At that moment, the bullet struck, and with it, the invisibility of the ethereal being vanished in a small shockwave that pushed Miyabi and me. The impulse took me by surprise, throwing me to the ground. My gun slipped out of my hands and slid to the other corner of the ruined street. He was unarmed.
Miyabi, on the other hand, managed to slow down by dragging his feet on the ground.
"Shit..." I muttered as I slowly sat up.
"Grab your gun!" Fast! Miyabi exclaimed with an eerie calm.
I rested both hands on the floor and, with effort, pushed myself to get up, also supporting my feet. I felt a stinging sensation in my leg, a sign that I had been injured by friction. Without wasting any more time, I threw myself towards where the weapon was, but I did not manage to get there enough.
The ethereal being, despite being wounded at its most critical, disappeared again with a swift movement.
"Miyabi, cover me!" I shouted with all my might.
Miyabi nodded and ran to the gun to help me reach for it. Just as he was about to crouch, the ethereal being attacked.
His sword parried the blow with astonishing ease. In one fluid motion, he deflected the attack and counterattacked with a precise slash, causing the creature to fall to the ground. Then he slapped the gun with his heel, as if it were a football pass, and it slid down to me.
"Finish it off," he ordered, pointing his sword at the ethereal being's head. If you don't do it quickly, I'll have to do it myself.
I grabbed the gun, stood up, and walked over to Miyabi.
"Why are you leaving it to me?" I asked curiously as I pointed at the creature.
"Your resume will benefit from these actions, believe me," he replied, putting his sword away calmly.
"But it would be better in yours, don't you think?" Boss? I let out a slight laugh.
"I'm the leader of one of the best sections of the base. I don't need to take advantage of anything.
Without thinking twice, I shot in the same place as before. The ethereal being remained motionless. He was dead.
"It is true that he was strong and agile, but—" it hasn't been that difficult to finish him off," I said confidently, already recomposed after the tense moment.
"Even if they seem like a threat, with a little preparation it's easy to defeat them.
I nodded as I hung the gun on my back, holding it with the built-in strap.
Miyabi reached into his pocket and pulled out a small syringe with a gleaming, sharp tip. Just seeing her made me anxious.
"Here," he said, holding it out. Ethereal DNA needs to be collected for further research. Do this before it disintegrates.
He offered me the syringe with his hand raised, bringing it too close to my face. I swallowed hard, took it with a trembling hand, and crouched down beside the motionless body of the ethereal being.
"What do you mean they disintegrate?" I asked, analyzing every part of his body for the best place to inject the needle.
"Ethereal beings are humans infected by radiation from the cavity," Miyabi explained. Some still retain their human appearance, but others lose control of their body entirely. In this case, corruption has consumed the entire human structure, leaving it without vital energy. When we remove them, they disappear completely.
His explanation sounded terrifying. I didn't like to imagine that we were actually killing people who were once human.
"Where should I inject this?" I asked, without taking my eyes off the corpse.
"In that sphere that looks like a black hole. It functions as a head. It is composed of plasma and some other elements.
Very carefully, I inserted the needle and began to suck out the plasma contained in the sphere.
—Is this then analyzed in the laboratory? I asked, pulling out the needle and handing the syringe back to Miyabi.
She took it without saying anything and put it back in her pocket.
— Exactly. All this is analyzed and thus the weak points of this type of being are discovered at the same time that the important puzzle to approach a cure is solved.
Everything Miyabi told made sense, but he had a big doubt. If in this type of ethereal being the human essence has disappeared, how is it possible to get a cure from a being without a human soul? That was the only doubt I had at that moment.
"Well, we'd better continue until we reach the mission area."
A purge. That was the great mission. There was no key goal, simply to kill ethereal beings to reduce their activity significantly and keep the cavity at bay.
For a moment, I felt a knot in my stomach. How many of these monsters had been people with lives, families, dreams? I shook my head. It was not the time to doubt
Suddenly, the ethereal being disintegrated without leaving any trace, nothing more than small particles of plasma.
Miyabi and I began to walk through the desolate streets, destroyed and ruined by the huge beings that roamed here. It was rumored that an ethereal being much larger and more aggressive than Nineveh, the most powerful sighted to date, was recently detected.
"Are the rumors true?" I asked.
Miyabi looked on in surprise. I didn't know what I was talking about. He shook his head to the side in a gesture of ignorance.
- That being, the one they say is greater, Nineveh. They say that its shadow covers entire streets. That their presence is enough for the devices to turn off. And that no one who has seen it has returned," I said, looking at the pebbles that were on the destroyed ground.
Miyabi was silent for a couple of seconds, which became eternal.
"Yes, it's true, but I can't talk about it," he said in a concise tone.
That answer surprised me, but knowing the environment we were in, I was not surprised that there were secrecy between us.
We continued walking through the desolate streets for about half an hour until we finally reached a small abandoned warehouse. Miyabi pulled out some sort of device that tracked ethereal activity in the area. The clunker was square with a kind of antenna that radiated a blinding red color in case the ethereal activity was dangerous. It had a screen that showed a small keystroke radar, revealing the enemy's position with red dots that were displayed on the screen.
Suddenly, Miyabi's radio produced a rather loud sound that made me worry because it might alert the ethereal beings.
