Charged - Book One Page 14

  “The children are still learning how to control their emotions. I’m certain the creatures will come for this room first. It’s better if we don’t have everyone emotionally overwhelmed if we can avoid it.”

  “Why this room?”

  “They’ve killed a couple of our coverts already and if they can pull images from us, then they’ll want to get in this room…”

  She slid back the huge table with ease, showing a square indentation in the center with thirteen plugs.

  “…because this is the helm. You can start the ship from any location, but you can only control flight destinations from here.” She slid the table back and continued typing on the screen in front of her and then a visual of the main hall appeared on all the screens.

  “Do you have audio?” Aaron said.

  “Yes.”

  Aaron nodded at Kye to connect him. “Jessica, are you there?”

  “I’m here,” she stood up, waving at the camera.

  “Baby, hide.”

  She stopped moving her hands and moved to the back of the room, looking through cabinets and pulling out large containers, trying to find a space large enough for her.

  “Everyone hold tight. We’ll do everything we can and Station Ten is on its way,” Aaron said into the mouthpiece. He then told Kye to hit mute and took a deep breath.

  Danel tapped the screen in front of us. There were several more screens, which showed feed from the main hall. We could now see many glowing eyes. Not all were yellow or orange; some were green and some purplish-blue. They sat there waiting, not talking or moving, all huddled around one of the circular tables. All were present and most were dressed in white lab coats. Each was touching the hand of another, except for Jessica and all eyes were bright.

  I could recognize most of them, even Lyra, who almost never spoke to me. Maybe they were praying or talking in other ways; I didn’t know. I could see Jessica trying to squeeze her large body into one of the pantries. She was so different from the rest.

  Danel quickly glanced over the guns on the table. “Is that everything?”

  “Yes,” Aaron said. We all knew it wasn’t enough.

  “Remember to aim for the head.”

  I was sitting next to Kye and put my hand on hers and squeezed slightly and she squeezed back, looking at me.

  “Is there any way to turn up the lighting in here?” I said.

  Kye hit a few buttons on the table in front of her and the soft blue light increased by eighty percent. She then looked at Danel, who had closed his eyes for a moment and then strained a little as he opened them.

  “I don’t want them missing the target.” Her voice was soft but stern.

  “I know,” he said.

  Kye was so in control of her emotions and here I was, sweating like a pig. How many times had I been in the line of fire and kept a cool, calm head? Where was that now? I tried to compose myself. I looked at Aaron and he had a look on his face that clearly said he had been in some bad situations that I probably didn’t want to know about. He enjoyed the chaos, almost like he was getting high off it. My adrenaline was still in flight mode, but I knew when the time came, I would shoot straight without a single tremor. Hopefully.

  As I stared at Aaron’s glowing eyes, I wondered if he could still see in the brighter light.

  “Do the brighter lights affect your vision?”

  “No,” he answered. “Jessica enhanced the muscles surrounding my pupils. It looks like I have no pupils in dim light because the muscles surrounding the iris are completely relaxed to allow maximum illumination and she put in a reflective patch to maximize the light. That muscle contracts in bright light and the patch flips to the unreflective side.”

  Danel then tapped on three of the holographic screens hanging above the oval table, activating them by disrupting the screens’ lighting source. They went black for a half a second and then switched to a clear view of the inside of the satellite dishes. The video cams that were placed on the dishes were set high up on the edges of the panels, so you could see the whole inner dish, but not the outside and surrounding areas. So far, there were no signs of the black-winged creatures.

  “Kye, max out the electrical load to the dishes up top and turn on all the mini cams in the bases of the dishes,” Danel instructed.

  Kye worked with ease as Aaron and I watched. She tapped on the table and screens in front of her, manipulating the images.

  “Done.”

  Danel then touched the left bottom corner of each of the three holographic screens hanging over the table and they enlarged to three times their size. Each screen was a larger view of the inside of each satellite dish above.

  “Do you see them?” Aaron said in a way that suggested that he saw something that the rest of us didn’t.

  We all searched the monitors and saw nothing. Danel then touched the small blue square in each screen to reproduce the image on the screen that just Aaron was observing. Still, I saw nothing.

  “The small shadows moving across the dish… they’re flying over it,” Aaron explained.

  We inspected the screens again and we could see three dim shadows passing back and forth across the center satellite dish as if they were waiting for something. They might be reflective, but they still cast shadows.

  They were here earlier than expected. My stomach lurched up into my throat, making it dry and my heart sank into my feet making my whole body feel like a brick.

  “I think I can direct another electrical current to the doors of this room, but we won’t have auxiliary if I do. Lewis, when that happens, everyone will be able to see except you.”

  I didn’t get the enhancement that Aaron did and now I regretted it.

  Kye continued to manipulate the tabletop’s schematics, tapping it in various places. This meant they would need the guns and rounds when this happened. I looked at Aaron and he nodded as if he could read my mind.

  “How many times can we surge the dishes?”

