Chapter XX: Elevation Predation (POV) - Time

AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

Nothing else to say here, just a reminder to please keep looking out for our heroines killing bird-watchers or anti-infection scientists instead of homicidal cultists. Again, I'm pretty sure I changed all the immunologists and ornithologists and such, but shit happens (as this chapter's plot shows :D).

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.

Chloe stood as the last one fell with an almighty groan, the blade-arm of another monster buried in its neck. "Oh fuuuck I can't believe we're still alive."

I looked around at the piles of the dead. Monsters, both the things and the Unitologists, lying together peacefully in death. Well fuck. Probably just how they'd like it, really, but... Fuck. Oh. A few very awkward seconds of silence had passed since Chloe's remark. I quickly added a simple, "Me either."

Rachel just shrugged, the dealer of death was more than used to it. "Eh. Wasn't that bad."

"Wasn't that bad?!" Chloe looked... gobsmacked. Her mouth dropped open cutely and she looked so utterly caught off guard and open about her honest confusion I couldn't help the mental squee over the adorableness. "Are you fucking kidding?"

Rachel frowned. "No? It's not even the biggest group we've gone up against thus far. Not even close, if what Joyce was telling me was right."

Chloe blinked. "Joyce was telling you stories?"

"Yep. While we were waiting for Temba's engineers to get everything ready." She shrugged. "She's rather proud of you, y'know."

Chloe took a very deep, very slow breath and nodded. "I know." Another breath. "Let's talk about something else." A third breath. "Please?"

Rachel smiled, patted Chloe gently on the shoulder. "So, Max. That gun of yours is really quite interesting. What is it?"

I shrugged. "I have no idea. One of the engineers gave it to me."

Rachel clicked her fingers, sudden recollection spreading across her face. "Oh, right, yes. The one that keeps flirting with Chloe!"

Chloe blinked. "Someone's flirting with me?" She frowned, looking off into her memory before- "You mean the beardy dude?"

Rachel laughed, clasped her hands together and batted her eyes melodramatically coquettishly and turned her voice up a few pitches. "Oh, Chloe, you're going to rip those Unitologists apart and think of me while you do? That's so sweet!"

Mac's might've been that, but Rachel's saccharine sarcasm obliterated any sense of sentiment the sentence might've had prior.

Still, Chloe turned and gaped at her. "That was flirting?"

I could feel the veins in my temples pulsing. Is that normal? Rachel just laughed again, quipped something else at Chloe's expense that I didn't catch. I might've stopped paying attention to their conversation entirely, quite focused on the idea that my head might explode.

What, had it been too long without voices? Without hallucinations? I know you're supposed to relax so you can 'relieve mental pressure', but I always thought that was a metaphor.

I might not've been able to hear the voices, but I sure as heck could hear the blood in my veins. Ba-dumph. Ba-dumph. Da-

...

Oh no. Did my heart just stop?

...

Oh god, this is agonising. Why won't it beat!?

Beat, damnit! Beat! Oh no, oh shit, oh fuck my heart has stopped and there was a painful sense of fullness in my chest and I'm dying in the middle of a Unitologist Church and I'm not even dying to Unitologists!

My palms were getting damp with sweat - same with my forehead - and I was swaying about light-headedly as I panicked, like a faint breeze would knock me right over. Come on! Come on! I slammed my fist into my chest. Beat! Damnit, beat!

...

I brought my hand to my chest again and thumped as hard as I could, again, and again, and again. Blow after blow until suddenly- something grabbed my hand, long and bony and digging into my skin, and I felt warm breath on my ear. "Apologies for the delay in your heartbeat there, but I needed a word."

Another breath. A pause. Jefferson's voice became almost... distant, introspective.

Worried.

"You're nearly there now, Max. So close to the end. Just remember what I told you, when it happens. It'll get you through. You're a real talent. My finest work - truly, unarguably pure. I'm so very proud."

The voice stepped back and the breath on my ear disappeared.

Ba-dumph. Ba-dumph.

I sighed, my shoulders slumping as the tension faded. "Oh thank Fuck."

"Max?" - "Thank fuck for what?"

Chloe and Rachel were both staring concernedly at me. They'd both spoken at the same time. Copse didn't seem to care, smirking with one eyebrow raised. I shrugged at them. "That we're not dead?"

I still wasn't a good liar.

Both of them blinked at me. Chloe even frowned, tilting her head slightly as she looked at me. Rachel pursed her lips. She crossed her arms, one hand resting gently on the handle of the knife poking out of her suit. "Yeah..." Chloe drawled slowly. "That is good, I guess?"

