by Tyler Hanson
The blast doors completed their closure with a sickening crunch, and blood gushed from the center of the entryway as the crushing force of the thick, dull metal severed the leg in its path. Even through the near-impenetrable barrier and over the sound of the alarm, Nadi heard the crippled man’s frantic cries of pain.
The group hiding under the jet engine dispersed from their refuge. As they did, the taller of the two women from the third floor collapsed to the ground, lifeless. Blood covered the front of her chest.
She must have taken the brunt of the intruders’ final assault, Nadi thought.
Reyansh exited the security room. Indra ran to join Ananya and the three survivors, his hand still clad in his white glove. The discs at his station clattered to the floor.
Nadi doubled over, retching. His stomach churned from the smell of his blood-soaked face and clothes.
“What are we going to do?” Indra asked.
“Come look,” was Reyansh’s reply.
The six scientists crowded into the security area, near the camera monitors. What they saw horrified them. They saw men in black, sporting machine guns, littering all four floors of the building like an infestation of ants. They saw scientists in white, hiding beneath tables and the bodies of their fallen peers. The few still alive were pulled from their shelters and gunned down on the spot. Most disconcerting, they saw a huddle of the intruders near the blast doors, adhering brick-shaped packages, probably some kind of explosive. The man with the recently amputated leg lay still on the floor, encircled by a pool of blood.
Indra looked around the room. “Like I said . . . what are we going to do?”
Ananya chimed in, a quiver in her voice. “What do we know about the other projects? Can we defend ourselves in here?”
“You’ve seen the extent of my project’s defensive capabilities,” responded Indra. “Those devices are made for data collection in hostile environments, not for combat maneuvers.”
The blood-covered scientist, a short, pudgy man with square glasses, said, “I’m from the second floor. We didn’t have access to the projects on this floor.”
“Neither did we,” said the woman from the third floor. She was shorter, like the other unfamiliar scientist, but with a small frame and brown hair that curled into a bun on her head. She paused as she looked over at her dead friend beneath the table, and solemnly corrected herself. “Neither do I.”
Nadi looked at the monitors once more as he considered his options. Everyone beyond this room is already dead. There’s no way to help them from here. Meanwhile, they’re about to blow a hole in the blast doors, the only thing keeping us safe.
“I know what we can do,” he said aloud, his voice stern.
He pushed past the others and left the security room, toward his PAUS prototype.
Ananya rushed to catch up with him. By her expression, she knew his intent. “What if there are survivors, Nadi?” she said. “Are you willing to bear that responsibility?”
He turned to her and raised his voice. “How am I supposed to know, Ananya? Our friends are outside, already dying!” She jumped in fright at his sharp tone. He continued, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “We can gamble on some of them just being injured, for now. We can wait and see what they do, and risk everything. But that’s not the pragmatic decision, and you know it. The pragmatic decision is to protect those of us who are still alive, to get them out safely, and then prevent this from happening ever again.” Nadi placed his hands over his eyes and clenched his jaw, sucking air through his teeth. “This is a tough choice either way, which is why I’m not letting anyone else make it.”
They both reached the PAUS, and Nadi furiously typed commands into the device.
“Does our local drive include the building’s floor plans?” he asked aloud, swallowing the lump in his throat.
“Yes,” said a voice behind him, and Nadi looked over his shoulder. The scientist in glasses had followed him to the PAUS. “I uploaded them for my project last year. You should have access, too.”
“Thank you so much.” Nadi looked at him. “I’m so sorry, but what is your name?”
The man stopped wiping the blood from his eyes. “Aarav. It’s fine. Let’s just hurry with whatever you’re planning on doing.”
Nadi continued programming as Ananya moved to the PAUS and prepared it for broadcast.
A few minutes passed before Reyansh yelled, “It looks like they’re almost ready to breach!”
“Almost done!” Nadi and Ananya called back at the same time.
“What are you doing?” The woman from the third floor inquired, poking her head out of the security room.
“These people made a fatal mistake,” Nadi muttered, entering the last few keystrokes.
She furrowed her brow. “A mistake? What mistake?”
Nadi looked up from the keyboard. “They didn’t turn off the lights.” He pressed ENTER.
The PAUS made a short hiss for just a fraction of a second. A heavy groan echoed from all directions. The floor and walls wailed and creaked, as if they had experienced an exponential weight increase. Through the cracks of the blast door, droplets of water formed and fell. Somewhere far above their heads, they could hear the twang of metal, reverberating throughout the hangar.
“Raand ka jamai!” cried Reyansh from the security room.
The woman near the security room widened her eyes and looked at Nadi. “What the hell did you do?” she demanded.
Nadi, Ananya, and Aarav rejoined the other three scientists in the security room to observe Nadi’s handiwork.
Most of the video feeds blurred, their apertures unable to adjust immediately to the sudden environmental transformation. As the cameras began to focus, they revealed water filling the first three floors to the brim, while their current floor had only filled the space on the opposite side of the blast door. The struggling attackers and murdered scientists floated in a jumbled mixture of blood and water.
