Ep 27 - Answers to Questions Never Asked

The jungle was a living black. The moon was a thin coin behind high clouds. Light was scarce. The compound was a darker ovoid in the canopy. Low buildings and a fence glinting with occasional reflection from a dull lamp. Generators hummed faintly like sleeping beasts. Six shapes moved through the undergrowth, quiet as ghosts. Yael led, behind her Michelle with a small satchel, Talia with a soft pack and an infrared penlight, Milena clutching a small coolbox, Mei-Ling and Liza. They stopped at a shallow depression in the brush, the blind spot Yael found on recon. Trella’s voice cracked in their ear via a short-range earpiece. “The boat team is posted. Two patrols just passed the west gate. You’re good. I’ll call if anything moves.”

Yael slid a finger across her throat — one last silence check. “No lights. No noise. Move slow. Milena, you stay three paces behind me. Do NOT improvise.”

Milena opened her mouth to protest, then nodded. Her fingers were jittery, but she forced a brave, unhappy face. “I know. I know.”

Yael gave a nod and crawled forward. They slipped into the shadow beneath the fence where the mesh dips against a fallen log. Mei-Ling dropped first, folding like a cat and slipping through an unseen service gap. The others carefully followed. They landed in the compound’s service corridor, a narrow lane between low buildings. The dull yellow of a distant floodlight created a banded wash across concrete. Footsteps echoed faintly in the distance.

Talia knelt and clicked her device. Her hands were sure; she was a small machine in the dark. A palm-sized black box with a thin antenna hummed quietly. She pulled a short fiber from the conduit, spliced with surgical speed and slipped a tiny gadget inside the junction. “Cameras on this corridor only. I’m inserting a loop. Ninety seconds on the first pass, then blackout. Keep moving. If anything trips, we’re ghosts.”

Michelle checked a small screen: a live feed of a hallway somewhere deeper in the lab. Two static camera angles. “You sure that’s all we need?”

“I loop the corridor cameras that watch this path. Not the whole network. Less footprint, less chance someone notices. You get to the control room rack first. One drive. Copy and go.”

Yael tapped Michelle’s shoulder. “You take point on files. I’ll take point on routes. Liza, evidence bags. Mei-Ling, doors, vents and alternate exits.”

They moved. The corridor was a soft geometry of shadows. Their boots made no sound. A lone guard passed at the far end, flashlight sweeping slowly. Yael froze, pressing herself into a recessed doorway. The guard’s beam swept past like a tongue of light; it did not catch them.

At Talia’s whispered count the gadget blinked. The two camera feeds stuttered and folded into a tight loop of empty corridor footage. Talia gave the small signal: two fingers to her lips. “Loop in. Ninety seconds starts now.”

They moved. Ninety seconds was a kind of prayer. They threaded between shadow and pipework, ducked under air ducts, slipped along maintenance catwalks – every step planned.

Milena’s breath was too loud. Yael’s boot nudged her calf — a mild, surgical reminder. Milena shut up and followed, clutching the coolbox like a child with a book. They reached a heavy service door with a stamped number. Mei-Ling knelt, ran a slender set of picks and a soft pry. The lock gave in with an almost apologetic sigh. Liza slid inside first, whispering a soft count as her light ghosted across metal racks. They slipped into a small communications room that led to a bank of internal panels. This was where the CCTV feeds converged. Talia set her kit on a console and worked the ports. Michelle immediately dropped to a forward console and scanned terminal names. “Control nets are segmented. The main server is two doors in, but there’s a local rack here. If I pull the config, I might find where they mirror manifests.”

Talia plugged a clone cable into a small hard drive. Her screen showed progress bars as she imaged a targeted security appliance, the one that logged movement in the corridor network. “We’re getting a heartbeat. Two minutes.”

“Milena,” Yael whispered. “Stay here until we secure the control room. Do NOT go wandering.”

Milena nodded. Her shoulders trembled for a second. Yael stayed in front of her like a shield. They moved deeper, passing a storage room. A muffled radio call skimmed the edges of the corridor. Yael froze, palm up. The sound died.

They arrived at the server room door. Two deadbolt locks and a keypad with a faint orange glow. Mei-Ling dropped to her knees and checked the ventilation shaft — a maze of ducts leading over the server room roof. Liza and Mei-Ling exchanged a tiny, efficient look: if the door becomes impossible, they’ll go up and over. Talia placed two fingers on the keypad, not to press but to feel. She leaned close to the seam and fed a microprobe into the panel. The lock clicked. The door yielded a whisper.

