The Thing 2: Infection✔️

Chapter 16: Sidetracked

"Goddamn they smell bad!" Reed complained.

"Yeah," Blake agreed. "Especially when they're cooked like that. Let's see if our new friend was hiding anything worthwhile."

He had an inkling, (that was more of a desperate hope than anything else), that the shack would hold the keycard. But, after five minutes of searching, they didn't find a damned thing. Stymied, the men spent another fifteen minute searching the cavern over, and Blake was nearly prepared to plunge into the ruined tunnel, when Powell finally turned something up. They found a ladder, tucked away in one corner of the cavern, that led to a ventilation shaft.

"Do we really have to?" Reed complained.

"Yeah, I'm afraid so," Blake replied. "It's our only option."

"Goddamn it. I hate this place," Reed muttered with real vehemence.

Blake didn't blame him. He really didn't want to go crawling around through the vents again. But he was a soldier, damn it, and he'd put up with it. So, he led by example, climbing the ladder and hauling himself into the vent duct. It was cramped, but doable. After about ten minutes of crawling through the squalid confines of the metal ducts, he finally began to hear something. It sounded like all manner of machinery. Well, that was probably good news. It at least meant he was heading towards somewhere important.

Finally, he spied a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. The end of the vent duct he was presently in had no mesh grating over it, and he could see a network of pipes, running up and down. As he approached it, someone in white ran past it, from right to left. Blake hesitated, bringing his MP-5 to bear. His patience was rewarded. A pair of men in black camo and gasmasks went by. Blake scooted forward as fast as he could and leaned out, first looking back, confirming there was no one coming up 'behind' him, then looking forward.

He was on some kind of catwalk, suspended high above the ground in a tall, underground shaft. He just caught the pair of hostiles moving to the edge of the catwalk, about to turn right onto another catwalk, giving chase to the medic. He opened fire. Both men went down screaming. Once he was sure they were dead, he hauled himself out, then covered Powell and Reed while they came out. Once they were out, he led them cautiously up the ramps towards the medic. He studied the room as he ascended, feeling very small in comparison to his environment. The place was huge. It was essentially a giant, rectangular vertical shaft.

Catwalks wrapped the exterior walls, heading up, up, up towards the top, which was where Blake and the others were. Taking up most of the middle of the room were huge pipes, a complex network of pipes of all different sizes. Occasionally, scalding hot steam would escape some of these pipes, blowing directly into the path of the catwalks. They had to stop twice and wait for the steam to quit blowing before reaching the medic.

"Hold-hold it!" he cried.

The man was unarmed, backed into a corner near a stack of crates, the absolute top of the vertical shaft. The end of the line.

"What's your name?" Blake asked after setting Powell and Reed on guard duty behind him, to make sure no one else snuck up on him.

"C-Cohen," the man said. "Please don't kill me. I'm not one of them," he whispered.

Blake wasn't sure whether or not he meant one of them as in Whitley's gasmask squad or one of them, as in infected.

"You know word or even actions aren't enough to prove that," Blake said.

"Yeah, but...please don't kill me. I don't want to die," he replied quietly. He was trembling in fear.

"I'm not going to kill you. Unfortunately, I don't have any tests on me...what are you doing here? For that matter, where even is here?" Blake replied.