Furnace

by Joseph Williams

  “DEEBAK SCHEN TSCHARIA,” he said, then drew back and hawked another thick, black string of phlegm into my eyes.

  The burn forced my eyelids shut, which only made things worse. The acidic spit was trapped now and slathered itself over my eyeballs like a living thing. It probably was.

  “OPEN YOUR EYES,” the creature commanded.

  I blinked involuntarily, more because I was startled that I suddenly understood him than I wanted to obey his orders. Three and a half years in the fleet plus the academy have made obedience a knee-jerk reaction for me on most occasions, but I’ve also learned resistance. I don’t cave easily under pressure, no matter what conclusions you may draw from Furnace. Considering it was the worst of all worst-case-scenarios, I’m hoping you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt.

  Once the burn of the Watchman’s saliva began to recede, I took a deep breath and drank in the world around me. I couldn’t gulp it all down in one swallow, though. It was the psychological equivalent of having the whole Pacific Ocean dropped on me at once and trying to catch it between my lips. My mind was drowned by incomprehension. I felt my brain swell until I thought my skull was about to burst, and then everything came into focus again. That didn’t mean there was much clarity as to what I was seeing, but my perception had at least been altered to the point where my surroundings were more than just a blinding white curtain with a migraine buzz in the background.

  Out of all the crazy shit I saw on Furnace, this was the only instance in which I’m thoroughly convinced I hallucinated, although maybe ‘hallucinated’ isn’t the right term, either. It was a message specifically targeted at my brain by the Watchman, so I guess it was more of a vision than anything. He dug into my head and left me all kinds of ugly surprises and trap-doors, some of which I suspect were implanted so he could access them at a later date. I find more of them every day. Sound paranoid? Maybe to you, but you weren’t there. You didn’t feel his burning hands against your temples. You didn’t feel the sudden, violent teleportation into a nightmare world created specifically for you.

  “Wherever you go,” a voice whispered beside me. “I’ll find you.”

  Objects began to fill in around me and I realized I was kneeling in the prison cell where the Kalak had once tortured me within an inch of death. I wasn’t strapped to the oversized bed where I’d spent several weeks without moving, but I could feel the sting of a recent interrogation session from my throat to my hips. The Kalak are big on using vipers from their native rainforests whenever they want to make someone bleed without killing them. The bites hurt like hell but centuries of exposure to radiation has diluted their venom just enough to be non-fatal to human physiology, making them valuable assets in interrogation.

  By the familiar, pulsing burns beneath my combat-suit, I could tell it had been less than an hour since I’d had a visit from the goon squad. Probably General Kraat had overseen the session himself. He was the worst of the overgrown lizards who’d somehow managed to sweep a dozen human colonies right out from under fleet protection. If it had been less than an hour, that usually meant I had at least three hours before they settled on a more succinct method for information extraction than the vipers. Not a lot of time, but plenty to get my head together.

  I was just glad to be off of Furnace, even for a few moments and even when it meant being dropped into another shitty situation.

  Am I really here, though? I wondered. Has the last year and a half been a dream? A new method of torture the Kalak have devised to watch us suffer? Some way to study human psychology?

  I considered the idea as carefully as my fragile mental state would allow, but eventually decided it was impossible. The Kalak were fearsome warriors and they loved developing new ways to inflict pain, but they weren’t exactly experts in holographic projection. They were color-blind, for one thing, and I was confident that particular handicap would manifest in some way with any virtual world they built. Maybe that’s naïve, since it assumes that no human would ever consider aiding the enemy for a price or to protest the Crown government, but I fail to see the point of such an involved deception. I’m not a general. I’m not a commander. I have no real secrets their spies couldn’t uncover on their own.

  The alternative, of course, was that my body still was on Furnace and the Watchman had isolated this particular near-memory for a reason. Why? I’m still not sure. Being a POW for weeks on a Kalak station was traumatizing, no doubt, but no more remarkable than being on Furnace or in the trenches of most other operations I’d run in the infantry. Maybe it was the connection of torture alone, which seemed to be a sweet spot for the demons in and around the city. The Watchman could have searched for a specific brand of agony when he tapped into my neural synapses and decided that my POW days was the best place to lay anchor. It would have been natural and recognizable for him, I guess.

  Either way, I knew I was in deep shit. Even if the Watchman had locked my consciousness in a memory while my body remained on Furnace, it still meant I would likely miss my window for escape and survival. I had to figure out a way to break free quickly or else either the Hummel would leave without me or a wandering demon would swoop in and devour me while I knelt motionless before the cathedral steps.

  And how do you plan on breaking out of this?

  I scanned the cell for any obvious escape routes, but as I’d verified about thirteen thousand times during my captivity, there was no such salvation hidden along the sterile, steel walls. For a moment, I’d held out hope that the walls themselves were an illusion and if I reached out with my hand I’d discover they were nothing but air. That wasn’t the case, however, and I jammed my thumb testing the theory. You’d think I would have been numb to such minor injuries by then, but I spent the next thirty seconds or so shaking my hand vigorously.

  If he didn’t want you to escape, why wouldn’t he have just killed you? Why the theatrics?

