by Aaron Bunce
Manis glared, but shifted his gaze to the captain, recognizing that he was the actual authority on the ship. He would have to side with Manis, especially if he cherished his position. But the captain turned away from him, showing his back as he addressed the nurse.
“Miss, is it as you said? Did he attack you?” The captain asked, speaking so quietly Manis almost couldn’t hear. The young woman nodded, wincing, and closing her eyes from the motion.
Liar. Faker. She attacked me!
“…obsessive…manic…without medication…paranoid. He is…dangerous,” the nurse whispered, only one out of every five words loud enough for him to hear. The crew standing around her stiffened, moving together. Several even turned to look at him, their eyes undeniably wide and full of either fear or…anger.
She was showing the captain the glowing screen of her data point. But what? He swallowed, trying to organize his thoughts and stabilize his footing. She cannot do that. Medical information is privileged to health providers. Unless…unless company safety is paramount, he thought. Shit, he’d used that legal out several times to get underperforming members of the staff cut and shipped off station.
“Dangerous? The danger is back there.” He pointed behind him, but realistically had no idea how they were really oriented to Hyde. It could be straight above or below them, or any variation in tilt and angle based off a three-dimensional plot. Manis peeled his mind off that thought before he could get stuck on the idea of vectors and degrees of angle.
“This isn’t dangerous?” the nurse asked, pulling the towel away and pointing at the dark blood stain.
The group murmured around her, the captain’s head nodding with increasing vigor. His look said–you’ll spiral, fall apart. No, you already are. Just look at him. We can’t trust what you’ll say or do, and it will only get worse.
Manis’ eyes flipped to the security officer. His eyes responded–you…are…dangerous! Dangerous!
The silent, unspoken words slapped against Manis like stinging, open-palmed blows. They drove him back, leaving white-hot pain inside and out.
They’re not saying anything. It is just your brain interpreting their facial expressions, he thought, trying to count the seconds of silence. But they kept moving, looking at each other, and sharing looks. Red tinged the corners of his vision, crowding in like a smothering blanket.
“Shut up you, s-s-stupid twat! All of you! Shut up. I hear you, all of you, plotting against me. Well, I will not stand for it. Will not! I will not be made a fool of like this! I am a…execut…you cannot talk to me like that!”
“See what I mean,” the nurse said, “he’s unhinged.”
Manis surged forward, fists clenched, desperate to strike her, throw his hands around her neck, push her, to violently deny her words. Anything to silence her hateful, painful voice.
Two men pushed in–the security officer’s bulk hitting him and jarring him back. Manis swung a fist but hit only air. Pain blossomed in his gut and he toppled over. A heartbeat later, two bodies wrapped around him, their arms pinning his back and lifting him straight.
“Mr. Mazzar, I understand you all have gone through a terrible ordeal. Terrible, quite terrible. But your behavior is troubling. You must understand, with such close quarters on a ship like this, I must take safety very seriously. I think it best if you are confined to quarters for the time being,” the captain said, his voice still low and steady. Manis could barely hear him over the heart raging in his ears.
“Unacceptable…” he tried to argue, but the two men wrenched him around, lifting him bodily through the crowded bridge.
Manis twisted and fought, banging an elbow on a monitor, and then managing to snag a doorway as they left the bridge. The two men cursed and yelled, pulling him violently to break his grip. But Manis held on.
A boot swung up suddenly and smashed his fingers against the metal frame. Fire erupted in his hand, shooting all the way past his elbow and shoulder.
“Rah! Fuck! Argh…” Manis screamed, the pain cutting through the anger. The two men stumbled, and they all seemed to float down the stairs as one. They hit the bottom, something hard cracking into his head. Stars burst over his vision, his ears plugged, a sound like rushing water quickly flooding in over everything else.
Manis managed to clear his vision just before everything tilted up and then he was pitching forward through a doorway. He caught the ground with his right foot, and stuck out his left to keep from falling, but his knee locked painfully, and he fell. The small cot caught the upper half of his body and he tumbled, rather ungainly, onto the deck.
Manis rolled over and looked to the doorway just as the security officer snorted, and the door slid shut.