Reyansh cried out and pointed at some of the individual intruders on his monitors. They swam upwards, trying to find an exit, but there was too much distance and too much water pressure. Bubbles escaped their mouths and, one by one, they each stopped moving, adding themselves to the pool of corpses.
“Fuck them,” Reyansh spat.
Nadi sighed and sat down in a nearby chair, relieved to be free from immediate danger. “Okay, this was as far as my plan went. Now how do we get out?”
Aquifer’s Report
01.06: “Escape”
Karnataka, India
April 18, 2006-B
The group spent the next hour or so in a series of frantic arguments amongst each other, debating on where the men came from, why they were there, and whose projects would warrant such a response. They bickered about what technologies were available to them in the moment, and what possible uses they might have in escaping their underwater lair. Eventually, Ananya ended the charade.
“This is getting us nowhere,” she said, exasperated. “Look at the facts. They brought heavy breaching equipment, when the top three floors don’t have security features that necessitate it. They knew our building design, and they had access to elevator controls. They were looking for something here, on this floor.”
Reyansh said, “She’s right. They knew what they were looking for. I doubt it was Indra’s project; no offense.”
Indra held a hand up. “None taken. I’m much too early in development to generate attention toward my project. Besides, I designed the drones to collect topographical and atmospheric data, these men probably want equipment capable of proper surveillance.”
Nadi was only half-listening to their conversation. Could he really have gone this far? He looked up and gestured at the green jet engine. “What do we know about Varsha’s equipment?”
Reyansh shrugged, while Indra shook his head. Aarav, who had finally cleaned the gore from his face, and Priya, the third-floor scientist, traded uncomfortable glances
.
Ananya furrowed her brow and rose to her feet. “Let’s not pretend like we don’t know what’s happening.”
Nadi sighed. It was only a matter of time before she said something. “We don’t know that it’s Kalt, Ananya. He has the resources, and he clearly wants to misappropriate PAUS, but there are so many legitimate ways for him to obtain it. There’s nothing to gain from this wanton violence and destruction.”
The walls and ceiling creaked out another awful, haunting moan. The group halted their conversation and looked to the blast doors. The leaking water had intensified over the last hour, and a thin puddle spread a quarter of the way across the room.
“We need to deal with that later, and leave now,” Priya said, the urgency creating a tremor in her voice. She looked over to the body of her fallen friend.
Nadi and Ananya met each other’s eyes, but Ananya was the one to speak.
“Well . . . maybe the device that trapped us here can also get us out,” she said.
“By . . . adding more water?” Aarav raised an eyebrow.
Indra sighed. “No, their PAUS can also create hydrophobic fields. They’re going to make one for us.”
Nadi and Ananya nodded.
“The control system isn’t flat, though,” Reyansh responded. “The computer is one of the thickest and heaviest parts of the device. We can control it with the wireless keyboard, but even then, we’ll have to heft it around.”
Nadi stared at the PAUS, then over at the blast doors. The severed foot still lay there, blood diluted throughout the water puddle. His eyes drifted over to the drones at Indra’s table, and he was struck by an idea. “I know what to do. Grab your tools and follow my lead.”
________________
They toiled for almost two hours before a shrill tone chirped from the security room, muffled by the closed door. Reyansh dropped what he was doing and sprinted inside. There was a long pause.
“Nadi! Ananya! Come here!” he yelled.
The pair left their stations while their project partners looked on with worried faces. Nadi and Ananya entered the security area to see Reyansh hunched over the monitors, his brow twisting with concern.
“The proximity alert that I set sounded.” His index finger reached for the screen. “What am I seeing here?”
The cameras for the first floor showed movement near the archway of the emergency doors, where the original intruders had first blasted into the lab. Two shadowy figures dove down from the ground floor of the Waste Water Treatment Plant, but they stopped themselves from travelling very far into the facility. Flashlights flickered on, their beams cutting through the murky water. They examined the first set of floating bodies and machinery before reaching into some sort of container, retrieving a capsule.
Whatever it was, the capsule appeared to be about the size and shape of an American football. They released the object into the first-floor entranceway and retreated in the direction they had appeared. The capsule floated for a few seconds, lazy and still, before it bubbled with violent intensity. The bubbling permeated throughout the water of the first floor, as if boiling the space. As the effect reached the cameras, a frothy haze obstructed their view.
Ananya shook her head while Nadi pinched the bridge of his nose, exasperated.
“I don’t know what I just saw, but I know that we need to leave immediately,” he said.
The trio returned to finalize their separate projects. They used a ribbon of wires, bundled into a thick cable, to connect Indra’s drone gloves to two pearl-white vests. Nadi and Indra strapped the gear to their chests, donned the left-handed control gloves, and faced the blast doors with the other four survivors. Ananya and Aarav paired up near Nadi, while Reyansh and Priya gathered next to Indra.
“Reyansh, when you open them, make sure there is a delay,” Nadi instructed, priming the cannibalized PAUS pieces interspersed along his vest. “We need to move a safe distance away beforehand. The ultrasound’s hydrophobic frequency keeps the water away, but it won’t protect us from the solid debris that’s right outside.”
