Chapter 10 - Darkness

(in which there is, once again, a fall, and another fall, and bubbles)

> "There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar."

> --Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

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ZAP-BANG!

...

A hand... a clawed hand... six fingers, six long fingers, all dripping with reflective ichor. Squeezing the air out of his throat. Its owner was the doppelganger that had terrified them on the floe, its features a mixture of the team's.

The surroundings, a mind-swearing swirl of gore-marred reds and putrid grays and there was a throbbing that echoed through the whole air and now it was all black it was all becoming black all was fog all was dread

"this is all a misunderstanding" he gasped "we just want to learn more of you"

its back half slid off with a horrifying wet sound and he felt himself drowning in its suddenly green innards and it resonated it echoed it vibrated with the

...im sorry imsorryIMSORRYIMSORRY

...

It was all a blur, of still-echoing sharp sound and intense pain and rough tumbling. Iraklijs felt like he was just punted by a particularly bulky Lateral-genemod. His ears ringed and his vision duplicated. With disgust and shock, he wiped his face of his deceased coworker's blood, which still dribbled onto his eyes and mouth. A few fragments of blaster casing and battery were embedded in the graphene folds of his coat, but thankfully it appeared that his cowering instinct had prevented any from embedding into his face.

The four survivors were laying at the bottom of a ramp, like the one they had come down from to see Spots' corpse, except leading to a different room. This seemed to be the left exit. The room itself seemed identical to the previous one, complete with the same circular hatch... which Iraklijs realized his head was slumped into. Sitting up hastily, he surveyed the room, Altair's still-pulsating white light illuminating it like a torch.

"Why did she even try to retrieve the guns?" the crystal hummed.

"Look, buddy, I'm not a fucking omniscient being," Ekut snarled and stood up, her formerly bright blue coat now stained with green and red viscera. "I could not have known. Not in a panic with everyone, including myself, losing their collective shit, because the person who was supposed to lead us BECAME A FUCKING NDAKUTA SAUSAGE!"

Realizing nobody would get her reference to her homeland's cuisine, she abruptly ceased her rant and spat on the floor. An oddly humanlike action. Then she realized that her right ear was cut cleanly in half by a chunk of shrapnel. The circle had become a semicircle. "Medigel, please!"

Zkeh was next to stand up, and quickly wielded their own supply of kaziil-adapted gel, then smeared the blue paste on the ragged cut. Everyone had a small medkit, with drugs and tools tailored to the different species in the team. This meant that any single explorer's death would not leave the team without the possibility to give first aid.

The chohjozra, himself, was completely nonchalant to the fact that his beak had a massive crack going down its side, nearly splitting it, and that his tail hand was hanging limply. His face showed no signs of pain, and it was as if he simply did not notice his injuries. His black coat was heavily damaged, too, and its lacy patterns were buried under grime.

Tsip was similarly unfazed by the bits of shrapnel jutting out of their thin gray suit, clearly having pierced into the teal flesh underneath. "Zkeh, I know you're sturdy, but not quite like me. Stand still, please."

"...for fuck's sake... Zkeh, are you okay?" Iraklijs stood up.

"Yess..." the chohjozra begrudgingly laid down. The three others knelt nearby. Tsip and Ekut held down his tail, while Iraklijs tried his best to splint and insta-cast the alligator's mangled tail-hand. The thick jelly quickly solidified, holding the broken appendage in a straightened position, and was protected from infection by several layers of white gauze. The beak, on the other hand, was carefully patched with chameleon tape that immediately changed color and texture to match the yellow keratin... and almost seemed to weld itself into its smooth surface.

"Thank you..." Zkeh said, in his usual monotone.

"No problem," Iraklijs patted his head and turned to look at Tsip. "Are you sure you don't need help?" he said, watching the kseldani rip out the shards from their body.

"Yes. I mean, no. I mean... don't help me," Tsip said.

"This is what I meant by English being awful," Ekut paced between the two exits out of the room. "Anyways, here's a new plan: come back to the well, and tell Tekatl to--"

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

"What is that..." Tsip's voice echoed, and soon they found out.

Careening down the ramp that led up to the room where Spots died, was some sort of immense scoop. It seemed to be guided by rails that suddenly molded themselves from the walls in its path.

"FUCK! RUN! PICK A WAY AND RUN!" Iraklijs shouted. They hastily packed the medical supplies and, aided by Ekut's calm and catlike dexterity, swiftly lowered themselves down the right corridor. It took a sudden turn straight downwards, but as everyone was holding onto the cord, it was not a big deal. They could hear the machine slurp up the blood and entrails and toss them into the disposal, followed by a grinding and zapping sound.