“No! No! Open that door right now! I order you!” he screamed, clawing his way painfully onto his hands and knees, then to his feet.
Laughter sounded out in the hallway as he bumped into the door. The panel mocked him, the red [Locked] icon flashing white with each jab of his finger.
“O-O-Open this door immediately!” Manis stammered, holding his throbbing fingers while trying to keep his weight off his injured knee. At least two fingers looked broken, the knuckles already double their normal size and angry red.
“Oh-oh-oh-open it up! Ha ha ha,” someone mocked him from just outside, their laughter muffled and moving away. Within seconds, the hallway beyond was quiet again.
Manis smashed his good fist into the door again and again, but it wasn’t long before that ached, too.
It’s just pain, he tried to tell himself, but that hardly helped. He slapped his hand against the door a final time and turned, slumping weakly towards the ground. His eyes flicked to the right, locking onto the thermo-cube.
36°
2340 Hours
Jacoby followed Anna out of the engine room, but moved slowly, following at a distance. His stomach gurgled loudly. It pinched and promptly burbled even louder. Hunger pangs hit him next, the sensation coming on so hard and fast it felt as if his stomach might fold in on itself.
“Jesus,” he groaned, bracing against his knees. His stomach gurgled and groaned again, the tremors visibly shaking his belly.
“We’ll figure this all out,” he whispered, “but first, eat something…maybe allot, and get some rest. I’m just tired and hungry, on edge. That’s it.” His stomach rumbled again in agreement. Ahead, Anna had mounted the ladder, her boots disappearing overhead.
“Frayed nerves, split skin, polluted, yellow eyes of a failed liver and drunken waste. A burned-out husk from whence new life will bloom anew! Blood, marrow, sinew, and steel to build a weapon of war,” he said, after starting to walk forward. Jacoby abruptly stopped and slapped a hand over his mouth.
“Shut up! What in the hell does that mean?” he spat, slapping a fist against his right temple. It wasn’t Poole, not that he could see at least. It was his voice coming out of his mouth. But the words…
“Did you say something?” Soraya asked, her voice echoing and muffled in the tight passage.
She heard? he thought. But he wasn’t sure which frightened him more–him unknowingly spouting murderous gibberish, or other people hearing him do it.
“Just talking to myself…” he stammered. Of course she was behind him. But he’d been surprised, nonetheless. As if in mere moments he’d forgotten that he hadn’t been alone.
“Sorry, I thought maybe you were talking to me.”
Jacoby stumbled to his right and fell into the passage wall, the space suddenly closing in around him. He stepped forward and turned. Soraya was behind him, only the gleam of her silvery eyes setting her apart from the dark passage. A part of his mind moved, squirming uncomfortably. She stirred, her limbs slicing the darkness. Or…he thought it was her, but she looked stretched, bendy, and boney.
Limbs? How many?
“Are you okay? Are you warm?” she asked, but her voice bent and twisted, like a chorus of broken people were screaming into his ears. “Blood…simmering, surging, ninety-eight-degree pe
tri dish. Blood…fertile, like soil, a womb to incubate and grow. Tissue, muscle strands, building blocks to tear apart and sew back together.” He heard her, but it wasn’t Soraya. Hoarse…broken?
“Fine. Fine. Just going to head up. Maybe lie down,” he said and turned. It was just the hunger, the stress. It’d been building. Like Poole said, he needed a release. A rest.
Soraya’s words scrambled up in his head. They didn’t make any sense. Something tapped against the near wall, and then the opposite side. Boney limbs smacking against metal, digging, and finding purchase, to pull the hungry mouth and tearing teeth closer, closer, closer. Dissect. Digest.
“Just go,” he breathed and threw his body forward. Jacoby cradled his aching groin and ran blindingly through the service passage and up the ladder. Shane sat at the table in the galley, Lana and Erik next to him. They talked animatedly, all clutching to steaming cups of coffee, but went quiet and all turned to watch him.
Jacoby smelled it–rich, tart earthiness cut with almost fruit-like sweetness. He smelled them, too–musk, sweat, sour breath.
