by Dan Henk
I eased forward, a distant hum faintly audible, piercing the gloom of the passageway. More than once I froze, whipping my neck around and trying to hone in on some imagined noise. The tunnel spiraled below the hangar, splitting into three interchangeable passageways. I followed the path I thought I remembered, slowing down before every fork as my mind scrolled through old memories. Time slowed to a tense crawl. I didn’t want to run and risk my noisy footfalls giving away my presence. The tunnel rounded one final curve and another bulkhead door abruptly concluded the walkway. I hoped this was the right one. It was a maze down here, and everything looked way too similar. I clasped the wheel, spun it to the left, and pulled. The door cracked open. Stepping over the stubby sidewall, I dropped onto the smooth concrete floor. The walls were damp blocks of stone. A long, thin fluorescent light slithered overhead, its glow blinding. My vision was swimming with the sudden lighting change, but the blur in the distance looked like my goal. A nondescript doorway on the left, the suit entombed inside, with the hazy form of a guard posted just beyond. Things must have changed since my days here because that watchman was a new addition. But I had gone too far to back out now. Killing the scientist had changed my point of view. Or rather, it stiffened my resolve. In a sense, letting this soldier live would mean the scientist had died for nothing. He could have had a brilliant future. He might have been the one that found the cure for cancer. What greater claim on life did this soldier have? Not that any of this was helping—rationalizing made nothing easier. If I was doomed, it was too late to turn back.
He was young…probably too young to even know what he was securing. I raised my .45 to eye level and walked slowly, pointing the gun at the soldier’s head. He was leaning against the wall, a bit hunched over, possibly daydreaming. He didn’t notice me until I got within twenty feet of him. His eyes widened, and just as he started to raise his M16, I squeezed the trigger. A red dot appeared just above his right eye, and brain matter sprayed out behind him, a slick sheen fanning across the wall, flowing over the doorframe and marring the door beyond. He collapsed into the wall with an unnatural thump, sliding to the ground with a look of shock on his face. The now familiar smell of freshly rent flesh wafted up to greet me.
I had had no choice, but excuses didn’t make it any better. The gore on the wall added a surreal touch, like this was some horror movie, playing out in a mesmerizing panorama right before my eyes. Everything was intense. The smell of gunpowder, the gristle of brain and blood on the wall, the coldly fixed corpse, the red-blooded warmth of life slowly dissipating into the belly of some forlorn underground bunker. I had to stop this. Had to focus on the mission ahead of me. Black and white. No choice. Kill or be killed.
Mounted on the wall behind his corpse was a small box requiring my security key. I slipped it in, the small bulb blinked green, and the door cracked open. I pushed, extending my left arm, and there it was in all its glory, the suit I had studied for so many years. It was floating in a large glass tank, its black mass limp and lifeless. This must have been some preservation measure, and they immersed it in fluid thinking it might decay. Primitives. They don’t have any idea what they’re dealing with.
The room was small, a closet. Most of the space was taken up by the tank, a large cylinder with a rubber hose sprouting from the metal cap on top and disappearing into a port behind. A small screen with a keypad was mounted on the wall beside the tank. It probably had something to do with the receptacle, but that didn’t really matter. After they buried the suit here, I didn’t follow up on it. I was sure this was all bureaucratic bullshit aimed at preserving something they had no clue about. I needed something to break the glass with. I glanced down at the lifeless guard, the finger his right hand rigidly caressing the M16 trigger. I scooped up the gun, flipped it around, and smashed the glass with the butt. There was a loud noise, and the gun bounced out of my hands, the momentum throwing me backwards.
Fuck, I wasn’t prepared for this. I dropped the M16, pulled my .45 out of its holster, and fired at the cylinder. The bullet punched a hole through the tank, bounced off the suit, exited, and lodged itself in the wall to my right. That was way too close, and it left me feeling thick-headed. Fluid poured out of the two new holes, but the glass held. My mind was racing, trying to come up with a solution. I walked over to the wall- mounted console and tapped at the keyboard. It lit up, and in green letters asked me for a password. Goddamnit! I glanced around, but nothing popped into my mind. I crawled behind the cylinder. With my back against the wall and using my feet as a lever, I strained against the glass. Nothing. Maybe if I crawled up higher? I shuffled up the wall, feet clumsily skipping up the glass, and tried again. This time it moved slightly. I climbed higher and tried again, gritting my teeth, narrowing my eyes, and pressing with all my strength.
