by Elin Wyn
“Unfortunately, we need to get these survivors moving out of this shit situation so let’s get it done.”
Luckily, none of the survivors had any severe injuries preventing them from walking. There was a sprained ankle or two among the group, maybe a broken arm, but all in all, we were in good shape.
All considered.
“You want to take the lead on this one?” Maki asked. “I’m a little burnt out on leading after blindly careening through the darkness.”
“Sure,” I smirked.
“I’ll help,” Alessa offered. “We can use my map for a few seconds every once in a while.”
“That’s better than nothing,” I chuckled.
“I’ll take the end of the pack,” Axtin said. “If anything sneaks up behind us, I’ll take them down.”
I nodded.
“Tyehn and I will float up and down the line. We’ll make sure no one shows signs of an unwelcome Gorgo visitor.”
We took our positions in front of the newly cleared archway. Alessa opened her map for a split second.
“If we head southeast, we’ll be sort of in the right direction,” she said.
“Is sort of the best we can do?”
“For now, yes,” she said.
“All right. Let’s get doing.”
I kept my weapon tucked away but had my hand hovering over the hilt, ready to grab at a moment’s notice.
“I bet crazy things happen at all your job sites,” I said lightly.
Alessa smirked faintly but said nothing.
“You handled all of that really well,” I said. “I’m impressed and there isn’t much that impresses me.”
“Thanks,” she said, voice flat.
I wondered if she was entering into shock. Sometimes it took a moment to kick in.
“If you want to make a joke about not working with aliens ever again, now would be the time,” I said.
“I’ll take you up on that at some point,” she said.
She powered up her map and let it flicker.
“Still southeast?”
“For a little while. Eventually, we’ll reach a turn.”
I said nothing. Instead, I focused on listening for the laughter of the Gorgo.
Everything would be fine once we got out of here.
Alessa
I understood what he was trying to do. If I wasn’t so fucking freaked out right now, I might have appreciated it. Maybe it was an alien thing, maybe it was a guy thing. Either way, he was completely oblivious to the fact that I wanted to be left alone to wrestle with my temper.
I appreciated all of the witty banter designed to take my mind off of the injured people who I was supposed to keep safe.
It had worked for a little while. It wasn’t working anymore.
I didn’t want to say anything. Within five minutes of meeting Navat, I had pegged him as an asshole.
Perhaps, I wasn’t totally correct. He was an asshole, but a nice asshole. An asshole with a heart of gold, if I may.
Over the last six days, he’d taken every bit of discomfort I had with working with aliens, and turned it into an entirely different kind of discomfort.
And I wasn’t even going to think about that kiss...
I took a moment to be thankful for the fact that telepathy wasn’t a thing. If anyone around me was listening in on my thoughts, they’d think I was a crazy person. I was just attacked by a mob of Gorgo infested humans.
I was allowed to have a few crazy thoughts bouncing around in my brain.
I refused to look at my hands. I never got the chance to rinse the blood off. I didn’t want to see what color my skin was stained. I could almost feel it on my skin as if it was a living thing. I wanted to scratch it off, skin and all.
No, I couldn’t lose my cool here. Once I was outside again, once I could feel the sun again, then I’d freak out. It would be my reward for surviving this mess.
My boss was going to get an earful next time he sees me. I’m going to demand a raise. I’m going to demand a better retirement plan. I’m definitely going to demand the right to refuse jobs.
I wasn’t even supposed to be here!
I wasn’t hired by my company to be an excavator or archeologist.
But I’d happily taken the job.
“Are you all right?” Navat asked in a gentle voice that sounded like nails on a chalkboard to me. No, that wasn’t fair. He was just trying to be helpful. I shouldn’t take my dangerously high temper out on him.
I just couldn’t stop seeing the faces of the people back at the camp, the ones that didn’t make it down into the structure.
Tameron.
All of them.
I should’ve been able to do something. Anything. But I couldn’t. All I could do was run. I ran. I regretted it.
“Alessa?” He asked sharply.
I blinked and looked at him.
“Sorry, I was lost in thought,” I said in a harsher tone than I should have.
“Just making sure you aren’t slipping into shock. We need you,” he said.
“I’ll do my best.”
Navat pulled me aside from the main group, and while I resisted at first, a part of me was thankful.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said in his deep voice.
“How can you be sure?” I asked, more fragile than I would have liked.
“Because I’ll protect you,” he said.
“And what if something happens to you?”
“Nothing will happen to me, Alessa,” he said calmly and confidently. It gave me strength.
Without realizing what I was doing I rested my head on his broad chest. I could feel the breaths he was taking.
It was soothing. I could do that forever, I thought.
“Hey, what’s that?” Maki called from her place in the middle of the group.
We turned to look. She’d stopped near the wall, pointing into a space that was slightly darker than the space around us. I’d been so lost in thought that I’d walked right by it.
