Titan: A Science Fiction Horror Adventure (NecroVerse Book 3)

by Aaron Bunce

  Manis blanched, his eyes dropping to the sample, its surface bubbling and moving, as if frantic insects squirmed within the dark liquid.

  “In-In-Inside my body?” he stammered, pushing the samples further away from his body.

  “They will not harm you, my dear. If anything, they will only help you, heal you, make you the best possible version of you. Once done, discard the sample containers. If you do, the crew will have no idea that you have them. Do not be afraid, my dear. I am here with you. And once you accept them, there is so much I will be able to show you.”

  Manis licked his dry, cracked lips and looked from Layla’s dark eyes to the samples in his hand, and finally to the door. The people were still out in the hall, their voices muffled but undeniable. At least two people, no three. They were talking, arguing, shouting.

  What were they talking about? They were talking about him and what they should do him? A violent knock answered a heartbeat later, the man’s voice that followed sharp and pointed.

  “We’re coming in. Do you hear me? We’re coming in to make sure you’re okay.” The door panel beeped, the border color shifting from red to green.

  He looked back to the mirror, his brain frozen in painful spiral of indecision.

  “It’s okay, my dear. I will help you,” Layla said. Her arm rose in the reflection, her hand wrapped around his wrist, and in response, his hand grasping the sample lifted towards his face. But nothing was helping him, not that his eyes could see. It was just his arm and the sample dish.

  Manis watched his hand rise towards his face, some power beyond his own control lifting the sample. He didn’t fight it–maybe he wasn’t able to, or, he considered, perhaps some part of him didn’t want to. The sample container kissed his lips, the metal pleasantly warm to the touch.

  Hot liquid dripped into his mouth and over his tongue, a coppery taste sliding down his throat. Manis swallowed and gagged, an effervescent, metallic bouquet rising like hot steam through his sinus cavity. He wasn’t even aware that his hands were moving until the second sample container pressed hard into his mouth.

  The heat passed into his stomach as the door whisked open.

  The captain appeared in the open doorway, the security officer pushing past him and into the room.

  “What in the hell is going on in here? It sounds like…” the security officer growled, stopping in front of Manis. He recoiled and took a step backwards, his nose wrinkling up and eyes immediately darting around the room. Manis followed his gaze to the wrinkled sheets on the floor, the overflowing rubbish bin, and finally to the filthy toilet.

  “It smells like something died in here, like ‘someone’ died in here. Jesus, what have you been doing? And the talking? We could hear you from the passage outside, even in the bridge. Who were you talking to? And why were you screaming?”

  Manis cleared his throat, licking the coppery taste from his lips as the captain strode cautiously forward. The security officer moved aside for the smaller man, his bulk blocking the light from the hallway and throwing Manis into his shadow.

  The samples, Manis thought and immediately fumbled his hands against his body.

  “Mr. Nazzar, I hope you understand our concern. On a company vessel, we must…” the captain started to say, just as the tips of Manis’s fingers found the crease of his hip pocket.

  He eased the hand inside, struggling to not draw attention to the motion. An uncomfortable pinch formed in his guts as he pulled his hand free. It felt like a hunger pang at first, but quickly escalated, until it felt like something was alive and clawing at his insides.

  Something small clattered to the deck by his feet, the captain biting off his words.

  “And what is that?” the captain asked.

  The pain in his guts became a red-hot knife, and then a glowing coal of searing agony. Manis doubled over, his legs spasming uncontrollably, the bloody, metal sample container lying accusatorially between his feet.

  Day 11

  0015 Hours

  Lex pushed up and away as Anna jumped in and cradled Jacoby’s head. She tried to wipe her bloody fingers clean on her jumpsuit, but it was tacky, already drying. The smell filled her nose–blood and sex, but why those two together?

  “What…?” she mumbled, trying to find her voice.

  “Coby? Open your eyes! Can you hear me? What happened to him? What happened?” Anna yelled, her voice rising in desperation and fear.

