Chapter 20: The Cutting Glow

The dead were still banging on the elevator doors as we passed the third, then second floors, traveling in the elevator shaft. God, it felt weird.

“What a racket!” Marci somehow soundlessly stopped on the metal ladder below, then said, “I wonder how long those things will stand there hitting the doors.”

Taking one more step before stopping, the metal ladder rang out with a slight echo. Looking down, I pointed the beam away from Marci. Yet her pale elven face seem to steal the light, a faint aura around her, “No idea. Until they hear or see something somewhere else?”

“Honestly, the bigger question is, where are they getting their energy from? How is the nanotech getting their muscles to move? You’d think they’d be degrading rapidly with their energy expenditure. Imagine if we were outside. Flies would feast and those things would soon be nothing more than skeletons.”

We’d paused on the ladder a little below the first floor. “I don’t know. But I don’t think we should open these doors. We don’t want zombies banging on them, in case we need to open them later. And I doubt the rest of the team is on the first floor, assuming they made it out.”

Despite raising her voice to overcome the constant knocking, Marci sounded oddly flat in the elevator shaft, “Where do you think they’d go?”

“I wish I knew. If we had a map of the hotel, it’d be easier to figure out. But, if I were in their shoes, I’d barricade myself in a room somewhere or head for the other stairwell. But it really depends on their condition and whether they were overrun like we were. If they’re fine, they’re probably trying to figure out how to get to us, only we aren’t there anymore.”

“We’ll have to find a way back to them. Maybe after the zombies calm down, we can sneak by. If zombies calm down. Or, we’ll arrange a distraction. They seem pretty focused on whatever they’re doing, it’s probably easy to distract them.”

“It’ll be difficult if they stay at the doors. We’ll have to find some other way up. We might find the solution in the basement though, a more detailed map in the security room or something.”

“I sure hope so. Bent would probably say there’ll be a clue somewhere in this hotel to solving the zombie problem. It is a quest, after all.”

“Yeah.” I slumped a little against the metal ladder. This wasn’t our mission! But we had no choice, if we wanted to survive. “Marci, did I make a mistake in bringing us down here into this dungeon? It seems absurd that we had to undertake quests to carry out our mission!

Marci’s soft voice carried in the empty shaft, “River? Are you ok?”

“Ah. Yeah. I’m second guessing myself. I’m questioning whether we’re going to accomplish what we need to. If that’s even possible.”

“No, no, don’t think like that. You keep us focused on the mission. The rest of us, I don’t know. The game’s pulling us in. Maybe because you’re somehow out of it, a little. But you’re doing a good job, River. You really are.”

“Thanks, Marci. That means a lot. We really should keep moving. The sooner we check security for video footage, the sooner we can get out of here.” And I hoped and hoped it really was down there.

Starting down the ladder, she mimicked a cheerful sounding Fred, “We got this, Boss!”

I laughed, then said, “And whatever else, Marci, I’m definitely getting an arm work-out in.”

“Probably gain a level in climbing by the time this is done.” She’d reached the next level down, “Doors here, with a B-1 painted on them.” The elf moved away from the ladder, crossing the doors and holding onto a metal bar on the little ledge in front of the doors. Or, behind them, if you were entering the elevator normally.

“Must be the basement. Or, at least, one floor below the main. Wait just a moment. I just want to look around.”

“Check for traps as Bent says?”

“That, and, see if the dust is disturbed.” After reaching just above her position, I shone the light around the metal door frame. It was dusty, but the dust had been disturbed in two places roughly thirty cm apart. “Looks like someone’s been here. I think these are old handprints.” Cupping my ears to the door, I listened carefully. “I don’t hear anything. Let’s do this as quietly as possible.”

Marci and I braced ourselves, each of us pulling the doors open. I wedged my foot in, then Marci shone her flashlight into the room beyond. No walking corpses. Opening the doors wider, I moved in, steps echoing hollowly in the empty space. The whole hotel was dark, but this felt more so. Thick and heavy, as if the air around us was smothering our light. I turned back to the elevator shaft and helped her into the room.

She hugged herself, “Ah, it’s less dusty, but feels oppressive.” Marci looked around at the dark ceiling as if it were going to collapse, then caught my gaze, and forced a smile.

She was right about the dust, very little was on the ground. Not in the middle, nor in the hidden corners. “That’s strange.” I switched to a whisper, “We should be extra quiet, then. Something might be down here, moving around a lot or cleaning.”

“Or,” she whispered right back, “there’s something in the air, like static electricity or something, pulling the dust out.”

“What would do that?”

“Batteries? Something with charge. A working air filtration system.”

“Could the room be cut off from air flow?”

“I sure hope not. Not entirely,” she pointed at the elevator doors. “That’s not sealed.”

“Good point. I’ll take, uh, point.” I moved past her, stepping as carefully as possible.

“Lead, you could have said lead. Or head. Or first.”

