A/N: Welcome back dear readers and lurkers! Hope you're staying cool and shaded as temperatures rise. Please enjoy.
Chapter Thirty-six: Run the Gauntlet
Sirens drilled into his battered head. More than that, the sharp, repetitive whine pierced into his lungs and heart. Isaac went around the table and grabbed Ivy by her arm to haul her bodily to the suit kiosk, where he shoved her in and tapped the selection button. It locked closed. The surprise, combined with his strength, overruled any protest she may have had.
The audio crackled alive in his ear as he waited for the Necromorphs to burst into the lab. "Isaac! What're you doing? I can help!"
"I don't need you in the way," he told her. He pumped the shotgun- -it gave a satisfying shashuk. "Stay in there."
And he didn't trust her in a firefight when she'd proven unreliable against one single Necromorph. He'd been itching to shoot off a round, so he did at a vent grate across the lab. The shotgun bit into his shoulder, the sharp blast punctuating the sirens' wail. At first, nothing happened and he thought he'd missed or that the shell had been a dud. But a hiss rose as the thin metal slats shrank, melted and were eaten clean away. Wherever the acid had concentrated, a huge hole gaped, yawning open as the acid disintegrated the metal, plastic, and wiring.
A screaming roar preceded the arrival of three, four, five advanced slashers that barreled through the new and enormous hole in the wall. Isaac aimed the shottie at the center mass and fired off another round. The five slashers were close enough in range that the blast knocked them clean off their feet. Then the acid activated. He'd seen some shit in the last few years of his life, but the acid reacting with the diseased skin and viral growth was like nothing he'd ever seen before.
The two lead slashers never got to their feet. Instead, they writhed and screamed on the floor as the acid dissolved their soft tissue, exposing and then…melting…the ugly, fleshy mass of tangled innards, to bone and spinal column, and left separate pieces of their outermost extremities. Blood had seeped to the floor in a slick, goopy pool. It was as if someone had cut off the hands, feet, and head of the things and set them aside from the torso.
Three of the slashers had been indirectly hit. They struggled to their feet, grappling toward him with their overlarge blades, but the acid was too concentrated, too corrosive. Even the small quantity devastated the Necromorphs' rotted, mottled skin and muscle. The acid ate into their lethal bodies, deteriorated their composition enough that their top halves separated from their bottom halves as they closed in on him. It would've been hysterical- -the Necromorphs swinging toward him, everything pumping and running smoothly, and then in one instant, the arms and chest and head altogether fly in one direction as the legs dash in another.
Half a Necromorph was still as dangerous as a whole one, so Isaac used stasis on the mobile halves of the three slashers. With help from adrenaline, he stomped on the bladed appendages until they split and cracked off, rendering the slashers 'dead'. Gore and dark slurry soaked his boots and his suit up to his knees. Disgusting.
After that short encounter, the lockdown cut off. The world fell to silence. Behind him, the suit kiosk clattered open. "Let's go," he said without facing her. "We've overstayed our welcome."
Ivy said nothing, but he heard her follow him. Her footsteps clunked along, an echo of his own steps, and out into the corridor that would take them to the aqueduct. She would at some point figure out what the details of his plan would be. That, and he realized sooner or later, he'd have to decide if she was worthwhile enough to risk taking her aboard Retribution.
All that worry shrank from a different type of worry, when he looked askance for Little Pig and couldn't find it. Had…had he set it in another spot? No. No. He remembered distinctly that he'd placed Little Pig to the left of these pipes, which ran beside the door. He'd gone to the valves to crank off the water, came back, and had removed the panels that housed the wiring. Confused and, worse, anxious, he squatted to the damp ground to examine the spot where he knew he'd set Little Pig.
"What's wrong?" Ivy asked.
He didn't reply, his mind swarmed with paranoia and questions. On his return trip, had he seen the bomb? Yes. No. He couldn't be sure. But…who would've taken it? Ivy? Suspicion was there and too easy to stoke. He glanced at her. She stood a meter or two separate from him, watching on with a line between her brows.
"How long was I out?" he asked her.