Rachel strode over and poked her in the side with a light laugh, getting a muffled, giggly twitch from Chloe for her teasing efforts. "You guess? Something you want to tell us?"

"Yep. If you guys die, I get everything in Mom's will. All the hella good crockery will finally be mine!" She raised her hands in mock-maniacal laughter.

Oh, really? I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow at her. One half of my mouth quirked up. "And who'll cook things to put in the crockery, if I'm dead?"

"I can cook!" She protested.

I snorted. "You can turn the things we use to cook into other things, I'll give you that, but only if they're machines and not ingredients. Those you can only turn into ashes."

Chloe flushed. "Can we talk about something else?"

Rachel and I exchanged amused looks, a smirk emblazoned across her face, before I remembered exactly who I was smiling at and looked away. "Again?"

"Yes, please." Chloe nodded, very, very emphatically.

"Like what?" Rachel asked, still amused, still smirking.

"Uh, like..." Chloe rubbed at the back of her neck. "where are we going next?"

Rachel pointed. "Those stairs."

"Yeah, but like, how far up?"

"All the way."

"Oh, right. That. Shit."

This time, I took the rear. I volunteered for it. My gun seemed to be a bit more... undiscriminating than the others' were, so I needed everyone else to be out of the way. Since I didn't know where we were going, that meant taking the rear.

It also gave me time to think. My last hallucination of Jefferson... he'd said we were nearing the end. Hopefully he meant the end of our journey, not the end of our, y'know, lives. That would suck. I had so much more I wanted to see, so much more I wanted to do. Dying here just felt... wrong. Even the voices in my head agreed with me on that, which wasn't surprising since they lived in there too and no head means no place for the voices to be.

Heh. What if the voices in my head could escape? Heh. What if my nightmares didn't need me anymore?

...

...

...

...Heh.

Way to get all emo, Max. Definitely can't let that happen. I'm way too old to make the change to dyed hair and all the angsty griping I'd need to do to make that work. Eeesh. Blue hair, with my colouring? No thanks.

Stuck in my mental rambles, I hadn't noticed that I'd fallen behind the others. Not far, but they were starting the next set of stairs while I was still barely a third of the way up the last. I turned from behind and scurried up after them, sparing a quick glance into the conspicuously open doorways lining the landing. The emergency lighting provided enough for me to see the office space was clear and I kept going.

I barely felt it at first, just a gentle graze down my shin. I did feel the shiver that went down my spine though, so I looked down to see what creepy crawly had gotten into my suit.

It may have been creepy, but it sure as hell wasn't crawly. More... slithery. That was my last calm thought before the tendril around my leg suddenly grabbed my ankle and yanked. I screamed and screamed as the enormous, roaring tentacle pulled me through the landing door and into the darkness.

For all the low light, I couldn't see shit of the tentacle thing. But I could feel it, clamped on my leg. I screamed as it tightened again. My back was in agony. My head was spinning. The tentacle roared again - and how the fuck was that happening? It didn't have a mouth! It pulled me again and I slammed into some solid metal surface. All the breath rushed out of me and I screamed again.

The huge muscles on the thing pulsed and coiled, tensing as it prepared to drag me further. I could see bits of it shifting in the dark, the single biggest point of light being a weird glowy blob a few feet along it. The emergency lighting was fuck all help.

I twisted in its grip, sending bouts of pain all over my body as I strained against the muscles holding me. Somehow, miracle of miracles, I still had my gun. So, I took shaky, shaky aim and fired. And immediately regretted it, as the electricity went straight through the thing and into me as well.

I could feel an intense, prickling burning across my legs and stomach. And I was so, so thirsty. I remembered that clearly. It was about all that was, really. Even the pain and the burning felt somehow distant.

Which was probably what made me shoot again, come to think of it. It certainly wasn't a smart choice, and only made all that pain so much worse, but the tentacle seemed to not like it either.

The first shot, it hadn't seemed bothered, but this... the roar was loud enough to rattle my bones. The light from that glowy blob flickered and the tensed muscles suddenly flexed and I was slammed into a wall. Breath, gone again. Ribs... ow. Head, spinning.

Situation? Great.

I twisted again and one of my ribs audibly snapped. I bit down on the scream, but that really was pointless. It escaped anyway, and I howled into the dark. The tentacle seemed to like that. It squeezed harder and I only screamed more.

Have you ever had a really bad toothache? The kind of pain that's so strong, so... permeating that it's all you can even feel, much less think about? The kind of pain that completely hijacks evegrything about you, every thought, every feeling, every aspect of your self is just gone under waves and waves of unending, unalterable pain.

