"Don't do it," Caitlin warned, the ion blaster warm in her hands, energy pulsing through it barrel. Kane, though, had no intention of relinquishing himself to his captors again. He shot a bolt of electricity towards them from the stun pistol, missing as he stumbled on the grating beneath his feet. In response, Caitlin pulled the trigger on her weapon.
A blue beam of light lanced out like a glowing string of death, cutting through the rail by his side. Kane jerked away as the laser grazed the beacon in his hand, sending shards of sparks flying from its battery. Caitlin was surprised by the sudden weight of the rifle while firing, which had activated an internal gyroscope comprised of spinning magnets, pulling her aim low. The weapon itself became heavy when fired, which was far from expected.
Having nearly been seared in half from the laser; the beacon bounced to the ground and off the grate floor as Kane stumbled back dangerously close to the spinning claws of the recycler while he watched the sonic beacon dance its way into the spinning blades until it was finally crushed between its metal teeth. The old man caught his wits and stared at the last sparking bits of the beacon mashed within the gears of the machine, realizing all too late what consequence that would spell. Caitlin and Thorn looked on in dread as a large shadow loomed over Kane from behind as he turned. The behemoth was a twisted horror of tormented flesh, infused with a vicious alien virus and equally perverse human engineering. Its touch, its taint, its very presence meant death; and Kane's dulled eyes were aware he had been a party to its creation.
The hybrid creature snarled, its disfigured eyes devoid of any discernable emotion as Kane raised his gun in pitiful defense only to have his wrist grasped by the creature’s thick misshapen hand and ripped his arm off at the elbow. Sinew snapped as strings of flesh resisted. White glossy bone spattered with blood as the severed arm twitched, firing the pistol repeatedly. Kane fell back, the grinding teeth of the recycler beckoning to call his fate. The mutant threw aside the twitching arm as if in disgust and roared at the old man who cringed beneath its glare.
A thin shaft of blue sunlight bit through the air and sheared through its chest, causing it to stagger as if experiencing pain for the first time and wondering what it was. With pleading eyes, Kane turned towards the two companions, while Thorn bolted forward and grabbed him up. The three of them rushed up the stairwell as the creature howled from below.
"We must hurry," Kane whispered feebly from the loss of blood as Thorn took a stark moment to bind the stump with a strip of cloth. Not sure if the creature was merely angry or mortally wounded, they heeded Kane's advice and made their way towards the evacuation chamber on the level above with the rest of the evacuees.
Through the blood-spattered halls, it became ever clear that those injured and wounded by the mutant's attack had begun to turn, which was an infection rate far accelerated that either of them had ever witnessed. Those few maimed citizens who hadn't been initially killed in the rampage, began to snarl like animals as their red eyes welled with blood. Dragging along the impaired General between them, they had finally reached the cafeteria only to find its disheveled remnants entirely empty, all the Fallhaven citizens had already made their way to the escape lift. A communications terminal on the wall suddenly blipped on with Beatrice looking quite pale as she saw Kane drenched in his own blood. She put down the gun she held on Haiti, and her demeanor changed to submission.
"So it's over..." was all she said, a pool of relief settling in her eyes. We were all a little dumbfounded by her response.
"We can sort this all out later, but now we have to get to the lift with the others and get out of here!" I proposed, trying not to lose my mind in the desperation of the moment. Beatrice turned herself over to Haiti and we gave them a few minutes to arrive at our location on the lower level.
It troubled me, and was trying to fathom why Betty had reacted the way she did and surrendered to us so readily. As gruesome as Kane's injury was, at least it was clean from infection. The only part of him that had touched the mutation was now lying somewhere on the floor of the recycle chamber. That monstrosity was still loose as far as we knew, and we didn't wish to wait to face its wrath if it had followed us back up to the main chambers. We needed to get out of this hellhole and back to the surface. When Haiti and Beatrice rushed into the cafeteria, the older woman addressed us directly while Kane was left moaning in a seat beyond as Thorn attempted to bind his arm with a tourniquet.
"The escape lift is ahead, I've already activated the emergency protocol to take us up," Beatrice managed to advise the group as we all made our way to the central chamber.
Ushering us through the gated doorway we followed in the footsteps of the surviving residents who had previously made their way to the lift. A repetitive banging echoing towards us through the corridor drew our attention, and we hastened our pace with a breath of caution. The lit hallway emptied into an enormous circular chamber with red blinking lights threading their way towards the surface along the chimney far above. In the center of the room, a large enclosed cell sat on the circular lift, its doors firmly sealed.
Peering inside the windowed slits, we could see the noise was coming from several of the citizens standing within, who were desperately trying to break their way out. Beatrice stepped up to the glass and got the attention of one of the grey clad guards inside, who quickly rushed over with a wild look in his eyes.
"What happened?" Beatrice demanded to the guard in slight confusion as to why they had locked themselves inside, "Open the doors!"
