“We’ll need the codes to open the door,” Maria called out to Omondi as he dashed up the stairs to the main entrance. She yanked out her pad to access the information.

“No, we don’t,” he answered in a grim tone.

Maria hesitated in her action. Omondi stood in the gaping doorway of the station. He stared inside with an expression that was difficult to decipher. Maria tucked away her pad as she climbed up the stairs and joined him.

The sunlight illuminated only part of the lobby, but it was evident there had been a battle. Bullet holes festooned the walls. Only armor suits revealed where the guards had fallen. But what Omondi was glowering at was a message left long ago scrawled across the wall in green paint.

“Gaia is free of the human scourge,” Maria read aloud.

“What does it mean?” Cruz asked, joining them. She ran a gloved hand over her short hair, perplexed.

The rest of the squad gathered behind them.

“The Gaia Cult,” Denman said with a sigh.

“What was that?” McKinney’s confusion was matched by a few others.

“In the last days of human world, the Gaia Cult rose up to declare that Mother Earth, Gaia, was purging humanity. They said humans were a virus,” Omondi explained. “They believed that once the last human had died, the Scrags would die, too. And then earth would be saved from us. They even claimed responsibility for the ISPV being released in Paris, London, and Moscow.”

Maria had remembered the Gaia Cult being briefly touched on in world history, but now she knew they would have an even bigger entry. They had compromised the last settlement of the living. Stepping into the lobby, she activated the light on her wristlet and flashed it over the simple rectangular room. The plastic furniture was stained with time and blood.

“Holm, status on that generator,” Omondi said into his wristlet.

The answer was the lights flickering on.

The room was rectangular and bland. The posters on the walls and style of the furniture indicated it had probably been some sort of recreational room for the guards. Omondi crossed the room to another doorway. It was also open. A desk had been wedged into the doorframe to keep it from closing. Sliding over the obstruction, Omondi disappeared into the next room.

Maria followed.

Monitors sprawled across one wall with a work station sprawled under the bank of screens. Sprayed over the monitors and the work station were the words “Gaia has reclaimed the world.” Bodies were caught under the chairs and some of the monitors had bullet holes punched through their dark faces. Now that power had been restored, the flat screens revealed the view from beyond the valley. Cameras began to transmit images from the long road winding up the pass. Even the cameras at the base station at the bottom of the mountain range were operational.

“They would have seen the approach of the Scrag horde that attacked,” Maria remarked.

“Whoever did this,” Omondi pointed at the message, “must have killed the guards.”

“The communication hub was completely destroyed. That’s why there was no warning and the city never could regain remote access,” Denman said, touching the wires spilling out of the destroyed workstation.

“But what brought the Scrags here?” Maria reached out to an operation console and began to quickly search through the recorded files. “This area is very remote.”

Holm climbed over the desk in the doorway and joined them at the workstation. Her face was tense with concentration as she started her diagnostic on the gate.

A few of the squad members filed into the room behind them or lingered near the open door. Maria glanced at them, but said nothing. They were all in a state of shock. It had always been possible that sabotage had been behind the gate failure, but to see that it had been the Gaia Cult had stunned everyone.

“What did you find?” Omondi asked Maria, lingering over her shoulder as she searched.

“The cameras were recording until the generator failed. According to the timestamps, the generator went off just after the gate opened.” Maria continued to scan the files, her fingers darting over the interface.

“That fits with what I found,” Holm said. “The generator was sabotaged. The batteries were ripped out of it.”

“Someone killed the guards, destroyed the communication and remote operations hub, and opened the gate,” Omondi said in disbelief.

“Whoever it was didn’t live very long after doing all that.” Maria activated a screen showing a man and a woman yanking the batteries out of the generator and the screen going dark.

“Fuck,” someone muttered behind her.

“They did this on purpose then died,” Omondi said in a low, angry voice. “They butchered their own people and almost destroyed the last hope of humanity.”

Maria pulled up more recordings. They told the atrocious tale of the ultimate betrayal. The base camp camera footage clearly revealed several trucks full of people luring a massive crowd of Scourge behind them. The people inside were yelling, but Maria didn’t get the impression it was with fear, but with rapture. Each camera along the road recorded the same vehicles moving purposefully toward the gate just ahead of the horde of Inferi Scourge.

“They led them here.” Holm shook her head, swinging her long blond braids.

There were even children in the trucks. Maria could see their frightened faces while the adults around them cheered with joy as the gate loomed before them. Sliding more camera views up onto the monitors, Maria watched the ascent of the Gaia Cultists and the Inferi Scourge. Now that the time frame was established for the arrival of the Scourge at the gate, she was able to swiftly find the recordings from the guard station.

Two men and a woman in the uniform of service workers parked outside the station and approached carrying what looked like a food delivery. When the woman fired the first shot into the face of a guard, the smile on her lips was eerie with delight. Systematically, the three people gunned down the guards as they advanced on the station. One of the male cultists was shot and killed on the steps, and the guard who shot him was moving to fire at the remaining two cultists when another guard killed him with a shot to the back of the head.

“Fuck me,” Cruz’s voice exclaimed. “One of the guards was a traitor!”

Maria glanced at Omondi. His jaw was set and his eyes were hard. Directing her attention back to the screen, Maria watched the two service workers and the guard kill everyone in the lobby. The door to the workstation was already propped open. Switching to the camera in the room, Maria slid back the timeframe.

They all watched as a guard at the console calmly turned and fired point blank into the faces of his two co-workers. He methodically destroyed the communication and remote access hub. Then he propped the door open and joined the Gaia Cultists in their killing spree.

“An inside job,” Omondi whispered. He rubbed his chin with his fingers as he watched the monitors.

The room fell silent as the squad watched the traitorous guard and his cohorts enter the room they were now standing in and activate the gate. One of the men took out the green paint and gleefully left his claim to glory as the other two laughed and wept with joy. The vehicles entered the valley ahead of the Scourge and parked near the guard station. The occupants climbed out and rushed to form a circle. Holding hands, they turned their faces upward as the Scourge rushed toward them.

All the screens went black marking the moment when the generator had died.

Omondi leaned against the workstation, his eyes closed as he absorbed what he had seen. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked at Maria. “Transmit all the information back to the SWD.”

Nodding, Maria started to compile the data for a full report.

“Holm, give me some good news,” Omondi said, turning toward the tall blond woman.

“They didn’t have time to sabotage the gate further. It’s not even damaged. Just the remote access was disabled. I should be able to just close it and reactivate the locks,” Holm answered. She had forgotten to take a breath before talking and her voice was ragged. Shaking her head, Holm returned her attention to the workstation. “We’re lucky they only had enough time to make sure the city didn’t know what was coming and disable the remote access. If they had done anything more to the gate...”

“Close it,” Omondi ordered, his gaze on the live feed. There were only a few Inferi Scourge wandering on the road beyond the gate.

“Yes, sir,” Holm answered, her fingers sliding over the controls.

Maria raised her eyes and watched as the massive gate trembled to life on the monitors. The room filled with a loud rumble as the floor vibrated beneath their feet. Behind her there was a scramble to get out of the room and witness the closing of the gate. Omondi leaned over the workstation with Holm and Maria at his side. The three watched the cameras outside record the second closing of the gate. It slid into place at an almost languid pace. A few Scourge were caught by the door and crushed. Maria felt the room shudder as the enormous door clanged shut and the locking mechanisms whirled.

“It’s done,” Holm said in an awed voice.

“Now we kill them all.” Omondi lifted his bolt weapon and headed out of the room.