A lot of things could have happened at that moment, but any more panic would have just agitated the Creep even further. I looked ahead and behind me, motioning for everyone to keep calm. I could see the fear in their eyes, but any sudden actions would have meant our doom. Once everyone was settled, I gave the command to keep moving ahead. It might sound cold, but at that second, we had to forget about the loss and keep going. There just wasn’t any chance to mourn or, at least, not at that moment. At the time I hoped that would be the only death we saw that day.
It wouldn’t be. Lopez was the next to go, but we wouldn’t realize it until morning. She’d been complaining of particularly strong sightings of Demons. At one point she turned to me and said she could see one standing behind me as we talked. That’s not a normal experience. When the Demons do linger, they normally stand at a distance. They might approach you, but they’ll vanish long before they get to you.
In six years I’ve never been told that one was standing over my shoulder.
I guess that Nwosu’s death must have affected her even more than the rest of us. With all the signs of fear and paranoia she was expressing, it’s not entirely surprising that she went the way she went. We were able to secure a room by using light heating to clear some sleeping space. It was a long and tense process, but we had to clear at least just enough of the Creep to settle on some beds. Before bedding down I tried to get everyone’s spirits up and reminded them that, at least if Mike’s estimates were right, we were closing in on the power plants. From there we’d have to be able to get some answers and devise a way out. All the layouts we’re familiar with indicated that an additional stairwell had to be against the far northern walls of this wing.
Sadly it wasn’t enough. Lopez wandered off overnight. When I woke up, it didn’t completely register with me at first. Then I realized we were a man down. Once I took count of our numbers, which are closing in on half of those we left with, I realized we’d suffered another loss.
We did some quick scouting to see if we could find her and retraced some of our steps, exploring some previous rooms we’d been to. Unfortunately there was no sign of her. I’m leaving a brief recording behind here to let her know our general direction, but if we don’t press on, we’ll die here.
Commander Vick’s Report Number Seventeen
I haven’t had time to record these. Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s even a point. If nobody gets this, will anyone care that I recorded it? Will anyone remember me? If nobody remembers me, will I really have ever existed?
Enough of that. We’re no longer on Floor 30.
It happened three days ago. Day seventeen of the Scavenging. I can’t imagine what people are thinking about back home. I don’t really have time to think about it, anyway.
We finally found the power plants.
It’s… nothing like what I expected.
I’m trying to figure out what this tower was created for in the first place, what it was supposed to power. Because the engine we discovered sank down floor after floor into the darkness.
We stumbled on it almost as if it were just any other day, the way you’d stumble into someone’s room accidentally or step into a meeting you weren’t supposed to attend. We just passed through a pair of partly opened doors and… there it was.
It’s gigantic. From what I can tell, it stretches a few more stories upward, but it descends into pitch blackness for floor upon floor. Walkways surround the entire chamber, which is circular, unlike every other room in the tower. All the power cables we’ve been trailing end here, and they all feed into the circular power core. From where we’re standing, I can spot what looks like control rooms that must have monitored the power output of the generator. Mike sees them, too. Funny, in spite of everything, he hasn’t lost his spirit. He might even be holding up a little better than me, and that just doesn’t normally happen. If I’m feeling tense, I’m sure he is, too, but he’s either psychologically capable of ignoring his emotions, or he’s just really good at lying. Either way, it’s never good to suppress what you’re feeling so much that it starts to build to a dangerous level.
Anyway, at this point I’m not putting anyone else at risk, so I take point, leading them around the walkways and toward the control room that juts out from the wall. As we get near, it lights up. Although there doesn’t seem to be much activity from the generator, it’s apparent that it’s still putting out some power. Power’s not the only thing coming out of the core, though. Once we’re able to get a thorough look of it from inside the control room, it’s apparent the thing, as massive as it is, is covered in some equally sized Creep matter.
It’s weird, seeing them this size, like gigantic pieces of flesh hanging off of a giant’s arm. Some are bulbous, and others are slick and slide down the sides of the engine. Their tendrils rope and loop over the power cables and stretch out toward the walls, either covering them or vanishing into deeper parts of the Tower.
Mike takes a look at me. “Now do you think the infestation started here?” he asks.
“I’m not sure,” I respond, looking from spot to spot inside the chamber. “I’m not saying I do or don’t. Still, this is as good as any a place for an infestation to start. Lots of surface area, and if the Creep really does feed off of power sources, then this is a big one.”
“Yeah, something this big has got to be a juicy target for it.”
“I’m not sure where to proceed from here. I mean…” I look away in disbelief and just shake my head. “What would happen if we could just shut the entire thing down? If we just shut down the central power core?”
“Wouldn’t we be shutting down the entire tower?” Mike glances up. “You know… even back home?”
“I don’t know. Do the top floors get their power from the core?”
“Hell if I know, to be honest.”
The best I can do is shrug. Still, as I look up into the darkness, an idea comes to me. “Now that you mention it, I’ve heard the upper floors get their power elsewhere, so they can’t be dependent on this place. Really, how could they? What would the solar panels be used for then? That’s how we get our power every day. When we go through long stretches with a lot of darkness, Authority always puts those energy-use restrictions on the Tower. That’s got to mean our power’s tied to the panels, not this thing.”
“Right. So, turning this thing into scrap couldn’t possibly hurt the people living up top.”
“You might be right.” I frown as I nearly push my face to the glass and stare out of the window. “So, let’s think of a way to blow it to hell.”
“Well, we still have explosives.”
He’s right, of course. The only problem is it’d require us crossing over to the power core using nothing more than the cables stretched out over the abyss. It should be noted that these cables are indeed quite thick and sturdy, easily as large around as a man’s leg, but that still doesn’t provide lots of room for navigating precariously over an open pit that drops thousands of feet into darkness. There’s also no visible access to the core, no walkways or anything like that. “At one time they might have been able to extend a bridge out to the core or something. They had to have done repairs once in a while.”