The girl didn’t move as he approached, the only motion coming from her back as heavy, shuddered breaths moved her shoulders out, and in. “I can’t leave,” the girl whispered, her words buzzing heavy in his ears. “We can’t leave.”
“Why not?” Corlin asked, taking another step closer to the hunched girl. A deep chill pierced into him, the shard stabbing fiercely and expanding as he made his way closer.
“I’m too weak. I’m not ready yet.”
“I know sweetheart. But we’re going to help you ok?” he replied, closing the space with another step, his legs moving autonomously, until he was right behind her.
The buzzing in his head grew, the static pressing his eyes open from the pressure, the sound drowning out everything else; all thoughts, all senses. Only the cold surrounded him, pressing everything else out.
“Yes. You will,” the girl replied, turning her face to him.
Corlin screamed, staring down at what remained of the girl’s face. Her mask had been removed and in the space it had been were deep gashes trailing down from her scalp to her chin, where it looked like she had tried ripping her face off with her fingernails. Two deep, blood moist cavities sat hollow where her eyes once were, black portals gouged back into her brain. Slowly she stood as Corlin continued to scream, his body frozen in place, arms locked to his side, fingers flayed. Her tiny hands reached out and silence enveloped him, his screams hiding far beyond his gaping mouth, cowering deep within his lungs.
The squad rushed down the corridor, back towards the central room. Baker called out across the comms again. “Corlin, do you read me?”
No sooner had his words left the comm, then he saw the corporal standing a short distance down the hall.
“What in the hell are you thinking Corporal?” Baker asked as they approached, “Are you trying to piss me off?”
As the group got closer light illuminated his features, a look beyond panic and fear warping his face beneath his helmet.
“Corlin?” Hawkes asked, the look on his friends face slowly registering. “What’s wrong man?” The others came to a staggered halt.
Corlin was shaking visibly, his body wracked with tremors, his breath coming in short, hyperventilated gasps. His eyes darted between them like a mouse backed into a corner by a pack of starving cats and they could see his hands balled into tight fists at his side. Behind him, invisible to the others, the tiny girl stood, her blackened portals fixed to his back. Now his voice came through over the comms.
“We can’t leave,” he whispered, his voice now crackling across. “I can’t leave. None of us can.” His voice broke. “We can’t.” Tears began to work their way down his cheeks.
“Corporal,” Baker whispered, his hands raising slowly in the air. “We’re right here. Ain’t nobody getting left behind. You’re gonna be fine, and we are all gonna leave here together, all right?” He took a step closer when the other man quickly pulled his sidearm and leveled it at him. Baker noticed in an instant how sloppily the move was, and how bad the man’s hands were shaking behind it. There was no training in the corporal’s form. Another sign that didn’t sit well. He could have drawn, disassembled and reassembled his pistol in a coma without a second lapse.
“Corporal, you lower that weapon. You hear me? That’s an order marine.” His words were soft and steady.
The girl slowly reached out, her fingers wrapping around the belt at his back.
“I can’t. If it gets back—”
“If what gets back son?” Baker asked as Corlin’s sentence trailed off, his eyes still shooting wildly between the group. “If what gets back?”
Ssshhhhhh
Corlin wrestled with the clouded jumble of thoughts, memories that clung to him, blending reality with fractured images. He struggled desperately to retain the thoughts he believed were still his. He couldn’t tell what was being created by his mind, and what was being conjured by the darkness behind him. Nothing seemed real, and yet, at the same time, everything felt clear. “It can’t.”
In one swift motion Corlin reached down and disengaged his envirosuit, the oxygen inside venting out in a loud hiss.
“Corlin!” Hawkes yelled, rushing towards the man who in a flash, put the pistol to the side of his head.
Tears streamed down from blood bursting eyes as his mouth opened and closed, gulping the martian air that immediately began to suffocate him. There was a look of desperation and pleading in his gaze. Then his finger pulled taught.
Baker startled as the corporal pulled the trigger, blasting the side of his head across the wall at his side, watching as he slumped to a pile on the floor.
“No!” Hawkes screamed, anguish dousing his words. “FUCK!!!!”
“What the fuck!!?” Vuong shouted.
A frenzy of hysteria wracked the group.
“I fucking told you we shouldn’t have come here,” Fascio said, turning to pace back and forth behind them. “I fucking told you!”
Baker stared blankly at the man who had minutes ago been talking lively amongst them, who less than an hour prior had sat across from him on the rover, gazing across the planet’s landscape. His mind raced, a jumble of senseless thoughts all twisting together into a vortex of fear and anguish.
“What the fuck is going on Sarge?” Mills clicked, snapping Baker back to the group that was grasping at any semblance of composure. The problem was, this time he didn’t have any of the answers they were looking for. This time he was simply just another marine.
