No Man Is an Island

Sandy Bell was surfing catching the biggest wave of her life. The waves at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal, are famed for being among the largest in the world and she had always wanted to surf them. She wasn't sure that was where she was, but it sure looked like the pictures she had seem of the huge swells there before the Pale Wars. Her suntanned body glistened from the surf spray, and her damp long blond hair stuck to her neck and back as she pulled at the wet top of her bikini to make sure it stayed in place as she kept perfect balance on her fiberglass surfboard. She was in total control, with a calmness in solitude that she had never before attained in her life. The only noise was the roar of the wave, and her slowing heartbeat as she grew even calmer, living in the moment.



Suddenly, Sandy frowned and her blue eyes narrowed as a strident voice broke her peace and quiet.

"WAKE UP CAPTAIN! WAKE UP SANDY!" Yelled Sandy's EGO psyche, Sargent Michael "Sarge" and sometimes "Mike" Murphy. "YOU NEED TO USE YOUR MED KIT TO KEEP YOURSELF FROM BLEEDING OUT!"

Sandy's wide blue eyes opened with a start, and she followed Sargent Murphy's orders, binding her claw wounds to staunch the profuse bleeding there with bandages from her med kit that she found in her hands,a although she didn't remember getting it out. Her EGO psyche's personality was based on her memories of her squad sargent during the Pale Wars, Master Sargent Michael "Mike" Murphy, who had made it his personal mission to keep her alive during the Pale Wars, although in the end he didn't quite succeed, for no fault of his own.

Once Sandy was bandaged and the bleeding stabilized, Sarge said less loudly and more calmly although with some urgency, "Good girl Sandy! Now you NEED to stand up! Use your assault rifle as a crutch if you need to!"

"Aw, Sarge," Protested Sandy in a whiny voice that was only in her head, "I'm tired and it will ruin my Piper if I get dirt in the barrel. Just let me sleep for a bit..."

"No, Captain," Replied Sarge firmly, "To sleep is to die. We'll get the Piper cleaned later. No excuses! Get moving soldier - NOW!"

Sandy sighed, then used her Piper assault rifle as a crutch to stand up unsteadily in the muddy gully she found herself in, first glancing at the dead bloody body of her squad mate there next to her then at the smoking wreck of the Garilu nearby before mumbling a question, "Shouldn't I stay near the wreckage, you know, in case someone comes looking for me... I know Volodja will come looking for me..."

"We weren't able to get a message out before the attack, and I'm still not able to contact any of the other Protectors," Answered Sarge, " We don't now if and when any help may get here. We need to get you to a medical facility pronto and procure some better meds. I'm betting the complex that was our target has an infirmary, and has the medical supplies we need, so lets head that direction soldier."

"What if it's guarded?" Asked Sandy as she began hobbling in the direction of where she thought the doctor's habitation to be.

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Answered Sarge, not verbalizing his concern that they might not even get to the bridge.

Volodja Uljanov was busy fighting off with huge amount of giant crazed bats to allow his men retreat safely. Fortunately for him their size and amount gave him an advantage. If bats were smaller or came in lesser quantity, he would have been already dead, but massive amount of massive specimens can cause more trouble to themselves than to their prey as Volodja had experienced in several occasions, because they have to avoid crashing with each other and at the same time every one of them tried to be first to catch the prey. That kind of things don't occur in animal kingdom exclusively. Have you seen behaviour of the "crown of the nature" during some huge discount of limited items?  If you can say "yes" then you can also compare that struggle for goods with Volodja's situation. Even the ultrasound, produced by bats, worked on Volodja's side. Although it caused him severe headache, it also messed up bat's own "radio-locating" system due to the large amount of disturbance they produced, because there was too many flying sonar systems at once. His shovel blade danced among bats and despite of getting several heavy blows, he was relatively uninjured. At least for now...


__________

"Ruined!" grieved Doctor Euthanasius. "How could you do this to me, Eugen? I picked you up from a gutter, made you whoever you are now and that's how you pay me for my kindness! What do you mean by saying that you were following orders by the letter?"

"I did! I did! I opened cages three and five as you ordered, but somehow all of them opened at once! Must be a short circuit or something like that," replied Eugen, who was eagerly scratching back of his head. 

