The Moon, chapter 22: Failures

Susie panicked, walking over to the elevator control panel and tapping the up arrow frantically, only to have the sound of a cable snapping and squealing metal deny her. The elevator was falling at a far faster speed now as the sides of the lift scraped off of the metal walls surrounding her. An alarm was sounding loudly as red lights from the ceiling blinked rapidly. She laid down on the floor of the lift, and hoped for the best, seeing no other options. Eventually the scraping stopped, and she felt her body get forced downward as it hit the ground. Or, more accurately, the water.

She stood up and looked around with her flashlight, soon finding out that it was no longer needed. Susie found herself floating in a vast, seemingly endless sea of dark water that emitted a faint blue glow. She pushed the doors of the elevator open and looked above her, seeing the hole the elevator emerged from in a similarly large steel ceiling that hovered miles above her. Both the metal and the water must've stretched on for miles. Susie wonders how this sort of thing is physically possible... but remembers that maybe all is not what it seems in this world in the first place. Though she could see the water's surface glistening with strange, glowing flakes, the bottom of the water was obscured by a strange black fog that settled just below the water's surface.

It was dead silent besides the soft water noises around her. Not the comforting kind of silent, either.

Susie looked around the elevator for any signs of a way to get her out of this situation, but the only thing she could find was a small box on one of the walls, with a faded yellow caution sign on it. She stepped over to it, her footsteps probably being heard for miles as she opened the small compartment. Inside was a lever, an odd looking cylinder, and a page on the back of the compartment door. Susie looked at the page, and even though it's words were faded, she could make out the words.

“IN CASE OF EMERGENCY!
If for any reason one of the cables snap, or the power cuts out, the lift can be switched into a high power emergency mode. This should, in theory, give the remaining cables (along with the entire system) enough power to lift you up. If the power went out, then you're probably stuck in the shaft somewhere, in which case you shouldn't worry too much. Simply climb to the top of the lift. There, you will find a fuse box with a cylinder similar to this one inside. Take it out, discard it, and put the one from this box inside that one. If a cable was cut or severed, but the red light above you isn't blinking, then you still shouldn't worry, and follow the steps above. If you see a red light blinking above you, stop reading this immediately, and follow the above steps. If you are in the Sea of Mistakes, you do NOT want to be there for any longer than you need to be. Why are you still reading? GO.
Signed, A”

Susie decided that with a name like that, the warning must have been there for a good reason. The sooner she got out of here, the better. She snatched the fuse in her hand, and walked over to the chain link door. Deciding it was probably the best place to climb, she grabbed a hold and began to traverse the door, making sure to not lose her grip and fall into whatever awaited her below. It was difficult, considering she had a rather large fuse in her hand, but she eventually made it. Crawling onto the roof of the lift, she looked around for the supposed fuse box, and found it in the middle of the four cables. Well, three now, since one had been cut. In a strange fashion, too, the cable was cut at the base, and it wasn't as if it was cut from normal deterioration. The cut was clean, like it was severed with a giant knife. She didn't want to think about the implications of this for much longer.

The fuse box squealed open, revealing a leaking, busted fuse that had split down the middle from some powerful impact. The implications Susie was trying not to think of were getting far less easy to force out of her mind. She cautiously picked the fuse up, and not knowing what to do next, tossed it into the water, only realizing after that she probably just attracted more attention to herself. All the more reason to move faster, she thought. Placing the fuse in the box and closing it, she felt the lift whirr to life as the lights below her turned on. With not a moment to spare, she turned around and climbed back down one of the doors, and closed both of them behind her. With hope in her step, and a bit of happiness  Through the gaps in the chain, she could see the silhouette of something incredibly tall in the distance. A humanoid figure that was at least as tall as a small skyscraper.

Susie took this as her queue to leave.

The force she used to press the up button was enough to make it sting for a bit. The elevator loudly announced it's ascent as the sound of shrieking metal reverberated across the sea, and began to rise high above the waters. Susie felt relief for a moment, and found that it was swiftly ripped away from her when she felt a dark gust of air blow across her body. It was a similar wind to the kind she felt on the cliff just minutes ago. Except it was coming from the silhouette in the distance, and seemed to be getting stronger as the elevator slightly swung in the breeze. Susie prayed that the elevator would make it to the shaft in time, but as she felt the cabin of the lift swing more and more, she felt her hope waste away from her body.

When she saw a small flash of light in the distance, she knew it was too late. Following the light, an unbelievably powerful gust of wind shook the entire lift, blasting Susie backward and hitting her back on the wall behind her. The wind knocked out of her, she gasped for air as she felt another cable from above snap, and the entire cabin tilt to it's side. Susie's body rolled to the bottom of the cabin, the machinery whining painfully as it tried to lift her with half of it's power gone. Hope had been lost to her completely. She shook in fear, waiting for the next flash, and when it came, she closed her eyes and braced herself for the pain to come.

The tearing of metal and whistling of wind reached Susie's ears as she no longer felt solid ground under her, her body being propelled backward incredibly fast. Pain tore through her entire body. What she could see became a blur as the steel ceiling and the blue sea became one. Nausea set in almost immediately as her stomach twisted in knots. She could barely breathe, and she felt the familiar taste of copper in her mouth. Then, after seconds of flying through the air, her body crashed against the water. She went light headed, her throat and lungs failing as water flowed into them, no longer being able to breathe. She witnessed in her blurry, distorted vision, the water around her turning dark red. She couldn't feel her left arm, and wondered why until she saw it floating a couple meters above her. She would've screamed if she had air in her lungs to do so. But as she felt each individual part of her body shut down, she knew it didn't matter anymore. She was going to die down here. She was going to fail her mission to save the world.

This was her last thought before her consciousness left her, and all that remained was darkness.

Then, she saw a light. It was far away, but she could see it all the same, static and bright in the darkness. Susie couldn't feel any of her body, she only felt a strange, comforting warmness that surrounded her. She thought she heard a voice, but it could've been anything. Then, the light came to her. It's radiance getting closer and closer, until...

Susie felt as if she was laying in a shallow pool of water. Her vision showing nothing but a dark red moon far above, and a white sky surrounding it. She used her arms to get to her knees, then eventually her feet. She looked around, only seeing a thin layer of water stretching to the horizon in every direction she looked until she turned around one last time and saw Hazel standing a few meters in front of her. Her head was missing, replaced by an unending, violent stream of dark fog that stretched far into the sky. The fog then became the sky, covering both it and the moon, until she was drenched in black so dark she couldn't see her own hands. She ran around the empty plains blindly, looking for someone or something to help her. She screamed for what felt like years, asking for anything or anybody to find her. Asking for forgiveness. Asking for love. Asking for feeling. But the running, frenzied footsteps of something she couldn't see eventually answered her calls.

Susie could hear the faint sound of a heart rate monitor flat-lining. Then, the sound of many frenzied, unsynchronized beeps. After a while, these beeps fell into place, and began to sound like a normal heart rate monitor. Then, she heard a strange, shy voice of a male. It sounded like it was being played through a speaker.

“Oh... Y-You're alive... That's good, I guess... I was going to, um, cremate you like all the others, but... maybe when you wake up we can...”

The voice, along with the heart rate monitor, faded into the distance until the darkness absorbed her once again.