Mind's Horizon

by Eric Malikyte

  She tried to remember the way a sidewalk felt in the middle of summer when she'd run out barefoot to catch the ice cream man before he left their cul-de-sac, the way her childhood home smelled like breakfast sausage and pancakes on a Saturday morning, or even the irritation of high school and the drama of college romances. Hell, she'd have lived through her parents’ last days all over again if it meant she could see them one last time.

  Any time but now.

  It was getting harder and harder to remember any of their faces, her parents, former lovers, childhood friends...

  Ghosts buried in the snow.

  Maybe this is what it's like to go mad? she thought.

  She rested her head on the concrete, stared up into the dark.

  2

  Mathias looked up from the notebook and stared at the tank at the center of Weber’s chamber. He'd seen terrible things inside the tank, and still he'd found no answers.

  So far he'd been unable to establish contact with the aliens again.

  Would another tank session prove fruitful? Or, would the Harvester find him, would it drag him off to the Astral Lands?

  He was out of time already. The Harvester could come for him at any moment, and then it would all be over. Maybe escaping to another world, another reality, was his only hope?

  Even the tattered grimoire that Weber regarded so highly would be unable to give him the information he needed. Only the tank held the answer. He had no choice. His eyes drifted to the medicine cabinet that contained all of Weber's recreational drugs. Before he knew what he was doing, he was reaching for a bottle of ketamine and stripping his clothes off, like he'd done so many times before.

  The act seemed strangely empty this time, however. It was no longer a thrill for him to dip his legs into that lukewarm solution, to feel the physical connection to his body wither away as he pulled the cover to the tank overhead.

  He focused on the stars. But, unlike that first time, there was nothing.

  Every time he tried to focus on Betelgeuse there was no reply, no transportation like last time... He almost felt like he was being shut out.

  How dare they ignore me! he thought.

  Mathias screamed into the void. He wished war and blight and destruction on the aliens.

  There had to be another way. There had to be other entities, other forms of consciousness in the universe that would be willing to give him the information he needed. He tried searching, scanning the cosmos for anything, he didn't care how powerful, how smart, or how malevolent they might be, without them he was lost!

  All hope of contact seemed to be lost, and his essence had wandered near a black hole, when he felt it. The black hole wasn't a black hole at all, but a massive black void, swallowing stars, maybe even galaxies. It had an essence, cold and dark and malign. It seemed to regard him with faint disinterest. He tried to call out to it, but it did not hear his call. He tried to impress upon it what he needed, what he wanted, by flashing images of the core chamber, and recreations of the images he'd seen of Weber's team climbing into the tanks. But the entity did not pay him any mind.

  The star it was consuming began to fade, a spiral vortex of plasma stretching for an entire astronomical unit into the mouth of the void. Soon, the star's light faded, until the rest of its mass broke down and became one with the entity as well.

  He attempted to call to the entity once more, and still it ignored him, moving on to another star in another system. Mathias was not going to give in that easily, though, and his essence followed the entity to another star, a red giant that had consumed its inner planets and had begun to eat away at the outer layers of a Jovian-class world that orbited dangerously close to its parent.

  The black mass moved close and began to feed.

  Mathias called again.

  Hear me! he thought. Hear my cry, please, I need help!

  The entity whirled about. He could see various gradients of gray and black spinning at a fraction of the speed of light—hints at the thing's true form—and at once his essence was consumed by that very darkness, by a void that had no end and no beginning. He saw his life pass before his eyes in reverse, until he was nothing, an embryo, and then just essence—

  The light was like needles in Mathias's eyes. He groaned and sat up; the crinkling of plastic wrappers and containers filled his ears as he moved. His hands found his eyes, rubbed them. His head felt heavy, and there was a throbbing pain that pulsed through his entire cranium. He imagined that was what a hangover felt like. He'd felt that pain before, the last couple of times he'd taken a trip inside the tank. How many had that been now?

  The trips had faded into a blur. Was that the memory of his first trip, or the fifth? If he was honest with himself, he'd lost count.

  His head turned, almost not of his own will, and he scanned over the open wrappers of protein bars and MRE packs, and his hands came up to feel the crumbs and dried chocolate on his beard.

  Again? he thought.

  How had he gotten here? He tried to remember the events of the trip he'd just had, and came up with nothing. Had he gained anything? Perhaps he had been successful in attaining Weber's password for the final experiment?

  No, he thought. There was no answer, no password in his mind's eye.

  There was something else. A vague memory of a presence within his mind after the trip.

  A black comet. Hungry and immense.

  How many rations had he consumed in that altered state? The last time he’d awakened in the rations room, he’d counted twelve empty MRE containers and ten protein bar wrappers. He looked around and tried to count, but held his head instead. It hurt too much to count yet.

  He got off the pile and moved through the door. The air conditioning was cold on his naked body. He was dry, though; the salt was the only thing left of the saline solution that had covered his body earlier, and it cracked and sprinkled on the floor as he shuffled to his chamber at the top of the facility.

  Mathias stepped through the doors and saw the tank at the center of the room, the lid shoved off onto the floor, and he instantly felt the memory of his own shaky steps, stumbling out from the tank after the conclusion of his failed meeting with an entity. He shook his head and found himself in front of Weber's cabinet of drugs.

