Romeo Delta 2

by Taylor Rikkinen

“Back it up and instead of looking at the gremlins, look at that Erin chick. Look at what she’s doing,” Eddie urged.

  Romney backed up the footage and did as he was told and even he felt short of breath. Erin let out a scream as soon as the Kyva Corp security broke through the bulkhead door and bullets began to fly. When the imposter calling himself Major Tom, was clipped by a bullet and on the verge of death, that was when Erin lost it. A bioluminescent light began to emanate from her crystalline blue eyes as she lost control and hordes of gremlins began to answer her cry for help. The scuttling abominations flocked to her like eager servants and whoever she gazed at with her frightful eyes, the gremlins launched into a relentless assault of bloody murder. The security team tried to run and seal the door that they had electronically hacked open moments before, but they were outnumbered by the sheer volume of Erin’s sacrificial drones willing to kill themselves so that she may survive.

  “She’s controlling them,” Romney finally said. “But she doesn’t seem to know that she’s doing it. She’s afraid of them.”

  Eddie felt a crawling in his chest and he began to look around the room. “I ain’t feeling too comfortable in this place anymore. Do you have that feeling too?”

  “It’s been over a month since the crash,” Romney reasoned calmly. “I think those creatures would have moved on by now, but I know what you mean. It’s like finding a nest of greasy rats hiding in your kitchen and suddenly the whole place feels tainted.”

  Eddie continued to look around with an uncertain steadiness as he narrowed his eyes on the malformed vents in the room. “Pretty much…” An idea suddenly shot through Eddie’s head and it came to him as he watched the imposter Tom being dragged off by the gremlins. “It looks like they swarmed the poor bastard. Do you think that uhh… he’s still here? His body I mean?”

  “I doubt it,” Romney said with a look around. “This place has been picked clean by Kyva Corp and I can guarantee you that we’re not the first ones to see this footage. It looks like he was dragged out into the corridor before the bulkhead closed again and you and I certainly aren’t lifting that twisted thing any time soon.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to…” Eddie eluded with a grimace.

  “What are you…?” Romney’s cycloptic eye suddenly went wide and fearful. “Oh no. You are not crawling through those vents with me in tow.”

  “You said it yourself. It’s unlikely that those gremlins are still around,” Eddie reasoned.

  Romney’s eye expressed nothing but distaste towards Eddie’s suggestion. “I said that for the exclusive purpose of calming your nerves so you wouldn’t drop me. There is every possibility that those hideous little hobgoblins are still slinking around in the wreckage. We are not going into the vents and that is final.”

  Eddie chewed his lip nonchalantly and after a moment of thought, he looked down at Romney’s head with an expression that said he knew he was about to win an argument. “Here are the choices, partner. Either I go alone without a second pair of… err… another eye watching my back and leave you here defenseless all on your lonesome in a dark scary room without your body, or we do this together.”

  Romney watched Eddie’s grin grow wider and wider and he felt himself begin to shake in his brainpan. “You are an utterly intolerable dickhead sometimes.”

  “I know,” Eddie said sounding somewhere beyond pleased with himself. “Now let’s go and don’t forget to keep the camera rolling.”

  “Yeah, sure thing,” Romney said sounding exasperated. “Just remember to turn the safety off on your gun this time, quick-draw.”

  “Oh, one time that happened and you’ll never let me live it down,” Eddie said with a frown.

  The vents were dark narrow passages of twisted metal and broken seams covered in dried blood and smelling strong of decay. Eddie finally had the lead that he had been looking for and to Romney’s great dismay he had become a relentless bloodhound pursuing the scent of truth. For all of Eddie’s countless shortcomings as a decent human being in the most liberal of senses, he was sharp and fearless in the face of danger when he knew that there was a mystery to be solved. In all their years of working together, Romney had to admire his partner’s tenaciousness and practically laugh at the fact that it was he who was gunned down and not Eddie. The guy was made of pure luck and Romney was convinced that if Eddie jumped into a river of shit, he would not only come out clean and smelling of roses, but he would have also snagged a hundred-dollar bill along the way. The race tracks seemed to be the only place impervious to Eddie’s stupid level of luck and Romney was hoping it was the only place that the phenomenon occurred, because he would rather it not be the gremlin infested ruins of Sky Base 10.

