The Ganymede Legacy

by A C Bonesteel

  "Nothing..." Leo whispered.

  "Why? Why did he do that?" Annabelle asked as she stared at Aaron's bloody corpse.

  Leo studied the man who had just brutally ended his own life. He couldn't understand the bizarre and shocking act.

  Then, Leo's eyes moved to the silvery puddle next to him. The two pools had joined into one next to Leo and were now rippling as they grew into a morphing, wiggling blob. The liquid squirmed as Leo watched and slowly grew in size to form what looked like a big silver balloon.

  "What is it doing?" the woman demanded as gasps of terror and confusion erupted from the crowd around them.

  The blob continued growing as it gracefully took the shape of a perfect sphere. Then, it began to rise into the air. Leo backed away and nudged Annabelle with his knee to do the same. She followed him as she watched the shimmering orb rise into the air.

  "Stop!" the woman screamed, her voice tense with stress.

  Leo was midstep when he heard the woman's warning. His foot hit the ground, and he was fully prepared to obey her command. But then, he heard the telltale zip of a mag-pistol firing. Leo expected to feel a bullet ripping through him, but he felt nothing.

  "Stop! Please! Don't shoot!" Leo begged as he stared at the massive silver sphere that was now hovering above them.

  Suddenly, with a small pop, the sphere exploded and showered Leo, Annabelle, and the crowd with a shimmering silver mist.

  Leo heard the pistol fire again, but he didn't feel a bullet pierce through his body. That wasn't even his primary concern, though, as he watched a portion of the mist coalesce and form a long cylinder that floated high above them.

  "I will show you..." Exony whispered in Leo's mind.

  Leo shivered and shrugged his shoulder to wipe some of the mist away from his mouth as he followed the cylinder's progress. It slowly floated over them, then it suddenly splintered into a vast, uncountable number of tiny silver threads. The threads zipped away in seemingly random directions and moved so fast that Leo couldn't keep track of them. Within a second, they had disappeared, leaving Leo, Annabelle, and the crowd of onlookers in stunned silence.

  "Please stop shooting at me..." Leo groaned as he turned to the woman with the gun.

  "I don't understand..." the woman moaned as she lowered the pistol. "What just happened?"

  "You missed..." Leo replied.

  "No, she didn't!" Annabelle suddenly cried as she pushed past him.

  Leo spun and saw Annabelle kneel next to the girl named Maddy, who was now lying on the ground in the fetal position. Leo quickly followed and took in a terrible sight. A small hole had been torn in the girl's white shirt, and blood was streaming from it onto the metal floor.

  "The shot..." Leo growled. "It was meant for me..."

  "We have to get her help..." Annabelle urged.

  Leo was about to agree, but then, chaos erupted around them.

  It started with the zipping sound of more mag-pistols firing. When he heard the noises, Leo spun around and ducked onto his belly to make himself as small a target as possible, but he quickly realized the bullets weren't meant for him.

  The woman dressed in the green nano-suit, and who had yelled at him to stop was no longer standing. She was now lying on the ground, and only a puddle of blood and shredded flesh existed where her head should have been.

  Leo watched in horror as two more of the onlookers drew their weapons with a look of abject horror upon their faces. Then, in perfect unison, they raised the guns to point at their right temples, and they pulled the triggers. With a pair of squishing zips, their heads exploded in a shower of blood and bone.

  Then, three more of them did the same, and each of them did so with an identical look on their faces. Leo could see it clearly as their jaws trembled, and tears streamed from their wide eyes. It was pure horror — nothing more, and nothing less.

  Leo spun around as a disturbing cacophony erupted behind him. When he turned, he saw at least ten of the onlookers drop to their knees and begin pounding their heads against the floor. Like the beating of a furious drumline, they beat their heads into the ground, each of them grunting wildly with the effort of each blow.

  As the first of them slumped to the floor, motionless, others around them dropped to their knees and began to emulate them. As Leo turned, he saw even more of the onlookers striving to end their own lives. Some of them pulled knives from their pockets and drove them into their temples, and others sat down, a blank look on their faces as they simply stopped breathing.

