Chapter 23: Powering Up

Our flashlights not helping the dirty, dark atmosphere of the basement, we moved to the next door, which was opposite the poisoned hallway. As she was getting ready to open it, Marci glanced back, saying, “Hey, your sword is glowing even less.”

I held the blade up. Dimmer now, but still giving off light, which was strange for metal. “Maybe it really is losing charge.”

“Something else I think. Anyways, ready?”

“Yes.” Tensing, I held the pointy end at the door as she opened it. Nothing charged out at us except the heavy scent of diesel, metal, and oil.

This room was larger, rectangular, and ended somewhere off in the darkness. It had a mess of shiny ventilation shafts running along the ceiling, two very large and dirty furnaces, whitish-grey insulated water storage tanks, large rectangular metal structures I didn’t recognize, and the generators we were looking for, plus the fuel tanks.

We walked across to them, beaming our lights everywhere, watchful for the dead. Shadows danced behind the pipes and round furnaces, the room was full of hiding places in the crooks of the machines, but it sounded and seemed empty, and we soon made it without issue to the fuel tanks.

“Why would a hotel in this day and age have furnaces?”

“Might be one of those eco-systems that run on bio-fuel.”

“That still produces CO2. And the methane leaks out.”

“I don’t know then, Marci. Maybe they recapture it. Or maybe this hotel was off-grid or something.”

She winked at me, “Let’s ask the owners later.”

“They’ll probably want to eat us as much as anything else.” I tapped the fuel gauge, “This one is full. What about that one?”

“Also full. So, the attack must have happened quickly.”

“If we’re right about our assumptions.”

“They’d have tried the power. Used it, if they could. That gives us three hypotheses.” Marci held up her small hand, going into scientist mode and raising her fingers as she counted, “First, the power simply couldn’t be turned on. We’ll be testing that in a moment. Second, the nano absorbed them into the game as soon as it could, which suggests a very high speed of conquering this entire world. But-”

“But,” I jumped in, “as the Victoria’s attack disrupted the nanotech for days, that’s unlikely. Or at least, the military would have tried that and slowed down the nanotech somewhat.”

“Exactly.” She ticked off her next finger, “Third, they had power until the game fully took over.”

“I’m going to call that one ‘the sneaky game’ hypothesis. Uh, how will we differentiate between two and three?”

“We probably can’t. Not until we collect more evidence. If we could find a military base, we’d get more answers, but maybe the security videos here will shed some light on the attack. Though we’re assuming we can watch the videos. We might not be able to.” Marci put her light on the generator, focusing on a large red button and a pully. “I think this turns them on.”

“Just a sec.” Getting close, I examined the rusty pully, worried about traps, but not feeling any particular dread. Well, given that the dead were trying to kill us, any greater dread than what I was already feeling. “Doesn’t seem to be trapped. I’ll try it.”

“Wait! Hold up a sec. Once we turn that on, the entire hotel will get power. That’ll give our teammates an edge over the zombies.”

“You’re right. They’re probably going to attack. We’d better head up to the restaurants ASAP, collect the team, bring them down here. And hope there aren’t too many zombies between the elevators and our people.”

“And hope there aren’t too many zombies. Though, we’d eliminate the zombie threat if we destroy those remaining altars.”

“Uh, yeah. Something to think about.” I reached up to press the button, then realized something awful. “Oh crap! Marci, we can’t get out of here quickly. That zombie we didn’t kill is still in the hallway and, for all we know, the hallway is full of poisonous gas.”

“Right. Do you want to take care of that now or after the light is on? Now is problematic because of the gas, but that’s true later, too. And fighting it, then running through the gas might be difficult. How long can you hold your breath for?”

“Actually, we should try the power first. If we can’t kill the zombie or the gas, uh, incapacitates us, we won’t turn the power on and our team will remain stuck. We need to prioritize their safety right now as we’re possibly their only hope.”

Marci nodded. “Makes sense. The other problem is that the hallway door opens inward. So, we’ll be pushing against the zombie to open it.”

“We’ll deal with that when we get there. Here goes nothing.” I pushed the giant red button and nothing happened. Pushed it longer, holding it, just in case it had a time requirement. Silence. Damn.

“You definitely got nothing. Try the lever?”

Taking the lever in my right hand, I pulled against friction and gear-turning sounds. Tried again, but this time pulling hard. And again. The next time, the gears moved more easily, and we heard the sound of a motor choking. I kissed my fingers, touching them to the machine. “Come on, baby.” I pulled a few more times in quick succession, and the generator rumbled to life. One by one, select lights flickered on, about every third one.

“It’s your baby, huh?”

“I love me a good power source.”

Marci gave me a fake scowl, then glanced around. “Looks like the system is designed not to be overloaded. That’s great. I thought we’d have to go around turning lights off room by room.” She breathed in, “And no fumes.”

