Fabienne Gschwind - The Fallen Heroine

We took off and quickly arrived at the former tourist attraction of Aven Armand. A decaying playground and picnic area lined a huge parking lot. We unhooked and walked to the dilapidated house that had housed a small museum and the store at the time. We tried to reach the funicular tunnel, but it was completely filled in. A tin sign adorned the blocked tunnel: 'Here 25 people had holed up during the apocalypse. All starved to death as they could not get back,' it read.

"Exhilarating," Tartelette opined, examining an ancient, weathered site plan. But the huge cavern had another entrance, which was a full eighty meters above the cave floor.

We found the entrance quickly, as an old, rusted fence was erected around it. The Ghosty hovered overhead, glowing like a magical dragonfly under the black storm cloud that was approaching.

The rusty fence and the approaching thunderstorm nearly doomed us, but we didn't know that yet.

We rappelled down. The sight was magnificent. I floated past 80 meters above a forest of stalactites and other formations. The speleologues, who were on video cameras to help us, were also enthralled. "This is a sight no one has seen in 100 years!" they exclaimed enthusiastically, and Thibault also commented that our live streaming viewership numbers really skyrocketed as more and more people tuned in.

"It smells like repro!" said Tartelette laconically, and now I smelled it too, a very peculiar smell ... like stale.

A drama was emerging: the 25 people were not dead but wandering around. It was horrible to look at them and I felt a shiver down my spine. The repros were almost unrecognizable as people, they were covered with the gray slime, some of them were missing limbs or were twisted in an abnormal way. I quickly gave myself Adalin to become calmer.

Up to this point, everything was no problem, because we could have simply retreated. But repros straight from the apocalypse are worth a fortune because they carry the original retroviruses. A great fuss was made on the part of the connected ReS headquarters and they immediately sent for professional repro catcher troops from Africa.

However, for reasons that were not clear, the new ReS commodore believed that we might have contracted the original retroviruses. His name was LeBoeuf, and he had taken command less than a week ago from Laura Cortaux, who was in failing health.

"You're contaminated with the primordial virus and you're just going to climb out of there. You stay right where you are, and don't climb a single millimeter higher! That is exactly what the protocol says. Paragraph 14 Section 89c."

The matter was so lucrative that the Commodore-in-Chief spoke to us personally. But Tamara went full confrontational.

The conversation that ensued was simply a headache.

"Excuse me, Commodore. The cave has a natural exit, which means the viruses could have floated out at will. We always had our visors down and no direct contact. Then paragraph 14 is null and void..."

The commodore's voice screeched shrilly into our speakers again, "I don't give a damn! You stay down there, Capitaine."

During the exchange of words, the repros started climbing up the stalagmites.

"There's no way you're moving higher!" the commodore yelled again when he saw this.

"Then we'll just zap them!" Tamara was about to give the order, but was interrupted.

"NO. Under no circumstances! You can't kill them, we need them alive. The other major powers will pay us a fortune, as research subjects."

"With all due respect, Commodore, what ReS unit did you actually serve in? You know you can't kill repros with zappers by any stretch of the imagination. For that, you have to decapitate them or shoot them to a pulp ..."

"Shut up, Capitaine! I served 20 years in the USDU Special Forces before I was appointed Commodore of the ReS a few weeks ago. What about you? What do you have to show for it?" the Commodore snapped at Tartelette. Thibault interfered via private radio, desperately pleading with Tamara to be reasonable and not get into trouble with the big boss. This spurred Tamara on even more...

But the argument continued and the commodore cursed. He ordered us not to shoot at the repros so we wouldn't kill them! What a bullshit.

The boss pointed out to him that the radio was being broadcast to the public and that at the moment there were a good five million people watching live.

"What nonsense, my radio is tap-proof. I can cuss around here all I want, and I can also dispute every word you say and claim you disobeyed my orders."

"Commodore, it may well be that your radio is tap-proof, but my side is recorded as usual and broadcast in realtime."

That's when the problems started. The thunderstorm, which had been heard in the background for a while, broke out with force.

The lightning must have fully struck the metal post to which our ropes were attached. They held up, but not the post. Gabin and I who were tied to the same post fell. Thanks to Tamara's fall training, I got off easy. Only Gabin crashed between two stalactics and remained pinned. The repros were now moving purposefully toward him. Fortunately for us, the repros were very "rusty". Probably they had hardly moved during the last decades and their joints were hardly working anymore. Meanwhile, Tamara had also rappelled down and helped to rescue Gabin. We zapped our way through the horde of zombies that moved very slowly.

A blessing for the ReS headquarters, because since the repros were moving in slow motion we had time to either zap them or even push them back with our bare hands. So the camera shots were not blurry. I did my best to impress with my newly acquired martial arts tricks and kicked or boxed the zombies aside. Because of the continuous bombardment our zappers overloaded again and again and there was nothing left but to push the repros back.

To stand in the middle of a horde of zombies would have given me worst nightmares months ago. But now I felt strong and invulnerable. Thanks to Adalin and Tamaras extreme training.

Finally we dragged Gabin to the rope and pulled ourselves up. Out of reach of the zombies. Now that we were covered in repro slime, there was nothing to do but hang from the rope and wait for the storm to subside and our reinforcements to set up a decontamination unit.

It took forever. In the meantime, ReS headquarters had already assembled an entire team to capture the human repros alive.

So 36 hours into the mission, we were decontaminated and back at the edge of Aven Armand, which was bustling with activity.

"And the dear Commodore still hasn't let a nuclear bomb fly around our ears?" asked Tartelette.

"Still no sign of him. But the media tore into him after your dialogue was aired, replicated and printed thousands of times. He has announced his resignation."

It occurred to me that the Commodore-in-Chief must have had many friends who were now hostile to Tartelette. They would not let the matter rest.

But then another radio from Thibault.

"Ahoy folks, the wolves have been found, near Montpellier- le-Vieux ..."

Finally, we agreed that Gabin and Emily would stay with the repro catcher units to support them, while Tartelette and I went to see about the wolves. It was already evening and night would soon fall.

In the meantime, since our Ghosty was chauffeuring another ReS unit around and there was no Deca available, we had to take an autonomous vehicle.

As usual, we were on the radio with all the people working with us and it was getting chaotic. There were our Ghosty pilots, even if they were with other people, the whole African repro catcher squad, Thibault and some more ReS units working directly with us. Somehow Thibault had to be very stressed as well, because otherwise he was careful that we did not hear all communication, but only what concerned us. While the other way around, everything we spoke was relayed.