  Leo was stunned and horrified as he watched them murder themselves. It only took twenty seconds for the crowd to finish their suicidal work.

  When the mashing of skull into metal had finally stopped, they had all fallen, except for one man. He still stood, his eyes wide as he sobbed uncontrollably. He was young, maybe eighteen or twenty years old, and he was the only one in the crowd who hadn't ended their own life.

  "Why did they do that?" Annabelle whispered. "Why?"

  "I don't know..." Leo answered as abstract thoughts of the silver liquid swam through his mind. Exony whispered to me... She said she would show me..."

  Tears streamed down Annabelle's cheeks as she spun around towards Maddy, who was now coughing raggedly. "I heard her too... But it doesn't matter! We can still help the girl!"

  "Yeah..." Leo breathlessly agreed. With a dart of his head, he then looked around the area and searched for something that could help them carry the girl.

  "There's gotta be something..." Leo grunted as his eyes crossed the floor and met the young man who had not yet ended his own life.

  "Hey! You!" Leo shouted, as the young man fearfully looked up at him. "Yeah, you! Help us!"

  The young man said nothing in response and stared at Leo for a few seconds, but then, he nodded and began to walk towards them.

  "Hurry up! She's dying!" Leo screamed, and he obediently broke into a run.

  "Carry the girl, and be gentle!" Leo ordered as the young man knelt next to them. "Then, follow me! I have medical supplies on my ship."

  The young man nodded, knelt, and lifted the girl into his arms with ease.

  "I know a b-better place..." the young man stammered as he rose with the girl in his arms and looked at the floor.

  "What? Where?" Annabelle demanded, cutting off Leo before he could speak.

  The young man tentatively looked at Annabelle. "When the... When they took over, they shut down all the medical facilities. But, we set one up. It's hidden, and you need a password... It's safe..."

  Leo was hopeful, but not yet prepared to trust the young man without more information."What happened here?" he demanded.

  "We don't have time for th..." Annabelle began, but the young man had already started to speak as fast as he could.

  "The Sarens... They locked down the station and rounded everyone up, one by one. Half of the people, the old ones mostly, were taken... I think for food. They're fucking cannibals, man... The other half, like me, they injected us with something. People went crazy after they got injected, but for some reason, I didn't. I pretended to, but I didn't. Then, they let me out and started ordering me around, making me do things... Terrible things... That's when I found the good people. Some people were able to hide and found places the bad people couldn't go... We have a secret elevator... To the lower levels..."

  Leo looked into the young man's eyes for signs of deceit. He found none, however, only earnest fear.

  "I say we trust him..." Annabelle declared.

  "Okay," Leo agreed.

  Without another word, the young man turned and began jogging down the alley. Leo and Annabelle quickly followed.

  Leo limped as he ran past the same shops and apartments he had run past the last time he had visited O'Hearn's, although now, there was no one within them. No one was lounging out on the decks of the apartments, and no one was haggling with an annoyed shopkeeper about the price of canned fish from Callisto.

  The alley was empty except for them, and the o
nly sound that echoed through it was the patter of their footsteps and their heavy breathing.

  When they reached the Grand Promenade, the bright red and orange waves of Jupiter came into view through the transparent ceiling far above them, and they ran right into a scene of morbid death.

  Across the entirety of the Grand Promenade, hundreds of corpses rested upon the ground. Blood oozed from their heads, knives stood at attention within their skulls, and their faces existed only as bloody puddles upon the floor. Some had simply slumped over, with no sign of injury or trauma.

  "What the fuck was that thing?" the young man shouted back to them. "Why did it do this? Is it a weapon?"

  "It's an antidote..." Leo answered between heaving breaths as he tried to match the young man's pace.

  "An antidote to what?" the young man shouted back.

  "Life, apparently," Leo replied.

  "Some life..." Annabelle corrected him, as she jogged beside Leo.

