For once in her life, the cooler it got as she made her way higher and higher through the core, the more relieved she became. She longed for that coldest embrace of all in the cryo-pod, tucked safely away from danger.
A great number of acidic aliens crossed her path, but she’d come too far to fear them any longer. She ran past them or else shot their heads and left them wounded or stunned on the wayside as she wound further and further upward.
Before very long there was Seclurm rising everywhere, and the fumes made Rosalyn slightly dizzy. The smaller aliens climbing around the core would get covered in it and thrash around as it pulled them into its rising flow, drowning them in it. Rosalyn got sprays of it on her many a time, but thankfully she was cognizant of it enough to remember to clamp her mouth shut. None of it entered her body.
A Seclurm-dripping tentacle wrapped around her ankle and stopped her on a staircase, gripping the wall with her free hand. She looked back and saw the massive alien opening its mouth wide after her, using its many tentacles to crawl over to her. It was now halfway-submerged within the rising Seclurm.
A carefully-aimed blast from her gun severed the tentacle, and as she dashed up the staircase it gradually loosened and finally fell from her foot as she climbed up a ledge.
The alien was slowed by the Seclurm flow, but it still climbed after her in fitful rage.
♦♦♦
Terri’s gondola came to a stop right next to the one Sam and Rosalyn had used. She rode down a small elevator to a ring-shaped platform in the reactor core where Sam stood at a terminal close to the yellow-white beam of energy. He was almost a silhouette set against it. He called her over when he saw her, like the shadow of some strange, higher life-form inviting her to step even further into the unknown.
“Thank God, you made it,” he said as she approached.
She shook her head, part of her desiring to bash his skull for pushing her to endanger her life. “Don’t say anything,” she muttered. “Where’s Rosalyn?”
He pointed to a hole in the floor. “Somewhere down there. Hopefully she’s on her way back.”
“She’d better be,” Terri answered with a scoff, one fist on her waist as she breathed heavily. “We’re about to be flooded. We are leaving on that gondola in two minutes, with or without her.”
Sam reluctantly nodded.
♦♦♦
The energy she had received from her visit to that miraculous reparation room a couple of hours ago had worn off completely, and Rosalyn felt her chest heaving and blowing like a furnace as she neared the top of the core.
She hadn’t found her way back very easily, and several dead ends had threatened to end her escape. If the neutron-scatterer wasn’t still in her hands to shoot through thin walls, those dead ends would have prevented her from getting away. But with the gun, she was able to make holes small enough to crawl through, and that served as just enough of a nuisance to break through for the hideous monster pursuing her for her to prolong her survival.
She recognized this place, now. After ducking underneath a wall she was at the staircase leading up to the very top. She watched the Seclurm rising beneath her, carrying dozens of dead bodies of drowned aliens floating atop its surface. Still others had survived and were climbing up just ahead of the flow.
She could hear sirens going off and feel the core trembling. The catastrophic meltdown was definitely underway.
She could smell her own blood from her many wounds. The monster’s shrill cry followed closely after her, but she resolved not to look back any longer. She only ran, holding the grip of the neutron-scatterer with one tightly-squeezed hand just to keep it from bouncing against her body.
She climbed up one ledge. Then another. And another. Then down a short hallway.
And she saw a light above.
“I’M HERE!” she screamed, hoping to gain their aid as soon as possible. Oh, she was tired. She might collapse at any moment.
More deep bellowing came from just behind her, almost drowned out by the splashing. The alien was better at climbing than she was. But if her ears weren’t deceiving her, the sound of the thundering Seclurm indicated it was rising quicker than the alien was.
“Rosalyn!” came the terrified voice of Sam. “Hurry!”
Painfully Rosalyn realized that if she was to have any hope of climbing up the last few ledges quickly enough, she would need to ditch the neutron-scatterer; it was too unwieldy to climb with. She looked back to find the alien’s tentacles right on her heels, and Seclurm near to swallowing the alien altogether.
