Chapter 17
I lasered off part of the banister and slid it through the handle of the door to stop the zombies from breaking through. They slammed into it as hard as they could and clawed at the metal, and the banging underscored our racing thoughts as we tried to work out a way to escape from the space station.
“No…” Rayne gasped as she looked first at the door into the entrance hall, which was blocked by a wall of undead bodies on the other side, and then over to me. “No, we can’t be trapped.”
“I don’t know another way out,” I said. “Do you?”
“This can’t be happening,” she groaned as she crouched down and put her head in her hands. “No, no, no. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
There were a few more bangs on the door, and I moved to lean against it to add a bit more resistance against the worm-infested bodies that were trying desperately to get to us.
“Just give me a minute,” I said.
“What, are you gonna use your laser and make us a new door?” she asked.
“No,” I replied. “I just need to think.”
“There have to be other ways out,” she said. “There’s a trading floor. There must be other entrances where they bring the products in, surely.”
“Those entrances can only be accessed using spaceships,” Francine said.
“Francine says that’s a no on that option,” I said.
“Okay…” Rayne said. “Okay, what about space suits? We could tie ourselves off to the exit and spacewalk around to the hangar.”
“You do realize how big this space station is, right?” I said. “We probably wouldn’t even get the suits on before this place blew, and then we’d be floating around in space until our air supply ran out and we suffocated.”
“Thanks for that image, it really helped to calm me down,” she snapped.
“Sorry,” I sighed. “Francine, how long do we have?”
“Seven minutes,” Francine said.
“Seven minutes,” I said. “Okay, that’s alright.”
“Seven minutes?” Rayne exclaimed. “You’ve got to be joking!”
She slammed her fist on the floor in anger, and there was a resounding clang of her suit-covered hand on the metal grate.
The sound of her fist on the grate echoed around the stairwell and shook the railings, but it wasn’t the volume of the sound that I was interested in. Instead, it was the fact that it sounded a lot more hollow than the rest of the floor around the rest of the space station did.
“Get up,” I said to Rayne as I hurried over to where she was sitting.
“What?” she asked.
“Move!” I said.
She quickly stood up, moved off the grate she was sitting on, and then turned around to watch what I was doing. The grate she had been sitting on was made of metal bars that criss-crossed across the panel. I peered through it to see what was below and realized that there was a gap between the grate and the actual solid floor below.
“Francine, tell me I’m not crazy for thinking what I’m thinking,” I said.
“I believe you are onto something,” Francine said. “I have accessed the blueprints for the air vents, and I will be able to direct you to the hangar.”
“That’s enough for me,” I said.
I put all of my fingers through the grate and started to pull. It took me a moment, and I needed to brace my legs and push up with them, but eventually, the grate came up in my hands. I chucked it to one side and had a look down at the air vent that ran underneath the floors. The initial section that I was looking into was pretty narrow since it was the top of the staircase, but it seemed to open out further along as we got deeper into the entrance hall.
“Do you think there’ll be any worms down there?” Rayne asked.
“I don’t think that’s our main worry right now,” I said as I was very much aware of the countdown that was hanging over our heads.
“Okay, well, I’ll let you go first, and I’ll pull the grate back on once we’re inside,” Rayne said.
The zombies slammed against the door again, and I saw the metal pipe from the banister bend from the force of the impact.
“We should…” I said.
“Yeah,” Rayne said.
I climbed head first into the grate and started to army crawl down the air vent. Once I was about a body’s length in, I waited for Rayne to get in after me.
She hopped in a second later and pulled the grate on over herself. She pulled it hard and it slid back into position, and then she rolled onto her front and started to follow me.
My night vision in my suit had already kicked in, and I knew that Rayne would have no issues down the dark vent with her eyes, so we started to move immediately. I pulled myself along through the vent as fast as I could, and I heard Rayne scrambling along behind me. I was acutely aware that the minutes we had left before this place self-destructed were dangerously few, so we moved as fast as our bodies would let us.
We passed into the entrance hall level almost immediately and followed the shallow vent along in the direction of the hangar. I still had my gun in one hand in case any worms were down here, but so far, we had managed to avoid coming into contact with any of the slimy bastards.
However, it wasn’t long until we came to a fork in the road. The vent went off in three different directions, each of which looked entirely identical and gave no indication as to where each of the tunnels led to.
“Francine?” I said.
“Keep going straight,” the AI said.
“It’s straight, Rayne,” I called back to her.
“I really hope you’re right about this,” she said. “Because I don’t wanna die sandwiched in a metal vent.”
“Me, neither,” I chuckled.
