Chapter 89: A Nightmarish Ascent (Patreon)

The Operator was securing the final connections between the generator and the elevator’s power junction, gently twisting the remaining leads into place. “Alright,” she said, then powered it up. The generator came to life with a low, rising hum and settled into a steady tone. The elevator’s call panel lit up beside the doors, indicators coming on one by one. “There we go. Let’s get out of here.”

She looked at the others. “Are you planning to keep those, or are you leaving them?” She nodded toward the rifles still slung across Dan and Lessa.

“Leaving them.” Lessa pulled hers off and set it against the wall. “Ran dry a while back, anyway.” She slid the sword into the silk holster at her hip; Napoleon had made those for them. “This should do the job now.”

Dan slid his off over his head and set it down next to hers. “Feels strange to put it down, but she’s right. Nothing left to load into it.”

The elevator groaned from above as its cables lowered it down the shaft. It stopped behind the doors, which then slowly opened.

“In. All of you.” The Operator waved them in, and they quickly moved forward, Catherine leading, then Dan and Lessa, with Napoleon riding her shoulder. She entered last and pressed the panel.

The elevator lurched and started up, but not smoothly. Below them, the generator fed power in pulses. The lights flickered, and the car slowed every few seconds as if it might stall, before the power caught and pulled it up again. Cables groaned overhead. The panel’s lights stuttered with each dip.

B-14.

They all watched the elevator’s number climb. As they passed each floor, for a moment they could hear the people on the other side. Screaming, loud enough to stop anyone’s breath. Nobody said a word. All of them were tense, waiting for the elevator to hold together.

I don’t believe in any fucking god. But if one of them’s up there, let this elevator reach the top.

B-12.

A roar came through one of the doors as they crawled upward. A chase, people running.

“Stop, stop, hold on. I’m right here. Somebody, please stop the elevator…”

Dan and Lessa drew their swords and raised them, bracing for whatever they were hearing out there, still not realizing they were stronger now than those things were.

“Let’s keep those down for now,” she said. “Just till we’re out of this box. No room to swing in here anyway. Keep them put away. If something happens, the only ones doing anything are Napoleon and me. Got it?”

Dan looked at the sword in his hand as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You’re both doing fine. Just breathe. I’ll tell you the second I need you.”

Next to her, Catherine remained still, her head tipped, and that faint sound grew in her throat. Her eyes turned yellow as she reached out to other Kanryx, trying to sense any of them in the darkness. 

“Still nothing?”

She didn't answer. The yellow faded.

“That’s okay. They’re just not close. We’ll keep looking, I promise.” The Operator rested a hand on her back, then turned toward the doors.

The car slowed. Not the generator this time. Slowing on purpose. A floor lit on the panel she hadn't pressed.

Someone called it. From outside.

B-11

The doors swung open to reveal a crowded hall. White coats and badges pressed against the gap; the moment it widened, they surged forward, hands and shoulders, a human wall eager to squeeze into a space that was already full.

All that weight is going to put the car down. The generator can’t hold it.

Shit. All these people are going to get us killed. She laid a hand flat on the two people blocking the doorway.

“Please…”

“Let us in, there's space…”

Before they could move forward, she pushed with ease. They stumbled back, losing their footing, and brought down three or four more in their fall, a jumbled cluster of white coats collapsing together. The remaining ones looked at her, their expressions changing. It wasn’t fear; it was something different. Recognition.

“That strength.”

“Perfect mutation? No malformations, nothing…”

“That's not possible.”

The murmurs spread among them, momentarily distracting the crowd from their original desire for the elevator to survive. They looked at her as if observing a specimen on a table. She was familiar with these people. She knew who they were and what they’d inflicted on those they had kidnapped into this place.

A woman in a security uniform pushed forward, higher rank than the coats by the look of her, stepping on those still trying to get up. “I don’t care if she’s a mutant or one of the lords himself standing there. I’m getting out.” She raised her rifle, pointing it at the scientists to clear her way. “I’m going up with them. The rest of you wait for it to come back down.”

She pushed her way through the front, getting a leg into the elevator when the Operator grabbed her by the throat and lifted her effortlessly. The woman came off the ground as if she weighed nothing, surprise flashing across her face. Her feet left the floor, and she hung from the Operator’s single hand. Her boots kicked and scrabbled for a floor that wasn’t beneath her. Both her hands shot up to grip the Operator’s forearm, trying to pull away, hit, or break free, but the Operator’s arm remained steady, showing no movement or shake. The punches landed on what felt like a solid wall.

The Operator turned her wrist. The woman's neck went with a short, dry crack, loud in the closed space, and the fight went out of her all at once. The Operator threw her out of the elevator, back across the floor they'd stopped on, and she hit the ground hard at the far end.

Nobody in the hall moved.

Behind her, Lessa’s breath caught. “Holy shit.”

“I’m going up with my people, not with a bunch of sons of bitches who knew exactly what was going on in this place.” She hit the panel. “Force your way in, and I’ll do that to each of you. Or wait and call it back down once I’m done with it.”

Nobody moved as the doors closed on their faces, and she left them with a few last words. “Not that it matters. There’s no escaping what’s out there in this world anyway. Not for you.”

The elevator climbed. For a moment, no one in the car said anything. Then the Operator let out a breath, and some of the anger left her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” She kept her eyes on the doors. “For Cat and me, years have gone by.”

"Years?" Lessa asked, confused.

“How do you think Cat got so big? The point is, I haven’t forgotten what they do in this hellhole.”

