WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

00048

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#Signs (4), Atascadero

With a new mutant on their hands, they needed to file an interim report. They'd set off the claymore too, so noise support was necessary. The radio operator fought with his set, but changing frequencies, the usual fix for jamming, wasn't working this time. He grumbled about it. Said the monsters had no business being that technically sophisticated.

The unit split briefly in two. Jeffrey took the radio operator and a squad out by vehicle to find a spot with a clear signal.

While they were gone, Gyeoul decided to search for the isolation ward keys with the remaining soldiers. They had door breaching equipment, but breaking through every single door and iron grate was out of the question. Too much noise. Too much time.

(Door Breaching: the act of forcibly breaking or blasting through a door.) They brought the equipment anyway. What Gyeoul chose was a Halligan bar. Shaped like a pickaxe with a horn jutting from the side, with an iron pry below the handle. Solid steel all the way through -- good as a weapon.

"Found them."

A soldier rifling through the police office held up a key ring. He tossed it; Gyeoul caught it out of the air.

"Keep looking. More is better."

The soldiers turned up three more bundles of keys. Right after, the windows shuddered. The Noise Makers had kicked in. Gyeoul checked the time, gauging how far Jeffrey's Humvee would have traveled. Eventually that distance could let them back-calculate the mutant's range. Not yet.

Jeffrey's return took longer than expected. Gyeoul secured one of the eastern guard towers and posted lookouts in case the special mutant tried to slip out. Nearly thirty minutes passed before three Humvees rolled in one after another. Jeffrey explained the delay.

"The Public Health Service Corps took an interest."

The Public Health Service Corps was a paramilitary organization under the Department of Health and Human Services, currently overseeing containment line sanitation operations in cooperation with the CDC and FEMA. Intelligence gathering on infected mutants fell under their mandate as well.

"Desk jockeys never have a sense of reality. Some doctor started drilling me with questions, didn't care at all how urgent things were, just kept pushing paperwork -- proper report first, procedure first. Damn."

There was more to it than that. Gyeoul asked.

"So what was the conclusion?"

"They want it captured if possible. Dead or alive, contact them once you've got it and they'll send a helicopter."

"Easy for them to say. Any other support?"

"They asked if you being here meant we needed any. I said we were fine. We're already behind, and waiting for backup on top of that would take forever. The monster isn't going to sit tight and wait, and it's not like we have enough men to surround the building anyway. That's my thinking."

A rising reputation was a liability at times like this. The more Gyeoul lived up to his name, the more would be demanded of him. Jeffrey knew exactly what was going through his mind.

"They don't know the lesson of Mogadishu[1], and it shows. This is why you can't have idiots in charge. All these so-called experts reeking of dusty books."

America's intervention in the Somali Civil War had ended in catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Mogadishu. Too much faith placed in special forces. An impossible mission assigned, success assumed as a matter of course.

A heavy voice cut in.

"How could you just walk away from that? Should've given them an earful before leaving."

The platoon's one and only sergeant. Jeffrey shot back.

"Look, that doctor happened to be a lieutenant colonel. If I end up in the brig, who's going to command?"

"That's fine, sir. The backbone of the army is its NCOs. And there's another ensign right here. Go right ahead."

Not a single shift in pitch. His expression just as flat. That was exactly why his nickname was Bore. Marvin "Bore" Liberman. Jeffrey stared at him like he'd grown a second head.

"Sergeant, you've got no expression. Even when you joke, it doesn't come across as a joke."

"That would be because it isn't."

"What?"

The soldiers snickered. Gyeoul stepped in.

"I know none of you want to deal with this, but let's save it for later. Days are short this time of year."

Half going along with the joke. Humor in the face of fear marked a veteran, and it helped keep the men's nerves in check. Sergeant Liberman nodded.

"Better than our ensign, as expected."

"What?!"

That was the end of the banter. Two officers, one sergeant, and privates and corporals serving as acting NCOs spread the facility map out and plotted their routes. The grounds were too wide to move as a single unit; they'd run out of time.

"Let's not push our luck from the start. Expecting big results with this small a force would be delusional."

Jeffrey set that boundary from the very beginning.

Gyeoul agreed.

"It's smart. Earlier it used infected babies to test our firepower. Being careful can't hurt."

"We move by squad, but there are three corridors, so we advance in parallel. That way we can link up for support when needed. Running comms relays should handle the rest. And since it can detect our radio signals, this becomes a kind of driven hunt."

The sergeant sketched in the routes as he proposed it, meaning they weren't going to avoid every last necessary transmission. Jeffrey nodded and wrote down timings at each checkpoint. The privates and corporals noted their own times and rally points. Where to converge in an emergency, when and where to find friendlies.

Gyeoul studied the map as though carving it into his eyes. Memory work, not skill augmentation.

Investing in 「Map Navigation」 right now would yield little. Without also raising 「Memorization」, updating the minimap would take considerable time.

"Ensign Han, you're the linchpin. No objections?"

"None. That makes sense."

He accepted it as a matter of course, and the soldiers reacted with playful oohs and aahs. Jeffrey rose from his seat.

"Alright. Everyone check your cams and let's move!"

The search began at last. The keys were divided among Gyeoul, Jeffrey, and Liberman, with the remaining bundle going to the reserve squad. Two men were pulled from each squad for the guard tower and lobby posts, leaving each search team with roughly nine members including their commander.

"Do you think it's still inside the ward? It might have slipped out while we were busy."

Gyeoul's squad included Corporal Elliot. Jeffrey's doing, a quiet gesture of consideration.