  “…the fuck happened?” Lex finally managed to finish. She looked up from her blood-stained hands to Jacoby’s arms. She did that. But why? Why did he do that? What happened to him?

  She looked up to the door and spotted the group standing in and around the opening, their eyes filled with more than a little surprise and confusion. Emiko stood in the forefront, partially hidden by Shane’s shadow. Her eyes were locked on her hands. They heard it all, saw her now—Jacoby, the blood. But there was no way for them to understand any of it…the how or the mother f….ng why.

  “Red, I need you to listen to me very carefully,” Poole said, from his perch atop a nearby locker. “We’re going to need Emiko’s expertise now more than ever. She’s freaked out right now, so I need you to quietly bring her to the…”

  “Emiko,” Lex blurted. The nurse’s eyes snapped up to hers. Then, before she could continue, Emiko jumped back, allowing the door to slide shut right in front of her.

  “Seriously, Red? What…in…the…hell’s sweaty jockstrap was that?” Poole groaned and punched himself in the face. “I just literally said ‘she’s freaked out’ and then you go and yell her name. Like what? Running up and wrapping her in a bear hug was too subtle? I…uh. Errr. You just totally channeled Jacoby-style nuance.” Poole punched himself in the face again, then disappeared, and reappeared on the bench to her right.

  “Take care of him,” Lex growled to Anna and jumped around them, slapped the door control panel, and shoved her body through and into the galley.

  Shane and the others scattered as she emerged on the other side, their voices rising in a machinegun-like crescendo.

  “He okay?”

  “What in the hell was that?”

  “Are we all going to die?”

  “Are we safe?”

  “Is he infected?”

  “Are we all going to die?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not…” Lex started to respond, but tripped over her own anger. It was the ‘are we all going to die’ that some idiot decided to repeat over and over again. She didn’t know who asked it, but wanted to grab them by the neck and slap the stupid out of them. Histeria never helped anyone, especially when dealing with potentially life-threatening situations.

  Yes, panic, that’ll help, stupid, she thought, but immediately realized the question wasn’t really so over the top.

  Was he technically infected? She supposed, in a way, he was. Lex paused as one last voice chimed out of the crowd.

  “Maybe they shouldn’t find us. Maybe we should open the airlock to keep everyone else out there safe. Quarantine. The same with those freighters. Keep everyone from Hyde away from people and any infection will die out,” Emiko said.

  Yes.

  “Wait, no,” she said, bumbling in a completely out of character moment. She’d thought yes, but not to what Emiko said. It was the nurse. She heard her say it, saw her mouth move. But she was agreeing with her own assertion of Jacoby being infected.

  And now, so am I. And Anna. And Soraya. And maybe before too long, everyone on this little ship. It felt too big, too comprehensible to make sense of. And for the first time in her adult life, Lex didn’t know if she wanted to continue fighting. To continue trying to find answers.

  Technically, Jacoby was the source of everything that happened to the people on Hyde. But the part of him responsible…Poole, wasn’t an evil thing. It wasn’t some malevolent creature bent on destruction and death. He wasn’t the enemy.

  She spotted Soraya in the crowd, a strange silver glint catching in her left eye. The four o
f them were connected by Poole. And even if they weren’t a risk to the others, would Shane, Lana, and the others see it that way? Would they be able to differentiate between the good and bad side of this outbreak? Was there such a thing? Were they really different from the mutating creatures on the station?

  Shit. This could get bad really quick.

  “Just give me a minute, okay. Just a few minutes,” Lex said and moved past Shane, easing the big man out of the way with a subtle twitch of her elbow. She hooked Soraya by the arm and pulled her around, propelling them both towards the bridge.

  Poole walked on the ceiling, matching their speed, and started pacing back and forth, wringing his hands once they entered.

  “Close the…” Lex said, but the door had already started to slide shut. Soraya held her finger on the panel for several long moments after the pressure door slid shut. Shared thoughts and impulses–they did save on time and breath. But damn, they were weird.