"Less than a minute," she replied. She adjusted a strap on her forearm. "You came around almost immediately afterwards." In the ripe pause that followed, something inside of her drew a conclusion and her look darkened. "Wait…you don't think that…what exactly are you accusing me of?"
"Before I went into that lab, there was a device…right…there…"
When he gestured aside, his vision slewed sideways- -distorted and awash in orange haze- -and the spot he'd been sure had been absent of Little Pig, was now occupied with the device. A cluster of nerves pulsed behind his eye and his vision cleared. Little Pig didn't disappear again. Unsure if he was seeing things, he reached out a tentative hand and brushed a sharp edge. Why hadn't he seen it? What was happening to him?
Ivy noticed his cringe, and hesitantly, she stepped to him. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." He faced her. "We have to get to this sector's aqueduct. Do you know the way?"
"Yes. I can get us there."
"I want you to lead. I'll follow with the device. We have to take the shortest, fastest route," he said, rubbing his temple as his headache continued to bully him. "If you're going to help me, that's how you're going to do it."
"So you still won't tell me what all this is about?"
"Maybe," he told her with a smirk despite his pain and suspicions. "We'll see."
Her lips tightened into a line, but she flicked her ponytail over her shoulder and activated her visor, which was a large rectangular piece with white light. Her suit made her seem even more mannish, squaring out her shoulders and adding weight to her torso and legs. The suit was grey with silver and white inlay and accent, and various emblems decorated the shoulders and chest panels. Pockets and small pouches hung at her hips, and various tools were sewn into the suit's fabric. The suit had flashlights attached to the helmet, which she toggled on.
When Isaac turned his back to pick up Little Pig, he opened a private audiolink to Trey and quickly relayed in harsh whispers news of his new 'friend' and suspicions; however the link was sporadic, sizzling with static and broken, so he wasn't sure if Trey understood. With his guard up, Isaac lifted Little Pig and began trailing after Ivy, who'd moved a few meters further along the corridor. As they rushed, they didn't speak. It was just as well since roars and screams were ever present in the deep bowels of the underground corridors. Everything looked the same, dark and dank with very few indications of Marker activity.
At long last, they reached what looked to be a main connection to the aqueduct. Quiet had descended in this area, and soft noises reached his ears. They weren't the kind of noises that he associated with Necromorphs, but he put aside Little Pig to free up his hands. Ivy had stopped ahead of him at a doorway that opened into more darkness. The door itself was jammed half into its frame. Immediately outside the doorway was sheer straight down into the gut of the aqueduct where a languid tentacle, thick and sluggish, lay like a living root. A ring of yellow infection peeked from the jagged hole in the wall where the tentacle had forced its way through. Sparse emergency lights leaked illumination over the length and width of it.
"Wh-what's that?" she whispered.
"The thing I'm here to exterminate," he told her. He crouched at the edge. Ponderously, he flicked a little piece of metal into the distance below. It clanked to the ground long seconds later and distant. "We gotta get down somehow." Struts jutted out where the decking had been shorn clean off. If he'd known he'd have to scale walls, he'd have kept the kinesis tether.
Ivy shifted beside him. "We could shut off the gravity."
"Yeah?"
She took a deep breath. "The aqueducts operate on separate grav generators. We can backtrack to the controls, disable it, and come back."
"Let's go."
Ivy led again as he followed with Little Pig. This close to the finish line, he didn't want to risk leaving it behind and being unable to get to it. He worried at the dark emptiness of the corridors, the lack of Necromorph presence. As he thought on it, an unsettling pain burst through the synapses of his brain; it was everywhere and so deep it was if each nerve had been simultaneously and cruelly pinched. Fireworks rocketed across his vision and when he came to, he was no longer in the corridor but standing on a vast plane that was white in every direction.
An impulse to walk took him, so he began. He had no pain, only the continuous throb in his right eye. Snow blurred across the air, crunched under his feet, and he felt a thread of sweat roll between his shoulder blades despite the cold snap in the air. He wasn't really there. He knew this and knew that this was a hallucination brought on from the Marker fucking around with his head, but the experience wasn't lessened. He was there wherever there was and would be until the Marker released him, or until he figured out how to force the Marker to let him go.
