Tiberian Sunset (Cancelled)

by AuremUmbra

Chapter 3: Memories

Chapter 3: Memories

Sunset was in a subterranean APC with six others: Oxanna, the cyborg commando and four cyborgs. She was again in her light armour and command helmet. She had her laser rifle and her pistols. Oxanna was in the outfit she wore when reporting and carried her pistol with her. The cyborg commando carried his flamethrower and chain gun.

They were on their way to a bridge which they were going to cross to get to the broadcast station. The other side of the bridge was either in the middle of an enemy base or paved, which prevents a subterranean APC from surfacing.

The broadcast station was on a hill, the bridge connected to another hill over a section on both that were almost cliff faces. The only way there other than the bridge was through the enemy base.

Slavik was in the Montauk commanding their other forces, the majority of which came from the base Sunset had saved from Hassan’s guard. Slavik’s forces were to destroy the small enemy base and destroy the bridge leading to the large one. The bridge was the only way on or off of the island the large base is built on. Thus, destroying it will cause the enemy forces to be trapped there.

Sunset’s team, however, was to escort Oxanna to the broadcast station unharmed. Oxanna would then use the broadcast station to convince the large approaching force to join them rather than their enemies. If they are successful, then Slavik’s mission will be much easier.

The APC surfaced and the cyborgs rushed out. The cyborg commando and Sunset followed quickly. Oxanna stayed inside the APC for safety. Sunset saw the enemies guarding the bridge. Two light infantry, an engineer, an attack buggy and a laser turret. A sandbag wall blocked off the road shortly before the bridge.

Sunset ordered the cyborg commando to destroy the attack buggy and then the turret. She ordered two of the cyborgs to stay with the APC and defend it. The other two cyborgs she ordered to go with her and destroy whatever survives both her and the cyborg commando.

They were a large distance away and so had not been recognised by their enemy. Sunset and the cyborg commando lead the group towards Hassan’s forces. They stopped shortly outside of the laser’s range.

“Now!” Sunset ordered.

She fired her laser rifle at the left infantry and it burned through his head. The cyborg commando fired at the attack buggy with his arm mounted plasma cannon. It incinerated the front of the buggy and caused the fuel tank to explode.

Sunset fired at the second light infantry. He was hit in the chest but not killed. He fell to the ground screaming. Sunset shot him again; silencing him.

The cyborg commando shot at the laser turret. It was badly damaged but it endured. So he shot it again, destroying it. Sunset shot at the engineer. It hit his bag on his back as he turned and ran. She shot again and he fell.

Sunset moved to the bridge. “All clear,” she said.

The APC drove forward and all the cyborgs joined her. She sent two of them to check the other side of the bridge for an ambush. There was none. Oxanna left the APC and it tunnelled underground to await their return. They all crossed the bridge. Sunset in the lead, the cyborg commando bringing up the rear, Oxanna in the middle and the two cyborgs on either side of her.

They crossed the bridge and came out into a small town. They carefully moved through the town. The pair of cyborgs that had crossed the bridge first were scouting ahead of the group. They found no more resistance and quickly arrived at the broadcast station.

Sunset, Oxanna and one of the cyborgs entered. The other three cyborgs and the cyborg commando guarded the building from the outside.

Sunset slung her laser rifle over her back and drew her pistols; they would be more suited to close combat than her rifle and the building did not have wide open areas.

Oxanna guided them through the building. They did not encounter any resistance in the building and Oxanna led them to a communications room. She used it to she convince the large force approaching from the south to join Slavik’s forces.

Sunset was contacted by Slavik and told that the mission was successful. The island base had been cut off and the smaller base had been destroyed by a combination of the reinforcements and their forces. Oxanna had failed to convince all of the Nod reinforcements to join Slavik, but the majority did.

Oxanna then led them to the news room which she entered and sat beside her colleague, Maicheq. Sunset watched through the doorway.

When Oxanna sat down beside him, Maicheq stopped and looked surprised. After several moments he said, “Well this is a surprise.”

“Please, continue,” Oxanna replied.

After several moments Maicheq turned his head to a second camera that was aimed solely at him and continued with the ‘news’ he was reporting. “Head of GDI forces, General Solomon, is said to have become mentally unstable. …”

He was cut off by Oxanna shooting him in the back of the head with her pistol. He collapsed and the televisions Sunset could see in the hallway changed back to showing the whole news desk. Maicheq was hidden behind the desk where he had collapsed.

Oxanna put her pistol down on the desk, and said, “In other news, General Hassan’s weak and impotent rule was overthrown today, when forces within the brotherhood rose up to unite Nod under a new leader, Anton Slavik, rescued from death by the Spirit Hand of Kane, has been vindicated of all crimes against the state. He steps forward now to lead us. Follow him as you would follow Kane.”

Sunset was ordered to return to the Montauk. Oxanna was going to stay and continue convincing those loyal to Hassan to join them for the betterment of the Brotherhood.

Sunset left with the cyborgs and cyborg commando and returned to the Montauk using the subterranean APC.

When she returned she was finally able to have a shower and wash out the brown dye in her hair. She then went to bed; Slavik had given her another mission but it wasn’t until the next day.

