by S. A. Lusher
“Uh-huh.”
Greg killed the connection and began looking for the way up.
* * * * *
Building Echo was a grim, bloody massacre.
Greg was frozen in a kneeling position in a doorway that looked out on the entrance lobby. The sheer amount of carnage made him reconsider his plan. Except that he couldn’t reconsider it, because he fucking had to do this. The specialized battery cell, (Volker had pinned its precise location down for him pretty quickly and had updated the map), for the goggles and the CSF samples were about equidistant from his current location and he’d been considering going after the battery first because the gun wasn’t all that far from it.
But this damned lobby…
Just, wow.
There was blood all over the fucking place, even up on the ceiling. He counted about a dozen bodies. He spied a good mix of regular humans and Mutants, and a few Fiends in there as well. Several of them had been turned to bones, but all the ones that remained relatively intact (given the number of decapitations, mutilations and maimed limbs, that was a loose interpretation of the word), had ragged, bloody holes in their backs.
Signs of the Revenant’s passing.
“Shit,” he muttered, reviewing his map again. Okay, okay...the infirmary Volker had marked was to the left of the main lobby, down a long-ass corridor, at its end. Well...at least it was a pretty straightforward route.
Of course, long, open corridors could work against you, too.
Swallowing his fear, Greg slipped out. He activated his radio as he slunk across the lobby, stepping over the corpses and trying to avoid the pools of blood.
“Volker...what’d you find out about the Revenant?” he asked softly.
“Not a whole lot, I’m afraid. It’s essentially impossible to detect with modern technology. We only know of its existence because it blocks out technology or disrupts it. We can track it this way, track the disruption. As for what we actually learned...well, I told you about the prolonged exposure. We don’t know why it needs cerbrospinal fluid, but so far this appears to be its only sustenance. Whether or not this is a preference or a need, we don’t know. It is very strong and can break down through metal doors if it wants to.”
“What does it look like?” Greg asked.
“I’m...not sure. I can’t honestly remember. It was dark, I remember that. And...blurry. And angular. And...uh...I shouldn’t think about it for too long. It leaves...an impression, on the mind, of those who view it through the goggles. You really must be careful.”
“Yeah. Anything else?”
“Honestly, no. Of all the creatures we have here, of all the things I’ve researched in my life, I must admit that it is the most enigmatic.”
As Greg reached the end of the hall and slipped into the infirmary, finding it bloody but clear, he hesitated. “Wait...if this thing is so fucking enigmatic, then how in the actual fuck do you know this gun of yours will kill it?”
“Well...see, that’s the problem. I don’t, actually. It just should kill it. It’s a very powerful gun...” Volker said hesitantly.
“You...fuck...what...” Greg couldn’t even find the words. Each one stumbled over the other as they tried to get out of his mouth. “You couldn’t have mentioned this sooner!?” he hissed finally, wanting to scream at the top of his lungs, but still too afraid to do so.
“I didn’t want to sap your confidence and I was hoping you wouldn’t figure it out.”
“You are a fuck, you know that? Now leave me alone.”
Greg killed the radio and quickly hunted through the ruined infirmary. He came up with several small glass samples of clear liquid that might as well have been water and hoped it wasn’t bullshit. He pocketed these and kept one in hand, just in case, as he slipped back out into the hallway. Which was apparently a good call because he heard a strange noise, a bizarre, resonating sound that immediately set him on edge.
It was coming from his right, towards the very end of the hallway, and he looked over. There was an open door and something was coming out of it, something dark and-
-came back into the lobby, blind screaming terror in his head, his whole body alive and trembling like he was hooked up to a powerful electrical current and he was crying, yelling, begging. Greg gasped as he came back to himself. He kept running, knowing that he could not stop or risk death and he just kept running and going, pounding straight through the far door in the lobby, realizing that he was on course for the battery.
He ran, pounding down another corridor, dodging past a few Mutants that made grabs and swipes for him. He ran until he saw an open door and slipped through. Slamming his fist on the close button, he saw that he’d come to a bathroom. Only after he cleared it did he stumble into a stall and shakily collapse onto the closed lid of a toilet.
Holy fuck.
That thing.
Jennifer had told him about the experience, but she hadn’t been able to adequately describe the skin-crawling terror he was coming down from. Greg sniffed and wiped at his eyes. Fuck, he didn’t even think he was capable of crying from pure fear anymore, but apparently he was! He grabbed some toilet paper and blew his nose. He supposed he wouldn’t be able to do the experience justice, either. Not that he’d want to.
Knowing that he had to get back to it, that the CSF he must have thrown, given the fact that he wasn’t dead, would only give him a brief reprieve from the Revenant, Greg made himself get up and headed back out into the corridor. He looked around and saw only a few Mutants around. Letting them live, as they might serve as good bait, he began making his way towards the battery. Had to get that. As he jogged on, he considered the Revenant.
The idea that you couldn’t look at it without suddenly snapping forward in time, without losing those few seconds of memories, without reacting in such mind-numbing terror that you literally forgot it and immediately ran away, was an idea that he had difficulty wrapping his head around. It was just...it seemed impossible. And yet he had just experienced it. He searched his memories for it, for what it looked like, because he had actually, physically seen it, he had looked at it, but there was nothing there.
