Chapter Eighteen: Failure
Deyana rubbed her temples, trying to exercise the weariness from her bones as she gazed down at the operating tables. The boy was going to die soon if she didn't get to work, but there was so much to be completed. Deyana began to try and process the downloaded information, which was encrypted. "Shit," Deyana whispered as she realized the codes weren't anything she'd ever seen before. There seemed to be no pattern, and Deyana stared back at the full operating tables.
The girl's dead body needed to be dissected, but the dying boy needed to come first. The new creature had been sedated, but Deyana felt she needed to study his body, too, but without killing him. Soon, she figured he'd probably need another sedation, and then, she had to find time to perform surgery on the drone. Deyana groaned as she stared back at the disk, realizing she needed to decode it in record time.
"Need some help?" Julio asked casually as he walked into the lab and scanned the five tables which each held a patient of some sort, dead or alive.
"Look at this code. This is what I got from their computers, but I can't make a single damn piece of data out," Deyana fumed as she went over to the body of the dead girl. "I need to take her apart and salvage some parts, and then, tell me what you've got."
The buzzing of generators enveloped the two awake people at the bottom of the bay, hidden snuggly under the water. Above them, a storm lashed across the surface, churning the bay and blowing some of the old, empty boats around like toys in a bathtub. However, the two oldest humans strove away at their own separate tasks, almost seemingly immune to the fatigue that plagued the other five people sleeping in the underwater lab.
Indeed, sleep had soon enveloped Liza and Theresa, and each had drifted quickly off to dreams in their own beds with Liza's stomach being empty of all food because of her frequent sickness during the day. Kelley had slept in Theresa's room, like instructed, and she was also fairly weary from sitting and watching the unconscious people in the lab all day.
Drum drug a cot into Calvin's room and threw himself across the makeshift bed. The cot, a pillow, and two blankets felt like water to a man wandering in the desert. Calvin had reluctantly taken the bed, but felt it inappropriate to offer it to Drum, who had promptly fallen asleep on the cot the minute he'd put it in the room and laid down on it.
But as the five slept, Julio gazed across the computer and the myriad of data he had to work with. Julio groaned after about two hours, when Deyana had completed her first task. By this time, Julio felt the pressure building in his head behind his eyes. It was hard to focus, and the numbers seemed hopelessly lost to him by this point.
"What do you have?" Deyana inquired as she gave the two creatures another dose of sedatives.
"This is going to take months, maybe years, possibly as long as it took to figure out how to get those metallic orbs from inside the creature's heads," Julio replied solemnly as he gazed at the computer screen.
"There's nothing we can do? No way to figure it out?" Deyana pleaded with Julio as she studied some notes he'd made, trying to figure out a pattern.
"It's in a different language, and their calculations are very complicated, and I've never done anything like them before," Julio responded dishearteningly as he stood up and stretched. Deyana scanned Julio's notes and began to scratch the paper as she frantically tried to form a correlation between some of their data. Julio observed her for a while before going to his bedroom to rest himself.
Deyana's pencil scratching on numerous sheets of paper and the clicking of calculator keys accompanied the buzzing of the lights and generators for the next four hours. The storm pushed its way across the bay, and even though the waves calmed on the surface, below Deyana's mind churned faster than the stormiest seas. She struggled, grappling with the ultimate power of the Overlord's data. She wrestled with their knowledge as priceless time slid along.
"Damn it!" Deyana shouted a curse of frustration. She slammed her fists down as she got up and walked around the lab, kicking over the wastebasket and shouting a curse occasionally. Then, she settled down for another try at the Overlord's data.
At one point, she stopped and sedated the creatures, but they were her second priority now. She checked the boy's vital functions, knowing she had less than half a day to come to a definitive conclusion about what she stole from the Meat Factory, and then figure out how to perform the surgery to make him a body. However, as the storm gave way to a calm sea, Deyana began to sink in the impossibility of her task.
Deyana slumped her head into her own two palms after several hours, when she began to go in circles. "I just need more time," Deyana whispered in a hoarse voice as she rubbed the base of her palms against her eyelids to calm the aching strains behind her eyes. Her mind felt like it had absorbed everything like a sponge, but was enable to wring it out into something useful.
"I need more time," Deyana muttered as she opened her eyes to gaze at the data again. Biting her lip, Deyana diverted into desperate randomness to try and extract anything from the mess she'd discovered. As Deyana continued to scribble on her paper, she bit her bottom lip until it bleed a stream of moist, crimson blood, which dribbled down onto her chin before dotting her papers.
