, and her heart was beating far too quickly. Even with the blood muting her senses and her brain being scrambled with a psychic cake mixer, Madison heard the robots abandoning pacification attempts after detecting her incapacitation.

 

“Nexus civilians threatened. Enacting Keter containment protocols.”

 

She couldn’t see anything, but even as an assistant dragged her out to safety, the fading thrum of the alarms told Dr Li that the threat had been promptly neutralized. As healing guns were trained on her, the head researcher mentally cursed at what had just happened even as she rubbed off the drying blood from her face. With unobstructed vision once more, Madison saw the tail end of more brown miasma fleeing through the air conditioning, while the floppy remains of mothmen skin lay in tattered pieces on the ground or in the Mr Branies’ claws.

 

They had been complacent again, though at least this time the outcome did not result in any fatalities. Still, because of that, she and her crew would have to endure a cleansing ritual and a full quarantine. On the bright side, Madison would have the novel opportunity to study the effects of the metanatural on herself. The collective shriek was excruciating, but it had only affected her, not the other researchers who were on the other side of the tent’s open entrance.

 

More metanatural bullshit.

 

Protocols will have to be updated. Maybe she’ll have to take up Sev on the offer for civilian-grade Sardaukar armor. But first, before they got dragged into the ritual circles…

 

“Anomalies have escaped. Can we track them?”

 

Cabal’s voice came through the tent’s speakers. “Affirmative. Eyebots have locks on unidentified twenty-seven signatures escaping Site Alpha. Maintaining tracking.”

 

Well, at least it’s not all botched. Madison sighed with some relief, and then turned to her recovering assistants. Might as well make a lesson out of this debacle…

 

“So, who here can tell me what we did wrong?”

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