Eli led the way out of Wild Spores Cavern. It was barely first glow, but the gang had already gotten a distress call out east.
He'd been hoping to hear something from Alana, but she hadn't contacted him at all last night or in the morning. They hadn't exactly made communication plans, but Eli had figured he would get some kind of indication that she was okay.
The radio silence wasn't exactly unusual- she had lived for five years alone, and while the Shane Gang definitely considered themselves to be a family by now, they hadn't been together for anywhere near that long- but it was unsettling. Eli had an unexplainable feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn't think of what it could be.
As he rode down the mushroom-lined paths and roads of the caverns, he decided that as soon as the distress call was taken care of, he would check in on Alana.
And mere seconds after that decision, he heard Trixie suddenly yell,
"Eli! Look!"
Eli glanced up at the path ahead of him and slammed on Lucky's brakes. The white and orange wolf came to a screeching halt, almost throwing Eli from his seat. He leaned forward, looking at the small white slug on the ground that seemed completely unfazed, jumping up onto Lucky's head and looking up at the Shane with a blue eye.
"Mage?" Eli asked incredulously. He looked around, expecting to see Alana emerge from the mushroom trees around the gang. But nobody came.
Mage shook her head and chirped urgently, looking concerned. Burpy hopped down from Eli's right shoulder and began to chirp and gesture with her. Trixie rode her Mecha up next to Eli, watching as the two slugs talked.
"Have you ever seen Alana separated from Mage?" she asked worriedly. Eli frowned and shook his head.
"No," he responded grimly. "No, I haven't."
Burpy and Mage finished their conversation. Burpy hopped up to Lucky's screen, pulling up the map and pointing at a red V on it. Eli felt every muscle in his body tense up.
"Blakk?" he guessed, looking down at the spot that marked the Blakk Industries citadel. Mage nodded, and then looked back at the map, searching for a spot. Eli's heart sank.
Please don't...
Mage pointed to a spot in the Jungle Cavern, not far from the Dark Periphery. Trixie frowned and looked up at Eli.
"You said Alana was following after something the Unbeatable Master told her. Was it in that direction?" she asked. Mage chirped and nodded. Eli ran his hands through his hair.
"So Blakk found her? That's what happened?" he asked, looking down at Mage. The Boon Doc nodded sadly.
"What about the distress call?" Kord asked, driving forward so he was level with Eli and Trixie. "The people out there sounded like they were bein' terrorized. But if Blakk's got Alana..."
"Pronto would not suggest splitting up the group," Pronto said, driving up next to Kord and peering up to where Mage had pointed to on the map. "Both missions are high-stake and extremely dangerous!"
The three slingers turned to Eli, who stared at the map for a moment, then at Mage. The healer looked terrified.
"What would Alana want us to do?" he asked, already knowing the answer. Trixie did, too. Her shoulders sagged.
"Go after the distress call," she said bitterly.
"But she could be in danger!" Pronto argued.
"There's no 'could' about it," Eli said. "She's definitely not safe. But Blakk wants her for her energy. He won't kill her, at least not right away."
He started Lucky, charging forward with the rest of the gang following behind him.
"So we hustle through this distress call, give it our all, and go save Alana!" he called. Burpy nodded and gave an encouraging chirp to Mage, who nodded and glanced up at Eli, who smiled.
"Don't worry," he said, holding out a hand. Mage jumped into it, then onto his left shoulder, waving at Doc, who was in Eli's bandoleer.
"We're gonna get her back."
~~~~~~~~~~
Alana couldn't remember exactly she dreamed. Ghosts lingered in her mind of Dark Urchins and ghouled Geoshards, green flames hitting her arm and then the pull of the portal tearing her away from her life-
And then her senses were fully back to her, and everything was blurry and gray and red, and she tried to bolt upwards, but hands quickly grabbed either arm and tried to force her down.
"Get off!" she yelled, pushing away at the arms and blinking rapidly. Her vision came back to her, revealing a gray room detailed with red. Scarlet bars made a line three quarters of the way to the door, where a man in a white jacket stood, watching worriedly as a small blonde woman tried to keep Alana down on a gray bed.
