“Shoot their heads,” Hannah said, apparently not seeing what just happened.
By the time I gained my feet, she had all the zombie dinos taken care off.
I returned my attention to Megan
I slammed my fist into her chest, knowing the force was probably just enough to feel like a nudge. “Megan?”
Nothing.
“The bite force might’ve knocked her out. Happened to me with that…whatever it was. Spinosaurus. Let’s get her out of her and into the stairwell. Probably safer there.”
So, we picked Megan up and carefully hauled her to the stairs. We laid her on the sixth-floor landing. We disengaged our lasers.
“She has to give the command to open the mech,” Hannah said.
Freaking out a bit, I asked, “How do we wake her up?”
“Our mech can’t handle the sizable pressure like yours, but I doubt anything except a laser blast would get through to really wake her up.”
I was about to try rolling her onto her side when I noticed the pool of blood spreading around her.
Heart sinking, I looked at Hannah. “One of the teeth must’ve made it through the mech. She’s bleeding to death.”
“What?” Hannah crouched, giving Megan a closer look. A couple seconds later, she said, “Shit.”
“What do we do?” I asked. “We can’t just let her bleed out.”
“If we can find something to stop the blood,” Hannah said. “Maybe we could shove something into the mech to slow the bleeding a little. One of those teeth got through.”
But, the more I inspected the amount of blood and how fast it was seeping out, I knew better. The tooth severed some artery or another. Or gored her really deep.
Hannah glanced around for something to staunch the bleeding. She hurried back through the door, leaving me alone with Megan. I held her in my arms, hoping she felt some comfort, though doubting it through the mech.
“Incoming private conversation,” the monotone voice announced.
At first, ragged breathing filled my speakers. Then…
“Well…how ‘bout…this shit, huh?”
“Hannah is looking for something to stop the bleeding,” I said.
“She’s a good one, my Han. My…boss…but my…only friend.”
“Just hold on,” I said. “We’ll get you out of here.”
Megan made a rough chuckling sound. “No. You won’t. I’m bleeding like a stuck pig, Wen.”
Tears prickled my eyes, blurred my vision until they broke free and trickled down my cheeks. Megan had been the biggest liar of them all. Misleading and all that too. But…in the end, she tried to save Max and saved me. Even after Max’s death, when she made the drastic change, she didn’t exactly turn into a bad person. Just one I wasn’t used to because I thought her personality was different. And it wasn’t like she changed all that much. More driven and a bit of an ass, but otherwise…
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was crying.
“Can’t get the files…without me. Hannah wants some blood samples. Once she gets them…get out here.”
I blinked away tears. “How? Is there another tunnel?”
“Han… Hannah knows. She…she…” A long sigh followed and her mech-clad body fell limp in my arms.
“Megan?”
No answer.
“Megan?”
“Your private conversation has ended. The pilot is now deceased.”
“No,” I sobbed.
The door crashed open and Hannah dropped to her knees on the opposite side of Megan. In her hand, she carried a blue towel. “Roll her so her back is facing me. Carefully.”
“Hannah,” I said.
“I’ll have to really push, but I think we can stop—”
“Hannah.”
“—the bleeding. Then we’ll get out of here. Shouldn’t have even attempted this mission in the first place.”
“Hannah.”
“What are you waiting for? Turn her so I can—”
“She’s gone.”
A curtain of silence draped between us for a moment. Then she tried prying Megan from my arms.
“No,” she said. “Give her to me.”
“She’s dead, Hannah.”
“No. Let her go!”
I held on tight and eventually Hannah stopped pulling and shoved me hard enough to send me tumbling into the wall. She scooped Megan up, holding the dead woman. Cradling her like a baby. Her hushed sobs trembled through the speakers. I didn’t have the heart to stand or do anything for that matter. Right then, I realized just how much Megan meant to Hannah. She hadn’t shed a tear for Max, as far as I knew, but Megan…
Megan had been by her side when the artificial lost world was built. They worked together then and continued to work together years later. They weren’t a couple, as far as I knew, but then again…what did I really know about them? Not like I had years with them. Only like a day or two. I wondered if Max even truly knew them like they knew each other. And he spent a couple years with them.
“Oh, Meg,” Hannah said in a choked voice. “I’m so sorry.”
She held Megan like that for a long time. Sometimes she paced, but mostly just stood there crying through my mech’s speakers. I sat, leaning against the wall, heart sinking. Max was a loss, but Megan was the greatest in Hannah’s eyes, I assumed. Hell, it was in mine as well. Megan died saving me when she and Hannah could have just left me to fight the thing off myself. She led the charge into that room.
Eventually, Hannah lowered to her knees and laid Megan down on the floor. She placed a mech-clad hand on Megan’s chest.
“Rest well, my dear friend,” she said, sniffling.
Another few seconds, she stood and said. “We need to get those files.”
I blinked. “But without Megan—”
“It will take longer, but I can hack the server.”
I stood. “What’s so damn important in those files? I mean, Max and Megan are dead because of this little quest.”
“I’m not paying you for your opinion,” Hannah said and brushed by toward the steps leading to the seventh floor.
