The Aethernet Falls

Chapter 14 - Solid - Part 1

Greco was pacing by the door of the lift when Boros reached the basement. “She’s sitting in the corner.” He said, a tinge of concern in his voice.

As promised, Clarissa was sitting in the far corner, back to the room. If she wasn’t so perfectly still Boros would have thought his sister was sobbing. He couldn’t blame her if she was, a lot had happened during the day and the sun wasn’t anywhere near setting. For a moment he considered just how much worse the day could get. It certainly wasn’t a good sign. The coming apocalypse would be difficult, but if every day progressively got worse from here the three of them were in some serious trouble.

“Hey, Sasa,” He put his hand on her shoulder, “We’re going up now.” To his surprise she was smiling when she turned to look at him.

“Ok.” She sounded almost cheerful.

Maybe she was in shock. Maybe she was just processing the day’s events. So far, Boros had to remind himself. Admittedly, he himself wasn’t handling things very well. He hadn’t said anything about it, but when he snapped at Greco for his cynicism he really wanted to kill the man. Just get it over with. He had a nagging feeling that the man had something to do with the armed men that had showed up to kill them, kidnap them. Whatever their plans were.

That was the most frightening part about them. He had no idea what they wanted. They never communicated with one another and, while they had began training their rifles on the three of them, they had died long before they could say anything.

That was something else. Greco claimed to never have killed anyone before, but he didn’t hesitate to take two of them out. Shoot them in the back and just move on. It was eerie. Maybe Greco was shutting them up before they could say something. They were dead now, though, and Greco was unlikely to say anything about them if he did, indeed, have something to do with them.

Clarissa stood up and Boros led her to the lift where Greco was already waiting. He looked impatient, but it was probably just stress. They were all feeling under pressure. Boros was convinced that something needed to go right, and soon, or else they all lose themselves.

The ride up the second time felt like it went faster, which was a godsend. The three of them stood in silence, the only sounds came from the decaying machinery that hauled them upwards, even worse than when Boros was alone.

Suddenly the lift slipped. Boros thought nothing of it, but Clarissa dropped to the floor. Greco just stood still. Nothing else happened until they could see the light coming from the floor above. Boros almost sighed when he heard something strain, a low pitched whining. It hadn’t happened before but the lift kept moving upwards, slowly just like the time before.

Everything happened at once, though the world seemed to slow to a crawl for Boros. A loud pinging noise, followed by a half dozen more. A cable had frayed and was coming undone. Then a loud snapping noise and the lift tilted towards one wall. Clarissa had begun to slide towards the wall. There was no gap she could fall through, but Boros thought that if she crashed against the wall, the weight would shift drastically enough to continue the cascading degradation of the lift. He went to reach for her hand, Greco caught it first. He had a grip on a rusted out portion of the doors, red dripping to the ground when he caught Clarissa with his outstretched arm.

“A little help.” He managed to grunt.

Boros was slipping himself, but he managed to take the few steps needed to reach the doors, he could almost touch the floor above with his fingertips. He hadn’t sounded anything that sounded like an emergency braking mechanism and wondered how long until the other side failed as well.

The lift shuddered as the other side, still attached, caught and tried to haul them up again. Greco cried out in pain but he didn’t drop Clarissa.

“Now!” He shouted. Boros could hear the pain behind his voice.

Not thinking, Boros leapt and grabbed hold of the floor above. He had a mental image of the concrete giving way and, with his weight crashing down, the remaining cables failing sending them all to their deaths.

But it held. He reached down for Greco, getting a firm grip around the man’s wrist and began lifting with all his might. He wasn’t sure if it would even matter but had the vague idea that reducing the amount of weight that the lift had to support would allow it to get moving again.

Two people aren’t light, the lift had agreed with him as it began scraping its way back up. It took the extra weight a little at a time and didn’t fail again until it reached its destination, though slightly askew. The doors opened slowly and Boros, relieved of his burden, tried to hurry them apart. When they were wide enough to fit a person through he rushed the others.

It had only been a minute, but it felt like an hour. When he finally got out himself he collapsed to the ground. His shoulders ached in the way that he knew would only get worse later. But they were all alive.