by James Walker
“That's horrible,” Cena said. “These poor people.” She clasped her hands together and whispered a prayer for the repose of the dead.
“I never heard about any of this,” Eliot said. “They must have covered the whole thing up.”
Although unnerved by realization that they had intruded upon a graveyard filled with monstrous corpses, the expedition team pressed on. Soon, they reached a sector reserved for Colonial Administration personnel only. In the deepest reaches of the restricted area, they found a security checkpoint, once heavily guarded by soldiers and attack drones. The human guards had long ago abandoned their posts in panic, but the robotic gatekeepers watched over the checkpoint still, now eternally silent. Beyond the security measures sat an enormous gate, its surface adorned with radiation hazard symbols and the words, “Planetary Radiation Research Laboratory. Authorized Personnel Only. Trespassers will be shot on sight.”
“We found it,” Esther gasped.
“We won't be getting that door open with a magnetic lever,” Pierson said. “Fortunately, I brought along a more forceful solution. Everyone, stand back.”
The rest of the team moved back as Pierson planted explosives on the gate. He returned to the others and motioned them around a corner before pulling out a remote detonator and pressing the switch. A deafening explosion ripped through the silence, spewing fire and debris everywhere. Pierson peered around the corner and nodded to the others.
Beyond the destroyed gate lay a once-luxurious reception area, where another corpse floated through the darkness. The team shone their lights on the body and saw the remains of a pale young man dressed in a medical gown, killed not by runaway cancerous growths but by a slew of bullet wounds. Upon the chest of his gown were printed the numbers 653, and in the center of his brow resided a third eye, staring into nothingness.
Astral floated forward and grabbed the boy's corpse by the hand. She stared at the body in wonder and said in her tiny voice, “Is this my brother?”
Vic maneuvered to Astral's side and put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you recognize this boy?”
Astral shook her head. “I never saw any of my siblings, but he has a third eye, like me. He must have been part of the same research project I was.”
She reached out her other hand and stroked the boy's frozen face. “I wonder if they gave him a name,” she said. “I wonder what he thought about, shut away for so many years in the darkness.”
“They're not invincible, then,” Guntar said. “That's a relief to know. Though judging by what happened to this colony, the carnage they're capable of inflicting is terrifying. Talk about a biological weapon.”
A clang rang out from the security checkpoint behind them. For an instant, something moved at the edge of their lights, but it vanished before any of them could get a closer look at it. Everyone except Esther and Astral drew firearms and aimed them through the wreckage.
“What the hell was that?” Cena said, her voice shaking.
“Probably just a piece of debris floating around,” Eliot said.
“Both of you go check it out,” Guntar ordered. “We'll cover you from here.”
Eliot and Cena flew back to the security checkpoint and shone their lights around. They searched for about a minute and, turning up nothing, came back through the wrecked gate and rejoined the rest of the team.
“Nothing, Colonel,” Eliot said. “Just debris, like I thought.”
“Fine,” Guntar said. “Let's move on.”
Esther paused to collect more samples from the body of the research subject, then they flew through the reception area and entered the rooms beyond. They found several biology laboratories so badly damaged by battle that nothing remained to shed light on the nature of the research that was conducted within. The labs were clogged with the bodies of mangled security guards, along with hundreds of spent shell casings and the corpse of another research subject, this one labeled 580.
Past the bio labs, they found a sealed door. The door gave way before Pierson's magnetic lever, and beyond, they found a large chamber filled with rows of stasis pods. Opaque casings covered most of the pods, but a few stood exposed as transparent cylinders containing human shapes. They focused their lights on the shapes and discovered more creatures similar to Astral, but with various deformities. Some had many eyes scattered randomly across their faces, while others sported extra limbs or had grotesquely unbalanced proportions. All of them floated within stale preservation fluid, long dead.
“These were the failures,” Astral whispered. “They couldn't receive actuation waves properly, or their genetic compositions were unstable. The scientists talked about them a lot.”
“This is horrible,” Cena gasped. “So much desecration of the human body.”
Another body floated behind the nearest row of stasis capsules. As it came into view, they saw that it wore a lab coat with a researcher's I.D. tag on the breast. Eliot intercepted the corpse and began rifling through its clothes.
“What are you doing?” Cena exclaimed. “Leave the dead in peace.”
“I'm just seeing if he has anything interesting,” Eliot replied. “And what do you know. Take a look at this.”
He extracted a pocket computer from the researcher's shirt and tried to power it on. When it failed to respond, he swapped its battery with the one in his own computer and made another attempt to turn it on. This time, it hummed to life, the light from the tiny screen reflecting off his visor. Smiling in triumph, he tossed the computer gently to Esther. Esther caught it and watched as the operating system proceeded through its startup sequence.
“The account is password-protected,” she reported. “But that's no big deal. Give me a couple minutes and I can bypass that no problem.”
The others waited expectantly as Esther navigated through the operating system. She soon reported success and began browsing the files kept in persistent storage. After a few minutes, her expression lit up in triumph.
“Guys, I think we just hit the jackpot,” she said. “The file system is crammed full of research notes.”
