Escape from Metal

Location: Unknown

With each passing second the flicker of the dim red light grew brighter and brighter, until everything around the man was bathed in the red glow. As he slowly opened his eyes, and the hazy glow became clearer. The blaring of a siren pierced his ears. The man stood up confused and disorientated he looked around him as the world slowly stopped spinning and fell into place like puzzle pieces building themselves.

He didn’t recognize any of his surroundings, lights haphazardly hung from the ceiling. Some broken and flashing intermittently as if trying to cling to their last bit of life. The room was made completely of metal and each of the walls was adorned with strange patterns and symbols. One side of the long metallic room was lined with cylindrical tubes, the glass on most of these tubes were broken but in one of the cylinders a strange object was floating.

On the other side of the tubes was a slightly elevated room with broken glass shards still protruding from its edges. The man cautiously walked towards it as broken glass shards cracked and crunched under his boots. He was close enough to see that a body of a man was floating in the green liquid, he lay horizontally as he hovered there. That’s when he noticed something strange a sickening smell came to him. The man looked down to see a body lay next to one of the tubes.

His eyes went wide as he saw the body and as he took a few steps back his foot touched another one. The man looked around him and saw bodies lying everywhere as the flicker of the red light illuminated them. It was only in the flashes in between of red that he could see the bloody corpses and floors. The blood drenched the floors and had become dry and crunchy. The man stood in horror of what he saw and couldn’t help but wonder who had done this and why couldn’t he remember anything.

As he was walking out of the room, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in one of the tubes. He saw a man with walnut colour hair and a thin yet fit body. There was a name tag on his shirt, it read Jake. Jake looked at his name happy to know it if nothing else and took one look back at the dead before he headed out of the lengthy room.

Outside he was faced with an extensive hallway, in the distance he could see a white light. Jake’s heart rate suddenly increased as the excitement and perhaps fear of finding out where he was and more importantly who he was.

After only walking for a few seconds, Jake stopped as he could hear the sound of twisting metal, the ceiling gave way unexpectedly as he fell backwards narrowly missing the falling debris of the twisted and burning metal. Jake couldn’t help but think of those bodies, was he like this place twisted and burning? Taking anything down in his path.

Jakes path to the light at the end of the hallway was now blocked. He would have to find another way to get there in this strange place. The only other way Jake could see of getting to the light was by going in the opposite direction and searching each room for anything helpful.

Where the one end of the hallway looked bright and hopefully, Jake now had to go towards the opposite side of it. Jake cautiously moved forward as he searched for a room that would help him escape this place.

He could hear distant rumbling in the building and occasionally it would turn into shaking. It was in those moments he had to focus on keeping his footing and to not trip over some of the debris on the floor. Jake’s mind raced as he tried to understand how he got into this situation, the more he thought about it the tighter he wrapped his arms around himself.

After searching for what felt like an eternity Jake finally found a room that was intact, well semi-intact. Parts of the room had collapsed, but he was elated to have finally found a room that wasn’t completely of no use to him. To Jake’s horror and dismay all he found was skeletons of people. they were laid in a circular pattern on metal slabs, around a giant metallic spiral which went through the roof. With what seemed to be a capsule compartment in the middle of the spire, ruffly human size.

“Dammit what is this place?” Jake said under his breath as he wiped sweat from his forehead. A sudden crash of some debris behind Jake startled him as he flinched and turned around. Even though the inferno of the collapsed part of the room burned and illuminated some of the room, he still couldn’t see where the debris fell and as he stared at it for a few seconds. Jake got chills down his spine as the hairs on his arms stood up.

After more fruitless searching he finally came to another half-destroyed room. Nothing in this room looked like it could help him. The room seemed oddly familiar to him. As Jake was lost in thought for a few seconds when he heard a soft and weak voice.

“Hello, is… is anyone there?” The voice said as they coughed.

Jake was unsure if he was just imaging the voice. He tilted his head in the direction of the voice. “Hello?” Jake said softly and hesitantly.

“I knew someone would find me.” The voice said as he started coughing again. “Now could you get me out before I suffocate or get squashed?”