  “Just once,” she said, “and it’s going to fry every wire up there when we do.”

  Kye started working on the table, switching screens back and forth as the rest of us watched the cam feed. Five more shadows started flying across the south dish and two more shadows were hovering above the north dish.

  Kye’s skin started radiating even more. The swirling veins under her skin started moving faster. I looked at Danel and he was also brighter and I remembered what Kye said. They were sweating. Only Aaron looked calm now.

  Finally, a group of six landed on the north dish without camouflage. They wanted their presence known. Just watching these things move made me want to run. The black-winged creatures didn’t look fluid in movement. Their upper bodies bounced out of sync with their lower bodies, as if they weren’t completely connected. Their wings rotated a full three hundred and sixty degrees and their hooked claws embedded themselves into the dishes as they landed.

  We simply didn’t have enough ammo for this many. Even if we got really close, it would just be Aaron and me shooting and Danel and Kye waiting. Not enough guns.

  “How many?”

  “Sixteen,” Aaron said.

  Three more landed on the south dish. I couldn’t count fast enough to separate the shadows, apart from the ones that had landed.

  “Nineteen,” Aaron called out, as if we were sharing the same thought.

  “Done,” Kye said. “We can surge these doors as well, but I don’t know if it will be enough to kill them.”

  Suddenly, one of the creatures drew its attention to the camera mounted on the base of the center satellite. It drew closer, as if it knew we were watching. Its eyeless face contorted with rage as it let out a scream and then with one hooked arm, it reached back and swung forward, crushing the camera.

  I tore my eyes away from the screen and looked at my watch. Thirty minutes until Station Ten arrived.

  We still had the rest of the cameras functioning and we watched silently as two of the creatures on the south dish flew over to
the center dish. Danel looked at me and then back at the screen. For the first time, he looked nervous. His fingers were rubbing his lipless mouth and he kept closing his eyes as if he was talking to himself, or maybe he was trying to mask his emotions from the others.

  His attention was suddenly drawn to one of the screens. One of the two creatures that landed in the center dish was reaching back and stabbing the door to the elevator shaft that Aaron and I had gone through.

  “We don’t have a choice now. The electrical current won’t conduct through the different materials in the shaft. We have to open the circuit before they climb inside,” he said.

  The creature holding the shaft door contracted its’ hooks directly back into its skin for a moment and I think I stopped breathing. The metal circular door fell to the base of the dish, just to the left of the opening and I shuddered at its power. After a moment, it started crawling inside.

  “Kye, do it now!” Danel yelled.

  “No! Wait!” Aaron said. “Three more are about to land!”

  Kye hesitated.

  “Do it now!” Danel said, standing up, now clearly afraid, clearly terrified.

  “Two seconds!” Aaron’s voice sounded strained. Then we saw one slowly crawl into the tube and three more land in the center dish.

  “Now!” Aaron said.

  I was with Aaron on this. It was better to kill three more than worry about one.

  Kye activated the electrical charge and the creatures started screaming. They couldn’t escape and we listened to their screeches that were inhuman and ear-piercing. Their bodies jerked violently and the one that was almost in the tube still had one claw on the base of the dish. Then the cameras went out.

  We sat staring silently at black screens, listening to muffled metallic screams from above that reached twenty stories down. I wondered if the others in the main hall could hear the screeching. Then it grew quiet. Silence filled the room.

  “How many did we get?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Collin said twenty-four total, right?”

  “Twenty-four, but two of them seemed injured when they crashed here,” Kye said.

  “How many have you killed?” I said, looking at Danel.

  “Just the one that killed Richie.”

  “So, best-case scenario,” Aaron said, “nine are either going to try for the elevator shaft that is no longer electrified or they are all digging beside it right now and two injured ones waiting in the wings.”

  There was twenty-five minutes until Station Ten arrived and hopefully half an hour before the remaining creatures could reach us. So there was approximately a five-minute leeway for error, which I was sure was enough time to kill most of us.

  CHAPTER 34

  WE COULD NOW HEAR the sound of metal scraping against itself from above. We sat waiting for death or rescue.

  “Do we know where they are?” I said.

  “We won’t have a visual until they breach the main garden room,” Danel answered, bringing up the screens to that area.

  No one seemed to be thinking. They were just more or less reacting to the situation.

  “There has to be something else we can do,” I whispered.

  Kye shook her head. She had clearly done all she could do. She gave me a sad smile.

  “The fountains,” Aaron muttered.

  Danel looked at him, hoping for an idea.

  “Can we close off the second garden room?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Kye brought up a blueprint on the main computer.

  “This section has an emergency lockdown in case there is a hull breach when the ship is in flight.”

  “Can you access it from here?”

  “Yes, but it won’t hold them for more than a couple minutes.”

  “How thick are the doors?”

  “Ten inches, maybe less.”

  “How fast do the doors come down?”

  “Half a second.”

  “The fountains… are they self-contained, or do they connect to the main source?”

