by James Axler
Chapter Two
The mat-trans door was balky beyond belief, and it took the effort of Ryan, J.B., Jak and Ricky to force it open just enough for them to slip through. Darkness and silence lay beyond the narrow opening.
“Dark night! A plas-ex charge would have been easier.” J.B. grunted, wiping sweat from his brow and resettling his fedora on his head.
“No power out here,” Krysty said, wrinkling her nose. “I can smell smoke pretty clearly, though. Looks like this may have been a one-way trip.”
“Let’s not abandon the wag till we see what shape it’s in first,” Ryan replied.
“Or ‘abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’” Doc said, making the others—except for Mildred—turn to him with puzzled frowns.
“Jak, you’re on point.” Blaster at the ready, Ryan nodded the young man forward. The albino’s uncanny night vision made him the perfect choice to scope out the room. With a nod, the skinny, fox-faced teen vanished into the blackness, a throwing blade held between two fingers, his own blaster drawn just in case he encountered something resistant to his leaf-bladed stickers.
Everyone fell silent, waiting for the young man to return. Ricky fingered his blaster as he peered into the darkness. After a bit of initial wariness, the two teens had formed a strong bond, second only to Ricky’s admiration of J.B. “Sure he’s all right out there?”
As if in answer, there was a loud click, followed by several isolated fluorescent lights blinking on.
“There’s your answer,” Ryan said as he stepped into the room and looked around. There was no anteroom. J.B. and the others were right behind him, fanning out to cover the room.
“Place looks shit,” Jak said from the other end.
His assessment wasn’t very far off the mark. They looked directly into a control room. Every control console for the complicated, delicate computers that ran the mat-trans was encrusted with deposits of some kind of white, crystalline powder. Several sparked and popped in the silence, trickles of gray smoke drifting lazily into the thick air.
“Looks like...smells like—” Mildred wet a finger and touched the powder, then brought it to her mouth. “Salt. Must be near an ocean. The question is, which one?”
“You agree about the condition, Doc?” Ryan asked, eyeing a discolored sign on the wall that told him this place was something called Pod Seven, part of something called Poseidon Base. The name tickled his memory for some reason, but he couldn’t put a finger on it.
Shaking his head, Ryan returned to the issue at hand. Every mat-trans unit had a Last Destination setting that could take them back to the redoubt they’d used to jump here. If that didn’t work, however, then they were stuck.
The old man wandered among the stations, running a wrinkled hand along them. “What? Oh, yes, Ryan, this mat-trans will not be transporting us or anyone else out of this room ever again. The damage by the encrusted salt is complete. Indeed, by allowing us to complete the jump in relative safety, Providence has shone her eternal countenance on us once again.”
“That’s comforting,” Mildred said, her gaze on the door at the far side of the room.
“What’d he say?” Ricky whispered to Jak.
“Old buzzard said we’re lucky,” the white-haired youth replied.
“Map here.” J.B. was examining the plastic-enclosed diagram on the wall. “This was built apart from the rest of the complex. Only way out—”
A burst of static from a speaker on the wall interrupted him. The sudden noise made everyone draw or aim their blasters at the noise before realizing what was going on.
“Welc—Posei—on Base for O—ic res—New arriv—cede to main lev—orientat—uty assign—” The garbled message repeated itself again, the bursts of static making the words nearly impossible to make out. As the message ended, the speaker popped and hissed, a small wisp of smoke drifting out of its casing. As if dying with it, one of the lights flared and died, as well, allowing the shadows in the room to approach a bit closer.
“Sounds like a welcome message,” Ryan said, checking the action on his blaster. “Might mean a welcoming party’s also on its way.”
“This just gets better and better,” J.B. said, also eyeing the door at the end. “Shall we?”
Ryan and he walked to the door, with the others split and behind them: Mildred, Ricky and Doc behind the Armorer; Krysty and Jak behind Ryan. No one had put their blasters away yet.
