[Original Novel] Pressure 2: Dark Corners, Part 14

^{Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. 13}

James stared at the ceiling quietly for a while. Just as Olivia was about to ask him whether the session was done, he turned back to her and said “Maybe we should be the ones trying to understand it. Remer said whatever this thing is, it’s down in the trench a few miles from here. We have nothing to lose by approaching it. We’re already infected with whatever the prisoner brought with him, or from Remer’s exposure to it. And if I approach it alone, I don’t think it will hurt me. It built me the foundry.”

“Peel the skin”. James looked over to Olivia. “Did you say something?” She looked confused and shook her head. The two walked in lockstep, herded down into the maintenance tunnel network by Remer and his men. “I thought I heard you whisper to me just now.”

Remer jabbed James in the ribs. “Talking ain’t part of the experiment. You can scream though.” Antonio and Bruce snickered as they worked at the giant steel hatch. With a groan and a rush of putrid smelling air the hatch slowly swung ajar. “In you go. If you make it for ten minutes you can come out. Get the footage I want and I won’t send you back in.”

He’d fitted both with headsets of the sort he and his men wore. Naval issue augmented reality glasses, in this case programmed to record until space ran out, for Remer’s review should the headsets be recoverable. James and Olivia looked forlorn and could only stand haplessly just inside the tunnel entrance as Bruce and Antonio swung the hatch back into place.

“First left, he said. Then straight, down a level...what’s after that?” The two had split the task of memorizing Hank’s directions so neither would have to remember all of it. “After that there should be a holding tank with a steel grate walkway across it and four tunnels coming off of it. We go right there, then at the next juncture there will be a ladder. Up one level, and if he hasn’t let us down the hatch into the maintenance bay should be open. We can jack a repair sub from there.”

The labyrinthine network of enormous pipes looked as if adapted for human access only as an afterthought. Grated walkways mounted to either side shook slightly with each step, threatening to give way and dump the pair into the river of waste below. “The skin is soft, and pliable. It pleases me.” James spun around. “Don’t tell me you didn’t whisper to me just now.” She looked startled. “I didn’t say anything”. A few taps to the side of the glasses turned on a lamp function. James swept it around the dim stretch of pipe ahead but saw nothing unusual.

“You kids having fun?” Remer’s scarred, smirking face appeared on the eyepiece. “Fuck off.” Olivia gestured rudely where the headset camera would pick it up. “I’ll take that as a no. Let’s see if we can’t fix that.” A second later, the lights shut off. Both cried out as the realization struck them. Nowhere was safe. It might emerge from any direction and at any moment. James’ first impulse was to run. “James don’t! We’ll get split up!”

With a bit of fiddling Olivia activated her own headset’s lamp. Both turned towards a rustling sound. A small shadowy patch on the wall immediately shrunk and then vanished as their lights hit it. “No James, no. Not this way. I want out of here. Where are we, do you remember the directions?”

Panic clouded his memory. “I think...I think it was left at this juncture.” Olivia’s light happened to sweep across another shadowy patch which had been quietly forming there, unseen, but which once again dissipated on contact with the light.

“With such perfect skin, I can make something wonderful.” The raspy whisper returned and now satisfied that it wasn’t Olivia, James flirted with the conclusion that the foundry builder was speaking to him. “Olivia, I’m...I hear voices.”

His light illuminated her dirty, sweaty face. She was breathing hard, a welcome reminder of her presence in the dark beside him when he was using the light to navigate. “All the time?” A therapist, even now. “No, for fuck’s sake. I mean it’s talking to me. Whatever’s doing this. I’ve been hearing it since Remer dragged us out of confinement.”

“What’s it saying?” They were now holding hands tightly enough to compromise circulation. “It’s talking about your skin. I think. It doesn’t make sense.” At the juncture the two ducked into the narrower pipe to the left which mercifully had a full grating across it. “Can you hear it too?” She shook her head. Then, realizing he couldn’t see her, spoke. “Don’t worry, I believe you. All of this seems to be tied to you somehow.”

The sound of rushing water became ever closer as they ran. They soon spilled out into a cavernous waste water chamber. “The flesh and blood of innocence. Only the finest materials will be used.” James halted for a moment. The raspy whispering conjured up memories of the prisoner he’d fought with back in the Belusarius holding cell. As if reading this thoughts, the whisper returned. “The one who watches for me is never far away.”

The rustling sound. This time discernibly closer. James swept his light around wildly until it came to rest on the source. The shadowy patch recoiled, shrunk and dissolved with a sizzling sound. Remer’s crackling voice cut in. “That’s enough of that. Light’s disrupting it somehow. Switching you over to night vision.”

With that, both headset lamps died and James found he could see a pale green video feed of the tunnel ahead through the eyepiece. He stood quietly for a moment adjusting to it, the sound of dripping echoing through the tunnels all around him.

“Olivia, is yours working?” When she didn’t answer he turned to where she’d been standing. What stared back was beyond his worst imaginings. An awkward, patchwork thing that struggled to stand before him without falling to pieces. The sunken eyes were of different colors, the mouth lined with teeth from a number of different animals.

It gurgled, and reached out to him. He recoiled, unable to scream. It moved clumsily, joints never intended to attach to one another clicking and popping as the limbs moved. A long, coiled umbilical trailed from its belly back into the shadowy patch. The patch into which Olivia was being pulled.

“NO!” James grabbed the umbilical and yanked. It was surprisingly easy to tear and the instant he did so, the shambling flesh pile connected to it collapsed. A piercing screech rang down the tunnel, originating from the shadow portal.

He could not reach it before the remainder of the umbilical withdrew into it and it vanished. He clawed at the rusting metal wall where it had been a moment earlier. “You can’t have Olivia. I have nobody else. Take anything, but leave me Olivia.”

“She is perfect. From these materials, my finest work....” James started off down the pipe, pumping his legs, struggling not to imagine where Olivia was and what might be happening to her. His endurance was gone by the time he made it to the ladder.

It was as rusty and ice cold as the tunnel. Hand over hand he hauled himself up, grunting from a mixture of exertion and anguish. Memories of the dream, or the vision, whatever had happened to him before surged to the forefront of his consciousness.

“You want me, don’t you? That’s who the cage was for. You don’t need Olivia. I’m coming straight to you. Please, release her.” No reply. He shifted focus to remembering the directions. Finally James arrived at a sealed hatch and for a moment considered with dread the possibility that he’d gotten something wrong and wouldn’t leave the tunnels alive. Until, with a familiar groan, the hatch swung open. Hank stood aside it, one hand on the lever and the other holding a pen light. “Where’s Olivia?”

James teared up and searched for words. “Whatever’s causing all of this has her now. It took her in the tunnels. Something came out of the shadows, it was...an insult to God. It cannot have been alive. Another one I didn’t see took Olivia into the shadow. I have to speak to it, I can still get her back.”

Enough of it resonated with Hank that he didn’t waste time asking questions. The dingy one seater repair sub, robotic arms folded away against the spherical cockpit while docked, sat readied for departure in the bay ahead.

It was quick work for James to strap himself in while Hank sealed the hatch. A long, low grinding sound followed as a winch lifted the sub and slid it into the cylindrical lockout chamber. The chamber rang like a bell when the inner door slammed shut.

Three clangs confirmed that the latches securing it were in place and flooding could begin. Inside, James held his head in his hands. She couldn’t be there. If she was, then what? Would it harm her? It had never harmed him.

---

^{Stay Tuned for Part 15!}