“Uh… yeah…sure, sure” He answered as he stammered over his words.

He was looking around for something to use as a lever. The thick smoke and increasingly worse shaking was making it hard to see anything let alone focus on getting something that wasn’t too short or brittle. The more he looked around in the room the more frantic he got. He could hear his heartbeat in his ear and the stranger coughing more with every minute that passed wasn’t helping Jake stay calm.

“Who are you?” the stranger asked in between his coughs.

“I… I’m not sure” he said as he was searching through some rubble to find a lever. Jake might have thought he was searching. In reality it looked like a frantic mad man digging through the trash to find some obscene object and the longer Jake took to find something the more he intensified his “searching”.

“So, I know that this situation we are in isn’t exactly the best but if you just calm down, we will be fine.” The stranger said surprisingly calm considering he was the one stuck under the rubble.

At that point Jake’s face completely froze, as if all the gears in his head had stopped turning. A midst all the fire in the room, the smoke and a strange man dying right next to him he sat down on a piece of debris closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. The flames around him were suddenly red banners of heat as they almost completely stopped moving. The smoke became a still fog and the wailing sirens became a muted sound.

Jake breathed out again as the flames crackled with each breath. The smoke no longer felt as if it had a grasp around his neck. He opened his eyes and sprang up from where he was sitting and confidently walked to the stranger. As he got closer, he grabbed a steel pole and wedged it under the debris.

“Are you sure you know what you are doing?”He said slightly concerned.

But Jake just continued to push down on the pole, the stranger caught a glimpse of his eyes as the debris slowly lifted. The raw determination in his eyes was like the fire burning mere meters from them, unyielding and fierce. As the debris lifted from the stranger’s leg he suddenly started screaming.

“C’mon, stop screaming and get out of there.” Jake said as he strained to keep the debris from falling back onto the stranger. “Unless you’d rather have the flames for company?”

The stranger bit down on his teeth to stop himself from screaming and pulled himself out from the debris. As soon as he cleared it Jake let it drop with a thud, he crouched down as he panted. The stranger clutched his leg as he lay on the floor as Jake slowly approached him.

“Are… are you ok? He softly asked his eyes now devoid of the fire that had just raged within them, now replaced by a more timid and gentle gaze. Something which many people would appreciate but in this particular situation gentleness and timidness wasn’t going to get them out of this burning death trap, wherever here was.

Jake held his hand out to the stranger, a man with curly ginger hair looked at him for a second with a look of gratitude before taking Jake’s hand.

The stranger had his arm slung over the shoulder of Jake as they walked towards the light at the end of the hallway, the ominous rumbling continued somewhere deep inside the dark strange building. With each rumble a piece of the building falling off, the dust on the walls slowly drifting downward the sound of something breaking deeper inside the building.

“Name’s Jake.” Jake said as he broke the silence between them.

“Or so I think…” He mumbled under his breath.

“I’m…” The stranger started to say but groaned as he grabbed his side with his free hand. “I’m Benedict.”

The two men passed by the eerie room Jake went into earlier, the room filled with skeletons. Jake couldn’t help but wonder what atrocities had been committed in there. So many skeletons filled the room, was this the fate that had awaited him?

As they were passing it Benedict’s eyes had a hollow look and his face turned devoid of facial expression. He quickly looked away when he realised Jake was looking at him.

“Can you hear that?” Benedict said.

“Hear what?” Jake asked as he looked puzzled and scared.

“Shhh quiet it’s getting louder.” Benedict said as he made a quiet gesture by putting his finger on his mouth.

Jake listened but all he could hear was the rumbling. Several moments of waiting and Jake was beginning to think Benedict was just hearing things but then he started to hear it. A slow but constant whirring followed by tapping rhythmic metallic sounds and it was growing louder with every second that passed.

“What is that?” Jake asked nervously as his forehead started getting sweat on it and his eyes started darting side to side as he was trying to find the source of the sound.

In this moment Jake was terrified he felt like an animal being corralled by an invisible foe, trapped scared but at least he was not alone he had someone to stand by him.

