by S. A. Lusher
He’d have to rely on Hollis more than normal, something he hated doing, and Hollis wasn’t in too great of shape himself. But who knew? Maybe they’d get lucky. Maybe Callie and the others would find the bastard, cap him and put an end to this. Although a thought continued to haunt Allan as he made his way through the pitch-black rock tunnel with only his visor to guide him, and it was this: there didn’t seem to be a surefire way to straight up end this. Usually there was a fairly cut and dry way to terminate these situations they found themselves in, but would it simply be as simple as killing ReSequez?
Well, they’d worry about that later.
Allan suddenly became aware of light sounds, getting closer. They were fast, rapid, almost like… “Incoming!” he called, spinning around.
He managed to turn around just in time to see something rushing up behind Hollis and, a split second later, he watched a thin but long crimson blade burst through the man’s chest. He began to scream but from the way it was cut off and from the way his body went slack, Allan understood at once that his heart had been pierced. Pierced? More than that: destroyed. As Allan raised his rifle and began opening fire, he thought he would feel something. Anger. Fury. Remorse. Horror. Revulsion. But he hardly felt anything.
He was too exhausted for emotions at this point.
There was just the techno before him, the same stealthy model as the one’s he’d faced down before, with the long silver blade and the eerily fast and silent movements, as it pull its blade from Hollis’ back in a great spray of blood that looked black under his vision filter. Then the strobing effect of his gun as he squeezed the trigger and rattled off rounds, the muzzle flare and the gunshots and the way the rifle chattered in his grip.
Then the techno was moving, left, then right, faster than he could track in his exhausted state, and it was coming straight for him.
Then it was before him, right in front of him and it reached out, slicing his rifle cleanly into two pieces. Allan felt the thing come apart in his grasp as he tried to step back, but then something pierced his armor and he was sure that this was it, this was the end, this was death. Although the pain seemed immense and chilled, (he always thought getting stabbed felt cold more than anything else), as he looked down, he could still see the thing’s bloodied blade. It was not inside of him. The other arm was up against his stomach.
Okay, so it had two blades.
Except...except there was no mushrooming explosion of pain, he realized. It was no more than a needle prick, and suddenly he was sleepy, he was more sleepy than he could ever remember being and it was like liquid warmth was filling up his entire body, his whole being, rocking him gently to sleep. The creature stepped back and Allan’s knees went out. He fell to them, then fell face first, but as he pitched forward, something grabbed onto him and eased him to the rocky ground instead of letting him simply fall there.
And then all was dark.
* * * * *
He became aware of light and sound.
The light was bright, white and clear, causing him to squint as he opened his eyes, and the sounds were soft but came from all around him. He could still feel pain, but it was distant, almost as if it were a separate entity all its own, dislocated from him. Something was missing, though. Something was wrong.
It came to him, slowly.
First, his power armor was missing. In fact, all of it was missing. He was naked. Secondly, he couldn’t move at all. Only his eyelids, and even then sluggishly. And it wasn’t simply that he was being restrained, he could look down at himself and see that. It was like he was completely paralyzed. His muscles wouldn’t respond at all.
“You’re awake, I’m so glad.”
Allan swallowed and looked up. Hanging on a prehensile tube that seemed to be able to control itself was a flat screen, and being displayed on that screen was a strangely angular face of pure neon green. Its eyes were a cool blue.
It looked only vaguely like a human face.
“Hello, Allan,” it said.
He tried to speak, but nothing happened.
“I do apologize for the chemical restraint. You’re quite paralyzed now. I’ve found that it’s so much easier to maintain control of a situation when you upgrade from simple leather and metal restraints. Now, you don’t know me, but I’m sure you’ve heard of me, and I know you! I’ve been listening, you see. And-” the voice suddenly broke off and the face froze up. What came out of the speakers, hidden somewhere nearby, was a stuttering electronic noise that suddenly snapped off, and the voice continued right along as if nothing had happened. “-I must say that I’m disappointed that they sent you instead of Greg. I was hoping to see Greg again. You see, he and I have a bit of a history together. He was my liberator and, he thought, at least, my executioner. I should introduce myself. My name, you see, is Erebus.”
Allan felt cold terror beginning to well within him, pushing past the chemical restraint that Erebus had given him to numb his body and his mind. He tried again to move, tried hard, but he couldn’t even shift a millimeter.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get to know each other in great detail, I’m sure. And I need you, Allan! I need to bring the others. There’s something special about you, about all of you, and I fully intend to distill this strange, unique quality you all have. Come along now. Time to go.”
He heard engines somewhere, distantly, and he tried again to struggle, but the lethargy was winning, and, much against his will, he slipped back into sleep.
* * * * *
“Allan, please, please talk to me!” Callie moaned, sick with fear.
She was hurrying through the castle now, making her way towards the back exit where Allan and Hollis had headed through. She had to get to him, had to find out what had happened to him. There was nothing but silence on the radio.
“Allan, come on! Give me something, give me any-”
As she came out the back, into the gray rainfall, the radio suddenly clicked to life. Callie froze, her heart leaping into her throat, waiting to hear his response.
