“Have you seen something like this before?” I asked. “When I took control of the Aelita the first thing I did was lead a small crew into the depths, the corridors locked away and only visited by the elders. We found much of the same as well as variants of scourge and caretakers, all miserable. We let some free hoping they would join us but there bodies were sick and all of them were in pain,” she was tearing up while she said it. All of this time layers beneath the surface while so many of us were living, eating, sleeping, dancing.
We continued our walk through the prison. It seemed endless. It must have extended halfway through the basement of the ship. It was a dungeon, a torture chamber, a lab, each and every corner and crevice revealed more darker secrets; bones left behind skeletons of creatures abandoned. If these creatures could think freely; if they weren’t in pain they could have joined our uprising and lived on Eden-3. In the new world we had been promised this never would have happened.
A husk seven feet tall stood in the dark hallway in front of us. It had no eyes, nose, or lower jaw only sharp fangs trimmed and sharpened. Its arms had been severed from it’s torso and replaced with massive steel blades. We could still see the metal thread that they had used to sew it all together. The blades seemed to extend down to its knees. Small mechanical tubes and wires ran through its dark naked flesh. Aira aimed her rifle at it and it began to lounge forward towards us. Trey jumped forward and received the full impact of the monster’s razor sharp arm. It ripped straight through his chest cavity and as it lifted him into the air he sank closer and closer to the upper jaw. Trey wasn’t dead he still had a few seconds of life left and with it he shot from his pistol into the monster’s head. Over and over we heard it cry in grunts and belches until it finally fell to the ground over Trey’s lifeless corpse. Vale walked over and put several more shots into it crying and screaming naming off each of her friends she had lost.
We gave her a few moments to collect Trey's tags. Vale began walking back to us when we thought it was over. We shined our light down on the ground staring at the monster that began to shiver over and over. Small tentacles sprang forth from the ground made of metal. Each had a small set of red spheres glowing at the end. They moved around the creature ripping its body into pieces. Each of us began to fire shredding the meat of the monster and tentacles into smaller parts. When more came we began to run. We had set off some kind of security measure and activated one of the Erebus’s defenses. To the Erebus we were a disease a virus making it sick. It needed us gone for whatever reason its programming decided. Vale was slower then Aira and I and the tentacles wrapped around her ripping at her armor and scalping the top of her face and inserting several large syringes inside her.
She fired holding down the trigger to her rifle for as long as she could. Looking behind we could make out small metal wires moving in and out of the holes in her body. We were resistant at first but we fired back hoping if Vale wasn’t already passed then we had ended her pain. The tentacles continued to move towards us. Cree ahead of us opened another chamber. The moment we were through she latched the door and shot the lock hoping that would hold the metal tentacles back. We could hear the banging on the door as each of us held our rifles pointing ready for it to break its way through. Silence. Cree was the first to let out a sigh, and then each of us began to relax. We had walked into a maze of traps hidden inside a house of lies. Door to the right read 'no exit - elders only'.
We were in a processing center. We could see several holding cells still in place but it was much cleaner and neater then the prison. Around us there were several cubes made for offices. Probably were the elder’s analyzed data or did smaller research. In one of the desks I saw Celes name painted clearly on display. I wanted to burn it and all of his notes and holos. I wanted to set fire to everything around us.
“This entire area up to the core is called the driveshaft. From this room out we’ll be in the lower maintenance tunnels of Erebus,” Aira had pulled up her PDA and was looking at a holo map checking to make sure we were on the right path. The prison was one of the blacked out areas in the layout Trevor had shown us; a part of the ship that didn’t officially exist. “Lets keep moving, we can’t waste anymore time,” I said knowing time was running down. The battle at the bridge had begun a few hours ago and by now Trevor had sent the engineers to the hive. It wouldn’t be long now before I am out of time to save my friends, to save them all. If I had to I would force Balkava by gunpoint to help us. It was more likely she would listen to me then Aira or Cree. Then it hit me. If we could get close enough to talk to her we could just kill her and take over the ship.
No. As much as I wanted to side with Aira now more then ever I couldn't. I felt like my heart and mind were playing games. Balkava couldn't be killed in an assassination. There would have to be another way.
By the time we made our way into the airdrome it was hard to tell what flashes were the lights and which were laser fire. Small metallic splinters filled the air as the tentacles we had been running from caught up to us. They came through the air vents above us first scraping our skin as we ducked and hid moving from cover to cover. When one of the red eyes went out and a tentacle died we could still see small surges of ‘life’ left trickling in their bodies like a body twitching at the morgue. In ten minutes maybe fifteen we would be too tired to run.
Our bodies were giving up and our adrenaline which had been forcing us to move was no longer enough. A serious of booms filled the air. Cree shot one of the massive cylindrical tanks that mixes and produces the oxygen and feeds the biomass throughout the ship. The pressure knocked several of the tentacles to the ground causing them to shake and shiver as their red lights faded into nothing. Another loud sound filled the air, another sharp concussion. This time it knocked the three of us to the ground.
