As the days passed, she learned more about the new man in her life. She discovered that Marcus was an ex-con who specialized in armed robbery and was back to plying his trade. Despite his criminal background (or maybe because of it) she couldn’t stop thinking about this enigma who had entered her life. The love bug had bitten her hard. She knew she would follow him anywhere, do whatever he told her to do…
They became inseparable. He could be vicious, brutal and merciless with others but, between them, she experienced only warmth. Two fragmented souls were drawn into each other’s orbit, only feeling whole when they were together.
It was during these first heady, passionate months that Faith got pregnant. She worried that this new development would upset her new love. Before they could discuss the matter, Marcus lured her into joining him for a robbery. He promised that it would change their lives, a big score they could live off for years to come. His friends had cased a pharmaceutical lab and found a way to breach its security. There was a plan in place that promised no one would get hurt. He had made it sound so easy. With the loot the heist would net them, they could change their lives, build a future, live happily ever after.
However, given her condition, to Faith the idea of wielding a pulse gun and committing a serious crime seemed especially risky. And still she hesitated in telling Marcus about the pregnancy. Instead, she nodded her agreement and indicated that she was ready to experience her first taste of action.
She always regretted holding back the news of the baby. Had Marcus known, maybe he would’ve had a change of heart. Maybe the last 10 years would have turned out differently…
A scream pierced the silence inside the holding cell, interrupting her mental journey into the past. Muffled sounds followed. Faith went white and jumped to her feet. Had the killer struck again?
Faith's gaze shifted to the hologram still clutched in her hand. She switched off the image, pocketed the item and rose from the cot. The distant sizzling of laser guns firing replaced the screams. More screams followed, louder now, taking on a sharper edge.
If the killer popped into her cell, she would be cornered with no place to go. Shit, she had to get out of this death trap. Once again, she silently cursed Harker for locking her up and approached the holding cell’s door. She fought back her fear and found her center, her mind focusing on the problem at hand. She studied the doorway’s electronic control panel with its built-in computer screen. Harker used a security code to lock her inside the cell and she had neither the time nor the skill-set to hack the system and break the code. It was hopeless…
To Faith’s surprise the cell door suddenly opened, revealing the deserted, dark corridor beyond. It was almost as if she were being prompted to leave the cell by an invisible host who wanted her to join the real festivities on the bridge. After a beat of hesitation, Faith took her first cautious step through the doorway. Maybe someone on the command bridge had decided to release her in an act of mercy once the screaming started? Or was someone else pulling the strings? Either way, she couldn’t stay put. Another important lesson she had learned in prison. Inactivity meant you were scared and scared got you shanked.
The holding cell was located at the end of a long corridor that connected to the Orion’s command center. Her best option was to pass through the bridge to reach elevators that could take her to another deck. She sprinted down the eerie passage, her eyes alert, nerves on fire, wishing she had a weapon of some sort.
Less than 30 seconds later, she reached the end of the hallway. She paused to catch her breath. No sounds emanated from behind the door. Realizing she had no other choice, she tapped the door’s control panel and it slid open.
Faith took her first weary step onto the bridge, eyes casting around her surroundings, and froze. She suddenly wished she had never left her holding cell.
***
Angus’ anguished cry resounded over the cargo deck and Harker’s heart thudded in his ears. The wail died down before it resumed once more, the pitch and timbre of the man’s torment now magnified. Harker was paralyzed for a second but the continuous soundtrack of the man’s suffering motivated him to shake off his terror.
He ran deeper into the cargo area. He thumbed his comlink, hoping to reach the bridge, but his efforts were rewarded with hissing static.
Angus cried out again and Harker was able to track it. What the hell was happening to him? These weren’t cries for help but an outpouring of unbridled anguish. Angus was being brutalized. For a moment the gun felt rock steady in Harker’s hand. The shakes were gone, replaced by a burning rage.
