He's not sure why.
4
Ira had taken to pacing back and forth in the cell. Hugo still wasn't making eye contact, which she was thankful for. She'd lost count of the hours since Mathias had cut off contact with her. Focusing on the sounds of her echoing footsteps was all she could do to keep herself sane. The sound from the static had her disoriented, especially when Mathias decided to turn the lights off and leave them in a pitch-black void.
Sometimes, when staring into that void, she felt she could almost get up and walk into the darkness for untold miles. And maybe she could.
At times she'd wake in the middle of the night—or the morning, afternoon, there was no telling—and she'd see those pale gray eyes pulsing in the dark. The diamond pattern moving toward the bars, a steady rumbling sound drowning out the static from the speakers.
Then it would be gone, and she'd drift back to sleep, her heart pounding through her chest, sweat beading moist on feverish skin.
There was madness in the void.
Then, other times, she'd wake screaming from her nightmares. Nightmares where she saw terrible things; terrible landscapes, horizons dwarfed by tentacles, black holes in impossible places—at the center of a small room, thousands of them scattered across a sea of sand.
"Now you've taken to pacing," Mathias' voice over the speakers was like nails on a chalkboard. "Interesting."
"You're watching us in the dark now?" Ira asked.
"Infrared," Mathias said.
"Turn the damn lights on," Ira said.
The lights plinked on. Her perceived space shrunk. She was almost tempted to beg him to turn the lights back off. Sometimes, there was freedom in the void, in madness.
"What do you want, Mathias?" Ira asked.
"I require Hugo for an experiment."
Her eyes drifted to Hugo. For once, he made eye-contact with her. He shook his head frantically.
Lena was still asleep on the bed.
"Oh, it's almost as if he thinks I'm giving him a choice." Mathias's laughter was distorted over the speakers, sending shivers up her spine. "I'm going to knock you all out now and collect my subject."
"Are you crazy?" Ira pointed to Lena. "In case you forgot, Lena's still pregnant. You can't just gas us or turn off the damn air every time you get angry or want something from us. She could have a miscarriage."
Static over the speakers.
"Very well, I will open your cage and Hugo will move into the other part of your chamber."
"I'm not going!" Hugo said. "I don't wanna end up like Eddy, B!"
"You won't. I've fixed that little error."
"You're lying," Hugo said, holding his hands over his battered ears. "You're gonna kill me."
Ira was disgusted with herself for empathizing with the bastard. She found herself standing over him, her fists balled up. "We don't have a choice. Get up and do what he says. I won't lose another family member because of you."
"Yes, Hugo, think of this as penance for your crimes."
"You put that shit in my head, yo!"
Ira grabbed him by the arm and forced him to his feet. "And yet, you have a mind of your own, don't you?"
He struggled all the way to the gate. She heard it unlatch and pop open. "No, please, don't do this. I'm sorry I killed him, yo, I'm sorry! I don't know what got into me! Please!"
Ira pushed him into the next part of the chamber. Considered running in with him. This could be her chance...
"Now, Ira, close the door."
Her hands found the bars on the gate...she hesitated. "What if it doesn't work, and he does end up like Eddy?"
Hugo's eyes went wild.
"It's best not to think of failure."
"You'll need another subject, won't you?"
"If this fails. Yes."
"Take me, then."
At least then, we could be monsters together, a part of her thought.
Lena shot up from where she was resting. "You can't!"
Ira put her hand up to silence her. "I know what I'm doing."
"That's a tough one there, Ira, truly. I don't think I can risk such a useful source of information just yet."
"Useful source of information?"
"You know far too much about Weber's experiments, about the systems here, for me to risk you being swallowed by the abyss just yet. Close the gate."
Reluctantly, she let it latch closed.
"Good. Now, Hugo, move to the door."
He shook his head. "No, man, I don't want this. I don't want this!"
"Move now, or suffer."
He stood up. His bruised, fearful eyes found Ira's before he went to the door. She said nothing to him.
The door popped open.
Hugo stepped into the light.
The door shut by itself.
That familiar static started to permeate the cell, and Ira knew Mathias was gone. Or was he? Maybe he was still watching her somehow, waiting for them to start plotting against him?
"Were you really gonna do it?" Lena asked.
Ira nodded. "It would have been our best chance to get out of here. He probably knows that."
"That fucker controls everything, even the air we breathe!"
"Yeah, but we need to outsmart him somehow."
"I tried to get you a phone...he caught me, though, sucked the air right out of the room before I saw...you know."
"Is there any reason why you think he'd let you back out? If you can sneak me a screen, a tablet, anything, then I can get us out of here."
Lena sat there looking at her feet; her eyes were red with tears. "Maybe. I was really trying to get supplies for us. We still need them."
"He's not stupid, that's something we need to remember. But, he is arrogant. And you're pregnant. We can use that."
"I don't know about you, but I barely finished two years at a community college to get my ADN, I'm not that smart." Lena stood up and walked to the bars, gripping them.
