T-Plus 16

The thunderous crash of rocks slamming against the ground behind them made Oliver’s ears ring, pushing them forward more. The wayward pebbles that were kicked up from the violent impacts whipped past his face and rushed over his shoulders, leaving trails across his cheeks. Dust billowed around them, blocking their view of the awakened aliens. The trio scurried forward, running in a zig-zag pattern as they put more distance between them and the dark section of the corridor.

Emerson lost her footing first, tripping when one of the aliens’ projectiles landed close to her. She flinched, missing her step and began plummeting forward with her arms outstretched. Another rocky missile landed right next to her, eliciting a scream from her as she rolled out of Oliver and Toast’s sight. Oliver chased after her, covering his face from the onslaught of dust kicked up after every rock’s collision. Finding her near the wall, Oliver held her by her elbow and blocked her from the dust clouds that picked up around them. Using the wall as support and Oliver as a crutch, Emerson continued forward. Toast reunited with them further up, stumbling away from the rocks that landed with frightening accuracy. Every time one of them tripped, the other two would pull them by their arms and haul them forward.

When they rounded the bend and the aliens had no way of aiming at them anymore, they finally came to a stop, huffing and puffing the panic out of their systems. The sounds of rocks colliding against the floor were still audible from where they rested, but Oliver’s ears still rang from the explosions, so they sounded muffled to him. He could feel Emerson’s arm tense with every thud behind them. They had decreased in intensity since they hid around the bend, but he still urged the other two to widen the gap between them and the dying noises.

Once they reached an area where the noises had dimmed to nothing even after he got his hearing back. He rested a hand on the nearby wall, leaning against it to keep from collapsing to the ground. His other hand was on his left knee as he took deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling, sometimes coughing out the last bits of dust from earlier. Beside him, Emerson had plopped onto the floor, her face in her hands as she sobbed into her fingers. With shaky breaths, she ran her hands through her hair, undoing the now loosened ponytail, so she could tie it up again. Toast had seated himself on a nearby pile of rubble, massaging his shaking knees.

All three sported small cuts and bruises from where pebbles had left their passing marks. Oliver patted his face, his fingers smearing away trace amounts of blood where some of the deeper cuts were oozing droplets. Toast seemed the least wounded out of the three of them, although his hands and cheeks had several obvious scuff marks from some close calls he managed to avoid. Emerson looked the worst with several long scratches on her face, the blood wiped away by her shaking hands. There were several bruises on her arms, peeking out from under her long, white sleeves.

The echoes of rock projectiles still rang out faintly from the way they came, but the number had dwindled from earlier now that they were out of sight. Each one of the remaining sounds made Emerson flinch, her hands shaking more as she tried retying her hair for the third time. Each one made Oliver’s shoulders tense more, ready to jump and evade to the side, only for him to stop his reflexes at an awkward pose. Each one made Toast’s fingers clench over his knees, digging into his dirty slacks and creating wrinkles in the fabric. After the last few explosions died away and the corridor returned to the original silence, they all finally regained their composure. They all released the breath they hadn’t realized they’d been holding in a simultaneous sigh.

Although her breath was still ragged, Emerson had stabilized herself enough to stand without shaking. Bracing herself against the wall, she stood up as the other two also shook off the shakiness from their limbs. They gathered closer together, settling themselves near the center of the hallway where it was open. Both sides of the corridor were clear within one of their views. Oliver cleared his throat, only to realize that it had clogged up during their panicked silence.

“That... well, I wasn’t expecting that,” Toast said first, already reflecting on their previous conversation. “They definitely didn’t leave their eggs unprotected.”

“You don’t say,” Emerson muttered, straightening her disheveled clothes out. “Let’s agree to never go through that area on the way back and hope that there isn’t another upgraded nest on the other side.”

“Ahh, you weren’t supposed to say that out loud!” Toast grumbled, rubbing his forehead. “Now you’ve jinxed it!”

Emerson only rolled her eyes, finally relaxed enough to retort back to Toast’s banter. She snorted, crossing her arms into her usual pose that she used to deal with Toast’s eccentricities.

“Then we’ll decide what we’ll do in response when we get there,” she said with a huff.

She pointed off to the side, giving a few glances at their current area.

“So? How far did we run?”

Now that Oliver wasn’t mentally cursing up a storm, he also took stock in their surroundings. The usual piles of rubble in disarray with the occasional dark pink splatter where an unlucky alien got caught in the Station’s shift. There were also a few darker stains, which Oliver decided to not think more on, peeking out from beneath rocks and darker corners. On the nearest wall, they could see the faint edge of the number five.

“We’re somewhere in Section 5A,” Oliver stated, pointing at the portion of the number they could see. “We don’t have any cards that can open any of these rooms, so let’s keep going.”

The other two nodded, dusting off the remainder of the earlier scuffle and taking hurried steps forward. Emerson’s rush to get away was understandable, but Toast being frazzled was something Oliver hadn’t expected. The technician glanced over at the scientist who seemed to have returned to his usual frivolity as if it was washed away with the disappearance of adrenaline. Oliver shook his head. Perhaps the academics just had different ways of handling things.

