Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

  “It’s right. I swear,” Franklin said. He was sweating profusely. “I checked and double checked. Mr. Kim even took the damn thing apart, put it back together. Same thing.” He, like everyone else onboard Madeline, had no intention of dying out there in the middle of space. He had a wife and a life waiting for him back at Reach Station.

  “That right, Mr. Kim?” yelled Aliza. Kim, the oldest member of the crew and not much of a talker, peeked over and nodded his head without coming in closer.

  “Damn.” Aliza rubbed her cheek. “Well, there’s only one thing to do.”

  “No, we’re not,” Grace said immediately. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Uh-huh, yeah we are.” Aliza went over to a nearby wall and took off a pair of gloves and put them on. She grabbed a second pair and threw them to Grace.

  “No, we’re not,” protested Grace as she caught the gloves Aliza tossed to her.

  “C’mon, we both know we’re going to do it.” Aliza walked over to the load of space rock and Iontanium that had made the matter scanner spike. Her finger hovered over the release button.

  “Do we have to?” Franklin whined.

  For once, his nasal voice echoed just what Grace thought. He wasn’t the only one scared of the volatile Iontanium being jostled when the contents of the container spilled out. The containers were lined with iridium-infused nanofiber that worked to dull the effects of the Iontanium.

  Not to mention, they’d have to clean up the mess.

  “Afraid we do, Frankie,” Aliza said. And with that, she pressed the button.

  There were some brief alarm sirens; then one of the thick transparent plastic walls that held the rock and metal slowly slid up and open.

  Grace felt her stomach tighten for a split second, waiting for an explosion.

  None came. Instead, only rock and stable Iontanium tumbled out onto Madeline’s cargo bay floor.

  Aliza dove right in. “Don’t see anything,” she said.

  “Jesus, Liza, careful!” Though Grace didn’t see any of the glow of unstable Iontanium, it didn't mean that there wasn’t any in the pile of metal-laden rocks. Some could have just been hidden by the rest.

  “What is that?” asked Franklin. He pointed at what looked like some kind of box in the middle of the rocks still in their container. Black and with what looked like carved designs in it, it stood out.

  “No idea,” said Grace as she leaned in for a closer look. How could no one have noticed this before?

  “That’s… interesting.” Aliza was intrigued.

  “It’s damn weird, is what it is,” Grace said as she got closer still. She wiped away the debris on the box. Against her better judgment, she pulled it out from the rock and carried it over to a curious Aliza and scared Franklin.

  “Gimme, gimme, gimme.” Wound up, Aliza ushered for the box to be brought to her.

  “Why are you so excited? We don’t even know what it is,” Grace said.

  “I’m excited because we never run into something we don’t know. We wake up and either come to this bridge or to Reach’s hangar. Get loaded up. Fly to the capital. We unload, come back, rinse and repeat. There’s never anything new, never anything exciting. But not today. Today there’s something new. Today, excitement!” Aliza practically snatched the box from Grace’s hands. She did that a lot, even though her friend had told her how much it annoyed her.

  “You sure you guys want to be handling that?” Franklin asked. “I mean, that was inside the asteroid.”

  “Somebody probably put it in there,” Aliza said.

  “When?” Franklin asked. “When could someone do that? This came in right from the drones.”

  Grace glanced around at the other cargo minders. “You guys playing a joke on us?”

  They both looked at her like she was speaking in tongues. Both shook their heads.

  “It’s probably not, you know, human,” Franklin whispered.

  “What? Like space aliens?” Grace asked.

  Aliza snorted. “One can only hope.” She flipped the box around and examined it for any seal, latch, or opening of any kind.

  Grace didn’t know what to think. Despite their expanded explorations into the cosmos, humankind had yet to run into any intelligent life forms—though there was plenty of evidence that some had existed at some point in the ancient past.

  And yet, there was that ornate box in Aliza’s hands.

