At the end of the broad hall was a tall doorway with a short stair leading down into a room beyond. With no apparent alternate exits, they chose that direction.
Down the staircase, they found themselves in a low-lit place that extended beyond their sight for the darkness. Their suit lights bobbed up and down as they ran. On either side of the room rose many low walls of increasing height in rows, perpendicular with the walls of the room. At a midway point they stopped getting higher and started getting lower again.
Randy tripped and fell on his face, luckily holding out his hands to catch him and prevent his helmet from getting damaged. Terri grumblingly helped him up and they both split up to hide behind a taller wall on either side of the room. They hastily shut off their suit lights. Sitting in the shadows with their backs against the walls, they peered silently at one another, hoping and praying they would be unheard, unseen, and unhurt.
For quite some time they waited, listening and gathering their strength. Terri shut her eyes and almost wished she could fall asleep. More than once they stood up to leave, thinking perhaps they were in the clear, but heard a noise that jolted them back down.
Finally Randy noticed another hallway on the opposite end of the room.
“Terri!” he called over the radio. “Let’s keep moving. There’s another way out.”
She nodded to him and followed as he hustled onward, crouching low, to the hallway. As they rounded the corner, they found the hallway looked completely unlike the rooms and halls they had just been in; the metal walls, floor, and ceiling looked mushy and melted, rough and uneven in texture. It was empty darkness within.
They stopped in their tracks and felt a paralyzing unease assault them, like a warning.
But hearing screams and scratches echoing from the preceding rooms, they looked back only once and then pressed onward, forcing their stiffening limbs to move.
A low light not too far in was the only thing making them hope it would be a good path to follow, and they were overcome with relief when they emerged from the small exit into a series of blank, circular chambers with no windows and few lights. Stepping down a short flight of steps, they saw stones everywhere, each one almost completely uniform in size.
Not all, Terri realized: there in the corner nearest to them, leaning up against the wall, was a purplish, semi-translucent, rounded object that was as large as her or Randy curled up in a ball.
“What is that thing?” she asked warily. With some measure of curiosity she stepped forward a few steps, keeping a careful distance in case it was dangerous.
Upon closer inspection she could see that it was actually a sac or cocoon, moist and organic, and something was inside.
The cocoon trembled.
♦♦♦
“When Shauna activated the pedestal, she unwittingly unleashed Seclurm upon it, and its effect has proven to be widespread.”
Its effect? wondered Sam. He walked up to a small pillar and suddenly saw it light up as well. As if it were a screen, beads shot up from the top of it, which was nearly level with his chin, and formed an image of a male humanoid creature displayed for medical purposes. He could see its features rather well: tall, slim, with grayish skin and narrow eyes, a head that was wider at the crown than at the chin, hair that looked thick and dark, and limbs that looked incredibly toned and muscled. Another one, female, appeared beside it, with similar strange features and in similar great health.
SNTNL spoke more slowly, as if it were choosing his words with precision, though Sam was sure its hardware was just running a bit laggy. “Its properties aren’t entirely to be found in this database, at least from what I can tell. I have not yet translated the entirety of their language, just most of it. But I’ve learned a few things.”
In front of the two aliens was then displayed a three-dimensional full-turnaround of a see-through molecule. It looked like nothing special, which somehow made it all the more coldly menacing.
“Seclurm is the name of the substance, and it is also used sometimes to refer to what it creates.”
♦♦♦
After Terri had gathered herself again, with Randy standing close beside her, the moving purple cocoon seemed to settle a bit. But she wasn’t planning on taking her chances.
“Let’s keep going,” she said after a slow sigh, leading the way forward. Through a small passageway on the opposite end of the circular chamber was the next chamber, similar in shape and size and with many of the same flat-looking stones on the ground.
“I can’t believe this. We have to get out of here!” muttered Randy.
They stopped again when they both spotted something moving on the floor not five paces from them, amidst the motionless stones. It was…another stone.