The butt of my ri fle hit Cree on the forehead, “Stupid,” she shouted. I looked up and I could see the ruptured carcass of an antliod hive-queen. It was dead another victim of the tentacles but this meant we were walking further into infested territory. Most of our intel said that Balkava had cleared away the antliods now there were only a few small scavengers left in the bellows.
Not standing. Crawling. We crawled our way through under small pipes and joints that connected various tanks to one another. The antliods were here after all hidden in the ceiling above us. Cree had scattered them and now the tentacles had made a new enemy. There was a threat greater then us to the ship and we were ignored. Cree trembled suddenly and then let out a small moan. Her gun had gotten caught on some of the hanging sets of plugs we were only ten or twelve feet from the next ventilation shaft that would have taken us into the Arcanaeum.
Cree let go of her weapon and unholstered her pistol. It would kill a human and antliod but it wasn’t nearly strong enough to take on a drone or tentacle. Behind us we could hear the tentacles and antliods tearing each other apart like two packs raptors fighting for food. Over and over the sound of pinchers hitting nails grew louder and louder echoing through the ventilation shaft until finally Aira pushed her way through a thin membrane of green biomass and though she was now stuck with the disgusting fluid we were free. Cree threw the last charge we had into the tunnel bridging the path between our past and future nightmares. Each of us checked our weapons and reloaded. Cree made sure she was using armor piercing rounds so as to not overcharge the battery on her gun. Aira offered Cree her rifle but declined saying Aira was the better shot. I don’t think it was true. Aira was a good shot but Cree had shown she could shoot the weld off an oxygen tank in the dark no less. Aira took the compliment and smiled it was nice for her to feel special.
The Arcanaeum was the data-house of the Erebus. Basically it was a library filled with the history and personal history of everyone on board. It was also the first area of the ship we had entered that wasn’t dimly lit or in complete darkness. We were even able to shut the light from our rifles off. Being able to see clearly made us feel safe. The Arcanaeum was one of the most secure ar
eas of the ship. The walls around it were several feet thick. The Arcanaeum was also one of the oldest parts of the ship aside form the core and several of the historic halls and the room that use to hold the nexus. Inside was every vision past, present, future ever seen by a user.
I don’t know why or how but I felt compelled to search. I was probably the first user to ever have access to an inventory like this – the entire history of our world. I walked over to one of the several silver consoles. It was covered in dust like it hadn’t been touched in decades. It made sense. Most information was sent here via signals and transmissions there was no real reason for anyone to be here aside from 'research'. The first thing I searched for was ‘Sev’ and in front of me various images of Narville flashed before my eyes. Images were he lay dead on the ground wrists bleeding with just those three words spelled out. Aside from that there was nothing. I couldn’t even find my own profile. It was like I didn’t exist. Several times I tried searching then I tried Aira, Dom, Hayden they all appeared. Had Balkava erased me? Perhaps Celes did it when he tortured me as a way to cover his actions and dispose of me without too many questions. I searched Errikus. I searched through the population scanning the names that began with ‘S’ and again then there nothing. I searched for Aelia and Cross, and still nothing showed. The last thing I searched for just as I began giving up hope was a name that always seemed to stick to me, a name that echoed in my mind. I almost didn't search for it out of some strange fear. Slowly typed the name 'Joseph Everett'.
The screen turned black for two seconds before piles of information poured out in front of my eyes all across the room. It surrounded me like an orb of light. Joseph Everett, the ark savior, the hunter, the American, the mad hatter, the wolf, the snake, the man of faces, the man of sin, the traitor, patient zero, and hundreds of other aliases and nicknames given to him throughout time. Several psychological profiles each from different centuries appeared as well calling him of sound mine, unstable, bi-polar, manic, genius, and on and on every other report contradicting the prior. Digging deeper there were several timelines each varied only slightly. Attached to the latest one there wasn’t a name but a title ‘user subject -77’.
01010011010001010101011000100000010101110100100101001100 0100110000100000010010110100100101001100010011000010000001 0101010101001100100000010000010100110001001100
The rest of the file was encrypted. How was this possible? It was archaic coded in binary. The moment I tried to run a decryption it mixed itself up and started spitting out nonsense and mathematical sequences too hard for any living human to translate. I longed for the shards in my body to break free and show me a vision worth having. I had seen so many things were they not real were they just possibilities laid over one another. An image of myself as a child appeared. It was an image from when I was first taken aboard the Erebus and forced inside the nexus. Standing next to me in the image was Balkava, several elders and next to behind me a little girl holding a stuffed Zeesk. It was Hera. Over her face there was a note saying “ Subject -16 failure”.
Cree was on a console at the same time just a few feet away. She seemed to have the same horror on her face. Before I had time to process anymore the lights in the room turned out and all of the consoles shut down. We had fallen too far into the rabbit hole. I walked over to Cree who was crying.
“What did you see?” I asked. “Subject -22, what does that mean? The console had pictures images of me as a child strapped to a table my body was torn apart, opened up like I was being dissected.” I put my hand out and she took it and I told her what I saw. I searched myself again under my new alias and found similar pictures. Images of my childhood on Errikus appeared as well as graphic images of myself as a child being torn apart plugged into several alien machines. Aira stood in a corner with her gun drawn. She had found more of the same horror when she searched her name. Aira was designtated 'Subject -19'.