  “Shouldn’t we report this?” Franklin asked. “I mean, isn’t that policy? Any unknown objects or elements should be reported to management. Right? That’s what they said during the orientation thingie. Right?”

  “How are we going to report it when you don’t even know what it is?” asked Aliza. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting tired of waiting to figure out that answer. Shame, would’ve been a nice little jewelry box or something.”

  “Wait,” Grace snapped, reaching out for the box as she suddenly realizing what her unpredictable friend was doing.

  But it was too late. With a quick flick of her wrist, Aliza smashed the corner of the box hard against the floor of the cargo hold. It shattered like glass the second it made impact.

  Out of it slid a small, obelisk-shaped sliver of porous black rock. In many ways it looked like old-Earth lava rock.

  Grace was paralyzed. For a moment, she thought it was shock. But then she heard something calling to her.

  It was right inside her head, like her own voice, but it sounded hard and gravelly. The voice called to her, screamed at her with an intensity that made her wince.

  It was yelling at her to pick up the shiny black rock. She reached out.

  But Aliza beat her to it.

  “Hey!” Grace said. She was actually upset.

  “What?” Aliza shrugged, flipping the shiny black rock around in her hand.

  “Nothing, I just...what do you think it is?”

  “We really should report this,” Franklin said again. He was shaking like a leaf now. He’d taken a couple of steps back.

  “Why don’t you go play cards with Mr. Kim?” Aliza said sharply. “Or whatever you guys do down here during your free time.”

  Franklin frowned and took another step back.

  “Aliza?”

  While her friend had been talking to Franklin, Grace noticed something odd. It was hard to detect at first. But as she watched, the motion became clearer.

  There was something moving in and out of the small holes in the rock. Something liquid.

  “What?” Aliza said, still distractedly watching Franklin slink away. “Cool, isn’t it?”

  “I think you should probably put that down,” Grace said.

  Aliza looked at her and raised one eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s something—”

  Before Grace could finish, the liquid inside the rock seemed to spring up through the top openings and ooze right onto Aliza’s exposed forearm. Her eyes bulged as it dug under her skin.

  “What the hell?” yelled Aliza. She tried to drop the rock, but a strand of the living liquid kept it stuck to her hand.

  As she yelled out in pain, Grace watched in horrified shock as the substance moved under her friend’s skin, undulating like flowing water. Then, suddenly, the undulation stopped and Aliza dropped to the floor like she’d been punched. Her head smacked against the ground as her eyes rolled up in her head. The black rock spun across the floor.

  Grace felt a sickly tickling sensation on her arm. She looked down to find her own skin was crawling around on her body.

  She blinked and tried to slow her breathing. It didn’t touch you, she told herself. It’s not on you. It’s in your head. It only touched Aliza.

  But she couldn’t stop the sensation of crawling under her skin.

  Grace screamed, or tried to, but nothing came out of her mouth. A flash of intense pain roared through her body.

  Then she passed out.

  Grace woke up in the small medical bay on board Madeline. Her eyes open
ed to a dimly lit room. All she heard at first was the constant hum of the engines and beeping machines and monitors. Then she heard Aliza’s voice.

  “How you doing?”

  Grace turned to see her friend in the bed next to her. The tiny med bay only had two beds.

  “How am I doing?” Grace croaked. “How the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Grace shook her head. “No, you’re not.”

  “Really, I am. They scanned me, everything’s normal.” Aliza paused. “How are you?”

  “How am I?” Grace asked sharply. “I’m freaked out.”

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  Grace frowned. “Yeah, that black liquid crawled up in your skin and you passed out. And then … And then I guess I lost it and I passed out, too.” It was embarrassing, but there was no hiding it. “And anyways, I …” Grace tried to sit up, but found it hard to get up. When she looked down, she saw her wrists and ankles were bound to the examination bed she lay on. “What is this? Why am I...Aliza, let me out of these things.”

  Aliza looked genuinely upset. “Sorry, I can’t do that.”