So she slept; and she dreamt.

She was in a white room lying on a small bed that resembled a hospital bed. She was in a white robe with wires attached to small metal items attached to her body. The wires led to a machine next to the bed.

She looked around the room. It was very large for what was in it. There was her bed and the machine next to it but the rest of the room was empty and was several times larger than the space taken up by the bed and machine. There was only one door. It was white with a golden eagle symbol enclosed in a golden circle. The walls were white and unadorned except for the wall opposite the one her bed rested against. It had a mirror in it. The mirror ran nearly the length of the room and started from about waist height to about a foot above her head.

She stood and removed the metal devices from her body. She felt as if she had used up all of her magic. She tried to remember where she was; and then she remembered. She had been running from people wearing that symbol. She had run through a field of green crystals. A large vehicle had got in her way, and she had used magic. But it didn’t work properly and then she collapsed.

So how did she get here? And what are they going to do to her?

As if to answer her unspoken question the door opened. In came someone wearing a full-body green suit with a slightly blue transparent visor. The man looked old. He had little hair, what hair he did have was grey. His face was wrinkled. His eyes looked at her with cold curiosity; like she was an interesting experiment.

The man approached her and she stepped back. She eventually reached the wall. She tried to use her magic but nothing came. The man continued towards her and pulled out a device. It somewhat resembled a syringe.

She slid herself along the wall to get away from the man. He continued after her. She eventually reached the corner and the man blocked her only means of escape. He grabbed her left arm and stabbed it with the device where the vein was, as if using it as a syringe.

Blood filled the device. After a few moments the man removed the device, let go of her arm and left the room.

***

The man was back. This time he brought one of the green crystals. Sunset again tried to use her magic. But nothing happened. She tried to run around him to the door. The door didn’t open. He came to her and held the crystal to her. She felt pain run up and down her spine. It was agony. She screamed. After what felt like hours everything went dark.

She would be delivered food by a younger man wearing a similar suit three times a day. The food was basic, almost tasteless and unsatisfying.

The old man, her tormentor, would return irregularly. Sometimes it was several times a day, sometimes he wouldn’t be seen for several days. When he visited her it would either be to take some of her blood or to cause her agony with a green substance; usually crystal. The colour of the crystal changed slightly between samples, she took this to mean that the substances were slightly different; probably different compositions.

After several weeks of this the man brought in a blue crystal. He held it to her. It caused her horrific agony. It was ten times worse than the green crystals. She screamed and tried to escape with her magic. The room shook. Loud booming sounds could be heard outside her room. She tried to use her magic even harder.

Then the crystal seemed to explode! Shards of the crystal went flying backwards and tore through the man. Blood poured out all over her. Surprisingly the pain was gone. She looked down and found that she wasn’t hurt. The only blood on her was the man’s. She looked around. The door had been torn out of the wall.

The mirror had shattered revealing a room behind it. She could see several people in there; they were all dead. Holes sticking through them from where the crystal had torn through them and shards of the crystal lodged inside of them. One of the people, the man who had fed her was pinned to the door with a large shard though his chest.

She took several minutes to calm herself down. Then she tried to escape. She ran out the door to her room and found herself in a hallway. There were two paths she could take. One to her left that went towards the room that she saw the other dead people in and one to her right. She took the path to the right. Most of the doors she ran past were destroyed similarly to the one to the room she had been locked in.

She saw more bodies; they were wearing golden armour like those that had chased her. Some had green crystal shards in their bodies. She tried not to look at them as she ran past. She came to the end of the hallway. There were stairs going up. So she climbed them, hoping that they would lead to the way out. She got to the top of the stairs and found a window. It was broken and showed that she was on the ground floor of the building. She climbed out of it and looked around.

There were many buildings around her. They were all very large, golden and decorated with the golden eagle design. Most of the buildings had smoke coming out of them and large cracks in the walls. There were several vehicles on their sides and several people stumbling around in golden armour.

Sunset ran. She ran away from the buildings. She ran away from the vehicles. She ran away from the people. And she ran away from the crystals.

She ran. And then she stopped.

In front of her she saw people in black and red fighting the people in gold. There were black wheeled vehicles destroying the golden metal things with legs. There were people in black armour using some kind of ranged weapon to kill people in gold armour using similar weapons.

There were tall men that looked like they had metal limbs killing the people in gold by pointing their arms at them. And she saw another one that was even taller wearing black armour. It pointed its right arm at one of the giant metal things with two legs and out came a green orb.

The orb flew very quickly at the metal giant and crashed into its leg. The orb exploded, tearing the leg off. The giant fell down and crushed someone in gold underneath it.

The black armoured man marched towards the golden army. It shot another orb at a metal giant and blew off its weapon. The giant exploded shortly after. It approached the golden people and grabbed something off its back in its left arm. It led the black army towards the golden people.

And it started shooting flames from the device in its left hand. The golden soldiers ran. Most didn’t escape. The large, black armoured man moved into the base and looked around. Noticing the destroyed buildings, it looked around again and spotted Sunset; standing there stunned.

