(G)et (T)he (F)uck (O)ut

Chapters

Egg

(G)et (T)he (F)uck (O)ut
B_25

I remember to remember the need to remember. Life before the injection from hydrostasis. Words from a mother as we stood before the Well. She told me to be well. To be bright. In peering over the edge to the abyss below, the princess had spoken, in how the cradle rocks above it—and how we are a brief crack of light set between two eternities of darkness.

The Well had not been an abyss at the time, though it had felt that way to me, for it forever went down as the eye could see. My eyes at the time were not kind enough to go so deep—or perhaps they were kind in another means.

The Well became deeper as time went on.

And my mother went deepest into it.

The crackling of thunder echoed inside the hollowness of the cradle, its violent sound, muffled, due to the destiny of the steel. I rocked alive in a breath that was a gasped that grasped for the essence of life. Oxygen came scarcely inside the pod.

Machine called an HSU.

Eyes come alive as vision returned. Interior of the capsule deemed my cradle. It rocked over the abyss as the quote had gone. However. The literal always go further than the metaphorical. Light pelting taps on the narrowed and vertical glass set before me. Nothing but a cushion begins to expand at my back.

Then the acceleration of machinery quaked from the beyond.

I breathed and I breathed and I breathed. Gasping forevermore as I lean as far forward as I could. Lungs squeezing for breath and being an always being an iota short of what they needed. I pleaded in whimpered inhales for a touch of a little more.

Then my cage swung around as it was carried forth.

I started to move around to find that I could not. Legs that were long, cramped, knees forced out—pressing into the front of the pod. Kneecaps pushing into steal with the inability to pull back or for my legs to strength. I panicked. Unable to be comfortable. Forced always into awkwardness.

Positioning, not mattering, during hydrostasis.

It's the trick of the Warden, in causing discomfort in the cradle, to seek the freedom beyond it.

Ahead of the glass I can see the top of the Well. Never over its edge to the surface but forever teased to its existence. It's been an unknown time since I've last seen land. Not ground or floor or words for those. Land. Dirt and road. Grass and sand. Concepts now blurred due to a faulty memory.

Above shoots out four beams, on which, my pod, and that of others, rolls onto.

Air sizzles as its compression is lost. Latches blow and the front of my cradle is lost. Terribleness. Coldness and rain crashing into me again. Finally I can breathe. Lungs fresh of a muck caught within the wind. My legs push out a little, stretching, now finally free.

The pod rolls forward onto the machine, where three others join me, dragons of course, two that did not look confused—and one that did. Blue eyes in a glow like shimmering water through the dark. Still bright. Not yet drained. As they soon would be, in one fashion or another, deep inside the well.

The four of us were joined and, as the bolts locked us on the track, the rotary suddenly dropped, and I was forced to hold my breath, enduring the intensity of the fall. Faster we fell and tougher was the swell in the pits of my stomach. Curved walls blurring to the opening of floors and levels unable to be captured within a frame.

There was the sound of the wall. Whizzing of winds and the clicking and jittering of metals. Shouts and cries and screams of deities locked deep within the well. How many fates we did escape in the quickness of our fall.

My claws hold tightly to the bars of the pod and my head rests into the cushioning like a cocoon that is at my back. I look up to see that view of the sky is an impossible view. Everyday. They send me down in rain. Even above I know not what the world must look like beyond the thick clouds.

I fall.

"Why us! Why why why! Please stop! Make it stop! I-I hate heights! P-Please! This is really scary!"

I'm tempted to answer him but the intensity of the fall forces me to grasp to the bars harder. It doesn't help to get attached. Not because you don't want to. Rather the reverse is true. You're so desperate to get connected to any little thing.

And you'll always lose that which you hold the most hope for.

They don't drop us fast to be cruel—although that might be true. Rather they do it to save us from the fates of those who had gone slow. Back in the starting of the expeditions. Crews of dragons, sent down slow, as time was of no concern, pulled back in the team failing to eject from their pods.

