Her gut suddenly felt queasy and slippery. The high from being miraculously healed was beginning to wear off. Did she really want to do this?
No, she did not, but she was not unaccustomed to uncomfortable things. Not at all.
She saw a downward slope and made her way down, ducking under a stream of hot air blowing out from a leaky valve. She would need to be cautious but quick if she was to find where the others had gone. No screaming their names, as much as her fear was pushing her to do. She kept descending, finding bridges and stairways and slopes as she went, seeing no Seclurm aliens or crewmates anywhere yet. She felt sweat oozing from every pore in her body and wondered if that was from the increasing heat or her own anxiety.
♦♦♦
Terri was considering opening the door. If Sam had not been with her, she believed she would have done it. Better far to die from a mob of murderous, faceless, alien animals than from the evolved, monstrous form of what was once her friend and coworker.
About twenty feet above, on the perforated metal floor that separated them, the cocoon that had formed around Randy was beginning to tremble, ballooning ever so slowly but surely to burst, perhaps any minute now. Neither she nor Sam had wanted to look at it, but both had stolen glances and seen the vague silhouette of what was in that cocoon, and it wasn’t Randy. Not anymore.
They had sunk back against the wall of the rusty silo, stepping over rusted metal chains and crates of bolts or nuts or beads. Within the silo also echoed the sound of the cocoon expanding: a slithery, stretching noise accompanied by the dripping of liquid from the cocoon through the thin perforated floor and onto the floor of the silo itself, some of which looked acidic. Seeing that left no guesses as to what manner of abominable transformation was happening to Randy’s poor, wretched body in that bloated, dark purple coffin. And outside the silo, of course, the occasional scratching and howling and clawing of the Seclurm creatures who had chased them into this place didn’t seem like it would end anytime soon.
The scent of rusty metal was thick in the low-oxygen air, and a strange, foul smell emitted from the growing cocoon, like the oily smell of Seclurm mixed with the deepest biochemical processes of Randy’s human form. Terri badly wanted to be away from it—to weep over his death somewhere far from his mutating carcass.
With their racing hearts and sweaty skins, Sam and Terri almost felt that mere moments had passed. Little had been said, and each of them had to keep from weeping or howling in horror and hopelessness as they had been doing for most of the time after they had realized Randy was transforming. There was no talk between them, no questions of how or why Randy had not realized or told them that he had somehow ingested Seclurm. Just a harried atmosphere of delayed death. Nothing but delayed death.
♦♦♦
Rosalyn missed hearing SNTNL’s voice, she realized. It was the closest thing she’d had to a companion here, which was what it was designed to do, of course. Now, she could not have possibly been more alone here as she stalked cautiously down through the factory. She thought she had a tendency to feel somewhat alone on the Novara between jobs, or during those quiet times on the surfaces of asteroids they’d mined hauling minerals on carriers, but here she was truly alone. A speck hiding from cold killing machines on a rock in the pitch black of endless space, carrying only a makeshift alien weapon to stave off attempts to snuff her out.
She could have gone away in that cryo-pod pretending things would somehow be okay if she did. But she knew they would not. For the first time she felt certainty and clarity driving her decisions. She had seen firsthand, and knew that her crewmates had seen even more closely, that Seclurm was a menace. The new creatures SNTNL said had been born from it had not yet shown themselves to her, but she did not need to see them to understand what had happened, and how very easily that sort of thing could happen on Earth. Maybe it would take some years before humans would feel they understood the substance through study enough to begin testing it on animals, but however long it took, it would happen either through horrendous folly or some critical accident. More likely the former; from what SNTNL said, the alien civilization had found many positive uses for Seclurm and used it to great advantage. It was likely the reason for their advanced state, at least partly. Humans—especially the ones at FAER—would find those positive uses too, and be tempted beyond their power to resist to use it. From there, whether quickly or after generations, the planet would fall into chaos.
