Chapter 14
There was a voice in his mind.
A voice, alternatively whispering and screaming. It knew his fear and his desire, it knew his hatred and his love. It knew… Heinrich bit his lip until he drew blood, using the pain to focus his thoughts. He wasn’t injured and his suit was undamaged, the daemon was trying to control him but it couldn’t do so entirely. Meanwhile the Japanese specialist was lurching around, stumbling uncontrollably. He he had become a serious threat, clearly unable to resist the preternatural being possessing him. Ideally they would restrain him and treat him with anti-possession meds, but that was out of the question now. The Medic raised his pistol and fired two shots, turning the possessed man’s head into mush. As the body continued to flail he tossed away his firearm and found the TED gun, then started shooting.
He got the one that had attacked him and then a second daemon as it emerged from the ruined corpse that had been Hirasawa. But there were still more. At least one had attached itself to every human in the team and there were still two free entities circling around looking for targets.
Squaring himself Heinrich tightened his grip on the TED gun.
Chapter 15
Chapter 15
Sergei’s arm throbbed and his heart pounded. He fought to hang on to control, to keep his sanity and his mind against the waves of… wrong that flowed over him. He summoned up images of god, of the party, of Kamila who waiting for him. All to no avail. The thing was inside of him, pushing into his veins and arteries, trying to extinguish what made him who he was. He dropped his gun and sank to his knees, hot tears on his cheeks as the man who was Sergei Ivanovich Blagadov slipped away.
Then the unthinkable happened.
He felt a… third presence in his mind. Something else pushing back against the pain and the wrong. A stubborn refusal to accept defeat, a mindless determination that would not allow itself to be snuffed out. Had the daemon a mouth it would have shrieked and screamed as it was shredded into fragments, and those fragments were shredded into scraps, and those scraps evaporated into nothing.
Exhausted, Sergei lay on the filthy plates of the deck and drew in breaths of stale air, staring up at the lost ship in a bottle that gamboled above him on waves of light.
Chapter 16
Chapter 16
Words. Symbols. Knowledge. If he had retained the faculties to move then Adolphus would have laughed. The pathways that the Mentiflex had widened were being torn open by the daemon’s attack and even as he felt himself ripped away the flow of information down those pathways turned from a trickle into a flood. It made the sum total of everything had ever known or understood pale in comparison, as the bulb of a flashlight paled before the rays of the midday sun. He was being destroyed utterly, yet it did not bother him and he gloried in it. And just before that last spark of humanity was locked away by the daemon in a place of eternal pain and darkness inside of himself he reached out.
And crushed the daemon.
It writhed and fought in his grasp but the Knowledge had told him what to do, told him how to use his own soul as a trap and a weapon, how reach out and strike at the creature in the same manner in which it struck out at him. The daemon died and the Technician, now something more than he had once been, opened his eyes to see the brave new world around him.
The Knowledge spoke, and he listened.
Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Cold.
Bitter cold. Colder than the emptiness of space. Colder than the frozen glaciers of Antarctica and Greenland. Colder than the fear that gripped her as she swam.
It was Arra’s nightmare, the swim as she left a punctured boat behind, striking out from certain death to certain death, no hope only panic. Why are you swimming? A voice asked. Why are you causing yourself more pain? Sleep and it will all be over. But she ignored the voice. Just one more stroke. And having taken that stroke she realized that she could take another. Just to see how far she could go, how close to land she could make it before she died.
It was all for personal curiosity really.
And then came the call of the horn as it always did from the ship. Calling out rescue, blaring out safety. Only this time it was too far away and her arms wouldn’t move, and she started to sink…
Pain. Light. Warmth.
The commando gasped and opened her eyes. The Nazi was standing over her holding an empty syringe as he resealed an opening in her suit. Neobalax of course, an anti-possession drug.
“How long-”
“We have to get out of here.” He finished and then pulled her to her feet. “Can you walk?”
Arra saw the Technician looking distracted and Sergei shaking like a leaf. Presumably the missing two were dead. “Always.” She told him. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 18
Chapter 18
Sergei took a deep breath and tried to grab a hold of himself. He was alive, he wasn’t being possessed- at least not by a daemon. He still had no idea what that other presence had been, the one that had most definitely saved his life and destroyed the daemon. That ship in a bottle… Could it be? It was still following them, but ghosts didn’t help people, the dead were dead. They were enemies at worst and sources of power at best. Sweat dripped from his brow into his eyes and the Russian shivered. He felt cold but he was sweating, you didn’t need to be a doctor to recognize that meant fever.
