Max wasn't exactly optimistic about her time remaining at the lake. With the frequency of scary incidents so far, she seriously doubted she'd end up staying the night, so she prepared to drive out of there at a moment's notice in case some other unnerving event occurred.
Wire was back pacing beside his RV while Max packed up the camp chairs she'd set down beside the van. It only took her a few minutes; afterwards, she leaned against her vehicle and grabbed Wire's attention with a wave.
“Do you need me to go clean up my snack garbage in your RV?” she asked.
“Nah, that's no problem. I'm more concerned about the remnants of that thing I just threw out.”
The volon blob crawling inside Wire's RV had left some small droplets of white blood in its wake. If those could also become sentient...
“Yeah... that could be a problem,” Max admitted.
“I'd better get in there before they crawl under something and I can't find them,” Wire sighed. He stopped patrolling and headed inside.
“Wait,” Max called out.
Wire spun around and faced her from the doorway.
“I think I have an idea. I... yeah. I want to try something.” She fought against her curiosity to dismiss him and say never mind, but after a few seconds of frantic debate in her head, her curiosity won. “Give me a second,” she said.
Max shuffled over to the passenger's seat and grabbed an empty test tube and one of her fluid analysis devices – the first model that had given her the 0.3% mercury result with the lake water. She then walked up to Wire and hesitantly held up the vial to him. “Would you... be willing to?”
He took a moment before speaking. “Are you sure?”
“I'm just... I gotta know. I want to see if my machine can tell me what it's made of. If it might bring me any closer to figuring this mystery out...”
“Are you gonna be okay if you test that stuff and it tells you that this is pure 'I'm gonna kill you goo' or some dumb shit? What if it comes to life?”
Max chuckled. “The machine couldn't even get the lake water right, unless this place really is filled with mercury. I don't think it's going to give me haunted results. As far as becoming sentient...” She couldn't lie – the idea was frightening. If it could eat through glass like it did cardboard, she'd be in for a nightmare scenario.
But then something occurred to her. The fluid on the “finger” didn't eat through the glass panel beneath the microscope when it was resting on it. Either it had consciously eaten through the cardboard, or it couldn't get through glass. Whatever the case, she felt comfortable enough to let her fervent interest win again.
“Maybe,” she continued, “we can just get a tiny bit. Just enough for the machine to pick up on it. Maybe it won't start moving that way.”
“All right, well, it's your call.”
“And you're okay doing this?” Max double-checked.
“Yeah, I mean, I'll be fine with it until it comes to life again.”
She shut her eyes and gave Wire a slow nod before handing him the test tube. As he walked into the RV, she felt compelled to follow him and watch. As long as he's the one putting it in there, and as long as he's willing... there's no need to feel scared or guilty.
After closing the door behind her, Max peeked around the corner to get a view of the scene. For a moment, she almost felt embarrassed for being apprehensive – aside from the small mess they made while dealing with the big glob, the residual volon fluid was nowhere near as scary as she expected. Not only was it all completely still, but there wasn't as much as Max thought there would be.
Wire knelt down next to the cupboard and looked around, eventually picking out a small glass panel. He leaned over the counter where most of the monster blood had dripped, positioning the tube next to the edge of the surface. He delicately used the glass panel to scrape some of the liquid towards the vial. Although it was quite viscous, it wasn't squirming or otherwise moving unnaturally.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Bit by bit, the white fluid dripped into the test tube. Max locked her gaze on it, waiting for the tiniest sign of sentience to show itself. But even as the vial filled up almost a quarter of the way, it didn't burn through the glass or begin wriggling.
“That's good,” Max declared. “That should be more than enough.”
Wire held the tube in the air between them. They both watched it for a quarter minute; once they determined the fluid was not moving, Max took the vial with a ginger grip.
She slid the sample tube into the fluid analyzer and pressed the button to scan it. Her heartbeat accelerated, anticipating some kind of huge reveal that would crack the mystery wide open, until–
The scan finished. 99.9% mercury, among other trace elements.
She stared in disbelief. It took her a few moments to process what she was seeing, but she soon came to the conclusion that only one of three possibilities could be true:
-The scanner was glitching and totally unreliable for information.
-The scanner didn't know what to call volon blood and erroneously labeled it as mercury.
-Volons were actually made of mercury.
