Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (32 page)

“
Leave
me alone you demon!” Lazarus shouts. The rock tumbles, heading
closer to the ceiling of the sky-box. Debris already resting on the
ceiling gives the only visual cue that shows the real distance to
this wall.

They
begin slowing down. Lazarus reversed gravity again, arresting their
fall. When they come to a stop, not far from the top of the world.
Lazarus turns gravity off. They float in place, along with many
others dotting the sky.

Renee
floats beside Lazarus, whispering in his ear, “You know there's
no god right? You've wasted your entire life. Now you're going to
simply stop existing. It's just too bad. I wish we could have kept
you in here to be tortured forever.”

“
I'm
going to heaven,” Lazarus says, clenching his crying eyes
closed. “I was doing God's work! Leave me alone!”

“
So
god wanted you to kill yourself in here, is that what god's plan was
for you? If that's what god wanted from you, I'd ask for a refund.
But the truth is that there is no god. There's nobody coming to save
you. It's over. You tortured and killed people because of a delusion.
How's that feel? Your life wasn't just wasted, you used it to do
evil, to hurt people. The world is better off with you dead.”

Renee
pushes the rock away. Her world is completely in ruins. She takes a
deep breath. She's done all she can. Her eyes roll up in her head and
her body goes limp.

Renee's
flesh-bot
animatron sits propped against the central node, unconscious. Deep
voices echo through the Comatorium. There's a small explosion
somewhere beneath the node. A metal panel flies up in the air and
clatters to the ground. A blue flame flickers out of the open panel
for an instant and snuffs out. Paul races over, jumping into the
hole. Lazarus's vivisected brain and nervous system had been hidden
beneath the node in a maintenance tunnel. The vat was a temporary
solution, made of flimsy plastic. Paul discovers Lazarus's brain and
nervous system lying at the bottom of the tunnel in a puddle of
cerebro-spinal fluid.

“
Get
the kid, hurry!” Paul shouts up the tunnel.

Paul
climbs out and the panicked guards hold Seth in front of him.

“
We've
got maybe six minutes. Go fix him!”

“
I
don't know how!” Seth says. Paul pushes a pistol in his face.
“I really don't!” Paul looks to the guards, but they are
more panicked than he is.

“
She
knows how,” Paul says, rushing to Renee's unconscious body. He
takes a hold of the cable connecting her to Solipsis.

“
No!
You can't just yank her out, you could put her into a coma!”
Seth protests. Paul yanks the cable. Renee doesn't wake up, makes no
movement. “God dammit! You three, get down there and get him
out of there!”

Seth
and the two remaining cult members climb into the hole.

Paul
picks a nearby vat and fires a bullet through the base. The glass
breaks, flooding the ground in fluid. He reaches in and tears the
brain and nerves out, tossing them aside.

In
the hole, Seth holds Lazarus's brain up to a cult member on the
ladder. They delicately pass everything up: brain, spine, nerves.
They keep passing the wires that are connected to the bundles of
nerves and terminate at a base unit, the connection to Solipsis. They
raise Lazarus very carefully.

“
Put
him in,” Paul points to the new vacancy he just created. Seth
sets his father's brain into the cradle. Brains need to be suspended
in fluid, if you leave it sitting at the bottom of a jar, or resting
against any hard surface, it will slowly warp the brain out of shape,
causing serious complications. These cradles can temporarily hold the
brain and prevent damage, but the brains have to be fully restored to
a suspended state within a day or so.

“
I
don't know what to do next,” Seth says.

“
There's
that gel, put that gel on,” Paul says. Seth searches the
insides of the vat for a hose. “Quit stalling,” Paul
says, pushing the pistol into the back of Seth's head.

“
Got
it,” Seth pulls out a hose, aims at the top of the brain and
hits the button. It shoots a blast of air, further drying the brain.
“Oops.”

“
If
he dies, I'm shooting you in the head,” Paul says.

“
Hey,”
one of the cult members says, “umm, what happens if the eight
minutes runs out?”

“
He
loses admin privileges, they get back control of the whole station,”
Paul says.

“
What
does that mean exactly?”

“
A
thousand pissed-off robots looking for us,” Seth replies.

“
What
do you mean us, you traitor,” Paul says. While Paul's looking
away, one cultist takes off running. The other one doesn't look to
keen on staying either.

Renee's
flesh-bot
opens its eyes. Her body remains completely still, except for her
eyes which scan the room. Seth keeps working on saving his father's
brain, but he's panicked, flustered. Paul is growing more and more
desperate as time is running out.

“
Why
won't she wake up!?” Paul shouts, looking to Renee. He's
shocked to discover that she's staring at him. “She is awake!”
He rushes to her. “Fix him. You have to save any patient that's
in front of you. You have to!”

“
I
can't move,” Renee's speaker says without her mouth physically
moving.

“
You
drained her hydraulic fluid, remember?” Seth says.

“
Right,”
Paul says, trying to think of a solution, and fast.

“
It
can be any fluid, right,” the last remaining cultist asks.

“
Yeah,
as long as you don't need much precision,” Renee says without
moving at all. Paul doesn't want to listen to her. He kneels next to
her, peels open the skin on her back, finds the hydraulic port and
unscrews it. Paul drags her a few feet to the nearest vat and props
her up against it.

