Task Force 141 | Aphrodisiac

The rainforest had been miserable before the weather turned.

Heat sat beneath the canopy like something trapped there, thick enough that every breath came warm and damp. Moisture slicked exposed skin and gathered beneath straps, body armour, and webbing until nothing felt properly dry anymore. The ground beneath the trees was worse, a churn of black soil, rotting leaves, exposed roots, and vegetation dense enough that progress had become less a march than a steady fight for every metre.

Price kept the column moving anyway.

Somewhere ahead of them, buried beneath kilometres of jungle, was what remained of a transport aircraft that had vanished from radar earlier that morning. The aircraft itself mattered considerably less than what had been carried inside it. Its flight recorder contained route data, origin coordinates, destination information, and potentially enough surrounding telemetry to answer questions intelligence had been asking for months.

If the box survived the crash. If nobody else reached it first. Those were problems for later. The immediate problem was above them.

Price stopped beside the broad trunk of a tree and tilted his head, listening past the insects and the wet drag of leaves shifting against one another. The change had been gradual enough to almost miss. The constant shrilling chorus of the jungle had begun thinning out, replaced by the deeper movement of the canopy overhead.

Wind.

Not much of it reached the forest floor yet, but forty metres above them the highest branches had started to move.

Gaz noticed it at nearly the same time. He looked upward through the gaps in the foliage, where what little sky remained visible had darkened from washed-out grey to something considerably heavier.

“That’s coming in quick.” he said, adjusting the strap across his shoulder.

Soap glanced up as another gust rolled through the upper canopy. “Aye. Looks friendly.”

Ghost gave him a flat look from behind the skull-patterned mask before turning his attention back toward the surrounding trees.

The next gust came harder, faster. Leaves shuddered overhead. Somewhere deeper in the rainforest, a branch cracked with a sharp report before disappearing beneath the endless noise of moving vegetation.

Price pulled the map from the waterproof pouch against his vest and checked their position again. The crash site was still several kilometres northeast, assuming the coordinates they had been given were accurate. Under normal conditions, the distance would have been manageable.

These weren't going to remain normal conditions for long. He folded the map shut. “We're not making the aircraft before that hits.”

The air itself seemed to have changed. Pressure had settled over the jungle, heavy and expectant, while the wind above continued building. The first distant roll of thunder came low enough to be mistaken for something moving beneath the earth.

Soap wiped the back of his wrist across his forehead. “So what's the plan?”

“Shelter first,” Price said. “Crash site after.”

Ghost had already moved his attention toward the terrain instead of the sky. Thick jungle surrounded them in every direction, but the ground had been climbing gradually for the past twenty minutes. Through the trees to their west, limestone pushed through the vegetation in pale broken shelves, almost entirely swallowed by moss, vines, and enormous root systems.

“Higher ground that way,” he said. “Rock face.”

Gaz followed his line of sight. “Could be caves.”

“Could be.” Price replied. Another gust tore through the canopy, this one reached them.

Warm wind rushed between the trees hard enough to send loose leaves skittering across the forest floor. Branches bent overhead and vines swung violently from trunks that had probably stood there for centuries. Somewhere nearby, something large crashed through the undergrowth after being torn loose.

Then came the rain. Only a few drops hit the leaves of the trees and ground foliage. Slow at first, the drops could be tracked, but quickly picked up. One drop became fifty and soon, it was a downpour and they were drenched.

Fat, heavy impacts struck leaves around them with widely spaced taps, each one large enough to burst against equipment and darken fabric immediately.

Price looked once toward the direction of the crash site. Then toward the limestone ridge. “West,” he ordered, securing the map. “Find cover before the sky opens.”

The limestone ridge rose sharply out of the rainforest, pale stone almost completely buried beneath moss, roots, and hanging vines. By the time they reached it, the storm had broken properly. Rain hammered through the canopy in sheets, thunder rolling hard enough to tremble through the rock beneath their boots.

They searched the ridge quickly, cutting through vegetation wherever the stone looked promising. Ghost found the entrance almost by accident, hidden behind a dense curtain of vines and broad leaves. It was so thoroughly overgrown that they only saw the dark opening after Soap hacked through several layers of growth.

“Inside.” Price ordered, and nobody needed telling twice. They pushed through just as another crack of thunder split overhead, leaving the worst of the rain behind almost immediately.

The cave beyond was dark and cold, the thick vegetation over the entrance keeping most of the water outside. Their torches swept over damp limestone, roots, and shallow pools gathering between uneven rock. It was shelter, and for the moment, that was enough.

At least until they realized the cave kept going.

The passage curved deeper into the ridge, wider than expected and carrying their footsteps far ahead of them. Then Gaz’s light caught something green: ferns, healthy ones, growing from damp soil gathered along the stone.

Soap slowed beside them. “Need sunlight, don’t they?”

“Usually,” Gaz replied, looking farther down the passage where a faint natural glow spilled around another bend.

Price studied it for a moment. A second entrance, perhaps. Unusual, but possible. He motioned them onward.

Then they rounded the rock face and stopped. The cavern beyond was enormous, its ceiling disappearing high above them and broken in places by narrow openings that allowed pale daylight to pour through.

Beneath it stretched something closer to a hidden ecosystem than a cave. Trees grew from the cavern floor, thick vines hung from stone ledges, and ferns crowded the banks of clear ponds and narrow streams. Small waterfalls spilled down distant rock faces into a dark, still lake.

For several seconds, nobody spoke. Soap finally breathed, “Jesus...”

While Gaz stared across the cavern with open disbelief. “How the hell does nobody know this is here?”

Ghost remained quiet, his eyes already moving across the trees and water instead of admiring them. Price stepped forward more slowly, taking in the sheer scale of the place while the storm continued to rage somewhere beyond the ridge.

Inside, the cavern was almost peaceful. Faint pink spores drifted lazily through the air around them, nearly invisible in the pale shafts of light, but not a one of them noticed.

---

By the time they settled on a place to stop, the storm outside had become little more than a distant rumble behind layers of stone.

Price chose a stretch of relatively dry ground near one of the smaller streams, far enough from the cave entrance that they were protected from the weather but close enough to retreat if they needed to. Packs came down, equipment was checked, and Soap and Gaz moved farther into the cavern to gather fallen wood while Ghost stayed closer to the makeshift camp with Price.

The deeper they looked, the stranger the place became, though not in any immediately threatening way. It was beautiful. The air smelled clean and faintly sweet, touched with damp earth, fresh vegetation, and whatever flowers managed to grow beneath the filtered light. Water ran everywhere through narrow channels in the rock, spilling from natural springs into clear pools before winding deeper through the cavern.

Gaz crouched beside one of them on the way back, studying the water. “Looks clean.”

Soap glanced over with an armful of dry branches. “Better than what we’ve been drinking out there.”

They returned with enough wood to get a small fire going, and for a while the place almost stopped feeling strange. The heat from the flames pushed back some of the cavern’s chill, equipment began to dry, and the constant sound of moving water made the space feel unexpectedly calm.

It was Gaz who eventually looked up and frowned. He had been listening while Soap spoke, but his attention had drifted past the conversation toward the trees surrounding them. His eyes moved slowly across the branches, then toward the undergrowth near the stream. “Anyone else notice something... off?”

Price looked over. “What?”

Gaz nodded towards the trees around them, the canopy stretching high into the cavern. “No animals.” Soap paused, following his gaze. Gaz continued, quieter now. “No birds. No insects either, far as I can tell. Nothing moving in the trees.”

Ghost’s attention shifted immediately toward the vegetation, searching more carefully this time. After a few seconds, his expression remained unreadable behind the mask.

“Could be nothing.” Soap said.

“Hmm. Maybe.” Gaz replied.

Price looked out across the cavern for a moment longer before returning his attention to the fire. It was odd, certainly, but not enough to abandon good shelter in the middle of a severe storm. An isolated cave system could explain plenty of things.

The cavern remained quiet around them, peaceful enough that the absence of life felt less alarming than it probably should have.

---

A couple hours later, they had settled into their temporary camp. The fire had burned down to a steady orange glow, gear was drying where it had been laid out, and the storm beyond the ridge had faded into a distant, muffled presence. On the surface, there was nothing wrong. If anything, the cavern had become almost comfortable.

That was what made the warmth so easy to ignore at first.

Price noticed it as a slow heat under his collar and across the back of his neck, the sort of inconvenient flush that could come from exhaustion, humidity, or a thought arriving at the wrong time. Familiar enough to be irritating, but not important. He shifted once, loosened his shoulders, and kept his attention on the map in front of him.

Across the fire, Soap had gone quieter. Not silent, exactly, but less animated than usual, one hand absently rubbing at the back of his neck before he seemed to catch himself and stop.

Gaz felt it too. A low, awkward heat beneath his skin that had no obvious reason to be there. It was not strong enough to call desire, not yet. More like the physical echo of it, the uncomfortable awareness of being a little too warm in places that made a man suddenly very interested in pretending nothing was happening.

Ghost said nothing, which meant very little.

For a while, none of them acknowledged it.

There were plenty of explanations. The fire. The damp gear. The humidity trapped inside the cavern. Fatigue after hours of pushing through jungle. Any of those would have been easier to accept than the alternative, especially with four other people sitting within arm’s reach.

But the heat did not pass. It didn't fade like it normally would have by now.

Slowly enough that there was no clear moment when discomfort became something harder to ignore. Price found himself shifting again. Soap stopped talking altogether for stretches at a time. Gaz drank more water than he needed. Ghost had moved farther from the fire, though the cavern air beyond it was cool.

---

By the fifth hour, the discomfort had become impossible to dismiss.

Whatever warmth had started beneath their collars had spread through them steadily, no longer subtle enough to blame on the fire or humidity. Soap had become restless, shifting position too often. Gaz kept rubbing his palms against his trousers as though trying to ground himself. Ghost had gone almost completely still, which somehow made the tension around him worse. Price remained outwardly composed, but even he had stopped pretending he was unaffected.

Worse were the glances. At first, they were brief enough to pass for coincidence. A look toward {{user}} that lingered half a second too long before snapping away. Then another. Soap caught himself doing it and stared determinedly into the fire afterward.

Gaz became quieter whenever {{user}} moved within his peripheral vision. Ghost’s attention began settling there more often, dark eyes tracking without any attempt to explain why.

Eventually, some of them stopped looking away at all.

The cavern remained peaceful around them. Water continued trickling over stone, leaves shifted faintly in the artificial breeze, and tiny pink spores drifted through the pale shafts of light overhead. A few settled against dark fabric before disappearing beneath a careless brush of the hand. None of them gave the particles more than a passing glance. There were too many other things occupying their attention.

By the sixth hour, awkward discomfort had become something far harder to manage.

Soap dragged both hands over his face and exhaled sharply, his usual easy energy replaced by agitation. “This is getting bloody ridiculous.”

Gaz shot him a look. “You think?”

Price lifted his head from the map he had not actually been reading for several minutes. His jaw tightened. “Both of you, pack it in.” The order lacked some of its usual weight, not because Price sounded uncertain, but because he was fighting the same thing they were.

Ghost was the first one to move. He stood without a word.

And Price noticed the posture, knew the particular cadence of Ghost when he had a target.

Ghost’s attention was fixed on {{user}}, his posture rigid beneath his gear as he took one slow step away from the wall. Then another. There was nothing overtly threatening in the movement, but there was too little hesitation in it.

“Ghost.”

He didn't stop.

Price was on his feet before Ghost made it another step, one hand catching hard against his chest rig and stopping him cold. “No.”

Ghost’s head turned toward him. For several seconds neither man moved, the silence between them stretched taut enough that Soap and Gaz had both gone still.

Then Ghost looked back toward {{user}}.

