(This is the story text from the corresponding Radio Cataclysm podcast episode. If you prefer audio, you can subscribe here. Read and listen early on Patreon.)

The structure was barely recognizable as a building from the North side. A single-story box of brick with earthen drifts sloping against the backside, they'd mistaken it for a small hill at first. Only when they came closer and saw the corners jutting out did its structure become apparent. A little distance away, a glittering spring gushed from a rocky mound. It ran through the clearing, between mossy stones and down a disconnected stretch of road before disappearing into a storm sewer.

Close by, a large circle of stones sat conspicuously in the open. In the center was a soggy pile of ash. “This is the 'ring of stone' the Speaker mentioned,” said John. “Meant for travelers who need a cook fire, or warmth. Or ritual. It should be safe to build a fire within it. As long as nobody goes around torching the foliage or anything.”

John closed his eyes and waved his staff across the floor of the clearing, moving it like an oar in a river. “The water is strong here,” he said. “I feel it twisting this way and that, beneath the ground, through a hundred pipes and tunnels and underground streams.” He let his staff lead him around the half-buried building. “And this,” he said, pointing at the building. “There is strength here of another kind. Of many kinds.” A box truck was backed up to the South wall of the building at a wonky angle, with only a few feet to spare. Its tires were rotted or eaten completely away, leaving its rusting wheels half-buried in the dirt. A constant loop of muffled chirping sang out from the trailer, as if a menagerie of exotic birds were caged inside. Kudzu covered all.

“Be so good as to clear away the flora, Derman,” said the Colonel. “Let's see what we've found.”

John whispered something dark, and the vines retreated from the building's walls, taking along their roots and grabbers. Brick upon brick fell to the ground, their mortar turned to dust by years of grasping, digging vines. The cinder blocks used to brick up the windows fell away, too. Behind it all was a cube of steel, welded tight. The slightest movement of air sent ripples of light across its surface, the tell-tale shimmer of enchantment.

After the noise of the falling bricks faded away, the looping chirps and tweets rose again from the back of the truck, louder than before.

“What is this place?” said the Colonel.

“A shop of some kind, I'd guess,” said John. He tapped a wooden board that lay among the bricks. It was all that remained of an old sign. “Looks like a cup of coffee, but the paint's too faded to make out the words. Whatever it was, it must have been repurposed as a shelter during the war. Could be Resistance, like you were looking for. Could be military.”

“What kind of enchantments are we looking at, Chad?” the Colonel asked.

Chad unfurled his Scrowall and scanned the structure. “A physical ward, a thaumatic ward, and at least one more, but I can't tell what flavor. It's a very strong combination. The scanner estimates ninety point three percent resistance to physical attacks. Eighty-three point nine resistance to thaumaturgy.”

“Strong for three decades ago, perhaps,” said the Colonel. He zapped it with his thaumaturgical wand, but it had no apparent effect. “Can you dispel these wards, Derman?”

“I can give it a shot, but I never really trained in that kind of thing. My specialty was water magic during the war. I'm a herpemancer now. Enchanted steel bunkers are more of a battle mage thing. But I'll take a look at it.” He ran his fingers over the surface of the wall. He gave it a sniff, tapped it with his staff, pressed his ear against it. Finally, he gave it the smallest of licks. He shook his head. “This is a pretty advanced defensive shell. Whoever built this shelter, they really wanted to protect what was inside.”

“Well, at least you gave it your best shot,” said the Colonel. “Strauss, I assume you're proficient in breaking and entering?” said the Colonel.

“I don't know why you'd assume that about me,” said Zeck. “I mean, I have found my way into a few secure locations, but that's neither here nor there.”

“There must be an entrance,” said the Colonel. He tapped the enchanted plating. “Anything that can be shut can be opened.”

“Where would we even begin?” said Zeck. “There's no lock. There's no door. No window. All of the seams are welded shut.”

“We'll have to excavate it,” said the Colonel. “Nothing is impenetrable. They wouldn't build a bunker or a shelter without a means of ingress. They'd need water and electricity, presumably. There's likely to be an access point underneath the building. Perhaps there's an old sewer tunnel nearby. Damn the noise!” He spun around, drawing his sword and slashing at the vines on the box truck all in one motion. Two vines grew back for every one he severed. “It would be much easier to think without that incessant chirping,” he said.