  The young man didn't inquire further, and they continued running past the swaths of countless dead bodies, all of whom had ended their own lives in the minutes before.

  After a mercifully short distance, the young man stopped running and turned into an alleyway beside a small wine bar.

  "Callistian Nights..." Annabelle informed him with a nod to the wine bar. "That's where I wanted to take you the night we first met..."

  Leo couldn't find the words to reply. There had been too much death, and too much pain to think back to relatively innocent times.

  In silence, the trio walked down the alleyway until the young man stopped and turned to his left to face a section of bare wall. There was no door there, and no identifying marker, just a plain wall.

  "Peas and mushrooms..." the young man whispered.

  Nothing happened, and Leo shifted his feet nervously. "No one home?"

  The young man shook his head. "I don't know..."

  Leo stared at Annabelle as he caught his breath. His chest was cut open, his forearm fileted, his hands were burnt to a crisp, he had been shot, and his exhaustion was finally catching up to

  "How are we alive, Alice... I mean, Annabelle?" he whispered.

  Annabelle smirked at him from within Alice's body. "It's probably not the last time you'll make that mistake, Leo..."

  Then, the wall next to them slid downward to reveal a dark entrance. The young man immediately stepped through into the dark room beyond, carrying the girl gingerly as he crossed the threshold.

  After giving Leo a weak smile, Annabelle stepped through. Leo quickly followed.

  Epilogue

  Within the darkness, twelve voices argued with one another.

  "All evidence has revealed that the agent has mutated beyond Exony's control. Whatever effects it is now making manifest, they are not the desires of Exony."

  "That is irrelevant. If it is beyond Exony's control, then it is beyond our control, and if we cannot control it, then it poses too great a risk for us to return."

  "This is an assumption, and nothing more. We do not know if the agent poses a threat to us, or humanity, in its mutated form. We must discover the truth of it if we are to advance our understanding and protect against similar agents in the future."

  "Simply not knowing is a great enough risk to justify our choice."

  "It is not yet our choice. A few among us disagree with your grim outlook."

  "Without our guidance, the Solar system will be thrust into chaos!"

  "Yes, if there is even a chance the final consequences of Exony's agent are not as dire as we feared, then we must return."

  "The agent has mutated and will continue to mutate. Even if it is not a threat in its current form, that may not be the case once it mutates further."

  "There is truth to that, and reason."

  "Reason be damned. One hundred billion! That is how many people we have left behind! Through no heroic deeds of our own, they may, in fact, not be threatened with certain death. We have one chance, right now, to isolate the agent in its current form, and develop a counter-agent. We must act now before it mutates further!"

  "There is truth to that as well, and much reason."

  "But also emotion, and emotion clouds proper judgment."

  "And so does a lack of emotion..."

  "History does not lend credence to that opinion."

  "Enough!" a loud, authoritative female voice commanded through the darkness, driving the other voices into silence. "I, Zary Anthem, will take my ship and return to the Solar system, regardless of the opinion of the other Council Members!"

  "Impossible!"

  "Heresy!"

  "No," Zary declared. "Fact!"

  "And I will join her!" a gentle but confident male voice added.

  Alice's voice suddenly cut through the darkness. It was much louder than the others.

  "Leo?"

  With a start, Leo opened his eyes. Alice's face swam in his vision as he blinked his eyes blearily.

  No, not Alice. It was Annabelle, he reminded himself, as he looked into her kind eyes. It was Annabelle who had awakened him. It was Annabelle's voice now. Alice was gone.

  He shook his head a few times to drive off the dream that had so rudely interfered with his sleep as Annabelle sat down next to him. The auxiliary control panel of his ship lit up in front of him, and he stared it as his dream slowly slipped from his memory. When he turned his head to inspect the rest of the cramped cockpit, the dream slipped from his mind completely.

  "How are your hands?" Leo asked Annabelle as he gingerly stood up and allowed her to sit down in the seat he had just occupied.

  Annabelle held her hands out for Leo to inspect. They were no longer charred and black, but instead a creamy, iridescent white.