Those few seconds were just flat out gone, blasted out of his head.
Greg skidded to a halt as he realized he’d overshot. He turned around and ran back down the corridor he was in, then ducked into the bedroom that the battery had ended up in. He found the battery on the floor in a puddle of blood, picked it up, cleaned it off to the best of his ability and swapped it out. As he got the goggles ready, he realized that he hadn’t felt cold. That was one thing that Jennifer had been specific about: when it was closing in on you, you felt cold. But he’d heard something, that weird, low resonating noise.
Was it different for each person?
Or did the environment change it?
What was different this time around?
No time to think about any of that. He slipped the goggles on and fired them up, then frowned. Nothing was different. No filter, nothing. Hell, he didn’t even see the peripheral of the goggles themselves, it was like he wasn’t wearing them at all...which must mean they must be working, he realized. They were digitally projecting a view from the camera lenses. Okay, well, fine then. Now he had to get to the gun, which had ended up in another one of the living quarters. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of the dorms complex.
As soon as Greg stepped out into the corridor, he heard it: the resonating hum.
He turned and stared back down the way he’d come.
And he saw it.
He saw the Revenant.
For a few seconds, his entire body went cold, his muscles seized and the air was forced from his lungs. All thoughts were ejected from his skull. Words came to him. Dark. Angular. Twitchy. Blurry. Big. Was it big? Or...was it...he couldn’t tell its dimensions. No matter how long he stared, he couldn’t figure out if it was big or small, the size of a dog or the size of a bull or a truck. It seemed to...shift. It was in the process of killing a Mutant. The Mutan
t looked normal, everything else looked normal. But the Revenant…
It wasn’t so much a thing as it was a thing-shaped hole in the fabric of reality itself.
And through that hole…
Greg felt his stomach twitch, felt his sanity and control slip a notch, felt strange thoughts begin to slide into his head, begin to invade his mind…
He screamed and made himself turn away, made himself run. His whole body felt like had fallen asleep and the pins and needles of coming awake assaulted him. There was also a strange kind of burning freeze assaulting him, and it felt like someone had wrapped his soul in flaming razorwire. It felt like...he didn’t even know what it felt like, except that it was bad. It was fucking awful. Was this what insanity was like?
He was shaking like he was coming down from a drug or something, but he felt like he was back in his own head at least. Greg ran as fast as he could, wanting, needing to kill this thing, this strange, shadowy, twitchy, angular thing. It had to be eliminated. Somewhere distant, but not distant enough, Greg could hear that deep, resonating hum. He pushed himself harder, dodging around every Mutant, Harvester and Fiend that got into his way, just to throw stumbling blocks into the Revenant’s path. He needed every second.
It felt like ages, but he finally came to the right room.
Greg found the specialized gun in question haphazardly tossed onto someone’s desktop and immediately snatched it up. He activated his radio as he looked the thing over. It was weird: a two-foot long, thick silver rectangle with a pistol grip, trigger and scope built onto it. There were grooves cut into the metal.
He didn’t see a way to load it.
“Volker, found the gun, what the hell is it?”
“Basically, it’s a new type of rail gun, a prototype we’ve been working on. It uses all new kinds of metal that has been treated with a specific type of radiation and...well, listen, all you need to know is that it’s single-shot and you’d better hope it’s loaded because I’m not sure you have enough time to get back to the armory where we kept the rounds, if there are any left. There’s a little black button on the side of the barrel, right side, near the back. Push it,” Volker replied.
Greg did and the barrel popped down, revealing a silver hole in its back. He tilted the gun up slightly and something slipped a little out of the hole, a projectile. It operated basically like a double-barrel shotgun, except it was single barrel. Crack it open, slap the new slug in, snap it close. Greg snapped it close.
“It’s loaded,” he said.
“Good. Now...you’re going to want to be careful about where you fire this gun, because...anything is in its path will be destroyed. And I do mean anything. We don’t know its effective range. It might actually achieve escape velocity. So don’t point it towards myself or your friends.”
“How the fuck do I determine that?!” Greg snapped as he headed back out.
“The goggles should have a compass feature built in. Reach up and hit the button on the top right. Do not shoot south or west,” Volker replied.
Greg did as he was told and stepped back out into the corridor. Well, the good news at least was that the way he’d last seen the creature was to the north.
“All right, now shut up and let me work.”
He thought about how to do this for a moment, then realized he had the perfect method. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out one of his CSF samples and hurled it as hard as he could down the hallway, then dropped into a crouch, rail gun tucked tight against his shoulder. Almost immediately he heard a resonating hum.
It was coming for him.
He waited, sweat trickling down him, his muscles trembling from the tension. Greg forced himself to focus. He only had one fucking shot at this. He could do it. He had to do it. The resonating hum was getting louder.
Abruptly, the Revenant stepped into view.