But it was determined to bring her down with it.
She fired three shots at the nearest tentacles, then another few at its mouth before finally tearing the gun strap off of her shoulder and heaving it down. The gun fell against its mouth, and it spat it out and stared at her with its six eyeballs hidden between the mass of reaching tentacles.
She turned and leaped up the second-to-last ledge. Two friendly arms reached down to her, one a slight tan and the other a dark brown. She leapt upwards with what felt like her final burst of willpower and caught Sam and Terri’s arms. Together they lifted her up and past the reach of the tentacles, and all of them watched, stupefied, as the huge, open-mouthed, hideous alien below was finally, finally swallowed by the rising Seclurm. As it sunk down into the dark filth its bellow died away, and it did not return.
Rosalyn lay on the ground and hyperventilated, immensely relieved. She was spattered with Seclurm and slick with sweat—especially her hair. Terri and Sam lifted her up to her feet.
A red-alert alarm was sounding from the computer terminal as well as the greater reactor room itself, the alarm echoing all around. The beam started to grow larger and larger.
Terri stared into Rosalyn’s eyes with intensity. “We have no time to waste! We are dead if we don’t get out—!”
She was cut off by a venomous, translucent acid-alien suddenly appearing behind Sam. It slashed at his back with an acidic hand, causing him to scream and drop to the ground, writhing in pain. Terri lifted her gun with a scream and frantically blasted the alien back twice, the shots angled such that it fell through the ring-shaped structure’s inner hole and right into the beam of energy within. In a flash of burning light the creature was reduced to ashen nothingness.
But it was replaced by about ten more acid-aliens crawling up from all sides of the ringed platform. Many of them were dripping with Seclurm. Sam stood up with great effort, his head spinning, holding his wounded back.
Rosalyn got to her feet with wide eyes. She found her second wind and cried to Sam, “Hand me your gun!” He didn’t complain, barely able to stand for the pain anyway, and she slipped his neutron-scatterer’s strap onto her shoulder before joining Terri in blasting away at the approaching aliens.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, watching hordes begin to swarm them. Their cries of fear and pain began to be drowned out by the cries of the monsters rushing them. Sirens blared and Seclurm rose steadily upward with all the thundering tremor of Niagara Falls.
It seemed clear now that they weren’t going to make it out.
At least Rosalyn was now certain that the reactor was going to be destroyed. Still, she almost wanted to apologize to her friends. Death was seconds away.
Yet more aliens climbed up and prepared to charge them, cutting them off from their path to the elevator that would bring them to the gondolas and to life and freedom. Rosalyn could feel Terri’s disappointed, angry stare without looking at her.
One of the metal flaps attached to the beam emitter suddenly detached, falling down and flipping in the air until it crushed flat a group of about seven aliens nearing the crewmates’ position.
All three of the astronauts gasped in shock as another flap fell down and crushed a few more aliens. It knocked the other flap off the outer rim of the ring to where it fell and cut a swath through the aliens climbing up the wall.
After blasting back the remaining aliens in front of them, the crewmates realize
d their path to the elevator and the gondola above was clear. They spared a second to look up at the flaps as they charged forward.
There was a figure—a humanoid figure in a filthy brown cloak—hanging lithely from some bars on the bottom of the core’s beam emitter. The figure reached over to the last few remaining flaps, worked the machinery with one hand for a few moments, and then they too fell down, crushing more aliens as they fell. Without stopping to say anything, the mysterious figure climbed back up the other end of the upper core.
“What the hell was that thing?” Sam wondered as they slid onto the elevator and pressed the button.
“I don’t know,” marveled Rosalyn as she stared back at the beam, “but it just saved our lives.”
All three of them were utterly baffled and disturbed by what they had just seen. Rosalyn knew she’d be unable to process it until they were out of danger’s path.
The great alarm echoing through the room rattled their eardrums as the elevator lifted upward. The heat and light from the widening reactor beam was starting to melt the structure itself.
