by M. R. Forbes
“I thought you were in a hurry to get back to Edenrise?”
“I am, but the feed.” He paused. “I need to see it for myself.”
“See what?” Nathan asked.
James’ voice was quiet. Shocked and slightly breathless.
“It may be one of the Others.”
Chapter 26
“What?” Nathan said.
“I can’t be sure. My link to the spider is weak at this distance. There’s a room down there, with something suspended in some kind of liquid. It’s a similar size and shape to the figure you saw in the sphere’s message.”
“The USSF had contact with one of the Others, and they stuck it in a jar?”
“We don’t know what happened, but I know Tinker would want us to find out. We’re already here. Let’s locate the mainframe first. I’ve got the spider coming back to help us identify the mines now that we know to look for them.”
“Roger that, General,” Nathan said. He paused. “Do you think the USSF opened the artifact? Do you think it really is a door, and one of the Others came through?”
“James Stacker never said what happened here. We always assumed he didn’t know. But maybe he lost touch with his contact? Maybe his contact is one of the bodies out in the hangar? I want to answer that question too.”
They waited a minute for the spider to make it back up the elevator shaft to their position. It didn’t stop when it reached them, advancing and scanning the ground. It was able to pick out the mines on the old tile, stopping in front of them and waiting while James carefully turned them over and disconnected the circuit. The process was painstakingly slow, to the point that Nathan was amazed James had the patience to do it. He was getting agitated with the slowdown.
It took nearly two hours to get down the corridor. Nathan checked the rooms along it as the spider and James continued pulling the mines, exploring the spaces where the USSF used to operate. Offices, mainly. Most of them were simple. Desks, chairs, old terminals. A few had photos still positioned on the desks. Wives. Children. Families. Looking at them made him jealous for what he would never have.
A couple of the offices had bodies in them. One was in an awkward position on the floor, sidearm in hand, gunshot wound out the back of his head. By the angle, it looked like he had stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
There was no power, so none of the terminals were functional. He found books in the offices, mostly manuals and guides of different kinds. Nothing to suggest what had happened to the people in the base. Nothing to give him a picture of why they had seemingly attacked one another or killed themselves. Nothing that connected the Other who James believed was down below with the operations center up here. But then, this section was administrative. Desk monkeys.
The hallway split into another junction at the end, but the spider stopped registering the presence of mines. It moved ahead cautiously until it reached the end of the corridor, still searching, and then clattered around the curve and out of sight.
“That took long enough,” James said, exhaling. Maybe he wasn’t as calm about it as Nathan thought. “Let’s split up from here. I’ll take that corridor. You check the doors behind the spider.”
“Roger that,” Nathan said.
They went to the junction together and then went their separate ways. The spider had already vanished around the next turn in the complex, but Nathan stopped at each door and pushed it open, glancing inside. For the first ten doors or so it was more of the same. Administrative offices. He passed an old bathroom, and he took a second to look inside. There were two bodies on the ground inside, facing one another. Both had guns near their hands. It looked like they had shot one another at point-blank range. The sight of it gave him a chill.
He backed out of the restroom, checking a half dozen more doors.
“Relentless,” James said through the comm. “I’ve got it. Come on back.”
“Roger,” Nathan said.
He turned around.
A man was standing in front of him. A soldier in a green USSF jumpsuit. He was holding a knife.
Nathan took a step back. The man was staring at him, a dark expression on his square face. He was short but muscled. There was a bloodstain on his chest. A moment later Nathan realized he had seen the man before.
Dead on the floor of the hangar.
The man lunged at him, and Nathan jerked aside, barely avoiding the knife. Not that it could have pierced his armor. He grabbed for the man’s hand, getting it around his wrist. The man punched him in the side of the helmet with his free hand, and the blow shook Nathan more than he would have ever expected.
He stumbled into the wall, and the man stabbed at him again, the knife hitting the armor plate on his forearm.
And sinking right through.
He felt the pain in his arm, and he cried out. Then he threw himself forward, slamming his helmet against the man’s head. The man fell back, but only for a second. Then he came in again, a knife in his other hand.
Where had he gotten it?
“General, I need backup,” Nathan said. “I’m under attack.”
He slapped the incoming hand aside, moving away from the blade. The other one made it to his chest, cutting through the armor and into his gut. He cursed, feeling the moisture of his blood along his flesh.
“Relentless?” James said. “Your tactical is clear.”
“I’m wounded, damn it,” Nathan replied. He threw another punch, catching the man in the chest. The blow knocked him back a step, giving him a moment to recover.
He noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. James’ spider. It was approaching him at a run.
He ducked as the man came at him again, avoiding the blade. He blocked the other one with his arm, leaving its point only centimeters from his helmet. His body hurt where he had already been stabbed.
This guy was supposed to be dead. How the fuck was he up and moving?
