Erin began weeping quietly as a flood of painful memories consumed her and she had that desire to curl into a ball once more, but was denied once again by the bindings that held her in place. “I’m sorry Joe… I can’t continue further. I need to get this thing out of my head…”
Chapter 08 – Medical Malpractice
Doctor Singh was typing out a letter on her computer when Joe knocked on the door and entered the room. “Is this a bad time, doc?”
“Not at all,” Doctor Singh said. “I was about to call on you. Was there something you wished to ask me before we do a review?”
“Not necessarily,” Joe admitted. “I just came to tell you that I needed to administer a sedative to Misses Wilco. She became hysterical when she began talking about the little grey creatures.”
“So, she’s sticking to what she told her lawyer,” Doctor Singh said with an irritated tone. “She is not making it easy to diagnose her with a clean bill of mental health.”
“At least she’s being consistent,” Joe reasoned. “She mentioned some kind of illness spreading like a fever. She could have been hallucinating at the time and truly believed that what she saw was real.”
“That is a possibility, yes,” Doctor Singh said darkly. “I am not fully convinced though. It could be advantageous for her to remain with this outlandish story and play the victim as we come to this conclusion of a fevered nightmare. I suspect that if I breech the subject, she will slowly come to the realization that yes, it was all a dream and she was misled by her imagination. I would guess that this is what she is hoping for.”
“You really have no faith in her?” Joe asked sounding a little put off.
“Not when our necks are on the line,” Doctor Singh said in her dry drawl. “We will continue this good cop bad cop routine for the time being. It appears that we are making progress with her.”
“If you say so,” Joe said.
“I do,” Doctor Singh said stiffly. “Now, can you answer a question for me?”
Joe’s eyes widened nervously and he nodded. “Yeah, sure. What is it?”
Doctor Singh held up two IV bags full of clear liquid that were sitting on her desk. “Which one of these is the agitator that I had you administer?”
Joe looked between the two unmarked bags and scratched his head nervously. “Uhh… The one on the right?”
Doctor Singh’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, but do you know for certain, or is that a guess?”
Joe shrugged. “It was a guess. I can’t tell.”
“Me neither,” Doctor Singh said with an annoyed expression. “Erin said that the bag was a different color and that’s how she knew. It pains me to ask you this, but did you tip her off in some way?”
“What? No, I didn’t,” Joe said with a hurt expression. “Why would I? Part of the test is to be as secretive as possible. We’ve done it a hundred times before and not once did I ever spill the beans.”
Doctor Singh sighed. “I know, Joe. I trust you, but I needed to ask. The agitators are supposed to be subtle and yet she was clearly aware of them and not buying my lies. This has never happened before.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, doc,” he said with a shrug. “All I can say is that she’s wise to us and not exactly hiding it. I don’t think she bought my story about mixing up the bags either, but she let it go nonetheless, so what does that tell you?”
“That she’s strategizing,” Doctor Singh said with a severe air. She then thought for a moment. “I nearly forgot to ask. Did you give her the sedative because you felt it was necessary, or because she requested one?”
Joe thought about it for a few seconds and lowered his eyes to a meaningless object on Doctor Singh’s desk. “She asked for it…”
“I thought so,” Doctor Singh said with a dull penetrating stare.
The two finished their review of Joe’s session with Erin and soon Doctor Singh was back to working on the letter she was typing up. As her fingers wove between the keys, she silently explained the new developments to her outside source, an investigative journalist by the name of Eddie Knox, and proceeded to commit a crime that could easily turn her into another convict on Dusk. She attached Erin’s scant private medical records to the email along with the biometric scan and a copy of the audio logs she had been keeping.
