by Emby Press
“I saw enough of him the first time.”
“Heh,” Schweitzer grinned a cadaverous smile. “Well it’s certainly not pretty Dylan, I’ll give you that.” His long, tapered fingers tapped the sheet. “This body is almost completely devoid of organs. And ah, things have been rearranged internally, arteries and nerve endings fused together in strange configurations.” Schweitzer shook his head. “And this is nothing new either. He must have lived this way for a while. And how he lived, is the greater mystery.”
Ronson considered this for a few seconds. “What about medical records?”
“Checked those before the circus came to town. Everything was normal before he arrived on Aftermath.”
The door opened behind Ronson, Lopez walking in to stand beside him. She looked smug but a little flustered.
“So doc,” Ronson continued, “what I really want to know is, was there an actual murder here?”
“Yes, tell us doctor,” added Lopez.
“Well, Collins is dead, and something removed whatever answered for the insides of his body.” Schweitzer said.
“Cut with a blade, a laser?” Ronson asked.
“Undetermined,” came Schweitzer’s reply.
Ronson looked to the doctor and Lopez. “I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me. Investigating this murder.”
*
The second incident arrived at 2:33 am the next morning. Ronson had been sleeping for just under two hours, the stress of the day having driven him to Sylvia’s room, where alcohol and sex had ensued. He’d returned to his room just after 12:30 am, so when his alarm went off, he felt he’d hardly slept at all.
Sleepy eyed, sluggish, he went to switch off the alarm on the bedside table before realizing the alarm ringing was his personal one. This cleared his head in a hurry, and reaching to the side of the bed he retrieved his pants and grabbed the Security Comm Unit clipped to his belt. It also functioned as a radio, so after flicking the noise off, he brought it to his ear.
“Yeah, Ronson here.”
“Sir this is Aimee Tennyson. I’m on night patrol on Habitat Level D5 and have encountered something. You need to get here ASAP.”
“Can you elaborate?” Ronson asked, struggling into his pants as he spoke.
“I caught someone creeping around this level,” she replied, “followed them to a room, and now all hell is happening on the other side of the door.”
Ronson’s mouth went dry. “Roger that. I’ll be there in five.”
He pulled on his clothes, and for the first time ever at the station, went to the locker at the foot of his bed and retrieved a sidearm. This he loaded and clipped to his belt, then shrugged into his dark blue leather uniform jacket and left his room, heading towards the closest elevator.
His was on Level B8, so he pressed the elevator button to travel four floors down to his destination. Nervous, he thought briefly over the events of the day before, the death, the autopsy and his trip outside. All evidence pointed towards a murder, the message from Tennyson now planting this in concrete.
Since his meeting with his security staff the previous afternoon he’d placed them on twenty-four hour patrol duty. He had also petitioned Lopez for security cameras. She’d said she would check that out with the Company.
The elevator halted at B8 and Ronson departed it in a hurry, turning left down the circular corridor towards Section D. The lighting in the corridor was set low, for nighttime energy saving.
He depressed the implant on his neck, saying, “Aftermath Computer, fully illuminate Sections B, A, D. Security override Ronson Alpha Dash Twelve.” The lights appeared, the shadows dispersed to reveal a white panelled corridor with black tiles underfoot.
Ronson reached and passed an automatic door before entering Section A. As he rushed down the corridor, a lift ahead and to his left opened, a familiar face appearing from inside. It was Vincent Chow, one of his security staff, his uniform unbuttoned and his appearance dishevelled. Ronson guessed the alarm had just awoken him too.
“Sir,” Chow said and joined Ronson.
“Got your sidearm?” Ronson asked, and his companion parted his jacket to reveal the automatic pistol attached to his belt. They reached the doorway to Section D and Ronson slowed, Chow following suit, and as the automatic door slid open he shouted, “Tennyson? We’re here.”
He speeded his gait again and the pair quickly reached a right-hand side intersection. Upon turning into it both men stumbled to a halt, and not because they’d reached their destination.
