Dead Space: Catalyst

by Evenson, Brian

  Callie stared at her corpse a moment, then gestured to Jensi. “That work?” she asked, pointing to the laser saw on his belt. When he nodded, she said, “Cut off her arms, too. Last thing we want is her coming back to haunt us.”

  * * *

  Jensi had removed one arm and was starting into the other when his RIG receiver crackled to life. He could tell by the looks on the faces of the others that the same thing was happening with their RIGs.

  “Briden here,” the voice said. “You should be more careful where you step.”

  “What do you want, Briden?” asked Callie.

  “Ah, Callie,” he said. “You should have stayed safe where you were in your cell. You would have had a much gentler death there than you will here. Who are your friends?”

  “None of your business,” said Jensi.

  “It doesn’t matter, I suppose,” said Briden. “You won’t last long. None of you will. If I were you, I wouldn’t bother to postpone the inevitable. You’d be better off if you put your guns to your heads now and pulled the triggers.”

  “Shut up, Briden,” said Callie.

  “Gladly, Callie,” said Briden. “I have much better things to do than to waste time talking to you. Besides, with a little luck your deaths will be captured on tape and I’ll be able to watch them over and over again.”

  * * *

  They came to another pressure mine but saw it this time and avoided it. Callie led the way, taking a somewhat circuitous path, as if she wasn’t completely sure where she was. Jensi had taken Anna’s gun, had given his laser saw to Henry.

  “I was serious about killing your brother,” said Callie.

  “I know you were,” said Jensi. “Just give me a chance to talk to him first.”

  They came to a place where the hallway was blocked by stacks of boxes, a kind of makeshift barricade. Callie stared at it a moment. “We can backtrack and take another hallway,” she said. “Or we can break through it. Or we can try to take a shortcut.”

  “What sort of shortcut?” asked Jensi.

  She shrugged, then gestured at the doors behind them. “Some of these rooms connect both to this hall and the one on the other side of it. We cut through one of them, see what’s on the other side.”

  Jensi nodded. “Let’s try it,” he said.

  “It might be a hallway filled with those things,” she said. “We might walk out into the middle of them.”

  “We might,” assented Jensi. “But it’s worth taking the risk.”

  He went to the first door in the hall and slid the door open. The room inside was empty, a fairly shallow storage room that did not have another door. He went to the next door and this one was locked. The third door down was open, however, and opened onto a large room, with a door on the other side of it.

  “Here it is,” he called back, and started in, Henry close behind him, Callie lagging a little ways behind. He crossed through the entrance and took a few steps and only then did he see the man who had been hiding behind the door. He swiveled to face him, raising his gun, but the man reached down to the console in front of him and pressed a button and everything went wrong. He felt his body slow, grow paralyzed. The man suddenly was moving much quicker than he should have been able to move, as if his metabolism had gone mad. He could just glimpse, out of the corner of his eye, Henry, suspended and equally unable to move. Stasis field, he realized, and realized, too, that he was trapped.

  And then the man at the console was rushing about like mad. He was saying something, but Jensi couldn’t hear it, could only see his lips moving too quickly to be read and hear a kind of insectoid whine. There was a rapid burst of energy and the man’s head simply fell off his shoulders. Another rapid burst, and the panel he had been standing at erupted in a shower of sparks.

  Slowly everything keyed up again and suddenly he was rushing rapidly sideways, returning to the movement he had been in the midst of before the stasis. Henry collided with him, and they came down in a heap.

  “Stasis trap,” said Callie from above them. “Simple but ingenious. But with a field not quite big enough to catch all three of us.” She gestured at the headless technician. “He made a mistake about which one of us to leave out of the field. And a further mistake when he underestimated my willingness to kill him.”