For a moment, Rosalyn imagined this cluttered, multi-tiered factory she wandered through to be some kind of human city—New York, or London, or Shanghai—now a nearly-deserted ghost town, decrepit and full of death, creatures much like the one that had killed Al and Mitchell on the Novara stalking about hunting survivors. Awful abominations humans could never have imagined causing widespread death.
That drove her onward, those images managing to win out against images of her own imminent demise.
Over twenty minutes had passed with no sign of any life anywhere, even though she had descended fairly far. She would poke around looking for stairways or ramps downward, find them, and then search for the next way down. It would be a trick to get back up when it came time to leave.
If I get that far, she reminded herself grimly.
She began to feel the heat from the reactor core far below, which SNTNL had warned her of, and felt strangely comforted by its warmth the further she went.
One particular structure in the factory caught her attention: a large central sphere atop a very thick column, covered with translucent tubes connecting in and out of and all around it. It almost looked like a brain. Within the tubes flowed a bright yellow light, casting shadows all around the room. Mingled with the light was a dark liquid that most certainly was Seclurm.
She could hear the muck flowing within, energized by the yellow glow.
She walked along the edge of a big drop, scanning the distant lower levels and bridges and mechanical structures down to her left. At that moment she heard faintly a cacophony of sound coming from some room ahead on her right. She started moving with greater speed, keeping her footfalls light and holding her gun at the ready. She came to the corner to peer at a long chamber. There were a number of big boilers set every thirty feet or so on either side of the chamber, and it led to one large silo-like structure at the far wall that was surrounded by a group of voracious creatures.
Their hides were a translucent, whitish color revealing odd but powerful skeletons and organs within. Their skin drooped and folded, yet that somehow did not diminish their appearance of vicious strength. They crawled around on four feet and had purple acid dripping from their bodies at varying rates.
Rosalyn heard screams that she could not believe were inhuman. Her friends? Her heart soared while simultaneously flaring with fear. The aliens ahead looked different from the one on the Novara, but no less deadly. What in the world would she do?
The foolishness of her bravado suddenly became demonstrably apparent. If the gun didn’t prove useful, she would be quickly destroyed.
Well, it was no use worrying about that. Instead her mind raced with thoughts and ideas of what to do. Letting herself be seen was suicide, she knew that much. Was there a weakness she could exploit? Anything at all?
They’re drawn to heat, she remembered of the alien on the Novara. But would these creatures be the same? How could she know?
SNTNL said they’re all collecting around the energy reactor—they must be drawn to heat.
Very quietly, and crouching low, she crept around the corner of the hall and hurried forward to take cover behind the nearest boiler. Now that she got a better look at the place, she scanned around and spotted a metal ladder connected to a catwalk above the row of boilers, high enough that she would be out of sight and earshot of the creatures gathering at the end of the hall.
The echoes of their roaring rattled her eardrums, punctuating her grimacing realization that the catwalk was no good to her—it was on the opposite side. She could not ru
n out into the open and risk revealing herself.
She peered around both sides of the boiler looking for anything else she could use to get up and saw nothing. She was stuck.
“RANDY!” she heard only just loudly enough for her to discern it. It was beyond faint, but there was no mistaking it: that was Terri’s hysterical voice.
Rosalyn had to get there, and quickly.
Her eyes drifted to the hot boiler she leaned against. There was a small window near her eye-level allowing her a look inside. It was a bubbling, boiling tank of what she assumed was water; it was certainly not Seclurm, and that made whatever it was good by comparison. A plan began to formulate in her mind as her gaze followed the boiler tank up to a pipe that fed into it from the ceiling. A searching glance through the entire hall told her that all the boilers in the room were connected to the ceiling similarly.
She needed a distraction. The boiler had a valve at arm’s reach. She touched the valve lightly, but found it too hot to grab with bare skin. She used the barrel of her gun to inch it open bit by bit until a loud whistling sound started emitting from it, louder and louder the more she turned it.
