Titan: A Science Fiction Horror Adventure (NecroVerse Book 3)

by Aaron Bunce

  But you were prowling, Poole thought, the sensation in his head once again overly slimy. Then Jacoby wondered if it was the alien creature, or he was somehow feeling his own damaged watermelon slosh around.

  “Good, that! Yes, someplace start,” Lex said, nodding, but she appeared too excited or worked up to put the words into a proper sentence. She immediately pulled herself towards the ground, bent her legs, and pushed off towards the aft passageway.

  And I don’t prowl, so you can just shut up. I have a hard time sleeping, especially with you constantly sliding, slipping, and prying around in my head. You’re like a giant, slimy garden slug with no concept of personal space.

  Your head is my space. Poole responded, but Jacoby sensed that it wasn’t all levity. There was still a great deal of pain there.

  “Okay, let’s get them squared away. The bunks. We can put them in the sleeping quarters, strap them down if we must. How does that sound?”

  “Yes. Good.”

  And everyone started moving without another word. He watched them push off into the dark room, Anna moving towards the bridge and returning a few moments later with Emiko in tow. They secured Shane and Erik, the younger man having thrown up. A mess of sick dampened the front of his jumpsuit and his hair. His larger, balder counterpart looked worse for the wear, the suffocating darkness exaggerating every bruise, cut, and scrape.

  It’s not that bad. It’s just the dark. They’re all going to be okay, he told himself, but Poole didn’t seem to share any optimism. A dark cynicism leached into his thoughts and feelings that went beyond his own doubt.

  They worked in silence, each evidently afraid that any unnecessary noise would bring further harm. Jacoby went with it, pulling straps from a storage compartment and helping Soraya gently secure the others down. She mumbled and whispered quietly as they worked, but he couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or to herself. He didn’t respond–not that he didn’t have anything to say, but more so because she seemed perched on the precipice of an emotional firestorm and he didn’t want to be the one to set it off.

  Lex floated back into the galley a short while later, several sizable bags floating behind her. One was white, with Emergency Response printed on the side.

  “And do what with it?” Poole interjected, his speech still a little slow and slurred. “Is there a doctor onboard? I mean, Emiko is a nurse, but she is kind of just hanging out back there.” He pointed back over his shoulder to emphasize his point.

  “Here,” Lex said, shoving a large brown bag Jacoby’s way, “I found lights and some other stuff.”

  “Good.” He drifted off to the side while the others dealt with the more critical, sensitive work. The large bag pulled open, revealing several yellow work lights, a number of small flashlights, some Fuso Labs power cells, and a string of what looked like planet and stars party lights. The last one felt a bit strange, but he pulled it out anyways.

  “This is a pulse oximeter, I think,” Lex said, clamping something small and white onto Emiko’s index finger. Anna, Jacoby noted, worked on getting Shane and Erik comfortable, and seemed to avoid the other two.

  Great, now we’ll have that to contend with, he thought, as he stuck the first of several magnetic work lights onto the ceiling. They powered on with a tap, filling the small space with a healthy, white glow.

  A short while later, the two small bunk rooms were well lit. It wasn’t great light, mind you, but it sure beat the smothering darkness. For as long as the power cells would last, at least.

  “So, what next?” he asked, apprehensively moving up behind Soraya and Lex. Anna floated in the doorway behind him, unwilling to fully enter the small room.

  “I mean, they’re alive…that much I can tell,” Lex said, gesturing to Shane and then Erik.

  In the brighter room, the technician looked the bigger mess, with blood trails leading from both nostrils and vomit plastered down the front of his suit. He was awake, too, or partially, but didn’t look as if he wanted to be.

  Erik’s eyes were open, but unfocused, his mouth, hands, and legs moving as he groaned softly. But the young man wouldn’t, or couldn’t, respond to Lex’s questions.

  Jacoby considered the state of his own head–the not insubstantial clump of hair and skin he’d left plastered to the pilot’s seat, and Poole’s obvious state. If that was him, how bad were they…really? How much pain was he enduring? Were they just beat up and rattled, in need of rest and a shower, perhaps some pain meds if they could be found? Or were there significant trauma and life-threatening injuries beneath the surface?

