Page 53 of Monstrous Rampage
:Figure it out,:I retorted. Then I shut him out. I’d rather block him like an asshole so he didn’t hear my emotional instabilities if this failed to work. Though he probably would need a little help, so I plugged Terroar into the medic’s channel. Between the two of them, they’d come up with a solid plan, and if I couldn’t trust Terroar, then we were already dead anyway.
:I don’t need the door destroyed,:I told Kaos.:Just the locking mechanism. It’s keyed only for Snyder’s access with a passcode nothing else on the ship uses.:
:Understood.:He laughed awkwardly, a sheepish tone creeping into his channel.:I’m going to try something unorthodox then to make sure the acid is as finely targeted as possible.:
Cramming my bulk back into the rear corner as far as possible, I scanned all the ship’s alerts while watching Kaos through our temporary channel.
NSTG-A has entered the training chamber.
HITMS has entered the training chamber.
CDC has entered the training chamber.
XAS has entered the training chamber.
HITMS engaging NSTG-A in combat.
SPTD engaging UGRR in combat.
Good. I hoped there would be so many updates that Snyder might miss any alarms we triggered. Detection was inevitable. What mattered was how long we had to get to Holly before the ship blew.
Kaos moved closer to the door, ducked beneath the refraction shield. Acid burned up his throat, but he only allowed a small amount to fill his mouth. It burned, destroying his own flesh, even as his body began healing the trauma. His blackened tongue flicked out in a quick lick over the door’s control panel, and then he swallowed the corrosive fluid back into his stomach. His first stomach, one of four, to be exact. Though the fourth stomach was barely just a bud, not quite formed.
:Looks like that worked.:He stared at the panel, letting me see through his eyes. Metal bubbled and dripped down the door. The panel shorted out in a series of sparks.:Trying manual override.:
Warning: BGR++ lock failure. Cell escape eminent.
Sirens screamed. Red lights flashed. I didn’t have to tell him to fucking hurry. He heaved the door upward, grunting with effort. Nihil tried to help with his armored head, but he didn’t dare shift back and risk someone seeing them on a camera.
I delayed shifting as long as possible too. If Snyder saw the alert and checked the cameras, I wanted him to see me still safely trapped. But as soon as the dyni managed to get the door a few inches off the ground, I shifted to my humanoid shape and threw myself toward the small slit of light.
Kaos roared with effort, both of us fighting pain. I partially shifted my arms, trying to dig claws into the tungsten to pull myself through. If he slipped?—
I refused to think about it. At least it’d be a quick death.
Nihil seized my arm in his teeth and helped drag me through. Lost a little skin but not bad. Keeping low beneath his shield, I ordered, :Let’s go.:
Panting, Kaos braced his hands on his knees, his head down.:Need a moment or I’ll puke, and that will be very, very bad.:
Every delay made me want to snarl and snap and rend but I kept my jaws locked tight. The dynos had saved my life. The least I could do was not bellow at him to hurry the fuck up when he was sick. He’d swallowed down corrosive fluid that ate through tungsten like it was no big deal. Yes, it came out of his own stomach, but his mouth and esophagus were raw.
:Damn,:he said on our channel.:The melted metal had enough acid mixed in it to start eating through the floor. Is there anything beneath this level?:
:Nothing but space.:I switched to the XAS’s channel, passing along images of the acid eating through the tungsten floor and Kaos’ file.:Compute how long we have until hull breach.:
Kaos moved closer to Nihil’s opposite shoulder, and we made our way slowly back toward the lift.
:Without exact measurements?—:
:An estimate,:I retorted.:Five minutes or thirty?:
:Approximately seventeen minutes at the current rate of disintegration.:
It’d taken Nihil and Kaos nearly twenty minutes to reach the hold at their current pace.
:We’re not going to make it at this pace,:I told them both.:When we exit the lift, shift so we can run like hell.:
Nihil lurched forward in a faster shuffle, rumbling the floor with his massive weight. We made it to the lift, and I hit the call button.