Inside were racks of humming metal and soft blue LEDs like a constellation. The air was cool and smelled of ozone. A single console station blinked the current user list. Michelle glided to it. “Okay, quick. Image the fastest server first. Liza, bag this terminal’s logs. Milena, when Yael gives you the nod, you check the cold storage route and be ready.”

Liza nodded, already pulling evidence bags. Talia yanked a drive from the slot and fed it into her field imager. Progress bars began, slow and steady. A faint noise. A metal tray slid in a distant lab. Mei-Ling flexed her fingers. ”Two guards rotate near the door in twelve minutes. We have time. We work fast.”

They worked in a small choreography: Talia moved between racks and console, imaging; Michelle transcribed manifest filenames into a small notebook; Liza sealed a packet of physical notes into a sack; Mei-Ling lifted a vent grate and checked access to cold-storage conduits.

On Talia’s screen: 70%… 85%… the drive cloned. The loop was looming toward the end. “Thirty seconds,” she whispered.

Yael slid a look over her shoulder at Milena — the kind that would keep the biologist from wandering. “Stay. Watch the door. Watch the air. You’re not alone.”

Milena nodded. The cloned bar hit 100%. Talia murmured, unplugged, tucked the SSD into a pouch and handed it to Michelle. No cheers. No relief. Only the soft abrasion of breath and the small mechanical clicks of gear being stowed.

“Let´s go,” Yael whispered. “Papers first, then the cold room.”

They slid through the thin door into a wider space — the lab proper. Light panels were on low; hoods hissed somewhere to keep air moving, racks with labeled vials blinked tiny LEDs and a refrigerated bank hummed low and sure. Milena stepped forward as if drawn. The room smelled faintly of solvents and plant resin — chemical perfume roughed by machinery. Despite the jungle around them, this place tasted clinical, coaxed into order by hands that knew seams of biology. Milena moved from bench to bench with quick, precise fingers, eyes scanning labels the way a hunter reads trail marks. She didn’t fumble. She knew chemistry, even if she didn't know how to move through gunfire.

“Fast. You grab what you can. No theatrics,” Yael whispered.

Milena nodded and turned to a labeled rack: “EXTRACT — LOT# ——” Small vials, some in chilled blocks. “Some of this is… surprisingly fresh. Those guys botched the bulk, but here — cold-chain maintained. Whoever runs this keeps stock properly.”

She worked with a focused, almost angry efficiency: vials lifted, sealed into sterile tubes; each tube wrapped and labeled. Liza knelt with a marker and evidence bags, sealed and tagged each sample with a neat, clinical hand.

Mei-Ling checked the doorway. The lab was tight and efficient, a working breath of an industry. Milena spotted a refrigerated drawer marked Cryo-Store and her fingers went careful. “These are the processed samples. Lighter concentration but pure. If we stabilize these, we can analyze them on-site and give Lang proof.”

She lifted one vial and held it to the dim light. The hand that held it was steady; the face behind it was not. This was not fieldwork she wanted, but she’s precise, clinical, exact.

Yael looked over her shoulder. “How many can you take?”

“As many as I can safely transport. I prioritize labeled lots and whole-seal vials. Not the sludge.” She worked fast, double-sealed everything.

“We move slowly. Milena, finish it,” Yael whispered.

Milena dropped the last vial into the cold box, locked it and handed the sealed container. Michelle took a small envelope from a drawer — a courier manifest and a stamped crate label. They did the small rituals that make a raid whole: Michelle signed the log with time and initials; Liza sealed the last pouch; Talia pocketed a tiny diagnostic drive she pulled from an auxiliary console. Each action was deliberate. Milena exhaled, the tension eased into a tired grin that was almost guilty relief. “We got what we needed. Now let’s go.”

The team filed out of the lab, packs secure, breaths steady but tight. Talia halted, her finger hovered toward a hulking steel door recessed into the far wall.

“Pretty massive for just storage…” Mei-Ling whispered.

She and Liza moved as one, hands ghosting over hinges. Mei-Ling slipped the lock with a slow practiced twist and the metal groaned as the door yawned open. A breath of icy air rolled out, prickling their skin and frosting the edges of their hair. Liza slid inside and whispered. “…Oh, crap.” Her voice carried a cold weight. “Guys… this isn’t storage. This is a morgue.”