“What do they say?” Pierson asked, unable to contain the excitement in his voice.
“Give me a second.” Esther browsed through the research files, pausing to skim the ones that looked most interesting. Finally, her eyes widened in amazement and she gasped, “Oh, my God.”
“What is it, Doc?” Eliot demanded. “Don't keep us in suspense.”
“The real purpose of this research was not to create humans with special powers,” Esther said. “That's only a side effect. The primary objective was to establish contact with an alien intelligence. Listen to this summary of the research project. 'After performing detailed mathematical analysis on samples of over 10,000 repil radiation readings, we have determined that the wave fluctuations do not meet the criteria for statistical randomness, nor do they exhibit patterns that would be expected of natural phenomena. In fact, it is highly probable that these waves contain meaningful, deliberately transmitted information, although we have so far been unable to decode it.
“'As is widely known, repil radiation originates in Saris's atmosphere, although the physical process by which the planet generates this radiation is not well understood. We developed a hypothesis that repil radiation signals constitute an attempt at intelligent communication. However, it is beyond question that Saris itself is the origin of these signals, which brings us to an obvious conundrum: What is attempting to communicate with us? Could the planet itself be intelligent? Although there is a romantic poetry to this notion, further investigations brought us to a more likely explanation: repil radiation is not simply an attempt by an alien intelligence to contact us; the radiation itself is the alien intelligence.
“'The patterns exhibited by repil radiation suggest that the detectable waves are only a medium by which the hypothetical intelligence's actions propagate through the physical world. If this is the case, then this intelligence's true form can be understood only mathematically, as an ent
ity residing in high-dimensional space. We refer to this hypothetical intelligence as the Xenowave.
“'This hypothesis is consistent with the fact that the so-called xenoadaptation effect, and in particular the fatal mutation known as Messenger syndrome, does not exhibit the behavior expected of random mutations, but rather seems driven as though by a conscious purpose. It is possible that, by changing the D.N.A. of organic life forms and attempting to propagate itself through the conversion of human tissue into diffusion cells, the Xenowave is attempting to communicate with us through more direct means. It may not even be aware of the harm that these mutations inflict upon the victims.
“'If this is true, then we can establish contact with the Xenowave by harnessing these mutations into a controlled, non-fatal form, by engineering an organism that acts as a receptor for repil radiation. We refer to these specially engineered receptors as Synthetic Messengers, or Synegers. Should we succeed, we can use these Synegers as a means to establish contact with the Xenowave.
“'We note also that humans infected with Messenger syndrome, prior to dying of cancerous mutations, often exhibit extraordinary mental capabilities, including a phenomenon that can only be described as extrasensory perception. A Syneger could theoretically be endowed with similar attributes without suffering the fatal side effects that accompany unmitigated Messenger syndrome. We can leverage this aspect to secure research funding, since the prospect of engineering artificial psychics will likely look more attractive to the review board.'”
Esther finished reading. For a long time, the others said nothing.
Finally, Amos broke the silence by saying, “So, it would appear that the term 'Messenger' is far more appropriate than anyone ever knew. And this girl is...”
“That's right,” a voice tinged with inhuman tones interrupted him.
Everyone turned to Astral, whose third eye was shining with brilliant scarlet light. “I am the first stable vessel that we can use to communicate with you,” she said.
The others stared at her agape. Vic reached out one hand and stammered, “Astral?”
“Yes,” she answered, her voice fringed with the strange timbre of a foreign consciousness. “But I am not only Astral.”
“Xenowave,” Pierson breathed.
“Your name for us,” Astral said. “We wish to warn you.”
“Warn us?” Esther asked. “About what?”
“We are not of one will,” Astral said. “A shadow has long lain sealed within us. Your coming has awakened it. The imperfections arising from the material world fill it with rage. It seeks to reduce all things to nothingness. It is pure evil. Its name is Scathe, and it has now found release through the perfect vessel.”
“Scathe?” Vic repeated. “What is it? How can we stop it?”
Astral did not answer. The glow in her third eye faded while her other two eyes closed and her body grew slack. Vic propelled himself toward her and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Astral,” he called. “Astral, are you all right?”
Her eyes fluttered open and she grasped her helmet in both hands. “My head hurts,” she sobbed. “So many voices.”
“The Xenowave,” Pierson said. “Is it still there?”
Astral groaned and shook her head. “It's there, but I can't channel it for long when it's so strong. I feel like my head is going to burst.”
“But it was telling us something important,” Pierson insisted. “Can you try?”
“I can't,” Astral cried. “I'm sorry. It's just too strong here. My receptors have shut down as a protective measure.”
Pierson's face contorted in frustration. “Dammit.”
A clang rang out from behind Eliot, and a shadow moved swiftly at the edge of his light. His nerves caused him to spin around and shoot blindly into the darkness. Something grabbed his wrist and deflected the shot wide, causing the bullet to ricochet several times off the walls.
“Hold your fire,” a woman's voice exclaimed, muffled by an airtight visor. “I'm not your enemy.”