Lessa moved closer to her, gently placing a hand on the Operator’s back. She then took the Operator’s trembling hand, the one that had done it, and gently wrapped her fingers around it. The hand was shaking, but the Operator hadn’t noticed until Lessa kept it steady.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Lessa said, quietly. “Not for that. Not with us.”

Dan nodded from the wall. “We saw that room, too. We get it.”

The Operator didn't say anything. The shaking eased, and she gave a small nod and faced front again. "When we're out of here, I promise I'll tell you where we were. Shit, this whole world is insane." The Operator said it with a laugh.

The generator struggled, causing the car to drop a foot and stop. The lights went out, leaving everything in darkness. Everyone held their breath as the cables clicked overhead. Then, power was restored, and the lights came back on. The car gradually slowed again, and a new floor indicator illuminated on the panel she hadn’t pressed.

B-7.

"More people called this floor? Probably nobody expected it to still be working, and they're desperate to get out."

Or the things that reached the kidnapped people in cryo could already be on other floors.

“Catherine. The goggles. In my pack’s side pocket. Get them out.”

The girl had the pack open before she finished her sentence. She pulled the goggles free, three sets, the ones the Operator had built back in the shadow library.

“Put these on fast. They’ll block your hearing, and you’ll see the electrical connections Napoleon sees.” The goggles fit around the head, with padded sides that covered the ears. “Whatever’s out there, you three don’t need to see or hear it. Just stay behind me.”

Catherine fitted Dan’s goggles over his face, then Lessa’s, and pulled her own on last. The Operator drew the revolver and put herself between them and the doors.

“Activating Technological Sense.” Napoleon stepped onto the Operator’s shoulder, his eyes turning yellow.

The elevator stopped. The doors opened to black. Not a dim hall. Not a floor with the lights off. Black, as if the doors had opened onto nothing at all. When Napoleon threw two thin beams of light into it, they found no wall, no floor, no far side.

"Help me, please… don't leave me he…"

Napoleon turned the light toward the voice. A man was slumped against the wall by the call panel, or what was left of one. Half of him had gone soft and run like wax, one arm melted into the wall, his face sliding off the bone on one side. One hand still worked, pressing the elevator button, holding it down. His eyes found her. His mouth moved.

“Help,” he managed to say, barely able to shape the word. “Help… me…” His hand pressed the button again, but the car stayed where it was.

"Fuck that. I'm not touching this guy to move him."

We can’t move if he keeps pressing the call button.

She pointed the revolver at him and fired once. His head snapped back against the wall, his hand slid off the button, and the begging stopped.

Then the smell hit, and beneath it, the sound. Screaming. Not one voice. Dozens, layered over one another, and worse than the screaming were the words buried in it, because some of it was screaming and some of it was begging. Human words, in human voices, coming out of the dark.

"Kill me…"

"It hurts… make it stop…"

"I can still feel it…"

"Don't leave me like this…"

"Why won't it end…"

Napoleon threw his light toward where the sound was coming from, and it revealed the thing coming toward them.

It was composed of people. She could see that clearly and wished she couldn’t. Bodies fused into one another, more than a dozen, forming a mass of limbs, half-formed faces, and torsos, all pushing outward at odd angles as the mass dragged itself toward the elevator. The faces still functioned: they screamed, wept, and pleaded for help, even as the entire mass moved forward on countless limbs. It had initially come through the lab wall, smashing the door off its frame, and it was still advancing from the shadows.

“Napoleon, we’re leaving. FAST.” She stepped in and jammed the elevator button. “Fucking place. Fucking piece-of-shit mission. Close, you goddamn door. CLOSE.”

The door started to slide shut, slowly. The mass was almost to the doors now, the nearest faces stretching toward the light, screaming, reaching. She leveled the revolver and put three rounds into the center of it. The shots tore through the fused bodies and threw the whole thing back off its front limbs, pieces of it coming loose and dropping to the floor, still moving, still screaming where they landed.

The doors closed with a bang, sealing out the darkness, the screams, and the creature rebuilding itself to return. Meanwhile, the elevator climbed.

“Shit, Tera. I’ve seen things, but I know I’ll never forget that one.”

Operator, remove their goggles now.

"Damn. I forgot."

She went to them and began pulling the goggles off, one by one. “How was it? Did you hear anything?”

"Didn't hear a thing, but we could see all the electrical connections down there. All I could make out was the power line to the elevator, nothing anywhere else. But there's a lot of it active on the top floor. The security area,” Lessa said.

“Good. Hold onto them. Don’t throw them out. We’re almost where we’ll really need them.”

The panel counted down to the last floor.

B-1.

The car slowed smoothly and came to a stop. Doors opened into a spacious white room with dead consoles lining one wall, dark screens, and a heavy door at the far end. The security floor. There was no screaming or dragging here, only the soft hum of the remaining active systems and the quiet after everything below.

"Out. All of you." The Operator held the doors and moved them through, Catherine first, then Dan and Lessa. Napoleon dropped off her shoulder to the floor beside them.

“Nobody’s riding this up after us.” She stepped out. The revolver was raised, and she pointed the barrel at the top of the car and fired. The round punched through the housing, and something behind it let go. Sparks first, a hard white spray, then a heavy crack as the mechanism above tore loose. She pushed back out of the doorway onto the security floor as the whole car dropped out from under the frame, cables whipping down after it, and the elevator fell away down the shaft into the dark it had climbed out of.

They listened to it go, the long scrape and clatter as it dropped floor after floor, then a crash somewhere far below, then nothing.

Behind her, Catherine hadn’t stopped. That low growl still working in her throat, her eyes still yellow, reaching the way she had all the way up. She went rigid. The growl cut off. She spun toward the Operator, eyes wide. “I found them.”