“Is that how you think of me? A mindless employee?” I hurried to follow her. “Look, maybe it should be me lying dead down there, but—”
She spun so fast, I nearly lost my balance on the steps.
“Yes. It should be. If you hadn’t meddled, Megan would still be alive. It’s because of you she’s dead.”
Her words were like dozens of knives stabbing into me, one by one. Each one hurt a little more than the last.
Hannah turned away and started up the steps again.
I sighed and followed. “Yeah. I shouldn’t have gone into the room. I get it. I’m an idiot. But the way you spoke to me earlier, I thought we were at least friends.”
Hannah chuckled. “Friends? At what point during all this did you think we were friends? This is a business agreement, nothing more.”
With that, she quickened her pace up the steps.
I gaped after her, hurt. I probably shouldn’t feel so hurt. She was right. It wasn’t like we used to hang out at all before this little quest. But still…it hurt. Maybe because I considered her a friend, regardless.
I mean, if I hadn’t thought so, I wouldn’t have tried to help her during her freak out after the Spinosaurus attack.
Reminding myself Hannah was grieving, I followed her without further conversation. I needed to let her grieve a bit. To accept things, I supposed.
She was already opening the seventh-floor door by the time I reached the landing. She didn’t wait for me. I guess I kind of expected that sort of treatment. It was what it was.
I opened the door and she stood on the other side, startling me.
Hannah didn’t say anything and instead walked straight down a hall from the door. Across the width of the floor, rather than length.
That floor, it was all walled off and the hall we walked revealed nothing beyond the walls. Curious, I
wanted to ask what they did on this floor, but stifled myself. It really didn’t matter. I mean, I was curious because I wanted to know how such an operation worked, but at the same time, I knew Hannah would shoot me with a laser burst than speak to me right then.
It was what it was…
At the end of the hall were three doors. One on the right, one on the left, and one directly in front of us.
Hannah glanced at each one, then chose the one on the left.
I followed her inside the room.
A very small room dominated by a cylindrical object which stood from floor to ceiling. At least 10 feet tall. Various wires and tubes snaked out of it and into every available wall space, save for the door.
At the object’s base was what appeared to be a small computer.
“Wait here,” Hannah said and walked to what I assumed was the server. More specifically, its base where the computer was embedded into the cylinder.
Every tiny light on the thing glowed green, red, blue, and yellow.
Hannah tapped away on the computer screen. I stood there, not really sure what to do with myself. All I really wanted to do was escape. To get out of this place, make it to the mainland, and never look back.
Two things stopped me. One, I didn’t know where to go to get out of the place. Two, despite Hannah basically hating me, I wasn’t going to abandon her.
It took a very long time. I’d say an hour, maybe two.
Hannah backed away from the server and faced me. “Eighth floor.”
She strode by me and out of the room before I could even mutter, “Okay.”
On the eighth floor, we went up an extra flight of stairs to what Hannah called: “The Attic.”
The same kind of cylindrical object stood in The Attic. Same computer at its base as before. And Hannah, like a floor below, went directly to the computer where she worked for what felt like, and could’ve been, hours.
“Yes,” she said, barely a whisper.
I opened my mouth to ask what was going on, then closed it again. Sometimes, no matter how much you wanted to say something, it was best to stay quiet and observe.
If I was truly just an expendable employee, maybe fewer words would be better from here on out.
Hannah wasn’t stable. And I didn’t want to trigger her.
Without a word, Hannah rushed by me and out of The Attic. I watched her descend the short flight of steps and quickly followed.
Did she get the files?
I didn’t know, nor did I ask. No matter how much I wanted to.
When I finally caught up to her, she stood in the stairwell right outside the door of the eighth floor. She wasn’t holding anything in her hands. No chip, or anything. If she got the files, where were they?
“Time to go,” she said and turned away, tromping up the steps toward the ninth floor.
“Where are we going?” I ventured, following her.
“To the mainland,” she said. “Where else?”
“Shouldn’t we be going down?”
“You can if you want, but the shuttle is on the 12th floor.”
Shuttle. Of course. I knew there had to have been a shuttle of some kind to evacuate everyone. I felt dumb for not actually thinking about it much. Too much going on. My brain needed to catch up.
We hurried up each flight of stairs until we reached the 12th-floor landing.
Before she turned the doorknob, Hannah said, “Some of this floor is exposed to the elements. So, there might be dinosaurs up here. Be on guard.”
“Okay.”
She opened the door and together we slipped onto the final floor.
“Laser,” Hannah said.
I said the same.
Lasers ready, we made our way deeper in. And, shit, the place was a disaster. Smashed computers and various forms of equipment. Broken glass everywhere. Green moss and black mold crawled over almost every surface.
Soon enough, I saw why.
The 12th floor was at the very top of the cliffs and under a glass dome. Well, used to be under a glass dome. Only the rusty metal arcs, which once held the glass, remained. On the right, the entire side of the floor was missing, giving me a view of the jungle. The shrill cries of the small lizards, or whatever they were, filled the massive room.
But, as far as I could tell, there weren’t any dinosaurs lurking on the 12h floor. Just a broken mess, remnants of humanity being eaten by nature. Soon enough, there would be no trace people ever existed in that false lost world.
