by Andrew Gates
Iris felt her heart rate pick up again. She was scared.
Where no hope is left, is left no fear.
Strangely, a smile began to form on her face.
“I haven’t lost hope yet,” she said to herself aloud. “I’m still afraid, so there’s still hope.”
“What was that?” Greyson asked, hearing her talk to herself.
“Nothing!” she shouted back.
Even in the dark, Iris could see the man walk up to the edge of the pit and look down into it. The two students stood close behind him. He stared at it for a few moments then glanced up at the unbroken ceiling. Iris wondered what was going through his head.
“How high would you say this ceiling is?” the man shouted.
That was an odd question.
“I don’t know!” she replied back. The sound of crashing metal grew louder and louder. She could now even feel the rumble beneath her feet.
“That hole formed from two strikes of the creature’s hands!” Greyson said. “They have sharp claws and strong arms, but that’s still surprising.”
“So what?” Iris shouted back.
“So that must mean the metal in his hall is much weaker than the metal used in the transition zones! The floor there is meant to take a beating! This floor isn’t,” he answered. “The other creatures fired their cannons at the floor below us when they fell! Plus, those grenades! My guess is this hole is two or three levels deep! Maybe even four if the impact of the creature’s body’s put enough pressure on it!”
“So what?” Iris asked again.
“So we need to get down there, right?” Greyson shouted back.
Iris could not believe it. Scaling down this hole was madness.
“We can’t do that!” she hollered. “We don’t have
ropes!”
“We don’t need them! The water is up to my calves here and it only gets higher with each level we descend! At this rate, assuming that hole is three levels deep, the water below us has got to be at least a meter high! You heard that splash!”
Is he suggesting we jump?
The sound of the rumbling grew louder. Whatever was coming was close now.
“Iris, we need to get down there right?” Greyson asked again.
“Yes!” she replied instinctively.
“Then we jump! The high water will protect us!”
“How do we know the mantises aren’t still down there?” Iris shouted back.
“The what?”
“The monsters!” she replied, choosing a different word.
Greyson paused, looked at the students and then looked back towards Iris’s side of the hall again.
“I think they’re gone!” he shouted back.
Iris took a step to the edge and peered down into the black void. I still have hope, she told herself. I must try.
“Alright!” she replied, half astounded by her own answer. “Let’s do it!”
“Are you serious?” Margery shouted to her teachers. Iris could hear the pain in her voice. She heard Greyson say something back to her, though she was unable to make out the words. The two argued for a few moments, but then the girl grew quiet. Whatever Greyson said, it must have calmed her down.
The floor shook harder now and the rumbling grew so loud it was hard to hear anything else. The lights at the end of the hall started to go out one by one. With each second, the halls grew darker.
“On three we jump!” Greyson shouted.
Iris felt her shoe on the edge of the hole and closed her eyes. Sight no longer mattered when the world was turning dark around her.
“One!”
She could hear mantises roaring from down the hall.
“Two!”
She could feel the warm air heating up the icy cold.
“Three!”
In that second, there was nothing. Iris shut out all senses and stepped forward into the abyss. She saw nothing. She heard nothing. She felt nothing. There was only Iris and her hope.
DARKNESS.
Darkness was all that the frozen math teacher could see as he felt his way through the shoulder-high water. But then again, darkness was all that he had ever really known.
He pulled out his pod and held it above the water level. He tried activating it but the device would not power on. Water damage, he thought. I should’ve known.
He could hear the two students wading through the water behind him. Their breaths were heavy. Iris navigated in front, using her hands and instincts to guide the way. Grey was concerned about her. She could not hear, she could barely feel, and now none of them could see. Yet she was their guide through this perilous journey into the furthest depths of nothing but darkness.
Occasionally Grey would step on what felt like a body part, or feel a corpse floating in the water. He would brush it aside each time and make no mention of it, hoping the students behind him would not notice. The last thing he wanted to do now was frighten them more.
“Do you feel that?” Iris shouted. With her ears the way they were, everything she said now was in the form of a shout.
Grey stopped for a moment, trying to feel whatever it was Iris felt.
“No,” he eventually answered, speaking loudly, “what is it?”
“A current!” she replied. “It’s pulling us!”
Grey felt it now. The water was moving in their direction.
“I feel it!” Jallah shouted too.
“There must be another hole of some sort,” Grey said, knowing full well that Iris was not going to be able to hear. They moved forward some more, following the current until Grey felt himself collide into Iris’s thin moist body.
“Why are we stopping?” Grey asked.
“Feel this!” Iris replied.
Grey felt his way ahead and placed his hands on the wall under the water level. He felt a square opening no larger than 30 centimeters. The metal around the opening felt like a weaker alloy than the rest of the walls in the station. He guessed this must have been some sort of ventilation shaft.
“It leads down!” Iris said.
“What is it?” Jallah asked. “A hole?”
“Yes,” Grey replied. “Come, feel this.”
