Foundation of All

The dark chamber rumbled around them and suddenly they were moving. The creature roared several times and thrashed, and then there was silence. After a few hours, the rumbling died down and the giant grub seemed to settle back into place.

“What do you think that was?” Lira asked.

There was some muttering, but none of them could settle on an answer. The two leading theories were that Sean or Satiana, the Enforcer the rest of the Enforcer squad had left in orbit, had made an attempt to rescue them. Lira hoped that Sean hadn’t risked himself like that. But whatever they had been trying, it seems they had failed considering all five of them were still trapped inside this thing.

Eventually, Lira frowned as the blade entering her gut was off target, at an angle instead of straight in. The scooping motion after was slightly jerky, not the smooth factory line process like from before. As time went on, the jerkiness only became more and more pronounced, the limb becoming unsteady and feeble like that of an old woman reaching her two hundreds.

There was a thump and then the creature that Lira had never seen fell to the ground in front of her.

“What was that? Lira, was that you?” Roger called out.

“Ye-yeah,” She said in surprise, “I think my bug had a heart attack or something. It just collapsed to the floor.”

“Try to get out, maybe your gunk isn’t working correctly either.”

Lira strained forward with all of her might, tightening her core as she curled forward causing the goo around her to pull back equally as hard. “Not feeling a difference yet,” she huffed out while continuing to strain forward. After a few minutes a foul smell wafted up into her nose and she sneezed. Had the thing below her just died? Why were the others not coming to drag away the body?

“Mine is twitching too,” Frederick reported, “Its slices are growing sloppy.”

The rest confirmed that all of their bugs were slowly beginning to act differently.

The smell grew stronger around Lira and she felt the gelatin around her gradually softening, letting her make marginal progress in shifting forward. Finally with a gasp, she fell forward onto the ground with a wet sucking sound. She fell onto all fours and just lay there panting for a few moments.

“Lira? You get it?”

Everything was still in darkness, and Lira groped the fleshy walls to stand blindly.

“I’m out,” she announced, “I think it rotted or something. It smells even worse than usual over here, like death. Roger, where are you? I’ll help you get out.”

“Here,” he said and she stumbled her way over towards his voice. There were small creatures on the floor, but they were twitching weakly and most seemed to be dead already.

Lira reached out and touched cold carapace. She flinched back and there was a low pained screech from where she knew the creature was. It stopped attacking Roger and crawled towards her, drunkenly stumbling from side to side as it moved forward. She blindly jumped forward and began hitting the creature and it flailed as she bowled it over. She felt little thin limbs beating against her stomach as it rolled onto its back with her on top of it.

She grunted as it stabbed her in the gut, and grabbed the limb before it could draw it back. It was strong, and even with its twitching and jerkiness she only just managed to keep the blade inside her. The bug screeched again weakly for a few seconds before the blade was degraded inside of Lira’s body, leaving a massive wound that Lira could hear spilling out the creature’s blood. It stumbled away after throwing Lira back and took a few steps away as if to flee, before collapsing to the ground again.

“Woof. You get it?” Roger asked from a few feet away.

“I think so, keep talking, I don't want to trip in and get stuck again.”

“Okay.”

Eventually through Roger’s coaching and Lira’s careful pokes, she managed to find Roger’s head.

“OW! My eye!”

“Sorry,” Lira said sheepishly as she finally found him. She brought her hands to cover his face.

“Bmph brgra,” he mumbled through her hands as she steadied herself in front of him. Ignoring whatever he was trying to say, she slowly ran her hands down until she reached his shoulders that were still half submerged in the gelatin. With a deep breath she stuck her hands inside the gooey material and grabbed Roger from underneath his armpits.

“Alright, here I go,” she announced, “On Three. Three. Two. One. Pull!”

Lira rooted her feet into the squishy ground and heaved back even as Roger strained forward as well. She sank into the floor slightly and her arms groaned and creaked as she slowly pulled him out of the sucking goop in the wall.

Finally with a loud pop, Roger came free and the both of them fell back, Roger falling on top of her as they fell backwards. He quickly rolled off of her and they both got to their feet.

She reached out blindly, hearing him in front of her and…

“OWWW! Again, Lira? Gaahhh. My eye again. Damn, that stings.”

“Er, sorry. Again.”

Lira quickly shifted her hand to his shoulder and he quickly did the same to her.

