The quiet sound of voices on a TV filled Mallory's ears. Nearly a minute passed before he thought he could start to make out specific words, then longer before he had the energy to open his eyes to attempt a look around. He was on a bed, with a ceiling fan above him making lazy circles. Near the door to his left sat two white sneakers, too small for him. There was a painting of a family on a picnic at the lake to his left, a dresser in the far right corner, and a nightstand with a phone to his right. He was under blankets with a moist towel on his forehead, and at the foot of the bed sat a human shape, watching the TV. A short while of double vision and slow focus later, he recognized her: Diana. She was wearing black slacks, a white t-shirt, and a grey cardigan that folded up at the base.
She was watching the TV. With a sigh, she changed the channel. A slight tremor shook the building. She looked up at and around the ceiling, then returned to the TV when it was done.
He stirred slightly, trying to sit up, but his body wouldn't cooperate. Giving up for the time being and allowing himself a bit more time to recover, he watched the TV quietly for a short time, until he saw some familiar faces along with the surprising number "Four."
"Shemp... joined the others?" he spoke out painfully. Diana whipped around with a concerned look on her face, but it soon turned to relief. She scooted closer, checking his cheek with the back of her hand. Satisfied, she leaned back. "I was trying to get the humor," she answered. "You guys have really interesting taste in comedy."
Her smile eased back a bit as she shut off the TV. "Are you ok, Quinn?" she asked, but Mallory gave her a strange look in return. "Don't call me that," he said, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth in the strain of sitting up. The towel fell off of his forehead. As the blanket slid down, he noticed he was shirtless. "There's still a chance," he finished.
Her face brightened somewhat, eyes widening. "Mallory?" she asked, looking into his eyes. "Last time I checked," he answered, leaning his head back against the headboard of the bed. His head clearing, he took another, better look around the room they were in.
"Why... aren't we in the hotel room that the Slidologists set us up with?" he asked. Another thought came to him, then confusion rolled through his mind. "And... what happened?" he further wondered. "The last thing I remember, Maggie wanted to get through the 'Magg portal and was talking about Remmy, then..."
A short silence passed. Diana stayed quiet, watching him with concern. "Nothing," Mallory finished. "It was just all black, then I was here." He looked around once more. "Where is here?" he asked, looking into his friend's dark eyes.
Cutting straight to it, she responded, "We're on another world."
Mallory gave her a confused look, searching his memories for what could have happened. "Did you set up the 'Magg sliding machine again?" he asked, but she simply smiled and shook her head. "I might have, if it didn't blow up," she responded.
"Then how...?" he started, but Diana simply and gently pushed his shoulders down, putting his head back on the pillow. After tucking him in, she took the towel from where it had fallen on the pillow. "One second," she said, went to the bathroom to the right, moistened the towel with cold water, then returned, folding it upon itself.
Mallory, regaining enough energy to move around slightly, felt around under the blanket. He was wearing nothing but his boxers. He smiled up at Diana as she placed the towel over his forehead, wincing slightly as the cold and damp material came to rest on him. "My dear Diana," he said cheekily, "how untoward of you to take advantage of an unconscious man," tapping the side of his right thigh to indicate his current state. She smiled her brilliant smile. "You're right," she said, "I'm not that kind of doctor. I had no right, Mr. Mallory!"
She sat on his bed, right leg turned towards him and the other on the floor, looking into his eyes. "We slid," she started. Mallory simply blinked. "Maggie went through after Remmy, and almost immediately after, the machine overloaded and exploded. It wasn't meant to pass a force field through alternate dimensions."
Mallory stirred somewhat, but she gently pushed his shoulder down, patting him reassuringly. "My PDL didn't record any data that was different than the tests," she said. "If my calculations are right, she's on Earth Prime now. It takes time for an interdimensional tunnel to shut down due to the natural instability of the exotic particles, so even if the initial device were to suffer some kind of malfunction, the added energy from the force field should have kept it open long enough for her to make it all the way through."
Relaxing somewhat, Mallory nodded. "You are the doctor," he answered, his voice steady with trust. "But how did we get here, then?" he asked.
She raised her eyebrows and took a deep breath, reaching into the front right pocket of her cardigan, and pulled out a white piece of plastic resembling a cellphone. She turned it slowly side to side, giving Mallory a good look. The face was almost a complete black display, some kind of plastic or glass, with six digits atop it in three pairs, each labeled: "HRS", "MINS", "SECS". The numbers underneath read "3", "22", and "59", counting down. A dial with a single piece of plastic in the middle, obviously for gripping, sat atop it. The readout underneath was an odd set of green bars, some kind of power readout, with the unfamiliar labels of "TAU", "DELTA", and "ZETA". A numerical keypad was at the bottom, along with a part of the case that swiveled from the back to cover them. A small port on the side allowed some kind of data access.
"Where..." Mallory started, wincing with the effort, then tried again, "Where did you get this?" Diana gestured straight towards him. "You made it," she answered. Following Mallory's blank stare, she continued. "Or rather, I should say, Quinn made it," she explained.
She closed the timer, putting it back in her pocket. "After Maggie went through the portal, I pulled you out of the room to get away from the blast, but you had some kind of a breakdown," she explained. "You were unresponsive. I thought you might have been hurt or in shock, but then you just stood up and went back into the room.
"You picked up a bunch of equipment from in there," she continued, "then after piling it into the hallway, you started ransacking the facility, then brought all kinds of electronics and tools together. I tried talking to you, asked what you were doing, but you didn't answer."
She looked back at him. "I didn't know if you had gone crazy or what," she said with a somewhat worried tone, "but when I saw you building some kind of device on the floor there, I think I started to figure out that Quinn was working through you."