"Maybe you haven't noticed. But you're feeding for two right now, and that is my blood, my brother's blood, that grows inside you! So you are going to suck it up! And you're going to help me, help us, get control of this facility so we can go back to surviving this hell!"
"And what then?" Lena whipped around, eyes wild. "What happens when our rations run out, Ira?"
"I'll go out and find more, we'll figure something out."
"And what if you get hurt like Eddy did? What if you die? What will we do then? Hugo's probably going to die, the fucking murderer, and Nico was the glue that held us all together...I'd be alone, raising his baby in this hellhole. Alone."
"Now I'm the glue."
"You're not half the man he was."
"Last I checked, I wasn't a man at all."
That won her a smile from Lena, even if it was fleeting.
They were silent for a while. Ira leaned her head against the bars and slid to her knees; Lena sat back down on the bed and rested her head against the wall. Maybe Lena was right? Maybe she didn't have what it took to lead them. Especially if it was just the two of them.
Maybe Mathias was what they deserved.
"What if he's right?" Lena asked.
"What?"
"What if he's right about saving us..."
"Are you insane!"
"Have you thought about it?"
"No!" Ira banged her head against the bars a couple of times. "It's madness!"
"You saw that thing in the dark. You've spent as much time as he has watching those videos, right?"
"And it's madness! That's all it is!"
"What if you're wrong?"
She was.
"I'm not, Mathias has lost his damn mind to this obsession, the experiment was made by a very desperate and depraved man."
"But you don't know what happened to the people who made this place."
"Doesn't matter..."
She knew what Weber had claimed happened. That a creature with seven eyes had dragged them off somewhere to be devoured. Maybe that was wh
y she kept seeing it? Why all of them kept seeing it...? That had to be it...it just couldn't be real.
But hadn't she seen it before she'd heard him mention it too? The nightmare she'd had beneath the streets of Riverside?
Ira shook her head.
"And Eddy...what he's become..." Fear dripped from Lena's voice.
Ira could almost picture what she'd seen. "We don't know if what you saw was real, Lena, Mathias didn't see anything on the cameras."
"The lights darkened around his...body...maybe the cameras shut off too?"
"That's convenient."
"It does matter," Lena said.
"And even if it isn't crazy, if you think I'm going to throw in with that bastard, the one who killed Nico and did that to Eddy without a single shred of remorse, then you've got another thing coming."
"I've forgotten what it's like to feel the sun on my skin."
"Trust me, it's overrated."
"I used to go to Huntington Beach every weekend with my homies in school." A faint smile traced across Lena's cracked lips. "Hell, sometimes we'd ditch days at a time and just camp out there, dodging pigs, making campfires, drinking and fucking. Living, you know? Of all the things I miss, my daughter, my girlfriends and boyfriends, that's the thing I miss the most. To feel the sand between my toes, you know? Feel the tide washing over me again and again."
Ira chuckled. For all their differences, they could agree on one thing. They missed living. "Now I know why you almost failed college."
Lena chuckled. "And I'd do it all again."
"At least we agree on one thing."
"I'm not saying we should trust Mathias."
"Then what are you suggesting?"
"We should take the place back, but we shouldn't throw it all out, everything he's said, without considering it just because he's a monster, or just because we don't understand it."
"Careful, Lena, that's starting to sound a lot like wisdom. You're not supposed to do wisdom."
"Shut up, I mean it. If there's a chance we can feel the sun again, run the sand through our toes again, live our lives, isn't that worth it?"
"And what if it's a pipe dream?" There was something else in her voice now. "What if the door can't be closed once it's open?"
"Then it's been fun, I guess." Lena's cracked smile faded into a solemn frown.
Lena stared at her for a time. There was something between them, like an invisible mass. The look on Lena's face said it all. That blank look that betrayed the moment of a hidden truth being learned, a knowing.
"So much for the human race being able to adapt to anything," Ira said finally.
"Can't adapt to this," Lena said.
"Damn well tried."
"Just prolonged the inevitable."
"Maybe."
Ira rested her head against the cold metal wall, felt her eyes dragging shut.
"He was scared, though," Lena said.
"Of what?" She could almost hear music at the edges of her consciousness.
"That Harvester thing he was talking about. It's got him spooked. Maybe we can use that?"
"Maybe..."
5
The singing is getting louder. He can feel them, how near they are.
The corridors are dark here. The waves of energy that guided him before are quieter, almost silent.
The singing guides him to a door.
The door is dark, metallic. There are black, lifeless screens and buttons.
He touches the door. Lets his fingers grow and stretch into the crack in the doors, just like he did to the elevator. He feels his fingers wrap around metal, bending it, shaping it to his will. There's a crumpling sound as the doors are crushed in his grip.
The room beyond is dark. There are glowing eyes inside.
The singing stops.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mathias smiled, staring at the screens in the security room. The hum from the electronics buzzed deep into his eyes, into his brain. The security room was one of three in the entire facility. It was nothing more than a small, four-by-six-foot concrete rectangle. He'd found it shortly before confining Ira and the others to their cell.
