The acid creatures! he thought immediately as he strode forward. What would happen to them if they became evolved by Seclurm, he found himself wondering? It was high on the list of things he did not want to ever see.
The floor started cracking.
A large tear streaked down from the edge of the hole towards Sam and between his legs. He jumped and stumbled over to the side, but the floor began sinking down faster than he could run. He cursed loudly and fell flat on his stomach, flailing his arms ahead of him in a desperate attempt to grab onto something, anything. Despite his efforts he slipped down at a forty-five degree angle until he felt himself falling through the air for a second.
Then he plummeted onto a slanted surface that knocked the wind out of him and made him tumble over himself multiple times until finally he grabbed hold of the lip of a cliff’s edge.
Dangling from it, he looked around awkwardly. Down below him was a darker, empty shaft only lit by occasional lights down along the walls. It seemed to go down for about two hundred feet. Due to the angle and the shadows, he could not see what lay at the very bottom.
Looking up again, he spotted an elevator. Just before him was the rectangular opening to it, with staircases on either side of it leading up to the floor Sam had fallen from. He carefully hoisted himself up onto the floor, which was covered with metal and stone debris.
“Sam, are you alright?” asked SNTNL.
He grunted before answering, “Bruised, but okay. I’m heading down, right?”
“Yes,” SNTNL said, although it sounded like it wanted to say more.
It stopped talking as Sam warily entered inside the elevator, however.
The elevator was dark yet spacious, and reacted automatically to his entrance by shutting the doors and starting downward with a mechanical hum. Sam didn’t know what to think, only that he wished he could feel safe about anything he was doing. There were no windows in this elevator to ease the suffocating feeling, either. He could almost tangibly feel his own lack of a weapon in his arms, like a specter.
The hum continued for about a minute and a half until finally the elevator halted. Sam inhaled, then exhaled.
The doors opened.
Into the elevator rushed a great load of purplish muck, knocking him off his feet and consuming him entirely.
Quickly he recognized what it was: the alien acid he had seen once before.
Regaining his footing, he emerged from the muck and watched it slide off of his chest and arms like maple syrup, leaving a thin layer still clinging to him and eating away at his suit with puffs of smoke. He didn’t know where to go or what to do; he just slogged forward with frantic horror.
Moving through the liquid felt like swimming in jelly, but his movements were electrified with adrenaline. Screaming and hyperventilating he trudged forward out of the elevator and into the main floor of the shaft: a smaller section that looked completely marred by acid.
Sam approached the wall where a wide, broken doorway was about eleven or twelve feet up from the floor. If there had been a staircase or the like, it was gone now, eaten away by acid. His body slammed against the wall and gripped it with his fingers. Thankfully, the acid hadn’t eaten through the floor very neatly and the metallic wall was full of holes and protrusions everywhere for him to gain hand and footholds. Still, with an increasing heat and threat of death upon him, he could hardly move with enough focus to grip anything. He slipped over and over again, nearly falling with every other step of his feet up the wall; his back still felt bruised from his earlier tumbling; and his helmet began to curl inward from the acid, becoming more and more blindingly opaque with each moment; but even with all of that, he would not allow himself to die now. Not this way.
His fingers arced over the ledge of the wide doorway and he pulled himself up inch by inch until he rolled up and over it. Standing up, he stumbled forward and screamed louder; he could feel the acid seeping into his gloves and biting into his shaking fingers.
I’m dead, he thought with terrible understanding. For a split second he had to weigh what death he preferred: to remain in his spacesuit until it got eaten through and burned into his body, or to rip it off and instead die by lack of oxygen.
It wasn’t too difficult a choice to make, especially because his body’s natural reflexes pushed him quickly to tear off the pain-causing spacesuit. Helmet first, then the torso attached to gloves and boots. A strange thought came to him that his smart device was still in the suit’s pocket, and perhaps he ought to take it so SNTNL might be able to save him somehow. Unlikely, but if he was about to die, what was there to lose? He noticed the pocket itself was eaten through, his device looking mostly undamaged by some miracle. He plucked it out and then fell on his back away from the steaming suit, setting the device clumsily on the floor and writhing as he watched his hands slowly stop burning. He felt some splashes and specks of acid on his face and shoulders and shins as well, though most of those were dulled a tiny bit by the clothing between the acid and his skin. His shouts echoed through the halls and the shaft. He seemed to breathe normally so far, and the temperature, oddly enough, wasn’t horrendously cold.
He opened his eyes and looked at his throbbing hands. The tips of all of his fingers were burnt a deep red and dug into almost a quarter of the way. With horror he realized that his right thumb’s fingernail was halfway gone, and his palms had sections of sensitive burns along them. He turned his head to the barely-recognizable pile of his spacesuit, which was soaked in violet liquid and disintegrating more and more each minute. Inside his burning backpack was a first aid kit that would never be recovered, as well as a space tent and plenty of food. He cursed himself for taking that food now, and vowed that if he somehow survived and ever did find the others and bring them back to the ship, he would eat less than them to compensate for his idiocy here.