Mallory leaned back into the pillow, closing his eyes. He didn't hear or feel anything within, but if the experiences of the past few weeks with Dr. Geiger, Quinn's mom, and now this, he didn't know what to think. Diana didn't dare ask to confirm; he had been through enough already.
"When I started to get an idea of what was going on," she continued, "I told you... Quinn... that I was going to get you some things. When I got outside, I saw some groupies piling up out there. They got word of the explosion, and I couldn't stop them from going in, or any of the others that showed up. Luckily, they just set up a workbench and blackboard in one of the side rooms for you to work on."
She smiled slightly. "One of them, Dana, gave me a lift to the local electronics store," she remembered, "and I tried to get as many pieces of hardware that might help to make something small and electronic. Dana maxed out her credit card getting all that stuff," she explained with a chuckle.
Looking back at Mallory, she continued. "You were there for days, working on whatever it was you were working on," she remembered. "The groupies and I first, then Quinn's mom later, had to take turns feeding you and practically forcing water down your throat. You were obsessed, barely rested."
She took the timer from her pocket once more, holding it up to Mallory. "And this is what came from it," she said. "The display lit up, telling us we had only a few minutes." She stopped, thinking back, her eyes downcast. "Quinn's mom didn't take it too well," she said softly. "She said she was going to lose him four times now."
With a smile, she reached into her other pocket, producing a silver circle with a hole in the middle that resembled a washer, the one given to them by Dr. Geiger. Diana held it up. "Remmy's home coordinates," she said. "The ones we used to program the Kromagg sliding machine to get Remmy and Maggie through. And Maggie's, though they won't do anyone any good now, of course." She waved it slightly. "Our home coordinates are on here too," she finished.
Mallory nodded. "Maybe that guy turned over a new leaf after all," he surmised, watching as she slid the disc into her PDL. A line of numbers and letters popped up, then another, then another... then another. He knit his eyebrows in confusion. "Four of them?" he asked, to which Diana shrugged. "One of the things Quinn did with the timer was give it the ability to track and store coordinates," she explained. "When the data came up about the Seer's world, I stored them on the disc... We can go back to get Quinn's mom anytime we want. I put them on my PDL too, just in case. Copied ten times on both, in different areas."
After Mallory made a face, but she just looked at him smugly. "How many times have we gotten separated?" she asked with a shrug, then pulled out the timer to make her point. "How many times did that other one go crazy on us? Flying from world to world without control, out in the middle of the ocean... And we don't know the effect of interdimensional travel on data stored on a timer. We've got potential corrupted data, flipped bits... what if we wanted to go home, and we had two sets of coordinates, but one was a letter or number off? Which one would we pick?"
Mallory nodded. "I wouldn't want to take a guess," he reasoned, and Diana smiled. "See? This way, if we have ten sets of coordinates, and one doesn't match, it's clearly the other nine that are right," she answered. "If we only have two, and they're different, who's to say which one is correct? I don't want us appearing a mile up in the air, out in space, or inside a cement mixer, and even if we pick the wrong one and figure out the other was right, what if the wrong one takes us to 'No Air World'? We would have been so close."
"We might end up on one of those worlds anyway," Mallory answered. He looked at her strangely. "Why did you take us to a new place anyway?" Diana took a breath, nodding slightly. "You were seizing up," she remembered. "Quinn was in control, then he wasn't. You were whispering Maggie's name. There wasn't enough time to get you to a hospital, and there wasn't anything else left at the Kromagg storehouse that resembled the machine Dr. Geiger made to separate you and Quinn. And if we missed that window, I didn't know if it was possible to make another timer. Even if there was another window of opportunity, you were screaming in pain on the floor."
She exhaled, turning her head to the side, and composed herself. "I only had a few minutes to think, Mallory," she said softly. "It was either try and get you to a hospital while you were in such horrible pain, and you and I both know they wouldn't be able to do anything about the fundamental problem. We could have returned to Dr. Geiger's lab to see if we could use his machine again, but he said it wouldn't work now. Even if he was lying and even though it's been a year, his goons might still be there working for someone else, and armed. That one's still an option for the future, maybe, but not with you like that. But there was definitely no point in going to Maggie's destroyed world, and a Kromagg invasion was no place for you in that state.
"So I rolled the dice," she said. "Try a new world, and see if there was something to help here." She looked downwards, a frown on her face, then turned to the TV. A few seconds of silence passed between them, Diana searching for the right words. Finally, she spoke. "I think I messed up bringing us here," she said softly. Reaching over to take the remote, she turned the TV back on, waiting for the screen to brighten up.
"Oh come on, the table with the falling legs, that folding mat on the ironing board?" Mallory chuckled, sitting up, "Shemp was great. People just needed time to get used..." His voice cut off, as Diana changed the channel.
"...throughout the streets. The reptilian creatures continue to pour from the earth at an increasing rate, suggesting that there is very little time before the eruption. Commenting on the as yet unfinished tunnels, Colonel Caleb Winson spoke earlier today of the monstrous threat, say..." the eastern woman in the red pantsuit and black bobcut spoke. An image in the upper right corner, somewhat out of focus, depicted what seemed to be a gila monster or komodo dragon, but far too big compared to the black car it was standing atop. Its belly was tan and tight, its skin stretched over powerful muscles, it had four legs ending in claws with razor sharp talons, and its dinosaur-like head leered sideways, a long jaw filled with sharp and nasty teeth within. Black and brown scales spread across its back from its head, all the way to a long tail at its rear, with sharp plates of bone lining its spine.