Harker spotted the entrance through which Angus had passed a few minutes earlier and stepped into the lab, the shadows swallowing him whole. The instant he set foot in the room, the pain-filled screams stopped. He advanced, eyes taking in the operating tables and sleek lab equipment with growing disbelief. What was this place? What dark purpose could it serve?
He cast his gaze around the lab and quickly located Angus. Or at least what was left of him. The man was still restrained to the operating table by steel bands. Two of his legs had been amputated, just cauterized stumps where the limbs once were.
Before Harker could even process what he was seeing, he spotted six articulated robotic arms that dangled above the hapless colonist like metallic tentacles, part of the table’s operating hub. One of the robotic arms swung toward Angus’ torso and a searing beam of light shot from its tip to laser off his arms in one fell swing. Another tentacle caught the severed limb and disappeared with its gruesome prize into the ceiling of the lab.
The sight of Angus’ mutilated torso was too much to process. Harker stood horror stricken as the man tilted his head to look at him. Eyeing Harker through a cloud of pain, he whispered, “Help me…”
There wasn’t anything in the world Harker would rather do. He took a step toward Angus. The laser-cutter had cauterized the wounds so cleanly that he wasn’t going to bleed out.
A sudden whirr gave Harker pause and his attention turned with dread to the ceiling. A robotic arm was unfurling toward Harker. It swung out and hurled him across the lab. He crumpled to the floor.
Shaking off the impact, he managed to scramble back to his feet just in time to see the robot arms perform a series of precision laser cuts all over Angus’ body. These were thinner, more concentrated beams that didn’t cauterize, the blood blooming from Angus’ new, open wounds.
Before Harker could react, the laser beams were switched off and metallic prongs burst from the tips of the robotic arms, hooking into the loosened folds of Angus’ skin. With brutal precision, the arms pulled the skin off the man in a series of quick moves, flaying him in seconds. A writhing mass of shiny red muscle remained on a blood-soaked surface that had transformed from an operating table into a butcher’s slab. Angus’ terrified eyes stared out of the exposed, glistening meat.
Everything happened so fast that both Harker and Angus were in shock for a second before the full horror of what had just transpired dawned on them. Angus’ lips twisted into a scream when a nozzle above the operating table sprayed him with a gray-blue liquid. With a hiss of sizzling flesh, liquid metal encased his exposed tissue, binding to bone and flesh and forming a second skin.
Between the man’s heaving cries of unimaginable pain, Harker could make out two words: “Kill me.”
Harker’s hand stopped shaking. He brought up the blaster and fired without hesitation. The beam slammed into Angus’ chest, ending the man’s suffering. The screams had been terrible but the silence that followed was far more chilling. Harker was gasping for air, grappling with his own mind-bending terror.
The robotic arms undulated and spun toward Harker…
He felt the blade at the end slash his uniform and draw blood. This finally triggered a reaction. Harker turned and ran for his life.
***
Faith had not stirred since setting foot on the bridge, her body rigid with fear. She was confronted by a landscape of death. Lifeless members of the crew
slumped in chairs, sprawled on the floor. She saw cauterized, scorched flesh wherever she turned, slit throats and blood-spattered computer panels, a tableau from a nightmare.
Faith couldn't help herself; her body started to tremble, an involuntary reaction over which she had no control. She considered herself a pretty tough broad, but this was unlike anything she had ever witnessed before. She understood violence, had always lived with it in one form or another, but the sight before her rattled her to the core. The sudden sound of Harker’s voice cut the silence like a knife, penetrating the horror. “Gilardi, are you there? Talk to me…”
Faith's gaze cleared. She combed the bridge and realized the source of the voice was a dead crewmember’s comlink.
Energized, Faith approached Gilardi’s corpse. There was a deep gash in his throat and his chest was soaked with arterial blood. She crouched down and reached for the comlink. She was doing her best to avoid the blood but her fingers were stained scarlet by the time she managed to pry the com from Gilardi’s wrist.
