A/N: New poll up on my profile page! Get your voice heard for the future of this series…
Bam!
Another impact slammed into the door, bending the metal hinges. Sam inhaled sharply at the sound, throwing a look back at Jetty and Lily in fear. She couldn't shield them against any attack by crazies massing outside – not with one not even into her teens; the other crippled by some bizarre sickness that apparently went far deeper than any mere disease.
"Fucking interlopers," a grunge male voice from the other side of the door swore. "Prometheans!"
"What is he saying?" Sam asked Scion in a panicked tone. "What do they want?"
"The Brotherhood members must believe you and your charges to be influenced by Prometheus's ideals," Scion mused in a calm voice inappropriate for the situation. "It is a common line used by the group's followers against any who disagree. I count at least twelve outside from scans."
"Can you stop them?"
"Insufficient time. They will reach you first. I will be quite safe."
Well, thanks, Sam thought wryly. Fat lot of help Scion would do safe and sound if she were pulp on the end of a blunt instrument.
"Stall them," Sam told the robot, turning to her two wide-eyed companions. "Lily, can you help me get Jetty out? We can't stay here."
"What about Firth and the others?" Lily whimpered. "They don't know, they –"
"Can't worry about them," Sam gritted her teeth. She didn't want to come off as so heartless, but she had to do something. "We have to go. We don't have a choice. Jetty – can you walk?"
The young woman shook her head, looking on the verge of throwing up again: "Sam…just take her and leave."
"No!" Sam vociferously refused her. "I'm not just going to leave you here for…that mob!"
"Yes you will," Jetty reached over for Sam's hand, grabbing it with her two sweaty mitts. "Go save her. Save yourself."
"You're coming too!" Sam maintained her position.
"I killed people for fun in my Games," Jetty leaned back on her gurney, letting Sam's hand go. "D'you know that? I thought it was a good time, as a volunteer and a killer. Maybe this is what I earned. Go, Sam…take Lily, keep her safe. Just go. I'll do what I can…if I can. Maybe they'll be content with me. Do it."
Sam stalled. She couldn't just leave Jetty here – not to whatever the swarming people outside slamming against the door would do. They'd…no telling what they had in store, but if Scion's explanation of them held water, it wouldn't be good. On the other hand, Jetty had a point – if she couldn't walk very well, trying to hustle both her and Lily out to safety would be nearly impossible. They wouldn't be able to make up any ground, slowed by injury and inexperience in this underwater hell.
In the end, the decision was the most inhuman type: A call of numbers. Lose one, or lose them all.
"I'm sorry," Sam let a tear slip out of her eyes and down her nose, gripping Jetty's hand once for a final time. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Jetty replied. "Just go. Take Lily, find the others. Find a way out of here. Don't come back for me."
Sam gave her a curt smile and grabbed Lily's hand. Time to go.
The door blew off its hinges just as Sam began to run. She turned around to catch Scion igniting the first Brotherhood member to come sprinting in – a pot-bellied beast of a man in red warpaint whose face exploded in a shower of blood under the drone's electrical attack. Scion jetted after Sam and Lily immediately after taking down the first intruder, giving way to a horde of boisterous, howling savages running into the medical ward.
"Lily! Don't let go!" Sam shouted to her companion, gripping her hand tightly and half-dragging her from the room at top speed.
A bullet hissed past Sam's head, exploding into fragments as it hit a far wall. She ignored the surprise, ignored the sounds of something horrible behind her – there was nothing she could do now but keep running as grays, reds, and blacks of her surroundings raced past her eyes. Run, run – all she could do was run.
At least in the Hunger Games, she had the option of fighting.
"There is a sealable set of chambers approximately fifty meters ahead," Scion reported as he floated alongside the two sprinting girls. "It will be sufficient to dissuade any pursues."
"What is it?" Sam panted as she ran.
"The morgue."
Sam and Lily raced ahead, uncaring of location as they rushed to get away. The thick doors to the morgue loomed large down a descending hallway, encased in giant slabs of carbon steel. They pulled apart as Sam slammed her hand into a control button, releasing pressure and unveiling their bowels to Sam, Lily, and Scion's entrance.
