T-Plus 18

Esther crouched instinctively behind the egg pedestal nearest to them, covering her head in an attempt to minimize whatever damage was coming her way. Vaughn was beside her, gripping her shoulder to steady himself as he ducked his own head in her shadow. If these aliens had any sort of “parental” instinct, they wouldn’t destroy their own eggs. Based on previous experience, they were highly protective of their evolutionary forms even if their race was cannibalistic. There was only one chance to make sure.

Two heartbeats passed, and a spray of pebbles and dust splattered over the duo. She braced herself for her hypothesis failing and a wave of shrapnel boring into their sides. Two heartbeats later, that didn’t happen. Just short of the pedestal was a dent in the floor. The dust around the area was still settling, but it proved her educated guess correct. It worked! She had bet everything on her hypothesis, and it worked!

This was no time to be ecstatic. Mustering her shaky legs to move, Esther pulled Vaughn up and ran for the next pile of cover as a round of rock pellets blasted their way toward them. She collapsed against the wall of rubble during the moment of repreive, feeling the vibrations as the rocky bullets buried themselves on the other side. Each pulse she felt against the wall sent her heart racing several more paces. Vaughn gasped shaky breaths beside her, wincing and grimacing as he swung his injured arm. The blood coming from his wounds were dripping down his sleeve, darkening the color of the fabric.

She turned her attention to where the light returned to the corridor. There were about two or three more piles of rubble to hide behind before they made it out of this alien nest. Esther waited for the next echo of the metal alien’s attack, feeling it crash against their current hiding place, before pulling Vaughn up and dragging him as far as they could. They weren’t going to make it to the next spot in time. Esther glanced over her shoulder, spotting the closest alien pedestal was far behind them. They couldn’t hide behind one again. She counted her own erratic heartbeats, shoving the scientist ahead of her as she dived and rolled after him. One... two... three...

The slam of a heavy impact sent her propelling forward. Her barely recovering ears were blasted back into deafness. A cloud of dust and rubble fell over her as she kept rolling. Searing pain lodged itself on her forearms, which she had raised to cover her head and vitals. Someone pulled her arm, and she crawled forward with their guidance as she could feel another round of vibrations reach her through the floor.

When the dust around her settled, she opened her eyes to find herself almost blinded by the light. They had reached the boundary of where the emergency lights were working. The wall right in front of her nose had a large number 2 painted on it in dusty white. Behind her, she could see the vague shapes of the aliens they had just escaped chasing after her and Vaughn. And behind them, the forms of the group after them were catching up in the blank period.

A tug on her arm pulled her out of her reverie, guiding her further down the corridor until they couldn’t see the aliens anymore. Checking forward and backward, it was just her and Vaughn in the corridor. Behind them, the sounds of rocks and metal slamming into the floor and walls echoed faintly in her still recovering ears. There was the vague notion that someone was shouting from that direction, but there was no way she could make out what they were saying with her ears’ current state.

Vaughn stretched out beside her on the ground, laying out his legs straight in front of him. His left arm was completely limp by his side, the piece of shrapnel still lodged in his shoulder and elbow. She finally looked down at her own injuries, counting up to three shards jutting out of her own arms. They were smaller than the two embedded in the scientist’s arm and could be dealt with after his.

She dug into her bag, resting it on her lap as she fished out the first aid kits they had filched from her room. First, the tweezers, then water, then a needle and thread, then cotton gauze, and then wrap and bind. With practiced ease, she pinched the piece of shrapnel stuck above his elbow after binding his upper arm tightly. She handed him a sponge for him to bite into before easing out the stopgap of his wound. With some luck, it seemed to have missed any major vein or nerve. This was salvageable.

The scientist shuddered as blood continued dripping down his arm. Esther pointed her smaller light at it, splashing water on it to clean out the wound. When it was sufficiently clean, she threaded the thin thread into the needle after cleaning it with an alcohol wipe. She stitched the wound above his elbow carefully, tying the end and snipping the extra off. It wasn’t the best stitching, but it’d have to do. She pressed a cotton gauze on it, binding it with tape. One done.

She moved onto the other one. This piece was smaller than the other, and the bleeding was less severe. It was a lot simpler to wash the wound out and bandage it, no stitches needed. Making sure his arm was elevated after the treatment, Esther treated the wound above his face next. The scientist’s eyes had closed, having fallen unconscious when she was stitching the wound above his elbow. The blood from his head wound covered the right side of his face, leaving a trail of red. She wiped the blood off, washed the wound with water, and stitched the long trail. It was a good thing he was already unconscious, otherwise it would’ve been hard if he struggled during this part.