Blue uniform, long yellow hair in disarray, Tennyson lay flat on her back, unconscious. The door to her right stood open.
“Tend to her,” Ronson ordered, and removing his sidearm stepped carefully towards the open room.
The lights inside were on, brightly illuminating a scene of wrecked furniture, other disarray, and, something Ronson was dreading yet expecting.
Another corpse, this one laid out on its side, eviscerated from throat to crotch.
Another empty shell with the contents missing.
Ronson hoped, no prayed, that Tennyson had some answers for him.
*
Tennyson was comatose, unresponsive, and had remained that way, under Doctor Schweitzer’s care, for five hours after Ronson and Chow first encountered her. Further bad news; the latest casualty had been quickly identified as Dwayne Morris, one of the scientists working under Sylvia in the Exobiology labs.
He broke the news to Sylvia personally, and she took it well, considering. At that point, Lopez had been literally pulling her hair out. This time, Ronson gained no satisfaction from it.
Around noon he finally found himself able to return to his room and fell on his bed fully clothed to get a few hours sleep. Those few hours became seven hours, and when he awoke, he found a message awaiting him on his private security line.
He placed the quietly trilling Comm Device to his ear then pressed numbers on the keypad to retrieve the message.
“Sir, this is Chow,” the voice said. “I’ve gone through Morris’s room with a fine tooth comb, and found a hidden cam.”
Ronson stood straight up from the bed.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” Chow continued, “so I placed it on your desk.”
“Goddammit!” Ronson yelled. The message was timed over two hours earlier. Two hours earlier he could have investigated the camera.
Straightening his uniform, Ronson left his room for his office.
Ten minutes later, he stood facing his desk, examining the computer pads, printed notes and other assorted slush there until a small circular object caught his eye. It lay in a transparent plastic evidence bag, unsealed, and what he retrieved was a portable camera not unlike the web camera attached to his monitor screen.
Why have a hidden cam? he considered, but what station operatives did during their personal time didn’t concern him, as long as no-one got hurt. The latter however, was why he was here. He moved around the desk and seating himself, switched on his computer, and waited the few second for it to boot up.
He said, “Visual interface on,” and removed the camera from the bag, dropping the latter into the wastepaper bin beside his desk. He held the camera before his own web camera and continued, “Scan this object and display latest footage, if any.”
Nothing happened for a few seconds, then an electronic male voice said, “Zeiss H.264 Portable Camera scanned. There are twenty-three time segments, the latest ending today at seventeen hundred hours and thirteen minutes.”
Ronson thought about this, then, “Begin the playback at two A.M.”
A small window appeared between the crammed icons on his desktop. The scene was dark, nothing really visible, so he said, “Fast forward times four.” He watched the timer at the bottom of the window. When it reached two twenty-seven, the lights came on.
Dwayne Morris appeared in the window, thin, middle aged and stooped, dressed only in his underpants and looking sleepy and puzzled. He walked towards the left, to the door to the
corridor, and disappeared for a few seconds only to reappear backing off and rubbing his chin. He looked even more confused, and as another figure stepped into the scene, Ronson saw why.
Sylvia? He couldn’t believe it. Still there she stood, in the jeans and pink top she’d worn during their last encounter, and what the hell was she doing in Morris’s room? A dark feeling of jealousy, then anger touched him, then Morris spoke.
“Er Sylvia. What are you doing here?”
Sylvia smiled, nodded, and said, “We planted the seed.”
What the…? Ronson thought.
Morris said, “What are you talking about? This is very inappropriate.”
“You’re full adapted now,” she said, and raising her left hand revealed a surgical laser cutter. She stalked towards Morris.
Ronson had seen enough; he rushed from his desk and didn’t look back as Morris screamed, leaving his office with his anger replaced by confusion at the total unreality of the situation.
Sylvia? What? How?
Her room stood on the same floor as his office, a few curving corridors away on the opposite side of the station. He had to see her, had to confront her, but not as station security, but as a lover, a friend.