  “Want to tell me why?” Grace asked as she stared at the restraints.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “C’mon, this isn’t funny. Lemme out.”

  “You attacked Franklin. Like, you almost killed the poor kid.”

  Grace felt a chill run down her spine. “What are you talking about? ‘Attacked him’?”

  “You passed out in the cargo bay. He tried helping you and you freaked out, tackled him, and just kept hitting him. I tried getting you off him and you gave me this beauty for my troubles.”

  Grace hadn’t registered Aliza’s black eye until she pointed it out. “I...I don’t remember any of that.”

  Nothing about any of this made sense to Grace. She didn’t remember attacking Franklin or hitting Aliza. But when she looked down at her hands, she saw that they were swollen, the skin split on a couple of knuckles.

  “I know. Stay here,” Aliza said. “I gotta go put out those fires you caused with the cargo monkeys.”

  She got up and walked over to one of the med bay walls and took something out of a drawer. It was a syringe. “This should help you relax, get some sleep.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. I don’t want to—”

  Aliza stood over her, frowning. “It’s for your own good, Grace.”

  Grace woke up on the floor of the transport’s main corridor. As she lifted her face up off the grated floor, she felt the marks it left on her face. She was wet. Why was she wet?

  When she rolled over and sat up, she saw that she was covered in blood.

  Grace felt revulsion and panic in equal measures. She was in pain all over, like she’d been in a fight. She half-crawled and half-rolled over to the wall of the corridor.

  She proceeded to check herself out. There were no cuts, no bullet wounds, not even any abrasions. She was fine. Her pain seemed to be all internal.

  The blood definitely wasn’t hers.

  What the hell is this? What the fuck is happening?

  Grace was beyond scared.

  Get hold of yourself. Get up. Figure this thing out.

  After a few deep breaths and attempts to find some semblance of calm, she managed to stand up.

  It was only then that she realized she was bathed in red light. The emergency lights were on all over the ship.

  “Aliza?” she called out as she walked towards the back of Madeline. “Aliza!”

  There was no answer. Something was very wrong.

  On her way back towards the cargo bay, she stopped by the doorway to the medical bay. The restraints on the bed had been cut down at the base of the table.

  Someone had cut her loose.

  Grace continued on down the corridor. She encountered no one. She entered in the code to open the double doors to the cargo bay. A sinking feeling of dread washed over her as she waited. She knew, absolutely knew, that nothing good was waiting beyond those doors.

  Before the doors were even fully open, she was assaulted by the gruesome sight of one of the cargo workers slumped against one of the containers. It was Janet. Her head was barely attached to her neck by little bits of tendon and sinew.

  Grace immediately vomited. She couldn’t help it. In no way was she prepared to see something like that.

  “Holy shit,” Grace mumbled out loud as she wiped the vomitus from her lips. “Shit, shit, shit.” She took one last look at Janet and barely managed not to vomit again.

  Grace looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. She found a wrench on the ground, right next to one of Janet’s limp lifeless hands. As she picked it up, it wasn’t lost on her that her crewmate had probably thought it would be adequate protection, too.

  Grace continued forward, further into the cargo bay. There was no more calling out anyone’s name. Whether or not anyone was still alive, who or whatever had killed them was probably still lurking around. And she wasn’t ready to die yet.

  In front of her, face-down on the floor, lay the oldest member of Madeline’s crew. “Mr. Kim?” Grace quietly said, not really expecting an answer.

  She used the tip of her toe to nudge Mr. Kim, just to see if he would respond. Nothing. She used the same foot to flip him over.

  When Grace saw what was done to Mr. Kim, she vomited again. It looked as if he had kissed a shredder. His face was ground up beyond recognition.

  Grace leaned up against a wall, trying to compose herself.

  That’s when she heard it.

  It sounded like someone gasping for breath.

  She slowly approached the sound, realizing as she did so that she had ended up right back at the container they’d opened earlier. The one with the shiny black rock. The contents of the container were still spilt out on the cargo bay floor.

