Chapter 124 The Rot Within
The dust of the lobby did not settle down. It was hanging in the air, a dense, violet smog, copper and ozone.
We had survived the breach. We had gotten through the Berserkers. However, coughing into my sleeve, standing at the center of the ruined atrium, I understood that we had not won. We had just been buried alive.
The door to the Spire had disappeared.
Where the huge doors of mass were, there was now a heap of twisted metal topped with broken concrete and... meat.
The suicide-Berserkers explosion had not merely fallen down upon the ceiling. It had amalgamated their biological substance with the construction materials.
One of the young militia soldiers was reaching a piece of rebar protruding out of the pile, and Ryker held his arm out to prevent him.
The soldier froze.
The rebar was no longer grey steel. It was black bone. And it was pulsating.
It is alive, I said to Vane, and threw on my flashlight and illuminated the blockage. "The whole damn wall is alive."
I came nearer, wetting the soles of my feet with glass.
The rubble was not a heap of rubbish. It was knitting together. The chunks of concrete were shooting out black veins and interweaving themselves into a web so thick and impenetrable. The blood of the Berserkers was of violet, and was as a mortar, solidified into a resin which hissed and steamed in cold air.
Karn did not simply block the door, his hackles stood on end, mumbled Baron. He the architecture contaminated. He made the Spire into a petri dish.
"Can we blast through it?" Jaxon inquired, when gazing at the cannon of the Beast.
We shoot that, Doctor Sato said, coming out of the shadows, and her scanner in her hand, and we put a cloud of concentrated Void spores into the ventilation system. This would be equivalent to the explosion of a chemical weapon in a submarine.
So we cannot go, I said, and found the claustrophobia closing in on my chest. "And we can't breathe if we try."
We are locked up, said Ryker. He sheathed his sword. "Again."
He turned to the room.
Jaxon, establish a perimeter of the blockage. Nobody comes within twenty feet. When that wall begins to grow... burn it.
Yes, sir, said Jaxon, but his voice shook. He gazed horrifyingly at the living wall.
"Vane," Ryker ordered. "Check the secondary exits. The loading dock. The roof access. We need a way out."
On it, on it, pity, pity, Vane said, running to the staircase.
Ryker walked over to me. He looked exhausted. He had nothing left in the fight. He was pale all but the dark circles under the eyes, and the slight tint of the bread-addiction on his lips, grey in color.
"Are you okay?" Ryker asked, touching my arm.
"I'm fine," I lied. "Just... tired."
Finding Gareth, indeed, we have to find Gareth; and there he was on the mezzanine, Ryker said to himself. "He saved us. But he's infected too. If he turns..."
"He won't turn," I said. "I saw his eyes, Ryker. He was lucid. Maybe all people are different in the Fever.
Or perhaps he is less insane, Ryker reasoned.
The Spread
After three hours, the situation deteriorated into a critical situation.
We were at the Level 20 War Room. Vane rushed in, and appeared frightened.
"Bad news, boss," Vane panted. The loading dock doors have been fused. The roof hatch is covered with resin. We peeped through the windows... the window-glass is covered with a coat of black frost. We can not blast it with explosives.
It is shrinking us up, Baron thought. "Like a cocoon."
"And it's growing," Vane added. "The blockage in the lobby? It has grown three feet within an hour. It's eating the floor, Ryker. It is transforming the marble to biomass.
Digesting the building, Sato said in regard to a schematic of the structure on the wall. The Spire is comprised of steel and concrete. That is only minerals to the Rot. It is disintegrating the molecular bonds to give itself food.
"Should it feed on the supports of the structure... I trailed off.
The Spire collapses," Sato completed. We have perhaps twenty four hours before the pillars are going to collapse.
We have to move out, Ryker said. "But to where? We are not going down, the basement is full of sludge. We can't go out."
"We go up," I said. "To the Beacon."
The roof is closed," Vane pointed out at me.
"Not the roof access," I said. The maintenance ladder in the spire needle. It is a small path, but it takes one to the very top. The glass up there is thinner. We can break it,--possibly we can attract attention to our aid.
"Help from who?" Baron scoffed. "Karn is outside. The rest of the world is dead."
Not everybody, I said, minding the weak radio signals that Vane had picked up weeks before. "There has to be someone left. The Coalition remnants? Other survivor groups?"
"It's a long shot," Ryker said. But it's better who die I wait.
The lights suddenly flicked violently.
There was a scream in the passage.
"What now?" Ryker drew his pistol.
We ran into the corridor.
An assembly of refugees was moving away behind the wall. One of the women was on the floor screaming and pointing.
I looked at the wall.
There was a face straining out of the plaster.
It wasn't a hole. The wall itself was straining like latex. It was a face, with eyes and nose and mouth, but of drywall and paint.
Hungry," said the wall-face.
"Get back!" Baron shouted and pushed the civilians back.
He raised his shotgun.
"Don't shoot!" I yelled. "It's structural!"
Baron hesitated.
The face opened its mouth. A black tongue, long and lashed. It wrapped around the ankle of a man near by.
"Help me!" The man screamed, tore at the floor.
The wall pulled. It pulled him towards the plaster. The surface was undulant, like quicksand.
"Cut him loose!" Ryker roared.
He sprang forward with his sword. He severed the black tongue.
SCREEEE.
The wall screamed--the scream of metal being cut off and pain. The plaster had fluid violet discharging.
