by Z. M. Wilmot
Station Fourteen
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[To whomever may receive this. I am Sergeant Jacqueline de Moray, current ranking and only officer of Station 14-A7-B2-3C in the Quatradi System. In fact, I'm the only human survivor left on Station Fourteen. The rest are either dead or faceless.
This is the last working transmitter on the station – the main ones are all torn to pieces, and only the backup’s backup is working at all. Power is running out fast, and the things could find me at any moment…
I won't survive this, and I can only hope that the right person reads this. If any Terran Government Officials are hearing this, fuck you. Go rot in hell. How long did you think you could cover this up?
If you are hearing this and are not a shit-headed loyalist puppydog of the goddamn Governing Council, then get this message out there. The people need to know, they need to stop this atrocity from happening…
Okay. Calm down. Right. To the point. Until ten hours ago, UTS 1100, everything here was normal. Station Fourteen is a classified station in the Quadrati System, orbiting the classified planet X-J5-2C, commonly called “Koatl.” Not being a member of the scientific staff, I can’t say much on what we did here, but I can see now how horrible they were. None of us military staff ever thought to question the Class 14 cargo-ships that came in periodically, their arrival always announced by the stench of rotting flesh and burning alcohol.
We never saw what was carried in from those ships – the expendable dregs were used for that, and now I believe the rumors that they were executed after they performed their duties. I never did before.
It was about ten hours ago that the first alarm klaxons began to sound. In accordance with protocol, all of us donned our protective gear; space-suit, pistol, rifle, and laser-edged knives. I was in the lounge with two subordinates when the klaxons went off, and was ready in less than thirty seconds. I called my unit together using the standard-issue radio transmitting devices, and the seven of us – six and myself – met in the main docking bay, where most of the Class 14 cargo vessels had been unloaded.
We saw no threat there, so I radioed in to my superior, Lieutenant Glackow, asking him was the matter. The response I got was curt and to the point, but useless – he told me to report to Lab 13-1 for containment purposes. My security clearance didn't normally extend to the Lab 13 complex.
We followed the signs to the appropriate complex, seeing no signs of anyone else as we went. The security doors all opened for us and closed behind us – it felt like we were being trapped in a rat’s maze.
We reached Lab Complex 13 after about half an hour, emerging into a stainless steel/titanium alloy hallway outside of Lab 13-0. Lab 13-1 was fifty meters down the hall on the opposite side, and we ran rapidly down the corridor, turning right at the door to Lab 13-1 and hurrying inside.
The door had not been completely closed, and moved aside with ease, letting us into the lab unquestioned. It was only my military training that kept me from turning and fleeing the lab right there, but I held firm, and my unit did the same behind me.
The bodies of what were presumably five scientists lay on the floor, scattered about the laboratory – that was what caught our eyes first. We noticed the stainless steel laboratory benches, covered in broken glassware oozing smoking liquids, a few moments later later. The machinery lining the walls was smoking and sparking. I ordered my unit to fan out and search the laboratory, which was only about twelve square meters. Pierre and Jean found two more bodies behind the lab benches lining the fringes of the room. Due to our station’s odd obsession with the number seven, we concluded that we found everyone, and a further sweep confirmed it.
The scientists had all been killed in the same way: a stab through the heart. There were four women and three men, but they were impossible to identify. They had no nameplates, nor was there any mention of their names anywhere else about the lab. But the worst part... was their faces.
Or what had once been their faces. They no longer had them; there was nothing there at all but a blank, flat, fleshy slate, no eyes, no nose, no mouth, not even any ears. The hair was still there, which only made it worse.
As unnatural as it appeared, though, it didn’t look as if anything had melted away – it looked like that was how their faces had always been. I summoned up the nerve to touch one and I pressed down to try to feel for any hollowness beneath, but it was all hard, as if the skull was completely solid beneath it.
None of us could figure out what was wrong, but it looked like there had been a struggle of some kind, a testament to the broken equipment everywhere. I radioed back to Glackow, informing him that we had arrived too late and that the contaminant had escaped, but there was no response. I tried again twice, but got nothing. I assumed the worst: that the contaminant, whatever it was, had escaped, and had reached Glackow.
We exited the lab quickly, made uneasy by the faceless bodies and fearing some kind of virus. The klaxons were still sounding, and the lights at the top of the walls still blinked madly at us. Away from the terrifying sight of those bodies our heads were clearer, and we decided to check the other labs. We went back to lab 13-0 first, closing the door to Lab 13-1 and pulling the containment switch remotely as we did so, sealing off Lab 13-1 from the rest of the station.
The door to Lab 13-0 was locked, and we banged on the door and pressed buttons on the keypad outside, but there was no answer. We tried for about three minutes and then split up, Levine and Jean staying at the door in case someone answered, and the rest of us following me down the hallway, past where it curved to the right beyond Lab 13-1, to 13-2. The door to 13-2 was open as well, and upon walking in, we found things in much the same state as in 13-1 – seven scientists, four female and three male, killed via pierced heart – all without faces.
We remotely contained that lab, and went quickly down the zigzagging corridor, checking every lab we could, which was every one save two, whose doors were both locked like that of 13-0. In every lab we found was the same situation – seven faceless stabbed scientists on the floor. As we got further away from the earlier labs, the signs of struggle decreased, until at lab 13-12 – the last we could enter, as 13-13 was sealed shut – we found the scientists all lying on their backs, hands clasped, their bodies looking almost at peace. They still didn't have faces.
