Nilologue - Part 7

The heat coming out of the machine's mouth just would not stop. Every breath I took made my throat constrict, my lungs spasm, made me cough and take in a gasp of scalding air, just to do it all over again. Ingrid, when I could spare her a glance, was doing even worse. She was slumped over the backpack, leaning against-

-it, eyes fluttering. The red glow of bubbling, popping metal was tinged with black around the edges. Like soup. I giggled, but nothing came up. The air. Every breath I took in, such as it was, seemed to echo the rippling walls. The air is. The thought just wouldn't connect. Deep breath in, and in came the ceiling as well, fuzzy clouds drifting around the edges of my vision. The red hot soup boiled and bubbled and spat, pop pop pop. The bubbles of... gas. "Just a minute" I said, leaning over. Ingrid was sliding down to the floor as well, mouth drooping. That seemed nice. "I'll stand up in a minute." The gnashing mouth of the demolition robot passed over the molten metal, and when the red light came back, it was a dull purple instead. "Fine..." slowly, begrudgingly, I stood up. The whole world tilted, and I nearly ended up on the floor when it turned into a wall. That robot must've been chewing it all up again. I tried to pick up the flickering backpack of control circuits, but it was stuck to the floor. I tried to pick up Ingrid, but she was sound asleep, and the walls kept moving in, and out, and in, and out, in and out...

I came to with my cheek pressed against a cold patch of floor, lungs aching, heart going like a jackhammer. The air is poison I finally managed to piece the thought together. And there was Ingrid, lying right beside a pool of molten metal that burped out another bubble of invisible gas every few seconds. I didn't know how far the gas had spread. For all I knew, I could still be sucking down lungfuls of it. It didn't matter. I needed to grab Ingrid, and get her at least this far away from it. The sooner the better. Right now, even. Sure. Just as soon as I caught my breath. The blackness lurked, lingering after each blink. Now. Do it. I took in one final deep breath, then one more, a gamble, and plunged back down the hallway. No need to run, just stride with purpose. Get to Ingrid, Bend down and sway went the floor, trying to buck me off. My scalp prickled with sweat, furnace heat quenched my eyes shut. Pick up Ingrid, never mind, grab one leg and watch the, oops, head, and back up the hall we go, step by wobbly step, how far away is safe? Where does the gas step, when can I stop, when can I sit down and breath, just for a minute, I just need to rest and catch my breath...

Something annoying was prodding my cheek. A stick, digging into my face and making annoying noises. Eventually, it started slapping at me. "Fuck off", I tried to say, but it came out as coughs.

"You're alive?" said the annoying stick. It had Jack's voice, because of course it did. "Bec?"

"Of course you moron, now leave me alone, I was asleep", I coughed, and coughed and coughed. I squeezed an eye open. Jack was leaning over me, with no shirt on for some reason. And, it turned out, no pants either, for what better be a damn good reason.

"Ingrid is still breathing, but she won't wake up." came Simon's voice. I rolled an eye open, checking if, yep, he was similarly undressed. I rolled it back, and was relieved to still be wearing more clothes than the rest of them put together. The door out to the hallway had been jammed shut with all the various articles of missing clothing, and was dripping wet.

"Wus' goin on..." I slurred, throat thick with phlegm.

"Goin' on, is you dying. Again. And coming back for a third round." said Jack. He pulled roughly at my eyelid, and stared deep into my empty skull. "You're fine. Somehow. Now we just need-" Ingrid shot bolt upright, and let out a ragged scream. It petered out by the end, "AAAAaah...?"

Simon picked himself up off the floor, and dusted down his bare legs.

"Ingrid's awake." he said.

"The gas!" Ingrid shrieked again. "It's everywhere, we're all-"

"Going to be fine." said Simon, holding one ear, pointing at the blocked up door.

"Oh. You, um, figured it out then."

"Yeah." said Jack. "We had it all setup, and then Bec comes clanging on the door, and we have to drag the two of your in here. And then you both woke up again. And now it's, now."

"So what next?" I asked.

"Well, it's not safe out there" said Simon.

"Is it safe in here?" I countered. I had visions of that invisible, undetectable, toxic gas, rising up and seeking out all the nooks and crannies and vents it could find, slowly coiling around my throat while I slept...

"It's safe in here for now." Correct Simon. "We drink some water, you two finish waking up, we figure out a plan and before we go running off to throw ourselves into a vat of molten metal. Again."

"Hey, that's-" started Ingrid, but she lowered her finger before she embarrassed herself further.