  “Okay, Poole, spill the beans,” Lex said, “and make it quick, we’re on borrowed time with these people. I think they’re reaching their threshold for unexplained, weird shit. We need it all on the table now, so we can get everyone together and on the same page. What happened to Jacoby and how does it affect the rest of us?”

  Poole laughed uncomfortably and dropped from the ceiling. He landed on his feet and immediately started twisting his mustache.

  “Okay. All right. Just so you know, there was no way for it, well, us…me, to know this would happen. Ya know? Uncharted territory for all of us. A brave new frontier, strange new worlds, undiscovered country.”

  Lex had never seen Poole so nonplussed, so erratic before. He looked like her–freaked out.

  “Just spit it out, please,” Soraya cut in, “this blah blah blah is just wasting my goddamn time.” Poole pressed his lips together, his miner’s jumpsuit switching from gray to red. Then he closed his eyes, sucked in a substantial breath, and blew it out. His jumpsuit disappeared, his pinstriped suit immediately appearing in its absence–a beautifully tailored blue with grey lapels and a pristine black tie.

  “I am the physical embodiment of tranquility and Zen. The universe is a sea of nurturing quiet and I am a pedal awash on its forever current,” he said, opening his eyes. “All right. This is not my fault. At least not directly. More like an unintended consequence. You can’t break new ground without stumbling across a few spike-laden pits, right?”

  “Jacoby looked horrible when he came into the showers. And that’s not to say he hasn’t looked bad for a while. He’s squirrely when talking to other people. When I grabbed him to keep him from falling on his face, I was overcome with a…” Lex said, struggling to put the experience into words. It was like waking up from a lucid dream, only to have it go from vivid to vague in a matter of heartbeats. “Hunger. No, that doesn’t do it justice. I felt ravenous, like I’d been starving for so long I forgot how it felt to be satisfied. Every thought, every emotion was tied to it. It was horrible.”

  “When we were down in the engine room, you said it was ‘no big deal’. You laughed it off. This doesn’t feel like a ‘no big deal’ thing, Poole,” Soraya chimed in.

  “Yes. Well, you would. And you are correct. It is like a pretty big deal, evidently. It turns out that I should have taken ole’ Jacky-Boy’s discomfort a little more seriously. Yes, this is me admitting that there is a small chance I was wrong. When he had his run-in with Lana, we saturated his body with complex biomodification microbes…”

  “We’ve already covered that. Move along please,” Soraya said, looking over from the pressure door. She turned and looked back out into the galley, her eyes tracking Shane and the others. They were clustered together, pointing to the showers, then the bridge, and arguing loudly.

  Don’t get stupid, people. Please stay rational, she thought.

  “Thank you, smarty pants. What I was about to say was–those microbes are cluster cells by nature. Globule-packed, protein-based information stores, attached to receptors, and coated with a specially designed latticework of communication cells. The very same ones that have allowed me to network the four of us together. It doesn’t seem possible, let alone plausible, but somehow, the concentration of those unutilized cells actually resulted in an external bioelectrical synaptic connection to form.”

  “Meaning…in English, please,” Lex pressed.

  “In such tight confines, that massive cluster of potential fused together, the electro potential forming a conduit, so to speak.”

  “Conduit? But to what…?” Lex started to ask, but she felt the answer form as she spoke. She met Soraya’s gaze and knew that she’d come to the same realization.

  “Hyde,” they said together.

  Poole nodded, all his usual bravado and bluster gone. He’d never looked more like Jacoby, in fact. Humbled, stripped down, and stressed out.

  “What does that mean? Is he all right? Does this mean he is infected now?” Lex asked.

  “Well, no. He has me and we’ve already safeguarded, hardened your genetic structures against the mutated virus. And yes…the conduit connected him to that wretched, tin can full of hungry guts. And before you ask, yes, Jacky-Boy is okay. When I discovered the connection, I performed an emergency purge of all the active bio-modification microbes in his system. He’ll need time to rest as I work to slowly and safely replace the infrastructure. Think of it like draining the old oil out of the family station wagon. And he’ll need a shower, obviously, but there should be no long-term side effects. At least none we can’t fix with a little R.N.A modification.”