“It sounds like… Oh no, we have to move…” As soon as Benedict said that the monster violently fell from the roof and crashed as the metal floor strained under its weight.

Jake and Benedict fell backwards as the monster slowly rose from its semi prone position. As it stood upright all that could be seen amongst all the dust was a red eye staring at them. A shiver went down Jakes spine as the cold and heartless eye stared deep into his soul.

“C’mon we have to go, get up let’s go” Benedict said as he tried picking Jake up. Who was staring blankly at the single beaming eye.

He tried to get Jake to stand up in those few moments after all he had just saved his life from a slow and painful death but as the soft clinking and clanking grew louder as the eye grew larger and larger.

For a brief moment he considered leaving Jake behind. He was the injured one maybe Jake could…

He felt a sudden jerk as Jake grabbed his arm and started pulling forward. They were going as fast as they could with Benedict’s injury.

Finally, they reached a impasse. the hallway’s roof that had collapsed earlier when Jake first awoke.

“Now what?” Jake asked Benedict as the ever-growing rattle was getting closer to them.

“Why… why are you asking me?” He said as he grew more anxious and annoyed by Jakes question “I don’t know it just looked like you might have an idea.”

“You better think fast whatever that thing is it’s getting closer.” Jake said as Benedict was trying furiously to think of something.

The sweat on both their foreheads increased by the second. Jake looked at Benedict waiting for him to think of an idea and Benedict had one hand on each side of his head and for reasons beyond his understanding he couldn’t comprehend why Jake couldn’t think of a way to get them out of this mess.

One glance at Jake’s face told him all he needed to know, his eyes where those of pure desperation and his face of absolute horror. In this moment it was as if Jake’s feet had been planted in the floor and as if he had no mind to possess.

As the horrid one-eyed monsters sole focus was on them. The red dim gleaming illumination of the monsters eye barely allowed them to make out the bipedal forearmed monster amongst the darkness surrounding it.

With each step it took, it took it was as silent as a mouse as it quietly walked towards them as its mechanical legs flexed. Each step commanded obedience and fear from whomever was unfortunate enough to be in its path.

Benedict could barely make out the sharp ends on each of the arms splayed out to the sides like feathers of a bird demanding submission. As it marched to them tearing a terrifying sound into the walls and its head breaking all the ceiling lights it head bumped into.

Its nightmare like silhouette walked towards them as the sparking from its blades, intermittent images of it flashed before them every few seconds it was getting closer and closer. One powerful step at a time as its red soulless eye stared at them.

“Ok, I have an idea but you’re going to have to trust me.” Benedict said as he held one of his fingers up in front of his face.

“Trust you? I just met you, I don’t even know who you are.” Jake said anxiously looking around.

“Well, if you would prefer to negotiate with the hulking monster coming towards us you are more than welcome.” Benedict said as he pointed towards the soulless monster coming ever closer.

“Alright fine what did you have in mind?”

“Remember that guy you were when you saved me earlier, I need you to be him again.”

“So, your plan is to get me to be someone else and think of a plan. Great we’re screwed!” Jake said as put both hands over the front of his face.

As the monster got closer Jake took his hands away from his face. All the worry from his face fell away. Jake stood up with a straight look on his face.

As the machine started charging its thumping was grew louder and more sparks flew around it as time seemed to slow when the metallic monster was meters away, at the very last moment he pushed Benedict away as he jumped out of the way.

The machine went crashing into the blockade falling down too many floors to count taking the rubble blocking there way with it.

The robot seemed to be falling into infinity as the cacophony of crashing continued.

Jake’s fearless empty eyes looked at Benedict. Jake grabbed Benedict’s collar as he took a step back, the next moment Jake through Benedict over the gap between them and the exit.

He screamed as he went over and met the metallic floor with a thump. The next moment Jake landed next to Benedict as cool and relaxed as ever.

“Next time you throw me, you could warn me you know Jake!” Benedict said angrily as he stood up.

“Now where would be the fun in that and who’s Jake?” He said with a sly smile as he just kept walking forwards without looking and Benedict.

Benedict’s eyes slightly widened with surprise.