Entity

by Donald Morrison

  Baker moved into the corridor, Corlin, Wilkes, and Fascio immediately behind him. Behind that the rest of the crew made their way nervously into the hall of death.

  “What the hell happened here Lanskey,” Baker asked, struggling to hold his voice steady as his eyes took in the slaughtered corpses spread from one end to the other.

  Lanskey approached the first of the bodies and bent to inspect them. Moments passed by like days.

  “I… I don’t know how else to put this Sarge, but it looks like someone took an axe to these people. We’ve got multiple lacerations, some so deep they severed bone. From the markings on these ones, a quick evaluation says from the nature of the wounds, these folks died defending themselves. Most of the lacerations classify as defensive, having occurred on the hands and forearms and the ones in the front sustained most of their injuries to the back.” She paused, looking up to Baker. “Sarge… These people were slaughtered.”

  His chest tightened and he could feel the sweat beginning to seep across his brow beneath the fiber wrapped helm.

  “I have to get to the director’s office.”

  Baker broke his gaze with Lanskey and moved it to Talmadge who stood, eyes wide and fists clenched to a ball. “I need to get there now.”

  Baker took a deep breath, steadying himself for his reply. He stared in disbelief at the weasely rep, seconds ticking away as he decided how to properly form his reply, remembering that everything he said could be stored for use against him upon return. “I think we have a whole list of other things that have just taken priority over you checking your company’s financials.” Anger began to build. Their trip had just taken a turn for the longer, and as it stood before them, the entire facility had taken to ending up dead. He was appalled by the fact that the first thing the rep was concerned with was making sure the company wasn’t going to be held liable for the deaths of the thirty-five families they had brought there. The anger began to border on disbelief. In a flash he no longer cared what the rep thought, or what he would do when they got back.

  “Look, I need—“

  “What you need to do, is shut the hell up and let me figure out just what the hell we’re supposed to do now. It seems obvious to me, that some pretty serious shit’s gone down here, and the last thing I’m going to do, is put my men in jeopardy, so that you can take a little field trip. We have no idea if who, or what it was that caused all this, isn’t still roaming around the facility waiting for more people to arrive, so that they can continue what it seems to me, they already started. So do me a favor, and shut the hell up for minute.”

  Talmadge held his tongue, fury coursing through him as he turned away and walked to the back of the group. The soldier had apparently forget his position on the ladder, but at this moment, his focus was on retrieving the data that had been collected, and sealing off any information that could be detrimental to the company’s image. Things had to appear as though everything had gone by the numbers, and that it was simply an isolated incident, caused by a miscalculation in the psych department back home. Someone had given them false information prior to screening, and had laid a well-orchestrated lie in order to get themselves hired on at the colony for the sole purpose of sabotage. The wheels had already started turning, well oiled, corporate cogs quickly spinning the gears in his mind as he created elaborate scenarios.

  “Fascio, you take point. Dom, Corlin, on his six. Let’s go see what the hell’s happened to the rest of these fine folks.”

  Fascio nodded to Dom who moved quickly to the front, followed by Corlin.

  “And I think it’s safe to say, safeties off.”

  Baker let the others move past and stopped as Talmadge attempted to move past him. He opened a private channel and held his arm as he spoke.

  “Look Talmadge. It’s obvious that you don’t like me, and to be honest, I don't care. I myself, can’t stand corporate, beurocratic rats, and you just so happen to stink like one. But since we didn’t come all this way to become friends, I really feel as though we should focus on the situation at hand. I understand that it was your company that paid for this little trip, and that it’s your best interests at hand, but at the moment, it appears that something a little bigger than our own petty likes has occurred here. So I suggest we get really good at working with each other, because that’s the only way this is going to work. On the way here, it was your game, but this—” Baker swept his hand towards the corpses on the floor. “—this is mine, and I happen to be very good at it. So I suggest we worry about what's happened, versus what will.” He paused as the rep stared back at him with gritted teeth behind the clear visor. “Now I’ll get you to your director’s office, but first, we need to worry about our immediate situation. We need to get environmental back online, cause these tanks we’re breathing out of, they aren’t bottomless, and when they run out... Well let’s just say that’ll make for a very short trip. And after that, we need to see what it was that caused this, incident, which means we need to get to security. Once I’ve secured our current situation, I’ll make sure you get escorted to your office. Now is that ok with you?”

  Talmadge stared at him with hatred burning behind his gaze, but he knew the soldier was right. Something had happened, and whatever it was, was going to cost a lot of money, and possibly a good amount of reputation for the company. He needed to tread very carefully. He needed to ensure as little of this made it out as possible. The soldiers were shackled under strict nondisclosure contracts, but what he was truly worried about was that one of the colonists managed to get something out to the public before communications went down, and the only way he would know that, is if he read through the director’s files, which meant at this moment, he had to play the game, and that, was what he was good at.

  Talmadge nodded. “Sure. Yeah. Your game.”

  Baker let the man’s arm go and nodded. “Good. Now where might we find environmental?”