In the end, the plan was pretty simple. Ingrid's device clearly worked perfectly, in it's own fashion, so we just needed to go out and get it, and then use it to clear the way. Jack and Simon wound damp shirts around their faces, and marched out to grab it, Clang, clang, clang, clang... went Simon's boot. ...clang, clang, clang, clang. They came back blue and red, with it the backpack swinging wildly with every staggering step.

Once the door was stoppered back up, Ingrid got to work. "Shouldn't be too hard." She mused. "Just a few minutes". The three of us got settled in for a wait, but less than minute later, there was a horrendous shrieking sound coming up the hallway. The whine of tortured metal tickled our ears, and the thrum of great engines vibrated through the floor. "I'm going to make it turn left, and get out of our way." called Ingrid. "And then I'll shut it off."

Clatter, went the keyboard. "There we are" said Ingrid, pressing the last button with aplomb. A few moments later, we heard the machine start up again. I could hear it, digging into the wall with those shredding jaws. "This will only take a few minutes." said Ingrid. Simon nodded. Seconds later, there was a great CRUNCH, a terrific ZAP, and then the fainter sounds of metal bashing against metal.

Then, silence.

"I... uh." said Ingrid, tapping the keyboard, then three or four more times. "It's not- That wasn't exactly what I expected. I think it's off now?"

Simon went out first to check how badly things had gone, wearing the impromptu gas mask. He came back with it dangling from his belt. "It's safe now. Far as I can tell. Just... watch your step."

The hallway was a mess. A rubbery red cable dangled from the ceiling thick as my arm, dripping with sparks and ending in a tangle of blackened copper wire. The floor, the ceiling were both splattered with gobbets of cooling black metal. The wall - there wasn't a wall anymore. Just a black emptiness roughly the size and shape of the machine that had terrified us so. The edges of the hole looked like they'd been chewed on.

"Well, it's gone." said Simon. "And we should be, as well. I don't like the look of that cable."

"No shit. What'd you do Ingrid?"

She arced up immediately. "Exactly what I said, I got that thing out of our way. What've you been doing to help?"

"Easy, easy." said Simon, stepping forwards. "Ingrid, go pack up the, uh, your device. Good job. Jack, we'll be leaving soon, so, go get sorted."

Ingrid marched off, shoulders high. Jack wandered away in the opposite direction. While the rest of them did their bickering, I inched forwards towards the gap, skirting the dots of hot metal that littered the floor. I needed to see what was down there. Should I lie down flat, and crawl closer? Or just, walk up and- and look. A faint breeze tickled through my hair, which was just long enough to ruffle. Every step I took was half the length of the previous. I didn't want to touch where the wall had been sheared apart, those jagged edges looked painful. Without anything as a safe hand-hold, I just leaned out and looked down into,

Nothing.

A faint red star gleamed in the depths.

A hand landed on my shoulder and pulled me backwards. "The hell Simon?" I asked, brushing him off.

"What were you doing? You looked like you were going to jump in there." he said, brow creased.

"I was- what? I was just trying to see how far down it went."

"Down?"

A faint creaking sound came from the metal plates of the floor.

"Yeah, down." I said again. "You know, the big hole?"

I felt stupid, and Simon had this slight grin on his face. I pointed at the black void where the demolition machine had vanished into.

"Bec, that's not quite right," said Simon, taking a few steps forwards. "You see it's... the..."

I waited. Simon stood where I had stood. Simon looked where I had looked. He licked his lips, a quick, darting motion. One of his hands was shaking.

"...Simon?"

He didn't respond. He just stared. A tendon in his neck flickered. I reached out and touched his hand, and he snatched it back like I'd electrocuted him. He turned to look at me, eyes wide, blinking too fast.

"Simon, come on." I let out a little laugh. "You're scaring me. Just, just come over here."

I reached out and grabbed his hand, and gave a tug. Then I yanked harder, and made Simon stagger back from the lip of the hole. He kicked one of the chunks of black metal that littered the floor, breaking the weld and sending it rattling against the far wall. He shook his head, once, twice, like he was trying to get water out of his ears.

"I... sorry, Bec. I don't know- what came over me there."

"Come on," I said. "Let's just, let's just get back to the others."

After his encounter with the vastness that lurked beneath our feet, Simon went and sat down for a while. He seemed alright, but none of the rest of us knew how to check. So, we all just sat around as well. Drank water, ate a little food. Jack put his head down on a backpack, and lay there for a while, just staring up at the ceiling. Now that Ingrid's pride and joy, which really needed a name, had been proven to work, she seemed a little... lost. It had definitely worked, but whatever had been communicating with her via error messages had since gone silent.