Usually a keypad was positioned beside each exit door, but this control room didn’t have one. The one-eyed man checked with J.B., who was holding his Mini-Uzi like he’d been born with it. He nodded at Ryan, who hit the door lever, ready to kill anything that moved on the other side or shut the door in the event of something they couldn’t contain, like water, or poison gas or who knew what else.
The door reacted with the same obstinacy as the mat-trans portal, only getting about halfway open before shuddering to a halt. Ryan had been unconsciously holding his breath, ready to throw the lever again if anything came at them, but the corridor beyond seemed as silent and dead as the rest of the redoubt so far.
No, not quite. The air outside seemed even heavier and still, as if it hadn’t stirred in many, many decades. Ryan could also see thick rimes of salt on the wall next to the door. Usually, the air-conditioning systems in these complexes kept the air clean and relatively comfortable. The fact that the fans didn’t seem to be working hinted at a redoubt that was on its last legs.
All the more reason, Ryan thought, to find a way out triple quick.
“Let’s go.” The one-eyed man led the way, but hadn’t gone a half dozen steps before stopping again, staring down the corridor as the motion-sensitive lights came on.
“Fireblast.”
The corridor sloped down—into a mass of still, black water.
“Like I said, better and better,” the Armorer muttered.
“Jak, you’re up again,” Ryan said, not taking his eye off the placid surface. Jak was already shucking out of his boots and jacket.
“Can I go?” Ricky asked. “My father taught me how to swim very fast.”
J.B. tapped his eyes. “I’m sure he did, but Jak’s got better dark vision, which he’ll need.”
“Plus, we’ll be able to see his hair as he goes down. If it looks like he’s in trouble, we’ll be able to reach him faster,” Mildred said.
A foot-long Bowie knife clamped in his teeth, Jak waded slowly into the water. The others covered the still pool as he moved, ready to chill anything that might try to take a bite out of him.
“Warm—like blood,” he grunted around the blade. He waited for a few seconds, gulping huge breaths to help him stay underwater longer. If anything was going to come out and investigate him, it would be now, but the water remained still. With one more step, the teen dived cleanly in, barely making a splash as he swam into the darkness. Within seconds, he vanished into the murk.
Silence fell among the rest of the group. Ricky, however, posed the question on everyone’s mind. “What happens if Jak doesn’t find a way out?”
Ryan and J.B. exchanged wry glances. “It’s never happened before, Ricky. We’ve always found a way—”
“Over, under, around or through,” J.B. interrupted.
“Yes, but what if we can’t do any of those things?” the teen persisted.
“Then you got a choice, Ricky—fast or slow,” Ryan said. He paused, waiting for the kid to realize what he was saying.
Ricky’s face wrinkled in puzzlement. “I don’t understand.”
“You can either put a blaster in your mouth and punch your ticket for the last train west yourself,” Ryan said. “Or you can wait here to starve to death.”
“Actually, you’d suffocate long before that happened,” Mildred said with a frown at Ryan.
“Truth is truth, Mildred,” Ryan replied, not minding her glare in the least. “Ricky made his choice when he came with us. Every choice has consequences.”
“Like ours to trust our lives in
those cantankerous contraptions every time,” Doc said, jerking his thumb back at the mat-trans chamber. “Upon my soul, it is a wonder that we have not awoken one time to find our atoms scattered throughout the universe—”
“Hold up, Doc. I see something,” Ryan said from the edge of the water. “Jak’s coming back.”
The white blur grew rapidly into the pale form of the young man, arms and legs churning the water for all he was worth.
“Coming in hot—” was all J.B. had time to say before the albino broke the surface of the water, rearing out as he sucked in a great gulp of air. A line of bright pink circles ran diagonally across his chest.
“Jak, what’s—” Ryan started to ask, but stopped as three gray tentacles, as thick around as his waist, burst out of the water behind him.
Chapter Three
One of the waving tentacles lashed at Jak, snaring him around the waist and tightening. The other two moved toward him, as well. “Fucker!” the youth gritted as he stabbed into the crushing appendage with his Bowie knife.
