by S. A. Lusher
Dark Nexus Fiction
Presents
NECROPOLIS 2
–a novel of sci-fi action–
written by
–S. A. Lusher–
cover by
–M. Knepper–
editing by
–Cassi Reed–
Dedicated to my mother, Sheila Moreland,
for always being there for me.
Chapter 01
–Welcome Back–
It didn't seem fair, Greg reflected, that he should only have two weeks with this new life before it all came to an end.
Inside the jump ship, there was chaos. Billings and Cage pried open weapons lockers, and passed out rifles they'd secured just moments ago. Kauffman lay on the deck, pale and bloody, on the verge of being forgotten.
“Powell, do we have any weapons?” Cage called, his usually calm voice now laced with tension.
Greg took a rifle, checked the sights, the magazine. He couldn't imagine fighting Dark Ops on their own terms, their own ship. It seemed impossible, but he refused to go down without some kind of a fight. He wouldn't go back to a holding cell.
“Just the minigun,” Powell replied.
Cage began to speak when the lights in the cabin flickered and died. Everyone fell silent. The interior of the ship became dead quiet. Greg heard sounds emerge from the cockpit, the flipping of switches and rapid pressing of buttons.
“Shit,” Powell muttered.
Greg noted with a certain terror that it was already getting colder and the oxygen filtration units weren't working. “They must have hit us with an EMP.”
“Wonderful,” Billings mumbled.
He sat down, suddenly. Cage moved forward to the cockpit.
Billings lit up a cigar and glanced up at Greg. “Might as well give it up, kid. There's no way we're getting out of here. Dark Ops wants us, they're going to have us.”
“There must be something we can do.” Greg's heart hammered in his chest. It felt like the walls were closing in on him.
“Yeah. Give them a reason not to shoot and kill us.” Billings' morose reply made things seem even grimmer, if that was possible.
Greg looked at Kyra, who was pale, tense with fear, uncertain. He glanced into the cockpit, past the uncertain shapes of Cage and Powell. A ship moved towards them. It was massive, engulfing their field of vision. Greg spied an opening. A hangar. They were going to take the jump ship within them without compunction.
“Cage?” Greg asked.
Cage had nothing to say. His silence seemed to echo Billings' own sentiment. Greg finally took a seat and Kyra sat down next to him. He took her hand in his and thought for a long moment, part of him waiting for the inevitable, part of him scrabbling hopelessly against it, desperately hunting for a way out.
Kyra leaned against him. Brilliant light flooded the cabin as they sailed into the starkly lit hangar of the Dark Ops ship. Greg found himself staring out one of the windows across from him. He grunted as the ship dropped with an abrupt, loud boom! of metal slamming into metal as the gravity of the vessel overtook their ship.
Beyond, he could see a broad expanse of open floor, broken occasionally by another ship or a stack of crates. Dark shapes, men in black armor, moved in on their ship. Greg's muscles tensed, prepared for anything.
A loud clang! sounded.
“What are they doing?” Kyra murmured.
Greg stood. “I'm not sure...I can't see.”
A sharp hiss of air greeted them. A green haze began to seep into the cabin from the ventilation slits, slowly filling it up.
“Gas!” Greg shouted.
It was all he had time to shout. A taste of bitter metal filled his mouth, his nose, his lungs, and then the world melted into darkness.
* * * * *
Greg snapped his eyes open, blinking rapidly. The first thing he noticed was that he felt lucid, with none of the residual effects of whatever had knocked him out lingering in his system. He struggled, but quickly discovered restraints held him fast.
“This is familiar,” he muttered.
Someone pushed him, the man's head and shoulders hovered just within Greg's field of vision. Unlike before, this man wasn't hidden behind a mask. This man wore something black that clung to his bulky shoulders. For a second, the man glanced down at Greg. A bolt of surprised fear shot through Greg's system as he saw this man's irises were one solid shade of red. They also seemed to glow with an intense inner light.
Other features came to Greg as the initial fear subsided. The man appeared middle-aged. His black hair buzzed short, his pale face marred by black, five o'clock stubble, and a jagged scar ran from the center of his forehead down to his left cheek.
“Ah, Mister Bishop, you're awake.” A new voice spoke.
Greg glanced down, along the length of his body, (pleased to see that he was at least still wearing what he'd been wearing before the knockout), and saw someone tall, with a shaved head, wrapped in a form-fitting black jumpsuit walking alongside him.
“Williams,” he said.
Williams looked back and smiled. Although nothing had actually changed about the man, Greg saw that his face had taken on a darker, sinister quality.
“I believe a re-introduction is in order. I am Director Williams. I head up this particular cell of Dark Ops.”
The man pushing Greg faltered and made a sound, something like a warning noise. Williams chuckled.
“Relax, Graves. He's ours now. They all are. They're never leaving this ship alive.”
For another long moment, they walked on in silence, making occasional turns, sometimes passing people who pressed up against the wall to let Greg and his entourage pass.
“Where are my friends?” Greg asked.
“Locked up, sleeping off the gas.”
“Why are we here?”
