“I am going to see this craft destroyed,” he answered calmly. It was a simple plan, but one that he hoped to be effective. The issue would come with ensuring that no one found the problem before it was too late.
Her eyes widened, and her breath came in more rapid succession. “But... but all those people!”
He continued to stare at the numbers overhead, the lift shifting direction and taking them leftwards. Nearly there now.
“You can’t just...”
He turned to her, his eyes intentionally hard. “I can. And I am going to. You claim ignorance of the crimes of this ship, and for now I shall choose to believe you. But then believe me when I say that I am doing this galaxy a service by putting an end to its true purpose.”
She opened her mouth, an argument already ready on her tongue, but she closed it again, and he was glad. He wanted her to think, for her to listen, not simply react.
He wondered why it mattered.
“What about the rest of the people?” she asked instead. “Lots are patients and their children. Do they deserve it too?”
To his mind, yes. It was due to their financing that the rest of it was possible. But he was certain saying so would only lead to more tears on her part, and that was tiresome. “That alarm has been ringing for the past twenty minutes. You think that patients did not evacuate when they first began to hear it?” He did not lie, but he was not confident that all had heeded the warning. But there was a chance. And he would have to live with knowing that a few would remain that had benefited from the Project and its work.
It would be far easier when the main hub was floating rubble in space.
The girl quieted after that, her expression still troubled, but her most pressing concern apparently appeased.
The doors opened.
Engineering was an interesting place. Perhaps in days of old, a lively hub of workers overseeing the delicate processes that kept the ship moving, kept the lights functioning, kept a steady stream of life support going through the vents.
But that was not 261’s experience.
In the small glimpse he’d been offered, it was a desolate place. Should the slightest alarm give hint of trouble, a host of specially trained individuals would be ready with knowledge and skill to tackle the problem, but the room itself had been modestly outfitted.
At the time, the staffer had even slept through 261’s venture into his domain.
He would not expect such fortune again, and he made brief inventory of the weaponry supplied on his person. His time of rebellion was an opportune one, for the Project had not had time to strip him of his tools after his last mission.
The last he would ever do them for them.
The doors were readying to open when he turned to his captive. Or was she an asset? He needed to decide, and soon. “Keep as quiet as you can,” he instructed, wondering if would be prudent to silence her outright. But he could not recall if he’d been given the sonic muzzle, and he would not waste time looking for something that might not be there at all.
She gave him a rueful look, and he wondered if she would be capable of heeding his instruction at all. Many couldn’t, those who had not experienced death finding it a shocking thing to witness.
He wondered at such innocence, what it might be like to experience horror so acute that one lost control.
The doors opened.
And despite the foreign feeling, the muscles so unused to such an action.
261 smiled.
2
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not in the least.
She was supposed to work, earn credits, and then return home. Not almost die twice in the same day.
She was still waiting for it to be a third time.
She was a simple girl from a simple farming colony. The work was difficult, their technology limited, and when she’d seen the advert for the Wholeness Project, she’d first dismissed it. It was too glamorous for the likes of her. She’d likely embarrass herself or even the company if she even applied.
Yet here she was, and it turned out it had all been a dreadful mistake.
He claimed there was something nefarious about it, something she was missing, but there had been no evidence of that. She saw couples, saw tears turn to beaming smiles, she saw children brought in for wellness checks, happy and thriving.
Surely he was wrong. Surely he was simply a madman, delusions clouding his mind until all that was left was a tangle of misinformation.
And she was tied to him.
She had never seen a room quite like the one they entered. Lights pulsed in rhythmic succession, suggesting some kind of power source that she could not even begin to name. Tubing lined the walls, filled with some kind of viscous fluid, an eerie blue light emanating from within. It was cold, clearly the chamber not attuned to humanoid preferences, but rather whatever the strange power cells required.
The room was strangely desolate other than two crewmen talking in the far corner, their backs to the newcomers, their attention on a console.
He’d told her to be quiet. He’d been very clear on that. But the temptation was there to shout, perhaps not for help for herself, but so they might run. The man tied to her had not physically hurt her, not yet, but she fully believed him capable of doing so. There was a hardness about him that was terrifying, a complete lack of any sort of empathy. She should have recognised it at once when first she’d so stupidly tried to ask him for help, but she hadn’t.
And now she was here.
He was moving forward so she had little choice but to do the same, the desire to hang back nearly overtaking her. But that would only lead to her stumbling, and she was acutely aware that the more trouble she caused, the less likely it would be that he kept her alive.
And she wanted to live.
Wanted to go home.
Wanted her job.
She had come to enjoy the work, though at first she’d found it so intimidating. She enjoyed meeting all different sorts of people, enjoyed the bustle in the corridors beyond, doctors and nurses flitting from room to room, tending to patients, delivering babies. She would not pretend that she had seen very much in her time there, but what she had was captivating.
