The remainder of the night had passed by and even most of the way into the next daylight hours. But finally, Andy had success.

The room's temperature currently sat at eleven degrees celsius. A bit on the chilly side, but more than workable for eating and drinking.

But more importantly, his waste tank had just dropped to forty degrees celsius. Meaning, he now had access to a decent supply of oxygen. Well, decent enough, it wouldn’t last forever of course, but it was more than enough to keep him going for a while.

Andy turned his cooling system off, now it would just be an unnecessary power drain if he left it on. Speaking of power drain, his suits battery had started to run out sometime this morning, so he had wired the portable generator up to the input of the power controller in the room and used that to charge the battery within it. He then swapped it out with his suit’s current battery.

The sun was already busy setting, so Andy went about filling up his hydration and hunger with bottled water and protein bars. He was now once more running out of water, with only half a bottle left.

At least he had been making steady health gains with all this careful work. He now sat at a much more comfortable sixty two percent health.

Andy needed to get back out there, and get back to work on solving his next problem.

He briefly considered swapping his O2 and waste tank around, now that he had a waste tank filled with usable O2. Even if there was a bit of CO2 in there, the filter would quickly mop it up. But he ultimately decided against this idea, when he realised that the waste tank was not insulated and as soon as he stepped outside, the atmosphere would start heating his O2 supply via the tank itself.

Instead, he opened the internal valve of the waste tank and set the now empty O2 tank to pump the atmosphere inside the suit and store it. He basically used his suit as a pipeline to transfer all the gas from the waste tank, to his O2 tank.

It was a strange feeling having all that gas rushing through his suit and the process took a few minutes, but ultimately succeeded. His O2 tank was now full with forty degree O2 and a bit of CO2 and his waste tank was mostly empty.

Andy set all of his suit’s settings back to normal, for the first time in a long time. It felt like hitting a nice big reset button. A fresh start, so to speak.

With the O2 issue out of the way, he proceeded to use his makeshift airlock to exit. Completing the process by removing the iron sheet from the wall frame, he was about to step out like any other time before, when something caught his eye.

Every instinct, every fibre of his being told him to freeze. The two long thin black limbs ending in talons, peeking over the edge of the broken base floor, sent shivers down his spine. Once he saw the limbs strain to pull up whatever they were attached to, he could wait no longer, panic screamed flight.

As the tell tale sign of the talon scraping against the metal in the process, could be heard, Andy ducked back against one of the adjacent walls of the airlock and ever so slightly out of view of the monster.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

Whatever that thing was, there was no way in hell he survived it unarmed. The blowtorch?

Andy heard the tap tap sound of multiple limbs ending in those metallic talons, traipsing their way across the base floor. They sound like they were drawing closer.

Fuck the blowtorch. No way, no how. He did not have confidence that it would be enough against whatever the fuck that thing was.

The tapping drew even closer. It was going to stumble across him sooner than later.

Andy did the only thing he could do. He reached out ever so slightly, hoping the thing would not notice his arm, and slid the gas canister out of the portable generator as quietly as he could. The sound of metal scraping against metal as he did so, was deafening to him under the circumstances.

Fully out, the creature had clearly not heard it or he’d probably be dead already. Andy swallowed hard.

He put the canister in the blowtorch just as slowly and quietly.

The tapping was getting very close now. He also heard the creature make a chittering sound.

Andy gently picked up the iron sheet and pointed it at the wall. He braced himself.

He flipped the blowtorch on and pointed at the wall as fast as possible.

All hell broke loose.

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The blowtorch roared to life, its flame making a sound that might as well be broadcasting his position loud and clear.

The creature that was already too close for comfort immediately sprinted for his position with a rapid and loud succession of talens tapping on over.

Fuck! He wasn’t going to be able to weld it fast enough, it was already almost on top of him to begin with.

Then the shit went down.

As the creature shoved one of its taloned limbs through an opening in the wall frame, the construction outline of the sheet turned red and the welding process was cancelled.

The talon missed him by an inch.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuuck!