Yeah.

This wasn't like that. Well. It was at first. I couldn't think. I couldn't even remember that I could think. Everything was just... hurt and hurt and hurt. But then, I stepped back and it was just gone. No pain, no hurt, no agony. No anything else. I couldn't even pull enough mind together to care. But it apparently wasn't my mind anyway.

Because my mind was down there, in the body a few feet below me that I could barely see through the layers of muscle and sinew coiled around it. Weirdly, while I was out here, instead of in there, the body was still screaming. The tentacle pulled again, and the body was gone, and I was left in darkness.

Huh.

Okay.

Well...

Now, wha-

It felt like something had grabbed me round the middle and yanked. I practically flew in the direction the body had disappeared. Wow. That tentacle could really move when it wanted to. It pulled us through two corridors, around a sharp right turn and into a large, well-lit hall. The centre of the floor had been cracked open, the metal torn and warped like something had exploded through it.

Can you guess what that something was?

I didn't have to. It was dragging the body below me towards the hole. The other end of the tentacle went into it and I couldn't see anything inside.

I screamed, but nothing heard me. I knew if it dragged my body in there, I wouldn't ever be getting back out.

Something in my weird projective state must've reached my body, because I watched as it turned and wriggled in the tentacle's grip - I didn't feel any of the pain or pressure this time - and raised the gun once again. The barrel was shaking, but it was still pointed straight into that hole. And then, my body fired. Instead of electricity, one of Mac's special little bombs flew from the weapon and landed in the hole.

There was a pause. A moment where I thought the thing might've been a dud. A moment where I started to resign myself to death, or at least floating above while I had to watch my death. But then the tentacle roared again, the sound resonating like church bells and music-hall opera, the sound growing and broadening before- the hole just... vanished. Where once a torn, tattered break in the floor had been, was now a large, perfectly round hole.

The tentacle wrapped around me thrashed and wailed, still moving somehow despite being detached from whatever had been inside that hole. For a second, I thought it might still kill me, but eventually the thrashing stopped and the tentacle just... relaxed.

Of course, that was when the cavalry arrived. The door I'd been dragged through literally exploded open and, like three avenging angels, Rachel, Chloe, and Copse charged in to save me. I expected my body to pull itself out of the tentacles, to go over and reunite, to get on with this while I was stuck up here watching, but...

Rachel gasped, and Chloe went so, so still.

My wife dashed over, dropping her gun to her side and dropping to her knees beside me. Her helmet flickered open and she leaned down to listen at my chest, she checked my pulse and- "No. Fucking no. Not this."

She slammed a fist into my chest. "No!"

I looked up to the ceiling, studying the- Oh, who am I kidding? I looked away from Chloe. I couldn't watch that. Couldn't watch her expression turn to that again. That expression I hadn't seen since her dad died, since we thought Rachel had... I stared at the ceiling, powerless to do anything to help my wife as she sobbed over my body. Over my... corpse.

I tilted my head. Was that a... there's a hole in the ceiling too? I stared at it, and my weird ethereal existence moved closer, closer, closer, until something reached out through it and grabbed me, pulling me through and out into endless void. I was... I was in space. The stars flickered around me and if I'd been able to feel anything, I knew the crushing cold would've killed me. But I was... I was dead already.

It was barely noticeable at first. One of the stars was slowly turning red. A sort of... burnt scarlet. And then one next to it started as well, and one next to that, and one next to that. The red spread further and further until every star I could see was the colour of drying blood. And I somehow knew that even the stars I couldn't were red too. I had no idea what it meant.

Figures. Even after death, I'm still hallucinating useless bullshit.

I sat there, wondering what the hell I do now. What had pulled me out here, and what did it want to show me? Or, since this was my hallucination, what did I want to show me? Man. That's confusing to think about.

Again, it happened slowly and barely noticeably. But it was happening. The stars were growing. I knew the basics from astronomy - stars grow as they get older because they lose mass, and thus lose density, and their gravitational ability decreases so they spread out more, and I even knew that they turned red as they did, but... all of them at once?

It felt like one big metaphor. Everything in my existence just... collapsing at once. But- Oh. That's... strange. They're not getting bigger.

They're getting closer.

I screamed and woke up.

Chloe was staring at me, utterly agape, eyes still red. Even Rachel looked shocked. Copse seemed totally unperturbed. Good old Copse.

"So, what did I- oof!" All the breath rushed out of me as Chloe wrapped her arms tightly around me and squeezed nearly as hard as the bloody tentacle had. This one didn't bother me too much, though. I hugged her back.

