CHAPTER TWELVE
Looking around the room, standing some ten feet away from a non functioning killing machine, we took in the scene around us. The two candles flickering nearest to us gave the Jackhammer a serene appearance, like a dog sitting by the fire. I blocked out the scene as it immediately began to fill me with sadness. The Jackhammer was no dog, it was four hundred kilo robot designed to search and destroy, I was slightly surprised that it was so easily damaged in the chase. Perhaps it was ‘injured’ by some previous encounter, I was almost positive that this couldn’t have been the same machine that chased me through the corridors above. Unless someone, maybe that Mexican man had hurt it during his encounter. It was a minor distraction to what was really troubling us both, but yet again I was slightly distracted.
In the candlelight I could finally see the woman that I had allied with about twenty minutes ago, she was standing looking around the room for other signs of importance, she eventually settled her eyes on me. Realising that I was staring at her she slowly moved her right hand to my face and used her index finger to gently lift my jaw.
She was beautiful, if somewhat ragged by the recent and whatever previous problems that she had come across in the darkened depths. Her hair was fairly short, but neatly swept back in a ponytail, it looked jet black and back just to the nape of her neck. But that wasn’t what caught my full attention.
The girl in front of me had the most startling blue eyes, really accentuated by her light complexion, she wore a dark red skinny shirt, that showed her athletic figure to its full. She wore red combat trousers and scuffed white shoes.
“You look like shit.”
The comment almost made me burst out laughing, I looked down and saw that the comment was pretty accurate, my shirt beneath the black outfit I acquired was also a brownish red colour, and the blue denim jeans that I had on were a darker shade of purple, strange…
I continued to look at myself for a few moments, and saw that the tail end of my shirt was still damp with the water that I fell into above, I’d lost count of how many flights of stairs we had descended into the darkness.
I rung the edge of my t-shirt out in my hand, and was shocked to see what happened. The droplets of water hit my dirty left palm, although there wasn’t a lot of it left in the drying shirt, the water that I did manage to wring out, was red.
Blood red.
“Holy shit.”
Sapphire edged closer to see what I was groaning about, then recoiled in horror.
“It’s all over you.”
I realised she was right, I was soaked in blood, it had began to dry into my skin and clothing. “Am I hurt??” I couldn’t understand it, it didn’t feel as if I was hurt anywhere, at least serious enough to cover my almost head to toe in my own blood, it was almost as if…
Oh my god.
“The pool…” thoughts began to flicker through my head at the scene covered in near perpetual darkness above.
“What?”
“The pool upstairs that I fell into, I remember that it felt the water was making me sluggish as I waded through it. Maybe it wasn’t water at all, for the most part at least.”
Sapphire stood there for a few moments remembering the scene above, the revelation spread over her face as quick as lightning, she grimaced at the thought.
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“I wish I was! There’s no other explanation for it, the blood is still damp for Christ’s sake!”
Reflecting on my own statement, I felt the sudden urge to strip naked. The thought was in my head to rinse all of the clothing in the stream, but if it was contaminated then that would prove to be equally problematic. My hands would soon be giving me the answer in around an hours time, if I don’t find a means of washing them before then.
“The candles.” Sapphire timed the question brilliantly, the thoughts of what I was wearing flushed immediately from my mind.
When we both burst into the room moments ago, the sensation of being able to see was almost as overpowering as the Jackhammer that distracted me from it. Now that I was able to reflect on the room, the feeling of being able to focus took a little getting used to. If the light was that of normal daylight, then we would probably have suffered some sort of permanent damage. But the lighting was just at the right level to not cause any discomfort. In different circumstances, I would have said that the feeling was almost romantic.
“Where do you think we are?” Sapphire asked, realising that I wasn’t going to retort to her previous statement.
“I have no idea, I didn’t even know where I was when I started, hell knows where we are now.” The room had no real significance with the exception of the stream running through it. My initial urge was to test how deep that water was, so scanning the room for disposable objects and finding none, I headed back to the robot.
“What are you doing?”
“Just hold on a minute,” I reassured her, stepping quietly over one of the Jackhammers extended forelimbs, it was motionless, with the fluid barely dripping from it now. As I manoeuvred my way over the large metallic monster, I tried to keep an eye on any sudden movements from it.
Even in the flickering candlelight, I didn’t see the movement in my periphery until it was too late, the barbed sphere of the Jackhammers’ main attacking prowess floated through the air without as much as a sound of hydraulics. The shouts of Sapphire echoing behind me didn’t travel quickly enough through the thick musty air as I stumbled backwards…