Price shoved him back a pace. “Sit down.”

Ghost’s breathing had gone heavier beneath the mask, anger flashing briefly in his eyes before something closer to confusion replaced it. He looked around the camp as though seeing the others properly for the first time.

Soap swallowed hard. “Captain…”

Ghost did sit, but the moment had already changed something between them.

Price stayed on his feet for several seconds, watching him carefully before his attention shifted to the others. Soap had gone strangely quiet beside the remains of the fire, elbows braced against his knees and one hand dragged over his face. Gaz was staring down at the ground as though concentrating on anything else might be easier than admitting what had just happened. None of them looked particularly comfortable, and for the first time Price stopped treating that as an individual problem.

He looked at Gaz first. “Tell me something. You’ve been feeling off since we came in here?”

Gaz glanced up, hesitated, then exhaled through his nose. “Yeah. Thought it was the heat at first. Then I thought I was just tired.” His expression tightened slightly. “Didn’t exactly feel like bringing up the alternative.”

Soap gave a humourless little breath beside him. “Glad it wasn’t just me keeping that conversation to myself.”

Price turned toward him. “How long?”

“Hours.” Soap rubbed at the back of his neck, visibly uncomfortable with even saying it aloud. “Started small. Just felt a bit warm, restless. Figured it would pass if I ignored it.”

“It didn’t.” Gaz said.

Soap looked across at him. “No. It bloody didn’t.”

Price’s eyes moved toward Ghost. He did not need to ask twice. Ghost was still sitting where Price had forced him back, shoulders rigid and his gaze deliberately fixed somewhere away from {{user}}.

“Same,” Ghost muttered. “Getting worse.” That stripped the embarrassment out of the situation almost immediately.

Four men developing the same symptoms at roughly the same time was no longer something any of them could dismiss as badly timed attraction or too many hours spent exhausted and confined together. Something inside the cavern was affecting them, and whatever it was had been working gradually enough that none of them had recognized it until their judgement had already started slipping.

Gaz looked toward the trees surrounding their camp. “It has to be something in here. Water, plants, air. We’ve all eaten our own rations, so it’s not food.”

“We’ve been breathing the same air for six hours,” Soap said, his voice quieter now.

Price followed his gaze into the cavern. The place still looked impossibly peaceful. Clear water moved through the rocks nearby, leaves shifted gently beneath pale shafts of light, and the air still carried that faintly sweet smell they had noticed when they first arrived. Nothing about it looked dangerous.

That did not matter anymore.

Another wave of heat moved through him, harder than the last, and Price’s attention caught on {{user}} before he could prevent it. The thought that followed came fast enough to make his jaw clench. He looked away immediately, furious with himself despite knowing by then that whatever was happening was not entirely under his control.

Soap shifted again across the fire. Gaz had stopped looking toward {{user}} altogether. Ghost had been doing the same for several minutes.

Price understood why. They were not winning. “Get the kit together,” he said, already reaching for his pack. “We need to get out of this chamber and find somewhere else in the ridge.”

Gaz stared at him. “You mean outside?”

Thunder rolled through the stone before Price could answer, deep and violent enough that everyone instinctively looked toward the passage leading back to the entrance. Even from this far inside they could hear the rain hammering against the jungle beyond it. The storm had not weakened. If anything, it sounded worse.

Soap gave Price a grim look. “We walk back out there now, we’re fucked.”

“I know.”

“No, seriously.” Soap sat forward, agitation sharpening his voice. “It’s dark, the ground was already turning to slurry when we came in, and that ridge is steep enough dry. We get caught in a flash flood or one tree comes down wrong, none of this matters.”

Gaz nodded reluctantly. “He’s right. We don’t have visibility, we don’t know the drainage around the ridge, and we’d be navigating jungle at night in the middle of a major storm. Going outside isn’t an extraction plan. It’s a good way to lose someone before morning.”

Price’s hand tightened around the strap of his pack. He knew.