"Calm down, kid!" the woman snapped as Alana broke her right arm free. Alana reared back for a punch and the woman flinched, backing away, but the man sped forward and blocked the hit, grabbing Alana's wrist. He peered down at Alana through a pair of glasses and scowled.
"Watch it, brat. We're not hurtin' ya," he said. Alana's eyes trailed down to a pin on his jacket. A red V. The woman had an identical one.
"No, but you will!" Alana exclaimed, wrenching her wrist free and springing to her feet.
But as soon as she did, black spots filled her vision, and she felt the ground shift beneath her. The two doctors hurried forward, each grabbing one of Alana's shoulders and pushing her back onto the bed.
"You're in no state to be fighting," the woman said. "Just calm down and-"
Alana froze as she suddenly felt a chill grow near. A swirling storm of dark energy that immediately set off alarm bells in her head. Faintly remembering the chill of the Dark Slinger, Alana stopped fighting back against the two doctors and sat on the bed, pressing her back against the wall of her cell. The female doctor- Dr. Stevens, according to her nametag- watched curiously.
The door on the other side of the red bars swung open, and in walked Dana. She was dressed in her grays and reds, her bandoleer full of vicious ghouls. Her face seemed paler, and Alana could see faint outlines of veins emerging from Dana's jacket collar. But despite the eerily sickly look the girl had, she looked happy.
"Our guest is awake," she noted, shutting the door behind her. Alana heard a lock click.
"Yeah, you were telling the truth. You didn't kill her," the man, Dr. Bradley, said gruffly. Dana rolled her eyes.
"I told you I wouldn't," Dana responded, crossing her arms. Bradley laughed coldly.
"You told me, but I wouldn't let myself believe it until we found a pulse," he responded. "But we did. The Amperling didn't do much damage, but she couldn't have been in a great state when you found her."
"She really wasn't-" Dana began, but Dr. Stevens cut her off.
"Do you have PTSD?" she asked Alana.
Alana, who'd been staring back and forth at Dana and Dr. Bradley, wondering why her drive was so quickly turning into numbness, blinked a few times and looked up at the doctor.
"Excuse me?" she asked.
"Do you have PTSD?" Dr. Stevens repeated. Alana narrowed her eyes.
"No, why?" she asked coldly.
"Your reaction to what I assume had to have been Dana's energy, because you reacted before she entered the room, was a good indicator. Not to mention you're a slinger who's been fighting against Doctor Blakk for ages now and you look like a frightened dog now. There's a tremor in your right hand and your breaths are short," Dr. Stevens rattled off. "You've at least recently undergone a traumatic experience."
Alana stared at her with wide eyes, glancing back at Dana and Dr. Bradley. Both of them just shrugged.
Yeah, seeing the deaths of your parents and the bodies of two of their teammates will do that to you.
"I don't have PTSD, don't psychoanalyze me," Alana snapped, now focusing on her breathing and trying to slow it down while fighting to keep her hand still.
"Well I have to take what I can get, all the other workers here are dumber than a sack of bricks, there's not much to analyze," Dr. Stevens said, putting her hands on her hips. "Except that blond guy, but he's got a heck of a poker face. And Edwards won't let me do it to her," she added, pointing back to Dana.
"That's right, so don't think about it," the ghoulslinger snapped, walking over to a control panel by the door and holding her hand up to it. Three bars of the cell lowered, creating an opening that Stevens and Bradley began to walk through.
Alana didn't want to move. She wanted to stay pressed up against the wall, putting her focus into blocking out thoughts of the West. But she knew that she should make an effort. So she sprang up from the bed and sprinted for the bars. But the second the doctors were through, they shot upwards again, keeping Alana trapped.
Dana frowned and stepped forward, her hand hovering over her black and scarlet blaster.
"I wouldn't do that," she warned. "I said I wouldn't kill you, but I didn't say anything about slugging you."
Alana stepped away from the bars, glaring at Dana.
