Iris (The Color of Water and Sky Book 1)

by Andrew Gates

  “Hello?” she asked, walking inside.

  There was shuffling coming from the teacher’s desk to her right. Iris turned her body and aimed her pod’s light in that direction. She slowly walked towards the noise. There was movement. Iris could not tell exactly what, but she saw something.

  “Hello?” she repeated.

  She heard a response. It sounded like a human voice but dampened and unintelligible. She continued to walk towards the desk when the light finally lit up a body.

  Jallah Sane stood before her. His purple shirt was so damp that it stuck to his skin. Iris studied him closely, wondering why he was here. She noticed he held a hammer in his hand. The student turned to his right and mumbled something incomprehensible. Confused, Iris turned in that direction. Suddenly Greyson and Margery popped up from the behind the desk. They both looked surprised to see her. Greyson held a wrench in his hand and Margery a kitchen knife.

  “Greyson!” Iris greeted. She had never been so glad to see him.

  Her fellow teacher took a slight step back and mumbled something Iris could not understand.

  “What are you saying?” Iris asked. “I can’t understand you.”

  “You’re here!” he shouted. Iris did not know why he was shouting, especially now when they needed to stay hidden.

  “Why are you shouting?” she asked.

  “You’re the one shouting!” Greyson answered. “I was speaking normally and you couldn’t understand me!”

  My hearing must be worse than I thought, Iris realized. She was just unable to hear them this whole time. Rather than reply verbally and risk shouting again, she gave them a thumbs up in acknowledgment.

  “How are you warm enough? It’s got to be below freezing in here!” Greyson shouted.

  Iris glanced down. In all the rush, she forgot that she had removed her sweater. Now the only thing covering her top half was her bra.

  “Oh, I forgot,” she answered honestly.

  Greyson leaned down behind the desk and grabbed a long jacket.

  “Put this on!” he said, offering it to her. “You’ll freeze!”

  Iris accepted the jacket and put it on. It felt damp but she had to admit, it did warm her. Surprisingly, she had not even noticed how cold it was until now. With all the excitement going on, she guessed her body must have been worrying about other things.

  My senses are all messed up.

  “Why are you here?” Jallah shouted.

  Iris nodded her head. Good question. She could not believe she hadn’t told them already.

  “I came to get you out,” she explained to Greyson. “Your brother is getting your family. We’re going to get out on the escape pods and reach the surface.”

  Greyson’s eyes opened wide in shock.

  “The surface?” he asked.

  Iris looked at the two students. We need to save as many as we can.

  “You can come too,” she added.

  Iris turned the pod so it faced her. She glanced at the clock. It was 19:41. They had half an hour left to get to the escape pod bay. That was hardly enough time. She expected to have been further along by this point.

  “Iris, first of all, you’re shouting! Quiet down! Second of all, are you nuts?” Greyson said.

  Iris grabbed Greyson on the shoulder and pulled him towards her.

  “You don’t have a choice!” she replied, shouting on purpose this time. “Your brother told me not to leave without you. If you don’t come with me, you will die. We don’t have time for this.”

  “If we do come with you, we’ll die!” Greyson responded.

  She looked at him in his dark eyes.

  “Then you have nothing to lose.”

  She let go of him. He slowly nodded and turned to the two students. He mumbled something to them that Iris could not hear. They mumbled back. For far too long, the three of them spoke to each other in words too quiet for her to pick up. As each second went by, Iris grew more impatient. Eventually, the two students both nodded their heads and gave her a thumbs up. Alright, Iris thought. Time to go.

  The four of them exited the room as fast as they could. Iris’s muscles did not feel quite as stiff as they had only a few minutes earlier. Perhaps the brief pause had given her body a bit of time to recover.

  As they ran through the halls, it occurred to Iris that she had not planned past this point. Getting to Harrison was the easy part. She could just stay on Level 5. Getting to the escape pod bay was going to be the hard part. Reaching the bay meant going down, which was no easy task given that the lifts were not only going to be packed, but probably destinations for slaughter.

  Not wanting to appear unprepared, Iris continued running in a random direction. Her three new companions followed along, keeping good pace behind her. Suddenly, she heard someone shout. She stopped to see what was wrong. To her surprise, no one in her group seemed to be calling out. That was when she heard the shout again and realized it was not coming from her group at all.

  A boy came running towards them. At first Iris was not able to make out who it was, but as he neared, she realized it was Clinton. She could not understand what he was saying, but stopped and waited for him as he approached.

  “Help, help!” she finally heard him shout.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  She could not understand his answer. He spoke too quietly for her to understand. Iris looked up to Greyson, hoping he could relay the message.

  “He says he’s been hiding here since school!” Greyson said. “He says we’re the first people he’s seen.”

  “Tell him he can come with us. We’re going down,” she said.

  Greyson mumbled something incomprehensible to the boy and then the group was off again. They quickly exited the halls of Harrison and entered a nearby green zone, though in this lighting it was impossible to tell. Iris knew this area well. This commercial district sprawled fairly close to the north edge of the station, which was exactly where the escape pod bay was located. Unfortunately she still had no plan for getting down.

