Page 51 of Consume
Cold sweat leaked down my face. I shivered so hard my fingertips slipped off the screen, away from the green button that would launch me into uncertainty.
I had to do this. I had to at least try.
Gathering every last bit of hope I’d ever dared to feel, I steeled myself with it, like an iron column in my backbone.
I pushed the button.
Chapter Fourteen
The particles thatmade up my yellow safety suit morphed into little floating blue squares, faster and faster until the squares consumed it. Consumed me. Then everything whisked upward, squares, me, everything, except my stomach. It seemed to have stayed behind because I wanted to retch but couldn’t.
There was no up and down, no sights or smells, just the extreme sense of movement. Fast transport. Almost instantaneous, because shimmering blue squares waved in the distance like stars. I hurtled toward them, and it could’ve been that some of them belonged to me, that they were me spread out between this second and the next.
It was the most surreal thing I’d ever experienced.
The blue squares grew more concentrated the closer I drew to them until they surrounded me and took the shape of my body. Gradually, they faded into my yellow safety suit, winking out to total darkness. It suffocated me, this darkness, as solid and complete as I now was.
My ragged breaths fogged the helmet, and I stumbled forward blindly. Had I made it? Was I on the Saelises’ ship? I swiped the glass with the sleeve of my safety suit, but it didn’t do any good.
One thing was clear, though—my feet touched ground. I was definitely somewhere or I’d be floating off into space. A small relief, but I’d take it.
The iron cube was still in my mouth, yet another small relief.
I started forward down a steep embankment, and soon, each step made a sloshing sound, lapping something wet up to my knees. On second thought, I was glad I couldn’t see anything. But I didn’t have time to stay in the dark. I sped my pace, fiddling with the switches on my helmet and thinking I would run into something eventually. My steps were loud, but it couldn’t be helped.
Finally, a gray light glowed from somewhere up ahead. As I neared it, a tunnel wall appeared on my left and then opened into a perpendicular tunnel. Around the corner, a ladder stretched up to a circular door in the wall. I hurried toward it, and as soon as I lifted my foot on the first rung, a loud plop sounded somewhere behind me, followed by another.
My muscles seized. I didn’t dare turn around to see who else waded through Saelis piss and shit with me. Instead, I hauled myself up the ladder and twisted open the door, my back prickling with the sense that something was creeping up behind me.
Through a crack in the door, a long, wide hallway with thick green vines and ferns winding up the walls stretched to the left. A Saelis passed right by me, its monstrous body crowding out everything else. I lurched back, my heart slamming into my rib cage. More crossed in front of the door, the entire hallway teeming with their strange clicks and whistles.
Rusted balls, I was really here. But what now? No way I could slither out in front of them with my bright yellow suit while covered in their shit without their noticing.
I shot a look over my shoulder for another door—and froze. Long, twin ripples snaked underneath the murky liquid below on a direct path toward me.
Oh, Feozva. I clamped my mouth shut on a scream. Maybe whatever that was couldn’t climb ladders. Or maybe it could. I squeezed my eyes shut at the terror threatening to consume me. I was too in over my broken head, but one thing was for sure—I couldn’t stay here.