They started slowly lowering themselves in a controlled manner... until the scoop went down the hall and hit the spot where the magnetic plunger was attached, that is. It reeled in, nearly hitting Ekut in the face, right as the four began their fall.

And it was a good thing that Zkeh's claws had somewhat healed back at the well-room, because now the scraping of these dagger-like talons, on eight whole feet, was the only thing preventing the group from entering freefall. They slid downwards, that way, holding onto Zkeh's back as he strained to slow the skid down the wall. Luckily, this did not last long.

The shaft ended. Ekut, thinking quickly, shot out another grapple anchor, and Zkeh gracefully lowered himself down, with the other three holding on like spiderlings onto their mother, descending on a thread of spiderweb. Instead of a thump and splat that would have signified failure, there was merely the soft click of claws that signified an equally soft landing.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

This was a hallway that resembled the one they first escaped the blob into. But there was no 'monorail', and instead of hatches there were many transparent bubbles that bulged from the walls like blisters. All were empty from a quick look around, and the hallway was straight and unchanging. As everywhere else in the complex, there was only a desolate kind of silence filling the air. Iraklijs' heartbeat slowed slightly. He turned off Altair's light, due to the crystal's flickering radiance, induced by its disturbed mental state, growing rather irritating. Everyone whipped out their flashlights.

Iraklijs walked up to one of the blisters. Empty indeed, with a few tubes hanging inside. He then inspected the one immediately to the right. Also empty. A few more steps to the right. There was a pile of some odd, chunky dust at the bottom of it. He took a picture. "...guys, check this out," he said.

Ekut stared at the pile. "I wish we had a way to get a sample of it. But smashing things and attracting attention doesn't strike me as a good idea."

A faint thrashing sound echoed through the hall, from the left. "Hass anyone else heard that?" Zkeh said.

Ekut blinked. "Yes. Go there."

Tsip led the way, their flashlight swinging from side to side. Their footsteps filled the air in an incessant cacophony, and Iraklijs nervously glanced from side to side. The sound repeated. This time, something that sounded like terse speech in an unfamiliar language accompanied it.

"Doppelganger?" Iraklijs scratched his head, and took out his revolver. He aimed into the darkness beyond, which the flashlight did not eliminate.

Scritch. Scratch. Groan. Yap!

"Likely," Ekut said. "Considering past events, more than likely, almost guaranteed."

Tsip waved their hand. "Can't know."

"I said almost," Ekut sighed.

Rattle. Scratch. Scrrrrattttchh... Kbol. Akus...! Akus!

"...the doppelganger was a lot more... monotonous," Iraklijs said. "I don't think this is it."

They reached what seemed to be the source of the noise. Tsip swung their flashlight to the side, and revealed something absolutely nobody expected. It was not a doppelganger. Iraklijs gasped, Zkeh hissed in confusion, and Ekut just blinked slowly.

Contained inside one of the blisters was a living dal-ghar. Iraklijs hadn't seen anyone of this species in a long time. The others, an even longer time, if ever. But now, a tormented snake-person was before their eyes.

Her-- and it was surely a 'her', due to the slight cobra-like hood on the neck-- body was two-and-a-half meters long, muscular in a rigid and unearthly way, and covered in metallically shiny red hexagonal scales from head to tail-tip. Much like the late Spots, she was a legless serpent with manipulators on the sides of her torso, but in her case these manipulators were two extremely long, bony hands with three clawed fingers. Her head, too, was much more detailed than that of a bquaa, with lots of ridges on the top of her head that formed concentric circles, and small non-concentric oval ridges on her cheeks. For eyes, she had four black beads a bit smaller than human eyes, arranged in a roughly Λ-shaped pattern, which glistened in a decidedly non-reptilian pattern, instead more resembling Ekut's reflective eyes, or those of a cat. Much like many sapient cold-blooded beings, the dal-ghar had ear fins; hers were concave with drooping tips like the wings of a butterfly, and discolored. She did not wear jewelry or fine robes, as other dal-ghar did (whether in their home-space or as emigres), instead being bare of anything except her scaly hide. And also unlike them, she had no regality or dignity to her.

This was not a representative individual of one of the most cruel and authoritarian empires of the Oval, and an enemy of the Federation, the Alliance, and all that stood for freedom; this was a captive, a victim, a poor soul somehow trapped here. Nevertheless, she seemed well-fed and physically uninjured. Her presence here raised lots of questions that Iraklijs could not quite articulate.

She was attached to the back of the cell with several metal clamps that restrained her thorax and tail, as well as two thin, flexible pipes that stuck into her ear-holes, and two more tucked into her mouth. She trashed around as much as she could, reaching the translucent shell of the blister with her claws, hissing and groaning and shouting brief words. Upon noticing the explorers, the dal-gharess turned away from the beam of the flashlight, and began rhythmically whipping her tail. Her mouth opened and closed silently, many times in quick succession.

