Here finally, pardon for the tardiness – my laptop gnawed it's own head off when I poured a cup of coffee into it, so it's been slow going.
Many thanks to fantastic beta Teresa for being so patient and not afraid to tell me where I went so, so wrong…
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Chapter 3: Descending further into the Depths of Evilness
Lucas stood on the threshold of the western flood doors, his beam shining down an empty corridor. Silence.
Fear strangled the breath in his throat, and he couldn't speak.
The office further down the Western Avenue still had the light on, and after pausing for a brief second, Lucas steeled himself to see if someone was there.
He barely walked a few paces before he paused, swinging his light back towards the Turbine Hall, uncertain whether to continue. He clenched his fists in frustration at his own cowardice. Move it Wolenczak. He took a deep, shaky breath and started again for the office.
Standing outside the door, nothing could be seen through the frosted glass window. He tried to listen, but heard nothing except his own panicked breaths.
The frozen door handle screeched as he twisted it, and Lucas jumped.
He slowly swung open the door, peering cautiously through the opening; Damp, decaying walls, a bare light-bulb, a chair, a hand.
A face.
Lucas didn't move anymore, stunned that someone was here. But there was no movement; the person didn't rise from the chair or speak.
Lucas pushed the door further but then cried out in horror - he recognised the mask-like face of a missing scientist, mouth gaping in a frozen grimace of fear, eyes glazed wide.
He doesn't notice the papers torn and scattered around the dead man.
He doesn't notice the 10 key hooks; nine with bunches of keys and one empty.
All he sees is the terror-stricken face and bloody torso of Dr Kimashoto, dead and bound to a chair in the centre of an empty office.
Lucas put his hand over his mouth, petrified and bewildered, legs weak and blood roaring in his ears.
Hot breath ghosted on Lucas's neck, and something moved in his peripheral vision.
He swung around.
A man, short and pale stood beside him, his face close to Lucas's. "Strangers mourning with ice-tinged tongues never feeling the halting breath escape" the stranger rasped. "Yet do they consent to purposeful capture?"
Lucas yelled out in shock and stumbled back, hitting the doorframe, moving sideways and back into the corridor as the man watched with an inscrutable expression.
They stood facing one another in silence for only a second before Lucas turned to run, but as he turned the man barrelled into him. They both went over, Lucas cried out in surprise cut short by landing hard on his back, the flashlight spinning and clattering against the wall. His head connected forcefully with the marble floor and Lucas' eyes rolled back with shock at the pain. The man lay over him, his face very close: "Eggshells underfoot tell of a faltering heart or a boxing bullish head. Which is it to be?"
Lucas, dazed and winded, ignored the riddle.
"Get off me" he whispered. He was deeply afraid.
This person was clearly deranged, and much stronger than he was. The man twisted up and knelt on Lucas' wrists and forearms, straddling his torso. Lucas tried to push him over, but it was futile.
"So, little wire tailor – how wholesome are we?"
As the man knelt over and began unzipping the parka, Lucas cried out louder. "Leave me alone, let me go!" and tried to slip under.
The man's cold fingers casually swept over Lucas' collarbone and upper chest under his top, and drew lazy lines around his pale throat and over his lips. Lucas' skin shivered at the contact and he clenched his jaw in an effort to quell the scream coiled in his chest. He closed his eyes and tried to gather his strength and mind ready for flight.
After a moment, the man lent over as if to whisper in his ear and Lucas swiftly drew up both his knees. Unbalanced, the man grunted and toppled forward, giving Lucas the chance to stumble to his feet. His eyes swept the floor for the flashlight, and lunged at it as the man's fingers gripped his ankle. Without pausing Lucas clenched the large light and swung it back, and connected with the man's shoulder and the man cursed, but released his grip.
In pain and shock, Lucas struggled to re-orientate himself. The man pulled himself up, standing aggressively between Lucas and the Western flood doors of the Turbine Hall.
"What the hell do you want with me?" Lucas yelled, gripped by panic. "If I go missing or they find me dead, the UEO will fry you alive…" but a few steps away, the man dismissed Lucas' threat.
As the man raised a clenched fist, Lucas grasped the flashlight with both hands and tried to deflect the attack, adrenaline giving him strength. The lightbeam arced in the dark.
Taken by surprise the man was knocked hard on the side of his face, swayed and crumpled to the floor. Horrified, Lucas shone the light on the man – he was still, but breathing.
This sucked.
He ran back towards the light of the Turbine Hall, and once there, tapped in the codes that sealed the doors with shaking fingers. Undoubtedly the man knew the codes and would return soon enough, so he was not safe here. He snatched up the headset.
"Patterson, this is Lucas do you copy?"
Static came in response.
"SeaQuest, do you copy?" Panic overwhelmed him.
"CAPTAIN?"
Where the hell were they?
This time there was no-one.
Drained and afraid, Lucas felt himself slip towards hysteria. He clasped his hands over his mouth to quell the nausea, and breathed deeply through his nose.
Let's go, let's go, let's go. His mind span in an effort to think what he needed to do.
He threw the contents of his backpack on the hall floor and placed his laptop inside before strapping the bag on. Forgetting the redundant headset, he snatched up the flashlight and approached the Eastern floodgates. He could only hope that he could reach the Stinger before the man awoke.
The Eastern flood gates opened when he typed in the codes, but something had changed.
Whereas before he could have seen across the perimeter corridor down the Central Eastern Avenue, he was now faced with a set of closed wooden doors. He gasped and stared in bewilderment.
