Jace Matthews | [ALT] Switching Base to Site-330

"Get into position."

His order cracked like a whip, and the recruits scrambled to their feet, bracing for another assault. Jace straightened, looking over the recruits before looking at his opponent, jaw set. Flashes of smiles told him the excited ones never changed, didn’t matter which Site he went to. They kept mental tabs on their wins and losses. No doubt excited to argue the numbers over drinks.

He panted as sweat dripped onto the wrestling mat, sounds swallowed by the occasional laugh and taunt. Silence returned when he put a hand up to signal they all start the next match.

But as his opponent lunged, Jace's world suddenly twisted. The fluorescent glare morphed into the sickly yellow glow of containment breach lamps. The trainees' faces blurred, replaced by the panicked expressions of his former squad, their voices drowned out by the echoes of gunfire and agonized screams.

No. Not again.

Jace's breath caught, heart pounding in his ears. He sidestepped the recruit's strike, jabbed him hard in the kidney, and swept his legs out from under him with practiced precision.

The trainee hit the mat with a thud, stunned. Jace towered over him, chest heaving, fists clenched at his sides. For a heartbeat, the world stood still.

Then, he blinked and took a breath, the illusion broken as his watch vibrated with a short, shrill beep. Finally, through with the retraining. Slowly, he extended a hand, hauling the recruit to his feet.

"Well done, and sorry about that," he said, voice low, and he turned to face the others to address them all. “That’s it. Get lunch and report to your stations.”

As the recruits filed out, Jace lingered, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension.

The quiet hum of the generator outside gave a comfort of normal, because "normal" meant operational and nothing anomalous. Yet. Jace stood over the table with the team's tablets glowing in the dim light, each displaying their orders and maps to compare and plan their next steps. They had chased this anomaly into the heart of its territory and now they needed to either contain it, contain the area, or eliminate the threat.

And if they managed the near-impossible to capture it alive? Jace already felt the phantom weight of a new responsibility. The captor always became the stand-in handler, a temporary warden until the lab coats back at Site-330 could design a cage and train a specialist. It was a duty he accepted with grim resignation.

"Matthews," Max's voice cut through his thoughts, laced with his characteristic dry cynicism. He tapped his own tablet, enhancing a section of the map. "You know what do these patterns mean?"

The display showed a series of faint residues on sensors, ghostly trails that mapped the anomaly's recent movements. They were deliberate, overlapping in a way that suggested patrol routes or hunting grounds.

Jace sighed, the sound a low rumble of frustration. He rubbed the small scar on his left earlobe. "It's a pattern of habituation. Or predation. Without knowing its motivation, it could be either." He clicked his tongue softly, analyzing the angles. "Really wish we had more than ghost signals and guesswork."

"'Least the signal's getting stronger," Max grumbled, picking up the tablet and comparing the glowing trails to the other data streams. He rolled his eyes. "For all we know, it's just luring us in for a closer look at its new snacks."

Jace scoffed. "Send another small fleet of drones. Try a new direction." Ivanova and Alvarez stood nearby, suited up and ready to go back outside. He looked at them, shoulders easing slightly. He'd been through hell with them, and he was certain they'd make it through this time too.

Alvarez shot him a knowing smile. "We headin' back out, boss?"

With a nod, Jace put his helmet back on and walked past them, and heading back outside. They had an anomaly to track down and contain.

The briefing room door hissed open, the sound slicing through the low hum of circulating air. Jace Matthews stood rigid before the holomap in the center, its shifting topographical lines painting his face in gradients of pale blue as it hovered over the desk. The terrain shimmered, ghostly and precise, with a single, blinking red icon pulsing at its heart. He didn’t turn at the interruption, instead focusing on the terrain and the single, blinking red icon at its heart.

“Matthews.”

The voice was a gravelly bark, stripped of pleasantry, carrying the weight of command. Chief Security Officer James Crowe filled the doorway, his broad silhouette blotting out the corridor light. Behind him, a cluster of researchers filed in, their signature white coats making them look like carbon copies of one another against the dim glow of the map. The door hissed shut, wrapping them all in the blue light.

Jace turned, his intense green eyes sweeping from Crowe to the small group in a quick assessment, coldly cataloging them one-by-one.

“This team,” Crowe said, jerking a thumb toward the small crowd. “Pulled them from Anomalous Materials. Pick one to go without on your mission. They'll be your sensor array.”

Jace’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of surprise breaking his neutral mask. He had expected the usual expendable D-Class, not specialists with skillsets too valuable to waste. He held his silence, waiting for the rest.

