Inside the Arcanum Purifier’s vent shaft, hot steam hissed across raw iron piping. The vapor bit sharp and sour, corroding the outer weave of Tala’s work suit. Spent reagents and ozone stung her nostrils through the seam line. The helmet’s readout flickered, warning of rising toxicity. Droplets of grey condensate ran down her visor. Her breath came in ragged, burning gasps. She pushed herself upright, ignoring the searing pain radiating from her left hip where she’d landed.
The rupture was a yawning maw in the main conduit, a jagged tear in the aged durasteel that pulsed with a vile, greenish discharge. The jet shrilled against the grating beneath her boots. Tala’s eyes, even behind the haze of her visor, quickly scanned the immediate vicinity. She had no tools, no patch kit—Branis’s impulsive shove had robbed her of any preparation. She saw only remnants of corroded scaffolding and a few abandoned equipment casings, half-dissolved by earlier, lesser leaks. Her gaze fell upon a heavy maintenance plate, still relatively intact, its securing bolts seized with rust. It wouldn't hold permanently, but it might buy them minutes.
Ignoring the rapid degradation of her suit’s integrity alarm, she clawed at the plate. The heat was unbearable, radiating through the failing fabric of her gloves. She wrestled the plate into position, bracing it with all her strength against the erupting flow. The erupting gas threatened to rip the iron slab from her fingers. She knew this was a temporary measure, a desperate gamble to slow the contamination, but it was all she had. Her muscles screamed, her head throbbed, and the acidic steam began to sting through the thinned material of her suit, reaching her skin.
Outside the sealed compartment, Olev Tarnov watched the screen beside the corridor bulkhead. His mouth hung open, fingers digging into the edge of the console. Tala was trapped behind four inches of reinforced slab. He snarled, shoving off from the console.
He pivoted toward the access corridor. Branis, still scrambling, had almost reached the far hydroponics door. Olev cut across the grates. His fist connected with Branis’s jaw with a sickening crack, sending him sprawling against the grimy wall. Branis cried out, a pathetic, whimpering sound, clutching his face. Olev didn’t stop. He hauled his brother up by the collar of his stained overalls, slamming him back against the wall, his own face inches from Branis’s terrified eyes. “You… worthless… parasite!” Olev hissed, each word punctuated by a vicious strike to Branis’s gut, his ribs, his temple. “She kept this place alive! She kept *you* alive!”
Branis doubled over, coughing up a mixture of bile and blood, his face a bruised mess. “I didn’t mean to! She… she was going to tell on me! I panicked!”
“Panicked?” Olev snarled, delivering a final, punishing kick to Branan’s knee. The bone grated, and Branis collapsed, writhing on the ground, a broken heap of selfish terror. “Your panic just signed the death warrant for us all!”
Olev ignored him, his focus already shifting. He stumbled over to the override panel for the Arcanum Purifier door, his fingers flying across the cold, unresponsive interface. The light remained stubbornly red. “Damn it!” he roared, slamming his fist against the panel. The atmosphere trapped beyond the vault seal, combined with corroded teeth, locked the latch tight. It refused to cycle while the vent was loaded with gas.
His eyes darted to the emergency locker, an old, rusted container marked with a faded biohazard symbol. Inside hung three hazard suits, remnants from the pre-Caustic Hoar era, never meant for sustained exposure to such extreme conditions. They were degraded, the seams brittle, the visors clouded. The best of them was a patchwork of sealant and prayers. The perished rubber offered scarce protection against the caustic vapor.
“Damn you, Tala,” he muttered, his voice raw with a twisted blend of affection and resentment. “Always making me do the right thing.”
He ripped open the locker, pulling out the least compromised suit. The fabric crackled as he donned it, the dry-rotted seals feeling dangerously fragile against his skin. The helmet clicked into place, the air supply tasting stale and metallic. He checked the emergency rebreather, the flow dial, and the faint, blinking sensor. It wasn't much, but it was all he had. The LED indicator on his forearm showed Tala’s suit integrity dropping rapidly, her backup air supply thinning. He had seconds.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Olev located the auxiliary manual release – a heavy, crank-operated mechanism that bypassed the main hydraulics. He gripped the cold metal handle, his muscles straining, and began to turn. Groaning, protesting, the massive door slowly, agonizingly, began to grind open, a sliver of yellow work-light revealing the churning, corrosive mist. The stench hit him immediately, a metallic, chemical assault that tasted like battery acid.
He pushed through the narrow opening, the grinding door scraping against the last of its seal. The heat was a physical blow. He squinted through his clouded visor, the geiger counter on his wrist screaming a frantic, high-pitched alarm. The air was thick with glowing particulate. Tala. He saw her, slumped against the patched plate, her suit shimmering with a dangerous, greenish ooze. Her head was lolled to one side, completely still.
“Tala!” he yelled, his voice distorted by the suit’s comms. He scrambled towards her, slipping on the slick, contaminated floor. He reached her, his gloved hands fumbling to check for a pulse, catching a thrum under her carotid artery. He grabbed her, hauling her limp body across his shoulder, ignoring the searing pain as the corrosive steam found new weak points in his own failing suit. He dragged her back towards the barely open door, every muscle screaming in protest, the air in his helmet growing thin and stale.
Just as he pulled Tala clear of the vault, collapsing onto the corridor floor, a sharp crack reverberated from the shaft. The maintenance plate Tala had jammed in place blew free, torn from the conduit. A torrent of superheated, acid-laced steam erupted, surging into the main conduit with a terrifying roar. On the bulkhead screen, the toxicity levels jumped again, flashing red warnings across the glass. The bunker had moments, not hours, before the air became unbreathable.