Crescent

by Phil Rossi

  “She is in good hands, Mr. Swaren,” Kendall said. “Is she safe? Not likely. Goodbye, Mr. Swaren.”

  A klaxon filled the chamber.

  The hangar doors rolled away on their tracks and air began to roar out into space. The vacuum plucked away cargo containers like they were pills in a pillbox. Nigel skidded along the floor on his back. Two of the officers were sucked, flailing, out of the station. The remaining officer was gripping a handrail and screaming in terror. She had the prettiest auburn hair Nigel had ever seen. Nigel continued to slide. He managed to roll over onto his stomach and tried to clutch at the deck grating as it blurred past him. Several of his fingernails tore free and he cried out. Nigel knew he was moving too fast to get any kind of purchase—he was more likely to lose his fingers entirely. His shoes were pulled right off his feet. It struck him as both absurd and mortifying. The officer with the pretty hair was brained by an untethered storage crate. Her grip fell slack and she slid past him.

  A big container, painted a shade of baby blue—the color of childhood toys, of teddy bears and footed pajamas—rocketed toward him like a freight train. Sparks flew out around its belly like luminescent sea foam churning at the bow of a ship. Nigel could feel the cold of space on his bare feet as he neared the open hangar bay doors.

  He could smell the cargo container’s burning paint.

  There was no way out of this one.

  He closed his eyes.

  (•••)

  It takes .36 seconds for an average human being, under relaxed conditions, to take in a single breath.

  A single inhalation.

  It took Marisa the span of a single breath to become fully cognizant of what was going on. A black, multi-fingered crane lifted Haddyrein out of the shining goo. Half-submerged, he swished his arms in chaotic arcs, streaming the viscous material over his head in sticky flashes of glare. The large speakers vibrated in their casings with hellish sounds. The question of what had been on the optical disc from the cistern had been answered. It was music—but not the sort intended for human ears. Marisa was thankful to be wearing earplugs, but even the ceramic plugs were not enough to dull the sound.

  Below her, the less fortunate were on bent knees with their hands over their ears. Blood gushed out between splayed fingers and ran down their arms. The poor bastards had likely been pumping the concert through cochlear implants when everything went to shit. She looked back to Erick Haddyrein. The vatter now hung limply from the retrieval crane. The trodes attached to his wet flesh pulsed dimly. Marisa didn’t think Haddyrein was dead, but she was pretty sure he’d be a vegetable for the rest of his life—however long that might be. The entire station seemed to tremble with the sounds screaming out of the speaker system. The stench of melting plastic soon overcame the concert smells. The speakers were burning.

  Marisa put one foot over the edge of the balcony, followed it with the other, and climbed down a trellis decorated with glowing vines of blue fiber optics. She nearly fell several times before she reached the floor. She ran across the center of the dance pit. Most of the people in attendance had already fled, leaving the trampled behind. Motionless, with limbs at awkward angles, the forsaken all looked dead. She was sure some of them were dead, but she was also sure that some were just knocked out cold. That was for the medics to deal with when they arrived. If they arrived. For now, she had to stop the noise. She climbed onto the stage and gawked at all the gear up there. Interlocking cables as thick as her arm connected the equipment. She picked a cable at random and tugged, then moved to another, pulling them free from their large, gold input jacks. The cables gave way grudgingly. If she made it through the ordeal alive, she would have one hell of backache. Despite her efforts, the speakers’ demonic chorus did not abate. Marisa gave up on unplugging gear. Casting about for another solution, she found a stray microphone stand with a heavy metal base. She hefted it, then swung it at a delicate-looking array of computer equipment. Colorful flashes of sparks and choking smoke rewarded each downward stroke. She smashed one throbbing unit after another.

  And then there was stillness.

  An instant later, a loud splash made her turn on her heels. Haddyrein’s crane had released him and he was sinking toward the bottom of the liquid filled chamber. A slow trail of bubbles rose from his lips and nostrils. She made a hasty path toward him and had almost reached the vat when the floor came alive.

