“No,” Vuong said, his hand reaching out to rewind the footage on the monitor. “Not that.” He brought his hand up and pointed at the monitor. “That.”
Baker leaned closer.
“Right there, before the guy shoots at the wall, something moved. Just watch. It’s like a shadow, or a shimmer.” He pressed play and leaned back, waiting for the moment before the man raised his pistol. “There, watch!”
Baker stared as the security feed in the room showed a colonist in mining apparel sitting at a desk with a pistol in his hand. He was staring blankly at the opposite wall, and then, at the edge of the screen, almost unnoticeable, something translucent moved past, a nearly invisible vapor, just enough to cause a ripple against the wall behind it. Then the man raised his pistol and fired three times at the space before turning the gun on himself.
“Can you slow that down?” Baker asked, rubbing his eyes before staring back at the screen. He could feel a nervous excitement ripple through him.
Vuong stared the video again, slowing it to twenty-five percent the moment the shimmer occurred. Then Baker saw the almost non-existent movement.
A grim realization crept through him, a nervousness bordering on fear slowly penetrating. No way… No…
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, his eyes still locked to the screen. “It’s fucking camouflaged.”
“Well that would explain why nobody saw anything. Cause there’s nothing to see. Whatever the hell that thing is, it’s fucking invisible.”
“God damnit,” Baker hissed. “Mills, get Lanskey on the horn and tell her we found what the hell it is that killed everyone and why we couldn’t find it. You tell them to get their asses back here on the double.”
“Roger.” Mills snapped, moving to step out of the room.
Baker shifted his gaze to Vuong. “My next question is, how do we kill it?”
Vuong pulled up the facility schematics. The facility unfolded before them in a series of white lines across a blue screen. Every tunnel, every duct and ventilation shaft was laid out before them. The group stared at the screen for a moment before Vuong continued. “We have multiple entry points,” he began. “We can seal off everything we don’t need access to, like the sci-labs, hydroponics, administration, the central core. That way, at least if it can’t travel through walls, it’ll either be trapped in one of those sections, or forced to come to us. We could funnel it somehow.”
“Yeah,” Baker replied. “But that’s if the thing can’t travel through walls… We don’t even know what this thing is, or what it’s made of. We don’t know shit.” He paused, his gaze moving to Vuong who sat looking up at him. “There must have been a reason someone built that thing out there, buried it and kept it hidden this whole time. Must have been a pretty important reason too...” His thoughts wandered to the dead colonists that filled the facility around them.
“Fire’s pretty universal,” Fascio said after a moment. “We could burn the fucker.”
“Ok.” Baker replied, pulling himself from the vapors of hopelessness that had begun to envelope him. “That’s one idea.”
“All we need to do is contain it,” Hawkes said, stepping forward. “As long as it can’t get loose, we can get off planet and wait for a clean-up crew to come take care of the rest. If it could move through walls, then the door in the vid wouldn’t have opened, it would have just came right through.”
Baker turned to the youngest of the unit and clenched his teeth together. “You have a point there, but don’t think for a moment we’re going to just turn tail and run. That’s one thing we won’t be doing.” He paused, his gaze hard and unforgiving. “That thing killed Corlin, and we aren’t leaving until we show it what happens when you kill one of ours.”
“I wasn’t suggesting—“
“That’s exactly the point.” Baker barked, the piercing behind his eyes flaring up. “You weren’t suggesting anything. And you’re gonna keep it that way.” He turned back to Fascio. “So where do we get fire?”
“Sarge,” Mills said, stepping back into the room. “I’m not getting any response. I tried all three of them. Nothing.”
Hollow dread slowly crept into the room.
“You gotta be shitting me,” Baker growled.
“Lanskey, Wilkes?” He shouted across the comm. “DiLeonardo. Come in, over!” There was no reply, only the sound of the circulation fans overhead. “Lanskey, respond god damnit!”
“Sarge..?”