She stopped when she heard distant scraping against the floor that was quickly growing less distant. Gingerly she slipped quickly behind the back of the boiler, moving closer to the silo at the far end of the room without having to move out into the open center and risk being seen. She kept going behind boiler after boiler, ducking under pipes and climbing over mechanical back ends until she was no more than forty feet from the silo.
Peering around, she saw that most of the aliens had gone towards her distraction, but a few were still loitering about halfway down the hall, sniffing in the air. Across the room from Rosalyn, by the opposite boiler, was another rusty-looking ladder. That would be perfect for getting up to the catwalk to the silo’s second floor door, but she wasn’t confident she could run to it and climb up before being spotted and killed. She edged out nearly into the open, looking at the small boiler window, and lifted up her gun to line up with it. Water bubbled inside.
She bit her lip. Was she sure about this? If she had the wrong idea, this would without a doubt cost her her life.
“Oh, God!” came the somewhat-faint, pleading scream of Terri. She thought she heard the voice of Sam as well, saying something unintelligible.
Her brow lowered.
She stepped back from the boiler’s window, out a fair distance into the open hallway, hefted the neutron-scatterer against her shoulder, aimed the barrel at the glass, and pulled the trigger.
The gun jolted her body. The boiler’s glass shattered into nothingness and superheated water started gushing out of the broken window at a rapid rate. But not rapid enough, she realized with panic as she started moving backwards, closer to the ladder. The screeches and scratches of the aliens down the chamber on her right stopped and they all turned to her. Her heart jumped into her throat, but she paid them no heed yet, instead rapidly launching shot after shot into the side of the boiler. The metal was fairly thick, but it seemed like this gun was fairly adept at punching through, as she’d expected from SNTNL’s research. After three more shots, there was another huge hole in the boiler gushing boiling liquid out, and the structural damage she’d caused made the boiler’s upper half start to bend against the hole thanks to the water pressure imbalance. There was a creaking sound, and the metal tube that funneled into the very top of the boiler split ever so slightly off the lid of the boiler, spitting non-boiling liquid.
Still not enough! Rosalyn thought with terror as she realized most of the aliens had turned and started running for her. Sweat fell down her temples and her trigger finger twitched. She had backed up until she was now standing about five feet from the ladder and thirty feet from the punctured boiler, the splashing water creeping closer to her shoes. She looked frantically around the boiler for just a half a moment before spotting thin support bars at its bottom. She fired a blast at one bar and half of the metal was gone. After shooting out another bar close to it, the boiler was finished at last: it tipped almost all the way over, half of it ripping from the other, all the water within it gushing out in a wave. Above it, the connected tube burst entirely and started shooting out gallons and gallons of liquid.
Not a second too soon, Rosalyn turned and leapt up to grab the ladder rungs just as a big wave of boiling liquid rushed into the running aliens and swept them back. One of them made it close enough to leap up to Rosalyn on the ladder, but she pointed the gun down with one hand and pulled the trigger once. The alien was blown back with great force, its chest spattered with bloody gashes, and it splashed into the wave of water and was carried away screeching. Rosalyn had no time to look into its strange eyes: black ends of antennae curled up in rings and connected to the skin of their heads.
The knockback had bruised her stomach, but she bit her lip and forgot the pain. She let the gun fall loose against her body, held up by the strap on her shoulder. With minimal splashes grazing her legs she ascended the ladder and made it to safety.
With a heaving chest she climbed up onto the catwalk and looked back from the high vantage point to see the mayhem she’d caused. The aliens had been carried away just as she had hoped, moving down the hallway and towards the edge of the main factory room, where they would fall off and hopefully break their necks. The sound of hundreds of gallons of water thundering down and through the hall echoed loudly and constantly. Rosalyn thought she preferred that to the relative silence she’d heard as she had crept through the factory.
