T-Plus 17

Their messy cleanup attracted Emerson’s attention, and her voice sounded out from beyond the wreckage of fallen ceiling parts, bent beams, ripped floor panels, tangled wires, and a slew of alien slime and rock carcasses. The aftermath of risky fireworks that would’ve had the Station’s firefighters and emergency robots running at them in red siren glory with an armful of fire extinguishers, if this was a normal working day, was still evident on the grey surroundings, being the only other colors of ashy black and splattered pink. The scent of burnt carbon and charred rock had stagnated and was heavy on their noses even as they distanced themselves by climbing up one of the higher piles of wreckage and rubble to meet up with Emerson.

The doctor’s head poked up from behind one of the piles closer to where the emergency lights were working. Seeing the two of them stand with their flashlights on, she called out their names, and in response they waved her over with a signal. As she became the climb, the two men flopped down on two of the sturdier surfaces nearby and finally caught their breath properly. With her arrival, they could discuss their findings, and Oliver would have an ally in scolding the scientist sitting across from him.

Oliver leaned against the makeshift back of his impromptu chair, the bent out of shape frame of what used to be a vent covering. It wasn’t the most comfortable setup he’d sat in recently, but it was better than what Toast had found for himself. The scientist had accepted second best and was sitting on the disfigured form of an air conditioning unit. Most of it had crumpled under the pressure from when the quakes had riled up the Station, but it still gave a flat surface to sit on.

After strenuous exercise, they sat in silence. Oliver elevated his injured foot up on the closest makeshift stool he could find, which happened to be a lower portion of the A/C unit Toast was sitting on. His toes still throbbed, but it was better now that he wasn’t putting unnecessary weight on it. He could already hear Emerson’s scolding in between each bout of heat coming from his toes. And as he expected, her first words to them were full of ridicule.

“I thought you were going to find out more information, not blow up the corridor,” she sighed with her fists on her hips once she reached them.

She pinched her nose, coughing through the remaining smoke that hadn’t dissipated and throwing dirty glares at the two obvious culprits with their singed hair and clothes.

“Care to explain?”

The two of them glanced at each other, unsure of exactly where to start before she caught another item to reprimand them about.

“Why do you have your leg up?” she asked, her eyes sharpening as she stared straight at Oliver. Her eyes narrowed as she asked, “Did you get injured again?”

Oliver rubbed the back of his neck, answering her with a few laughs. That was all she needed to give him another disappointed sigh accompanied with a shake of her head. With a gesture, she ordered Oliver to roll up his pant legs and took off his boot for her to examine, while also glaring at Toast to fess up what they had done as she had been waiting for their results. After listening to the two’s explanation, Emerson summarized their rambling recountings to five points.

She counted them off her fingers. “One, the pedestals are actually the epicenter of evolving aliens. Two, the further away the alien from the pedestal, the less evolved they are. Three, disturbing the pedestal will raise the ire of all of them connected to it, but if you only handle them one at a time, it’s okay. Four, if anyone, even the evolving aliens themselves, disturb the pedestal, they’ll get eaten alive and presumably become fodder for the aliens’ evolution. And five, you’re hypothesizing that the pedestals are the catalyst for one super alien with the other aliens as fodder?”

Toast nodded with a clap. “That’s what I think. What do you?”

Emerson crossed her arms in thought, tapping her fingers on her leg where she sat.

“We can’t really confirm it without further information, but I’m willing to believe that conjecture for now. It would make sense after what we’ve seen so far. Or at least, what you two have done to obliterate this one.”

The doctor jabbed her thumb at the burnt areas behind her. As the men exchanged another set of glances, one guilty, the other unaware why the other two kept mentioning it, the three dusted the accumulated dirt off their pants and proceeded to the other end of the corridor where the light picked up again.

Free of dim lighting and seeing the sorry state they were truly in, Oliver could only lament the lack of time for a proper shower of some sort. He and Toast were covered in soot and ash, which he had expected after the stunts they just pulled, and the three were covered in grime from crawling and climbing through the Station during this entire ordeal. He just hadn’t expected they’d become closer to sewer monkeys. He had preferred his imagination of them being underground folks digging beneath the lunar surface or something.

“Soup’s room is just beyond here, right?” Emerson asked, gesturing at the number five marked on the wall in Station white paint.

Parts of it were hidden behind some broken shelving and ceiling pieces, but the top portion of the number was still recognizable. Stepping past the numbered wall, the opening to Residential Section 5A was seen. With a nod and skip, Toast rushed toward it, peering into the hallway that was dimly lit compared to the larger corridor. The scientist paused uncharacteristically, turning back to them while holding a finger to his lips. Oliver and Emerson exchanged glances as she helped the technician limp his way over to hide where Toast was hovering around the archway.

Unlike the other residential hallways they had traversed through previously, this one was too clean. The hallway was bare, free of excess and small debris from the larger corridor, and there was only a light layer of dust on the ground. If they weren’t still standing in the chaotic scene of the corridor, Oliver would’ve assumed this hallway had gone back in time since it looked the same as before the quakes. However, upon closer inspection, there were scratches and scrapes on the archway’s frame and parts of the wall closest to the corridor.

