The Thing 2: Infection✔️

Chapter 14: Hostile Territory

"I-I-thank you," he said.

"And I welcome you," Blake replied.

Lavelle snorted, then laughed. After a moment, the other engineer laughed nervously. He took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Name's Blake, Special Forces. This is Lavelle. We're with the resistance. Who are you?"

"The resistance? Oh, thank god. I thought I was the last one. My name is Powell."

Blake studied the man. He seemed very young, perhaps twenty four. His face was clean-shaven, his black hair cut very short. He was skinny and looked high-strung. He had no weapons on him, and he clenched his fists open and closed several times.

"Okay, first order of business," Blake said, pulling out his last, remaining test kit. "You know what to do with this, I assume?" he asked.

"Uh...yeah, but what about you?" he asked nervously, accepting the kit.

"It's my last one, but I saw another farther back in the facility, behind a locked door," Blake replied, taking a step back and raising his flamethrower.

Powell looked at it, then carefully raised the test kit. "I have a skeleton key," he said slowly. "I could get you in there."

"Good. Now, do the test."

Powell did the test. Nothing happened. Blake let out a sigh of relief, lowering the flamethrower. He considered Powell for a moment.

"If I give you a pistol, will you make me regret it?" he asked.

"No, I wouldn't. I know you can't kill these things with bullets alone," Powell replied.

Blake nodded and passed the pistol he'd picked up earlier and all the ammo for it over to Powell, who took it and pocketed the ammo.

"Okay, you're with the resistance, I assume you know the score?" he asked as moved deeper into the room, looking everything over. There was a door at the back.

"Yeah, stop the creatures from getting off this continent," Powell replied.

"Good. What's in this room?"

"Dunno. I was kind of chased here," Powell replied.

Blake sighed and opened the door. Nothing inside but more frozen blocks containing Scuttlers. Blake shook his head and closed it. He turned to regard the two engineers standing apart from each other, apart from him.

"Well...nothing else to do but keep pushing," he said, if only because it seemed like they expected him to say something.

They began making their way back through the building. "How'd you get mixed up in all this?" Blake asked.

"Me?" Powell asked. He shrugged and laughed nervously. "I was a boy genius," he replied. "Graduated high school at sixteen, master's degree in engineering at twenty. I've always felt...dislocated, from society. Alone. And I've always felt driven, you know? I'm twenty two now. I signed on with Gen Inc right out of college. They offered me this job, to help maintain their computers and setup databases down here at the bottom of the world. So I took it. I figured, why not? I'm already cut off from society, might as well make it official."

"Man, did you get more than you bargained for," Lavelle muttered.

"Yeah, did I ever," Powell replied unhappily.

They found the second of the locked doors and opened it up. There was nothing worth salvaging in the room and Blake felt his frustration begin to mount. When they traced their way back to the second door and unlocked it, Blake felt his frustration continue to rise. The only thing worth anything was the test kit he'd initially seen. He grabbed it and tested himself as quickly as he could, wanting to get on with this. Powell and Lavelle relaxed visibly when the test turned up negative.