by Amy Cross
"Amanda Cole is dead," I point out, with tears rolling down my cheeks.
"Yeah," he replies, fixing me with a curious, sad stare, "I think she really is."
Chapter Two
Sutter
"Help!" I shout, dragging myself along the gantry until I reach the hatch. "Get me out of here!"
I wait, but there's no reply. I don't know what the hell Crizz and Tom are doing up there, but it's hard to believe they can't hear me. I've been calling out to them for the past few minutes, and I'm starting to wonder if something has incapacitated them. Turning to look back along the gantry, I wait for any sign that my attacker is coming after me, but all I see is the metal platform receding into darkness.
Looking down at my right leg, I can immediately tell that the cuts are deep. Blood has flowed out from my thigh, soaking my uniform and leaving a smeared trail on the floor. I still don't quite know what it was that came after me a few moments ago, but whatever it was, it managed to cut deep into my flesh. I'm not sure if I was imagining it, but I swear I felt something grinding against my bones, and the pain is getting stronger by the minute.
Reaching up, I grab hold of the hatch and try to pull myself up. After a moment, however, I have to let go and I fall back down onto the gantry with a heavy thud. Again, the pain arcs through my body, and I let out an involuntary grunt. I don't know how much longer I can stay conscious, but I can definitely feel my strength starting to ebb away.
"Help me!" I shout, as loud as I can manage. "Crizz! Tom! Someone, help me!"
Chapter Three
Crizz
"Down here!" Tom shouts, hurrying toward the hatch that leads to the gantry. He climbs through before stopping suddenly. "Jesus Christ... Crizz, grab a medical kit!"
"What is it?" I ask, racing over to him. "What's wrong?"
"Just get a medical kit!" he shouts.
Leaning through the hatch, I see Sutter on the floor of the gantry with blood all over the lower part of his uniform. As Tom turns him over, it's clear that he's not conscious, and for a moment all I can do is stare at his injuries and try to work out what the hell happened.
"Crizz!" Tom says firmly. "Medical kit! Now!"
Finally realizing I have to do something, I turn and run back through to the rig's control room. It takes me a moment to find the medical kit in one of the lockers, but eventually I run back to the hatch and climb through, to find that Tom has already torn away the uniform around Sutter's right leg. The skin has been ripped away, exposing meat and bone, and it's clear that Sutter has already lost a lot of blood.
"I need gel," Tom says as he tries to clean the wound. "Crizz, get me some gel!"
Fumbling through the contents of the medical kit, I finally find a can of gel and pass it to him. He pulls the top off and sprays gel into the wound. It's not much, but it's a start: the gel will neutralize infection and promote regrowth of the surrounding tissue, eventually forming the framework for the regeneration of damaged muscle. I watch helplessly as Tom grabs a packet of IsoDerm and rips it open, and finally he spreads a thick layer around the wound before smearing it over the top of the gel.
"There's a lot of blood," I say, looking back along the gantry and seeing a thick trail of smeared blood running all the way from the shadows.
"It's okay," Tom replies, taking a syringe from the kit and quickly drawing up some base plasma from a small jar. He injects Sutter and then sits back. The base plasma should promote rapid blood production, and Sutter's own immune system will hopefully kick in now that it's been stimulated. There's already some color coming back to his face, and although it's a little early to be too confident, I can't help hoping that we got to him in time.
"Now what?" I ask.
"His pulse isn't too bad," he says as he places two fingers against the side of Sutter's neck. "He's in a good state for recovery, but we shouldn't move him too much. Help me get him through the hatch and then we'll wait for him to heal a little more before we consider carrying him to the lander."
It's not easy to maneuver a human body through the narrow hatch, but eventually Tom and I manage to get Sutter through. We carry him to the control room, and Tom starts checking the state of his wound while I run back to the hatch and swing it shut. There are several deadlock systems on the main door, and I activate them all. Although they're designed to seal the space and ensure that no gases can escape from beneath the rig, this time I'm more worried about whatever caused Sutter's injuries. I've seen industrial accidents before, but they're not usually so ragged. The damage to Sutter's leg looked more like it was caused by some kind of animal.
"How's he doing?" I ask as I hurry back through to the control room.
"It's looking good," Tom replies as he finishes giving Sutter another injection. "I've knocked him out for an hour or two, so his body can heal a little better. He's going to be in pain when he wakes up, and if there's one thing I know about Nick Sutter, it's that he's not a very good patient. In fact, the guy tends to be a total asshole when he's got an injury." He pauses, before finally sitting back. "If we hadn't found him when we did," he adds, "I'm not sure he would have made it. He was cut all the way through to the bone."
"By..." I start to say, before pausing for a moment. My heart is racing and I'm almost too scared to ask the next question. "By what?" I say eventually.
Tom turns to me.
"I mean..." I pause. "What could have caused this?"
"That's a very good question," he replies. "I can't think of any kind of machinery down in that part of the rig that would cause this type of injury, and anyway, Sutter's got too much sense to make a mistake. It's almost as if..."
I wait for him to finish.
"Almost as if what?" I ask.
He stares at Sutter for a moment.