Greg made himself aim down the sights, steadied his hands, drew a bead on the strange, impossible, twisting aperture in reality itself and squeezed the trigger. There was a brilliant flash of light and the gun, surprisingly, kicked hardly at all, but holy shit did it have an effect. He heard a shriek that lasted for perhaps a fraction of a second, and then suddenly the feeling of insanity, the lingering malignant presence of impossible, irreconcilable madness simply ceased to be, like someone flicking a light switch.
“Holy shit, I did it,” he whispered. He slowly lowered the gun. “You hear that Volker? I fucking did it, that thing is toast.”
“Good. I’m very grateful. Now collect your friends and get to the Military HQ, there is still a lot to do,” the scientist replied.
“Uh-huh,” Greg muttered, standing and jogging down the length of the corridor to where the Revenant had once been.
It had basically detonated.
There were bits of strange, trembling dark gore everywhere. And sure enough, he spied a smoking hole in the wall. Crouching down, careful of the gore, (he didn’t want to touch this thing at all, not even in death), he peered through it and saw that it went on for quite a ways. Straightened back up, Greg decided he was going to hang onto this gun.
It seemed like it could really come in handy.
He set off to go get Drake and Eric, and then to get some damned answers.
CHAPTER 10
–Answers–
“Hold,” Greg said, freezing up.
He looked across the body-strewn corridor, scanning the blood-slicked gray tiles and shiny metal walls, hunting for enemies. He’d heard something. Behind him, Drake held Eric, crouching, waiting. Greg continued scrutinizing the environment. He took it all in: the smashed furniture, the wrecked, blocky metal desk that dominated the center of the room, much more stern looking than the other lobbies he’d come into. It made enough sense, he supposed, given the fact that he wasn’t far from the military sector.
There.
The sound again, he heard it. A shuffling movement, and something breathing.
“Wait here,” Greg murmured.
He was pretty confident that it, whatever it was, was hidden behind the desk in the center of the room. He slipped out of the side room they’d emerged in from underground, keeping an eye on the darker areas or the places that hadn’t been immediately visible from his original vantage point. They remained clear of enemies. He got up to the desk and edged around it. Sure enough, he found a Harvester hunkered down there, doing...whatever it was Harvesters did when they didn’t have corpses to slurp up.
Aiming, he squeezed the trigger on his pistol and put two in its head, capping it. Greg looked around, making sure nothing else was going to sneak up on him. When he saw nothing, he waved to Drake, who emerged from the maintenance room. They made for the entrance to the military zone. After he’d killed the Revenant, it had been a relatively easy task to head back down underground and take the tunnel back to the hangar.
Okay, maybe easy wasn’t the correct word, but he’d been able to do it. The job was a simple matter of moving through the dark, underground environment, trying not to get killed. Nothing he hadn’t done a hundred times before. But about the time he’d finally got to Drake and Eric was the time that the numbing agent was wearing off and holy shit had it hurt. He’d been unable to go on, so he’d had Drake peel away the bloody bandage and apply a fresh infusion of the numbing stuff. Then slap a new bandage on.
And then they’d gone back into the underground.
Finally, they’d reached Building Delta, which seemed to be the nerve center of Polaris. Finally, he was going to get some fucking answers out of Volker and they were going to figure out how to get off of this world, put a stop to Blackmore and Jericho, and figure out what was happening with the rest of their squad.
“Volker,” Greg said as they marched into the military sector and came to stand before the huge, steel doors that stood between him and his friends. “Open up. We’re outside.”
“You’re alone out there? No creepy-crawlies?” he replied.
“Nothing but us. Open up.”
“V
ery well then.”
There was a pause that lasted long enough that Greg almost snapped at the doctor over the radio again, and then the doors slid quickly open. Greg checked out the area beyond, finding a short alcove that led to a larger, well-lit room beyond. There was no immediate threat, so he turned around and provided cover while Drake brought Eric into the room. Once he was clear, the door began to close, and Greg followed Drake into the area beyond. The alcove opened up into a large, rounded room packed with terminals, consoles and workstations, all of it built around a huge station on a raised dais in the center of the room.
Volker was sitting at it.
Greg studied the man who had helped orchestrate this whole thing, the man who had been stringing them along. He was thin, a shaved bald head gleaming under the bright lights. He had a dark blonde goatee, shiny white eyes with a pair of glittering blue irises. As he rose smoothly from his chair and stepped down from the dais, everything about him seemed to be precise and certain. The man was an economy of movement.
“I’m so glad you three made it here alive and intact,” he said.
“Yeah, where’s our friends?” Greg replied.
Volker hesitated and frowned slightly. “Straight to the point, I see. Very well, through here,” he replied, turning and heading through a door to the right. Greg and Drake moved forward, following him. They came into a side room that seemed to be an emergency infirmary, and not a very big one. Along the back wall were three sealed cryo-units.
“Get them out of there,” Drake said as he laid Eric out on one of the open examination tables.
Greg walked forward, staring in through the frosted windows. He could see them in there: Eve, Jennifer, Genevieve.
“I’ve already begun the process of thawing them,” Volker replied mildly. “They’ll be awake in about five minutes, though orientation will take a bit. Then I will update all six of you on the situation. No sense repeating myself,” he said.
Greg sighed and turned to Volker. “Help him,” he said, pointing at Eric.