  Instead of ketamine or LSD, though, he went for the painkillers and took two. The bed called to him, but he had much work to do. Ira and the others would need rations soon, as well. He wondered how long he'd been asleep.

  The digital alarm clock next to Weber's bed told him it was three in the morning. He couldn't remember what time it'd been when he climbed in.

  Something struck him odd about the whole experience. Something familiar about that black mass, that devourer of stars...

  Then he remembered the ceremony he'd botched only so long ago, how the walls of the experiment chamber had crumbled away into another reality, revealing a dark shape, like a comet that swallowed all light.

  He was shaking there, standing naked inside the symbol that surrounded the tank.

  I need to find Eddy, he thought. I need to know how much damage has been done, how much time we have.

  3

  The lights woke Ira before she even knew it. She removed her head from the concrete floor and rubbed it. She hadn't even felt herself go back to sleep. She glanced around the cell: Hugo was still in the corner; unfortunately, he was still breathing. Her eyes drifted over to where Lena had been. She wasn't there.

  Ira bolted upright, panicking, thinking for half a heartbeat, maybe he called my bluff? Maybe he's taken her too?

  Then she noticed that Lena was outside the cell, curled up in a ball against the far wall, unconscious.

  It felt like it'd been days since their conversation with Mathias. Had it really taken so long for him to arrive at a decision?

  Maybe it was just the confinement?

  Ira felt like she was going crazy.

  She approached the bars.

  "Not so fast, Ira," Mathias said.

>   Ira felt his gaze from every angle of the room. "What?"

  "You're not going."

  "The hell I'm not. I need to find him!"

  "You said it yourself. You could hack into any terminal in the facility if I only give you a chance. I'm not going to give you a chance. No, I'm afraid that Lena will be searching by her lonesome."

  She could feel blood rushing to her head, her face boiling. "You have to let me go."

  "No. Lena goes, you stay. That's the deal. Unless you'd like me to keep the door locked, and let Eddy die out there? Who knows what condition he's in?"

  Lena stirred, her head lifting, confusion in her eyes. "Where am I?"

  Did Mathias really come in here and drag her through the cell doors? she thought.

  "I moved Lena while you two slept..."

  There was an odd quality about his voice. Was he lying?

  "Okay, what the hell for?" Lena held herself, glancing around the room nervously.

  "He wants you to search for Eddy," Ira said.

  Lena stumbled to her feet, rubbing her hand through her rat's nest of hair. "What?"

  "He's not letting me go with you."

  "That's right, now if you'd be so kind to move toward the door. I'm a very busy man."

  Ira kept her mouth shut, watched Lena walk over to the door. Her hand shot out and snatched at Lena's arm. "Find him."

  Lena nodded, her matted blonde hair swaying in the steady, mechanical breeze from the ventilation. She padded the rest of the way to the door. It opened by itself, and she walked through.

  Coward doesn't even have the guts to face us in person, Ira thought.

  The door shut on its own, and she heard a clicking sound, signaling that the lock was in place.

  "I trust you'll be good?"

  "Yeah, whatever."

  She shuffled back to the bed; she sat down, holding her head.

  "Now, was that so hard?"

  "Go fuck yourself."

  The static returned, and her eyes felt heavier than they had in years.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lena's legs felt weak. The unsettling sound of flesh slapping on stone echoed back to her ears as she paced down the corridor, trying not to betray the fact that she was shaking. Mathias’s eyes were everywhere, down every hall, his voice coated her like an endless fog, smooth and tempting like a snake's hiss. But that wasn't all.

  There was also that other thing she'd seen.

  She remembered it vividly. There, in the darkness of her bedroom. Seven eyes had pulsed in the shape of a diamond, pupils too numerous to be anything from this world. She thought she could see an open maw, filled with thousands of shadowy teeth, ready to devour her.

  Maybe it had been her imagination? But, if it was, why had she seen it again in the cell?

  No. It had to be her imagination.

  Mathias and Hugo were the only monsters here.

  "The door to your right is unlocked," Mathias said.

  She stopped and tested the door; it opened.

  "Go on through," he said.

  Sweat beaded across her forehead. Could she really pull this off? "I thought I was supposed to be searching for Eddy? How am I supposed to search for him if you keep leading me around like a damn lab rat?"

  "Your search is being supervised."

  "I need to get to the med bay."

  "And why would you need to do that?"

  "If Eddy's hurt, I may need to treat him."

  "His condition is no concern of mine."

  "I think it is—Ira already warned you what she'd do if he's hurt. No offense, but I wouldn't doubt her if I were you."

  "And why would I give a damn about such idle threats from trapped mice?"

  "Because she's got too much of her brother in her."

  He paused for a second. "Fine. Point taken."

  It wasn't the usual way to the med bay; it was like he was testing his control of the facility, forcing her to walk through a maze.

  "You look nervous," he said. "You've been awfully quiet."

  "You give a shit?" she said.

  "Of course I care. I wouldn't have kept you alive if I didn't." Shuffling sounds echoed over the speaker. "After all, the future of the human race swells within your womb."