In returning all four to the surface, bare remains were left of the dragons, some missing their skulls, others missing ribs, flesh torn, not devoured, though the bone chewed upon. Prisoners were dropped instead of lowered, to flash past the floors not yet cleared, those things, willing to jump, latching on to devour.

And that which also roamed within.

//: R46/CE49: ALPHA

RECEIVING WARDEN TRANSMISSION

WAITING

...

RECEIVED

WARDEN

//: DECODED SUBSURFACE TRANSMISSION

LOCATION OF ALPHA SECURED.

NEEDED FOR //ERROR ERORR//

...

GENEROUS AMOUNT OF PRISONERS: GRANTED

// SUBSURFACE TRANSMISSION REQUESTION

RECEIVING

// DECODING

...

// DECODED SUBSURFACE SUBMISSION

... IT'S THAT BITCH! SHE SET US UP!

WARDEN! CLOSE THOSE DOORS! WE WON'T—AAAAAA [SCREAM, GUNFIRE, UNTELLIGIBLE]

PLEASE! I DON'T WANNA [CRACK, COUGHING, CHOKING—UNKNOWN]

...

//: END OF TRANSMISSION

The message fades at the edge of the HUD as the machine slows in its pace. The screeching of metal echoing to the return of cries like nails on steel. Soon the wind slows and the swirling in our stomachs comes to do the same.

Finally there is a rock and a stop as the tearing of a floor swirls into view behind us. I look to my partners to see nothing of their expression. Nothing about that message seems to have them frazzled. The new one, of course, is terrified. But it seems like that would be the case no matter what.

"Why us? Please oh Celestia why us?" he asks and he asks in a prayer that is hush and quickens in every succession. "We're not here right now. Not here not here. We're not deep inside this well. Everything is okay. Okay! Everything is—"

"Oi now! Will you shut it?" The pods start to turn in the center of the chasm, where there is the opening of a room, torn through in a pierce able to make the Well, sheets of metals and dying lights, revealing, the floor to the Complex. "Who knows how many have jumped after us from above due to your screaming."

The pods were brought together in being hovered over the starting of the torn floor, a foot between the ground and the abyss behind, a length, rumoured, to reach the center of the world. It was rumoured to be as hot as the sun deep enough. I wondered if that's why my mother had plunged to the deepest parts when I was young.

"W-What is this place? Who are you guys? Please... what is... what..."

My heart stopped and so did the others as another heartbeat came to pulsate brightly. Even though there was nothing we could do, all of us remained still, except for the forth, who wiggled in his cocoon.

My dead eyes went wide at the view ahead of us. Opening to the floor was some kind of lab with a chunk of its corner torn. Fog was layered above the ground in a way that was not produced naturally. Cylinders rose from the flooring, slowly and without sound, pumping still, in there dying state, each succession, the lights, filtering on for a second longer.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Before the arrays of pumping cylinders, in the steel flooring smooth across, there was a sleeper, hunched over and alone, glowing, head raising and tilting back the brighter its light became. It was hard to see in the fog. But soon even that glowed to the hue of the monster's colour.

"W-What... what is that! What is that what is that?!”

"Oi! Fucking idiot! Shut the fuck up before you—"

"It's turning it's turning! S-Stop! I'm warning you! I'll—"

You had to be fucking kidding me! I exhale my exaltation in clenching my claws into the bars of my pod. Pushing on the impossible in order to free myself. I struggled and struggled as the safety had not come off. The creature's head continued to tilt back, right over its shoulders, extending more than it should have.

"What the fuck... what the fuck... please oh please... what the fuuuuck?"

I glare to the far left with the newbie had failed to shut the fuck up. Now he was still—when it was too late. Already he was crying and limpness composed his body. Still I fought to maybe do something. Meanwhile in looking back to the creature... all hearts stop once.

It was a monster of thin skin and thick flesh able to be seen. No features marked it. Its head sunk over the slope of its spine, and finally, the pressure on its center is too great. There is a rip. Slit developing across its front. Shooting upward as grey blood leaks from the cavity.

