the cracks in her helmet were superficial. After all, no warnings had gone off. “Can’t believe the scary ass dog is afraid of water.”
She bent over to rinse her hands in the water when the thin line in the glass suddenly widened with a deafening crack. Immediately the alert that she had dreaded went off in her helmet.
“Warning! Terminate exploration. Helmet breach has been detected. Make your way to the nearest checkpoint immediately.”
“Fuck me,” she whispered, her fingers tracing over the cracks as if that would magically seal them. “Shit. Maybe I should have left the mud on. What’s the saying? Held together by dirt? Shit!”
The message repeated on a loop as she tried to remember how to turn it off. She knew there was no way to repair it, but she would have liked whatever time she had left to be spent in relative peace and silence. Already she could feel the breach in her helmet beginning to affect her. The world felt like it was spinning as she tried to stand in the knee-deep water, but her feet only sank further into the mud with each attempt.
Charlie trudged through the water, each step taking great effort. Her breath came in deep pants of exertion. She laughed as she neared some land—could have been real joy or just oxygen deprivation, she wasn’t in any place to draw a distinction on the matter—but just when she grabbed a tree branch to pull herself free from the swamp, a tentacle snapped up too close for comfort. She pulled herself up enough to tangle her hand in a mess of branches as several tentacles surged up after her, followed by the monstrous bulk as an adult nigris iumentum rose from the water.
First the demon dog and now the creature from the pit of all hells imaginable. Charlie dragged herself higher up the embankment, scrabbling to escape its reach. One tentacle grazed her leg, and the scream that ripped from her throat hurt her own ears as the monstrously enormous tentacle tugged at her.
The branches and leaves bit into her hands, but she refused to let go. She had just escaped being a meal for one creature—she wasn’t about to wind up a meal for another. It would just have to wait until the environment poisoned her or she suffocated in her helmet before it got to eat her. Yeah, she would be dead regardless, but it was the principle. A hysterical laugh burst from her, its tentacle tightening around her leg. Other tentacles flailed around her as the creature’s exposed mouth gaped wide, displaying the ring of sharp teeth waiting to tear into her flesh.
The muscle in the tentacle coiled as it began to slowly and persistently pull her toward the gaping maw as if her grip on the tree was nothing. For a moment, she felt like she was caught in the same nightmare that had plagued her since Nightshade first arrived at the vivarium. How many times had she dreamed of the specimen eating her? She had lost count. Except this time, if she died, she was lucid enough to know that she wouldn’t be waking up.
The branches ripped out of her hands, leaves coming away in her palms as Charlie dropped to the ground. The tentacle rose higher, but she kicked, splashing against the water as she pushed forward up the embankment again.
“No! You’re not fucking eating me this time, Nightshade.”
Her fingers dug into the ground as she tried to find purchase. Scrambling through the mud, she raised her hand, wrapping her fingers around a thick, low-hanging branch as more tentacles tugged harder at her legs. She snarled and pulled herself higher on the branch.
Through the haze in her mind, she knew that if she could just turn around, she would be able to distract the tentacles with the branch. She had watched the one from the lab enough times to know that the tentacles would go for anything that moved. It was a terrible monster, but in the end, it was still just an animal.
Charlie sucked in a deep breath and twisted. Yellow eyes bore into her soul as the mouth opened wider, fangs glistening in the daylight as they drew closer. She braced her feet on the underside of its mouth and thrust the end of the branch toward the tentacles. It was snapped up by most of the appendages, but one still clung to her like a lax lifeline as the creature grappled with the tree