“I’ll take head.”

“Oh, will you now?”

I stumbled. “First, I mean first.”

“Do you think it’s safe enough for that?”

“Marci!”

“Sorry,” she laughed sweetly and warmly. “I just needed some levity. This place is so gloomy and depressing. You’re easy to set up, you know.”

I couldn’t help but smile for a moment, paused, turned slightly and touched her hand. “Yeah, you’re right about both of those things. Let’s focus. Hopefully, it’ll be easy to find the generators.”

“On that note, I’ve been thinking. The amount of fuel remaining is an indication of how quickly the nanotech attack was.”

That got my attention. “How so?”

“The attack transformed the planet. That means, at some point, it cut off the power grid. Given that this hotel seems to be a resort hotel, it probably wasn’t very close to any cities. So, the attack here would have been delayed.”

“The power . . .”

“Right.” She brushed hair away from her face. “When the power went off nationally, or locally if it were divided, the generators would have been turned on by people here. But if the attack was very quick, the people wouldn’t have had time to turn the generators on. If the fuel is depleted, that tells us the attack was slow.”

“But why wouldn’t all the fuel be gone in that case?”

“We’re in a cavern. A giant cavern.” She tilted her head at me. “Either the nanotech moved the hotel here or built the cavern around it. It would have shut the power off for either of those scenarios. Hopefully, the generators still exist, but it might have coopted them into something else like it probably did with our ship.”

“Oh. Holy shit. And here I am, putting all my points into intelligence.”

“This is all engineering stuff. You’re a soft science kind of guy.”

“Hey,” I gave her a fake angry look, “archaeology is still science.”

She winked and smiled, “Sure, of course. Absolutely.” Then blinked a lot. “So much science.”

“I’m gonna, when we get off this planet, I’m gonna,” I straightened up and made as if to be doing up a tie on a proper shirt, “listen to my mom and become a doctor. Medical doctor. Stop disappointing my parents and all that.” I held up my right fist, “It’s time.”

“Ha!”

We shared a smile, and then I squeezed her hand, “Let’s get going. The sooner we find the generators, the more information we get, the sooner we can meet up with our team and get out of this damned hotel.”

“Lead the way.”

The hallway down here didn’t have wallpaper and wasn’t painted. Bare concrete, rough patches trying to cover cracks here and there, and sometimes the cracks won. We moved through it, taking the left passage first. The lights reflected off a distant door handle.

Something felt off. I stopped walking, whispered harshly, “Wait!” Put my light on the floor, running it slowly forward. It first found leather shoes that led to the legs of a body, lying prone, pointing forward. I walked toward it cautiously, looking for any hint of a trap on the walls. The corpse’s pants appeared to be a fine metal weave, and it bore a tunic of the same material, with a leather cloak overtop. The corpse’s skin was leathery, this person was long dead and thankfully not moving.

“Hey,” softly said Marci, kneeling down beside me, “look at the scabbard.”

Around its hips, a thick tan belt with sword attached, was glowing a yellowish-white color where the blade entered the leather scabbard. I unbuckled it, easily lifting it over – it was very light for its size, which was that of a longsword. As I drew it, light sprung up everywhere. The sword itself was like a Scottish claymore, widening about three quarters down the length, then curving toward a point. It was easy to heft and well balanced.

Marci said, “A glowing sword?”

“You think it’s radioactive? Maybe this killed him?”

She looked at me like I was crazy, “I don’t think so. Who’d imbue steel with radioactivity? Look at it,” she touched the smooth steel. “A lot nicer than the blades we took off those troglodytes. No scratches or cracks.”

“Hey, there’s faint writing on it. Looks like gold. Down the center.”

Marci reached for the handle, and I let her take it. Running her fingers along the inscription, she said, “This is Elvish.”

I looked up into her blue eyes, “How do you know that?”

“It says, ‘Fear Not The Darkness.’ And it carries a double meaning. Darkness in Elvish includes notions of the afterlife, the void, death. Wait! What the hell?” She shook her head, “I have no idea how I can read this. Or know this!”

I touched her shoulder, “It’s the nanotech. Changing you. Us, it’s changing us.”

Her eyes wide, shaking her head a little, “God, this is fun. So much fun.”

“Elvish. Now that I’m looking at it, these clothes are roughly your size. And the blade is light.” I ran my hands along the mesh. It was cool to the touch, feeling like metal, “I bet this was an elf. Do you think this is some kind of armor?”

“I don’t know.”

“If it is, it’s better than what you’re wearing now.”

“And couldn’t possibly stink as much. You keep the blade, though. It doesn’t feel quite right. I’m supposed to be a sorcerer, remember?”

“An axe-wielding sorcerer.”

“Just until my magic works.”

“What do you think, shall we rob the dead?”

“He doesn’t need this stuff anymore. It’s less robbing and more appropriating.”

“Let’s drag him back to the elevator area. I can’t shake a bad feeling here.”