Part 33

         MESSAGE SENT

    Okay, that was all he needed. Time to go. 

    He sensed movement behind him. He rolled his head on his shoulders and spun around to face the Conglomeration, which no longer seemed dazed. This seemed to be a problem he was just going to have to deal with.. He chuckled to himself and pulled his axe.

    "You and me seem to have an issue," he told the mass of flesh, teeth, and tentacles. "But I told everyone what happened to us. You won't survive if you get to the surface. They'll know how to defeat you!" 

    Kevin's voice rose to a yell in his final words, but the monster made no return conversation, made no acknowledgement that it even understood. That made sense though. It was a thing of mad hunger and primal instincts, there was no way it would have talked to him. no way to respond to hi- Oh shit.

    He ducked again as a tentacle whipped at him, sliced upward with the axe and - because he was thrown off by the limp arm - missed. He swung a few more times wildly and weakly, then started running for the exit. He didn't need to kill this thing, he just needed to make it out of the room. Needed to make it to Engineering. He could set the self destruct and get the hell out of here. Get himself back to Earth.

    He ran. True he was limping and clutching his limp arm, but he ran with all the speed in him. Flashes of green fields with yellow and white wildflowers. The snow peaked mountains around him stabbed at the sky and the crisp air filled his lungs. This was home. A tentacle swung at him and he ducked to miss it, narrowly missing a decapitating blow. He leapt off of another grasping tentacle. He stumbled a little as he dropped off the fallen log, but kept good grip on his rifle. In his ear, a battle brother called him 'twinkle toes' and they laughed together. They were running as a unit through the redwoods, but it was a lighter exercise than their normal ones. He turned around to see his squad, then spun back around- and ran straight into a server tower. His busted lip, which had just stopped bleeding, broke back open in a new gush of crimson and he fell to the floor and dropped his axe.

    He picked himself up again, stumbling away. He made it the last 30 feet to the door, narrowly missing grasping tentacles through sheer luck and stupidity. Back in the antechamber he spun around and looked back toward the server room. The Conglomeration roared, attempting to flail it's limbs at him, picking up discarded bodies and throwing them in his direction. The bodies hit the ballistic glass with wet smacks as some of them exploded into an unpleasant coating of viscera. 

    He turned to leave, holding down the scant contents of his stomach.