The Ganymede Legacy

by A C Bonesteel

  "STUPID BITCH!" Thrall screamed as he raised his stump again. "You know where Leo is, now tell me! How do I open this stupid fucking door!"

  Alice leered up at him. "It won't open. Something got into our ship A.I. and corrupted it. It'll be in your ship soon too... Then, it will be in your blood, and then your head... Finally, after it's had its way with you, it will kill you.. It's gonna kill us all..."

  Thrall looked like he was about to hit her again, but after a series of strange bodily twitches, he lowered his stump and stood up. Then, he began to look around the control room with a curious look on his face. After a few seconds of inspection, he turned back to Alice and smiled.

  "What's this? Something will get into my ship? Something will kill me? AHHHAHAAHAAAA AAAHAHAHAAHA HAHHAHAHAAAAAA."

  Thrall laughed maniacally for over ten seconds, and doubled over as if delirious from amusement.

  "No, my little snack," he continued after his laughter finally ebbed. "I may not be able to scan this stupid ship, but I will tear it into pieces and find Leo's hiding place. If you're here, he's here!"

  Before Alice could say anything to interrupt Thrall's humorous revery, Idi's voice rang out around them.

  "System reinitialization successful. Containment protocol deactivatedrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzz."

  Thrall looked around the control room with a thoughtful look on his face. "Looks like your A.I. isn't fried after all. You know, this may be a filthy Council ship, but I kind of like it. it smells nice... Like you... Perhaps I'll add it to my fleet. I have so many ships now... Osiris has given me everything I could've asked for..."

  Alice's mind raced as Thrall's words landed. He had taken over Osiris, and he had taken all the ships aboard the station as well. That would explain how he had gotten to Desdemona so quickly. Regardless, she promptly reined in her thoughts. None of that mattered. Idi was back online.

  "Idi. Open the doors!" Alice screamed as loudly as she could.

  Instantly, Alice heard the door to the main corridor slide open next to her.

  She saw Thrall's eyes move back to her, then up and past her to look at the door and saw his sick smile widen as he opened his arms in greeting. As she followed his gaze, excitement, and hope grew within her. Leo was standing in the precipice of the control coom. He held a large rifle in his arms, and he was aiming it directly at Thrall.

  Leo said nothing, but his eyes grew wide with surprise as he looked at Thrall standing over her. After the shortest of pauses, Leo's eyes narrowed and he fired.

  With a loud hum, and a flash of blue light, the rifle unleashed a bolt of plasma. Alice whipped her head to see if it had found its mark as Thrall shrieked in pain. The bolt had struck him, but only just. The left side of Thrall's face was now a charred, fleshy mess, but he hadn't fallen, and he still held a smile on his lips.

  Then, Thrall dropped to one knee and, with a flash of movement, pulled something out of his pocket.

  She heard Leo fire again, and saw the plasma bolt miss Thrall's head by inches as he rolled to his left. As Thrall rolled, he flung what was in his hand at Leo. The object spun through the air over Alice, and she saw the glint of a blade. It was another Antares tether...

  Leo dodged to his left, but he wasn't fast enough. The tether whipped towards him and stabbed into his right ankle. Alice watched Leo stumble, struggle for a moment, then drop his rifle and tumble to the ground as the rope quickly uncoiled and wrapped its mechanical cords around him. Dismay cascaded over her. Leo was down, and he was now bound and helpless, just as she was.

  "AHA!" Thrall exclaimed as Alice whipped her head around. "That was soooooo easy! To be honest, I expected a little more resistance from you two, considering how many of my family you've killed in the last few days."

  Thrall nimbly stepped over Alice and ambled toward Leo. Leo grunted with the effort as he tried to escape his bonds. When Thrall approached him, however, Leo froze, stared up for a moment, then closed his eyes.

  "No silly games this time, you disgusting freak," Thrall spat. Then, he lifted his black boot and drove it down into Leo's temple. The blow landed with a sickening thud, and Leo's body instantly went limp.