"What..." Mallory started, interrupting the broadcast. "That thing... How many... Where..." Cutting his stammering short, a middle-aged dark-skinned man appeared on the screen, mic held up in front of him. His face was square and serious, determined dark eyes looking into the camera. His thick dark mustache moved under his large nose as he spoke with purpose, and strangely enough, his head seemed to be contained in some kind of large black helmet, with a great white light welded to the right side, but now turned off.
The hotel shook gently again. The two looked around nervously, but in seconds, the shaking passed. Mallory didn't hear a word the reporter said as a single word from the news report popped back into his mind.
"Did she say 'eruption'?!" he exclaimed. Diana nodded. "Unfortunately, yes. It's the Clear Lake volcano field," she explained. "I was reading up on the history of this world, about how they've been discussing a possible eruption over the past few years, but it seems in the end, the theorists were right."
Mallory's mind raced. "There's a 400 mile radius on our timer, right?" he offered. "There's no way we'd pop up in range of this thing." He looked at her with hope. "Right?"
Diana shook her head, looking back at him. "That was the old timer, with the whispering gallery stabilizer. Quinn's new one..." she stopped, thinking, "I haven't had a chance to check it out for myself yet, but..."
Sitting up straight, the adrenaline energizing him enough to lean his back against the headboard, Mallory looked her in the eyes. "Where are we now?" he asked simply.
Diana sighed. "Santa Rosa," she answered.
Mallory's eyes rolled back in his head, knocking his head softly against the headboard. "We've got to get out of here," he muttered.
Diana reached out to gently push his shoulders back again, but Mallory shook his head. "You stayed here for me," he said, appreciation in every word. Throwing the blanket off, he let his legs dangle over the side of the bed. "I'm up now... let's get out of here." Carefully placing a hand on the bed, he stood to his feet, then collapsed onto the floor, breaking his fall with arms he could barely feel through the pins and needles.
Diana rushed to his side. "You're going to lie here and wait until the slide, Mallory," she stated flatly.
He looked up at her. "Just... get me into a taxi or something," he said, but she made a face. "Mallory, everyone's running," she answered, grunting with effort to pick him up and throw him on the bed. He collapsed on his side, facing away from her. "Even if we could get a taxi, all the roads leading out are blocked up with traffic or closed off."
With effort, he rolled over, looking up at her. "'Closed off?' What do you mean closed off?" he asked. Diana sighed, then bent over to put his left arm over her shoulder, pulling him into a sitting position. She indicated towards the window with a motion of her head. "If you want to see, you're gonna have to work with me," she said. Mallory nodded, and with her support and a great deal of effort, dragged himself over to the far window.
"Why can't I walk straight?" he asked. She shook her head in confusion. "I don't know," she admitted. "Quinn had control of your body for several days. Maybe after that much time, it takes time to reintegrate your quantum matrix with your corporeal form."
He scoffed. "You know, I was just going to suggest that," he offered. Diana smiled and continued to carry-drag him forward until they were at the window.
The lizard creatures were on the road. Not too many, but enough to empty a pit in both of their stomachs. One stood atop a pile of green metal stained red to the right, then bolted across the road to the left until it was out of sight. Another was standing atop a lamp post, moving its head from side to side.
Suddenly, from the left, the lizard creature that had just torn down the road flew back, its head caved in, and came to a bloody rest on the road. The lizard on the lamp post screeched, then jumped out of sight to the left. A few seconds later, there was a high-pitched squeal, followed by a sickening crunch.
Before either of them could react, a taloned claw thumped down on the top left part of the window. The two fell backwards in shock, hearing a hissing sound fill the air. Diana jumped to her feet and drew the curtains, grabbed the remote to turn off the TV, then snuck backwards, kneeling down to throw Mallory's arm over her shoulder again. In utter silence, she dragged him back to the bed, then sat him up on the side, facing the door. She sat next to him on his right.
"Like I said, lie here and wait for the slide," she whispered, a nervous smile on her face. Mallory chuckled softly. "Thanks Diana," he said, putting an exhausted arm around her shoulders and giving her a thankful hug. She leaned into him, then pulled back.
They looked into one another's eyes. "Maybe next world will be better?" she suggested with a brilliant smile. "Yeah," he answered, waving his left hand in a broad gesture, "I can just see it now: The Six Stooges."
She chuckled, holding his stare with a smile. He grinned wider.
The door exploded inwards.
A black robotic exoskeleton, easily seven or eight feet tall, burst into the room. Mallory and Diana raised their hands to shield their eyes from the sudden flood of light coming from its shoulder. The legs stood tall in front of them, and as a lightly tinted visor rose up in the helmet to reveal a face, one of its massive arms rose to point a single, accusatory metallic digit at the two.
"MALLORY!" the man within shouted, turning off the light. It was The colonel from the broadcast, his face a mix of anger and confusion. He pointed his metallic finger between the two of them, Diana dressed up to his left, and Mallory wearing nothing more than a pair of boxers to his right. He raised the robotic hand upwards in a gesture of confusion, staring daggers at Mallory. "What the hell is this?!" he demanded.
Men in green exosuits stood in pairs to the left and right of the hotel on the street, eyes glancing around for the slightest movement, and a long army truck stood parked in the middle of the street. Its massive six wheels held up the camo frame, including a wide truck bed covered and hidden from casual view.
Colonel Winson burst from the front door of the hotel, carrying a near naked and squirming to the best of his ability Mallory, his body hugged tight to the exosuit and held by a massive robotic arm. He couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"I'm telling you, you got the wrong guy," Mallory protested once more, pushing on the arm. Confusion was etched on his face as he watched the armored warriors straight out of a scifi movie stomping about.