Should he tell the medic? Eventually maybe, if it became a problem. For now he could still function, and as long as he could function he could fight. Besides, with their recent casualties he was now the Team Leader.
“Do you hear something?” Speaking of the Medic, Heinrich had assumed the second position, even though by all rights it should be the Commando at his shoulder. The other man had taken Hirasawa’s TED gun and between that with his pistol the Nazi apparently now believed that he should have a combat role. The Combat Specialist had more important things to do than challenge him though, and Arra seemed to be letting it slide.
“That clicking?” Sergei was careful to shine his flashlight into any open doors they passed. “Da.”
They were moving through the crew quarters, through a nightmare of broken doors and smashed walls, seventy year old feces and blood smeared across the bulkheads. Bodies, none more than skeletons, lay scattered everywhere. Almost all showed signs of monsterism and the empty eye sockets of skulls watched the surviving team members as they made their way past in a tightly bunched group. Here and there you could see where an individual or a group of seamen had attempted to barricade themselves in one of the bunkrooms, only to fall eventually to hands of their former comrades or the insidious creeping effects of Thaumaturgic Radiation. Scrawled in flaking dark blood on one wall were the words “there is no god”, and he moved quickly past them- disturbed in some innate fashion by the nihilistic sentiment.
And overlaying everything was the sound of a regular clicking, not metallic but something else. There was an enemy in here somewhere, in this warren of desperation a monster had to be lurking. They still had one friend at least, or something that the Russian was convinced had to be a friend. The luminescent ship in a bottle floated a few meters behind the group, bobbing to avoid the keening spirit of a dead sailor.
“Technician.” Sergei whispered, and then when there was no response, “Adolf!”
“Hmm?” The little man that he had never trusted had been very distracted ever since they left the officers’ quarters where Grey and Hirasawa died. He was a fascist, and if he tried to ignore the orders of his superior officer for some pseudo-scientific racial reason then he would have another thing coming.
“You have a spell that incinerates things?” They should have recovered the Japanese specialist’s plasma gun- another mistake atop a long list of mistakes that began with entering this ship.
“Yes.” Adolphus turned to look at the Combat Specialist, light from their flashlights reflected in his eyes disconcertingly. “I know what I did wrong the last time,
Knowledge tells me how to do it better now.” He probably meant ‘experience’, not 'knowledge', neither of them knew English as their first language and stress was the sort of thing that would bring out mistakes.
“Good.” They had come to a corner and the clicking was louder than ever now. It wasn’t moving closer to them, they were moving closer to it. Sergie stepped over a pile of… something, and cautiously moved around the corner, his assault rifle aimed directly down the corridor towards the source of the sound. It was worse than he had feared. With the exception of the American sailor and his machines (who was horrible because he was conscious and could speak) it was the most terrifying thing that he had seen since the team had entered the U.S.S Colorado, worse than the easily dispatched spider-man, or the possessed generator that had wounded his arm.
It was a tree.
Rising from a mound of skeletons and decaying flesh was a trunk of ivory-white bone. Fleshy branches of muscle tissue sprouted from it at regular intervals, looking pink and alive. Each branch terminated in a set of apparently human mandibles, reflexively opening and closing forcefully without any clear pattern or higher thought and producing the continuous clicking sound that they had heard. Broken teeth formed a veritable snowdrift amid the still putrescent corpses- or was that just the rotting remains of bitten off tongues? Around the branches hovered a sea of lights and half formed figures, hundreds if not thousands of ghosts, their faint voices like the rushing of the sea.
“I’ve never seen so many ghosts in one place, they’re broadcasting across the electromagnetic spectrum.” The Technician said, fascination written clearly on his face. “Not just visible light, radio, ultraviolet, there’s even some gamma radiation.” How could he tell? The Russian was about to ask when he took a step closer and the ghostly voices resolved suddenly into a single terrifyingly familiar phrase repeated over and over again with no emotion or inflection.
“Beware JS. Beware JS. Beware JS.”
The ghosts surged forward, a wave of lights and sounds and voices repeating in union unceasingly. The Nazi fired the TED gun, sending one pulse after the other, sometimes killing two with one shot, the spirits were so closely packed together. But there were hundreds of them and while one ghost might be reckoned no more than a nuisance this many were an unstoppable force. Not being physical creatures they could at times barely effect solid objects and people. But even alone ghosts spread madness in their wake, and Sergei could already feel the voices gnawing at his still fragile self-control.
“Retreat.” He took a great deal of pride in the fact that his voice didn’t quaver when he gave the order. “Run!”
They ran pell-mell, trying not to trip on bones and detritus as they fled down the hallway, the shining ship in a bottle shooting after them. The Medic grabbed his shoulder and Sergei almost shot him in surprise.
