Jim

Jim tried to breathe quietly, kept himself hidden next to his two allies. They were currently hiding behind a larger cable, which was right in front of a round opening: the end of the tunnel. The temperature had risen by a good bit since they had entered the tunnel, and something about the air here seemed to be even more dull, or plain even, than out in the dense metallic fauna of the jungle. The sweat on his forehead wasn’t from the heat, though.

Anna held her bow readied, waited for the right moment to strike. A rather small heart – which Hendrick had cut out of the spreader they had fought earlier – was fixated on the arrow Anna was currently preparing to shoot. She had one of Hendrick’s spears on her back as a melee weapon, just in case they needed it later on. Hendrick couldn’t carry it anymore anyways; was more than busy carrying the box on his back around.

Hopefully this works, he thought. I don’t want to find out what happens once these things catch us trespassing.

In front of them, behind the round opening, a giant funnel shaped room presented itself. Spreaders were floating around like honeybees, going in and out of dozens of round holes which appeared to be arranged evenly spaced close to the ceiling of the room. Jim estimated them to be around 50 meters apart from each other, the room being too large to guess its size.

I just hope that Hen is right and they really just use their own assigned tunnel, he thought.

Jim looked over at Anna’s arms, saw her struggle to take aim.

Fighting one of them was worse enough…

From what Hendrick had explained earlier, every single one of these holes led to another tunnel, like the one they had just walked through. Only the upper meters of the room weren’t slope shaped and instead consisted of a vertical metal wall.

At about the same height as the tunnel entrances along the wall, there was an around 2 meter wide metal grid floor. See through… because of course it had to be see through. Like everything here, it seemed like it hadn’t been built and rather grown out of the wall, which itself seemed to be shaped out of metal parts and leftovers. Even the sloped surfaces weren’t smooth, but rather smaller metallic pieces melt together in rough fashion.

Anna followed the movement of a rather close spreader, which carried something with his tentacles. It was still alive, weak mechanical roaring getting drowned out by the sound of the floating terrors. The spreader made its way closer to the middle of the room, then dropped the creature, which hit the steep slope surface below with a loud crank. It then slid downwards until it disappeared inside of the hole at the bottom of the room. Its screams decreased in volume, then disappeared completely.

Anna’s bow moved with the being, her mechanical hands shivering slightly. It then flew closer to them, almost in their direction. Did it spot something? Jim saw Anna’s hand shake more.

“Not this one,” Hendrick whispered. Anna stopped shaking as the spreader flew closer before leaving through its assigned hole around 50 meters to their right. Anna sighed, put down her aim.

“So this is what you call most of the problems, huh? How are we even supposed to get to the elevator like this? It’s like a fucking nest of them.” Even though Anna was whispering, her voice appeared to be rather loud.

“It’s the easiest way, believe me. If you don’t want to end like the animal that just got dropped, just do what I say.”

“Might as well be less painful than this shit,” Anna said, rolled her eyes. “Pff… Anyways. Which one is it then?”

“You see that one back there?” Hendrick pointed towards another spreader, which had just entered the room. He nodded. “Once it moved far enough.”

Anna took aim once again, this time without the shaking.

Jim had used the last few moments to keep his breathing quiet. He needed to stay focused now, making sure everything worked according to plan. He couldn’t allow himself to make any more rash decisions, had to keep them safe.

His head went through the steps once again: shoot down problematic spreader… Sneak alongside the wall as fast as possible while the others are confused… get to the–

An arrow hissed through the air as Jim got ripped out of his thoughts. The others had already gotten out of the hiding place, had positioned themselves, ready to move. The arrow flew close to the spreader, but missed by half a meter and embedded itself inside of the wall behind the spreader with a loud thock.

“Fuck,” she whispered. “My hands… can’t aim.”

Hendrick jumped over the cable and onto the metallic grid floor. He threw the tracking device back into the tunnel, said, “Now. We won’t get a second chance.”

The nearby spreaders appeared to have noticed the loud sound, moved towards the arrow to examine it. Anna followed Hendrick onto the grid, looked at Jim. “Come on, dude.”

Jim hesitated, then followed. Why did it have to be a grid? He did not look down, followed the others alongside the wall. The spreaders pulled the arrow out, looked at the heart which had been attached to it. They somehow looked sad.

Hen was right. It really is their highest priority, he thought. These things really are dumb as shit.

Fast, light steps moved through the room as they kept pushing forward. They couldn’t run fast because of the weight Hendrick was carrying on his back, but they still moved as fast as possible. Jim held his shield and half-scissor ready, kept his attention to everything which could be a potential danger.

Then, out of a tunnel they were about to pass by, a spreader emerged. It turned towards them, lifted a single tentacle. Hendrick stood right in front of the thing as it made itself ready to attack.

But then, right before it could fire its smoke, an arrow pierced the tentacle, and the smoke was misdirected. Jim leaped forward, cut off the tentacle before the spreader could react to the sudden attack. It let out a metallic screech, shivered and shook itself before Anna impaled its body with her spear.

“Fuck yea. Die trash-can,” she said in the most aggressive whispering voice Jim had ever heard. He caught himself blushing, shook his head to restore his focus.

He turned his head, got met with another problem. Some spreaders had heard the screeching and were now approaching rapidly, their screeches alarming more and more of their kind. They were still rather far away, but that wouldn’t stay like that for long.

Suddenly, Jim’s fear of heights wasn’t as big of a problem anymore. “Uh… guys?”

“Screw the plan,” Hendrick shouted. “Run!”

