The group followed Norton outside the room they had been gathered in, though instead of using the door Isaac, Chrysalis, and Carver came through he used the door that was opposite that one, to which they all moved through the circular security door and headed outside. Of course the trio ignored the Bench that was near the door, especially since none of them had used any ammunition since the battle with the Snow Beast, though as they entered the circular room that would let them head outside they made sure to engage their helmets, just in case something happened. When they walked through the other side they found that Ellie's group, as they had to split into two groups of three to use the security door, was standing on a short bridge in front of them and that Ellie was trying to get Norton to wait for them, since they were vital to the success of the mission. Isaac still found it amusing when she did things like that, as Norton was so used to giving orders and it was plainly clear that he hated taking orders that he didn't like, along with the fact that no one was actually listening to the majority of the orders he had attempted to give them since they reached the atmosphere of this planet.
As they caught up with the group, who Norton had convinced to move to the other side of the bridge at least, a missile raced through the air and slammed into the middle of the bridge, knocking Ellie's group off the bridge while Isaac, Chrysalis, and Carver were thrown into the area below the bridge, thanks to the angle the missile had come in at... though as they got back up the group watched as a Unitologist ship, no doubt containing Danik himself, flew overhead.
"How the hell did Danik's men find us?!" Carver asked, because he was fairly sure they had lost the Unitologists when they entered ShockSpace when they were leaving the Lunar Colony behind, but that didn't change the fact that their enemies had found them once more.
"Come on." Norton said, his voice full of urgency as he tugged on Ellie and Santos, trying to get them to move away from the area that they were in, while at the same time Ellie glanced down at the area that the trio had landed in and stared at Isaac, as she was worried for him and his companions, "Come on. Run!"
"Ellie! Get going and stay safe!" Isaac said, causing Ellie to look down at them for a moment and nod her head towards him, indicating that she would do her best to do exactly that, before she, Santos, and Norton continued along the path that was in front of them, "We'll meet you guys at the warehouse!"
As he said that he, Chrysalis, and Carver turned towards the Unitologist ship that was coming to a stop in the area in front of them, though as that happened Chrysalis spotted several more of them flying through the air and dropping cultists off along the path that they were following. That told her a few things, though the first was that Danik was likely on a different ship that hadn't reached the facility yet, meaning that they would have to fight their way through his fellow insane fanatics before they reached the warehouse. The other thing she thought about was how impossible it had been for them to even follow the Eudora all the way to Tau Volantis, as from her readings she knew that it wasn't possible to track things through ShockSpace. Once she considered that point she came to another conclusion, one that she knew had to be real despite the fact that she foolishly hoped it wasn't, and that was that someone had to have told Danik where Tau Volantis was located... and the only person that would even dream of sabotaging this mission, and getting almost all of them killed in the process, was Robert Norton, the man that came and recruited them for the operation on Ellie's orders.
If she was right, and Norton had betrayed them in the worst way imaginable, she was going to utterly destroy him and make it impossible for the Marker to use his body when he was dead, and then she was going to turn her magic on the Unitologists and do the same to them.
As the followers of Danik dropped down from their ship and stared firing at the trio, providing cover fire so that the rest of their forces could join them, Isaac and Carver returned fire and did one simple thing as they did so, they targeted the heads of their enemies, making it easy to blast their way out of the ambush that was in front of them. When the last Unitologist had been dropped, and either one of the duo had gunned him down after avoiding his opening fire, the gunship started to rise so it could leave and get more soldiers for later, though Chrysalis wasn't going to let that happen on her watch. As such she reached for her magic and wove it through the air, allowing it to grab onto the gunship before it could depart, to which she grinned for a moment as her magic ignited, tearing the gunship apart in a explosive fireball, raining parts on the ground as she, Isaac, and Carver moved forward so they could reach the warehouse. Along the way to the security door, as there was only one that was operational at the moment, Chrysalis took a moment to also burn the corpses of their enemies, after looting them for their ammunition and med packs anyway.
