"But, we mean to progress beyond mere superstition, to use evidence instead of faith. It wasn't long ago that your ancestors believed I should be made to pick cotton, and serve a master, where my intellect would’ve been wasted because of someone's inability to form a reasonable thought. Their belief, as it were. So, yes, I choose science over God, or gods, and there isn't a damned thing you can do about it.
"Your beliefs will erode as our progress spreads, and you will be left behind to clutch at your Bible as you shame our progress, and predict the coming of the end of the world by fire and brimstone, which will never happen. The end of the world will be by chance, by an ice age, or by an asteroid, or a comet, but humanity will survive, because that's what we do, and it has nothing to do with faith."
Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape. She had sat down and crossed herself, and a few of his silent colleagues had clapped for his speech. Professor Adams had not been as impressed, but he’d attempted to get the class back on track at last.
Was that how it had happened? He couldn't be sure. Perhaps his speech hadn't been nearly as eloquent, perhaps it was only what he'd wished he'd have said? After that semester, he heard that the religious woman had dropped out of school to become a missionary. He hadn't even bothered to learn what her major was, but he’d been glad she was gone.
Now, when he saw her, her complexion was pale, frost clinging to her dead skin. Her eyes drifted slowly, her cataract-filled pupils focusing on him.
"You were right," she said. "In a way. But the human race will not survive this."
"We will," he said, grinning. "I will."
She laughed, revealing her rotted and stained teeth. "No. You will not. I've seen the truth, Mathias. There is no God. But, there are other things. I've seen them. I've seen them.
"One of them has its sights on you.
"It won't rest until you're gobbled up by the abyss!
"The Harvester is coming for you, Mathias, coming for you!"
A foul wind carried by her sickening cackle filled the classroom. The walls cracked, shattering and peeling away into the starless night sky.
When he turned back to her, she was gone. He was standing on the cliff, facing the ice cave that led into the facility. There was a mound of snow roughly the size of a human male.
The soft cries of a little girl filled the freezing air. She wept, bundled up and on all fours, her tears floating away into the freezing wind like snowflakes.
There was someone else, too. Mathias saw the back of someone's exposed head, standing over the grave as if he'd just materialized there. The mohawk was familiar. Nico turned to him, but his eyes were black, his mouth oozing something dark and insipid; his bullet wounds were festering, becoming frostbit.
"It's your fault." Nico's voice echoed through the tank, through the black. "You killed me."
"And how do you know this?" Mathias said.
"You were the only one in the cell who could have heard Lena say what she said. You told Hugo about me and Lena."
"I did," Mathias said. "Though it's regrettable that you had to die, sometimes that's what progress is. I'm going to save everyone. I'm going to do what you never could."
"I will be with you for the rest of your life."
"Too bad I don't believe in ghosts." Mathias chuckled. "Now go away, be forgotten like the rest of humanity."
Nico turned around and sat down atop his grave.
A creature sprung up from his shadow. Its seven eyes pulsed from the darkness. The eyes seemed to be arranged in a diamond on its rather large head. Thin, dark spikes shot off from its back, silhouetted by the purple ice and the dim glow of the moon above. It was like a panther, or a salamander, or both, but it seemed to be out of phase somehow, like it was both physically there and made from pure shadow.
It crouched low, like a cat ready to pounce.
All reason fled from Mathias’s mind as he turned, running straight into the mouth of the ice cave. The creature's growls reached him, bouncing off the ceiling and walls of the cave.
The cave transformed before his eyes. Gone were the familiar doors to the facility, the tunnel ending in a ledge, a cliff overlooking a familiar stone room—built around a hole in the floor that housed a black hole. There was a staircase to the left of the icy cliff. He felt compelled to walk down, to face the black hole at the center of the room.
It was finished devouring a star, its tentacles reaching out to find other sources of sustenance.
The Harvester was standing at the edge, a frown carved in its ancient mask.
"I know I botched the ritual," Mathias said.
The Harvester nodded.
"If Eddy isn't gone, I can try again!"
The Harvester shook its head. No.
The Harvester's hollow whisper of a voice crept through his mind like maggots eating away at his brain stem. His knees buckled and he fell on all fours. "You don't have to take me yet, there are others!"
The Harvester turned to him. Its appendages reaching out, grasping at his frail body, lifting him up into the stale air of that ancient place, dangling him over the edge of the black hole.
"Give me more time! Please!"
Mathias closed his eyes, but even then he could not unsee the truth of the abyss.
At its center, he could see a dim green light. An eye encircled by like impossibly juxtaposed pyramids. The Harvester's master.
The Harvester pulled Mathias’s body back over the edge and flung him across the floor, back toward the cave mouth high above the room.
Then, the creature was gone.
Was it toying with him?
If so, why?
He had to get out of there, he had to run, before it changed its mind.
You will never be able to hide, the Harvester said, filling his mind fit to burst. You are all but playthings.