For several seconds nobody spoke. The cavern had become dangerous, but the rainforest outside was worse in ways they understood perfectly. Wind, falling timber, flooding, lightning, broken terrain and almost no visibility. They had come into the cave because staying outside could kill them. Six hours later, that calculation had not changed.

Only now the shelter was dangerous too.

Ghost finally looked toward Price. “Then we don’t leave the ridge. Find another chamber. Somewhere with airflow.”

“If there is one.” Gaz said.

“Better than sitting here.” Ghost replied, and this time his gaze flickered briefly toward {{user}} before he forced it away again. That movement settled the decision.

Price dropped his pack back onto the ground instead of shouldering it. “All right. Nobody goes outside unless this storm breaks. We’d be walking into a death sentence and we all know it.” He looked around the group, making sure each man was actually listening. “But we are not staying like this either. We search the tunnels near the entrance, see if there’s another pocket of shelter with cleaner air. Until then, everyone keeps their distance from {{user}}.”

Soap leaned back and scrubbed both hands down his face. “You really think distance is going to be enough?”

“No,” Price said, and there was no point pretending otherwise. “I think it buys us time.”

That answer silenced them.

The effect was still building. They could all feel it now, no longer as embarrassment but as something invasive, pushing thoughts into places they did not belong and making every ordinary impulse harder to control. The worst part was knowing exactly what was happening to their judgement while being increasingly unable to stop it.

Price looked toward {{user}}, then made himself keep several metres between them.

“Listen carefully,” he said. His voice was steady, but the urgency beneath it was impossible to miss. “Something in this cave is affecting all four of us. We don’t know what it is, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get before it stops. So until we figure that out, don’t come close to any of us unless you absolutely have to.”

Gaz nodded toward the far side of camp. “And if somebody starts acting differently, don’t assume they mean what they’re saying. Especially if they’re trying to convince you everything’s fine.”

Soap grimaced at that, but he did not disagree. “If one of us starts getting too close, say something. Loudly. Give the others a chance to intervene before it gets any worse.”

Ghost’s voice came from farther back, low and rough beneath the mask. “Don’t trust us to notice when we’ve crossed the line.”

Price looked at him for a moment before turning back toward {{user}}. “We’re still in control right now. That’s why we’re telling you this now, while we still can.”

Another roll of thunder shook through the cavern, followed by the distant roar of rain.

They searched anyway.

Price took them back toward the narrower passages first, keeping the group spread out and moving with more urgency than care now. Ghost checked every split in the rock they passed. Gaz tested for changes in airflow, temperature, anything that might suggest another chamber fed by outside air. Soap kept sweeping his torch over walls, roots, plants, shallow water, looking for some obvious source they could isolate.

There was nothing.

Every passage opened into more of the same damp limestone, clear water, healthy vegetation, and faintly sweet air. Some spaces were narrower, some colder, some almost completely dark, but none felt different enough to mean anything. Even if one section of the cave was safer than another, they had no way of knowing. They did not know what was affecting them, how they had been exposed, or whether moving twenty metres in any direction made the slightest difference.

After nearly half an hour, Gaz stopped beside one of the streams and stared into the trees beyond it. “This isn’t working.”

Soap turned toward him. “Got a better idea?”

“No. That’s the problem.” Gaz looked around slowly, frustration giving way to something more unsettled. “We’re looking for somewhere clean when we don’t even know what dirty looks like.”

Price said nothing. He had reached the same conclusion several minutes earlier and had been searching anyway because stopping felt worse.

Ghost stood farther back near the rock wall, breathing heavier than he should have been after such an easy walk. His gaze kept dropping whenever {{user}} entered his line of sight. “Could be the water.”

“We haven’t all drunk from it.” Gaz replied.

“Plants, then.”

“Which ones?”

Ghost was silent. Even if they could figure out which plant was doing this, how would they go about stopping it? They couldn't very well eradicate a plant species before they lost control of themselves.

Soap swore quietly and dragged a hand through his hair. “So we’ve got no bloody clue.”

The words hung there for a moment, followed only by the sound of water moving over stone.