More aliens climbed up the walls and attempted to leap to the elevator, but Rosalyn and Terri had grown very adept at firing quick shots to blast them away.
One landed on and clung to the wall immediately beside Rosalyn and slashed at her hand with a powerful, clawed limb before she could line up her gun to shoot. A well-aimed shot from Terri sent the creature falling down into the Seclurm that was quickly consuming the ring-shaped structure they had stood on mere moments prior.
Rosalyn clutched her bleeding hand in pain. “Thanks, Terri,” she said through bared teeth.
Terri only nodded, a frown on her trembling face.
They saw the beam grow large enough in diameter and power that the entire ring was in the process of incinerating. The beam would continue expanding until it caused a complete meltdown of the entire reactor. The heat from the beam was so intense that they each saw a few aliens floating in Seclurm that were merely close beside it become literally engulfed in flames. The Seclurm itself was smoking and boiling.
The elevator came to a stop and they turned and dashed to the gondola, but stopped before the edge of the platform and cursed.
An acid-alien clung to the cable above just between the two gondolas and was secreting violet liquid. The cable severed and the gondolas plummeted into the rising and turbulent sea of Seclurm along with the alien, vanishing away swiftly.
“NO! NO!” they screamed.
Terri’s face trembled with rage. She ran right up to Rosalyn’s face and shouted, “WE’RE DEAD, DAMN YOU! IT’S OVER!”
Rosalyn could hardly keep from weeping. No…! We were so close! So close…!
“What do we do now?” Sam asked desperately, still clinging to the wound in his back. Red lights swept repeatedly over him and everything else.
The liquid was rising up fast, soon to sweep over the edge of the reactor and consume them all, killing them.
Rosalyn clutched her bloody hand and glanced around with glistening eyes, searching for something, anything that could help them. “There!” she cried.
She pointed to one of the thick columns on their left, which had a ladder built into it leading to sets of scaffolding that extended upward to the very top of the reactor structure and the room’s ceiling far above.
“Climb up! There might be a way. It’s our only chance!” she said as she ran over to the ladder and waved them to follow. Terri dashed ahead of her, gun slung over her shoulder, and started climbing without a single contrary word. Rosalyn went next, followed by Sam. She tried not to get too much blood on the rungs as she made her way upwards, but it was excruciating. The flashing emergency lights colored the room and alarms shrieked in their ears almost over the increasingly violent thrum of the reactor meltdown and the roar of Seclurm pumping into the room.
Sam’s acid-wounded fingers hurt tremendously as he climbed. He grimaced and shook, straining to keep from screaming in pain. After a minute it was too much, and he stopped climbing and bared his teeth.
Just above him, Rosalyn stopped and turned to look at him.
He was so weak. He shed a tear and leaned back, feeling wind on his face and caressing his black hair.
Terri stopped climbing next, noticing Sam had stopped. “What are you stopping for?” she demanded.
His voice was trembling as he said, “I can’t climb. …Th-thanks for all you did, Roz. If you keep moving, you might make it. But I’m just slowing you down. Whatever I do, I won’t be a burden on either of you.”
He exhaled.
Then he let go of the ladder and leaned backward.
Rosalyn’s hand shot down and grasped the front of his coat before his legs could leave the rungs.
“No you don’t!” she shouted over the terrible din all around them. She swallowed heavy breaths. Her eyes watered as she pulled him closer. “No you don’t! You are making it out, Sam. Come on—hang onto me!”
A very shocked Sam hung onto her waist, clinging with his arms rather than with his hands, and she began to climb again with twice as much difficulty. Terri was wide-eyed as she resumed her climb. Sam was able to step up onto each rung carefully with his feet, and although slower-going, it worked. Sam was glad neither of them could see him crying as they climbed.
