ABANDON

Chapter 47 -- Awake

Drip, drip, drip...
Jane opened her eyes. She could see nothing.  Disorientation overcame her. Something was wrong, she could feel an irritation inside her, inside heart and limb and leg, pulling her to do something, to go somewhere, to get out of this place.  Jane thought about reaching out her hands, but she was afraid to. 

Drip, drip, drip...
That sound, Jane knew that sound.  She turned her eyes towards it and felt pain explode up her back and into her head.  A cold drop fell on her face.

 Water!  Jane turned her face up to the source, imagining the sun shining down on her. Despite the pain, Jane reached down her side and felt her PD, she felt the straps of Michael's backpack.  In another pocket, Jane found her portable light.  She covered her face, her nose, and with a pounding heart, Jane held out the light in front of her, and turned it on.

Large shapes separated out of the darkness, so many mounds of inanimate objects that at first Jane could not determine one from another.  Junk separated into piles: screens, desks, cables, even office chairs, gravity intravenous systems, displacement needles, and all manner of lab equipment interspersed with office supplies and pressurized canisters of oxygen, nitrogen, and boron.  All this was arranged into gigantic images, everything from keyboards to tires, portable propane tanks to boxes and boxes of latex gloves.  Jane's small beam of light shone through the few empty spaces creating menacing shadows on the metal walls around her.  Blocky letters were partially legible: Substation – North Bay –Sub-Level 5.  Jane closed her eyes, felt hope fly from her like a thousand doves.  She was back where she had started, back where Harris and Ibber had died.  For almost an entire minute Jane regretted, her mind stagnant as she sat with her eyes closed and breathed, deep sorrowful breaths.  The irritation inside her chest seethed into her brain: get out, get out of here!  Jane painfully stood and panned her light around. 

Something was wrong.  She felt it deep inside.  The smell!  Jane's hand pressed her face, squishing her nose, sheltering her mouth.  The room protected an unbelievable stank.  Unused to humidity, Jane felt the air cling to her, sticking like rancid fat. 

Next to the blocky letters was a doorway, two large doors hanging on a track by rollers, held to the wall by long threads of something wet and soft.  Jane shuffled to the door on aching legs, her body protesting, like she had been put inside a box for far too long.  Jane moved through the door.

The first object Jane saw in the new room was a horizontal metal chain.  Along it droplets of water collected and at the lowest point a crystal drop hung down about to fall, housing a perfect upside down image of Jane. Metal walkway and metal chain, pitiful protection from deep pits—it was the water purification plant.  But this room was different from the one in the Anders nest.  There was water dripping everywhere, from chain, perspiring from the walls, bleeding from the ceiling. There were several mountains of black that rose out of the pits. Huge piles of dark matter with flecks of gray showing through.  Jane saw something rectangular clinging to something gray jutting out from the dark pile.  A patch still stuck to a bare foot.  Jane could hear Harris's voice in her mind: Do you want to know what else is pathetic...  Raynaud's.  The foot was bare because Harris's boot had struck Jane in the head.  Mountains of... bodies!

Jane clamped her hand over her mouth refusing to breath in death. Faringoth, Callivar, Maymio, Hessa, all piled on bodies too decomposed to recognize. 

The stench!  It enveloped Jane like a hot, clammy hand.  Burning vomit rose in her throat.  She turned to run and came face to face with a monster materializing out of the shadows.  Unable to go anywhere, Jane fell to her knees and vomited.

The monster stood his ground, looming over her.  Jane could hear tiny scurrying noises all around her, like mice in the walls.  They did not come at her, and Jane stayed low long after she had finished retching, waiting and listening, contemplating how she was going to get out of this alive.  Jane looked at her hands, her blue stained hands.  They were not trembling.   

The smell!  It pushed Jane, forced her to stand, to move.  "I have to--"  But the moment she spoke the warm, humid stench overwhelmed her again and she was laid low, retching again.  The monster moved behind Jane, separating her from the deep pits.  Then he moved close, crowding her so she had to step back.  He came at her again and again, forcing her back through the door on rollers and into the room full of old junk.  And as the monster herded her, he kept his black beady eyes on her, never taking them from her—a cold, hard stare.

Back in the room she had woken up in, monsters scurried across metal ceiling beams, moved along the walls in great hoards.  They covered the piles of junk, stepping lightly, making those delicate towers look like the strongest concrete structure.  In a solid arc around her the monsters collected and Jane could see there was no escape. 

One stepped out, separating from the mass, directly in front of Jane.  The same monster as before, the stub from his missing limb moving with his others.  He stood before Jane, and as before he brought one long leg forward, the point suddenly separating into five long digits.  He held it before Jane.

Jane was no longer afraid. How many times had she been in this situation, the kind where she had no choice. She touched the center of his hand with her first finger.  For one long respectful moment everything was still. The monster with the missing limb backed away with his head down and behind him the mass parted creating a passage, and at the end of it was a door.  Made of metal and with no handle, it was recessed into the wall. The recess was made of glass with the distorted image of machines beyond. The dark metal of the threshold was cut by deep gashes of silver. The gashes also marred the metal at the bottom of the door, which had been pushed from the inside, by something trying in vain to escape. 

Jane took a step back.  "This door will only open for three people—Denji Tokairin, George Kelly, and..." Jane shook her head.  "Jane Hallowell."  The truth of who she was stood before her.  All she had to do was step inside.   

There were so many things to stop her, and yet, she didn't care about any of them.  She took off Michael's backpack and took out a few tools and the Akai'nii power source.  She removed the housing of the scanner. The exposed wires and thin metal cams gave way to her shoving and she pressed the Akai'nii box inside.  The monsters squeezed filling every space behind Jane, fighting among themselves, seething in and around to get a better view.  Twice their actions made Jane pause, and her hands began to tremble.   

What was beyond the door?  What could scratch through solid metal?  There was another nagging question that Jane had to recognize—Seehoiah was powerful enough to escape this feeble door, bring down these crumbling walls. If there was one inside, why did it stay?

Jane located the header and sliced the wire.  She exposed the separated wires and then touched them to the power source.  The cams shocked into motion, the metal arms reached up and down, sending life to feelers that whisked their imaginary hands into the air and saw with their distillery eyes. The recess came alive with blue light.

"Welcome Jane Hallowell.  Loading personal settings."   The door softly slid open, until it hit the part that was bent, and then it froze in place. The man's voice stated a wrong date for today, then there was a short pause.  "Scanner offline, psychrometer offline. Sunshine has grown significantly since the last measurement.  Updating all information, please stand by."

"Sunshine?" Jane asked the voice, but the voice only repeated the last phrase. Jane bowed her head.  Her heart still beat, her hands stayed by her side completely capable, and deep inside Jane felt a pillar of strength.  She smiled, then laughed.  She had known who she was all along.

Jane took a deep breath and walked through the door.