T-Plus 10

  Oliver was very tired of running, although on the other hand, it made for good exercise, not that he wanted to make that his goal at the moment. Or maybe he should. He could feel the aliens' behind them reaching out with their elongated feelers, just touching their heels. Was it just him or were their arms getting longer?

"Are there more aliens than before?" Daniel complained as he sped through the throng closing in on them.

"Just keep running!"

  After meeting with the survivors on the second floor, they had decided to stay with them for a night before wading back through the slew of aliens that separated them from where they had left Emerson and Joey. The giant alien from before was nowhere to be seen, but more of the smaller ones seemed to have gathered in its wake. With Daniel in the lead as usual, Soup and Toast, who decided to run the course back with them, stayed in the middle with Oliver bringing up the rear. Oliver sprayed a tongue of flames at the aliens too close on the scientists’ legs, corralling them forward after the other technician.

“Toast! Stop trying to give them a handshake!” Oliver cried, burning through another of Toast’s attempt at interspecies diplomacy.

“But Hensley, can’t we bring one back?” the mad scientist asked over his shoulder. “For science?”

“No!” was the collective response.

  As they got pass the nest in the stairwell entrance, the aliens thinned out, but they were still right behind the group as they drew closer to the hole that led up to the third floor. Daniel paused at the bottom of the mountain of debris, pushing Soup and Toast up first as he helped Oliver burn the pursuers before hurrying up themselves. Oliver climbed up first, shoving the blowtorch into the backpack’s side pocket as he began haphazardly reaching for handholds and dodging the loose pebbles the two above were sending down.

“It’s clear up here!” Soup called from the third floor after swinging himself up.

  Oliver ducked his head as another round of pebbles tumbled down as Soup helped Toast up over the ledge. He glanced down to see Daniel struggling to kick some of the more persistent aliens off him. As the pebbles dislodged by Toast’s frantic struggle to pull himself up came down, Daniel flattened himself against the debris mountain and watched as the aliens took some to their faces and absorbed them into themselves.

“They can eat rock?” Oliver asked, grabbing for another handhold.

“If they can eat rock, then maybe the can clean up this mess for us,” Daniel swore as he hurried to catch up.

“You would wish.”

  Distracted by the sudden switch in midday snackage, the aliens stopped their pursuit, some sliding down off the debris all together while some others remained attached. Oliver grabbed for the ledge and was helped up by Soup. Once his two feet were on solid ground again, he turned around to pull Daniel up after him.

“Are they still behind us?”

“I don’t think they knew they could eat rocks either,” Daniel said, pointing his light straight at a few that had taken several of Toast’s accidental distractions.

  As they watched, the pebbles and bit of debris absorbed into the aliens’ bodies dissolved within their bodies and disappeared. On some of them that absorbed bigger pieces, there were still trace amounts of white and gray that streaked inside their translucently flesh-colored bodies.

“I wonder how that would affect them,” Soup observed, pointing his own flashlight at them now that the group was in a safer area.

“I’m not sure exactly, but seeing how those that we’ve seen have taken on humanoid features after eating our fellow Station-mates, we can assume that our neighbors’ evolutions are based off of their diet,” Toast said, poking his head under Daniel and Soup’s shoulders to peer down at the aliens. “If they eat enough rocks, maybe they’ll become unable to move...”

“Or they’ll literally become snails,” Oliver scoffed. “Come on, let’s go back to the Bay.”

  They dusted themselves off as they followed their paint streaks back the way they came. They could relax themselves a bit more now, and as they rounded the curve, they saw the familiar sight of the Engineering Bay with the battery-powered lanterns marking the entrance.

“So this is where you guys were?” Toast asked, pointing his light at the abundant spray paint lines and the set of lights in the Bay’s hallway.

“Yeah, we cleared out the aliens around here, so we should be fine,” Daniel explained, stepping into the Bay. “Knowing Joey, he probably went off on his own. I’m going to get Dr. Emerson.”

  He headed for the locker room as the others waited outside in the corridor. Or rather, Soup and Oliver made sure Toast didn’t run off down the corridor in all his excitement to explore and catch an alien for himself or something outrageously Toast-like.

  As they waited, they heard two shouts at the same time, their voices outlined by shaking lights.

  Daniel ran out first, the sound of crashing lockers and his pounding boots following in his sprint.

“Dr. Emerson’s gone!”

