Karen is panting, climbing up the round staircase to the monitor hall; she is accompanied by RJ the brunette with a mustache. He is wearing a pair of round glasses now.
Karen hates awkward silences and usually breaks them by explaining her favorite scientific topics. Right now, for some reason, she feels perfectly calm walking up the stairs in silence with the mustached man.
"So, elevators..." RJ breaks the silence. "We have them here but they are so high maintenance we keep them only in working areas. The resting blocks have none, you have to walk up and down stairs all the time." RJ finishes with an awkward smile. Karen smiles back "He must be uncomfortable with awkward silences too."
"Batteries don't last here too, I hope your friend's headphone batteries are special because lithium batteries die in the magnetic field in just a few hours."
Karen stops on her step. RJ stops to look back. "Her batteries are cesium, they last longer." She looks at her watch and resumes climbing. "The headphone batteries have failed by now." She pinches a stream of her hair on her right shoulder and starts curling it around her index nervously. "I hope her pocket flashlight doesn't fail."
For unknown reasons, CASTEL does not allow the Cosmic Mirror to reflect sunlight on plasma rigs for longer than a few hours. Some assume that it has to do with reflecting energy onto a volatile rig.
The fake sun has almost disappeared. The sky is turning black as minutes pass. Rayne was hoping the natural purple hue of the planet's always-night sky would glow again and shine some light on the enormous unmoving worm. The sky completely darkens but only a faint crimson hue appears.
"The smoke from the flare has changed the sky's color." the captain utters without precedence as if he has read Rayne's mind.
The bright white light from Rayne's pocket flashlight shines on a small section of the humongous worm. Outside of the flashlight, complete darkness. A 1 by 1 meter square from the skin is exposed and the underlying flesh is bleeding. The bright white light of the flashlight is absorbed in the deep red color of the blood slowly oozing out.
Rayne is standing a few meters away, observing the bleeding flesh. She starts walking closer, and as she gets closer, the light of her flashlight reflects more intensely from the wound. Rayne pushes her arms deep into the flesh. The snow under their feet shakes. The worm jitters and pushes Rayne backward. Rayne holds her arms inside the flash and keeps her balance "Damn thing is waking up." The jittering stops a few seconds later and the worm returns to looking lifeless again.
The captain feels the urge to light a smoke as he watches this scene. His hands are covered in blood. His 18 months of training as a battle nurse toughened him up for any gory scene. Still, a cigarette would help a lot in dealing with all the familiar smells.
The doctor's equipment has protection against magnetic radiation but its half-life is limited.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
"Where do you think they are?" asks RJ.
"I don't have a clue. The doctor always does this part of the extermination alone." The two of them are facing the metallic entrance door of the monitor hall.
Karen has never accompanied the doctor in the final procedure of any past Vermillion worm mission. The doctor never took an assistant with her. She only needed remote backup from the center to calculate the exact ejection site of the worm, "The location must be AI-calculated live. That fucking overflow killed the connection." Karen suddenly realizes she just spoke loudly.
Karen and most of the CASTEL employees are completely AI-dependent, Rayne and her everyday assistant, Jane, are some of the few trained to go offline if necessary.