Williams laughed, again. “Because I want you here. Experiments. Tying up loose ends. Take your pick.”
“Why should I cooperate with you at all?”
“Because I am now the only thing standing between a reasonably comfortable couple of weeks, possibly months, and a long, drawn-out, painful death. I assure you, we've gotten quite good at keeping a man in constant agony for...well, a long time. Go against me, Greg, and you'll die by nanometers,” Williams said.
There was no threat in his voice. They might have been discussing the weather. Greg's blood chilled. He had to find some way out of here. If he didn't take this situation into his own hands, he was going to die. Plain and simple, there was no other way around this fact. Dark Ops seemed to have everything locked down. Abruptly, they turned and came into a long, low room. The far wall, Greg could see, was made entirely of glass, perfectly clear, as if nothing stood between them and the dead vacuum of space.
Williams walked right up to the glass wall. Graves wheeled Greg along with him and manipulated the device he was on so that Greg shifted into an upright position. He felt like furniture on a dolly.
“Do you see that, Greg?” Williams asked, staring out the window. There was an uncomfortable note of fervor in his voice now.
Greg looked out the window.
What he saw stunned him. A collection of ships clustered beyond the window, at least a dozen, all of them enormous monoliths of polished obsidian. Darkness against the black of space, blocking out the distant pinpoints of long dead or dying stars.
“Do you see that?” Williams directed his view to the left, towards something large and round, like a planet, but too small or perhaps far away.
“What is that?” Greg murmured.
“That's Kyo. That's Dis' moon. Its only moon. Without Dis, it has flung out of orbit,” Williams said, quietly, studiously, as though Greg was his student.
Greg stared at it, and then at a brillian
t pinpoint of light, much closer than all the others, beyond it: the local sun.
“Yes, you can see where it's going...into the sun.” Here, Williams turned and looked directly at him, his eyes boring into Greg's. “This is the power we have, Greg. The power to destroy planets, moons, armies. Any thoughts you have of escape, of resistance, end them now. They will serve you no purpose here beyond pain and agony. And we are very good with pain, aren't we Graves?” He looked at the man who now stood behind Greg.
There was a quiet noise of affirmation and then Greg began to lower until he was lying on his back again. They walked once more, leaving the observatory, making their way back through the bowels of the ship.
“I'm not an unreasonable man, Greg,” Williams said.
“Says the guy who just destroyed a fucking planet,” Greg muttered.
“If you're willing to go along with these tests and experiments, I may be willing to let you see your friends.” Williams continued, as though he hadn't heard. “If not, well...Starck is somewhere onboard. I'm sure she'd be happy to oversee your life. And she isn't nearly so reasonable as I am.” His voice lowered.
Greg said nothing. Instead, he focused on his environment. They passed several doors, all of them identical. The ceiling and walls were all made of the same gray plate metal. Occasionally, they passed a camera built into the ceiling, red light pulsing gently. Greg noted that the cameras all followed him when they passed by.
There were no more words and soon Greg arrived at his cell. It was stark. The opposite of his quarters back on Dis. Everything was white, made more so by a single strip of light that glared down on them from above. There was a toilet, a sink, a shower stall, and a bed. Williams waited out in the corridor while Graves wheeled Greg in. The man pushed a button and the straps holding Greg snapped open.
He stood, a little quicker than he meant to, and turned, feeling dizzy. A plan formulated in his mind, to attack this man called Graves, overwhelm him, get his gun somehow, and take Williams hostage.
This plan fell apart when he laid eyes fully on Graves for the first time.
Graves wasn't so much a man as he was a pile of muscle wrapped in a tight black jumpsuit. He must have stood six and a half feet tall, broad enough to fill an average-size door. Everything about the man spoke of pumping iron and possibly steroids. His eyes, full of digitized crimson, were impossible to read.
His posture spoke of expectancy, as if he wanted Greg to try to attack him, to put his titanic muscles to use.
His plan of escape deflated, Greg took a step back, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Graves stared at him for a long moment with his unnerving eyes, and then, seeming disappointed, wheeled the gurney out of the room, even going as far as to turn his back on Greg. It was practically an open invitation to attack.
The door shut behind him. Greg found himself encased in a white crate with no windows. As he thought this, a section of the door became transparent. Williams stared in at him, still smiling that damned smile.
“Be seeing you soon, Greg.” His voice came through a mechanical filter. Then the door was opaque again.
Greg spent the next five minutes studying his new quarters in detail, trying to find some means of escape. There was nothing, literally nothing. Even the vents were little more than narrow slits, high up in the ceiling, to provide air and perhaps something more noxious should Greg prove too difficult to control.
Greg caught sight of another camera, positioned high, built into the ceiling. It droned steadily at him, an almost silent white noise of operational machinery. It watched him with an unblinking glass eye, never to grow bored or tired.
Flipping the camera off once, Greg lowered himself to the floor and began to do push-ups. He was going to get out of here, one way or the other.
Chapter 02
–Dreary Days–
Time passed, though Greg wasn't sure how much.