"Possible," muttered Euthanasius. "You have always been loyal to me, Eugen. Not the brightest brain among biologists, plus that little problem of drinking, but you are dedicated to our cause. And since I am used of being surrounded by incompetence, everything is possible. But we lost lot of our work and have to start all over again if we can't catch our babies! Actually there is a silver lining! Yes there is! If we return some of surviving specimens, then we have smartest, fittest and luckiest ones, suitable for providing us with a gene pool for future breeding. Even sort of negative result is a result after all!"
__________

Another nose diving bat hit the ground when Volodja jumped backwards. It was a close miss but still counted. Volodja retreated few steps, keeping his eyes open for another possible daredevil attack when he heard Sophie's warning: "Watch out for that tree!"

"Which tree?" asked Volodja. He couldn't look around because two bats who discovered a gap among their colleagues were lunging themselves towards his chest at high speed. 

"That fallen tree behind you! Too late!" It was too late indeed, because Volodja already stumbled to the tree trunk and fell to the ground. He managed to avoid ramming bats who's descending trajectory intersected with the horizontal surface instead of vertical target as originally planned, but he also hit his head to the ground so hard that he could hear the music ringing in his ears.

"Who put a the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?" he managed to ask before passing out.

With a wicked grin on her pretty chalk white face, Lena exclaimed, "You are dead, Dr. E! You are SOOOOOOO dead! Dead, dead, dead, D-E-A-D, DEAD!" Lena pointed an alabaster finger at Dr. Euthanasia as she laughed hysterically, before saying, "Dead mad scientist walking!" Suddenly her grin disappeared, replaced with a serious look, her unblinking sky blue eyes wide as she said in a matter-of-fact way, "Let me spell it out for you, Bub. I saw Sandy Bell there in your Bat-massacre, and if Sandy was here, Volodja Uljanov is here. If Volodja Uljanov is here, then Atticus Batman is here! You know, Atticus Batman... Harbinger of Death... super powered ruthless killer of those who kill the innocent and do injustice... what, you live on an island or something? Oh, yeah, I guess you do! Well, just google it and you'll know you're dead! They're all part of a do-gooder group called the Bay Area Protectors and these Protectors flock closer than your big bats, so he won't be alone either! You're dead, man!"

Lena stopped, putting an alabaster pinkie in the corner of her lush lips as she rolled her sky blue eyes as if in deep thought, before opening them wide to stare intently at Dr. Euthanasius before saying, "However... Pooh Bear and I can save you! Atty-baby is a close personal friend of mine, and I'm absolutely sure I can convince him this was all some horrible mistake and to pretty-please-with-sprinkles-on-it don't kill my other good friend Dr. E!"

Dr. Euthanasius bulgy eyes stared impassively at Lena, reminding her of a large albino frog, before he asked suspiciously, "And what do I have to do for this sudden good will?"

Lena leaned casually on her mop as her wicked smile returned with a vengeance, replying nonchalantly, "Just agree in writing to give Marcel and me a piece of your action - say 10% - and we will protect you from the big bad boogie man!" Lena's smile broadened as she added, "Oh, yeah, and sign over your island to us, lock, stock, and barrel! You can live here as long as you want, working with your little friends and making bugs and stuff, but the island will belong to us so that when you are through with it, we can have it! You got nothing to lose and your life to gain! Looking at you, I'm betting you don't have a line of heirs waiting to take over, so what have you got to lose? With the paperwork, I can show Atticus that you work for - I mean with - us, so please Mr. Big-Bad-Batman-don't-kill-my-friend! Easy peasy! We all live happily ever after ending! Birds sing, small animals frolic, we all dance merrily!"

Still smiling like the cat that ate the canary, Lena held out her chalk white hand to be shook and asked cheerfully, "So what do you say Dr. E, deal? You need to decide pretty quick, for if I know Atticus - and I do - he's already on his way here, mad as hell, and ready to shoot first and ask questions later! Even more so if your little monsters killed Sandy!"



*****

One person who was the object of Lena's conversation, Sandy Bell, walked slowly step by painful step, using her Piper assault rifle as a crutch, towards the modernistic house hidden in the jungle. As she got to the small waterfall at the base of the house, she fell to her knees in a shallow pool there. She cupped the water in her bloodied hands, bringing it to her mouth and drinking long from it, than washing her pretty face with it as the water in the pool became red from her blood. Sandy's head started to reel, but she kept her senses long enough to fall backwards instead of face forward into the pool where she might drown, as she returned to darkness despite her EGO psyche's loud protestations.

"You lead, me follow!"