  Icy fingers snaked down her spine and prickled over her swelling belly. "Stop the small talk, just guide me to the med bay."

  "I figured you could use some verbal company, considering how much you're shaking."

  She stopped, holding herself in a futile attempt to stop herself from shaking. Why hadn't she noticed that she'd been doing that? She glanced down the corridor, into the dark, and quickly turned back. "Not from you."

  "How rude. And here I've been kind enough to let you search for Eddy."

  "Yeah, the let part is the problem."

  "Round the next corner, and take the door on the left."

  She found herself in one of the hallways that led to the med bay. She approached the glass automatic doors, but the sensor didn't react to her presence.

  "The doors aren't opening."

  "You might not approve of my methods now," Mathias said. "But one day you'll thank me for doing this."

  "I'm sure I'll be ecstatic. Can you open the doors?"

  "Say thank you."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Say it, or I'll let you sit out there for a few days to mull over how disrespectful you've been to me."

  She stood there, listening to the static over the speakers, the way it filled every corner of the corridor, every shadow.

  I have to stay strong, she thought. What will Ira do if I don't find him?

  It was funny, in a way, how people could come together when faced with a common enemy, a threat. They used to hate each other, and maybe they still did. The fighting was over between them, though. They were going to be family soon. As much as Lena didn't like the idea, she couldn't help but think about her abuela. Whenever her family would get together, her uncles would end up getting too damn drunk and causing trouble. She’d hated her uncles sometimes. But her abuela had always told her to try to see at least one good quality in family that she was angry with. She was always the peacekeeper; without her abuela, the family might have fallen apart.

  There was one quality in Ira she could admire, and that was her strength. Lena had to find her own strength now and use it to get Mathias to do what she needed him to.

  "Open the doors, or lose another body for your stupid experiment." She caressed her stomach. "Scratch that, two bodies."

  "You'd seriously threaten to kill yourself? Isn't suicide a sin?"

  "Do I look fucking religious to you?"

  "Fine. What's one body? I'm sure I can get it right with only two subjects."

  "One might mean the difference between the human race surviving or becoming extinct. You know that. You've already lost Nico, that reduced your odds of success by ten percent."

  "Ten percent is a little much, you're pulling numbers out of your ass."

  "Bet I'm right, though. If you thought you were guaranteed success just from the remaining three of us, you would have let Eddy die, and you would have already done your little experiment. You haven't, which means that you're not sure you've got it right."

  "You assume too much, Lena. I activated that experiment chamber on Eddy already."

  "What?"

  "Unfortunately, things didn't work out like I'd hoped. The Harvester is still after me."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  Silence; crackling noises came over the speakers. She held herself. It felt like thousands of spiders had hatched from her pores. He was going crazy, like that doctor in the recording she’d seen on Ira's laptop.

  "Tell me," Mathias said after a time. "When you stare into the dark, do you by chance see seven gray glowing eyes pulsing in the dark? Do you see it stalking your cage, salivating for the taste of your flesh?"

  She gasped. Had he overheard her talking about it in her sleep, or somewhere else? "T-that was just a dre
am!"

  "Afraid not. There are things in this vast multiverse beyond the limits of our understanding, beyond time, space, and our pitiful notions of God and divinity."

  "So what? Even if I believe you, what's that got to do with me?"

  "Well, it's simple, really. That thing uses shadows to travel into our world, to hunt. I've seen where it lives, Lena. Rolling hills covered in a leathery hide beneath a sky like a cancerous lung, with open mouths scattered across the landscape, each one filled with serrated black and yellow teeth, waiting for some poor soul to be dropped into them to feed whatever beast lives at the center.

  "I wonder. What if I were to turn the lights off where you are? How long do you think it would take for it to find you and drag your useless carcass off to the Astral Lands?"

  Lena heard a loud plinking sound. She turned to see that Mathias had turned off the lights at the other end of the corridor. "What do you want from me?"

  "Say you're sorry."

  "Are you fucking serious?"

  "SAY IT!"

  She hesitated.

  Another light plinked off.

  She wasn't as strong as Ira.

  Another one. She thought she could see something looking back at her.

  She couldn't beat him. Her lip curled, tears threatened to break from her eyes. "Sorry!"

  He went quiet for a while. Her hands found her arms and she hugged herself, tried her best not to look back at the darkened end of the corridor. She hadn't noticed how cold it had gotten since Mathias locked them all up.

  The automatic doors opened, and the lights turned on inside the med bay. "See, now was that so hard?"

  She limped forward.

  Lena knew she wasn't as bright as Ira, but she wasn't an idiot. Something about what she'd said had gotten under his skin. Maybe they could use that, whatever it was?

  She might not have had a mind for science, but there had been plenty of learning involved in becoming a nurse, and she hadn't shied away from it, even if it bored her half to death. There had to be something in this room that could help Ira get control back.

  "I need silence so I can think."

  "I promise nothing."

  "You owe us that much after all you've done..."

  Static over the speakers. Maybe she'd gotten through to him? Her hands were trembling. She balled them up in fists, closed her eyes, and tried to calm herself.