#Inktober2019 - Day 10, 'Pattern'

As originally posted at https://archiveofourown.org/works/20854958/chapters/49573574

There’s something here, I can tell.

The boss used to say that intelligence was the ability to make sense from nonsense - to find the pattern in an apparently random set of data. I used to do that for governments, back when there were still governments to do it for. Sift through hundreds, even thousands of reports, of pictures, of studies and testimonies and rumours that made no sense and had nothing to do with each other. That moment, that first flash of insight where I’d start to see a pattern somewhere in the data, always made me feel like the smartest man on earth.

Staring at the flickering computer screens, trying to ignore the wail of the siren and the dust which scatters from the ceiling with each of the heavy thuds that shakes the concrete of the bunker around me, I can’t help but grimace at how stupid I feel now.

Four years.

That’s how long I’ve been trying to find the pattern here. Gazing at satellite images of where the mist swells and recede, of where the enemy strikes, of autopsied creatures and combat reports, trying to put the pieces together. Lately, they’ve been attacking this area more and more - with greater numbers and force each time. At first, I thought it was a push toward the relay in the mountains, but they’ve seen no scouts there and in any case, the route of the attacks has veered away in recent months. Then, I thought it might be to do with supplies - cutting us off, one resource at a time until we’re all running out of resources, but even then they’ve been hitting our redundant bases as much as those which produce rarer resources. I even tried cross-referencing the path with known mutation and cult activity - but even that didn’t give any answers.

They enemy isn’t random, and it isn’t mindless. I know how the soldiers talk, but it’s their job to shoot and my job to think, and none of us should be in a hurry to trade those roles. The enemy knows how to scout, how to ambush, how to feign a retreat. It knows to starve us of food and fuel, to poison our water and to wound messily enough that treating survivors is never a sure process even as it eats into what medical supplies we have left.

I rub at my eyes to clear the dust, force myself to focus on the screen. The flickering signals the death of hope as much as the grid, the last chance we’re going to have to use these data banks. It’s like being trapped inside an enormous concrete drum, one which is being beaten with all the fury of a war-march, and I barely notice O’Connor as he staggers through the door and into the room behind me.

“Doctor Schafer!” He coughs as he speaks, propping a bloodied arm against the frame for support. “Doctor Schafer, we have to go! They’re in the tunnels now, we need to get to the evac point!”

I stare at the screen, scrolling through the static-washed reports in equal parts rage and despair. A near-defenceless fuel dump ignored, five miles from a massacred garrison with no real value. A plague in the mountains which causes gangrene in women. An enormous totem of cartilage and scales nurtured in front of an old brewery.

Damn it, why can’t I see it?

It’s there.

I know it’s there!

The itch confirms it, that furious scraping at the back of my skull which accompanies every moment of insight.

“Doctor, please!”

“Just hang on!” I snap without turning to look at him, desperately scrolling through mission reports. Pictures shake as the screen vibrates with each quake of the structure, the clatter of heavy gunfire all too loud, too close now that the door is open. The itch is building as I begin opening a new set of files, nagging as it torments me with the genius of the unconscious.

I’ve already worked this out, damn it!

Fingers work at my temples as I stare at the two pictures before me now, one a satellite image of a great and gloomy shadow off the coast of the island, the other an old transcription of a temple relief allegedly found beneath the ice of Antarctica. A mission report is open below, the standard dry bravado about bullets and death and blood, something about a big cluster of barnacles in the observatory, a short description of a new strain with fingers like leeches that was hiding in the radio room…

Click.

And there it is.

The lights flicker and dim again, and this time one of the screens doesn’t come back on. I’m rooted in place, unable to move, frozen to the spot by the revelation. Could it be? SUrey not, and yet…

I pull them up. More documents, more images, frenzied and insensate to O’Connor’s alarm as he panics in the doorway. It’s impossible, no - yet it’s there. So subtle, so cunning, so damned, damned clever - yet for all it’s taken me too long to see it, I see it now. Intelligence is the ability to find patterns in random data. But genius is to hide it there. And these aliens have a true genius about them, to have hidden the pattern so well and for so long.

The second screen flickers and fails as the room is plunged into darkness, now lit only by the dying green glow of the third and final screen. Text races as I save every file I can, turning to stare with renewed hope at the drive buzzing with such anger as it writes to the disc.

With one last, heavy roar, the power finally dies, the bunker lurching beneath my feet as I’m thrown to the ground. I stagger to my feet, fall again, scrape my way across the raw concrete to the powerless computer tower, ignoring the fresh stink of seaweed and sewage which floods the room. Both hands begin bleeding in the moments it takes me to smash the yellowing plastic off the front of the drive, clawing out the disc within.

“Doctor Schafer!”

O’Connor grips my shoulder, turning me to face him, the torch in his hand flashing and flickering as he struggles to keep his footing. I don’t look at his as I raise the disc, brandish it with excitement.

“This is it! This is it!”

“What are you talking about, we have to go!”

“I know what they’re doing!” I’m manic, grinning with joy despite the danger of the collapsing base. “I know what they’re doing! Smart fish, not smart enough, don’t you see, it was there all along, right under our noses, but now I can stop them!”

O’Connor stares at me for a moment, his face suddenly blank - clearly overwhelmed. “You can stop them? You’re sure?”

“Yes, yes! We must hurry at once, we-”

I barely feel the knife which slides up through my chest.

It’s a strange feeling, to know that you’ve died. It has happened; it can no more be turned back than the tide. Yet for a few moments more, I’m able to watch it, to feel the curious sensation of absent sensation. There’s no pain, no pressure, no flush of cold. It has simply… stopped.

I sink to me knees, feel liquid flowing down my chest, across my hands. When did I raise them? My wedding ring, such a precious thing, hidden beneath a bloody veneer. I raise my head while I still can, the torch darkening as surely as the room. There’s no anger, no hatred, no need to fight back, just a simple curiosity.

“Why?”

There’s a genuine sadness to his expression as he kneels before me, scrapes the disc away from the pool of blood. “I’m sorry, doctor. I wish you’d just run for evac. I always did like you.”

I’m having to speak carefully now, each word the labour of a corpse’s lungs. “This doesn’t change anything. I was the first, but I won’t be the last. They hid it well, but in time, anyone can see the pattern.”

He stares at me, slowly shakes his head. “No, doctor, you weren’t the first.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I’m so tired now, eyes dark, my balance fading. “There’ll be others. We’ll rise again.”

O’Connor sighs. “Sorry, doctor. Not this time.”

The disc snaps, and I pitch forward into emptiness.