Moving slowly, trying not to make a sound, she got her feet under her and stood. Wincing at the pain in her head, the bruises in her limbs, she edged carefully toward the ladder.
Sam reached the ladder and began to climb. She was several steps up when her foot slipped, the toe of her boot clanking on a lower rung. She froze — but the imp lifted its head as if listening. It turned with a roar and saw its prey trying to get away.
She started up the ladder again, forgetting her throbbing head and aching muscles, clambering as fast as she could. She reached the opening, and just managed to squeeze through the narrow aperture beside the fan blades’ framework when the imp closed its talons around her ankle and nearly jerked her back down.
No. She wasn’t going to let it end like this.
Sam kicked downward, going with the motion of the imp’s tugging, and slammed the genetic demon hard in the face with her bootheel, grinding into its optical membranes. It squealed in pain and its grip loosened. She wrenched free and pulled herself up onto the little platform, next to the slowly whirling fan blades. The imp was reaching through the aperture, raking its claws at her, but she was well out of reach. It couldn’t fit its wide shoulders through the opening to this level — it’d grown past human proportions.
“That’s right, you bastard, I’m getting away from you!” she yelled. Releasing pent-up fear and fury. “Fuck you!”
She continued up the ladder, then paused about halfway to the next set of blades when she heard the imp chattering, making a sound close to laughter. She looked down to see it had taken hold of the fan blade, was being spun around, not particularly rapidly, like a child on a playground toy. It slung its legs up over the blade, and began to climb onto it, still spinning around as it climbed. The blades were going so slowly that they weren’t much obstacle.
“Shit,” she muttered, and resumed climbing, trying to urge her aching limbs into greater speed.
But moments later Sam heard the imp chittering in triumph and looked down to see it leaping from the top of the big fan blade to the lower rungs of the ladder she was on. It leered up at her and began to climb, moving much more rapidly than she could.
“Oh fuck…” Riding a surge of terror-charged adrenaline, she redoubled her speed, and reached the next aperture, pulled herself through just ahead of the imp. It raked at her leg, slashing a bit of her left calf away, but she managed to slip through ahead of it.
She turned to see it leap at the fan blade, catching the slowly spinning metal with the agility of a giant chimp, chattering to itself as it spun around and around, doubling up to wrap its feet around the blade.
Despite the pain, she started climbing again. Trying to see what was above that last whirling blade…air ducts, going off in three directions. Big enough to move through, hunkered down. But the imp could fit into them, too. It would follow her and catch her before she got fifty paces.
She spotted something else, next to the platform beside the air ducts, above the topmost fan blade…
She was panting for air in her effort to keep ahead of the imp, sweat running down her back and pasting her hair to her forehead, blood flowing from her injured leg. Sweat on her hands threatened to make her lose her purchase on the rungs — she almost fell into the imp’s arms, and it roared in anticipation, snapping at her heels with its jaws.
“No!” she shouted, reaching the final aperture. She reached up and did a pull-up — something normally she hadn’t strength to do — and wormed her way through, banging elbows and knees in her haste.
The imp was already poised to leap at the fan blades.
Sam stood up and opened the metal box on the wall, the controller for the fans she’d spotted from below. There it was — the setting she had hoped for.
FULL POWER
She looked to see the imp just about six feet away, clambering up onto a blade, halfway up, legs dangling down below the fan. In another second it would be up — and upon her.
She turned the control knob and the fan blades responded immediately — although the lights dimmed a bit as it drained more of the emergency power — turning faster, faster, becoming a blur like helicopter blades, humming…
And slicing the imp in two.
It shrieked, and its upper half tumbled atop the blades, dancing about like a chunk of meat when first popped into a blender, before being chopped to pieces. Black blood splashed the walls, pieces of talon and teeth and bone flew everywhere…The increased turbulence from the fan made her stagger, bouncing her back against the wall so that she nearly rebounded to fall into the blades. Blood from the imp became a horrific rain caught in hurricane winds, bitter as it struck her mouth…
She caught a stanchion and held on, caught in an artificial windstorm, her hair streaming, eyes drying in the roaring wind. She reached out and fumbled at the knob, switched it back to normal speed. The fan blades slowed, the gale abated, and she got her balance again.
Sam sat on the platform for a few moments, back against the wall and knees drawn up, resting, cleaning demon’s blood from her face and hair as best she could. Then she caught a distant chattering, clicking sound — coming from the tunnel opposite her. She stood up, listening breathlessly. Yeah, there it was again. And it was getting louder.
A genetic demon was coming down the tunnel toward her — she couldn’t see it but she knew it was coming, hunting her.
She turned and darted into the round air duct to her right — maybe it wouldn’t take this one when it got to the air shaft.
But less than a minute later, as she made her way hunkered over in the narrow, dark metal tunnel of the duct, she heard a low chattering growl echoing from behind her. She could smell the imp; she heard its urgent, clicking footsteps…
She turned and looked down the circular tunnel, saw the silhouette of an imp, against the light, its quivering shadow stretching ahead of it, as if reaching out for her in anticipation. It was closing in on her.
Sam turned, hurrying on — then heard a hissing sound and instinctively threw herself flat. The imp’s tongue flashed over her, susurrating as it passed close over the back of her head, unrolling out of its mouth — just missing her before reeling back into its toothy maw.
She was up and scrambling down the tunnel, then — and came to a grating, for a vent down into a room under the duct. She could see through the slats, into the room below — a bit. There was a desk and a chair down there; she couldn’t make out anything else. The rest of the room might be filled with monsters. But the imp in the duct was almost upon her again, and there was no time to worry about what was below.
She slammed her elbow into the grating, hard enough to make blood flow, and the grating popped out, clattering down. She felt the demon’s breath on the back of her neck…
It was too big to get through the vent opening. It was her only chance.
Sam dropped through headfirst, trying to break her fall on the desk with her hands — but she never struck it, though it was directly below.
The imp had gripped her lower legs, just above the ankles. She was dangling there, head down. It was running its long, long tongue down her right leg, spiraling it around her ankle, down her calf, wet and raspy, probing toward her crotch. She could feel the barb on it, dragging across her skin, looking for the right spot to strike, like a cobra aiming its fangs.
Sam’s hands were dangling over the desk…and on the desk — a nice big pair of scissors. She couldn’t quite reach them.
She strained for the makeshift weapon. The tongue was slinking along her, stretching…leaving a trail of drool on her skin.