[WARNING — DISTURBING IMAGERY]
[WARNING — DISTURBING IMAGERY]
The morning of day 204 arrived. pale light filtered through the shield above, laying a soft glow over the water station. Egon, Alfred, Wagner, abi, and Professor Kastner woke to the crisp, fresh air that invigorated both body and mind. It almost deceived them, as if the world outside was not yet ruined.
Kastner offered to joined them. He hadn't been a soldier in decades, but three years of service is more than others had. They accepted. The four men revised their plan one last time. Egon's control tablet projected blueprints of the target base, allowing them to trace weak spots and firing lanes..
After that, they transferred the supplies and equipment needed from the vehicles into portable containers. Abi stayed behind to address the malfunction.
With their preparations complete, they set out towards their target. They moved on foot — slower, but safer than engines and sand trails. 85 minutes later, they reached the safehouse Egon had secured the day before.
They placed laser-triggered sticky bombs on the doors and windows of the ground floor while they took position on the third. They scanned the area through binoculars with an infrared lenses able to detect heat signatures within 120 meters. This only covered less than 20 meters from the outer walls, enough to see any patrolling guards. There were none.
The Villa ground stretched beyond that limited range, so they launched the military drone. It rose quickly and flew towards the fortress. Three cameras fed its signal: one provided clear daylight footage, another with thermal view, and the third with a detailed x-ray-like vision. Alfred guided it, while the rest watched the feed.
The footage came in three pieces. None of them was pleasant. Tens of bodies, lifeless. The area looked war-torn. Vehicles were overturned, burned to ashes, or half-buried in pale dust. One of them was still burning with it's smoke nearing the color of the ground beneath it.
On thermal, there was nothing. No patrols. No movement. Just a single heat signature: Someone setting motionless in one of the upper floors.
As the drone kept moving, a new shape appeared at the edge of the estate. At first it looked hazed, then they realized it was a tree. A colossal Darkened tree. Larger than any they've seen before. It's massive trunk twisted unnaturally, as if it grew around something that resisted it. The branches were too many, covered in leaves of all stages. Not green leaves. They were a strange shade of purplish pink, like a sakura tree feeding on death.
The drone kept moving. The rest of the view was no better. Dark rocks scattered across the ground. SOme glowed faintly on thermal view. Others were cold as the dead.
Alfred switched the drone to autopilot and set it to trigger an alert if it registered anything moving besides the team and the one stationary figure. Then, they left the house and advanced.
They moved with cautious. A hundred meters to the gate felt longer than the march that got them here. The suit's sensors alerted a spike in radiation. No one suggested turning back.
They passed between the military vehicles and entered the villa. The first body they saw was sprawled just inside the gate. Skin was pale, cracks around the eyes, and its chest was torn open with the heart laying beside it, still connected by red wires of veins and arteries. A slight heat signature emanated from the body. Faint but recent. Blood had dried into rust-brown streaks, except for a small, wetter pool where it had continued to seep until very recently. Nearby, lay one of the black rocks, a bit darker than usual.
They moved on.