After making sure he didn’t have any more noticeable wounds, she moved onto her own. The wounds on her arms didn’t require stitches or staples, a fact that brought her some relief. It’d been a long time since she tried to one-handedly sew anything together, and she wasn’t about to try it with both arms injured. Applying ointment and pressing gauze on it, she dealt with her injuries quickly.

Leaving Vaughn lying where they stopped, she stood with unsteady steps with her flashlight. It’d been some time now. She had to check on the others. After confirming that this section of the corridor was safe for the time being, Esther retraced the blood splatters that led back to where the alien nest was.

Esther walked around the bend, just in time to witness Hensley hurling himself out of the dark part of the corridor. Behind him, the metal alien was rearing its head out into the light. It was much different seeing it from across the way with dim flashlights. The indentations on its “face” were much deeper than its earlier counterparts, and its body was an artpiece made of shoddily glued together metal scraps. Parts of its body jutted out at strange angles, forming jagged corners and edges that caused the high-pitched scratching sound along the floor. Its arms weren’t as flexible as its rocky underlings, but they were naturally longer and extended their feelers toward Hensley as he crawled away. And to her utter horror, upon seeing it clearly in the light, she found out the reason the alien seemed taller than its earlier counterparts. It wasn’t because it had a larger mass. No, this particular form had evolved rudimentary legs.

It crawled and shuffled forward at a speed akin to a crawl, but with its high-speed projectiles and sharp feelers, that was enough. Esther charged in, grabbing Hensley by the collar and yanked him toward her. The alien’s feelers missed her cheek as she fell back with the technician in her grasp. At this distance, she could see its mouth widen and deepen as it prepared to spit one of its deadly shrapnel bombs at them. A row of what seemed like metallic shark teeth appeared in the depths of its mouth, melding into a spherical shape. The more it widened its mouth, the larger the ball became. She and Hensley scurried backwards.

As Esther was recounting if she had left a will, Johnson rushed up behind it, slamming it down into the ground with his foot. The alien visibly bounced up, throwing Johnson off balance from the force. A dust cloud rose with the alien in the center, and Hensley and Esther didn’t waste any time widening the distance between them and the danger. Out of the smoke, the taller technician grabbed Hensley by his arm, while Bacon appeared behind him and grabbed Esther’s elbow. They dragged them along the path of bloody droplets as the alien was stunned by its own attack ricocheting back at it.

A moment later, Esther felt the air behind her heat up. She glanced over her shoulder to see a hazy outline of a circle appear in the area they had just retreated from. The circle opened, dropping Audrey and Lucky before closing. The Navigator was sweating, the droplets dripping down the side of her face as she clenched her teeth, carrying the female technician on her back.

Esther stopped Bacon, gesturing behind them. The group stopped, helping the two dodge the next round of rocky bullets as they ran toward safety. The metal alien had recovered and was leading the charge toward them. It spat another ball of shrapnel in their direction, missing as they followed the curve of the corridor’s bend.

“K-Keep going!” Esther mustered through stuttering gasps. “They won’t leave their nests if there are evolutionary pedestals in them.”

The group trudged forward. Johnson had taken Lucky from Audrey’s back, carrying the female technician on his own back. Bacon had offered Hensley her shoulder, helping him limp after the group. Esther and Audrey kept up with them at their own pace, hearing the echoing thuds of desperate attacks miss behind them. Soon, there weren’t any more. They’d gotten away.

Around the next bend, they reached where Esther had left Vaughn. The scientist was still unconscious among the rubble, his arm propped up on his backpack at the angle she had left it. Everyone plopped down around him, their breathing haggard and their limbs splayed out without energy in any of them.

Most of her hearing had recovered at this point. Looking around, it seemed the others’ ears had also stopped ringing to some degree.

“We... we did it,” Bacon breathed from her spot next to Vaughn.

“That... was a lot closer than I had wanted,” Hensley said, the goosebumps on his arms obvious from the near death experience. “That was a nice save, Johnson.”

The other technician nodded as he took deep breaths to calm his heart rate. The Navigator was still dripping with sweat, and she was still panting from the excessive exertion. Looking around, other than her and Vaughn, the group hadn’t sustained any more dire injuries, the first bit of good news. Unfortunately, the adrenaline rush leaving had left the group tired. She could already see some of them nodding off, the exhaustion hitting them in the face. Esther doubted she could even stand up in her current state, but they couldn’t stay around here. It was too open, and much too close to an alien nest for her comfort.

“Come on, let’s get to Sector 1A at least,” she urged, struggling to stand again. “Can’t leave him sleeping out here. He’d get a cold,” she added, pointing to the still unconscious scientist.

With a lot more effort than they thought, the group got back on their feet. Everyone with uninjured limbs helped carry the injured, and they hobbled down the hallway, back to a safer area.