But it wasn’t Allan’s voice that came onto the line.
“Callie Ward, hello.” The voice was strange, distant, electronic. “I’m afraid I have to take Allan away now. I’d take you too, but...well, I just don’t have the time. I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to see Greg, but I know you’re going to see him soon. Please do me a favor and deliver this message to him. Tell him: Erebus looks forward to seeing him again. Goodbye.”
And as this message was being said, a strange, silver, curved craft was rising out of the ground maybe a hundred and fifty meters away. It raised itself up, pointed towards the horizon and suddenly took off in a burst of light and sound.
“Allan! No!” Callie heard herself shriek, feeling her throat flame up at the abuse. But the ship was gone, fading into the clouds until there was nothing left to see.
Callie stood there for a long, long time in the rain, staring at where the ship had gone, her mind blank and mute and numb.
But, as before, her professionalism would not let her rest for long, would not let her enjoy even the small, dismal comfort of shell-shocked horror. Slowly, she turned around and walked back into the castle. There were things to do.
Calls to make.
Information to hunt down.
She was going after Allan.
INTO THE VOID
CHAPTER 01
CPL. Matthew Cage
L. CPL. John Powell
PVT. Jerome Baker
William Holt
Linda Lawrence
Susan Sharpe
Gideon Stewart
Lucy Banks
PFC Juan Ramirez
SPEC. Duncan Kato
SPEC. Colin Epps
SGT. Jonathan Philbrick
PFC Aaron Malone
Mark Collins
SPEC. Lin Parker
Greg found it difficult to stop staring at the wall of engravings. Some of these names he knew, some of them he didn’t. Hell, some of them he’d personally requested. It
had been a grim task, but Hawkins thought it was something that needed to be done. And he wasn’t wrong. More than something that needed to be done, it was something that deserved to be done. Here were the men and women who had died fighting Rogue Operations, and later, after Rogue Ops was put six feet under, fighting to keep the galaxy a safe place.
There were more names on there, a lot more.
Over the past several weeks, Greg had found himself coming to this spot more often. The gold plaque was huge, taking up a solid section of the wall where it was placed, in an intersection room that connected the bridge, the primary airlock and the rest of the ship. Unconsciously, Greg reached up and gently rubbed his neck.
Sometimes, he could still feel the phantom pain of his decapitation.
He continued staring at the flat plate of gold. There were a lot of names, dozens...and there was still a lot of space yet to be filled. The fact that he could be another name on this list hadn’t escaped him. It didn’t bother him, either. At least, not as much as it used to. No, what bothered him now was the fact that he might end up in a situation where he was incapable of dying and in essentially eternal torment.
He could face death, he didn’t think he could face that.
That brought him around to the other thing he’d been thinking about. There was a name missing. Greg had never made up his mind about Enzo Rains.
The man had fucked up. There was no question about that. But even though he’d first knocked Greg out, robbed him and left him stranded on an island, and later had tried to kill him and Eve and Drake and Jennifer, Greg wasn’t sure he could entirely blame the man. It was obvious that his actions were motivated by his inescapable pain. Before, Greg hadn’t been so sure it was an excuse, and although he still wasn’t entirely certain about it, he felt a lot less concrete about that having endured what he had on Ash.
Turning away from the plaque, Greg began to make his way slowly through the ship.
He’d hoped that today would be different from yesterday, and the day before that, and the ones before that, ever since he’d come out of his medically induced coma. But it wasn’t. It was the same as before, and he was beginning to suspect that if he didn’t do something, something big, then it was just going to stay this way.
Or maybe even get worse.
There was always that possibility.
As he kept going, unsure of where he was headed, Greg reached into his pocket and fished out his pack of Galactic Lites and Zippo lighter. He stuck a cig in his mouth, lit up and snapped the lighter shut, replacing everything in his pocket. This wasn’t helping, either. All it did was make him think of Cage, and that just made him think of Cage coming after him with glowing eyes and metal limbs. And all of that inevitably led him back to Kyra.
Greg sighed heavily, a plume of formless blue smoke escaping his nostrils.
Everything felt like shit. When he wasn’t afraid he was lonely, when he wasn’t lonely he was anxious, when he wasn’t anxious he was confused. Or frustrated. Or pissed. He hadn’t slept through the night since waking up from the procedure. There were always nightmares, usually involving his head falling off.
He’d been talking to the others about it, those that had been there, but it wasn’t helping. Eric had blocked most of it out and Drake seemed pretty zen about what had happened. Jennifer was probably the most helpful, he guessed, in the sense that she was pretty fucked up about what had happened. She’d told him that she couldn’t eat cheese pizza anymore. She’d been in the mess hall two weeks ago and someone was pulling away a piece, stretching the cheese out and she’d had a fucking flashback to her leg getting ripped off.
She’d puked right there on the spot and had passed out a minute later.
But even she was doing better now. And as shitty as it made him feel, Greg kind of wished she was still fucked up like he was. Because being fucked up about this was hard enough as it was, but doing it alone was a lot harder. Wishing this on someone else just made him feel guilty. To make matters even worse, almost everyone was gone.