“Nukefire!” Drawing his panga, Ryan splashed into the water to try to distract one of the other tentacles. He heard the peculiar cough of Ricky’s carbine behind him, and the tentacle nearest him spurted black ichor as a hole appeared in it about a foot from the tip. It drew back.
“Watch your fire!” he shouted.
Jak, meanwhile, had been grabbed by another tentacle, and was being drawn below the water, his face growing even paler than normal as the constricting limb crushed the air out of his lungs. Despite that, he still slashed at the tentacle around his waist.
Ryan took one more step and lunged out of the water. As he came back down, he swept the panga in a savage slash, putting all of his two hundred pounds behind the blow.
The razor-sharp steel sliced deeply into the same tentacle Jak was working on, nearly severing it. Ryan pulled the blade out and swung again, cutting through the rubbery flesh and chopping the young man free. The wounded appendage drew back, black fluid spraying everywhere as it writhed about. Tearing off the rest of the limb, Ryan threw it into the water, hoping the other two would be distracted by the movement.
They weren’t.
The one around Jak’s arm tightened its grip, making him grunt in pain even as he kept stabbing the ropy, boneless appendage. The one with the hole in it went for Ryan, who was now standing chest-deep in the water.
Instead of dodging, he brought the panga around again in a ferocious swing. The blade hit the tentacle again, but bounced off the rubbery skin. It shot past him, and Ryan turned to see J.B. standing a few feet away, a combat-type knife in one hand, his Mini-Uzi in the other.
“Get Jak!” the Armorer yelled as the tentacle kept coming for him.
Ryan turned back and grabbed Jak’s trapped arm, pulling it toward him as hard as he could. He stretched the tentacle out, too, but Ryan felt it only go a certain distance before it stopped, as if it was affixed to something big—really big.
“Ow—what you doing, dammit?” Jak asked.
“Hold still!” Ryan said through gritted teeth. Raising the panga again, he brought it down in a swift slice, severing the end completely. Jak fell toward him as the rest of the writhing appendage shot backward and disappeared into the water.
A burst of automatic weapon fire made Ryan turn just enough to see J.B. holding a three-foot-long segment of gray, suckered limb still squirming on his blade. His Mini-Uzi was smoking, making it obvious how the Armorer had dealt with his attacker.
“Ace on the line—” Ryan began just as he felt something snake between his legs and curl around one ankle. Before he could move, he was jerked off his feet and into the water.
He did have the presence of mind to draw a breath right before he went under. He jackknifed to saw at the tentacle that was trying to drag him into deeper water and drown him. While he fought to loosen its crushing grip, he looked around to see how close he was coming to whatever the relentless arms were attached to. But they disappeared into the black water, which was just as well. Ryan wasn’t in the mood to find out what was on the other end.
A glance up showed the light and the rest of his companions receding. Ryan just kept cutting at the tentacle, which kept tightening its grip. A flash of white streaked by him, and Ryan saw Jak dive down and begin sawing at the tentacle with his Bowie knife. Between the two, they cut off the suckered appendage and headed back to the surface.
Ryan’s lungs were bursting as he got closer, and the thick, salty air had never tasted so good. Jak and he both splashed out of the water as fast as they could, with J.B., Ricky, and both women covering their retreat until everyone was back at the doorway to the mat-trans control room.
“You get...a look...at what those were attached to...Jak?” Ryan asked between pants for air.
The albino shook his head, spraying drops of water everywhere. “No. Came out big, dark hole in wall. Got outta there.” He swept his hair out of his eyes. “Corridor continued past, but mutie waiting to grab anything swimming by.”
“And good Homer thought the many-armed Scylla merely a figment of his imagination,” Doc mused. “Or perhaps it was based merely on a purported sighting of a giant squid, whose tentacles would surely pluck unlucky crewman from the decks to be drawn into its gaping, beaked maw and devoured while still alive.”
“Either way, we got a bitch of a problem on our hands,” Mildred said as she took a look at Jak’s chest. “You didn’t feel any kind of stabbing or needle-like pains, did you?”
