The Tower

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The Tower
The fourth chapter of a complete free sci-fi / horror story.
By Dean Thorpe

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Chapter 4

17:30

I must have dozed off as the next thing I knew was awaking in my now dark room with my mum yelling at me to come downstairs for dinner. I tried to eat something to keep up my strength, but I only managed about a quarter of my dinner before feeling sick and having to run for the toilet. My Mum asked me why I had not eaten all my dinner and I said that something I had eaten for my lunch at the college had not agreed with me. I made my way back upstairs and into my room. I powered up my terminal and then started looking through the some of files I had copied from the college, but they were all seemed to be in Amygees. I as about to give up when I found a whole section of graphics files. There were video animation's and still pictures. I started going through the video and found the security camera footage files. I found evidence of twenty-five murders of students. I was horrified by what I saw. The one I had seen killed today was bad enough, but the deaths of some of the others had been much worse. In one it showed a group of four people that must have been students by the look of them. They were moving in to attack one of the aliens while he was getting into his car in the front car park at the college. They had knives and baseball bats, but the alien was still much too fast for them. Its body expanded in the same way as the one today had except this one's whole body expanded. It must have been almost twelve foot tall. It grabbed the nearest student and snapped his back in half. He then ripped his head off and threw it at one of the others. It hit him in the stomach so hard it knocked him back against one of the fences. He was electrocuted instantly and sparks flew out from all around his body. Then he fell to the floor looking just like a piece of burnt wood. I could see that his body was still shaking from the extremely high voltage. It had only been a few hours since I had been leaning against that fence while waiting for the bus this afternoon. I thought to myself that I must remember to avoid those fences at night. The next one of the students it at swiped with a razor sharp claw that had extended out of the aliens wrist. Carving him open in a deep diagonal slash from his left shoulder down to his right hip. Even with the low quality of the video footage you could see his guts splashing down on the floor. The poor student just stood wobbling there for a couple of seconds looking down at the remains of his stomach before the alien sliced his head off. The last student had tried to run away, but the alien was much too fast and it just ripped his entire body in two. He was on the floor trying to drag what was left of himself away when the aliens foot came down squarely on his head splattering it all over the floor. After watching all this I very nearly threw up. I could not let this continue any longer. I continued to go through more of the aliens files until I found the information I was after. The complete maps of the tower were now being displayed before my very eyes. I switched the VR to 3D mode and it created a virtual version of the tower for me. This gave me an advantage as you could make the wall semi transparent and it lets you go anywhere you want. Using this I found a carefully hidden door on floor 17 where I have my IT lessons. The door led to an extra flight of stairs up to the top floor. There were no details of exactly what was on this floor. That information was classified and only available to aliens with 'Delta' level security clearance or higher. These plans had been made by the architects and as some of them were human collaborators they could not have been allowed to access to that kind of sensitive information. The computer just showed me a long corridor with a few doors on either side. The only other detail that was shown was the two 4000 model androids that they had posted as security guards. I had heard people say that the 4000 model was a seriously advanced prototype of some kind, but that was all I had known. That had changed now as I could see them in every detail. They were very large robots designed for use in wars. They were based on the rough shape of the aliens and had many kinds of weapons all over them. Whatever method I used to get in it would not involve me getting past these awesome killing machines. I knew I had to find another way if I did not want to finish up dead like those other students.

21:30

I decided to play some more of Syndicate Wars VR 3. This had always helped me think in the past and this time was no different. I got beaten again, but this time I did not care. The way they had beaten me had given me the very idea that I had needed. I had been protecting a scientist in an underground bunker and I had heard the lift start on its way down to the level I was on. I had gone to the lift doors and waited to shoot whoever or whatever was in there coming to attack me. Unfortunately for me the lift was empty except for a small explosive device. A bright flash and the game over message was all I had known about it. I wondered if this trick could stand a chance of working at the tower to take out those heavily armed android guards. A human like me could not use the lift because the speed would kill or badly injure whoever tried it, but that did not mean I could not put some kind of bomb in it.

23:30

It was getting very late and I needed to catch up on some sleep if I was going to be any use tomorrow so I crawled into bed. I lay there for a while thinking about the things I had seen. I could not get those images from the security tapes out of my mind. Every time I closed my eyes all I could see was that last student crawling away. The look on his face was such terror. He was only about my age and looked like quite a normal person to me. The way he was dragging himself would have almost been funny if it wasn't for the fact the entire bottom half of his body had been severed by that alien. As for that final blow, there was just no need for that at all. He could have let him live, but no he just crushed his skull like a plastic cup. I suppose it did stop him from being in incredible pain and even with the medical science of today he would have almost certainly died from those horrific injuries anyway. The ease with which he did it was the worst thing for me. It was just like the way I would have squashed a pathetic little spider on my bedroom ceiling, but this was no tiny spider, this was a real living humans head. You could see as he had splattered it all across the floor and if you looked carefully then you could still just about make out the remains of his brain and his shattered skull. You could also clearly see on the video one of his eye balls bouncing out of its socket and rolling away across the gravel car park and down into the drainage system below. After hours of trying I finally fell into a deep, but restless sleep.

5:00

That must have been the worst night's sleep I have ever had in my life. All I had all night was nightmare after terrible nightmare. I had woken up in my pitch-black room and had been convinced there was an alien in the room with me. There were definite sounds of movement. These sounds had been coming from somewhere around my desk. I had just laid there in my bed shaking for what seemed like an eternity. What could I do if it was an alien. I reached under my bed and got my hover ball bat. I did not know if it was strong enough to kill the alien, but I had to try something. I was so scared my pulse must have been right through the roof. As I got to my feet I raised the bat above my head ready to bring it down on the alien or aliens. I quietly reached out with my other hand and switched on my bedroom light. When the room was illuminated I swung the bat towards the desk. The next thing I knew there was a loud meow and my poor cat went running out of the bedroom door looking even more scared than me. He must have been trying to get into the rats cage for a snack. After this I could not sleep any more so I started to plan my revenge. I gave my rats more food and water than usual just in case things went badly. They were both looking up at me as if they knew something was wrong. The cage was still open so I got them both out of their cage and put one on each of my shoulders. They always loved to sit on there and I did not know when or if they would ever be able to do it again. If I got caught by the aliens I could be thrown in prison or even worse still killed.

7:00

I prepared for the college early to get things sorted out, I needed to be there and ready before the rest of the other students arrived. On my wrist I had brought with me my computer watch as it had a built in modem for giving me access to the college computer systems from any part of the building. It had very little processing power in comparison to my home terminal as it was only had a 500ghz CPU in contrast to my 32thz system at home. It was quite out of date, but it would have to do as I needed something I could hide if I was confronted by any of the teachers. I also could not risk taking anything bigger into the college as it could have been spotted on the surveillance cameras if everything went wrong. I left the house and headed for the bus stop. The weather was much better than it had been the day before, the sun was out and there was just a couple of small clouds in the distance spoiling it from being an absolutely perfect morning. I wished that I could have just forgotten about the aliens and headed off to the beach, but there was no chance of that. I had a job to do and unfortunately no one else could do this for me. I had thought about going to the police for help, but I had heard so many rumours about how corrupt they had been since the aliens had arrived.

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