We both paused when we heard the behemoths above us scrabbling around on the floor. We were still near the stairwell door, and I was pretty sure the door still held, though I had a feeling that wouldn’t be true for long.
“I think we should keep the talking to a minimum,” I whispered. “Just in case they can hear us through the floor.”
“Agreed,” Rayne replied, and then we pushed on down the center vent toward the exit.
Suddenly, out of the darkness, an object came flying at me and pelted straight into my head. I yelped, wrenched the Brainworm off me, and I held the writhing creature up in my hand and shot a laser through its head with the other. It continued to wriggle for a short time after its head exploded, but eventually, the worm went limp, and I shoved the body to one side of the vent.
“Are you okay?” Rayne asked from behind me.
“Well, your question about the worms just got answered,” I sighed as I pressed on, making sure to avoid touching the squishy corpse beside me.
A moment later, I heard a squelch, and Rayne groaned, and I realized I’d forgotten to warn her about where the worm’s body was. I decided to say nothing. If she wanted to be pissed at me, she could be pissed when we were safely on the ship and flying away from this hellhole.
“How long, Frankie?” I grunted as I powered through the vent, which had widened enough that I could crawl on my hands and knees through it.
“Five minutes,” Francine replied.
“Shit,” I said. “Make sure the ship’s ready when we get there.”
“It already is,” Francine said.
“You’re an angel,” I replied.
“I know,” the AI quipped.
I chuckled to myself as I crawled as fast as I could through the vent. I came across a couple of Brainworm cocoons and promptly lasered them before anything had a chance to wriggle out of it and drop down on us. The worms really had infested every inch of the space station like a virus, and I was looking forward to the triumphant feeling that I knew I would have when I watched the space station, and all of the homicidal, evil creatures inside it, explode into a million pieces. I did wonder where the worms had come from, and I just had to hope that it was somewhere that was so far away that I would never find them again.
We came to another fork in the road, and this time, Francine told me to take the tunnel that went off to the right. I did as she said, and Rayne followed close behind me. We were both breathing pretty heavily from the heat inside the vent, and while our suits regulated our body temperatures, our heads were exposed to the elements. The effort of crawling the whole way had started to show in the beads of sweat on our brows.
But I didn’t slow down, not even to wipe my brow. In fact, I started to speed up once I knew that we were closing in on the exit. I had good spatial awareness and had been able to picture roughly where in the entrance level we were, and I could tell that we were coming up to the hangar once we had taken the right turn.
I could hardly hear any of the infected aliens above us now, since they had all gone in the direction of the stairwell where we had been just a couple of minutes ago. I wondered if they had all sprinted down to the lower levels to search for us. It made sense that they would join the hunt on the control level if the worms were somehow communicating with each other, but then a sound that echoed down the vent made me think otherwise.
At first, it was so quiet that I thought it was just Rayne’s heavy breathing behind me, but then I looked back and saw that she had turned her head to look over her shoulder. We both stopped for a moment to listen, and just when we were about to move again, we heard it. A low grunt, followed by the sounds of sharp nails scraping along the metal floor. It was still quite a way off, but there was no doubt about it.
Something was down here with us. And where one of those Brainworms went, the rest would soon follow.
Rayne and I were spurred on by the sound of the quickly-approaching alien that was somewhere in the vents, and we did the crawling version of sprinting down the final stretch of the tunnel. I knew exactly when we passed underneath the main doors, as the vent closed in slightly to make space for one of the massive pillars that supported the doorframe.
“How long, Francine?” I asked.
“Three minutes,” Francine replied.
“Fuck, we’ll never make it crawling like this,” I said, and I hurried deeper into the hangar. “Okay, screw this. We’re running the rest of the way.”
I flipped over on my back, aimed my gun at the ceiling of the vent, and started to laser through the metal. I needed to create a hatch for us to climb through, and we needed it yesterday. I put the headpiece of my suit on just before the sparks started to rain down on me, and I carefully cut out a square that was large enough for both of us to fit through.
Rayne kept watching behind her for the alien that was down here with us, in case it appeared. Both of us were impatient for the laser to finish cutting, and the atmosphere was alive and buzzing with nervous energy.
I became aware of the scraping sounds getting louder and louder. I was almost done with the hatch, but I could hear the grunting and growling coming closer.
“Will…” Rayne said.
“Almost there,” I replied.
“Will!” Rayne shouted.
I turned and saw the alien at the end of the vent. It was clumsy as it moved, probably because crawling couldn’t be easy for the Brainworm to control, so the alien scratched and scraped its way down the vent. Still, it was coming for us, and we needed to get out, now.
