Knowing that monster was lurking around in the ventilation system was enough to fill her with dread. A quick glance around the room revealed there wasn’t a single place to hide should it come charging in. Suddenly she felt very vulnerable.
“There should be a big monitor on the wall, can you see it?”
“Yeah…” Liara answered looking at the giant screen. How could anyone miss it?
“That should slide to the side, behind it there should be a panel that you can use to access the maintenance shaft…”
She followed his instructions and found a yellow coloured metal panel on the wall. There was two handles either side and a collection of what she interpreted as warning symbols adorning the middle of it.
“On the panel on the wall, should be slightly to its left…” Krahm continued.
She glanced, saw what looked like a keypad. A little square with little buttons in a by 4 by 4 grid. Of course she didn’t recognise any of the symbols etched onto the buttons.
“…If you think of the keypad as one from Earth, and you ignore the fourth column - then press 1, 7, 7, 8, 9, and then press the 2nd button on the fourth column. It should unlock…”
She was impressed by Krahm’s ability to break this information down in a way she could understand. Obviously these new aliens were highly intelligent.
Or were they just that familiar with human life?
She entered the code and the panel emitted a soft hiss of air before it slid out towards her a fraction. She took hold of the handles and pulled. It slowly came away from the wall. The weight of the panel caught her off guard and she dropped it loudly on the floor as it came free.
“Shit!” She hissed as the bang reverberated around the room. A few centimetres closer and she’d have crushed her toes.
The silence that followed was protracted and pregnant. She strained her ears for the slightest indication she’d been heard. After a minute or two, she slowly assured herself that nothing was on route to investigate that noise. There was no thumping around in the ventilation system, yet.
“That wasn’t good,” the radio remarked.
Talk about stating the obvious, she halted the sarcastic reply on her tongue. She didn’t appreciate Krahm’s condescending tone but she needed him a lot more than he needed her.
“It’s… Not gonna be in there is it…” she surveyed the little circular opening before her.
“No, it seems to be using the ventilation system to traverse the spire… That’s an access ladder, it only leads up to the data banks…”
Despite his assurances otherwise, she still couldn’t quite shake the dread that the mysterious creation was lurking in the darkness before her.
“You need to move Liara, it will come back…”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because there’s still prey… You’re exactly where the food is. You are the food…”
Her blood chilled a little. She took a deep breath and clambered inside.
It was cramped, but she could still move. She crawled forward, the sound of her traversal echoing around her ears in the tunnel.
“Before you should be a ladder, climb that. At the top you should be able to climb out in the data banks,”
“What am I looking for in the data banks?”
“A little device, it’ll help you begin unlocking doors…”
She found the ladder and climbed it. A difficult process in the pitch-black of the tunnel. She climbed a small distance and hit her head on a ceiling.
She groped upwards, feeling the ceiling she’d struck. Her finger brushed against a switch and suddenly the ceiling slid away. She was greeted with rich blue light.
She hauled herself up and out.
The databank was filled with rows upon rows of tall beeping electronic towers. They were twice her height and twice her width. The walls of the room appeared to dome upwards and appeared to be made of dense metal.
“Ok I’m in the databanks…” Liara whispered.
“Find the nearest wall and follow it counter-clockwise. You should find a table of some sort. Upon that should be…” Krahm stalled. He was struggling with a hole in translations. She slipped forward, she reached the wall. Something felt amiss as she began to follow it counter-clockwise. She had an unshakeable feeling that she wasn’t alone in here. Her eyes darted to and fro, scanning wildly. Somewhere in amongst all these databanks someone, or something, lurked. She could sense it.
It felt a little like hunting that wretched creature back in the caves above the underground city back on the Four’s planet. That had been an intense challenge fought amongst similar pillars. That time she had an axe, this time she had nothing.
“Is there any weapons nearby?” She whispered as she journeyed.
“…No,”
“You mean nothing? At all?”
“There is a strict no weapon policy on the research pod…”
Research pod? No weapon policy? Fuck… She wanted to laugh at how feeble and vulnerable she was.
She reached the table. As Krahm predicted there was a discarded collection of strange devices. They looked a little like futuristic etch-a-sketches. A large screen and two dials. They were darkly coloured but it was hard to discern what colour with the blue lighting of the room.
“I found one of those… devices,” Liara took it up.
“Turn a dial, see if it has any charge,”
A good idea. She turned a dial and nothing happened. She placed that one down and picked up a different one. This one flickered awake. A collection of odd hieroglyphics greeted her.
“It works,”
“Good. Now I need you to do two things. First I need you to find the central databank. It will be the largest tower in the room. Let me know when you find it,”
Something crashed loudly nearby and Liara jumped.
She dove under the table and turned in the direction of the noise. It appeared to have come from the opposite end of the room. She strained but no further sound followed.
What was that?