He touched the communicator on his neck, lowered his hand in indecision, then placed it there again, pressing down.
“Sylvia Soska,” he said, the station’s computer patching him through to her location. There was no reply for about twenty seconds, twenty seconds spent running down the corridor towards her room.
“Dylan,” her husky voice said in his ear, “it’s a little late don’t you think?”
He reached the door to Section D.
“I need to speak to you, now Sylvia.”
She didn’t reply, and as he turned left at a corridor intersection then left again, his unease grew alongside his confusion. Just as he reached the turnoff to her room, he saw her leaving it, dressed in yellow pyjamas and a pink house robe.
“Sylvia!” he shouted, and upon seeing his approach, she ran in the opposite direction. He gave chase, but was too distant to catch her as she darted into the elevator to her left. He came to a halt before it and jammed a finger at the button, watched helplessly as the indicator sent it all the way to the roof.
Another elevator, should be… he turned and headed back towards Section A, his fatigue growing as he rushed towards the next elevator. Too many minutes elapsed as he made his way there, time where Sylvia could be doing anything. He reached the elevator panting from the fatigue, and entering it, sent it towards the roof.
His breath returned in the small cylindrical silver space. He stared at metal walls and the numbers on the indicator, trying to keep his thoughts away from what would happen once he faced Sylvia.
The elevator reached its destination quickly, the calm yet claustrophobic quiet replaced by wind and cold and the stink of fetid jungle. Ronson stepped outside with his gun unholstered, leaving the small pyramidical structure the elevator was attached to, to face the large circular landing pad.
Formed from a yellow, rubberised weatherproof material, it stood two hundred feet in diameter and was illuminated brightly by flood lamps along the edges. The sky above was a mucky shade of purple, two green, shadowy moons leering down from between a spatter of stars.
Two shuttles, squat machines painted with black and yellow checks, stood on the pad but he saw no sign of Sylvia. Perhaps she’d doubled back. He stepped onto the pad and the wind buffeted his hair and clothes. There was no sign of her, but it was dark beyond the flood lamps. He shouted her name but the word was swallowed by the wind.
“Dylan.” Her voice appeared from behind him.
He span around, pointed his gun at the shadow beside the elevator. The shadow turned and headed towards the edge of the roof.
“Sylvia,” he said and approached carefully.
She paused at the very edge of the roof and turned to him, smiling.
The wind buffeted her hair. She looked… beautiful.
Ronson snarled. “How many have been infected Sylvia? How did it get to you in the first place?”
She continued to smile, and stare, ignoring his words.
“Am I… am I infected?” he asked, the concept ripping through him like a knife.
I slept with you… spent so much time with you.
It took extreme effort not to shake as he pointed the gun at her, this scene, this termination of his investigations, dreamlike and disturbing in its terrible absurdity.
“What you call infection, we call evolution, Dylan. It’s all about the evolution of a higher form.” She raised her arms and spread them out, Ronson growing afraid she might topple over the edge of the landing pad.
“Don’t.” Don’t what, he asked himself. Don’t jump, don’t make me shoot you, don’t be the one who committed those crimes? “Just don’t move. Come away from there and let’s talk about this.”
Sylvia smiled again, sadly this time. “You just don’t get it do you? I brought you here, away from the others, for a reason.”
He was almost too afraid to ask. “What… what reason Sylvia?”
“Evolution,” Sylvia said again, and burst.
Ronson backed off, covering his face, but the explosion from Sylvia’s chest was completely dry. Between his fingers and gun, he saw an alien, fleshy thing flop from her gaping chest, past her tattered clothing and ripped skin. He saw raw fleshy insides, cracked ribs and a gleaming white vertebra, before the abomination absorbed his gaze. A ball of dark, twisted flesh, it was spotted with tube like appendages that sucked and gasped as it rolled forward.