The room dimmed around him, the lights flickering off and then on again, before dimming to a barely perceptible red glow. Lana’s hair started to move in the bloody light, writhing down her neck and shoulders like oily snakes.
Shane looked up at him and opened his mouth to speak. But his skin started to crawl. His jaw and lips moved. He was speaking, or trying to, but it wasn’t his voice, but the same chorus of horrible, tortured screams.
Jacoby slapped his hands over his ears to block out the horrible noise and ran. He glanced up and just caught sight of Anna standing in the middle of the small bridge. Her body was alight, glowing, snaking cables crawling and drooping out of every surface, burrowing deep into her flesh.
“Jacoby. Have a seat. The coffee sucks, but it’s hot. Have a cup with us,” Shane said, lifting his mug. The flesh on his face was melting, a glob of skin that used to be his cheek breaking free and falling with a plop onto the table. A multitude of squirming shapes churned in the newly made hole.
“I…uh.”
“Please join us. We heated up some of this biscuit and gravy stuff. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I smelled it.” It was Erik. It had to be, but the young man’s face was just…gone.
“Jacoby. What’s the matter? You look like someone…” Shane started to say, but his voice was a wet, choked gargle. The entire room was moving around him, wet trails of dark fluid running down the walls and raining off the ceiling.
It’s not real, Jacoby thought, and tried to push it away, but he felt the wet droplets hitting his face and neck. The ship was rotting, everyone in it decomposing, the room crushing in around him.
Jacoby veered left past Shane as the pressure on his chest doubled, and by the time he got to the small shower room door, he could barely breathe. He tapped the open icon, the controller beeping quietly in response. Jacoby lurched inside as the door whisked open and fell to his knees, struggling to draw air.
Everything went dark, but he couldn’t tell if the lights went out or his eyes were closed. He sucked in a breath, a raspy wheezy sound coming from his chest. The smell was everywhere–blood, rot, foul things pushing in to cover him. They clawed at his lips, pulling them inside his mouth and down his throat.
He was dying, finally being consumed by the darkness that took the station. He was sure of it. A voice broke through the pressure smothering his ears. It was feminine, strong, and close.
“Jacoby, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he gasped. “Where are you? Where am I? I can’t…see anything…stuck in the darkness. Rotting…everything is rotting, dead, dying.” In the manner of just a few moments he’d lost all concept of his surroundings. There was only the festering darkness.
“I’m right here next to you.”
But Jacoby couldn’t see or feel her. A light blossomed somewhere ahead, splitting through the putrid darkness. He was in a wide room, but it wasn’t the shower. He didn’t recognize the space. It was too large to be the Betty. Jacoby tried to speak, to move his feet, but…
“Jacoby. Squeeze my hands. Tell me you can hear me,” Lex said, but he couldn’t respond.
The room around him resolved out of the darkness, a solitary overhead light flickering spasmodically. Two consoles flanked him, flexing, pulsing growths branching up and over the smooth ceramic surfaces. He reached out for one, to pull himself closer, but couldn’t move. His head sagged as the light popped and went dark. When it flared back to life, his eyes raked over his legs.
Jacoby wanted to scream, to deny it, but his voice denied him. He didn’t have legs, just a mass of tubes and pulpy matter snaking up and over where they should have been. The growths broke and grew clean through the panels beneath him. The floor and walls buzzed, the vibration passing from metal into organic matter and flooding into him. He understood what it meant, somehow. He…it, whatever he was, was moving.
“Jacoby! Open your eyes,” Lex said, distantly.
A light blossomed ahead, a distant sun rising just over the horizon. He watched out the frost-kissed observation window, unable to move, to break free, or deny any of it. The light flowed over a planet below, causing the massive shape to practically melt out of the darkness. It was close, right beneath them, its gravity ripping and tearing at him. But he wasn’t fighting it. He was moving with it. Somehow, he felt it, the pull.
Pain cut into his arms–intense pressure crushing his biceps and triceps. Lex’s voice rang out again somewhere in the distance, but he couldn’t pinpoint where.