Eddie Knox had been her ear to the ground for years on Dusk and ever since he tipped her off about Hector’s nearly impenetrable lies, she had been privately employing the man to do the digging for her with the promise that he would get first dibs on publishing the stories. It was a scummy relationship, but one that was necessary on a colony like Dusk. She wanted to get off that rock and start a private firm in a place that was far less hostile and selling the details of psychopaths to the media had been the most direct route to her goal. She had long since paid her dues and Erin was the stroke of luck that she had been waiting for to get her off of that godforsaken moon. She was tired and growing old and she had never truly adjusted to the constant twilight of Dusk and it had been years since she had had a restful night of sleep. She wanted to be done with it and go back to the Mars colony that she had grown up in.
As Doctor Singh pressed the button to send the message, the data took to the ether and soared across digital links and weaved through two dozen security checks until it finally reached its destination and a bare metal humanoid droid sitting at a desk beeped to life. The droid slowly orientated itself and looked around with its red glowing cycloptic eye as it processed its location. It then stood up from the desk and walked on skeletal metal legs towards a scratchy sofa with a man sleeping on it. The droid gently tapped the man’s shoulder and spoke with a plain and casual voice.
“Hey Eddie,” the droid said in a quiet tone. “You have a message from Doctor Singh.”
Eddie Knox tried to bat away the droid’s hand and groaned as he rolled over. “Go away, Romney. I’ll deal with it in the morning.”
Romney sighed as his cycloptic eye became half lidded on its digital display. “Eddie, it’s already after lunch. I’ve had to cancel two of your meetings already and you did tell me that Doctor Singh was top priority, or have you changed your mind yet again?”
“I changed my mind…” Eddie said as he moved his fedora over his eyes to block out the golden twilight coming through the window. “Everyone has already had a go at this Erin Wilco chick. It’s not like we’re going to be bringing anything new to the table.”
“That may be true, but the bills aren’t going to pay themselves,” Romney scolded as he took the hat off Eddie’s face and hung it up on the rack. “Come on. I’ve already routed the emails to your personal computer and told the coffee pot to start brewing that strong Cuban blend for you.”
Eddie groaned in misery as he rolled around and tried to get comfortable on the cheap and terrible couch. “I told you that I can’t drink that shit anymore. It makes my heart beat in my chest until it feels like it’s going to explode.”
“Your medical premiums allow you up to three new cloned hearts,” Romney said dismissively. “You’ll be fine. Now get up or I’ll flip you off the couch again.”
Eddie let out a long and exaggerated sigh until he finally stood up and plopped down at his desk as Romney came in with a cup of hot and strongly caffeinated bean water. He began going through the email and his eyebrows furrowed at what he saw.
“Ugh… She photographed her notes again,” he said miserably. “I can’t read this loopy crap.”
Romney ignored Eddie’s concern as he began to tidy up the office. “You know that my plain text translation is already at the bottom, like it always is, so get reading.”
Eddie grumbled some more, but all of his micro complaints fell on deaf robotic ears. He started from the beginning and read through the dry notes as he began playing the most recent audio logs one after the other. He wasn’t impressed with Erin’s account up to that point, but he figured that he may be able to spin it as some sort of sob story that the masses would eat up. Everyone was dem
onizing her for the most part and trying to say otherwise in any credible publication was journalistic suicide at that particular point in time. Erin was a monster and it would take something quite substantial to eradicate that stigma. He would most likely have to wait until after she was executed to release the story and by then most people would have already forgotten about her. He wished he knew why Doctor Singh thought that Erin was so important, beyond the act of celestial genocide that she had committed, but as he got to the biometric scan of Erin’s body he let an expression of exasperation fall across his face.
“Oh, for the love of Christ… Why does she keep sending me crap like this? I don’t even know what the hell I’m looking at here,” Eddie fumed.
“Would you care for me to explain it to you?” Romney offered. “I have been analyzing it ever since I received the message and have just finished reading the books on pathology that Doctor Singh attached to the email.”
“I don’t know… Maybe. Will it sell?” Eddie asked.
“Perhaps,” Romney said. “She has an unknown disease spreading through her body that can neither be identified, nor extracted in any way that would not be life threatening in her condition. The disease appears to be the reason for the continued quarantine.”
Eddie let his first smile of the day spread across his face. “Hey, now that’s something I can write about. I thought the quarantine was just there to keep out those crazy bombers we exposed. Are you telling me that this chick brought something contagious down along with Sky Base 10?”
“It’s hard to tell,” Romney admitted. “We may need to continue looking into Major Tom and perhaps investigate the little grey men that Misses Wilco mentioned.”
Eddie let his smile fall as he let out a groan. “Oh, put on a tinfoil hat already. There weren’t any little grey men up there. She was making that crap up to get the insanity plea, but I bet you she was thinking that Dusk was like Earth. We don’t coddle our crazies; we gas those basket weaving burdens. Please don’t tell me that you buy her crap and actually believe that aliens boarded the space station to raise hell. Do I need to defrag your hard drive again? You’re not getting weird on me, are you?”
“Don’t be a dick, Eddie. You know that I don’t think that,” Romney said in his reasonable tone. “But it would be wise to investigate every angle of this before we draw any hasty conclusions. By the sound of that last audio log, it seems like finding out about Romeo Delta 2 would be to our benefit, even if Erin Wilco sounds like a sympathy baiting loon.”
“That may be hard,” Eddie said with a grim expression. “The wreckage of Sky Base 10 has been put under lock and key beneath that inflatable biodome and who is to say that Romeo Delta 2 didn’t get destroyed in the crash? I gotta say, Romney, I’m getting awfully tired of snooping around for dangerous government conspiracies.”
“Liar,” Romney accused. “You and I both live for it. Look, Doctor Singh has never let us down before and it is my belief that she sees something special in this one, or at least her gut is telling her that. Whether this turns out to be a story about a possible viral outbreak or a genocidal maniac that single handedly brought down an orbiting space station, it’ll sell. The people will want to know what the Milo Medical Institute has been hiding for these last few weeks.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Eddie said. “I just hope that this one turns out to be a bit more exciting than the last couple she gave us. No challenge whatsoever.”
“We could always go back to being private detectives,” Romney suggested.
“To hell with that,” Eddie said with a glower. “After watching you get gunned down, I prefer to be on this side of the line. I don’t have the stomach to see any more of my friends get murdered because of me.”
“Awe, it’s not that bad,” Romney reassured him. “I’m still me, I just got an upgrade and a bunch of metal parts to replace the organic bits.”
“I don’t know man…” Eddie said with a distant look. “Linking a human mind to a machine just doesn’t seem right to me. Although, I can’t figure out if it’s because I don’t believe that the human mind is meant to process reality that fast when you overclock your system, or if the mechanical parts were never meant to merge with the organic bits in any natural way.”
“Don’t knock it till you try it,” Romney said dully.
Chapter 09 – Beyond the Veil of Shadows
Though Erin knew it to be impossible, she briefly believed that she was floating weightless in space in her husband’s arms. Rodger was smiling warmly at her as they were surrounded in the tranquil light of a trillion distant stars and she felt a tear form in her eye. Despite all the odds, they were together again after so long apart and they had finally found each other at the center of infinity. They were both wearing their enviro suits and as the glass of their helmets touched they both realized that the only thing separating them was the void of cold and merciless death all around them. They could never truly touch, and they could never truly kiss, but from their glass prisons they could continue to watch and love each other for the rest of eternity.