  "Idi, there is an intruder on board!" Alice screamed. "Activate interior defense, goddamnit! Take him out!"

  Thrall turned and wheeled his head around with wide eyes, clearly fearful of some mysterious defense mechanism that might emerge on Alice's command.

  Idi didn't respond for a few seconds, but then her voice rang out around them. "I'm sorry, Alice. I can hear them..."

  "Idi! What are you talking about?" Alice shrieked. "Do something! Help me!"

  "You are not among us..." Idi replied.

  Thrall watched the panicked exchange curiously, but the look of curiosity slowly fell from his face as Alice stared up at him. After a few seconds of silence, he slowly crept over to her. By the time he reached her, his curious expression had been replaced by one of pure hate.

  "Yes, after I wipe this retarded A.I., this ship will make a nice addition to my collection, and you will make for a nice meal. Leo will enjoy watching as I eat you, piece by piece until there is nothing left."

  As Thrall finished speaking, he raised his boot over Alice's head. The last thing she saw was the white ceiling of her ship being rapidly eclipsed by the black outline of Thrall's boot.

  Chapter 52

  A slowly growing sense of unease had taken its toll on Madeline Forna over her previous two days aboard Osiris Station. She had lived on the station for three years with her father, mother, and sister. She usually found it a pleasant and fun place to live. During the recent lockdown, however, she had become anxious about the well being of her family, none of whom had yet returned home.

  Though she was only fifteen years old, she had learned how to adapt to different environments very well. Her father was a mining company executive, and he had been frequently called to relocate when different sources of valuable minerals and metals were discovered.

  During her time on Osiris, she had become well accustomed to the idiosyncracies of station life, so when a stage-five lockdown had been implemented two days prior, it hadn't caused her alarm. She had been through two other stage-five lockdowns, and she knew the drill.

  The first had been caused by a reactor meltdown on the station's ancient maintenance levels. That particular lockdown had only kept Madeline and her family confined to their apartment for two days. All in all, it hadn't bothered her very much. In fact, she had enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with her family, especially her father, whom she rarely had a chance to talk to due to his busy schedule.

  The second lockdown had lasted four days. It had been caused by a mysterious computer virus that had infected all of Osiris' essential systems. She hadn't enjoyed those four days because she had been alone for the entirety. Her family had been confined to other parts of the station and hadn't returned home until it had ended.

  And now, she was alone again. The absence of her family was one cause for her worry. However, it had been the screams that planted true seeds of terror within her mind.

  She had heard them just a few hours after the lockdown alarm had sounded from the emergency alert speakers. She had been sitting cross-legged on the floor by the front door, hoping that her family would be allowed to return home.

  She had hoped to see the front door slide open and reveal her mother's loving, though perpetually concerned visage. She had wished to see her father, brusque but jovial as he always was, and hoped that perhaps he might make a joke upon entering his home and seeing her.

  "Oh, Madeline, were you worried the aliens had abducted me?" he might have asked as he swept her into his strong embrace.

  And her sister, Cala... She had hoped to see her sister most of all, if for no other reason than to apologize for the argument she had started before Cala had left for school. She would have liked to explain that she was sorry for ignoring her sister's persistent requests to stop using her makeup without asking.

 
Yes, she had hoped her family would walk through the front door, but instead, something far more troubling had come through it. Like a host of vengeful specters, several screams had come from just outside the door, sliding through whatever narrow gaps in the apartment entry they could find to make their home in Madeline's mind.

  It was a woman who had made them. Madeline had never imagined that a man's screams could reach such a high pitch and as horrifying a timbre. The woman had also been right outside the apartment; they could not have been heard so clearly unless the woman who made them was close.

