by S. A. Lusher
“Fuck,” Greg whispered.
“Come on,” Drake replied. “We have to keep pushing.” He wondered how many times one of them had said something like that in the past few hours. They had to keep reminding themselves not to stop, keep reminding themselves to just keep drilling deeper into the madness. Like most shitty things in life, the only way out was through.
It was especially true on Ash.
He took the first step out into the passageway beyond. As he started moving down it, putting one foot in front of the other, he heard the others start moving behind him. Good. He'd seen people freeze up when facing down a lot less, and that didn't necessarily make them cowards. Sometimes it was just too much, or sometimes maybe a wire got crossed in your brain and suddenly you just couldn't go forward anymore. He'd seen kids who were on their first assignment freeze up and thirty year vets freeze up.
Hell, he'd done it once or twice.
Then, it just came to down to the luck of the draw. If you were lucky, you wouldn't wind up dead. He wondered if something like that was going to happen here. This place was sure as hell stressful enough and it was obvious that it was fucking with their minds. And now they were in an enclosed space that looked like the gullet of some huge, dying beast looking for one last meal. He kept going, moving towards the more well-lit areas, trying to ignore the pain wracking his body and the sounds his boots made hitting the 'ground'.
Instead, he focused on his environment. Beyond the awful squishing-sucking noise their boots made and the constant drip-drip-drip of the oily substance, there were other sounds. The shifting shuffle of movement, muttered words that were too indistinct to make out, and something that let out a deep, forbidding growl. Nothing good. There were hostiles down here for sure, but what were they? Kruger had said they were the Deathless and...something else. Up ahead, the tunnel seemed to broaden, opening up into a cave.
Something moved, up ahead.
“Get ready,” Drake whispered harshly. “Something's waiting for us.”
He stepped carefully into the next cave and gave it a quick once over, sweeping it with a tight arc of his rifle. There was nothing, but he could see several openings along the walls. Was he seeing things? Had he-
“What the fuck is that!?” Greg screamed.
Drake snapped his gaze to Greg, who was looking up in stark terror. He looked up and gaped at what he saw.
It looked like someone had cut up about a dozen people and then sewn them back together. Only instead of a coherent structure, they had just smashed bits and pieces and body parts together. The abomination clung to the ceiling, but now that it had been discovered it let go and allowed itself to drop the fifteen foot drop.
Everyone scattered to get out of its way. It landed with a crash and scrambled into an upright position. It looked like...Drake had no fucking idea what it looked like. It had limbs...sort of. Different length limbs cobbled together from bone and gristle and flesh and sometimes heads. Heads that still had faces attached to them. That were still aware and awake and screaming. The thing had at least a dozen screaming heads on it. In it. The limbs seemed to shoot out of a central body mass at total random. It began reaching for him.
“Shoot it! Kill it!” Drake heard himself screaming as he opened fire.
He saw it pick up and throw Eric. Shrieking and screaming filled the cavern. Immediately, Drake's mind went to work figuring out how to kill this thing. One thing he realized that he'd noticed was when it had hit the ground, several smaller pieces of it had come off from the impact. Okay, maybe this thing wasn't all that well put together. It sure as hell didn't look too structurally sound. He backed up several paces. It seemed occupied with the others for the moment. He flipped his rifle back to three-round burst, aimed for one of its limbs and fired.
First shot did it.
The armor-piercing rounds tore through the limb and severed it, causing the creature to stumble and jerk one of its swinging limbs away at the last second before it crashed into Greg. “Take out the limbs!” Drake shouted, sighting the next one.
Once the initial horror of seeing the creature passed, the survivors quickly rallied, moved away from it, sighted its awful, twitching limbs and began cutting them off with precision shots until the thing was a jerking, twitching lump on the ground.
“What the fuck was it supposed to be?” Parker whispered, horrified.
“I don't know...maybe it was trying to get around its creations being mortal?” Jennifer suggested after a moment.
“This was too easy,” Eric said quietly.
“Yeah...I was thinking the same thing,” Drake muttered.
“Maybe we should count our blessings and move on,” Greg suggested.
That's when the lights snapped off, plunging them into perfect darkness.
* * * * *
“Drake? Parker?”
Greg felt his pulse racing, which only made his goddamned stomach hurt worse. His guts were killing him but none of that matter right now. It was pitch black and perfectly silent. Not even the sounds of the creature they'd just killed came to him. He heard nothing but his own breathing and the pounding of his heart in his ears.
“Okay...” he whispered. “Okay, Parker was right next to me...”
He turned to his right and reached out, taking one step, two, three...nothing. “Okay,” Greg muttered. “Stop and think.”
But it was hard to think. And he realized just how hard it was to think when it came to him that he should turn on his goddamned suit-mounted flashlights. It didn't occur to him to actually do the more logical thing and use his vision filters until he'd already hit the switch. The flashlights, mounted on the sides of his helmet, flared into being…
...and illuminated a lone figure about ten feet ahead of him.
“Hello, Greg,” the dead man said.