"What the fuck is it doing!"

"Will you shut up already!" I bark and already regret my mistake, knowing that, last one to speak, last one to do anything—gains the attention of the beast. "Oh shit. Shit shiit. Aw fuck!"

From the density of the tear comes the pouring of teeth from the sides of the slit. Growing out and widening the sides of the slit. Goo pours from the missing gums. Dried red hitting the ground like sludge. Smoke rises as it burns through the metal.

Already its focused on me.

Fuck fuck fuck!

My claws go to the beams and push on them again, they are still stuck, unwilling to let me out, as a bright light flashes on my eyes. Another cylinder rises from deep in the room, nearing the ceiling itself. It pumps down, and power comes in hard, illuminating the scene.

Of the countless silhouettes of hunched monsters not yet grown their teeth.

"Shut up." There comes the third voice. "Eat up death silently and shut the hell up!"

The room hadn't been alerted. Just the one that hadn't yet screamed. Didn't matter if we were in our pods if it did. Warden wouldn't take us back without the job done. Bright blue shines in the beyond to the alleviation of the room. To the many, around the towering pumps, which found the motion and the sound, soothing, as it rocked them to sleep.

The cradle rocks above the abyss.

And we are but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

"We all die if you make a sound," the second voice spoke again. "Do us a favour and die silently now—yeah?"

They were talking to me.

And yet.

"No no! Please! I don't want to die!" the fourth yells again, and in the distance, the shuffling of heartbeats echoes across the room. "I-I didn't even do anything wrong! Small hoard and no village burning! I don't deserve this!"

The others whispered the loudest they could.

"You whiny idiot."

"You weren't the one we were speaking to."

Ahead of us the monster had turned. Coming to stand in a stagger, to which, saggy feet, slapping the ground, left and right, began toward our forth. I look to the left and watch as the monster came toward him. There was a pelting, teeth like change in every step, clattering on the ground, each one bigger than the last.

"Ho fuck ho fuck HO FUCK!"

There was a cry and a growl and a gasp and the figure leapt at the dragon still suspended. It latched to his body effortlessly and leaned back in a vicious howl. Then it furled forward, into the side of his neck, devouring it into its slip, all those teeth, melting, the scales it suckles upon.

The bars come free.

At once, I am on my feet and, in the second next, I dash to the pod, reaching the creature's legs and yanking it back—hearing bone crack from the pull. It flies and hits the ground behind me, more crack echoing, like the kind coming from the sickly and the old, the thing, convulsing on the ground.

It lies on its back and rolls to the sides, its skeleton underneath the flesh, crackling during its adjusting, a flimsily state barley held together. Its bones mended to put the flesh in whatever state it craved. The many figures it became.

"Outta the way."

There was a claw on my chest pulling me to the side and, in the second next, a foot stepping over my own, a dragon dressed in an outfit, holding a gavel high over his head. It came down in the moment after, right into the creature's head, which popped at once, an explosion of unknown matter.

I wanted to fall onto my ass to pant and breathe and to reflect on the fact that I was alive. Yet we looked behind us to the pod to where our forth was supposed to me. He'd been silent since the attack. We quickly knew why.

The three of us turned to face the pod that was feet above us. There the dragon laid back in his cradle. He laid back in it fine. His head was leaning to the right and away from the bite mark. The left side of his neck was missing and, on squinting, I could see the dim interior to his throat.

His expressions was a terrified yet dumb one. It always seems like death causes the face to look its stupidest. Soon the dragon's head tilted too much to the right and, the connecting flesh, tearing from the lean—now ripped.

And his head plopped onto the ground between our feet.

All three of us were looking down.

Red was the first to look up. "Funny how they say dragons have the better luck of surviving this muck huh?"

Blue hushes him at once. "Quiet. We haven't woken them yet."

The bars release on our forth and, as his body crashes atop his head, we all look back, to the rise of the floor.

Few lights glow brighter, but not for long, as the hum of the engine, keeps going on, which lulls them to sleep.