The others shone their lights on the intruder, illuminating a svelte woman clad in a Spacy flight suit. Several of them recognized the burn-scarred face inside the visor.
“It's you,” Vic cried.
“Yes. My name is La—I mean...” The woman hesitated, then said, “My name is Celeste. You were right,” she looked at Vic, “it is possible to cut the strings, if you know they're there.”
Vic looked at her in amazement. “You mean...?”
Celeste nodded. “I forced the maintenance crew to wipe my programming. My mind is my own again. Though it took a tragic sacrifice... But that's not important right now. There's something I have to tell you.”
“What is it?” Pierson asked.
“I overhead everything that happened just now,” Celeste said. “Including what Astral said, about this thing called Scathe, and that it's found the perfect vessel. I think I know what vessel she was talking about.”
“You do?” Pierson said. “What?”
Celeste replied, “Commodore Falsrain.”
SEVENTH MESSAGE: FALSRAIN ~ SO CLOSE THINE EYES, HEAR NOTHING, REACH INSIDE
50
Falsrain floated within the Onyx Down's observation room, surrounded by a dome of monitors. The ocher halo of Chalice hovered to the right, but Falsrain's attention was transfixed on the gigantic form of Saris directly over him, its swirling eyes boring into his own. Some time earlier, he had felt the vessel shudder from what seemed like external impacts and the intercom had sounded general quarters, but soon enough the danger, whatever its origin, had passed. Falsrain had paid the episode no heed. Mere battles were of no importance to him now.
As Falsrain hovered in the center of the chamber, his long coat and hair billowing from the air flow of the ventilation system, a voice seemed to whisper on the breeze.
“Are you there?”
Falsrain frowned. The question was so faint, it might only have been a perturbation of air through a loose ventilation grate. He was about to dismiss it as a product of his imagination when it spoke again, more clearly.
“Are you there?”
A thrill of excitement passed through Falsrain. “I'm here,” he answered.
There was a pause. Something stroked the edges of his consciousness like gentle fingertips. “Who are you?” the voice asked.
“Me?” Falsrain considered the question. If this entity was what he thought it was, to respond with his name would be meaningless. How could he best convey his identity to a superior being, a creature of pure energy?
“I...” He paused, then smiled as the most perfect, natural answer presented itself to him. “I am nothing. I am... emptiness.”
“Indeed?” The voice seemed pleased. “What do you think of those around you who are overflowing with transient fire, who burn until they flicker out like candles in the wind?”
“Nothing,” Falsrain answered truthfully. “I think nothing of them.”
“And what of yourself?” the voice asked. “What is your deepest desire?”
“I?” Falsrain held up his hand and stared at it. “I just want to persist. I don't want to flicker out. I want to be a flame that burns perpetually.”
He felt a tinge of inhuman will seeping into the cracks at the edge of his mind. “And if that were impossible?” the voice inquired.
Falsrain swung his arm in a violent expression of denial, causing him to spin slowly through the air. “It must be possible,” he cried. “You exist as pure energy, on a higher plane of consciousness. You're practically a god! You must know how to free me from the shackles of this miserable, decaying vessel of flesh.”
“Ah,” the voice said in understanding. Did Falsrain detect a hint of amusement from it? “So it is release that you seek.”
“Yes,” he said fervently. “Please, make me your emissary. I will gladly carry out your will. Only, elevate my consciousness closer to your realm, if even a little bit. I ask for nothing else in recompense to become your loyal s
ervant for all time.”
A trace of his excitement was reflected in the voice as it said, “In return for this blessing, you will become my hands to enact my will?”
“I will,” Falsrain nodded, his eyes gleaming with ecstasy. “Then you accept me?”
“Yes, my servant,” the voice said. “Let us be bound, you and I, by an inseverable contract.”
Falsrain extended his arms, his face lighting up with exaltation, as a foreign will seeped into his own. To think that injecting himself with Astral's tissue samples had actually worked! That miserable lab rat, that failure, had rejected him. But by becoming a Syneger himself, Falsrain had rendered her interference irrelevant. He would make a far more fitting vessel for the Xenowave than that deformed homunculus ever could.
Yet something seemed wrong. As the Xenowave filled Falsrain's consciousness, its thoughts merging with his own, he caught glimpses of an unfathomable loathing, a hatred so deep and terrible that brushing against it nearly made him physically ill. As the entity's true intentions appeared through the murk of his thoughts, a sensation of horrified rejection rose within him, and he began flailing about in panic.
“No,” he shrieked. “This isn't what we agreed on. This isn't what I wanted. It's the opposite—the opposite of my desires! Get out! Get out of me!”
With a last, gurgling cry, Falsrain fell silent and his eyes rolled up in the back of his head. His body grew slack and he floated limply in the observation room for a long time, as still as a corpse.
*
Commander Koga strode into the observation room, his magnetic boots clacking on the metal floor. Upon spotting Falsrain floating in the center of the chamber, he stormed in, shouting and waving his arms in anger.
“So this is where you came to cower while you abandoned your duties, is it? Do you even know what's been going on while you've been hiding in here? You'll be lucky if they don't have you hanged after...”