Terri rushed away from the widespread flow as quickly as she could to find the next pipe.
Without much difficulty, beyond ornate chambers and past abstract statues or decorated walls, she found another pipe covering and then another and dutifully repeated the same process. The dusty air irritated her sinuses.
Only two more pipes, Terri told herself as she huffed and perspired on her way across a long hallway leading to the next large part of the palace-like structure.
There at the end of the hall on two hind legs stood an eight-foot-tall, greenish, hairless figure with a snouted head and long claws on each foot. A thick, ridged tail behind it, along with its slow, gliding movements, gave it a somewhat reptilian appearance. It made a low, moaning noise and looked Terri’s way, and she found herself stabbed with a cold feeling in her heart. The thing’s eyes were nonexistent, and in place of them she saw, to her horror, thick masses of puffy flesh. Large ears perked up on either side of the head.
When Terri got a hold of herself again, she was able to process, amid her soft whimpers, that this strange-looking alien was blind.
It took several steps forward and opened its mouth. A few long threads of saliva connected from the end of one jaw to the other, and Terri gawked at a set of jagged fangs ready to pierce. Something told her that merely shooting it might not prove effective.
But, possessed by fear, she tried it anyway.
The shot seemed to be absorbed by the creature, barely a mark being made on its broad, yet bony chest, and it roared slowly and terribly with a long and breathy roar as it began striding with swiftness on two hind legs towards Terri’s location.
She put a hand over her mouth as she dashed back the way she came. She scrambled to her right and up a staircase leading to a second floor of the hallway, feeling her insides wanting to vomit or scream or die, or perhaps all three.
She heard the creature move along, perhaps preoccupied with the sound of the flowing waterfall of Seclurm that was just ahead of it. Its crocodile-like tail dragged noisily along the floor as it went.
She wasn’t sure what well of willpower she tapped into to force herself to continue on with her mission, but somehow she quietly and deftly made her way through the second floor of the hallway leading into the next building.
♦♦♦
The dark, horrible creature Rosalyn stood before possessed tentacles beyond count and beyond measurement of length, each of them emerging from a pulsating mass of flesh at the center of the room. The creature had a large mouth full of teeth within a head that was sinking down into the mass, as if hiding within it. Dark, liquid Seclurm flowed out of the corners of its gaping maw and dribbled onto the cord-strewn floor.
Gasping for breath, Rosalyn stood on a slightly raised level above the creature. The room around her shone with at least three dozen glowing red spheres of various sizes, most of them covered by at least one of the creature’s tentacles along with their usual mass of cords. The heat in this room was such that Rosalyn knew she couldn’t spend too much time here or else she’d risk fainting from heatstroke.
Oddly enough, that intense heat seemed to be emerging from the many-tentacled alien itself, along with the most overpowering smell of Seclurm and strangely ancient flesh.
There were many platforms and levels in this room, and upon them Rosalyn could see some acidic aliens laying down and in the grasp of a tentacle, like lazy zoo lions being fed with a long stick.
She ducked behind the thick metal railing, out of sight for the time being. She had been following the increases of heat in her search through the core, but she still thought it remarkable that she had come upon this place: the very place she was searching for.
This creature, this abomination must have been what was causing the reactor meltdown to slow to a crawl.
And Rosalyn’s job, somehow, was to kill it.
A sudden familiar voice sounded from somewhere in the room. “Rosalyn, if you can hear me, Terri is working on opening up all the Seclurm pipes, but it’s taking longer than we expected. She’s having to blow them open one at a time. This is probably the fifth time I’ve said this so please check in if you can hear this. Man, I hope you’re okay down there.”
That was Sam’s voice. Rosalyn raised an eyebrow and discovered the source: a terminal in the corner. She peeked over the railing at the disgusting alien to see what it was doing.
Its many tentacles gyrated and twisted around, clutching the myriad of glowing globes and caressing them. Only then did she notice that the creature itself was actually sitting on a large glowing sphere. It seemed to take no notice of her, perhaps believing she was dead.
The terminal in the corner was secluded behind a little section of wall, just beside a passageway out of the room. When she was sure enough that she would probably not be noticed, Rosalyn ran in a crouch over to the terminal and found the intercom button.
“Sam…” she breathed. “I’m gonna need you to speak very quietly.”
“Rosalyn!” he exclaimed, then coughed and tried to whisper. “I’m so glad you’re alive. What news?”
She stooped beside the terminal like a statue for a moment before answering as softly as she could, “I think I’m at the heart of the lower core. There’s a creature here that might be the source of our problem. You say the Seclurm is already beginning to pool up out there?”
“Yeah, it looks to me like she’s already opened up most of the pipes. I hope you’re gonna find a solution quickly, because we have no way to shut them again.”
A satisfied sigh escaped her lips. “That’s good. I’d rather they be open than not.”
A message appeared on her screen from SNTNL.
what does the creature look like.