  Eddie kicked out a horribly bent vent cover and shined his bright LED pocket light into the dark silent halls. His guesswork had been correct and he had managed to weave around the wall onto the other side of the heavy bulkhead door. A part of him was glad that the station had landed upside down, because it meant that he didn’t need to climb any walls to get back to his exit, but it made orientating himself on the map Romney had thrown together for him somewhat difficult. He shined his flashlight up at what had once been the floor and saw a trail of dried blood above him. It was easy to guess that the blood most likely belonged to the imposter Tom and perhaps the eviscerated Kyva Corp security team as well and if they were going to find anything worthwhile, they needed to follow it to its conclusion.

  Romney’s eye changed color from red to white and set the illumination to maximum. “Is that better?”

  Eddie nodded as he held Romney’s head like a lantern. “Yeah. Do you see anything worth noting?”

  “No,” Romney admitted. “You’re better at spotting out of place things than I am. I’m still recording though. The signal in here is terrible, so there is a chance that I can’t stream it to the office computer until we’re out of here.”

  “That’s too bad,” Eddie said with a brave smile. “I was hoping to leave you behind.”

  “I told you not to joke about that,” Romney warned. “I am scared, sleep deprived, and feeling claustrophobic.”

  “You and me both, pal…” Eddie mumbled.

  Eddie pulled out his gun and marched forward while following the bloody trail above them. Signs of struggle were everywhere in the form of bloody grasping handprints and it didn’t take long for Eddie to find his first mangled corpse. As they got closer, the smell got worse and Eddie’s breathing mask was pushed to its limits as it tried to filter out the repugnant odor. It was the withered husk of a Kyva Corp security officer that had been cut in half and wherever his legs were, was anyone’s guess. The further into the cavern of death they went the more rotten bodies they found, but none appeared to be the imposter Tom. Eddie had to wonder why the vents had been lined with gore, but after a while he put two and two together. Some gremlins must have survived the crash and they were hungry enough to drag the recently dead into their nest of horrors and consume what little flesh there was.

  The trail of blood on the ceiling had become thin and Eddie had to wonder if it was because the imposter Tom’s heart had finally ceased its rhythm, or because he had been sectioned off into pieces as he was dragged screaming through the darkness. Neither Eddie, nor Romney tried to think about it and they continued on in silence. Soon there was another type of body mixed in with the Kyva Corp security forces and they were thin grey medium sized creatures that looked to be permanently hunched as if by some spiteful design. Eddie’s heart began to race and Romney could feel his partner’s agitation through the finger tips holding him suspended in the air.

  “I don’t like this one bit,” Romney whispered.

  “Me neither,” Eddie said honestly. “But we gotta get to the bottom of this, no matter how ugly it looks.”

  “Just steer clear of those creatures,” Romney begged. “I want nothing to do with them.”

  Eddie lifted his foot and brought it down hard on the creature’s neck and there was an immediat
e sickening crack. “Already dead…”

  “Jesus, Eddie… Don’t push your luck,” Romney warned.

  “I ain’t,” Eddie said defiantly. “You heard that Erin chick talk about these things. They hide in the shadows and hunt. They don’t lie out in the open and play dead.”

  “Says you,” Romney said scathingly.

  Eddie ignored him and continued walking through the confining darkness until the trail of blood above him was essentially gone. There was only one direction to go in the long corridor, but it didn’t mean that stepping over the bodies of terrible little monsters was any easier. They eventually came to a dead end where the corridor had collapsed and Eddie cursed under his breath.

  “Damnit… We need to get around this somehow,” Eddie said angrily.

  Romney let out a sigh as he moved his eye around. “It’s useless, Eddie. We can’t go on like this.”

  “Fuck that,” Eddie said defiantly. “I’m not done here and I sure as hell didn’t walk through all those bodies to give up now. Look around for another vent.”