A glowing dot appeared in the dark far below, beneath the slowly expanding light’s furthest boundary. But what at first appeared as a single pinprick of light quickly grew closer and larger until it sprawled across the dark surface like a sea of twinkling fireflies.
A city. It’s a city, he realized, just as the sun’s light hit the viewport, icy crystals erupting with radiant light. The city was his destination, even if he couldn’t articulate exactly where it was or why. Then a shiver ran up through his body, an all-consuming, pervading sensation washing everything away.
Hunger. The ravenous need he felt before.
“Jacoby! Poole, where are you? What is happening to him?” the distant voice screamed.
Jacoby watched helplessly as shapes moved beyond the thick glass, sheets of ice exploding into the vacuum. Freed from the frozen cocoon, massive, muscular tendrils unfurled from…him, stretching towards the approaching city. They twisted and flexed, eager and ready to peel open the metal structures.
“Can’t you give me like, I don’t know, five minutes of peace, Jacky-Boy?” Poole asked, after appearing with a subtle, pop.
Jacoby heard and saw him appear, but the hunger dominated his attention. He reached towards the quickly approaching settlement, the thick tendrils moving in response to his call. The buildings weren’t just dots of light anymore, but geometric pressure buildings connected by cylindrical passages.
“Jacky-Boy. What? Why? How?” Poole asked, ducking into view. His eyes crawled over Jacoby’s face, and then rose to the dripping ceiling and walls, his mouth crinkling in disgust.
“What in the deep-fried cat turds is going on? It looks like the bleeding uterus of Satan’s homicidal sister-wife in here. Are you dreaming right now? Why didn’t I feel this? Why can’t I…? Wait, I can’t stop this.”
The walls and structural supports creaked around him, the floor panels shuddering violently. A groan–his groan of hunger and excitement. The city was almost within reach. He felt the organisms, people, moving inside–morsels to pluck out and break down, to be made whole.
“A burned-out husk from whence pure, strong life will bloom! Blood, marrow, sinew, and steel. Consume, digest, build. Need more…grow…integrate! Purpose is everything.”
“Jacky-Boy you’re not making any sense. This is strange, even for you. It’s not…” Poole said, looking around the horrific, live room, “in your head. Where are you? How are you doin
g this?”
The hunger increased. It burned through his body, radiating painfully into every fiber of his being. He had to satiate it, had to fill the void.
Poole disappeared and reappeared around him, never in the same pose, but always mumbling and poking. His touch stabbed like icy needles into the heat of Jacoby’s need. He was there in his mind, too, like a million buzzing insects. But it was just a nuisance…secondary to his drive to consume and absorb.
“Aha, yes. I found it…a binding of some sort. Energy…oodles of it. Bio-electric oomphness. Fascinating. But how? It’s not coming from… Oh! I see. Shit, that is not good at all. You know what, I know we just talked about boundaries and all, but you’ll understand. I hope you do. Shit, don’t be angry at me, Jacky-Boy. Here it goes. I’ll just rip the band aid off super-fast. I’m sorry, but you’re definitely not going to like this,” Poole said. He appeared before him, blocking the viewport.
It…they…were so close now. Almost within reach. He did not need to see them, he could feel their heat, the lively energy snapping through muscle fibers and neurons, the rich, nutrient laden blood coursing through organs and arteries. It made him salivate.
A pale figure materialized through the fleshy bulkhead to the right, the tissue tearing open to birth them through and then promptly sealing closed again. Jacoby saw them for a second–the neat dark hair, tan skin, and white, almost glowing lab coat. But her legs were gone, replaced by a squirming mass of thick tentacles.
Poole moved in front of him, turned and saw her, too, and screamed. His hand went back and stabbed violently into Jacoby’s stomach, a cold jolt erupting inside him, followed by a painful wave of pressure in his pelvis. The pain quickly increased, until it severed every other thought and impulse, and then with an abrupt rush, it broke loose in a violent surge, flooding down and out of his body.
The heat, angst, and almost overwhelming hunger instantly broke, draining away with the pressure. Jacoby groaned, the pressure release inside his body morphing from pain to an almost orgasmic sense of pleasure. No, not almost. It was orgasmic.