He worked out, doing mostly sit-ups and push-ups, as well as practicing hand-to-hand combat techniques he discovered via muscle memory. He found that exercising made him want to do the techniques. When he was tired enough, drenched with sweat, he lay down and slept on top of the bedding.
He awoke to the sound of the door opening. Graves stood there with a man encased in a white bio-hazard suit. A gurney rested between them.
“You gonna fight? We don't have to do the gurney,” Graves said.
Greg hesitated, as up until that moment it seemed that Graves hadn't been able to talk. He had a slight accent and his voice was not as deep as Greg assumed it was.
“I won't fight,” he replied.
Graves stared at him for a moment, perhaps trying to determine how much truth there was in that statement, and then he waved the man in the suit and the gurney away.
“Come on then.” He turned.
Greg stepped out of his cell and walked alongside Graves. The man was a full head taller than he was and the way he walked spoke of a deceptive grace and lethal training. The man was an economy of movement, nothing wasted.
Neither of them spoke as they navigated the brilliantly lit corridors. Greg thought to ask questions, demand answers, but neither seemed like they would have elicited any reaction from a man like Graves beyond mild amusement.
After a while, they came to one door among many. Graves escorted him in. A pair of medical technicians waited within, standing on either side of an examination table. Graves stood by the door, silent as a monolith of polished obsidian. Greg moved forward with slow, cautious steps and lay down on the examination table.
Working without speaking, the med-techs attached wired strips to his head, his neck, and his chest beneath his shirt. Greg continued to lay there. It was a genuine effort not to tear the strips off, jump up, punch out the med-techs, and bum-rush Graves. He clenched his fists, resisted the urge, and continued to lay there.
As he tried to distract himself, questions came. Why were they still testing him? They had the Cure, what more was there to learn? He laid there for a long time, thinking about it as they continued to run their tests, gathering more data on his body, his blood, and his bones. Seconds bled by, pooling into minutes.
Abruptly, without provocation, one of the med-techs walked over to Greg and slipped a needle into his arm, at the vein. He watched as his blood began to spiral up a clear tube, towards a collection pouch.
What were they looking for?
Greg decided simply to observe and settled in for the long haul.
* * * * *
When Graves escorted Greg back to his cell, he felt lightheaded. It was an effort to walk in a straight line and keep upright, but determination and a strange feeling of not wanting to appear weak in front of Graves got him back. He stepped into his cell, and as the door closed behind him, all but collapsed onto his cot.
He realized they must have taken more than an average amount of blood from him. Greg managed to settle into a more comfortable position and shifted beneath his blankets to ward off the chill he'd gained.
As he drifted off, he heard a voice, talking to him, asking him something. It was a light voice, with the vague edge of mechanical buzz.
And then he was out like a light.
* * * * *
Time passed.
Minutes, hours, days.
Once again, Greg fell into a routine. He worked out until he was too tired to stay awake. He ate whenever they brought him the bland, processed food. They gave him two towels and a change of clothes, a copy of the SI uniform he wore. When he showered, they took away his dirty clothes and replaced them with a fresh uniform. Whenever they took him out of his cell, he was always escorted by Graves. He studied the men, the ship, and the routines for any kind of weakness, any method of escape or something he might be able to exploit.
They continued to take his blood, as much of it as they could, and run extensive scans on him, but nothing more.
It was on his third day (he assumed) that the voice came back to him, the one he'd heard as he was drifting off and simpl
y assumed that it was produced by his blood-deprived brain. This time, he was wide-awake and in the middle of working out when it happened.
“Hello, Greg Bishop.”
Greg froze, mid push-up, and looked around. He stood, wiped his sweat-slicked forehead and finally settled his eyes on the camera. The light winked at him steadily and the lens seemed fixated on him.
“Who's there?” he asked. It wasn't a voice he recognized.
“You can call me Thomas. I want to help you, Greg,” the voice replied. It buzzed with the soft mechanic filter of a radio.
“Why should I trust you?” he asked.
“Why shouldn't you? What could you possibly lose? You're going to die here if you don't find a way to escape.”
Greg considered this. It was a reasonable assessment. He was still considering his response when there was an almost inaudible click.
“Hello?”
Nothing. He tried twice more to elicit a response, but he remained alone in a sea of silence. Considering the development, Greg continued working out.
* * * * *
After four more cycles of sleeping and going for testing, the voice came back to him. Greg was in the middle of a shower.
“I'm sorry about earlier. I had to cut the conversation short.” The voice spoke as though very little time had passed.
“Is that so?” Greg replied.
They'd supplied him with soap, shampoo, a razor. He stared at the razor, thinking he could use it as a weapon against them, or maybe himself. Were they worried he'd kill himself? Chances were there was someone constantly on standby. It wasn't like it used to be, where slitting your wrist vertically was practically as effective as a bullet to the brain. From what Greg had been able to gather, they could bring a man back from the brink without too much trouble, and well, if he was being honest with himself, he knew wasn't going to kill himself.
“Yes. I was nearly detected, but it should be safer to talk this time. I want to help you escape, Greg, and I'm your only option. These tests will not go on forever. I can offer you the best shot you've got to live...and the odds aren't even that abysmal.”