“It’s black and it’s got dozens and dozens of long tentacles.”
oh no.
i saw something about this in the computer. its one of the oldest seclurm evolved creatures in this place. i dont know much about it other than that but what i do know is not good. it must be siphoning the heat away from the reactor. if you get rid of it the meltdown should resume.
rosalyn all you need to know is that you cant kill it with a neutron scatterer. find some other way to deal with it if you can and then run. get out of there before it sees you. you cant outrun it. please be careful.
Rosalyn heard the alien’s tentacles slithering around like a bed full of snakes.
“Got it,” she managed to say, choking down less brave noises her body wanted to make. She wiped her face clear of sweat. “Sam, I’ll see you soon. If I see you.”
“And…if you don’t?”
The tentacled creature was starting to rumble and growl. Rosalyn watched its many tentacles twitching and vibrating, and she actually felt the air around her become substantially less hot for a moment, as if the creature were taking a deep “breath” of the reactor’s heat.
She searched down deep within herself. “If I don’t, then…then I’m glad to have worked with you, Sam Tokoharu. You are…quite the man.”
She lifted her finger off the intercom and hefted her gun again, feeling her muscles ache and strain from repeated use. She trudged out into the open and stood up straight.
She thought up a plan.
The massive, tentacled abomination trembled and seemed to gasp, its wide-skulled head lifting up out of its body, and the few free tentacles it had started moving towards her. Red-glowing globes shone all around the room.
She lifted her gun and pulled the trigger.
One of the globes exploded in a flash of brilliant light and fire.
Rosalyn smirked as the creature shrieked in shock and its tentacles shook.
She kept shooting every globe she could see, half-shutting her eyes each time to hopefully avoid blinding herself. The alien kept roaring and trembling more and more and the room became increasingly dimmed and increasingly hot with each blast.
A few tentacles swatted at Rosalyn, but she sidestepped them and fired them away. Before too long, there remained
only one globe other than the one the large alien sat upon. It hung near the ceiling.
Rosalyn took aim at it and fired. Glass and sparks rained down, and the room became dark as pitch besides the glow that emerged from beneath the alien.
That glow started to become infinitely intense, and the heat seemed to concentrate in that one spot. The alien gave a manic cry as it used its myriad of tentacles to painfully lift its massive, bloated body off the globe. Rosalyn saw that its underside was literally in flames and melting.
Reflexively she fired a shot at the now-revealed final sphere and it exploded with such force that Rosalyn was thrown off her feet and felt fire all around her for a single moment.
The alien’s already ear-piercing roar increased tenfold, and she heard its tentacles grasping around and reaching up to lift itself along.
It was moving towards her.
Her head was a jumble of static and her clothes were singed and burnt, but she got up and turned to run anyway, barely dodging tentacles stabbing into the wall around her as she exited the room.
You can’t outrun it, SNTNL had said.
If that Seclurm flow didn’t rise quickly, she was as good as dead.
20
Terri couldn’t believe her weary, aching body was still standing. It was all but certain to her that her bones would be permanently damaged and she would ache and fear for the rest of her life.
She opened up the second-to-last pipe covering with a series of blasts from the neutron-scatterer and dashed away before she could be discovered by the blind alien, which was lurking around here somewhere, she was certain. If she escaped and lived till she was a hundred, with aches and pains keeping her bedridden day and night, she would never be able to forget that distorted, vaguely reptilian face; those fleshy masses in place of eyes.
Through the chamber she ran, past super-tall reddish curtains—tapestries?—hung from the walls, holding her breath as much as she could and with light footfalls. The muffling sounds of four heavy flows of Seclurm spilling through and out the building would hopefully prevent the blind alien from hearing and finding her.
She approached the final pipe covering in another room that looked like a dining hall or a lounge with over-sized furniture. Not too far beyond the pipe, through a tall and open passageway, was a set of stairs leading down to the landing. There at the edge of the drop was a post with a button that would call the gondola over.
A nearby sniffing noise called her attention and made her shrink back silently against the wall.
The blind alien was hunched over and sniffing around atop an empty windowsill set into the wall above and to the right of the pipe covering.
I…I could leave now, she thought, pushing back tears. There might be enough Seclurm flowing down there already.
Anxiously she stared down the staircase to her left. The alien in the window was still, breathing deeply, trying to sense what was around it. Terri saw and smelled its saliva dripping from its mouth and down onto the floor.
Already there was a great rumbling sound from the many Seclurm pipes echoing throughout the entire reactor room, competing with the beam of energy for loudest sound. She crept forward and moved behind benches and tables, happily distancing herself from the alien, until she reached the edge of the glass and peered down at the bottom of the room. Waterfalls of Seclurm were plummeting down from all around, the four that originated from this building each more plentiful than all the ones that didn’t.
But what good would any of it do, she thought with defeat, if the flow was too slow to help Rosalyn escape alive and ensure the meltdown of the reactor?
She pulled at her hair and sat there quietly for several moments, looking back repeatedly at the alien.
She wanted to run away. That was all she wanted.
The alien dropped down from the window and crept forward with back hunched over. Terri watched it with horror, as if she were seeing her future slip through her fingers.
