T-Plus 9

"Is everyone okay?" Esther asked.

Audrey responded first, standing with the wall as her support. She was clutching her temples in pain, but was otherwise okay. Joey raised his arms and legs, running his light over them, twisting in place as he did. The front of his backpack had been chewed, revealing the innards of the outer pockets and some of the inner lining. His thick boots had kept his feet and part of his calves safe, but his thighs and knees were torn where the aliens slipped past his defenses. His scrapes and scratches weren't as bad as Jiang and Hensley's previous wounds, but there were small pinpricks of blood welling up and sections of his pants were hanging on by threads where it was the worst.

Esther held her own light over the open wounds, narrowing her eyes as she examined them. The top layer of his skin had been scraped off, although there was still some hanging on for dear life. It looked as bad as falling and scraping against cement, a lot more pain than there was blood. Fortunately, after Hensley's mishap, Esther had learned from experience and carried around a pocket assortment of first-aid, which contained a roll of gauze and several sanitation wipes, along with extra batteries for her pen light even when she didn't have a bag with her.

"This is going to sting," Esther warned, ripping open one of the wipes with her teeth. She rubbed it over his skin, tearing open two more to clean the rest of his limbs. A loud hiss followed each swipe, but Joey kept himself still as she worked. With the wounds clean, she wrapped the more serious damages, slipping the remaining gauze back in her pocket.

"Thanks, Doc," Joey said, inspecting his wrapped limbs. He stood with a grunt, helping Esther once he was up. "Now what?"

"We need to go further in," Audrey said, waving in the general direction. It looked like her headache had subsided, and the girl wobbled closer. "But... I don't know how many aliens there'll be."

Her voice quieted with every word, and in the end, she averted her gaze.

"I don't know how much more I can charge through either," Joey said, wincing as he touched the wrappings on his limbs.

"We'll need a distraction if we run into another group," Esther said.

"The seniors said they're attracted to flames. No, wait, that's wrong," Joey said.

He waved his hands in opposite circles, summoning his few brain cells together. A long "uhhh..." of meditation accompanied his movements, and Esther honestly couldn't tell if he was praying to the galactic gods or if his brain had short-circuited. Finally, with a louder than intended clap, the intern said, "Wait, duh, they said they're attracted to heat. That's why the aliens come after us so fast, because we're the only things emitting heat in the Station right now. And it's why they swarm and melt like an overcooked marshmallow with the blowtorches."

"Then how do they differentiate between themselves and us?" Audrey asked. "Because they are cannibals, if you hadn't already realized. Assuming they use heat as a marker like reptiles, are you saying, alive, they don't have any, and dead, they do?"

Joey faltered, running his fingers through his hair. He did it so many times, he knocked off his bandana. The silence stretched as he picked it up. Esther could feel the brain cell meditation return before it did. Luckily, this answer, if it could be considered an answer, didn't take too long to process.

"I don't know," he said, still in the midst of tying the ends of the bandana behind his head. "My seniors didn't say anything about that. They just said that if we slam into them like a cup of jelly hitting the ground, the others would go after the body instead of us."

Audrey's face twisted in disgust at the analogy. "You didn't have a better way of describing that? But whatever, why don't we use that then?"

"That?"

The Navigator rolled her eyes, waving at the hallway they had just escaped from. "That! You just said they're cannibals. They obviously enjoy their own flesh over ours. Can't we just take one of their bodies and use it as bait? Or even just a piece of it? Carry it with us and drop it when we need to?"

Joey gaped at her, his mouth closing as slowly as his brain was operating at the moment. After a few moments, a thought clicked and he asked, "But wait, will that work? Will they eat each other even if they're not fresh? Even if they have heat after they go splat, what if that cools down?"

"Only one way to find out," Esther said, shooing him away. "Get to it."

He pointed at himself.

"Wait, me?"

The doctor raised an eyebrow and nodded.

"Who else? It's your job anyway, isn't it? You are wearing blue."

"But I'm injured!"

"And I'm crippled," Esther retorted. She pointed at the Navigator and added, "And do you expect her to do anything?"

"How rude! I have much more important tasks to be handling than being bait! It's only right that we leave the hard labor to the technicians."

"Exactly what I meant," Esther said, rolling her eyes over to Joey. "So?"