Winson just shook his head in disbelief. "Look, I get the whole 'one last fling' thing, especially with the lizards on the loose, but you KNEW we didn't have much time left," he said in the tone of a disappointed father. "Reynolds saw you and your girl come in with his own eyes. So you get your scrawny butt in the suit, gear up, and we finish this op like we planned."
Nearing the truck, Winson looked back at a flustered Diana, protesting to one of the grunts in a green exosuit. His arms raised up towards her in a calming motion, but she only gestured all the more wildly towards Mallory. When she tried to get past him, he picked her up sideways by the belly, turned her horizontally, then turned to the left. He pointed towards something down the road with his free robotic arm while she struggled in vain to escape his grip.
"Where are you taking her?!" Mallory demanded. Winson looked to him, confused. "To the evac site with the rest of the civvies," he answered, as if Mallory should have known already. Dipping his robotic arm down slightly, Winson slightly released Mallory, tossed him upwards, then caught him again, bringing Mallory's head next to his helmet. With a smile and a squeeze, The colonel gestured with his head towards the struggling scientist. "But I can see why you'd want to be a little late," he admitted, whistling slightly in appreciation as they approached the truck. Mallory looked to him, then back to Diana, then suddenly saw the floor of the truck bed rise up to meet him as Winson tossed him in.
He hit the bed with a thud, groaning softly. Winson shook his head. "Drunk again or what, Mallory?" he asked, then indicated towards a green footlocker at the foot of the long seat lining the left side of the truck. Multiple large tools resembling massive drills were strapped to the frame surrounded the truck bed.
"C'mon, boy," Winson called from behind. "You want to let Jack and Jake down again, seeing you like this? Get dressed already, we gotta go!"
The footlocker occupied the very least of Mallory's attention as he looked up and saw the massive blue exoskeleton before him. It had the same huge helmet, headlight, arms, legs, and torso of The colonel's, but there appeared to be two black pipes over the exosuit's arms. Splayed across the center of the chest read the words "Liz Slayer". Mallory made his way over to the footlocker, pulled out black army fatigues and boots, and slowly got into them.
"Who's Liz, and why I gotta slay her?" he muttered sardonically. Winson smirked and shook his head, climbing into the back of the truck, then opened the front of the massive suit of blue armor sideways like a vehicle door. He picked up the now clothed Mallory in two massive metal arms, holding him up in front of his face. "She's that scaly floozy you're gonna beat the stuffing out of," he said, shoving Mallory into the exosuit, closing the front, then locking three massive bolt locks in place one after the other, "so you can get back to your baby doll, and I can get back to mine."
With a hearty slap on Mallory's left shoulder, Winson exited the truck, calling out to the other suited up men and women in the street. With fatigue still overtaking his body, Mallory couldn't move the heavy exosuit in the slightest. (How am I supposed to get out of the truck...) his mind started, when the exosuit suddenly roared to life, jumping straight forward and out of the bed. It smashed with a massive thud onto the road below him, but before he could appreciate his short success, the exoskeleton tipped forward under its own momentum, then fell to the ground before him with a loud boom.
Seconds later, a massive black arm reached down, pulling Mallory to his feet. Winson looked into his eyes with a weird look on his face. "Pretty antsy, Mallory," he said, brushing off the rubble from the exosuit and bringing a fatherly fist gently down on his right shoulder twice. "Maybe I should've busted down the door a couple minutes later."
As the various armored soldiers came closer to board the truck, Mallory tried to turn his head to see them, but the exosuit didn't respond. (Come on, turn!) he desperately called out in his mind, and without hesitation, the exosuit answered, bringing him a view of the hotel to the right. Nodding in slow understanding within the armor, Mallory pictured himself turning around, and the exosuit came to life, bringing the army truck in full view as soldiers piled in the back.
(I guess this might be my chance to get Diana and get out of here), he thought. The exosuit didn't respond in the slightest, and he shook his head with a smile. (Guess not), he added, then directed the exosuit to bring him into the truck with a single mental image. Taking a seat in the rear, soldiers piled in around him, and the truck roared to life. They headed north out of town, where the buildings became more sparse on either side as they headed farther out and into a forested road heading towards Woodleaf.
The trip was peaceful for the first several minutes, with soldiers checking one another's exoskeletons, quietly discussing battle tactics, or just messing about to loosen up for the operation. There were mild tremors on the way that seemed to be getting closer together, but the army truck easily withstood any and all shaking. Mallory's mind worked, trying to think of what he should do. Diana said the timer had a tracking function, meaning if she had to leave before he did, she could come back after the window opened on the other world. They could meet up at the nearest Chandler Hotel, but separated like that, they were a lot less safe if they ran into trouble... on either world.
But shortly after, calm verbal warnings rang out from the outside of the vehicle. There were a pair of women on both the left and right side in brown exosuits, hanging onto the side of the truck, with heavy brown backpacks on their backs. Mallory noticed that they were significantly faster than then men in the green. Peering through a cut in the truck bed cover, he saw one on the left release her hold on the metal frame overhanging the truck bed, come to a run beside it, then grab a lizard attempting to leap onto and attack the great vehicle. Putting a hand on the top and bottom of its jaws, she pulled, and a tearing sound filled the air. Still running, she discarded the black and tan beast onto the road, leaped up, then took hold of the frame once more. Giving a thumbs up with her left metal hand to her partner, she returned to her vigil.