  They had started with a keening moan that seemed to edge closer to Madeline as she sat, petrified but engrossed by the noise. Then, there had been silence, but only for a second before a blood-curdling cry had shattered it. There had been pain in the scream, and Madeline had felt it as much as she had heard it. The pain was in the tearing sound of the cry, as if whoever uttered it desired help far more than they wished to preserve the health of their vocal cords.

  The second and third screams had followed a few seconds after the first, and they had communicated to Madeline more directly than the first had. "Please" and "No" had been the words that shaped those screams.

  Next had come the sharp cry of pure, unadulterated pain. However, it had lasted no time at all before transforming into a gurgling moan. There had been words in that moan too. "God. No," and others that Madeline didn't care to remember.

  After the gurgling moan had faded from Madeline's ears, there had been nothing. No sounds from outside the door, and no message or update from the emergency intercom.

  There had also been no food deliveries like the ones Madeline had seen her mother warmly receive from station security staff during prior lockdowns, and all of Madeline's attempts to contact her family and friends had been unsuccessful. Her own transponder implant had stopped functioning as soon as the lockdown began, and her communication tablet had been rendered useless. All of her attempts to turn it on had been met with only the answer of a black screen.

  And so, Madeline waited there. She was trying with every fiber of her being to reassure herself that nothing was wrong, and that everything would be okay. She had to keep believing that her family would soon walk through the door in front of her.

  She hadn't moved since she had heard the screams, except to relieve herself. She had wiled away the lonely hours by thinking about her family as she stared at the cold, titanium door. It was unadorned except for the names "Madeline," and "Cala," scrawled inside of a small heart on the bottom left corner.

  Madeline sat and stared at the names inside the heart and remembered how they had gotten there.

  She had only been twelve years old then, and her sister, only nine. They had smiled sneakily at one another as they executed the harmless crime. During the night, she and her sister had placed that small but indelible mark on their home.

  They had known their mother would not approve of them defacing their pristine new apartment, but they had, and they had done it with a shared glee that only sisters could know. The riskiness of the undertaking had only amplified their pleasure the next day when their mother had walked out the door without displaying the slightest sign that she noticed.

  Madeline smiled to herself as she remembered her and her sister bidding their mother goodbye for the day. Then, when she had left the room, how they had fallen into each other's arms and laughed in glee.

  As Madeline's memories occupied her mind, she closed her eyes to picture her sister's smiling face and it pushed the fear farther away.

  But then, she finally heard the noise she had been waiting for. It was a smooth, hissing, sliding sound, and it told her that the front door was opening.

  As hope filled Madeline, she opened her eyes and fully expected to see her family walk through the door. However, that hope quickly mutated into doubt when she saw it wasn't her family that stood outside. It was two men whom she didn't know, and they leered down at her as the door opened.

  "W-who are y-you?" Madeline asked, trying but failing to avoid sounding frightened. The men weren't wearing the uniform of any station staff she could recognize. They were dressed in black, and nothing about their appearance gave a clue to their purpose.

  The two men didn't answer. Instead, they stared at her with a shared expression that caused Madeline's fright to mutate further into genuine, immediate terror. They had hunger in their eyes and a cold sneer across their thin lips. Their expressions didn't change as they both stepped through the door.

  "Who are you, and why are you here?!" Madeline demanded, more firmly this time, as she quickly stood up and began to back away.

  The men didn't answer, and kept walking toward her. She kept backing up and never took her eyes off them until she backed into the wall of her family's living room. As her back met the wall, panic built within her. There was nowhere she could go to escape the men, and nothing she could do to stop them from doing whatever they wanted to her.

  The men continued advancing until they were within an arm's reach. Then, they stopped and began to survey her. They looked her up and down critically before starting a disturbing conversation.

  "What do you think?" the one on the right asked.

  "Pretty nice..." the other replied. "She definitely has potential."

  "She's young..."

  "She's not too young. Her face is pretty, at least."

  "It'd be a real waste to put her with the feeders. Although, she's probably very tender and sweet."

  "We should turn her, probably give her to Brinson or Thrall."

