Aliens: Finding Void

Chapter Eleven

Daeus' POV

The girl screamed out when I grabbed her, kicking out against me and clawing at my arms. Yet she was small and unlike the men Yukor, she had no claws. I was easily able to restrain her with my four arms and she continued to scream and wail. The moment my hands had touched her, she had realized what I was here for and I don't know what exactly she thought, but as she screamed, I felt a pit open in my stomach. I didn't want to hurt her.

"Follow me! Hurry up!" The kid's voice was faint above the wailing of the girl, but the urgency in it struck me through her fighting. I had to do this for me, for Vrillyn and Vri. Maybe it would be easy and she wouldn't get hurt -

I turned, holding onto the girl as tightly as I could and raced after the ghost. He took us a different way, through darker and darker halls until suddenly we were running through a hole in the wall and I wasn't on concrete anymore.

Dusty ground swallowed us and the girl kept screaming and kicking. She was small and weak and nothing she did hurt me. They had to have know I'd escaped and by now, maybe they even knew I'd gotten to her with how loud her wailing was. I had no clue how good a Yukor's hearing was and now wasn't the time to test it. I could barely even see the kid anymore and the further we went, the smaller the tunnel got until I was crawling, hunched over the girl and forcing myself forward. The earth was crumbling around and me it was getting harder to breath, but he was still ahead of me so I had to keep going.

Until I couldn't.

My second shoulders seared in pain as I tried to force them forward. I growled out and moved maybe an inch. There was darkness surrounding us and the girl had gone quiet. "Kid! I can't follow you!"

There was silence and then the kid was in front of me. "It's not much farther! You have to! If they corner you here, you're done for. The room we're heading to will give you control over the whole building,"

The desperation in his voice was different than before. His body seemed a little more solid than it had and his white paws were brown from the dirt. I didn't have time to figure this out, but I knew that I had to do what he said. No questions. No hesitation.

Pushing up against the top of the tunnel, I switched to holding the girl in my bottom two arms and used my upper two to help pull through the tunnel. The way my body felt like it was being crushed from all sides was not fun and I gritted my teeth, digging my claws into the dirt.

Everything screamed at me as I wedged myself further through the tunnel. I was slowly suffocating in here and I could feel the sides of the dirt tunnel pressing into me unforgivingly.

Until it crumbled from under me and I felt my hand burst through the ground into open air.

Quickly, I pulled at the ground until light met my eyes and new air flooded into the stale tunnel. I clawed at the ground until a hole wide enough to fit my shoulders through opened up and I was pulling myself up through the hole, squeezing through the top layer of dirt and into a large, spacious, yet empty room.

I didn't dare put the girl down, but I was lucky she'd stopped struggling. The kid stood over by a desk that held a ton of buttons and looked at me with eyes that seemed to be seeing something else. He wasn't really focused and his body seemed like it was shaking. "One of these buttons will broadcast through the whole complex." He said, turning to stare at the buttons. "Tell them," he urged. "Quick! Tell them you have her!"

Moving to the control board, I scanned the buttons. There was not a single word or drawing on the whole board that would tell me which button was the one I needed. I could sense the kid watching me, waiting for me to choose the right one, but I didn't even know what half of these could do. I was about to tell him that we needed to find another way when the girl reached down and pressed a large green button. She started to say something, but panic had me clamping a hand over her mouth.