“Will. I want you to find a way to sneak into the mines and record what you see there. Anything suspicious or downright ugly.”
“Right away!”
“And I'll try to find out what's happening with these two they just snatched from the bullpen.”
9
Will had gone off and now it was up to me to find a way out of the vent tunnels. I crept along until I found another room which looked empty. With my guns at my side I slowly and as quietly as possible opened up the vent door. It squealed loudly which only jangled my nerves further as I took it off and climbed out. I winced at the noise but there was so much ambient background noise around that it didn't seem to alert anyone. I saw that there was one floor above the room where I'd seen the miners filing through. The place had a rank, fusty smell to the air. This, along with choke-inducing acrid fumes from failing equipment made me want to hold my breath indefinitely.
I crept outside into the adjacent hall and saw a pair security officers at the end of the hall lazily passing by. They are definitely not worried about anyone coming to investigate them. I thought.
The place should have been crawling with security and it would have – if it were operating on Earth. Out here, I'm guessing money changed hands and people kept quiet and turned a blind eye. I lifted my gun close and waited for them to move out of sight. Once they were out of sight I crept down the opposite direction. I was hoping to find an elevator, stair or some sort of lift. At this point my search was random as I had no real idea where I was going, only that I needed to go up. I turned the corner of a door-less hallway and at the end of it I saw some hope; a large old lift, big enough to hold and move large machines between floors with a sign posted: Keep Out!
Ha! Too late for that! I heaved the door up and climbed in.
Inside I saw only a knob for one extra floor up, Floor 3. I pushed this knob and the lift shuttered like a dying beast and then it went up, shuttering and squealing along the way. I raised my arm, ready to blast anyone standing at the doorway when the lift finally stopped and its doors drew open. I was now upon a long, wide parapet with a railing that separated it from the room beneath. Beside me were three other doors, all closed. It wasn't bright but it wasn't exactly dim either. There was a long stairwell reaching to what looked like a huge lab room, as I studied it from above more closely. I descended as quietly as I could, silently cursing myself as my boots made more noise than I'd intended. Still, I hadn't managed to disturb anyone so far. Finally on the ground, I took up my flashlight to examine the place. On my right were mostly what looked like equipment; supplies, lab equipment, tools and machines, old and new. There were towers of boxes piled neatly on top of each other and large stacked crates. I approached one and though I couldn't open it to see what was inside, I rubbed my hands over it until I felt something on its spine. It was sticker paper. I picked at it until it slowly peeled way and I found what I sought underneath: NCO Products. I went to another crate, looking around furtively to make sure no one had come in behind me, and pulled off another sticker. NCO Products, once again. I recalled that obnoxious woman on the delegation the last time I was in Langrenus. I didn't know a lot about the company but what I'd heard from others who used to work there wasn't good. They were worse than Whitney Corp. when it came to how they treated their employees. And then Diamond's recollection of smuggling for this company came to mind. This was bad business. They were shipping most likely illegal drugs and other products to a company that had a hidden mine, a company in the local area that was known in the area for abusing its employees. I cursed myself for sending Will off, for I needed a heavy duty camera or recording device right now.
I looked for my little pin camera and took pictures, peeling off sticker tape and taking pictures of the lab room full of boxes and crates of unopened materials, most with the company name NCO plastered on them under the sticker tape. The boxes were tightly shut so I wasn't able to get inside these and take a look. I took photos of these boxes with the company name NCO on them. Then I looked around these, then wandered down the aisles toward the left side of the room. There was a wide, film slide door that separated it in half. I pulled away the slide door to find holding tanks; lots and lots of holding tanks. With people in them. It stopped me cold. I couldn't quite understand what I was looking at, at first. Many of these people looked dead but as I wandered on, the humans in the tanks looked as if they were in mere stasis but stranger still, the further I wandered the less human they appeared. In fact, as I explored deeper, I saw men and women, specimens I gathered, whose skin glowed. They were illuminated as if they had been bred with deep sea fish or other luminous creatures. Creatures that glowed with the colors of the lights of the moon. Some had appendages such as arms and legs that were neither flesh and bone but what looked like transformed glowing limbs of light. It was as if they were transforming into near ethereal creatures but something had stopped the process. Their eyes were all deeply hollowed, the delicate skin around them ringed with very dark circles and some were missing their eyes entirely. It was the most wondrous and most foul thing I'd ever experienced. I didn't know what to think.
As I wandered further, the specimens took on a more alien, less corporeal, like ethereal fire, I would call it. But the holding tanks of these last more, fiery, looking creatures looked as if their stasis, whatever it was, was drawing to an end. Some had fiery flames and gases of different colors shooting off from their skin, skin that looked diaphanous, translucent. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. What in the black suns is going on here? Off to the left of this section of the room was a doorway. I moved carefully through this doorway only to find more horrors. In this room were more vertical tanks filled with amniotic fluid and with humans, amputated limbs, half decayed or skeletal. There were even animals in different forms of decay. Their mouths were twisted and contorted in impossible, silent, indefinite screams. Oh, how they must have suffered! This looked like a torture chamber where the people, hapless miners, were being used as experiments. But for what? And what were those fiery, colorful beings in stasis? Were they once humans? What had they been transformed into?
