She heard it again, a cry full of pain and terror.
It was more like a raw, painful croak than anything. It cut through her in an almost primal fashion causing a chill to run down her back.
“Wh-what was that…?” one of the men behind Inspector Chen stammered.
They peered down the hole, leaning in and pointing their chest lamps inside the dark jagged gap in the floor until…
“Wait! Let’s move over there before we investigate,” said the Inspector pointing to a flat, albeit slightly tilted, area just past the gaping hole in the ground. “We’re in a precarious spot right now.”
It took a bit of shuffling and swaying as they tried to maneuver their clunky suits past the hole without leaning on the wall for support, but they eventually made it to a relatively stable area. By now it was very clear that the water dripping from above was not ordinary water. Red streams streaked down the viewports of their suits.
Above, there were rumbles as structural integrity gave way somewhere. Concern, Yahuei reached out, ignoring the early throbbings of a headache. But it seemed they were still safe, at least for now.
There was a sharp gasp and cursing from the men. They had collected around the edge of the hole to look down.
“Oh god… wh-what is that…”
“Don’t throw up,” the man with the gentle melodious voice said. “Remember we’re still wearing our suits.”
“Oh shit… Oh shit… BLeaURGH.”
“Goddammit, he threw up.” The man sighed. “And after I told him not to, too.”
One of the men stumbled backwards and doubled over. Yahuei stepped around him, taking his place at the edge of the chasm.
Twisted dark shapes descended downward, like glimmering metallic teeth in the mouth of a creature waiting for them to make one wrong move so it could swallow them up. Tangles of wiring and fragments of plaster littered the area as crimson water dripped in from above.
Then her heart caught in her throat.
There, amidst the slick wreckage, was a yellow suit.
Then, though a shattered face-piece was a pale face.
Black eyes stared up at her; no sclera, just blackness. A pale female face with dark gash for a mouth. The rest of the body was in a crooked position, held in place by a row of twisted metal jutting through from below.
At first Yahuei thought the woman was dead, but then the body convulsed. One of her arms wriggled futilely against the iron bars as she let out another cry for help.
“Shit.” the soft spoken man said, uncharacteristically. “I thought she was dead.”
“Who is she?” Yahuei asked, stepping back from the pit. The others took this as a cue to do the same.
The large man responded, “Well… a couple of hours ago, the first team went in and… were a little unprepared.” The man paused and took a few deep breaths. “Earrgh… ok I’m feeling a little queasy too now.”
“The ground gave out over here,” the other man said with a measured tone, “He was part of the initial group of three and was the only one who made it out.” He pointed at the man now sitting in the corner with vomit obscuring his face.
“Her name was Yen.” He shrugged, his fine features twisted in a wry expression. “I was part of the rescue team, but by the time I got here, the other guy was nowhere to be found. We could only see her, but… well as you can see there wasn’t much we could do about her. Her spine was broken and there’s what looks like internal brain hemorrhage, we deemed it pretty pointless to try to extract her. Especially since this whole area is unstable and covered in contaminants.”
“Well, she apparently survived.” Yahuei said.
“If you could call it that.” The man raised his hands to gesture at the falling red water. “I’m just gonna say, in normal conditions, a person would be dead by now.”
“I see… Is there any way we could at least put her out of her misery?” she asked.
“Unless you can somehow reach down there and finish her off in a way that won’t result in Rust just reviving her again… Probably not?”
The Inspector sighed and closed her eyes, trying to block out yet another wail emanating from the pit below.
“Well then, let's get moving then. The faster we’re out of here the better.” She went over to the man still crouched in the corner. “You feeling ok?”
There was a cough and a clearing of the throat. Then:
“No, not really… But I ain’t staying down here for one more fuckin’ minute.”
She patted him firmly on the shoulder. “Let’s grab the data and get out of here then.”
The rest of the way to the controller lab was largely uneventful. The entrance to the facility was open. At first glance this was a good thing as the doors were quite sturdy and airtight to prevent contamination in and out of the lab. But it also meant that the power was most likely down as all the doors unlocked in the event of a power outage for safety.
A small t-junction separated the testing room and the data center. Yahuei directed the lean man to accompany her to the testing room. There, they would search the area and hopefully find an intact controller. The man tapping on his face window hoping to dislodge vomit and improve visibility would go with the larger man who had a portable battery on his back.
“Let’s keep comms open.” Yahuei said. “Let me know what you can find.”
“Sure thing,” replied the large man as he unslung the battery from his back. “Let’s move, Hsiming, the sooner we’re out of this place, the better.”
The other man grumbled, still banging on the side of his headpiece, and followed him into the other room.
***
The inside of the testing room was lined with glass pods and microscopes. A panel on the wall housed various molecular imaging and design equipment that Yahuei only had the vaguest knowledge of. At the center of the room was what looked like a bed with a circular archway over it. It resembled a CT-scanner.
“Any idea where to start looking?” Yahuei asked.