The cylinder slowly tipped. Falling forward, it crashed onto the ground with a loud thump, the sudden loss of perch dropping me to the floor in a gruff collapse of flailing limbs. I scrambled to get my footing, but to no avail. I landed in a partial squat that succeeded only in softening the blow to my ass. Letting loose with a string of expletives, I instantly regretted the clamor and cut them off in mid curse. I tried to keep my voice down, while wincing in pain, rocking, and gritting my teeth as I bit my lip. Crawling to my feet, I limped over to the sideways cylinder. The fall had ripped the rubber hose from the top, and fluid was gurgling out, covering the floor with a yellowish-green slime. A chemical stench not unlike that of gear oil mixed with alcohol filled the air. I examined the cap. Dual slits on either side of the hose opening looked large enough for my hands. Stepping into the mire, I crouched down in front of the torn hose portal and delved my hands into the grips. Fluid gurgling out of the hole smacked me in the chest, drenching me, my head swimming in the strong vapors. My fingers hit something. There was a slight hissing sound, and the circular top popped forward. The fluid wasn’t far behind, and what remained of it surged out in a torrent, bludgeoning me in the chest.
I fought back a wave of nausea, tossing the black metal top aside like a discus. It glided a short distance before clumsily crashing into the floor. Now for the tricky part—extracting the suit from the cylinder. The fall had propelled it forward, the head barely touching the entry hole. I reached my hands inside, trying to dig into the armpits. Heavy as lead. Shuffling closer, I flanked the rim and dove my arms into the cylinder. Spreading the arms a little, the confines of the tube preventing me from further motion, I tugged with all the strength I could muster. The top of the cylinder cut into my throat, beads of sweat broke out on my face. The thing lurched forward with a scraping noise, throwing me backwards into the pool. Sitting back up, my drenched shirt clinging to my back in a cold, rumpled mess, I hooked the armpits again, braced my boots against the top of the cylinder, and pulled. This time the rest of the suit tore out further, again launching me backwards into the oily mire. The form was as heavy as I remembered, probably a good three-hundred pounds. I took a couple of deep breaths and hauled out the rest.
Now for the nightmare of hauling it to the ship. Slowly I rose to my feet and stumbled backwards, dragging it down the hall, my feet slipping in the greasy muck. Panting and sweating like a racehorse, I inched it along, leaving a trail of ooze all the way to the elevator. Reaching the door, I let go of the suit, its mass colliding loudly with the floor. I pressed the button and nervously waited. Through my heavy exhalations, I kept imagining I could hear sounds, but whenever I held my breath I was met only with dead silence. The doors opened after what seemed an eternity, and I dragged the suit inside, hitting the button for two floors up. Fortunately, the elevator car opened on the far side of the hangar, under the shade of an overhead walkway, so I would stay relatively hidden. As the doors slowly closed, I looked back at the mess I was leaving behind. The limp cadaver of a soldier, his sloppy demise splayed in crusty blood across the bare concrete wall. A broken tank choking off the hall, the intestinal slime trailing up to the elevator doors. A compression hiss, a lurch, and I
was moving upwards.
The elevator doors opened into a side view of the ship. It was only a few dozen feet away. I always forgot how staggeringly big it was. The purpose of its design was way beyond our science. There was a ramp off to the left, not far from the elevator, and it led through a hole in the side of the vessel and into the depths. The stretch between the elevator and the ship was mostly shaded, the aperture gouged out of the lower echelons of the craft, presumably by the crash. It was buried beneath the left wing, mostly hidden in its shade. No one occupied the ramp, but there were several men not too far away. At least three were working by the entrance portal above the wing, not the torn orifice I had meant to enter through. This was going to be tricky. I had to get the suit inside without alerting those men above. The hard part would be dragging the suit up the ramp and into the alien craft without making too much noise. Hitting a brief stretch visible to the men upstairs, my head started to pound, a desperate anxiety creeping in. The trek felt impossibly long and slow, but in a few minutes I was ensconced by the shade of the wing. Now to drag the suit up that ramp. A thin rubber tread covered the shiny metal ramp, but this body was immensely heavy. I set it down, panting as I tried to catch my breath. The lingering smell of chemical vapors sickened my stomach.