“Adolphus stopped!”
The Russian turned his head and saw the technician standing in the path of the oncoming ghosts, chanting arcane words. They circled around him, held back by an invisible barrier- Thaumaturgy. One dissolved, then another.
“We can’t go back.” They were almost to the door.
“Gott im himmel! You can’t leave him behind!” The Nazi stopped.
“Then go get him and bring him back with you.” Sergei snarled and laid hands on the door. “Quickly!” He threw it open and found himself staring into a large darkened room, the walls lined with catwalks. Glowing tendrils stirred as the door opened and as quickly as he had pushed it open he slammed it shut. The generator room again. He opened the door a second time, a hallway lined with destruction and devastation. At the far end was the shape of the jaw-tree, clicking away endlessly. The Russian closed it a second time.
“God and all the saints help me.” He whispered, trying to shut out the voices of the ghosts. He opened the door a third time and was face to face with a man in a dirty Hazardous Environment Suit torn on one arm and an M-5 slung over his shoulder. Sweat ran down his face and his eyes were fever bright. Behind him three other people in ES suits, a woman and two men crowded in close. For a long time Sergei stared at himself, seeing the same fear, pain, and confusion reflected in the other's familiar face that he knew showed on his own. Then both Sergei Ivanoviches closed their doors simultaneously.
Some things were better left unknown.
He looked over his shoulder and saw that the Technician had rejoined them, presumably the Nazi had been able to convince him out of whatever foolishness had caused him to stop running. Now back to the door, one more time. This time it opened onto a pitch black corridor, the light of his flashlight showing footprints through the deep dust. The Russian stepped through without a thought, closing the door as soon as the rest of the team had joined him. He knew where they were, a few feet further in there would be a door torn off its hinges, and through there the officers’ mess. It was hardly safe haven, but it would do for a place to rest and catch their breath.
Wearily Sergei started off.
Chapter 19
Chapter 19
“This can’t continue.” The commando slid down to sit on the floor, her back resting against one of the bookcases. “We need a plan of action beyond wandering around at random and hoping that we strike our goals by chance.”
Privately Heinrich agreed with what she said, but he was hardly impressed by her originality. Yes, having a plan was better than not having one, what of it? They had no way of charting a reliable course through the ship- how else could they search? He sighed and wished very much that he could rub his eyes through the suit. Over ten hours of high stress and adrenaline had left him as just exhausted as everyone else, but that forty-eight hour clock was ticking and the situation was continuing to deteriorate. The Medic was worried about Adolphus and his rash attempt to stay behind- he had been planning evidently to use a thaumaturgic barrier to keep the ghosts back while he trapped and converted them into gastplasm one by one- however his neglect to consider the rest of the team was unusual but not unheard of when there was something fascinating holding his attention. What was much more worrisome was the Bolshevik who had definitely started to show symptoms of something. The large man was visibly feverish and sweating and the fact that he hadn’t said anything about what he was going through could very well be an indication of psychological effects on top of that. There were many different kinds of possession, although it could just as easily be one of a number of preternatural diseases. Insanity was a frighteningly common symptom for many of those, and the Nazi could think of at least two conditions that resulted in paranoid delusions which then would lead the infected to attack their friends and allies.
And this man was their highest ranking officer.
To add to those problems they still had yet to do anything about the ship in a bottle. It even managed to follow them back out of the crew quarters and into the officers’ mess where had it rejoined the other miniature ships in their colorful dance over the body of the dead marine. And the team was taking absolutely no precautions, sheltering in a room that was home to half a dozen potentially dangerous preternatural entities and the Bolshevik didn’t seem to care.
There was nothing for it, Heinrich started fishing in his bag for something that might help with the Combat Specialist’s condition. He was going to have to confront the other man about his symptoms and hope that he didn’t deny their existence or become violent. And if he did try to refuse treatment… Well this wasn’t a hospital where they could restrain a troubled patient and examine him. This was the field and the patient had an assault rifle. It was standard operating procedure for PCRA field medics to never to risk your life or the lives of others in order to save an armed, unstable patient suffering the effects of dangerous thaumaturgy or the preternatural. Of course if he had to triage the most heavily armed surviving member of the team who coincidentally also had the most combat training and experience of any of them, then that was hardly going to make them safer with reg
ards to threats from within the ship.
As the American idiom went he was “dammed if he did and dammed if he didn’t”.
Heinrich’s musing were interrupted suddenly by rough words from the Bolshevik, not to him but to the Technician.
Abyssus Abyssum Invocat Page 6