Frankly, she’d just said the smartest thing anybody had said since we came in here. I called out, “Vera! Let’s get out of here. I bet we can do something about this place from a safe distance.”
She completely ignored me.
I took a deep breath. “We’re in this to the end, guys. We’re not abandoning her.”
“Seconded.” Nervous as she sounded, Claire’s response was emphatic.
“Unanimous,” Ray agreed.
Movement caught my attention. I closed my eyes and saw through Archimedes. The big yellow thing in the basement writhed violently.
The woman’s voice in the speakers announced, “The Red Panacea Clinic does not allow Conqueror technology on our property. Leave the building or be evicted.”
Oh, yeah. They knew we were coming, and what was coming.
With a squeal and a hiss and a lot of cracking, the square Vera had cut fell through into the room below.
I saw the hexagon with my human eyes. Grey stones covered in symbols formed a six-sided gate. On the other side lay a dark room with a cement floor and a lot of wooden beams. That room couldn’t be physically here, on the asteroid, and amid the sweet stink of burned monster, fresh air laden with dust stood out.
We were looking at a portal to Earth.
The monster next to the portal attacked. This thing wasn’t remotely human or goat. It looked like a pillbug with its back attached to the wall, all waving legs and armored plates, scarlet pulsing meat and chitin that blended into the stuff lining the basement.
Tentacles shot out to meet a pink ray that set them on fire. Legs unfolded, and unfolded some more, and unfolded even more, reaching right up through the hole in the ceiling to close over Vera. Her opponent was half pillbug, half octopus, and all butt ugly. I closed my eyes again, and Archimedes saw her burn through the mass of blue and yellow, while more and more poured up to seal her in.
“We have to help!”
“Don’t touch it!” Ray slapped his hands together, activating his gloves. The ball that grew between his spreading palms looked blazing yellow to Archimedes.
“The stairs!” Claire yelled.
Archimedes looked up. Things crawled and staggered down the big staircase in the center of the lobby. They were just awkward masses of blue and yellow and pink through cat eyes, and I did not want to know what they looked like with my own.
Ray fired his energy ball at the fastest moving monster in front. The ball knocked it back against the stairs, where it thrashed like a broken toy. Claire ran off to the side and grabbed a chair. She looked tiny and helpless, a little bouncing yellow figure. As Ray drew out another energy ball, she knocked the legs out from under the next monster coming down the stairs. It fell forward, but kept inchworming towards me and Ray.
It hadn’t turned to attack Claire, and I wasn’t going to give it a chance. Time for a real combat trial of my new weapon. I looked straight at the oncoming monster through Archimedes’ eyes, and yelled, “Stop!”
It did.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!”
One scrambling abomination went motionless. Another fell forward and draped over the railing. The last slid limply down the stairs.
Ray blasted the closest monster back onto the staircase, but he didn’t have to. None of them even tried to move again.
I turned to help Vera. Pointing Archimedes at the squirming yellow mass, I ordered, “Stop!”
The yellow rippled, but nothing happened.
“Stop! STOP! LET HER GO!” Yellow whirled, and the tentacles halted―for about half a second. Enough time for Vera to melt her way out of the mass of arms. But the monster resumed swatting at her, and dodging meant she couldn’t keep her beam focused long enough to do real damage.
The goat mutants had no will. They were just zombies. This thing was strong enough to resist my orders.
I had a fix for you, buddy. I pulled a cursed penny out of my pouch. It looked like a green flare through Archimedes’ eyes, my first solid evidence the pennies had real power. I threw the penny down into the yellow mass. Stuck to the wall, it couldn’t dodge. It didn’t even try to block.
The penny hit and stuck. Green flooded out into the yellow, creating whirlpools and shifting blobs. Whatever that meant, I knew I’d ruined its day somehow.
“Stop!” Archimedes yowled, magnifying the command.
All the tentacles fell to the floor.
Vera stopped dodging, and aimed her heat ray right in the middle of the yellow and green blob. I risked a peek with my human eyes to find out what was going on.