“How do we know we won’t just fall into full water?” Margery asked. “How do we know there’s air down there? It gets more flooded as we go down. We could drown!”
“There’s air,” Grey clarified. “Otherwise the water would not flow in that direction. The water is filling in the empty space. That means it’s not completely flooded down there.”
The four of them had already fallen three levels when they jumped through the pit a few moments earlier. All they had to do was get down one more level and they would be right where they needed to be. This shaft, whatever it was, looked like it could be their way down.
“We don’t even know where we are!” Margery protested. “We can’t even see!”
“Margery, we don’t have a choice. We don’t have time for this!” Grey responded. He could hear clanking of UBE feet from the level overhead.
“I heard that!” Iris jumped in. “Mr. Georgopolis is right! We don’t have a choice!”
It felt odd having a conversation with people he could not see, but Grey nodded towards Iris’s voice.
“Thank you.” He took a step closer to the hole. “I’ll go first!” he said loudly so that Iris could hear. “Iris, you go last! Make sure the kids get through behind me!”
“What? You’re crazy!” Margery shouted as the clanking of metal footsteps grew louder above their heads. “We haven’t seen light since we jumped down that hole. That hallway where Clinton died had those tiny light strips and even then, it was dim and-”
“We’ll find it! We’re close!” Iris shouted, this time for emphasis. “Just shut up and follow Mr. Georgopolis!”
I’ve never heard Iris talk like that before. Where did this Iris come from?
“Listen to her,” he said as he grabbed onto the edge of the hole. He lifted his legs up and placed them into the
square. He could feel the metal slope down beneath his feet. The water pulled him with it. He felt like a kid again sitting on top of a slide.
“Go!” Iris shouted.
Grey let go of the wall and held his breath, letting gravity and the current do its work. He felt himself descend, sliding through the small space like a torpedo in its launch tube. But he did not fall for long. Only a few seconds later, he felt his body land in high water, which now reached his chin. He waded in the cold sea for a few moments, trying to get his bearings.
It seemed like something was there with him, thick sheets that weighed him down. He pressed against whatever it was, hoping that it would not pose a problem for the others, whose feet would not be able to touch the floor like his. After a few moments, Grey realized that these sheets were nothing more than damp fabric. It wasn’t a vent, he realized, it was a laundry chute.
Another loud splash filled the room behind him. Grey turned towards the noise, though he could not see a thing.
“Help!” Jallah yelled. Grey waded through the water until he felt the boy thrashing around, completely submerged. The teacher pulled the boy towards him and placed him on his shoulders. Jallah coughed up water and gasped for breath.
“Don’t worry. I’m here,” Grey said.
“Thanks!” Jallah muttered.
“We have to find a way out of this room,” Grey explained. “I think it’s a laundry room.”
Grey felt his way around until he found a door handle. He pressed on it, but the door did not budge.
Another splash filled the room. Grey turned towards the noise.
“Here!” Grey yelled.
He could hear Margery swimming in his direction.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“There’s a door here but it’s a pull door and the water level is too high. The pressure is going to make it impossible to move.”
A third splash filled the room as Iris entered with them.
“Here!” Grey yelled again as his deafened colleague made her way towards him.
“We have to get out!” Margery yelled.
“Of course we do, but how?” Grey asked. For once, he was out of ideas.
He felt Margery push past him and move her way towards the door. She immediately started banging on it with her fists, pounding like one of the UBEs against the metal floor.
“Help!” she shouted, pounding on the metal door with ferocity. “Help!”
It pained him to hear her act with such hope. As much as he wanted help, he knew none would come.
“What’s going on?” Iris asked as Margery continued to beat the door and yell for help.
“The water pressure is too strong! We can’t open the door!” Grey explained again.
He felt Iris move past him. For a moment, Grey simply stood there, unsure of what to do as the ladies stood against the door. He could feel Jallah trembling on his shoulders.
Maybe this is it, he thought. This is the end. This is how far we go.
But then Iris shouted something. At first, Grey did not understand what she said.
“What?” he asked.
“Border,” she repeated in a speaking voice. “I’ve felt this before. This material. It’s… it’s our way out,” she explained.
“What do you mean?” Grey asked.
“There’s glass on this door! Glass! We can break it! On the very top of the door, above the water level.”
“Do it! Find something to smash it with!” Grey shouted.
“I’ve still got my hammer,” said the boy above his head. Grey reached up and received the hammer from Jallah’s hands and waded towards the door. He felt the door until he could feel the cold thin glass beneath his fingers. He quickly pulled his hand back and brought it forward with great force, swinging the hammer until it collided with the glass. He felt it hit, but the glass did not break. He hit again. And again. And again. By the fourth hit, he could feel a small crack start to form. With one more strike, the glass came apart.
Grey pulled Jallah off his shoulders and held him up towards the newly formed hole.
“Go through!” Grey shouted to Jallah. The boy squirmed through the hole, probably getting shards of glass stuck in his hands. But Grey would not concern himself with cuts from glass right now. All that mattered was escaping. Injuries would have to wait.