Time was meaningless. Hours or days or perhaps minutes or seconds had passed. He didn't know. His chronometer blinked dashes across the display. The white and cold and snow and flatness were perpetual. He was neither hungry nor thirsty nor tired. He had questions, though. What was this place? What was the Marker showing him? Was it the Marker? Why now? And sandwiched between those good questions, why me?
Then he'd taken one step too many. A great presence made itself known, something more massive and more evil than any of the Markers combined. The presence of the Markers made him queasy with panic, shook him up, but the Markers were small potatoes compared to whatever was on this plane, and the rising panic set his heart tripping in his chest. His terror of it, the chilling horror that wrapped around him, froze him stiff, and even though he silently screamed at himself to run, that there was no hope in fighting it, he couldn't move. Couldn't…couldn't resist.
The presence telegraphed a signal to him, didn't speak, but made him think it, made him feel it.
You will be consumed and made whole. You are already a part of us. Make us whole. Make us whole. Make us whole…over and over and over until his body vibrated with the signal, the blood and muscles and skin reflecting an electrical charge that multiplied with strength. He wasn't himself, but more, a hundred-million fractured thoughts and images of people and creatures and places, so much of it that he couldn't comprehend. But he was a part of it. A part of that evil presence. A part of the whole…
Rumbling started under his feet and the white landscape and white horizon and white sky shattered to pieces as the blizzard ripped the picture away, tore the reality from him until everything was dark and enclosed and small white lights shone on him in triplicate. He was flat on his back and disoriented and an emptiness, a hopelessness, dug into him with tangible nails. There was only that numbing presence, the aftertaste of it inside him. He didn't want to think about it.
He was helped to his feet. Vaguely, he accepted the shotgun that was shoved into his chest. The three lights flicked around him and they were all he could see. Who was he? He was torn between two inexplicable forces. Nicole and the dead on one side; the overwhelming evil on the other. The scale of these forces was too…incomprehensible. It didn't register for him. He was a man of logic and reason and what he could touch and see, but that source of understanding had been pitched out the window a long time ago on the Ishimura. So what did he have left? Did that mean he was well and truly insane? Was this happening in his head, in his imagination, or were these forces in reality at work against each other?
And what effect would a man have on both of them?
"Isaac, you must be strong." Nicole's face took shape in the lights and she had him by the shoulders and shook him. "It is a part of you but it doesn't control you. It can't control you."
"I don't understand…I can't…"
Her eyes had faith in him. "Your path is a dark one. It is a difficult one. But it is one that must be crossed. And it's you who must do it. No one else possesses the strength that you do. It's you who was chosen to carry this burden."
A tingle started where she had gripped his shoulders and it spread, grew in power and warmth. He closed his eyes to steady himself against the future. His 'dark path' would take him to ruin. That much was obvious. But who else would be caught in that ruin? Could he prevent Ellie from falling to it? He opened his eyes. Felt lost and alone and desperate to be free. Noisy ruckus rang around him, separating him from the quiet of Nicole's presence, and he tucked the shotgun to his shoulder as yellow pinpricks blinked awake in the near darkness.
"What do we do? They've surrounded us." Ivy's voice was high pitched over the link. "What do we do?"
He curled his finger around the trigger. One thing was crystal clear. If he wanted answers, he'd have to survive. "We fight."
What happened next was difficult to track. Roars thundered around them, shrieks and screams and hisses, and the sick stench of dead flesh. Wave after wave of Necromorphs bore down on them, the variety across the gamut, until they became shapes and body parts and nothing more. Ivy's Queen Bee impacted the Necromorphs unlike any weapon Isaac experienced. The hum of it was the single indication that it was on. She would raise her hand, palm outward, the air would compress- -or would feel compressed- -and the Necromorphs would stop stock still, their bodies would stiffen, and a second later, they would crumple to the floor to remain there unmoving without dismemberment in a heap. It was obviously a weapon that had been designed for maximum efficiency against Necromorphs.
