Ho-hum. You’re probably wondering how the heck I’m gong to end this in two days. Well, I have a plan! And it’s a good one, mind you.

Word Count: 56,232

Nearly a half a mile later, we felt inexplicably tired. Our trek in the Renaissance Room was finally putting its toll on our fetches. I moved my arms as I walked; I could hear them creaking. Maiya’s, too. We needed to rest, but we couldn’t have possibly done that – not when the injection site was so close.

As we moved forward, our aching bodies trudging through one step at a time, it became clear how quickly things had progressed in the mines since I’d been gone. I wasn’t sure how many days or weeks it had been, but the mines had become a desolate wasteland in that time. A fog of toxic dust spread itself along the floors and pathways of the residential areas we passed through. We saw a few bodies laying around, lifeless yet full of color. You could tell a dead fetch was a fetch by its distinct color retention. Since it was an artificial body, it didn’t turn cold and purple like a real body after death.

Dozens of them. And those were just what we could see. As we neared the injection site, we wondered what we would find there – would we see the solution dripping from the walls, actively dissolving the Slate? Or would the Slate already be gone, succumbed to the rasase long ago? With each step I took, I could only wonder more. With each step I took, I left deep footprints in the dust below me. I coughed, and breathed deeply. Calmly. And then I saw it: A hole in the wall. Maiya saw it, too – I could see her head jerk to the left.

There it was, prominent as ever, literally melting the wall away; but it wasn’t a liquid. The injection site was located just a few hundred meters away from a residential area, in a vein that shot off of the main pathway. Along the walls of the vein, I saw a gaping hole. An entirely unnatural clearing that looked as if somebody had melted a passageway into the Slate. On the walls inside and around this clearing was a transparent, waxy substance. This substance hugged the Slate deposits, almost appearing to crawl along them. It made the entire opening look like a wet cave; stalactites and stalagmites of Slate had formed within and were being slowly dissolved away by the waxy substance. Closer to the injection site, a rancid odor filled the air – I wasn’t sure if it was the rasase’s natural scent or the smell of dissolving Slate; probably a combination of both.

When Maiya and I were finally at the injection site, my first reaction was to reach out to touch some of the rasase with my finger. Maiya grabbed my arm before I could reach the substance. “Don’t touch it. You don’t really know what it’s doing.”

I pulled my hand away and looked at the deposit dissolving before my eyes. Some sections were bubbling up a black, grotesque foam. On the ground, I noticed that toxic Slate dust was pouring out of the room at a rapid pace – there was little doubt in my mind that this injection site was the source of all the dust we’d been wading through, or that it was the rasase producing it, literally grinding the Slate to a fine powder in order to get rid of it. I breathed in a hefty quantity of dust, then looked at Maiya, sternly at first, then with a calm demeanor, to let her know that I understood the dangers of the chemical we were dealing with. Or rather, that I didn’t understand the dangers.

Suddenly, the ground shook. Another tremor. Oddly, I hadn’t felt any in the Renaissance facilities, but in the mines they were just as common as before – and they were getting stronger, an indication that we didn’t have much time left before the effects of the rasase became irreversible. Some of the stalactites fell from the roof of the injection site, bringing the waxy rasase down with them.

Maiya’s first action after the quake was to step inside the cavern of rasase while she still could. I yelled at her not to go in, given her distinct fear of simply touching the chemical compound, but she wouldn’t listen. I never understood why she felt she could give me advice, but not take it herself.

Nevertheless, I followed her in. I wasn’t sure what I hoped to gain, I only wanted to ensure her safety. Not that I was sure I could have saved her, should anything traumatic occur.

As Maiya trekked through the waxy slosh of chemicals and dilapidated Slate, I shouted to her to at least come back to me so we weren’t apart. I could see that Maiya’s shoes were draped in waxy rasase, but the compound wasn’t doing much to her other than hampering her movement. I used that to catch up with her, making sure to avoid any rasase deposits on the floor.

Huffing, I spoke. “You think I’m insane? Look at you – what are you going to do about this on your own?”

“I’m looking for something.”

“And I can’t even touch this crap, but you can jump straight into it?”

“Don’t act like a child. I know what I’m getting myself into, and you don’t.” I felt the earth shake a bit, and became nervous. “You’re scared to death, and I can tell. I know your limits by now, Vince. And I know you’re not going to want to look for—”

She stopped talking, and started staring. Off into the distance, deep into the cavern of rasase wax, was the machine making the injection. She marveled at it – I was simply astonished that it fit there. It was gargantuan, immobile, and filled with enough rasase to coat a city; though I supposed that was the plan. Thick steel structures – steel, presumbly, to avoid the machine itself being destroyed by rasase – wrapped around a central plexiglass tank of rasase gel, which was being sprayed by a smart apparatus attached to a hose. The device itself was the height of the cavern, or about three times my height, and it was just as wide.