She gave it a few moments, just to be sure nothing was heading in her direction. She crawled back out, hyper-aware of any sounds. She couldn’t hear anything beyond the occasional tiny beep from a tower nearby.
Following the perimeter of the room seemed the safest option to find the central databank, so she did that. As she approached it, identifying it from the undeniable fact it dwarfed the other towers, she became aware of faint footsteps.
She crouched and crept to the nearest tower. The blue light of the room gave everything a dark and gloomy appearance. The footsteps came closer but she deduced they weren’t heading in her direction. She craned her neck around the tower but she couldn’t see anything. It didn’t sound like the Progenmorph, but she couldn’t rule it out.
The footsteps softly disappeared.
She was definitely far from alone in the databanks.
“I’m at the central bank,” she whispered.
No response.
She didn’t want to raise her voice any louder, the last thing she needed was to attract whatever was in the room with her. She unclipped the radio and pressed it to her mouth.
“I’m at the central bank… I’m not alone up here…” she whispered.
“…There should be three slots, I need you to take the disk drive out of the top slot and place it in the bottom one…” Krahm replied. She had turned the volume down even more so she had to strain to hear him. She followed his directions.
“Done it,”
“Ok. Now to the left of that disk should be four buttons, I want you to press the third one,”
She did it.
“…When you’ve done that, the machine will begin to make a noise. The lights will begin flashing in a pattern,”
They were flashing in a downward sweep. The machine was building up a soft whirring sound, something not too dissimilar from the sound a laser makes when burning a CD.
“…While we wait for that, I’ve had an idea.”
“The research pod can detach from the rest of the spire. If we can boot up the system, then trap the creature down there. You can eject the pod and get rid of it.”
She liked this idea.
“How do we do that?”
“If you can patch me into the console down in the observation tank, I should be able to patch in and reactivate the lift. Then from the Observatory you should be able to manually eject the research pod…”
It sounded like a good plan. Not that she had an alternative to propose.
“Ok. How am I going to get into the observation tank?”
“You’re gonna hack past the door,”
The tower stopped whirring and the lights beginning beeping erratically.
“It’s finished…” she whispered.
“Take the disk-drive. I need you to keep that safe,”
She leant up and plucked it from the slot. She deposited in the inside of her bodysuit.
“Huh!”
The cry of alarm came from her left. She jumped and threw herself back. It was one of the Tethu’s, it had come across her no doubt attracted by the sounds.
She scrambled backwards, disappearing round the nearest pillar.
There was the sound of footsteps, but the alien wasn’t following her. It seemed to have fled in its own direction.
“Krahm-” she stopped. What was that thumping sound? It was underfoot, she could feel the small vibrations underneath the soles of her feet.
She slipped the radio back onto her suit, now was not the time to tell Krahm about the fellow surviving aliens. That thing, the nightmarish creature, was nearby. She needed to head back to the maintenance shaft. The problem was she was disorientated and lost. The stairwell! Perhaps she could get through the door from this side?
Her plan to follow the perimeter would bring her to the stairwell, she had no doubt of it. Following this plan, she tentatively crept past the central data bank.
The faint thumping and rumbling of the creature underfoot added a sense of desperate urgency to each step, a step that she worried brought her closer to it or the Tethu. She found the stairwell. The door was jammed open, brilliant flashes of sparks flickered intermittently from one corner. She crept on, aware that descending brought her closer to the Progenmorph’s path. She made it down the first flight of steps. Turned and began to descend the next.
There was a short burst of footsteps and before Liara could react someone slammed against the door she’d just passed through. As she braced herself for an attack she witnessed the Tethu tugging the door to the ground. What the hell? Before she could even move the door hit the floor with a definitive boom. The Tethu had shut the door on her!
Somewhere nearby she heard a familiar shriek. The sound was muffled through walls and doors and she had no idea where it came from. Retreat or advance?
She noticed the door that had just been slammed shut was displaying a little red light. It looked like advancing down the stairwell was her only option. The faint blue light didn’t help visibility levels at the bottom. She found the door was barricaded and dented. Several towers had been piled in front of it.
“Fuck…” she whispered angrily. There was no way she was going to get through that! She now understood why the door hadn’t opened for her. The Tethu had obviously barricaded itself in the databank! “Fuck fuck,” she hissed.
“Krahm… Krahm, I’m stuck. I’ve been trapped in the stairwell,”
His reply was too quiet and she didn’t make it out.
“Say that again,” she demanded as she turned the volume up.
“Trapped how?”
“The door back into the observation deck has been barricaded and there’s no way I can move any of it. The door from the databanks has been… locked behind me…” She informed angrily.
There was another shriek. She felt desperately afraid and prone. Where the hell was it? She couldn’t figure it out!
“If it’s locked you can hack it open…”
“Ok, ok. Talk me through it,”
She began to climb the stairs once more.
“Take the Hacker and turn both dials simultaneously till you have a screen that looks like…” he trailed off.