Baker looked at Vuong and then exhaled sharply.
“Med lab. Now!”
18
The group made their way through housing. The moist chill that still hung in the air around them continued to press inwards, the noxious vapors of death filtering past their noses. None of them spoke, their minds working the events unfolding around them. A grease covered knot continued to build in the sergeant’s stomach, growing tighter as they approached medical.
Baker stopped at the door, holding up his hand and turning his head to shoot Fascio a concerned look before gesturing for him to take point. The other nodded, shifting his rifle to the back and unslinging his newly acquired shotgun. He took a deep breath, exhaling heavily in front of him and then started down the hall. With every step he half-expected the corpses contained in the bags along the floor to jump up and attack them. He made the extra motion to give the canvas bags as wide of a berth as possible. The lights had begun to flicker again and he could hear something creaking deeper in the facility, the steel bones flexing as the heat allowed the sleeping giant to stretch. The team continued inwards, and when they reached the section of the corridor that angled out of view, they instinctively slowed before turning the edge. When they did, the lights overhead flickered again, strobing the hallway in pulses that strained their eyes to see ahead of them. The facility continued to mock their movements, making every effort to stifle their advance. Unknown to them, the monster hidden in the darkness waited patiently. Time not measured in human terms had passed in its existence, the minutes it took the men to make their way there was nothing, a blink in existence unnoticed.
“I hate this fucking place,” Mills whispered, swallowing hard as he squinted tightly against the flashing illumination.
Fascio stepped around the curve and stopped. His eyes locked to a puddle of dark liquid slowly seeping from beyond the doorway of the director’s office. He turned to look at Sarge who tensed, moving his rifle to his shoulder before stepping in front and approaching the doorway. As he neared it he realized what the liquid was, and that the way it was moving, it had just been spilled.
The creature the humans hunted hung invisibly on the ceiling, a vapor clinging to steel as it watched the men approach. Slowly it pressed itself flat. It would wait. It was patient, and time was nothing but an unknown sensation to it. It had already had its fill for the time being. The newest arrivals was simply an addition.
Baker’s heart began to beat heavily in his chest, a thin line of sweat working its way across his forehead as he stepped closer. He was less than ten feet away when a voice, like a memory, phantom in the room, whispered past his ear.
“They did this.”
Baker stopped, the flesh across his back tightening against his sold frame. He glanced behind him to the fear glazed eyes of his unit. ‘It’s just the station,’ he told himself as he turned back to the doorway looming darkly ahead. ‘This place is fucking with me.’ He stepped closer to the room, dim emergency lights slowly flickering to life as another thin groan of constricted steel cried out overhead.
Before he breached the room he stopped, turning to his men one last time. He knew that no matter what, they would have his back, but there was something pulling him backwards, begging him not to enter. He could feel the still air in the hallway stagnant around him and smelled the all-too-familiar mixture of blood and gunpowder wafting from within. Before he even stepped forward he knew what lay in wait.
The light on his gun illuminated the scene before him as he quickly spun around the edg
e. Lying on his side five feet inside the room was Dom, his helmet and the top half of his skull missing; a mass of brain matter and tissue lying in fragments around him. Lying crumpled next to the large desk was Wilkes. He’d been shot multiple times in the chest and face, the only identifying marks left, the thin canvas strip on his vest embroidered with his name. Next to him, leaned over in the chair was Lanskey. She’d been shot repeatedly in the stomach and chest, and her dead eyes held fixed at a spot on the floor near Baker’s feet. Death hung thick in the air, a mixture of copper, iron and stale gun smoke. He stood frozen, his mind a jumbled cacophony of racing thoughts. His instincts screamed at him to turn and run, while his training whispered to him to pull it together, focus. All he could do was stare, his eyes moving unblinking between the marines who had less than an hour ago stood beside him. He stared at the corpses that would never return to Earth, a wife and newborn son who would never see their father again. His grip tightened around the rifle as he stifled back the desire to scream in rage at the death lying in front of him.