The moment the two ends of the square I had cut out met, I brought both of my feet up to my chest and kicked the square into the hangar. A second later, I rolled out of the vent with Rayne right behind me.
We were right outside the doorway into the entrance hall of the space station. We looked around, and I heard Rayne gasp as she saw the horde of walking dead. The zombie army was gathered on the other side of the room near the stairwell, but the crash of our new hatch had attracted their attention.
“Shit,” I muttered as they started to charge at us. “Run!”
Rayne and I sprinted away from the doors and raced through the hangar. We didn’t bother to dodge or weave through the ships, since the Brainworms knew where we were and would come for us regardless. Besides, we had less than three minutes to get the hell out of here before this whole place went up in flames.
“Two minutes, Will,” Francine announced on cue.
Then, the ship came into view, which gave us the energy for the last stretch of the race. We tore down the hangar, and I only looked back once. A flood of the aliens came careening after us, and they were determined to taste our blood.
I decided it would be best to stay looking forward after that.
Finally, we arrived beside my ship, and I almost slammed into the side because of how fast I had been running. Francine had opened the door for us as soon as we got there, and Rayne dove into the cockpit, quickly followed by me.
The door closed itself behind us as we leaped into our seats and fastened our safety belts in record time.
“Ready?” I asked as I started to get the ship up off the ground.
“Get us out of here!” Rayne shouted.
I shoved both joysticks forward, and we soared through the hangar.
“One minute,” Francine said.
We reached the opening and shot out into the expanse of space beyond. As soon as we were out, I punched the thrusters and pushed the engines as hard as I dared. We were still too close, and I didn’t wanna get caught in the blast when the space station exploded.
“Come on!” I urged the ship. “Take us out!”
“Thirty seconds,” Francine said.
“Brace yourself, Rayne,” I said. “We’re gonna feel it.”
Rayne nodded and grabbed hold of the armrests of her chair. My whole body tensed so hard until it felt like it was made of stone as we waited for impact.
“Five seconds,” Francine said. “Four, three, two, one…”
There was a moment of pause. Everything felt like it had slowed down. I turned to Rayne, and we shared a look of both panic and acceptance, and then a moment later, the whole ship was thrown forward as though some massive truck had rear-ended us on the freeway. We flew forward from the force of the blast, and it carried us a good distance, until the force petered out, and we were back to our own thrusters again.
I quickly turned the ship around so that we could see the destruction we had left behind.
The entire space station was slowly coming apart. There were flames in the small pockets where there was still oxygen, but the fires quickly fizzed out as the force of the explosion ripped through everything. Chunks of metal, pieces of spaceships, and other debris were thrown out into the darkness. There was a second explosion when the surge hit the medical bay, and the brief fire was bright enough to light the cockpit of my ship.
All we could do was sit back and watch the destruction unfold. It was insane to think that we had been inside the space station less than a minute earlier. If it wasn’t for all of the upgrades I’d had done on the ship, we probably would have been fried in the blast as well. I took a moment to thank my lucky stars that we had made it out alive, because that had probably been one of our closest calls to date.
“Is it weird that I kind of think it looks… beautiful?” Rayne asked.
I turned to look at her, and I could see the reflection of the explosion in her gorgeous green eyes. I took in the wonder on her face, the brightness in her eyes, and the touch of a smile on her luscious lips. I wanted to reach out and touch the blonde hair that had tumbled down over her shoulders to frame her perfect face like the halos around the saints on stained-glass windows. I thought about how lucky I was that both of us had made it out, and that I got to look at her face in this light again.
“Yeah,” I said without taking my eyes off her. “It really is beautiful.”
She turned to me and smiled, and our eye contact lingered.
And then Bob plodded in and ruined the mood with his happy little robot body. He beeped happily when he saw both of us, and we both laughed and gave him a pat on his yellow torso.
“Good work, buddy,” I said. “How are the Lilacrons?”
“They are in perfect health,” Francine said through Bob. “The stasis tubes are in excellent condition and are operating at full capacity.”
“Well, then we have some cause for celebration,” I said as I stood up and marched into the living compartment.
I returned to the cockpit a moment later with two beers in my hands for Rayne and me. She took hers eagerly, and then we cheered and took a good swig of the stuff. The bubbles tickled my throat, and the taste instantly reminded me of back home. Back then, I had sat around on the couch reading books about space, and now here I was actually in it, toasting the destruction of a space station that I’d blown up.
How the tables had turned.
“So…” I said. “That was exciting.”
“I’m not sure that’s the word I’d use for it,” Rayne laughed.
“Still, we’re here, we’re alive, and we’re safe,” I said. “For now, anyway.”
“Such a wordsmith,” she giggled.