Her voice felt drained of all emotion, shell-shocked, as she palmed the communicator. “They're dead... They're all dead.”
Harker replied to her hoarse whisper. “Faith, is that you? What are you doing on the bridge? Faith!”
She didn’t respond, her attention drawn to a holo-terminal that had come to life. The computer was playing back a holo-file of a scene recorded earlier on the bridge. Onscreen, Faith was trying to convince a skeptical Harker of her innocence.
“I swear, I had nothing to do with this,“ she said.
“Don’t trust her,” Michelle interjected, her voice laced with burgeoning panic, almost as if she knew she wouldn’t survive beyond the hour.
One more screen lit up. It was another recording taken on the bridge. In the security feed, six colonists were gathered; Faith didn’t recognize any of them. Even though the faces were unfamiliar, the emotions were not. One of the colonists, a rugged black man with long dreads and Ashanti tattoos, barked in a sharp voice that did little to mask his fear, “Where the fuck is the crew?!”
Before Faith could make sense of this latest image, another holo-terminal turned on. And another. Each screen showed a twisted funhouse mirror version of the one preceding it. Each time a crew of colonists shared their growing panic and confusion. The scene repeated itself again and again. They weren’t the first group of colonists to wake from cryo. How long had this been going on aboard the Orion?
Her speculation came to a halt as a door opened to her left. The beat of incoming footfalls grew audible. Her escape route had been cut off! She considered making a go for the door that led back to the holding cell, but quickly realized she would never make it in time. A grim certainty gripped her. Death was coming for her.
“What the hell is happening up there? Talk to me!” Faith killed the comlink, cutting Harker off. Her eyes ticked backed and forth, hoping to find another way of escape but knowing there was none. She was trapped. Panicked, she took in the collection of dead bodies and her pupils dilated with sudden inspiration.
She threw herself to the ground right next to the other bodies. Michelle stared back at her with empty, dead eyes. Faith lacked confidence in her own plan, but what else could she do? Deciding to play dead might turn out to be a fatal mistake, but she was fresh out of options. If the man who was about to step onto the bridge was the same man who’d killed these hapless colonists, and Faith had a feeling he was, he would remember that she wasn’t one of his victims here. But with their mining tech uniforms, they all looked the same. With a bridge full of dead bodies, he might not take note of one more body.
It required all her self-control to stay put as the killer arrived. A pair of leather boots grew visible in her low-angle view of the room. The boots crunched as the massive figure moved around the bridge. They turned back toward Faith. She swallowed her breath, heart and mind racing. Fighting back the urge to flee, she somehow managed to remain motionless.
The killer circled the captain's chair. Moving closer. Faith stared helplessly at approaching death. Her attention shifted from the advancing boots to the bodies and spotted an item that provided a flash of hope: a plasma gun. One of the colonists must have dropped it during the killer’s earlier assault. Should she make a go for the gun? Could she reach it in time?
Faith's body remained primed, ready to spring into action, when she noticed one of the male colonists, she remembered his name being Brian, inching across the floor, trailing blood. Making his way toward Faith. Toward the pulse gun.
So Faith wasn’t the only one playing dead. Even if Brian still had some fight left in him, he wouldn’t last for much longer. His wounds looked serious and he was barely clinging to life. A dead man too stubborn to roll over and perish, deciding instead to fight to the bitter end, was an attitude Faith could respect.
For a moment their eyes met. Brian’s haunted yet determined expression urged Faith to stay put. At the same time, the boots paused. An eternal moment dragged on before they closed in on Faith once more. Who the hell did she think she was fooling? This psycho knew exactly what was happening here. He was merely toying with her, dragging out the inevitable.
Her thoughts received terrifying confirmation as the advancing figure unsheathed a shiver blade that started to vibrate at great speed. Both Brian and Faith knew the game was up. They’d been made. She had to do something. Right now.