The pillbug had curled up, folding its legs into a shield. Smoke hissed up as Vera burned away at it, but this stuff was hard. As I watched, more legs burst out of the red mass surrounding the bug, and thickened the shield.
One of the fallen tentacles rose. “Stop!” I yelled again. It fell, but twitched. My penny’s curse was weakening.
“Surrender! Stop fighting! Just die!” I screamed at it. Archimedes wailed. The thing wriggled at my first command, its plated legs fluttered at the second, and at the third spread apart.
Vera’s beam hit unguarded red goo, which went up in flames, burning into charcoal in a second. The legs fell limp.
Vera wasn’t satisfied. She kept burning away.
I looked around. Ray crouched next to me, fists clenched. Claire held half a broken chair, watching the―okay, I did not want to look at the things on the stairs. That they mostly wore clothing made it worse.
The alarm cut off. Vera stopped burning. She’d melted a blackened crater right into the stone wall. Only drifting, nauseatingly sweet smoke moved.
A man’s voice announced over the speakers, “Visitors, please see patient Juliet in room 103.”
I looked around. Still, nothing moved. I closed my eyes and looked around again, this time with Archimedes. The pink and purple had stopped flowing through the gooey blue columns. The things lying on the stairs had halfway faded to the same red as the stairs beneath them. The only yellow left pulsed inside my friends.
Back to my own eyes. Vera floated unhurriedly to the stairs. Instead of blasting the bodies there, she flashed pink, over and over. They began turning grey and crumbling at the edges, but it was not a process I wanted to watch.
I pointed down through the hole at the gate, and I could hear my own voice shake. “We can’t leave Earth connected to this place. It might spread.”
Ray’s voice didn’t crack often, but boy did it squeak now. “It’s been connected for a hundred years.” Raising both hands, he added, “That was not an argument.”
Claire walked over to us, and looked down into the pit. The girl who’d been most frightened at first now seemed just fine. “Looks like mad science to me. Hit the self-destruct button.”
“Ha ha ha,” I fake laughed. I couldn’t manage much sarcasm. I knew from experience that when you are in a mad science frenzy, self-destruct buttons just happen. How could I make this one happen?
It was just like building a gate backwards, but much, much simpler. The picture my superpower provided was pathetically simple.
I pointed Archimedes at the red tentacles hooking into the edge of the gate. “Shut off.” The view of Earth winked out. “Collapse.” The heavy stones the gate had been made of rolled away from each other and into the air.
I felt really weird. Dizzy, like I was on the worst roller coaster. Which way was up? Which way was down?
My feet didn’t touch the floor. I looked around and saw Claire and Ray floating up towards the ceiling.
“Well, that’s where our gravity came from. And probably our oxygen,” guessed Ray.
I could get the hang of this vertigo, but I didn’t want to. “It’s dead. We’re getting out of here.”
The man on the PA broke in. “Please don’t leave Juliet.”
What?
I looked at Ray. I looked at Claire. I looked at Ray again. “There can’t be a survivor.” he said.
Claire frowned. “Could it be a trap? Are you sure thi
s red gunk is dead?”
I closed my regular eyes, and waved Archimedes slowly around. “Yes. I’m sure.” Nothing moved. Most of the pink and purple had faded, and even some of the blue. The only thing that stood out…
…was that green spot on the upper floor.
I opened my eyes and shook my head. I couldn’t believe it. “There’s a survivor.”
Ray and Claire gaped, but after a few seconds, Ray lowered his head. “Lead on.”
I smiled despite myself. Ray wasn’t the kind of guy who would even take the risk of leaving someone in this grisly horror house. Then I giggled, because nodding had sent his hat floating off his head, and he had to grab it and stuff it in his jacket.
“Vera, could you push us to the stairs?” I asked.
As quietly and peacefully as she’d always been before we got here, she hovered over and did just that. Gripping the railings of the staircase, we pulled ourselves up to the second floor. Ray climbed past me when we reached the top, taking the handle of the door and bracing himself against the wall to pull it open.
There was a lot of red hard shelled gunk up here. It covered most of the walls. The hallway had a line of little rooms that looked like doctor’s office exam rooms, which I supposed they were. This place was a medical clinic, if a nightmare medical clinic.