“Like what?” she demanded desperately. She was turning the dials slowly though it was hard to read the screen in the blue light. What she would’ve given for a backlight.
“A grid…?” Krahm seemed unsure of the description. Out of all the English words he’d used, this one sounded like he’d struggled to understand it.
A few seconds later and the screen flickered into a grid. Krahm’s description was indeed quite accurate, it was a grind and it looked a little like graph paper. For a split second Liara thought of her schooldays. Trigonometry and all that other useless bullshit. Like she’d ever needed that in her life…
“Ok, got it.”
There was a loud thud and a shriek again. This time it was closer. It was on the other side of the door.
Her gut sank and her skin prickled.
It was on the other side of the door!
Now what was she going to do?
“Now you need to draw a line across the screen like a-”
“Hold on Krahm!” she hissed.
There was a soft set of footprints on the other side of the door.
She was holding her breath again. She slowly, ever so slowly, exhaled. Her eyes were wide and bulging. Any second she anticipated it to come charging through the door.
“Ah!” There was a muffled shout of protest. Then a sudden and sharp shriek.
Liara jumped when something slammed against the door. She fell on her ass and squealed but nothing broke through. The slam was followed by the sound of fight and then another sharp wet thud. Then there was a peculiar and sudden silence.
As Liara slowly itched herself back onto her feet, she listened hard.
There was the familiar wet footprints and the sound of clambering into the vents.
Then another silence.
A silence disturbed only by the sound of her pulse in her ears.
The moment dragged on…
“Liara? Are you okay?”
“I’m here…” She wasn’t sure she was ok. She was frightened, more than she’d ever been in her life. The T-Rex, the Fours, the strange creature in the cave, not a single one of them compared to this.
“You need to move…” he prompted.
She agreed, but she wasn’t sure that she actually could. She wanted to just curl into a ball and cry. She was trapped in another hellhole, again. This one made the other living nightmares look like romantic strolls along a beach.
“You can do this!” Krahm urged. It was exactly the sort of thing she should tell herself. Well, in the most crazy of truths, she actually had. This mysterious alien ally was using her voice. She had literally heard herself say it.
She shook her head and exhaled.
That was one for the many chapters in the “how fucked up my life has become” book.
“Draw what on the screen?”
“A large plus sign. It’ll split the screen into four sections. You’ll need to press four panels in the order they appear…”
With one hand she held the device just so, so she could see the screen. The other hand followed Krahm’s instructions. The screen pixelated when she’d finished and the little pulsing red light on the door turned green. She’d done it.
It slid open with a hiss.
There was a pool of blood before her. A long dark streak of it curved and disappeared into the forest of pillars. It was undeniable the Tethu’s fate. She took a deep breath and swallowed the nausea that had bubbled up her throat suddenly.
“Get a grip. You can do this. You’ve survived a hostile jungle, a fucking T-Rex. The Fours…” she closed her eyes as her mantra tumbled from her lips, “ survived the Above, killed their Queen, that thing in the caves…I can survive this too, I can survive this too…”
She just needed to be bra
ve.
There was no sign the creature was still about.
She stepped around this pool of blood.
“I’m heading for the maintenance access,” she whispered to Krahm. She followed the trail of blood. Her plan was to systematically sweep the rows of towers till she found the floor panel. The trail of blood swept right and headed straight for the wall. It smeared all the way up to the vent and disappeared inside. That meant the creature was still in the vents and not inside the maintenance access like she’d feared.
It was on the third row she spotted the open floor panel. She headed for it.
She crouched and clambered down onto the ladder. Instinctively she brushed the switch once more and shut it behind her. She’d stopped leaving bloodied footprints in her wake but she’d learnt her lesson. She was covering her tracks, exactly what she should’ve been doing all along.
Stepping back into the observation deck was done with little thought. She knew she would have to maintain a certain amount of momentum, stopping to worry would only slow her down and put her in danger. She would need to be efficient and brave. She needed to be instinctive and not hesitate. It was going to be a fine line between foolish and foolhardy. She crossed the room and squatted in front of the locked door near the large window.
Her stomach sank when she heard thumping overhead.
It was back already.
This thing certainly didn’t take its time to eat dinner.
She turned both dials, found the correct frequency and hacked her way inside. The feeling of success was drowned out by the icy fear sliding its way around her organs.
This new room smelt peculiar, it brought a jarring realisation that all the previous rooms had been so devoid of smell. Not even the smell of blood in the two bloodbaths she’d encountered. This room smelt earthy and muddy.
“I’m inside,” she slipped inside the room.
The door hissed shut behind her. It relieved her no end that the door had shut. She contemplated the idea of hacking it once more and locking it behind her. A quick scan of the ceiling told her it was unwise. There was two large ventilation openings in the room, should the creature drop inside, the locked door would seal her demise. She’d never paid much attention to ventilation systems before, but she certainly had a new respect for them now.
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