"We can't!" the uniformed guard yelled back through the thick glass, "we're locked in here," he answered, nervously jerking at the controls to the sliding door, "we didn't know where you were so we followed protocol and directed everyone inside and followed the instructions given by the program over the speakers. Once we got everyone inside and activated the lift, the doors sealed shut, and now they refuse to open!" he blared back with a nervous look over his shoulder. Behind him, we could see several dozen people in their different shaded jumpsuits milling about and attending to the injured.
Something wasn't right here, and the telltale look of confusion on the old woman's face showed it. For some reason the emergency escape lift was not operational, and she could only imagine there had been a failure of the gears. Scanning the systems panel by the lift entrance she could see that it was getting power, it just wasn't working. She spun her head, as we all did in turn towards the low pained chuckle coming from Kane, who stood leaning against a nearby support post; a deep red stain dripping from the binding at his severed elbow.
We turned back with a snap toward the elevator as we heard a wild scream, then another; and chaos started to arise beyond the sealed doors as we stood and glanced through the small windows. It was an inevitable chance that at least one of the survivors had been contaminated during the mutant attack; but we had no idea just how quickly the engineered virus from the creature could spread and turn their hosts. Several shots from a stun pistol lit up the enclosed room, silhouetting frightened people dashing for safety, each strobe of light framing a shadow poised in terror.
The government scientists had accelerated the infection stage so it could be to be more effective in a hostile environment on foreign soil. The mutant had meant created as a weapon rather than as a means of research for a cure. Beatrice vainly fiddled at the hatch lock, trying to reroute the directives to get the doors to open; but it was Thorn who pulled her away as the screams from inside escalated. It was simply too late for them. It was a hard call, but at this point, it was safer to keep the doors sealed. We quietly turned our attention back to the wounded General who had slumped to the floor, sitting upright with his back against the pillar support, a perverse smile on his bloodied lips.
"What did you do?" Beatrice finally accused as she stepped towards the pitiful man, gripping her balled fists.
"You," he muttered between labored breaths, "...you can't do this without me. Haven couldn't have existed without my guidance. You know that, my dear
," his weary eyes raised to meet hers.
Betty spun back towards the console to note something she hadn't been looking for before. Kane had initiated a lockdown. Nobody was going anywhere. Stomping back towards Kane, the glare in her eyes showed she had little sympathy that he was bleeding to death.
"Why would you do this," her voice raising to a shout, "stop this, open those doors and save those people!" she demanded, but her plea didn't move the old stubborn man in the slightest, his face grim and unruffled in the face of her distress.
"I have manipulated these people to do my bidding for all these years, and at nearly every moment you have been by my side," he muttered, exposing her own guilt, "not once have you spoken out to save anyone, ever. All you cared about was your own position and minor power, which you earned through loyal service ...service to me and my wishes. Now that I'm no longer in control, here you are, Betty, turning your back on me for what - these lowlife scavengers?" he motioned towards us with a feeble wave of his only hand.
"I'm ashamed to have done the things I did for you, Kane, just to survive," she muttered with a tear in her eyes, "I only used you to get through this disaster alive, but you twisted it into something grotesque. All you cared about was to be the petty king of your own little world."
"No, my dear," he laughed bitterly, "I used you, body and soul. You could never have endured suffering on the lower levels or survived the years of menial work at your age, let alone, out upon the surface. Don't insult me by pretending you didn't enjoy being at my side, or feigning disgrace to this pitiful lot just to trick them into trusting you now that the tables have turned," Kane muttered with a labored cough, his harsh words implicating her.
Honestly, it was hard to read Beatrice. I made us question if she surrendered simply to play us after she saw that the General’s plan had backfired. Was she the type of person with the lack of character who would turn on anyone at any time, just to save her own skin? Those were the qualities of a coward, someone more dangerous that Kane could ever be by being so entirely unpredictable. With the glances my friends and I cast between us, we all shared that same thought. Haiti pulled Beatrice away when it looked she was about to strangle the wounded man. Unfortunately, given the circumstances, we still needed him.
"Is there anything we can do, or even reboot this system if that's even possible?" I inquired with a measure of hope. Grudgingly, Betty made her way back to the elevator control panel, trying to phase out the screams and horror still echoing from the growing numbers of infected attacking those who were still trapped inside the elevator car.
"The stairwell to the surface has deactivated to allow clearance for the lift chamber," she noted while pointing up towards the folded walkway sections above, positioned along the walls, "I could try to reset whatever he did to the elevator by shutting down the power entirely to this section, and that should open the doors to the elevator so we can rescue our people," she ended with optimism.
We peered back through the windows only to jump back in startled fright when a mutated Weeper leapt towards us, its distorted face pressed against the glass. Whoever it had once been, their mind was now quite gone; reflected by the frenzied look its wild eyes streaming tears of blood. This clearly wasn't the usual plague, for the blighted victim's face and hands were bloated and mottled with erupted sores.
"We can't have those doors opening on us. This mutant strain appears highly volatile," Thorn warned as he pulled me aside so we could speak out of earshot of the old woman, and I tried to debate our options at the moment.
