Chapter 4: Meetup

"Dad!?" I called out in surprise. "What is this?!"

"Xavier?!" My father sounded just as shocked.

As soon as I got back to my senses, my monitor began busting out with call requests, messages, members of our group demanding to speak with us since we were the organizers.

I couldn't accept all at once, as the maximum calls I could answer at once was two, with my father on my headset, I could only answer one more. And there was at least seven call requests.

It sounded like my father was enveloped with calls too, because I heard his voice speaking rapidly on the other side.

Following suit, I decided to accept one of their calls, a fellow geologist named Dr. Luis Aramen.

"Mr. Hinata!?" She demanded, "What is this?! We should immediately be warned when there is an obstacle in the way!"

"I— we—" I thought about my words carefully. "Please calm down! My father and I were also impacted by the obstacle! We both did not expect a sudden impact!"

"Wasn't this suit supposed to be state of the art?!" She demanded, "How could it not detect an incoming obstacle, especially one as large as this?!?"

As large as this?

"Please, Dr. Luis. This was NOT meant to happen. There shouldn't have been an obstacle in the way, our laser would have sliced past it with ease..."

"Then why is there an obstacle?!!" She voices out frustratingly.

To that, I had no answer.

I peeked ever so slightly to a screen next to me. It showed the status of the environment outside my suit.

The temperature was a mind boggling 1365 degrees Celsius (but it should be relatively harmless to the suit).

We have descended about a hundred and three kilometers from where we first started from, and have passed the LAB for about two kilometers.

Despite continuously falling, my suit didn't seem to be dam aged at all, it only had a couple of minor bugs to the lighting, but other than that, everything was functioning normally.

But there was no indication of an obstacle, or surface, blocking out path. No warning. It was as if this obstacle simply came out of nowhere.

I pursed my lips.

I had to see what we were even blocked by in the first place.

As I tried to explain the situation to the best of my ability to Dr. Luis, I moved my hand rapidly across the control board.

Using a few cranks, plus a pedal by my feet, I began moving the appendages on my suit, trying to pull us both up. And slowly but surely, it was getting up to its feet.

Though I could feel my suit getting up on its on, the window was still filled with a sickening, translucent redness.

I flicked a small switch by the corner, which turned on the spotlight on my suit.

And yet, I still saw only red.

I was baffled by this, before realizing that some light passed through the redness from outside. The light, I presumed, was my spotlight.

I made the terrifying realization:

This redness wasn't part of the environment, it was literally stuck to the glass like glue!

"Eww..." I mumbled. A sense of disgust upon this realization was inevitable, impossible to suppress.

I flicked another switch, activating a compressed wind screen wiper that wiped off the sticky red stuff off the glass.

As it did this, I had another disgusting thought.

Why was this... fluid stuck to the glass?

And with that thought, came another, and another.

And finally, my mind came to one final question:

How is it even here in the first place?

As seen before, the temperature here was over a thousand degrees Celsius, any fluid here should be something like magma, or another extremely dense liquid that moves slowly.

Yet, this red fluid seemed to act exactly like water, and moves freely and easily.

It should be impossible.

When I noticed these... squirmy things moving around inside the remainder of the red liquid that wasn't wiped away.

They looked like a mealworms, but less wrinkly and more... smooth and gel-like.

It was like little thin pieces of banana or apple that one would find inside a bowl of jelly.

Thinking about jelly, the ground seemed oddly squishy as well.

As ridiculous as all that sounds, it felt like I was somehow sinking into the floor. Like something was pulling me in.

It made it considerably hard for the suit to get up on its feet.

But eventually, it steadied itself, and I could finally have a good breather for the first time in a while.

Dr. Luis had hung up sometime ago, while I was busy trying to stand upright. The call requests I got had also disappeared as well.

Guess my father had managed to explain to them all.

Or had something else happened—

"Xavier!" My father's voice penetrated my ears suddenly, startling me a little. "Are you okay?!"

"Y-Yeah..." I shook my head soundly to get back to my senses. "I think s-so..."

"Hah... good..." My father sighed in relief and sadness at the same time.

"Dad?" I asked. "What happened?"

"We appear to be... stuck on a soft membrane-like surface at the moment." My father explained. "The area seems to absorb light, so we cannot determine a definite location."