"If you're not going to kill me, then why am I here?" she asked.
"Doctor Blakk has plans of his own today that don't require my help," Dana said, a faint smile on her face. "And he's cleared me for a project that I've been working on for weeks."
"And that is?"
"I think you know."
Alana's heart seemed to stutter-step. She knew Dana had been talking about finding a way to ghoul her, but it hadn't seemed real until now, when she was looking into Dana's scarlet eyes and seeing only honesty and excitement, not deception.
Alana took a few hesitant steps back.
"You're not serious," she said, but disappointment was already flooding through her.
"I am," Dana replied, and she almost looked sympathetic. "I know you're going to freak out on me, but Alana, I've thought about this and it's for the best. I understand it doesn't look like it to you-"
"No, you don't understand," Alana said icily, storming forward to the row of bars and jabbing a finger at Dana. "You will never understand, ever, how it feels to see your old friend turn into something like this, and then want to drag you down with her!"
Dana raised an eyebrow, unfazed.
"I'm not dragging you down, I'm pulling you up," she argued. "Alana, what would you do if you could cure my dark energy?"
"I would do it, because it would keep you from becoming like Blakk!" Alana exclaimed, but she already knew where Dana was taking the conversation.
"You'd do it because you think it's the right thing to do. I'm doing this because I think it's the right thing to do. Either option hurts the other person- we'd both lose who we are if we changed. But we just can't help ourselves," Dana said with a wry smile. She shrugged and turned away, heading for the door, the two doctors following after her. "It doesn't matter. By tonight you'll see things from my point of view."
Alana scowled and slammed her fist into one of the bars as the cell door swung shut and clicked behind Dana and the doctors. Tears stung her blue eyes as she sat down on the bed, running her hands through her hair.
She was blanking. She hadn't recovered from the memories of the West, and now she was in the citadel, of all places. There was no telling if help would be coming, no telling if Max would make it to Bonnie Springs.
She didn't know what to do, except sit there and let her fate meet her.
~~~~~~~~~~
The four medical students sat at the counter of the emergency room entrance, two behind the counter and two in front. They all had chairs pulled up, but had long abandoned their seats, now standing ancily as their card game was drawing to a close.
All eyes were on Rhydian as the short boy looked through his extensive hand of cards. This certainly hadn't been his game. He scratched at his dreadlocks for a moment and then placed a three of hearts on top of the pile of cards at the center of the four (the previous top had been a three of spades).
There was dead silence for a split second. Then Gwen smiled. The blonde girl quickly set an eight of hearts on the pile and glanced over at Sam, knowing what was coming.
Rhydian realized his mistake, and his dark face tinted red. He began to shake his head in protest, but Sam had already pulled a card from the face-down pile next to the face-up one and tossed it to him.
"Penalty for not saying doubles when you had two threes," she said with a sweet smile. Rhydian groaned and snatched up the card, sticking it into his already extensive collection.
"This is stupid!" he protested, but quickly snapped his mouth shut. Alex, who was standing next to Sam in front of the counter, grinned and shook her head. She grabbed another face-down card and handed it to Rhydian.
"Penalty for speaking outside a point of order," Sam said for Alex, whose hands were full with her cards. Rhydian was practically steaming, but he said nothing else.
Now all eyes were on Sam, who held only one card in her hand. She took her time, looking at the card, then at the eight of hearts at the top of the pile. Then, with a sigh, she shrugged and set her final card on top, a queen of hearts.
"The game of Mao is over. I win," she said cheerfully.
Rhydian and Gwen groaned, throwing their cards down onto the countertop. Alex tossed hers down and threw her hands up in the air, shaking her head.
"How do you do that? This game is mostly luck!" Gwen exclaimed, running her hands through her pale blonde hair. Rhydian shook his head, hopping over the countertop while Gwen walked around to the opening they were supposed to walk through.
"It's rigged," he said teasingly. "It's all in the way you shuffle the cards or something."