"It looks like an animal did it," I say finally.
He turns to me.
"I'm not saying it did," I continue. "I mean, it can't have... I'm just saying, that's what it looked like. There has to be something down there, some kind of machine, that can cause an injury like that. It's as if the skin was ripped open and part of the muscle was gouged away. It's not impossible that a piece of equipment might malfunction and do that, is it?"
"Nothing's impossible," he replies, clearly skeptical. "It's just a matter of what's more likely."
"There's nothing down there," I tell him. "Io-5's a dead planet, like every other planet we've ever reached. It was fully surveyed, just like all the rest. If there was even a chance of life existing here, the survey team would have found something."
"Of course they would," he replies. "Unless they didn't." He pauses. "Io-5's not the biggest planet in the galaxy, but it's still pretty big. How far down do the survey teams go, Crizz? A couple of miles? Just enough to check for the easiest deposits. Sure, they pay lip service to the idea of scanning the whole damn thing, but do you really think they could catch anything? What about the deeper parts of the planet? I've seen the schematics for this place. There are a lot of subterranean passages, maybe even more than you'd expect on this type of planet."
Pausing for a moment, I look over at Sutter.
"The mining equipment goes deeper," Tom continues. "It pushes down for mile after mile, grinding its way through the rock and extracting as much as methane-hydrozone as it can find. Maybe we finally pissed something off down there."
"You think something's living in the center of the planet?" I ask.
"I think something almost killer Sutter," he replies, "and he sure as hell didn't just trip over his own shoelaces. His wounds were ragged, and whatever tore into him, it did so with repeated strikes, each time in slightly different directions. That doesn't sound like a machine to me."
"I should write a report," I say after a moment. "I need to let Supreme Command know -"
"Let them know what?" he asks. "That your colleague was attacked by a monster?"
"That something's happened," I reply. "Supreme Command has to be kept informed about developments!"
"I think you've kept them informed enough for one day," he says firmly, "don't you? Anyway, you should probably try to have a little more to tell them before you go sending anything. He'll be awake soon enough."
Taking a deep breath, I try to stay calm. For as long as Sutter's injured, I'm technically in charge of the station, which is definitely not something I anticipated when I graduated from the academy just a few months ago. There's also the matter of whatever attacked him, since there's clearly a problem somewhere beneath the rig.
"I'm going to take a look," I say, heading toward the hatch.
"You can't go down there," Tom replies. "I won't let you."
"I'm not going down there," I tell him. "I'm just going to check the sensors and see if I can pick anything up. I don't believe in aliens, but until he wakes up and tells us what happened, I have a duty to make sure the site is safe."
Without waiting for him to reply, I head through to the corridor and then along to the relay station. It'll take a lot more than some scratches on Sutter's leg to convinced me that hordes of alien creatures are about to come storming up from the depths of Io-5. At the same time, I need to work out what's going on here, and as I reach the sensor terminals and initiating a deep scan, I can't help thinking back to the hallucinations I experienced while I was suffering from Hidden Eye Syndrome. I've always assumed that if first contact with an alien race occurred, it would some kind of huge event, but now I can't help but wonder if maybe it'd be more like this. I just hope Sutter wakes up soon and tells us the truth.
Chapter Four
Sutter
"Take it easy," Tom says as he helps me to sit up. "You're in bad shape, old man."
I stare down at my leg, and for a moment I can't remember who I am or what the hell I'm doing here. After a few seconds, the daze starts to clear and I look around; I'm in the control room of the central rig down on Io-5, and Tom's presence means it must be time for the reserves to be drained. Still, my memory is a little hazy and I'm struggling to work out what the hell happened to my leg.
"So," Tom continues, passing me a bottle of water. "Care to let on?"
"Let on what?" I ask, taking a sip.
"Why we found you half-dead down there?"
I pause for a moment.
"You were calling for help," he continues. "Well, screaming, actually. Don't worry, though. I won't tell anyone quite how desperate you sounded."
"I was down at the reserve hatch," I reply, feeling a little breathless as the pain in my leg continues to build. "I was trying to work out what caused the fluctuations I've been detecting."
"I know," he says. "It's the bit after that, though. What the hell happened to you?"
"Where's Amanda?" I ask, looking over at the door with a sudden sense of panic.
"Amanda's dead," he replies, "but Crizz, on the other hand, went off to check some other readings. Don't worry, though. She won't be going down to the reserve hatch. She doesn't have the balls."
"Amanda's not dead," I say, trying to get to my feet but finding that the pain is too intense. "Why the hell would you say something like that?"
"Because it's true," he continues. "I've spoken to her. There's not a trace of her old personality in there. I know you and Deborah and the others were convinced you could unthread this new mind and bring the old Amanda Cole back, but I think you need to give it up. Crizz Arnold and Amanda Cole are two completely different people, and Crizz is too deeply embedded in that body to ever let go." He pauses. "So what happened, Nick? I've gotta tell you, the damage to your leg looked suspiciously like it was caused by some kind of animal."
"Don't talk crap," I mutter.
"Then enlighten me," he says firmly.