Navat shined his light in the space. There was a small archway carved into the wall. It was taller and skinnier than the ones we’d walked through before.
The darkness beyond the archway devoured the light from Navat’s flashlight.
Something stirred in my chest. I couldn’t properly describe it. I was suddenly plagued with the deep need to see where that pathway lead.
“Do you think it’s the way out?” Axtin asked.
“I think it has as good of a chance as being the way out as going straight has,” Tyehn reasoned.
“I think we should go,” Maki said with certainty. “It feels right.”
“What?” Navat furrowed his strong brow.
“I can’t explain it,” Maki said. “I just feel like it’s what we’re supposed to do.”
“I feel the same thing,” I said.
Navat turned his quizzical gaze on me.
“All right,” Axtin declared. “Let’s go.”
I made my way toward the opening with Maki. Tyehn and Navat followed behind us. The survivors murmured in confusion at the abrupt change in direction.
“Where does that lead?” A scrawny man asked. I didn’t know his name but he really seemed to hate Navat.
Navat wasn’t his biggest fan either. It was sort of amusing.
“We’re going to find out,” Navat said to him with an ear to ear grin. The sour expression on the scientist’s face almost brought a smile to mine.
His gaze slid to mine. He caught me watching the exchange. He didn’t say anything. He just winked.
I felt a smile pulling at the corners of my mouth.
Navat walked through the archway first. Even though my map wasn’t working, I followed behind him anyway. From the scant images, I was able to glean from the flickering map, this corridor wasn’t reflected anywhere.
That was a complete surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t be.
I knew the satellite images were taken with Urai tech. As advanced as it was, I di
dn’t believe it to be infallible.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
That was less frightening than the alternative. That this particular corridor possessed some kind of cloaking technology capable of hiding it from advanced satellites.
We walked in silence. The corridor wasn’t as long as I imagined it to be. We only walked for a few moments before the corridor opened up into a room. Unlike the other rooms we’d stumbled across, this one wasn’t empty.
“What is that?” I gasped as my headlamp landed on a carefully placed object wrapped in dirty swaths of fabric.
“Please tell me it’s not what I think it is,” Maki whispered.
Navat stepped forward.
I didn’t follow.
He shone his light on the object.
“It’s a body.”
I found myself scrambling back, embedding myself in the group of survivors.
“Human?” Tyehn asked.
“I don’t think so,” Navat replied. “Unless something was done to them.”
Oh, that was an unsettling thing for him to say.
“Let me take a look,” Axtin said. Navat and Tyehn gave him a look. “What? Leena’s taught me about human physiology. I pay attention to my mate's work.”
Leena sounded like a human. I heard rumors about the aliens taking human mates but I didn’t know if they were true or not. I supposed they were.
Interesting.
Axtin stepped up to the wrapped object.
“Definitely not human,” he said. “They look more like Urai than anything.”
I crept closer to the alien men. Navat noticed me and stepped aside so I could have a better look.
Axtin was right. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. Most of its body was wrapped, but its face was left exposed to the elements. The arrangements of its facial features were human enough, in the sense that it had two ears, two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but the comparisons stopped there. It was a long, skinny being of at least seven feet tall.
Parts of its skull were elongated, giving the effect of wearing a crown.
Very strange, indeed.
The area around it wasn’t clean, but it was neatly arranged. Rows of little pots lined the body. Dried flowers were placed around the head of the being.
“This is an altar,” I whispered.
“Look,” Maki said softly. “There are more.”
She shone her light around the room. The walls were lined with altars just like the one we stood before.
“This is a tomb,” Navat said.
“The rest of the structure doesn’t support that theory,” I mused. “Parts of this structure look modern. This is the oldest looking part I’ve seen so far.”
“The mystery deepens,” Axtin murmurs.
“Perhaps only this chamber was used for burials. The rest of the structure could’ve been used for other things,” Tyehn said.
“That’s possible,” I agreed.
“Hey, guys,” Maki said. “Look at this.”
The beam of her light illuminated lines of unfamiliar characters on the wall.
“Anyone know what that says?” Axtin asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” I said.
“Neither have I,” Navat echoed.
“I wish I could document this,” Maki sighed. “This is a significant find.”
“I have a camera,” I offered.
They all turned to look at me.
“When did you have time to grab a camera?” Navat asked me.
“I keep it clipped to my utility belt,” I explained.
I unclipped my camera, which looked like nothing more than a thin black bar.
“It’s not crystal-clear quality, but it’ll pick up the writing.” I passed it to Maki.
“Thanks,” she smiled and snapped several photos.
“It looks like there’s another room opposite of where we came in.” Navat shone his flashlight in that direction, illuminating another tall, thin archway.
We moved as a group through the row of altars into the next chamber only to find more of the same.
“How many do you think there are?” Maki asked.
“Chambers or bodies?” I asked back.
“Either. Both,” she replied.