Once they were on the other side of the door, however, Isaac decided to spend a moment asking the very question that Chrysalis had been considering before the Unitologists started dropping it's followers into the area they were in, as if they actually expected some of them to kill the trio.
"Where did they come from?" Ellie asked, as she was hoping that someone, it didn't matter who, had an idea or an explanation as to how this had happened, though her voice revealed that, while she was shocked by the arrival of Danik and his men, she was thinking of an explanation herself.
"They must have tailed us here." Norton stated, though at the same time Isaac, Chrysalis, and Carver moving towards the other door in the area they had entered, so they could press on and meet up with the others, even if they had to blast their way through a hundred more Unitologists to do so.
"That would be impossible, since no one's able to do something like that through ShockSpace." Chrysalis spoke up, though at the same time she knew she needed to speak her mind, to at least Isaac and Carver, because she had the feeling that she was right.
"Yeah, well they did." Carver said, as right now he wasn't in the mood to argue with anyone, because as far as he was concerned Danik had figured out where they had gone and had come after him, which meant they needed to be careful from this point forward.
"Ellie, can you and the others get to the warehouse?" Isaac asked, because if the answer was no he'd have to figure out how to meet up with them and help them get to their destination, even if that meant allowing Danik's men to run wild throughout the rest of the facility.
"Yes, though we'll have to outmaneuver the Unitologists to do so." Ellie replied, though even as she answered the line between them and her group was disconnected, indicating that they needed some silence before they were caught, which Isaac could understand.
"Isaac, I might have an idea how this happened." Chrysalis said, stopping Isaac and Carver in their tracks, to which she sighed as she considered how best to tell them what she was thinking, especially since one of them might take this the wrong way entirely, "Look, I might be wrong about this, but there's only one explanation that makes sense for how this came to pass... someone betrayed the location of Tau Volantis to our enemy, and right now the only person that has any real reason to do that is Norton."
"That's bullshit!" Carver replied, as he couldn't believe that Chrysalis was accusing his superior of something like that, especially after all the effort they went through to make sure the two of them came to this place to stop the Markers, "The Captain would never..."
"Are you really that blind to what he's been saying so far?" Chrysalis asked, causing Carver to freeze for a moment, as she wasn't letting him finish his statement, because she was going to tell him why she was thinking the way she was and wanted to see if Isaac agreed, "Carver, I told you that I'm a changeling and that my species can feel people's emotions, even feed on them at times despite my recent transformation nullifying the reason for me to do that. I can tell that when Norton looks at Ellie it's with the same love that Isaac radiates when he looks at her, though when Norton looks at Isaac he feels nothing but anger, rage, and jealousy. He's jealous that Ellie would pick someone like Isaac, who she has had feelings for since the events of the Titan Station, and has spent the majority of the time we've known him trying to convince Ellie to give up the mission for her own sake. Personally, I wouldn't put it passed him to try something like this, to use the unitologists, our human enemies, to try and kill Isaac so he could try to get together with Ellie."
"You're wrong about the Captain." Carver said, to which he disengaged his helmet for a moment so he could look Chrysalis right in the eye, especially when she did the same thing with her helmet, before he put his back together and continued towards the door, "You'll see that you read the situation wrong and the Unitologists followed us through ShockSpace... and then you'll beg the Captain for his forgiveness for doubting his commitment to our mission."
Chrysalis sighed as she put her helmet back together, as it appeared that it would be harder to convince Carver than she originally thought it would be, but at the very least the nod from Isaac revealed that he was thinking the same thing that she was, to which they followed after Carver before he got too far ahead of them. As they walked outside the building they had been inside Carver happened to intercept an enemy communication, indicating that the Unitologists knew where the three of them were, but that was great for them since it allowed Ellie, Santos, and Norton to get away, even if Chrysalis didn't trust Norton at this point. From there they accessed the cargo lift that was in front of them and used it to get to the area below them, though as they started to move down they spotted Ellie's group running across a walkway that was some distance in front of them, telling the trio that they were on two separate routes at this point. As the cargo lift reached the bottom area they found a group of Unitologists waiting for them, though as they fired at the cultists all three of them spotted some slashers pulling themselves from the ground behind the Unitologists... who were cut down from behind, to which the trio turned their guns on the slashers and dismembered them with destroying the corpses of their enemies.