"It's still inside. The interference is too strong."

He said it, then unlocked the first sector door. They'd lock it behind them to keep from being hit from the rear. If they were in a hurry, shooting the lock out would do.

Iron grates dividing the sections appeared at regular intervals. The soldiers peered at the locked doors on both sides as they passed.

"Sir, look at this. The ones locked inside aren't moving at all."

A soldier called out to Gyeoul. The young officer kept watch in the other direction as he pressed against the door. Through the wire-reinforced glass, he peered into the room. The mutant was like a freeze frame. Standing toward the window. Still.

"Is it dead?"

"Not sure."

Gyeoul waved the soldiers back. Elliot had a skeptical look.

"Doesn't look like it starved, at least. Is it conserving energy?"

That was exactly right. Gyeoul gave a vague answer, something between 'probably' and 'who knows.'

No need to demonstrate it.

Thunder. The clouds blazed white for an instant, and the frozen mutant lurched to life, convulsing. It flung itself at the grate. That was why it had been standing there all along, motionless, facing the window.

The soldiers held their breath. The mutant just stared beyond the glass. Nothing else. Then, slowly, the movement died back to stillness.

"Holy shit," Elliot breathed.

After that, everyone made a conscious effort to be even quieter. Every step deliberate.

The corridors were the same everywhere they went. Dark and silent. Ward rooms packed on either side left no gap for even the grey daylight to filter in. Outside sounds, equally muffled. Save for the mutants convulsing at every crack of thunder, the only sound was boots, hushed and careful.

Then the scene changed.

At the third section, the blast door stood open. Every door in sight, open too. Gyeoul pulled down the night vision scope from his helmet. His field of view flooded with shades of green. What mattered were the faint orange-red smears left on the floor.

"Lots of footprints."

"What the hell!"

Gyeoul warned him.

"Hey. Keep your voice down."

"...Sorry."

The soldiers kept glancing at Gyeoul. Their equipment couldn't read heat signatures.

Infected mutants ran hotter than humans. And they moved barefoot. Even so, visible footprints were strange. Not much time had passed, which meant they'd moved out immediately, in an organized fashion.

Where did they go.

Gyeoul picked up his radio to report the situation. Heavy interference.

"Ensign Jeffrey. Sergeant Liberman. Can you hear me?"

Thud. Thud. Thud. Heavy footfalls passed directly overhead, front to back. At the same moment the radio static spiked, then settled back to where it had been. Everyone looked up. Gyeoul confirmed the radio was useless and exhaled.

"What just passed overhead -- that's our quarry."

Elliot asked, uneasy.

"What do we do?"

"Follow me."

Gyeoul sprinted into the empty corridor. The soldiers scrambled after him.

"It went backward!"

"Feels like a trap."

Smart. The loud footsteps had been deliberate. The moment they tried to radio in, it had pinpointed their location.

In this moment of total uncertainty, speed was everything.

Get ahead of its predictions.

At a full sprint they reached the end of the corridor. Sure enough, the next section was open too.

There were plenty of visible traces here. Blood-soaked handprints and footprints covered the walls and floor, all pointing toward the southern corridor. The northern corridor was spotless. The soldiers were already worrying about Sergeant Liberman.

South was Liberman's route. North was Jeffrey's.

The static faded. The radio crackled to life.

「Oh, now we're getting somewhere. Ensign Han. Can you hear me? Something's off over here. Every door is wide open. I think we're going to need support.」

Sergeant Liberman's voice. Gyeoul didn't answer. He held up a hand -- radio silence.

"Don't respond. It can't know where we are."

"But...!"

"That's an order."

He silenced them and pulled the night vision scope down again. He studied both corridors carefully, then made his call.

"We're going north."

Immediate pushback. They weren't going to follow without an explanation. Gyeoul tapped the scope.

"There are more footprints on the north side. Ones you can't see."

"..."

Those who understood went pale -- fear and disbelief in equal measure.

"God, it really is a trap!"

They scrambled desperately to catch up with Gyeoul, who was already running. Two corners, roughly eighty meters, and he slowed.

Jeffrey hadn't made it this far yet. The blast door here was still locked. Each ward room, still shut.

Gyeoul unlocked the blast door and pushed it closed so it appeared locked.

Drawing on everything he'd seen so far, he thought of the creature as a cunning human.

'If you're planning an ambush, you don't put your target on edge.'

So why was only this section still locked?

He traced back his memory of the map. At the central intersection of the northern corridor stood an auditorium that jutted outward from the main building. Exactly the kind of space where large numbers of mutants could hide.

If there was an ambush, it was just ahead.

Wait. Turn it back on them.

Tipping their hand now and the creature would likely retreat to another route.

Gyeoul raised a finger to his lips. The soldiers still didn't have the full picture. They'd come to help, so why weren't they linking up immediately? But they followed his lead without argument. Because of how certain he looked.

He turned the radio volume down. Through the heavy static, Jeffrey's voice.

「Ensign Han? Sergeant Liberman? Hel-lo? Damn. This is killing me.」

The boy sent his men a hand signal.

Get ready to fight.

Footnotes:

[1] The Battle of Mogadishu (October 3-4, 1993) was a defining disaster of America's post-Cold War interventionism. U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force operators sent to capture a Somali warlord's lieutenants found themselves trapped in the city after two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down. Eighteen American soldiers were killed and seventy-three wounded. The incident became widely known in the West through Mark Bowden's book and Ridley Scott's 2001 film "Black Hawk Down." 

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