That was all he could study of it at the moment. Blades and bodies and flesh swarmed around the two living survivors, but thanks to technology and a swift trigger-finger, the Necromorphs were cut down in bloody swaths, feet, arms, hands, and heads scattered in the narrow confines of the corridors. The shotgun was slower to shoot than a pulse rifle or plasma cutter, but the damage it did was catastrophic. It pared down the large quantity of Necromorphs before they could slip in for the kill, and furthermore, melted craters in the floor that tripped up the monsters so that they fell and could not immediately get up. He and Ivy managed the attack and Little Pig as if they'd been working side by side the whole of their lives and somehow caught a break at gravity control in one of those anonymous rooms.
"I've got this," she told him. "If you'll watch my back?"
He nodded and stood beside where he'd set Little Pig, glancing around for vents. Though the Necromorphs had pressed them into this area, he and Ivy had put at least one or two walls between them. Knowing the Necromorphs as he did, it was a matter of time before they breached the temporary safety of the station. Whatever they had to do to get the gravity offline, it had to be fast.
The RIG opened a hololink in front of him, and he didn't realize how on edge he was when he jumped from it. It was Kaassen. Quickly, Isaac switched the hololink to private audio.
"Clarke," the old man said, "I'm returning to the last bomb. Hostiles are everywhere and high in numbers." He stated this as if he was commenting on airspace traffic. "Are you available to provide back up?"
"We've had some complications. I don't know if Trey told you, but I'm with a survivor. She…works for Oracle." Isaac glanced at Ivy, who tapped furiously at the console. She paid him no attention. "She's been trustworthy so far, but she concerns me. We're working on putting in place Little Pig."
"What's your ETA?"
"I don't know. It's a matter of setting up the bomb without getting killed doing it."
Over the audio, Isaac felt the scowl emanate from Kaassen. "I'll wait as long as I can. Radio me when you're en route. Kaassen, out."
Isaac waited behind Ivy, and a moment later, she pulled away from the console. "There. The aqueduct is now zero-g. Um. How're we going to get back?"
After a moment's thought, he said, "Same way we came."
She accepted his reply and nodded for him to precede her. As Isaac stepped to the door, the flood of raucous noise ebbed until it went silent. He touched the emblem set on the metal but did not open the door. "Did you hear that?"
"It went quiet," Ivy answered, confirming what he'd already thought. "Why would they…why would they do that?"
"My guess is they're setting up an ambush." He grimaced. "We don't have a choice. We have to keep going."
Together they left through the door to retrace their steps. A trail of gore spread in front of them- -puddles of goo and body parts, and whole bodies that they had to skirt which clogged the narrow corridors. Ivy caught her foot on a limb that jutted out and nearly fell, but braced herself on the wall. Awkwardly, Isaac helped to extricate her foot from the tangle and without further incident, they arrived to the open door that overlooked the gutted aqueduct. Trash, corpses, and various loose items cluttered the space between them and the base of the tentacle. The tentacle, no longer burdened under its own weight, curled and stretched with ease.
Isaac gestured. "See that yellow ring, near the hole?" Ivy nodded her head and he continued, "That's where we plant Little Pig. You ready?"
She nodded her head. He positioned his feet to unlock the magnetic clamps and after a short hiss, he floated. His sec-suit had a safety hook which he threaded out and attached to Little Pig. Ivy maneuvered beside him, her bright lights flashing around in the darkness. The whole aqueduct was suspiciously quiet and shadowy over cracks and crevices. His Marker-sense didn't relay a warning, but in a way, he already knew that the Marker had called the Necromorphs to this area for a showdown.
Where they had entered was at the far end of the aqueduct from where the tentacle had forced through the wall. With the zero-g, the tentacle had free rein in the ample spaciousness and could reach- -and thereby crush- -anywhere in the aqueduct. Except maybe along a ridge that ran the length of the ceiling…it looked like it was remnants of when the station had been originally built, and large tracks had been used to put into place the sections of the aqueduct. With the tentacle as big as it was, the ridge could provide some protection from the flailing mass of flesh.
"We'll walk along the ceiling. Try to hug that track," he told Ivy. She didn't respond, but followed as he flew across the open space to clamp on the smooth metal up against the ridge. "With any luck, it won't notice we're here.