John whispered again and waved his hands. The kudzu covering the truck's rear door parted like a curtain. The doors themselves were missing, leaving the truck wide open. The vines retreated from the vehicle as they had from the wall, revealing a strange tableau. A human figure sat hunched on a stool, one hand on a keyboard and the other hanging like the pendulum of a clock. He stood and turned to the company.

“Your bones are plenty,” whispered John.

The figure in the truck was another skeleton, though less adorned than the one that had spoken for the forest. His eye sockets were empty. As the vines retreated from the truck and from his body, his tattered clothes fell away. His bones clattered to the floor one by one. His skull toppled from its spine and rolled across the keyboard, playing a ghoulish arpeggio that faded to silence as the tendrils crawled back from the towering console behind the keyboard.

“Why did it have to be another skeleton?” said Zeck.

“Bones can't hurt you,” said Bob.

“I wouldn't say 'can't,'” said John. “Probably won't.”

“Those clothes,” said the Colonel, pointing at the rags now heaped on the floor of the truck. “That's a Resistance uniform. This is a Resistance bunker. That settles it. We won't rest until we've found a way in.” He ran his gloved fingers over the steel wall of the building and scratched at it with his magic wand some more. It didn't leave a mark, but made a sound like hot metal on dry ice. “They could have stashed anything in there. Weaponry, arcane artifacts, secrets about their tactics thought lost to the ages. There may even be a means of contacting the Isle. I'm willing to bet the interior is incredibly well preserved. A structure like this could withstand armor piercing gunfire, earthquakes, a direct hit from a bomb, demi-thaumatic or not, and all manner of elemental attacks.”

“But what about termites?” said Zeck.

“It's brick and steel, not wood,” said the Colonel. He stepped up into the truck. “What is that heap of junk behind the keyboard? Some ancient computer? A control panel for a weapons array?”

Towering over the keyboard where the skeleton had sat was a wall of knobs and switches, cable ports and LEDs. The whole setup was composed of dozens of boxes, most no bigger than a bookmark. Many were made of metal, but there was a scattering of wooden panels with arcane glyphs burnt into them. Cables dangled from some of the ports, but most of the plugs were empty. Little footprints remained where the vines had recently been.

“It's a synthesizer,” said Zeck.

“It doesn't look like any synthesizer I've ever seen,” said the Colonel. “Very primitive. Loose cords. A thousand knobs. What does it make? Textiles? Food rations?”

“Music,” said Zeck, pointing at the keyboard. “It's a modular synthesizer. One of the strangest I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few.” He climbed up into the truck next to the Colonel and switched on his electric torch. “I know what most of these modules do, but some of them are complete mysteries to me. This one doesn't have a port or anything, just a pictogram. This one just has a keyhole and a drawing of a broken egg. And why is it here in the first place, backed up to a shielded bunker with a Resistance skeleton at the controls?”

“Oh,” said Steven. “I get it now.” He tapped the steel plating that covered the building. “It's a Melody Lock.”

“I doubt that,” said Bob. “It wouldn't be very secure. People use Melody Locks on their diaries. Other people, not me. If anybody knows what song it's been programmed with, they can open the lock. I've heard. From a friend.”

“The ones the Resistance used were a little more advanced than that,” said Steven. “For these, you can't just sing it, or play it on a flute or whatever. They were complex compositions that you had to have precise equipment to play. They'd record them on shiny discs called seedees that stored music. The seedees were encrypted, and they would only play in special modified players. Of course, you could hack them if you knew how, so if they really wanted to keep something secure, they'd assign a bard to it. The bards wrote music with hidden messages that they used to communicate with each other and identify fellow Resistance fighters. But they also held the keys to the locks, so to speak. Even an encrypted seedee can fall into the wrong hands, and encryptions can be cracked. But a bard can't be forced to play if he doesn't want to. Try to force him, and he's bound to fuck it up anyway. Too many mistakes, and whoever's trying to get in gets fried. Most of the locks were booby-trapped.”