Jennifer, Genevieve, Drake, Eric, Allan and Callie were all gone on missions, and they’d taken some of the staff with them. Eve was still here, but she was making him feel even guiltier. The idea of leaving Anomalous Ops had been kicking around his head ever since he’d woken. Besides the obvious problem of his mortal terror at running into a situation like that again, there was the added problem of his instability. He didn’t feel capable of taking on another mission, which put himself and, more importantly, others at risk.
But could he really leave?
There was a conclusion that Greg had come to, but he was afraid to face it. Having woken up with no memories one day a little over a year ago, there hadn’t really been much in his life that held significance or meaning. He’d latched onto certain things that had kind of just been there. Namely, the adrenaline kick that come from fighting the insane odds...and Kyra. He’d never really gotten over her and now that it felt like he’d lost his connection to his professional life and his adrenaline addiction, it seemed like all his thoughts were being drawn to her.
He hadn’t spoken to her once since she’d left.
It hadn’t been easy, although being with Eve and Callie and Vanessa had gone a long way towards helping. But now…
Greg stopped where he was, coming to a halt beside a window that was currently shuttered because they were in FLT flight. He leaned against the nearest bulkhead and closed his eyes. This wasn’t working. Whatever he was doing here, moping about on the Dauntless, arguing with Eve, his head a swirl of confusing, painful emotions...
He needed to act.
Abruptly, he straightened up, turned around and marched off. He needed to leave. Before, he’d spent time running down potential paths to his lost memories, and nothing had worked. It hadn’t made him happy, but once he felt confident that there was nothing he could do, that there was no way to recover his memories, he had turned away from them and started focusing on building new ones and a new life. That’s what he needed to do now.
He needed to know if his only other viable path would work.
He needed to see Kyra.
Greg walked until he reached Hawkins’ office. The little light beside the door that indicated whether or not he was busy, red for ‘fuck off’, green for ‘fine, come in, but make it quick’, was green. He hit the call button. A few seconds later the door slid open. Greg stepped into the room, finding the old commander as he always did: hunched behind his desk, a bottle of something strong and a shot glass on the desktop, amidst towers of infopads.
“Greg,” Hawkins said, stopping what he was doing. “What can I do for you?”
For a moment, Greg felt guilty. He knew Hawkins wanted to help, and he also knew that Hawkins didn’t want to lose him.
“Where are we going right now?” he asked.
“We’re headed for a resupply run to a space station in the Keene System, why?”
“I need you drop me off there.”
Hawkins frowned, staring at him for a long moment. “Why?” he repeated.
“I’m leaving. I...I’m sorry. I’m leaving and I’m not sure if I’m coming back.”
Hawkins continued staring at him, perhaps going through a list of responses, wondering if there was anything he could say to change Greg’s mind. Ultimately, he must have decided that there wasn’t anything.
He sighed. “Okay.”
“Thank you.”
Greg stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on Hawkins’ desk and turned to go, then hesitated. He began feeling even shittier now that he needed a favor.
“Before I go, I’m going to need some information.”
“What information?” Hawkins replied.
“I need to know where someone is.”
* * * * *
“So that’s it? You’re just...leaving?” Eve asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” Greg said, continuing to sort through his clothing, trying to figure out what he should take with him. He didn’t exactl
y have a lot of personal items, probably because he didn’t have much of a personality.
“Greg...”
He stopped looking around and turned to face her. Looking at her just made him feel even more like shit. Goddamn, was there a bottom to this well of crappy feelings?
“Eve, I’m sorry, okay? I just...I can’t handle this anymore. I can’t do fucking anything. I can’t come to any fucking decisions about anything and I just can’t fucking do this. I need to figure out if this is going to work.”
“Going back to her?”
“Yes. I...I’m sorry.” How many times had he said that recently?
Eve looked at him for a long moment and he could see various emotions playing across her face. Anger. Frustration. Guilt? All at once, everything seemed to collapse. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let it out.
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry, too. I can actually understand why you’d want to leave. I don’t know what I’d do if I’d gone through what you did. I just...wish you weren’t leaving. I...I really liked what we had going.”
“I did too,” Greg replied softly.
Eve crossed the distance between them and wrapped him in a tight, hard hug. He hugged her back, surprised by the action. After several seconds, she suddenly pulled back, then leaned in and gave him a quick kiss.
“Good luck. Goodbye,” she said, then turned and walked out of the room.
Greg watched her go, his stomach a churning cauldron of negative emotions, his heart hammering in his chest. He turned back to his dresser and continued sorting through his stuff, knowing that he had to keep going, had to keep forcing himself on, step by step. He’d done it before, although then it had been easier.
Personal problems were a lot harder to deal with than screaming zombies.
* * * * *
The shuttle Greg was riding in was finishing its descent through the atmosphere.
He’d been dozing, dreaming of terminals and orbital reentry and, sometimes, Ash. When the Dauntless had hit the Keene System, Greg had taken his bag full of stuff, mostly clothing, gone through the airlock and bought a ticket to a space station orbiting a blue-green farming world called Genesis. That’s what Hawkins’ data had turned up.