Chapter 19 Mad Scientist

The long, bone-shaking ride across the wasteland brought Dune and her crew to the edge of Ironclad territory. A crude fence made from twisted metal scraps and barbed wire stretched across the horizon, lined with rusting warning signs that had seen better days.

"TURN BACK OR DIE"
"TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT"
"NO EXCEPTIONS"

The area beyond was no less foreboding—a sprawling encampment of scavenged shacks, smoking oil drums, and the occasional armored vehicle rumbling through the dirt paths. The Ironclad settlement was a haven for outlaws and rejects, all the worst the wasteland had to offer.

“These folks sure know how to roll out the welcome mat,” Reed jested, his tone light, but his grip tightening on his shotgun.

“Let’s not stick around long enough to get acquainted. The sooner we’re out of here, the better. I am not in a good term with Ironclads, let's just leave it at that.”

Dune's focus locked on the tracker Sable was holding. The blinking signal indicated their destination wasn’t within the settlement but farther out in the barren desert. 

Following the signal, they wound through the rocky terrain, leaving the Ironclad camp behind. The tracker eventually led them to an isolated stretch of desert dominated by dunes and rust-colored cliffs. At the heart of it stood a structure half-buried in the sand—a massive set of blast doors, weathered and pockmarked with scars from many attempts of breaching but still intact.

“This is it,” Sable confirmed, hopping out of the buggy and dusting himself off. He pulled up the vault code he’d extracted from Rex’s ECU, studying it as he approached a keypad barely visible beneath a layer of sand.

Mia scanned the surroundings, her rifle at the ready.

 “Doesn’t feel right,” she muttered. 

“Ironclads don’t leave things unguarded. Where’s the welcoming committee?”

“Probably shooting someone else,” Dune replied, stepping out and readying her own weapon. 

“Still, keep your eyes peeled.”

Reed, meanwhile, was poking at the edges of the bunker door.

 “What do you think’s in here? Treasure? Weapons? A secret recipe for the perfect wasteland cocktail?”

“Focus, Reed. Don't let your guard down.”

Sable ignored the banter, his attention fully on the keypad. After a few moments of punching in the code, there was a hiss of hydraulics. The massive blast doors groaned, and a crack of darkness yawned open, revealing the entrance to the bunker.

“All right, we’re in,” Sable announced, stepping back as the doors slid apart.

Dune motioned for everyone to enter, the sound of their boots echoing on the cold metal floor. Once they were all inside, Sable hit the controls to seal the doors behind them. The heavy clang reverberated through the chamber, shutting them off from the outside world.

“Just in case someone out there decides to drop by,” he said.

Dune smirked, her fingers brushing the holster of her weapon.

 “Yeah, I have to agree. I don't want some Ironclads taking us from behind.”

As Dune and her team ventured deeper into the bunker, the flickering lights overhead cast long shadows on the walls, revealing a place long forgotten by time but oddly still functional. The walls were lined with exposed wires, and piles of junk littered the floor, as if the place had been left to rot for years. However, one thing was certain: the power was still on, indicating some was home.

Mia kept her rifle at the ready, scanning the environment.

 “This doesn’t feel right,” she muttered, her eyes darting to the abandoned pods and storage units that lined the corridors.

“Tell me about it,” Reed agreed, his hand twitching near his sidearm.

 “This place is like a junkyard mixed with a hospital for rejects and the cleaner went on long vocation.”

As they moved deeper into the bunker, the unmistakable sound of mechanical whirring and faint voices echoed from further ahead. They passed through more rooms—most empty or filled with broken equipment—but what caught their attention were the large cryochambers lining one of the halls. The pods were filled with figures encased in frost, their bodies unnaturally twisted and warped, with parts of metal and flesh intertwined, their eyes closed as if in eternal slumber. Abominators.

Dune stopped, eyeing one pod where the occupant’s face was barely visible behind layers of ice.

 "This is... this is bad. How many of these are they keeping here?"

"Too many," Sable replied, his voice quiet, almost reverent. 

"And they're all waiting for something... or someone to wake them up. We better hurry up and don't wait to find out."

The deeper they went, the more unsettling the bunker became. Finally, they arrived at the last room at the end of the corridor. Through the door they could hear the murmurs of a voice. Not just one voice, but two—arguing.

Dune motioned for the team to be quiet as they slowly pushed open the door. Inside was a figure standing with his back to them, surrounded by a mess of scattered papers, half-finished projects, and machinery that looked like it hadn’t been touched in ages. The figure was muttering to himself in a way that seemed completely detached from reality.

He wore a once-white lab coat, now stained with dirt, grease, and what appeared to be blood. His face was half-hidden beneath a patchwork of chrome metal plates and twisted, cancerous flesh. His left arm had been replaced entirely with a mechanical one, wires snaking out from where flesh had once been. His right eye was missing, replaced by a dull, glowing lens. The rest of his face seemed to flicker between human features and an unsettling synthetic visage. He wasn’t even aware they had entered.

"…The neural receptor array is incompatible, but the sequence is correct! No, no! That’s not it! The protein synthesis... it needs a—" He paused, the mechanical eye flickering as he scratched at his scalp, and then continued, his voice rising in frustration.

 "—It’s supposed to be working, damn it! Why isn’t it working?"

The team stood frozen, watching the strange figure as he paced in his cluttered lab, arguing with himself. He was completely absorbed in his ramblings, lost in his own twisted world. 

"That is… The Forgotten one," Mia whispered, her gaze fixed on the figure.

 "He seems unstable or went insane."

Sable stepped forward slightly, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the man.

 "This is the one, I think. He must have been the one behind the projects... or at least involved in it."

Dune’s heart skipped a beat as she watched the figure, his voice trailing off into a bitter laugh. The words he muttered were jumbled and nonsensical, but there was a clear sense of madness behind them, like the man was trying desperately to fix something he’d created but couldn't understand anymore.

"Can you hear it? It's working, it's almost working!" he shouted to no one in particular, his voice shaking with a mix of triumph and insanity.

Sable exchanged a glance with Dune, then took a careful step into the room.

 "Hello, I am Sable. A fellow scientist," he called out, "You must be Dr. Thaddeus Virell. The lead scientist of the weather control project."

The man froze, his head jerking toward them, his eyes wide. For a moment, there was silence as his gaze shifted from one team member to another. And then, without a word, he started laughing—a high-pitched, almost manic laugh.

"Visitors? I haven’t had visitors in... well, 100 years. And a fellow scientist at that! You think you understand, don't you? The science? The project? You think it’s just about weather, about the future. But no one understands! No one! The planets desertification will be over soon! Everyone will die."

 He spun around to face them, eyes wild and unfocused, his hands trembling as they reached for the red button on the table. 

"No! No, idiot! They want data! Data? You want data? You want to know what’s really happening?"

He started pacing again, shaking his head like a mad scientist on the brink of a breakthrough—or a breakdown.

"You think it’s just about the technology? The weather control? The power it hold? I’ve seen it, you know. I’ve seen what it can do! What we can do... but it’s not complete. It’s all... incomplete. I have to finish it, fix it. I have to finish the process... or we all... we all die!"

"Listen," Dune said, stepping closer, trying to assert control over the conversation.

 "I don’t care about your problems. I care about what’s inside that head of yours. We’re taking whatever’s left. You’ve got something we need—your experiments, your work. So cut the nonsense and show us what you have."

The man paused, his eyes flickering as if he was considering her words. For a long, tense moment, there was silence. Then, slowly, his grin returned.