by Isaac Stone
“Because you have no other way to get through here,” she replied. “Your own visual assist doesn’t work inside this place and I don’t advise you trying to feel your way in the darkness to the exit on the other side.”
“Why not? According to you, there is nothing in this place which could harm me or anyone else.”
“After everything we have been through, you don’t want to be in the darkness when whatever threat resides here comes after you. I’m sure it will have the ability to see inside this room if you can’t.”
Ash stood in place and thought over what to do. Ash had led them this far down in the bowels of the dungeon and now he needed to face the consequences of his actions.
However, there was one other option, the VR goggles. These were older models, as the current way to access VR was to jack in using a brain wave scanner. It was how he’d managed to do it on board the gunship. These goggles wouldn’t give the wearer the sensation of being inside the reality they represented, but they could give the wearer visual simulations. It would still get them past the room further down, which seemed like the only way to go at this point.
“We’ll do it with the VR goggles,” Ash announced to her and walked back into the vestibule. Barbara Ann followed him and left the door open.
“See what I was talking about?” Costa said to Ash. “You can’t use the visual assist inside that place.” He was holding one of the VR googles.
“These are old and won’t give us the same experience we’re used to enjoying,” Ash explained to his team, “but we can still get through the next room with them on our faces. They’re old style VR glass. I’m going to try and see if they work.” He grabbed one from a hanger and walked back inside the room.
Once he faced the darkness, Ash took his helm off and strapped the goggles around his eyes. Perfect. Now he could see the entire room. It resembled a desert landscape, which he knew to be fake. Just to make sure, Ash placed the helm on his head, but popped up the visor. Now he had some head protection and could see the room before him as well.
Although the room appeared to be a desert landscape, the proportions were the same. He did not feel the heat from the sun as he might in a modern VR system, nor did he smell anything from the air. The sand beneath his boots was a fog, which his feet penetrated until they felt the hard floor. This wasn’t the best situation for them, but at least he didn’t have to rely on Barbara Ann to guide them through the room. It sounded too much like a trap to him anyway.
Ash returned to the vestibule. “It works,” he announced. “Everyone put on a set and follow me. They won’t work with your visor closed, so flip in up. The room appeared to be a desert of some kind when you put them on, but the rest of your senses aren’t affected.”
The rest of Team Omega goggles on and followed Ash into the dark room. Ash walked in the direction of the door he could see on the other side and tried to ignore the image of the blazing sun overhead and phantom sand around his boots.”
“Does everyone see a desert?” he asked the others. Everyone agreed they were in some kind of desert landscape and the floor felt real, but not the swirling sand.
Nothing happened until they were fifty yards out from the exit, or at least what appeared to be fifty yards.
There were a few large dunes around the landscape, but Ash ignored them and continued to head to the open door. This had to lead to another staircase down, but he didn’t have time to ask the android what was down there. One way or another, they were about to find out.
“Well, hello!” Ash heard Costa say as the door to the next level was in sight. He turned around to see what the cry referenced. He was shocked.
Standing next to the dune were three dark-skinned and very attractive women. All were young; none of them more than twenty years of age and each were built in a fine manner. They stood there and leered at the team, who stopped to admire the spectacle. And, of course, each was naked.
They glistened in the sunlight from sheen of oil that covered each of their bodies. One had short hair and the other two kept it long. Their bodies were tight and sensuous. Although they did not appear to be related, each of them looked similar to each other.
Two more naked women strode out from behind the virtual dune and joined the trio. They posed themselves in such a way to be seductive to the crew. It was obvious to Ash what torture this room was designed to inflict on the unwary.
“Think we can stop for a few minutes, boss?” Costa joked as he looked at them. “These natives seem friendly.” Ash could see the sweat form on his brow, although this room was kept at seventy degrees Fahrenheit.
They were all fake, of course. A computer program designed to seduce those who had no idea what they were up against. Whoever built this chamber of horrors didn’t have enough money to create a fully operation VR room of full capacity, so the goggles and their images had to suffice. He knew the reality from the illusion, but there was no telling what kinds of drugs the victims would have been doped up with. They might forget about eating and drinking until it was too late.
The women walked up to the men and began to eye them over. Ash realized this could get out of hand, if he didn’t take control soon. The door to the next staircase wasn’t that far away and he needed to get them out of here. This was not a level where they would find Haddo; he had to be somewhere further down. Inside, Ash thought about the horrors of the room with the dead bodies in the cold chamber. It made him furious. There was nothing logical about this station unless you realized it was built to see what depravity people could be subjected.
“Are you ready to let me take you to the door?” Barbara Ann asked him. “I think you should let me intervene here or you will never get them away from this mirage.”
“Dammit, guys,” Ash called out, “Cut this shit out. Those aren’t real and you know it! Now let’s get moving because this whole level is built to mess with your head!” At which point it occurred to him the women hadn’t said a thing.
“Disgusting is right,” Ester grumbled. “I thought you picked better men, Ash. What the hell is wrong with them?” He saw Kris shake her head too.
“Okay, Okay,” Makulah, responded. “We know it’s not real. Just let us have some fun for a minute. This place has been a freak show since we arrived and I need a break.” He turned to resume the trek to the door.
“Ash,” Barbara Ann suddenly announced. “That one’s real.” She pointed back the way they’d come.
Ash spun around to look at where her finger indicated.
It picked up speed as it came, something that resembled a centipede, only impossibly large. If this is what it looked like in VR then what kind of nightmare might it be in actual reality? Ash didn’t know what the kind of range it had, or if it even possessed projectile weapons, but he was willing to bet they had mere seconds before it reached them.
Worst of all, this room didn’t have anything they could hide behind. The dunes, sunlight, naked women and sand were all creations of a VR program. He had little time to get his team to safety.
“Run!” he yelled, “To the staircase! The gun is back!” He sprinted over to the men who hadn’t responded and pushed them along. The women were already in flight to the open door that led to the next level.
He heard the thud of their boots on the ground as they ran to the door. From where they were, it seemed a thousand miles away, not matter how close it might be. To stay and shoot back wasn’t an option as the beast seemed to flicker out of his sights just as he was able to draw a bead on it, as if it knew where he was aiming at any given moment.
He saw Kris vanish down the staircase, followed by Makulah, Costa, Theo and Jack. Barbara Ann was next, although he wondered if it could even see her since she wasn’t plugged into the VR system. Or was she? Ash was at the top of the staircase when he realized Ester was still behind him. He whirled around to find out where she was.
Ester, who’d tripped a good ten feet behind him, got up off the floor. Ash looked over to see the creature scu
ttle on its multitude of legs and then begin to rear up as it extended its wicked mandibles. There could only be one reason it would do that.
“Goddammit, run!” he screamed at Ester as he dropped to the ground. He brought his impact gun up and began firing instinctively, trusting his body to know where to shoot more than his eyes.
He felt the stock tremble under him as the slugs from his miniature cannon slammed into the creature, his instincts having lead him right with at least one of his many shots. Ester screamed as the beast lashed out at her, its mandibles shearing off her right leg just above the knee even as the massive stingers on its tail pierced through the armor of her lower back.
Ash kept shooting as Ester went down, and soon the damage he was inflicting on the beast caused what he assumed to be a malfunction in its ability to manipulate the VR sensory inputs. Suddenly he could aim at the creature without it shifting to avoid him, and he switched to full-auto as she rushed to Ester’s side. The withering hail of fire shattered the undulating creature, and as Ash came closer he saw that it wasn’t actually that large of a droid, though its now ruined mandibles and stingers were still plenty intimidating.
His magazine clicked empty, and the sound of it broke Ash out of his combat trance. He looked down and gasped with disgust as he saw what the stinger’s venom had done to Ester. Her body had contorted so powerfully that her bones had broken inside her armor, and bloody vomit leaked from her helmet even as the last of her essence pumped out from her severed stump.
Ash turned quickly, putting his back to the corpse, blinking back tears of horror and grief as he slotted a fresh magazine into his impact rifle.
13
The rest of his crew soon gathered around Ester.
She was sprawled out on the floor, her body twisted at angles that could not have been possible without the poison savaging her system. Her gun was next to her, right where she’d dropped it when the stingers in the back. A large pool of blood formed around her. Kris placed one hand on her helm and pulled it off Ester’s head.
She looked at the internal screen inside it and shook her head. “No way could she have survived it, the poison I mean,” Kris commented and turned to look up the stairs. “What about the thing that killed her?” She had fear mixed with anger in her eyes.
“Looked like a centipede in the VR, not sure what it looks like in reality,” Ash told her. “Makulah and Theo, go to the top of the stairs and see if anything else is waiting for us.” He turned and looked down at the body on the floor.
Makulah ran to the top of the stairs with his impact gun out and leveled, Theo right behind him. He had no idea what might be up there, but it was important he find out and as quick as he could. He reached the top and raised himself up as slow to see what might be over the last step. In the distance, he could see the insectoid horror Ash took down and noted it wasn’t moving. He couldn’t see anything else in beyond it, even with his VR rig. The goggles showed the desert horizon with nothing moving in the haze. He pulled the goggles off and looked at the blackness, which began a few feet into the room they’d left behind.
“Didn’t see a thing up there,” he told Ash moments later. “The VR glasses showed nothing. I took them off and looked again. Didn’t see anything with them off either, but it’s what I expected.”
Ash went over Ester’s body and recovered her impact rifle. He handed the gun to Barbara Ann.
“I never trained on how to use one of these,” She told him.
“I don’t care, you can carry it for us,” he informed her. “And her ammo too.” He handed her a few magazines on a bandolier.
Not knowing what else to do, Ash folded her arms across the chest and looked down at the body.
“We need to keep moving,” he told the others. “If there is anything you want to say, now is the time.”