  "They work well enough, for now..." Annabelle replied as she stretched her fingers apart.

  "And how is our guest?" Leo asked as he inspected his own hands.

  Annabelle crossed her arms and shivered. "She's okay. Shaken up... Traumatized... They killed her whole family... I don't know what we can do for her..."

  Leo stepped to his right and sat down in the seat Annabelle had just vacated, behind the ship's primary control panel. "We couldn't leave her there... Not alone. It was no place for a young girl with no family."

  Annabelle leaned back in her chair and sighed. "Of course... I know... I just... I'm worried about her. I don't know how a girl could come to terms with what happened. She lost her whole family."

  "She'll overcome it. I know she will... Somehow..." Leo replied as he tapped the control panel a few times to check the ship's course.

  "Where are we going anyway? What's the plan?" Annabelle asked as she let out a huge yawn.

  With a swipe of his finger, he began to check the status of the ship's systems. "Titan. It's close. We can get supplies there and scope out the situation. We need to see if Exony's agent has done any damage there and assess its impact. We need to get our hands checked out by a real doctor, too. I'm not sure how long the treatment we got on Osiris will last... And, we need weapons. We need everything we can get our hands on if we're going to figure this thing out."

  "Want fries with that?" Annabelle tiredly joked. "You know someone there who can get us all that?"

  Annabelle's eyes drooped due to her severe tiredness. Mercifully, she had allowed Leo to be the first to sleep after they had left Osiris.

  "I know some monks..." Leo replied.

  "Monks?" Annabelle exclaimed with a laugh. "They're not big fans of tech or weapons if what I've read is true."

  "No, they're not..." Leo admitted. "But, they'll give us food and a safe place to stay while we find the other stuff. Plus, I think they'll be able to help Madeline..."

  "Hmmm, do they teach meditation?" Annabelle groaned as she closed her eyes and sighed deeply. "I could go for some meditation right now... Yeah, about thirty hours of meditation..."

  "Well, you get eight," Leo grunted as he smacked her arm.

  Her eyes snapped open, and she looked up at him
angrily, but the smile he gave her disarmed her anger, and she immediately closed them again.

  "Then, it's my turn..." he finished, watching her as she breathed deeply and her muscles relaxed. Within ten seconds, her breathing became regular and deep, and Leo knew she had found sleep.

  Leo sighed and turned back to the control panel. With a few quick inputs, he accessed the Council News Feed. Unfortunately, the last entry was from two days prior, and there were no articles on it relating to Exony's shimmering liquid.

  With a few more inputs, he accessed the Titan local news feed to see if there was anything of note there. Then, he edged closer to the screen when he saw the title to the first article.

  Isolated Incidents of Mass Suicide Spark Panic in Pontia City

  Scrolling down, he saw a second article that caused his heart to race

  "Mass Delusion" Is Official Cause of Widespread Hallucinations and Strange Behavior

  With a press of his finger, Leo opened the second article and began reading.

  Pontia City, Titan

  The Titan Wire News Service

  Pontia City leaders have finally issued an official statement regarding reports of widespread hallucinations and strange behavior among the city's residents that occurred yesterday.

  The Official Statement Reads:

  "After a preliminary analysis, we have determined the likely cause of the recent disturbing events in our city."

  "Many residents contacted us to report an unexplained loss of consciousness and to describe delusions of 'voices in their heads.' We all experienced the same unexplained symptoms, and after a detailed investigation, we believe every resident of Pontia City was, in fact, affected."

  "After contacting other local governments, we believe this was an event that affected every single resident of Titan, and preliminary analysis suggests that this phenomenon occurred on many other colonies in an identical manner."

  "At this time, our investigation suggests that the symptoms were the product of a shared, mass-delusion. Our scientists have theorized that such a phenomenon could be caused by a small black hole, or a nano-virus designed to corrupt cognitive implants. We do not know the exact cause yet, but we are working hard to find the answers we know our citizens deserve."