(Creatures, volcano... what am I supposed to do?) Mallory wondered. In an instant, his visor closed, and a display appeared in front of him: it was a volcano displayed from a side view. The view drew closer, displaying a 3D image of a massive vehicle with a drill on the front, boring straight through the base of the volcano on its western side and next to the volcano's great central vent. The view changed to the western side of the volcano, displaying a transparent image of the drill still driving through within the massive mountain, then a dozen more drill vehicles appeared, much smaller than the first. They pointed towards the volcano instead, then began to move forward, pushing deep into the earth and rock and towards the tunnel made by the larger one within. The view changed again to a top-down view, showing the smaller drills moving towards the large central cavern opened up by the first vehicle.
Red dots suddenly appeared, pouring out of the center of the volcano. They flooded over the giant drill, which disappeared from the screen, then soon began to wander around the center of the great mountain, seemingly without purpose. The other drills stopped their movement, close to meeting up with the main tunnel.
Something knocked against his helmet. Mallory thought of it opening, and it did, clearly revealing Winson's face. "Actually doing your homework this time?" he asked with a smile, slapping the side of his helmet. "Thought you just wanted to kick some butt, leave the redirection to the eggheads." He sat down with a thump on the side of the truck, which leaned ever so slightly to the left, but the driver course corrected without difficulty. A shriek was heard from the right side of the truck, and Winson smiled. "Gotta love those girls," he remarked.
He looked ahead in seriousness. "Just keep it all away from Santa Rosa and Sacramento," he muttered, casting a sideways glance at Mallory. He was silent for a moment, then spoke again. "The boys miss ya," he said. "Jack's still getting into swordplay, and Jake's tagging along as usual. The only reason they want to suit up is to be like Uncle Mallory, go toe to toe with the bad guys." He laughed, slapping the back of his metal hand against the chest of Mallory's exoskeleton. Mallory smiled despite himself.
"Maybe that's what you need: good girl to settle down with, couple little Mallories runnin' around," he suggested. "Better than the booze and womanizing." Mallory looked to him. "I'm still kind of young for the whole marriage thing," he said with a wry smile.
"Don't take too long," Winson replied, checking the underside of his left arm. "No telling how long your latest will stick around; looks like a keeper to me... Almost there," he finished, then turned to Mallory. "How are the cutters?" he asked. Mallory looked about his exosuit, trying to figure out what he was talking about. It obviously wasn't the bolt locks, or anything he saw on the helmet. Maybe the pipes...?
The word "cutter" running through his mind, nothing happened until he turned his arm towards the back of the truck bed, straight out towards the road and the receding trees behind them, and away from everyone else. Suddenly, a white flame-like line of energy surrounding what seemed to be some kind of whirling chainsaw exploded out and came to a roiling hot end a few feet away. Jumping in surprise, Mallory nonetheless kept his arm under control, and sneaking a glance at his left arm pointing towards the cover atop the truck, was relieved to see that the left pipe emitted no heat. Even when his mind wandered despite himself to what would happen if it engaged, nothing came out.
The truck erupted into cheers. Mallory turned to see everyone pumping fists and clapping their massive metal hands together, but Winson's face was a mask of both confusion and shock. "You..." he started, then shook his head to compose himself. "You been practicing or something?" he continued. "How in the hell did you get the full system to engage?"
"Spinach," Mallory answered with a shrug of his left shoulder. Focusing on shutting down the cutter, the flame cooled, then the saw retreated into the exoskeleton. The other guys looked at one another, nodding and murmuring, casting short glances back at him. Winson just sat back, thumping the side of the army truck, smiling. "They ain't got a chance, man," he said, throwing a metal arm around Mallory.
Pulling closer to their destination through the tree-lined road, there was a buzz inside the truck. Though the attacks from the lizards were getting more frequent, the girls kept them safely away, leaving them broken on the road behind. Eventually, the truck came to a stop at a T-intersection between the forested road they had just pushed through, and a freeway heading west and east. Winson slapped Mallory's armored left shoulder with the back of his hand twice, and taking the cue, the two got out of the truck, circled around it, then looked north.
A massive volcano stood before them, wisps of increasingly thick smoke rising from the top. Past the freeway and on the way to the massive mountain was a flat plain of dirt and short grass, with an intermittent treeline of sickly trees running along it that, almost like they were sunbleached.
The brown-exosuited ladies took positions to the west and east, and without hesitation, the green-clad men in the truck jumped out with heavy thuds, each carrying one of the large drills, trotting to the front of the truck and forming an inverted V-shape with the women. Winson stomped forward to take the lead of the V, and Mallory came up behind him to stand in the center. When they started moving forward, he followed.
There was movement to the west, but in an instant, the company went from arms raised and ready to fight, to relaxed and marching calmly. A woman in a brown exosuit approached. "Everything's going according to plan, sir," she said, saluting with her massive metal arm. Winson returned it. "The drillers are approaching from the outside, and we've got guards in place. The rest is all yours."
"Thank you, Lieutenant," Winson responded, exchanging another pair of salutes, then watched as she rushed back to the west side of the volcano. There was a calm warning from their right, and Mallory watched as the two girls there charged forward to bash into two approaching lizards, tackle them to the ground, then end them with two horrific snaps. In seconds, they were back in formation.
The attacks only once got bad enough to warrant sending in the boys, even as they neared the massive drilled tunnel leading into the base of the volcano. They came in singles, pairs, and in one case, a trio: one of the green exosuited men on the right caught the third lizard in the side with his drill, tearing into the beast with a horrible ripping sound, then flung its wriggling body to the ground. The girl who had just finished off the first lizard then turned to bring a metal knee down on the monstrous creature's neck, ending the threat. Otherwise, it was mostly quiet on their way into the volcano.
