“You will be okay.”
It tossed Becca the blinking flash drive and she caught it, nodded knowingly, and the pathoton leaned back out of the module, backing away from the fairing as the access door began to close. Revin bodies were dropping into the silo — a chorus of shouts screaming past the small viewing panes, falling into the dim, orange ether of the lower depths. Bodies racing past as if the still rocket was splitting through limbo. A large, muscular revin crashed feet first on the shoulders of the pathoton, sending it barreling into the rail of the walkway, bending in the heavy safety rail and mangling the sensor array on its shoulder. Sparks flew out from stripped coils around the pathoton’s upper frame and it flailed at the herculean creature on its shoulders. The pathoton thrashed its arms wildly, standing upright and crashing backwards into the cableway wall, pinning the revin against a steel truss along the tunnel in a thunderous crack. The mammoth revin gasped, the wind knocked out of its lungs, and collapsed along the plank. As it looked up, the pathoton was swinging one fist down towards its skull. The revin rolled backwards and knocked the mechanical pummel to the side. The pathoton rattled, lurched forward then back, struggling to stay upright. Its gyroscopic servo and sensor array were badly damaged. It listed on the diamond plate, shaking convulsively before the revin, which stood up to face the machine. The pathoton was malfunctioning. It bellowed out into the passage:
“YOU WILL BE OKAY!”
It repeated this emphatically, over and over, as if saying it loud and fast enough would save it. Becca could hear this booming edict from within the shuttle module, but couldn’t see the violence raging just outside. The hulking revin screamed back and dove at the dazed android, sinking its hands in the cables wrapped around its frame, ripping at them, pulling them out like tendons from tissue. The pathoton went still, its pendulum slowly failing, and started to fall backwards towards the landing. They crashed into the access panel and the walkway began to retract from the fairing. The rain poured down atop the sparking wound in the pathoton’s frame and the exposed circuitry ignited — white alloy blazing in the archway, crowning the pathoton in flames like a headless horseman ignited in the netherworld. The short-circuit cycled the pathoton through its re-boot. It came to, grabbing each arm of the sinewy creature, holding its tensed limbs out like the Vitruvian Man. The top of the pathoton burned intensely and the revin closed its eyes, screaming out. It felt its arms ripping from the sockets and, when it opened its eyes again, it was upended and falling down the silo shaft, blood spurting from its quartered shoulders. It crashed to the concrete exhaust duct at the bottom, shattering all its bones. Blood expunged from a jaw broken wide. It opened one eye in time to see its own severed arms falling towards it.
The pathoton, shoulder still ablaze, rushed down the cableway as more revins were falling through the closure doors from the desert floor above. They were beginning to pile at the base, near the launch duct, bruised revins atop broken bodies, saved by their brethren from the fall. Soon, they’d find the fire escape and be able to make their way up. They slithered over one another, gazing up at the dark sky sliced open by the retracted plates. They could hear the shouts of their companions at the top. One banged on the blast shields covering the lower walls, rattling out a shrill echo throughout the silo. The cries of the revins at the bottom ascended the vault, meeting the bedlam of the others at the top as they fell inwards.
On the other side of the cableway, the pathoton sped through a three-ton blast door and emerged in an elaborate alcove — the launch control room. Ages back, soldiers sat at terminals, hand on a key and ears peeled to headsets, patiently awaiting the word to end the world. Ministers to the ICBM. The sixties era IBM circuit boards had been stripped out. A Martin-Marietta logo was all that remained from the cold war launch center. Now, this room gleamed with digital phantoms — bright blue holographic displays carried into the air from sunken prisms and painted the compass chamber with the celestial bodies of the solar system. The pathoton, with scapula flaring brightly from arm to arm, brought its hands to rest in the air above the center console. As its palm moved, twisting in the air above the console, fingers flicking outward and in, the holograms spun wildly in the air. They swirled above the prisms, flickering staccato, flashing arcane code, before finally displaying the silo. A series of lights blinked green beside the diagram of the rocket and the whole complex began to reverberate violently. The incandescent lights lowered throughout the complex and red alarm strobes along the walls began to flash. The launch was initiated. The countdown had begun. The hologram depicted a timer next to the payload: 5 minutes, 4:59, 4:58 4:57. Suddenly, the holographic depiction of the rocket’s base began to flash red. A gentle voice boomed throughout the control room:
“Warning! Exhaust ducts are blocked. Lower fire escape is open. Warning!”
The alarm blared out unyieldingly, booming through the concrete and steel passages like a foghorn in a crawlspace. The pathoton scrambled back into the cableway, racing towards an open chamber before the first blast door — a small living quarters littered with empty juice boxes and torn MRE’s. A rosary was hung on the door handle. The red strobe alarms lit the pathoton in the blinking light of paradise lost. The headless machine, ablaze, plummeted through the subterranean labyrinth, headlong into the inferno. The pathoton cut into the open sleeping quarters and plucked a twin mattress off a cot, swooping into the room before tearing back down the cableway, polyurethane tires screeching along the steel plate.
The fire escape emptied into the cableway, just before the silo landing. As it neared, a web of fingers were protruding from the chain-link door. The metal webbing pushed in with a rush of revin bodies crushing up against it. The handle on the gate began to turn — a limb falling into it haphazardly from the inside, or some spark alighting in the mind of the poor soul pushed inward just beyond. The pathoton crashed into the mob spewing out of the escape just as the door unhitched, pushing them back into the stairway with the mattress, arms and hands breaking through on the sides like seedlings emerging from soil. They crushed up against the mattress and the pathoton leaned inward, its tires squealing on the diamond plate and arms shaking as it held the mattress against the mob. The upper torso of the pathoton was now engulfed in a metal flame from its shoulder — its titanium spine flaring a shower of fire into the cold air of the cableway passage.
The alpha crept along the mineshaft, gracefully navigating the darkness with ease. It was at home in the black. Its legion of killers followed close behind, sniffing at the air, footsteps softly crumbling gravel under soles. Their heavy breaths dampened the limestone rock face, the sound of one prolonged whisper carrying on the air. They heard the girls voice again, cracking and fading, but near: