Dead Space Martyr

by B. K. Evenson

  2 When he woke up, he was still strapped down to a bed. He was alone in a small room, something very like a cell. He struggled against the straps, but they were firm. He slept, he woke, he slept again. Occasionally a nurse would come in and change the bag of fluids hanging beside him. His head throbbed. Once when the nurse came, she took out a small pocket mirror and held it so he could see himself. His head was wrapped in bandages. He hardly recognized his own face. "There, see," said the nurse, and gestured to the top of his head. "That's where you had your accident." "Accident?" he said. "Yes," she said. "Where you slipped and fell." "It wasn't an accident," he said. She smiled. "After head trauma, sometimes things can get confused," she said. "No," he said. "I know exactly what happened." Her smile looked painted on, fake. "I'm not supposed to talk to you," she said. "Those are the rules." She backed slowly out the door. A few minutes later, the door opened and a man with a hypodermic entered. When he woke up again, he was in a different place, a place that didn't just look like a cell, but was one. The bandages were no longer on his head, though a lump and a healing wound were still there. They had unstrapped him, had left him lying on the floor. He got unsteadily to his feet, his muscles weak from disuse. The room was white, without mark or other design. There was one door, small, in the middle of one wall. High above him and out of reach was a vid recorder. A small toilet in the corner, a food dispenser just beside it. He went to the door and pounded on it. "Hello!" he called. "Hello!" Then he pressed his ear to the door. He heard nothing. He waited, tried again. Nothing happened. And then again. Still nothing. Hours went by, then days. The only noise that did not come from himself was the clunk when food came down the slot. There was no way for him to control when it came, no button to push. Suddenly there was a clunk and the food was there. He saved the containers and they slowly filled one side of the room. He felt like he was the last man on earth. He felt like he was going mad. He withdrew deeper and deeper into himself, paid less and less attention to the outside world. Then the dead started to return, one by one, to keep him company. All the people whose deaths he felt responsible for, sitting around him, judging him. There was Ada and Field, Hendricks and Hammond, and others he couldn't recognize. It was just him, and his guilt, and the dead. And then he awoke to find that he was no longer in that room, that instead he was sitting in a chair at a large table. His hands were cuffed to the arms of the chair. Across from him, on the other side of the table, were Markoff and Stevens. "Hello, Altman," said Markoff. He didn't answer at first. It was strange to be in a room with living people, almost unbearable. He couldn't believe it was really happening. "Altman," said Stevens. He snapped his fingers. "Here, Altman. Focus." "You're not here," said Altman. "I'm hallucinating you." "No," said Stevens. "We're here. Even if we're not, what will it hurt you to talk to us?" He's right, said Altman. What will it hurt? And then he remembered Hennessy, dead from listening to a hallucination; Hendricks, dead from listening to a hallucination; Ada, dead from listening to a hallucination. On and on and on. His eyes filled with tears. "What's wrong with him?" Markoff asked. "We broke him," said Stevens. "I told you it was too long. We're real, Altman. What do we have to do to prove that we're real?" "You can't prove it," said Altman. "Do something, Stevens," said Markoff. "He's not any fun like this." Stevens darted forward, slapped him hard, then again. Altman reached up and touched his cheek. "Did you feel that?" asked Stevens, his voice gently mocking. Had he felt it or had he only imagined feeling it? He didn't know. But he had to make a choice: either speak to them or ignore them. He hesitated for so long that Stevens, or the Stevens hallucination, slapped him again. "Well?" he said. "Yes," said Altman. "Maybe you're real." And as he said it, it was almost as if they became more real. But if he had insisted they were hallucinations, would the reverse have happened? Would they have merely faded away? "That's better," said Markoff, his eyes starting to gleam. "Where's Krax?" he asked. Markoff waved the question away. "Krax made the mistake of becoming expendable. What we're here to talk about, Altman, is you." "What about me?" "We had to figure out what to do with you," said Stevens. "You've caused a lot of trouble." "That stunt you pulled in Washington," said Markoff. "That was in very bad taste. I wanted to kill you for that." "Why didn't you?" Markoff glanced briefly at Stevens. "Cooler heads prevailed," he said. "As it turned out, they were wrong." "I'm the first to admit it," said Stevens. "You were no better once you came back," said Markoff. "You meddled with experiments, caused a tremendous amount of property damage, did everything you could to get in the way. Once the setback occurred on the floating compound, I thought, Well, they'll tear him apart and transform him into one of them, and I'll be at home with my popcorn and candy, watching it on the screen. But that didn't work either. Instead you sank a billion-dollar research facility." "We almost had you killed when we picked you and Harmon up from the boat, but Markoff wanted your death to be the perfect thing," said Stevens. "Yes," said Markoff, "the perfect thing." "You're both crazy," said Altman. "You've used that one before," said Markoff. "You need to come up with a better insult." "Would you like to hear our plans?" "No," said Altman. "Send me back to my cell." Stevens ignored him. "Once we have the secret of the Marker worked out, once we have the new Marker replicated, we'll share it with the public. Until then, we'll give them little tastes, something to prepare them for what's coming." "That's where you come in," said Markoff. Stevens nodded. "Seen in that light, you have played right into our hands. It's not enough for just us to believe. Since it's a matter of the salvation of the human species, we need to spread the belief. What better way to do that than to start a formal religion? That way, when the right time comes, they'll be ready." "Not everybody has to know the full extent of what's really going on," said Markoff. "Indeed, it's better if only a few of us really know the details, only a select inner circle. It's always better to maintain a little mystery, initiate people slowly, gradually. Keep the power in the right hands." Altman found his hands were shaking. "But I got the word out," he said. "I went public. People will know." "Yes, you did," said Stevens. "Thank you for doing that. The word you got out was that the government is hiding something that the people should know about. Think about it. We've looked back over all the footage, all the interviews you did. You were conflicted enough about whether the Marker was something to be feared or something to be studied, and so you remained vague. We can spin your comments any way we want. By the time we're through with you, not only will your little stunt not hurt us: you'll be considered a saint. You got the word out first, Altman--you're the one who started it all. Everyone will believe that you were the one who founded the religion." "I'll never go along with it," said Altman, dread rising in him. Markoff laughed. "We never said we needed you to go along with it," he said. "Like any prophet, you're more useful to us dead than alive," said Stevens. "Once you're dead, we can let the truth--our truth--build up around you and you can't do anything about it. You'll be larger than life. We'll write histories of you, holy books. We'll erase what we don't like about you and make you fit what we want. Your name will be forever associated with the Church of Unitology. You'll come to be known as our founder." "Which will allow the rest of us to stay in the background and get things done," said Markoff. "I must admit I find it very satisfying to think of your name leading the movement that you tried so hard to destroy. It almost makes all the trouble you caused feel worthwhile." "You'll never get away with this," said Altman. Markoff smiled, showing the tips of his teeth. "You can't honestly believe that," Stevens said. "Of course we'll get away with it." "You have officially become expendable," said Markoff. "We've decided to donate your body to science. We have a particularly vicious death planned for you." "You'll find this interesting," said Stevens. "Using a variant of the genetic material that Guthe produced, we've developed a specimen that we'd be interested in having you meet. It was made by combining the tissue of three human corpses with the DNA. We've named it after one of the corpses. We're calling it the Krax. The results, as I'm sure you'll be likely to agree, are rather
surprising." Altman tried to lunge across the desk but succeeded only in turning over his chair. He lay there with his face pressed against the floor. After a moment, Markoff and Stevens got up from their chairs and heaved him back upright. "Krax, by the way, was lying to you when he said he didn't kill your girlfriend," said Markoff. "What was her name again? Doesn't matter, I suppose. He did kill her. A generally inconsistent character. Which is why he became expendable." Altman didn't answer. "So there's your motivation," said Stevens. "Revenge. Kill the Krax, and Ada's death will be avenged. Should make for a good show." He smiled. "It seems fitting, doesn't it? An appropriate way for you to meet your end? Who could ask for anything more?" "You may think we're going to throw you in there defenseless," said Markoff. "If you think that, you're wrong. We have a weapon for you." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a spoon, forced it into Altman's closed fist. "Here you go," he said. "Good luck." And then, without another word, the pair stood and left the room.