“What's it say?” Wire asked.
Option 1 seemed unlikely with the level of precision the device gave the other “normal” elements, even when she'd tested the lake water. She didn't know enough about mercury to say whether option 3 was plausible or not, so her mind gravitated towards option 2.
“Max?”
And from option 2, another theory formed in her mind – a simple connection she was surprised she hadn't already made. If it's labeling volon goop as mercury... And the lake water is apparently 0.3% mercury...
She managed to stop herself before she went down any more thought spirals. Instead, she looked up to her friend.
“Wire,” Max said, “I need your opinion on something.”
“Ah?”
“The lake water scan said it was 0.3% mercury earlier, right.”
Wire hummed affirmatively.
“And this scan right now just said this volon stuff is 99.9% mercury.”
“Whoa. Well, if you want my opinion, I think your scanner's wrong. I've seen mercury, and it's not... like that.”
“Okay, but riddle me this. If the scanner is calling this stuff mercury, and it's also saying the lake contains a high volume of mercury, what is the first thing you conclude from that?”
“...The lake... is part volon?”
Max exhaled. “So I'm not crazy.”
Wire hummed and hawed before answering. “No, you're not crazy,” he mumbled. “It makes sense to me, I think?”
“It's getting really tempting to leave and tell my boss 'the lake is a volon and that's why it's rising. Please don't assign me to any more nightmare jobs.'”
“I don't blame you. If I was in your shoes and I was sent here alone, I probably would have fucked off the moment I realized volons were active here. But, strength in numbers, I suppose!” Wire patted her shoulder. “Although I'll admit, I've kind of been enjoying the thrill.”
Maxie sighed. “That makes one of us. I'm going to go check on my other stuff and make a judgment call from there.”
“Want me to resume patrolling while you do that?”
“I'd really appreciate that.”
“Your wish is my command!”
Wire's chipper attitude was always welcome in uncomfortable situations. Max led him out of the RV and she hopped in her van once again, leaving Wire to secure the area.
She opened her laptop and looked at the water level graph, not expecting much to have changed. But Max felt a cold sweat jolt through her body upon seeing the stats – the lake's water had risen substantially in just the last hour. Before coming to the lake, it had taken about 24 hours to increase by a centimetre. Now, it had risen multiple centimetres in just one hour, and the graph showed no signs of slowing down.
Max peered out of the van's windshield to look at the electronic stake she'd placed at the water's edge. As the laptop said, it was now clearly deeper than when she first placed it.
“Oh no,” she mumbled.
She opened the sonar scan window to check its status. Immediately, she noticed the strange lakebed. It was way higher than before, even though she last checked it not even an hour ago.
Max dragged the mouse cursor back and forth along the timeline bar beneath the sonar images, scrubbing through all the scans the boat had taken since it was deployed. Three more blips – volons, presumably – had walked down to the lakebed from the other side of the water. And, in plain view, the flat area below the lake was rising, pushing up massive heaps of sediment.
Whatever was down there, it was emerging, and fast.
She unrolled the van's window. “Wire!” she called out.
“What's up?”
“I'm getting out of here. Something below the lake is rising up and I'm not going to be here to find out what it is.”
“Uh oh. What about your gadgets out there?” Wire asked, pointing to the lake.
“It's company property – I'll tell them we barely survived a volon attack and we didn't have time for it. Seriously, dude, I have a bad feeling about this.”
“A-all right. Do you want me to follow you out of here?”
“Probably a good idea!” she shouted.
Something huge below the lake is pushing the water level up, Max concluded. Good enough for me. One instinct her curiosity could never trump was her sense of self-preservation, and it was on red alert after seeing the bottom of the lake grow like that. She entered the five-digit code to start the vehicle's ignition, and her van whirred to life.
As if prompted by the vehicle's rumble, an immense, ghastly moan rumbled through the ground.
“What... the fuck... was that?!” Max panted. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wire bolt into his RV, clearly spurred on by the monstrous wail.
She drove the vehicle around to face the exit, hearing the RV chug to life nearby. After pointing her van at the trail, she peeked at her laptop on the passenger's seat. The water level graph had spiked up way further, and the sonar scan showed a very different, lumpy shape emerging from the lakebed.
Max pressed her foot down on the accelerator pedal.