At this point, Sam didn't care where they ended up. It was better than whatever Jetty was enduring now – if she was still alive.
A blast of frigid air hit Sam as she stepped into the morgue after throwing a look over her shoulder. Despite the lack of any pursuers, she wanted to get as far away from her attackers as possible. If this could keep them out – as Scion had said – then so be it. Who would even be in the morgue now, anyway? After hundreds of years, it was doubtful any bodies would still be down here.
"An interesting location," Scion quipped cheerfully as the great doors shut behind Sam and Lily. The drone hovered about in the air, examining iced-over gray, metal walls in the bare, squarish morgue foyer. "I am reading a 92% occupancy rate for this morgue's cryo-chambers."
"A what?" Sam shook her head.
"Ah, excuse me," the drone said. "Only 8% of the morgue's holding vaults are empty. There are many bodies down here."
So much for no corpses.
"Hmm-hmmmm," Scion hummed. "A time for war and a time for peace…and so much war, oh my."
Lily had slumped down against a barren wall as Scion had explained the predicament, her hands covering her face: "I can't believe we just left her…just…"
"Lily," Sam tried her best to soothe the girl's racing emotions. "I know, this isn't easy. We just have to find everyone else again; do our best to find a way out of this."
"What if we can't?" Lily refused to look up and give in to Sam's attempts at easing the pain. "What if we're stuck down here?"
"Don't you worry," Sam patted her head. "This is kinda my fault. I shouldn't have dragged everyone down here or even said anything…but I'll find a way out. I promise."
Sam felt sick herself, even if she didn't let Lily see. She had just left Jetty behind back there in that dirty, dank medical room – even if her companion from District 4 had wanted it that way. How was she supposed to live that one down? At least when others in her life had died – such as Clara, or Storm, or Cal – she hadn't been able to intervene and save them. Jetty…she could have saved her, could have tried to help her.
No, a voice in her head spoke up. She would have slowed you down. None of you would have made it. You'd all be dead…Lily included. You saved her, at least.
"Delightful!" Scion interjected at the wrong time. "I am picking up one life sign!"
Way to be tactful. "What do you mean 'life sign?'" Sam asked
"There is one living occupant in the morgue," Scion answered. "Frozen in cryostasis. How peculiar."
"Can he help us?"
"That perhaps is not advisable…"
One person, Sam thought. Better than the mob that got Jetty.
If whoever had been left in this horrible place could provide any sort of help, she would take it. Right now, Sam felt as if she had little hope: Firth and the others had no chance of reaching her without a radio, while she had only Scion to guide her around – a drone that had shown enough odd traits of his own to leave her suspicious of its intent. An actual person who knew this strange place – and who didn't want to kill her – would be a world of hurt.
Of course, he or she could always try to brutally murder her, but that was a chance she had to take. She had few options.
"Let's go then," Sam told Scion. "Can you take us to…this person?"
"Certainly," Scion chirped. "Although I am not sure you will find what you are looking for."
"Wait," Lily spoke up. Sam turned to her as the blonde-haired girl held up a black object – a familiar rectangular prism, covered in small grated lines with a red button on the side. "What's this?"
Sam had seen this before – back when she and Firth had first found the entrance to this horrible place. "Hit the button on the side."
A familiar, heavily-accented voice spoke out from the prism, just like the prior time: "I don't really get what Prometheus is trying, telling the docs to make the one big morgue of Lazarus a tootin' freezing chamber. 'Oh, McIlroy,' he tells me. 'We're doing it to preserve our genetic viability. What if we must need the genes to restart human civilization one day?' I gots a bad feeling about this kind of thing, y'know? Like Prometheus just wants to test this whole…cryostasis…thing out on dead bodies before he gets some grandiose ideas. He might be the big leader and down here with the surface blown to shit, but I got to watch things. Freezing dead bodies don't sound like a great idea to me in an underwater city."
"McIlroy," Sam breathed. "He was the same one from last time."
"What?" Lily asked.
"There…there was another one of those up above," Sam explained. "When Firth and I had first found the sub and that place. The same man – McIlroy, I guess his name is – had spoken on that one, too."