Reyansh nodded, disappearing into the security room. He rejoined Indra and Priya seconds later, just as the blast door alarms sounded.
Nadi took a deep breath.
I really hope this works.
The blast doors parted, and water gushed into the last bastion of dry air. Bodies, guns and equipment tumbled in with the flood. They struck the tables piled in front of the doors, and the loose debris rushed in a wave toward the scientists.
Excited shouts erupted from Indra’s group, and Nadi looked at them. All three chattered to each other, pointing at their feet. The water halted several meters ahead of them, continuing its path around them, forming a dry circle. As the room filled up, the circle grew into a sphere large enough to comfortably fit at least twice as many people.
Glancing down, Nadi saw the same process occurring around his group. Aarav watched the water rise in front of him with an expression of awe on his face. He reached his fingers out to penetrate the suspended fluid; as he pulled back, the water rose over their heads, completing their ultrasound bubble.
“Okay, just a reminder,” Nadi spoke, his tone authoritative. “There is no reason to move forward quickly, nor is there a reason to panic. We have limited oxygen inside these bubbles, but we should have enough to last us until we reach our exit.” He met Ananya and Aarav’s eyes. “Let me be very clear. The bubble is following me. You will only stay inside of it if you stay close to me. Understood?” The two scientists nodded. “Then let’s get the hell out of—“
GLP-GLP-GLP. GLP-GLP-GLP.
“It’s only the ultrasound reverberations,” Nadi lied to his passengers. What the hell is that?
The noise had a wet thickness to it; he’d never heard such a sound so loud before. It was reminiscent of the sound a thirsty person makes when gulping a glass of water, yet infinitely more chilling. For Nadi, it was impossible to identify the source or of the sound, or determine its proximity.
Ananya and Aarav slowly turned to Nadi, their faces skeptical.
“Let’s . . . let’s just go,” Nadi said.
GLP-GLP-GLP. GLP-GLP-GLP.
The two groups moved forward in tandem, careful to avoid the floating debris. As they passed a body, the man’s head drifted into their bubble from the side. Aarav made a disgusted noise and pushed the head away, sending it floating off behind them.
GLP-GLP-GLP. GLP-GLP-GLP.
They reached the service ramp beyond the blast doors, pushing past the cluster of hovering corpses to make their way into floor three.
GLP-GLP-GLP. GLP-GLP-GLP.
The group rounded the corner to the third floor, illuminated by off-kilter lighting. Nadi’s PAUS had sapped most of the photons in the building to fill it with water, but the electricity powering the facility quickly revitalized the artificial lights.
GLP-GLP-GLP. GLP-GLP-GLP.
A shadow appeared ahead of them on the ramp, descending from the second floor, and they all paused. It seemed cylindrical, and it moved in a wriggling, serpentine motion. They could not glean much from the silhouette, however, as its caster was large enough to block out almost all light coming from the second-floor emergency lamps.
There was a brief moment of silence, but the noise returned in full force, almost deafening Nadi.
GLP-GLP-GLP. GLP-GLP-GLP.
Nadi inched close to Indra’s group so that their two bubbles merged into one shared space.
“We need to hide, at least for a moment,” he whispered to the other five escapees.
“Why? The longer we stay, the more likely we’re found,” Priya said, her hushed voice cracking under the stress.
“But he’s right,” Ananya rebutted, pointing at the ramp. “That’s our only active way to the second floor, so if that shadow is standing between us and escape . . .”
“Moving forward right now would be suicide,” Indra finished.
“It’s
all we can do,” Nadi replied.
Reyansh eyed the second-floor entrance nervously. “This thing seems to be heading down the ramp toward us.”
“Over here, then,” Priya whispered, gesturing toward a table across the room. “We’ll hide behind my workstation.”
“Let’s go, before it sees us,” Aarav said, exasperated.
The two groups moved through the mass of floating corpses and metal on the third floor, their footsteps quick yet careful. They reached Priya’s former workstation, covered in pearl-white metal boards. Shaped like large, flat tombstones, their design was similar to coastal body boards.
The scientists moved around the workstation, and the gap between it and the far wall left just enough space for all six to cram together, crouched and panting. The proximity allowed the entire party to stay dry under the same ultrasound space. The boards on the table caught Nadi’s eye, and he poked at one of them. “Is this what I think it is?”
Priya grimaced. “Yeah, some hack contracted me to design hydraulic personal transporters.”
“So . . .” Nadi leaned closer. “Hoverboards?”
She sighed. “Spare me your Back to the Future comments.”
“Can this wait?” Reyansh hissed at them, pointing toward the ramp. Everyone craned to see, either under or around the sides of the table.
From the opening to the corkscrew ramp slid a giant, purple, cylindrical mass. It had a slimy, round body as thick as a bus and at least twice as long. With no distinguishing features anywhere, its skin was a smooth, spotless, deep purple from one end all the way to the other. Nadi looked at his peers’ concerned faces for answers.
“What is that?”
GLP-GLP-GLP.
The other scientists gasped. Nadi whipped his head back around, but he missed whatever had happened. The creature slinked further into the room, making slow, squirming motions.
