The Awakening by Kurt Petrey

Author:Kurt Petrey [Petrey, Kurt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Chloe

When Chloe stepped into the stone hallway, she felt like she'd entered a completely new environment. The only thing that was similar to the top level was the floor, and her footsteps echoed through the hallway.

“Hello?”

She kept her voice low, unsure if she wanted to get an answer or not. She'd seen Nikolai's display, pulled up his vitals, and she'd seen the truth: he no longer had a heartbeat. She couldn't hear anyone else, and for the first time she realized she could be the only one alive down there. Stupid, she thought. What am I doing? She pulled up her handheld display and requested Joshua send her the map and streams. After a moment the map downloaded.

She studied the map, finding out where the guys were relative to Nikolai. Fortunately, they were not going in his direction. Fixing their position, she began to walk towards them. The next room she entered looked like it might be a shortcut to where everyone was.

“Joshua,” she whispered, “do you know where the refinery is? Have we located the robot yet?”

Joshua didn’t reply for a moment. “Chloe,” he said, “you really need to come back. Something very dangerous is down there. I think it killed Nikolai.”

Chloe was so tired of people telling her what she could or couldn't do. “Look,” she said, “I’m down here, and I’m not planning to go back up until I know we are going to live. You're just going to have to face that, okay?”

There was a long pause. “Okay.” Another long pause. “Wait a minute while I coordinate with everyone.”

Either Joshua was angry with her, or he was busy working with Ian, because she didn't hear from him for a while. As she waited for him to get back to her, she started walking toward Nikolai then stopped when she discovered another set of options on her harness. Curious, she reached over and activated the second part of the harness, which prompted her handheld device to start beeping. She synced the two devices, then she saw she could select streams on her own, without Joshua’s approval. She selected Nikolai’s feed and was rewarded not only with his screen appearing on the glass in front of her eye, but with a light shining in front of her. This was odd, because she hadn't executed a light mode. It did help her see, though.

She had just started to walk towards where Nikolai was, when his feed started to move. She froze, then she selected communications with Nikolai’s feed.

“Nikolai, is that you? Are you alive?”

There was no response, but his feed moved again. As she watched, he moved in what seemed like an odd direction, as if he was crawling backwards with his head facing upwards. She wondered if his sensors could be damaged, then gasped when she figured it out. Nikolai wasn't crawling, he was being dragged.

She tapped Joshua’s name on the display. “Joshua, are you seeing Nikolai’s feed?”

“Yeah. I've told everyone else to back away. Whatever is down there has Nikolai, and until we learn more about whatever it is, we need to get out.

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