I did the same, smelling the air. Machine oils, our sweat, but no exhaust. “And now to the hard part.”

“What are you thinking?”

“It’d help if we knew what kind of gas it is. I didn’t smell sulfur, so it’s not H2S.”

Shrugging, she said, “We wouldn’t be here if it was H2S.”

“That means we can rule out pretty much every gas that kills instantly. Cloth.” I took off my armor, then my shirt, “We’ll wrap our shirts around our mouths and noses. The gas isn’t extremely lethal, maybe this’ll help a bit.”

Marci said nothing, but smiled at me, lifting her chain up her body, eyes on mine as it came off and she took hold of the bottom of her shirt.

I turned around. “Uh, sorry.”

“I have a bra on, you know.”

I felt my face heating up and hoped and hoped it wasn’t so obvious I was blushing like crazy. “Right.”

“God, I hope this hotel has water. Maybe we can get a hot shower in?”

“That’d be heavenly. If the generators also power the furnaces, maybe.” Then I wondered if I’d said what I now thought I’d said, “Uhm, you mean individually, right? Showering? Uh, nothing, never mind me.” I nearly jumped as Marci’s hand touched my back.

“Here, River, your armor.” She bent down, taking it off the floor, and handed it back to me as I turned around. Her new eleven armor was back on her body, the image of clouds passing across the armor as she moved.

“Uhm,” I took it from her, “thank you. Your new armor is stunning.”

Against Marci’s deep blue pupils, her black eyelashes fluttered, “You’re an armor on kind of guy, huh.”

“Uhm, no, that’s . . . not at all what I . . .”

Smiling, she touched my forearm, saying, “Come on. The door opens inward. If that thing is still pounding it, we’re going to have to push hard.”

In a few moments, we were in front of our only exit. “It’s not pounding the door.” Even getting close to it, I couldn’t hear the zombie we’d left in the hallway.

Marci put her ear against the door, cupping it, resting her other hand on my waist, “That’s almost worse. Where do you think it is?”

“Has to be in that hallway, from the elevator room to here. Unless it went into the elevator room. I think we left the door open.”

“Hey,” Marci said, pointing near my leg, “your scabbard.”

“What?” Looking down, a yellow light emanated from the scabbard. Pulling the sword out, it seemed to have renewed and was once again glowing. Not quite as bright as the last time I was at this door, but more than in the security room. “I wonder.”

“Oh? Do share.”

I disengaged from the door and Marci, walking toward the security room. Sure enough, the sword dimmed. Heading back to Marci or, more accurately, the hallway housing the zombie, the sword brightened. “It’s the-”

“Zombies! I should have realized that sooner. Or, more likely,” she reached out and took hold of the handle, turning it over to the Elvish words, “all undead. It’s this word here,” she said a bunch of syllables I couldn’t pronounce, “which I translated as ‘darkness’ before, it has a greater meaning than that.”

“Yeah, you said it could include death. Does it also mean necromancy? Maybe it can help us defeat whoever set this whole place up, the altars and zombies and everything.”

Marci’s blue eyes jumped from the sword to me, “I have to give this more thought. I think it might be a clue to how the game functions, why I’m feeling so awful down here, why this sword works the way it does. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe how we should build our characters.”

I tried to take this all in, not really getting it. And worried for her. She was changing. Not becoming dull or stupid, still analyzing the world through the lens of science, but Marci was no longer quite the same person who’d been on the ship with me. When I looked at her pointed ears, deepening blue eyes, narrow eyebrows, that much was obvious. While her eyes held my gaze, they were slightly different now and it wasn’t just the color. Wider, higher in the middle, curvy near the corners, as if she’d put on makeup to accentuate their intensity.

“River?”

I blinked, refocused on her face, coming back to the present, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

She shook her head, letting go the sword, “Me either. Not yet. If I do, I’ll talk to you more about it. I need to think more on this, let it ruminate.”

“Ok. Yes. God damnit.” I became suddenly angry – all this talk about the game and its stupid mechanics! Our lives weren’t a game! We had a mission! Found my hand squeezing the sword hilt tightly. I tried to calm down. None of this was her fault. It had to be the nanotech pushing her interest in these silly game mechanics.

“What’s wrong?”

“Fuck, sorry. Sorry. I just, this is overwhelming sometimes.” I didn’t say it, but wondered how we would fight against an enemy that overcame the entire military force of a planet. An entire planet! It might be easier to just give in to the game. We likely would anyways.

“It’s ok.” She moved to touch my hand, but I stepped back. Marci looked up at me.

“I’m . . . I’m sure we’ll get more clues on how the game works, but what’s really important right now is getting to our friends. Our team.” Closed my eyes, trying to remain calm, push the worry and anger away – why was I acting like this? Took a breath. “Ok, focusing. Uhm, I think we’re going to have to open the door, try to get them to come at us, and I’ll stab them.”