Mathias screamed, tossing the lid to the tank onto the floor. He clawed his way out of the tank, his heart pounding through his chest, the harsh light from Weber's personal chamber causing him to shield his eyes in reflex. He sat on the cool linoleum floor, allowing himself a moment to come back to reality.
He was running out of time. Just like Weber.
7
Ira scratched her chin and leaned back in her chair.
She was watching Mathias on the security cam. He was at the top of the facility, in Weber's own personal chambers. He'd just climbed out of a sensory deprivation tank screaming. She watched him dry himself off and find his clothes. He looked like he had been spooked by something, and his steps were hurried.
Why was he using the tank?
She felt like she didn't want to know the answer.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Something is calling him from the shadows of the facility, radiating out from a central point high above him, carried through lines, triangles, pyramidal shapes, waves, and curling, twisting things.
There's something else too. A voice. It tells him to leave his chrysalis. It's so loud and violent he feels it may crack his skull in two if he does not obey.
With fingers that aren't his own, fingers that stretch and flow and wrap around things like snakes constricting on prey, he feels. The lid to his chrysalis is loose.
Yes. Open it.
With a push, it flops open, allowing the sounds of the room to fill his one good ear.
His body is much larger now. Much larger. His considerable mass spills out from his chrysalis, down onto the cold metal stairs and floor. He finds his way to the mirror.
He caresses the mirror even though his eyes are blackened, leaking pits of ash. It spills out from his rotting sockets and down his ruined cheeks. Yet, even so, he is not blind. He can feel the chamber even better than he could before, feel the energy pulsing through the entire facility, feels it deep in his bones.
He lumbers out into the corridor with legs like tree trunks, leaving ashen filth in his wake.
Only one thing matters now.
He must feed.
2
At
first, it seemed like a normal session inside the mainframe room. Ira was at her console, observing Mathias's actions at his station. He seemed to be avoiding Weber's personal logs now, instead digging into the scientific papers, blueprints, and the final experiment logs. What was he up to? A sickness began to rest in the pit of her gut.
Mathias clicked on the last log file that wasn't corrupted.
"They called me a madman," Weber said. "They said that this work was the work of a desperate fool, that I was grasping at straws! But after today those straws will have borne fruit, and the human race will be saved.
"Sure, there's been sacrifices. That thing has been hard at work to make sure that none of us survive this, but I intend to win out, as I won out against the Harvester."
The video was playing in the left-hand corner of her screen, where she could minimize it should Mathias wander within line of sight of her monitor. She turned, looked at Mathias, but he didn't notice; she readjusted her headphones, and kept watching.
Weber's hair had begun to fall out; his skin was splotchy, dark blue circles hung beneath his eyes, and his yellowed teeth had black splotches growing beneath infected gums. Was this the effect that his obsession was having on his body, or did it have something to do with that grimoire?
Could something like that actually have a physical effect on someone?
A voice deep inside of her said: Only if it's real, only if the things whispering to you are eons old.
Eldritch things.
She shuddered.
"I do not pretend to know what the outcome of this grand experiment will be," Weber said. "But, once the core is primed, and I have the necessary calculations made, the remaining staff and I will conduct the final experiment. This time, on our selves. If it's—when it's successful, the limited automation within the facility will cut off all of the facility's systems, except for atmospherics, and everything besides the fusion core will be shut down.
"I haven't bothered alerting the government to our progress. I've decided that they can come search for it, if they wish. But I suspect all they'll end up doing is feeding themselves to that thing."
The thing she’d seen. The thing with the diamond pattern of eyes, seven eyes that had pulsed gray in the dark as she closed the door on Hugo.
Maybe he was dead?
Things like that don't exist. Like ghosts and demons and all that stupid crap. Only children believed that stuff. But why, then, was she so damned scared?
"If humanity is to survive, then it is our right, as scientists, to save it, and leave the filth behind to perish on frozen Earth."
Weber's chest was heaving. He was laughing.
"I have to agree with him." Mathias's voice made her jump up as he forced his hand over her mouth.
Soft fabric brushed over her lips. She struggled, kicking and grabbing for Mathias's face, but it was already too late. Her vision blurred. She tried to stand, balancing her weight on her table, and collapsed on the floor.
"I have to say," Mathias said. "It was rather smart to plant that malware on my machine. I almost would have fallen for it, if it weren't for how you acted whenever I came into view of you. You're a terrible snoop, Ira."
She couldn't speak, the chloroform did its thing, and soon she let darkness swallow her...
Seven eyes, pulsing gray in the dark.
3
Her nostrils flared. She reeled back at the sharp, stabbing aroma of smelling salts. Her head hit the back of something metallic, causing a loud bang to echo off concrete walls.
She tried to scream, but something was jammed in her mouth. Moving her head too far in any direction threatened to tear her hair from her scalp. Her hands and feet were restrained as well.
Her mind was in a fog, but she knew there was only one person who could have done this to her. She took a quick glace around the room to get her bearings. She was seated next to a metal table, and there were workstations and monitors directly in front of her, as well as a blacked-out two-way mirror.