"Fine," Sam said, straightening out her white jacket. "Next time you can shuffle, and then we'll see-"
She was cut off by a nurse in green scrubs bursting in through the entrance doors from the small entryway that led outside.
"There's a Mecha coming in here and it doesn't look like it's slowing down," he gasped. Sam turned to Doctor Eberly, who had been sitting behind the counter reading a textbook and attempting to ignore his students' game. He sighed and closed the book, hurrying around the counter.
"Prop open the doors and get ready, it's either an emergency or an attack," he said. His dark skin now had wrinkles around his tired brown eyes, and Sam had seen his black hair become speckled with gray in her time at the hospital.
She rushed forward and helped the nurse prop open the two sets of doors, letting in a slight breeze. There was a dark Mecha approaching in the pale morning light of the cavern, and something seemed familiar about it, but Sam couldn't figure out what.
"Sam, is it one of Blakk's?" Rhydian asked as he and Gwen rolled up a gurney to prepare for the patient. He was anxiously watching Alex as he undid the velcro straps on it.
Alex was hovering near one of the doors that led out to a hallway, tugging nervously at the collar of her turtleneck shirt. Sam didn't know the details of what exactly had happened with the muscular girl, but she knew Alex used to want to be a slinger before a group of Blakk Industries workers terrorized her town and left her mute. Now, whenever Blakk's men came into Bonnie Springs, she was sent elsewhere to avoid panic.
"No, I don't think so," Sam said, turning back toward the Mecha. "It's..."
The Mecha- the wolf- drew closer.
"Wait, I know this. It's-"
It approached the open doors.
"Alana?"
The MD-NT model Mecha stormed into the emergency room, screeching to a halt. But its rider wasn't the blue-haired slinger Sam had been expecting. Instead, it was a young woman in an apron and pink dress, with her side stained red.
Eberly and Sam rushed forward, looking over the woman. Alex, Rhydian, and Gwen wheeled the gurney up to Midnight, whose tail was thrashing as she looked back and forth between the healers.
Sam reached out to touch the woman, but her hand was swatted away. The woman's slanted eyes opened, and she looked wildly around.
"You- need to get help," she gasped, grabbing onto Sam's forearm. "You need to get help-"
"Calm down, miss," Eberly said, reaching to help her off the Mecha. But she pulled away, wincing and holding her side with her free hand. Tears were forming in her eyes.
"You don't understand- she's only a kid she's- Blakk-" the woman took a shuddering breath, forcing herself to calm down. "Alana, from the Shane Gang, she was with me but Dana, that-that girl who works for Blakk..."
The girl trailed off as slugs began to emerge from the Mecha, led by a tired-looking Infurnus. His head was ablaze as he looked up at Sam and nodded.
"Alana would never be separated from Ash," Sam said, looking up at Doctor Eberly. The ma hesitated, then motioned over a few nurses that had been drawn to the emergency room by the chaos. Rhydian and Gwen wheeled the gurney over to the Mecha.
"You've got the most experience with the Shane Gang. You take the student team out to Blakk's citadel. Observe, but do not engage. Call the Shane Gang on the way. You are not to enter that citadel, but when they get her out, she won't be in good shape if that Dana girl took her," he said. "Understand?"
"Yes," Sam said with a nod. She turned back to the young woman, who was still holding her forearm with a trembling hand. "We're going to get help for Alana. But we need to help you, too."
Her message delivered, the woman nodded and relaxed. Sam and Eberly carefully lifted her off the Mecha, and Sam winced when she saw the wound in the girl's side.
"She's lost a lot of blood. Miss, do you know what you were hit with?" one of the nurses asked.
"Hop Jack," the woman replied dizzily as Sam strapped her into the gurney.
"Shouldn't be an issue then, we've dealt with worse," Eberly said, observing the wound. The woman looked up at Sam and a faint smile appeared on her lightly freckled face.
"You're pretty," she giggled, her breath rattling. Sam's face turned pink, and Rhydian laughed from somewhere behind her.
"Thank you," Sam said with a smile, taking a step away from the gurney and letting the nurses take over. "Thank you for delivering your message. We'll make sure Alana makes it out safe."
