Before the antithesis came, humanity spread to every corner of the earth. Burning forests and terraforming the earth in order to make room for more farmland to feed their appetites. With the ravenous aliens running rampant over the countryside, humanity needed to find better ways. Vertical farms were the most popular solution.

  Massive complexes that matched, or in some cases even dwarfed the mega scrapers found in cities, but filled with automated farmland. They were seen as revolutionary when first established, but people quickly realized that just putting the plants into a building did not protect them from the aliens.

  -The Evolution of Farming, 2044

  —

  “Which way to farm three?” I yelled as I sprinted back towards the door.

  “The official entrance is outside and around the back of the warehouse but…” Edward stuttered.

  “Spit it out Edward!” Skyler shouted.

  “There’s an automated conveyor system that connects the warehouse to each of the farms. It’s narrow, but much closer. Out the door to the right, into the main facility then to the far side,” the man finally explained.

  I nodded once, then took off at a sprint. The corridor leading farther into the facility was fairly short, and when I smashed into the door it opened into a massive open area. The warehouse itself had several floors, each one the same size as an airplane hanger. Row upon row of seedlings sat upon conveyors where automated arms mounted to tracks on the roof spritzed them with water, collected them into groups of four, boxed them up and then carried them to another level. It was a very efficient system.

  Skyler lightly tapped me on the back and pointed towards the back of the conveyor system, where there were half a dozen tunnels leading out of the facility.

  “Which one?” I asked as we jogged through the titanic storage facility. “Artymis?”

  {Athy: Third from the left, according to the plans, FC-03. Thankfully you humans like to have everything organized, it’s easy to identify.}

  I quickly hurdled the first two conveyors, then jumped onto the third, pausing momentarily to help Skyler up. The belt was thankfully really slow, it didn’t need to be fast to carry the harvested seedlings, so we were able to make it up the small, slightly inclined, enclosed connector and into farm three.

  Jumping down from the far end of the belt, somewhere on the second floor of the farm, I quickly glanced around. The ground was entirely covered by a layer of loamy topsoil, and had hundreds of rows of small seedlings planted in concentric rows around a central pillar which contained several computer screens, and apparently access to the other floors. The seedlings were being monitored by more automated arms which were zipping around on roof mounted tracks constantly scanning, watering, harvesting the most mature plants, and planting new seeds.

  “I don’t see anything,” Skyler whispered. “Gimme a minute to send out my scouts.”

  “The gunfire has already stopped, I’ll check to see if Edward can point us in the right direction,” I replied.

  [Edward, where is Adrien?]

  It took a few seconds for me to get a reply. [I don’t know, he’s not on any of the displays!]

  [Then where are the current system failures coming from?] I shot back.

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  [Floor seven.] There was a pause. [We have crews on floor five and ten, should I…?]

  [Get them as far away from floor seven as possible. Is there a place you can evacuate the higher team from, near the top of the facility?]

  [Of course! There’s maintenance access on the roof] Edward reported.

  [Then get them out of here until you hear back from us. Keep the line clear until then.]

  [Right.] He replied right before I disconnected the call.

  Skyler still had a far away look in her eyes, signalling that she was still connected to her recon drones. I leaned in closer to her “Floor Seven,” I whispered to her, trying not to break her concentration.

  To my surprise she immediately replied. “I was afraid of that… There’s something up there disrupting my signal. I can’t get anything close to that area.”

  “Not a good sign,” I mumbled. “Will you be able to get your artillery drones up there?”

  “Maybe? They’re from a higher class catalog, so they’re more resistant to interference, but I won’t know until we get up there,” Skyler reported, glancing back at her drones. The three of them were slowly flying in circles, holographic images of our cats displayed upon each.

  The two of us stared at the drones for several seconds. “Maybe you should shut that off for now,” I finally said.

  “Good plan, I can always re-enable it once we’re done,” Skyler replied. A moment later the holograms disappeared.

  The two of us quickly made our way between the planted seedlings towards the central support pillar. Thankfully the roof was just over twelve feet tall, so the arms had plenty of clearance. At the speed they traveled I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to dodge them, even with my increased reflexes.

  The central pillar was around twenty feet wide, and after a quick inspection I found both a lift and spiral staircase built into it. I paused next to the staircase, and listened for several long seconds, but couldn’t hear anything suspicious.

  “What do you think?” Skyler asked quietly.

  I glanced up the dark staircase, “I think we take this slow, check each floor as we go up to avoid getting flanked. There’s enough space for your drones to float up the middle of the stairs, so we can use that to provide a little bit of overwatch.”

  Drawing Rending Wave, I slowly took my first few steps up the stairs. Stopping at each floor didn’t make me feel better, it actually had the opposite effect. Not finding any signs of disturbed plants, never mind any antithesis, made me nervous.

  When we arrived at the sixth floor that all changed. As soon as I stepped off the stairs I could see patches of ravaged plants. Small groups, but most of the crop was intact.

  Glancing around, I didn’t notice anything suspicious, not at first. There weren’t any antithesis running around, the area was clear.

  Skyler narrowed her eyes as she stepped up next to me. “It’s obvious that the antithesis have been here, so where did they go?”

  “I don’t know,” I said as I continued scanning the area. “How are the drones?”

  She glanced back at the three drones following her around like ducklings. “Signal isn’t great, but still operational. Whatever’s causing the interference is close.”

  I nodded lightly, then stalked further into the farm area. Since the largest of the seedlings were only a couple inches high, it wasn’t really like there was any place for the antithesis to hide. We made about half a lap around the central pillar before I had to stop.

  “You have to be shitting me,” I whispered.

  “What?” Skyler asked, looking past me before frowning. “That can’t be real, can it?”

  A couple feet in front of us, sitting right in the middle of the field, was a two foot tall bush. At least that’s what it would have looked like to a normal person, with my augmented eyes I could see the Nine behind the camouflage.

  “Guess we know why the sensors are failing,” I grumbled. “Kind of hard to hide properly when the area doesn’t have any debris.”

  “What is it?” Skyler asked.

  “A Nine, must be more upstairs.” As I stepped forward the bush shuttered slightly, but before the nine could lunge I brought Rending Wave down through the creature. The pitiful thing still attempted to strike at me, which was difficult when it was literally cut in two. The top half of the Nine slowly crawled forward on three scything limbs, occasionally swiping my way, before I removed its head.

  Once it stopped moving Skyler moved closer and knelt next to the corpse. “How the hell did they get in? And why didn’t anyone notice them?”

  “So much of the system is automated, the maintenance workers probably don’t even check unless there are alarms,” I explained, “and as long as the Nines aren’t as blatant as that one, the workers could probably walk right past them.”

  Skyler poked the corpse with her rifle, before standing up again. “What are they doing here?”

  “Probably some sort of recon for the hive, before we destroyed it,” I said, considering the situation. “This is probably heaven for them, biomass that grows at an accelerated pace, and is automatically replanted after it’s harvested.”

  “You think they’d make another hive inside the farm?” Skyler asked.

  “I would if I was them, but I’m not going to claim I understand the antithesis mind. We’ll see when we get upstairs. Let’s finish cleaning this floor first.”

  We finished clearing the sixth floor without encountering any further antithesis, so we made our way back to the stairs. Once I knew what we were dealing with, I began seeing signs everywhere, like flickering lights, and my augs constantly losing signal. Thankfully Skyler’s drones seemed to have some level of resistance, and they didn’t just drop out of the air.

  Stepping up to the open door to the seventh floor I glanced back at Skyler and took a deep breath. “Alright, let’s see what they’re up to,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster before stepping up to the door.

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