I really didn’t have time for this, but my back already ached. Ignore the pain. It will all be over, for better or for worse, very soon.
At the sound, the voices above me got louder, and I froze. Every nerve ending was raw and screaming. The very air seemed to gel. Seconds crept by, but no one appeared. I slowly staggered up the ramp again, the sweat on my brow now a film of salty water fighting to get into my eyes.
After a few agonizing minutes, I stumbled over a slight bump and into the shadowy opening of the craft. The interior swirled around me like a dream, or maybe a nightmare, the air charged with a strange, ionized sterility.
I was so close. I hoisted the mass and continued my awkward backward shuffle. The feet bounced along the floor ridges, the strange material of the craft absorbing the noise. I rounded a curve and stopped at a porthole…at least I think it was a porthole. It was a tunnel straight down with curved rungs that served as handgrips. A pale light wafted up languidly from the depths below. I dug some parachute-strength nylon cord out of my leg holster, wrapped it under the arms of the suit, and crossed it over the chest to make a virtual harness. I encircled it a few times, tied it off, pulled out a few feet of cord, doubled it over, and continued wrapping. This gave me a secured upper body, with several lengths of cord hanging free.
I bent over the porthole, tying the ends of the cord to the first rung. Circling around, I grabbed the feet and shoved the suit headfirst into the hole. The loose cord whipped by, the hulking mass crashing into the row of descending rungs, then it rebounded and continued its plunge. The rope hit the end of its slack, bringing the suit to an abrupt stop. The form dangled, listlessly drifting from side to side. Everything was deathly silent. All I could hear was the sound of my own panting. I climbed in, the taut nylon rope running down the center of the rungs and minimizing the opportunity for a handhold. I scampered down past the first gap, leaning to the left side to avoid the cord as much as possible and coming to a stop as the hanging body blocked my descent to the second. The opening I wanted was just to the right of the rungs and directly below, a black maw barely penetrated by a distant light. I managed to squeeze past it by pushing against the limp body and descended into to the abyss. I gathered my strength, removing my knife from its sheath, and took a deep breath. With a jerk, I pressed my shoulder into the form’s back. It swung toward the hole as I slashed at the cable. Tumbling into the opening, it landed with a violent crash and crumpled over on its side, where it lie stiff and contorted. In the dim light it resembled a soldier, felled in some long forgotten war. My heart beat wildly in my chest. Almost there. I jumped into the maw, landing just shy of the suit. My momentum carried me forward, and I tumbled overtop the form, crashing into the wall. The collision stunned me, blurring my vision and leaving me disoriented. But I couldn’t pause now. I glanced over at the tunnel I had descended and realized the alien suit and I both were casting huge shadows, like something out of a noir movie. My back was killing me, and my strength was giving out, but I was so close now. Panting and soaked in cold sweat, I rounded a corner and staggered up to a familiar door. Beyond the threshold lie what we assumed was the ship’s lab.
I let go of the suit and took a couple of deep breaths, gulping the air into my heaving lungs. Pulling out my Maglite, I looked around. Everything appeared the same as when I left years ago…an oval room that more closely resembled a beehive than an earthly cubicle. A large semicircular pedestal, the surface dotted with holes and studs, rose up in the middle. We had decided that was the instrument panel. The floors surrounding it were narrow and roughly textured in a strange ocher pattern that resembled diamond plate more than anything else. The walls were grids, smooth expanses of dirty yellow broken up by ridges into rough squares. Two upright capsule-shaped chambers, immediately in front of the semi-circular control panel, were half-embedded in—they looked melted into—the wall. This was it. The room I found on that fateful first day. A decade of study and three years of planning, but if it paid off, it was more than worth it.
To open one of the capsules and complete this procedure, I would have to turn the power on. That would probably alert staff, so timing was critical. I had studied this backward and forward. I knew how to open the capsules, what controls started the procedure, how to hook up the suit in its capsule. Hopefully the other one was meant for a live body. There was a short delay in the closing of the capsule I would be stepping into, which I assumed accounted for entry time. It would take them at least five minutes, running balls out, to get down here. I had time enough.