As the creature continued to round the corner in that moment, it sent another long taloned limb searching for him. This one connected and both tore through his suit and cut his right leg in the process, causing him great deal of pain and a health loss.

Andy did the only thing he could and turned the blow torch to the limb.

The ghastly sizzling of flesh could be heard and the monster shrieked in pain, instantly retracting the limb. Another limb replaced it however and swung at him. But Andy managed to lean out of the way and blowtorch it as well.

The creature howled once more and Andy decided to press the attack with the creature nursing both of it’s frontal limbs. He summoned every inch of courage he could muster and leaned close to the open wall frame. Catching a glimpse of a portion of the creature's jet black hairy body, he shoved the blowtorch at its side, causing more burn damage.

The creature, apparently not expecting to suddenly become the hunted, howled at the man and jumped away in panic.

Yes, it can fucking jump!

Andy quickly leaned back and used the reprieve to try and weld the iron sheet again, while the creature hissed at him angrily from a distance.

Come on! Come on! Almost there! Were the chaotic thoughts bouncing around his skull as panic set in.

The creature realised something had changed and once more charged straight for him.

Holy mother of fuck it was fast!

“Aaaaaarrrggghhhh!” Andy cried out something between fear, desperation, determination and a war cry, as the monster barreled towards him.

Just before it reached him the iron sheet snapped in place and Andy heard a loud thud noise as the creature crashed into the now solid wall.

Holy fuck. Fuck! What the actual fuck! Mother fucking fucker!

Andy was still trying to calm down, trapped in his little airlock, that suddenly felt very, very claustrophobic. Andy turned the blowtorch off, before he could accidentally burn a hole in himself or something.

Hole! Fuck!

His suit was sounding off an alarm about the breach in his suit and the resulting toxins flowing in. Andy grabbed the duct tape from one of the compartments on his toolbelt and used it to seal the breach. After which he flushed his suit once to get rid of the toxins. He didn’t even have enough room in his emotions right now to care about what would otherwise have been a really scary burst of flames all around him in a tight enclosed space as he did this.

The warnings went away. What they were replaced with however, was the sound of the creature clawing at the wall on the other side. Now that was fucking nerve wracking! After waiting for quite some time however, the creature gave up on that. Andy assumed at this point that it couldn’t actually get through the walls.

He was however treated to the unnerving sound of the creature wandering around. Tap. Tap. tap-tap-tap. It was searching for a way to get to him.

All Andy could do was wait.

And wait.

And wait.

He didn’t know how long he waited, the feeling of being bait trapped in a cage only worsened with time.

The creature had gone off somewhere eventually, but he doubted that it had left the area.

Just what the fuck was he going to do. He couldn’t sit here forever. His hydration was a ticking time bomb. Maybe that thing would retreat during the scorching day time? He had no idea. If it didn’t, he was fucked. Actually he was fucked even if it did. He would have long since consumed his lost bit of water by then.

Surviving another night and day without a source of water did not seem viable. He would still need time to come up with a solution for getting more water. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't stay here.

Fuck, he really wanted to though. Really, really wanted to. But he needed to get busy or he would die.

But then what? Go out there and carry on building? Hope that thing didn’t rip his guts out while he was busy. That was madness and quite impossible to go along with.

Fuck! Again! Fuck!

He had no choice. He needed to face that thing!

Andy tried to console himself. What’s the worst that could happen? He died? Andy reminded himself that he was a dead man before this game already, and going into this game as well. It had never really changed. And dead men shouldn’t be afraid of dying!

He took a moment to focus and come up with a plan.

After some thought, he started off by adjusting the valves in his suit, to funnel one third of his remaining oxygen into his waste tank. Once that was done, he gave the command to disengage his waste tank. It partially detached from his backpack and he was able to clip it out completely.

Warnings immediately showed up about the loss of the waste tank and how it would lead to CO2 toxicity in his suit. But he didn’t care. It wouldn’t happen immediately.

He then navigated the menu over to the option to flush his suit and left it there without actually activating. Andy put the waste tank down and held up the crowbar, ready to peel back his only defence and go out there and court death itself.