The Descent

The elevator continued its descent while Elusia was resting and attending to her wounds.

She was holding a life card in front of the wound and was gripping TOX in her mouth.

“Ok…caaarrfullly…”

She had to concentrate as hard as she could so that the spell wouldn’t misfire and cause horrible mutations to occur. The spell would also always cause massive pain in relation to the amount of damage it was repairing, as her cells reconstructed themselves, so she had to brace herself for the pain.

“Don’t bite down too hard.”

“Quiet.”

Elusia activated the card.

“Urgh!”

She squirmed as her cells rapidly replicated in her leg and replaced the damage caused by the monster, patching up her wounds.

“Gah!”

She keeled in pain as her body finished healing and dropped TOX from her mouth.

“…huff…huff…” She panted in pain. “Guh…I’ll never get used to that.”

“Do you mind wiping me off. I am sticky. So very sticky.”

“Yeah, just hold your horses for a sec.”

After a minute or two, she got off the floor, picked up TOX, and started shining him with her coat.

“You do realize that is not helping right? You are also covered with a large coat of slime. All you are doing is rubbing it around”

“Oh, shut up.”

She just kept on rubbing.

“So, what do you think was the idea with that weird puzzle thing? You think the monster made it?”

“Of course not.”

“Then who did?” She said, puzzled.

“Presumably the people who constructed the building.”

“But no one made this place. They couldn’t have. It’s not even in the same dimension! If anyone could have made this place, it’d probably be the freakin monster.”

“Yes, but from the fact that the layout seems to have been made with the intention of being a death trap seems to indicate that a more sentient and intelligent individual is responsible for the materialization of the area.”

“Wait, so you’re sayin that someone intentionally created a supernatural event just to kill us?!”

“Correct. Though this is just a hypothetical answer to your previous query. It is also very possible that this trap was not designed for us in mind.”

“But how would they even do that?”

“I have insufficient data to form a hypothesis.”

“Not enough data huh…”

Elusia was shaken by the revelations that she had heard and the questions bouncing around her head.

“…”

“…”

They stood in silence for a while, while Elusia kept rubbing TOX.

Well one of them was currently a gun, so he didn’t really have a choice.

Finally Elusia had enough and spoke up to change the topic.

“Oh well, no point just brooding about it. By the way…you’re taking this whole situation pretty well. I thought you’d be a lot more skeptical about this stuff, you know, considering you’re an AI.”

“Well, Yes. I suppose I am just basing my thoughts towards past reference material on the subject in my database. I have over 500 years of historical data and pop culture installed inside of my main system memory. It is also not very surprising considering the fact that we currently reside on a planet mostly devoid of any natural resources and is mostly populated with cybernetic mutations.”

“Oh…wait what?! Since when?! And I get the historical information stuff, but why did they put in pop culture?!”

“The pop culture data was introduced at the behest of the chief of police. I believe that it is just her personal preference. As for the other information, it requires a much longer explanation. I will tell you later.”

“Damn dude!”

The elevator continued to descend.

“Hey isn’t this ride taking way too long?” Said Elusia apprehensively. “We’ve been in here for at least 5 minutes, and it still hasn’t stopped. The building can’t be that big”

“Look at the screen.”

She looked at the LED screen near the door and gawked at the strange symbols that flashed repeatedly.

“What the what!?”

The strange symbols were flashing in a loop, over and over again.

“Wait, so if those are supposed to be like floor numbers…doesn’t that mean we’re not going anywhere!?” Exclaimed Elusia.

“It would appear so.”

“So what are we going to do? We need to get out of here!” She shouted, a bit annoyed.

“Try looking for a maintenance hatch. Most elevators have them in case of emergency or for repairs.”

“Kay” replied Elusia, who had already accepted and adapted to her current situation by this point.

She looked around for a opening she could go through in the ceiling. She found a suspicious looking spot in the left corner of the elevator and she walked underneath it. She took out her bat and used it to poke around for the hatch.

“Eureka.”

She climbed onto the back railing and pushed open the hatch with her bat.

“Got it.” Said Elusia as she tossed her bat and TOX into the opening.

Elusia climbed up into the shaft and pulled herself onto the top of the elevator. The walls around them were flying past at an absurd rate, sparks flying from the friction. Above her she could see the bottom of another elevator…no, the same elevator coming down from above.

“Crap. We’re going too fast to get off now!” Shouted Elusia, over the sounds of the motor.

“Try opening the box over there. There should be a maintenance override switch inside that you could push to stop the elevator.”

“Ok.”

Elusia crawled towards the box near the motorized wench of the elevator and prayed it open with a pocket knife she looted earlier. Inside the box was a series of small wires and three buttons.

“Ok what do I do now?”

“Press the emergency button.”

“Ok…let’s try this one.” responded Elusia as she quickly pressed the center red button labeled E.

The Elevator screeched as it continued to descend, slowing down only slightly. Suddenly, the world shook as the motorized wench gave and the elevator was dropped into an uncontrolled free fall.

“Ok that’s not working!”

“The elevator must have been moving too quickly for the brakes to gain enough traction without breaking.”

“So what do we do now!?” Screamed Elusia as her body floated up into air.

She gripped onto the elevator to keep herself from flying up any further, using her legs to grab TOX.

“…Pray?”

“Like hell!” Retorted Elusia. “Wait, I’ve got an idea!”

She used one hand to shuffle in her pockets. She took out a couple of cards.

“Here goes nothing!”

She activated and slammed the stasis card into the elevator and quickly took 2 float cards in her other hand. The elevator came to an abrupt halt and Elusia was flung into the air with immense force.

“Ugh!”

Before she hit the underside of the elevator she used the other card in her hand and managed to halt her impact just inches away. As she fell, used her superhuman reflexes to grab her bat and TOX out of the air and braced for the impact.

“Gah!”

Elusia had reduced her initial velocity but still felt the impact ripple throughout her body. She could feel the bones in her arm crack as she landed.

“Damn it!” She shouted in pain.

She quickly scanned the shaft for an opening to escape from.

6 seconds left.

“There’s the doors.” She pointed the gun at the center of the outer elevator doors that lead to a different floor. “TOX, I need you to fire as much as you got to get through them!”

“Got it. Redirecting all non-essential power to barrel.”

3 seconds left.

‘Click’

She fired a massive blast of energy towards the doors, blowing them right off.

1 second left.

“Aaaaaaahhhhhh!”

Elusia mustered up all of her remaining power to grab her bat and dive into the new opening.

She landed in the hallway just as the stasis spell wore off, causing the elevator to continue falling endlessly behind her creating a large draft of air that blew into the hall.

“Hah…we made it…”

“Warning. Less than 5% power remaining. I’m going into sleep mode.”

“Can’t you hold on for a bit longer?” Elusia asked, a bit worriedly.

She wasn’t sure she would make it alone, or keep her sanity intact in here.

“…”

No response.

She carefully stood up from the ground, being sure not to put any pressure on her broken arm and checked the rest of the body.

“Ugh…good enough.” She winced as she held her right arm. “Looks like I won’t be able to use this for a while.”

She picked up her bat and used her coat to make a makeshift splint for herself.

“No time to heal. The pain would probably knock me out for a hour at least.”

She then turned her attention to TOX on the floor. It had reverted back into it’s original form, a black rectangle with glowing red accents.

“…Thanks for all the help. I promise to get you back to normal later.”

She tore off a part of her jeans and used it to sling TOX onto her back.

“Ok, let’s go.”