“These things aren’t rocks. These are those snail aliens!” Terri said with alarm. The chambers were filled with dozens and dozens of them.
Randy’s breath caught and he watched the moving snail ahead of them creeping along the floor leaving a trail of fuming, purplish acid behind it. The snail slowed to a stop and then fell over on its side.
What is it doing? thought Randy, watching with disgust.
The fleshy interior of the snail was a pale color with purple liquid seeping out from it. It had no discernible eyes or other features, at least not that they could see from their distance. That fleshy part started pushing outward from the shell, squashing and stretching and making disgusting noises all the while. Terri and Randy backed up at the gross sight but kept their eye trained on it out of morbid curiosity. The snail kept emerging until it left its shell altogether, and then curled into a ball beside it.
Randy couldn’t tear away his gaze as the snail started to secrete more liquid from all over its body, only this liquid wasn’t purple but mostly clear. More and more liquid poured out—almost more than they could believe was inside the creature—and the liquid began to coalesce into a unified mesh, regaining its purple color gradually until it had formed a full, liquid-filled sac around the snail.
♦♦♦
“Seclurm’s origin lies with the aliens who built this place. Nothing I’ve found says where it came from. What it is is ‘pure matter’. That’s the best way I can describe it. Like a virus it is able to enter other organisms—although it requires heavy exposure to be able to do so—and like a sponge it absorbs the DNA of organisms, carrying it wherever it goes.”
An unsettled feeling overtook Sam, his head throbbing. “So…what did it do to Shauna?”
He came to the second small pillar, which also shot up a 3D image. This time, it was a three-image cycle, each image staying for about three seconds before flipping to the next. The first was a small, four-legged creature with a wide chest, thick legs, and large, docile eyes. The second added another animal six inches above the other, this one with a horrifying appearance like a crab or spider with many thin, sharp limbs drawn up to hide its bulbous body, four red eyes set into its head. Between the two animals there was the same mysterious molecule from before. The third image showed only one animal, but it was entirely different. Large and multi-limbed, it had five eyes, a large mouth full of killer teeth, sharp claws at the ends of its many thick limbs, and a long tail with a strong spiked ball on its end.
“I cannot answer that with any certainty, Sam. As you know, the camera recordings were destroyed—”
“SNTNL, do you know what happened to her?” he demanded. The strange, repeating cycle of images began to frighten him.
“Seclurm was meant to evolve things,” SNTNL replied. “It sparks creation; it was the reason why the alien civilization thrived here. And it may also be the reason why they are no longer here.”
That didn’t answer Sam’s question, but curiosity filled him enough to make him ask one more. “So wh-what happened to them?—the same thing that happened to Shauna?”
The next and final long screen around the walls of the chamber showed many, many pages of writings in the bizarre alien script. SNTNL explained, “I located documents that o
riginate from some time ago. The dating system isn’t decipherable, so I can’t even give any certain estimate of how long ago it was. Maybe decades, maybe centuries, maybe millennia. These documents I’ve located are the most recent ones available. They appear to be edicts written about the growing dangers of Seclurm, many issues caused by Seclurm creatures. I have the feeling that there was more, much more, but some of the data had been either wiped intentionally or destroyed accidentally between then and now. It’s difficult to believe that an entire civilization disappeared without leaving too much of a reason why or how.
“Seclurm isn’t an unstable substance. By all reports, it was used often for evolving subjects in a dependable fashion. I cannot find many details on why, but it is clear that it nonetheless ended up causing many problems.”
Although this information was raising all kinds of wild and incredible thoughts in his mind, Sam’s most pressing question still hadn’t been answered, at least not directly. But he did not want to accept the conclusion he was starting to arrive at. “Listen, I know you’ve got programming for these kinds of intense situations, but SNTNL—if you know the answer, I have to know what happened to Shauna.”
The A.I. was silent for a moment.
As he came to the end of the last screen, Sam stopped and became overcome with emotion, admitting aloud something he hadn’t considered before, or even wanted to. “She…she was transformed into that thing, wasn’t she? …The alien we killed…it was Shauna.”