I didn't notice it until now, but what he said was true, no matter how brightly I turned the spotlight on, I couldn't get a clear view of the world around me.

But what I could tell, was that it was HUGE.

The landscape was a ark red as well, and it seemed to stretch out in every direction.

"How did we not detect something like this?!" I suddenly demanded like Dr. Luis. "Something this big should have been notified to us at least fifty kilometers before we reached it!"

"I... don't know..." My father sounded just as confused as I was, "Even now... this area hasn't registered on my environment status, so we wouldn't even have known about it before, well, this happens."

I tried to gather my thoughts together, and work out a solution together with my father, and the team of scientists we brought.

And my father seemed to have read my mind.

"Hah..." He sighed, "We should meet up. I've sent a message to everyone that we should meet up with each other to ensure everyone is safe. You know where to go yourself."

I did know.

Basically, there were twelve of us on this mission, and we used a clock based system to locate where each of us were, in terms of the circle shape our laser dug through. So twelve o'clock would be the most northern point. And six o'clock would represent the mouth southern point of the circle.

Whenever there was an emergency, all of us would meet back up at the twelve o'clock zone, which is where my father is.

And speak of the devil.

Behind me, I could feel some deep trembling shake my suit's feet.

Another suit, similar to mine, with thick, flexible wires still connected to its back, was marching oath slowly, since it was really heavy.

Through the transparent window, I spotted a man named Dr. Ali Bossad.

He was not much of a geologist, or even a scientist. He was actually a medic, sent with us because of protocol by the government.

He was a kind-hearted man, and was really good at fixing most basic injuries, and sometimes even fatal ones.

Though I do wonder how he could help anyone since he was inside his suit after all.

He waved towards me, and pointed Northwest.

Are we going the right way?

I pointed a thumbs up.

To get to the twelve o'clock spot, we were meant to walk around the circumference of the hole formed by the laser, but the area seemed to be way bigger, like we were in an underground cave. Thankfully, we installed a diagram of the size and map of the hole on one of the monitors so we wouldn't lose our way on the circumference.

I adjusted a few knobs on the monitor next to me, and it switched to a page with a near perfect circle, with colors representing the temperature and size of it.

Time to meet my father, I guess.

--

"Dad?" I tried speaking to him again. But no answer, he had hung up a while ago for no known reason.

Dr. Ali and I had reached the twelve o'clock point officially, and we saw about a couple other suits, but none belonged to my father.

I signaled to them anyway, flashing the spotlight a couple times to get their attention.

They turned around slowly, and immediately recognized me. I got a couple of call requests.

I answered them, "Hello?"

"Is everything alright?" One of them was Dr. Lan, "Do you have the slightest clue what is going on."

"I'm terribly sorry, but we have no idea..." I admitted.

Now that I have a closer look, the suits were definitely sinking into the red floor, a dent beneath their metal feet.

"Should we evacuate?" A different voice asked, I recognized it as Dr. Ralph McNorn, "Figure out the plan once we're safe?"

"We... should wait for everyone to arrive before settling anything..." I answered, "Do any of you know where my father went?"

"He was here earlier, but began moving off for some reason, telling us to wait in this spot."

I was confused, but I knew my father never did things without reason. Maybe he went to find the others? Or—

A wave of blinking lights erupted from my left.

I turned my suit around, and I found the rest of the team coming towards us.

But alas, my father wasn't among them.

Since I couldn't address all of them through calls, we used basic sign language to communicate to each other.

Most of them were understanding about the fact that we didn't know what was going on, but there were others, such as Dr. Luis, or wasn't as forgiving, and was clearly shaken up by the event.

She moved towards me rapidly, demanding for her call request to be answered again.

With no choice, I decided to accept her—

PSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH!!!!!

Huh?

All of a sudden, she fell through the ground.

That was no metaphor. She was LITERALLY swallowed up by the ground, her suit penetrating through the red membrane that was the floor.

Before she disappeared, I saw I look of terror in her eyes, as she stared below her.

And then, she was gone.

Only the hole in the ground, and the ropes that were connected to her suit were still visible.

At first, I was stunned, but I wasn't particularly afraid for her safety.

The ropes attached to her back were keeping her connected to the upper world. To ascend, she would simply have to—

They snapped.

The ropes snapped upwards like a flick of a whip.

All of us stared in shocked despair.

What the hell—

And then came the volcano.