The woman nodded, looking up at the ceiling.
"Such a nice kid. Doesn't deserve this," she said quietly.
You're telling me. What's Alana gotten herself into now? Sam thought as the woman was wheeled into an operating room.
She turned to Rhydian, Alex, and Gwen, who were worriedly standing around the Mecha. The wolf still looked on-edge, and had the rest of what Sam assumed to be Alana's slugs on it.
"We're heading to Blakk's citadel to scope things out. We'll call the Shane Gang once we're on the road," Sam announced. She held out her hand, and Ash jumped into it and onto her right shoulder. "We'll make sure Alana's okay and hopefully be back by tonight. Alex, are you okay to come along as security? If not, I can get one of the security slingers."
Alex hesitated, but the magenta-haired healer nodded.
Let me get my blaster, she signed. Sam nodded.
"Load up. We leave in five."
Hold on, Alana.
~~~~~~~~~
Alana sat at the edge of her bed, facing the cell's door. She'd been wringing her hands and cracking her knuckles for who knew how long. All she knew was that it had been hours since she'd woken up. Her eyes felt droopy, but she couldn't let herself sleep. Not here.
She felt the dark energy of the citadel. She knew the ghouling rooms were somewhere to her left, and she could feel the stored dark water beneath her. The constant, piercing chill of dark energy had turned into a dull ache, but it was still there, reminding Alana of how trapped she was.
She didn't know how to feel. She wished the events of the last twenty-four hours had taken place over the span of at least a week with how exhausted she was. Every time she started to think of how she should plan on escaping, thoughts of the West started seeping into her head, and she just couldn't block them out.
"Stevens was right."
Alana barely responded to the rush of dark energy. She narrowed her eyes and slightly lifted her head to look up at Dana.
"About what?" Alana asked sourly, her hands curled into fists. Dana walked right up to the cell bars, her arms crossed.
"You went through something," she said, observing Alana. "You were a mess when we found you at Altori's campsite."
"It was the middle of the night," Alana responded monotonously.
"But you still haven't gotten better. You look... sad. Scared. Kind of... blank," Dana noted. Alana rolled her eyes.
"I don't know, maybe it's just that you get a little scared when you're kidnapped," Alana said quietly. "Because that's technically what this is."
"You think I care about the legal formalities behind this?" Dana asked with a small laugh. "It doesn't matter. It's not like you'll be pressing charges."
"You got me there," Alana responded bitterly, staring down at the ground. A few moments passed in silence.
Then,
"But what happened, Alana?"
Alana bit her lip and cracked her knuckles as annoyance flooded through her.
"Why do you care?" Alana asked. "I didn't think you cared about anyone but yourself nowadays."
"You would know about not caring for others, wouldn't you?" Dana drawled. "I seem to remember you implying that the things that happened to me were my fault-"
"I apologized for that. Obviously I wasn't in the best state when I said that stuff," Alana fired back immediately. "I tried to get you to understand that, but you never cared about what I had to say once you got ghouled."
"Maybe I care now," Dana said with a shrug. Alana held back a scoff.
Like you would ever care, she thought bitterly.
"I don't need to tell you anything," she snapped.
"But if things are bad enough for even you to be miserable and not at least be bottling things up," Dana said. "I knew things must have been bad for you to be sent away from your home realm, but what could have possibly-"
"You knew?" Alana interrupted. She looked up into Dana's eyes. "How did you know?"
"Doctor Blakk told me," Dana said matter-of-factly. "He was studying slug energy when the portal that brought you here opened up. He'd already hypothesized that Slugterra was bigger than we thought, and it just confirmed it. Unfortunately, he decided to put more focus on learning to ghoul slugs. Otherwise, he might have tried to get ahold of you before Will Shane."
Alana stared at Dana, shocked and confused and even a little frightened as she thought about what could have been.
"I figured something must've happened for you to end up here, but I didn't think it would affect you like this," Dana continued. "I mean, I brought up your past during the Winnowing in the hopes of drawing you away from your gang, but-"
Alana sprang to her feet.
