Chapter 14: The Heart of the Ruin
December 30, 2016 – The Basement
The basement was a tomb of another kind. The air was thick with the smell of ozone, dust, and the coppery tang of old blood. Emergency lights cast long, dancing shadows, creating monsters from every stacked chair and overturned cart. The rhythmic pounding from the sealed door was a frantic heartbeat, slowly being drowned out by the closer, more visceral sound of feeding.
It came from a side corridor. We pressed ourselves against the cold cinderblock wall, barely daring to breathe. Peering around the corner, I saw it. One of the larger creatures, its scythe-like arms pinning a body in an Execution Division uniform to the floor, its head buried in the man's chest. The wet, tearing sounds were the stuff of pure nightmare.
Ngozi let out a tiny, choked whimper.
The creature's head snapped up. A circular maw of needle-teeth, dripping black and red, rotated towards us. It let out a low, inquisitive click.
Adisa grabbed my arm, his fingers like ice. "The control room is on the third floor. The main stairwell is at the end of this hall."
The stairwell was past the creature.
There was no time for a plan. There was only action and reaction.
"Run," I said.
We broke from cover, sprinting down the central corridor. The creature shrieked, a sound of rage and excitement, and launched itself after us, its claws scraping furiously on the linoleum floor.
Mama shoved Ngozi ahead of her. "Don't look back!"
The stairwell door was twenty meters away. Ten.
I could hear the thing's hot, foul breath on my neck. I risked a glance back. It was a leap away, one scythe-arm raised to strike.
A fire extinguisher, mounted on the wall beside me. I wrenched it free, turned, and pulled the pin. A thick, white cloud of CO2 erupted, engulfing the creature. It screeched, blinded and disoriented, crashing into the wall beside us.
We burst through the stairwell door, slamming it shut. I jammed the handle with the fire extinguisher canister.
The stairwell was a vertical spine of the dead. We passed the first-floor landing. A barricade of desks and filing cabinets had been torn apart, the defenders lying in pieces around it. The second floor was worse. The door was gone, blasted from its hinges. Inside, the hallway was a charnel house, littered with the bodies of students and soldiers, all gray and desiccated. The work of the smaller, life-draining creatures.
We didn't speak. We just climbed, our sobs and gasps echoing in the concrete shaft. The air grew thicker, humming with a powerful, unnatural energy that made the hair on my arms stand on end. The light from the emergency strips flickered erratically.
The third-floor landing. The door was marked QUANTUM PHYSICS LAB - RESTRICTED ACCESS. It was reinforced steel, scarred with deep gouges, but intact. A keypad glowed beside it.
Adisa stepped forward, his hands trembling. "The code… by God, let me remember the code." He typed in a sequence. A red light blinked. "No!"
He tried again, his breath coming in panicked hitches. Another red light.
The pounding started up again, from far below. The Execution Division was breaking through the basement door.
"Doctor!" Mama's voice was sharp, cutting through his panic.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, closed his eyes, and typed one more time.
A green light. A heavy clunk.
The door swung inward.
The control room was a scene of frozen catastrophe. Monitors were smashed, chairs overturned, papers strewn everywhere. But at the center of the room, behind a wall of reinforced glass, a massive,环形 machine hummed with violent, crimson light. In its center, a tiny, brilliant point of white-hot energy floated, and around it, the very air was tearing, ripping open into a shimmering, blood-red portal that pulsed like a diseased heart.
The source. The fissure.
"It's grown," Adisa whispered, horrified. "It's stabilizing on its own."
"Then unstabilize it!" I yelled.
He stumbled to the main console, his fingers flying across the keyboard, bringing screens to life. Schematics and error messages flashed.
"I can initiate the collapse sequence! But it will take time to calculate the inversion frequency. And the energy surge… it will be a beacon. It will draw every one of them here. It will be like the first Crimson Hour, but concentrated on this building!"
"We don't have a choice!" Mama said, her voice steady as she guided Ngozi to a sheltered corner behind a heavy console.
BANG.
The sound didn't come from the stairwell. It came from the hallway outside the control room. Something heavy was slamming against the reinforced door.
BANG. The metal began to buckle.
"They're here," Adisa said, his eyes wide with terror. "The large ones. The guardians."
BANG. A dent appeared in the steel.
"I need five minutes!" Adisa screamed, his hands a blur on the keyboard.
I looked at the buckling door. I looked at the fire axe hanging on the wall next to it. I looked at my mother, shielding my sister.
Five minutes was an eternity.
I walked to the wall, took the axe in my hands, and planted my feet in front of the door.
"Then you have five minutes," I said, my voice sounding strangely calm.
The door exploded inwards.