"You answer, I'm busy," Miyabi said. He grabbed the radio from his left pocket and handed it to me. Do you know what this woman was able to keep in her pockets?
"I know it sounds stupid but... do I have to answer with some code or something?"
Miyabi shook his head. He didn't say a word.
- Okay...
I grabbed the radio in a way that I was comfortable with and pressed the side button that it had to open the line of communication.
— This is Private Lucas, who's talking? — I felt very special saying that, it's like I was in a movie.
"Lucas? it's me, Soukaku" said that shrill voice over the radio.
"Soukaku?" I gave a slight sigh, "I'm glad to hear you're still alive," I added with a tone of relief.
"We're not that easy to eliminate, Lucas," he said
- Well... Let's get to the point, this is not the time for talks. What's the matter?
"Alex has disappeared, I don't know where he can be" He began to say "We finished with all the ethereal beings without much difficulty, but after that I didn't see him again"
And is that a problem?
"But what's going on with that?" I asked once more to get a more accurate answer.
"Alex is the only one in that group who knows where to find another portal to return home," Miyabi said out of nowhere.
"Does that mean Soukaku can't go back to base?"
— No, of course it can, but it has the obligation to return with all the members. Moreover, they would take twice as long due to Soukaku's inexperience in getting out of the cavities.
I looked down at the floor processing everything Miyabi had told me as I thought of a solution to the present problem.
"Hello?"He said, checking that there was someone behind the radio.
"Sorry Soukaku. Miyabi was telling me the possible cause of your problem," I said, "So... Do you have to go back with Alex to the base on a mandatory basis?"
"Exactly, that's it"
"Miyabi, do we know where they might be?" I asked.
Miyabi shook his head, falling silent again.
— Shit... I can't find a viable solution," I said aloud.
"I know it's a problem that I should solve, but I don't know how"
Neither did I.
As Miyabi mentioned in the meeting before the mission, each pair was supposed to go to a different end of the cavity, that is, we would be too far away to be able to look for them in the surroundings from our position.
"Could we call a helicopter to pick you up?" I asked.
— Helicopters are not allowed to enter the cavities, only high-ranking military aircraft are allowed to enter. Still, we can't call a military plane just for the search for a missing person.
He was right, it would be stupid to call a gigantic plane just to look for someone.
"Well, I'll go," I said.
"What?! Nobody knows where we are. Not even me," Soukaku said, surprised by my proposal
"Soukaku, do you have the device that tracks ethereal activity?"
"Mmm... The one usually used by the boss? Yes, I do, why?"
"I want you to take it out and analyze the area," I said. Soukaku and Alex were supposed to be done with the purge by now, which meant that the activity in their area should be zero, or so he thought. If they detected a large amount of activity, there could be a slight chance that they were in this area.
"LUCAS!" Soukaku exclaimed
"What's wrong?" I asked, a little upset by Soukaku's unexpected scream.
"Nothing, I just wanted to scare you"
Doesn't this girl take anything seriously?
- Don't make those jokes, it's not the time.
"Lucas"
"Which," he said.
"You're very boring"
Wow, what a novelty. Without a doubt, news that saves lives.
I released the side button on the radio so Soukaku wouldn't hear anything more of the conversation I was having with Miyabi.
"Going to look for Soukaku is a bad idea," he said, "You won't be able to find her."
Those words seemed to be spoken to challenge my abilities, but as a rational human being, I knew it was telling me a truth I shouldn't ignore.
"Alex will be back. It's not the first time he's done it, he likes to go his own way," Miyabi said.
— That's not fair, in this job you have to know how to work as a couple. We're inside a cavity, what if Soukaku was ambushed and killed? doesn't he think about those consequences?" I asked. My tone was beginning to take on a form of despair.
— He's an elite soldier, he knows what he's doing
"If I knew what he did, he'd be a senior member, not a reserve of the division," I said.
- Don't get upset, Lucas. Maybe you'll end up in that reservation, too. You have talent, that is indisputable, but there are people more deserving of this position than you.
I felt as if it had been a knife blow. It was painful to hear those words and even more so coming from your own boss. In the first seconds after that answer I thought he was saying it to scare people, but after thinking about it a couple of times, I realized that it could be true.
"And why did you bring me here?" If you say so much that there are people better than me, call them together, not me.
"It wasn't my idea," he sighed, "Soukaku convinced me. I had planned to call Sergio, that friend of yours. He is good at defense and would be a great support for the team. Your only strength is marksmanship and firearm prowess in addition to hand-to-hand combat. Don't get confused, I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's not what we're looking for. Perhaps the division will obscure if it requires your services.
Miyabi's words were not friendly, only devastating. Was Sergio a candidate above me? go... that... I didn't expect it, but just thinking about it fills me with pride and... Envy? Grudge? I don't think so...
"Well, let's get this shit over with it and get out of it once and for all," I snapped with some contempt.
I pressed the side button on the radio one last time to give him one last message before returning the radio to Miyabi.
- Go back to the base, see you there. Short," I said. I handed the radio back to Miyabi and readied the gun. "There's no time to lose, come on." I began to walk to the area of ethereal activity without any fear, only a strong rage that had begun to consume me inside.
Miyabi I don't know what he complained about, he put the pot away and followed me from behind.