He lay there in his jeans, shoes, and red shirt. He wasn’t in good shape now, certainly not fit for what he must do. The relative cold of the ruins, which his suit had shielded him from before, now seeped into his bones.
He became aware of SNTNL trying to speak to him.
“Sam! Sam, answer me!” the A.I. said with fear in its voice.
He breathed deeply for a few moments before saying, “I’m…alive. …SNTNL…why am I not suffocating?”
“You’re going to be alright. Since the city woke up, the atmosphere within it seems to have been regulated in such a way as to allow humans to breathe normally. I might have told you that earlier, but there was no reason to remove your spacesuit, and besides, I did not expect you to believe it without seeing for yourself.”
He could barely process the magnitude of that miracle. He managed a faint smile. He was alive. “I guess…you’re probably right…at that,” he admitted.
“Well. You are much closer to Terri and Randy now,” the A.I. said encouragingly, “thanks to that shortcut.”
Sam kept his eyes closed and his trembling hands at his sides. “True… Thanks for looking…on the bright side…”
“On a more serious note, I’ve spotted them again and you are actually nearer to them as well as to a place where I believe you may be able to heal yourself.”
“What…what are you talk…talking about?”
“Some information I gathered from the computer speaks of a ‘reparation room’ that was used to heal injuries. I have reason to believe it is functioning. You should be able to access it easily when you get nearer to where the others are.”
With the sad state of their own medical bay on the Novara, maybe it would be smart to make use of what was here. But then again… “I don’t know, SNTNL,” he said as he began to sit up, “how do we know…it will be safe for humans?”
“I suppose we don’t. But it is worth looking into. It isn’t overly far from where your crewmates are. I would strongly, strongly recommend heading towards it once you meet up with them again.”
Why the A.I. was so forceful about this reparation room, Sam wasn’t sure. But he wasn’t
in much of a state for critical thinking himself. It was some time before he felt the strength again to stand and begin walking onward through the tall-ceilinged, spiraling hallway he found himself in. The walls were streaked with scrapes and cuts here too, and that only made him wish he was still wearing his warm, safe spacesuit.
Behind the remains of the spacesuit and deep down in the violet muck, something stirred and glided upward until it crested the surface and latched onto the wall below the door.
PART THREE
ADAPTATION
14
The muffled noise of falling water graced Terri’s ears as she awoke laying on her side on a rough stone floor. Everything was dark. She felt so tired, and wondered if she’d been dreaming. Lucidity returned to her, as well as a terrible throbbing in her head, and she remembered that they had just been falling down through a tube full of liquid.
She raised up her head and arms and realized that her visor was completely covered in dark material. Wiping it off from her eyes, she almost screamed to see the same dark liquid that had been Shauna’s undoing.
Her suit was completely covered in it.
When she had wiped her visor clear, shaking the muck off her hands, she got a good look at where she was, although that didn’t answer many of her questions. Around her was a gigantic cavern that looked similar in size and shape to the city’s central room with the many tiers. Oddest of anything, there were large buildings sprouting from the ceiling and coming down without touching the ground in most cases, as if they were on the ground floor and Terri was on the ceiling.
Eventually it hit her: those were the same buildings as in the city’s central room, because she was in that very room—only, she was now below the ground floor!
Marveling at that, she looked around at the many slopes and hills and dips in the stony landscape on this lowest level—more than she could take in all at once. She didn’t know what this upside-down-looking place was or how to make sense of it, but it consumed her being with a sense of awe and stupor.
She turned back to where the falling water sound was coming from and saw she was beside a lake of the dark liquid. A large metal tube was suspended in air, emerging from one of the further-reaching upside-down buildings, and pumping the liquid out to where it fell thirty feet down to the small lake, splashing and filling it.
Where’s Randy? Terri wondered suddenly. She looked all around and couldn’t spot him. There was little wind or movement, although she could very faintly hear indiscernible echoes from afar off. She felt very small, very alone, and so lost. Although none of the dark liquid had gotten through her insulated suit, she thought she could almost feel its disturbing touch upon her, as if it couldn’t wait to make contact with her flesh.
She glanced back at the lake and saw something floating near the surface. Stepping up to the edge of the lapping waves, she saw a darkness-soaked, bluish-colored spacesuit bobbing on the mucky liquid. Randy was completely motionless.
With some reluctance she waded carefully into the lake about fifteen feet to grab Randy’s shoulders and pull him to shore.
After setting him down, she wiped off his blackened visor to see his weathered face, thin brown hair on his head, and facial hair.
“Randy! Are you okay?” she asked, keeping her voice as low as she could to avoid echoing.
He didn’t respond, but he stirred slightly. It was then that she noticed a red, blinking light on his suit’s collar through the black muck, and her eyes went wide. That meant his oxygenating system was compromised.