  Romney began to scan the area, but it was useless and he was forced to watch Eddie dig ineffectively through the rubble with his bare hands. He was about to say something more to discourage his partner, but they both let out a shout as Eddie moved a large chunk of debris and found a withered looking gremlin beneath it. Eddie nearly dropped Romney, but was able to clutch him close to his chest as he fished out his gun and pointed it at the creature.

  “Eddie, seriously. Let’s get out of here. I’m done with this crap. Doctor Singh can shove our pay up her ass for all I care. I want out.”

  Eddie was silent and staring with his gun outstretched and a look of disbelief was all across his face. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  “What?” Romney asked agitatedly and as soon as his eye narrowed in on the gremlin, he was rendered nearly speechless. “No… Don’t you dare, Eddie. Don’t you fucking dare.”

  “It’s breathing,” Eddie said with a perverse infatuation.

  “I know what you’re thinking Eddie and it’s a bad idea. A really bad idea. Turn around and leave right now,” Romney ordered.

  “Look at it,” Eddie said. “Its arms and legs are broken and it’s on the verge of death. Look at the ground around it. That thing has been dragging itself around with its broken limbs and hiding in that hollow and by the looks of those bones, it’s been gnawing on the corpses around here.”

  “Then put a bullet in its head so it doesn’t have to suffer anymore,” Romney suggested in a frightfully cruel tone.

  “I will if it makes any sudden moves. Until then, don’t you dare stop recording,” Eddie said with a dry hoarse voice.

  Chapter 24 – The Last Ranger

  Eddie approached the pathetic looking sleeping creature with a tense air of trepidation. With his gun constantly pointed at the gremlin’s head, he edged a bloody shoe towards the creature’s ribs and gave it a nudge. The thing barely registered the jab and only let out the mildest of moans as Eddie’s heart continued to race frantically in his chest. He nudged it again and a pair of dark glassy amber eyes opened up and gazed upon him for a brief moment before losing interest and trying to go back to sleep. Eddie nudged the creature again and let out a small whistle.

  “Hey, wake up,” he said nearly mockingly. “Can you talk? I heard that you can talk. I’m looking for Major Tom. Did you eat him or something?”

  The gremlin opened its eyes again with a pained expression and hissed at him like a wounded cat before rolling over and ignoring him once more.

  Eddie then looked down at Romney with a grimace. “I don’t think the little guy likes me.”

  “Good,” Romney said peevishly. “Now let’s get out of here. We’ve got the footage of these things existing and I think that’s enough for one day. I don’t want to find out whether or not this thing has friends crawling around in the ruins.”

  Eddie was quiet for a long time while he went deep into thought until he eventually slid his eyes back down to Romney. “Do you think that thing would be willing to talk to that Erin chick? She was controlling them after all.”

  “Who knows?” Romney said dismissively.

  “Want to try it?” Eddie asked pressingly.

  “I don’t know her,” Romney said impatiently. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve neither met her, nor have I had the opportunity to scan her. I need to scan someone before I can project a hologram like that and pretend I’m someone else.”

  “You’ve got her voice,” Eddie said with a hushed tone. “And you’ve got pictures of her in her hospital bed. Try this one thing for me and if it doesn’t work, then I promise to get us the hell out of here.”

  Romney let out a reluctant sigh and began compiling data. “Fine, but don’t keep pushing your luck with me. I’m already livid with you for dragging me in here.”

  “You’ll get over it,” Eddie said dully. “Now hurry up and work your magic.”

  Romney undertook the process of taking static pictures of Erin Wilco and compiling them together to make a 3D model. It was an annoying process where he had to fill in a lot of gaps and mirror some of her features, but he eventually got there by using a previously scanned female from ages ago and using her body as a model to work from. He then went through the digital process of copying the tone and pitch of Erin’s voice and reviewed the audio logs to match her style of speaking. The whole process took just over three seconds from Eddie’s perspective, but in Romney’s overclocked mind it felt like a couple hours of rigorous mental gymnastics and even at that he considered it to be a rushed and unprofessional job. The whole process was lost on Eddie and that fact alone cemented in Romney’s mind the idea that Eddie would never truly appreciate his contribution to their business.

