by James Stubbs
‘Ok, I’m ready to go.’ There is no source of light at all. I can’t see more than two to three inches further than my nose but there isn’t a thing that I can do about it just yet. Wait! My hand brushes past something right there as I trace the folded contours of the rustic apron. There’s something inside of a concealed pocket.
I rummage for it but do so calmly so as to not overexcite myself and have to start the whole process yet again. I know what it is already. A glow stick. The kind that matched the light of ten to twenty candles burning strong. They had been used in emergency packs all over the galaxy for as long as I knew of, and much longer before too.
All I have to do was crack it, and let the chemicals within react to create an emitting light that might just help that tiny amount. My hand finally finds it. I take it from the concealed inside pocket and break it with a fierce snap using both of my hands.
As the chemicals inside start to mix, the glow stick illuminates just a few inches more of the growing fog in front of my face. I can see the various levels to it now. The clouds upon clouds of it. The density and thickness of it. But I have to say that I am relieved to have not seen anything more than just the gassy fog.
The mind plays tricks. In this strange place. In this unknown world. Given what we saw back in the caves that led to the mountain pass, those shapes, ghastly figures dancing about the mist. I was so certain that it would have been the same here as soon as I lit up the gas.
‘Okay.’ I sigh to myself and exert myself just that little but more to draw in a deeper and more satisfying breath of filtered air. My thought’s turn to Lucy. What is it about her? That has me so… off balance. I think is the right thing to say. I care about her. And I don’t know why. I don’t believe in love at first sight. At least, the old me didn’t. But I have to concede, and my heart pounding when I just think of her confirms it, that I guess this is just what it is. Love at first sight.
‘Come on Parker!’ I bat the thoughts out of my head physically with my fist. I need to think. Yes, ok, I do care about her. A lot more than I should and a lot more than I suppose I’m supposed to. I do, after all, and even if she doesn’t, remember who she is. But so what? My mind screams at me. A new start. That’s what I promised myself this would be. If I care about her then to Hell with anything that might stop me.
But I do need to shake off the paranoid thoughts, the smitten worries, and just get my ass into gear and find her. If she is still alive. My mind sneaks another harrowing thought to me from under the radar.
But I dismiss it just as fast. She is smart. More capable than I am. Strong, angelic and fast. She found time to warn me. She will have found time to make it to safety too. I’m sure of it.
No more fooling around! I demand to myself and take the first step through the choking dense fog. I can map the place in my mind now. I know the vague direction of the stairwell that I used to get down here. I make for it, with an uncertain arm waving out in front of me as some kind of poorly designed mine detector.
The glow stick is doing it’s job. I know these things can last hours and I certainly hope to have this figured out before that long. It should be ok. I slam my foot into the base of one of the chairs, it scared the life out of me and it hurt like Hell too. I listen as the chair on wheels slid across the flame scarred, once highly polished metal floor, and slammed into the metal railing that lined the staircase. It makes a dull thud, with a tiny echo that follows but was soon choked away.
That helped. In an odd way. It reconfirmed the location of the steps in my mind and also made sure there was nothing more in my way upon the floor that I can no longer see. In a dash of bravery I jog the remaining distance to the steps and start climbing much faster than I though I was going to be able to.
I cut through the fog with a spurt of energy, motivated by my selfish and childish desire to heroically save Lucy from whichever cupboard she had hidden in. I finally make it, out of breath and feeling clammy underneath my double layers of apron and armor, to the point where we had parted ways. Half way up the monumental structure that used to be the engine room.
I finally realize now how hard it must have been for Kolt, or his ghost, or whatever he was, just to breathe wearing these damn things. My lungs are burning with the harsh pull of my diaphragm again and again just trying to suck in more air. But I had to be glad of it. Without this garish and let’s face it down right ugly thing, I would have been dead by now.
It takes me twice as long as usual to get my breath back. I’m a big guy. I’m fit and I’m strong. I slam an axe against a rock face all day long but this place, this uncivilized planet at the ass end of the galaxy, is killing me.
I place my open palms on my knees and arch my back over to get my breath back. It seems to help. My lungs can work more efficiently it seems in that position. But that’s not the only reason I’m doing it. I was trying to ignore it. I was trying to just hope it would go away. But my back is killing me with pain. From the fall on the ice, from the jump off the mountain pass and most of all from the crash that started this whole chain of events.
I feel like doubling over and just staying there, crawled up in a ball, until such time as I either die or some one rescues me. But my will power will have to prove itself yet again here. Because I can’t do either of those things. And I won’t either. I need to save Lucy. I need to figure this place out and try to find a way off this cursed decrepit land.
‘Stand up you coward.’ I said, no, demanded of myself. It was odd. How much that voice inside could mimic what the guards, the so called bosses come slave drivers, back at the mine would say. And it was even more so odd that I listen to it.
I stand up straight and fight the urge to scream out as I hear my back crack back into place again.
The pain finally gives way and my breathing settles. I need to get a move on. I still have no idea what had happened to Lucy, or even if she is still alive. But I know that I need to be faster than this. She might have safeguarded herself somewhere and somehow but I don’t know how long, if that was true, she would be out of harms way for.