"It needs a name. " I said, making everyone jump a bit. I hadn't realised how silent we had all been. I pointed at the lumpy bag of screens and processing blocks. "The device, I mean."

"I've just been thinking of it as, well, that. The Device." admitted Simon.

"Well, Ingrid is going to make something else just as useful and important in the future. What'll we call that?" I countered.

"The Device, Two." said Jack, without getting up. Ingrid looked positively glowing.

"I made it, so I, get to name it. It's..."

"..." I said.

"Shut up, I'm thinking. It's, the, um, multi-target communication device."

Jack mouthed the name. "So, the MuTCoD?"

"What? No!" said Ingrid, and that was that.

We had to keep moving eventually. Simon and Jack finished dressing in their crumpled, damp uniforms.. Simon hauled up the MuTCoD without assistance or a word of complaint, but I saw his knees wobble a little. As we left the room, Jack turned left, while Ingrid turned right, striding off into the unexplored direction. After a few paces, she realised none us were following. "I just thought..." she waved a hand towards the dark, unknown hallway. Simon shook his head. "But we didn't even find the mother drone yet..." she whined, but still fell into line. In my heart of hearts, I wanted to keep exploring as well. We had plenty of food and water. The MuTCoD could keep us safe, that was for sure. Still, I wasn't the one who had to carry the damn thing.

Simon skirted far around the hole as we passed it. Ingrid looked a little embarrassed at the reminder. Jack poked his head over the edge and said "huh." Personally, I wanted to try and get some climbing equipment and see what was down there. Maybe we could salvage something out of the giant machine we had sent plummeting to it's death. It seemed a shame, it clearly wasn't a weapon or aiming to kill us. If we could've taken full control and repurposed it, we could've made something more useful out of it. Perhaps used it as- well, as a weapon. Or something useful. But definitely we could've used it as a weapon. I was sure there was something else that could've been done with it, but my thoughts just kept going round, and round in circles, all the way back through the halls.

"We must be nearly home." I said, for the second time. The way back had seemed twice as long as the journey out. I was ready for a shower and bed, probably in that order. Or maybe, bed, then shower. Much to think about. Jack turned a corner, and stopped so suddenly that I ran into the back of him. He let out a sighing groan.

"Yeah, sucks to see you too." came a familiar gruff voice. Hearing her set my blood boiling, the top fell out of my stomach. I darted around Jack to see if- And there she was. Annie was sitting with her back against the wall, slumped really, right next to the sliding door that lead into the mess hall.

Both her hands were empty, clearly displayed on either side of her. She turned as I skipped out, and I gave a little gasp. The human side of her face was covered in dried blood, crusting her remaining eye shut.

"Sup. It's not as bad as it looks." she said, by way of greeting.

"Gen. Gen!" I called, running down- I mean, walking quickly down the hallway. Jack hissed something unimportant. I pulled the door open, blinking in the harsh white light. There was nobody in the mess hall. "Gen, get out here! We need a doctor!"

"Don't you worry about blondie." said Annie. "She knows I'm here, and decided she didn't want none of it."

"Bec, you should go inside." said Simon.

I turned to face him. He looked bone-tired, like the MuTCoD was about to pull him over backwards.

"You should go first Simon, and put that thing down before you fall down." I stepped aside, gesturing for him to pass.

His eyes darted between me and Annie. "Go! In, and sit down. I'll be fine." I said. Eventually, he walked through, with Ingrid trotting at his heels.

"I'll stay out here." said Jack. "Just in case."

"Actually," I clasped my hands together and stared him in the face. "You can go and get Gen for me. Right now."

"... whatever." he said, and brushed past. For some reason, I closed the door behind him. I left just a tiny gap, enough light to see Annie by. Could never be too careful.

"Ugh, what is with them." I said, crouching down on the other side of the hallway to look Annie square on.

"Maybe it's because I, you know, roughed them up a bit."

"Pfft, hardly!" I had to laugh at that. "You? With your toy gun? They're all such babies."

Annie blinked at me, and shifted her position slightly. She didn't say much for a while. I started digging through my backpack, I knew there was a drop of water left. "Well," she started. "Gen at least has plenty of reason to want me out."

"You didn't really hurt her though." I countered, alternating between looking at Annie, searching through my backpack and glaring at the closed door. "You just shook her a bit when she was being stupid. Like she's doing now. You could've really hurt her, I dunno, hit her in the face. Pulled her hair, whatever. It's not like you wanted to injure her."