“Let’s find our way out of here,” Roger said.

“What about us?” Frederick called out, “You’re just going to leave us behind?”

Roger was silent and his hand tightened on Lira’s shoulder. She hesitated, but then spoke.

“Of course not, we wouldn’t do that. Right, Roger?”

“Right,” he grumbled. The two of them made their way to the three enforcers and managed to free them as well, the area becoming more and more surrounded by the smell of rot and death as they went. Roger and Lira stayed in contact and separated from the other three

“Here, Ratul,” Frederick said, “I’ve got one of their blades. We can use it to cut our way out.”

“Alright, sir. Let me break my finger so we can get it to a short enough length to wield.”

There was a sick crack in the darkness and then a wet squelch.

“Got it!” Frederick said triumphantly, “We’ll be out here in no time.”

They all worked together to get blades from the dead insects in the darkness, not a single living insect coming towards them as they did so. All of them stumbled down the tunnel with their makeshift blades, unsure of where they were going exactly but not wanting to start cutting their way out through the rotting goo where they had been trapped for this whole time.

Finally Frederick decided on a spot, Roger and Lira going along with his orders for now without protesting.

They all took turns hacking at the fleshy walls with their blades and creating a tunnel out. The movement of the creature had stilled to nothing during Lira’s escape, and it was likely dead.

They carved through, creating a grisly exit even as the space around them began to sag and bloat as it rotted. They picked up their pace by silent agreement, none of them speaking as they hacked and slashed as quickly as they could and throwing the discarded chunks into the tunnel behind them.

Chunks began falling from the roof with wet plops and the smell only grew stronger as their tunneling grew to a frantic pace. None of them wanted to be trapped in the rotting flesh for who knows how long. Lira shuddered just thinking about it as she slashed again as the wall in front of her, rubbing her eyes as more disgusting fluid sprayed onto her face just like it had for all of them this whole time. It was all just so gross.

Lira sliced again and suddenly, there was nothing there, and the massively suffocating humid air rushed out, letting cold dry air replace it. She reached forward and stuck her hand in and waved it around as she realized that there was nothing on the other side but open air.

“We’re there!” She shouted excitedly, “I think it’s the outside!”

A few minutes later, all of them had spilled out onto the hard dirt floor ten feet below, rolling down the rolls of flesh below them. They scrambled around, the dry dirt sticking to their slime coated bodies as they tried to find each other again.

They found each other and huddled around, Lira shifting uncomfortably as Frederick stood next to her with his hand on her shoulder while Roger did the same on her right. She knew he couldn’t see, but his hand was growing uncomfortably close to the tops of her boobs…

She shifted more towards Roger and shrugged her shoulder up and Frederick shifted his hand more towards her arm and she let out a small sigh of relief. Thank the Shadow she hadn’t had to say anything, that would be awkward. Lira realized that Roger’s hand was just as close as Frederick’s had been, if not closer, but she hadn’t even noticed. Huh.

“What do you think happened?” Roger asked, “Do you think the swarm is still around if we leave the body? What killed it?”

“I don’t know,” Frederick replied in a commanding tone, “But with the main breeder dead, the rest of the swarm won’t last much longer. All we have to do now is navigate our way back to the surface.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Lira asked, “Just stumble around some more? Who knows how big this place is?”

There was a pause.

“Yes, it will take a long time. But do you have any other ideas?”

“...No,” she admitted.

“Stumbling around it is,” Ratul added as the woman enforcer remained silent. Lira had forgotten her name already, she had only spoken when she had to this whole time.

And so they set off in the tunnels, doing the best they could to stay together by keeping contact to each other at all times. They wandered in the darkness for what felt like forever, taking whatever tunnels they thought might lead upwards. None of them spoke except to curse whenever they stumbled into each other in the darkness or to call out when someone lost contact and got separated from the group.

Lira always made sure she always knew where Roger was at all times just in case something went wrong with the Enforcers between them. Just because Lira hadn’t wanted to leave the Enforcers behind in the dead creature didn’t mean she trusted them all that much.

After who knows how long, Lira blinked and stepped to the side as Frederick almost lurched to the side and hit her again after hitting a patch of uneven ground. Wait…

“I can see!” Lira called out, “There’s light somewhere nearby!”

Everyone froze and looked around but even as they stood there the light grew brighter and brighter. The five of them gathered together, the three Enforcers together while Lira and Roger stood a little ways apart from the rest.