  (•••)

  Gerald lifted his head to peer over the sea of broken, multicolored glass that covered the bartop. He saw Marisa as she raced across the floor. She leapt over the prone bodies of concert goers and clambered onto a stage that was pulsing with so many different colors, he thought he might seize just by looking at it.

  But Gerald didn’t seize. He looked to his mate-in-hiding and mouthed the words ‘stay put’. At her nod, he clambered over the top of the bar, cutting himself in the process, and half crawled and half rolled off the other side onto a sprawl of fallen stools. He groaned as he got to his feet. On the stage, Marisa was beating the ever-living crap out of the vatter’s multi-million credit gear. She had the right idea, and Gerald hoisted one of the stools and ran toward the stage to help her. Suddenly, the music stopped, but Gerald’s ears continued to ring in retaliation. He watched with growing alarm as the black digits of Haddyrein’s crane disengaged one by one. Haddyrein seemed suspended in midair, like a character out of an old fashioned cartoon, and then he splashed into his light-goo.

  It was as if the vatter’s impact was the trigger, tugging the floor right out from underneath Gerald just like the old tablecloth trick. And the flowers are no longer standing! Gerald would have laughed at the comedy of it, were he not sailing through the air. He landed hard on floor’s rebar support structure. The bar stool clattered onto its side a meter or so away from him. The now-black dance floor moved like a tidal wave with bits and pieces of photosensitive tile flying off in its wake. Something big beneath the floor was moving, roaring toward the stage. Marisa screamed and darted for the rear of the platform. The floor-wave slammed into the stage; the vat shattered in a cloud of diamond-glass and glowing liquid.

  The auditorium was mostly dark as the dust settled, lit only by a few sputtering electrical fires. Hunks of debris crashed to the ruined floor, punctuating the stillness like afterthoughts. Gerald limped to the stage on the crosshatched metal supports. A pile of rubble and sticky liquid was all that remained of the structure. Gerald dug through it as best he could, but after just a few minutes he had already worked his hands raw.

  Marisa was gone.

  “Down here!” Marisa’s voice called from below. A hallucination brought on by impending grief? He hobbled around the rubble pile. The floor had been peeled away from behind the stage thanks to the tidal force of the wave. Marisa lay on her back about three meters below the auditorium, covered in thick, white dust. It looked like someone had thrown a bag of flour at her and scored a direct hit.

  “I thought I lost you.” Out of breath and choked by emotion, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Now sure as shit isn’t the time to get sentimental, Gerry.” She stood and grimaced. “Ankle is mildly fucked,” she said. “But yeah. I think I’m okay, otherwise. Are you?”

  “I’ll be all right as soon as my heart slows the hell down and my ears stop ringing from the aural ass-fucking,” he said. “Can you walk?”

  (•••)

  Donovan’s ears filled with a chorus of whispers and dry rustles, rising in pitch and intensity—the sound of dead leaves blowing across concrete. The lights in the tunnel flared. Old ceiling mounted speakers spewed forth an awful sound along with big, dark clouds of dust. The sheer pain of the noise almost brought Donovan back around. For a split second, he felt rationality return; in the next, he thought his skull would split down the middle. The Vault’s massive bulkhead trembled beneath his frozen hands.

  A banshee’s wail rolled down the corridor toward him and then the shuddering door ground open. Its old mechanics cried mournfull
y after hundreds of years of disuse. Donovan stood with creaking, trembling knees and stumbled over the threshold into the corridor beyond, into darkness. Light panels set in the ceiling of the revealed passage flickered an azure so deep it was almost black. The walls glittered as if painted with the very stars that Crescent floated through.

  The air was cold and Donovan could see his breath. Each inhalation made his lungs burn. He walked down the corridor, letting his feet take him where they would.