They had progressed a quarter of the length to the tentacle's base without trouble. Then the tentacle shifted and slammed into the sides of the aqueduct. Metal rattled and dented, groaned against the strength in that tentacle as sturdy panels crinkled under the weight of the impact. Isaac had nestled his back flat along the protective track wall. Ivy was beside him, her arms flung out to grip any nook or cranny she could get her fingers into. It seemed to avoid them, but had ripped off several swaths from the walls and batted the pieces into areas further than Isaac could see. When the low bellows and expressive roars rolled over him, he understood the purpose.
Scattered, flickered shadows from the sides drew his attention. Necromorphs charged out of the fresh openings, those that could move fluidly in zero-g and some that would try regardless. Lurkers, leapers, infectors, and some odd flying-brain creatures with tails that Isaac had never seen before and spitters with the additional tentacles poured forth. There were plenty of angles to attack, and if he and Ivy stood and fought, they would be swallowed in the tidal wave of Necromorphs.
"Those things are getting closer!" Ivy's panic trembled her voice.
"Don't stop, keep going!" he called back, but he knew running the rest of the way would kill them.
Already the infectors had fanned out to the corpses that hung, suspended, in far corners, but the flying brains…they swooped like scavengers, closer and closer, close enough that Isaac could see the tail's barbed tip. The Necromorphs that couldn't fly launched forward to the survivors, sailing over the distance with terrifying swiftness.
"SHIT, LOOK OUT!"
He already detached the magnetic clamps and coiled his muscles. When Ivy's warning came, he sprang with as much force as he could muster. Smoothly, he glided along, low to the riveted metal. Cacophony roared at them from every angle. Isaac concentrated on the flying things that swooped over them, flaps of regrown skin beating the air and tails thrashing around.
He rolled to face the grouping of flyers and brought the shotgun to his shoulder. Several flyers dove at him, at least five or six, but Isaac aimed for the middle one and squeezed the trigger. Even as the flyers scattered, holes had flecked the wings, widening until they gaped. The flyers careened, squalling, into the sides of the aqueduct or collapsed in midair, a sack of formless, still flesh. Blood and fluid had sprayed a fine mist in the air or had leaked a trail of solid red bubbles.
Ivy had mimicked his trick and sailed through the air a meter or two behind him. She used Queen Bee on any flyer that neared, and she, too, used her suits boosters to amp up her speed. Though they had cleared the cloud of flyers, the other Necromorphs chased after them, using their spiked and barbed limbs to cover the distance.
"There's no way we'll make it!" Ivy called. "We have to get out of here!"
"Not without planting and arming the bomb, first," he said, more to himself than to Ivy. Louder, he said, "It won't take long. We just have to get there. Keep your boosters on!"
No sooner had he said that then a compact ball of greenish brown matter whizzed past his head and splattered apart on the metal behind him. A cloud of low thumps surrounded him, and as the acid activated, it angrily sizzled as it weakened the metal. Bowling ball sized dents were scattered around them. The spitters weren't anywhere near, but were an uneven rank behind the fast-moving leapers and lurkers that crawled and raced up the wall space. He watched, horrified, as the spitters paused, and even from the distance he was at, Isaac could see their abdominal organs and tissues squeeze, the little dangling arms separating the mass so that the acidic ball could be shot.
Another volley soared at them. With that number of acidic balls raining down, they would be pelted, slowed, and swarmed. Unless they had some cover…
"Over the wall!" he said to Ivy.
Abruptly, he swiveled to switched direction. The bomb attached to him continued on forward momentum and it jerked around when he moved and clanked into the wall. Ivy was far enough behind him that she saw what he'd done. Together, they vaulted over the protective ridge. More thumps resonated as the acid balls hit. And that was when the first of the Necromorphs landed in a contingent between them and the tentacle's base. There was a mix of lurkers and leapers. They hissed and shrieked, disgusting bodies leaving smears of fluid where they crouched, and there was a moment between them and action.
Then Ivy pushed him aside and gestured her arm, sweeping it to encompass the entire cluster of Necromorphs. Queen Bee hummed the air, unseen waves vibrating into the targets, and a second later the limp bodies floated away. Ribbons of fluid and blood had spurted from the Necromorphs in their death throes. It disconcerted Isaac to bump into whole Necromorphs, but they had to keep going and finally, they were at the base of the tentacle. Up close, it was even more nauseating. Under the thin membrane, the infected fluid pulsed and where the infection ended, were open and oozing sores.
