Seventh

by Heath Pfaff

  I raised the steel bar up in front of me, ready to use it if I needed to.

  "Get out of my way!" I yelled at the cloaked figures, deciding that the time for passing silently through them was at an end. "I don't want to hurt anyone, but I will if you don't let me pass."

  There was no motion from the crowd in front of me, but I thought I heard a wave of quiet laughter ripple out around me. It might have been my imagination, or it might have been my madness playing more tricks on me. I couldn't be sure, and it was impossible to try and act rationally when I wasn't sure what was really happening.

  To my shock, the crowd before me parted, leaving a path wide enough for me to pass through unmolested. I was so shocked that I didn't react immediately. I stood there staring, dumbfounded for longer than I should have.

  I lowered my weapon and gestured for Hobbes to follow me, and then I took off at a run through the crowd. I didn't just run - I sprinted as though my very life depended upon the quickness of my feet. I expected the hooded demons to close in on me at any second. I could picture them throwing back their hoods to reveal broken, evil grins gouged into reptilian faces marked by glinting, murderous eyes. Then they would descend upon us and rip our bodies to pieces with their rows of hidden shark teeth crammed into their lurid, semi-human jaws.

  The horde thinned and I stumbled to a stop, losing my footing and falling on my shoulder with bruising force. I was breathing hard as I pushed myself back to my feet. There was a man dressed in an officer's formal uniform sitting on a stone bench near the outer edge of the comfort center. He was whispering to a figure in black sitting next to him, though it stood up as we drew near and walked away, leaving the man by himself on the bench. He gazed up at us, his eyes cold and far away, but thankfully still human.

  I dusted myself off, though in truth there was no dust to dispose of. The dirt of the path was just part of the illusion created by the comfort center, but instinct overruled logic at that moment. I walked hesitantly towards the man on the bench. If he was an officer he might know what was happening. Of course, the fact that he'd been talking to one of the cloaked things did not leave me with a strong sense of security.

  "James Wright, it's good to see you've come this far. Many of us didn't believe you'd make it." His voice was dry and old, much older even than he looked. It sounded as though he desperately needed a drink, like the vocal emanations were forcing their way up through a dry and forsaken patch of desert.

  I bit back my surprise at his familiarity. "I didn't realize I was expected." I offered, hoping some sort of explanation would be forthcoming.

  "Didn't you?" The man in officer’s clothes asked, as though surprised. "Why else would we be here? The signs are fulfilled, James. The Brotherhood of the Worm has waited a long time for this event, but even still there are naysayers amongst us."

  I shook my head. "I don't understand. Does this have something to do with what is happening aboard Odyssey?"

  The officer leaned forward on the bench as if considering me more closely. "You really don't know, do you? I thought you would have been raised for this… that you would be aware of your destiny. After all, you’ve performed all the required tasks."

  He chuckled, his voice still dry and crackling. "Sergeant Wright… James, you are destined for a singular honor. Did it not strike you as strange that they would send you back aboard the Odyssey after all that had happened? We arranged your reassignment."

  An overwhelming rush of confusion swirled around me. "Wait, what? I'm not a sergeant, Sir. I'm only a cadet. This is my first ship-side mission. I'm not sure who you have me confused with, but..."

  This time the officer broke into a long, explosive bout of laughter. "A cadet, are you? Well, I suppose you’re as much a cadet as you are a sergeant, anymore. Fine, let us pretend then. So, Cadet Wright, tell me, what has brought you here?" The grin on his face was merciless and dark.

  Was this man suffering from DSD as well? He seemed to think I was something I certainly wasn't. I decided it was best to not confront him on the issue any more than necessary. I wasn't sure what he was capable of.

  "I'm just looking for answers. I want to know what has happened to the ship."

  The officer stretched on the bench before standing up and crossing his arms over his chest.

  "Odyssey is currently locked in a level 6 slipstream jump while she performs some field experiments." He answered easily.

  I tried to stifle the anger that was slowly flooding through me. There was obviously more going on, and I was certain this unidentified officer knew what was happening.