“
What
are you doing?” Renee demands. Paul ignores her, firing a shot
into the base of the vat. It springs a huge crack, not shattering.
The viscous fluid pours out and along the cracking glass. Paul
desperately uses his hands to corral some of the fluid into the hole
in Renee's back. Renee starts to gain some ability to move. She
immediately reaches for Paul's neck, grabbing it as firmly as she
can. He recoils from her, his neck slips through her oily fingers.

Paul
points his gun at Renee's chest. “Fix him.” Paul and the
cultist drag Renee towards Lazarus. Laying on her belly, barely able
to move, Renee and Seth get to work. Renee spots a pistol lying
underneath a dead robot only a meter away. She eyes the gun while she
delicately feeds Lazarus's spinal column into the spiraled grooves of
the cradle, careful with all the wiring. Seth pours on a continuous
stream of neuro-protective gel.

Paul's
eyes are totally fixated on Lazarus's brain. The neural-connection
unit, where all the wires end, has an activity monitor on its side.
The NCU is still wired to the central node. Lazarus is still alive,
but his brain activity is deteriorating.

Renee
eyes the bad guys standing behind her in the reflection of a vat in
front of her. Then her eyes dart back to the gun to her right, hidden
beneath a dead robot. She continues to work through this, setting the
brain while he pours on the syrupy neuro-protective. Paul leans over
them, tearing up, he's overwhelmed.

“
How
long has it been?” Paul demands.

“
Maybe
seven minutes,” the sole remaining cult member replies.

“
Is
it fixed yet!?...Well? Is he!?” He jams the gun against Renee's
neck.

“
Just
pay close attention to the NCU, that'll tell you how he's doing,”
Renee says without looking away from the neuro-cradle and the
delicate nerve grooves.

“
I
don't know how to read this.”

“
Is
it spiking a lot?”

“
I
don't know if its a lot.”

“
Let
me know if the pattern changes,” Renee replies. A light on the
side of the NCU turns on, accompanied by a shrill beeping. Renee
looks back, seeing Paul and the cult member paying total attention to
the NCU, staring into the brain wave pattern, hoping, praying,
willing it to improve. Renee slowly reaches her right hand out toward
the fallen robot, and the pistol beneath it. She gets a grip on the
base of the gun. Seth's eyes meet hers, he has noticed where her hand
is and realizes what she's about to do. His wide eyes are afraid of
what's about to happen, but he will do nothing to stop her.

Renee
yanks the gun out and rolls over onto her back in one fluid motion.
She raises the gun clumsily, her arm barely has the strength to lift
itself. The gun sits loosely in her hand. Paul and the cultist
instantly try to retreat. She lets loose a hail of gunfire. Paul
fires a few rounds blindly behind him as he ducks behind a vat. The
cultist keeps running for the exit.

Renee
struggles to sit up. She reaches out for Seth to help her, but he's
been hit. He's in shock, looking at blood pouring out of his stomach.
Paul fires around the vat, it hits Renee in the left shoulder,
disabling that arm. Renee jams the pistol into the hole in her
shoulder, holstering it. She pulls Seth along to the central node,
taking cover behind it.

Seth
is barely conscious, in serious pain. She hears Paul's footsteps as
he maneuvers behind vats, trying to get a clean shot.

“
Save
Lazarus or I'll kill you and your boyfriend,” Paul shouts from
behind a vat. He and Renee make eye contact through the vat.

Renee
takes the gun from her shoulder and aims it at Lazarus's brain as it
sits in the open air, the gel is evaporating. “You took an
oath! Do no harm!”

“
I'm
sorry Paul, it seems we've lost him,” Renee says sarcastically.
She fires. Lazarus's brain explodes, white and gray matter flies
through the air in all directions. The NCU flat-lines and sends out a
harsh warning.

Paul
falls to his knees, crying. Seth is losing consciousness. He barely
gets out a few words before his eyes glaze over, “Don't forget
about the bomb.”

Renee
looks back up and no longer sees Paul. She can't hear him either. He
may have run away, or he may simply be hiding.

Renee
crawls, pushing with her legs, pulling with her one good arm. She
keeps the gun held in her teeth in case she needs it. She crawls for
the bomb hidden away in the floor panel over the environmental air
tanks. She crawls, scraping her body along the wet grated floor,
searching for the bulging rubber panel.

She
crawls over countless dead cult members, broken animatrons, past
dozens of broken vats, each one representing a person who has
succumbed to a Xenon Shock.

She
crawls on, finding a vat where the brain has been stabilized into the
cradle and sealed inside the neuroprotective shroud.

Renee
carries on until she spots a bulging rubber floor panel. She rips the
rubber panel open and finds the bomb, still ticking:
15:20,
15:19, 15:18
.
She tries to turn it off, but her weakening hydraulics make it very
difficult for her to perform any precise task. Her hands and fingers
rattle loosely in their joints. She realizes she might hit the wrong
button... She decides instead to simply yank all the wires from the
timer. She gets a firm hold of two of the wires, but the third keeps
slipping between her fingers.

A
foot steps on her arm, pinning it down, making it impossible for her
to yank the cables. Renee's eyes swivel up and to the corner of her
eye, she is unable to move her stiff neck. Out of the corner of her
eye she sees Paul standing over her, aiming a gun at her back. He
says, “You're deleted.”

BANG.

Renee
flinches, closing her eyes. The purple-blue flames from the muzzle
flash sear through her closed rubber eye-lids.