The others exchanged a single grim look. Yael motioned them quickly in. The door eased shut behind them, sealing them in the refrigerated dark. Rows of steel drawers lined the walls like filing cabinets for the damned. Mei-Ling and Liza carefully pulled one, the rollers squealed faintly in protest. Inside was the pale stillness of a young girl’s body, no older than twelve. Her features were slacked in unnatural sleep. Another drawer, another child. Milena swallowed, but forced her face into neutrality, though her eyes betrayed a flash of disgust. She pulled gloves tighter and knelt, her hands were moving with clinical precision as she drew a blood sample, then a tissue clip, sealing each vial with practiced speed. No commentary, no hesitation, just the mechanical work of a scientist turning horror into evidence. Yael watched her, every muscle tight with fury she wouldn’t voice here. They closed the drawer quietly, sealing the stillness back behind cold steel.

“There are a few more rooms we haven’t checked,” Talia whispered with an uneasy voice.

“No,” Yael replied. “We’ve spent enough time here. Let´s get out.”

The steel door shutted, silencing the morgue behind it. The team slipped back toward their exit path, heavier than before, carrying not just data and samples, but the weight of what they’ve seen. They retraced their steps through the maze, audio and heartbeats tuned to the same frequency. When they slipped back through the blind gap into the breathing dark of the jungle, the forest took them in like a cloak. At the edge of the blind spot, Milena exhaled a sound like she’d been holding it for hours. They melted away into trees, the glow of the compound was shrinking behind them.

The forest ate the sound. Mud muffled boots. Lantern-light swung between trunks as the team threaded a narrow animal track toward the river. The outer team moved like a ring around the infiltration group. For a long beat no one spoke. Then Liza’s voice, small and brittle, cut the darkness. “Kids. They were… kids.”

Mei-Ling pressed her hand to her mouth in anger. “Eight. Nine. Maybe twelve. Not faceless test subjects. Children.”

“This is worse than a lab,” Yael said. “This is a slaughterhouse for something the world should never see.”

“Around here, people lose kids to the river, to the jungle. They accept what they must to survive. They don’t look for enemies like these,” Michelle muttered.

Milena, clutching the sealed sample case, let out a slow, bitter whisper. “They accepted it because they had to. Somebody made a choice that took that from them—twice. That’s what matters.”

A low rumble of agreement passed along the line. No easy words. No righteous speeches. Only the heavy, solid thud of feet pulling them home.

“We bring this back. Not for the dead, they’re gone, but for whoever comes after them,” Milena said.

They moved on. The village lights wavered ahead, warm, small, ordinary and the team’s shadows fell long and sharp across the path.

***

Not many were able to sleep last night after what they´d seen. So they started to process their findings in shifts… When the consoles and drives were sifted through, the truth was underwhelming and yet telling.

Michelle stepped forward. “Long story short. The files are shallow. No deep archives, no history of breakthroughs, just failures stacked on failures. Most records end where the bodies began. Every name was a failed trial, every chart a death sentence. “

Trella folded her arms. “How far did they get with the development?”

“I don´t know. I just have here a flood of technical terms with no coherence, proof of reckless tinkering. Resource maps of the jungle, supply routes crossing remote rivers, and traces of a financial trail leading to a wealthy Brazilian eccentric named Alberto Santos - a man playing God with more money than sense.”

“I know that name,” Yael interrupted. “A rich egoistical idiot. He owns a penthouse in Manaus.”

“So that is our next target,” Trella said. “Are there any connections to the US?”

“None. This isn’t tied to the stateside horrors — at least not directly.”

“What about cybernetic augmentations?” Mei-Ling asked.

“Zero trace. “

One faint collective relief in an otherwise grim data pool…

Milena spoke next with a tired voice. “I´ve made a quick analysis of the samples. Crude and botched. The same toxic mess Yael brought me. Amateurishly made, but because of that even more dangerous. They also have completed “supersoldier” serums. Badly refined, poor quality, yet unmistakably echoing Maya’s serum composition.”

“That could mean this Santos guy and Schmidt had it from the same seller,” Trella said.

“Possible,” Michelle replied. “No traces in the data. I guess we have to ask him.”

Milena hesitated, then continued. “One more thing. I examined the samples from the dead girl. She died because of a massive overdose. The tissue is warped, its veins burst from within. Not only do these people not know how to make the serum, they don’t even know how to use it.“

“That means just one thing,” Yael said. “We´ve stumbled into the sandbox of dabblers. And even in the hands of amateurs the serum is dangerous. We will split into two teams. I will take team one with Michelle, Liza, Aiko and Milena. We’ll go to Manaus. The rest is team two. You will take down the facility. No survivors. We´ll go simultaneously, so they won´t have the chance to warn each other. For now, get some rest.”

The girls were tired but determined. This rainforest horror had to end.