In the darkness, Faith ran.
Paneling and grating the color of iron rust and fired brass rattled underfoot. Moving like a shadow, she darted from passageway to passageway, her pack rising and falling against her back, pounding to the same rhythm as her dull and reactor-weathered officer’s boots. Breath came quick, eyes darting, searching, checking, leading. Numbers flew past– 292-F, 301 Victor, a weaving sequence inward and outward until she hit the long, straight vein of a central access corridor and shot into the outside ring of the deep reactor pit, skirting along the trailing edge until 797-Alpha caught her eye and she darted back toward the core again. From there, it was a short run to the 800 block, a quick jog through maze-like stairwells and passages that led into the 880's, a shifting and glancing series of movements until the capillary-like corridor of 887-F came into view. The hunched form of a body locked into the crumpled chrome and white heap of a deep reactor suit marked the correct passageway, a signpost of fate collapsed sideways against a wall near the center of that twisting little stretch of steel and steam.
Time was short. Faith worked quickly, hurried out of sheer necessity. Repressing a grimace, she fought with the suit, fought to ignore the pungent smell of burnt hair and corruption that escaped from the vacuum locks as she punched open the seals of the suit and checked quickly for leaks, burns, anything that could compromise the radiation protection she would so desperately need once she got closer to the core. What was left of Rosendo was unpleasant, disgusting, a sticky crust of pink and yellow that plastered the inside of the suit, caked into every joint, every crack and crevice, a hardened wash that had once been a body, a corpse since liquified and reduced to a hardening slick of unrecognizable remains. Exhaling quickly, she ran her hands over the suit, fought with the urge to hesitate, to go in with just the spray clinging to her skin no matter how dangerous it would be. She didn’t have time to clean it, to do much more than scrape the leavings of Rosendo’s face off the suit’s visor and dump what was still liquid out of his steaming boots. Hardly a proper burial, but it would have to do. At the very least, she thought, he might have taken some degree of solace in the fact that what was left of his corpse, the skin that still hung clinging to the inside of the suit, would provide a marginal amount of protection for his Admiral in her most dire time of need– not enough to protect her against spikes like the one that had liquified him, but maybe enough to keep the tumors, the memory loss and the lesions to a minimum.
Every movement felt like a battle, an uphill struggle against the relentless march of time. Fighting, baring teeth from behind her filtration mask, Faith tore apart the backpack, ripped open both rolls of nano-aug gauze and wrapped as much of her body with it as she could, binding her torso first, her arms, her forehead– parts of her body that would benefit the most from the marginal protection. Sweating, shaking– eager hands moved for the pair of fat sealant tape rolls buried in the bottom of the sack, worked them open, worked the wide strips free and spent them in quick, tight loops between the inflexible parts of her body and the exterior of the suit. Thirty seconds and they were out, nanofoam centers rolling down grated passageway. The last can of deep reactor spray lodged in her pack went on quick, a light spread between the suit and her wrapped skin that she applied in alternating coats until the can hissed empty, drained of the final barrier she had, the last wall she could raise between herself and certain death at the hands of the cruel air and the radiation flares that haunted the passages and spiked sharper and more frequently the closer she got to the core. Hesitating for only the barest second, she took one last breath of harsh air through the failing filter of her mask, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and then set to work putting the suit on.
Two minutes later, she was at the entrance to cooridor 887-F, breathing the cool filtered air as it flooded into the suit, replacing the acrid vapors of the deep reactor. Only the lingering stench of sweat, grease and Rosendo remained.
Standing there, alone at the mouth of the corridor, surrounded by the stink of death, of acidic rust and vaporous corrosion, something stirred deep within the Admiral, something anxious, something as afraid as it was eager, something that urged her to act, the tolling bell of death summoning her to her fate. She knew exactly where the nearest opening to the core was, could have found her way there blind. Knuckles cracked as suited fingers curled into a fist, tightened.
“How long do we have, Chief?” She asked. Kali’s voice came back instantly, clear and smooth in her ear. Basic, simple.
“Minutes.”
Faith’s nod came silent, confident, unseen. She knew what she had to do, what had to be done in order to save the Hok and all her crew, all her officers, all the rescued pilots of the Von. She was the ranking officer, the Admiral who’d spent earlier days working in a reactor just like this one, who’d memorized every passage, every strip of grating and paneling, the arcane order of it all and the way it all flowed into the core like the vessels, veins and capillaries of some massive organ.
In the hellish half-light, her fist broke open, fingers flexing outward an instant before her feet shot across the grating. It may have been a maze, but it was a maze she knew, her maze, and as she ran, she flew on steady feet into the depths of the core, intent on the lair of El Diablo.
Hang on. Came the sudden, desperate plea.
Just a little longer.