Vo smiled with his most happy smile when he heard Lady's words. It was first words he could hear clearly since the bat attack started. All that time he was grasping Lady's hand as if it was the only lead he had, which, in fact, it was. All their way to the compound he was fighting to not lose his consciousness due to severe headache and dizziness. Atticus's advice to cover in foliage helped a little with it but his senses were still overloaded — that was the downside of having them enhanced, the operation which Belle made for him as a gift when she tried to share her abilities with her team members. This time the only goal he could set to himself was to survive, almost like long time ago, at the age of 9, when he managed to survive a terraforming blast and had spent at least two months in the newly terraformed jungle. Almost, because he was not alone this time. This time he was a part of the team, whose lives he felt responsible for. Even it that bad condition he had, he wanted to help his team to survive so he helped with what little he could do for them… and for Belle. With his consciousness threatening to shut down, he couldn't forget the woman he loved, Belle Starr. After their latest mission he found out that Belle was brainwashed into thinking she's a completely different person living in a completely different world. Nevertheless, Vo still had hopes that she would regain her memories some day and would remember her friends and him as her lover. If that happened, Vo knew Belle would be upset very much if he didn't survive this operation, but she also would be upset if he let his teammates die as he tried to survive himself. That's why, following Lady's lead, he still watched the surroundings as long as he could, for any dangers the jungle could hide on their way. That's why he pulled Lady's hand from time to time, making her alter the route to avoid a sticky swamp or toxic plants. He wasn't sure if Lady in her current form could be injured by them but Private Perkins who followed them definitely could.

But now his consciousness was rapidly returning back to him and it was his time to lead the way. He looked around the corner into the hallway, and his EGO scanned the environment on all frequencies she could.

"I'm detecting a lot of signals flowing around this building and to the outside," Shirra reported, "It seems like the building is some kind of a central hub controlling various powerful equipment both inside and outside it."

"What powerful equipment could be placed outside a lone house in the middle of the jungle? It doesn't seem like its owner is digging gulanite on an industrial scale or trying to rebuild an Ark or something like that. Except… is it possible that all those weather and electromagnetic effects were controlled from here?"

"The control over weather effects are not the public knowledge except for several failed experiments," Shirra replied "But if we extrapolate their results and given the density of control commands being sent around here… yes, it's possible, although all those devices should have an external power source."

"Great," Vo thought to his EGO, "Mark me the location of that hub or the control room or whatever it could be and share it with our team."

"Marking the hub," Shirra reported, "Marking the possible generator location under the waterfall as well."

"It's possible that we found the hub which controls the weather and other strange effects on this island," Vo reported to his team, "I'll mark it on your map as our primary target so we could commandeer it and make it easier for Taffer and his squad on the Riot to travel around the island. Chances are we could find people who may tell us on Lena's and Marcels' whereabouts or at least find some logs there. The secondary target is the generator in case we need to shut down the entire facility. It's a dangerous option if we don't take over the control room first as the equipment which has its own power sources may go awry if they abruptly lose a control signal. Now let's stay close to each other and form a triangle. Lady and Private Perkins, you stay behind me, watch my back and watch each other. Tell me everything you may notice that is dangerous or may be related to our mission here."

With his squad in tow, Vo started his way forward towards the location of the control hub Shirra marked for them. There was a moment he glanced over the window and saw that plants nearby were moving strangely which couldn't be explained by a simple wind or a whirl. As his EGO scan didn't return anything remarkable, he took it as a reminder that there was still a dangerous environment outside, although he expected most dangers to his squad to come from inside the building like various traps he searched for on his way or any guards who may try to stop them.

Instead of replying immediately to Lena's proposal, Doctor Euthanasius looked at his pager and suddenly started to recite verses:

"Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are.
Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him."

Lena stared at him with her unblinking sky blue eyes and stated: "Maaan! You are as crazy as your bats."

"What is that nonsensical gibberish supposed to mean?" asked Marcel calmly but his steely eyes went even more emotionless predicting that something bad was about to happen. 

"The Great Birnam Wood begun to move and will cometh here, my dear uneducated guests," said Doctor Euthanasius. "I could say that ignorance is bliss but this time ignorance will be death. Death to all of us. You are facing another scientist who's creation has risen against him! My lovely creatures are marching towards this castle of mine and I believe that they don't have friendly intentions towards us all. But if you expect me to sit and wait here, playing Bach on my organ and laugh maniacally then you are wrong! First, I don't have an organ but a small spinet. Second, we are going to defend ourselves. How big is our little garrison? Two house guests, me, Hubert, Eugen and Doris. Why are you grinning Doris? It is most unsuitable moment to grin. Nothing to laugh here."