  Soon Erin Wilco was in the dark corridor with them, radiating a gentle aura wherever she stepped and though she was burned and rough around the edges, Eddie couldn’t help but feel that she looked somewhat angelic. She approached the tired gremlin and kneeled down beside it to goad it from its slumber with her quiet voice. The gremlin did not wish to be bothered and moaned in agony as it huddled its knees to its chest, but after hearing Erin’s voice a few more times it began to stir awake. Its amber eyes opened again and its expression was similar to that of preparing to hiss once more, but as its hazy eyes focused on the figure standing over it, the creature became startled and tried to reach out towards Erin’s ghost.

  “E-Erin…” the creature let out in a weak raspy dry voice.

  Eddie’s heart went back to beating in his chest as excitement rushed through him. “It can talk… Holy shit, it can fucking talk…” he breathed out in wonder.

  “Shut up,” Romney whispered to him in agitation.

  Erin’s ghost smiled warmly down at the gremlin and her voice took on a tender and motherly tone. “Are you hurt?”

  The gremlin began to smile and tried to touch her face, but its hands simply sunk into the projected light without any resistance. The gremlin became confused and worried as it tried to touch her again, but the same results occurred and the gremlin went into a panic. “Erin…? Erin…? Hurt?” the creature asked worriedly.

  “I’m fine,” Erin’s ghost said soothingly. “Don’t worry about me.”

  The gremlin ignored the ghost and tried to rest on its knees as it continued to examine Erin’s ghost. It wrapped its broken knuckles tightly and began tapping its head in agitation as if something was terribly amiss.

  “Can’t hear…” it said miserably.

  “Can’t hear what?” Erin’s ghost asked.

  The creature pointed at her with a worried expression and then at its head. “Can’t hear you… Hurt? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m not hurt,” Erin’s ghost reassured the gremlin. “Are you saying that you can’t hear me in your head?”

  The gremlin nodded sadly and looked at her like a wounded dog. “Lonely… Want to hear you…”

  “I’m here now,” Erin’s ghost said soft
ly. “Don’t worry about your head, it’s fine.”

  The gremlin nodded happily and dragged its body into Erin’s holographic lap and curled up like a longing child finally returning to its mother. It did not matter to the gremlin that it could not touch her, simply that she was near and watching over it seemed to be all it needed. The gremlin looked as though it was ready to fall asleep once more by the loving light of its mother, but Erin’s voice came out once more and it left its eyes slitted open in obedience.

  “What happened to Major Tom?” she asked quietly. “Do you know Tom? Did he die here?”

  The broken gremlin shook its head while looking rather pleased with itself despite its misery. “Safe.”

  “What does that mean? Where is he?” Erin’s ghost asked quickly.

  The gremlin lifted a shattered arm up and pointed a jagged finger towards a horribly twisted hatch in the ceiling that Eddie had mistaken for a vent. When he looked up, he remembered that it was supposed to be a floor above him and that fact kept slipping from his mind. Both Eddie and Romney’s eyes slid up to where the gremlin was pointing and Eddie’s mouth dropped open in shock.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Eddie asked under his breath.

  “Safe,” the gremlin repeated to Erin’s ghost as it touched its head. “You ask… we save… save Tom. Don’t let Tom die… Tom is your Ranger.”

  It was difficult to make out and easy to miss at a glance, but the faded, burnt, upside down words on the hatch read, Emergency Life Pods. Eddie got even closer to the twisted hatch above him and saw that it had once been covered by a thin piece of metal that would have blended into the floor easily. The gremlins knew about the life pods and dragged Tom to one on Erin’s mental order. He had to wonder if Erin knew about the life pods herself, but he highly doubted it, which meant that the gremlins were smart and could probably read. After months of scuttling through the station, they must have learned the ins and outs of Sky Base 10.

  “Did he eject?” Erin’s ghost asked quickly once again.