There were no overhead lights in this room; he'd had to get a desk lamp from one of the abandoned rooms in the upper levels. At first, he hadn’t felt safe sitting in here. The desk lamp and the screens cast shadows everywhere.
Gateways, he thought.
Drawing a copy of Weber's eye of the abyss in the center of the room had helped alleviate his uneasiness. Most of it. His chair sat at the edge of the symbol, just inside its influence.
Hugo looked confused on the screen, standing in the corridor outside his cell. He was holding himself tight, checking the shadows.
One of the screens showed a complex grid outline of the entire floor, as well as operations commands Mathias could use to control Hugo's path to the experiment chamber.
"You look nervous, Hugo." Mathias spoke into the microphone at the edge of the metal desk.
"Let's just get this over with, man."
"Very well."
Mathias opened up a door at the northern end of the corridor, drawing Hugo's attention like a mouse catching a whiff of cheese. "Move through that door."
"What are you gonna do to me?"
"Don't worry about that. Move into the next corridor. I don't have all day."
Hugo rubbed his arms like a junkie craving his next fix and reluctantly followed Mathias's command.
Once he was in the next corridor, Mathias closed the doors behind Hugo and opened another set up to his right. "Go into the next room."
Hugo complied. He hoped the man wouldn't require a command for every door he opened. Hopefully Pavlov would win out.
"You must really get off on this shit, yo." Hugo glanced around himself, staring at the cameras with paranoia burning deep in his dimwitted eyes.
"No more than you did when you killed Nico."
"That was you, man!"
"Really, Hugo, you mustn't blame others for your crimes."
"Man, just wait till I see you, see how tough you are when you ain't sitting behind a desk."
"By the time you see me again, it'll be too late."
"You just wait, B, your number's comin’ up." Hugo's eyes kept dancing around the sealed corridor. "And where the fuck is that noise coming from?"
"I haven't drugged you, if that's what you're implying. If you're experiencing auditory hallucinations, then I would look to your cellmate if you want someone to blame."
"Man, I ain't hallucinating this, why are you playing music?"
"I assure you, I'm not."
"Whatever, man, I'm not falling for it."
"Clearly."
Mathias opened another door. Hugo moved forward without needing coaxing.
"Thank you, Pavlov."
Something else caught his eye as he entered the command for the next door. Another camera feed from the basement levels, below where Eddy and Nico had found the rations and storage caches, a place that was never officially on any maps.
The screens showed a series of power outages. Lena had mentioned that the thing she claimed was Eddy had caused the lights to darken around his body...but, this was on a scale much larger than what had happened outside the med bay...
He remembered how the walls had seemed to crumble away to reveal an alien starscape, where the star eater was busy fulfilling its namesake.
"What's the holdup?"
"Wait. Something's happening..."
Mathias turned up the audio feed from the chamber Hugo was standing in.
"Tell me, Hugo, are you still hearing music?"
Hugo stared suspiciously at the camera dead in front of him. "You know what I'm hearing."
"Just answer the question."
Hugo sighed, staring at the floor. "Yeah, I still hear it."
And indeed, he could hear it too. It was quiet. So quiet that he had to turn the volume up all the way for it to register on his speakers.
2
They move as one. Through ever-darkening corridors, up stairwells.
Their purpose is one.
Their goal is clear.
The waves are getting stronger, the edges of their flames licking at the incorporeal bits—their true bodies, which gestate, feeding off of the flesh that once governed their being—beckoning them ever forward. He can feel the others as if they are physically connected to his ever-changing body.
He can feel their hunger growing to match his own. It's almost loud enough to drown out his own thoughts.
Soon.
Soon they will feed.
3
"Where the hell are you heading?" Mathias asked the monitor, watching the power outages progress from corridor to corridor. He'd tried shutting the doors, but still they progressed. The cameras were useless, even after reconnecting to the network.
"Yo, man, this shit's getting louder! What the fuck is going on?"
"I'm not sure myself."
"Yo, don't mess with me, man, I'm sorry for what I did, man, but don't mess with me!" Mathias glanced back at the monitor: Hugo was actually sobbing. Something about what he was hearing was clearly driving him mad. Fascinating. "They're in the next room, man, they're fucking coming for me! Do something!"
There was indeed a power outage in the next room. Mathias scanned Hugo's surroundings. He was completely exposed. If there was something otherworldly beyond those doors, then Hugo was doomed, and so too would he be, if the Harvester had anything to say about it.
He said the only thing he could think of. "Hide, you moron!"
4
Hugo wasn't sure he could handle much more.
Something had darkened the lights around the doors at the end of the corridor. The singing was muffled, but he could tell that it was coming from behind the doors.
There was a creaking, bending, breaking noise. Long shadowy tendrils seeped through the middle crack in the doors, snaking through them. There were hundreds of them, like a pit full of vipers in some old movie.
He found himself backing away, his heart drumming into his temples.
"Hide, you moron!"
The doors crumpled like aluminum foil and sank into darkness like two derelict ships plummeting to the bottom of the ocean.
Mind's Horizon Page 25