Isaac chose to plant Little Pig to the side of the jagged metal hole, aligning it with the yellow ring. He and Trey had had the foresight to weld raw magnets to the bottom and so the device sat still where it was planted. Behind him, he heard Queen Bee buzzing as Ivy fended off the continuous attack. The shrieks and howls rattled around them and he could barely hear himself think.
"Whatever you're doing, do it faster," Ivy told him. "Queen Bee's almost done for."
He lifted the protective shutter that housed the remote activation toggle and flipped it. Little Pig powered up. As he stepped away, a blackened mass plowed into him, tackling him off his feet. He grunted as air exploded from his lungs. Two clawed arms grappled his shoulders painfully as the momentum carried him and the leaper from solid ground. His shotgun was sandwiched between their bodies and as he struggled to free it, he and the leaper rolled in midair. The scorpion-like tail swung, but the leaper hadn't pinned him and so the barb went wide. It screamed at him and tried to skewer him a second time, but missed again.
Over the chomping mandibles and evil glowing eyes, Isaac noticed a spitter had sprinted forward and lobbed acid at him. Desperate, he used his stabilizers to shift position and blocked the acid gob with the leaper's body. It screamed, convulsed, and let him go. He quick-drew the shotgun and with one blast, blew the spitter back to hell.
"ISAAC!"
Ivy's shout diverted his attention to her position, where she flew toward him, lurkers hot on her heels, some flicking missiles her way, others bounding after her along the walls or using broken debris as platforms. The thick cluster of Necromorphs gave him plenty to aim for, and with a couple shots, he pared down their numbers so that he and Ivy could get some breathing room. It wasn't enough. Up ahead was a gouged-out section of the aqueduct where they would hopefully find their escape.
"Use your boosters!" Isaac called to Ivy.
His suit juiced power to the boosters and he picked up speed. Ivy drew up beside him. Over the bloodthirsty roars thick in the air and the constant force of the suit boosters, Isaac heard a low rumble. He didn't know what it was, but then the anguished cry of bent and torn metal cut through as the tentacle dragged its massive weight across the panels up and down the sides of the aqueduct. It lashed at them, an inevitable rope malevolent in design and size. Isaac pressed his boosters harder, but they were already at maximum burn and he didn't know if he was going to make it.
Ivy's muffled scream came as the tentacle descended, a presence that had physical weight even in zero-g, and he winced with the anticipation of being slammed into death. When he didn't feel pain or hear anything, he opened his eyes. The world collided with him, went dark and enclosed, and then he tumbled to a halt, ricocheting off smooth stone wall and steel support beams until he collapsed in a heap in a corner. Stunned, Isaac didn't move.
How did he live through that? Ivy floated closer to the hole they had eked through and didn't respond when he hailed her. They were still in zero-g. The tentacle had laid bare a parallel hall that led up to a closed door. Isaac grabbed Ivy by the waist and maneuvered to the door, which opened into an untouched corridor. When the door closed, the gravity returned and he had to rest Ivy on the floor.
"Marker team? Marker team, do you copy?" The comm crackled with static and went clear. He hoped the open channel would reach everyone. "Marker team? You there?"
"We hear you, Clarke," replied Trey. "We were getting worried."
Isaac struggled to avoid panting over audio. "Little Pig's been planted and I'm returning for the last bomb. The Major was en route last time we talked. Have you heard from him?"
"I'm still kicking, Clarke," replied a gruff voice. The Major grunted. "It's about time you finished your job."
"Yeah, I'm on my way." From behind him erupted the telltale roars. "Fuck, it never ends. I gotta move. We'll contact you when the last bomb is ready. Stay safe."
"You, too," Trey said. "We're holding the fort for you."
A/N: If you can't tell, my foot's on the accelerator and it's to the floor. Hope that was a good ride for all of you...there's more to come. Next chapter will be posted June 8th. See you then!
Lite edits 12/20/15.