Jak shook his head again. “Nope. Just thought bastard gonna crush ribs.”
“You’ll live,” she said before straightening to regard the others. “Well, whether it’s wounded or not, I sure as hell don’t want to face that thing on its own turf with only a knife to fend it off.”
Ryan nodded. “Ace on the line on that. No way are we facing that thing down there.” He looked at J.B. “Blast it?”
The Armorer nodded as he pulled a lump of plas-ex from one pocket of his battered leather jacket and a small, waterproof detonator from another. “Should have just enough. Besides, the shock wave ought to stun it no matter what.” Having prepped the charge, he looked around. “I need something to weigh it down.”
“Perhaps this would do, John Barrymore?” Doc had gone back into the control room and came back wheeling a salt-encrusted chair in front of him.
“Yeah.” J.B. pressed the plas-ex firmly onto the seat, activated the timer, then nodded at Ryan. “Do it.”
Picking up the chair, Ryan hurled it as close to where the ceiling met the water as he could. It hit the water with a splash, and although he couldn’t be sure, Ryan thought he saw a tentacle curl just high enough to grab it.
“Any luck, it’ll bring it right back to wherever it’s hiding,” Krysty said with a shudder.
“That’s the idea. Let’s head back inside,” Ryan suggested, and everyone was more than willing to follow his advice, spreading out from the half-open door on the other side.
“Crouch down, ears and eyes shut, mouth open,” Ryan told Ricky. “The blast may be underwater, but just in case...”
“How long did you set it for?” Ricky asked as he cupped his hands over his ears.
“Figured thirty seconds—” J.B. was interrupted by a dull report that sounded far way. Ryan stuck his head out in time to see a huge bubble of water burst on the pool, with several small waves lapping at the shore.
“Time to go.” Once again he led the group to the edge of the water. “Damn, I sure wish we had a light.”
“If wishes were horses, then all beggars would ride,” Mildred said as she waded past him. “Never liked the water in the first place, damn sure like it even less now. Let’s just get this over with.”
Ryan thought he saw her shudder a bit, but it was gone so quickly he wasn’t sure.
“Agreed, Mildred, most definitely agreed.” Doc had drawn his rapier from its walking-stick scabbard, tucking it into his belt before wading out, as well.
; The rest of them followed, all gulping great breaths of air to fill their lungs.
“Which side, Jak?” Ryan asked, but the albino was already swimming to the right.
“Fucker was over there,” he said pointing at the left wall.
“Hopefully there’s nothing on this side,” Ricky said, his words hanging in the silence.
“All right, everyone follow the wall single file, and go as far as you can,” Ryan said. “We’ll count up on the other side.”
With that, Jak slid into the water, followed by Doc, Mildred, J.B., Ricky, and then Krysty. Ryan slid into the water last, taking one final huge breath of air and clamping his panga in his teeth before descending under the surface.
The light from the corridor penetrated only a couple of feet, so it wasn’t long before he was swimming in pure blackness. Ryan experimentally waved a hand in front of his face, but saw nothing. If it hadn’t been for the motion of the others in the water, he never would have known they were there.
Weighed down by his weapons and clothes, Ryan realized he was on the bottom of the corridor. He began moving along the wall, keeping his right hand pressed against it at all times, and his left out to the side, in case the tentacles came back.
The next couple of minutes were among the hardest in his life. Ryan had been in plenty of ass-puckering situations before, but this—holding his breath underwater, in complete darkness, with the possibility of some kind of huge, aggressive mutie creature nearby that he and the rest of the group had little chance against—was a new situation. On top of all that, there was the strong possibility that this tunnel would end in another rock wall, or just keep going on and on underwater until they all drowned.
His lungs began straining for oxygen, and Ryan gave it another few paces before pushing off the bottom and swimming for the surface. As he went, he thought he could see the dim glow of light above him, and increased his speed. He also felt some kind of disturbance in the water, someone thrashing around nearby. Ryan kept heading up, but as he did, he looked around, checking for tentacles coming after him or anyone else.