  On cue, the voice of the clown demon drifted out from the vents in a puff of white smoke. “You will be my vessel,” he hissed.

  I rose groggily to my feet and backed away from the fumes. Hearing his voice wasn’t exactly comforting, but it confirmed to my satisfaction that the intent was not for me to die in the Kalak prison. At the very least, he had something to show me, and I didn’t think it was the close walls of the cell or the surveillance pod mounted high above the door. There was still a chance that he was toying with me—in fact, there was a damned good probability of it—but the prospect of invincibility, or really just a safety net, helped convince me to get moving. What did I have to lose? If a Kalak guard gunned me down for attempting escape, so be it. For all I knew, the trick to breaking through the nightmare was simply having the courage to open the door and step into the hallway.

  Only one way to find out.

  It took all of one step to realize that every single injury I’d accumulated on Furnace had made the jump with me, which made me wonder if I’d miscalculated the amount of time since my last interrogation and whether or not the vipers had been used at all.

  Doesn’t matter, I decided. At least I can move.

  Before pain could convince me otherwise, I limped across the room and waved my hand in front of the door controls. If I’d had Kalak blood, the reinforced steel would have gasped open and I would have been home free (more or less). I didn’t, of course, and even in this distant memory conjured by the Watchman, I couldn’t override the lizards’ security protocols simply by willing the door open.

  “Great,” I muttered, surprised at the sound of my own voice. Now that the physical world had filled in around me, I was startled by how concrete everything seemed. Just like when I’d awoken beneath the bone chandelier in the clown demon’s city hideaway. And just like when I’d barely eluded the clown thing’s grasp and wound up in the wastelands, I was hoping for a miracle.

  I scanned the room frantically. My combat-instincts wanted me to keep moving, like I knew deep down the horrors that would follow, but it was no use. The Watchman had brought me ba
ck there for a reason and he meant to see his plan to fruition before I found a way out. I’m convinced that even if I’d somehow managed to break free of my cell and stagger into the main corridor, I wouldn’t have gotten far. Either the universe beyond the four walls of my cell would have been completely blank or there would have been an entire platoon of Kalak runners waiting to put me down. Maybe not kill me, but beat me well enough to be sure I wouldn’t attempt escape again without some very serious soul-searching. They’d done it to me before and it had worked well enough. For a while, anyway.

  I turned back to the oversized bed (which had been converted from a Kalak medical gurney into a crude vehicle for torture and restraint) determined to utilize my lone asset for a grand—and so far undetermined—escape plan. I didn’t get far before I heard the clack of boots echoing through the outer corridor. It was a safe bet they were coming for me, whoever ‘they’ were.

  I reached for the SX pistol but there was nothing in the holster and the rest of my utility belt was still missing. I should have expected as much, but my brain was still overloaded with conflicting information. I was a little slower on the uptake with some things than others.

  “Here I come,” a high-pitched voice mocked me from the hallway. Laughter echoed down the long corridor, pinging off each girder and doorway along the way.

  Who the hell was that? I wondered.

  It definitely wasn’t the voice of a Kalak or any demon I’d encountered on Furnace so far. Worst of all, it sounded vaguely familiar. Human. Female. The longer I thought it over, the more certain I was that I knew the voice.

  Mom?

  “I’ve got a present for you,” she giggled.

  I backed away with my eyes wide, too stunned to position myself for a quick bolt as soon as the door opened and the corridor was exposed. I was trapped in indecision. Did I attack right away based on the assumption that it couldn’t really be my mother, risking that it somehow was and I would be inflicting some measure of physical or psychological damage across trillions of light years?

  I didn’t decide fast enough. The door slid open and suddenly I was staring up at the most absurd manifestation of my mother I could ever have imagined. Stranger, even, than the sight of her severed head bouncing over the dusty surface of Furnace like a tumbleweed. The body before me was that of a heavy Kalak runner: one of the biggest and strongest among their ranks. It had the same greenish-yellow scales, broad shoulders, and massive hands gripping one of their infamously bulky assault rifles, but the creature’s head narrowed into my mother’s twisted visage beyond the black and gray hood. She was grinning wide at me and waving the barrel of the assault rifle back and forth, but her teeth were stained black just like the clown demon’s and black roots of infection stood out in the veins across her face.

  “My boy,” she cackled. A long glob of black drool dripped from the edge of her mouth and burned a hole in the steel floor. “It hurts me to see you like this.”

  Another figure stepped through the doorway. This time, it was the woman from Europa. The navigator who’d explained the new jump theories from Sol Facility.

  I was more fundamentally shaken by her sudden appearance than my mother’s, likely because I’d already seen my mother’s head on the surface and she’d been lurking in the back of my mind ever since. The navigator was so far out of left field for me that it took a moment to realize it was her, although part of that could have been because, like my mother, her form was nearly unrecognizable. Her skin was charcoal black like the Watchmen, except hers looked like it had been burned rather than born. Long, flapping gills lined her ribcage before merging with an open wound on her back where an ugly red creature nested and growled at me.

  I whispered her name in horror, still unsure whether or not it was truly her since only the eyes seemed to match the woman I’d loved.