“What the fuck!?” Fascio blurted from behind him, snapping him from the red haze that hung in front of his eyes. “Oh shit. No no no. This isn’t fuckin’ happening...”
Chaos wormed its way through the group, an icy blanket that slipped between them, into them. Behind them, a thin vapor wisped across the ceiling, disappearing out of view.
The others moved into the room, stopping as their eyes fell on the scene before them.
“No way,” Mills whispered. “There’s no way. We just spoke to them. This can’t be—”
The squad’s voices faded to the background as Baker stared at the carnage, his true instincts quickly lurching forward. “This just happened,” he whispered as the others continued to panic behind him.
“We’ve gotta get out of here man!” Mills shouted above the others. “It’s gonna fucking kill us! We gotta go.”
“Shut up!” Baker yelled, turning around to grab Mills by the vest and slamming him against the wall next to the doorway. “You pull your shit together marine, and you do it now, or I’m gonna pull it together for you. Do you fucking copy!?”
Mills stared at the sergeant, eyes wild, a gazelle trapped in a lions grasp. Slowly he nodded, his gaze not moving from the man who held him a half inch off the floor.
“Good,” Baker growled, setting the man down and turning to look over the scene again. “As I was saying. This just happened. Look.” He pointed to the blood and tissue hanging from the ceiling, and held his finger out until a drop formed and fell to the floor below. He moved to where Dom lay and kneeled down, hovering his hand just over the barrel of the rifle. “His gun is still warm.” Slowly he stood, turning to the others, his words lowering to a whisper. “Whatever did this, it’s still here.”
The others shifted nervously, their gazes moving to every dark space in the room.
Every corner had eyes, every shadow jagged talons.
Baker took a deep breath. He knew the impact of what he was about to say, but also knew, at this moment, things had gotten well out of control. The situation was no longer in their hands. “Let’s move. I’m not gonna let any more of us die for a paycheck, especially one signed by the assholes that caused this in the first place. Fuck this station. We’re getting the hell out of here.”
“Sarge?” Vuong asked, pulling the sergeant’s gaze to him. “What about them?”
Baker turned his gaze to their dead friends, finally stopping to rest on Dom.
“We can’t leave them here.”
Baker stared at the crumpled body at his feet. What seemed like an eternity passed before he was able to form his words. “We. We can’t run the risk of bringing an unknown pathogen, or virus back with us.” He paused, his words stabbing into him, a lie wrapped in fear. “Let’s just get out of here, and once the cleanup crew arrives, we’ll come back for them.” He tried to convince himself that the words he spoke were true, but he knew the moment they got free of the planet’s atmosphere, he would immediately put them on course back to Earth. He wasn’t going to sit in orbit waiting for another unit to arrive. He’d lost four men on this mission, and wasn’t going to wait around so that he could see more marines lost. They were done. They had survived, and now, they got to go home. There was nothing more they could do. They were simply not outfitted for this type of situation, and didn’t have the weapons or manpower to engage. Nor did they even understand the enemy if they were to. “Sarge, do you read me? It’s Portofino, over.”
Talmadge stood silently behind them, a ripple of fear and excitement working its way beneath his shirt.
Baker brought his hand up to the comm on his helmet and clicked over. “I read you. What’s the status, over?”
“I heard knocking at the rear hatch. Are you still inside the facility? Over.”
“That is affirmative Corporal. Do not open that hatch, I repeat, do not, under any circumstance, are you to open that hatch. You keep that ship secure until you see me standing in front of it, do you understand?”
The interior lights of the ships control panel illuminated the pilot’s features as she stared at the view screen in front of her, the empty tarmac in full view. She was positive she had heard knocking. When she clicked the sergeant his response came back as a thin series of garbled words layered in static.