The spider stopped a meter away.
“Relentless, the spider is right next to you. Nothing is showing on its feed.”
What?
Nathan glanced at the spider, and then back at the man.
He was gone.
Nathan looked down the corridor. He didn’t see anyone. The soldier had literally vanished into thin air. What the hell was going on?
His arm still hurt. So did his stomach. He looked down. There was no tear in the armor. No crack in the plates. No blood.
The pain was real.
James appeared at the end of the passage, rifle up and ready. He lowered it when he saw Nathan.
“What the fuck?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Nathan replied. “But I’ve decided I don’t like this place.”
Chapter 27
The mainframe was composed of sixteen individual units, each of them a narrow tower nearly as tall as Nathan and around twenty centimeters wide. They weren’t particularly heavy, but they were bulky, which meant they could only carry two of them at a time.
Nathan had explained to James what happened to him. The soldier. The stab wounds. The ongoing pain. It subsided over the next hour as they started unplugging the servers, but it left them both with a lot of questions, the foremost being: what the fuck had caused it?
James suggested that there might be something in the mines besides explosives. A nerve agent or toxin of some kind that caused the hallucinations. That might have made sense, except Nathan was wearing a helmet with full filtration, designed to keep out dangerous particles. Besides James appeared to be unaffected.
James also suggested the hallucinations might be from exhaustion or stress, or the shock of seeing the dead around the base. Nathan didn’t buy that, either. He had seen enough death that it shouldn’t cause him to start imagining things, especially to the extent that the pain felt so real.
Besides, the soldiers on the base had killed one another. That much was clear. Then they had killed themselves. Had the same psychotic episode overtaken everyone here? If it had, i
t came back around to how and why, and again why hadn’t James been affected? Coincidence?
Whatever the cause, whatever the reason, having proof that the whole thing was in his head seemed to work to keep it from returning. They spent the next four hours packing the mainframe and carrying it back to the Pulse, with no interruptions from anything living or dead.
The sun was sinking behind the mountains by the time they were done, the moon rising on the other side. It was big and red, a menacing bloody sphere. The whole sky was turning deep red. Nathan paused at the entrance to the base to stare at it in wonder. Proxima’s atmosphere didn’t have so much variation.
James seemed pleased with their efforts. He put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “Everyone should be able to stand in one place and look up at the sky without having to worry a trife is going to grab them while they do.”
Nathan didn’t respond. He followed James back into the hangar and through to the original corridor. James approached the gate in front of the lift, grabbing it with his replacement hand and pulling it open despite its complaints. Then he pulled a small box from his hip and began unspooling a thin wire with a weighted end, dropping it into the shaft.
It continued to unwind for a few seconds before hitting bottom. He tapped something on the surface, and then placed the box on the floor ahead of the shaft.
“That’s strong enough to hold us?” Nathan asked.
“I can use the climb wire in the Mark Three,” James replied. He turned backward, grabbing the wire in his gloved hands and rappelling over the edge and into the shaft.
Nathan walked over to the edge. He looked down the shaft, catching James’ dark form sinking away. He turned and reached for the climb wire.
“Nathan.”
He froze. That voice.
“Nathan. Help me.”
He looked up. That was Niobe’s voice.
“Help me. Nathan. Please.”
It was coming from the hangar. What the hell?
“Nathan. They’re coming for me. They’re going to kill me because of what I know. Help me. Please.”
Nathan swallowed hard, his heart beginning to race. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Who the fuck was playing with his head like this, and how?
He grabbed the climb wire, approaching the edge.
“Nathan, where are you going? Don’t you love me?”
“Fuck off!” he shouted.
Then he rappelled away, using his feet to tap the sides of the shaft as he lowered himself.
He reached the top of the lift within seconds. James was waiting for him there. The access hatch on top of the lift was open, giving them a path through it to the floor.
“I’m hearing Niobe’s voice now,” Nathan said.
“You can head back out to the Pulse if you want,” James replied.
“No. I’ll deal with it. I want to see this Other of yours.”
“Come on then,” James said.
They dropped to the left and then walked along the corridor. James’ spider was still out in front, leading the way. There was another heavy blast door ahead of them, again hanging slightly open. The spider passed through it easily, but James and Nathan had to stop. They grabbed the left side together, managing to pull it free.
They moved into a small control center, with desks, terminals and displays arranged in three rows of three, and a wide aisle down the center. There were a pair of doors behind at the back labeled Research. They were slightly open, the spider already having passed through.
“Hold up,” James said before they reached the doors.
“What is it?” Nathan asked.
“Strange.” He continued to the door. “My spider’s feed just died.”
“It died?”
They moved through the doors, into a long corridor. There were windows on both sides of it, which looked out into the research areas. The spider was sitting in the middle of the passage, motionless.
