invaders must die [ p ]

Uriel had barely woken up this morning before he’d received a message from SP headquarters. He sat up in his bed, bringing a knee up to flex the joint as he read the display of the tablet in his hand. It seemed as though he was being assigned to some kind of exploratory mission in one of the recently identified salvage zones. He wasn’t entirely sure why a member of the Secret Police was needed for something like that, but he supposed that there was the potential for unknown danger and he and his fellow officers were the people in Novus best trained to deal with such matters.

In any case, he was supposed to depart on a train rather soon, meeting with another officer there who would be joining him. He ran a hand through his hair and got up, walking into the bathroom and showering off, shaving, and the rest of an abbreviated morning routine. He quickly got dressed into his uniform, checked his sidearm, and grabbed a small nylon duffel bag, soon stuffed with various supplies, a handful of granola bars, a couple of cups of yogurt, and a few of bottles of chocolate nutrient-shake some of which he would eat on the way to their destination. He arrived at the train, to find that the person he’d be spending the day with would actually be Kendra. He hadn’t seen her since the time they spent together in the shooting range, and the thought momentarily crossed his mind that he hoped her situation had gotten better from whoever it was that was bothering her so much back then. Even so, he appreciated that she was the one he’d be doing the mission with.

By the time they had made their way to the salvage zone, Uriel had finished off all of his impromptu breakfast, of course offering a granola bar to Kendra, and saving the rest for whenever they decided to take a break. It took a fair amount of food to keep a body of his size running, and he hoped the mission wouldn’t take too much of their day. Besides, Uriel was never a huge fan of confined spaces, so the prospect of spending extended amounts of time in an underground cave wasn’t the most appealing thing in the world to the officer. It was then that Kendra’s voice caught his attention, the blonde looking to her and nodding.

“I thought the same thing when I got the message this morning. I’m hoping we don’t run into anything especially dangerous, but who better to deal with such a thing? And we’ll see how many we need when we get down there. We only need enough for the brains to get an idea of what’s down here to be mined.”

Soon enough they’d arrived at the destination, Uriel and Kendra stepping out into the small outpost hub for the zone and soon out into the cavern they would begin exploring. Uriel looked around, actually rather awestruck with the size of it and thinking that it wasn’t quite as bad as he was expecting, that and the blue glow of the embedded crystals were quite pleasant to look at.

“I wonder if this had always been here, or whether the disaster helped create it somehow. Either way…this is impressive.”

He looked to Kendra with a light smile, noticing how excited she seemed to be. Maybe he would enjoy this day quite a bit more than he expected.

"Shall we get started then?"