“How do you know so much about the Resistance?” Zeck asked Steven.

“Matthew knew. It was- is a special interest of his. They taught a little bit of it in school, but only the basics. And a lot of the text was expurgated. And I didn't go to school a whole lot, anyway. But I helped Matthew do his research on the Web.”

“What you're saying is that all we have to do is play the right tune on this electric piano machine, and the door will open?” said the Colonel.

“Yeah, but what song?” said Steven. “It looks like that poor sod yanked as many cables as he could before he kicked the bucket. He probably scrambled the knobs, too.”

“He broke the key, so to speak,” said John. “Probably just as the bombs of the Retort were falling. He died protecting the people in the bunker.”

“If you lose the key to your house, you call a locksmith,” said the Colonel. He looked at Zeck. “Or a locksport enthusiast. Strauss, you've expressed familiarity with this machine. You can play it.” It wasn't a question.

“I can play it if we can even get it working,” said Zeck, “but there's no way of telling how they had it patched. I can make music with it, but there's a million different ways to set it up.”

“Chad, can you fix the synthesizer?”

“I'm afraid I lack the expertise,” said Chad. “I have extensive musical training on the salpinx, the rhoptron, and of course the lyre, but my knowledge of electronic audio synthesis is limited to vocal reproduction.”

“Give me a soldering iron and I can fix anything that's broken,” said Steven, “but I'm not much of a musician. And I have to agree with the pirate; it would take a hundred years to figure out how to patch the thing. And we still don't know what song they used, or if it's an original comp their bard came up with.”

“What would really help is if we could find their patch sheet,” said Zeck. “It's a sort of instructional diagram for the synthesizer. Tells you where to put the cables and which toggles to flip. Where to turn the knobs and everything. This is just too big, too complex of a setup for guesswork. There's far too many possible combinations. And this guy's certainly not talking.” He tapped the skull's forehead. Its jaw fell open, as if to speak. Zeck shrieked. The Colonel cackled with amusement.

Zeck's wits came back to him when he noticed something in the skull's mouth glinting in the electric torchlight. He plucked it out with his thumb and forefinger. It was a small brass key. “He must have tried to swallow it,” he said. He peered into the skull's mouth. “This guy had terrible teeth. That one's worn down to a point.” He ran his tongue over the caps on his own teeth.

“As I said,” said the Colonel, “a key for every lock.” He took the key from Zeck. It fit perfectly into the keyhole under the symbol of the broken egg on the synthesizer rack, but it wouldn't turn. The Colonel fiddled it back and forth, but any more force would have bent it. “It must have corroded,” he said. “At least now we know this lock is important. It could be the crux of the entire puzzle. You'll have to pick it, Strauss.”

“Careful,” said Bob. “It could be booby-trapped.”

“With my luck, it will be,” said Zeck. He reached to pull the key from the lock. A static spark jumped from the metal to his finger. He flinched away, but as the initial reflex wore off, he felt a strange attraction to the key. Instead of removing it, he gave it a turn. The lock turned smoothly this time, as if it had never resisted in the first place. “I guess it just needed some loosening,” said Zeck.

“So it seems,” said the Colonel.

Inside the box was a sheet of paper, folded twice. Zeck unfolded it to find a complex hand-drawn diagram. It looked like the scribblings of a lunatic. Rectangles full of circles that vaguely resembled the synthesizer's mods had dozens of lines connecting them and scribbled notes written in every direction.

“Would that happen to be a patch sheet?” said the Colonel.

Zeck nodded.

“And you can read it.” Again, it wasn't a question.

“It's a little beat up. And a little unusual. I might need John's help interpreting these sigils. Sure, I can do it, but it's going to take some time. Probably want to move the skeleton first. And dust a little bit.”

“Set to work, then.”

Zeck waved the patch sheet. “Even with this, there's no guarantee we'll get it exactly as they had it. And we still don't know what we're supposed to be playing.”

“One problem at a time,” said the Colonel. “I have a feeling a solution will present itself to you.”

Captains Solomon and Corrigan crept through the woods, stealthy as the spiders they were dressed to resemble. They were close enough to the treeline to see the clearing, but far enough into the woods to have ample cover.