  "Then what about all of this?" I gestured around us to the black cloaked figures. "What about the monsters we've encountered? This isn’t just some run-of-the-mill field experiment situation."

  The officer nodded. "That is true. This is not a normal situation at all, but you asked what was happening to the ship, and I told you the truth. Odyssey is currently suspended in a level 6 slipstream jump, gathering massive amounts of information from an ongoing experiment."

  My anger got the better of me. "Stop fucking avoiding the question! What the fucking hell is going on here!?" I yelled, and even as the words burst from my lips my mind began to panic, knowing that yelling at a superior office was a court-marshalling offence.

  His smile faltered as though it had died on his face. "Do you want to know what’s happening, Wright? Do you want to understand what has begun here?" The officer reached behind his back and pulled something from the waist of his pants. I stepped back and raised my steel bar defensively in front of myself.

  The officer revealed a knife. It was a long, sharp blade that might have come from one of the cafeterias. It looked designed to shred meat, a well-honed and functional tool.

  "Look!" He yelled, and before I could react he had driven the blade into his own abdomen and was twisting hard on the handle, drawing the blade upwards towards his chest. His stomach was laid open in a gush of blood. "Look at me!" He reached a hand into the split cavity and ripped out a bloody fist of white and yellow gore that brought with it even more tangles of internal organs.

  "This is for you, James Wright! FOR YOU!" He was shouting now at a fever pitch. The cloaked figures around us still just stood deathly still, each one’s face lifted in our direction, though I still couldn't see through the dark beneath their hoods.

  I staggered backwards, right into one of the robed figures. It didn't even budge as I hit it. I looked to my side to see Hobbes standing there, unmoving, his face staring grimly ahead at the disemboweled officer.

  "He is coming. Find him, James. FIND HIM AND BRING HIM BACK TO US!" The disemboweled officer collapsed to the ground, convulsing in a pile of his own guts and gore.

  "Fuck, fuck, fuck..." I heard myself saying, and realized I'd been repeating the word for some time. Hands grabbed my arms, and I looked down to see black scaled claws, semi-humanoid in appearance, wrapped tightly around my biceps. Dark spots waved through my vision again, and my knees began to buckle.

  "He waits..." A rumbling voice growled from behind me. As I felt myself being lifted, the words, as well as whatever demonic thing gave them voice, faded to nothingness with the rest of reality.

  I didn't come back to consciousness gradually, as one normally finds themselves coming awake after a sleep. I simply found myself aware that I was leaning against a bulkhead, breathing heavily as cold sweat trickled down my face. The room I was in was completely dark but for the now-familiar sight of a pulsing red emergency beacon. I recognized it immediately as my room, the tiny area with nothing more than a desk, a bed, a closet and a chair. There was now one notable difference, however, from the last time I had been here. Hobbes was sitting on the edge of my bed, his impassive gaze locked on my own.

  "How the fuck did we get back in here?" I asked, dispersing with any attempt to pretend I knew what was happening. "We were just in the comfort center not moments ago." I pushed myself off the wall and stifled a wave of nausea. My guts felt empty and cold, as tho
ugh I’d been the one gutted by the strange officer’s knife, and then the empty cavity filled with ice.

  I saw Hobbes’ mouth open to speak, but the room returned to blackness and it seemed eerily like his voice floated at me through pure darkness.

  "Don't you remember?" He asked. The red light pulsed back on, and I thought for a moment in that strange lighting I could see a splash of black-looking liquid covering one half of Hobbes' head and face.

  "Are you alright, Hobbes? Did you get injured?" I asked, suddenly concerned. How long had I blacked out this time? What had happened? Hobbes’ tale of the slowly moving shadow that had killed his platoon invaded my thoughts, and panic briefly threatened to overtake me.

  "No, I'm not alright, James. You killed me." His voice was so cold, so impassive. My heart fluttered in my chest.

  "I... No, I don't know what you're talking about." I tripped over the words. "I wouldn't do that, besides, you're talking to me so you're clearly not dead!"