  “What else can you tell us?” Jacoby asked, urging Lex on when Erik closed his eyes again, “what does the equipment say?”

  “Say?” Lex echoed. Then she cursed quietly under her breath. “I mean, I think it all looks fine. The numbers, that is, but I don’t remember what half of this stuff means. Shane and Erik look okay, for the most part…just banged up, I guess. But Emiko, she’s got a whopper of a bump on her head with puffiness radiating outward. That could be a skull fracture, I think. Lana seems worse, her neck doesn’t feel right, and her vitals are really goofy. Blood-oxygen saturation is low, heart rate is fluctuating from low to high, and her blood pressure barely registers. She needs a doctor, Jacoby, or a team of them, a hospital, maybe even a miracle.”

  “A doctor,” Soraya whispered, then slapped her forehead. “Poole, you can help them, right?”

  “And how am I supposed to do that? Guide your hands like some invisible, spirit doctor? Conjure complicated medical and surgical equipment out of thin air? You all made your stance quite clear–your bodies, your choice.” He spoke slowly, his facial features and clothing changing erratically.

  “This is different–”

  “Why? Because now you need me?”

  Soraya hung still for a long moment, glaring. “Yes,” she finally admitted.

  Poole sighed. “You meatballs are infinitely frustrating. Stop, leave us alone, only if we ask. No, wait, we need you, forget everything we said before, save us, we can’t do this without you.”

  “Yes, it’s fucked up,” Lex cut in before Poole could really get going. “Yes, we like our privacy. Yes, we like autonomy. Yes, we also like what you can do for us. But these people could be dying right before our eyes and none of them look to be in a position to ask for help. Shit, even if they could, how would they know? How would we help them? None of us are medics or doctors. You have the power to help them, so please, in case you can’t tell, this is us asking you to use it. Help them.”

  “I hardly have power, not now, not like before,” Poole grumbled, but he moved between them and up to Lana. “Anna, darling, I need you.”

  Jacoby moved aside as Anna moved tentatively forward. She met Poole’s gaze and the two hovered silently for a moment, as if sharing a private conversation. Finally, she nodded and pushed forward, extending her left hand.

  “Wait a second,” Soraya hissed. “Hell no! After what we just saw, after what just happened up there, you ain’t touching anything! Get away from her.” She grabbed the bunk, which looked more like a shelf to Jacoby, and blocked Anna’s path. With no way to stop her momentum, Anna floated right into her.

  They wrestled for a moment, Anna trying to push free while Soraya twisted and grappled, wrenching on her right arm, and avoiding her left, as if it were a snake or something equally dangerous. Then a fist lashed out and Anna’s head snapped back. It happened so fast Jacoby didn’t even see who swung.

  He clawed his way into the middle of the scrum, hands and fists hitting his already throbbing head and shoulders, but pushed away, just managing to tear them apart.

  Jacoby floated back, his shoulder hitting the wall right next to the doorway but turned and pinned Anna to the wall. Her face was still red, her eyes glassy, and every one of her limbs thrashing as she tried to get free.

  He turned and extended an arm, just in time to push Soraya back. She pinwheeled, hit the bunks, Shane, and Erik at the same time, and howled a
ngrily.

  “Stop!” Jacoby screamed, the ache in his head opening like a full-on, tower-toppling earthquake with a raging forest burning on top of it. The room flashed bright, then dark, the white emergency lights sliding from blue to green and every other primary color in turn.

  He clutched to Anna’s shoulder as everything turned around him. Poole flickered in and out, his body seemingly melting and reforming with every angry pulse in his brain.

  “Shit,” he grunted and pressed his free hand over his left eye. “Stop it, please. Just…stop.” A tingling wave of nausea rose inside and he forced his eyes closed, breathing through it all.

  Jacoby sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, letting his body settle back to its new, damaged calm.

  Thankfully…blessedly, the anger and commotion died away, and by the time he was able to open his eyes again the other were floating in place, refusing to meet his gaze.