I walked to the middle of the lab and depressed a button on the floor with my foot. As if it were built yesterday, the whole place lit up. The light was searing. I sprinted across the floor and opened the first capsule. The form I intended to put in there had no openings except the eyes, which were closed, and the ear holes, but the placement of the connecting cords and their length suggested they should be attached to the head. I ran back to the suit, tucked my arms under, and in a stumbling lunge fell backwards into the capsule. My gasps for air were now full on grunts. My muscles felt like they were going to explode. My heart was racing in my chest, my movements loose and sloppy. I heard something snap, some nerve or tendon that I had strained past its breaking point. My back felt like it was being stabbed by a red-hot poker, and pain shot down my leg. Little matter now, I was so close.
Grunting and panting, and now with a plaguing pain, I bent over and pushed the body upright, slowly, until its head smacked against the back of the capsule. My back seemed to crack and radiate stabs of agony with every upward inch. The hoses dangling from the top had suction pads at the ends, and I stuck these to the head. I climbed out, shut the capsule lid, and ran to the console in the middle of the room. The pain in my leg alternated between jolts of torment and, even scarier, numbness. I dug my hands into the central hole, pressed what I assumed were the right protrusions, and ran to the other capsule. My scalp was pounding with the rush of blood, my heart hammering violently, about to explode. This had to work. I climbed inside, pulled off my cloth army hat, stuck the cable suckers to my shaved head, nestled into a snug repose, and waited. Time slowed to a crawl, my breath escaping in shallow bursts of exasperation. A muskiness that mingled rubber and grease pressed in on me, choking the air.
Nothing seemed to be happening. Deep down, I had known this wouldn’t work. I’m truly fucked now!
Minutes passed, though it seemed like an eternity. After a time I could make out sounds, probably from approaching security. The noises grew louder. They were definitely manmade. I could hear talking. The capsule door finally started to close. Slowly. I had no doubt it was a Special Forces squad. They probably had found the bodies and would shoot first, especially if they recognized
me.
The lid sealed with a slight pop. The chamber was deathly silent, blocking out all noise, but I was sure the soldiers were near. The capsule lid was transparent, frosted by a crusty yellowish stain creeping in on the edges, but still lucent enough that I could still see. I strained my eyes, my body peculiarly suppressed, but I could make out no movement. There was a weird light, and suddenly I was looking at the same room, but from a slightly different angle. Then I noticed that I no longer felt the cold wet clothes against my skin. My muscles didn’t ache, and I couldn’t hear my breathing, or my heartbeat, for that matter. There was no pain in my leg. I moved my head forward and looked down. There was no neck tension; it was all one fluid motion. I felt detached, at the controls of some strange vehicle I was intrinsically linked to. No smells assaulted my senses. No bite of angry nerves. No painful drought of saliva in my throat.
It all seemed a hallucination. Weird red symbols flitted across my field of vision. A sensation rushed over me, and I suddenly felt invigorated. Everything was optimized. There was no lactic acid buildup, no stiff musculature. I had done coke before, in college, and it was sort of like that, but without the jitteriness or paranoia. I felt awesome. I peered out, my eyesight crisp and sharp, as if I were looking through the lens of a camera. I could imagine whirring and clicking noises as my vision focused on the doorway, my sight obscured by the translucent screen of the capsule.
A head, encased in a black gasmask, peered around the corner. I looked at it hard. My eyesight magnified automatically, and instantly I was viewing it in detail. I could see the texture of the rubber as it met the olive green metal ring of the hose. I mentally backed up the magnification. They had arrived, but it was too late! It had worked! I was in the body! The capsule opened, and I stumbled out. I knew for a fact this new form was incredibly heavy, but it felt so light! I could see my former self, still entombed within the capsule. It appeared I was asleep. It was then I was distracted by a sudden chain of thoughts. What if it was taken by government forces for experimentation? What if they somehow found a way to bring me back? To pull me back into a body they had done who knows what to? Removed limbs? Torn out body parts? Imprisoned me in some dark chamber with the intent of torturing out whatever info I had? Too many thoughts. Too much that could go wrong! I had no choice. I had to destroy it. Then a disturbing thought crossed my mind: What if destroying the original body somehow affected me in this host body? What if that was all it was, a host, and I really needed the original?