I know that I’m facing the crack between the two broken halves of the door, even though I cannot see it. The gas, still illuminated by the glow stick, is spreading further and faster. I can see it, carried by some current of wind or breeze flowing through the bowels of the ship, gushing through the crack in the broken door.
‘Lucy!’ I scream at the top of my lungs. The sound barely carries. My mask drowns most of it and the thick foggy gas gets the rest. There is nothing but silence. I sigh to myself and slide through the small gap in the broken door.
I can feel my apron and my armor beneath it snag on the sharply protruding shards of sheered metal but I can just about fit through. I have to suck my gut in and not take in any air but I get through.
Now I’m starting to feel a little scared. I have to admit it. I have no point of reference anymore. No mental picture of what the place was like before the gas filled the corridors and airways. I was going to have to make my way through here like some kind of blind and rabid dog.
I crouch to the floor and start rubbing my hand over the slick surface of the cold metal. It almost sends shivers around my skin. The surface is icy cold to the touch. My fingers almost get stuck to it like they might a frozen metal railing in the deep winter.
That’s strange. Very strange. Because it doesn’t feel cold at all. I have to keep going. Somehow. I have to find the strength. I’m not sure bravado is the word that I would use but I need to save her. I have to. So I, again, power through my protesting heartbeat and start moving again.
I stay low down on the floor, propped up on my hands and scurrying along like a spider. Staying low but keeping my knees off the burning cold of the metal below. The glow stick is showing no signs of fading but it does little to pierce any light through the volumes gas. It just lights up the various billowing layers of it. Like the worst fog you could think of. It’s debilitating, choking and highly claustrophobic.
I throw it behind me and am again embraced in thick darkness. It must have slipped, or I must not be that good at throwing, because it lands just behind my stretched out feet. I lay on the floor as low and as flat as I possibly can get and try my hardest to stop hyperventilating. I have nothing to defend myself with. I can fight okay, but I really don’t have it in me right now.
I can still see them, but more faintly now that my only source of light is behind me. There are three figures. Three easily recognizable as human frames ahead of me. One is taller, the other shorter. Both slim. But The third is being carried, cradled by the two others. The head of the third in the arms of the first. And the feet of the third in the arms of the second. Lucy? Had someone gotten to her? Had someone killed her?
I shake my head from side to side. It hurts with the added weight of the gas mask around my nose. I’m faced with another burning question. Were there still people surviving, still living in the hollowed out ruin of the Kraken? Either way, I’m not going to stand for it! I lift myself up to a standing and tall position. I ignore the hurt in my back, I block out the pain in the neck and the burning of my lungs as they try harder and harder to draw in more oxygen when there is little left.
I start to run. I keep my blurring and glazed eyes fixated on the dark figures and make a direct line for them. My feet slam against the floor with every step of my stride in sprint. Breathing is harder and harder but I keep going anyway. I can feel, and hear, a growl build up inside of me. My arms swing violently up and down to balance me as I leapt at the tallest of the figures. But fall against the wall instead.
No, it isn’t a wall, it’s a sheet of glass. I feel it flex just that tiny amount under my weight and bounce me back like glass does. I stand up right away, dazed and confused, I start swinging my arms around for Lucy’s kidnapper, who must have somehow escaped my grasp. But the figures are gone. And all I can see in the distance, down the straight corridor I had sprinted down, is the feint glow of my light stick.
Was it another vision? Or was I just loosing it? My lungs burn even more fiercely and I fall once again to my knees, panting hard for breath. But I’m, almost instantly, shocked out of my state of self pity, by the loud banging behind me. I rise up, spin around with clenched fists ready, only to see Lucy, safe and well behind the glass I had fallen into.
I relax and instinctively, even though I have no idea what good it would do me more than raise my rock bottom morale, place my hands on the glass. She does the same. I can feel the electricity through the cold reflective surface and we both, I can sense, breathe a little easier.
She’s talking. But I can’t hear her. She wipes away the odd tear of what I hope is relief. We part our, for want of a better phrase, “distant embrace” and I start rubbing my ear, shaking my head and waving my hand to signal to her that the room she’s hidden in must be soundproofed. She catches on quickly and smiles sweetly. She raises a single finger, a single dainty digit, to get me to wait a moment.
The room behind her must have been in some former life, in days long gone, some kind of lab. It’s safe, and even through the darkness I can see there is an airlock door at the other end. That must have been how she got in. There are two large towers housed in an area no larger than a closet that would purify the air. I can just about make out nozzles in the area above that. They would spray for any contaminants and kill any bacteria. The room itself is lined with microscopes on top of benches, various machines of design I can not place the use for, and the odd chart and white board still hanging from the other two visible walls.
I’m calm. And that means I’m thinking straight. I start to figure things out again and read my surroundings. Like I should have been all along. I’m stood behind a pane of glass, looking into a lab. What could that mean? Where was I? People in labs, looking through toughened glass into a room beyond, are more often than not, studying something in a secure area. Damn! That must mean I’m in the secure area.