“Someone’s been here recently?” Toast asked, glancing back at his two companions.

“Seems like it,” Oliver replied, shifting his weight to lean against the wall instead of Emerson.

“There’s another survivor down here?” Emerson asked, her head poking out from behind Oliver.

“Let’s find out.”

Without waiting for either of the usual nags to stop him, Toast stepped into the hallway, shouting, “Bacon! Are you here?”

After a pause, the scientist scratched his head and added, “And, uh, if you’re not Bacon, you’re still allowed to respond.”

The hallway remained as silent as when they came upon it. Toast’s voice rebounded off the white walls for a moment, and the three of them exchanged unsure glances. After another round of hollering, there still was no answer. Emerson and Oliver relaxed their tense shoulders once they noticed Toast’s loud noises and shuffles hadn’t attracted anyone or anything over.

Using the wall as his crutch, Oliver and Emerson made their way over to where Toast was searching through the number of hallways. With his foot still throbbing, Oliver stuck around the first intersection of hallways, waiting for the other two to walk further in and check the others. Unlike the main hallway, the two he was standing between were a bit more cluttered, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of effort in cleaning them up. There were less traces of being used than this main one.

The other two returned with some clues.

“The second hallway is clear,” Emerson reported with a shake of her head.

“There were some wrappers on the left end of the last hallway,” Toast said. “And traces of someone staying there. A mini barricade with some dirty towels with a small pile of empty water bottles. Several piles of dirty towels, actually. So maybe more than one person? But I’m not a survival expert, so I don’t know how long ago. There’s some dust covering those bottles, so I’d say it’s been a while.”

“Optimistically, I’d say it’s our missing trio,” Oliver suggested. “Or it could be some other survivors that got stuck here during the initial quarantine.”

“Well, if there’s not too much dust, it should have only been a few days since they last were here,” Emerson deduced. “And seeing how we ventured past two evolution nests, there’s really only one way for them to move forward. We should keep an eye out as we keep going.”

“Nothing else we can really do,” Oliver said with a sigh. He turned to the scientist, returning to the reason they were here in the first place. “You know where Soup’s room is?”

The scientist pointed down the right side of the hallway they were already standing in. With Toast in the lead, they reached the last door to the hallway, room 109.

“Here is it,” Toast said, beckoning them around the first corner.

The nameplate beneath the room number displayed “Viktor Kuznetsov”, confirming this as Soup’s bedroom. Oliver fished out the engineer’s room key, swiping it against the door and hearing the click of the lock opening. With a push, they forced the door open and stepped inside.

As expected of the residential area for government agents, there was an obvious difference compared to those they’d already perused. For one, it was twice the size of any of the technicians’ rooms. However, unlike the other rooms that were personalized by their inhabitants, this one was stark in comparison. Empty of anything that they could consider a hobby or even personal items from home, Oliver concluded that Soup probably only used it to sleep. That is, if he actually returned from Lab 5C. A waste of such a large room, honestly.

If anything, even after multiple quakes, there wasn’t a mess strewn across the floor of the room. They could still see the floor, aside from the pillows, blanket, and couch cushions that were scattered across the room. As Oliver settled on the couch, Emerson tossed the fallen items back to their respective locations. Toast dropped his backpack and raided the cabinets, pulling out a multitude of different instant coffees. With practice ease, the scientist pulled out a coffee pot and thermal plate, starting up his entire brewing process.

Seeing how they were already in the room, they all decided to take the chance and relax after today’s events. Emerson gave another cursory examination to Oliver’s foot injury now that they were in better lighting, grimacing at his swollen toes from where the alien’s rock bullet had managed to skim. She slathered ointment on it, warning him to keep it elevated and not move around while they were resting here. He could only leave the arrangements to the other two, accepting Toast’s offering of coffee as Emerson scoured the room for Soup’s usable electronics.

Electronics acquired, and to their glee, Soup’s laptop and tablet were in almost perfect shape. They’d been locked away in one of the lower drawers, and Toast had busted the lock on it to open it. Once that was stored away in Toast’s backpack, they allocated the sleeping spots. With Emerson banning him from moving, Oliver got the couch, Emerson acquired the bed, while Toast got the other couch.

Oliver was the first one to wake, blinking the exhaustion from his eyes as he sat up. The other two were still sleeping, their quiet breathing the only sounds in the room. The technician rubbed the back of his head, flattening the bedhead that had sprung up from his snooze on the couch. His injured foot was still elevated, and the pain had subsided while he was asleep. As his eyes adjusted to waking, he frowned. There was a dull buzz bothering his ears, and he couldn’t quite pinpoint where it was coming from.

After turning his head a few times, he finally narrowed it down to the area of the connected bathroom. The dull buzz had morphed into gargling in the time it took for him to find where it was coming from. As he stared in that direction, the gargling grew louder, and he could see Emerson, who was the closest to the bathroom, stirring awake.

As she sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes, the gurgling sounds quieted, only to be replaced by the unideal viscous sounds of something moving from beyond the bathroom door.