  Despite her hearing, Iris could make out a loud mechanized sound coming from an intersection in front of them. The ground began to shake beneath their feet and the temperature became noticeably warmer. Iris turned to make sure her party was okay. Greyson raised his wrench tightly in hand.

  In an instant, the halls lit up with orange light. Three Navy men ran backwards from the right side of the intersection to the left, firing machine guns as they ran. Iris stopped in her tracks and held her arms out to make sure no one in her group ran ahead. She paused and waited. Only a few seconds later, three mantises followed, running faster than any human. The first one’s armor was engulfed in flame. The other two seemed unscathed. They chased down the Navy men, charging their plasma cannons as they went.

  When it seemed clear, Iris turned around to evaluate her group. They all seemed petrified. She wondered if this had been their first time seeing the creatures in person. She motioned for them to move forward and then proceeded through the hall. As they crossed the path of the mantises, Iris could not help but turn her head to the left to see where they went. But before she could see anything, she heard a loud roar to her right and turned her head the other way.

  Before her stood another mantis, this one holding a white-suited corpse in each hand. It looked down at her, threw both bodies aside and raised its sharp claws, preparing to smash her to bits. Instinctively, Iris jumped out of the way, avoiding the mantis’s strike. Water splashed up and the metal reverberated as its large claws collided with the floor. She could feel the metal beneath her feet start to bend towards where the mantis had struck.

  “Run!” she shouted to her group, but her warning did nothing but draw the mantis’s attention to the others. It quickly turned and started towards them instead. No, not the kids, she thought.

  She fumbled around, looking for anything she could use to draw its attention. She felt the weight of the personal pod in her pocket and decided to pull it out. As the massive
armored beast raised its arms towards the retreating children, Iris pegged it with her pod as hard as she could. The small electronic device collided with it straight in the head, causing the creature to roar and turn back angrily. It glared at the frightened teacher. Still holding its arms in the air, it brought them down with great force. Once again, Iris jumped out of the way as the mantis’s strong claws smashed into the metal floor in the same place.

  The floor rumbled and the water quickly started to flow towards the center of the dent. The mantis seemed to lose its footing and stumbled briefly before the floor started to crack beneath it. Metal snapped like cold plastic and a gaping chasm appeared. Iris reached up and grabbed an LED strip from the wall as the floor let out from underneath her. She did not even need to see the rest. She could hear the weight of everything falling down an entire level. Slowly she crawled up, one pull at a time until she could reach the rim of the hole and stand safely. When it was all over, she stood at the edge and turned around.

  The mantis was gone, pulled into a now massive crater at the center of the hallway’s intersection. Clearly the mantis’s repeated strikes had given the metal floor a lot of stress. On the other side, Iris could see Greyson, Jallah, Margery and Clinton observing the wreckage from a safe vantage point.

  “What do we do now?” Greyson asked as he surveyed the hole. It was far too large to jump and the hall was too narrow. There was no room to walk around it.

  But before Iris could think, she heard another roar from the hall perpendicular to her. We caused a lot of noise. It must be the three mantises we saw before, she thought. The roars were coming from that exact direction. Listening more carefully, she could even hear their heavy footsteps coming this way.

  Suddenly, the hole in front of her lit up with bright white light, casting shadows upon the ceiling and the walls. Iris backed away from the chasm, knowing that the beast below was charging up its plasma cannon. She looked across to the other side, hoping to see her friends do the same. Fortunately, they did.

  Boom!

  Iris was far enough away by the time the explosion happened that she remained unscathed. This was the first time she had directly faced an explosion as it erupted. For a moment, the world before her was nothing but a bright light. Iris had to shield her eyes. But then it quickly faded into smoke.

  The crater was larger now and the LED lights on the walls were no longer working. But there was enough light further down the halls that they were not completely blind. Only mostly blind. Suddenly, more lights emanated from the perpendicular hall. The other mantises must have been close. Iris walked up to the edge and tried to peek around, but her angle was not very good. It was too hard to see anything from where she stood. She backed off again as the lights grew closer and closer and the sound of stomping feet grew louder and louder.

  It only took a few seconds until she finally saw the three other mantises. They ran at full speed straight toward the hole, seemingly unaware of it. The first two in front had their plasma cannons lit, ready to fire at any second. Iris simply ducked down as the water current pushed against her. As she hoped, the mantises kept running straight into the dark hole. They lost their footing and tried to recover, grabbing onto any ledge they could. But it was too late. The two mantises with charged cannons fell right into it. Only a second later their weapons went off. The level beneath them rumbled and Iris could hear mantises screaming in pain. The mantises must have shot straight down when they fell in the hole, Iris thought.

  There was still one more beast on their level. It managed to stop before the others and avoid the fall. Iris stood up and stared at it as it stared back at her. She wondered what it would do next. Would it turn right to Greyson and the kids, or would it turn left for Iris? But instead of choosing a side, the mantis opened a panel on its dark armor and what seemed like 10 small glowing balls fell into its hands. Iris remembered seeing these glowing balls earlier in the transition zones. Grenades.