And then something tightened around my ankle again.

I managed a glance back just in time to see another five tentacles poking out of the hole, four rocketing towards us and the last already around my ankle.

"Ah, fuck." Chloe said, moments before the tentacle that had ahold of me yanked me ass over teakettle and another slammed into Chloe's side like a truck.

She tried to grab me as it pulled me away, but swung too late.

Damnit.

"Fucking shoot it!"

More rounds tore through the tentacle holding me upside down in the air. It shook with each shot, but held firm on my ankle and around my body up 'til my side, where it had pinned my arm by the wrist. I continued to scream and shout. There wasn't much else I could bloody do. I couldn't even reach my damn gun, with my arms like this.

Below me, Rachel was darting and dodging between the three tentacles trying to hit her. Her little knife was flashing and lashing and doing fuck all but peppering the tentacles with long, light scratches. Considering that even if she cut her way through the tentacle enough that she could get her whole arm in, she'd not be able to reach the other side of the thing, that knife was never going to be effective here.

I couldn't tell you what Copse was doing. The few glances of him I could actually catch when my spins put him in my eyeline, he was just standing at some kind of console and... he seemed to be glowing. A pure, vibrant red. Okay. So, I'm definitely hallucinating him. That's fun.

Oh dog. I gulped as another swing of the tentacle spun me 'round. Nope. Nope. Not gonna throw up. Oh dog. I gulped again.

Chloe fired another burst of bullets at the tentacle holding me. Again, it made nothing but a twitch. Tentacles were tough, man. And I will say, thank fuck for straps. If I hadn't had a strap, I would've lost my gun already. Not that I could use the fucking thing. I fired another grenade at one tentacle. It... just bounced off again, landed on the floor, and created yet another perfect, round hole. Damnit.

"Would you stop doing that, Max!? You're going to kill one of us!" Copse shouted. Okay, he definitely wasn't where I thought he was. But he had a point: if the grenades didn't get my friends (or Rachel), then the holes in the ground could.

So, I let the gun fall to my side and watched powerlessly as they tried to bring down the tentacles. It, well... it wasn't good. Even Chloe's gun was barely doing more than tearing thin streaks through the tentacle's tough hide. Though one lucky shot seemed to embed itself in the flesh of the thing and brought a deafening roar of pain from it. The tentacle around me shifted, loosening for just a moment before it tightened even more.

I just... honestly didn't understand what this thing was trying to do. And that was the only thing keeping me thinking straight. It looked just like the one we'd seen in the EarthGov generator room, and was similarly fleshy to the rest of the monsters. All the others had tried to eat or... convert people, but this one just seemed to be trying to hold me up and dodge the others. Why wasn't it trying to kill us?

Of course, immediately as I thought that, one tentacle slammed into Rachel's side. Her knife flashed out and jammed into the side of the thing, giving her a sort of improvised piton to hold onto the tentacle with as it lifted her back up in the air. At the point she was at, trying to grab it would've been like trying to hug a redwood.

That didn't stop her trying though.

She kind of... pivoted? around the tentacle, using the knife as some weird leverage point to shove herself around from. Her body ended up wrapped around the tentacle like a ring on a finger. Which was just an odd metaphor.

And even with her hanging on and stabbing it, the tentacle still didn't try to kill her. Just... let her cling there and stab away.

Suddenly, something out of my view exploded and Copse cursed loudly. Two of the tentacles attacking Rachel broke off and went after him. He just growled, yelled an irate "Fuck off!" and did something that drew another thunderous roar from the creature. I twisted as best I could to see, but all I caught was Copse standing, his hand out in front of him and clenched into a fist. I thought that he might be holding something, but I couldn't see what.

Still, the tentacles hadn't gotten him. So whatever he was doing, it was working. And none of us were dead or bruised to heck yet, just stuck in holding positions while the tentacles tried to catch us.

Dog, this was getting weird.

I went for my gun, intending to fire a bolt this time, instead of a grenade, but... "Shit!" the creature's shifting had carried it out of my reach and up near the small of my back somewhere. I tried to shift about, make a grab for the little bit of the gun I could see, but even my fingertips were barely reaching it. I just couldn't bend like that and trying was agony everywhere.

The tentacle holding Rachel slammed down into the ground and she cried out in pain. She didn't let go though, just kept stabbing and stabbing.