“I never even imagined. . .” I came expecting to find corruption and deplorable working conditions. I'd found something entirely different, in addition to deception, corruption and deplorable working conditions. Then my mind went to the two employees forcibly taken from the main room. But there was something else. There were also what looked to me alien skeletons and decomposing alien bodies in some of these tanks as well. A dark emotion washed over me. It reminded me of the alien junkies looking for human bone marrow. Had they come here already? Were humans doing the same thing to aliens here? Who was using them? I shivered to think of the implications. But no, this was different. I took out the pin camera and recorded these ominous things. Suddenly, I saw one of these. . .ethereal and terrifying looking beings move! A woman. Her eyes flew open.
“Don't look her in the eyes! Don't look her in the eyes! Never look her in the eyes!” She cried out in terror. But through the fluid it sounded like strained gurgling. I nearly jumped into my own stomach to hear and see her speak. I could barely make it out and she repeated this about seven times before she fell silent, her face collapsing back into a shapeless, mass of flesh fire again. It was as if I had imagined her screaming. But I was quite sure I hadn't.
In another room, somewhere just beyond the wall I could hear voices. One in particular reminded me of the shrill whine of the mosquito as it was grating, high-pitched and overly animated. Like someone hopped up on a drug of some sort. Or very high-strung. I finally got the were-withal to get out my camera and record some of these things. There was another stair leading to a walkway and into a room above. There was a wall and a door up ahead, with what looked like another series of lab rooms from what I could ascertain from the window in the door. It was starting to dawn on me how large the scope of this thing was, but just what it was, I still didn't know. The current lab room I was standing in felt unusually warm, li
ke a tropical rainforest. I climbed up the stairs, my nerves rattling with every tremor and shake of the rail I clung to. I went down a long, dark hall with a low ceiling and entered the doors at the end, which slid opened right away for me as soon as my shadow alighted upon the door. Beyond this was a darkened room, warm and womb-like. In front of me was a long drape separating it from the rest of the room. Slowly I lifted the heavy velvet curtain away and entered. What I saw was a chamber full of ambient, soft light but not from any specific source. All around the perimeter of the room was a ceiling to floor glass-like aquarium shaped into a huge semi-circle and it was full of some type of fluid. It looked like one of those massive aquariums attached to a river or to the sea. Its currents in the fluid seemed to change colors ever so slightly, from red to orange, blue, violet and white. Like the colors of the lunar lights. The low hum from the room itself was hypnotic. I could feel low vibrations in my feet and even traveling up through my head. It was. . .comforting. In the middle of this room was a chair with cords and large diodes attached to its ends. These cords attached to cruel, mechanical looking contraptions that sprouted out of the ceiling. In that chair, hooked up to all those evil looking diodes,blades, wires and long needles sat what looked like a dead woman. It wasn't the one I saw taken. Her hollow, black eyes simply stared out at nothing, lifeless. Above was a long, large glass tube fitted into the ceiling, full of the same liquid stuff in the room-sized aquarium tank and it ran the length of the ceiling until it met and ran into the tank. What an evil looking contraption. I thought. My hands shaking, I took out my pin camera and started recording everything I saw in the room.
“I see you have come to seek me out.” I thought I heard a soft voice. I glanced around not sure if I really heard anything. Then I stared at the dead woman before me. But it couldn't have been her speaking. I put the camera away quickly.
“Do not worry over the corpse. Her usefulness has come to an end. She was weak, like all human flesh. Come now. You have entered my private chambers, unannounced.” This time I knew I hadn't imagined anything.
“What is. . . it doing here?”
“She was a suit for me to use when I needed to walk among your kind. Nothing more. Suits wear out. They must be discarded. If it bothers you, I will remove it.” Suddenly the floor underneath the chair opened up and it lowered down into a chute, the body was over turned and then the floor opening closed. Just what am I dealing with now? I wondered, horrified at what I just saw.
“Who. . .who are. . . you?” I stammered, looking towards the aquarium ahead of me and to the sides, searching for the villain that had abused and obviously killed this woman.
“I am the Mistress of the Moon. The Mother of Lights.”
“Mother of Lights?” I asked dumbly when I should have been running. I heard a silvery and seductive laugh.
“Yes. And what brings you to my inner sanctum? I have not invited any other humans here, except for those that work for me. Why do you come and who told you of this place?”
“I found it by accident.” I said weakly.
“And I thought we were well hidden. Come closer. I find you . . fascinating.”
“Why?”
“I find all humans fascinating. You are a new species to me.”
“What are you?” I asked, slowly backing out of the room.
“Oh, do not go. It has been so long since I've had proper companionship.”