James knelt beside the robot, picking it up and checking it.
“The battery is dead,” he said. “It had three hours of charge ten seconds ago.”
“Maybe the indicator was bad?” Nathan said.
“It had a full charge and had only been going for six hours. It isn’t the indicator.”
“Shorted?”
“Maybe.”
James stood up. “Piece of shit.” He kicked the spider, sending it crashing into the wall. Two of the legs broke off, and a few other pieces exploded out from it.
Nathan looked away. James’ temper was so much worse than his own. Maybe the reconditioning he had gone through on Proxima had worked better than he thought?
He wound up looking through the window on his right. He saw the large container now, an upright glass vessel with wires and tubes connecting to machinery at the top and bottom. There was liquid inside, only visible because it had a thick, slightly murky appearance. His heart raced as his eyes tracked toward the contents, anticipating looking at the Other.
The container was empty.
He stepped forward, putting his hand on the glass and blinking his eyes. James had said the alien was in there. He looked again. Still empty. He turned around. Maybe there was another one on the other side? That room was mainly machines and equipment, intended for a different kind of research.
What the hell?
“James,” he said, turning around again and confirming the container was empty for the third time. “Is the Other supposed to be in there?”
James looked through the window at the containment tank.
“Relentless, is it just me, or is that fucking tank empty?”
“It isn’t just you,” Nathan replied, glad he wasn’t crazy.
“The spider’s feed showed something in there, damn it,” James said, getting angry. He punched the window, the force of his blow leaving a large crack through it.
“General,” Nathan said.
James ignored him, hitting the glass again.
“James!” Nathan said sharply.
The General continued to ignore him. He hit the glass two more times, the last blow causing it to shatter. He cleared the debris enough to climb through, entering the lab.
Nathan gritted his teeth in frustration. For all they knew the lab was contaminated, and now they were too.
James approached the tank, putting his helmet up to it, still expecting something to be inside. Nathan climbed through the broken window and joined him there.
“Either this thing really is empty, and the spider was lying,” James said. “Or we’re both hallucinating.”
“We have the mainframe,” Nathan said. “We should just go. This place isn’t right.”
James drew back his hand, preparing to punch the tank. “There’s one way to find out whether or not it’s empty.”
Nathan grabbed his arm before he could throw the punch. “James, you don’t know what that liquid is.”
“Get your fucking hands off me!” James shouted. He turned, hitting Nathan with his other hand and shoving him back.
Nathan felt his anger flare. He clenched his fists to try to control it. Getting into a fight with James wouldn’t do either of them any good.
“Damn it, James!” he shouted. “What if you break it open and an alien spills out? What then? How is that going to help you? What good is that going to do anybody?”
James turned his head toward him, staring at him for a long, tense moment. “I need to know if Tinker is leading us to true salvation, if he’s leading us into the hands of new malevolent masters, or if he’s just fucking crazy.”
“And seeing a dead alien will help you with that?”
“At least then we know the Others exist. At least we’ll know they’ve been here before, and they didn’t seize control of the planet. At least we’ll know they aren’t gods.”
“There’s no such thing as gods.”
“Even a sufficiently advanced race could be described as godly. But gods don’t wind up in jars.” James laughed softly, calming a little. “I�
�m sorry I shoved you, Nathan. I do need to know if there’s anything in there. We can’t trust our eyes in here, not completely. And the spider is dead.”
“I wonder if we were hallucinating its malfunction too?”
James froze, realizing he may have smashed a fully operational robot. “Fuck. I didn’t think of that. I feel like I’m starting to lose track of what’s real down here.”
“Which is a pretty strong signal that we should go, isn’t it, General?”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Maybe the mainframe can give us the answers I want?”
“I hope so.”
“Let’s move out, Relentless.”
“Roger that, sir.”
They both turned back to the shattered window.
They both froze at the same time.
The Other was standing on the opposite side.
Chapter 28
“You see it, right?” Nathan said.
“I see it,” James replied. “I don’t believe it, but I see it.”
There was no way for Nathan to be sure it was an Other, but that’s what he decided to call it until someone proved otherwise. Like James had suggested, it was similar height and build and dress to the being in the sphere’s three-dimensional hologram.
The being was a little less than two meters tall, thin and lanky, high cheekbones on a long, pear-shaped face that looked like it was being stretched downward. A wide, flat nose; large, angled eyes; and small ears that looked like little more than flaps on the side of its bald head. It wore a long hooded cloak that spilled out of sight behind the broken window, over multiple layers of thin white material cinched closed at the waist by a wide belt.
It didn’t say anything. It stood there unconcerned and unhurried.
“How do we know it’s real?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t think we can,” James said. “You said the soldier that attacked you felt real.”
“Even the wounds he caused hurt like real wounds.”
“Well, we can’t get out without going past it, real or not.”