Once Jallah was all the way through the door, Grey pocketed the hammer and turned around, reaching for the first body he could find. He did not know if it was Margery or Iris. Both were small women, but he lifted whoever it was up to the hole. She climbed through.
Grey repeated this process until he was the last one left in the laundry room. He grabbed onto the hole with both hands, pulled himself up and crawled through, feeling glass puncture his skin. Keep going, he thought, ignoring the pain.
Finally on the other side, he had his first glimpse of illumination since the pit. Straight ahead, on the opposite end of a long hall, was a small rectangular sliver of bright white light.
“There,” Grey said, pointing towards it, though he knew no one could see where he was pointing. “Let’s go! Fast! Now!”
The water level seemed slightly lower here than it was in the previous room, though it was still rather high. Grey moved through the water easily but heard the others struggling behind him. Even Iris, usually in the front of the pack, seemed to have trouble keeping up this time.
“Come on!” he shouted, hoping to motivate them.
The light was not so far away now. He grew closer and closer and closer. Grey reached out his hand as if to grab it. It’s there, he thought. It’s there!
His left knee ran into something hard and heavy underneath the water. He grabbed his aching joint with his left hand and reached ahead with his right, trying to move whatever was in his way. He felt something long and tubular with a handle and realized it was a machine gun. Grey instinctively pulled the heavy object out of the water and continued running forward, fighting through the new pain in his knee.
When he finally reached the end of the hall, he stood before another door with glass on top and metal on the bottom. This time a bright light came through the room on the other side, beaming through the window. Grey had to hold his hand in front of his face as his eyes adjusted. He smashed the glass again as the others followed in behind him.
“There’s light!” Margery said as they approached it.
“It’s bright enough to see from the other end of the hall!” Grey confirmed, shouting so that Iris could hear. “The next room must have full power!”
The teacher took advantage of the darkness and tucked the machine gun into the back of his shirt without anyone noticing. Each of his companions hurried through the hole one by one. Grey was last to move through. When he arrived on the other side, he was surprised to see the water level was only to his ankles and the lights were fully activated. He could hear a multitude of voices nearby, like a busy crowd talking amongst themselves.
Grey turned towards Iris. She appeared numb and confused, almost as if she were high on Synthetic Looper Inhalant. Grey snapped his fingers, hoping to draw her attention. After a few snaps, she turned and faced him.
“Don’t give up on me, Iris! Where do we go from here?” he asked.
Iris stared blankly into space for a few moments before nodding her head and looking around.
“North!” she eventually said.
“Which way is that?” Grey asked.
Iris shrugged. Clearly she was becoming too tired to think clearly. Just as Grey was about to turn around again, Iris grabbed him on the shoulder.
“That way!” she said, pointing left down the hall.
“Are you sure?” he asked, skeptical.
“I’m sure!” she replied, nodding. “I can feel the hum of the large power cells to our right, which means the pods are on the left! We’re close!”
Good, we haven’t lost Iris after all.
They turned down the hall to the left and quickly encountered a large crowd of peop
le. Grey slowed his pace as he approached them. These were the first people they had seen since the Navy men were pursued four levels up.
There were all types of people. Most people looked disheveled in soggy nightgowns and pajamas. Others wore suits and fine clothes. Some people even belonged to the military. Grey saw mothers with their children, elderly couples sitting by themselves and men and women frantically shouting the names of loved ones. It seemed this was the last place in the station unaffected by the UBEs.
“Is this where we are trying to get?” Grey asked to Iris as they walked through the crowd. The space opened up at the end of the hall, revealing a large rectangular room. It was practically the width of a yellow transition zone, yet with a lower ceiling. People crowded to the middle around what appeared to be a man handing out boxes of food.
“It is! The escape pods should be here!” Iris answered.
“Then why are all of these people still here?” Grey wondered.
“What?”
“I said why are these people still here?” Grey repeated even louder.
“They can’t use the escape pods! They’re encrypted somehow! We need an access code!”
“And you know the code?”
Iris shook her head.
“No, Trace told me some number code! He thinks it will work!” she replied.
“He thinks?”
The teacher nodded her head again.
“He knows a code! He doesn’t know what it does, but he thinks it works on the escape pods!” she answered.
Grey did not like the sound of this. From what his brother told him, Trace was not to be trusted. He was a rebel, an anarchist, and worst of all, a murderer. This whole time, Iris’s entire escape plan was based on the gut feeling of an untrustworthy borderline insane person.
Grey placed his hand on his face and wiped whatever moisture was sticking to him. Shit, he thought. We’re fucked.
“There!” Margery said, pointing up somewhere ahead of them.
“What?” Grey asked, confused.
“Look, the sign!” she said.
Grey glanced up towards the other end of the room. There was another hall leading out on the other side. Above the hall were the words Escape Pod Bay written in red paint against the black surface.