  “Coby, are you okay?” Anna asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  “No, I’m not okay,” he said, sliding his hand to the back of his head and pulling it away to reveal a palm full of fresh, dark blood. “They’re not okay. None of us are okay. It doesn’t matter why or how at this point. It wasn’t…”

  “She knew something was going on in her head. She knew it and didn’t tell any of us. Now look! We were just put through a fucking rock tumbler, everyone’s hurt, and we’ve got no medic, and to beat that we’re stuck on a busted ass ship way out here in the black. We’ve got no power, we’ve got no life support, and worse yet, we’ve got no way to call for help,” Lex said, cutting in. To her credit, she seemed more frustrated than angry. At least she wasn’t swinging fists.

  “So, let’s figure this out. Fighting isn’t going to help anyone.”

  “She probably tried to tell you,” Poole chimed in right after.

  They all turned to him.

  “What does that mean?” Soraya asked, the light glinting off her silver irises. She looked fierce, formidable.

  “I mean what I mean. Do I need to wait for you to get your decoder rings?”

  “I wouldn’t need a decoder ring if you could just learn to speak in full damned sentences,” Soraya snapped.

  Poole winced and held his head, a pain stabbing through Jacoby’s brain at the same time. His double disappeared, his voice echoing strangely from the air vents, then the galley behind them, and finally from next to Lex.

  “And…there it is,” he said, reappearing right in the middle of the group, naked, save for a pair of flower-covered boxers.

  “I’m really scrambled here, folks. I mean, ring the bell, because that pilot’s seat took me down with an impressive T.K.O before I even managed to step foot in the ring. I don’t know if I can…think I should maybe…or I could…fudge railcars on a carrot stripper,” he held up a finger and closed his eyes, then quietly continued. “The banana does not ask for seagrass or biscuits. You put the pudding in the cup, for her hair is green. Anna is breath, rain, and pebbles.”

  “Huh?” Soraya asked, and Lex snorted loudly.

  One of the machines strapped to Lana’s arm started to beep–a high pitched, incessant noise from hell. A small red light lit on the screen, and for the first time since the incident, Lana moved. Her legs twitched, and then her arms, and her mouth opened. But she didn’t speak or cry out, just sucked strangely at the air. Jacoby could see her eyes moving beneath the lids, just like Anna’s had when she had her first seizure.

  “Okay, why is she doing that?” Soraya asked and pulled herself back to the bedside. “Damn. Her heartrate is low. Something is wrong. What do we do?”

  Lex and Anna moved in, digging through the bag of medical supplies, the argument now well behind them. They tightened the straps, secured her neck with a brace, and shone a small light into one eye to check pupil response.

  “There are drugs in here and an injector,” Anna cried, pulling several small clear vials from the bag and a gun-shaped device. “But I don’t recognize any of these names. I mean they could be antibiotics or…shit, anything else. Could they help?”

  “How am I supposed to know? If the computer was up,” Soraya started to say, but then turned on the redhead. “Lex, what can we do?”

  Anna looked up at her at the same time. She looked between them, then to Lana, Emiko, and the two men on the other bunks, and finally Jacoby. Her expression pinched, her mouth moving before she found her voice.

  “I don’t…I mean. I don’t know!”

  “Poole, can you help her? Yes or no,” Jacoby whispered. The pressure slid in his head, the gash on the back of his skull throbbing in response. His response was an emotion, or a feeling. Affirmation, perhaps. He couldn’t seem to speak.

  The three women continued, Lex slapping her hands against her head. They yelled and pointed, frustration and helplessness bubbling up until tears flowed down Lex’s cheeks. It was all beyond them. He knew he had to do something before something irreversible happened.

  An idea hit Jacoby, and before it could slip away, he snagged the medical bag out of the air and wrenched it open. He dug around inside, pulling packs of gauze, tape, tweezers, and other supplies free to float loose in the air. Then he found a long paper pack. The tote floated free as he tore the small pack open, exposing the cotton-packed ends of long swabs.

  “Poole how many of your little microbes do you need to save her? How many would it take to help them all?” he asked, and the three women abruptly went quiet. Lana stopped moving just then, the monitor beep changing pitch.

  “I…it’s hard to…” Poole tried to say, his form fading in and out of the shadows.

  “However many it takes, do it!” Jacoby said, “like in the surgery back on Hyde. You could make them move around. Push them all out and we’ll pass them over.”