I made another grab for the gun, my fingers yet again barely scraping the damn fuck thing before I had to drop back. Felt like my fucking ribs were about to pull out of their sockets. Or whatever it was that ribs had. Did ribs have sockets? Not important. Ow. I muttered a low curse at the little jolts across my ribcage. "Fuck!" Ahem. That was not my inside voice - apparently, it was trying to join my ribs in their escape to outside-ness.

I flopped down limply - maybe the aches would stop, or at least get slightly less agonising, if I just relaxed and- Oh no. The low, dull pain flared into a nauseating burning across my lower back and in whatever I could still feel of my legs.

Another three shots rang out from Chloe, the loud cracks distracting me momentarily from the agony going on in my ribcage. The tentacle wrapped around me tensed and twinged, slacking ever so slightly. That was my opportunity. I twisted as rapidly as I could - screaming in pain all the while - and made another grab for the gun.

For a second, I thought I'd miss again - and I really couldn't take another round on my ribs - but my heart soared in poetically cheesy elation as my fingers... scraped along the gun again and... grabbed on. I pulled the gun with me as I fell back and levelled the barrel on the fucking hole all these tentacle fucks had come out of.

I tried to think of something badass to say, but... yeah. I got nothing.

So, sod it. I just pulled the trigger.

The blackhole bomb flew in a smooth arc, sailing right into the hole.

For a moment, I thought everything had gone wrong, but then a low rumble began deep below us, like a distant stampede. I could feel it in the flesh of the tentacle around me. It rippled and rumbled and grew until something distinguished and I knew it was the tentacle. The sound reverberated through my bones as it built and built and its pitch got higher and higher and it became nothing but a teeth-aching screech.

And then the tentacle just... dropped.

I hit the floor at alarming speed and everything went black.

I expected it to be more of a flicker, really. Regaining consciousness, I mean. That level of head stuff had to be worse than those other times I'd been knocked out, right? So, maybe they'd've been more like the movies? But no. Clap off, clap on. I just sorta suddenly blinked and I was back.

Though I don't remember the ceiling being quite so... wibbly when I got dragged in here. I blinked hard a few times and black settled into grey and white settled into blue and- "Chloe!"

My wife's face was near ashen. Something spasmed mournfully in my gut. At my outburst yell though, her shoulders relaxed completely and she hugged me quickly before pulling back. "I'm so glad you're not dead." She blurted out, almost in a single breath.

"Me too." I beamed. "How am I not dead? I fell from pretty high up."

Chloe tapped her hand on my helmet, which was sitting on the ground next to her. "This activated while you were falling and... well. If you hadn't had it on... Fuck. I don't wanna think about that. You're okay, I'm okay, the other two fuckers-"

"Hey!" Said fuckers retorted.

"-are okay too, so... let's just focus on that shit, okay."

We stared at each other for a few seconds before Chloe seemed to jolt and stuck out her hand. "Anyway. Come on, Max." I took it, and she pulled me up. Before I could stop her, she started to gently dust me off.

Well, stop her is probably the wrong phrase. Really, I just looked at her and raised a brow. "Uh, Chloe? What are you doing?"

She smirked. "You got shit on you, dude."

I looked down and squeaked. "Ew, gross!" I was completely covered in tentacle squick and viscera. My hands flailed slightly before I started to scrub desperately at the disgusting shit all down my front.

The others all chuckled.

I glared at them.

They only chuckled more.

Bastards.

I gave up on the scrubbing. It wasn't doing much. I was also still kinda... foggy, both in vision and in my brain, so I wasn't even sure I was actually scrubbing the dirty spots. Wow. "Well. I guess we'll have to live with everyone here being able to smell me coming from a deck away. And... do those monsters have noses?"

Rachel shrugged as Copse shook his head, the latter choking back his chuckles as he responded. "Didn't seem like it from that doctor's notes. And they only seem to come after us when they see us."

i shrugged. "Fair enough. Well, maybe it'll be alright then."

I leaned down to scoop up my helmet. It seemed to be stuck in 'on' position. I tapped the foldy key thingy and it wouldn't fold away, so I think the fall broke that bit. The helmet itself seemed okay though. I nodded. Cool.

I slid it back on and stood a little straighter, then turned to the door I'd been dragged through. Or at least, I think I did. Again, everything was still kind of... foggy. Huh. Maybe that's a sign of, um... something. Wait, what was I supposed to be doing? Oh, right, yes. The way forward. "Uh..." I turned back to them. "Lead the way? I was kind of distracted when I got dragged in here, so..."

Dealing with my head trauma could wait.

Probably.

Rachel smiled. "Well, you being grabbed by a tentacle was actually useful - I think we're closer to the second staircase now."

"You think?"