I need more time, Deyana thought desperately as she grappled with the challenge. Deyana continued to scribble desperately until she heard footsteps in the lab. Reluctantly, Deyana turned around to view her guest. In the doorway wearing a T-shirt and sweat pants, stood Julio, who surveyed a scene that hadn't changed much since he left the lab to rest.
"I need more time," Deyana blurted out before Julio could even utter a word. However, the muscular man scrutinized the smaller woman hunched over her desk as he strode across the room towards her. Julio took his hands and rested them on Deyana's shoulders.
"You need to stop. It's over," Julio told her gently, but Deyana shook her head, but didn't shake off Julio's strong, firm hands.
"I need to figure this out, make him a body, and do the surgery," Deyana told Julio frantically as she gazed back down at her calculations. "I have less than half a day, Julio, I need more time."
Then, like the braking of a sturdy dam, Deyana Orbligano began to weep, and her body shook as she became wracked with sobbing. She lay down on her desk and rested her hands upon her arms as she let her tears stain the calculations she'd labored so arduously over. Julio kept his hands firmly fixed onto Deyana's bony shoulders, which he kept his hands steadily resting upon, even though he didn't clamp down and hold her. Deyana's loud sobbing echoed through out the lab, breaking the eerie, concentrated silence that held the room in its grasp for son long. Her tears mingled with her blood, staining her paper and arms, yet Julio remained behind her until her cries subsided, and she was once again silent and left with swollen, red eyes.
"Deyana, go to sleep," Julio told Deyana gently as he pulled her out of the chair and walked her towards the door. In the doorway stood Liza and Calvin while Drum leaned against the doorframe, his eyes solely fixed up Eric. Liza and Calvin parted as Julio ushered a bewildered and completely drained Deyana through the hallway and into her own room, where he laid her in her bed and covered with her blankets.
"I'm sorry," Deyana whispered hoarsely. "I failed."
"It's not the end," Julio murmured in Deyana's ear before he shut the door and left her to what peace she could find on her own. Julio walked to the doorway, where he found the three others still staring in on the scene in the lab. Julio walked past them, towards the table where Eric lay, and Drum followed him like an obedient dog. Julio reached up and put his hand by the oxygen that kept Eric breathing.
"Let me," Drum said as he reached out and brushed aside Julio's hand. "I . . . should . . . he knew me."
Without another word, Drum carefully removed his friend's life supports, and rested his good hand on Eric's upper arm. The four of them watched as Eric's chest failed to rise and fall any longer, yet Drum kept his hand on Eric as the room remained in an entranced state. Then, Julio moved reluctantly over to the body bag where the rest of Cassie's remains were placed. Julio closed the bag and wrapped it in another garbage bag, but before he moved over to Eric and Drum again, he paused and took a deep, soothing breath.
"We have to dispose of their bodies," Julio said solemnly as he gazed at Drum, who hadn't moved, and Liza and Calvin, staring blankly from the doorframe. This seemed to break the trance that was over Drum, who moved and grabbed another bag to put Eric's body inside.
"We'll bury them," Drum replied sternly. Julio gazed as Drum began to wrap up Eric's body, and let him continue on his hurried, almost frantically insane pace that he used to stuff Eric into a body bag. Liza and Calvin stood in the doorway, completely transfixed and seemingly unaware of themselves.
"We'll drop them into the bay, where their remains can't be touched by Overlords or creatures," Julio said understandingly to Drum, which made him stop his scramble with his friend's body. Drum shook his head and turned and stared at Julio, his eyes moist, yet a tear didn't fall from them.
"Okay," Drum muttered after several moments of silent tension between the two men. Then, Julio slide past Liza and Calvin with Cassie's body bag and motioned Drum and Liza to follow him to the sub. Drum took up the rear, carrying Eric's lifeless form over his shoulder.
Silence cloaked the ride to the surface, and Julio led the other three out of the sub and they turned back to face the bay below them. The waters sparkled where the sunlight hit the steely blue surface. Julio heaved his load from his shoulder into the water, where the white bag floated down through the rays into the depths. Drum then hoisted Eric's body into the water with a splash, and the depths of the icy waters of the bay also claimed his body.
"Let's go," Julio said softly as he climbed back into the sub. He waited several minutes before Calvin, Liza, and Drum joined him. The four pairs of eyes remained dry, possibly because there was no physical way to express the loss and feeling of defeat the reached deeper than the bay floor where their lab rested.