“Why are our numbers so low and yours so high?” Cree cried. “I don’t know,” I wanted to shout but it would have done no good so instead I tried to talk as calmly as possible, “none of this makes any sense, the only connection we all have to each other is we were born around the same time.” I paused, “what are we?” “We are human and that is all that matters, meta, altered, doesn’t matter, Lore was a cyborg and he was still human” “Lore also took commands from a ship and killed Hayden,” I was shouting at Aira now. She had only been trying to defend herself, defend us. “Wait, you were both users weren’t you?” Cree asked “Yes,” Aira and I spoke in unison, though Aira never was able to use the nexus she still passed the test given to us at birth, at least the test we thought was given to us at birth. The test was designed to show whether or not we had a gene that would let us interact with the nexus. All of it was fake. There was no test. Our bodies were altered.
“I am a user too,” Cree proclaimed giving us another thing we each had in common as well as Hera. We knew Balkava had shut us out. We could hear drones torching just outside one of the doors. We were being hunted again and now more confused then ever we were in chaos. Each of us had hundreds of theories running through our minds but none of it would matter if we didn't make it out alive. The only person that had the answers was coming for us. We steadied our rifles behind cover, Cree was ready with her pistol hiding to the side of while Aira and I stood directly in front of the door. The drone broke through and floating a few feet off the ground lounged for us. We fired shot after shot of energy but it was Cree’s blaster and a shot to the back against a small control panel that brought the drone to the ground only inches from crashing into Aira.
I knew she was a good shot. We continued to make our way through the ‘Hall of Countenance” and into “Hall of Elements” and last through the “Hall of Memoria” which depicted carved images several feet high depicted the first invasion as well as several others. Each room was small but full of magnificent statues fifteen feet high. They had been decorated with heroes and warriors known by all and some forgotten. Each was an addition made by elders, places they could seek refuge and meditate.
Finally we made it to the “Horza Forge” where we found the shaft that would take us into the core.
THE CORE // LOSE OF CONTROL Welcome to see the butcher.
Welcome to see the slayer,
Welcome to see the monster, the maker, the hand of Tiamat .
Welcome to the order of man.
You are but a face floating through the void. An angel cast down by God.
You are a vessel.
You are a tool.
You are a puppet.
You are a harbinger.
You are Archaea with no muscle or soul
You are # 00110010001100100011011100110111 Error Error
Error
Systems. REBOOT.
Immersion core. CHECK.
Hull. 66%
Life Support. 98%
Stasis. 32%
Error critical system failure inevitable.
01010011010001010101011000100000010101110100100101001100 0100110000100000010010110100100101001100010011000010000001 0101010101001100100000010000010100110001001100 Infection onboard. Protocol 17 initiated
Dear Anna,
I’m sorry I haven’t written you in so long. It has been years now. My last message must have left you very ill. There is nothing I can say to you now that
will change anything I just want you to know I did what was best for you.
- Joseph Everett 1976
The year was 1946. Cold squad disbanded shortly after Black Island. The Brit and the Aussie helped me run. I had found something buried deep within the walls of that pit and it showed me a vision - a world full of terrors. I had to hide what I found for fear it would fall into the wrong hands. The best I could do was delay the inevitable. I didn’t understand half of what I saw. To those around me it was nothing more then a black rock but whenever I touched it I could see worlds beyond ours. I saw humans living in massive indescribable structures while other times I saw the past livin
g life among tribes, castles, and wooden ships. I saw the revolution, the Great War, the settlers and the Indians. At first I wrote it down. I filled journal after journal until I could write no more. I thought about publishing several papers as fiction but it was pointless. They were the rantings of a mad man, a veteran lost in the trauma of war.
Eventually I stopped writing. In Burma I joined a group of guerrillas. It was the aftermath of the Second World War and there were still soldiers and generals fighting even after their side surrendered. I took the life of several in the name of peace. There were bandits too. Those that would rape and kill for pleasure or reward all of which became my prey. I was a hunter, a legend, and a ghost.
I saw visions, murders that hadn’t happened and I stopped them or at least I did the best I could. I was still only a man. I could only move so fast and do so much.
It was during a monsoon I slit the throat of a man that would have killed his wife selling his child into slavery. It was that same night a strange man found me. He was skinny and starved, a monk from an order called the Archaeon. He had been tracking me for over a year. It was with his last dying breath he told me about a group called the order, the Templars and their splinter group the ‘Sons of Sol’. He begged me to climb into the mountains in the north and deliver the shard he called nexus to a the monks there ensuring they would protect it. I had no way to verify his claim. I recognized the name, ‘Sons of Sol’; I had seen it in a vision. They were unkind, power hungry, and manipulative. The Archaeon seemed like the lesser of all evils and the moment I left to the mountains my visions of an immediate future full of corruption began to change.
Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Page 31