“Wait a moment.” Navat stopped walking. “Look at the writing in here.”
He shone his light on the wall, illuminating more lines of script.
“That’s not the same writing in the other room,” I observed.
“There are pictures too,” Axtin pointed out. “I can’t tell what they’re depicting.”
Near the writing was a series of panels. The lines were most certainly deliberate but I didn’t have a clue what the images represented.
Maki took more pictures.
“And look,” Maki pointed straight ahead. “Another chamber.”
“What is this?” I asked myself more than anyone else. No one answered. No one had a clue what we’d found.
We moved into the next chamber.
There were more altars, more bodied but different writing and pictures.
We found three more chambers after that.
The more we saw, the less we understood.
Navat
“This place is screwing with us,” Axtin declared after we passed the same strange room for the third time.
Row after row of long narrow beds lined the walls.
At least these were unoccupied.
Not a corpse or a Gorgo in sight.
“Maybe this isn’t the same room,” Maki suggested.
“It’s odd enough that there would be one room like that, let alone three,” I said. “What would something like this be doing here in the first place? There’s nothing around for miles.”
“I have a theory about that,” Alessa said. “I saw something in the last room, but didn’t think it was important enough to stop moving for.”
“What was it?”
“Bars slots for bars in the floor. As in, prison bars,” she said.
“You think this was a prison?” Maki gave her a quizzical look.
“It could also have been a hospital,” Alessa said. “I can’t think of anything else that has rows of beds like that. Maybe a dormitory, but then where’s the rest of the living quarters?”
“But what kind of hospital has bars?” Tyehn asked.
“Not a good kind,” Alessa shuddered.
A rumble of laughter echoed through the corridors.
“Host. Host. Host.” The Gorgo chirped.
The survivors heard it this time. They huddled together, murmuring frantically to one another.
“Everything’s okay,” Maki soothed. “We have weapons. General Rouhr trains his soldiers well.”
“We’ve handled way worse,” Axtin said with a dismissive wave.
A peal of laughter made Alessa jump beside me. Without thinking, I reached out and touched her arm. We both stared at my hand on her sleeve.
I expected her to twist away, but she stayed put.
After a moment, I dropped my hand. It was that, or pull her closer to me.
“Why is he laughing?” Maki wondered.
“Did you see him?” One of the survivors stuttered. “He’s mad.”
“But is he?” I said. “Did the Gorgo drive him mad? Is the Gorgo itself mad? We don’t know.”
“Not helpful,” Alessa muttered to me.
“They asked,” I replied.
“Why hasn’t he attacked us?” Axtin wondered. “We all saw him transform.”
“Either he knows we outgun him or the Gorgo doesn’t have full control yet,” I replied.
“Find them. Find them,” a guttural voice came from the darkness.
“Can I please just shoot him?” Axtin asked through clenched teeth.
“It would be great if we could catch him,” I said. “Take him back with us.”
Maki and Alessa looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Leena and Dr. Parr need more test su
bjects,” I shrugged. “This guy is a prime candidate. Besides, we might be able to help him if we get lucky.”
“A good portion of our future depends on luck and I’m not thrilled with that,” Alessa said.
“We’re relying on pure luck to get us out of here, that’s for sure,” Axtin said.
“Let’s get back to the building,” Tyehn suggested. “Figuring it out might help us get out of here sooner.”
“I had a thought,” Alessa said. “It’s along the line of unpleasant hospitals.”
“A death ward?” I asked.
“An asylum.”
“Oh,” Maki said softly.
“It’s a halfway mark between a prison and a hospital.”
“Obviously another species built it,” Tyehn reasoned. “Something that lived here before the humans did.”
“It’s possible,” Maki said. “But we’ve never found signs of something being here so recently before us.” She shook her head. “This isn’t anywhere as old as the temple Amira found in the desert.”
“A fair amount of your planet is unexplored,” Axtin points out. “I wouldn’t rule out yet another ancient civilization here.”
“I don’t want to think about that,” Maki shuddered.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Every time we discover a new lifeform on the planet, things get hard for us,” she explained.
Axtin, Tyehn and I exchanged glances.
“Are we supposed to be insulted by that?” Axtin asked.
“No,” Maki shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad you’re all here. But when the Vengeance crashed, life got harder for the humans. That’s just facts.”
“The Xathi were a shit show,” Alessa said.
“The Puppet Master messed us up for a while,” Maki added. “Though, I’m glad we have the Puppet Master now. Still doesn’t change the destruction he caused.”
“Now we have Gorgos,” Alessa finished. “They aren’t making things any easier for us.”
“So, to answer your question, no. The idea of another intelligent species showing up does not fill me with a sense of ease,” Maki said.
I was speechless.
Axtin blinked, struggling to find the right words.
“Point taken,” Tyehn shrugged when no one else spoke.
“Do you see why I’m alien cautious?” Alessa asked me. “Not anti-alien.”