We came in at 114. There went 113, then 112. We climbed down the hall, or up the hall, or along the hall. There was no down anymore, just pushing from doorway to doorway. We all had gloves, so at least we didn’t have to touch this gruesome stuff with bare skin.
There was 103. Ray grabbed a knob of chitin, pulling himself to a stop in front of the doorway. I took his hand, letting him anchor me, while Claire climbed around the doorframe herself.
The announcer had been right. There was someone or something strapped to the exam table. She definitely was not human, not with that elongated head, the horns, the fur running down the back of her neck or the knobby, thick fingers. She did have a human female shape, although her thick shirt, poufy knee-length bloomers, and hospital gown over both kept that vague.
As we watched, she whispered, “Not again. I don’t want to wake up.”
The first monster had talked. None of us wanted to move in too fast. She clenched her four eyes tighter shut, curling her head down. Long, white-and-black splotchy hair floated weightlessly around her head. “It isn’t… he’s lying to you, Harvey. It’s only another trick.”
Claire swallowed, hard, and whispered, “I don’t think that’s a recording.”
She pushed away from the doorframe, floating into the room. Ray made to move us after her, but Claire waved him off. I lifted Archimedes, just in case.
“Are you Juliet?” Claire asked.
The thing on the bed’s muscles tensed, trying to curl up, but its wrists and neck and ankles had all been strapped down. After a second of that, she relaxed just enough to turn her head and open her eyes. She had four, two regular brown eyes in front, above where her face started to bulge forward goatishly. The other two sat farther up on the sides of her head, and shined the same ruby color as Archimedes’.
The brown eyes looked up at Claire’s face, as wondering as if she had just seen an angel. With Claire’s golden hair shining under the incandescent ceiling bulb, that wasn’t a bad description. “Y-yes, I am. Did Harvey send you?” the thing asked, with a perfectly normal adult woman’s voice, if nervous and shy.
“I think so. He didn’t tell us his name. We killed the monster in the basement, and he told us to come save you.” Claire reached up very slowly and carefully to Juliet’s neck, unfastening the buckle there. I wasn’t thrilled with her hands being so close to that extended mouth and its mismatched teeth, but it did seem like we’d found a real human survivor. Badly scarred, but human.
“He’s really, truly dead? “ Juliet asked, her voice hushed. “I know, you’ve never lied to me. It’s just so very hard to believe. Can I trust them?”
She wasn’t talking to Claire. She looked past Claire, talking to an empty chair in the corner. Um. Okay.
You know what? I wasn’t going to say anything. Being trapped in this place would drive anyone crazy.
Claire clearly felt the same way. She moved on to unbuckling the straps around Juliet’s wrists, then her ankles. Juliet herself lay back with a heavy sigh, satisfied by whatever the voice only she could hear told her.
We’d heard that voice quite clearly when it used the speaker system, Penny. Keep that in mind. Maybe Juliet wasn’t crazy.
When the ankle buckles came free, Juliet floated upwards. Claire held onto the foot of the table, and held out her hand. Juliet gripped it, and Claire towed them both gently towards the door.
“What is that?” Juliet asked, peering curiously at Vera.
My spine went cold. Vera had just gone completely genocidal on the monsters in this place. The flash of ice faded immediately as Vera gave Juliet just as peacefully quizzical a stare. Whatever set Vera off, Juliet wasn’t it.
Good evidence Juliet wasn’t going to kill us, actually. That was reassurance I’d needed.
“Out. We’re getting out of here.”
“Watch out for the doctors. And the other patients. Harvey―I was the only one Harvey could save.” Juliet warned us.
“I think we got them all,” I promised. “If not, Vera will take care of them.”
We were a lot less cautious climbing back up the hall towards the stairs. Juliet shrank away from me and Ray at first, but clearly trusted Claire to pull her along. By the time we reached the door, Juliet was helping Claire climb.
Ray held the door open again, and we crawled out. Juliet stared wide-eyed at the crumbling grey shapes on the stairwell.