Entering the roughly ten foot tall tunnel, Winson gestured towards the buttresses. "The way I figure it, since you've gotten the cutters to work so well, you won't even need to stop and cut the sides one by one," he said, then pointed at the ceiling. "You can just cut them straight from the top, get this whole place crashing down in one slice."
Mallory's mind raced, trying to make sense of the instructions. Why would they want to bring down the ceiling on themselves? Obviously they'd want to escape, unless... (This is some kind of suicide mission), he thought, his exosuit faltering somewhat, before he composed himself and continued walking, trying to figure out what to do.
As the light from the outside began to dim in the dark of the tunnel, everyone turned on their shoulder lights, flooding the tunnel with intense beams and illuminating the relatively smooth cut made by the initial drill machine. It smelled of earth and rock, and the air got heavier and hotter as they pressed on. The ground shook again, heavier than anywhere in or near the hotel, before it calmed.
Several minutes later, a beeping sound rang out from Winson's suit. He looked at his left metal underarm again, and after taking a few steps forward, turned to his left and pointed at the wall. "Here. Marquez," he ordered. One of the men in the green exosuits immediately stopped to The colonel's left, waited for the V to continue down the tunnel, then drove his spinning drill into the wall with a horrific grinding noise. A few minutes later, another beep. Winson followed the data, pointing to another section of wall on the left. "Lambros," he ordered, and another man took his position to drill.
A pair of yellow eyes flashed from the darkness, and with a screech, a lizard leaped at The colonel. One of the girls caught the vile creature with a massive fist from the left, knocking it into the far right wall. With a massive stomp, a second of the suited ladies brought low the attacking beast.
After a third drilling spot was manned, the shrinking group soon approached the fourth. Suddenly, there was a strange hissing sound coming from the right, a sound which grew louder by the second. In an instant, steam exploded out from the wall, catching one of the girls fully in the right side. She raised her arms to block the scalding mist, but it blew straight through the various openings in her suit, burning her as lava slowly seeped from the wall.
Mallory barreled forward, pushing himself between her and the mist, the side of his exosuit serving as a shield as they tumbled through the ground. The mist burned through just enough to cause horrific pain, and he cried out sharply. The other girl on the right aimed her metal arms at the wall, blasting a white foam from the tube on her right wrist and through the mist, which almost instantly solidified against the rock. The mist stopped, the lava turned to smoking black rock, and silence enveloped the tunnel.
For a brief second. From the darkness down the tunnel, a lizard leaped forward, its talons extended and descending down upon the head of the scalded girl's helmet. Without thinking, Mallory rolled over, covering her brown exosuit with his blue, faced up, then grabbed the forelimbs of the creature. Its talons raked over his helmet, drawing deep gashes above and below the open viewing area, so close that he could almost feel the breeze of their movement over his face.
Winson ran forward and clapped his massive arms around the lizard's head. It instantly seized up, then slumped down upon Mallory's exosuit. One of the girls from the left pushed it off and tossed it farther down the tunnel, then running forward to sit atop its exposed belly, rained haymakers down on it until it stopped twitching.
"Miller, get her outside," Winson said, pointing to the entrance of the tunnel. A woman in a brown exoskeleton on the left instantly knelt at the fallen soldier's side, ripped open the front panel, then gently took the scalded red woman out, retreating quickly to the daylight far behind them.
Looking around him, Winson spoke. "Keep all ears open for anything unusual," he said. "We're running out of time, and we still got to get those tunnels open and drown the bastards." With a nod of respect at Mallory, he turned and continued down the tunnel, the others following close behind in formation. "Keep the bombs for later; I don't want them going off in another steam attack," he added.
Aside from a handful of single lizards that were easily dispatched by one of the guard girls, the final five drilling spots were manned without incident. The remaining two ladies took up flanks on The colonel's left and right sides, and Mallory brought up the back, wincing at the steam burns. The sounds of drilling continued from behind, down the tunnel. The ground shook again, almost bringing the four to the ground and lasting several seconds longer than any previous quake, but again, the shaking abated.
"Aw, hell," Winson said quietly, looking ahead. The remains of the destroyed digging machine lay before them, its tires flattened, its drill blunted at the end, covered in teeth marks and in unusable shape, and its circuitry ripped to pieces with wires of varying lengths and colors pulled out of its every panel. To the right was a side tunnel... and not just any tunnel. It was easily 20 feet long and 50 feet high, and led straight into the depths of a large cavern within the volcano. As they drew closer, they could hear the distant screeching of an unimaginable amount of the lizards.
"Back down the tunnel," Winson ordered, and the four returned, leaving the massive side cave where it was. When they had made it back to the eighth and final drilling spot, Winson's exosuit beeped again. "Lin, Zeta," he said, pointing towards the lizard tunnel. "You're up." The two girls nodded, taking positions.
Winson tapped the side of his helmet. "Go ahead," he said. Mallory heard nothing from the other end, and decided to lean painfully up against the western rock wall. Winson nodded. "All set up," he continued, then paused shortly before speaking again. "Yeah, he's right here."
A few seconds passed in the tunnel, lit only by the shoulder lights of the four. Winson turned his head slightly towards Mallory, then looked back down towards the entrance of the tunnel. After a short time, he spoke. "Copy," he said, tapping his helmet once more. He sat down between Mallory and the girls.
"So, Mallory..." he started, as the two met eyes. Winson looked him up and down, his eyes finally coming to rest on younger man's. "...was found coming out a bar in Clearlake."
Mallory thought quickly. "But I was in the hotel..." he started. Winson just shook his head, cutting him off. "He came looking for his suit, far past the time we were starting the op," The colonel continued. "He had his tags on. Do I need to ask if you have yours?"