At the end of the short path in front of them stood another security door, one that allowed them to enter a room where they could catch their breath in, allowing Isaac to make sure that Ellie and the others were safe, where Norton quickly stated that none of them were safe and that the Unitologists were only after Isaac, since he was the one that had the key to destroying the Markers inside his head. Norton even went so far as to say that Isaac wasn't worth all the trouble he had given the group, to which Ellie, who was getting really annoyed with the Captain, could be heard punching him in the gut as Santos said she found the warehouse... to which the audio link disconnected once more. Isaac and Carver stopped at the Bench to pick up a little more ammunition, just in case they encountered something that needed more than the few shots they were firing so far, before they headed out through the security door that was in front of them and continued their journey towards the warehouse. On the other side of the door they found some Unitologists that started shouting that they had found the group, though that only woke up several slashers that had been buried in the snow, who promptly killed the cultists before they could do anything to defend themselves... even though the trio opened fire and dismembered both them and the Necromorphs at the same time.
Chrysalis would have felt sorry for the Unitologists, but then she remembered that the majority of them were trying to bring about the end of the human race with a Convergence Event, which caused her to growl as she fired upon her targets and cut them apart before they could reach the three of them.
Once those enemies had been taken care of the three of them headed into the tunnel that was to their right, where one of the Unitologists called out that Isaac was in the tunnel, which just so happened to be the one that was right around the corner from where they entered the tunnel. Isaac gladly blew a hole in the cultist's brain, even though he knew that the other enemies knew where he and his friends were located already, before they moved towards the security door that was at the end of the path and used it to enter the area it was connected to. When the door opened a slasher was waiting for them, only to be immediately destroyed, though as they stepped into the room that was in front of them they discovered that the scientists that had been sent down to Tau Volantis had discovered more than one Snow Beast, as there was a still frozen and lifeless one resting in front of them, still half buried in the snow. As they walked over to the end of the walkway they were standing on, however, Isaac found a communicator that had a message from Danik, proclaiming that he was essentially an enemy of humanity, since he was trying to stop their 'rebirth', and that he and those who followed him needed to be killed before Convergence could happen.
At the bottom of the stairs rested yet another security door, revealing that the colonists and soldiers that had come here loved these things, though one the other side they engaged the cultists that happened to be guarding the area, to which they either blew the heads off their targets or dismembered them entirely. From there they walked through another security door and entered a small building that would allow them to get closer to the warehouse, though as they walked into the area they found the head of a divider burrowing into the decapitated body of a cultist, forcing the body to rise once more and fight for the Necromorphs. The trio then discovered that it was an easy target, as all they had to do was fire at the head and the entire thing went limp again, though to be on the safe side they all agreed to dismember every body they came across, so that way the creepers, as Chrysalis called the heads of the dividers now, wouldn't be able to do anything if they possessed a body.
As they walked through the other security door that allowed them to enter the small building, however, the trio stopped when the door opened and they walked outside, as some distance in front of them rested a massive Necromorph that both Isaac and Chrysalis recognized immediately, as they had fought one of them back on Aegis VII.
"What the hell is THAT?" Carver asked, as he hadn't seen or heard of anything like that before, but then again there were some Necromorphs that Ellie hadn't informed him and the others about ahead of time, and this just happened to be one of those types.
"A Hive Mind." Chrysalis replied, though at the same time she stared at the frozen creature, remembering what they had done to stop the creature the first time and who she had killed seconds before the first Hive Mind they had fought revealed itself to them, "We fought one on Aegis VII a few years ago and defeated it. Don't worry, if something were to wake that bad boy up we know how to take it out."