  He passed two motionless collector robots. These models were black metal creations that rested on curved, many-jointed legs—different from the typical units that were on the station. Their standard arm attachments had been replaced with long, rusted tethers that looked like tentacles. Multiple sensors dotted the automatons’ heads, glowing like hot embers. Donovan approached one of the robots for closer inspection. The big machine raised itself on its curved legs and stood to its full height. It was easily three meters tall. Then the robot bent back down, leaning over Donovan to examine him closely. Servos whirred somewhere deep within its metal body. The collector straightened and moved away with loud, shuffling clanks. It was joined by the other big robot. Donovan looked over his shoulder and watched the things disappear through the open Vault door.

  The robots are part of this station—and this station is inextricably part of the Three now, Donovan thought distantly.

  He traveled down the corridor, feeling like he was not covering any distance. There were more collector robots here; each activated with his passing and moved down the passage in the way he had come. At times, the tunnel submerged into inky blankness so complete that the collectors appeared only as floating orange lights. The smoldering eye nodes would swing in close to Donovan and then move away behind him, carried by invisible, clanking limbs. Creatures that defied identification dwelled in the patches of darkness. Shifting, amorphous forms drifted past, glowing like afterimages. Faces lurked in these changing shapes, their mouths stretched wide in silent screams.

  His flashlight was worthless against the unnatural darkness, so he cast it aside.

  Pleas echoed around him—long-forgotten cries for help, trapped for centuries between bulbs of the hourglass. Something very bad had happened down here in the dark. He trailed his fingers along sealed bulkheads. The doors were welded shut. Some of the bulkheads had dusty viewports. Backlit, the windows in the sealed doors were like blue disks suspended in the murk. Donovan peered through one. Corpses lay one over the other behind the door. He was in a crypt.

  He could feel the fever creeping back up behind his eyes. He was weary and wanted to stop, but the Violet pushed him on.

  At last, Donovan left the darkness behind him. He came to a well-lit intersection where the corridor split in two. He chose the passage to his left and followed it a short distance to where it ended at a glass door. The door was labeled Infirmary in yellow block letters. The door slid open, squeaking and rattling in its track. Donovan stepped into the flickering light of a medical suite.

  The room was in perfect order. Neat vials stood on countertops that had likely been well-polished once. Long-expired medications lined glass-faced freezer units. Rows of surgical tables stood vacant. Tool carts stood beside the tables, meant for surgeries that would never happen. The same dust that seemed to permeate the entirety of Crescent covered everything in the infirmary in a thin, fuzzy layer. Donovan ambled past each surgical station and stopped at the last table. The tools on this cart had been removed from their sterile cases, and a scattering of photographs sat on the surgical tray. The instruments were covered in dark flakes. Donovan took the pictures and blew the dust off them.

  The first photograph—tiny stains spattered its once-glossy surface—showed a pretty woman with long, dark hair. Pretty was an understatement. Whoever the girl had been, she was beautiful. She posed in the photo with her delicate fingers framing a milk-white abdomen. A proud smile graced her elegant features. The next photograph was an ultrasound image. It showed a small fetus, thumb in its mouth. The following image showed the woman on an operating table. A figure in scrubs, back to the camera, made a crude abdominal incision with a dark, rounded object. Donovan was suddenly aware of the carving in his pocket. Dark, rounded. And sharp enough to cut flesh.

  The last photograph showed a team of surgeons removing the woman’s uterus. Donovan couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought the patient looked awake.

  The door rattled open behind him. He turned so quickly that he lost his balance and fell into the surgical cart, knocking it to the floor. Unable to stand, he lay tangled in the cart, vulnerable. A group of men and women, all dressed in black, filed through the room and approached him slowly. Their complexions were porcelain and their features were slack. He recognized these people. He had seen them all over the station handing out their black flyers and antagonizing people.

  And now they were here.

  “Dude. You don’t look so good.” A young boy approached Donovan and helped him to his feet. The boy reached into the breast pocket of Donovan’s nightshirt.

  “Wow. This is really good, man. And it looks nice and sharp,” the boy said. He handed the sanguinite carving to a freckle-faced girl who stood behind him. She moved to the surgical table and cleared it. Righting the fallen cart, she began to pick up the scattered tools.