She folded her arms, backing up a bit, looking at the door. “While holding our breath. That might be difficult.”

“You want to run down the hallway, try to make it past the zombie, then into the other room?”

“That doesn’t seem possible, either. Maybe if we had Fred or Ave with us.”

“Right. Let’s see, if it was poisonous gas – deadly – would it dissipate enough in that hallway to be harmless?”

Marci shook her head, “We can’t know that without knowing the gas, but I wouldn’t think harmless.”

“Then we’re going to have to draw the zombie over, make noise or something. But – but! – the power’s on now. Right? So, the ventilation systems should be working. I wonder if that would get rid of the gas.”

“God, I hope you’re right. We could wait longer, just to be sure. Or, somehow prop this door open. We know it’s not immediately lethal, but let’s assume it’s meant to be for that hallway’s volume. The extra air here,” she held her arms up high, “would help dissipate it, reducing its effectiveness. Maybe even to zero. Well, negligeable.”

“That is a good plan. Let’s do that. We’ll open the door, then block it with a chair. They’ll come for us and, hopefully one at a time. When they gets stuck, I’ll kill it.”

“It’s already dead.” She gave me a slight smile, head tilt, blond locks moved over a bit.

I took it and smiled back. “Kill it deader? Stop it moving? Make the things cease functioning?” Still looking at her, I headed over to the security room, “Let’s get a chair from the computer room of evil.”

Marci followed. “We’ll have to ask Bentley after. There’s probably a word for killing the undead.”

“There shouldn’t be undead.”

“Oh, I couldn’t agree more.” I felt the shudder in her words, “I hate everything about this place. I don’t want to be here, and I wish we’d return to the surface. Let’s get this done.”

I’d calmed down, or returned to my normal, with a touch of guilt. But I pushed that away as we got back to the hallway door with the office chair. “You should probably back up. Just in case.” Put my ear against it, listening. Still nothing. Cracked open the handle ever so slowly, quietly, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.

The zombie was about halfway down the hallway, shambling away from me, ragged clothing dragging behind it. With half the hall lights on, the creature was an appalling sight. It’s flesh darkened and shrunken, bone visible here and there, but thank God there were no flies down here, so no maggots feeding on it.

It stopped, turning first its head, snarled with its arms shaking, shambled around to face us then hurriedly stumbling and shuffling our way.

Laying the chair flat, I let the door close on it. Pulling out my sword, glowing brighter as the thing approached, I backed up, went around to the left, took another breath, returned to the doorway just as the zombie got to the chair. Its knees hit first, it looked down, then stepped over the chair and entered our room.

“Shit!” I lunged forward, the sword stabbing into its upper chest, but not too deep.

It grabbed my sword arm, yellow fingernails and rotting flesh curling around my leather armor, grip enormously tight, the zombie opened its mouth ready to bite down.

Marci shoved her sword into its mouth, the teeth clanging against the metal. She pushed and pushed, I pulled at my sword and the thing’s crazy strong grip, and Marci’s blade exited the back of its neck and it went limp.

“Damn!”

Taking me by the hand, Marci led me back into the security room, “Let’s catch our breath here. How’re you feeling? You were breathing pretty heavily there.”

“I thought I was holding my breath.”

“You don’t, ah, hold your breath well. While fighting.”

“I don’t feel any pain. Lungs seem fine. Lots of adrenaline.” Deep breaths, heart racing, but slowly calming down, “Those bastards don’t fight like normal people, they just try to bite you. It’s unnerving. And hard to respond to.”

She turned my right arm over, feeling along it, “Did you get bit?”

“No. But, holy their grip is strong.”

“Thank goodness,” she relaxed then, her forehead against my shoulder.

I hadn’t realized how tense she was until that moment. It was difficult to think of her as anything other than a hard-edged scientist, always analyzing everything. “Marci, hey, I’m ok. Thank you. Thanks to you.” I ran my hand along her soft face, stopping on her cheek.

She smiled, giving my shoulder a squeeze and straightening up. “On the plus side, I think the air cleared out. And I still don’t smell exhaust. So, the generators really are venting outside, into the cavern. I hope there’s airflow into it, but even if there isn’t, we have some time.”

“We can shut down the generator after rescuing our friends.”

“What about destroying the two remaining shrines?”

“Marci . . .”

“It’d make our life easier. The zombies would all stop.”

“You really think so?”

“Game logic. The quest said, ‘cleanse the hotel.’ I think that means these evil shrines are keeping the zombies alive.”

“Let’s see what state our team is in, then decide if we need to.”

“Just two more. I think it’s worth it for the XP. Gaining power will help our survivability.”

I looked at her, worried. “We’ll see. Alright?”

“Gotcha.”

“Come on, let’s hurry back up to the second floor.”