Crowe stepped up to the holomap, his scarred knuckles tapping the red dot. “Sector Theta-9. Last confirmed position of the anomaly.” His voice dropped lower, heavier. “Intel suggests it’s been... gathering. Organic. Synthetic. Building something. We don’t know what.”

Crowe turned his full attention to Jace, his expression grim. “You are lead on this. The team is high-value. Whoever you choose stays behind you at all times." His eyes cut to the group of researchers, setting a clear expectation. "They speak only when they have a critical update. They follow your orders instantly, without question.”

He turned back to Jace, his tone sharpening into steel. “Use them to read the anomaly. Contain it if the window is open. Terminate it the second it slams shut. Understood?”

The silence that followed was thick, charged. The holomap blinked, the red icon pulsing like a heartbeat. And beneath Crowe’s true command hung in the air: The Foundation wants it alive. I want it neutralized. You figure out the middle ground.

"Understood." Jace looked to the researchers, as Crowe left them to plan out the mission. His shoulders fell, dropping some of the tension with a quiet sigh. "Is there a volunteer?"

He hoped someone spoke up.

A high, ringing whine filled Jace’s skull, drowning out the distant, frantic shouts over the comms. The last thing he remembered was the flash of silver and the impact that felt like a freight train. Now, he was propped against the cold, damp wall of cavern wall. The air was cold, carrying the scent of ancient dust and forest... and his own blood.

He’d been a fool. He’d tracked the entity nto what he thought was a dead end. It had been a trap. The thing had moved with a blur of cutting edges and crushing force. His vest was shredded by four deep claw marks. He’d used a torn piece of his own uniform to fashion a crude, already-soaked pressure bandage, pressed in the gashes Every breath was a sharp, stabbing reminder of his impending doom.

Vision swimming, he fumbled for his sidearm, but his fingers were slick and numb. The weapon lay just out of reach, glinting on the rough stone floor. Then he felt it—not a sound, but a shift in the air pressure, a subtle wrongness that was the entity’s calling card. It was still here. He forced his head up, his vision clearing just enough to see it.

The anomaly stood a dozen feet away, its form coalescing from the shadows, a being of shifting mercury and obsidian. It had cornered him. It had won.

But it seem to attack. Not yet anyway.

Jace’s training screamed at him to grab his weapon, to fight to his last breath. But another part of his mind, the part that had survived Site-72 by trusting instinct over doctrine, told him this was not an attack vector. This was assessment. He swallowed, his throat dry as dust. "Truce," he gritted out, the word tasting foreign and desperate. "Until it's contained."

He wasn't asking for mercy. He was proposing a temporary alliance. He just hoped the entity was intelligent, or took some form of pity on him.

The hum of Site-330’s aging ventilation system accompanied the rhythmic thud of his boots on the concrete in the dimly lit sub-level corridor. Normalcy, a baseline against which the truly anomalous could be measured. He was walking back from the firing range, with the weight of his service weapon a comfortable pressure against his hip, and already mentally reviewing the performance of the new recruits. They were sloppy. Predictable.

A soft, almost imperceptible whirring sound cut through the ventilation hum, pulling him from his thoughts. He stopped, his posture instinctively straightening, his hand resting near his hip. A small, matte-black reconnaissance drone, no larger than his hand, one of Maximilian Voss’s personal, unregistered projects, descended from a ceiling vent. It wasn't on any official schematics. Jace smirked and shook his head.

He clicked his tongue, "Voss." Amusement clouded the heat in his tone.

It hovered before him for a moment, its single, blue sensor lens regarding him. Then, with a precise, silent dip—a gesture reminiscent of a respectful nod—it zipped forward. A small, foil-wrapped object dropped from its undercarriage, landing softly in Jace's open palm.

It was a single, high-caffeine energy bar. His preferred brand. The one that was always sold out in the commissary.

Jace stood perfectly still in the empty hallway, the damned thing feeling fragile in his gloves. The corner of his mouth twitched upward for a fraction of a second, a crack in the stoic armor he wore as naturally as his tactical gear.

Birthdays were a liability. They created patterns, predictable moments of vulnerability an adversary, or an anomaly, could exploit. More than that, it was a stark, annual reminder of the chasm between the man he was and the one he’d failed to be. It marked another year surviving in a world of chaos, another year further from the simple, normal life his grandmother had wanted for him. Celebrating felt like a betrayal of that memory, and of the sacrifices made in the silent, erased halls of Site-72.

Most knew each other's birthdays, and most knew not to mention it unless they did first.

"Thanks."

.