They quickly bypassed what remained of section 5A, reaching another dark area. They flicked on their flashlights again, wary of seeing more egg-like structures poking out of the rubble. So far, so good. Oliver checked the edges of the wall, determining that this section of power outage was mostly because of the rubble blocking the light out. When they turned their lights off, Oliver could see some feeble rays glowing inside some cracks in the rubble here and there.

The better news was that this section wasn’t as long as the previous one, and they could see the corridor on the other side filtering in some light toward the center of the darkened section. At a glance, it was just a normal uninhabited section of the corridor, but Oliver wasn’t taking that risk again.

Emerson and Toast stayed far from the dark section as Oliver climbed over the pile of rubble that was partially still in the light. He reached the top of the pile with ease, sweeping his light on the center of the dark section. He double-checked and triple-checked the small area and saw nothing noteworthy other than grey rubble as usual.

He climbed down, walking closer to the other side while still not seeing anything, his light sweeping at everything around his feet. Rocks, rocks, more rocks. Rocky vien. Rocky vein? Oliver paused in his steps, retreating as much as he could without tripping. He whipped the flashlight around where he originally saw the veinlike structure, following it with his light until it disappeared behind another piece of rubble.

Oliver shifted sideways until his light caught sight of the veins again. He followed the faint protrusions in the rubble, his frown deepening every time it wove in and out of the rubble piles. As he followed it from a distance, he could see the veins increase in number, swarming in from different areas, becoming so concentrated that they congregated into one thick vein until it was noticeable even without his flashlight the further he followed it. At the end of the tangled veins was another one of those wretched spideregg alien pedestals.

The technician swept his light around him, catching sight of multiple other thick veins snaking out from under various other rubble. Upon closer inspection, they almost looked like the aliens’ tendrils. Oliver shuddered thinking about the image of a multitude of aliens’ arms gathering together to form this egg. If his imagination had an ounce of truth to it, which he’d rather it not be, then it wasn’t odd that an entire nest of aliens rose up when he tipped over the other egg.

His flashlight shook as he stared at the alien anomaly hidden in the tight corner. Maybe it was just a trick of the shadows, but he could swear that some of the thicker veins were pulsing. He took a step closer, but nothing moved. He looked near his foot and saw a vein beside him. Pointing his light down on it, he did the second stupid thing of the day. He stepped on it.

Oliver could feel the vein pulse from beneath his boot. His eyes hadn’t been imagining it. It felt and looked like the rocks they were surrounded by, but that was definitely a pulse he was feeling. It was a low thrum, slower than a heartbeat, almost the same rhythm as waves hitting the coast. In the next few seconds, he could see the other sections of the vein he was stepping on rise out of the ground. There was no need to think about his next action now.

He swiveled around and ran back the way he came, careful as he climbed over rocks to not trip and accidentally alert whatever other aliens were hidden beneath the gray rubble. He climbed over the last section of rubble, jumping down the rest of the way and rolling back into the light.

The technician scampered over to where Emerson and Toast had moved to meet with him. He straightened, dusting off the pieces of rubble that had stuck to him in his rush to escape that area. Seeing the other two’s faces, he didn’t really need to say what he ran into. Their expressions meant they already answered that question themselves.

“How many were there?” Emerson asked, her brows scrunched together.

“I only found one,” Oliver replied, quickly recounting the exact sight he saw up until discovering the eggsac and what happened when he stepped on one of the veins.

The other two nodded, biting their lips or tapping their foot in contemplation. Toast was the one to ask the next question.

“How close did you get to it?”

“Not too close, only enough to confirm that it was where all those veins were gathering.”

“And you sure there was only one?”

“If you’re about to tell me to try and tip it over again, you can do that yourself,” Oliver said before Toast could get in another word.

“I mean... if there’s only one egg, then there won’t necessarily be an alien swarm, right?” the scientist reasoned. “Maybe just about the number of half of those veins you saw.”

“If we keep running into these things, we should get more information if we can,” Emerson said after a moment. “Although we know some things, we don’t know enough.”

“We know that their eggs only show up in dark areas,” Toast said, counting off his fingers. “They aren’t unprotected. And vein strands connect them and are probably the aliens’ way of monitoring its condition. If we had gotten closer to that cluster from the last one, I don’t doubt that we would’ve seen them for ourselves.”

“Alright, so you need to go in there Hensley,” Emerson said, copying Toast’s pushy investigative behavior. “Although I don’t quite agree with tipping the egg over and finding what happens, if you do end up doing that, you should check the rest of the area first. See if you can deal with the veins one at a time, since it looks like as long as you don’t mess with the egg, they won’t all come at you at once.”

She pointed at the dark section behind them. Seeing how there weren’t any aliens spitting rocks at them, it was safe to assume that Oliver hadn’t alerted the entire group that was with this particular egg.

“If I die to aliens one of these days, I’ll blame it on the two of you,” Oliver grumbled, handing his backpack over to the two of them.

He kept his flashlight and blowtorch on him, giving the two of them one last glare before heading back into the dark section of the corridor.