Nipping

<snip>
Cassandra nodded and plugged in the memory stick, much to Holly's protest. The 0s and 1s started turning red, and then everything else changed....
</snip>

The monitors and overhead lights dimmed and flickered to begin with, before finally failing completely and plunging the room into total darkness
“¡Dios mío!” Gomez shouted “What happened!?”
“The lights just went out!” Cass sarcastically snapped, as she stretched her arms out, trying to balance herself in the sudden dizzying blackness, her eyes involuntarily trying to blink away the dark “Anyone got a torch? I can't see a smegging thing!”
“Yeah, here!” Davie called, and a moment later a pale, thin beam of light lanced through the darkness, casting massive, menacing shadows around the room as he flicked the light across the dozens of dead monitors and the silent bulk of Holly's core
“Well, that was somewhat ...unexpected” Cass muttered, bending back over the terminal she had plugged the memory stick into and tapping a few of the keys, trying to gain some sort of response from the thing
“Jones!” Jay started “What just happened?”
“Oh, there's no use asking him” Cass scowled, trying a few diagnostics before finally attempting a hard reset of the terminal “This thing's dead!”
“I meant...” Jay began
“Yeah, yeah, I know what you meant” Cass glanced over her shoulder at him with a wry smile “You were in shouty captain mode; I never was an underling Jay, never will be”
“Oh, for heaven's sake...” Jay muttered, but his rejoinder was cut prematurely short by the sudden eruption of a massive commotion outside the door that Gomez had just sealed, sounding almost exactly like a mad bull that was having its gonads slowly crushed with a mangle
Davie snatched the torchlight urgently over towards the door, making sure that the damned thing was still sealed
“...Shit” Alex croaked as the the sounds finally died
“I think that virus just hit the simulants” Cass straightened and turned back to the group “Seems like we found a really nasty one”
Heavy weapons fire and tortured screams erupted suddenly on the other side of the door, startling almost everyone
“Hey, that sounds like a turbo-cooled BPK-221/70” Davie breathed, his eyes gleaming with worrying excitement in the half light
More screaming and arms fire filled the air
“Don’t you think we should hide or something?” Seymour asked nervously jigging from one leg to the other
“No... No, it was a BPK-222/55” Davie smiled happily “Air cooled, gas ejection system with belt fed ammo and three hundred rounds a minute in full auto mode; gorgeous!”
A couple of massive explosions rocked the room and finally there was silence

In the scant illumination, Cass found she was stood near to Phi, and nodded in acknowledgement to the other woman
“Hi” she smiled in the half light, pulling her filthy wet hair back out of her face with one hand “I don't think we've met before; I'm Cass...”
Phi forced a tight smile and inclined her head in response
“Dirty...” she breathed before the illumination was snatched away as Davie crept over towards the door to press his ear up against it, trying to hear any signs of life on the other side
He listened in silence for a moment before something hammered hard on the other side of the door, startling him into scrambling back away from the thing
“Shit” he gasped, breathing heavily as the adrenaline surged through him "Something's out there!"
"Really?" Cass observed

The hammering continued for another few minutes before abruptly ceasing, leaving the small group in silence
“What just happened?” Jay asked after a moment
“Best guess?” Cass replied, shivering slightly in her wet clothes “I reckon that virus probably started out as a smart porn dialler or something and has evolved on that memory stick over the last three million years into something uniquely virulent and unpleasant; I'm stunned at how well it worked – I was expecting to have to use a battery of other advanced nasties I've got on file to even get close to what just happened!”
“So what's happened to Holly?”
“Again, I'm not entirely sure...” Cass looked a little embarrassed at this “But given that everything's dead, I think that Holly's probably gone catatonic while it fights the viral infection, with the result that non essential systems like lighting, holographic display, life support and such like have all had their power diverted into ramping up Holly's processing cycles”
“Not good” Jay observed “I suppose there's no way of telling how long he's going to be like this, right?”
“The short answer to that would be: No” Cass smiled wanly “On the one hand, Holly's still alive, so there's a good chance it'll survive this encounter once it figures out how to combat the virus, but it could be hours, days or even months before Hol's back with us”
“I say...” Seymour piped up, still jigging from one leg to the other
Cass just ignored him, assuming he was going to start whining about his legs again; she'd get around to fixing them once she thought he had suffered enough
“The trouble we have right now...” she continued “Is that the Huzards are going to go smegging nuts about this; right now they're probably wondering why their god has forsaken them and has turned their heat and light off, so it won't be long until some bright spark over there decides that a few more human sacrifices are in order to help bring him back”
“And besides which” Cass sighed “I'm cold and wet, and could do with a good shower to get whatever was in that filthy water washed off me; this place doesn’t have any of the stuff we need like food, beds or even a toilet; we can't really stay here for long”
"Yes, about that..." Seymour interrupted, a note of urgency sounding in his voice "I could do with the, ah... aforementioned facilities..."
"Oh, just go piss over in the corner or somewhere Seymour"
"It's not that" he groaned, dancing around on the spot in a tight little circle "... it must have been all the mushy peas I ate earlier"
"Oh, shit!"
"Exactly" Seymour gasped, small beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead “Can we open that door?”
“I was going to recommend we wait at least an hour, to make sure whatever was out there had got bored and had left the area” Davie muttered

<tag>
There's at least one surviving simulant out there somewhere – are we going to risk opening the door so soon?
</tag>