“Let’s start by looking around the Nano-Projector,” the man gestured at the bed at the center of the room. “I’d say that’s our best bet.”
The Nano-Projector was the machine that translated commands from the controller to the nano-machines inside a person. The person would lie on the bed while the circular part worked over them, giving out signals to the nano-machines in different parts of them.
They gave the device a once-over, but found nothing. As Yahuei stood up from her stooped position on the floor, she suddenly felt woozy. She collapsed into a nearby chair.
“Are you alright?” the man asked, noticing her sudden movement.
“Yeah… I just need to rest a little,” she replied. She could feel the fatigue going deep, her head was throbbing like a spike had wriggled its way in. She wasn’t sure if she would be able to use her abilities much on the way back. Thankfully they had managed to find a somewhat safe route, but she was worried what if things had shifted since they got here…
“I don’t blame ya. That was a pretty tough thing to see back there if you hadn’t already known it was going to be there.”
The Inspector forced herself to sit up. They needed to move fast, before things changed or they would be the ones buried and covered in red water just like that woman… or worse.
She just couldn’t get that woman’s face out of her head. The dark eyes in that pale twisted face. She shuddered, what a horrible fate. She wasn’t sure if it was just in her head or if she could still somehow hear the lady crying for help all the way from here.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“Hey how did you know not to touch that part of the wall?” the man asked suddenly.
“What?”
“When we were trying to move past the hole in the ground. That specific segment of the wall.”
Yahuei looked up at him trying to read his expression, but the glare of her light on his suit obscured her view.
“I felt something shift when I touched it and sensed something was wrong.”
It wasn’t a lie, which made it easier to tell.
“Well you’ve got good senses,” the man said, “I’m very surprised we made it this far.”
“Well, there’s a little bit of luck involved too.”
“Hmmm…” the man turned back to keep searching, flipping through a cabinet with various devices displayed. “I am curious though… Something’s been bugging me quite a bit.”
“What’s that?”
“What made you come down here anyways?” He paused,in the midst of inspecting a nano-contamination scanner to glance at her. “You are probably one of the most important people down here. I can tell that much.”
“Well the second generation nano project is very important.”
“Yes but, why come down here yourself? What are you going to do that none of us could’ve done?” He shook his head, set aside the scanner, and grabbed a pair of long metal tweezers. “This is a huge risk, there must be something more to it.”
The Inspector simply looked at him.
“Maybe there was something that made you confident. Risk vs Benefit: perhaps rather than the possible benefit, it was the risk that you can somehow manage.” He nodded, pondering this for a moment. “But I’m really not sure how.”
“Are you trying to go somewhere with this?” she asked.
“Hmm… not really, just thinking out loud,” he replied. “Oh! Maybe you’re here to cover up something.”
“I’ve come all the way down here to cover something up?” she scoffed.
“Hah! Yeah you’re right, it would be easier to just let the Rust sweep right through everything.” It appeared the tweezers weren’t getting him anywhere, so he set those aside too. Next was a remote controller of some sort, but without power no amount of clicking would reveal its function.
“I guess all that’s left is: you came down here to investigate,” he concluded, adding the remote to a pocket in his suit. “Somebody blew this section of the lab up. You’re here to figure out who and why.”
“You’re pretty smart,” the Inspector responded, “What is your primary job?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“Isn’t that a pretty high value job? What are you doing down here?”
“Well I’m a field medic. This sort of thing falls right into my specialty.”
All that was left in the room was a steel cabinet, but it was locked tight with a sliding electric door. The man pulled on it a bit, but it wouldn’t budge.
He contemplated a bit, then said, “I still don’t get why someone as important as you is risking their life down here though. You’re too confident for such a dangerous operation…”
Somewhere above them, there was a scraping noise followed by the clang of something metal shifting.
“See anything?” She got up.
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Well I guess that’s the best we can do.” She beckoned him to follow. “We’d best meet up with the other two. Sounds like this area is about to give out.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.”
“By the way, what’s your name?” Yahuei asked.
“Jianting, what’s yours?”
“Inspector Chen, still.”
With that she left the room, leaving him a moment to chuckle before following suit.
***
It appeared the other two had had a much more fruitful search.
The large man, whose name the inspector later learned was Fongming, had found the drive with the blueprints with the aid of Ximin, who knew the passcodes to the systems.
“So I just downloaded the info onto this disc. Do you want me to upload it to a central location?”
The Inspector considered. On the one hand it would make sure the info wouldn’t be lost on the off chance they couldn’t make it out, but on the other hand it would be far easier to discover if they were hacked.
“For now just keep it local, we’ll make a few copies too for each of us. If it feels like for some reason we won’t make it out, THEN upload it.”
Suddenly there was another metal on metal screeching followed by a creaking sound above.
This time the groaning of metal didn’t stop.
“Let’s move,” Inspector Chen commanded.
The four of them moved quickly out of the controller lab.
On the way out, Fongming transferred the blueprint files to the rest of them. Yahuei considered scanning the surrounding area with her kinetisense, but decided there wasn’t much point. The place was falling apart already and if she pushed herself too far she might just collapse.