Lily shrugged: "I guess."
You sound crazy, Sam thought. Chasing dead people. Whoever that was hasn't been around for hundreds of years.
The doors leading deeper into the morgue opened up, revealing ice-lined walls of a crypt. Sam crossed her arms tightly over her chest, trying to trap what little heat she could as she and Lily followed Scion deeper into the morgue. Black, rectangular bulges lined the long hallway they stepped into on either side, making Sam feel cramped and enclosed in the tight space.
"What are these things?" Sam asked as they walked slowly along, her teeth nearly chattering from the cold.
"Coffins," Scion answered nonchalantly. "Each holds human remains."
"That's reassuring," Sam whispered sarcastically, putting an arm around Lily. "So why are these…Brotherhood people, I guess…so interested in whatever this Prometheus guy left behind if he's dead?"
Scion paused momentarily, something Sam hadn't yet seen him do. It was as if the spherical drone was searching for the appropriate answer, taking a moment before speaking with reservation: "These humans are zealous."
"That didn't really give an answer."
"We are close. Please, follow."
He's hiding something. Sam knew better than to open herself completely to the drone that led them around, but it was just too convenient that Scion had remained behind for hundreds of years when all its creators had died. What had happened down here – and had her guide been responsible for any of this?
It was a troubling notion. As Sam relied almost completely on this…thing for directions about this place, she felt as if she were in untrustworthy hands.
The creepy, frozen crypt didn't make that feeling any better.
"I don't like this," Lily peeped, looking around cautiously at the myriad tombs on either side of the long hallway.
"We'll find a way out soon," Sam reassured her. "Don't worry."
Scion's interpretation of "close" conflicted greatly with Sam's. The drone led the two girls through two more of the long hallways, dragging them past dozens, maybe even hundreds of presumably filled coffins before reaching a raised control panel at the end of the third frigid hallway. Sam had felt as if she were about to pass out by this point – either from the sheer cold, or the feeling of dread she experienced walking by all the countless reminders of those who had died in this place. It pressed in on her as the halls stretched on, closing around her claustrophobically with each further row of coffins. She knew better than to imagine them opening up and spilling a corpse onto the ground…but she couldn't shake the feeling that these tombs hadn't been filled with a benign purpose. The entire Lazarus city reeked with an awful stench – and perhaps these were its tributes.
"Yes, this is the terminal," Scion extended his control arm, tapping a button on the raised computer console before retracing the limb into his spherical body. "It will be the third tomb on the left. I am not sure who the occupant will be, however…how exciting. I will remain vigilant, of course."
A single black coffin on the left extended out from the ice-white walls, itself covered in frost. A hole in the ceiling opened up, revealing a robotic arm that removed the coffin and placed it roughly on the ground. The steel arm loosened a latch on the side, clearing the final hurdle for the coffin's opening before pulling back into the ceiling.
"The cargo will be ready upon appropriate thawing," Scion remarked.
"How long is that supposed to take?" Sam asked, keeping her eyes on the black rectangular shape on the ground.
"Oh, perhaps thirty seconds."
Air spat out of the coffin as the lid slowly opened with a creak. Sam felt her gut sloshing around with nervousness. While she knew Scion would likely blast whatever came out of there, if someone within could help her find the control center of this sprawling underwater city – where she hoped she'd find the keys to stopping Nihlus – things would finally be looking up.
The coffin lid slowly pulled away, showering its contents with a cold, misty spray. Sam craned her neck for a glimpse, squinting her eyes as she tried to see what lay within the white-lined space. Something twitched within – a person, perhaps?
She hadn't expected this.
A thin man – a teenage boy, really – with loose, dirty blonde hair coughed and crawled out of the coffin, hacking upon the corrugated metal floor with all his force. Sam paused, frozen in place by this development – someone had frozen a teenager in this crypt?
The boy looked up, meeting Sam's gaze with a pair of soft brown eyes. He looked over at Scion, with his cheeks instantly flushing of what little color they had.
Without further ado, the boy got to his feet and took off running – away from Sam and away from some unseen danger she didn't understand.