Once they had their fill of staring at the frozen Hive Mind, and continued along the path that was in front of them, all three of them paused as a group of terrified Unitologists backed up in front of them, completely ignoring them, and tried to run from some slashers and fodders while they tried to kill them. The trio decided to wait for a few seconds, letting the undead take care of the cultists for them, before firing at the group of Necromorphs that were now standing in their way and dismembered them. Of course as they moved forward more of the creepers showed up and started infesting the corpses that were in front of them, to which the trio simply shot them in the head and were done with them, as there was no reason to let them gain complete control over the bodies in front of them. The moment they were sure that all of the enemies, both the living ones and the dead ones, had been taken care of they walked into the area the Unitologists had been standing guard in and found a computer terminal that required two people to hack into it.
Chrysalis stood guard over Isaac and Carver as they started to bypass the defenses and activate the security door that was beside them, though at the same time she was attacked by a single fodder the entire time they stood in front of the terminal, which she dismembered almost immediately... though a few moments later they stepped away from the computer and the door opened for them.
"Okay, I might regret asking this," Carver said, to which the three of them paused when they stepped through the other side of the circular security door and entered the large chamber that they were now standing in, where he pointed up at the machine that was in front of them, with part of it jammed into something, "but what is that?"
"It looks like a drill." Isaac answered, knowing that Carver, who served in the military, wouldn't have been taught to recognize something like this, while at the same time he knew it because he had repaired one or two of them in the past and Chrysalis knew it from her readings on the technology that was all around her, "Considering how many buildings we've already passed by, and how many we've gone through, I'd have to hazard a guess that the warehouse should be on the other side of that door."
"Of course to do that we'll have to move the drill." Chrysalis commented, to which she spotted something that was right in front of where the drill was resting, some switches of some kind, and wondered if those were the key to getting through the other security door.
The three of them headed down the short ramp that was off on their right and approached the deactivated Bench that was at the bottom, though at the same time Carver spotted a generator that he guessed restored power to part of the chamber that they were in. When he turned the generator's lever, however, they discovered that it not only powered up the area that the Bench was located in, but it also powered up the rest of the chamber, where a computerized voice declared that the Coring Platform was online. That was accompanied by the sounds of the drill starting up and the small gate that was beside the generator lowered into the ground, meaning that they could now walk out into the area that the drill happened to be in and investigate how they were going to remove the drill. Chrysalis, seeing all of this happen, came to the conclusion that they might have to destroy the drill to move forward, which would be easy with their Kinesis Modules and her magic... but that didn't stop her from looking for any additional methods they could use to clear the path, without destroying something every single time they wanted to move forward.
"Like I thought, the damn thing's stuck." Isaac said, to which the three of them carefully entered the massive circular area that the drill usually operated in, while at the same time seeing what Chrysalis must have seen earlier, "Hey Carver, give me a hand and help me lower those safety gates."
"SAFETY GATES? DOWN?" Carver asked, disbelief filling his voice for a moment, as if he couldn't believe that Isaac was asking him to do something like that, but at the same time he growled and shook his head for a moment, "You had better know what you're doing."
Together the two of them latched onto the switches that controlled the safety gates, which is what Chrysalis had seen earlier, and they turned them with their Kinesis Modules, though that caused the pair of safety gates to lower into the floor and free the drill from it's prison. As the drill came free, however, they discovered that it was going to have to be destroyed, as there was no way for them to safely move around it without someone getting seriously hurt or killed, to which the three of them focused on what they needed to do. Isaac, being the one that was the most familiar with drills, stated that they could use a Stasis charge on it and slow the drill down, revealing it's weak point to them so they could damage it and eventually destroy it. At the same time, just as Isaac slowed the drill down and they started to fire at it, several Necromorphs pulled themselves out of the nearby vents and charged at the group, causing Chrysalis to focus her efforts on keeping them safe while Isaac and Carver dealt with breaking the drill.