Rosalyn’s blood marked each rung. The sounds of the surviving aliens shrieking below, most certainly climbing up after them, were not comforting. Terri reached the top and shouted at them to hurry, and Rosalyn summoned all her strength for the final stretch, at last reaching the top rung where Terri pulled Sam up and over Rosalyn’s head. She set him down on the scaffolding and he rolled over with trembling limbs and bleeding back.
Rosalyn joined him and helped him stand up. She and Terri took their guns in hand again and they started up a zig-zagging staircase, spotting plenty more determined, climbing acid-aliens hastily nearing the bottom of the scaffolding. Weariness sapped away at each of their very bones.
Up some stairs, down a short catwalk, and up more stairs they went, not knowing at all where they were heading, just that it was safer than what was below.
They moved to another staircase when an alien suddenly burst out of the floor in front of Rosalyn, spitting acid. She and Terri fired at it, knocking it over the railing with a guttural scream. Rosalyn’s bloody hand burned with sharp pain as she pulled the trigger. This nightmare never seemed to end.
Eventually the ascending scaffolding ended. It led to another large, inside section of the reactor, only this one had a lower ceiling than the core. They were near to the very top of the reactor room. This inner section was as wide as the reactor was, with the floor sloped like a bowl. Near the center, in place of a hole and a beam, there was a column-like structure connecting top to bottom that Rosalyn realized was a small elevator shaft going upward and out of this room.
Her heart leapt with relief she could scarcely comprehend.
She shouted to the others behind her, “An elevator! Come on!”
She could see why SNTNL hadn’t recommended this path to her at first; not only was it likely more out of the way than how they’d gone originally, but coming down through this elevator would have meant going down all the scaffolding and risking slipping and falling to their deaths.
Aliens began to climb up from the edges of the reactor floor on all sides before the three had gotten halfway to the elevator. They stopped counting how many there were.
All they needed to do was reach the elevator shaft and get in. Rosalyn and Terri fired wild blasts at the approaching creatures, hitting them most of the time, distracted by the chaos and the increasing trembling of the reactor core below them. Midnight-black Seclurm was ever rising, soon to reach their level. They hoped to be gone when that happened.
The trio reached the elevator, which was a cylindrical glass shaft with a doorway and buttons.
Rosalyn looked inside. Agonizingly, it was empty.
None of them had any breath left to swear with.
They called the elevator down and waited. More aliens were pouring in from the open sides of the room, far more than they could ever think to battle. The hope that had been building in them started to fade away, and they each felt deeply sick.
Behind the approaching aliens came the torrent of rising Seclurm. It would pool up in the bowl and drown them before the elevator came halfway to them.
Before they could start to wonder what they could possibly attempt to do, part of the ground began falling away. In a perfect ring about twenty-five feet around the elevator shaft the floor fell out from underneath the feet of anything standing there, including a good number of surprised aliens. Now there was a large and very deep gap all around the island of the elevator shaft. The gap was long enough that any pursuant aliens would have to climb up from the side of the elevator platform to reach the escapees, giving the three of them a major tactical advantage.
The Seclurm that began pouring in from all sides of the reactor flowed down into the hole and swept away the aliens, which fell down screaming. The crewmates were safe from the flood for another few minutes, at least.
What is this? Rosalyn wondered again. Something, or someone, was helping them escape. How, and why?
“Elevator almost here?” she asked as she, along with Terri, focused on shooting at the few remaining aliens who were attempting to climb up the walls of the little elevator island to kill them. One or two blasts would usually send them falling down into the dark abyss below.
Sam looked up the shaft through the glass and could barely see the elevator. “Maybe another minute,” he estimated nervously.
That seemed doable. Perhaps.
Suddenly she heard a rip, and Sam was shoving a long strip of cloth—previously part of his shirt—in Rosalyn’s hands.
“Here. Hand me the gun while you bind your hand,” he said with a nod.
“Th-thanks,” she said, accepting it and tying it while Sam took back his gun and, with great care not to press too hard on his wounded finger, shot at the ascending aliens. She sighed with relief at being able to bind the wound.
Seclurm: Devolution Page 33