He wished he could have taken those words back somehow as soon as he said them. To have SNTNL tell him no, he had the wrong idea. But he knew already what would be said to answer him.
“…I am sorry, Sam. Again, please know you are not to blame for this.”
His eyes grew wet. He fought back tears and raised his hands to his face, forgetting for a moment that he wore a glass helmet. He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive himself for having had a hand in the transformation of his friend into a monster who killed two people and wounded another before being killed herself…by him. The horror of the alien’s menace was compounded, and he couldn’t deny the truth that he had literally killed her. His breathing grew raspy for a few moments. Immediately he wished that he had never known, but he knew he needed to be strong. His hands fell back down to his sides and he went back to the main computer terminal to lean against the wall, his eyes heavy with pain.
♦♦♦
Terri and Randy noticed more movement around them. They looked all about and gasped at the sight of all the stones—really snails in their shells—beginning to move about slowly.
Terri screamed and tried to run back the way they’d come. “I am not going to die!” she said.
But she leapt back as she found herself stepping over purple acid that stuck to her boots. With horrified expression she realized that if she kept stepping on it, it would eat through her suit and compromise her insulation. There was already too much acid covering the way they’d come for them to get over or past it safely.
“Quick! The other way!” she said, and the two of them started toward the other exit.
They halted when they saw the exact same acid burning through the floor on this end. Everywhere those creatures went they left a trail of violet. All the edges of the circular room were completely and thoroughly covered with shiny, violet acid, and the snails had begun to congregate in the main exits, as if to block off Terri and Randy’s escape.
The two of them stood in the center with backs together and felt their bodies shake, eyes darting about and trying not to burst out in miserable shouts and tears.
“What’s going on here?” hissed Randy through gritted teeth, his eyes stinging. “Are—!”
The floor shook suddenly. Then it wobbled, causing the two of them to lift up their arms and bend their knees, waiting.
Then the floor fell down, crumbling into two large pieces as it did, and Terri and Randy plummeted into darkness. They felt themselves fall into what felt like a tube of liquid that pushed them haphazardly downward in its flow, their shouts and cries drowning away.
♦♦♦
Sam got a hold of himself, remembering that there was more yet to be done if lives were to be saved. “So Seclurm evolved Shauna into that creature because she got covered in it?”
“That’s mostly correct. Merely touching it does not affect you; it requires full submersion or else being ingested in order to do that. Shauna’s spacesuit’s helmet was broken and she accidentally imbibed some of it, allowing it to work on her. The process did not go as quickly as it could have thanks to your efforts to pull her out of it.”
That was little consolation. “So this underground city is pumping Seclurm around that will turn everything into monsters?” Sam said with sudden alarm.
“Well…not exactly. Seclurm has no transformative properties in and of itself; it first needs to be injected with another set of DNA. Only when it has DNA already within it will it have any effect. Drinking or being submerged within DNA-encoded Seclurm will gradually transform an organism into an evolved version of itself, using the injected DNA as an endpoint and the organism’s original DNA as a starting point. Usually the completed evolution ends up being somewhere in the middle, but its effects can linger even for multiple generations.”
Sam quickly became lost in thoughts, pondering on creation and evolution.
“The orb that Shauna touched was a kind of codex containing DNA. It combined with the Seclurm and then her own DNA. After transforming in a sac-like cocoon during the night, she was no longer herself.”
He shook his head and put away thoughts of Shauna’s fate. “Do you know if the Seclurm pumping through this city is already injected with DNA or not?” he asked. He was immeasurably grateful for the A.I.’s assistance—he didn’t know how he could possibly have learned even a fraction of this information without its help, and he probably would have stumbled blindly to his own death…or worse. The fear of becoming transformed by Seclurm became lodged in his mind. He would avoid it at all costs.
“It would be wise to treat it as if it is.”
Sam took a deep breath. “Holy crap. SNTNL…are you sure this is all real? You’re reading all of this correctly?”
