Unleashed: A Science Fiction Horror Adventure (NecroVerse Book 1)

by Aaron Bunce

  Anna smiled, a little bit of the ice melting in her gaze. Then she shook her head, “No…I’m not scheduled today or tomorrow.”

  A small hint of Jacoby’s tension melted away when she didn’t flinch or pull away from his touch, but she didn’t go out of her way to make it easier either. He moved forward, Anna sliding out of his way.

  * * * *

  Janice clicked her gum, her lip freezing in the typical “you are shit” sneer she reserved for people that fell short of expectation. He’d seen that look a lot. God she’s a bitch.

  “Sat in my office for fifteen minutes waiting for you…got the crud floating around station. I feel like hell, and what am I doing?” she quipped, before pulling a tissue out of her pocket and blowing her nose. The always-pronounced wrinkles around her mouth, the crow’s feet taking flight from the corners of her eyes, and her sunken cheeks were even more pronounced than usual.

  “I don’t know,” Jacoby responded, quietly.

  “…waiting on you,” she growled, irritably, “then had to take three elevators and walk all the way up here to D ring, just to stand outside your room for another fifteen minutes. More waiting, Jacoby. That’s thirty minutes of my life I’m neva getting back, Jack. Jack…Jack…Jack,” Janice snapped, turning and traipsing stiffly down the hall.

  He followed, his stomach turning sour.

  “Incident follow-ups every morning, first thing…always, always, always, unless you’re crippled or maimed beyond saving. Reminder went out to your PDP. Ain’t my trouble if you choose not to read it, or you broke that, too,” Janice snapped, when he didn’t respond.

  Jacoby hated it when she called him Jack, and even more when she intentionally rhymed his name into a sentence. Thankfully, their walk to the elevator passed in silence. He fumbled in his pocked for his data point, but it wasn’t there. He didn’t remember the last time he’d seen it, actually.

  The elevator hummed quietly as it plummeted down the gravity tube. His stomach did a little jig and gurgled loudly. Janice mumbled something snarky.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  She turned, smacking her gum, but intentionally looked away, in the “you’re not good enough to look at, right now” manner that drove him crazy.

  “Didn’t say nothing!”

  Painted hair, nails, and lips, to cover the cracked and rotting flesh beneath, the voice said again, but it wasn’t Janice. He could see her face and her lips didn’t move.

  Jacoby reached up and rubbed his temples, the start of a headache just then forming. They walked out and onto the curving path of D ring’s lowest level, until Janice stopped at the massive transit elevators. They long ride to the production hub passed quietly, the length of the station zipping along around them.

  The elevator chimed loudly as it reached its final destination, the doors opening to the familiar noise wash of the production station. He followed Janice through pre-production, past racks of cavitation chisels, laser bores, and hydraulic ratchets. Runner drones hummed by, pushing gravity carts full of ore en-route to processing for enrichment. Just another day cracking space rocks, only he wasn’t a part of it.

  Everything was stained with grease and rock dust, the familiar patina and oily smell an odd comfort. He looked down at his hands, the cracks and swirls on his skin stained with the same patina. This station, the ore they mined, and the rocks floating in the nearby belt were a part of him, and he them. No one could take that away – not Janice, not Anna’s parents. No one.

  Half of the overhead lights were still dark, leaving the space between banks and the corners in heavy shadow. The darkness was comforting. Jacoby spotted Mike at his locker, his coveralls pulled half on. He mouthed “what the f…?” but turned back to his locker as Janice noticed. He’d tell him later…if he had a later, or maybe not…not after his comments about Anna. Yuri joked that Janice likely ate her young, so Jacoby didn’t feel confident in his future.

  Janice turned into the conference room, pausing to drag her glossy fingernails down Shane, the foreman’s, arm. He turned and flashed her a stiff smile, before they all filed into the room. Jacoby waited for Janice and Shane to sit, before sliding into the lone chair on the opposite side. He instantly felt like a child, sent to the principal’s office for punishment, and shrunk a little deeper into the chair.

  “Coffee?” Shane asked, looking to both Janice and Jacoby.

  “Just water, please,” he said.

  Jacoby liked Shane. He was former military, soft spoken, but fair with everyone – the makings of a good boss.

  “Yeah, sweetie! I like it black,” Janice said, tickling Shane’s arm with her fingernails again. Then as he left, she looked at Jacoby, her smile dying, and said, “We’ll get started.

  Shuffling papers, Janice smashed her bony rear deeper into the chair, as if trying to grind a softer spot into the seat with her pelvis. Try a pillow, skeleton queen, he thought, irritably.