  * * *

  They dismembered the body and continued on, following the new hall along. They were halfway when Cassie stopped and ushered them quickly into a side room. They stayed crouched there, listening to the wheezing sound of the creatures passing by, and only once they were ready to go out did Jensi realize that the ducts overhead were broken out and that there was blood spattered across the walls. They slipped quietly back into the corridor and after making sure it was safe, moved forward. Ahead was a strange buzzing noise and Jensi was prepared for some new abomination, but when he turned the corner it was to see a rattling ventilator. The hall curved sharply around another corner and came to an observation theater with a reinforced transparent wall. On the other side of it, in the operation room, stood Briden. He had his arms crossed and was smiling at them. He activated the communication system between them.

  “Still fighting it?” he asked, smiling. “Still haven’t accepted the inevitable?”

  “Shut up, Briden,” said Callie.

  “I’m here for my brother,” said Jensi. “Let my brother go and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Your brother?” said Briden, momentarily off balance. “And who might that be.”

  “Istvan,” said Jensi.

  For a moment Briden looked incredulous, and then he burst out laughing. “He’s your brother?” he said. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “What have you done to him?” shouted Jensi. “Give me back my brother!”

  “You think he’s your brother, do you?” said Briden. “How quaint. Whatever he is now, he’s not anyone’s brother anymore. He won’t even recognize you. He has become a prophet. The Marker has chosen him to spread its gospel. He belongs to the Marker now.”

  In frustration, Jensi pounded his fists against the glass. Callie was working with the door lock, trying to override it and get the door to open, Henry helping her.

  Briden noticed them, gave a deep bow. “Be seeing you,” he said, and slipped out a door on the far side.

  A moment later the door opened of its own accord and Jensi rushed in and across the operating room. The door on the other side was locked.

  “Think you can do anything with it?” Jensi asked Callie.

  “I’ll try,” she said, and started to work on it.

  The lights flickered and went off, the room now lit only by the pale glow of emergency lighting. “Callie, did you do that?” Jensi asked. “Knocked some wire maybe?”

  “Wasn’t me,” she said.

  “Wasn’t me, either,” volunteered Henry.

  The door they had come in slid suddenly shut. Jensi returned to it, tried to open it, but something was keeping it closed.

  “Get out your weapons,” Jensi said. “Quick.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Henry.

  There was a scraping, echoing sound somewhere up above them, in the ductwork. Jensi could hear it starting near one corner of the room, moving slowly toward the room’s center, near a duct opening, near where Henry was.

  “Henry,” he called, “move!”

  Henry looked up, confused, but didn’t move. The grating above him shattered and something large and lanky flashed down through the flickering light and Henry was lifted off his feet. He screamed and screamed, swaying in the air as Jensi rushed forward, already firing but without seeming to do much damage and then Henry was hurled hard against the wall. And then the thing, whatever it was, turned its attention to Jensi.

  It looked hardly humanoid, gathered as it was in one distended arm, the rest of its body, head included, remarkably squat. The arm groped toward him and he had to leap back to avoid it. It came toward him in awkward little shuffling hops, and he fired at the arm without much
success. He switched his aim and fired at the head, decimating it. And then the creature was shuffling and searching blindly. Jensi took out first one leg and then the other, and then it was little more than an arm, but it continued to crawl and inch about, still searching, still searching.

  Jensi gave it a wide berth and made his way to Henry. He was dead, his neck broken, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. One more death, one more loss. Jensi shook his head, still keeping one eye on the inching, throbbing gigantic arm.

  “Any luck with the door?” he asked Callie.

  “Almost got it,” she said. He watched her working, concentrated and focused. She had broken the casing off the control panel with the butt of her gun and had begun to remove and shuffle the circuits. She ran a loose wire between two of them and there was a hissing noise and the door slid open.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Where’s Henry?”

  “Dead,” he said.

  “That thing killed him?” she said. “Too bad. You have to dismember him.”

  “I can’t dismember him,” he said. “He’s my best friend.”

  Callie stared at him a moment. “Last thing you want is your friend coming back to kill you. Or me for that matter. But up to you. Come on, let’s go.”