  6

  Shadows crept across the corridor, slinking back into the corners and hidden crevices as the unit made their way further in. Fascio was in the lead, the light from his rifle scanning the blackness ahead; a visceral trail of blood splattered across corrugated steel shining beneath the sweeping beam. The air around them was coppery and thick, and even though they couldn’t feel it through the skin of their suits, they could sense it clinging wetly to them as they continued in. A handful of scattered boxes littered the floor; dropped by those trying to flee the carnage that had erupted around them and every surface shimmered as his flashlight cast its glow ahead of them. Save for their heavy footsteps, an eerie silence pressed in on all sides.

  Baker found himself wishing at that moment that they hadn’t been issued their standard outfitting for this trip, the missing night vision that was standard on their tactical helmets being exactly what he instinctively desired at that moment. But tac helms didn’t fit inside the envirosuits… As he peered into the unforgiving black he realized there were a great many things he wished they had at that moment. But it was his job to make do with what they did have, and that was exactly what he would do.

  They had made it twenty meters in before Fascio’s light caught a single handprint slapped against the wall; a dark burgundy stain spread further into the vacant hallway ahead. “What the hell happened here Sarge?” he asked, a whisper cracking across their comms in the silence.

  Baker held his response, silently cursing himself for flinching at the sudden question. Whatever the answer was, he was sure it was nothing any of them wanted to hear. “Wilkes, can you get auxiliary power up?”

  “It depends on the extent of the damage. I’ll check the next panel we come across and run diagnostics. Should be able to reroute power from somewhere.”

  Baker nodded, his gaze falling to the floor where a frosted puddle of blood had pooled, a set of footprints disappearing further down the hall ahead. A claustrophobic feeling of dread pressed in on all sides as they continued forward, the foreboding sense of solitude growing between them.

/>   “Roger that.”

  “Sarge,” Fascio whispered. “One o’clock.”

  Baker traced Fascio’s light down the hall to where three bodies were huddled against a metal crate. The inhuman patchwork drew him in, the twisted limbs, entangled in each other, blending one frozen corpse into another. A faint twitch pulled at the edge of his right eye and he could feel the sweat being wicked away from his back by the suits internal regulator. He wished at that moment for one thing that above everything else which paraded his thoughts; a cigarette. “Lanskey,” he said, staring at the dead colonists.

  The medical officer moved past to the corpses piled together. She knelt down, shining a small pen light over the crystallized mass. Blood and frozen flesh sparkled beneath crimson stained cloth.

  “It’s the same thing Sarge,” she said after a moment. As she spoke she noticed that two of the bodies had blades still frozen in their grasp. She reached down, inspecting the weapons closer, and then startled softly at the realization. “It looks like these people did this to each other.”

  Baker stepped closer, stopping just behind her.

  She pointed to a woman slumped against the wall. “The wounds on her neck and chest are consistent with the knife in that one’s hand.” She moved her light to a younger man who was sprawled on the floor at the woman’s feet. “And the puncture marks across his left cheek match the screwdriver she’s holding.” She paused, her gaze lifting to meet Baker’s. “These people killed each other. I’d say an altercation is an understatement of what happened here.”

  “What the fuck…” Corlin moved his light away, sending the beam trailing further down the hallway. “I don’t like this Sarge. Not at all. This is fucked.” He wasn’t a stranger to seeing things like this. He’d been at the front lines in Rwanda and had witnessed firsthand the things capable during war at the hands of the warring tribes. But there was something about this that wormed its way under his skin and continued to crawl beneath the surface. Maybe it was the way that everyone had simply disappeared, or that without the help of environmental controls, everything was frozen, perfectly preserved carnage in full grotesqueness, saved for them to stumble across in its full, macabre glory.

  “Let’s just get to environmental,” Baker replied. “We need to get these systems back online. Maybe then, we can make our way to security and figure out what the hell went on in here. Until then marine, I need us to keep it together.”

  Corlin swallowed hard. He was visibly shaken and as Baker looked into his eyes he could see that he was on the border of panic. He was the largest man in his unit; six foot three and two hundred and twenty pounds; pure hardened muscle strapped to a solid steel frame, and Baker had been in more than his fair share of situations with him that neither of them thought they were getting out of alive. But there and then, as he stared into the other’s eyes, he saw something he had never seen before; fear, very real, and completely unhidden.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Baker said, still holding eye contact with the big man. “Talmadge, how much farther?”

  “Not far.”

  “Then lead the way.”

  Baker didn’t trust Talmadge. Nothing about him sat right with him. He could feel ulterior motive oozing from the rep as he moved past him. He waited until he was a few feet ahead and clicked Vuong on a private channel. “Vuong, could you pull up a schematic of the facility? I’d like to know where we’re going in here.”

  “Roger that,” Vuong replied, tapping his holowrist to life and working his fingers quickly across the keyboard. A minute later a holographic projection of the facility popped up in front of them. “There you go. We’re here, and environmental’s here.”

  “Copy that,” Baker replied, turning to follow the others.

  The first room they came to was admissions. The door leading in was propped open, a pipe wedged into the floor holding it inside the wall. Fascio could see blood splatter along the floor and wall even before he reached it. He knew without looking what horrors waited him inside.