The man scrambled away, choking.
The scanner everybody looked at, Sato whispered, looking at it. The wiring has been infected. It's in the plumbing. The building is waking up."
"We have to move," Ryker said. "Now. Everyone to the upper levels! Get above the infection line!"
The Climb
The evacuation was chaotic.
Five thousand attempted to squeeze into the main stairway. The lifts were out of order--the lifts were already stifled with black veins.
"Keep moving!" Jaxon screamed, with a hoarse voice. "Don't touch the walls! Stay in the center!"
We climbed.
Level 30. Level 40. Level 50.
As we went up each floor the Spire groaned. The skeleton which was made of steel was bending because of the overwhelming pressure on the lower levels that were being consumed by the swift biological growth. The air became more humid and hot and reeking of rot.
On Level 60, we found Gareth.
The leader of the Union was trapped in the server room. The door was welded on the inside with a hole opening only a little way.
"Gareth!" Ryker banged on the door. "Open up! We're evacuating to the top!"
No, said Gareth, inwardly. "It's safer in here. The servers are hot. The Rot doesn't like the heat."
The house is falling, Gareth! I shouted. "If you stay here, you die!"
I am already dead, girl, I said, Gareth.
Through the slot, I saw his eye. It was entirely violet now. One of the vine-growings was pressing out of his tear duct, and twisting down his cheek.
I hear it, I can hear it, Gareth said. The building... it is singing to me. It declares that the basis is delicious.
"Gareth, snap out of it!" Ryker ordered. "You saved us in the lobby! You can fight this!"
Wolfs I hate, and I saved you, said Gareth, chuckling darkly. "Not because I like kings."
He cleared his throat, which was a moist, rattling cough.
"Go up," Gareth said. "I'll hold the stairwell. I have... I have programmed the servers to overheat. When the Rot gets here... I'm going to burn it out."
You will kill yourself, Ryker said to himself.
It is better to lose than to win, said Gareth.
He slid the slot shut.
Good-bye, Union, said Ryker, with a touch on the door.
We kept climbing.
We were on Level 80, which was the highest floor that was inhabitable. This air was thinner, yet purer. The infection had not yet attained this high.
However, we were getting behind. The Spire grew narrower as it increased in height. The stair-case was filled with frightened individuals.
We will not get all in the needle, said Vane looking at the press of bodies. It is a maintenance shaft, Ryker. Maybe fifty people, max."
Ryker looked at the crowd. He was looking at the mothers, the children, the old men.
We are not leaving them, Ryker said.
He turned to Jaxon.
Jaxon, form a defensive perimeter on this landing. Use the furniture. Use anything. Should the wall-things rise up the stairs... take them.
Nay, sir," Jaxon said, and he was looking terror-stricken. "We will hold."
"Elara, Vane, Baron," Ryker said. "With me. We're going to the needle. In case we can attract attention... perhaps we can have an evac transport.
"It's a dream," Baron grunted. "But it's a nice dream."
We ascended to the top of the last ladder onto the maintenance spire.
It was a small tube of glass with an antenna and alert lights inside, only ten feet across. Our feet were one thousand feet above ground.
The city was below us a wreck of a city. The scar of the North was a flaming violet. The black wave of the Rot filled the streets.
"Vane," Ryker ordered. "Get the beacon working. Elara, charge it."
I am on it, Vane, opening the control panel.
I touched my hand on the crystal enclosure of the beacon light.
Pray, I said to the Origin Stone. "Just one more time. Be loud."
I pushed.
The crystal flared. There was a ray of pure white light that flew out into the grey sky and cut through the clouds.
It wasn't a weapon this time. It was a plea.
SOS.
SOS.
We waited.
Five minutes passed. Ten.
The Spire groaned beneath us. I could feel the Rot drilling at the support beams eighty stories below.
Nothing, said Baron, who was observing the horizon. "No one is coming."
Wait, said Vane, and put his headphones on his ears. "I'm picking up a bounce-back."
"A what?" Ryker asked.
A reflection, said Vane, and turned a dial. "The signal hit something. Something big. And metal."
He pointed to the sky. Not north. Up.
"Look."
We looked up.
Breaching the cloud shield, falling gently, and soundlessly down, was a vessel.
Nevertheless, it was not a Coalition dropship. It wasn't a scavenger vessel.
It was a silver, teardrop-shaped, sleek one. It carried no visible engines, it only gave the shimmering distortion field about it.
That is not man, Sato had said, as we climbed on the ladder.
"Is it the Queen?" I asked, terrified.
No, no, no, Ryker said, and then he laughed. The Queen is made of bone and meat. That... that is technology.
The vessel went down towards the Spire. A hatch on the bottom opened.
A beam of light—green, scanning light—swept over us.
A voice boomed from the ship. Amplified. Synthetic.
“IDENTIFY. ARE YOU PURE? OR ARE YOU ROT?”
"We are survivors!" Ryker shouted back, shielding his eyes.
The ship hovered.
“SCANNING... ORIGIN SIGNATURE DETECTED.”
The voice changed. It became less robotic, more... reverent.
“THE SEED IS FOUND. PREPARE FOR EXTRACTION.”
"Extraction?" Baron asked. "Who are they?"
"I don't know," Ryker said, gripping his sword. "But they have a ship. And we have a collapsing building."
He looked at me.
"Get ready to fly, Elara."