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Anna

The spreaders inched closer and closer as they pressed forward as fast as they could, a chorus of low humming behind them increasing in volume more and more. Anna was in the lead, turned around for just a moment to see Hendrick falling behind. Of course he was the slowest. He carried that box thing on his back after all, as well as some extra weight.

Hopefully this thing won’t get us into more trouble than it gets us out of… she thought.

Anna stopped running, turned around and aimed with her bow. She recalled the lessons from her archery club, moved as smoothly as her metal arms allowed her to. She pulled with her right arm, index finger now close to the crease of her lips, middle and ring finger below the side of the chin. She held her breath low, let the string slide out of her fingers as the arrow whipped through the air at high speed.

It almost hit a spreader, which floated to the side to dodge, but hit another spreader in the process. A second later, half a dozen spreaders were losing their balance and falling towards the sloped surface beneath.

Nailed it! she thought. These things sure aren’t the brightest.

Jim, who was guarding Hendrick, shot Anna a reassuring nod. She replied with a smile.

It was impressive that Jim was now able to run around here so freely. Usually, he got balance problems as soon as someone talked about high places.

Anna turned around, continued running.

That was the last arrow I can waste. I’m going to need the last one for later.

They were now almost at their destination, its shape now clearly visible. It seemed to be a rather regular elevator which was built into the room’s outer wall. A little out-of-place looking, but besides that, more or less what you would expect to find in a shopping center. Oh… the things she would give to be in a shopping center right now and not this oversized dump...

She reached the elevator door.

Next to the elevator, a splash of reddish colour caught her eye. “The tracking device!” she shouted while out of breath.

“It is in the tunnel as decoy.” Hendrick shouted, his voice more flat than usual. “Use your hands!”

Hendrick was around 50 meters behind Anna; Jim was running towards her. She looked at her hands, then at the scanner. Hendrick had stopped, was now turned towards the approaching swarm of spreaders.

She clenched her teeth, pressed both palms against the fleshy fixture which grew out of the metal next to the elevator door. It twitched and moved, stuck to her hand.

Anna turned her head, saw Jim catch up to her. Hendrick was now around 40 meters away, walking backwards while still facing the spreaders, which had almost caught up to him. He held a tube in his hands which was attached to the box onto his back.

“Jim, what is he doing?”

“I don’t know. Just open the door.”

Hendrick stood there, the spreaders now almost close enough as they lifted their tentacles ready for attack.

Hendrick stopped walking.

And a burst of grey smoke shot out of the box,

piercing forward as it engulfed the army of spreaders.

And they fell out of the sky, tumbling down the slope one by one.

The elevator door opened, made a calming ‘ding’ sound. A small screen above it displayed the words ‘DNA recognized. Access granted’. The red mass let go of Anna’s hands, and she hurried inside of the elevator. Jim followed. On the inside were dozens of various buttons, arranged in a vertical line with symbols of unknown language.

“How far do we need to go down?” Jim asked.

Anna hovered her fingers in front of the buttons, then pressed the one at the very bottom.

The door begun to close, but Hendrick wasn’t there.

“Hen! Fast!”

Anna peaked outside, saw Hendrick still fending off the spreaders with his smoke while walking backwards. He was now only 10 meters away from the door. Jim jammed his shield between the two sides of the closing door, stopped it as pressure begun to build up

Hendrick turned around, started running. The spreaders one by one ascended from below, continued their attack.

The wooden shield made uncomfortable cracking noises.

The spreaders started shooting their smoke towards Hendrick.

And as Hendrick jumped towards the elevator door,

the shield broke and the door threw itself shut.

Hendrick had made it in just in time.

Then, a split second after the door had closed:

Baaam!

Something had smashed against the elevator door, leaving a huge dent in the metal. But right before whatever had caused the dent could continue, the elevator started moving downwards. They were safe… at least for now.

Hendrick, who had thrown Jim off balance with his heroic jump, now got up and held his forehead.

Jim sat up, his hair even more messy than before, said, “I-Is everyone safe?”

“Yea,” Hendrick said, now rubbing his forehead as if to wish the pain away.

“I think I just had a panic attack, but besides that I’m good,” Anna said, helped Jim get up.

Jim got back onto his feet, blew some hair out of his face. “That was... fucking awesome. Good job team. I think Jack would have been proud of us.”

Silence.

“So that was what you meant with ‘we can get rid of most problems’.” Anna said. “Am I right, Hendrick?”

Hendrick had put down the box, seemed pretty calm for what had just happened. “Yea… more or less. We should be safe for a bit now. The elevator takes a good while to travel all the way down.”

She took a look around. The button on the elevator she had pressed earlier now glowed in a threatening blue. She wouldn’t be surprised if the symbol meant something like ‘descent to hell’ in trash-can language. A single light embedded into the ceiling of the elevator cast a yellow filter onto the rest of the room. Wooden splinters were spread across the floor.

“Yea… there goes our only defense, I suppose,” she said, leaned against a wall. It was surprising that this elevator looked normal, and wasn’t weirdly smacked together from random mechanical crap like the rest of this place.

She looked at the palm of her hand. There was no trace of the scanner.

‘DNA recognized…’ she thought. What exactly did that mean?

Hendrick sat down, leaned against the wall as well. Jim did the same, his legs crossed as he rolled his head over towards Hendrick. “So, what’s next ‘hacker-man-I-cheat-myself-through-the-giant-metal-maze’ guy?”

“Well… remember that one time we found out you are the fastest runner of our group?”

“Uhm… yea?” Jim scratched his head, one eyebrow slightly raised.

“Why should that be from importance here?” Anna asked.

Hendrick smiled.

“Glad you asked.”

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