He marched towards her. In a robotic voice he said, “Do you know what did this?” Sunset nodded shakily. He looked at her closely. “Come with me.”

He turned around and headed towards a black vehicle with a drill on it. Sunset looked around quickly. The others in black were going inside the buildings or walking around looking for enemies. She turned and followed him into the vehicle.

The man sat in a seat and attached a harness. Sunset sat opposite him and did the same, with difficulty.

Once she had buckled the harness the vehicle moved. It tilted and drove down at an angle. After several minutes it levelled off and sped up. After another few minutes it stopped. The door opened and the armoured metal man walked out. Sunset followed after removing her harness; again with difficulty.

She found herself looking at a large red and black vehicle. She didn’t have time to look at it before she followed the man inside. They walked down a hallway and through several doors before coming to another door.

It opened and she saw four people arguing. One, a male sitting in the chair closet to Sunset, at a higher elevation to the others, was saying that they can’t make assumptions.

A woman standing to his right was saying that ‘shiners’ did it. A man in the far right of the room sitting in a chair was saying that they should leave and let the ‘shiners’ and ‘GDI’ fight it out.

And the man in the far left was arguing that it was their research that caused it. Apparently, ‘GDI’ doesn’t understand ‘tiberium’. Sunset was confused; that was until she saw the screen.

It showed the building she had escaped from. Green crystals had pierced through everything: Metal walls, armoured people, the ceiling, the floor, even several meters into the ground.

A fifth voice announced her presence. It sounded robotic but not the same as the man that brought her. She couldn’t see where it was coming from.

They all turned to look at her.

“She was found at the base,” said the disembodied voice. “She did not run from us or try to fight. One of the cyborgs saw her running towards our battle then stopping when she saw our forces. She complied with all directives given by the cyborg commando and does not appear to be a soldier or scientist. She was likely a test subject. She acknowledged that she knew the events you are discussing.”

“My name is Anton Slavik,” the closest man said. “Could you please tell us how this happened?” he gestured at the screen.

Sunset gulped, nodded, then tried to speak. It came out as a croak so she tried again. “They were tor-torturing me with green crystals,” She teared up at saying this, “for several weeks. T-to-today th-they tri-tried wi-with a blue cry-crystal. It-It was agony.” She paused and started to calm down a little, but not for long. “There were explosions outside the room. I-I think that it was the green crystals exploding. The-then the blue crystal exploded. It-it cut them apart. I don’t know why I-I’m okay. The explosion destroyed the door, so I-I ran out.

“I ran down hallways, the-there were green crystal spikes sticking through walls and people. I ju-just kept running. I found my way out and ev-everything was destroyed. I ran from the gold people and saw your people.”

“Commander, you need to see this,” said the man at the front right.

Slavik turned around and looked at the screen. It showed the room Sunset had seen from her room through the broken glass. Sunset looked away.

“Project Sunshine,” Slavik said. “We found it.”

Sunset looked up at the screen when he said that. It showed a research journal. It said ‘Project Sunshine’ at the top.

“See if you can get the computer working,” Slavik said.

The camera moved to a small machine on the side. It was one of the few things that didn’t have holes or shards through it. The screen showed hands moving across the machine and after several minutes it lit up. The camera moved to show a screen with several holes in it. It still turned on.

“Play the most recent video,” Slavik said.

It showed what happened to Sunset and how the crystal had exploded. The reactions were emotional. Slavik was livid, the others were visibly either terrified or enraged. Things like ‘No one should be tortured like that’ and ‘She’s just a child’ were shouted around the room.

Eventually everyone calmed down. And Slavik ordered, “Play the first video.”

This video was shaky and showed Sunset running from a man in gold armour. The camera was also chasing Sunset. It showed her run out into a field of green crystals. It showed a large gold and grey vehicle drive in front of her.

Then the tiberium began to glow. The tiberium closest to Sunset changed colour, turning teal. Then, in a flash of light, the tiberium vanished, as did the harvester. Then Sunset collapsed on the ground. The video ended.

The people turned back to face Sunset. “I think we need to protect her from GDI,” Slavik said.

Sunset awoke. Breathing heavily. Tear stains on her pillow. “Thank Celestia, Slavik found me,” she said.

Author's Note:

Note:
I am not saying that GDI is evil or all of them would torture someone, or continue research if that research caused agony to someone else.
I do not believe either side of this conflict is right or wrong. Both are morally grey and contain bad elements.
The scientists are not evil; just doing something wrong to try to prevent something worse.

Comments

[Sollys]

Wow, that's one hell of a backstory.

[Lex the Pikachu]

You're not wrong, Nod is more bad than GDi but GDI has been shown to do bad things depending on who is in charge.

For example. The Ion Cannon strike on Temple Prime that caused a deadly chain reaction. And the fact Director Boyld wanted you to use a Liquid-T Bomb in the final fight against the Scrin.

[Admiral Q Ponyform]

sorry this is BS...Tiberium experiemnts was clear NOD territory not GDI..come up with a better excuse for Susnet to be with Nod then this crap.

[AuremUmbra]

9995683
Both sides did tiberium experiments.