She shrugged. "I mean, I haven't ever been here myself-"

"What?!" We yelled.

She continued without pause. "-but I'm certain my directions are good. I've studied the blueprints and I have an excellent... uh... memory! Yes, an excellent memory." She smirked at us as we indulgently eye-rolled like a middle sibling at her terrible joke before clapping her hands together. "Right! This way then. Nearly there now, everybody. So close to the end of all this."

She lead us out through the doorway and right, where I'd been dragged from the left, and then she lead us down. I was about to ask, but- eh. I didn't want to trust her, though honestly, I didn't really have any other option. Even if she was lying about knowing exactly where the machine was, she'd still spent more time here than the rest of us so she was best placed to work it out. Anyway, I took the stairs okay. I staggered down the fuckers, the angle making me feel slightly dizzy, but I managed not to trip or fall. Go me.

Down took us along another large corridor with towering Altman statues watching over us. We took two lefts, a right, then stopped at a busted door. "Fuck." Rachel sighed. "Chloe?"

Chloe scuttled forward and opened up a panel next to the door. We took positions around the area and kept watch. Fortunately, everything stayed clear until the door screeched open. And dear dog that noise hurt. Chloe flinched back and let out a blue streak of her own that faltered as the monstrous screams sounded around us.

"Inside, now!" Copse barked.

We ran.

Rachel lead us through at full pelt to a door in the back that- "Shit!" -flashed orange. Locked. "This wasn't supposed to be locked! I don't know the code."

I took the chance to look around us. The room looked to be some kind of maintenance-storage place. Lots of cleaning robots and vats of stuff. Chloe looked it over far more quickly than I and stopped the bickering with a yell. "Why is the damn access panel on the inside? Fucking shit! I need five minutes. Rach', you know their maintenance access codes?"

Rachel frowned. "No, why would I know-"

"Well, I don't fucking know. Maybe you dated a Unitologist janitor or something. Now, go cover the door. That five minutes just became seven."

Rachel stood and looked at Chloe, not moving, so my wife gave her a shove. "Go! The monster-fuckers are coming and I need time to get us in there!"

So, we all took positions pointing guns at the door. My heart was pounding almost as strongly as my head. I had a very dangerous thing in my hands and my aim... wasn't the best right now. Still, when the first monster face appeared in the door, I fired. The usual happened, taking out several monsters that had crowded 'round.

While I reloaded, Copse and Rachel took the time to attack more prosaically, shooting and throwing. And I still had to ask how that knife worked. My next shot bounced off the armoured hide of one of the blade-arm things, though this one looked bigger and bulkier and somehow more... rotted than the others had, ending up somewhere on the ground near its feet.

The explosion vanished a large section of the floor and the monsters all fell.

The rest of the seven minutes was rather easy after that.

Just as the time was up, Chloe appeared in the middle of us all and dived behind cover - cover that was facing away from the door we'd just been shooting at. "Take cover!"

"We're in cover!"

"The other wa-"

Boom.

To be honest, the explosion wasn't that bad. It was like being shoulder checked into our chosen cover by a particularly burly athlete, but otherwise it was okay. The worst thing was the smell. It was like... tangy ammonia and a sharp, clean smell that I couldn't place. It burned at my eyes and nose and the inside of my throat felt like it was actually on fire. Chloe, coughing, stumbled over to me and pulled me up. "Run for the door!"

We did. And it wasn't fun.

The searing heat of trying to run through flames was agony, even inside our protective suits. (An1). Or it was for me and Chloe, anyway, judging by the tone of her pained cursing. If Rachel and Copse did anything, I couldn't hear it over the crackling of the fire everywhere around us. The air was burning, the area around the door was burning. The door itself was also on fire. I... "How the hell did you set metal on fire?"

"It's not. The stuff on the door is what's on fire. The door's just being melted by it." Chloe shrugged, like that was nothing. Then I remembered the toaster-turned-plasma-cutter and agreed with her.

We stumbled away from the unsurprising architecture-turned-weapon and joined Rachel at the far edge of the room, where the stench hadn't quite reached yet. I took a few breaths of the clean air and hoped the sheer amount of shit in the air from before hadn't broken the air scrubber thingies in the helmet. I didn't know how to check that, so... I just had to wait and see.

While I let my lungs recover, the others convened. "Where to now?"

Rachel pointed over to a ladder hidden off in the corner. "Up there."

Chloe still had her helmet up, so I couldn't see her face, but I could definitely hear her confusion. "I thought you said we were looking for stairs?"