Baker’s mind raced, the vision of Corlin standing before him burned into his vision. His training told him to speak up, to direct his men and create order out of the chaos that had exploded around them, but his instincts pulled him in on himself. He stood frozen as the others shouted questions to each other and waived their rifle lights back and forth in the hall. He let his gaze fall to Corlin’s still twitching corpse and realized that he had been holding his breath.
“Fascio, Mills, you carry Corlin,” he said softly while exhaling heavily. “We’re getting the hell out of here. Everyone stays together, no one strays. We move two by two and I want clear line of sight on everyone. Now let’s move, double time.”
The men picked up Corlin’s corpse and started down the hallway with the others. They were walking as quickly as they could without tripping over their feet in the dark, their headlamps bobbing wildly as they made their way towards the exit. What they had just seen left a cold space within them deeper than the air that warped around them. None of them spoke a word until they were back on the rover and the Attis station was falling back into view.
“What happened in there Sarge?” Fascio asked, his gaze falling hard across to Baker.
“I have no idea,” Baker replied, glancing down to where Corlin lay covered in a tarp at their feet. “He must have been compromised; affected by whatever it was that caused it to happen to the people in Attis.”
Beneath them the rover bounced unphased along the rocky landscape.
“But we all had our envirosuits on,” Vuong replied. “Why was it just him?”
Again Baker found himself falling short of answers, a feeling he was slowly realizing he wasn’t comfortable getting used to.
“Maybe somehow, he got himself infected before we went out.”
“It’s not an infection,” Lanskey said, bringing their eyes to her. She shook her head slowly while bouncing in uncomfortably hard seat. “All pathology reads normal, toxicology as well. This is something else. I think this is psychological. Possibly even xenomorphic in nature.”
The group held silent as the rovers engine growled, a large bump lurching them sideways.
“What,” Fascio asked a moment later as his brow scrunched together tightly behind his mask. “Like some kind of alien?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”
“Well if it is alien,” Baker growled, “Then that means it’s alive, which also means it can be killed. And if that’s the case, then we’re gonna do what we do best, a
nd blow it the hell back to wherever it is that it came from.”
“And how do you suppose you’re going to do that sergeant,” Talmadge asked, his gaze locked to Baker from across the rover. “You don’t even know what it is?”
Baker looked up at the rep, his gaze stabbing through the space between them. “I know two things Talmadge. First, I know that whatever it is that’s causing this, was released because of your precious company, and the moment we get back to Earth, every organization and media outlet on the planet is going to know that you assholes, are personally responsible for the deaths of every single person in this colony, as well as one of the marines sent to accompany you on your cover up mission. And secondly, we’re marines! We’ll figure it out. That’s what we do. We fight, we kill, and we survive. And I’ll be god damned, if I survived six tours and a world war, to come have my ass taken out by some god damned bug.” Baker turned to the others, his gaze scanning each of their faces as he raised his voice above the rover’s engine. “From now on, nobody goes anywhere alone. We travel in teams, no less than two, and if any of us start acting funny, the others will immediately relieve them of their weapons, no hesitation, and we will slap their asses right back into reality. Does everyone understand?”
The group nodded. “Rah. Roger that.”
“The second we’re back,” he continued, pointing at Vuong and Fascio, “I want the two of you back in security. You keep looking until you find something. We need to figure out what the hell it was that killed those colonists, and what it is that has now taking a liking to marine blood. We’re up against something here, and it’s not stupid. We need to know what the hell it is, and how we can kill it before any more of us depart this shit life we’ve been given.” He paused, looking to Dom who sat uncharacteristically quiet. “You and Wilkes will accompany Lanskey back to medical the moment we return. I wanna know every symptom that’s been recorded from the moment they returned from that thing, and I want psych profiles on every colonist. Look for patterns in behavior leading up to death and the patterns of the deaths themselves. If something is killing us, or getting us to punch our own clocks, then I want to know how it is that it’s doing it. I wanna know how it hunts, what it wants, how it gets into our heads, everything. If we’re all hearing voices, then they have to be coming from somewhere, and it’s only safe to assume that it’s whatever is causing all this. The rest of us are going to make our way back to the facility director’s room, and we’re going to have a nice little conversation about the clusterfuck this facility has become. Then we’re gonna dig so deep into that computer, we’re gonna need a rope and harness to climb back out.”
“Sergeant Thomas, I can’t—“
“Shut the fuck up Talmadge! One of my men are dead, because or your fuck up. You’re about this close from being next.” He held up his middle finger and gritted his teeth together, turning his gaze back to Vuong. “The second you find out anything.”
“You got it Sarge.”
Baker turned his gaze to the facility looming closer. Before he had gone into the pyramid he had been upset, disturbed and possibly even distressed. Now he was angry, violently vehement. Whatever it was that had killed the people in the facility, now had his men in its crosshairs, which meant that it wasn’t some virus, or flu. It was intelligent, picking them off one by one, separating them from the pack when they were their weakest. That meant it was sentient, which also meant that it could be killed. This thing wanted war… and killing one of his men was the quickest way it could have gotten it. Sergeant Thomas’s original intention had been to wait for reply from HQ and then comply with whatever those instructions would be. Now, that was piss spray in the wind. There was no standing by, no waiting for proper channels. He was gonna find this thing, and he was gonna kill it, and none of them were going to leave until he was damn sure whatever it was that killed Corporal John Corlin was good and dead.