  “Every person that comes to the facility has to go through admissions,” Talmadge said, pulling Baker’s attention from the soldier that stood staring blankly into the open room. “They’re processed and logged, given their I.D. number and clearance. We managed to streamline the process so—“

  Baker couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The company weasel was still talking about his station with pride, as if giving them the grand tour to their brand new facility on opening day. They had just walked past the product of his creation, death the kind only told in books and movies back home, and that asshole was still standing there like a real estate agent pitching a beach front house. Something in his eyes must have clued the other in and he immediately changed direction.

  “Environmental’s down the hall on the right,” Talmadge said, his gaze glancing nervously to the floor and back.

  “Sarge.”

  Baker turned to Wilkes who had his light pinned to the back of the room.

  “There’s an access panel. I may be able to reroute power from here.”

  “Do it. Fascio, Dom, post security. If anything so much as blinks in this hallway, you put it down.”

  The men moved past him as Wilkes made his way into the room, sweeping the corners with his light as he moved to the electrical panel. Around him, darkness pressed in, the scene behind it hidden away beyond a veil of black. He opened the panel and ran a cable from the display to his holowrist. A second later the display illuminated. Behind him, Baker stood at the doorway, his eyes straining to see through the endless pitch of the hallway. Part of him hoped the lights wouldn’t come back on. If the rest of the facility was anything like what they’d seen already, then it wasn’t something he wanted to see. Again his thoughts went to the night vision he was used to having.

  “Got it,” Wilkes said, his voice cracking across the comms as a thin flicker of light began to illuminate through the slotted grates that comprised the walls.

  Baker steeled himself for what he knew was coming.

  Overhead the emergency lights slowly came to light, peeling back the cover that held the rest of the horror at bay. Light slowly filtered through the hallway, unmasking the violence that had stayed hidden in the dark. From one end of the hall to the other, paper and boxes were scattered, bloodstained remnants of colonists scrambling desperately to escape. Containers were overturned and articles from the colonist’s lives lay scattered from one end to the other. Baker felt his stomach knot as the reality of the situation came to full bare. Whatever had happened here had happened quickly, and no one had a chance. The frigid unease burrowed deeper.

  Inside the room the overhead lights cast their glow across the surface. “My god,” Wilkes whispered, his gaze falling to the wall in front of him. “Sarge. Might wanna see this.”

  Baker felt his skin flex tight as Wilke’s words pressed into his ears. He turned and made his way into the room where he was standing, his gaze locked to the wall in front of him. Written across the wall was a single sentence; Don’t believe the whispers. He read it, every word punching home, realizing at the same time the medium in which it was painted with. The knot in his stomach tightened. “This just keeps getting better.” He turned and made his way back into the hall, glancing through the thin beams of light that illuminated outwards from the wall panels. Above were inset lights every twenty feet that cast a shadow through the haze of particles hanging in the air. With no atmosphere the image looked like a grainy, still framed photograph. He shifted, glancing past Fascio to where the corridor curved out of view. The feeling of unseen eyes peering back at him burrowed into him and he found himself staring back, waiting for the hidden monstrosity to appear as he turned the scrawled words over and over again in his mind. What the hell did that mean? And what whispers..?

  “All right marines, let’s move,” he said after a moment, the command coming out barely past a nervous exhale.

  The rest of the hallway was the same, personal effects scattered along the flo
or, blood splatter on the walls and dried puddles glistening on the floor as the dim light cast across their icy surface. Baker wrestled with the sight, clinging desperately to the hope that the would find some rational explanation for it all; a system malfunction or colonist gone off the deep end, but every stain he passed, every name badge lying cast away at his feet, pushed that thought further and further away. Whatever happened here had happened fast, and had not been contained.

  The group continued onward, reaching a section where the corridor branched off ten minutes later. The signs along the ceiling that were now illuminated in dull green read, Administration, with a small arrow pointing to the left and Central Housing to the right. Baker looked to Vuong who nodded silently to another sign on the ceiling that read Environmental. Talmadge walked up and began to tell them it was just ahead when Baker cut him off. “I know, I can read.” He wasn’t in the mood for more braggadocio about the corpse installation.

  The hallway leading past environmental to central housing was at a slight incline. He made his way up, stopping a short distance from the closed door as the others came to a halt behind. He took a deep breath and held it in his chest.

  “Fascio, Dom, Wilkes, Corlin, stack up. I want a clean entry. No surprises.”

  The men moved to the door, two on each side and nodded to each other. Corlin who was at the rear reached out and patted Wilkes from behind, the others doing the same. At the same time Fascio reached out and pressed the switch on the wall. As the door opened with a soft whoosh, Dom charged inside, his rifle at the ready. The others followed immediately behind him, their lights sweeping the room in a matter of seconds. “Clear.”

  Baker stepped into the room and surveyed the scene. Though environmental wasn’t online, and there was no way anyone could have survived this long in a zero oxygen atmosphere, he still expected some monster or crazed maniac to jump out at him. It was his nature to be cautious. It was his job.