The group located the source of the light, from a turn in one of the branching tunnels forty feet away. After a few minutes two figures rounded the corner, both wearing bulky full body suits with a glass domed visor and roundish helmet on their heads. They were facing the opposite way from Lira’s group.

“Bringing out the classics, ay? You know you love the design,” An unfamiliar voice came softly from one of the suits as if to continue a prior conversation, “You know the original space suits looked like this? Back in the beginning of history? They have a few of the relics back at the Den. I made these so they would just look like them, so badass… We’re like the first explorers through the galaxy when we’re in these!”

“Quiet, Nyx,” Lira straightened and her grip on Roger's shoulder tightened as she heard Sean’s disgruntled voice from the other suit. It seems the two of them hadn’t spotted them yet.

The suit that Lira thought Sean was in raised its arm and inspected a glowing screen on its forearm.

“They should be close now,” Sean said, “Life signs grew much stronger once we entered this section…”

“Gah, it’s probably another false alarm,” The other man, Nyx, complained, “They’re Immortals, they’ll be fine. Even if we left them on their own they’d make it to the surface eventually. Don’t know what you’re getting so worked up about.”

“Eventually,” Sean replied frostily, “Isn’t fast enough. I’m not leaving them down here a second longer than I have to. And weren’t you the one saying that we had to go before the Enforcer Fleet arrived to arrest all of us?”

“Pffft. You worry too much. Those fat bastards will sit on the news for weeks at least before finally sending a proper response. We have some time without you being such a killjoy. Why do you think I was so confident on coming here and fucking some shit up without getting caught?”

“Whatever. Wait, I have something…”

Sean turned around and held up his suited arm towards them.

“This way, I think they might only be a tunnel or two away.”

“Lead on, Oh Great Leader,” Nyx said mockingly to which Sean only grunted in reply and started walking towards them head pointed down to his wrist.

The light grew brighter and Roger opened his mouth.

“HEY SEAN! OVER THIS WAY! WE’RE OVER HERE!”

Sean’s head shot up and he started jogging towards them at full speed, the other man following a second later. Suddenly the light was bright enough to fully light up the tunnel and Lira blinked hard to adjust her eyes. When she recovered Sean and Nyx stood there in front of their group in their bulky suits.

An intrusive thought suddenly came over Lira and she reflexively glanced to the side where Frederick stood, then down at his waist… Oh. My. Shadow. She blushed furiously and glanced away as heat rushed to her cheeks. They made them that big?!

Before Lira could overcome her embarrassment from her instinctive look, she suddenly became acutely aware of just how naked she was in front of this whole big group of people. She yelped and grabbed Roger tightly by the shoulders and pulled him in front of her so his body was blocking everyone else’s view of her. He complied and didn’t question her and just stood there as she cowered behind him.

Sean was fishing around in his belt looking like he was hunting for something as the three Enforcers stood there awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot.

“Nyx, are you going to help? You have some clothing bands on you?” Sean said in annoyance after a few seconds, “I swore I had them right here…”

“Nah,” Nyx replied, “Just enjoying the view a bit first. I assume the one that yelped and just cowered behind that other guy is your girl. Good choice, she’s hot. Other one’s not too bad either. I don’t usually go for Enforcers, but I could be convinced otherwise for a body that good.”

Sean shoved the other man and sent him stumbling into the wall, bracing his arm against it to catch himself with one arm of the suit, “Hey!” Sean said with some heat, “Quit being such a damn pervert and just give them the clothing bands! You trying to fuck with me on purpose? You leave her alone or the deal’s off! And just don’t be such a pervert in general. Fuck!”

“Fine, fine,” Nyx said while rubbing the shoulder of his suit, “Someone’s touchy. Nothing wrong with looking, that’s all I was doing… Here, take some candy children.”

Nyx reached down to his side and pulled out a stack of wristbands and tossed them towards the group of naked Immortals in a loose bundle so they flew every which way. The bands scattered all over the floor, and Lira quickly ducked down and put it on her wrist, and let out a sigh of relief as its nanites crawled over her skin to cover her again. A few seconds later, everyone else followed her example and covered themselves. The woman enforcer was giving Nyx’s suit the evil eye along with Lira. Although Lira was more cautious on why Sean would be making a deal with this person. What had happened up there that Sean would be with this Nyx?