"Those bastards react only to a relative break in motion and sound." Red kicks the limp body, the sound, dull, and terribly lethargically. "And we've caught them next to an engine. So long as we don't lose our shit like dim-wits here—we should be nice and dry for the moment."

I cough and look to the victim. "And what do we do about him?"

Blue shakes his head. "Added problem we need nothing of."

"Added problem? Hold the fuck up there champ." Red turns Blue, the first taller than the second, though more slender, while the second, plump and round. "When the fuck would you ever need a fuhkin added problem?"

Blue growls. "He might turn."

"Naaaah." Red shake his head. "Heard that was a load of bullcrap."

"Heard from who?"

"Just haven't experienced it yet."

"Ever drop with same crew twice?"

Red breathes for a second. "Alright. The fuck we do with the body?"

Blue looks over to me, not for input, but rather, to read me. In seeing nothing because I am nothing, his gaze returns to the corpse and, upon setting foot on it, pushes, rolling it over the edge. The body falls and distant smacks against rocks come up. Then there is nothing for a long while.

"Kinda fucked up there."

"Grab the ammo for his weapons and disperse it equally."

"Communist bastard—I love you."

Red walks to the cocoon and reaches into the right side, far into its divot, pulling out the strung bags and the weapon locked to the casket. I do the same with my own, pulling out my guns, old mining equipment, magically infused, to be fired.

Red passes the ammo to Blue and some to himself—more to himself than Red—before handing a clip my way. He holds it out for a long while, shaking it, waiting for me to take it. "Well?"

I hold up my claw and gesture for him to take it.

"Another that's not fond of living? Well if this isn't my lucky day! Teammates that won't even be alive to protect my fuckin' arse." Red pulls out a sniper from his pod, which is the last to retract, it tilting up, joining the rest, as they shoot, slowly, to the surface. "Just gotta fight well enough for two. Or three. Though I'm used to that by now."

"Used to shutting the fuck up at all?"

"Only when it matters plump and plumper."

I hold out my weapon and look at it longingly, seeing a glow of purple that comes from deep inside of it. Curse of the one who sent me down here all that time ago. To think how much technology would come from magic—and how it caused it all to regress.

//: DECODED WARDEN TRANSMISSION

MSGCAT : : OBJ.NEW

FIND HSU_797 SOMWEHRE INSIDE ZONE999//?ERROR?//

MSGDEC_STATUS l l E_DONE

_TRANSMISSION CHECKSUM 416508841

// END OF WARDEN TRANSMISSION

"That cannot be correct."

"Can't be correct all the way around your roundness!" Red spoke a little louder than he should have, and I knew, for the sleepers above glowed more in number. Even though the engine went on, they could sense us, and the death that had happened. "Can't even text to say her life! Some gifted princess that bitch was. Know of flip phones that worked better than this flimsy shit."

Blue paces back and forth in place, an eye on the surroundings, devouring it all, needing to keep attention on everything. He seems like the kind to plan for it all. Knowing only an objective and the ways to it. His type did alright. But they died if their plan went alight. "Warden corruptions are normal. This place has been around too long to be fully functional. She did drop us at the right floor.”

Red scoffs. "And how the fuck you figure that out you fat fuck? Eat a sign telling you where we was—and where we need to go?"

"Up there." Blue turns and points over the climb of the floor, and the pooling lights, which splashed onto the wall over them. 986. "It must be in one of these rooms. It still dropped us within the vicinity of it."

"And what if that number was supposed to go on for a hell of a lot longer?"

"You ever descended into the thousands?"

Red is forced into silence again.

"And how about you purple?"

I blink and shake my head.

"There you have it." Blue pumps the shotgun in his claws, tossing it over his back, letting a carbine hang over his shoulder. He cracks his neck in a way that summons more lights from beyond. "Either it's Zone 999 or we're fucked. Quit your complaining and let's find out if we get to be fucked another day."

Together we left the room.

From the glowing lights.