  “Look, pops. You did really good. But you’re not done yet. The Other is dying right now. It can’t sustain itself on its own anymore. You gotta give it whatever you have left. Do you dig?”

  “I don’t understand,” Donovan said. He felt very upset and very much like a child. He wanted to see his daughter desperately.

  “Go down the hallway and you will understand.” The boy clapped Donovan on the shoulder and gently guided him out of the room. “The Other—the Three-to-be—is counting on you to hold it over until its chosen vessel can get down here.” The boy looked at his watch. “I sure hope they hurry!” He flashed Donovan a grin and joined the freckle-faced girl at the surgical table.

  (•••)

  Donovan traveled back the way he had come. A man covered in tattoos waited at the intersecting corridors. Without a word, he led Donovan to another glass door.

  “Ina?” Donovan whispered.

  The door opened, and the tattooed man nodded and indicated for Donovan to enter. Donovan stepped over the threshold and the door slid closed behind him. In the room beyond, several open crates were scattered about on the floor with large black rocks nestled inside. Each chamber wall had a door. Light bled from beneath one of the exits. Donovan took a breath and placed his hands on its surface. The door slid into the ceiling.

  He found a circle of black stones in the next room. In the space between each pair of stones was a flickering candle. A metal pedestal was at the center of the circle, with a cylindrical glass aquarium atop it. Cables ran from the base of the pedestal and into the walls. The Other was close. Donovan could feel it. The presence reached out and caressed him. It was dying, but Donovan was not too late to save it.

  He approached the center of the room. There was a metal ring around the pedestal with tiny rock fragments set into it—a smaller version of what Donovan had seen in the Anrar III photographs.

  Donovan looked in to the glass cylinder. Something small and pink swam in the liquid. It looked like a tiny fetus with ridges on its back that tapered at a curling tail. The small creature swam in lazy somersaults, trailing threads of color—violet, red, and black—behind it. The fetus-thing stopped moving when Donovan put his face close to the glass, and it opened its eyes. Black eyes. Donovan looked into them and saw a thousand stars being born and saw a thousand stars die. He saw universes writhe and fold in on one another like they were living masses of dark and light. Donovan grabbed the sides of the large tube with the intention of setting it down on the floor, but instead, it tipped off its stand and he was too weak to hold onto it. The cylinder tumbled and shattered.

  The creature wriggled in a steadily evaporating puddle of liquid. Donovan picke
d the thing up and cradled it in his hand. Its flesh was painfully cold to the touch. Donovan raised his cupped hands to his lips and opened his mouth. Something sharp anchored itself into the back of his throat. His eyes went wide with the pain of it. The fetus-thing snapped from his hand and into his mouth.

  Before Donovan’s eyes, he saw a flash of violet.

  A flash of red.

  And then the shadows began to flow off the walls, flooding the room in devil darkness. He was consumed by the Black. It devoured what was left of his mind, suckling at the last few shreds of Donovan Cortez’s being so that it could sustain itself until the true vessel arrived.

  The last thing Donovan saw in his mind’s eye was his daughter. And right before he ceased to exist, it all made sense.

  (•••)

  The floor rocked beneath Ina’s feet. The station corridor tilted one way and then the other, throwing her into the walls with enough ferocity to rattle her teeth. She burst into the apartment and ran to the bedroom. It stank of urine, feces, and vomit, but it was empty. She began to cry and scream uncontrollably.

  “Dad?” she yelled. There was no response. She looked in the bathroom. He was not there. She went to the study. The light was on above the desk. His surgical implements were scattered about, along with tiny red shards of sanguinite.

  Oh, Dad, no.

  There was a pad of paper beside his surgical tools and she flipped through the pages rapidly. A sketch showed a crude map of the station—the forgotten tunnels and crawl-spaces she herself had once crept down. She stared at the map with the sinking realization that her father’s part in things was not yet done. She began to tremble. Get it together. She forced herself to take a deep breath but still, her body shook. Get it together, damn you. She repeated the deep breaths, one slow inhalation and exhalation after the other, until she felt some semblance of composure return.