The creature I was speaking to was invisible at first but slowly within the flowing currents of biological fluid mixed with ribbons of tiny lightening streaks of color it appeared like an inkblot fading in. An ink blot of fire. It was humanoid in form but without leg and feet appendages. Graceful in form it was and it seemed to shift and change shape with the flow of the currents in the liquid. Long tendrils of what looked like hair flared out gracefully like thin waterfalls from its head. If I didn't know better, I'd think I was staring at an ethereal version of a mermaid. But there was what looked like tendrils of flame emanating from its body. And the voice sounded odd and distinctly female. I was mesmerized by it as it swayed lazily in the fluid. The eyes then appeared, golden yellow and white like the sun and they bored into me and a wide generous mouth appeared from the face smiling.
“Who are you?” asked the creature, “I have not seen you before. Are you one of the scientists here, newly hired?”
“Um, yeah. That's it. Recently hired. Actually, a technician.”
“Technician. Come closer. You are not familiar to me, your essence is different, technician,” she said this last word with a certain emphasis that made me very uncomfortable.
“My essence?”
“Your energy. You do not seem like a miner, nor do I know of you as one of my scientists or their assistants.” Oh boy. I stepped gingerly about three steps closer to the tank looking above me as the liquid changed color. I decided that now would be a good time to try and distract this creature. If I ran immediately I probably wouldn't get far.
“I'm a janitor, actually. I keep the place clean around here.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. I was wondering, how do you keep your. . essence in all that fluid? I don't understand.”
“There are many things you would not understand about my genetic makeup, human. I am something higher than you,” she said. Genetic makeup. A chill went down my spine.
“I have never seen you before either, though I was told about you in bits and flashes.”
“Were you now?” The creature sounded amused.
“I was. But. . . you are even more beautiful than I had imagined.” Flattery often works on people. I hoped it would work here too. There was more soft, lilting laughter.
“My wish is that all beings can know what it is like to be like myself. One day they will. For ages I was alone. I am the last of my kind.”
“Where do you come from?”
“From the edges of time itself. From roving about the universe and exploring the stars, countless as they are.” And it struck me from what Sworda told me, this creature, though fluid, looked as if it had been birthed from fire. That ancient race of beings native to Eraut that for some mysterious reason had disappeared. I dared to ask.
“Are you. . .one of the Fiorjah?” Suddenly the whole room brightened as the liquid turned from soft amber to bright yellow and white.
“And what would you know of the Fiorjah?”
“Only that they died out long ago on Eraut. Or so I was told.”
“And who told you this, human?”
“A fellow Erautian. A Suwudi man.”
“The races of Eraut are not my fellows. You seem to know much for a human. You know of the once beautiful Eraut?” I nodded. I heard an audible, heavy sigh before she went on.
“Tell me how you came to know of these things and from whom?”
“An Erautian told me of how his home world is now dying and that his people wandered the stars and eventually settled here, looking to Earth.” I said, feeling shaken as I uttered those words. “I don't know much other than that he was friendly to humans.” She seemed to examine me closely.
“Yes. . .yes. Eraut is dying. Nothing can stop it. All the peoples of Eraut seek a new home. My own people were the first to seek other homes among the stars. I am Fiorjah. The last living one of my race. I finally settled here after finding no one else in all my long travails throughout the universe but the human species. The other races of Eraut no longer worship us as they once did and no longer recognize us as part of their kind. They no longer have any memory of us. That is how long we have been. . .extinct. No matter, we were superior to all Erautians in every way. We were gods to them in ancient times. Before the Dusk came.”
“What happened during the Dusk? What was that?” I blurted out, transfixed by her. The room's temperature became hot suddenly, as if responding in tandem with her mood.
“You question me so casually, as if I were your equal. It is not for you to know such things, human,” she said, fire in her voice. She then softe
ned her voice and the room grew cooler in temperature. “But since you are here, you might as well know why I have come to your system. Even beings like myself become. . .lonely. I have drifted the vast universe, only to find nothing in it like myself, alive, intelligent, sentient with its own will.”
“You mean that Earthlings and Erautians are the only ones in this universe?”
“I speak in hyperbole. The universe is an endless web of galaxies. I have not touched the fingertip of it. But I have traveled enough, far more than your kind could ever do so and I have found nothing as advanced. My planet is finally in its final death stages. I cannot go back there. Its people live in fear and near chaos outside of the great walled cities.”
“What do you mean, chaos?”
“The last time I was there, before the first migration to this system from Eraut, the world had collapsed into chaos outside of its great cities. The great cities of Eraut had become walled in, an energy barrier that locks all undesirables outside of the city. Outside are wastelands and riots and worse. I finally came here and I saw Earth, just as they did so long ago. Nearly as beautiful as Eraut. I came here finding both other Erautians who had traveled here and humans; sentient beings full of culture, curiosity. Such as what you have displayed in coming to me. The perfect specimens.”
“Perfect specimens?”
“For my purpose of reigniting the race of Fiorjah once again in the universe. When the Fiorjah nearly died out, the light of the universe left with them. I am the only one now. Do you know what it is like to be the only one of your kind left anywhere?” She asked and there was a sort of pleading sound in her voice. I had some dim inkling when I was ostracized at work but I suppose it would be an insult to compare that with being the only one of your people left in the universe.
Mission: Lights of Langrenus Page 8