"...what the..." Iraklijs cleared his throat, and regretted not taking Hegemony Xenolinguistics class. "Hello? Who the hell are you?"

The dal-ghar seemed to recognize English, if not understand it. Or perhaps she recognized a human. She snarled a few words that Iraklijs wasn't sure were not obscene.

Ekut immediately took a few steps back, and began inspecting the cell from that distance with a mysterious look on her face. "Greetings," she said. Behind that dull greeting was deep internal conflict.

Zkeh reached for his mattock, only to be stopped by Tsip, who knelt next to them. "No."

"I wanted to break her out, Tssip... not kill her..."

Ekut gave him a death glare. The dal-ghar stared at them and almost seemed to chuckle.

Iraklijs looked towards his comrades. "Let me sort her out, nobody say or do anything that might aggravate her," he said, remembering the reason he skipped that class. He took out his datapad, then turned on the translator, and scrolled down to select 'Tkou-jyk-mul' from a massive list of alien languages.

"I am Iraklijs Sīlis, of the COMA Agency, and so are the people behind me. We're supposed to explore this place but, to put it simply, got lost here. We were seized by a living metal creature, but managed to escape it. Our team leader died a gruesome death not thirty minutes ago. You're the first clearly sapient soul that we've seen in these halls. We have zero intent of hurting you, and despite our nations' enmity I want to rescue you. If you're still sane, say something coherent in the dal-ghar language."

He then waited as the pad barked out harsh and choppy words for a small while.

The captive's ear-fins perked up. She strained to speak properly, snarling in confusion and darting her head from side to side. Soon, Iraklijs' pad translated her response.

"Human?! A real, living human?! Not a taunting simulacrum of my kind, but a flesh-and-blood human?! What do you mean... rescue...? You humans, and you kaziil, and you kseldani, and you chohjozra, only wish to debase... I was taught... we were all taught that. You are not here to rescue me. You will indoctrinate me! You will indoctrinate me!" she was clearly not in the best state of mind.

Iraklijs sighed and spoke into the translator again. "You were taught propaganda. And besides... look, we're not even affiliated with the Alliance, strictly speaking. We're not a political agency. I want to save your scaly ass out of altruism, not because I want to 'indoctrinate' you. Do you want out of this bubble or not? If so, swear on the Red Comet that you will not attack us. We know the way to the exit."

The Red Comet was the main god of the dal-ghar. They were only able to overthrow their old slavemasters, saacxit-jxuumzu, and turn the tables of oppression on them in the worst possible way, because of a precursor plague the latter accidentally unleashed on their shared homeworld, at the same time that a particularly bright comet, tinted red like a dal-ghar's hide, appeared over the desert planet's night sky. From this deity came the divine right of the new Iron Empire's nobility, of those matriarchs and their families, to oppress the low, to uphold the natural order. This divine right was what led the Hegemony to conquer, and crush all they deemed unnatural. And due to their civilization's origins, they were as or more driven to precursor exploration than humans. There was a reason Iraklijs had brought up a rival team from the Iron Empire as a possibility if the planet's location was leaked; and this was apparently a moot point considering this lady's presence.

She took six whole seconds to think, and to compose herself. "I swear," her voice echoed through the translator. "I swear by the Comet, and by my husband Dak-tuz-yul, and my hatchlings, and my parents, and my sisters, and my grandparents, and by my liege Hok-tuz-zhvo, that I will not take any hostile actions against you or your team."

"Right," Iraklijs said, gesturing to Zkeh to not immediately start hacking away with his mattock, "I do want to ask a few questions before we release you, though. What is your name, miss? For how long did you stay here? Where is the rest of your team? How did you come to know of the glass planet? And how did you get trapped?"

The dal-gharess clearly was taken by a panic attack, following this rapid-fire interrogation. She trashed around harder, before hissing loudly. She then monotonously, yet calmly, rattled off the answers, as if speaking to a regime official. "Giil-tuz-kol, of the Tuz merchant house. I don't know, likely years, for hundreds of times I wake up and see only the glass bubble and feel only the tubes. I don't know, likely dead or worse. What do you mean, glass planet? Our freighter was carrying monopoles, and the captain Phor-xal-zann chose to take a shortcut through what she said was a non-patrolled system in Silent Empire space; we exited warp in front of a Silent ship, and we all felt waves of heat wash over us; the next thing I remember is that I was alone, in a hallway, and they took me to a large spherical chamber through a hatch in the floor..." she then hissed and wailed loudly.

She kept wailing.