"So you wanted me to go to the Dark Periphery?" Alana asked coldly. She felt like she should be angry, but all she felt was grief over the things she had learned about her past. Dana nodded, and Alana shook her head. "Well, if this is all on you, then you should know that I relived memories that have been blocked for ten years.
"I relived being attacked by a ghoulslinger in my own home. I saw two Western guardians, close friends and teammates of my parents, rush to my family's aid. And then a few minutes later, I saw the Dark Slinger drop their bodies on the ground like they meant nothing," Alana hissed. Tears were forming in her eyes. "I saw my home cavern go up in flames. I saw the fear and sadness and pain on my father's face when he realized he would die, and I saw his eyes go blank as a ghouled Geoshard crystallized his brain. And I saw my mother fatally wounded and putting every last bit of energy into making a portal to let me escape."
As she spoke, mourning rose in Alana. Her vision was laced with pale blue, and she saw in the corner of her eyes that her trembling hands had a similar faint glow.
"So if I seem upset, it's because I had to watch my home get destroyed and see my parents get killed," she finished icily. She felt her energy coursing through her, turning from calm waters to rolling waves ready to crash into something.
Maybe I can use this to escape-
But Alana's concentration was shattered when Dana just put one hand over her mouth and began to laugh.
The blue dissolved from Alana's sight and disappeared from her hands.
What-?
"I'm sorry, it's just so ironic," Dana said, lowering her hand. She was grinning, and there was grim amusement in her eyes. "You're falling apart over something I'd love to see!"
Alana's shoulder dropped, confusion all over her face.
"What do you mean?" she asked, dumbfounded. Dana sighed.
"I want that. I want to be able to destroy where I came from and get rid of the people I used to know. I want to destroy them, Alana, I want to see the light fade from their eyes, and I want them to know in their final moments that it was me," she said, and Alana watched mad glee form in Dana's red eyes.
"I want to never feel weak again, and once Blakk takes Slugterra, I'll be able to go back to that miserable cavern and make them pay," Dana finished, curling her hands around the bars of the cell. "And it will be great."
Alana shook her head, blinking tears from her eyes. She saw the wicken smile on Dana's face, and caught herself wondering if there really was any chance in saving her old friend.
"You're... that's... wrong," Alana breathed. "And it won't happen. Because if you try to ghoul me, there's only two possibilities. You either fail and kill me, which leads to the gang being ready for revenge the next time they see you, or you succeed and corrupt me, and if anyone knows how to beat me in a fight, it'll be my friends."
Dana shrugged, taking her hands off the bars and taking a step back. The door behind her opened, and two uniformed Blakk Industries workers walked into the room.
"Well, if that's the only hope you're holding onto, you're about to be disappointed," Dana said, glancing over at one of the workers and nodding. One of them unclipped a holoscreen from his belt, opening it and turning it so Alana could see.
The footage was shaky, with an explosion temporarily rocking the camera and smoke drifting through the air. There were yells and the sounds of slugfire, and then the cameraman sped forward through a cloud of smoke and zoomed in on a group of slingers.
It was the Shane Gang, and Alana watched with wide eyes as they plummeted down in a pit that she recognized as the Great Abyss.
She felt tears immediately begin to form in her eyes.
"It's fake," Alana said immediately. But she wasn't convincing herself- her breaths were speeding up, and it felt like the walls of her cell were pressing in on her.
"You know illusions don't work on camera. That's how you caught Twist, isn't it?" Dana reminded. "We just got sent this ten minutes ago. It's real. Your friends are in a heap at the bottom of the Great Abyss."
Alana shook her head, holding her bangs back with her hands. She fell to her knees, fear and loss filling her up.
"Now," Dana said as she pressed the control panel by the door. A few of the bars lowered into the ground, and the two uniformed workers walked into the cell, each grabbing on of Alana's arms. "We get to the fun part."
~
The workers dragged Alana to her feet. For a moment, she tried to fight back against them. Dana watched as she dug her feet into the ground, tried to twist out of the ghoulslingers' grasp.