Fortunately with the three of them following that arrangement, even with Chrysalis going after the Necromorphs and nothing else, they were able to cause enough damage to the drill to cause the blades to break in half, which was followed by it spinning out of control... to which Chrysalis returned to her friends and raised a barrier to protect them, just in case the drill came at them. A few seconds later, however, they watched as the drill separated from what it was attached to and spun around until it was embedded in the wall above the door they needed to pass through, though it appeared to be deep enough so that it wouldn't come undone at all.
"You know, I'm glad that worked as well as it did." Isaac commented, to which he looked at their handiwork as Chrysalis lowered the barrier, though he was happy that she was thinking about all of their safety when she saw the drill moving like that, "I'm not sure what we would have done if it didn't work."
"I'm pretty sure I could have blasted our way out of here," Chrysalis said, though as she spoke she held a hand out and let some magic gather around her, reminding them that she still had a power they really didn't use all that much, which was just fine with her considering that she couldn't control her full terrible power.
"You know what, I'm just going to say this, but fuck this planet." Carver stated, indicating that he was growing tired of everything trying to kill them, even though it was their fault the drill attempted it since they powered the thing and lowered the safety gates it was stuck on, "Come on, let's get out of here."
"Okay Ellie, we're headed to the warehouse now." Isaac said, reestablishing the audio link between their group and Ellie's group, as he was worried about them and he was sure that they were worried about the three of them, especially since Danik had decided to show up.
"Is everything alright?" Ellie asked, though her tone suggested that she knew that something had happened in their area, which wouldn't come as a surprise to him or Chrysalis since her team had been the reason they had survived this long, or had found the areas and pieces of equipment that they needed.
"Well, considering that this planet wants to kill us, Norton hating my guts, and Danik finding us, I'd say we're having a blast." Isaac replied, though in truth he was being sarcastic, and he knew that Ellie knew he was doing that on purpose, to which he focused on what he really wanted to say, "Ellie, we just destroyed a drill that was blocking our way and the Necromorphs that came in to stop us died before they could lay a hand on any of us. We're fine, I promise."
"And I believe you." Ellie said, though at the same time the trio could hear the relief in her voice, because while she might actually worry about them, despite the fact that two of them were seasoned veterans at dealing with outbreaks like this, she knew that they would always come out on top, "Isaac, I'm sorry about the way Norton is acting... he certainly wasn't this way when I asked him and Carver to find you and Chrysalis."
"Well tell him that if he doesn't behave I'll fulfill my promise from earlier," Chrysalis stated, knowing that Norton had seen some of her power earlier and knew that she was dangerous, as that had gotten him to shut up when they attempted to use the Crozier to breach the atmosphere, and maybe it would get him to behave again, "Have you guys had any luck in finding the experiment?"
"Yes, we've located it." Ellie replied, though at the same time her tone was still happy, meaning that whatever she and the others had found must have been a lot better than the fact that the Unitologists were now scouring the facility, looking for all of them.
"And?" Carver asked, because right now he knew that they had information on the experiment, something that they might need to know before they reached the warehouse, and was silently hoping that Ellie would given them what she and the others had found out.
"The three of you will have to see for yourselves." Ellie stated, to which the audio link disconnected a few seconds later, indicating that she and the others had work to do and were fully expecting the trio to arrive shortly, causing them to move forward while Carver moaned for a few seconds.
The three of them headed through the security door that was in front of them and discovered that they were outside once more, though this time around they had to use the cargo lift that was to their left to ride up to the path that was above them, which they did so without delay. When the cargo lift came to a stop they carefully walked forward and kept their weapons at the ready, as they immediately expected enemies to reveal themselves when they spotted the crates that were partly buried in the snow, but what surprised them was that there weren't any enemies that wanted to engage them at the moment. Still, to be on the safe side, the three of them kept their eyes and ears open for anything and everything that might want to fight them, though as they did so they stepped into the security door and headed finally entered the warehouse that everyone else was inside... though when they stepped through the second side of the security door, however, they stared at the massive Necromorph that was frozen over and definitely wasn't moving at all.