15
A solemn distance hung between the squad as they made their way back into the facility. Heavy was the loss bore from the shattered comradery. Silence clung to them, their words stifled by a sadness that built in the form of tears at the edge of their eyes. They had all known Corlin for a long time. He was part of their family, a friend and brother, and now, with no way to stop it, and helpless to intervene, he was dead, taken out by his own hand. Nothing about it made sense. Nothing.
They made their way back towards security, passing admissions, down the hallway that led to environmental. The smell in the station had grown violently pungent in places, the primary airlock and entrance to admissions the worse. The filtration system struggled to keep up with the clouding odor, but with so many sources, it made for an impossible task. They had dragged some of the bodies onto the landing pad when they first made their way in, a minute attempt to quell the rising stench, but the smell was already one that none of them would be purging any time soon.
As they approached the entrance to the corporate offices Baker stopped, glancing to Vuong and Fascio. “The moment you find anything.”
“On it Sarge,” Fascio replied, tapping Vuong on the shoulder as he turned to make his way back to security, Wilkes, Dom and Lanskey following along. “Let’s go see what the fuck killed Corlin,” he said, shooting a stern glance to Talmadge and turning to make his way past reception.
Vuong and Fascio were in the lead of the group, walking quietly when the lights above began to flicker, dimming to the point of blackness before snapping back to life. The throbbing illumination added to the façade that the facility was sentient and ever monitoring.
“I’m really beginning to hate this place,” Fascio said, his rifle shifting in his grip.
“Yeah,” Vuong replied, squinting into the hallway ahead. “I’m gonna be taking a long leave when I get back, and I’m putting in for transfer. I can’t do this space shit any more…”
“I’ll be standing in line next to you buddy,” Fascio replied. “I think this was it for me too. I’d rather dodge bullets back home than ever have to go through something like this again. Resources or not, I’m never leaving Los Angeles. I don’t care if it is a hundred and twenty, year round. Fuck space.”
“Amen to that.”
They reached security and turned to the others. “If you need anything,” Fascio said, turning to Wilkes, “we’re right down the hall.”
“Roget that Fas,” Wilkes replied, reaching out to clasp his hand firmly.
“You be careful.”
“Ooh-Rah.”
Wilkes nodded, releasing his grasp on Fascio’s hand to step back and look at Dom and Lanskey. “Let’s get to medical. I wanna know what the hell it is we’re fighting here.”
Dom nodded, extending his hand for Wilkes to lead the way.
Back in administrations, Baker, Talmadge and Hawkes were just approaching the director’s office. The lights in the hallway had failed, leaving only the emergency overhead’s. As they made their way into the room Baker broke the silence that had accompanied them from the moment they had passed reception.
“Go ahead and pull up everything you can find. I want to know what they found out there, what they brought back, and the names of the men that did. I want pictures, samples and anything else that might help us.” He stared at Talmadge, waiting for him to move to the computer. “Now,” he growled, his patience stretched to its last strand. “Vuong,” he clicked across. “You and Fascio back at security yet?”
“That’s affirmative,” Vuong clicked back.
“Good. Slight change of plans. I want you to pull up full schematics of the facility. I want every door not in our immediate path sealed; full override on the locks. I don’t want anything coming in or out of even so much as a ventilation duct. Seal off everything. Let me know when it’s done.”
“10-4,” Vuong replied, turning to the monitor and bringing the station plans to life.
Talmadge sat at the desk, Baker standing just behind him as he poured through the sealed reports surrounding the excavation. He had found th
e names of the survey crew that found it, and the ones that breached the exterior and inner walls. Lightly he scraped the tip of the classified section, showing just enough to quell the sergeant’s need for answers. The crew had recorded everything, documenting the runes script, maps of the interior and even collected samples of the material the structure was comprised of, which the science department had returned as previously unclassified and foreign in composition. They reported breaching the inner wall, and every one of their statements were the same; the wall fractured and as soon as the section cut fell away, they were hit with a freezing cold that seemed to move through them. It was accompanied by a feeling of panic; a fear none of them had ever felt before. One of the men had thrown up and passed out on the spot, another turned and ran from the facility, and was found nearly ten miles away, wandering the martian landscape, mumbling incoherently. That colonist in particular had brought back to the facility and placed in the infirmary. He had secluded to a semi-catatonic state, where he would go into fits of extreme emotion, violently angry one moment, and crying hysterically another. The reports said that nothing had been found in the center chamber, that everything was kept exactly as it was, being left for an archeological crew that was set to arrive at Attis later.
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