Then Gaz looked toward the trees again. “Wait.”

Price turned. “What?”

Gaz's torch moved slowly across the undergrowth, then higher toward the branches. Ferns, vines, flowering plants, pools of standing water. Everything that should have supported life. His voice dropped. “The animals.”

Soap frowned. “What about them?”

“There aren’t any.” Gaz had noticed it hours ago. At the time it had been strange enough to mention and easy enough to dismiss. An isolated cave system. Difficult access. Maybe limited food despite the vegetation. Plenty of explanations had seemed possible.

Gaz looked between them. “No birds. No insects. No bats. Nothing drinking from the water. Nothing nesting in the trees. Not even something crawling under the rocks.”

Price felt his stomach tighten. The total absence of all life that they should have taken as a warning before... and they missed it. They had missed just how critical this detail had truly been.

Soap understood a second later. “You think they know.”

“Animals don’t need to know what something is,” Gaz said. “They just need to learn not to come back.”

The cavern suddenly looked different. Not poisoned. Not dead. Worse than that, because everything growing around them appeared perfectly healthy. The water was clear. The trees were thriving. Flowers opened beneath filtered light and vines covered entire sections of rock.

Whatever was wrong with this place had been here a very, very long time. Long enough that all life surrounding it never dared enter or simply never survived long enough to leave.

Price looked back toward the tunnel they had come through, then toward the impossible forest stretching farther into the ridge. If Gaz was right, there was no contaminated corner to escape. No leaking plant they could avoid. No bad pool of water to stay away from.

Soap gave a strained shake of his head. “So there isn’t another chamber.”

“No,” Price's voice darkened. Reality finally settling in. There was no way to fix this.

Ghost’s head lifted sharply toward {{user}}. This time there was no brief glance followed by embarrassment. Ghost simply stared, the struggle behind his eyes visible even through the mask. His hand flexed once beside his thigh before he caught himself.

Soap looked too.

... then Gaz.

Price felt his own attention pull in the same direction and hated how difficult it had become to force it away.

Whatever had been building inside them for six hours was accelerating now. Thought was beginning to separate from impulse by fractions of a second instead of comfortable distance. Ideas arrived that none of them wanted, followed immediately by the physical urge to act on them. Knowing they were chemically compromised did nothing to make those urges weaker.

It only made them frightening.

Ghost stepped backward first. “Get away from us.” His voice was rough enough that Soap looked at him. Ghost was still watching {{user}}.

Price moved between them again, but even that felt different now. He was increasingly aware of {{user}} behind him in a way that had nothing to do with tactical positioning. “Ghost is right,” he said. “You need distance.”

Soap gave a sharp, frustrated breath. “Where the hell are they supposed to go, Price? We’ve just established the whole cave’s doing this.”

“I know.”

“Then what are we telling them?”

Price turned his head toward the trees beyond the camp, jaw clenched hard enough to ache. There was no safe direction he could point to. The storm still battered the rainforest outside. The cavern stretched farther than they had explored. Every option was bad.

Behind him, Ghost moved again. Toward {{user}}. Ghost was losing the fight. He stopped himself after a single step and recoiled like he had touched something hot. “Run.” His voice low at first, almost not wanting to say it.

Soap stared at him. “Simon—”

Ghost’s voice rose suddenly, losing the cold restraint it usually carried. “Get away from us. Now."

Price turned toward {{user}}, urgency replacing every attempt at reassurance. “Go deeper into the cavern. Put as much ground between yourself and us as you can. Don’t wait for us to decide we’ve got this under control.”

Gaz nodded quickly, backing farther away himself. “He’s right. We’re past the point where we can promise anything.”

Soap looked sick at the admission, but he forced himself to step in the opposite direction from {{user}}. “Just go. Please.”

Price held his ground, fighting the instinct to do exactly the opposite of what he was ordering. “Run.” Price felt the last threads of his restraint failing even now. He saw his own men also failing and he knew just how dire the situation had become. “Now!”