Oh no, she thought.
"Ah, you're awake." Mathias's voice came from behind her; he sounded far too excited for her comfort. "I'm so glad. Truly. Now we can get down to business."
She tried to mouth a few choice curses at him, but only managed garbled nonsense. Mathias walked out from behind her; he was sporting a white lab coat over his long johns and a smug shit-eating grin that stretched from ear to ear.
"I do apologize, Ira, but you left me no other choice. You were getting too close." He pulled up a metal chair and sat down next to her. His right arm rested on the table, his hand clutching something tightly. Maybe a remote, or a small knife? "You forced my hand, but you'll see that it's all for the best."
She tried to ask him why he was doing this, what he wanted with her, but again all she managed to produce was incoherence.
He shushed her and shook his head. "I'm getting to that. Everything I've done here has been carefully planned and orchestrated."
She stared into his fading brown eyes, watched the sweat bead across his forehead. He almost looked remorseful. That was it. It made so much sense now. He must have been the one who told Hugo about Lena's pregnancy.
She shook her chair, testing the tight hold the tape had on her limbs. She wanted to reach out with clawed hands, to wring that scrawny little neck until his eyes popped from their sockets!
He seemed to be taken aback by her expression and leaned back in his chair, toying with the thing in his right hand.
"I feared you might be like this." He frowned and pressed a button at the end of the remote he held tight in his hand; the lights on the other side of the two-way mirror revealed one of the experiment chambers she'd seen in so many log entries. This one featured a vertical sensory deprivation tank in the center of a glass pyramidal structure, which was housed inside a particle collider. "Do you want to know who's inside that tank?" He smiled. "I'm sure you could use a happy reunion after all the hardship you've seen."
He clicked another button on his remote, which woke the screens at each of the workstations. One of the screens showed an infrared view of the interior of the tank; she couldn't believe whose face she saw.
"That's right. Eddy's in that tank, waiting for you to rescue him."
She struggled with her restraints again. She'd stretched the adhesive enough to be able to wriggle her left wrist a bit.
"I've been taking very good care of him, I assure you, and making sure he gets the minimum necessary nutrients this whole time. Well, until I encouraged you to gain admin access to all systems in the base." He stood up, walking back toward the consoles at the other side of the room. "Which is where my game comes to a head. You might be wondering why I risked letting you gain so much power, but I needed to witness how you did it. How you were able to hack into the other databases and systems, yes, but most of all, the password to the admin network. It was the look on your face that gave it away really. John Lilly was the key. Though I'm sure you've since changed the password to something that reflects your own obsessions...no, you wouldn't be that stupid, would you?" He chuckled and moved back toward her, placed his hands next to the tape that wrapped around her head. "Now, I'm going to remove this, and you're going to do exactly as I say, or else I'm going to activate this experiment chamber, and you'll never see Eddy again.
"Nod once if you understand."
Her heart thrummed, her face flushed with heat, and she felt control of her emotions snap like a rope carrying too much weight. He meant business; she didn't think she could handle seeing Eddy vanish in one of those experiments so soon after losing Nico.
She nodded once. It took every ounce of willpower for her to do it, but she did.
"Good." He ripped the tape off; fire raged across the lower half of her face.
She spat a wadded-up sock onto the floor. "You're a sick bastard, you know that?"
"And here I thought you were going to be compliant," Mathias said. "I'm disappointed—"
"I'm going to fucking kill you!"
"Save him? Do you fucking hear yourself?" She shook her head. "He's trapped inside a tank, you idiot!"
"I don't expect you to understand the science behind this. It's far more complicated than you know. Rest assured that I'm quite certain this will work."
"Oh, great, you're convinced, that makes me feel so much better about liquefying my best fucking friend!"
He held up the device, his thumb hovering over the button. "Shut up and listen."
She bit her lip until she tasted the copper of blood spilling onto her tongue.
"Now for my demands. You're going to turn over all voice and biometric access to me, and you're going to give me the password to the admin system."
She held her words and stared at the remote he held in his right hand. She wondered if she could get her hand free, if she would be fast enough to knock it out of his grip and strangle him. Then she wondered if it was worth the risk. Her eyes drifted to the tank at the center of the experiment chamber. Where the man she loved had been kept this whole time, probably slowly losing his mind inside a formless abyss where seven-eyed abominations dwelled. She could only imagine what he'd been through, what was going through his mind now.
Would he even be the same Eddy she'd known?
Her eyes drifted to the readout screen that was monitoring his vitals. They seemed weak.
"You're trying to think of some way to stop me," Mathias said. "It's against your best interests, I assure you. I'm going to save us all."
"Even you have to have figured out that Weber's experiments were insane!"
"Were they? If that were so true, then where are their bodies? We see some corpses left over from the first few experiments, sure, but none from the final experiment. Why is that? This facility once housed five hundred personnel. The door logs show that a lockdown went into effect some time into the spreading of the ice sheets. No one was permitted in or out for some reason."
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