Chapter 22 Trapped
TWENTY-TWO
TRAPPED
Julia
Thud, thud, thud!
Something, and that something being the Boa, attacks the other side of the door. Thud, thud, thud, thud! The large industrial door shudders, the violent banging against it making me jerk with each subsequent pounding sound.
“Let me innnn!” I hear the Boa say through the racket of his wild barragement.
The hair rises on the back of my neck as I hold my aim, waiting for it all to end, praying the door continues to hold.
The door does, and eventually, after what seems like a short eternity, the sounds fade as the Boa gives up.
Silence begins to ring in my ears. After a few more minutes, I am sure the only banging I’m hearing is my heart slamming back and forth inside my chest. Hoping the Boa has wandered off for now, I release my rifle, let it go limp under my arm, and grab my flashlight off the ground.
As my pulse calms, I think about Krellix, Olivia, and the others. I hope they’re okay.
Glancing around, I find myself on the central landing of a cornered staircase leading deeper into the ground.
Considering the industrial door one final time, I walk down the last few steps to discover a wide hallway with a series of cold, dark rooms. Giant machines that look like they could be generators line the walls, but they’re so old I can’t really tell what they were once used for.
Eyeing the faded signs on the walls and the piping across the ceiling, I wonder if Krellix knows about this place.
I decide against it, reminded of the stories of Shelby’s and Celeste’s own journeys underground within the boundaries of the facility.
And Krellix being partially involved. Also, the dust and dirt is so thick, my boots are leaving footprints behind me; I’m the first to pass through in a long time.
Peering at all of the large, intact equipment, I think I might be the first person to pass through here since Earth’s destruction.
I cross my arms. The air is chillier down here than it is above. I hesitate and glance back at the stairs, wondering if I should turn back and wait by the door—or maybe check outside and see if the Boa is gone.
No. No chance he’s given up that easily.
Instead, I keep walking, discovering a set of double-wide doors that looks like the one I came in through, just twice as big. Maybe there’s another way out of here…
I start to search for a map on one of the walls as I walk to the keycard machine next to the double-doors.
Pulling out the card, I tentatively line it up and swipe it through.
The industrial doors click, the latch unlocking, and I twist the handle.
Opening the left door, I peek into the dark room on the other side.
Seeing nothing more than open space, I push the door the rest of the way open and walk through.
Immediately on the other side, I find myself on a landing over a large stairwell going further underground.
I descend the stairs two at a time. Enough time has passed that Krellix is probably aware that I’m no longer with him.
He’ll come for me and he’ll find the Boa instead.
He won’t be ready. If I can find a different way out of here than the way I came in, we’ll both be safer and maybe I can prevent an encounter I really don’t want to happen.
When I reach the hall at the bottom, I pick up my pace and start jogging. It’s so long I’m starting to question whether I should turn back and take my chances getting past the Boa anyway. But then I turn the corner and another set of double-wide doors appears.
Unlike the last ones, these are large and white, and twice as thick. Also unlike the last ones, they’re wide open.
Darkness spills out before me into what feels like an even larger room on the other side.
Cold air and a strange, pervasive chemical musk tickles my nose.
I lift my mask back over my face, cringing away from the polluted scent.
Like wet soil and something overly sweet, the smell quickly grows unpleasant.
I blink against the darkness, squinting past the shadows where the little light I have bleeds into the room. Trying to see as far into the space as I can, I slide my flashlight over the heavy shadows. Coming upon nothing but more darkness beyond, I slowly step through the doors.
Yet another landing. I walk further into the room and beam the light outward, waiting for something—a wall at least—to appear.
There’s nothing at first, the light fading off into the darkness until finally it catches a railing across the floor ahead of me.
Shifting the flashlight from side to side as I move toward it, the beam hits a glass panel and reflects back at me from even deeper into the space.
Holding its aim on the glass, I see more glinting surfaces around it.
Thinking the cavernous feel of the room must be from a possible cave-in somewhere ahead of me, I drop my light from the glass to point it downward on the exact other side of the railing.
Slowly, my eyes adjust, taking in the vague outlines of shapes spanning out below and before me, far past the edge of my meager illumination.
What the fuck is this place…?
I glance back at the double-wide doors behind me, assuring myself they’re still open. I get the feeling they’re supposed to be closed…
Since I’m pressed for time, I decide to look for a way down, and soon discover two sets of stairs, one on either side of me along the room’s outer walls.
The landing spans between them. Heading left, I grab the railing with my free hand as I head down to see what I’ve found and if there’s a possible exit ahead.
Lurkers… at least the one Shelby found… had been underground. Suddenly, midstep, my stomach churns with my next inhale of air. Have I made a grave mistake? Maybe I shouldn’t have come here. I should go back now and head above. I should take my chances with the Boa outside.
The hand holding my flashlight drops and the light shifts over the glinting machinery below.
My gaze remains on the shapes beneath me, the darkness keeping them obscured just enough to make them sway in illusion.
Shadowy forms merge between them, seemingly moving.
Despite knowing it’s just a trick being played by my eyes, I continue to stare at them, wrestling with what I should do and if I have the courage to do it.
I smell death. Whatever it is, it’s not right.
Whatever is down here, and I know something has to be down here, it’s probably dead, and unless I turn back, my only other choice is to keep moving through.