Running across the perimeter corridor to the doors, he pushed, but they were locked fast. There was no code panel, so they must have been locked by a key.
The adrenaline that had temporarily subsided, surged again in his veins - this man had a plan.
He turned around to assess his next move. The Grand Atrium from which the docking bays branched off, were to the east, so it made no sense to travel along the long Northern or Southern Avenues. Instead he should go back up to the main Galley Level and travel along the Upper Eastern Avenue. Lucas remembered from the station plans that there were stairwells located around the perimeter corridor and so he ran to the left, swinging his light along the wall, until he reached the doors to the first staircase, and with relief they swung open.
Then his frightened heart sank.
The stairs only went down.
~ ~ ~
The next stairwell was some way further along the perimeter corridor and almost certainly also only went downwards to the administration levels. He shone the light down the corridor and saw that the Northern Avenue had similarly been blocked by closed wooden doors. He had no choice but to descend. This has to be a trap. Lucas momentarily battled with his instincts to not play the game.
Don't play, can't win.
His only present advantage over the prostrate man was his consciousness, and not wanting to squander it, he set off down the staircase.
As he approached the next level down, he noticed a change in the acoustics. He shone his beam over the banisters of the stairs and what he saw caught his breath, for the lower levels were flooded.
Lucas sighed deeply and swore under his breath, but he couldn't tell from his position if the water had completely submerged the next level, so with little choice or hope, he continued downwards.
He reached the third level doors with the icy stagnant water up halfway up his shins, and pushed open the doors feeling resistance, which implied similar level of flooding inside. As he entered the third level he gagged on the foul air. The once beautifully painted walls were black with virulent damp spores, only increasing the crushing crypt-like atmosphere. Yet survival only presented one option, Lucas had to continue.
Coughing he half ran, half waded round to the entrance to the lower Eastern Avenue and shone his lightbeam into the dark, dank corridor, but couldn't see the end.
"Please don't let me die. Not now…not like this..." A prayer to a god he had no faith in passed his lips.
He started down the long avenue with feet so cold and slow they felt they were tethered, and his teeth chattered incessantly. Finally his lightbeam found the end of the corridor, and the wooden doors, as he so vehemently hoped against, were closed.
Lucas felt his tenuous grip on control slip further as he stopped and stared at the end doors. They can't be locked!
Lucas splashed through the water up to them and took a deep breath and tried to open the slimy doors, but they would not move.
He snapped, kicking and pounding the door repeatedly in frustration.
"Come on asshole! I'm smarter than you!" Lucas yelled, and someone caught his cry in the frozen air.
A muffled but distinctive sound of a door slammed somewhere above, and Lucas instantly regretted the challenge.
"Oh you clever boy Wolenczak…" he muttered under his breath.
He glanced around – what to do? He doubted he could return to the other end of the Lower Eastern Avenue in time to evade the man who had probably expected him to come this way, and now his antagonistic shout had confirmed it. The empty offices would only offer a brief refuge, yet Lucas refused to plainly stand and wait for what now seemed inevitable. He started to quickly retrace his steps through the watery avenue, swinging his flashlight from side to side at the doors.
He paused outside one door: 'Ladies Bathroom'. There could be a number of options inside, so Lucas entered and tired eyes scanned the room. The sound of another heavy door closing echoed down the avenue.
The man had entered this level.
Lucas' breathing and pulse soared, pure panic swimming through his body.
Hide or fight? The cubicles were useless against someone with boundless time and a psychotic will, so fight it was. The mirror could be broken for a shard of razor sharp glass but a crash in the black avenue warned Lucas that the man had descended armed with a tool. A heavy and effective weapon by the sound of the destruction he was wreaking on the office doors further down.
Terror muddled his brain and his eyes uselessly flitted about the room. There was nothing, nothing to help.
Lucas looked down and chewed his lip anxiously, as an idea began to form. He placed the flashlight on a ledge before crouching down and running his fingers along the plumbing under the washbasins. The wall plaster was dusty and crumbled easily under his touch.
Lucas tugged at a length of copper piping for the water supply, the rusty joints shearing away in part.
He swore and pulled again.
A door crashed and splintered like a felled tree, the noise exploding in the cavernous corridor.
Lucas pulled hard and some of the clip joints gave way.
Splashing in the corridor.
He was coming!
Lucas yanked desperately – one last joint.
He pulled and the pipe came away from the wall.
Lucas felt crushed by fear but willed himself to concentrate on surviving, out-smarting the man, leaving, and living.
Bridger would be strong, Ford would never crumble. But then in a million years this would never have happened to the Captain nor the Commander. Lucas cursed his luck and turned off his flashlight.
Suddenly light, fuzzy and dim under the ubiquitous mould, flickered on in the Avenue. Lucas' eyes widened with confusion and the footsteps approached. He drew himself up behind the bathroom entrance in preparation, knowing he would live or die by his ability to carry this off.
As the man approached, Lucas tensed his legs and arms, his numb fingers fiercely gripping the weighty copper pipe, with the heavy wielded joint at the far end.
He was perspiring and damp clothes clung to his cold body. He breathed deeply a few times and then held his breath, afraid that the exhaled mist would betray his presence.
Time slowed. Lucas hoped his heart would be strong and his hands wouldn't fail.
He wanted to live.
The footsteps were close, closer, by the bathroom and continued down the corridor.
This was it - he had to do it now…