The smart apparatus roamed the nearby cavern areas, spraying rasase gel, which solidified into wax on contact before it began chewing away the Slate. The hose snaked its way around objects, coating eveything it could find in rasase. As it moved closer to me and Maiya, I began to back my way out of the cave.

“I’d stay where you are,” Maiya told me.

“There’s no way we can demolish that thing,” I said. “It’s gi-fucking-normous. And it’s powered and still dispensing the enzyme. If we get close to it, we’re going to get either sprayed with rasase, or killed.”

“If the machine is operational, that means there’s either a control panel or terminal connected to it. Typical of the stuff Vosler makes. So all we need to do to shut it down is find the corresponding terminal, and send it a killall command.” As she said this, she took a step forward – the ground crumbled beneath her feet, exposing a small hole, through which we saw a steep drop through to a subcavern. “We’re going to need to watch our step, it looks like,” Maiya said.

The rasase had penetrated the Slate mines far deeper than we had ever imagined. Not only was this cavern being dissolved, but an entire network of unstable, dissolving caverns was expanding throughout the Slate mines. This was where we began to feel that we were too late to help the situation – but we tried. We tried to find a terminal in futility, and the more we traversed the cavern the more that the floor began to crumble beneath us, until Maiya and I were no longer sure we could make it out of the injection site without falling through the floor.

Nothing was going as we’d hoped. We’d both had it in our heads that the rasase injections would be some sot of easy to remove attachment – as if anything had ever been so easy! I should have known that from my own experience; everything was more complicated than it seemed, and this was no exception.

I began to attempt to escape the injection site. On the way back, I heard a crumbling noise beneath my feet. Instict should have told me to pull away, but I only stepped down harder, causing the floor to break with an irritating crackling noise. My foot got caught in the break in the floor – I couldn’t move. The jagged edges of the break, created by drying Slate and other metals, threatened to rip off my foot if I moved it too much. I could already see oily blood dripping from the ankle of my fetch.

“Maiya!” I shouted. “I need a bit of help!”

“What the heck do you need? We’ve got to find that terminal, or you can kiss this corner of the planet goodbye. Just keep looking and stay quiet.”

“I can’t – my foot’s stuck in the floor; it got caught in a break. I don’t think I’ll be able to smash the surrounding Slate without cutting off my damned foot.” Maiya began walking over. “Thanks,” I told her. “This wasn’t exactly my plan.” I felt awkward – like I couldn’t handle myself where Maiya could.

Maiya came over and began kicking away at the break from a distance, so as to widen the hole my foot was stuck in. However, as she kicked another tremor occurred – the largest one yet. As the ground shook beneath us, it caused Maiya to kick the floor just that much too hard. The Slate around my foot broke away, setting me free, but at a high cost – the entire floor began to crumble beneath us as the earthquake took its toll on the dissolving slate.

The shaking toppled us both over onto our sides; I watched as Maiya’s body broke through the fragile layer of Slate, sending her body shooting down hundreds of meters to the floor of the next cavern. I heard her blood-curdling scream, and my body completely froze up. Now alone, scared and helpless, I watched in slow motion as the cracking noises around me produced breaks in the floor. I made a small attempt to escape and get to stable ground, but anywhere I grabbed seemed to dissolve in my hands. The entire cavern was turning into a fine powder – the rasase had done its job.

I saw the rasase injector fall through the floor, headed to parts unknown below the surface. Who knew where it would land – who knew if it would keep working? At this point, I was more concerned about my own safety than the safety of others; I didn’t even care about Maiya. The only thing on my mind was escaping the crumbling floor. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even scream for more help. Maiya was gone.

Suddenly, everything crumbled before me. And I went with it, down into the depths of hell.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

Curie awoke and found himself, once again, in a fetch. He lifted up an arm, testing it out, only to have it hit a wall of glass. He looked around; his eyes were still adjusting to light. They had never been opened before. He could tell – he knew what that felt like. To have fresh, new eyes. Eyes that could see the world for what it truly was. Eyes that could see all of the beauty and travesty on Cydia.

He quickly realized that he was inside one of the cryogenic tubes surrounding The Collective. He’d done it – he made it out. And now he was back on his feet, at least so long as he could get out of the tube. But, try as he might have, he could not break the glass of his cryogenic container. In fact, there was barely enough room for him to lift up his arms. He attempted to get enough strength into both of his arms that an uppercut, though short, might break or fracture the glass enough that he could kick it open. No go.

Just about to slump backward into his container, he heard footsteps just outside. Through the mist, he made out a deep, black figure – but couldn’t determine any of its features. Afraid that he had been found at last and would be sent immediately back into the collective, he panicked.

He could feel outside air rushing in – this person was opening up his container. The warm outside air rushed in and thawed his frozen limbs, cool from the cryogenic containment process, giving a pleasant sensation to his new body. But the face that greeted him on the other side did just the exact opposite – in fact, all it generated was morbid surprise.

Curie blinked and rubbed his eyes. Just to make sure what he was seeing was real.