  “So, the hunger I felt, was what those things feel? It’s what drives them?”

  Poole nodded. “And for Jacoby, it was one hundred times more intense. He didn’t just feel it. He saw it–they’re impulse, they’re desire. The connection allowed him a brief glimpse into their collective consciousness. It confirmed what we already knew. The human genome is complex, but humans are driven by several base impulses–collect sustenance, mate, and protect itself. A virus is less an organism itself, and more a contained sack of bio-information. Its purpose is to take over cells and force them to produce more of it. My microbes are designed to latch onto a cell and magnify it’s already established design and potential. In a way, the three came together on Hyde to create a massive, evolving creature driven by an all-consuming need to collect sustenance, protect itself, and reproduce.”

  Lex listened to Poole and stared at her blood-stained fingers. She shuddered as a chill crept down her spine. If she felt the bastardized creature’s hunger, did that mean that the connection allowed them, or it, a glimpse into her head? What did that mean for them moving forward? Would they know where they were headed?

  “Even way out here, we’re not safe? This nightmare just won’t stop.”

  “They’re not going to burst out of someone’s chest or drop down behind you in the hold if that’s what you’re thinking. But this startles even me, let me tell you. This kind of electro-organic connectivity over that distance shouldn’t be possible. Think of it like somehow connecting an old-fashioned Bluetooth headset to your datapoint from opposite sides of the planet. At this point, we should probably throw the word ‘shouldn’t’ out an airlock. We should probably also consider that whatever is growing on that station is still evolving and growing, and the brain-splitting headache Jacoby gave it with his saw was only a minor setback. We shouldn’t just fear it, but what it will eventually become.”

  “What does that mean?” Lex asked.

  “Exactly like it sounds, Red. Fear what we do not know.”

  “It sounds like the plot of a really bad horror movie,” Soraya muttered, and Poole nodded.

  “We need to get somewhere with deep space communications fast and send a warning. First, they need to track down those freighters and put them under strict quarantine. But also, they can’t send anyone to Hyde–emergency ships, Planitex recovery crews. No one. Accept to destroy it. A nuke. Like a really big nuke. Or a bunch of them. Blast i
t to atoms.”

  “That’s my girl, Red. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Good. Now we just have to hope that we can get somewhere, shoot a message out into the black, and have someone receive it and actually listen before something else happens. These people are freaking out, let us sit them down before they do something we don’t like. Scared people are capable of doing some really stupid shit.”

  “Freak out and dump us into an airlock?” Lex finished for her.

  “You lovelies will not like space. It is entirely too cold and airless.”

  “You said we would need Emiko. Is that because she was working with that doctor on Hyde?” Soraya asked.

  “Yes. Out of all the meat sacks on this sealed, tin car, Emiko has the best chances of understanding what is going on and formulating some kind of plan. We need to find an…agreeable way of bringing them all up to speed. Most will naturally shy away from the idea of letting Jacoby copulate with them, especially Emiko. She comes from a very conservative Taiwanese family. Now Lana? She definitely has a party girl vibe about her. I think she might only take a little wining and dining, maybe a one drink minimum. They’re likely to distrust you once they hear the truth, even after everything they saw before. But it cannot be understated that I can inoculate them against this thing. I cannot tell them, for obvious reasons, but that needs to be your sales pitch!” Poole said, spreading his arms and smiling, “plus, they would gain access to the wonder that is me.”

  “Is that really your sales pitch, Poole?” Soraya asked, looking to Lex, “hop aboard the alien sexually transmitted bandwagon to protect yourself from a runaway, killer virus? I’m no marketing genius, but that sucks. You might as well call it the ‘meat-wagon brigade’.”

  “I’m just working with what I’ve got, Turbo. Why don’t you use your silver tongue and increased synaptic response times to convince them it is not just their best route at this point, but truthfully, the only one?”