And I could only hope they weren’t studying something dangerous. And if they were, that it wasn’t still around to be upset with me on their behalf!
Lucy had been staring at me for a few seconds. While I was in a trance reading the room around me and the room around her too. She was thinking too. I could see the distance in her eyes. The vagueness in her expression. Though she still looked as pretty. And then came the eureka moment. Her posture bolted more upright and her gorgeous eyes focused immediately.
She reaches into her back pocket and reveals a small canister of ruby red lipstick. She starts to apply it to her thin and seductive lips, with the faintest hint of a smile and a sly, barely noticeable wink too. I can tell she is teasing me. Even though I feel, deep down, the situation to be too desperate for such frivolity, I accept the gesture, smile beneath my mask and place a hand back on the glass so she knew I liked it.
She just giggles. Even though I can’t hear it. I know it would have been cute.
She stops playing with me and starts thinking hard. The focus returns to her eyes and she ran her free hand through her copper red hair just once and starts drawing.
A little stick man first, then a line, and a little stick girl behind that. That must be us. She’s drawing me a map. A few corridors, extending and never finishing, most likely because she had no memory of them and hadn’t explored that far, a few doorways too. Some discovered, some not. And with the odd turn and twist here and there, my directions to where she is.
I commit it to memory. Turn to face my right. A short walk. A left, a long corridor, another left. She doodles some blocks and what looks like stones and boulders in the way, and a diversion that swung through some more corridors to the right.
In those corridors she had doodled what looked like waves. I guess that they must have be flooded. With one final left turn, the route would lead to the airlock behind where she was stood in the lab before me. I hadn’t noticed before, I was just too glad to see her, but her hair was wet. How badly flooded was that section of the ship?
She draws a heart in lipstick at the point where we would meet again. I smile again, remember that she couldn’t see it behind my mask, and bravely trace the outline of a heart shape with my own finger. She must have liked it. Because she started to cry again and pressed her lips against the glass.
I’m scared more than ever before. But I don’t want her to worry, and I guess there’s some bravado there too, so I just wave bravely, stand tall and walk away into the fog again. I look back after a few paces once I’m sure she can’t see me anymore and fall back to my knees in the pain I had been hiding.
Chapter 16
The Dead
I just can’t lie anymore. My back feels worse than ever. I can lie to others. I can hide it. I can cover it up, but I can’t lie to myself and just carry on ignoring it. But at the same time, I need to keep moving. This place is no place to die. Alone in this ship, not being able to see two fingers in front of my face, and choked by this creeping gas.
I persuade myself off my knees and stumble to the wall at my left. I place a hand on it and use that to support my weight as I shuffle down the hallway. I can remember the map she had drawn. I need to turn left. My hand finally finds it’s way around a sharp corner and the rest of my body follows.
I know the next task is a long walk down a corridor, before I have to negotiate some tougher obstacles. I need to take it easy, try to breathe my way through the clenching pain, and take this easier walk to try and put myself right.
I manage to scrape myself down the hall and reach the first turn to the left. The slow walk and gentle pace relaxes my back muscles and the spasm from before subsides a little bit. I can breath a little easier now and it calms me enough to refocus.
I’m trying to keep that mental map al
ive in my head but it isn’t easy. I’m still fuzzy in the mind. Probably suffering concussion and definitely starved of water and food. Then there’s the blood loss on top of that.
No way am I firing on all cylinders. I try to think of the basic sweeping pattern around the lab and to the airlock on the other side. But there are some doors and areas she hadn’t drawn on her lipstick map. And they throw me a little. I guess I need to stick to the path of least resistance. That must have been what she did. That was the only way she might have made it down the twisting halls so quickly.
I’m walking slowly still, even after that first left turn, and I have one arm pressed with my palm open across the wall to my right. It’s there to steady me. To stop me from falling if my back has another spasm or anything like that. Whatever painkillers Kolt had given me had completely worn off and failed in my system. Maybe there will be more in that lab? I can hope.
That thought might help me drive through the last of the challenges and get me through that door. That as well as the chance of seeing Lucy again.
I come across, quite by accident as I slid my hand over the flame choked and scarred walls, a door that was peculiarly warm. Warm like it shouldn’t be. Not here on this ice cast mountain. After a raging torrent of a fire ripped through the ship many years ago. It was nice though. Just the touch and the feel of it. What were the chances? I thought to myself. Of there still being an odd burning ember on the other side, one that might warm me and comfort me. One that might burn a hole through this suffocating gas so that I may be able to see.
And what were the chances still that I might be able to get the door open? I fold my apron to one side and reach into the pocket of my armor. I haven’t used my access card for a long time. Since we left the rig so many miles and what feels like so many days ago.
What were the chances that it might open this door? I thought hard. Through the mire of gas, through the shaken concussive blasts to my head, through the claustrophobia and to some entrenched memory that I could barely still grasp at. All the cards worked off a personal area network. They used the electric field the body generates to spark the door open.