Corrigan sent a HUD message to Solomon; a reddish hue that pointed the way to a possible target.

Solomon looked where the HUD pointed her. Off through the trees, a deer was drinking from a creek. It was a buck, healthy and muscular. Solomon replied with a 'negative.'

Corrigan sent his message again, with additional symbols for emphasis.

Solomon responded in the negative again, and kept moving.

“Oh, come on,” said Corrigan over the radio comm. “We seldom have a chance like this. It's right there. It'll take no time at all to take it down.”

“We're only halfway around,” said Solomon. “You heard the Lieutenant. No hunting here. It's too risky.”

Corrigan scoffed. “The Lieutenant. Why is she even here? I heard she left the Sparassa to join the Imperial Guard. That Captain Jaut was her partner. That fucking twit, her partner, driving a paddywagon back and forth, delivering perps to court. A glorified bus driver. You don't leave the Sparassa to become a fucking attercop unless there's something wrong with you, or you royally fucked up somehow.”

“Irving thinks that maybe she was undercover. That she never really left, but she was gathering intel or something.”

“And you believe that?” Corrigan snickered.

“Not my business,” said Solomon. “I have no love for the Lieutenant, but she's my commander. That's all that matters. Anyway, the Colonel certainly thinks highly of her. Do you want to tell him that he's made a mistake?”

“I'm sure he has his reasons. And I'll follow any order he gives me. But that doesn't mean I have to kowtow to Sheryl.”

“The Colonel can listen in on these conversations, you know,” said Solomon.

Corrigan froze. He snorted. “He's not listening to this. Not that I'd care if he was. I speak my mind to him all the time. The Corrigans are one of the most trusted families in the military.”

“Yeah, but you weren't born a Corrigan. And the Colonel knows that, too.”

“Whatever,” said Corrigan. “War Children are born on the battlefield. You think the Lieutenant was born a Teymore? You must be color blind.” He extended his wristblades with a faint snik. “I'm taking down this deer. You can have my back, or you can go off on your own without your partner and see how the Lieutenant likes that. Last chance to share the credit when I stroll into camp with a venison feast on my shoulders.”

He stalked off in the direction of the deer. Solomon sighed, but followed. She knew it was a bad idea, but it would have been worse to leave him behind. “You can keep the credit and the blame,” she said. “This is idiotic.”

“Stick to HUD chat from here,” Corrigan said. “Your voice is distracting.”

The woods were darker the farther they got from the clearing. Captain Solomon switched on her eyepiece's multi-spectrum viewer. Something struck her as odd about the deer, but she couldn't put her finger on it. As they drew closer, she got a better look at the creature, and it quickly became obvious. It wasn't exactly a deer. It was a chimera, one of the countless mutant hybrids that had emerged from the war. Above the shoulders, it was like any other buck. From the neck back, it was covered in armadillo-like plates. Its armored section was the size of an elephant. Its limbs were proportional to its body, but they looked more like those of a rabbit. The hind legs were taut and muscular, spring-loaded levers ready to leap at any moment. Solomon messaged Corrigan. “Too big. Armor. Few weak spots.”

“Neck. Easy kill,” he sent back. He crept up to the beast from the side, his wrist blades fully extended.

The buck seemed not to have noticed either of them. Solomon crept around the other side, inching closer as she went. Now she had a full view of the animal, from head to tail. Something seemed off about the creature. Something not quite right, even for a strange hybrid. She zoomed in with her eyepiece and toggled between settings. When she hit infrared, she knew what was wrong. “Not neck,” she sent Corrigan, marked urgent. “Tail. Stop. Retreat.”

Corrigan returned a general inquisitive signal. He was close enough to strike now. The deer head lifted from the stream. A moment too late, Corrigan realized what Solomon's message had meant; it wasn't the creature's head, but its tail, with an antler-tipped flail on the end. It moved fast, like a snake. The neck of the tail slid up and out of its armored shell, lengthening as it rose. It swung away from Corrigan, raising its false nose as if to sniff the air, then swung back like a whip. He dove to the ground and rolled away, springing back up onto his feet in an instant. He turned to the creature, raising his blades to slice through the tail if it swung back in his direction. As fast as he was, he was too slow. The deer-headed flail was already moving straight for him. It smacked him in the chest, knocking him off his feet. One of the antlers struck his chestplate, skittered off and snagged on his coif.