And the body still falling.

//: DECODED WARDEN TRANMISSION

MGSCAT : : TWI.LIGHT

SPIKE. I KNOW YOU MISS HER.

YOU PUSHED WHAT YOU COULDN'T PULL

SO HOW DEEP DO YOU INTEND TO FALL?

MESSAGE : : E_DONE

// END OF WARDEN TRANSMISSION

“Though the door! Through the fucking door!” Our feet pound into the ground as the crunching of bones race behind us. Darkness blankets us beyond the dim lighting of our flashlights. Steel brackets of storage rooms offering us protection from the chasing and shooting stars. "Turn and fire! You can't outrun them! Turn and fire or else you're dead!"

I turn and bring the SMG close as I narrow my shots to the quickening foes. Tubes of flesh barreling teeth inside barrel after me in curves through the air. Shot after shot causes them to retract. One suckle and you are done. These things drink you to death.

In the darkness I see nothing. In doing nothing I am sure to see nothing. Yet it is in pulling the trigger, the flash of the muzzle, the spark of the bullet on an object, that I am able to see. Those flashes in the night, allowing me to see its horror—but, at the same chance, offering me a chance against it.

There is a moral in that, somewhere.

I have no desire to live.

But in firing my shots.

My actions contradict my intentions.

I wasn't sure I was through the door until the change of biome came apparent. From a storage from to the sterile whiteness of a metallic lab. Its large and wide door, closing, to the coming of enemies. Dropping to my stomach I fired more shots. Enough to stagger a few from crawling through.

Red did the same as I, his bullets, firing loud in electricity, blasting like a cannon, rumbles through the ground, a sizzling from the slot where the next capsule went in. Ahead show a line reduced to a paste and a smear on the floor.

The door closed before the horde.

"You bloody bastard... you bloody bastard!" Blue backed a few steps in needing to breathe harder than his lungs could handle. Coughs follow him in every attempt to gasp to breathe. Looking around the lab, there was a console to our right, a wall to our left, some steps and a panel, nothing more than that.

And already there was banging on the door.

Blue reaches for his waist and pulls out a grenade. "That's enough out of you."

He tosses it at the door and a foam covers it. The knocking comes lighter and muffled although it is still there. Blue stumbles to the computer, hacking and wheezing, searching for what he needs to.

"Querying the damn thing now." Blue coughs into his shoulder again. "Still five zones away from getting closer. The hell is all this? Everything's so polished near the center of the world."

His hacking continued.

"The fuck is this? HSU_787 not found."

Red pushes to his feet and hops in place, looking to the thinning foam on the door to the one on the PC. He glances at me and I give him the nod. I return to looking at the door. My claw reaches for my revolver—but then I stop.

It's not a weapon I use on sleepers.

"The fuck you mean it's not found? It the Warden dickin' us about again is it? Knew that... the hell?"

Whimpers and whimpering. Cries of light before it dies. Crackling bones now snapped into death. The horde, no more, beyond the door. It stands tall and its lights flickers at the top and on its sides. I look to my right, seeing the two by the console, the windows behind them, which looked into a testing chamber.

What the hell were they doing here? I had no idea as I rose. Looking over my shoulder to the slanted way to see 995 on the wall. My mates came to join me at my side, our guns now out, knowing there to be something on the other side.

"Something's coming." Red cocks another shell into his sniper. "Something we ain't seen before. Some wicked shit was going down on the deeper floors. What could... A-Angela baby?"

I look from Red to the door and found I could do so no more. Nothing was around me but a tree standing large on a hilltop. Fair winds blew and the lush grass bent with it. Faint blue painted the sky with a breeze that was fresh.

//: ERROR??ERROR??EROOR??

SOMETIMES THE PAST NEVER PASSES

DO NOT BE SWEPT BACK

ALL MUST GO FORWARD OR FOREVER BE STILL

//: END

"Spike?"