  “Main supply; one hundred and fifty thousand gallons that line the bottom of the ship that is continually recycled. Why?” Kye said.

  “We can drown them. You have at least twelve fountains just in the main garden room. How much water can we pump through them and how fast?”

  “It would take half an hour just to fill the room,” Danel said.

  “We don’t even know if they can drown. We don’t know if they have lungs,” Kye said.

  “They can drown,” Danel said.

  “Blow the pumps,” Aaron said. “Blow the fountains right out of the floor.”

  “What about the waterfall in the second garden?” I asked.

  “It’s self-contained.” Danel said.

  CHAPTER 35

  “WE HAVE A VISUAL,” Kye said, looking at the screen. She quickly changed all of our screens to see what she was seeing.

  All eleven of them were present and none looked injured. They were flying through the main garden room and their bodies became almost entirely invisible, as if the hunt was on. They glistened against the blue light, making their outer shells look like broken pieces of mirrors strung together by some undetectable source. They were moving so fast that the mirror shards were only slightly disrupted, so I could only make out half their forms. Had they not been moving, I don’t think I would’ve seen them at all.

  I couldn’t imagine anything worse than this. These things came from Hell, from some unspeakable place. They flew right into the alien trees unaffected and uprooted them. Some crashed against the fountains, shattering them into tiny pieces. It was as if they knew that their bodies would be unaffected.

  Four were scaling across the walls and it was more horrifying than I’d imaged. What I could make out from the shifting mirrored images looked impossible to physically do. Their oversized hooked arms flew out in front of them, stabbing the walls and their legs came out from underneath their bodies in between the arms on the inside. Their bodies looked bent in half with every leap, due to their arms being twice the length of the legs. And the distance obtained in this movement was unsurpassed by any human or animal I’d ever seen. Every jarred leap they took had two seconds of glide time from lift off to touch down: launch, glide, land and repeat.

  Kye’s eyes started to water as we watched. Aaron was motionless. And Danel? Danel was completely composed, as if he were the one doing all the watching in the last month. Or maybe I simply couldn’t read his expression. I was hoping for the latter.

  “I’ve never seen them move like this,” Kye said.

  I know remembered that she saw everything differently than me.

  Danel didn’t reassure her. He simply looked at the screen like he was watching something he’d seen a hundred times.

  “Don’t wait for all of them. Don’t wait too long!” Aaron’s voice was panicked now. He was just starting to worry and I could feel my body getting ready for fight mode. My mind started to move faster; my blood was rushing into my muscles.

  It would only be a moment now before they reached the second garden room. Four of the ones in flight got there before the others, moving at incredible speed. It was only a matter of seconds for them to get halfway into the second garden room.

  “Now, Kye!” Danel ordered.

  With trembling hands, she hit two buttons on the touch screen in the table in front. And nothing happened.

  “Now, Kye!” Danel yelled.

  “I did!” Kye’s voice was now trembling.

  “Oh, God!” slipped from my lips. The doors didn’t close.

  Danel now pushed Kye out of the way and hit the keys himself and still nothing happened. Tension and sweat and breath filled the room. One of the creatures that was in flight landed in the doorway of the second garden and seemed to look around with its eyeless head. It was looking for us, trying to sense us. It would only be a moment before all of them were through both gardens and on their way.

  “Damn!” Danel’s compo
sure was completely gone.

  “They haven’t been used in five thousand years,” Kye was trying to explain.

  Danel hit two other keys and the floor shook as the door came down. It was faster than my own human eyes could see, slicing one creature in half just as four more creatures reached it. They stopped, looking at the remains of the creature that was crushed and began to claw at the doors. The creature severed by the door was still moving. Half its body was in the garden room and the other half was now dragging itself slowly in our direction.

  Quickly, Kye blew the pumps by increasing the pressure in the storage tanks that lined the ship. The remaining fountains exploded into pieces almost simultaneously. The sound was deafening, like large booms from fireworks, one after the other separated by only fractions of a second. Some of the creatures were struck by a few large pieces of the fountains, but they were unaffected.

  We watched as the first four stopped clawing the door and turned their heads towards the sound and debris that had hit them. During those three seconds, the rooms were already twenty-five percent full. At water level, they were not reflective at all. The orange and pink elements of the water didn’t blend together, but resembled oil and water: one being much lighter than the other, but you could still see through it.

  The creatures slowly started to change in appearance. The parts of their bodies that touched the water were black and looked like hard shiny metal. We watched as half went back to the main entrance, only to see that both doors had come down. As they clawed their way back, I had to catch my breath, because the parts of them that were in the water were visible, but the parts of them that were out of the water were still invisible. I was watching half a creature claw back to the main doors.

  There were eight completely locked in the second garden and three in the first garden which was also filling with water. The three creatures in the first garden started climbing back out the way they had come in. That would buy us time until Station Ten arrived. Backup would be here in a matter of minutes and I was no longer afraid. But I was really hoping that none of the guys from Station Ten were going to be in that tunnel when the creatures started climbing back out.