  “But for who? All of them? Just Lana? Emiko?” Soraya asked, looking between Lana and Emiko. The question hung in the air for a long, painful moment before it fully sunk in. He had to decide who received help, even if that meant someone died in the process. Lana was in bad shape, her vitals bottoming out. She obviously had an internal injury, and if that was the case, there really was nothing any of them, save Poole, could do for her. She didn’t have long. But would the others survive without Emiko’s medical knowledge? Would any of them survive if Erik or Lana weren’t there to try and fix the ship? Erik was the tech. But from listening to their conversations, Jacoby had gathered that Lana had far more practical knowledge of the ship’s systems and how they worked.

  “Ahhh!” Jacoby yelled, as a spike of pain erupted in his head.

  “I’m sorry, Jacky-Boy. I’m too damaged. I can’t seem to manage manifesting to speak intelligibly and hold back your pain at the same time,” Poole said, appearing in solid form. The clearer he appeared, the most pain jabbed into Jacoby’s head.

  “Don’t worry about me. Can you help them?”

  “Maybe,” Poole said, eyeing Lana with obvious concern. “One, perhaps. Damn it, I just purged your body, Jacky-Boy. There simply aren’t enough microorganisms inside you right now. If it was before, it wouldn’t even be an issue. But I cannot produce them fast enough…”

  “Do it,” he grunted, pointing at Emiko and Lana when he struggled to speak.

  “Both of them? I can’t. It would take every single microbe inside you right now. It would leave you with nothing, Jacky-Boy. The damage, the bleeding, it could kill you. If you die, I die, remember.”

  “My logic sucks but hear me out. We need Erik or Lana. Shit, we probably need them both. If they’re not here to fix the ship, we’re all screwed. No power, no air, no heat. Everyone dies. I’m the odd man out here. Trust me, I know that. Please, just do it!”

  “Coby, no!” Anna gasped, “We’ll find a way.”

  Lana’s monitor cut her off, multiple alarms splitting the air. She twitched once, rolled her head over, and went still. Clear liquid ran down from her nostrils, mixing with the blood from her mouth. There was a chance that it was already too late, some deep, al
ien part of his brain telling him that the clear liquid was cerebrospinal fluid, which meant that she likely had a skull fracture and brain trauma. That she, unlike him, was likely very short on time.

  “Do it now. I will take the pain. Put all of your energy into them, oh great and powerful Genie,” Jacoby said, and mimicked rubbing a lamp.

  “Now you get it, you freaking lovable dope! Damnit, don’t you go and stroke out on me or something. I can keep your organs working, I think, but there is no guarantee you’ll wake up again if you have an aneurism or something in the meantime. You could spiral into a coma that you never wake up from.”

  “Coby, wait.” Jacoby grabbed Anna’s hand and squeezed, but he couldn’t meet her eyes. He’d fold, and damnit, people needed him. He could make a difference.

  “If this is it, I just want to say…well, it’s been a good run, buddy. Thank for being my ride, meat sack,” Poole said, his mouth drooping in what looked like genuine sadness.

  “Ditto.” That was all he could think of at the moment, the pain thrumming in his brain like the beating of a horrible, massive drum.

  “Coby, you don’t need to do this. Take them from us, Poole. Please!”

  “I can’t,” Poole said, somberly. “The microbes he passed on to you are fused with your cellular architecture. That is why he doesn’t need to continue passing them along. They’re as much a lasting part of you as the freckles on your nose or the hair on your head.”

  A strange, bubbling sensation almost immediately filled Jacoby’s toes and fingers, then crawled up his ankles, wrists, arms, and legs. It left everything empty, cold, and weak in its wake, but thankfully, there was no gravity to yank him towards the ground this time.

  A hot stabbing pain fired into the back of his head, the muscles spasming down his neck and up onto his scalp. It grew hot quickly, the fire thrumming in his brain growing in intensity.

  “Almost there, Jacky-Boy. Just put those up to your lips and I will do the rest. Don’t die on me, please. Just give me a little bit of time, hold on and hold the fort until I get back there to fix you up,” Poole said. “And, heh, don’t go vegetable on me either, otherwise I’ll be stuck in here until your body decomposes around me.”