“Campbell...” Greg whispered, taking a step back.
“It's you and me now. Time to pay up. No more running, no more hiding, no more distractions. You aren't going anywhere. I'm going to see to it personally.”
“What...what do you want from me?” Greg asked, hating the way his voice sounded. It trembled, weak and feeble.
“To make you pay,” Campbell replied simply. He looked worse than he had ever before. His skin was rotting off his bones. It looked pallid and decayed. “You have to own up to what you did, Greg Bishop,” he said, his voice a growl.
He began walking towards Greg.
“But I didn't do anything!” he cried.
“You know that isn't true. How many Rogue Ops personnel have you killed personally? How many have died as a result of your actions? And how many friends did you let die?” Campbell stepped closer, and closer.
Greg felt frozen in place. “What other choice did I have?!” he snapped, feeling panicky fear and anger rising up in him. “What were my other options, fucking lay down and die? Give the fuck up? Why are you doing this?!”
“One of us is going to die here, Greg,” Campbell replied firmly. “And if you're so sure that you had no choice, if you're so sure that you did the right thing, then why do you still feel so guilty? Why do you have nightmares about me? Trouble sleeping?”
“I don't...I don't know!” he moaned.
Campbell was closer than ever.
“Then I guess you'll die.”
His pale, dead hands were reaching for Greg's throat now and at once Greg knew that if Campbell got a grip on him, he'd never let go. He'd squeeze the life out of him until he was dead...or driven insane here on this miserable rock called Ash, stuck forever in permanent torture. No...he had to defend himself.
Glancing down, Greg realized that he had a pistol in his hand. He took a step back and raised it. “I feel like shit because...emotions aren't logical,” he said, the idea forming in his mind, coalescing quickly. “Emotions are what they are, but I...did the right thing. It had to be done. To do otherwise would have been to cause the deaths of countless others.”
“Then kill me if you can. Do it yourself t
his time, Greg. Because I'm going to kill you if I can,” Campbell replied, his voice an awful grating growl.
Greg aimed directly at Campbell's forehead, hesitated for a second, then squeezed the trigger.
* * * * *
Drake flicked on his flashlights as soon as the darkness enveloped him. Immediately he could tell something was wrong, because everything was different. The body and the parts of the creature they had just attacked were missing. So were his fellow teammates. He was alone in a pit of darkness. Nothing seemed to have any substance.
“Drake.”
He froze up. He recognized that voice. He'd recognized it anywhere.
“Trent,” he replied, turning around and finding himself staring into Trent's dead eyes. They were gray now, flat gray. “Go. Away.”
“That's all you have to say to me?”
“I'd have a lot to say to Trent. You aren't Trent. Get the fuck out of my head.”
“Admit it, you blame yourself for my death-”
“No,” Drake said flatly. “I told you before. It wasn't my fault. I did everything I could. Trent would never blame me for his death. Get. Out. Of. My. Head.”
For the first time, Drake shifted his focus to his pain. He let the pain seep into his body and his conscious mind. His stomach, his shoulder, all of his bruises and aches and cuts and scrapes and sore muscles. For a moment, it blinded him and he felt close to fainting. His eyes squeezed shut, tears of agony pushing their way out.
When he opened his eyes again, the thing that was not Trent was gone.
* * * * *
The darkness was absolute.
Jennifer could hear only her own heavy breathing and the beating of her heart. It was as if she'd been thrown into a black hole. She willed herself to calm down, to regain herself. This was a new situation, and if she was to survive, she had to maintain the balance that had kept her going for all these years. It hadn't failed her yet. She hit her flashlights.
Nothing happened.
“Shit,” she whispered. In all the hectic chaos, they must have been damaged. She quickly tried one of her vision filters, something to help her see in the darkness, but nothing changed there, either. Surely her suit wasn't that damaged, was it?
As she considered alternatives, abruptly, she realized that her hands were empty. No rifle, no bolt gun. She began patting herself down. Her hand fell to the butt of her pistol, resting in its holster. Okay. There was that at least. She pulled it out and flipped on the muzzle-mounted flashlight. As she aimed straight ahead of herself, she realized that the light revealed almost nothing. Just a rough approximation of the ground, and it didn't even resemble the place they'd just left. Where the fuck was she? What had happened?
A footfall, as crystal clear as anything, sounded suddenly to her right. She jerked the pistol that way and felt ice fill her veins as the light showed Mark. The dead man who had been occupying her thoughts lately. He wore the ragged remains of his jumpsuit and his pale, blood-smeared skin showed through. There was a hole his forehead, a round black hole with singe marks along it. His right eye hung from its socket.
“Jennifer, you let this happen to me,” he said.
“I'm sorry,” she moaned sickly, still pointing the pistol at him, though more to keep him in the light than anything else. Terror raced through her body. Where was this? How was this happening? What was happening?
Mark took a lurching step towards her.
“Sorry doesn't bring me back, sorry doesn't change what happened,” Mark replied coldly in his flat, dead voice.
He took another step towards her.