  Franklin lay on top of the rocks, holding his bleeding chest, gasping for air.

  Grace rushed over to him.

  His eyes were wide with fear. He was trying to say something, but his mouth was muddied by blood, and just the act of drawing breath seemed to take all his effort.

  “Shhh, don’t talk,” Grace said as she looked Franklin over. He’d suffered a stab wound to his chest. All the blood pooling around him in the rocks, coupled with his refusal to move his hands, told her it was bad. She carefully slid a couple of his fingers aside and caught a glimpse of the edge of what looked like a big hole gouged out, exposing his ribcage.

  She gasped. “Who did this to you?”

  Grace highly doubted it was Dash. He wasn’t the type under any circumstances, and she’d not seen him once since she’d left the bridge. She assumed he was still up there, and the thought suddenly occurred to her that she needed to get up there too, if only to make sure he was still alive.

  Then there was Aliza. She wasn’t violent, let alone homicidal. But Grace couldn’t ignore the fact that the black liquid from that damn rock had crawled right under her skin.

  I saw it happen!

  Grace’s mind raced with possibilities. What could that liquid have done to her best friend? Was it some kind of alien life that had taken over her mind? If so, was it forcing her to hurt Madeline’s crew?

  Then there was a third possibility. Madeline could have a stowaway. It was possible something aboard was hunting them.

  But there weren’t that many places to hide on a ship this size.

  Franklin was staring up at her. “Do you know who did this to you, Franklin?” Grace paused. “Just nod if yes.”

  He just stared up at her, terrified.

  “Was it Aliza?” she asked.

  Blood and spit made small pathetic bubbles in his mouth as he tried to talk, tried to say something. She got closer so that she could hear.

  “Get. Away—” His voice gave out.

  When she turned back to him, his eyes were glassy. She knew he was dead.

  “Franklin? Franklin!” she shouted, as if raising her voice would so
mehow bring him back to life. It didn’t.

  She tripped and fell as she backed away. This was too much, way too much for her to take. How had an ordinary run turned into this nightmare? How did it happen so quickly?

  What am I supposed to do? What the hell can I do? I need to find Aliza. I need to get some answers.

  Grace got up. She wiped tears from her cheeks and hurried out of the cargo bay. Her destination was obvious. She had to go to the bridge.

  Normally the walk from the cargo bay and up the ladder to the bridge took a couple of minutes. But this time it felt like hours as Grace tried to steel herself for whatever she would find once she got there.

  If Aliza had done this, it wasn’t her. She was under the control of that damn black goo. The stuff had attacked her. Taken her over. She probably had no idea what she’d done.

  There were bloody handprints on the rungs of the ladder that led up to the bridge. Grace readjusted her grip on the wrench before climbing up, using her one free hand. She moved slowly, steady and cautious. She expected an ambush the moment she entered.

  Grace poked her head up through the open hatch that led into the bridge. Aliza was inside. She was standing next to Dash at the co-pilot’s station. Her back was to Grace.

  Suddenly Dash screamed.

  The guttural sound seemed to wake something in Grace. She charged into the bridge, swinging the wrench wildly as she did so. “Aliza! Stop!”

  Aliza spun around just as Grace slashed downward with the wrench. The weight of it practically pulled her off her feet.

  But somehow Grace missed. The wrench clanged off the side of the pilot’s chair.

  She pulled it back, eyes wide with surprise when she found that Aliza had disappeared.

  Instead there was only Dash, sitting there in the co-pilot’s chair, doing his damnedest to hold his guts in with his hands.

  Grace’s hand felt light. The wrench was gone.

  Instead there was just the hand that had been holding it, dripping with blood, pieces of what looked like skin stuck under her nails. Somehow, Grace sensed that there was someone behind her.

  She spun around to see a crying Aliza rushing at her with the bridge’s emergency axe held high over her head.