She loved the smooth white walls, the professional logo embroidered on her uniform, the feeling that she was a part of something important.
She loved that there was no longer a constant supply of dirt clinging beneath her fingertips.
She did not love the supplied shoes. They pinched her little toe incessantly, suggesting perhaps her feet were just a bit too wide for the preferred candidate for her position, but she had never thought to complain. Maybe when she had been there longer, she would risk slipping them off entirely behind her desk, but she hadn’t tried it yet.
Not when she was certain they would dismiss her soon for the smallest offense.
According to the madman, however, that would no longer be a concern.
There would be no desk to hide behind, no patients to check in, no pretty emblem lining polished corridors.
No Wholeness Project.
Not exactly true. This was not their only facility, and dimly she already wondered if she could be hired on in another quadrant.
She chided herself for such thoughts. People were going to die here today, if the madman proved even half as capable as he seemed, and here she thought of a job.
He had told her to be quiet. But that inferred silencing her tongue. She knew that was not all he meant, but when they passed a set of tools stationed on a cart, she found herself purposefully knocking it with her hip, the set of drills and electro-wrenches clattering against one another.
Three sets of eyes landed on her and she swallowed, only concerned with the ones nearest her. She was ready to tell him she was sorry—the only truth she could muster, for as soon as he looked at her with those eyes, she regretted the action entirely. But then his attention left, and his hand was rising, a hand filled with a blaster she had not noticed before.
The men dropped before they were even given a chance to move, laser fire burning hot and true through their foreheads, no blood even spilling on the polished floors.
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
She’d seen a man die before. A fight had broken out at the eatery, likely a complaint over rations that had turned physical. A hearty blow and an unfortunately placed table, and the other man was dead, his eyes open and unseeing as he laid where he fell, spectators too shocked at how quickly it had ended to do anything at first.
But that had begun as a squabble, the dead man landing a few blows of his own. Unfortunate, yes, but not uncommon where she’d come from.
But this...
The invisible tether insisted she keep moving, and she did, though her feet felt leaden, her mind floating somewhere not wholly related to her body. She didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want any part of this.
The madman thought his reasons were good, had even suggested she believe him on word alone, but that seemed wholly impossible. Not after he’d just killed two crewmembers simply because they’d had the misfortune of being on duty.
They were moving closer to the bodies, and her legs grew even more unwilling to cooperate, her arms pulled taut as the madman kept moving and she did not. That was fine. She didn’t even feel the discomfort. Not really. And she was not going any closer. She couldn’t.
Not when she would have to see their faces, the visages burned into her memory for the rest of her life—no matter how short that would prove to be when he remembered she hadn’t followed his instructions.
Eventually the pull of the tether gave her no choice but to comply. He was intent on the console, and she knew that whatever his intention, it would end badly. “You don’t have to do this,” she reminded him, a plea and a prayer that perhaps he would rethink things.
Or maybe it was simply to stop him moving so she did not have to see, did not have to carry the memory of those men with her.
“I do not,” he agreed, but there was no comfort in it. “But I want to.”
And with that, he took hold of the tether and gave it a hard yank, pulling her forward so there was enough allowance for him to reach the console and do... whatever he intended.
It would not have been so bad had she not stumbled over the leg of one of the fallen crewmembers. He was in a traditional uniform, ones she had seen the maintenance staff wearing when there was trouble with a lavatory or one of the entrance panels on the main door. They had always been friendly with her, indulgent even when it was her ignorance that proved the problem rather than an issue with the system.
She swallowed, trying to suppress the wave of sick that threatened to overwhelm her.
“Is this what you do?” she asked, knowing he’d told her to be quiet, but clearly the room had already been purged of intruders. Or perhaps he feared her being a distraction. She wasn’t certain she could help being that, not when words and actions kept coming forth unbidden. “Blow up ships and kill innocents?”
Hard eyes met hers, but only briefly before he returned to his work. “Disabling aircrafts is a fairly common procedure in my previous employ, yes.” Each word was offered tightly, almost incredulously, as if he could not quite believe that he was answering her at all.
It surprised her just as equally.
Previous employ. She had heard of people taking revenge after their contracts were terminated, their next positions being less to their liking. When attempts to return were rebuffed, they grew angry.
Perhaps that was what happened to him. That did not explain why he would be well versed in keeping ships from being able to fly or why the Project would require such a thing. Maybe if new parents could not pay the rest of their feeds, their crafts were seized as recompense. The thought saddened her, but she was certain they would find the exchange worth it. A baby for a ship? Surely that was fair.
Unease still settled in her belly, doubt and worry gnawing persistently that she simply did not know enough, and that was something she was well acquainted with. She had not been given much education, not compared to what children were provided on other worlds. She knew how to read, knew her way around a basic pad, but even this job had intimidated her.