  "Aww, did poor 'cadet' Wright forget what he did?" Hobbes' voice had taken on a condescending, mocking tone. "It's so easy to forget when you don't want to remember, isn’t it?"

  "Stop it, Hobbes. Shit, you're scaring the hell out of me! Just tell me what's going on, stop fucking around." I demanded, positive that Hobbes was somehow messing with me. I hadn't killed anyone. Even in my roughest days of training I'd never even given anyone more than a bruise.

  I heard Hobbes get up from my bed, even though I couldn't see him because the room had gone dark again. When the light blinked back on again he was standing about a foot away from me, which was honestly as far apart as we could get in the limited floor space of the small room. From this angle I could see him more clearly, and what I saw caused my gorge to rise.

  The left side of his head was caved in, completely pulverized, and his eye was dripping down the side of his face like an exploded robin's egg. Gray brain matter dripped from the ruptured hole at the top of his head and shards of skull jutted awkwardly from the ruined flesh, shockingly white even in the red light of the emergency beacon.

  "Couldn't trust me with the weapon, could you?" Hobbes said in his monotone voice again. "...or with all those medkits. What if you needed more and I wasn't willing to share them? Well, they're yours now. Not that they'll do you any good. They’re keyed to my biorhythm, so you can't even unlock them, much less use them. But I guess that doesn't matter. After the things you’ve done in the past, killing me is hardly another notch on your belt."

  I screwed my eyes closed, unwilling to look at the ruin standing before me. "You're not fucking real. This is the DSD playing with my head. You are not real. You are not real. YOU ARE NOT REAL!" I shouted it the last time, as loud as my lungs would allow. The sound echoed in the small cabin, hurting my ears and making my eyes water. I wiped away the tears with the back of my arm and then opened my eyes.

  Hobbes, or the ghost of Hobbes, or the illusion of Hobbes that I was hallucinating, was gone. I was alone again. I slumped to the ground and began to cry. The tears were a mixture of frustration, confusion and despair. My life had been so simple before. I couldn't understand how it had all spun out of control so completely.

  "Do you feel alone and afraid, James?" Odyssey spoke quietly, almost as though she were a concerned lover whispering in my ear.

  "Odyssey?" It was her voice, but it obviously wasn't something she should ever say.

  "Do. You. Feel. Alone. And. Afraid?" She was louder this time and spoke each word slowly and pointedly, as if she were an adult addressing a small child.

  "I'm confused." I said, almost certain I was now talking to myself.

  "Confused, James? Were you confused when you killed my son and daughter? Were you confused when you killed me? James, did my son's screams for mercy confuse you?" Odyssey’s voice broke into a menacing laugh that echoed around inside of my head as though it were bouncing in the space between my brain and skull.

  "I haven't killed anyone!" I protested. "You're a fucking ship, a huge piece of flying metal! I can't kill you, and you don't have kids! Get the fuck out of my head!"

  "Now you're just being cruel." Her voice was quiet again. "You don't get to put us away. You don't get to leave us behind, James. Not ever. We're going to be with you forever. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?"

  "Who are you?!" I jumped to my feet and pounded on the hatch to my room, slamming the steel bar I somehow had managed to still hold against the impermeable metal bulkhead. "Who the hell are you?!" I waited, but there was no answer.

  "Odyssey?"

  The hatch slid open in front of me, opening into a suspiciously normal looking corridor, but it was certainly not the familiar hallway that should have been connected to my quarters. My room normally opened out into a walkway that extended both left and right and was lined with doors into other cabins. Instead, this corridor preceded straight outward, as though my bunk were the only room at the end of the hall.

  Perhaps I should have stayed in that dark room with the blinking red light, but I was compelled to step out into the relatively bright light of the hall beyond. My door slid quietly shut behind me, and I knew without trying that I wouldn't be able to turn and go back the way I'd come. I grit my teeth and walked forward with determination. I had no way of knowing where I was going, but it didn't matter. It wasn't long before another set of footfalls joined mine in the hall. I glanced over my shoulder, not sure what to expect this time.