"Holy shit." Isaac said, as when Ellie said that they had found the experiment he was expecting something small, like a item one of them could hold or a vehicle that they could all drive in, but he and the others weren't expecting the experiment to be a large Hive Mind sized Necromorph.
"Isaac, there you guys are!" Santos spoke up, apparently seeing them from wherever she was standing, though at the same time the group remained standing where they were, because they were interested in what they were seeing at the moment, "We're upstairs on the observation level."
"What the hell is this thing?" Isaac asked, because the more he looked at the Necromorph the more he could tell that it wasn't a Hive Mind, as there were some notable differences between what they saw on Aegis VII and what was resting in front of them.
"It's bad news, that's what it is." Norton stated, indicating that he wanted nothing to do with what the others were attempting, even though at this point he was really giving Chrysalis a reason to get rid of him, because if he wasn't going to help them he might as well be gone.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Santos inquired, apparently ignoring Norton's comment on the large Necromorph, which had to annoy him, while at the same time staring at some of the information that was in front of her, as they suspected that she and the others found something when they arrived, "The researchers called it the 'Nexus'. They thought these larger specimens acted as conduits for the Marker signal, broadcasting it to the smaller forms."
"And that helps us how?" Carver asked, because he honestly wasn't seeing what was so special about the large dead creature that was in front of them, as he wanted nothing more than to let Chrysalis use her magic and obliterate the entire thing, just to be on the safe side.
"Because I think the researchers found the Machine by tracking the signal upstream," Santos replied, her tone revealing that she was vastly interested in what she had found and what they could still find, especially since there might be more for them to learn, "through the nerve clusters inside the creature."
"We actually have to go inside that thing?" Chrysalis inquired, as that was the weirdest thing she had heard of since she arrived in this part of the universe, because at this point she was too used to the dead rising and transforming into monsters that were bent on killing everything.
"Yes! This is a wonderful opportunity!" Santos said, indicating that she was overly excited about the prospect of learning even more about the Necromorphs, even if that meant sending the trio inside the beast in front of them and potentially repeating the experiment the researchers did.
"Okay, but there's a problem with that plan." Carver stated, as he appeared to be one of the few people that seemed to understand what they were seeing at the moment, even though he was sure that Isaac and Chrysalis had noticed the problem as well, "That son of a bitch is frozen solid. How the hell are we supposed to get inside it?"
"Well, the scientists used heat exchanges... here, let me try to ignite them." Santos replied, to which the trio watched as nothing seemed to happen in the chamber that they were inside, which made sense considering that this facility had been offline for two hundred years, though they were thankful that the doors, at least, were still operational, "No good."
"There's probably a furnace on the roof." Isaac stated, as that made the most sense in this situation, even though the last thing any of them wanted to do was to go inside the body of a Necromorph, even one that had been frozen for the last two hundred years, "Chrysalis, Carver, and I will head up there and see if we can't find it, and get it running again... and then we can talk about the Nexus again."
"Guys, please be careful out there." Ellie said, as she was sure that they would remain safe while they were outside the chamber, if what had happened so far was anything to go by, but she wanted them to know that she wanted nothing to harm them while they searched for the furnace.
"Yeah, don't get yourselves hurt." Norton remarked, his tone indicating that he didn't care if they succeeded or not, meaning that he was still hoping that he could convince Ellie to leave the planet, even if everyone else was so dead set against leaving at this point.
Chrysalis sighed as they started to walk away from the Bench that was near the door they had walked through, as she knew that this was going to end poorly for someone, especially since they were going to turn the heat on to thaw out a frozen Necromorph, which had to have some disastrous consequences they weren't aware of... to which she readied herself, as she wanted to keep them all safe so they could get this mission done as fast as possible.