Dreamspinner
Page 18
“What I need is a change of routine,” he said aloud as he mentally shook himself from the self pity he felt rising within. Before he changed his mind, he raced up to his security room on deck three and stripped the linen from the bed. Before leaving the room, he gathered all his discarded clothes and trudged back down to deck five. Through a door in the recreation room was a large laundry area and Tearan put one of the machines on for the bed linen and another for his clothes. In thirty-five minutes, the items emerged washed, dried, ironed, folded, and wrapped in a thin protective paper covering.
‘Research Vessel Novosentia.’
Tearan read the paper label printed onto the protective covering that surrounded his bed linen and clothes. After re-reading it several times, he stared wide eyed as the significance of his discovery hit home.
“So this ship is called the Novosentia huh? What a weird name. And it is a research vessel after all.” He was pleased that he now had a little more information about his prison, despite it bringing yet more questions that he was unable to answer. One thing he knew right away was that the vessel was not known to him. There was no way for him to know whether the IGEC’s involvement with it was recent or not, nor whether any other branch of the inter-galactic military was also involved. Simply having a name for his prison gave him more emotional relief than he would have anticipated. It was as if by giving it a name, he made it more solidly real and therefore easier to cope with. After the nightmares, shadows, and unexplained noises that made him worry about his sanity, the solidity offered by that name was a huge relief.
After taking the cleaned items back up to his security room, Tearan left the paper with its printed label on the table in the engineering briefing room and left a new message on the recorder for Tovis and Mykus. That done, he returned to the security room and spent a couple of hours cleaning it from one end to the other. Finding considerable emotional comfort in the familiarity of mundane tasks, he then turned his attentions to the kitchen and then the dining room. Having missed eating in the middle of the day, he ate his late meal with more than his usual appreciation and then spent a couple of hours watching movies on the Recreation Room vidicom screen before deciding to go to bed. As he lay and listened to the silent ship, he said its name over and over.
“Research Vessel Novosentia. I have to know what is behind that wall. Even if getting through it kills me, I have to know what they’re hiding. I can’t live like this for much longer and I’d rather die trying to find out what’s going on, than live alone in ignorance for the rest of my life and slowly go mad.” The decision now made, Tearan’s mind relaxed enough to allow him to fall asleep.
Tearan stood before the wall in the cargo hangar and examined it closely. After a good night’s sleep, he awoke with fresh determination to explain the mystery of the wall and decided it was his first and only priority now. He ate a hearty breakfast, believing that an adequately fuelled body helps maintain a balanced and healthy mind. One thing was without question, he needed his mind to be clear and objective. With all the weirdness he had endured recently and the subsequent worry about his state of mind, he did not intend to neglect his mental health any more. During breakfast, he allowed his mind to dwell on the question of whether the others actually existed or not and came up with a couple of possible explanations, none of which pleased him. When he considered the fact that Mykus, Tovis, and himself had all separately requested they all meet up and work together, yet they had not done so, his heart sank. Then he remembered his trip around the ship, yelling his head off for the others. No reply had been forthcoming from either of them and his frown deepened. There was also the uncanny sense of recognition he felt whenever he listened to the messages Mykus and Tovis left, and it was this fact that helped him make up his mind. Despite being the explanation he wanted least, Tearan had to admit to a definite possibility that the others did not exist other than in his own troubled mind. Once he finished washing up his breakfast dishes, he made his way down to the cargo hangar to begin the process of working out what kind of weird shit was actually going on.
“Maybe whatever caused my amnesia is causing me to think there are others aboard. Perhaps my feeling of recognition is my mind beginning to realise they’re not real. If that’s true then it’s a sign that my mind is recovering.”
Another thought that had occurred to him while he showered before breakfast, was that Mykus and Tovis were working for whatever secretive operation was running the ship. Maybe they had been planted on board to watch him and report to whoever was in charge. If the memories from the time leading up to blacking out returned, he felt sure some of his questions would be answered. Forcing his mind back to the time before waking up, his last memory was sitting with other soldiers in a lecture hall and listening to a sector commander talking. The subject of the lecture was lost but he had no idea how long before his blackout the lecture took place.
“It could be the day before or ten years before,” he said and ran a hand through his hair as he prepared to shave. It was becoming more and more likely that his unit had been connected in some way with some kind of secret research. The most likely scenario was that his unit was being used in a security capacity, given the secrecy of whatever had been going on. Something might have happened that overwhelmed their security measures. He had not found a single dead body aboard anywhere and this told him that either everyone survived whatever happened, or the dead had been taken away when the survivors fled. Somehow, he had been left behind, either accidentally or on purpose and now, here he was awake and alone. One thing he knew for certain was that if his unit thought he had died during whatever the event had been, they would not be coming back for him. If they believed there was a chance he was still alive, they might do, if they were able.