  “You’ve been out at sea too long, Mikey,” my mother hissed. She took another step toward me and I carefully maneuvered to the other side of the room. It brought me within swiping distance of the burned fish-creature, but since it hadn’t addressed me yet and was less physically imposing, I considered it the lesser of two evils.

  My mother wasn’t deterred. “It’s time to come home,” she said.

  I almost believed the pain in her voice. She reached out to me with her left hand, tucking the assault rifle to her hip with the right.

  “No,” I said firmly. I was still too shocked to bolt for the door, but I was getting my head about me again and calculating the odds that I could dart through both of them with my heavy limp.

  “It’s not up to you,” the charred fish navigator told me. “We’re taking you home.”

  Both of them moved toward me at once. The red creature hovering over the navigator’s shoulder growled again and flashed its pointed, yellow teeth.

  “You’ve been gone too long, Mikey,” my mother opined. “We all miss you so much. Your father’s inconsolable. You’ve never even met your niece!”

  “I miss you,” the navigator whispered. “I dream about you every night.”

  I shook my head slowly, trying not to gag at the smell wafting from her as the creature nesting in her back shifted within the open wound. My mother’s face twisted into deeper rage with each step I took away from her.

  “COME HERE!’ she suddenly screeched.

  I lunged out of her reach and slammed back into the side of the Kalak torture-bed. The impact made me cry out but falling also helped me narrowly avoid the nails of the creature on the navigator’s back. It also put me between the two of them, which afforded me a new opportunity. I didn’t hesitate. With all the force I could muster, I locked my left leg around my mother’s ankle and swept my right along the ground. She fell to the floor hard enough that I heard bones crack somewhere in her upper body, but she was already getting to her feet by the time I released and drove my shoulder into the navigator’s midsection. I pushed her just far enough out of the way that I could slip through the door without either of them catching me, then punched the controls as hard as I could and watched them slide away.

  “BOY!” my mutant mother screamed as she rushed for the door.

  She hit the steel just as it slid completely closed. Hard enough to make me flinch a few steps into the large hallway before my knees caught me.

  “Mike!” the navigator pleaded. I could hear the red creature clawing at the door and pictured its nails snapping off from the pressure. The pain wouldn’t have stopped it, of course. If anything, it would only have made it angrier. I didn’t plan on sticking around to find out.

  Feeling a swell of panic materialize in my chest (a sensation which had been blessedly absent in the prison cell), I swung around to start my escape and ran head-first into the chest of the hooded Watchman.

  The impact sent me reeling. I could feel the thin veil of reality stretching again, this time so far that my mind was momentarily blinded by the realized depth of my ignorance, and then I tripped over the cathedral steps and the world came back into focus.

  I was back where I’d started, at least in terms of the Watchman. I guess the cold marble should have been comforting since it meant I’d somehow wrenched myself free of the demon’s control, but the shock of seeing both my mother and the navigator twisted into monsters suddenly crashed into me like a rogue wave.

  No, I told myself. You don’t have time for that now. Fight it.

  I was distantly aware of the red-masked demon crouching over me inquisitively and extending his right hand, presumably to grind more poison into my eye, but I wasn’t about to give him the chance. I threw my fist forward into the center of his mask, and when my knuckles immediately screamed with agony, I drew back and hit him again. He didn’t fall—not completely—but the force knocked him on his heels and gave me room to regain my footing.

  “No!” I roared.

  I became a cyclone of wild blows from both fists and feet. Most landed but many were also glancing. Blood from my stripped knuckles shot over my venom-ravaged cheeks, but
for once, the pain only spurred me on. I was becoming one of them, I thought. Using the pain to lash out. Maybe that’s what the demons wanted all along. To change me into a creature that fed off of pain like them. The more I think about it these days, the more I’m convinced that they care more about turning the things you love against you. Making you question every aspect of your life. Bringing evil into every innocent relationship you’ve left behind, so that if you ever return to them, you do so with the weighted cynicism of memory. You’ve seen what Hell looks like, and you’ve seen how things that seem innocent and comfortable can be warped into your most terrifying nightmare.

  I wasn’t going to let the Watchman kill me, if only because he was the one who’d put those thoughts in my head. He’s the reason I know what my mother would look like if her genes were spliced with a Kalak runner.

  I punched and kicked until he lay motionless on the dusty street, and then I pulled the SX pistol, knelt on his chest, and blew a hole through his temple. He didn’t resist at all, and I didn’t feel any better after re-holstering the SX and staggering to my feet. I guess I knew even then that he’d gotten what he came for and had known the consequences for a job well done.

  Once I’d gathered my breath, I turned back to the cathedral and continued on without looking back.

  TSCHARIA

  The marble cathedral steps were worn from frequent use, which seemed out of place considering the environment. Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe the demons had stolen the building from another species they’d tortured and killed. In any event, it was more plausible than any of those demonic assholes frequenting a house of worship, no matter what indecencies the so-called ‘religion’ practiced. It was too much order for creatures like them. Too specific, if that makes sense. And though they occasionally displayed some group-think and general cooperation with each other, they didn’t strike me as the type to conform beneath one banner.