  A storm of lights marked whoever the other group was that was running toward them from further down the opposite end of the corridor. Joey’s loud yell of panic gave away his identity as they approached them.

“Mr. Hensley! Mr. Jiang! Save us!”

  They pointed their lights past Joey’s group, which included two new faces, but Oliver brushed that thought away. What was more important was what they had brought with them. Behind them, in a greater mass than what the four of them had just ran through, was a horde of aliens in all sizes. Several of the swifter ones were already latching onto Emerson’s heels and dragging her toward them.

“Boy!” Oliver scolded as Joey approached them.

  Right after him were two people, one girl and an older boy, both in purple Navigator uniforms. Parts of the bottom of their pant legs were shredded and revealed their legs, although they weren’t as bad as Oliver’s old wounds. They ducked behind the five of them, pausing to catch their breath.

“Sorry, sir!” Joey said, whipping out his own pair of blowtorches. “I swear it wasn’t my idea! Well.... I was the one to go out first, but the girls wanted to-”

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“Excuses later!” Oliver shouted, grabbing his own blowtorches. “You four, get inside the Bay and start stacking as much as you can in the entrance.”

  As the two scientists dragged the Navigators with them, Oliver and Daniel stepped forward to pull Emerson toward them. The doctor latched onto their arms, her skin flushed red from overexertion. Her legs were injured as badly as Oliver had been, and the shredded skin reached up to her thighs. Oliver carried her over the beginnings of their makeshift wall, setting her down further in. Joey had rushed after him, running toward where they kept their first-aid kits and extra medicines. Daniel had already rushed into the horde of aliens, waving around his blowtorches while running around as live bait.

“Here we go again,” Oliver said, rushing out and crushing some of the ones getting too close to his friend.

“Where did they go to pull this many?” Daniel asked, rolling clear of several aliens.

“The Doctor and Audrey wanted to go into ARCNAV, sir!” Joey replied, stepping in with them after delivering the medical items to Emerson.

  Behind them their barricade now covered the width of the Bay’s entrance and was as high as their knees, not high enough to be of much use. As they watched, Soup and the others pulled more furniture out of the nearest rooms and began adding them to the jigsaw puzzle.

  Oliver jumped back from a surge of aliens coming for him, warding them off with a tap of his blowtorch. As he stepped past the intern, Joey pulled something from his backpack and lobbed it behind the horde of aliens. It shattered with a sound only glass could make, and suddenly half the mass turned away from them and surged toward whatever the hell Joey had thrown.

“Whatever that was, do you have any more?” Oliver asked.

“I have one more, but with this many, I don’t know if it’ll last long if I toss it now,” Joey said.

“Save it,” Daniel said as he lurched out of the way of an alien.

  It clipped the laces of his boots, pulling and tripping the technician. Daniel rolled out of the way, wincing as he stood.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just hoping I didn’t just sprain my ankle.”

  Oliver glanced over at the barricade’s progress to see its height at reached up to their waists now. He nodded his head at Daniel and Joey as he started backing up toward it. They followed his lead. Joey covered for Daniel’s now bad leg, twisting and blocking some of the aliens with his own backpack.

  Soup helped Daniel over the barricade first, taking the blowtorches from the technician and lighting the aliens that were following them. Oliver hopped over next, kicking some of the ones approaching his straddling leg. Before Joey followed, he tossed his remaining glass contraption, distracting their pursuers.

  Their lights passed over the aliens still in the corridor. Their numbers had dwindled to a workable amount, but Daniel was also out for the count now. Soup had taken Daniel’s place and was keeping an eye out on the aliens on the other side, but for now they had a moment.

“Any ideas?” Oliver asked, finally looking at their new arrivals.

  The two Navigators stood apart from each other, refusing to meet each other’s eyes, so they focused on him instead. The girl spoke.

“Can’t the intern just rush in like he usually does with his ungodly war cry?”

  Oliver raised an eyebrow at Joey. The intern scratched his cheek, holding up his blowtorches again. Oliver exchanged glances with Daniel, who was sitting beside Emerson now. What kind of reputation had their intern gotten while they were gone? It’d literally been maybe a day.

“Well? You think you can handle this number?” Oliver asked the intern.

“Uhhhhhh, no?”