“Yes, Sam. Unfortunately this is the truth.”
He shook his head. “I have nothing…nothing to handle this with. What am I supposed to do?”
“I understand. I am with you, for what it’s worth. I can’t promise help with everything, but I can keep you informed as we go at the very least.”
Sam tried hard to get a complete grasp on this entire problem, straining as he did. “Do you think Terri and Randy are in immediate danger?”
“I believe with Seclurm flowing through the entire city, problems are bound to start happening.”
“Have any…creatures in these ruins already made contact with any Seclurm and evolved?”
“…I can only say that I believe so. You should move carefully in case you encounter any of them.”
Those words hit Sam like a punch to his gut. “SNTNL, we barely killed the alien…Shauna…when we had a flamethrower and a bowie knife. I don’t have anything. If another one finds me, I’m going to die.”
SNTNL didn’t immediately reply.
“And even if I somehow find them and get back to the entrance, how do I know we can get that door open to let us back outside?”
“We will find a way.”
He was pacing now. “How far away are Terri and Randy? D-do you have a map of this city? Or anything like that?”
“We still have the radar data. It will serve as a map of sorts. And yes, I can ping the coordinates of the camera where we saw the others. I’ve lost visual of them, but they can’t have gotten far. I’ll update you when I spot them again. Combined with the radar data, I will be able to give you an exact location, but the journey there may prove to be a little bit muddy.”
“Well, that’s better than nothing. Can you still look at those cameras and everything after I take you out of t
his terminal?”
“I might not have full access, but it will be enough, I promise. Don’t worry about that. Anyway, Terri and Randy’s last location was a fair distance away from you. Depending on the length of the hallways and rooms you’ll be going through, it could be anywhere from forty minutes away to twice that long.”
“What in the world are they doing in this place?” he wondered aloud as he started packing up the space tent in his suit’s backpack. “I don’t feel remotely sorry for drinking all the beer anymore.”
His legs itched, and he wanted to see his crewmates’ faces again, no matter how aggravated they were making him. He pulled the smart device out of the alien terminal and set it back in a pocket of his spacesuit. Stepping out of the room and returning to the hallway, he walked to his right, further down as SNTNL directed him. He soon came to a “T” in the hallway, the left leading to a staircase downward and the other to a broken-off hallway leading out into the open. He spared a moment to walk to the right to stare out into the underground city, careful not to stand too close to the edge. It really looked like it might have been inhabited once by a people he could never understand without having known them. These strange, tall buildings of an odd metal material with crisscrossing bridges across them, the rooms, the records of their use of Seclurm, and their language were all one big time capsule left behind by them. Whether anyone was meant to find it or not, Sam had no idea. He did not feel optimistic about the intentions of these aliens, whoever they were, and wondered why and how they left behind any lifeforms at all, especially ones who secreted acid or had killer tails and teeth.
Out into the expanse of the city he could almost see these people-like aliens who once lived here. Down on the surface, below a layer of some reinforced glass, he could make out what he thought could have been a travel system, like a subway, and some streets carved from the metal reinforcing the glass layer. It took his breath away, and helped him take his mind off of what he’d just learned.
Turning back he made his way to the staircase of pock-marked metal, like pewter. It traveled down farther than he expected, hit a landing, and went down twice as far to a large room with a tall ceiling. It reminded him somewhat of some kind of recreation center’s main room, with a walled-off section to the left side where groups of long tables were placed and an open section to the right, part of it raised up a few inches from the rest of the floor. Another section had two staircases leading down somewhere. He thought he could see long-faded-out colors throughout the room. A set of twin doorways was at the far end across from Sam, and more lights than he had seen in prior rooms hung from the ceiling, almost making him feel perfectly safe. In contrast to that, however, there was structural damage galore; he could see pock-marks in the walls far out in front of and to the right of him, and in the center of the room a gaping hole that seemed eaten away.
Seclurm: Devolution Page 21