  51

  They went straight ahead, moving as quickly as they could until they reached the control room. There, Callie tried to key the door open. They were both surprised when it did open—apparently Briden had been confident enough that they wouldn’t make it that he hadn’t bothered to rekey the lock.

  The control room contained a half dozen researchers, who all froze when they entered. Jensi waved his gun around, fired it once into the ceiling.

  “Lift your hands above your heads,” he said. “No reason for anyone to get hurt.”

  They mostly did, except for one man who hesitated. “He’s serious, Johnson,” Callie said to him. “He won’t hesitate to kill you.”

  Slowly the man lifted his hands.

  “There,” Jensi said. “Now, the two of us are going to enter the Marker chamber.”

  “You can’t—” Johnson started.

  “I’ve warned you once, Johnson,” Jensi said, his voice cold. “I won’t warn you again.”

  Johnson didn’t speak again and nobody else moved. They continued slowly toward the door. “You’ll have to keep an eye on them,” said Callie in a low voice. “I’ve got to turn around long enough to press my hand to the keypad.”

  Jensi nodded. He kept his gun trained at the scientists, sighting down the line of them and then back again. Behind him, he heard the scuff of Callie’s boots as she turned. Johnson, he saw, had started to lower his hands and he barked at him to keep them up and in place, and reluctantly he did. There was a beeping behind him, and Callie cursed. Then another, different beeping and the door slid open, and the two of them backed into the Marker room.

  * * *

  Inside it was strangely peaceful, strangely quiet. Istvan stood there alone beside the Marker, very focused, not seeming to notice them. Jensi felt his heart leap.

  “Istvan, it’s me!” he called.

  But his brother didn’t respond, didn’t even move. Jensi moved closer and repeated his words again, louder this time, and this time he watched Istvan slowly turn toward him, his eyes heavy and lidded.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “Why do you look different from the other dead?”

  Jensi paused, confused. “It’s me, Istvan,” he said. “Jensi.”

  He watched as something changed in Istvan’s eyes. “Jensi,” he responded. “So you are dead now as well. How did you die? Or perhaps this is not a thing the Marker knows how to tell me in stealing your form.”

  “Dead? What are you talking about? No, I’m here. I’m real,” said Jensi.

  But Istvan didn’t seem to believe him. He stared at Jensi as if he were staring through him, then slowly shook his head. “No,” he said. “How can you be here? You can’t be here.” He turned and peered up at the Marker. “Of all the things you have made me see, this is the cruelest,” he said. “Give me another, not him.”

  “I’ve had enough,” said Callie. “You’ve had your chance. You can see how crazy he is.”

  “No,” said Jensi. “I’ve just found him. He’ll come around.”

  “The time for talking is through,” she said. “You’ve had your chance and failed.”

  “No!” said Jensi, and stepped between her and Istvan, beginning to move slowly toward her.

  “Get out of the way,” she said, in a level voice. “It’s not pleasant but it needs to be done.”

  “No reason to kill anyone,” he said, still moving slowly forward. “If you’ll just give me a few moments…” he said.

  But Callie was already leveling the rifle at him. He leapt to one side, feeling the burn of it as the beam passed by him to singe the flesh off the outside of one of his shoulders. It hurt like hell. He spun and leapt again, this time into Callie, knocking her off her feet and onto the ground. The breath was knocked out of her, but she continued to hold the gun.

  For a moment they struggled, he on top of her, both of them grabbing the gun and trying to pull it away from each other while in the background Istvan stood as motionless as the idol of a savage god. Jensi’s shoulder was aching now, and he could smell the stink of his own burnt flesh, and Callie below him had her jaw clenched determinedly and just refused to let go.

  He reared up and raised his head and then brought it down hard, slammed it into her forehead. She cried out, her grip loosening. He raised his head again, struck again, and this time her eyes rolled up into her skull and she lost consciousness.