Sylvia, now a slack-jawed, empty shell, collapsed in on her gaping chest, falling backwards from the landing pad. Ronson reached out even as she fell, even as that miscegenation of life rolled towards him. He screamed, a raw animal sound of panic that filled the air as he aimed his gun at the approaching horror.
His finger pressed the trigger, but gentle voices filled his head, a wave of warmth making him lower the gun and release his finger.
The creature paused mere inches from his feet.
Help us evolve, its pleasant, psychic voice said as it pumped and swelled at his feet. A flap opened near its apex, rolling back to reveal a throat like maw and a tongue holding a tiny, embryonic form.
Ronson went to his knees, and accepted the offering.
THE STAIN
Damir Salkovic
When I’d last seen Allan Tremaine, he was embarking on a long tour of Europe, as was then the custom of idle young men of means. For a time his adventures on the Old Continent supplied copy for the yellow press: there was mention of a scandalous love affair with the wife of a British Peer in London, lurid tales of riotous orgies that had both outraged and delighted the high society circles of Paris, sightings in the company of swarthy, armed rebels in the Caucasus mountains. Then nothing, as the sensational press found other debauchery to feast upon.
Nine years had elapsed since, and during that time not a word had reached me of the heir to the Tremaine fortune. Yet our friendship was a bond sealed many years ago, in childhood, and when the unexpected invitation came to visit him I did not hesitate to accept it.
On a bright, crisp autumn morning I found myself in the smoke-filled compartment of a passenger train bound for Providence, watching the somnolent New England countryside turn from green to russet and gold.
A short cab ride through the wide streets and decayed squares of that strange, silent town, past rows of weathered pastel-colored abodes, brought me to the steps of the handsome Georgian mansion on College Hill, the ancestral home of the New England Tremaines for close to three hundred years. Allan greeted me at the door himself. Time had wrought its changes upon my old friend: his dark, lustrous curls were thinner at the front than I recalled, his face bore the marks of overindulgence and dissipation, and the expert fit of his trousers and waistcoat did little to conceal the stodgy fleshiness of middle age. But the smile and the devil-may-care look in his eyes belonged to the Tr
emaine I knew, and he still carried himself with an air of rakish charm, undimmed by the years.
My host seemed genuinely pleased to see me, and regaled me with many stories of his travels abroad. Hours passed like minutes as he described to me the stark, barren landscapes of Central Asia, the mystical reaches of the Far East and the grim ruins of forgotten empires in the black jungles of the Amazon, haunted by mysteries far older than man. Before I knew it, night had descended over the crooked rooftops and tall church-spires of the town below. We sat in Tremaine’s oak-paneled study, brandy glasses in hand and logs crackling in the ornate fireplace, each lost to his own reveries.
“I don’t suppose,” Allan said, leaning back in his chair and watching the flickering firelight dance in the amber depths of his glass, “that you’ve heard of the recent death of my uncle, Charles Atworth.”
I nodded, vaguely recalling an obituary in a regional paper. Charles Atworth had been a scholar and wealthy eccentric, well known for his contributions to the field of anthropology; several of his volumes repose on the shelves of my home library. “But I didn’t know you were related.”
“On my mother’s side.” He gave a wry smile. “Between the Tremaines and the Wards, there are few New England families to whom I’m not in some way related. Anyway, the old boy is dead, and I’m the sole heir to his estate. He had never married or had children. I was the closest thing he had for a grandson, I suppose.”
There was a telling glow in his eye; I began to suspect the renewal of our acquaintance had not been accidental. “As a matter of fact, Singleton, that’s what I wanted to speak to you about. The estate has something of a history. Bad history.” He assumed his most confidential mien. “Uncle Charles was found dead in his library. The police found no evidence of foul play, and the coroner decreed that his death was due to natural causes. He was an old man, and there was no trace of injury or poison.”
“Yet you have your doubts.” There was something he was keeping from me; I could tell by the way his gaze drifted into the dark corners of the room, as if half expecting something to emerge from the shadows.