"She's not very nice, is she?" Joey muttered.

"When you meet another Navigator, you'll get used to it," Esther whispered back.

"Are they all like this?"

Esther only shrugged. Not all, she thought.

"I'll do it," the intern sighed, handing his backpack over to the doctor.

He kept his blowtorch and flashlight, sweeping the light around the room they were in. As one of the rooms at the forefront of ARCNAV, its role was to accept visitors who weren't allowed further in. Even some of the department supervisors had only been this far. But unfortunately, this wouldn't be the day to relish how much further they could venture into ARCNAV than others. Like all the other rooms they'd been in, the interior had been turned over on itself, and it looked nothing like the suave waiting room it used to be. The designer couches close to the door were shoved up against it alongside some of the antique wooden side tables. The remaining couches and chairs littered the sides of the room, having slid to their current positions from the recent quake. As a testament to their craftsmanship, the furniture still retained their original polished forms, albeit with a few scratches here and there. The couches' cushions and pillows had flown away from their seats, falling among the other furniture. The glass from shattered lamps littered the center of the room, and they broke into more pieces under the intern's boots.

"Really wish I had some gloves or even a bucket," Joey muttered as he approached the door after his search ended unfruitful. "Wonder if they really feel like jelly?"

The intern pushed some of the furniture he had stacked up aside and slipped out into the hallway. Even from inside, the two women could hear his calls of "Where are my aliens at?" or "I swear I'm not trying to kill you!" or "I just want a tiny part of you! Not for an experiment!" or "Cosmic galaxies! Shit! Shit! Shit!"

"Are we really sure we can trust him with the task?" Audrey asked as his screams got louder. They moved up and down the hallway as the intern ran around, chased by the liquid sounds of the pursuing aliens.

"Were you going to do it?"

"No."

"Then why bother asking?" Esther said, shaking her head. "It'll be fine. He's a goofball and a bit of a galaxy brain, but he'll get the job done." She paused as another silly war cry sounded from the hallway outside. "With... a bit of his own creative flair," she added.

A battle later, Joey returned. There were splatters all over his uniform and bandages, but he didn't gain any more injuries this time. He waved for them to come out. After an exchange of glances, they followed the intern. The hallway was straight out of a pre-galactic era sci-fi horror film. Splatters of unknown alien corpses and insides painted the floors and walls, a wonderful pink, fleshy color that was a few shades lighter than blood. It took careful maneuvering to avoid stepping on any. It was also fortunate the scene was scentless, otherwise even Esther would've gagged at the scene. At the far end, before the broken entrance of ARCNAV, was a pile of pink... substance that suspiciously looked like alien goop. Several splatters surrounded it in a semicircle. Other than their remains, there wasn't an alien in sight. Although, if she concentrated hard enough, she could hear some in the distance.

"Well, two things," Joey began, holding his fingers up, which hands were covered in the remnants of alien matter. "We already knew using dead aliens as bait works, but if we want to use parts of them, it's really hard to scoop up. Best option is to find a jar or something to hold it in."

"What's the consistency feel like?" Esther asked first.

"Really... weird. The outside feels like... the inside of your cheek, just less moist, but when you pick it up it wobbles like an unstable Jenga tower," the intern answered after a moment's thought.

Esther nodded, making a mental record.

"Not really sure how fresh they need to be," he added, continuing with his experiment's results, "but we've confirmed the initial hypothesis."

He waved at the alien goop at the entrance. Certainly, it seemed like it worked.

"Okay, then our next course of action is to find a container," Esther said with a nod. "There are labs all around us and the ARCNAV lounge should be close by, correct?"

Audrey nodded from where she stood in the cleanest spot in the hallway. She was hugging herself, keeping her hands from touching anything contaminated by alien matter.

"If we continue straight, the lounge I was in is on the left. The higher ranking lounges are on the right. All the labs are further down, but even I don't have access to all of them."

Esther nodded, placing a finger on her chin in thought.

"Okay, for now, if we run into a lone alien, we'll just finish it off. If there's a handful, we'll attempt to finish them off, otherwise we hide. If there's too many, then we hide. If we can't, we'll have to kill our way out. If we can find a jar and hold some of their dead substance with us, it'll become easier. The goal is to maximize safety while exploring."

"Why does that sound like I have to do everything though?" Joey complained.