“Maybe they all got amnesia too, so they might not remember I exist at all.” This thought made his heart sink even lower as he realised that in such a case, he had no hope of rescue. “They have to come, they have to.”
Standing before the wall in the cargo hangar, Tearan was pleased with his efforts. A quarter of the entire length was now cleared. He remembered using Q Walls a couple of times during his time with the IGEC, and knew from his experience that somewhere there should be a control pad. He also knew that the control pad was normally situated on one side of a Q Wall, not both. Such walls are usually built in places where either secrecy or security are paramount and control of the wall tends to be carefully guarded. Tearan knew it was likely that the control for the wall would be on the other side. Despite this likelihood, he was going to check anyway. The gravity of his situation demanded he be thorough, so he decided to make sure before taking further action.
He noticed immediately that there was no wall control panel on the end of the wall he had cleared, but he checked up close anyway. Sensitive fingers tapped and slid along the edge from floor to ceiling but he found no secret panel or hidden compartment that might hide a control panel. Experience told him the panel would be at a height easily reached by a man; an emergency would demand they use the wall quickly and they would not want to waste time climbing up to the top to press the switch. Nevertheless, he checked all the way up, climbing the now empty shelving just to be sure. Only when he was satisfied the control panel was not there, did he walk to the other end of the wall. This end had not been cleared of cargo, so he was forced to shift boxes and crates to reveal the end of the wall where it joined the adjacent one. He hopped into a loader to shift the higher shelves and after an hour, began another search for a control panel. Finding none, he stood back and scratched his chin.
The lack of a control panel told Tearan that it had to be on the other side. This went some way to confirming that there might indeed be people through there. Why put the only control for the Q-Wall on the other side if no one is there to use it? Furthermore, this told him that they had the upper hand, by design rather than by accident. Thoughts raced around his head and he made a conscious effort not to express his thoughts aloud. Striding back down
to the empty portion of shelving, Tearan walked right up to the wall and pressed the side of his face against it while touching it with all five fingertips of his right hand. Closing his eyes to heighten his concentration, he allowed his other senses to tell him what his eyes alone, were unable to. The ever-so-slightly rough texture of the wall and the almost-not-there vibration confirmed what Tovis said. This was indeed a genuine Q-Wall.
Tearan stepped away and ran a hand through his hair as he tried to get the ramifications of this new information into some sort of order. Q-Walls are expensive. Not the, give up the booze for a few weeks and put the money in a jar, sort of expensive, but the, beyond all comprehension, kind. The, it would take you seven hundred years of saving every penny, kind of expensive. They are way beyond the means of the majority of companies. Their use is still not readily accepted by the mainstream, despite modern safety advancements making them almost completely safe. Ninety nine percent of Q-Walls are used in either secret military installations, or equally secret research establishments. Knowing the Novosentia was a research vessel, Tearan wondered what kind of secret research they might be hiding. Was it some kind of deadly virus they were mutating for bio weapons, a new type of fuel maybe, medical experimentation perhaps?
‘Maybe that’s it. Maybe some medical experiment went horribly wrong,’ he thought to himself, not daring to talk aloud in case the room was bugged. He knew that if whatever was going on was so secret they needed a Q-Wall, secret filming and bugging was to be expected. For this reason, he kept his mouth shut and discussed the situation with himself in the confines of his own mind. The level of secrecy indicated by the presence of the Q-Wall made him wonder if he had been observed since the moment he awoke. Was he being filmed, listened to? His mind raced as he tried to think back to anything he might have said or done to make things dangerous for himself and he remembered speaking aloud about the inhibitors Tovis found. Now he understood perfectly why high end military inhibitors were on board and he mentally kicked himself for being so vocal about them with Tovis and Mykus. His two colleagues then filled his mind and he knew he had not imagined them after all. They were not hallucinations conjured by his troubled mind, they were real and in as much danger as he was. Maybe this explained the absence of Doctor Arma and his crazy rantings written on the walls of the medical bay. They might not be such crazy rantings after all. There was every possibility that what the doctor thought was a haunting was actually the people from behind the wall.
All sorts of odd things fell into place and Tearan pieced the jigsaw together inside his head. The missing doctor, the apparent absence of Mykus and Tovis, the crash he heard in the security room and the scratches on the floor, the shadows seen in the corner of his eye that disappeared when he tried to focus on them. Even the time discrepancies. Everything fell into place as he stood before the wall.