"Look, I know she can't be trusted either, but we can't go back into that complex with that monstrosity running around, let alone that this entire facility is irreversibly contaminated by now," I struggled to reason with him as Haiti looked at us both with a note of concern in his eyes.
"You ain't gonna let that crazy woman open those doors are ya, girlie?" Haiti inquired with his broken dialect, while referring to the screaming madness ensuing on the other side of the hatch where the diseased were attacking one another. Not failing to note that we were limited to defending ourselves with nothing more that a pair of stun pistols and a single laser rifle which I was holding; all I could do was affirm the unquestioning desperation of our situation.
"Actually, Haity ...I'm afraid there's no other way."
Daylight
There was only one way to purge the lockdown protocol Kane had initiated by dead booting the power through the emergency terminal. It was something Beatrice knew how to do, but had never tried before. Arguably, it was a dangerous move, as the system would release all hatchways on the lift upon shutdown; which would free the weepers trapped within. The only smart move I could think of was to board the elevator.
"Ya'll crazy; there ain't no way we can go in there, woman!" Haiti argued while giving me a piece of his mind.
"Not 'into' the elevator, but on top of it," I offered in defense of my plan as I pointed up to its flat ceiling, "we can use a maintenance ladder to mount the roof of the elevator chamber and ride it to the surface when the system reboots."
"And be well out of reach of the infected, it’s not a bad idea," Thorn answered back, attracted to the idea I had come up with.
"Can you reboot the power connection?" I asked while looking over to Beatrice; she nodded, followed by a smug glance towards Kane who sat on the floor drenched in his own blood.
"Yes, I think I can. Though I'm not sure how long it will take since we've never actually done it before," she agreed, though there was a taint of worry in her tone. I could see the sorrow in her eyes as she glanced through the glass into the interior of the lift; silently grieving all the poor souls within which had been baited by Kane's treachery.
I gripped the Centurion rifle, not quite sure how much juice this thing held or how long it would last. Bullets you could count for peace of mind, but this damn thing could entirely drain in the next shot, or the next hundred; I had no clue as to what its energy capacity was. We found a rolling work ladder that would suffice, and rigged it up with a rope to loop around a nearby support so we could pull it far enough away to clear the gears after we mounted the elevator. Beatrice crouched down and worked under the control panel, until she seemed to have finally found what she was looking for and promptly yanked apart a coupling, then quickly plugged it back into its mated socket. The moment she had done that the lights flickered and the female voice of the systems computer came on over the PA system, giving us a countdown of five minutes until a full-scale power reboot. Haiti hopped over and assisted the old woman up the ladder. Once we were all on top of the lift, we struggled to draw the rope pulley in effort to remove the ladder from the rooftop where we stood; awaiting what was about to ensue as the countdown progressed.
Having thrown down the rope over the side which had been tied to the rear of the wheeled ladder, our eyes widened in despair as Haiti pointed towards the maintenance ladder which had begun to slowly roll its way back towards the elevator where we had mounted. We had failed to notice it before, but the floor of the chamber had been slightly graded towards the center of the shaft where trace water leaks would be drained away through the gutter. As the timer counted down to the last minute, we watched in dread as the tiny squeaky wheels of the step ladder inched back towards us ...then suddenly, everything went black around us.
A choir of clicking tones and tension wires echoed through the shaft as we all glanced upward into the elevator shaft. Slowly, the lights began to snap on one by one from the ceiling down towards us as we heard the soft hush of the lift doors opening below our feet. From within the elevator, the infected began to flood out and around the chamber, surrounding us on all sides. As the final lights clicked on at the ground level, we saw the outer room filled with the twisted mutations trying to claw their way to our position on top of the lift. It was disquieting how quickly the hybrid virus had made them turn; their wild diseased eyes were now gleaming from the reflected spotlights in vengeful hatred.
Luckily, they could no
t quite reach the top of the roof, but there were those that were bold enough to climb over the other weepers back to pull themselves up to our level. Thorn fired his stun pistol, as did Haiti, towards the few weepers that had managed to gain the roof, only to be dropped after absorbing several direct shots. To our despair, a few errant mutant weepers began mounting the rolling stepladder that was now only a few short feet away, their added weight quickening its pace towards the edge of the roof. I took a shot at one with the laser rifle, the shot cutting low, disintegrating one of the ghouls shoulder and causing it to flip forward; blocking the wheels. With only a few sparse feet to breach, it did not take long for several more of the infected to mount the ladder and risk the leap over to the roof.
Beatrice huddled in the center of the dome alongside Kane who glared in horror at the nightmare that had befallen them. All three of us concentrated our fire where the mutants were jumping onto the roof, and in a strange dreamy moment, the world around us paused as a colossal grinding echoed down from the shaft above. Even the enraged infected hesitated as all eyes, human and mutant, turned upwards as a crack of heavenly light pierced from the surface hatch far above. I saw many of them waver as the first beam of sunlight raced down to wash over us, dancing particles of dust suspended in the thick air. But for a brief moment they all stood there basking in the light, as if some residual memory of their former selves held onto the splinter of that distant dream of the blue sky they had almost forgotten.
Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029 Page 16