“Didn’t think so,” Oliver said with a nod. “You go first. Go show us-, I mean them, your warcry. Soup and I will follow behind. The rest of you, use whatever you can to keep them out of the Bay.”

  Joey rushed in again, shouting his mighty yell of “So my seniors won’t kill me! I’ll kill you!” He crushed those aliens that were still distracted by his earlier glass container, attracting the interest of the other aliens that hadn’t been lured in. Oliver followed his example, slamming into them as they turned on their fellow aliens’ corpses. Soup wasn’t far behind, and within fifteen minutes or so, they finished clearing out the stampede the second group had dragged along with them.

  Oliver leaned against the outer layer of the barricade, rolling his shoulders to ease the pain. Even with alien bodies to cushion part of the fall, crushing them against the ground still required hitting the floor with his full body’s weight, and that did a number on whatever side of him he decided to use. He had no doubt he’d probably wake up with a number of bruises tomorrow. Beside him, Soup and Joey were doing similar actions, although Joey had a mile of complaints flowing out of his mouth as he sat slumped against the barricade.

“Are they all dead?” the female Navigator asked, peering over the barricade at them.

“Well, if they weren’t, we would be,” Oliver replied.

  He stood, helping the other two up, so they could reconvene on with the others inside the Engineering Bay. Emerson had finished wrapping up her wounds, and was poking at Daniel’s sprained ankle. With them as the center, the rest of them gathered around the light they were using.

“I feel as if introductions are in order,” the male Navigator said, sitting beside Emerson. “I am Aaron Richardson, Navigator Rank Six.”

“Audrey Zimmerman, Navigator Rank Two,” said the female Navigator.

“Oliver Hensley, technician.”

“Daniel Jiang, technician.”

“You can call me Toast! Head Scientist of Lab 5C in charge of testing new probes. That’s my assistant, Soup.”

“Toast? Soup? You have very strange names,” Zimmerman said. “Were your parents hungry when they were naming you?”

“Those are nicknames, Audrey,” Emerson corrected without looking up from her task. “The idiot is Dr. Lucas Vaughn. His assistant’s name is Dr. Viktor Kuznetsov. And I see you found your way out of the vents, Dr. Vaughn.”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I have?”

“Oh... what kind of nicknames are Toast and Soup?” Zimmerman interrupted again.

“That’s a long story,” Oliver sighed, waving away her question. “The more important question is why are the two of you still on the Station?”

  The two Navigators exchanged looks before Richardson opened his mouth.

“The epicenter of this mess was from an ARCNAV experiment.”

  As he continued explaining their story, Toast’s face continued lighting up and if Soup hadn’t covered his mouth, Oliver swore he would’ve blurted out “My theory about ARCNAV was real!” or something. By the end of the explanation, Oliver was rubbing his temples for several reasons.

“So you’re telling me... your prototype summoned the aliens to us?”

“Yes.”

  Daniel sighed, leaning his head back against the wall.

“Okay, one mystery solved. What do we do now?”

“We need to send a message down to Triton now that we’ve confirmed that there are Navigators up here. The Chief will want to hear about this.”

“Wait... the Chief’s still up here?”

“There’s another set of survivors down on the second floor,” Daniel explained. “It’s where we found Toast. We were coming back up here to discuss migrating over to them.”

“But if we need to send a message down to Triton, it’s better to stay up here,” Oliver added, glancing over at the two Navigators. “Any supplies that we would need to repair the power box is on this floor.”

“Joey, go prepare some more room in the other locker room for the three of them. And when you’re done, find some more flashlights for them.”

“Shouldn’t we hurry to find the parts necessary?” Zimmerman asked, standing when the intern rushed toward the locker rooms.

“Well, one, I’m hungry and working on an empty stomach isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Oliver explained as he fished out the supplies they had brought back with them from his and Daniel’s backpacks. “And two, it’s going to take several days to be able to scavenge all the supplies we may possibly need, since I’m not even sure of the extent of the damages until we actually get out there.”

“Get out where?” Richardson asked.

“Obviously outside the base,” Oliver replied, looking up at the two Navigators who probably didn’t even know how the Station they lived on worked. They didn't look like the type that got out much. “The power box and relevant solar panels are attached to the Station itself.”

“So what I’m hearing is a big sleepover!” Toast concluded with a sagely nod.

  Oliver rolled his eyes over at Emerson and Daniel, shaking his head.

“Sure, Toast. A big sleepover.”