  The mantis tossed half towards Greyson and the other half towards Iris.

  “Grenades!” Iris shouted, hoping Greyson could hear her. As the balls landed on the floor, Greyson seemed to be running towards them, not away from them. Shit, he didn’t hear me.

  “Kick them into the hole!” he yelled.

  Now Iris understood. She followed his lead and kicked the glowing balls into the hole, careful to get every single one. As the lights descended into the hall beneath them, the mantis on the corner became irritated. An explosion erupted almost immediately, contained to the floor below them (although Iris could still feel the heat). More mantis screams could be heard from below, followed by the now familiar sound of metal ripping apart.

  The remaining mantis took a few steps back, lowered its head and then sprinted toward the edge of the hole. Iris watched in fear as the mantis jumped across it toward Greyson’s side of the intersection. It landed safely on the other side with a loud thud and a splash. Greyson held his wrench in front of his face and the three students bolted away in the opposite direction. Iris could only stand and watch in horror as the beast neared her colleague.

  “Run!” she shouted, though she knew it would do no good.

  The mantis seemed uninterested in Greyson. It moved past him toward the retreating kids. The beast held out its claws. Its reach was far, much further than Iris realized. It easily picked up Clinton by the ankles and pulled him back.

  Greyson ran up to the monster’s legs and started hacking it with his wrench but the armor was too strong. Each strike seemed to do nothing whatsoever to the preoccupied mantis, which simply held the boy in its hands. Clinton flailed around, screaming in horror. The mantis brought Clinton up to its face, perhaps to study him more carefully. Doing the only thing he could, the boy reached out and grabbed onto the creature’s mask. This seemed to annoy it. The mantis tried to pull him away, but the boy’s grip was tight. After a few seconds, the creature started to struggle now and began circling around. No matter how hard it tried, Clinton would not let go of the mask.

  Iris noticed that the mantis was slowly losing its footing as the water current pushed on it. Greyson must have noticed the same thing because he backed off and watched as Clinton’s taunting drove the creature to further frustration. Finally, the mantis used its other hand and pierced the boy’s dainty body with its spike-like fingers. Clinton shouted in pain and let go of the mask as dark red blood oozed from his chest.

  “No!” Iris shouted. Greyson took a few steps back. There was no way to save him now.

  Despite stopping Clinton, the creature had not quite recovered its footing. It toppled over sideways. Its top half hung over the hole while its insect-like legs flailed around on the floor. The current pushed against its body. The mantis let go of Clinton, discarding him into the massive hole as its body edged ever closer to the center. Before they knew it, the creature fell in and joined its allies at the bottom of the pit. This time it sounded like it took a few seconds longer before it reached the bottom.

  Holy fuck, Iris thought.

  For the moment, it seemed safe. The distressed teacher took a deep breath, the first one she had taken in a long time. She held her hands to her face and realized that there were tears coming from her eyes.

  “Jallah, Margery, come back! It’s gone!” Greyson shouted to the students who were now far down the hall.

  The image of Clinton’s butchered body reappeared in Iris’s mind. She wiped her face and shook her head, trying to think of something else. She could feel herself gag, but nothing came out. Her stomach was empty and her muscles weak. The distressed teacher, trying to focus elsewhere, looked across the crater and saw her students running back like lost toddlers to their parents. Even I’m a mess, Iris thought. She could hardly imagine how it must have felt for them. It was too dark to see their faces, but she guessed they must have been petrified after watching their friend die so brutally.

  Even with her hearing the way it was, Iris was able to make out splashing sounds far below her. It sounded as if the
creatures were walking away. She guessed they had little patience to pursue only four mere people.

  The battered teacher’s head ached. She placed her palms on her forehead to help soften the internal pain. To her surprise, the outside of her head felt like it was covered in massive bruises. She pulled her hand back and felt a pinching snap in her right wrist. She held it firmly with her left hand, massaging it, hoping that it was not broken.

  “Iris!” Greyson shouted, distracting her from her body. “How much time do we have?”

  Iris instinctively reached for her pod but quickly realized that she no longer had it.

  “I don’t know!” she answered. She shuddered as she said the words. As far as she knew, they may have missed their opportunity.

  “Well where do we go from here?” Greyson shouted back as he collected the two students.

  “I don’t know that either!” she hollered. It was at this point Iris realized this whole escapade was almost certainly doomed. Their time may have been up already, an army was out there and they had to get down four levels without using a lift. What was I thinking?

  “Do you hear that?” Greyson shouted, pulling Iris’s concentration back to the situation.

  Iris looked up towards him and saw him facing down the hall where the three mantises had come. She turned that way too but heard nothing.

  “No!” she hollered back. “My ears are still bad!”

  “Then shut up and listen!” he replied.

  Iris did as he asked. It took her a few moments, but then she heard it. The sound could only be described as destruction in its purest form. She heard what sounded like an orchestra of footsteps, broken metal, smashed walls and forceful beatings. It’s like a stampede, she thought, thinking of the old surface era animals. There’s a stampede, and they’re taking this whole level down.

  “It has to be hundreds of them!” Greyson shouted from across the pit.