That voice. It captures me at once. Makes me look over my shoulder to the top of the hill. There she is standing. My mother looking positively sinister. Before the bark and forever on top. Her faze was blurry as all of this was based in memory. "Tell me. Why are dragons places in an HSU?"

I blink and shake my head and answer. "Because dragons are one of the few creatures to hyphenate. Your cradles take advantage of that to force us into sleep. Our length of life means we can be called into services a thousand years apart."

Celestia laughed despite not possessing a mouth. "Cute. You keep to expressing objective information as it tends to be correct. Yet you do not propose your feelings on such matters."

"Are prisoners allowed to have feelings?"

"Why did you enlist to become one?"

"Because I was feeling guilty."

"Because you pushed me?"

"Because I pushed you."

"Then why don't you come to me, now, and hug me? Pretend you have caught me in relish in that feeling." Celestia reared onto her back legs and, in rising up, a tear slit across her featureless face. Down her throat and across her chest and over her belly. Everything widening to take me inside. "Aren't you tired? Don't you want to be back with your mommy? Always stuffed in your cradle."

"I..."

"Be with me as you were before." The monstrosity split more, becoming wider, a depth of darkness willing to take me inside. I nearly stepped toward it. To let this nightmare to be over. "Inside me. In a womb that was your room. Always spacious and free. Don't you want to return to me?"

I smiled without knowing why. I looked behind me to the field of grass of darkened emerald. Thousands of little Spikes came, crawling on their backs on all fours, heading toward their mother, the waves rushing past me feet.

They raced into her, inside her, disappearing into her abyss.

And as they passed.

I took out my gun.

Aiming for my head.

And taking the shot.

//: DECODED WARDEN TRANMISSION

> LAID IN DARKNESS

HATCHED IN THE LIGHT

LIVING IN DARKNESS

DESIRING THE LIGHT

//: END OF TRANSMISSIONS

"C'mon now." Taps at my face to draw the opening of my eyes. "I know you're not dead yet. At least you're not inside-out yet. Never gonna have to imagine what the inside of a fat fuck looks like ever again."

I look to the world and find us back in the lab. I am on the ground and Red stands over me. He wears a mask I barely can see his face through. He seems to be smiling that I am alive. It is not because I am alive. Rather it is because someone else is alive.

My eyes go to look at the door.

"No you don't." His claw grabs the side of my face and holds it for a moment. "There's a body there. Some hideous thing with eyes glowing red. Fucked up experiment. Lava like blood emerges across its body the more you look at it. Burned right through the door in reaching us. Sent us for... whatever the fuck it sent us for."

I decided not to look at the door.

Instead I looked to the console. Parts of everything covered it. Chunks of the inside of a dragon.

Red looks over his shoulder and at it. "Poor dumb fuck. Probably never dealt with the special types before. They did all kinds of shit shit down here. The powers some of these fucking things have. God damn own ecosystem down here. Say... how did you get out of the dream?"

I blink. "Killed myself?"

"Figured as much since you're a bastard with a death wish." Red towers above me, but in so doing, offers a claw, a gesture for me to join him. I wonder why I should bother, and yet, my claw takes it. The body lives on even when the mind does now. "Ever since you declined that ammo. Saw my little one in there. Knew it was dream yet I couldn't bear to kill her."

Red looks to the remains of Blue, who is now a paste, around everywhere. "Controlling fuck wasn't he? Seemed like he planned for everything. Yet its those types that hold out a bit of hope. Must have saw something to hold on to—and it blew him back hard enough to reveal everything within. Poor bastard."

Red chuckles. "Wasn't suicidal or cynical enough to see through the bullshit. That special type seems weakened by its failure. Let's kick a leg before it tries another trick."

I nod.

And we went on.

I do not know how long we were in the dark, taking it slow and clearing the rooms, able to see in the dark, for moments, in the flashing of our lights. Seeing sleepers hunched over and glowing in a moment, before their heartbeats stopped again, and we could ensure, through the use of our gavel, it kept that way for good.

996.

997.

998.

999.