“Affirmative…shhhhik, Open the hatch…. ssshhhhk”
“Well you could have at least given me a head’s up,” she smirked, standing up to make her way to the back of the ship. She stopped at the exit hatch and engaged her envirosuit, sealing it before reaching up to engage the outer hatch. As the door opened the air inside vented out in a loud cloud that dissipated as the planet’s atmosphere dissolved it instantly. She looked up and shook her head, exhaling with a click of her tongue as the frigid air moved through her into the ship.
“Portofino?” Sarge barked into the comm. “Do you read me?”
The comms went silent, not even static replying.
Baker felt a sold lump building deep within his gut, a sickness of bile and fear slowly growing larger. Somehow, whatever had done this, had immediately gone to cut off their retreat. Whatever it was they were dealing with seemed to know their next move. Whatever it was they were now up against, was intelligent, and tactical. It knew they were going to go to the ship and try to make their way off the surface, and it was making sure that didn’t’ happen.
“Portofino!?” he shouted one last time before glancing to Fascio in the doorway. “Shit! Everybody get to the ship, now!”
The men turned and started their way quickly down the hall. As they dashed past the admissions office Portofino’s voice clicked back on.
“Where’s everyone else Sarge?”
Baker skidded to a stop, the others halting in front of them as they turned. Portofino’s words stabbed through the headset.
“Portofino, we’re still in the facility, do you copy?”
“What? How..?”
“Portofino, I repeat, I am still inside Attis. Who are you speaking to? Respond!” A familiar chill worked through him.
“But. If I blow the ship, then how do we get home? I need to get to my daughter. I need to see her again…” There was sadness in the pilot’s voice, a distant anguish that trembled her words.
“Portofino! Fuck!” Baker had already started running before he yelled to the others. “MOVE!”
The unit rushed through the hallway. The sound of their boots clanking heavy echoed through the silent corridors as they pounded across the titanium floor, the flickering lights and sparking conduits flying past them as they raced towards the entrance. They were minutes away, but already Baker felt the sense of dread crescendoing behind his heartbeat that continued to grow as they bolted down the end of the hallway to the inner hatch. ‘How the fuck did that thing made it to the ship so quickly?’
As Mills ran behind he could hear the voices in his ears telling him to stop, to rest. He was tired, and there was no need to run, the ship would still b
e there. The whispers kept pace with him, soft voices gently lulling him slower in pace. He didn’t need to stay with the rest, he could meet them there. Everything was going to be fine. He pounded one balled fist against the side of his head and continued forward, picking his pace back up with the others.
Baker reached the inner hatch and immediately began suiting up, pulling the sleeves to the envirosuit on frantically. The others stopped behind him, setting their rifles down as they did the same. A moment later he was suited up and turned to the others who were nearly done.
“Mills!” Baker yelled, seeing the youngest of them standing behind the others, staring at the floor with a dazed look in his eyes.
Mills looked up at him blankly, staring for a moment before nodding and setting his rifle down.
“Any day now soldier,” Baker yelled, waiting for the other to finish engaging his suit.
The moment Mill’s suit sealed he turned and engaged the inner hatch, moving in as quickly as possible. “Portofino? We’re at the outer hatch of the facility, do you copy, over?”
The door sealed behind them, the atmosphere venting out as the outer air filled the space. Then Baker engaged the second door.
As they exited the airlock they saw the ship standing where they had left it, fifty meters away. Baker started quickly for it, pausing as Portofino stepped out from behind.
She had just finished rigging the explosive charge to the fuel cells. Salted lines still running beneath her helmet down her face as she revisited the faces of the squad she had arrived with. Sarge had explained to her that they had all been killed, that the creatures in the facility had been stalking them from the moment they arrived, killing them off one by one. She listened as Sergeant Thomas explained that the monsters in the facility would try to use the ship to escape. Instantly she knew that wasn’t a possibility. If even one of the creatures managed to get back to earth, it would be the end of humanity, and she would not allow that to happen. As she stepped around the back of the ship she saw the horrors that the sergeant had told her about, the monsters that had killed her friends.
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