"Uh huh." she said.

"Well, I mean." I stopped moving. She was looking up at me with all three cameras. I could see that one of them had the tiniest scratch on the lens. "Or you could've like, grabbed a finger and threatened to break it. Or pushed her to the ground and put your foot on her neck. Or, you're strong enough to pick her up by the neck."

She shrugged, maybe.

"Or you had that bit of junk you were pretending was a gun, you could've marched her around with that to her head and made her do stuff."

"Like what." there was a tilt to Annie's head. My head felt like one of Ingrid's projects, all error messages.

"Like, um, tied the rest of us up? Or something? I don't know. What were we talking about? You're the expert at this."

"I don't know about that..." said Annie, leaning back and putting both hands behind her head. She looked me up and down from where she was sitting. "You sure have put a lot more thought into this than me."

"I haven't- you don't- I mean..."

"I'm just messing with you. It's Bec, right? In my head, you're just the scrappy one."

"Yeah." I looked around. Where was Gen? Where was anyone. I'd sent everyone inside like I'd known what I was doing. And now, I was alone out here. With Annie. My heart was still galloping away like a horse (whatever that was).

"Woah, Bec, I'm not going to hurt you. You're alright."

Some kind of emotion seemed to be winding its way down my brain.

"I'm just going to sit here for a bit longer, then get going." she said, waving a thumb towards the darkness. "Obviously I'm not welcome."

I made a noise of protest, but she just smiled grimly.

"Look-" I said. "Let me get that blood out of your eye. At least."

She raised her remaining eyebrow, cracking the dried blood a fraction.

"It's the least I can do." I pressed.

"...All right."

I finally found the last water bottle, and crawled across the floor to Annie. My hands were all shaky, and a few drops plinked against the floor as I tried to pour a little of it onto the hem of my shirt.

She shifted positions, bring up her metal leg and resting her metal elbow on the knee with a click. She was wearing the same type of grey uniform as me, but stretched over the black lines of her modified body. The fingernails of her left hand were bitten short, and a few loose strands of hair brushed her shoulders. In order to wipe off the blood I would have to look up, look at her face.

"What... um... what happened?", I said, to put off that moment.

I startled up as Annie bent down, sticking her bloodied face in front of my eyes

"Mm. Wouldn't you like to know, Rebecca." she said, then laughed quietly and sat back up. My throat felt like it had closed over. "No, it was stupid. Could've been killed, but instead I'm here making that your problem. How embarrassing."

"You're not... you're not a problem." was all I could squeeze out.

In the utter silence, I could hear the lenses of her face shift. I felt a little lightheaded. Then, I breathed in, a great gasp. I tried to play it off, and Annie didn't say anything.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, I had the bottom of my uniform shirt ready as a wet rag. I had to keep shuffling closer and closer to Annie, until I was basically sitting on her leg. Carefully (carefully) I pressed it against her eye. She held completely still. I couldn't imagine what a fool I must've looked like, fumbling around like this with Annie in the half light.

She let out a little cough and shifted slightly as I wiped away at the crusted blood. When she could open her eye again, her pupil was massive. Grey iris. "Look at you." she murmured. "You're a mess."

I had her blood smeared along the hem of my shirt. I shrugged.

"Not the first time."

I couldn't help but wonder what she was looking at.

The sliding door crunched wide, letting out a fan of harsh white light. Annie squinted her human eye shut, and I heard the faint sound of a lens go 'click.' I spun around, blinking. Simon stood in the entryway, the lights of the mess hall at his back.

"Bec." he said quietly. "You should come inside." I turned back to face Annie, a mouth full of protests, but the woman gave a tiny shake of her head.

"I should probably get going as well." Annie said out loud, slapping her knees with both hands. "Would you help me up?" Her human hand was halfway between Simon and I. Simon made a little twitch towards it, but did nothing. I got onto my knees, grabbed Annie's arm between my two, oddly sweaty palms, and we both leaned upwards. Annie stood bolt upright, but I had a suspicion that without Simon as audience, she would've been swaying. "Well, thanks." she said, and turned away towards the dark. Simon and I watched her go, and waited until her heavy footfalls were swallowed.

"Is she- ok? Injured?" asked Simon. I shrugged.

"Not really. I mean, she's not injured. Just a cut, and it's already stopped bleeding."

"Then... what did she want?" asked Simon again.

"I don't know."

And I really didn't know.

I promise.