“I don’t understand,” she said aloud, trying not to cry. The bodies were still beside her, and the madman seemed wholly unconcerned with the state of them. The state of her.
He was focused on his task, and she was acutely aware that she had no concept of what he was doing. Would the ship explode immediately? Would she feel it? She hoped not. She hoped that perhaps it would feel like nothingness, that it would be so quick that she would simply blink and then...
“You are clouded by fear so you are not listening,” the madman chastised, not bothering to look up from his work. She did not fully disagree with him, but she also would maintain that he used far too few words. “You are employed by an evil people, one that I am going to purge from the universe.”
Evil?
That was a strong word, one not bandied about lightly. Unjust, maybe. Unfair. Cruel could even be used to describe some of the overseers in the farming colonies, but not evil.
And he clearly believed what he said.
Either he was even more delusional than she thought, or she had grossly misunderstood the Project and its work.
But the Project was not intent on committing a crime against a mass of people, many who likely did not deserve it.
The maintenance workers didn’t. They had been kind and helpful.
Her colleagues could be a little brusque with her, saving their charm and smiles for clients and patients, but that was to be expected. She was a little slow, a little new, and she understood that mistakes could be tiresome things.
She’d seen no proof of his assertion, nothing that would make her trust his word. There was only the niggling caution that he could be. That there was much in the universe she did not understand, and could not pretend to. And maybe she was simply blind to what she did not wish to see.
He retreated from the console, a satisfied look on his face—one of the few expressions she had seen from him thus far. It was barely there, only a hint of what a normal man might have produced, but she was looking at him so intently that she could see the slight crinkle about the eyes, the set of his mouth as he surveyed his work with satisfaction.
It would only be a matter of time now.
She had not bothered to stand from when she’d stumbled. Scuttled away from the bodies, yes, but that was all. She would only get yanked again, and despair was beginning to creep in. She didn’t want to die, but a new possibility was settling into her mind.
What if she lived? Either he would leave her on the ship to join the rest of the crew, awaiting a death she could not avoid. Or he would take her with him.
And she shuddered just imagining what a life like that would entail, short though she was certain it would be.
“You are crying,” he commented dryly, his head tilted as he assessed her. “You will have reason to cry more if you remain where you are.”
She sniffed, wiping her hand against her eyes, not realising that she had even begun. “What happens now?”
He seemed so calm, that she wondered if she had misjudged his intent and there was no urgency, no threat of the ship imploding in on itself in only a short while.
She did not expect him to suddenly crouch, to lean in closer. She countered the movement, certain he would touch her again, would threaten to cut away her breath until she knew no more, but he didn’t.
He watched.
For what, she could not say.
“If we remain where we are,” he answered. “We will die with the rest of them. Is that what you would like?”
Her throat felt suddenly tight. She didn’t need him to interfere with her breathing—evidently her body was capable of choking her without his assistance. “No,” she managed to get out past her uncooperative throat. “That isn’t what I want.”
She didn’t want anyone to die. S
he might have understood if the madman had to die, and even now she prayed that real security would come and put an end to the situation. She would blurt out what she knew, would watch as more engineers would be roused from their off-hours and would save them all.
But the doors weren’t opening, and it was just the two of them, time apparently slipping away, and the choice with it.
“Then, you are saying you would like to leave this ship?” he pressed, and she was certain she was answering everything wrong, was agreeing to something she couldn’t possibly understand.
“Yes,” she said anyway, the honesty ripped from her, brutal and selfish, as she noticed a light begin to change on the far wall. There was no accompanying alarm, nothing that might notify someone of the trouble within the system, but enough to send terror spiking through her.
“Then you will walk,” the madman told her, not giving her the chance for hesitation as he reached out and pulled her to her feet. He did not touch her for long, only the quick grasp of her bound wrists and a yank of movement, his strength measured enough to keep her from flying forward into him.
They disappeared back into the lift, and she watched him type in his coordinates with a grim sort of resignation. She could only dully hope that he would put her in an escape pod and send her to safety, but that outcome seemed brittle even in imagination, and likely impossible.
“I don’t want to die,” she admitted, a plea, but also an apology to all those who would be left behind, unwarned of the imminent threat.
“Then you will walk,” he said again, his voice an unsettling sort of calm. Her hands were shaking, as she followed him, wishing she had more knowledge of the technology surrounding her that she might alert the others. But there was no great button fastened to the wall for emergencies. No automated voice offering assistance to the novice learner.
This place was one of the most advanced facilities in the galaxy, and their engine room was no different.
And she was a receptionist.
A farm girl that knew how to push the four buttons required of her to see a patient settled into the proper room.
Designation 261 (The Wholeness Project) Page 3