ATARAXIA • BELLAMY BLAKE

[ 4 9 ]

"Scoot back," I tell Bellamy once I locate the vent he's behind. I give him a second to do as told. "Have you scooted?"

"I've scooted," he replies impatiently.

"No need to be pissy. If you want me to burn your eyebrows off, all you have to do is ask," I say as I then turn on the acetylene torch and use its hot flame all the way around the corners of the vent cover until the metal melts and I can take it off. I'd needed to do the same to the vent I'd entered through mere minutes ago, and I already feel quite handy with this tool.

I set the vent cover off to the side and move so that Bellamy can crawl out. Once he gets up and dusts off, we walk further into the room. I pause to take a look around at our surroundings. The amount of warning labels plastered all over the walls and different tubes and containers is impossible to count. It puts me on edge.

"Come in, Raven, we made it," I say, summoning Raven back to her radio after the time of radio silence on her end. I put the safety back on the torch, pocket it, before pulling out my hand gun to hold in its stead. In the meantime Bellamy heads over to an emergency box on the wall and breaks the glass to take the axe inside. He climbs to the top of some stairs leading to the only door in this place and breaks the mechanical lock beside it with the axe before using it to lock the door from the inside. "I hope you have a plan."

"Still working on it," she replies. "Give me something to go on. What do you see?"

"Huge steel vat. It looks like a submarine," Bellamy says from the top of the stairs where he has a good overview. I continue looking around at the bottom, looking for the specifics. "And some other tanks with chemical formulas and warning labels. A bunch of pipes going into the wall."

"There's a monitor," I then say once I spot it further down the pathway of the room. Near the vent I also spot a big grey oxygen tank with a big red label reading 'FLAMMABLE' on it with a whole bunch of fire signs surrounding the letters. I make a mental note to steer clear of that in case things go south.

"Oh, go to the monitor," I strange, very eager, male voice says on Raven's line, making me pause my step.

"Hello to you too," I say as I resume my walk and stop in front of the monitor.

"Don't mind Wick, he's not really helping," Raven says. I look to the side to see Bellamy making his way down the stairs and toward me.

"Hey, Freya. How's my boy Monty doing?" Wick asks. I assume he must know Monty through engineering judging by how Raven trusts him to help us with the fog.

"He's fine, but I don't know for how long," I offer just as Bellamy stops next to me.

"Great. Pleasantries over," Wick says. "Listen, if that monitor is a control panel, we can use it to kill this thing."

"I like the sound of that," Bellamy says.

"Look for a pH scale," he instructs.

"Well, it has a scale," Bellamy says. "But the rest is, uh...S3, V2, O5, H2, S2, O7...Can we just blow this thing?"

Raven starts to say something but then Wick's voice cuts hers off. "No, they'll know their defenses are down. They'll send a tech to fix it or reroute it, or pull out a weapon we don't even know about."