  3 The chamber they dumped him into was circular, about six meters in diameter. They pushed him through a pressure door and had left him there, gripping his absurd weapon, for too long. He had tried to make it a little less absurd, scraping it against the walls and sharpening its edges, giving it a point, making it a makeshift knife. The observation chamber was directly overhead, the same size and shape as the chamber below. The glass ceiling of the lower chamber served as the glass floor of the upper one. He could see Stevens and Markoff above, looming over him. They were drinking glasses of champagne, smiling. It's one thing to be killed, thought Altman, but dying knowing what infamy will be done in your name after your death is another thing entirely. Better to be like the old drunk in the town and have no name. The second door of the chamber slid open to reveal a dark corridor. He stayed where he was, near the door he had been pushed through, waiting for something to come through. Nothing did. The world is a hell, thought Altman. You can do everything right and cheat death, and then be ruined by one false step. Those, apparently, were the conditions of life. Of his life, at least. The smell suddenly reached him. It was a rank, rotting odor, putrid to an extreme. He gagged. And then he heard a heavy scraping sound, and the creature pulled itself in through the door. It scraped against the sides of the passage as it came. He could see, here and there, reminders that it had once been human, a foot that had been stretched and split and now projected from the joint of the creature's chitinous gigantic arm. Fingerlike tentacles throbbed over its face. And there, in the middle of its pulsating abdomen, was a large callus that looked like Krax's screaming face. It pushed the rest of the way into the room and howled. Oh, God, he thought. Let this be a hallucination. Let this be a dream. Let me wake up. He closed his eyes and then he opened them again. The creature was still there. It roared, and then it charged.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible if Frank and Nick Murray hadn't provided me the perfect place to write at just the right time. Thanks are due to them and to Le Tr�fle Rouge, and to the fine folks at Visceral Games/EA for trusting me with the best bit of first-person SF/horror dismemberment out there. And applause is due especially to my editor, Eric Raab, for his excellent, tireless, and thankless work.