React, goddamn it! Brian made a go for the blaster, fingers closing around the gun. He turned toward the killer just as a boot shot out with inhuman speed. It knocked the gun away, crushing his wrist with a bone-breaking snap. The gun clattered on the floor.
Without hesitation, the blade lashed out at Brian’s throat. In and out, a splash of red as shivering steel penetrated soft flesh like butter. The shocked colonist exhaled blood and his eyes glazed. For a brief moment, the murderer's back was turned to Faith. As terrified as she was, Faith knew this would be her last chance. It was now or never!
She jumped to her feet. The killer's head snapped toward Faith and she let out a sharp gasp. Oh, my God! Pink, inhuman eyes that looked like ghastly wounds glared back at her from an albino death mask. A skull shimmered through the translucent skin and Faith could make out a web of arteries and veins feeding blood to a throbbing brain. The killer’s body was humanoid and he wore the uniform of a crewmember, the fabric shredded, hanging in tatters off his gargantuan frame. Milky, see-through skin poked from torn patches of uniform and appeared to be molded from a carapace-like material. As the killer advanced, Faith could see organs pulsating and twitching under the transparent flesh. What the fuck was this thing?
Faith took a step back while the creature kept tracking her. Its powerful limbs flexed with dangerous anticipation. No longer thinking, just reacting, Faith propelled herself through an open doorway and flew down the corridor before her. Legs pistoning at a full sprint, she couldn’t shake the memory of the last chilling detail she had noticed about her attacker. Her eyes had fastened on the nametag on the killer’s bloodstained overalls. It identified him as Succorso, a name Faith remembered from the day she boarded the vessel. The monstrous distortion of flesh that had murdered the crew was the captain of the ship!
CHAPTER SEVEN
FAITH POUNDED DOWN an endless, winding corridor. Her heart raced, legs pumping on their own volition, fueled by raging adrenaline. She reached the elevator at the end of the hallway and stabbed the button on the control panel. Waiting impatiently, she kept braving frantic glances down the corridor, expecting the killer to appear any instant now. Her hands were trembling but she couldn’t make them stop. She tried to shake off the horror, the scene on the bridge replaying again and again in her mind. What had she just experienced? Had the monster been the captain of the Orion? If so, what could trigger such a terrifying transformation?
Humanity had colonized most of the sol system and only recently begun to venture beyond. So far they hadn’t come across any other life forms, intelligent or otherwise. For now humanity
was still alone in the universe unless you chose to believe the authorities were hiding the truth from the world. Faith believed in secrets but put little heed in organized conspiracies. Certain truths could not remain hidden for long, no matter how hard an organization might try to suppress the information. Nevertheless, the killer’s changed biology raised questions and brought forth images of the various holo-flicks she’d seen over the years where hapless space travelers encountered alien parasites that could wreak havoc on their biology.
Stop it! Faith ordered herself. No point in engaging in rampant, counterproductive speculation. Damn it, where was the fucking elevator? To her great relief just then the lift arrived. The doors split open and Harker jumped out, gun leveled.
“Stay right where you are!” he ordered.
“Listen, we don’t have time for this! We need to keep mov…”
Faith paused in mid-sentence. She saw the shock in Harker’s expression and understood its dark significance. She whirled. The creature lurked at the far end of the hallway. He had caught up with them.
Harker brought up his pulse gun. Laser bullets slammed into the killer's chest. He stumbled backward but remained on his feet.
Faith swapped a dire glance with Harker. He was beginning to realize that their attacker was more than human. Pulse rounds pockmarked the walls around them and they retreated into the elevator. The doors hissed shut. Faith punched the down button, selecting one of the lower decks as their destination. The lift hummed and started to descend.
Still reeling, Faith looked at Harker to find the former cop studying her, his exasperated expression questioning. “What the fuck is that thing?”
“I think that thing used to be the captain of the ship.”
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