After that was done, the two men in the bulky suits started leading them back to the surface. Roger and Lira quickly sidled up to Sean and pulled him to the side.

“Listen you two,” Sean whispered, “The deal is important. We can discuss it later once we’re out of the solar system and can think it over as a group. He’s a jerk, but I don’t think he’ll betray us. I can’t say much more until we’re safe on the ship. The Enforcers might be listening in.”

Lira glanced over and saw that Frederick was indeed looking at them with some interest as they whispered together off to the side as they walked to the surface. Nyx stood apart, seeming to be whistling to himself as he walked ahead of the rest of the group.

“Fine. Later,” Roger agreed, “Thanks for coming to find us. Who knows how long we would have been stuck down here if you hadn’t shown up.”

“You’re welcome,” Sean replied, “I’m just glad that you’re both okay.”

“Well, it’s not like we could die,” Roger said in a forcefully light tone, “Wasn’t anything more than an inconvenience, really.”

“That’s— That’s good. You, Lira? You doing alright?”

“Well, I’m— Not perfect, but not terrible,” She said, “Nyx didn’t make a good first impression though,” she grumbled.

“No, no he didn’t,” Sean said, “We don’t have to like him to work with him. You’ll understand when I explain everything to you.”

After that they drifted apart again and didn’t speak any more as they continued to the surface. Lira had to blink furiously and hold her hand up to her face as they emerged from the tunnel into the forest around them. It felt like it had been forever since Lira, Roger, Ash, and Sean had stopped at somewhere similar just to relax and have some fun…

There were two shuttles in the distance parked relatively close to each other. They all moved towards them, but Nyx held up a hand to them.

“Stop! Yo, hold up!”

Everyone stopped and Sean stood there as Nyx jogged ahead and entered one of the ships.

“You might be infected by a disease caught from your time down there,” Sean explained, “We have to decontaminate you before we do anything else.”

Nyx returned with a bundle of rods in his arms. He put it on the forest floor and extended the poles until it created a box like structure with dozens of what looked like lights pointing towards the center.

“Go on, in,” Nyx said with a big gesture, “Everyone gets their little dose of radiation to kill off everything. I keep a clean ship, no little plagues are sneaking onboard without my permission!”

Lira and Roger were a little hesitant, but the Enforcers didn’t hesitate and went through one by one, removing their clothing band after they went into the shrouded booth and getting blasted full force with high radiation for a few minutes.

Roger went second to last, and came out the other side fine.

“Don’t worry, Lira,” he assured her after he was done, “Barely a sting. Doesn’t hurt much at all.”

“Okay.”

She went in and the lights around her suddenly blazed on full force and her whole body tingled. It was uncomfortable just standing there in place letting herself be blasted by radiation that she knew should have been causing her to keel over and die almost instantly. But then it was done and after reactivating her clothing band to cover herself again she exited, joining everyone else outside. Nyx began disassembling the thing behind her, and after it was done set off back towards his shuttle.

“Alright, Roger, Lira, let’s get out of here,” Sean said, “I’d rather not be arrested by the Immortal Council when they arrive in force.”

“Hey, what about us?” Frederick said indignantly, “You’re just going to leave us here?”

“Yes,” Sean said flatly, “You’re on the surface, and the planetary government knows you’re here. I’m sure they’ll swoop in and pick you up after we leave.”

Frederick grumbled a bit, but took a step back and nodded after sharing two long glances with his companions.

“Fine. I guess that’s the best deal I’ll get.”

“Yes, C’mon Lira, Roger. Let’s go.”

The three of them headed to their shuttle even as Nyx’s shuttle’s engines began to rumble as it prepared for takeoff. Before they fully went inside the ship, Lira hesitated.

“Do you guys think they’ll really be fine? What if the local government doesn’t pick them up?”

“The Immortal Council will be here in a few weeks,” Sean said soothingly, “They’ll make sure they get picked up then even in the worst case. No need to worry about them.”

“Well— Okay. I guess that’s okay. I just feel bad leaving them behind.”

The door closed behind them and Sean began taking off the suit he was in and put it in a box in the corner.

“Ship, use AI pilot. Return to main ship,” Sean said.

“Confirmed, Sean,” The ship’s voice said over the intercom, and the engines began to rumble.

Well, Lira mused, at least she would be seeing Ash again soon. She hoped that Ash was holding up okay while she and Roger were gone…