“Stay...stay back,” Jennifer said, feeling for the core of cold steel she so frequently relied on to keep her alive...and finding nothing.
“You have to pay for your mistakes,” Mark said. “One this severe is going to be quite costly.”
He was coming at her faster now, and she was backing up. Her guilt was nearly crippling, all she could see was the scene of his death playing in her mind, over and over again. She'd played dice often enough with her own life, and with other people's lives, because that's what came with running the show, which she sometimes did. Burdens of command. But they were calculated risks, and when it went bad, they all knew what they'd been getting into. It wasn't like that on the Cimmerian. No, Mark hadn't signed up for any of this shit, even though he should have known that something bad, really bad, could've happened out there on the Far Reach.
But Jennifer had fucked up and she knew it.
She'd been desperate and terrified and she'd pushed Enzo too far. And Mark had paid the ultimate price for that.
“Please, Mark, I'm sorry,” she said. He was very close now.
“I don't forgive you,” he replied flatly. He was reaching for her now. “Retribution must be had. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. You have to die, Jennifer.”
For a second, just a split second, she felt that he was right. It felt right. And in that second, it felt right not just for his life, but for all the people who had died or suffered because of her actions, directly or indirectly.
For a second, she welcomed the death his cold, pallid hands would bring.
But then reality, logic and reason reasserted in her mind and the grasp that whatever was doing this had on her was broken. She realized how insane this was, and that none of this had anything to do with her guilt. Something was trying to kill her, and she reacted the same way she always did when her life was in danger.
She fought back.
Jennifer brought one foot up and planted it firmly against Mark's torso, shoving him back violently. He cried her name, once, as she raised the pistol and put another round through his head. Then she gasped as the world shifted.
* * * * *
“Hello?...where'd everybody go?” Eric asked. His voice seemed to come out hardly above a whisper. He had been tossed into a universe where light was a myth. Terror began to fill him and he felt his mind starting to become unhinged. He tried his flashlight but as he did, he suddenly realized that he wasn't wearing his suit anymore. It was gone. All that was left was his uniform beneath it. He suddenly felt cold and very vulnerable.
No weapons, no gear, nothing.
“Hello?” he called.
He wasn't alone, he knew that much.
“Eric...”
He gasped, turning around, but there was nothing to see. He could hear breathing. Familiar breathing, and that voice…
“Autumn?”
“You let me die, Eric.”
“No...” he moaned. “I didn't, I...I did everything I could...”
“You didn't try hard enough, you let me die, you let all of us die. You could have done more, Eric. You could have gotten us out of there if you were any good at your job.”
She was closer now, much closer, and suddenly he could feel her breath on the back of his neck. It felt cold.
“I tried,” he whispered.
“I know, Eric.”
He felt her hands, like cold stone, on his chest, as though she was standing behind him and reaching around. Then her hands began to press against him, the pressure increasing, making it hard for him to breathe.
Then it felt as if her hands were beginning to go into his chest.
Eric tried to scream, but he had no breath to do so.
Suddenly, the pressure and the presence were both gone, and he was cast into pure, cold darkness once more.
CHAPTER 15
–Beyond Pain, Beyond Sanity–
Greg gasped as he was thrown back into reality.
He stumbled, fell to his hands and knees, sucking in great lungfuls of air and then wishing he hadn't. It reeked like a rotted corpse down here. He was trembling all over, his mind twisting around in a maelstrom of emotion and shattered thoughts. Slowly, he regained his feet, his stomach crying out in agony with every movement.
Looking around, he was immensely relieved to see that everyone was still here and intact, though shaken.
“What the fuck was that?”
Jennifer muttered thickly.
“Some kind of psychic assault,” Drake replied, the first on his feet. “...Eric?”
Greg glanced over. He realized that Eric hadn't moved yet. He was still on the ground. Fuck, had the assault worked on him? Moving past the horrific remains of the body they'd produced, which was still screaming and squirming to some degree, he and the others gathered around Eric. Drake crouched down and tapped into his suit's sensor suite, scanning his vitals.
He grunted. “Well, he's still alive.”
“We have to get him up,” Drake said. “Whatever's up next...all of us need to be there.”
“Get his helmet off, I'll give him a stimulant,” Parker replied.
“Will it even work?” Jennifer asked.
“Hell, I don't know,” Parker muttered as she crouched by Eric's unconscious form. Drake got his helmet unlatched and off, carefully setting his head on the ground while holding onto the helmet. Parker swabbed a space on his neck and stuck him, then injected the stimulant. They waited a moment. Greg felt the press of time. Suddenly resolute, the pain in his gut making him restless, he straightened up and looked around.
The cavern they were in had several exits. He could see the one they'd come through and, as he scanned the wall, searching for something significant, he spied several smaller openings, big enough for a person to move through, but no equipment. Finally, his eyes fell on a large opening that was, for some reason, difficult to see through. It was almost like there was a heat haze or an almost invisible curtain just beyond the opening.
Another trick of Ash, of the strange entity entombed in the device that was fueling all of this insanity, this horrible, bloody madness.