Straightening, I shift my light to the floor, descending the rest of the stairs. How did it come to this? How could I let myself get caught off from the group?
A grated metal pathway meets me at the bottom, lifted several feet off of the real cement floors beneath it.
I follow the pathway until I’m below where I stood at the railing.
Along the wall beneath, numerous massive machines sit hunched under the weight of the piping exploding out from them.
Leading away from the wall and out into the enormous room are multiple parallel catwalks between large rows of what looks like more machinery, this time cylindrical in shape.
A low humming comes from deeper in and I pause to listen. It sounds like the machines are on and running. At least some of them. Maybe I woke them up when I turned the power back on above… But I don’t think so… There must be another power source.
I aim my light at the first shape on the right side of the pathway.
It hits a long glass cylinder that’s filled with murky water.
Huge tubes, pipes, wires, and looping metal hang off and connect to it from above and below.
Peering past it, I can see many more cylinders that are exactly the same leading into the velvety darkness.
My heart sinks. I know what I might be looking at, and my breath shortens with deeper unease. I may not be as trusted by the women who’d chosen to remain here with their naga mates, but Daisy, Shelby, and Laura have shared enough with me that I know where the nagas originate.
Others have discovered places like this…
The first dozen or so cylinders are empty except for a pale greenish liquid, and as I pass them on either side, I start to relax. I expected some sort of mass grave but when my beam hits the thirteenth cylinder, there’s something inside of it.
Several thinly-stretched, pale yellow strips float unmoving at the top, no wider than several inches. Seeing no defining features of anything I recognize, I keep going, past the next few—each with similarly shaped things inside.
The cylinders start to get bigger, the solution within turning clearer. I come upon several cracked ones where the liquid has drained away, the things inside it long deteriorated.
Then I come upon the first body.
I squint as I approach, directing my flashlight at the bulbous amalgamation.
Floating inside the next cylinder is a chimeric creature: the upper torso of a human and the bottom half a coiled tail.
Peering at the face within, I take in its softly shut eyes and bald head.
There is no coloring or pattern to its flesh, all of it instead a sickly, pale yellow.
My heart drops as I run my light over the body.
A quick scan ahead reveals that the following dozen or so tanks have similar forms floating within them. Returning my attention back to the one I’m next to, I approach the computer panel and wipe the dust off it with the sleeve of my jacket.
The naga looks grown.
Trying the buttons, testing the sturdiness of several tubes, nothing happens, and I step back onto the path.
I shift my light over the naga’s face one more time and its eyes snap open.
“Fuck!” I jerk back.
Steadying myself, holding my light firm. The naga otherwise doesn’t move, its eyes staring forward and down at me, unfocused. Glazed. Alive.
It’s still alive.
A rush of horror and dread fills me; my body freezes in disbelief. I take in the naga’s blanched features, appalled by the notion that it’s been here, alive, trapped, for all this time.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” I ask.
I get no response, just a blank stare at my light. I check the remaining tanks past it and see more dully flickering lights on the machines around the vats. Not every one, but many. Jogging now to see even further, I come across an entire row of lifeless machines.
I return to the first naga and swallow thickly.
I can’t just leave it, living in limbo. I can’t.
Death is better than being confined to a tank for hundreds of years.
I’m not sure I can save him or the few around him but I can at least give them peace.
Guilt mixed with regret joins the sickness churning my stomach as I set down my light and take out my rifle.
I shoot the glass. The sound echoes in the huge chamber.
The bullet barely cracks the cylinder. A second shot doesn’t do any better.
I step forward up to the large vat and yank at the tubes.
They don’t budge.
Huffing, I lean away and peer up at the tank and the naga. Its eyes are closed again and if it—he—I don’t know—hadn’t opened his eyes, I would have assumed him dead. Maybe he didn’t open his eyes? Maybe I’m seeing things…
My thoughts shift as I turn away. Had Krellix come from a tank as well? I never asked him about his childhood. I know he lost his family and his home when us humans first arrived but I don’t know if that included a father and a mother. Parents or a… vat? I shiver.
Sick at heart, I walk as far as the grated pathway goes until I reach the end of the room. Stepping off the path and glancing behind me, I calculate there has to be several dozen tanks in all.
All of this just so humans could use alien lurker technology.
My stomach clamps with nausea. I look along the back wall of the room for another exit, desperate to flee this horrible place, but only discover another platform like the one I entered onto, with even more large, industrial machinery at the top. Some flashing lights come from a few of them too.
Hoping my alternate way out is up there, I climb the stairs and find the room’s power supply instead.
Heading for it, I search the lights and interfaces until I come across a keycard access point on the main control panel.
I stick my card in and am surprised when the lights in the room actually turn on.
Faraway bulbs pop as a bright explosion repels the darkness.
Blinking viciously until my eyes adjust, I peer down at the large, blank screens and buttons before me, choosing to ignore the hundreds of tanks behind me in the partially lit-up gloom.
There’s no alternate exit, at least not this way.
I drop into a crouch and bury my head in my hands. Taking several minutes to calm my nerves, and wishing I had Shelby’s eyes, all while praying that Krellix and the others are safe from the Boa—I rise back to my feet.
Because I’m going to do something they might not agree with.
But only I understand how far the military will go to get ahold of weapons to fight the Ketts.
I can’t leave this place behind intact.
I’m going to shut everything down and make sure no one can ever use the machines here again.