There was a reflection in his glass helmet that puzzled her, and she looked down at her own suit to discover that exact same blinking light was going off on hers. Both of them were no longer breathing suit-provided oxygen, but the ruined city’s atmosphere.
Thoughts raced through her head. Either they were dying as they stood, or else the atmosphere, somehow, was okay to breathe. A dilemma posed itself to her: if their suits’ oxygen systems were broken, it was likely that their insulation could be too. If that were the case, they needed to get out of them pronto before the black muck did to them what it did to Shauna. Could she trust her own eyes and believe that the atmosphere was okay to breathe? What if it killed them only gradually?
Well… she thought at length, that would be better than being infected with this stuff.
After a deep breath she wiped off her helmet as much as she could with her gloves until she was sure that none would pour onto her neck when she took it off. Then, like the pulling of a tooth, she yanked off her helmet and threw it to the ground.
She shut her eyes and breathed the cool air carefully, afraid for several moments that she had just killed herself. For a moment—just a moment—she welcomed that death and the rest it would bring.
But she didn’t die. Somehow, by some inexplicable turn, the atmosphere had been regulated. It felt cold to her skin, with damp air, but not as cold as it had been before. It was livable. A few short, strained laughs escaped her lips.
Before she took off the rest of her suit, she realized she might need it on to safely remove Randy’s. She stopped and decided to wait a bit to see if he would wake up on his own.
She looked into the dark distance again and tried to discern what lay beyond. Far away, shrouded between two ridges, she saw a large and purplish object, like a big bean bag, only it looked moist and organic. Terri kept her eyes trained on it worriedly until Randy began to stir.
His eyes opened and he twitched.
“Randy!” she said.
He struggled for breath several times and looked around in a sudden panic. When he saw her, he marveled at her lack of a helmet.
“Randy, it’s okay! It’s okay! I don’t know how, but the atmosphere is breathable.”
After a minute he seemed to be fully regaining lucidity, but there was something not right with him.
“I think you hit your head or something,” she said. She held up a gloved forefinger that dripped black liquid. “Randy, follow my finger.”
She moved it from left to right and back again, and his eyes followed it belatedly.
“You definitely hit your head. How do you feel?”
“I…” he cleared his throat. “I guess I feel okay, but a little…weird.”
“Did any of that liquid get in your spacesuit?”
He was still for a moment. Then slowly he shook his head. “Where are we?” he asked.
She looked around. “I don’t know exactly. But I think we’re down under the floor of the main room. See those buildings up there? We should head for the edge and see if there’s a way up. There must be.”
“You’re taking your suit off?”
She nodded. “They’ve been completely soaked in that toxic gunk. We need to get out of it before it seeps through and kills us. Or worse.”
He understood, and pretty soon both of them had removed their spacesuits completely and left them behind, walking cold and afraid across the dark landscape.
As before, Terri wore her tan FAER doctor’s uniform and Randy his classic-design standard-issue uniform. Their clothes were ragged and itchy, but at least they were dry and uncontaminated. There was no way they were returning to the ship without their spacesuits, but they could find their way back to the carrier and gather their materials again. It must have been sealed off since they left it, or else the atmosphere could not have been regulated.
Their only hope was that the seal didn’t block them off from accessing their supplies. If that was the case, they were dead.
At an echoing noise, Terri looked back at that distant, large purple object she had seen and beheld it cracking, tearing, and opening.
Liquid gushed out, and a huge creature emerged.
“Run!” she said quietly but forcefully to Randy.
He was confused, unable to see what she had spotted, but they ran together down a slope and far away, Terri hoped, from danger.
♦♦♦
Winds were blowing at a measured speed, but it felt like it was
eating Sam’s unsuited body as he walked onward. His red and black FAER uniform shirt, once something radiating optimism and pride, now looked sad and feeble, almost ridiculous. This structure he moved through led only downward. He had found a doorway with an upward stairwell, but the metal door itself was crushed and mangled and the staircase eaten through in too many places to be usable. Perhaps with some climbing he could have made it up, but it would have been anything but safe and with his stinging fingers outright impossible. So instead he went down, down, further into the bowels of the ruins.
He passed the walls and found himself standing on a thin bridge between structures. Below him he saw the glassy-looking, metal-reinforced canopy covering the ground level of the city where the bases of all the skyscrapers started from. He hadn’t realized it was glassy until now. He looked more closely. Below the glass he saw darkness leading down perhaps a hundred or more feet into lakes and rocky hills and cavernous expanses. Some spires extended from the glass down to thirty or forty feet into that cavernous region, attached to the bottom of skyscrapers. With a rush of revelation he understood how all the buildings had appeared from nowhere: they had been stored in that lower section and then somehow risen upward to where they now stood in the colossal upper cavern.
Seclurm: Devolution Page 22