Hanging around wouldn’t help. I held out a hand to Claire. She took it. I held out my other hand to Ray. He took it. He held out his other hand to Juliet and, hesitantly, she took it.
“Vera, can you pull us to the door?” I asked. Vera grabbed my collar, and floated us down the stairs and across the lobby. When Ray opened up the door to the reception room, the sucking sound made me realize something I hadn’t the first time we visited. The reception room was also an airlock.
We wouldn’t need those services. The Red Herring’s gill hatch was safely clamped around the outer door. I had my freaky bat spacesuits, just in case. Ray pushed against the wall with his feet, floating us over to the outer door. When he opened it, Juliet let out a squeak.
I looked back at her. She stared at the entrance to the Red Herring with undisguised horror. I followed her gaze, and saw… a giant, obviously living space fish made out of chitin and rubbery flesh exactly the color of the abominations inside the clinic.
What had I made? Had Mourning Dove known something about my power after all?
No. The Red Herring was harmless. It just used the same biotech principles as the Red Panacea Clinic. Juliet calmed down immediately, so I had to be right. She even smiled, and asked, “Oh. Really?” Pushing past us, she followed someone we couldn’t see into the ship.
Of course, when she passed through the doorway, the Red Herring’s artificial gravity pulled her to the floor, but she caught herself like she’d been expecting it.
My turn, but I paused at the door. I had one last thing to take care of before I left.
Pointing at the plaque on the desk, I ordered, “Vera. Erase that.”
A pink ray wandered over the brass plate, until the words ‘We are in the midst of an enlightened summoning of health that will remove the barriers to the universe itself.’ disappeared in a dripping mass of glowing metal slag. The desk behind it was so old it didn’t catch fire, just blackened and dropped orange embers on the floor.
I felt better. I felt better still when I stepped into the tube and could suddenly tell up from down. I staggered more than Juliet did. More than anyone, since my superhumanly boosted friends of course had no trouble at all.
Ray gave the airlock’s rim a hard tug. Red Herring got the message, and closed the door. Unstea
dy or not, I rushed over to the monitor, pressed my hand to it, and gave a shove. “Get us away from here.”
The long tunnel that made up the Red Herring’s interior rippled. The asteroid and walls of the clinic slid out of view. I pushed harder, hoping the Red Herring understood I wanted some speed. It was hard to tell how fast we were going without anything in view but stars.
That ought to be enough. I turned us around. We were close enough I could still pick out which dot was the asteroid, but that was about it.
I took a deep breath, and let it out. “All in favor of annihilation?” I asked loudly.
“Aye,” Claire answered, just as emphatically.
“I vote Aye eleven times,” Ray joked, but his hard tone meant what he said.
Vera gave the three dings she made when she first saw the place.
“Oh. Wow!” Juliet said to, presumably, Harvey. She stared past me at the monitor.
“Does this ship have weapons?” Claire gave me a cautious look.
“No,” I answered. “Vera! You’re in communication with the Orb of the Heavens. Can you give it targeting information?”
Vera nodded, and let out a little chime.
I pointed at the little blob of the Red Panacea Clinic. “Teleport that asteroid into the sun.”
Ray’s eyes widened. It would work. I could see it in my head, the whole―
“Evasive maneuvers!” I yelled. Archimedes yowled. Thought was faster than speech, and the Red Herring curled up into a ball before the words got out.
A white flash blotted out the monitor, and the eyelid clenched shut. The Red Herring rippled and shook, not from impact, but from whatever it used to protect us from acceleration taking damage.
The shaking stopped. We still had light. We still had heat. We still had gravity.
My poor space fish. Was it okay? I wasn’t sure how to check.
“What just happened?” Claire’s voice fluttered up and down as she unclasped her hands from over her head.
Aaaaaand my cheeks suddenly burned. Feeling like the moron who just came within inches of getting us killed, I explained, “I opened up a tiny gate directly into the sun, sucking the asteroid into it with gravity thousands of times greater than anything we can imagine, but also momentarily exposing a plume of pure nuclear fusion.” My superpower hadn’t really explained that to me in detail, but I’d gotten the message. It did love showing me bombs going off. Not fast enough, this time.
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