But she knew that the news of the fall of the Shane Gang would push her old friend over the edge, and sure enough, by the time the workers got Alana out into one of the halls of the citadel, Alana stopped trying to fight back. Dana shut the cell door and led the way down the gray and red hall, not letting herself look back at Alana.
Alana would've been causing a scene, but the truth was, the citadel was nearly empty. Doctor Blakk had taken workers out to finish assembly of his new Slugterran Express model, while others were on the hunt for more slugs to ghoul. The gatler blaster was an incredible weapon, one that Dana hoped she would get to use soon, but it required a tremendous amount of ammunition.
"Don't do this!" Alana pleaded, and Dana winced as she heard the pain in her voice. She could practically imagine Alana's blue eyes, filled with pain and tears as she continued to beg. "Dana, you don't even know if it'll work, please don't!"
Dana closed her eyes for a moment, pushing away her empathy. The darkness inside her rose up for a moment, sending a familiar chill down her spine.
Even if it doesn't work, she'll be gone forever, Dana thought to herself. It's a win-win for me.
Yes. That was right. She'd either be down an enemy, or up an ally. Even if it meant possibly destroying an old friend, these were the things she had to do to make sure she stayed in power. And she didn't want to go back to being powerless, weak and beneath others, did she?
This is right.
And as she led her crying friend down the halls of the Blakk Industries citadel, Dana truly believed it.
~
Alana couldn't find the strength to fight off the workers. Her head hurt and her breaths were still short and choppy. She was in shock from seeing the gang plummeting down into the Great Abyss, and terrified of the fate that was quickly approaching her.
What if this is the end?
Dana stopped in front of a door and quickly typed a code into the control panel next to it. It clicked and swung open with a small hiss, revealing a rectangular room that was split in half. The back half was covered by a panel of glass. Inside, there was a long control panel, and the walls were lined with blueprints and charts.
The front half encouraged Alana to resume trying to break free of the two ghoulslingers' grasps.
There were a few barrels on the left and right walls, each covered in warning labels. Tubes were connected to the tops of the metal barrels and ran along the floor, connecting to a device in the middle of the room.
It was a circular platform, two and a half feet in diameter. A glass tube rose up from the platform, six feet into the air, sealed with a cap of metal that the tubes connected to.
Alana had seen the inside of a ghoul depot before. She knew what it was. It was like the gas tubes used to ghoul slugs. Except this one was big enough for a person.
"We were actually unsure what the best way to get about this was," Dana said, unfazed as Alana began to kick at the two workers, fear consuming her. "I was exposed to a mixture of gas and physical contact with the liquid form of dark water, but we use the gas to corrupt slug energy, so we figured it was the best option."
"No, Dana-" Alana gasped, trying to pull away from the workers. But two adult men versus and exhausted fifteen-year-old girl wasn't even a fight. The workers tightened their grips on Alana's arms, forcing her forward. Half of the glass tube swung open with a hiss.
"Sorry it had to end this way," Dana said, not sounding sorry at all as she walked into the half of the room that was sealed off with the panel of glass. "But it's for the best."
Alana could practically hear her heart pounding. Her arms were trembling with fear as the two ghoulslingers shoved her inside the glass tube. It swung shut before she could even think about trying to leap back out.
This is it.
She only pounded on the glass once. It was at least three inches thick- she knew she'd have no effect on it. She kept her arm up on the glass and rested her forehead beneath it, tears filling her eyes.
Alana looked up as the two workers walked into the control room and stood next to Dana. They watched without any emotion as Dana pressed a few buttons and turned a few knobs on the large control panel.
"Dana, don't," Alana said, in one last desperate attempt. "Please. If we were ever friends, don't do this."
Click!
Dana kept her gaze on Alana as the top of the glass tube suddenly opened up at three points. Thick red gas began to seep into the chamber.
Dread and emptiness filled Alana as she made eye contact with her old friend, devastated and disappointed.
Dana hadn't even hesitated.