With an awkward smile, Mallory spoke. "Would you believe I had them in my other boxers?" he offered. Winson stared at him for a few seconds, then let out a chuckle he couldn't quite stifle.
With a sigh, Winson looked at the far wall. "I don't know who you are..." he started, in a voice that was part stern, part worry... and yet with a tone of something less worrying. He took a deep breath, waited a few seconds, then continued. "...but you told me everything I need to know about you when you put yourself between Fox and that steam."
Winson's voice lost the initial edge, revealing the appreciation underlying it, as he turned to Mallory. "We can still count on you to finish this op?" he stated more than asked, extending his metal left arm. Mallory raised his and took it, nodding. "We both got people outside," he said simply. Winson nodded. "Plus," Mallory finished, "you still haven't told me why I gotta slay Liz."
Winson shook his head with a smile. "Only thing left to do is wait here until the drillers are done," he explained. "When they break through to the boys and girls coming in from the outside, we have a clear path out. That's where you and I break for the main exit: I'll cover your six, you slice out those tunnel supports and bury these bastards for the lava to fry. With any luck, the pressure release tunnels will divert the lava west and into the ocean, away from the major cities around us."
Exhaling in relief, Mallory looked to the ceiling. "So it isn't a suicide mission..." he reasoned. He looked over at Winson, who had a patronizing look on his face. "Not that I wasn't down to be buried alive with you fine folks," he followed up. Winson laughed and backhanded his armored chest. "Of course not," he answered, checking on the girls. He paused. A thought struck him, and he turned to look at Mallory again. "What's your name, anyway?"
"Mallory," his partner responded. Winson shook his head in disbelief. "Son, don't mess with me anymore than you already have," he protested halfheartedly.
"Really, it's Mallory," he responded, softly forcing out the next word, "Quinn... Mallory. It's probably too long a story to explain. I guess you can just call us twins for now."
"Musta got the good genes on you, then," Winson muttered, smiling. "Mallory taught me all about battle, swordplay, wrestling... if he didn't have the natural talent with the psilink, I might be sitting in that suit you're in right now." He shrugged his massive metal arms. "Guess there's something to be said being in charge of this op, especially with the battle girls here. But I think you might be able to teach that boy a thing or two about responsibility. Lord knows I haven't had too much luck."
Mallory shook his head in response. "Took me a while to get things right," he said. "Stealing cars and stuff. I guess Diana was a bigger help than I thought when I was in the wheelchair. She was in my corner until I walked again." He paused, staring off into the distance, then looked back at The colonel. "He'll need someone in his. Just keep up the pressure until he comes around," he suggested.
Winson smiled and nodded, but his appreciation was short-lived. The ground shook, more violently than before, making it difficult to stand. Screeching howls erupted from beyond the main corridor. Something was coming, and it sounded like an army. Zeta repositioned herself at Lin's side to face down the invasion.
Winson tapped the side of his helmet. "How close?!" he shouted, standing between them. Mallory ran to their right as the screeching grew closer. After a few seconds, The colonel nodded. "All right, the five of you get the hell out of here. The other three, double time it," he shouted into his transceiver. "The second you get a breach, get through the release tunnel as soon as possible. Otherwise, if I give the order, get back through the main tunnel and let the drillcars handle the rest. Move!"
The screeching grew even louder, getting closer and more violent. The ground shook again. The first lizard burst through the darkness, leaping at Lin. With a single punch, it was floored, but another was right behind it, barreling into her and knocking her down. Winson decked it in the back of the skull, then tossed its writhing body back down the tunnel, striking another lizard just before it could reach Zeta.
Two more shrieked and leaped over the tangle below them, pouncing on Zeta. Mallory, after quickly pulling up the fallen Lin, engaged his left cutter and drove it sideways through the bodies of the two, pinning them to the rock wall on the eastern side. Zeta raised her arms and drove two massive metal fists into their heads, pushing their bodies through the white saw-flame and dropping them to the floor.
"Evacuate!" The colonel yelled, throwing a right cross directly into the shrieking face of another jumping lizard. Three more leaped towards him. Lin grabbed the one on the left, spun, drove its body into the left wall, then threw its body down the tunnel. Mallory sliced straight through the center one with both cutters, pushing the mess forward and away. Zeta backhanded the last, sending it flying back into another crowd of the lizards pouring in from the tunnel. The rush disoriented them long enough for Winson to push the three back, taking point.
"Lin, Zeta! You know what to do!" he shouted back, digging in his heels. He turned back briefly, pointing a finger straight at the blue exosuit behind him. "And Mallory, you don't let those things out to hurt my kids, understand?" he shouted. "You keep them away from my kids!" With a final turn, he readied his massive black metal arms to meet the coming horde.
The girls pulled at Mallory. "C'mon!" Lin cried out. "It's all on us now!" Zeta was already running down the tunnel, placing a large white square on the wall to the east, fiddling with it slightly before continuing her run. Mallory took a final look back at Winson, who was decking a lizard in the skull with a right hook, then ran back through the tunnel. Running by the white square, some kind of explosive he surmised, he could see a timer counting down, the readout too small to read. Mallory briefly looked to his right, seeing daylight from one of the release tunnels, and an abandoned drillcar sitting in the center of it. The green exosuited soldier, his job finished, had dropped his drill on the ground and was long gone. It would have been easy to escape down the tunnel, but...
Mallory looked back down the main tunnel, following the girls. Seconds later, Lin slapped another explosive on the wall, armed it, then continued through. One by one, the girls took turns arming the bombs, until the two at last reached the first of the pressure release tunnels, heading west to freedom.