We had known all along that something terrible had happened, but now it was clear that whatever it was that had escaped containment was no force that we could deal with. We rushed back down the corridor, and as we passed Lab 13-7 I received a radio transmission from Levine, saying that the door to 13-0 was opening. I relayed the news to my comrades and we hurried forward, turning the final corner, expecting to see living scientists who could explain what the hell was going on.
But that was not to be our luck. What we found were two more bodies – Levine and Jean’s – lying face-up on the floor, stabbed through the heart, their faces gone. After a moment of shock and horror, I rallied the remainder of my unit and we leapt into Lab 13-0, ready to shoot at the first thing that moved.
But nothing did. There were only seven faceless scientists in the room, and signs of a long, protracted struggle. We left hurriedly headed back down the corridor until we arrived at 13-8, the first of the two sealed ones. I shot the door's keypad with my rifle, causing the lab door’s wiring to short out. The door slid open. We all rushed in, guns raised, expecting to find seven dead scientists before us.
But that wasn't what we found.
There were six dead scientists, but one was still alive. There were signs of a very long struggle, and the living scientist, a balding old man, was leaning against one of the laboratory benches, purple and green liquids falling down on either side of him. He hardly seemed to notice that, let alone the wound through his heart.
We rushed over to him and asked him what was going on, and he tried to speak to us… but damn, he couldn’t, he tried so hard…
His mouth was changing, I swear it, and closing up right before our eyes
. He cried as his mouth muscles twitched and shuddered as he tried to form words, but his mouth wouldn't let him. His lips vanished into his face, and there was soon no way to tell where his mouth had been. Then he closed his eyes then... it was probably just a blink... but it didn't matter, because his eyelashes and eyebrows were sucked into his head as well. His eyes fleshed over, vanishing in a matter of seconds.
I heard someone behind me vomit, and I felt the urge myself. The scientist's nose sank into his face, nostrils merging with and vanishing into the formless, flat front of his face. His ears were sucked into his head with a sickening squelch, and the skin on his face began to tighten and smooth out until it looked just like the rest of the bodies we'd found.
I lost it then. I ran out of the room with only a curt order to follow, and sprinted down to the last Lab, 13-13, where I was sure there would be answers. I shot at the keypad with my rifle, trying in vain to keep my hysterics under control, but it didn’t work. Damn it, it didn’t work… if only it had, things might have been different…
I turned around to get my team, who I thought had followed me, to help, but they weren’t there. Fear took me over, and I pressed myself against the door of Lab 13-13, not wanting to see what had become of my unit. I held my rifle in shaking hands, pointed back down the corridor, and fired the instant I saw something move around the corner.
My beam had no effect on the thing, that horrible thing, that damn motherfucking face destroyer… it was easily one and a half times my height, and would have appeared human at a distance… but its two terrible arms… one was a blade, like a scythe of flesh and bone, doubtless the thing that had impaled the scientists… and the other arm had, instead of a hand, a needle, from the tip of which dripped a red liquid, like glowing blood. And then behind that thing came another one, identical to the first… they were naked, the damn things, and had no genitalia, or breasts, or nipples – they were completely devoid of any form of identification – including faces, of course. I lost control completely, and blasted away at them with all I had… but then the alarm klaxons stopped sounding, and they paused, ignoring me, and turned away, vanishing down the hallways.
Once I stopped blasting, it took all of my self-control to make myself leave the lab, all the while terrified that one of those things would get me the instant my attention wavered. I tried in vain to contact a superior, to contact anyone, but I couldn't.
I staggered out of Lab Complex 13 and made my way to the transmission terminals, but they were all destroyed. On my way around the station I passed countless faceless bodies – it seemed as if the things had gotten everywhere…
But I passed an open terminal on the way to the backup transmitters. It had a faceless colonel lying in front of it. I kicked him away and read what he had been reading… about Project Erasure, and how to defeat the “Erasers”… but he was doomed. There was no way – any contamination breach would result in the deaths of everyone on board. I just hope that Station Twelve in the Hera System gets this message, as they seem to be working on the same project… the government’s first step towards identity control. They’re developing beings with the power to inject a virus that changes your very genetic structure, and takes away your face, and will let them mould new ones onto the blank slate… fashioning their very own fucking master race. Too bad for you the experiments seem to have gotten out of control, and don’t know how to control their own urges… the cost of making such goddamned fucking good tools. Learn a lesson from history, motherfuckers. Don’t play God – he’ll only get right back at you.
They’re coming now… I hear their footsteps. I don’t know why they spared me the first time – maybe something in those damn klaxons, some kind of secret code – the terminal mentioned sonic encoding as a way to control them – but I doubt they’ll spare me a second time. Damn, the klaxons have started up again… is someone higher up still alive? Are they controlling the beasts, commanding them to hunt me down?
I don’t have much time… I need to kill myself before they take me away from myself… I don’t want everything to go dark and silent! Help me please, God… I made it this far … don’t let me die now, please… no, dammit Jacqui, don’t cry… this isn’t the time…
My god, they’re here! Help me oh Lord, they’ve found me… no… AAAAAAGHHH… help me… I’m bleeding… dammit, my heart… no… my face… its moving… help… no… not my mouth… God, don’t let thism… mmm… mm! Mmmmmm mmm mmmm!]
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[…Transmission Content…]