There was no time to congratulate herself. Rosalyn dashed along the catwalk until it came to a stop just above a landing with one of the two second floor doors of the silo. A short jump later, she was trying the crank-style handle with a sweaty hand. It was locked.
She took a deep breath. “It’s Rosalyn! Stand back, I’m shooting down the door!” she shouted. After a few moments for them to get away if need be, she carefully blasted the door at an angle. The edge of the door where she’d guessed the hinge to be was blasted off, and after some kicking, the door fell inward.
She walked into the room and found herself standing on a thin, perforated metal floor through which she could see the main floor of the silo below her. She walked past stacked crates and saw another door on the right side of the room. Near that was something she’d seen before only on a screen. It was a moist, bloated sack attached to the floor with a fleshy, dark purple appearance to it and a faint silhouette within. Her blood curdled as she saw it.
From below came the sudden screams of Sam and Terri, and Rosalyn looked down to glimpse them through the metal laying near the back wall amid a jumble of crates and various metal objects. She was overjoyed to see their faces, but the cocoon in front of her seemed more pressing.
“R-Rosalyn?” said Sam, incredulous.
“LOOK OUT!” barked Terri, pointing up at the cocoon. From what little Rosalyn could spot of them, they both looked horrible, almost unrecognizable, especially in Terri’s case.
Rosalyn looked up to see the cocoon expanding further. It was soon to burst open, she could tell. Without hesitation she fired the neutron-scatterer at it in repeated bursts.
It exploded in a great blast of purplish liquid, some bits of which Rosalyn felt on her skin. It stung awfully, accompanied by a pungent odor. From below she could tell that a drop or two of acid had landed on the others.
“IT’S RANDY!” Terri screamed. Rosalyn looked at the creature that was birthed from the cocoon. It rose up with adrenal speed, hurt by her shooting, and screeched at her.
Dripping gunk and slime, it stood up on two legs and took a trembling breath, reveling in its rebirth. It had an appearance much like the acidic Seclurm aliens outside, only its skin was more defined, less translucent, and a bit less saggy. The form was more humanoid, but had long, powerful-looking limbs and a twisted shape to it. Its face was dominated by the same circular antennae eyes, but shorter than the others’. Out of its open mouth rolled a tongue that dripp
ed acid like a hose, and the thing stood up tall with a broad chest, breathing out with a dull roar that bespoke malicious intent.
It’s…Randy…! Rosalyn thought with a sharp, painful thorn in her chest, realization undercutting her bravado. The sulfur-like reek of the open cocoon was nearly overpowering. She swore under her breath and pointed her weapon at the alien’s head, trembling, each opponent awaiting first move.
It lunged forward at her, launching a spray of purplish acid at her face faster than she could react. Her reflexes kicked in and she pulled the trigger, which scattered the spray into nothingness, though she still felt a red-hot mist rush around her head. She strafed to the side and kept firing, though found the gun would work better if she staggered her shots.
The alien abomination dodged with swiftness, taking cover behind stacks of crates and trying to get in a blow to her with its acid. Rosalyn kept moving in a desperate attempt to keep that from happening. Splashes of acid struck the wall and crates and the floor, everywhere it spilled burning and melting and smoking, with the exception of the silo walls and floor.
The sound of gushing water from outside tuned out as there came clawing and thumping and spraying and splashing and hissing and knocking over metal objects, not to mention regular blasts from Rosalyn’s gun. It was utter chaos.
After realizing the crate stacks were shielding the alien more than shielding her, she started blowing them down with the gun, hoping to drive the wretched creature out to the open. The silo wasn’t enormous—perhaps thirty-five square feet around—but the alien that used to be Randy moved as if it had decades of experience evading attacks.
It burst into the open again on all fours and reached for Rosalyn, swiping at her side with powerful hands that had small claws in them. Only one of its blows actually connected, grazing her hip and leaving a bloody gash. She cried out, but the pain was pushed away by adrenaline as she fired a wild retaliatory blast before bounding away.
Seclurm: Devolution Page 27