Alien Gears

Chapter 20: Awakening

AWAKENING

As I made my way further and further down into the pipework, which made up the COLOSSUS's air conditioning, while avoiding the luckily inactive fans, I was struck by how common the occurrences of the noises had become. The great machine was becoming louder, it was almost as if it was slowly coming out of its period of dormancy and slowly activating, as if the dead machinery was coming back to life. No! This couldn't be happening. But it was. I could hear the sound of the big three blade fan ahead of me spinning up, drawing cool air straight into the section I was crouched in. I crossed ahead of it, careful not to slip or be drawn in to the blades by the air and got into another section of the pipes, now suddenly much louder because of the presence of the active fans. The floor began to shake beneath me then the whole area violently tipped, throwing me off balance to the ground. That must be it beginning to move, I thought. And I began to move faster too.

Sprinting while crouched is a difficult thing to do in the best of times and for me, running with my head down into walls and vents while the tunnel system shifted and bumped around me was hardly one of the good times. I stumbled against a wall, sliding sideways and I narrowly avoided having my arm lopped off at the elbow by an annoyingly placed fan. I crashed and banged off the pipe walls, deafening myself with the echoes as I came closer and closer to my final destination.

I finally staggered out of the smaller, lower ceilinged pipes into a much larger one, being blasted by the warm air being input by a great fan, rushing further into the beast. Pipes clanked and shook above me, several well rusted. Sprays and emissions of steam and splashes of hot water and oil dripped on my head and face, causing me to wince in pain. I sped up, dashing from side to side to avoid the falling rain. These areas were suffering from quite severe corrosion, a sure sign that I was getting closer to an accessible exit. I ducked under lower pipes and continued my dash through the enclosed space, frantic to get out while the floor shook to the rhythm of the movement of the COLOSSUS. The walls shook as rounds and projectiles from the military force outside began to bombard the great exoskeleton, and great whines began as counter weaponry from the COLOSSUS's body began to return fire.

I came to a door far narrower and shorter than myself at the end of the long snaking pipe. Vents covering it indicated that I was going to find a way out behind it. I pulled the remaining tools free from my kit, bludgeoning the long handle of the hook after jamming it through the grill to brute force the door open but it didn't budge. The metal began to bend but the bindings that fixed the door in place refused to move.

I ripped the hook free and began to batter the entirety of the metal framed door with the end of the hook. Still it remained motionless. I was getting nowhere. I leant back against the wall of the pipe, considering what options I had left when out of the corner of my eye I noticed the familiar shape of one of the robotic finger-key slots. Pulling them free from the gear bag, I tried them all in the cavity, quickly finding the one that fitted. Yet nothing happened. The door was still motionless. Had my bashing damaged the rolling gears that opened the door? I went back to the opening in the wall where I had let the metal finger sit inside and removed it, yet still nothing happened. It was only after another brief examination of the slot that I noted the curved hand-shaped indent on the wall. I had just had a revelation: I now knew that I was getting out of here.

After inserting all of the finger keys into the right shaped slots the door slowly slid open across a groove in the floor. Unfortunately I had to leave the keys in the slots otherwise the door would have returned to its position barring the exit. Robots using this route for maintenance must have come in teams of at least two, unless they went around dismembering themselves to open doors. I left through the now open doorway and found myself in a more minimalistic designed pipe heading out and around again. I could feel the open air ahead and I found myself rushing forward to see the outside world. My rush was cut short however, as I ran out to the edge of a great hole ahead of me, a great hole down into the living world, hundreds of feet below me.