Lin turned to Mallory. "Thank you," she said, sweat dripping down from her forehead past her almond eyes and button nose to collect in a dripping stream at her round chin. She dashed down the escape tunnel and past Zeta, who nodded in gratitude, closing her wide brown eyes slightly in humility and deep thanks. Flashing him a smile from her full lips, she turned to chase after Lin.
Engaging the cutters and raising them high, Mallory ran down the tunnel and began slicing through the wooden supports one by one, the grinding saws and superheated flame ripping through them as if they were nothing. One after the other, keystone blocks of sorts slipped from the ceiling, the rest of the buttresses buckled, and the tunnel began to cave in, part by part.
Mallory heard screeching behind him. He was moving fast, but it wasn't fast enough. The lizards were gaining, and he still couldn't see daylight. Slicing through another buttress, he heard the sound of falling rocks behind him, but it didn't seem to be slowing them much; in fact, it seemed to be making them more angry.
The screeching stopped for the briefest of seconds, and Mallory, fearing the worst, turned the great blue exosuit around, slicing both the cutters through the air just in time to tear through three lizards at once before they could tackle him to the ground. A quick look through his shoulder light revealed that the tunnel was collapsing, but the lizards were pushing through gaps in the rocks, and in the distance, were pushing the great stones aside to try and make their own paths.
Taking another step backwards on his path out of the volcano, Mallory twisted the great exoskeleton to continue forward, raising his arms to slice through another buttress. The screeches behind gained in volume and proximity once more. He shook his head... he wasn't going to make it.
A strange light began to take form in front of him. Was it the exit? No... it was too bright for that. Slicing through another support, Mallory saw the light grow in size and strength. It was a shoulder light, the beam directed behind him. With another slash, another wooden block fell, raining rocks behind him... and he saw the shape more clearly.
It was an exosuit: smaller, and blindingly white. And within... was Diana.
She rocketed behind him, pressing a leg against the wall to her right, then blasted left, driving a sweeping kick through the skulls of several lizards at once. They all struck the western wall, then slumped to the floor. Immediately, she turned the suit around and caught up with Mallory. She squeezed her massive white metal arms into an embrace around his exosuited body. "Keep the cutters up!" she cried out. "And hang on!"
With a thought, her exoskeleton engaged, shooting yellow-blue flames out of the back of her suit. A lizard attempting to grab her from behind, taking the full brunt of the blast, screeched in horrific pain as it burned, then dropped to the floor. Diana held tight and rocketed the two of them straight towards the exit.
The ceiling supports sliced to ribbons one after the other and tumbled to the ground like dominoes, dropping rocks into the tunnel by the hundreds. The screeching of the lizards faded as they found themselves trapped between two broken buttresses or under the massive weight of the collapsing volcano. Mallory and Diana finally saw daylight, as the white pinpoint slowly expanded to welcome their escape from this hellish place.
Inside, the bombs counted down their final seconds: 3, 2, 1... then exploded one after the other.
The molten rock from the central vent, no longer waiting to make its explosive entrance from the crater, poured through the side and devoured the lizards one after the other in screeching horror. The steaming lava continued out through the pressure release tunnels, well on its way west through the evacuated and largely empty towns there to join the sea.
Slicing through the final buttress, Mallory retracted the cutters and Diana disengaged her engines. A second later, the two blasted out of the volcano, tumbling end over end atop the dirt and straight into the sickly trees beyond it. Dirt kicked up and the two bashed every part of their exoskeletons on the ground as they rolled to a final, undignified stop. When the world stopped spinning, they looked at one another, Mallory's exoskeleton on its back with Diana's atop him.
He smiled at her. "How did you...?" he started, not knowing what to ask first. "They asked for some volunteers, so I got in this one," she explained. "They said something about the psilink being too difficult, but when I got inside, it was pretty easy to move. You should have seen the looks on their faces!"
Leaning his head back, Mallory raised his eyebrows in wonder. "Same thing happened to me," he answered. "I had a feeling it was because Quinn's somewhere in there. Maybe he made the link stronger." Diana shrugged her great metal arms. "I thought we might have had different brain patterns, since we're from another world," she suggested, then smiled cheekily. "Or maybe it's just because I'm smarter than you."
He laughed, pushing her off him. She rolled over, then slowly stood, looking at the carnage behind them. Lava was pouring out of the side of the volcano at a quick clip towards the ocean. She could see a bustle of activity in front of the volcano and to the west: several small shapes moving around in a line formation, gesturing about. She checked her underarm. "One minute until the slide," she announced.
There was no answer. She turned around and looked at the fallen exosuit: Mallory's eyes were closed, and he wasn't moving. "Mallory?!" she cried out, reaching down to undo the bolt locks keeping him within the massive suit of armor. Slamming them open, she stepped back in her exosuit, gave the mental command to unlock it, then leaped out, putting her arms around him. With great effort, she strained as hard as she could, pulling him out of the blue beast. His breathing was shallow and ragged.
A beeping from her pocket. Sitting on the ground with the unconscious Mallory leaning heavily into her right shoulder, and her arm wrapped around him, she pulled the timer from her pocket: five seconds. Immediately, she pointed the small device to her left towards an open spot in the dirt field, then engaged. A beam shot out, opening the shining rainbow-striped bridge.
Pocketing the timer, she stood up, then put her arms under Mallory's shoulders, dragging him to the vortex. With a final heave, she tossed him in. The tunnel did the rest, pulling his body through on his journey to the next world.
Just before she leaped in herself, she took one last look at the scene before her. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw a black figure standing at the center of a mass of green and brown shapes, slowly stumbling away from the steaming lava flow of the volcano.
With no time to lose, she leaped into the vortex, and seconds later, it closed behind her.