"We were looking for stairs, but then a tentacle dragged Max off closer to another route up and now, well," Rachel shrugged, gesturing towards the ladder with one hand. "here we are."

"Right." Chloe nodded in acknowledgement. "So, when do we get off?"

Rachel just smirked. "When we reach the top. Should get to a back room near the Apse, I think."

Even I couldn't resist a choking chuckle as I imagined Chloe's expression creasing at that.

"Shit."

"Yep." She sauntered over to the ladder, placing her foot a few rungs up and placing her hand up a few rungs more. "So, you coming?

I nodded earnestly. "Hell yes, I'm coming. We need to get away from the gas."

So, up we went. Rachel, then me, then Chloe, then Copse, and I quickly lost myself in the monotony of climbing. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left-

Man, I am lucky to be alive. And I thought being pulled out of the fire by Victoria and the others was good luck. And surviving the shuttle crash. And getting out of that EarthGov outpost alive. And getting blasted out into space. And rescuing Joyce and David. And- well, like, four explosions? Five?

I might be going mad, but at least I'm not dead. Something to drink to, huh?

Heh.

The hallucinations were not something I thought would happen today, back when we agreed to help Kate. Seeing Jefferson of all people - and the memory of that last 'visit', the warning that we were getting close now. What did that even mean? Now I had a calm moment to actually think about it, it just seemed... odd. Slightly foreboding, but... if he's just in my head, shouldn't I know? Shouldn't I understand?

Shouldn't I have a clue what was happening? I've basically just been running from thing to thing, and dog it feels like I've barely had a second to think about any of it. At least this ladder climb is quiet - clunk clunk clunk - 'quiet-ish' enough that I can think.

And man, what the hell had happened to Kate? She abandoned us for the Church and then what? For all that she tried to kill us, I hoped that she wasn't in the Church when we blew the bloody doors off. She is, was, a friend and I'd rather not have killed her. I mean, what if-

A momentary interruption to my thoughts came from a groan somewhere off below me. Definitely Chloe, definitely getting tired of the ascent. "Rachel," She whined, quite adorably. "-how much longer?"

"Not too far now." Rachel singsonged back.

Chloe groaned again. "That's not helpful!"

Rachel gave a faint, tinkling laugh. "Now, Chloe... Where would be the fun in that?"

"Fuck you, Rach'!" She yelled back, letting out another exhausted 'ugh' of incredibly dramatic despair.

"Promises, promises." Rachel teased. If she'd been able, I know the woman would've punctuated it with a wink.

"My wife is right there, Rach."

The flirt in question quickly clarified. "Hey, she can come too." A pause, and I could hear the laughter in her voice. "Those freckles are cute."

"You dog." Chloe drawled.

"Woof woof."

The both of them laughed and went quiet, going back to the climbing grind. Left, right, left, right, left-

Well, at least we've kept our spirits up, this close to the end. And Jefferson, I, my hallucination, whatever, was definitely right about that. Something about this feels... penultimate. Like climbing the metaphorical mountain. Though ironically, climbing the mountain would probably be easier. I think the cold might make us sweat less than this. And the variety would probably be nice.

I mean, it is penultimate, right?

We've got to find the machine up here, turn it off, and then we can get the hell off this station of horrors and go get some therapy. Because wowzers, we fucking need it. I'm glad I haven't had proper sleep yet, because I'm pretty sure I'm going to have nightmares when I do.

Dog, I hope I don't have to add to that when we get to the top.

I started thinking over all the horrible things I'd seen getting here, all the shit we'd waded through and the nightmares we'd fled from. Even confining it to the non-literal nightmares that I knew definitively were real was just... it was a lot, okay, and I... wow. Just wow. Once I started, I really struggled to stop, images of blades and tentacles and howling inter-spaced with teeth and mocking grins heightening my anxiety for the rest of the fucking climb.

The moment I reached the top of the ladder, I dropped down onto the ground and took many, many deep breaths, very much focusing on clearing my head and getting air into my lungs. Ignoring my little crisis, Chloe and Copse just... carefully stepped over me and spread out into the room. Real nice, guys. "Clear."

After a moment's silence that was broken only by my breathing, I spoke up. In my desperate attempts to get the horrors out of my head, a memory had come to me. Something... nice.

"Y'know Chlo', if we survive this, we really need to go back to that planet and try that Cobra Wine."

"The what?" Oddly, Rachel and Copse's silence sounded as baffled as Chloe's question did.

"The Cobra Wine? You don't remember? It was in that little bar in that tiny town with the weird half-doors. It had a snake in and the snake didn't have any skin and it freaked you out, so we didn't drink it."