As they stepped out of the open sliding doors, there was a sudden cracking noise followed by a swoosh as a torrent of red water poured down upon them.
“Shit!” Fongming swore.
The area became tinged with red as the lights on their suits became covered with crimson liquid. The ground shifted as the gaping hole where the impaled woman resided splintered wider.
Ximin staggered toward the hole, but Yahuei nudged him to the side.
“Let me lead, can you even see out of that thing?”
Jianting spoke up from behind her, “Erhm… are you sure about that?”
“Yes, now let's go.”
She sent out a ping, ignoring the spike that immediately began throbbing in her head. There were a lot of moving things. Not just shifting and falling, however. Oddly, there appeared to be things lurching sideways or moving in repetitive motions…
“We can’t go back that way, it’s about to collapse,” she stated pointing at the ledge near the wall they had approached by.
“Then how are we supposed to get back?” Jianting asked.
“We have to go that way,” she pointed at the debris piled from the previous cave-in. “That’s actually our best bet at this point. We have to skirt along that pile of rubble until we reach that ledge there.”
The man sighed, “Ok let’s go… Let’s go!”
The concrete fragments where the ceiling had collapsed were held together by metal rebar. These metal bars were twisted in some places and jagged in others. The surface was slick with water.
Fongming shifted nervously. “I don't know about this. I’m not really good with balance plus I’m kind of big…”
Just then, there was another rumble, the wall where they had crossed earlier began to bulge and sag inward.
“You can stay if you want. But I’m going to at least try to make it out of here,” Yahuei said.
She took a step onto a relatively solid looking piece of concrete and leaned onto her right side, matching the slope of the rubble and using it to keep her balance.
She jerked as the woman in the hole screamed again. If she lost her footing, she would probably be joining that pale face down there.
She kept going.
Behind her she could hear the men trying to follow. Some footholds were too loose to stand on, crumbling or clattering downward the moment she put her foot on them. Others were too sloped and slick with water. She kept her body titled as close to the rubble as she could, grasping at the exposed rebar.
Yahuei could hear Jianting following close behind, pointing out which fragments to use as footholds and which segments to grab onto to the others.
She was around three quarters of the way to the other side when there was another crashing sound. At first she was too focused on the task at hand to pay any heed, but then she heard a shout.
“What in god’s name is that!?”
She turned to look, momentarily distracted. Her foot slipped as a result of her sudden movement causing her stomach to lurch.
A hand shot out to stabilize her from behind just as she tightened her grip on the metal bar.
“Careful there,” Jianting said sardonically, “If you die here, the rest of us will probably get executed.”
Yahuei was about to answer, but found herself speechless at the sight of what appeared to be a length of squirming tangled intestines that had descended from the dark abyss above them.
As they watched, the tangle of viscera pulsed, slowly drooping downward onto the collapsed wall across from them. A splash of water gushed down carrying it downward. The length of intestines seemed to grow wider as it connected upward and at the top Inspector Chen was rather disgusted to see hairs had begun sprouting from its base.
“Let’s uh… let's just try to ignore that thing and keep moving,” came Jianting’s from behind, his ordinarily delicate voice was hoarse with revulsion.
Yahuei finally made it to solid ground. Cautious as she was, she sent out another probe to try to confirm her surroundings. The world suddenly began to spin as dark spots appeared in her vision.
She stumbled forward, sagging against a section of glass along the wall. She could feel her knees giving away.
“Hey, are you alrigh–”
Inspector Chen suddenly reached out and grabbed him, pulling him on top of her as a long steel segment of ceiling swung down on top of them.
Jianting didn’t have time to look back at the others. He scooped up the Inspector (who was a lot lighter than he had expected) and carried her forward back toward the cafeteria.
By this point the Inspector had passed out entirely and was limp in his arms. He quickly set her down and turned back just in time to see Fongming grab Ximin and throw him toward the edge of the rapidly expanding pit. Ximin flopped awkwardly onto the ledge and kicked his legs at the collapsed ceiling segment trying to use it to lever himself up.
Jianting made his way back just in time to get hit in the facepiece with Fongming’s backpack, filled to the brim with all the hardware he had collected. He quickly threw this aside and helped Ximin scrabble his way up.
Fongming, now unladen, let loose a series of breathtaking parkour moves. He swung from slippery rebar, using an exposed metal pipe to propel himself forward, to a set of cables. From there, he kicked off the side of a crumbling wall and swung to safety. He landed with a smooth roll as the whole area collapsed in a flood of concrete and hairy organic material.
Ximin stared at him for a bit then said, “Why the fuck didn’t you do that earlier?”
“I-I actually have no idea how I did that.”
“Everyone alright?” Jianting cut in.
The other two men made noises of affirmation. The worst was over it seems. The rest of the way was stable.
“Good.” Jianting tossed Fongming’s backpack back to him and hoisted the Inspector up in his arms. “Let’s get the hell out of here then.”