‘We’re the experiment. Tovis, Mykus, Doctor Arma, and me. They’re on the other side looking at us, probably listening too. They’ve captured Doctor Arma, maybe even Mykus and Tovis because they found out too much and they’re probably going to come for me soon for the same reason. They’ve been doing secret experiments that they don’t want people to know about so they get the military to guard their secret and dispose of anyone who finds out.’ Tearan gasped as the realisation hit home. ‘Oh shit, they’re gonna be after me too because I know as much as Mykus and Tovis. I’m a dead man walking.’ This final piece of the jigsaw fell into place and Tearan fought to retain control over the emotions he felt fighting to rise within. After less than thirty seconds, he clenched his jaw and balled his fists, determined to fight to the very end, whatever form that might take. With one last sweep of his eyes from one end of the wall to the other, he yelled at the top of his voice.
“I know you’re there assholes. Can you hear me?”
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Tearan paced up and down the room as he yelled into the lofty silence. Inside himself, he knew such an emotional display would not yield the results he wanted, but it served to relieve the anguish that had grown to uncomfortable proportions within his mind. Shrieking demands and yelling insults was not going to worry people with the money and power to have created this whole situation, but he did it anyway, to make himself feel better. Tearan was not a man for tears; he always found explosions of anger a far more effective way of relieving emotional pressure.
There were so many questions needing answers and he shrieked them all at the wall, which stood impassive and undaunted. The most burning question was what was going on and the absence of an answer lay in his gut like a rock. Every fibre in his body ached to know the reason why he had found himself without memories in an apparently abandoned space ship. Worry for the others in his unit, for Mykus, Tovis, and Doctor Arma came next and he yelled at the wall, demanding to know they were alive and unharmed.
Knowing there should be seven beside himself in his IGEC unit, with Mykus, Tovis, and Doctor Arma, that made ten others now unaccounted for. Experience told him his unit was probably there originally as security. This meant that he was, at least originally, supposed to be on the same side as those running whatever was going on. The absence of the other men in his unit told Tearan that something must have happened to make the unit change sides. Either that or everyone else believed that he had done so. This was rapidly dismissed as a possibility. Over the years, Tearan learned to keep an emotional distance between himself and whatever his unit were guarding, despite seeing many things that sickened him. Without that detachment, he could not function in his duty as a member of the IGEC. Turning a blind eye was a painful lesson everyone in the unit learned, some more easily than others and Tearan knew his ability to step back from whatever was happening would not have deserted him.
‘If we were brought here as security, why would they turn on us?’ The question forced its way through the melee inside his head to the front of his consciousness. ‘If we were guarding them from something, why has my unit disappeared?’ Tearan had done many such highly secret security missions and he knew that there were only two possible answers to his question. Either his unit had been killed by whatever they were guarding against, or they switched their allegiance for some reason and paid for the mutiny with their lives. If indeed they were killed by something, whatever that something might be was anyone’s guess. Tearan labelled this unknown quantity, ‘the bad thing.’ Maybe the bad thing had somehow got out and killed everyone but himself, Mykus, Tovis, and Doctor Arma. The subsequent disappearance of Doctor Arma suggested that the bad thing was still very much alive and functioning, which meant if Mykus and Tovis were still alive and hiding somewhere, all three of them were still in danger from it.
Knowing the ship was a research vessel, as confirmed by the writing on the paper label wrapping the clothes he laundered, Tearan wondered what sort of bad thing he was dealing with. Horrific visions of laboratory created fiends flooded through his mind unbidden and a frisson of fear coursed through him. Words on walls, telling of ghosts and dismembered bodies floated across his perception. Words written by a man driven almost insane by what he saw; words Tearan and the others had not believed. As he stood before the wall, lost in the melee of thoughts and images that raced around his mind, he was no longer so quick to disbelieve. Perhaps Doctor Arma was not crazy after all. Maybe he knew what the people behind the Q-Wall were trying to keep secret. He was now sure the Doctor had indeed seen something and that seeing it was the cause of his disappearance.
‘Shit. What the fuck is happening here?’ A moment of panic gripped him and he closed his eyes while he waited for it to go away. From the messages he had exchanged with Mykus and Tovis, none of them had actually seen anything so far, other than fleeting shadows that were gone the moment you tried to focus on them. He had heard things, heard his name called. There was the crash he heard in the security room, and the scratches on the floor, but that was not sufficient to cause him to want to write anything on walls about hauntings or dismembered bodies.
Tearan learned to obey from the first day he joined the military, when he left his parents to begin his seven-year journey to become, ‘a grown man proud and true.’ Obedience was something he had been good at; his unquestioning loyalty to his superior officers’ had borne fruit in his acceptance into the Inter-Galactic Elite Command. There were many times when he knew his mission called upon him to step beyond normal military remit and into a grey area where different rules apply. His superior officers’ always assured the men that what they were doing was for the good of all people in the galaxy, that they were helping to save millions of lives, that so much good was to come from what they were doing. A little step over the line now would pay dividends later, they said. As Tearan stood before the Q-Wall and immersed himself in his thoughts, he realised with dismay that his unwavering belief in his superior officers’ had probably been misplaced.