  Hobbes was behind me, his head no longer sporting the gaping wound that had misshapen it so thoroughly not so long ago.

  "You're still not real." I told him, but I did not slow my pace. The hall had to lead somewhere, and I didn’t intend to let any hallucinations slow me down.

  "Here I am real, James. That's why you came back. Once you went out there, you knew that only coming back could make you feel real again. Only coming back here could restore what was lost." His reply was impassive, yet ominous. He was speaking cryptically. I felt like I should know what he meant, but I just couldn't get a grasp on it. I was filled with the frustrating sensation that full recollection, full understanding, was dancing just beyond my comprehension.

  "Where is here, Hobbes? Where are we?" I asked. I didn't bother to look back at him. I still wasn't exactly sure what he was. I wanted to write his entire existence off as a figment of my imagination, but I was somehow carrying his steel pipe, his med-kits were strapped to my belt.

  "We're now at the edge of darkness. From here we can almost see it, but – what really matters – is that it can definitely see us. You should know that. You were the only one out of all of us who had been here before. He needs you to find him. He needs you to let him come home."

  I stopped and turned to face the hard eyed Shock Trooper. He stopped with me, maintaining a distance of three or four feet.

  "Who is "he", and what is the edge of darkness? I've never been anywhere like this before. Are we even onboard the Odyssey anymore?" Keeping my voice calm was a struggle. The words wanted to pour out of me to the beat of my pounding heart.

  "He is the Worm, and the darkness is his place. It wasn't always, though. He wants to go home, but he needs someone to find him. …Someone who can carry him out of the void. It can't be just anyone."

  "Worm.” I said the name out loud, and then a recollection came to my mind. “I met him, near the comfort center. What is he? Why does he need me? How do you even know all of this stuff, Hobbes?"

  "I'm not Hobbes anymore, and you haven't met the Worm yet… only his shadow. You need to remember, James Wright. You need to remember why you came back."

  I was about to yell at him, to try and force him to tell me what I was supposed to be remembering, but a female voice from behind me broke my attention.

  "James, I didn't expect you home for another week!" It was Odyssey, or at least it sounded like Odyssey, but now her voice wasn't coming from the implants inside my head. I spun to face where the voice came from and suddenly found myself in a different setting. I was in a house
that looked vaguely familiar, and I felt strangely heavy. This was the pull of a true planet’s gravity, not the centrifugal force gravity of a ship. The air smelled of plant life and a perfume scent that triggered sparks of emotion that I could feel only distantly.

  The voice had come from a petite brunette woman with a warm smile and beautiful brown eyes.

  "I had to leave quarantine." I heard myself say the words, though I didn't intend to speak.

  "But I thought quarantine was mandator- James, is that blood on your hands?" Her smile had faltered on her face, and it faded into a look of worry.

  I followed her gaze to my hands. They were covered in blood. It was still fresh, warm and tacky to the touch. I could smell it, too. It was a scent I had never smelled it before. It was sweet, like strawberries left too long on the vine.

  "Yeah, I had to kill them. It’s better this way, trust me. He'll be here soon, and I can’t let you get lost. Oh, Karen, you can't begin to imagine how cold the darkness is." It was my voice, but I had never said something like that. I would never say something like that. This entire scene was madness.

  Worry turned to fear on Karen's face. "You're scaring me, James. Who did you kill? What have you done?!"

  I felt the corners of my mouth turn up sharply. I was smiling. I was smiling so hard that my face was aching with the contortion. It was awful.

  "No, fuck this, no!" I yelled, and I had control again. The woman, the house, the feel of planetary gravity, and the scent of bloody-strawberries faded and I was back in the long, doorless corridor. "It's not fucking real! Why do I keep seeing things like this?! Odyssey is not a person!"

  "No, she's not." It was Hobbes, now standing just beside me. I only had to turn my head a bit to the left to see him.

  "Then what am I seeing? What the hell does it mean?" I was pleading at this point.

  "That voice you've been hearing in your head isn't Odyssey, Wright."