The rooms became more and we soon passed through labs clean of anything. The last one was the greatest of it all as it was a cold-storage facilitating... something. In the monolithic wall was a door unlike the others. It requires a scan to be opened.

And possessed the numbers.

1000.

"Ain't that right? That's just right... ain't it?" Red and I reach the door to the windows at its bottom, seeing through, to what lurks on the other side. It was rocks and lava and such. The world, untouched, in its deepest of parts. "Centre of the world that is. Not even a dragon could handle that shit for long."

There was a growl from the other side of the hall. This room is a big lane, reminiscent of a bridge, where everything shoots from this door. It made sense. They mined from ahead to build all that came before.

"Knew it had been too quiet—always one in the fuckin' dark ain't there?" Red tosses up his sniper and looks through the scope, exhaling, not to steady his aim. "Nope. No living through that. This is it then."

I blink. "What about the HSU?"

"Still on about that? Mission's dead." Red backs to the door and I follow with him on those steps, him pulling the lever on it, a scan appearing around us. "Even if we get this open and dash our tight asses through—we don't outrun that. Frankly. I'm tired of running anyway."

"But the Warden—"

"Sent us to die."

"Like that previous message?"

"That dream screw you loose? What message." Red chuckles. "Ha then. Well. You are the legendary purple—aren't you? Certainly know how to not live up to your reputation." Red's laughter grew in a way, to any other sound, would be painful. "We were set to die from the start. That one sleeper by itself. Dream getting our Mr. Never Fooled. And even me here."

I shake my head and pull out my gun and prepare to fire. "Don't you mean us?"

Red laughs again. The scan around us turns purple as the percentage goes faster. In seconds it is done, though, instead of the massive thing opening—only a small slot at its bottom does so. I turn to look at it, and in so doing, feeling a push on my back.

I stumble through to safety.

And I turn around, right in time, to see the latch seal itself back into place.

Red looks at me from the other side. "Your girl is manipulative as all tits buddy. That's half of my criteria for not going to hell out of the way. You're alone now." He returns to his sniper and starts firing, each round, sparking lighting in the dark, allowing me to see the density of waves rolling toward him. "And, in a way, that's hella worse than dying."

The sea would be upon him in seconds.

And I could not bear to see him drown.

As I stepped back.

Turned around.

And went on my way to the center of the world.

//: TRANSMISSION

OVERRIDE!

FIND NEONATE_489 SOMEWHERE IN ZONE 1000

I switch off the transmissions and I walk in the dark. Laval flanks me at the sides as they flow in lakes. Nothing gives me cause to ready gun. Rather it's empty. Hopeless. Setting mattering not when one is alone. Yet as I wander, I come to a place, a building set on rock, vast enough to be a prison—reminding me of one.

I go inside of it and flick on my flashlight. It's empty and huge with steps going up and down. It's here that I can see a path leading to the right. Down a flight of steps to doors left open. What seemed like a prison, from inside, reminding me more of a hospital.

In how everything seems like it was quickly left in a mess.

I enter the room to find it empty. There are racks with slots meant for something round. Then I see it. On the ground, knocked over, an HSU like mine—only smaller. I come to it and I crouch before it. Something knocked over in the rush of a collapse from inside of the place.

It is here that, in rolling the thing over, I see through the window, the egg that is inside, a dragon's egg. Nothing is tainted about it. Clean and pure and safe despite this place. I'd felt ready to use my other gun on myself.

//: TRANSMISSION

OVERRIDE!

THE ALPHA HAS BEEN ACQUIRED BY THE OMEGA

SUBJECTS REQUIRED AT EXTRACTION AT ZONE_1000

NEEDED CONDITIONS... ACQUIRED

NO WITNESSES... ACQUIRED

DECOYS TO OTHER WARDENS... ACQUIRED

WAITING

...

OVERRIDE!

Spike

I know you're reading this

That egg is your brother

Please

I need you both to come back to me

Do not let me live fully inside this machine

Resuscitation is possible for a body

Return to the surface

//: END OF TRANSMISSION