The coif was made of tactical silk dyed black, the strongest armor-grade fabric produced in the Churlian spider farms. It could withstand a slash from a razor-sharp blade. When struck by a bullet, it congealed instantly, stopping the shot and absorbing most of the impact. But it could still be pierced, under the right circumstances. And the antler was pointed, and needle-sharp. It pierced the silk and kept going, straight through Corrigan's shoulder and out the other side, hooking him like a fish. The impact lifted Corrigan off his feet and tossed him backwards. The piercing point twisted and turned on its way out of his shoulder, ripping flesh and scraping a deep gouge into his collarbone. Blood sprayed. Corrigan screamed. His mouthpiece swallowed the sound, but Solomon heard it in the comm. He landed with a thump. He kept screaming, louder and shriller, no words, only sounds of pain. Solomon muted the feed from Corrigan's radio.

The deer head swung to the side, then swiftly back. Solomon dived out of the way and circled around to the other end of the chimera. It seemed to sense her movements, even before it could see her. “If that's the tail, this must be the head,” she thought. Sure enough, the part they'd thought to be its tail lifted off the ground. Its armored segments peeled back, revealing a face like that of an opossum. Its forehead and snout were covered in armor. The only vulnerable spot was its mouth, which measured five feet from corner to corner. Its teeth were the size of daggers, and looked as sharp. Captain Solomon could smell its breath, danker than a butcher's dumpster. Its teeth parted with a warning hiss, showing a red dark cavern just big enough to fit a human.

“Nope,” said Solomon. She crouched, then jumped straight up and landed on a tree branch well above the creature. It sniffed the air. Its tail slowed, weaving to and fro like a cobra.

The creature turned toward Captain Corrigan, who lay on his back where he'd landed, clutching at his torn shoulder, flinching away, then clutching it again, as if every motion made the pain worse. The chimera sniffed its way over to him.

Solomon sent an emergency override to Corrigan's armor. Once she was linked in, she sent a command to his helm. A shrill note, inaudible to humans but sickening to certain other animals, emitted from Corrigan's mouthpiece. The chimera shrank back immediately, but only for a second. The noise seemed to make it angry, and it moved as if to swat at Corrigan. Solomon took aim with her spider gun. She shot a wad of weavers at the deer head on the end of the tail. It hit right between the dark spots of its false eyes. The weavers couldn't do much about the antlers, which poked right through the webbing, but the end of the tail was nicely wrapped in off-white silk. It didn't have much of an effect on its movement, but Solomon's primary intent was to distract the beast. It worked. The chimera turned around to see what had attacked it from behind.

Solomon knew she wouldn't have much time. She leapt from one tree to another until she was close enough to drop down next to Corrigan. She sent another command that told his suit to stiffen, keeping him from moving. She hoped it would prevent his injuries from worsening when she did the next bit. She put one arm underneath his body and grabbed him around the waist. She raised her right arm and leapt again, extruding a length of web rope at the same time. Even with hydraulic greaves built into her suit, she couldn't jump quite as high with Corrigan's added weight, but the rope stuck where she wanted it to. She found herself hanging ten meters above the ground, with the rope in one hand and Corrigan in the other.

The chimera had wandered back their way. It was close enough to spit on, pacing back and forth. It thrashed its tail against the trees and the ground, trying to clean off the webbing. The deer head swished through the air and crashed into the tree they hung from, shaking their branch. A rivulet of blood ran from Corrigan's shoulder down his stiffened arm to the tip of his finger. A drop welled there for a moment, then fell. It landed on the creature's face. It reared back. Solomon wasn't sure it could see them, but now it knew they were there.

There was an emergency beacon in her utility belt, but she didn't have a hand or an inch to spare. She'd have to rely on her radio. “DISTRESS,” she sent, first through HUD chat and then over the comm to anybody who could receive it, “Soldier down.” She hoped the signal would carry.