Hannah led the way until we weren’t under the open dome anymore to a set of steel double doors, which were rusty and growing dark mold. She shoved the doors open and light spilled in, momentarily blinding me. The doors gave way to the outside and a silver shuttle resting on a single rail-track. The rail-track shot up at a 45-degree angle, at least 300 feet, into a hole in the rock ceiling of the manufactured land we stood in.
And, even though the shuttle appeared okay, the rail-track looked pretty rusty. The stilts holding it up, some of them seemed bent in places.
“It’ll hold,” Hannah said, as though reading my mind.
“Are you…sure?”
“No. But the shuttle cleans and oils the rail as it goes, so we won’t get stuck in the rust.”
“So, you’re not sure.”
“I said no, didn’t I?”
A heavy sigh blew out of me.
“It’s our only way out,” Hannah said. “There are no more tunnels. The one we came through was created as a way to bring water in to filter and feed into the rivers. More were to be drilled, but that never happened.”
“Lovely,” I said. “So, we’ll probably die riding that thing.”
“Our mechs should take most of the damage if something happens.”
I almost said, “Yeah, unless some rogue rusty piece of metal punctures through,” but didn’t. I feared such a comment would trigger her so soon after Megan’s death. She would probably shoot me in rage. Or something. Best to keep on her tolerable side.
She opened the shuttle’s door. “There were four of these. The other three are topside on the mainland, rusting into history.”
“Well,” I said. “That sucks.” I pointed at our shuttle. “How do you know it still works?”
“Because it runs on the same nuclear generator as the servers.”
“I see.”
“Alright,” Hannah said. “Get in. We’re getting out of—”
It broke through a thicket of tall trees, splinters flying. A monster that shouldn’t exist emerged through the falling debris. Split lower jaw gaping, a mouth like a cavern full of teeth.
It was missing one of its arms and a black groove cut across its chest and…
“Oh my God,” I said. “It’s the one Megan thought she killed.”
“Don’t just stand there!” Hannah shouted. “Shoot the bastard!”
I pointed the laser at the charging mutant T-rex. Now it all made sense. It killed Gerty the Stegosaurus to taunt us. It was stalking us ever since the beach. Waiting…just waiting…
I squeezed my hand into a fist. The blue beam poked a black hole into its chest. It cried out though didn’t stop.
Hannah shot a burst, which struck its head. The creature shrieked, staggered away from us toward the research lab, or whatever it was, nearly fell, then regained its balance.
It swung back toward us. A deafening roar filled the air. Its tail lashed and thumped against the ground so hard I felt the vibrations through the mech. For a few seconds, it simply glared at us, as if testing our mettle.
“Cut it down,” Hannah said and sliced a laser beam at the mutant T-rex.
Somehow, she only managed to cut off one of the talons of its remaining claw.
I aimed, ready to take its head, when it drew back and pounced at us.
There was no time to do anything.
It landed hard, ground quaking enough to knock me off my feet. Dirt and rock erupted, obscuring everything.
It wasn’t until Hannah screamed and
the dust cleared enough when I managed to stand. I froze. Clamped in the creature’s mouth, Hannah thrashed. She beat at the thing, the lower half of her body deep in the monster’s mouth.
I shook my terror off, aimed the laser, and sliced almost halfway through its neck. Only stopping because I didn’t want to hit Hannah.
Its head lolled to the right, bobbing on charred flesh.
Hannah shouted something, though I couldn’t understand what she was saying. Her words were too garbled. The jaws opened, and she fell out onto the ground, not moving. The creature staggered, body twitching. Gurgling noises came from its open throat.
It leaned forward.
Shit.
I raced to Hannah and quickly pulled her away from the nearly headless monster as it staggered.
We managed just the right amount of distance before the beast collapsed on top of the shuttle in a tremendous crash of crumpling metal.
“Shit,” I said, still dragging Hannah away from the dead monster.
In my ears, through the speakers, I listened to her ragged breathing. It wasn’t until I leaned her against a boulder when I realized something I should have known before. And…maybe I did at one point.
Sometimes…we never really know who people are.
Pale green blood smeared my mech-clad hands and arms, pooled around her as she sat there.
But it wasn’t blood. Not really. It was a mixture of hydraulic fluids and coolant.
“You really are a droid,” I said.
A rough chuckle. “Thought it would have been obvious before now.”
“Kinda.” Despite that little fact, I choked up, unable to really say anything for a moment.
Hannah wasn’t human, and yet, she acted like one so well, I let the odd stuttering thing go after the Spinosaurus attack. She showed emotions. She seemed to feel. And by all accounts, I think she really did feel. Those emotions, they were real too.
What really makes a human…human?
Emotions. Empathy. Intelligence. Humor. Etcetera, etcetera. On and on. Compassion…
She wasn’t human. She was so much more.
Hannah chuckled lightly. “For the record, I felt human for most of my life. Didn’t know I was droid until I pricked my finger one day and…” She gestured at all the pale green fluid all over and around her. “Well, this color isn’t exactly red, right?”
Below The Earth Page 15
