Beyond Survival: Chapter 7

“Get to it! We need those buildings up by the end of the day!”

Dr. Anderson watched from his control room as all the engineering teams worked as fast as they could to assemble the prefabricated buildings in the clearing while harvesting drones worked in tandem with other teams to cut down a large swathe of the forests around them to make space for more construction.

It had been two days since they had received news from the other side that The Corruption would reach the Nevada Base in a matter of a week at most, increasing the urgency everyone felt.

Ever since then, Dr. Anderson has ordered everyone to stop working on R&D works and surveillance. Instead, he pulled every man and woman he could get and had them double down on the construction of shelters and resourcing operations to sustain the thousands of civilians that were about to burst through from the other side.

Already, they had managed to set up over fifty buildings, each one capable of housing up to a hundred people in a configuration of five stories high, with each floor having five separate units and each unit housing four people.

And it was a good thing that they had done so since the three Generals on the other side had already begun the evacuations and a steady stream of Civilians had been moving through to the other side since the day before.

While Dr. Anderson felt worried about the status of the Gate device since they had never managed to stress test the machine before its full-scale operations, he had no choice but to take a wait-and-see approach.

The Gate would open for one hour continuously, allowing over a thousand civilians and a large quantity of resources and equipment to be transported, before shutting down for two hours before being activated again.

By this point, nearly eight thousand civilians had been transported to the other side of the Gate, making this clearing feel very crowded and making the situation extremely chaotic since there were still three thousand people without homes ready for them right now.

Combined with the general discontent and depression at leaving behind the only home they ever knew, the irrational anger and other outbursts led to a chaotic situation that needed the Military units to intervene and stop before they escalated into something ugly.

During their hasty harvesting of wood and other resources from the flora around them, they came across many exotic creatures and plant life that interested the scientists greatly. However, they did not have the time to look at them properly before they were shoved into cryogenic storage for study at a later time.

For now, the priority was to continue building infrastructure for the incoming refugees and establishing supply chains for their sustenance.

Already, their Atmospheric Condenser units which could produce nearly 4000 liters of water per day were strained to the limit to barely accommodate everyone even with rationing it to the absolute limit, forcing Dr. Anderson to commence the construction of additional Condensers in parallel with the shelters along with expanding the electricity grid through the construction of a few more Hydrogen Generators, the Electrolytic Synthesizers that could be used to produce the Hydrogen needed for the Generators, expanding the energy grid and installing more Batteries and many more changes happening in parallel across the board.

One of the few strokes of fortune that their prospector teams came across in the last few days was a vast network of underground water sources, a discovery that instantly allowed the humans on this side of the gate to reduce their reliance on Solar power by the usage of Electrolysis for Hydrogen synthesis.

Unfortunately, this water was deemed undrinkable by humans due to various foreign microorganisms and unknown minerals mixed into it.

Even then, it was still a good thing for humans as they now had a steady supply of Hydrogen for their electricity and production needs.

However, not everything is sunshine and rainbows.

Dr. Anderson’s implant sent him a ping originating from one of the Ornies high in the atmosphere, highlighting a relatively large group of signatures picked up by their motion trackers around the base and the sensors aboard the Ornie.

For the past few days, Dr. Anderson had been keeping an eye on this anomalous group of signatures that seemed to appear and disappear regularly around their base, sometimes increasing in number, and sometimes decreasing into single digits.

If it were not for the AI that had tagged this anomalous group and highlighted it to him, he might have considered them to be nothing more than a group of native Fauna.

However, as he continued spying on their movements through the motion trackers and the Ornies up in the atmosphere, it was clear that whatever this group of creatures was, it was sentient.

And yet, once again, his hands were tied and he could not send a team to look into this group since he desperately needed every pair of hands he could get to work on the construction of the infrastructure.

That did not mean that he dismissed them as a threat. As a scientist who had worked with the US military and then the UN for as long as he did, he knew better than anyone that it was never prudent to leave unknown entities to lurk in your territory without some kind of deterrence in place.

That is why he had secretly instructed the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma squads to work on establishing basic defensive infrastructure around the base discretely. A task that they were implementing flawlessly.

Already, his implant was showing that five automated MAC cannon emplacements were online, with the sixth one being worked on, while the perimeter of the base was littered with hidden large-caliber Gauss guns and Railguns. They even used outdated weaponry that relied on chemical-propelled ammo like the Vulkan chain guns and CIWS systems due to the lack of proper resources to construct full-scale defensive infrastructure.

If this group proved themselves to be hostile in some way, they would find themselves blown to hell by the human firepower.

Dr. Anderson knew that what he and his kind were doing was nothing short of a hostile invasion of another world. It is highly likely that this group of unknowns are the original inhabitants of this place, which would paint the humans as monsters that unjustly took the land and resources of others.

However, he also knew that they had no choice.

Humanity is desperate and afraid. They are facing an extinction crisis and their world is nearly dead. That is why, they will do whatever it takes for the sake of their survival, even if they end up becoming monsters that history books would condemn as a stain on humanity.

With his mind made up, Dr. Anderson continued watching this group of unknowns through his Implants while also keeping an eye on the progress of his teams.

‘Thank god for the Mind Accelerator Implant made available to military scientists. If it were not for that thing’s computational power augmenting my mind, I would never have been able to keep up with so much work.’

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Somewhere under the African Continent. Hyperloop corridor 8.

In one of the twenty Hyperloop corridors that hundreds of pods use every day to shuttle people towards Nevada, a shuttle passed through the artificially created vacuum at blistering speeds.

However, unlike the rest of the Hyperloop capsules, this one looked as if it was aging decades every second.

It was a clear sign that The Corruption had made its way into this capsule.

Within the capsule was a scene taken directly out of a hellish nightmare.

Corpses littered the capsule as The Corruption rapidly ate through their organic matter, decaying their bodies at a visible rate. All the while, those few who were not yet dead screamed in agony and fear as their bodies withered in front of their very eyes.

And yet, inside the pilot cabin, the situation was completely different.

“Nevada Control, This is Capsule 2284. We are at the halfway point and are expected to arrive within the next six hours. Over”

“Acknowledged, Capsule 2284. We will clear the platform before your arrival for unloading the civilians. Be advised, Hyperloop Corridor 9 recently collapsed due to The Corruption. It is estimated that the rest of the Hyperloop corridors will have to work overtime to get the rest of the civilians over here. Over.”

“Understood, Nevada Control. Thanks for the heads-up. Over and Out.”

With that, the pilot disconnected the communications and continued monitoring the shuttle systems.

His glowing crimson eyes held a chilling coldness as his ashen skin reflected the light within the cabin.

If anyone had seen his current state, with his half-torn Environmental suit and ruined Exo-Rig, which exposed his ashen skin, crimson eyes, and the rotting flesh beneath his clothes, they would have run for the hills.

For this was a clear sign of The Corruption having devoured the humanity of this man, turning him into a ruthless machine that had only one goal.

To kill as many humans as possible before he is inevitably destroyed through the judicious use of firepower.

And unfortunately for the Nevada base, he was now heading toward the last bastion of humanity with ill intent.