She held him close to her heart and squeezed him tightly as she began to weep. She knew what was coming next because she had relived it so many times. Rodger had to go because destiny was on due course. She refused to let him go and tried to pull him away, but before she knew it, he had slipped out of her grasp and began to float away. She reached out and called his name, but her voice was lost to the vacuum of space. Then it happened. A stone shot through his body and soon beads of frozen blood began circling around him as he tried to hold the wound shut, but as he struggled to stay alive, Rodger’s suit depressurized and he was dying. Erin struggled to swim forward, but there was nothing to propel her. She called out his name once again, but it served no purpose. Then from the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of her Rangers floating ahead of her and joining Rodger in his death. She wanted to join them, but there was only one way to do that and she was too afraid to undertake such a violent task. Sky Base 10 then floated past her with the dying engines burning and sectors exploding as the thing broke apart. Everyone was going down with the station, including Rodger and her ranger team, but there she remained, left behind and all alone in eternity to watch the mayhem of 60,000 souls plunging to their deaths. She then felt the hand of a withered grey monster touch her shoulder and she startled awake with a shout.
“Whoa, easy there,” Joe said in a soothing tone. “I think you were having a nightmare. Are you alright?”
Erin breathed hard while looking all around her and felt a calm slowly crawl over her as she realized that she was in a safe place. “I had that dream again,” she said miserably.
“Hey, it’s over now. You’re with good people,” Joe said soothingly.
Erin didn’t bother arguing that as she tried to calm her beating heart. “Is it story time already?”
Joe nodded. “Yup, doctor’s orders.”
Erin sighed as she tried to wipe her eyes on her pillow. “I can’t believe it’s morning. I can never tell what time it is around here. I’m pretty sure I’m still conforming to a 24-hour day.”
“You’d be surprised,” Joe said conversationally. “Almost everyone naturally adopts a 25-hour day around here.”
“Really?” she asked with interest.
Joe nodded. “I don’t know what it is, maybe something is in the air or it’s how the water gets treated down at the plant, but yeah, 25-hour days. It’s so common that pretty much every business works on that timetable. I can probably sneak you in one of the clocks from the lunch room if you want.”
“I think I’d appreciate that,” Erin said with a slight sigh of relief. “I don’t mean to sound needy, but is there a chance that I can get some form of entertainment? I’m not sleeping nearly as much these days and I’m getting bored with counting the bullets that ricochet off the window. Like, a TV would be great, but I’m desperate enough to take a crossword puzzle at this point even if I’m not allowed to have a pen.”
“I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t make any promises,” Joe said regretfully. “We’ve got to clear you first before any of that can happen in a legitimate way. Crazies aren’t allowed… well anything really, and first we need to prove that you’re not one of the crazies. The rules on Dusk are pretty strict and I don’t want to lose my job…”
“Great…” Erin groaned. “We left off at the gremlins, and now I’ve got to convince you that I’m not nuts with that part of the story. Why do I feel like King Sisyphus all of the sudden?”
“Who?” Joe asked.
“Err… Greek mythology… It’s not important,” Erin said with an embarrassed expression. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to just jump into it and get it over with today. The quicker I get it out of the way, the sooner I can stop dreading it.”
Joe lifted Doctor Singh’s clipboard and rolled the pen across the paper to get the ink flowing. “Alright, I’m all ears. Lay it on me, no matter how crazy you may think it sounds. I’m not here to judge. I’m only here to listen and engage from time to time.”
“I understand,” she said with a frown. “But this is going to sound bat shit crazy no matter how impartial you try to remain.” She took a deep breath and continued her story from where she left off. “After that day, the day that we opened up Romeo Delta 2, we began to hear noises in the vents all around the station. Things scampering in the dark and trying to remain unseen. Sometimes after lights out, you could see their eyes watching you from behind the vent screens. They always watched us from high above. Their gazes never breaking and sometimes when we finally fell asleep from exhaustion we would snap awake just in time to hear the scuttling of clawed feet and the still warm lingering breath of something that had once been very near to touching our bare flesh. They were… studying us.”
Erin closed her eyes and shivered slightly at the thought. “I wish that people believed us at first. It would have saved so much heartache and maybe we could have banded together better, and more people could have been saved, but no one wanted to believe that gremlins were lurking all around us.”
Romeo Delta 2 Page 7