Ash didn’t follow any religions or have any use for them. As a kid, his mother would drag him off to the local Roman Catholic Church, but that is about all the religious instruction he received as a child, other than his name, some kind of old school practice he never cared about. It never bothered him much as he grew older. He thought it was absurd people fought and killed each other over the nature of gods.
“I don’t know about this place,” Costa spoke up as he fiddled through his pockets in search of something. “We’ve gone through this atrocity exhibit far enough and still no sign of the man we’re supposed to catch. I know I voted in favor of coming here, but this place is starting to get on my nerves. What the hell was the last place all about? Do you mean to tell me those savages have been going at it ever since this place was built?”
“Shortly after,” Barbara Ann told them.
“How can EAC operate this place without anyone finding out?” Makulah brought up. “The kinds of engineers, fabricators, programmers, and money it would take to build this place, that would be tough to hide from any accountant or legal team even half awake.”
“It’s out of the way,” Barbara Ann explained. “No one has any reason to come out here. There is no government which claims this territory.”
Kris didn’t say anything, just continued to look down at Ester. Ash knew the two of them were close and this had to rip her up inside.
“We have to be pretty close to the bottom level,” Theo brought up. “Our quarry can’t be too far away. What bothers me is that we haven’t met one person who’s seen him so far, or is even aware enough to communicate really.”
“This place is an asylum that’s for sure,” Ash responded. “We’ve come too far to stop now. We need to get Haddo and bring him back. I’ll be damned if I came all this way and not get paid.”
They noted the latest vestibule they stood inside was painted with the strange Enochian symbols and writing found in the levels above them. No one said anything about them as they were used to the writing by now.
“It’s a trade-off, I suppose,” Costa said. “Do we leave and get nothing or risk our lives to become rich. Ester didn’t want to go back and a whole lot of good it did her.”
“We might not have the ammo and oxy to make it back as it is, might as well push through if we’re almost there,” added Jack.
Barbara Ann noticed something. Ash watched her walk over the right wall and stare at a section that was painted with the cryptic symbols. He watched her bend down and look at a special section on them. It was at that moment Ash realized she’d found another numerical sequence code for the information insider her memory.
“Another pass code synth?” Ash asked her.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I think this may be the last one. But I’m not sure. There is a lot of information about this place I was given, but up until now, I really didn’t have access to a lot of it.”
“Care to share it with us?” Jack asked her. He took one hand ran it across the barrel of his impact rifle.
“It would be much better if I could show it to you,” she told him. “I think I know a way to do it too.” She walked over to the abandoned helm that Ester wore before she was cut down and picked it up.
Next, Barbara Ann walked over to Costa and looked down at the box that contained the AI. “Char,” she asked it, “Can you access this helm?” Barbara Ann’s face turned into something that resembled sadness, not at all what she’d shown before.
“Of course,” Char told her. “Is there something you want me to do with it?”
“I want you to project something into the middle of the room,” she explained. “I will give you the pass codes for it and the location of the database inside this station.”
“Alright. The best way to enter them is….”
The next thing they heard was a complicated series of signals Barbara Ann generated from her voice. It wasn’t speech, but a series of audible sounds that Char could render into data. The AI understood them right away. As the rest of Team Omega stood around and watched, the helm began to light back up. All the electronic signals from the inside worked again.
A series of images began to
pulse from inside the helm. The images turned into a solid sphere and began to show them images and sounds of what took place inside Inferno Station before their arrival. They had to crowd around the helmet so they could see, as the interior screen was intended for just the wearer’s perspective.
A long time ago, Ash had looked at a book of art paintings from the distant past on Old Earth. These were paintings based around a common theme. One of them was of a man who suffered a lot in his younger days and created a representation of what his life was like. The painting showed his head split open in a field. Inside his head, he’d painted a series of images of the horrors of his existence. Ash would think about that painting from time to time for some reason. He was very young, not more than seven when he found it and the imagery disturbed him.
But noting in that painting was close to what he saw projected before him. It was a montage of nightmares, mostly security camera feeds or intentional recordings from the research teams. The people pushed into the freezing room. Men hauled into the giant oven and left to die as it increased in heat. Families killing each other in the arena. People dying of starvation and thirst in VR level. Refugees and station staff deemed no longer useful being shoved into the vestibule level they’d first encountered to scavenge for supplies while being hunted by the antique battle droid. He could see the look of horror and disgust on the faces of the others in the room.
“Turn it off!” Ash rasped at Char, “We’ve seen enough!” Char shut down the projection in an instant.
“I don’t know what the purpose of that display was,” Ash snarled at Barbara Ann. “Other than to make me want to see this place destroyed. We’ve all seen the results….” Ash stopped as another sound began to emerge from the space where the projection was located.
He turned to see another image form in the space where the previous one had been. “I thought I told you to stop that!” Ash yelled at Char.
“I’m not doing it,” Char replied. “I stopped my projection when you told me to do it, someone else with full systems access is broadcasting.”