Chapter 5: "Eyes with a voice."

Dibbuk dragged Harvel back towards the switch station as steadily as she could. He wasn't heavy mind you. She could have practically chucked him the rest of the way if she'd wanted to. This not being an option, she settled for squeezing him firmer than absolutely necessary.

Harvel getting hurt was nothing new to her at this point. Only a year ago a can of solvent had exploded, burning nearly all the flesh from his forearm in the middle of a fatburg clearing. His left forearm had looked a little like what you got when all the cheese slid off a slice of pizza. When the treatments were finished it had looked like when someone hastily tries to pile it all back on before it gets cold.

This muck-brained idiot had told Mary to take off before any of them had even known what was going on. The first thing she had noticed upon waking up was the smell. The second, was all of the screaming. All of it had smashed her in the face so hard she could have filed charges.

'Everything had gone to hell and, where were you? Of course, you were asleep. They had needed you, and you were asleep.' She thought, as she approached the station platform.

She watched as the medical team cart came flying into the other side of the station. They skidded a bit as they stopped. She waited as patiently as she could, applying pressure to Harvels back. She couldn't risk trying to pull him up the 20 foot ladder and making whatever was wrong with him worse.

The medics reached the edge of the platform and rappelled down the side. Dibbuk glanced at the nearby ladder, a bit confused. The medics expanded a stretcher out between the two of them. They pulled him on and strapped him in, with what looked like one smooth motion.

As Dibbuk grabbed Harvels shotgun and headed for the ladder, the medics both hooked the rappel lines to their backs. Securing the stretcher to rings protruding from the sides of their waists, they yanked on the lines in unison. They ascended to the platform within a matter of seconds, the little pullys at the top making a sound like a phone book being sliced in half.

Dibbuk waited as they rushed into the cart and took off at unnaturally high speed. She sighed once more, letting her hands drop down into the muck, still holding onto Harvels shotgun and her assault rifle. She watched as the flow danced around her knuckles, ribbons of crimson mixing with the green water. 'This damn job is going to be the end of us.' She thought, lifting her brothers shotgun and inspecting it.

'It's bent like a drinking straw for fucks sake.' She thought, passing a claw over the kink in the metal. For a moment, the composition of the air seemed to shift, like ionization produced by an electrical arc. She lifted her gaze and tried to see further down the tunnel. Her reptilian eyes strained themselves to confirm what she knew was there.

There was something sitting, seemingly waiting, at the very edge of the light. Something darker than the blackness around it. She could feel it staring at her, like a hound laser focused on a meal just outside of its reach. After a second, she realized that what it was truly staring at. Harvels shotgun.

Just a bit more curious than she was frightened, Dibbuk pulled a flare from her breast pocket and lit it. The bright green light it emanated bounced around the glistening walls of the pipe. Tossing the flare down the pipe with practiced aim, it landed exactly where she had seen the darker shadow.

There was nothing there. Where she had sensed the thing was, sat only a slightly larger pile of muck than the rest. The flare had lodged itself in the heap, like a single candle on the worlds saddest birthday cake. Dibbuk let out a nervous little chuckle at the thought. Still a little uneasy, she trekked back to the ladder and pulled herself up onto the platform. Mary was in the middle of working the transfer station controls so they could all finally go home.

"What'd you do all that for?" Lindon asked, staring out at the flare in the distance.

"Oh, uh, thought he might've dropped something. Guess I was wrong." Dibbuk replied, a bout of nervous laughter punctuating the end of her statement.

Lindon didn't believe her, she could tell by the way he sucked on his teeth, but what was she going to say? I think something tried to kill my brother and it wasn't just a giant muck centipede? Nah, she'd just end up in some sort of seminar about pipe madness or ptsd. Not that those weren't very real issues, they just didn't apply here. She hoped.

"Well, let's just get back to base and everyone can calm down. Wicksomme hasn't stopped sweating since he woke up, mid-crises." Lindon said, nodding his head toward the drenched young man standing as close to the cart as he physically could.

Dibbuk nodded in agreement as she strapped Harvels shotgun to her pack. Lindon sauntered over to Wicksomme and tried offering him a drink. This was about as close as Don got to what you might call emotional support.

The cart was dropped into place on the red line rails and Mary opened the hatch. Wicksomme zipped into the cart so fast Dibbuk wasn't sure she saw his boots leave the ground. Lindon and Mary both followed him with significantly less zeal.

As Dibbuk moved toward the cart she felt a pull in the back of her mind. She hesitated to comply with it but gave in after a second of somber deliberation. She gave a final glance down the pipe, focusing on the distant green twinkle of the flare. Though they were designed to last over an hour, the flare began to sputter and spit green sparks.

The sputtering and sparks continued for a moment as if the little flare was fighting for its very existence. Then, like a boxer leaning on the ropes before the final blow, it dimmed, then it was gone. The blackness returned like a great wall blocking any view of what was behind it.

There were five sets of lights between Dibbuk and the flare. Then there were four. Then three, then two. One by one the sets of blue lights running along the pipe began to fizzle out. When it had reached the last set of lights, merely fifty feet away from the platform, it stopped.

It had stopped, and now it stared. She couldn't tell how, but she knew it was staring. She could feel its eyes.

They said, "Nice try. Don't try it again, thank you very much." The eyes had a voice.

With that last polite, if albeit thinly veiled threat, Dibbuk got the message. She turned, walked into the cart, shut the hatch, and tried not to look anyone in the eye. She'd just been privy to the weirdest course of events in her, at this point, short life, and didn't want anyone to know just how loudly she was screaming on the inside.