Doris kept grinning. Grin on Doris's face evolved into laughter and when the laughter ended, all people in the room could hear Doris speak:

"Old idiot! This is yet another miscalculation in the long row you have made. First, it's not Doris but Boris!" was said in mocking manner. Doris grabbed her grey hair between strong fingers and removed the wig, revealing that he was telling truth.


"Have you wondered why everything you have done turned into a mess lately? Why all bats were released at once? Why I didn't get rid of this gentleman here? (Boris pointed his forefinger at Marcel). Why I let these two escape? Why, you may ask? We have a bit time to explain before hell breaks lose." And Boris grinned again while Euthanasius moaned: "Et Tu, Brute!"

"Reasons are quite simple, you know! You are pure genius when it's about creating viruses, Euthanasius. I am willing to admit that. Otherwise you are an arrogant idiot! That's why I arranged myself amongst your servants, tolerated your caprices and constant bragging about your superior mind. I was waiting patiently for the right moment to act. The moment, you stumble on something revolutionary. It wasn't an easy task. The hardest part wasn't playing a woman, although you might think that. No! The hardest part was playing a DUMB SILENT woman, because we all know that women aren't like that. But that was necessary because nobody suspects poor, mentally limited woman, who can visit all the corners of your facility. Even if I got caught in forbidden places, you thought that I was dumb enough to get there accidentally, so I continued to spy on you.

I was finally rewarded for my long time suffering, because that moment, we were waiting for, came, when you discovered the virus which is lethal to Votans only. The world belongs to humans, Euthanasius! And we, group of concerned citizens, are going to see that it goes that way. Your assistant Hubert shares our visions about the pure world, so we worked against you together and when he told me that you have a virus, but you don't have a working cure yet, we realized that it was perfect moment. Thanks to you the world will be cleansed again."

While Boris spoke, Hubert stepped by his side, pulled out huge dangerous looking pistol and pointed at rest of people in the room. He didn't drooled any more, although that missing feature didn't made him prettier either. But he still looked dreadful.

Boris continued: "Since masks are fallen, I can also speak about the future. Hubert and I are going to leave and produce some more of this magnificent matter. Then we are going to spread it across the world. As for your future...This attack on your castle was unexpected, but it fits our plans PERFECTLY. Why, you may ask again. No harm to telling you that, I guess. Knowing you, you would have created another virus which affects only humans to keep things balanced. Just to see, which side is going to survive when they have an equal chance having viruses and cures in their hands. We couldn't let things go that far, couldn't we? First we intended to close this island by readjusting parameters of electromagnetic shield, so we can leave you into isolation, Prince Prospero, while the Red Death stalks the world. It wouldn't matter any more if you managed to create cure or not then. I was planning to use the escape of these two as a distraction to cover our leave, but... 

But the whole situation changed and this island is soon to become another theatre of survival instead of being an oasis. Now you have an equal chance to prove that you are fittest to survive, Euthanasius. I considered saving some of your human guests, but they are corrupted because of their intimate, not to mention emotional contacts with Votans. I observed behaviour of your guests and can tell that it's true, so this gentleman here remains here forever, although he would have been quite nice stallion for reproducing new and improved mankind. And now I have to follow example of lady Macbeth and wash my hands. Hubert and I will leave with a submarine which already expects us. Few words more before we leave this place...

Since electromagnetic shield covers the island and it can't be turned off, the rest of you will remain here to fight for survival as was told earlier. Don't worry. Your little domed world is not something unusual, because outside world is about to follow your example in much larger scale, except your survival won't mean a thing compared with the rest of the world. Only the fittest humans survive that chaos outside and they will be the building material for the new brave world once the virus has done it's job while survivors in this island are going to swim in this microscopic gene pool until they extinct. Your generators should keep the shield up for couple of centuries. Enough time to decide what will happen with them if they are alive after that. Speaking of time...Last moment to leave, because my open talk served another purpose - helping your enemies to get closer to this place. I achieved that purpose, so...Ta ta!"

After saying that (and wiping their hands theatrically) Boris and Hubert stepped outside and closed the door. Soon they were on board of the submarine and Boris pushed the button of his remote control, causing an explosion which buried control room and generators, needed to keep the electromagnetic shield in working order, thus sealing the island for good. Euthanasius, remains of his staff (id est Eugen), house guests (Lena and Marcel) and Paradise Protectors remained trapped to the island...