We both took another swig of our beers while Francine took over the controls and started to slowly fly us further away from the space station. Eventually, we could hardly see it anymore. It was just a small, orange speck in the distance. I imagined all of the worm corpses that would be floating around the remnants of the space station for years to come, and the relief that brought me far outweighed the disappointment I felt that we had to destroy such a forward-thinking, inventive, and advanced medical center.
Still, we had managed to collect what we had gone there for, and it was for the greater good that we had it on board with us.
“So, Francine, when do we get to play with our new toy?” I asked.
“Whenever you would like,” Francine-Bob replied.
“Well, we went to enough trouble to get it that we may as well use it right away,” I said as I stood up from my chair again. “I wanna see what this baby can do.”
“It may not be as pleasant an experience as it was when I inserted my nanobots into your body before,” Francine said. “I have not used this technology before.”
“I know,” I replied. “But if it could help us defeat the Karaak and keep your creators and Earth safe, then it’s worth a bit of trial and error.”
“I am glad you agree,” Francine said.
“Stop procrastinating and get down there,” Rayne said impatiently.
“Yes, ma’am,” I laughed as I led the way through the living compartment and down the ladder into the storage compartment.
We weaved through the stasis tubes, and I quickly did my own checks on a couple of them, just to put my mind at ease. I looked at the stats on the side of the tubes to check that everything was alright and glanced down at two of their faces to make sure they looked peaceful in their unconscious state. I had been given the responsibility of keeping them safe, and I was going to do my due diligence to make sure that the Lilacrons were thriving while in my care.
Once I was satisfied that they were all in good health, I moved over to the Nano-Developer, which we had shoved into a corner in our haste. It looked impressive, which I took as a sign that it was worth the trouble we had gone through to get it.
It was about a foot and a half tall and entirely black. It was roughly a square shape, with exposed tubes and wires, and a space in the middle that looked as though something was meant to be put on it. We also had the bag full of solution on the trolley as well, which I picked up and inspected.
“Put one of the vials in this tray,” Francine said, and a moment later, a small tray popped out from the bottom of the machine.
“You’ve already got total control of this thing, then,” I chuckled as I inserted one of the vials into the tray.
“Remember who you’re talking to, Will,” Francine-Bob said. “Now, place your arm on the flat center section.”
I did as Francine said and placed my left arm into the slot that was just large enough for my appendage. I glanced over to Rayne, who looked nervous but mainly intrigued, and then looked back down at my arm.
“So, when exactly does it sta--” I began, but then I felt a jolt of something cold entering the skin on my forearm.
It was far more intense than when Francine had given me the nanobots back on Earth. I closed my eyes and just let myself experience it, though I could sense Rayne’s eyes on me, watching my every move.
The nanobot solution entered through my skin. It felt freezing cold, like I had frostbite that was climbing up my arm alarmingly fast. Soon, it had spread across my chest, down my legs, and had started to crawl over the skin of my face. It was strange to feel every inch of my face as it started to tingle and freeze, but eventually, I was cold all over.
I forced myself to stand still while it washed over me like a wave, and eventually, the sensation subsided. It was as though the nanobots were retreating deeper into my body and allowed my blood to warm me up again. I shivered as my body heat returned to normal, and then I dared to slowly open my eyes.
As soon as I opened my eyes, I knew that something was different. What I could see in front of me looked sharper, and I felt everything more intensely. The air being circulated around us, the cool metal of the Nano-Developer under my arm, the material of my suit on my skin. I turned to Rayne and, not that I would have thought it was possible before, but her eyes actually looked brighter and more vibrant.
“Well?” she asked. “How do you feel?”
“I feel…” I said as I searched for the right word.
I opened and closed my hands into fists. I stretched out my muscles. I bent my knees. This was what I imagined a superhero felt like. There were no aches or pains, no residual tension in my muscles, and I felt like I could have done anything. I felt strong. I felt powerful.
“Will, are you okay?” Rayne asked as she instinctively put a hand on my forehead to check my temperature.
“I’m better than okay,” I said with a grin. “I feel incredible.”
“Do you think it worked?” she asked. “I mean, we don’t know that we picked the right solution with the nanobots in it.”
“We did,” I replied. “Trust me.”
“Well?” she asked. “What’s different? What can you feel or do that you couldn’t before?”
“Let’s test it out,” I said as I took out my gun and set it to Electro-Launch.
“Will, calm down,” she said as she looked nervously at the weapon. “You shouldn’t shoot things in here. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” I replied. “Just wait.”
Rayne looked at me like I’d gone insane and leaped behind one of the stasis tubes as I aimed it up at the ceiling without looking and fired.