"Huh. Oh yeah, the one that pretentious Asian guy made. What made you remember that?"

"Dunno. Something about that climb just made me think of Snakes."

Chloe didn't say anything for a few moments, then nodded. "Yeah. Let's do that. We'll go drink some snakes, then get therapy."

"Therapy sounds nice." I quipped. Or, well. Tried to quip. Judging by the way everyone in the room slowly turned towards me, it came out way more serious than I intended. I quickly pulled myself to my feet. "Let's go. We've got a machine to shut down."

"Yep, we certainly do." Copse said, "Let's go... do that."

After an awkward moment, we stack up on the single door in the room. Rachel held up a hand and counted down from five. On one, she tapped the door key and we swept quietly into the room.

The Apse was not a wide room, maybe fifty or sixty feet across? But it was probably three decks high, and all the upper walls were covered in Unitologist iconography. The bottom floor kind of spread out a little further than the upper icon-covered levels, which were held up by eight pillars in an octagon around the centre tower-like space, leading to a sort of cloister-esque walkway wrapped around the entire space.

One side of the lower floor extended out into a rectangular room, with four doors there - one on each side wall and the other two on the far wall. [AN2].

We quickly spread out to take cover behind the pillars - hiding in cover pretty much an instinct now.

I took a quick glance around, for a moment not seeing any machine, and I started to turn accusing eyes onto Rachel. "I thought you-"

I bit back anything more as four people walked into view from somewhere in the rectangular extension. All of the, unfortunately, were familiar. And one of them being there answered a question I'd been having. Kate was standing, head bowed, between two other men, one of whom had a hand laid on her shoulder as he walked her forward.

The third man was a little ways ahead of them, looking at them through his hands, making a square out of his thumbs and pointers. He was walking backwards without seeming effort.

I recognised all three of the men. The taller one manhandling Kate was rather immediately familiar. He'd yelled at us and incited a mob to shoot at us barely a few (?) hours ago. Sean motherfucking Prescott.

I don't think that was his actual middle name though.

The man on the other side of Kate, I hadn't seen in... oh, ten years. Nathan Prescott.

If I hadn't been hallucinating Jefferson trying to finger-square-viewfinder the whole scene, I'd probably have sworn at that point. The asshole was supposed to be in prison. But of course daddy got him out, and of course here he was, bold as bulkheads, walking Kate over through his daddy's church. Bastard.

As the trio got closer, Kate's voice carried in a clear chant. "Death is the beginning. Unity is forever. One Purpose, One Mind, One Soul."

The two men separated away from her as they closed on the far wall. I had to lean out to see, but I finally caught sight of the machine. It was a hella weird thing. A central podium was flanked by two spiralling tubes of metal that formed an oddly cage-like structure before topping off in a double-helix at the top. A few feet up on either side, at just the right height that someone standing could comfortably rest their forearms on them, were two flat consoles covered in incomprehensible squiggles in place of lettered keys. One Prescott went to each console while Kate stood in front of the podium... cage... thingy.

Still not an engineer, people.

The Prescotts fiddled over the console for a second, and I made to step forward to help Kate. Again, she was our friend. She might've tried to kill us, but I couldn't just let this happen. But Copse held me back. "Not yet!" He hissed into my ear.

Not yet? What?

As I struggled against Copse, the Elder Prescott suddenly nodded and Kate stepped forward, beginning her a new chant.

"Holy ones, transform me into your servant. Allow me to further your plan. Show me the path to enlightenment as you alter my flesh and free my soul. Show me the truth as we become one."

She stepped into the machine and uttered her final words moments before it tore her body apart and she erupted into a flood of blood and viscera that began to swirl into a whirling vortex. "Make us whole."

I gasped.

Despite the immense noise of the machine, both Prescott's heads shot up, eyes locked on mine and slowly, surely, they both began to grin.

AN1 - For those wondering, this is because Max and Chloe's suits were given by the Haven, so they're essentially just slightly modified maintenance worker suits designed for repair work, meaning they're more suited (heh, pun) for the cold of space than the heat of chemical fires. If memory serves, and I haven't done actual chemistry in about four years, ammonia and similar cleaning chemical stuff burns at 600-something degrees Celsius, so... that shit be hot, yo, hence why Max still feels it through protective clothing.

AN2 - Also for those wondering, I'm picturing this a lot like the Apse with the main altar in St Peter's Basilica in Rome, but the brutalist, we-ran-out-of-resources-years-back-and-don't-really-have-the-cool-stuff-to-decorate-with-anymore version.