  Even unconscious, her hands still gripped the gun. He almost had to break her fingers to get it away from her. He tossed it away from her and it skittered across the floor. Still breathing heavily, he heaved himself up and, clutching his shoulder, stumbled toward his brother.

  * * *

  It had been so long, and he had come so far. Here was his brother at last. Somewhere there, within this strange distracted false prophet, lurked his brother. He was there. He had to be.

  He reached out and touched him. At first Istvan seemed not to notice but as Jensi kept his hand there he turned his body a little, trying to draw away from it.

  “I’ve come for you, Istvan,” Jensi said. When Istvan didn’t respond, he continued. “I’m here to save you, to get you out of all this.”

  By now Istvan had pulled fully away. Jensi took a step forward, pressed his brother’s shoulder again with his hand. “Istvan, it’s me, Jensi,” he said.

  Istvan shrugged him off.

  But Jensi was not to be denied. He came closer still and hugged Istvan, wrapped both his injured and uninjured arm around him and held on tighter this time.

  “Istvan,” he said. “It’s really me. Can’t you see me? Can’t you remember?”

  But Istvan was struggling to get away.

  “All you have to do is look, brother,” said Jensi. “All you have to do is see me.”

  Istvan gave a little grunt of anger and frustration. He pushed at Jensi’s head, but Jensi held on.

  “Istvan,” he said. “I’m here for you.”

  Istvan struck him very hard, in the face, but Jensi held on. He hit him again, and then again, and yet again, but still he held on. He hit him harder and harder, Jensi’s face growing bruised and bloody, his burnt shoulder cracking and bleeding as well. His head was growing loose on his shoulders, but still he held on.

  52

  Something was beginning to change for Istvan. The veil that had fallen and had been the scrim upon which he had begun to see the other world was growing more and more tattered, no longer able to hold all the images of that world. There were gaps and tears and the other world was beginning to leak out. The images of his mother, Councilman Fischer, and Conn no longer seeming as real as they had felt over the last few days. No, there was something wrong with them: they weren’t real, they were puppets, their motions wrong now
, not realistic at all. How could he ever have believed that that was the man he had killed? And how could he have believed they could trade faces with one another?

  His hands were still moving, doing something. He was hitting something, he knew, hitting the thing that something or someone was trying to pass off as his brother. No, it couldn’t be his brother—Jensi was millions of miles away, safe on Vindauga. He couldn’t be here. This was just another deception.

  The veil was in tatters now, all but gone. He slowly began to relax. He was less distracted, his motions less mechanical. He began to hit the thing masquerading as his brother less and less hard, and finally stopped hitting it altogether.

  When he did, Jensi finally let go. He collapsed, bloody and broken, in a heap. Istvan watched him fall and then stood there looking at him. Yes, it looked like Jensi, remarkably like him, and did not continue to shift and change as the other dead had done.

  Istvan hesitated. What if it really was his brother? What if he had killed him?

  Slowly he crouched down near him and looked closer, examining the lines of his face. His mother’s face had been just as he remembered it, the face she had had the last time he had seen her. It was the face that had been captured in his memory, and this was one of the things that had allowed him to know she wasn’t real, that the Marker was talking through her. But here, Jensi’s face was different than he remembered.

  He reached out and touched the face with his hand. “Jensi,” he said. “Is it really you?”

  And then the veil came together again, or tried to. He felt a pain in his head and then saw before him, standing on the other side of his brother, his mother. She was there, a ghost, the same ghost he had been seeing for days now, no different.

  No, Istvan, she said. This is a lie. This isn’t really who you think it is. It’s not Jensi. He’s not real.

  “He’s not?” he asked.

  He could be convinced, he realized. In fact, he would have been convinced if he could not see the difference between this ghost and the man lying on the floor. His mother’s face was the same as it had always been, not a bit different. But this man on the floor was his brother but older and bruised and bloody. Which meant that he was not a ghost created by the Marker. Which meant that Jensi must be real.