Descension

CHAPTER 3

Ben sighs in relief as he looks over his patch on the reactor's shell. He smiles softly to himself as he swipes his hand over it, pleased to find it still intact. Ben turns away from the reactor, walking up the spiral staircase and down the hall to the lab. He sets aside his gloves as he enters. Ben sits down at his workstation and grabs the container of the shell sample, only to find that the sample is gone. Whatever ate through the steel had begun to deteriorate the glass too. Small holes have appeared in the bottom of the glass, and the same warpage pattern has embedded into the container. Stunned into silence, Ben simply stares down at the bottom of the container.

Without thinking for another second, Ben smashes the container on the table, grabs a beaker, and collects every last shard into it. He frantically walks to the back of the lab where samples of every pure element they use at Omnicore are stored. From Hydrogen to Omnium, Ben takes one gram of every element they have and places them each in a new Petri dish. Ben sprinkles the shattered glass over them, then seals the tops, and tosses off his gloves.

Ben scrambles to the lab's sink and frantically washes his hands, glancing over his shoulder repeatedly at the elements on the table behind him. He quickly exits the lab, trying to suppress his dread as he closes his eyes and takes deep breaths. You don't know what this affects yet. It could be just a few materials. Ben repeats this affirmation in his mind until the words blur into a single cry of noise, so deep in his thoughts that he doesn't even notice the people passing by him, their greetings muffled and filtered out. Something about this is wrong. Seriously wrong.

0600. In a single file line, six people in white suits with gas masks and orange gloves march through the front doors of Omnicore, their lead-plated boots a resounding drum in the halls of the facility. The two people in front, the leaders of the group, take out their holopads, the man first in line already typing out observations about the facility, the woman beside him copying what he writes. They continue on, beginning their descent of the spiral staircase. Once on the floor, the leader of the group walks over to the patch on the shell, looking it over for a moment.

"The patch has a hole in it," he states, tracing his finger around the edge of the tungsten square. "The welding is successful, however."

"We should remove the welding to observe the opening beneath," the woman adds, looking at the man beside her.

The man nods and turns to one of the assistants behind him, who opens a duffle bag and pulls out a laser saw. The man takes it and turns it on, leveling the saw before carefully slicing the patch from the aluminum shell. Peeling it off reveals an opening in the steel over 10 centimeters in diameter.

The man leans in closer. "Huh..."

"Has the second shell been breached?" the woman asks, ready to type on her holopad.

"No..." The man tilts his head as he runs his fingers over the second shell, "...but it is discolored."

At the top of the stairs, the door bursts open, Ben sprinting down and skipping steps all while throwing his lab coat on. It's now long after the investigators had left: 0823. Once at the floor of the facility, Ben's eyes snap wide open at the sight of the large opening before him. He rushes up to the reactor, his brows knitting in horror as he observes the warping on the secondary shell.

"...Damn it!" Ben shouts, curling his fingers tightly in his hair, sweat beading at his hairline. Ben moves to run out of the reactor, giving a double-take before scrambling back up the stairs.

Ben scurries up to the lab and rushes over to the line of containers on the table, moving his shaking hands as carefully as he possibly can to remove the lids. Ben takes a pair of tweezers, gently beginning to pick up and observe the materials he had left in the warped glass. On each and every one of them, there is discoloration and warpage, including carbon; the foundation of life on Earth. Ben's shaking and sweating intensifies as he stares at the matter, paralyzed. Life could be affected by this. Humans could be affected by this.

There's only one way to find out.

Ben slips on a fresh pair of gloves and takes a pinch of the contaminated glass, then sprinkles it into a beaker. He then takes a scalpel and presses it to the thenar of his hand, his eyebrows knitting as he begins to quietly sob a raspy, choked sound. Blood on its own isn't enough to observe the full-scope of effects, and without the privilege of time to acquire another source for his sample, this is the easiest piece of himself to part with. This is for the greater good. This is for the greater good.

Ben squeezes his eyes shut, then makes the cut. He screams in pain as he severs through his flesh and deep into his muscle, heaving for breath as he slowly opens his tear-filled eyes to realize that he has to keep cutting through. Ben's breaths become wheezes as he begins to move the scalpel back and forth, tears streaming down his face as he cries out in pain as the feeling of warm, thick blood drips down his palm and onto the floor.

There's banging coming from somewhere, though Ben is too disoriented to process if it is even real.

He hysterically begins to cut faster and faster, begging for it to be over, until it finally slices through to the other side of his skin, Ben gasping in both horror and relief at the feeling of a piece of his own flesh sliding into the center of his palm. Ben stumbles over to the beaker with the glass inside of it, then slips the chunk of flesh through the opening of the beaker, staring through his tears to make sure it's inside. Ben heaves, swallows the bile in his throat, then gasps as his knees buckle. He falls, beginning to hyperventilate on the ground. The banging is still there: erratic and desperate. There's yelling too. The banging gets louder, but it's a different kind of reverberance now; shoes, feet on the floor. Through the ethereal blur of his tears and the contracting vignette around the rim of his vision, he can just barely make out figures above him.

"Ben!"

"Dr. Anderson!"

"Doctor!"

"Bennett!"

"Wake up!"