I take a deep breath as I try to remember exactly what happened. Something definitely seemed to hit me, and for a moment back there I was worried that something was down there with me. I remember struggling to get back up to the gantry, and then...
"I don't like that look on your face," Tom says after a moment. "You seem scared."
"There was..."
Pausing, I finally remember turning around on the gantry and seeing... something.
"If you're about to tell me that little green men did this to you," Tom continues, "I'd urge you to reconsider. Don't make me get you sectioned for mental illness."
"It wasn't little green men," I reply, still unable to quite remember what I saw. "Someone was trying to sabotage the rig."
He raises a skeptical eyebrow.
"It's true," I continue, forcing myself to get to my feet despite the agonizing pain in my right leg. "There was someone down there, alright, but it sure as hell wasn't some kind of monster. Someone's been here for months, trying to damage the rig and shut down the operation. They must have arrived while I was manning the station alone. If they landed while I was sleeping one night, it's possible that they just slipped through unnoticed."
"And why would someone do that?" he asks.
"Rebels," I reply.
"We're the -" He pauses, before lowering his voice. "We're the rebels, Nick. Remember?"
"Maybe there are others," I continue. "It makes sense. As far as most of humanity is concerned, Amanda Cole and her associates are dead and buried. It's not hard to believe that some other rebel group, completely independent of anything we're doing, has sprung up and decided to sabotage the main mining planets that keep Supreme Command's wheels spinning. They sent someone here to damage the rig, and maybe something went wrong so now he's stuck here, or maybe it's a long-term mission, or maybe..."
I pause for a moment as I try to make sense of the conflicting ideas that are filling my head. This would be a lot easier if I could remember exactly what attacked me, but my memory of those crucial moments seems to be buried too deep.
"If there was another rebel group," Tom says after a moment, "don't you think we'd have heard about them? Besides, having some guy run around in the shadows on Io-5 for a few months is hardly an efficient use of resources, is it? Why not juts plant a bomb and then get the hell out of here?"
"I don't know," I reply, "but it's more plausible than goddamn aliens."
"Are you sure about that?" he asks, watching as I limp over to the nearest terminal. "Maybe there comes a time when it's worth -"
"There's no such thing as aliens!" I hiss, starting to lose my temper. "Cycling through various diagnostic screens, I start running scans to see if there's any hint of human life down by the reserve hatch. The sensors only go down as far as the lower part of the hatch's final gantry, which means it's impossible to tell if someone might have gone deeper, but I figure I need to clear up this situation as soon as possible. I know damn well that there's a saboteur down beneath the rig, and I also know that it has to be a human.
"Crizz is already running scans," Tom says after a moment. "She's in the relay station right now. Oh, and by the way, we've got a big problem heading our way thanks to her."
"Add it to the list," I mutter, checking the scans before realizing that there's no-one else nearby. "We've got a more immediate problem," I add. "There's no-one else in the rig."
"Isn't that a good thing?"
"I mean no-one else," I continue, turning to him. "I don't know where Crizz has gone, but she sure as hell isn't in the relay station."
Chapter Five
Crizz
It's not easy, but I'm finally able to get the access panel loose so that I can crawl into the duct. I knew it would be difficult to gain access, although I was hoping I'd be able to get the job done without any risk that the others might notice I'm missing. They're probably already wondering about me, but I don't have any choice. Reaching through to the main coil, I grab hold of the transponder link and pull it free.
Immediately, the ion engines of Tom's cargo ship begin to shut down.
Crawling back out, I replace the panel before slipping the transponder into my pocket. It's crazy to think that I can cripple the entire vessel just by removing such a simple piece of equipment. He carries spares, of course,
but I've already removed those from his maintenance bay. The ship is now effectively marooned on the surface of Io-5, which means there's no way he can make a run for it before Supreme Command is able to send a squadron to investigate the message I sent.
Once I'm back in the control room of Tom's ship, I make my way quickly to the access hatch and climb out, before hurrying down to the surface of the planet and jogging over to the door that leads back into the rig. Tom and Nick and going to be furious when they find out what I've done, but I had no choice. Supreme Command would be disappointed in me if I allowed Tom to get away, and even though he managed to sow a few doubts in my mind earlier, I know full well that ultimately I'm here to serve Supreme Command above all others.
I'm not a traitor.
Making my way up to the rig's main control deck, I realize after a moment that I can hear raised voices in another part of the rig.
"You're going to put the whole damn operation in jeopardy!" Sutter shouts, sounding more angry than I've ever heard him before.
"There is no operation," Tom replies, clearly struggling to keep his temper under control. "She's gone. I know you and Deborah had this crazy notion that you could undo the procedure, but it's never going to happen! Amanda Cole is dead. Sure, maybe a tiny part of her is still buried deep in her head, but she's someone else now. If you really think you can give her a few nudges and hope to bring her back, you're out of your mind!"
"I know what I'm doing," Sutter says firmly. "You're just passing through. What the hell do you know?"
"We have to switch to a back-up plan," Tom insists.
"There are no back-up plans," Sutter replies. "Don't you get it? This is our only chance!"
"She's just one person. Instead of trying to bring her back, don't you think we should focus on moving forward? We can replace her."