The moment to choose freedom had passed.
“What is wrong with me?” she said softly as she turned and shot a hole in the window.
The alien gave an angry cry and started running. Terri dove forward, rolling underneath one of the over-sized benches.
It leapt onto the bench, nearly crushing it and her beneath it, and then pounced over to stand beside the large hole in the glass, searching around furiously, scattering broken glass at its feet as it did.
Its tail lay right beside Terri’s eye. She crawled slowly away and emerged on the other side of the bench, standing up and then creeping back to the wall immediately right of the pipe covering.
There had to be a way she could do this and still survive. Right?
She reasoned with herself for a span of seconds that felt like an hour to her. Why let these ruins win, she thought? Why let the alien world that had killed her friends and beaten her down have the last victory? Why not spit in its face, amid whatever would happen?
And whatever happened, she admitted to herself—and only to the deepest parts of herself—that she didn’t want to leave Rosalyn to die if she could do something to prevent it.
She lifted the gun and grimaced as she fired three shots.
Seclurm spewed out of the pipe cover.
The alien turned and started scraping the floor as it darted towards her.
Terri had shot three holes in the pipe covering starting about five feet up, leaving just enough room for her to crouch down directly beneath the high-pressure flow, leaning back low enough that whatever got on her was only flecks, and shut her eyes.
She heard a screech coming closer to her and trembled as she braced herself to be eviscerated.
Then the screech was cut off by garbled spitting. Just as she had planned, the creature had run unknowingly into the flow of Seclurm and was pushed back. She heard more scrambling and scrapes and screeches, and the creature seemed to be moving slightly leftward.
She didn’t move; she didn’t open her eyes. She wouldn’t until she heard the creature’s scream echoing down as it fell into the bottom of the reactor to die.
Seclurm spat out of the hole just above her head, and she grimaced as she listened to its gushing, like that of an open wound.
She didn’t hear any more sounds from the blind alien.
For a few moments she waited, but there came nothing more. She opened her eyes a sliver and looked around. She stepped out from underneath the flow of Seclurm. It was pooling up and pushing through all the benches and tables and flowing over and down through the hole in the glass.
Not seeing where the alien had gone was almost worse than it being near her in the open. It might have scrambled to some hiding place, waiting to pounce when she least expected it.
She turned and growled as she blasted several more holes in the pipe, expanding the flow until finally the proverbial dam burst.
Countless gallons of Seclurm surged out of the uncovered pipe. It flowed down and punched a much larger hole through the glass, plummeting down in a cascade like a fountain until it splashed into the rising level of Seclurm at the bottom of the room, adding to the cacophony.
Terri dashed outside, moving a few steps down the staircase while looking outward at the vast room to watch the Seclurm falls. Virtually all the Seclurm currently flowing throughout the entire city, funneling into one place to obliterate its own creations and to be obliterated itself, forever. Already the churning ocean of Seclurm was nearly a third of the way up the height of the reactor, and climbing somewhat quickly. Winds blew against her hair and cooled her skin. It was a magnificent sight, in a strange way.
Looking back over her shoulder at the dark east entrance to the lavish, ruined building, she found herself free from pursuit and sighed a long, peaceful sigh.
She turned ahead and screamed. Just in front of her, sprawled out on the steps, was the blind alien lying face down in a pool of dark blood.
Approaching it, her eyes grew wide to discover a sharp, rusty, three-foot metal rod sticking out of
its head. It was a corpse.
Her heart was throbbing out of her chest, but she made her way down the stairs to the edge of the landing and used a button to call the gondola over to take her to the reactor core.
♦♦♦
Rosalyn knew the many-tentacled alien was going to catch her any second now, but she ran anyway.
It seemed to have no problem supporting the immense weight of its overlarge body by balancing on tentacles set underneath it and pulling itself along with tentacles on its sides. With countless limbs at its disposal, it never stopped moving.
Now that it was standing up and extending its head, Rosalyn saw that its body was somewhat pear-shaped, almost like that of a spider, and its head wide and adorned with a set of at least six deep, bluish eyeballs.
The thick hide was certainly ancient-looking, slightly hairy, rough, and spotted with deformities. It positively repulsed her in every way imaginable.
Soon after Rosalyn began running, she became aware of liquid seeping in through the walls, and a tremendous noise straining the metal’s structural integrity. Yes, Seclurm was starting to flow up the reactor core. That was her only hope to escape alive.
She clattered up ledges and staircases and sped through halls and passageways all lined with red lights and machinery, often losing her way, but always bounding in whatever direction she needed to go in order to dodge the powerful tentacles that were almost constantly reaching for her. She looked back and could see the massive alien climbing and crawling after her, pushing its malleable body through tight spaces she couldn’t believe it was able to pass through, or else tearing metal apart to continue pursuing her. Its bellowing, deep roar gave her goosebumps.
She could feel her energy swiftly depleting, and her body cried out for release, but she would not relent. Adrenaline carried her.
Seclurm: Devolution Page 32