  "Thrall isn't here, and Brinson is a moron. We should take her for ourselves. I staked my claim in quadrant three. It's an old pub, and it's pretty big. There's more than enough room for two. We can bring her there and keep her for ourselves."

  "But then we'd have to feed her, and what the hell would we do with her anyway?"

  "She could be our entertainment. We could teach her to sing and dance and do other things...."

  "Goddamnit, Aaron," the one on the left exclaimed as he glared at his partner. "You've got a sick mind, bro. She's just a kid!"

  The one on the right crossed his arms and a stubborn look came over his face. "In a couple of years, she'll be in her prime. I'm just thinking long-term. She could be a good breeder..."

  The one on the left stared at his partner and pursed his lips.

  "Fine..." he agreed. "We'll turn her here, then take her to your place. But, she's your responsibility! If Thrall or Brinson find out, it's your ass, and not mine!"

  "Deal!" Aaron agreed. Then, he licked his lips and stared into Madeline's eyes.

  Madeline listened to their conversation as an animal would listen to those deciding how best to slaughter it. She could tell by their words they wanted nothing good for her. She knew that they wanted to hurt her, and they wanted to hurt her in evil ways...

  "I'm not going with you!" she suddenly screamed. "SOMEONE, PLEASE HELP!"

  Then, with a burst of pure courage, Madeline sprung away from the wall. She tried to push past the two men and reach the door behind them. They reacted too quickly to her movement, however, and caught her within seconds. One of them grabbed her wrists and twisted them painfully behind her back, while the other kicked her feet out from under her and knocked her face-first to the floor.

  Madeline let out a gasp of pain as her chest slammed into the floor. She struggled with all her might against he hands that held her, but they were too strong, and held her firmly.

  As she struggled, she heard something clinking above her, then felt what she thought was a man's knee press down painfully between her shoulder blades. Then, she felt fingers intertwining in her hair as a giant hand pressed her face down into the floor.

  "You'll thank me later..." Aaron whispered into her right ear; his hot breath caused waves of revulsion to emanate from the back of her neck. "You're going to be way better off with me than you would be with Thrall or Brinson. I'm... Well, I'm a pretty nice guy, once you get to know me... Those g
uys... They would do terrible things to you. Nasty, nasty things! But I won't, I promise... I'll take care of you... I'll treat you nice..."

  Aaron kept speaking, but she stopped comprehending him when she felt something sharp stab into the back of her skull and pierce into her brain. She then shrieked wildly as she felt a white-hot liquid slowly begin to flow into her brain. It was an inferno within her skull that crept like a slug into the deepest cavities of her mind.

  It was the worst pain Madeline had ever experienced, and until that moment, she hadn't believed such agony was possible. She screamed louder, and as the pitch and volume of her scream intensified, her pain increased even more, quickly pushing her to the brink of insanity.

  It felt like an eternity of agony, and Madeline begged to pass out a thousand times as the burning fire spread into her body, but she didn't. She felt it all and lived in a universe of torment until the searing misery spread into every part of her body. From her fingertips, to her intestines, to her eyes, a white-hot metal was consuming her...

  Finally, when she was sure she was about to die, the pain began to wane. Madeline sobbed with relief and spoke a thousand thoughts of gratitude in her mind as the agony slowly released its crippling hold on her.

  The pain left, just as it had come. It flowed out from the back of her skull, starting first in her hands and feet, then her torso, and finally, her brain.

  She moaned with pleasure and tears fell from her eyes as the agony receded. Then, when the pain was completely gone, she began to hear once again.

  "...It'll be okay... I promise it'll be okay... You'll be happy with me, I promise..." someone whispered into her ear.

  But then, a powerful sensation began to fill her body once again. It wasn't pain this time, but something similar.

  She needed to eat, she suddenly realized. She would starve if she didn't eat immediately, and she knew it with utter certainty. She moaned again as the hunger began to consume her, quickly filling her with only one sole purpose.