"Do you want one of us to help you then?" Esther asked, raising her eyebrow at him.

"Nevermind."

"I thought so."

Esther returned the backpack to him, and the intern clipped his flashlight back onto his shoulder. With Audrey's guidance, they approached the first intersection. There was a rod-iron gate here, the next security check if ARCNAV was still running as usual. Seeing how there wasn't another giant hole and only some of the bars were dented out of place, the giant alien must've been able to slip through.

"It's gaining solid mass," Esther observed, tapping on the dented bars.

"But it's always been solid mass?" Joey said.

The doctor rolled her eyes yet again. "Assuming that what you have personally observed is true, then their bodies are similar to jelly. Now, would jelly slide through this or what?"

"Yeah, it'd just slide through... Oh. What dented the bars then?"

"My point exactly."

"If your hypothesis is true," Audrey said, her brows furrowing, "what does that mean for us?"

"I don't know. We'll have to see."

With Audrey with them, they passed through the gates with ease. On the other side of the gate was a rotunda with four hallways. The two center ones had more security checkpoints blocking them. There were traces of the giant alien passing through the center right gate. As they passed by it, the trio could see some pink tendrils at the end of the lights' range. Esther averted her eyes from the splatters that coated the inner floors behind the gate, and even Audrey didn't say anything as she pushed past and headed for the left side.

Following after the Navigator, they went down the leftmost one where the general lounges were located. As they approached the hallway, they could hear the usual sloshing sounds of aliens moving. Joey took the lead, pointing his flashlight down the hallway. Crawling further in were a handful of aliens, three on the ceiling and another two on the floor. Just out of the range of the flashlight even further down were several more.

"You think you can take care of them?" Esther asked.

"The five in the front... Maybe if I squash one, I can deal with the rest. Problem is the guys in the back. I can't tell how many are back there, but I do not want to mess with those."

"There are a lot more wandering in here than I remember," Audrey muttered as she stepped closer to them.

Joey handed the backpack over to Esther again, heading into the hallway armed with only his flashlight and trusty blowtorch. With his war cry, "For science!", Joey charged in and flattened the closest unsuspecting alien. As he stepped into their range, the other four reacted at the same time. Those on the ceiling reached down to him, but he ducked and rolled away from the alien he just squished. With a brisk shake of his affected body parts, he removed the remnants off him and stepped back as the other four surged forward to consume their fallen brethren.

As he dealt with them one-by-one, making sure not to accidentally alert those further back, the two women watched on. Audrey's complexion changed from red to white to green over the course of Joey's cleaning spree. Esther was used to the tech boys' antics, so she wasn't too surprised. Watching the aliens explode on impact, however, was another matter. Each squish or splat that echoed in the hallway was another cringe from the doctor. After clearing out this section of the hallway, the intern returned covered in alien matter with a grin on his face. Esther handed him his backpack, hiding the Navigator behind her as he approached.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Don't ask. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. No change in my condition, Doc."

"Good. Did you see the door?"

The intern nodded, leading the way through the mess. Esther decided to ignore the gagging noises from behind her as well as the questioning looks from in front of her. Eventually, one of them stopped, and they arrived at a door. The label beside it named it as "Navigator Lounge 1." There were three other doors nearby, one beside this one closer to where the other aliens were and another set across from each of them. The one behind them was covered in fresh aliens.

Audrey poked her head out from behind Esther, pointing at Lounge 1.

"That's the lounge I was in. I left a few days ago, so I don't know what's changed, but there should be containers. Otherwise one of the other lounges should have something."

"Alright, let's see."

Joey waited for the Navigator to tap her card, and the three of them heard the click of the lock. The intern turned the knob, pushed the door open, stuck his light in, and immediately closed the door. On the other side, they could hear the unfortunately familiar watery sounds of aliens. The door shook and thumped as the three of them backed away.

"Uhm, on second thought, maybe it wasn't that lounge," Audrey squeaked.

"Obviously," Esther muttered as they tried the next door.

"It's okay, Doc," Joey assured. "They can't all have aliens behind them."

There were aliens behind the other door as well, and now they could hear thumping sounds from both walls as they backed out into the rotunda.

"Do you want to say that again?" Esther asked, throwing a glance at the intern.

"No."

"Keep it that way."