“What’s going on?” Andrew questioned his officers as they boarded the lymph in the efferent vessel.
“We suspect that an invasion is imminent, sir. We believe that guerillas from the GPLC have gained entry into the system, and are currently hiding in a secret camp, where they are proliferating and arming themselves and preparing for an attack. We are not sure of their base location or thetarget of their next strike.” T-H1 Lieutenant Eugene gave a brisk reply.
Andrew pondered over the information his officer gave him. He was puzzled at the continuous attacks on the system. Just last week, he had received news that the nodes in the bronchial sectors and para-tracheal sector 2 werebattling S. Pneumonia fanatics, who were wrecking damage with their auto-pneumolysin launchers. These toxic rounds were extremely deadly tocells, disrupting and damaging their membranes and causing them to lyse.
Andrew shuddered, just thinking of the vicious weapons the enemies had developed in their unending conquest. He heard they used IgA-Protease flares– countermeasures that could upset the aim of IgA homing-missile turrets –to evade the primary defenses of the pharynx, and gain entry into the lungs.
They were a particularly virulent strain of militants, who seemed imperviousto the counterattacks of system troops of the region. Fortunately for system defenders,the blood-capillary transport network were suddenly seeded with mines – mines that miraculously appeared to aid them in their struggle. These mines had a beta-lactam spiked core that could pierce and lodge into the membranes of the aggressors and disturb their cell wall stability, thuscausing them to assume weird shapes and eventually lyse. With the help of the mines, system troops managed to fight off the enemies.
Apparently, the appearance of these mines was system-wide. No one had anyidea where they came from, but several nodes from various regions have already reported decreased sightings of foreign invaders, presumably due tot he destructive capabilities of the mines. They decided to name these mines ‘penicillin’ mines, after the T-H1 captain who first discovered them, Sir Alex Fleming.
Andrew was perplexed as to how these new invaders were able to survive the mines. He was deep in thought as they left the paracortex and entered the medullary sinuses.
The medullary sinuses was a huge compound, the gathering point of all kinds of soldiers and officers from the node before they entered the lymph vessels to travel to other regions. Andrew could see the histiocytes (sentry macrophages on duty, who stayed there and checked all cells) doing their job dutifully, carefully scrutinizing all the civilian cells passing through the checkpoints.
Andrew gestured to his officers, Eugene and Eric, towards the efferent vessel. They were going to board to blood transport via the lymphatics, which was a military transport network, connecting all the nodes (military command centres), making them very accessible and facilitating an emergency response to invasion. As they entered the vessel, they were quickly swept away by the lymph, in their journey towards the thoracic duct, which was the interchange between the military lymph and civilian blood transport network.
* * * *
Ava was exhausted as she strode into the Infection site. The site was a camp for her and her comrades, a place for them to obtain some respite from the fighting. As their leader had informed them during their morning briefing, the main attack was going to take place tomorrow, and there would be no turning back. It was a win-or-die situation.
Their conquest had been smooth so far, she thought smugly. They had managed to sneak in undetected, managed to set up an Infection site with minimal difficulty. Except for that annoying sentry macrophage she encountered at their point of entry. Macrophages were powerful obstacles to invading terrorists like him – they could consume and destroy her, verify her identity, and raise the alarm by transmitting his ID through their MHC II comm. links to the Tcell officers. That would’ve gotten the military hot on their trail, hunting them down like the malicious bacteria they were.
Fortunately, that macrophage did not seem too experienced. He seemed… weak. Ava was up to a challenge that morning, so she waved the rest of the squad on, indicating them to proceed while he dealt with the lone sentry. She chuckled as she recalled how the macrophage tried to shoot him with NO rounds instead of attempting to phagocytose her.
She had obtained NO resistance a long time ago thanks to her NO-proof vest. After she easily dodged his poorly aimed shots, she retuned fire, hitting the clumsy novice in the side. She used the rifle loaded with SA rounds.
‘That’ll give them a nasty surprise’, she sniggered.
A victory she could not celebrate for long, she thought in disdain, for although the sentry was incapacitated, she suddenly noticed those familiar shapes floating in the distance, advancing mercilessly towards him. She swore under his breath, as she turned and fled, moving her flagella as quickly as she could. Fear gripped her nucleus, and her cell wall shuddered.
Those caustic abominations were the scourge of bacteria kind. There had been stories passed down through the generations about them, and how they had wiped out countless entire colonies of her people. The stories say that these powerful weapons are produced by the arch-enemies of their armies, the fungi. Little is known, however, of these creatures, only that they are extremely efficient in targeting and killing off his brethren. The System troops had named these weapons Penicillin, a name as vile as its very own nature.
Fortunately, there have been rumours that some fighters in her camp are naturally resistant to the mines, a phenomenon no one seemed to be able to explain.
Fortunately for her, she grinned, as she stepped into the ‘Infectious’ nightclub.
No comments:
Post a Comment