  We could soften the old bones for her, the soft voice said again, and Jacoby shifted uncomfortably in his chair. An electric tingle shot down into his arms a moment later, his fingers convulsing against the armrests.

  “The union requires that I notify you that this follow-up is strictly administrative, and you will be paid the normal non-duty pay for this time. Me, personally, I think it’s a crock of shit. But I’ve got to say it, so there,” she said, spitting the words as she lined up the forms neatly before her.

  Shane returned, dropping a bottle of purified water before Jacoby, and a stained coffee mug before Janice. He slid into the seat, carefully, but subtly, sliding over to give himself some extra room.

  “The form is simple, by the numbers… I’ve already filled out most of the information, so you just need to listen and at the end, sign. No talking. First, you disregarded a void warning prior to rock processing. The logs were pulled, and we confirmed that you deleted the warning and manually triggered processing. The company considers any tampering with warnings or logs an automatic write up and six month probation. Second, you fused your plasma saw…which I shouldn’t have to tell you is an incredibly expensive piece of hardware. The saw is a total loss,” Janice paused, wiping a bit of smudged mascara from beneath her eye and letting her palm fall with a loud slap onto the table. “I’d can your worthless ass for those two alone, but as Shane here reminded me, the union has precedent, as you requested medical treatment afterwards I cannot fire you. We’re also running short on qualified rock crackers, so Planitex has been ordered to issue leniency,” she said, spitting the word.

  Worthless is words, air, expelled with no value. False face and bloated words, the voice whispered, accompanied by a loud ringing in his ears.

  He looked to Shane and then turned around in his chair, but there was no one else in the room. Who or what was he hearing? Jacoby inserted a finger into his ear and wiggled it around violently, but the noise didn’t relent. When he turned back, Janice was watching him, her gum hanging over her lip in a failed bubble. She wrinkled up her face in disgust and proceeded to blow her nose messily into a tissue.

  And I’m disgusting? the ringing returned, and he wiggled his finger in the other ear.

  “Is everything okay? Are we good to proceed? Or, do you need a moment to pick your nose, too?” she asked, her voice dripping with false sincerity.

  Jacoby flushed warm and promptly sat on his hands. “Doc said I probably picked up the bug making its way around station. Said it would be a few days before I was better,” he responded, avoiding her gaze.

  “Yes, ill,” she said. “That brings me to the next portion…drugs and alcohol. Due to some…personal concerns, the company is hereby proceeding with a standard incident blood screening, and has already taken action to remove you from any production work until results are returned. ”

  “Drugs? I wasn’t on drugs,” Jacoby argued, looking to Shane.

  The foreman immediately held up his hands, “Jacoby, it’s not our call. The company has the right to request screens on any post incide
nt.”

  Jacoby’s insides wound up into a tight ball, his anger threatening to burst forth. He knew several workers who had incidents on the production floor, one even that month, but not a single one had been forced into a review, or worse, wait on a toxicology screen – they just went back to work.

  “That’s bullshit,” he grumbled, “Dan Seevers crushed a cradle because he didn’t set the mooring legs correctly. He didn’t miss any time. Bob Harskens ran his plasma saw out of high temp synthetic lubricant and burned it to slag. Did he miss any time? Gerhold Driver dropped a two ton hunk of rock on his workstation, and he didn’t…”

  “Jacoby, we’re just following the company’s directive,” Shane argued, cutting him off, but Janice silenced him with a hand to the shoulder, her crooked smile firmly in place.

  “I met quota every month last year…even doubled it two months running. I finished top five in production three out of four quarters, but since I signed my new contract all I get is crap, junk rock with no trace or valuable minerals, while other guys get cherry ‘stroids full of palladium, tungsten, and tritium. I can’t make bonus anymore. This is a load of crap. Give me something to work with, not this worthless…” Jacoby said, his voice quickly rising, but he mastered his temper just in time. “I just need a break. I’m sick, and got overheated. I got too hot and blacked out. It won’t happen again.”

  He knew it wasn’t just that. It was the drinking, the stress coming from working six out of every seven days, and all his fuck up’s in between. Damn, he should have told Anna about the contract.

  Janice’s painted nails tapped a quiet cadence against the table, her lips pulling into a smug smile. She had him right where she wanted him, at her mercy, and he knew it.

  “Jacoby, you know pre-processing is automated and doesn’t play favorites. The contract you signed states that we, as the company, have the right to request a post incident. You have the right to deny, but that is the same as a positive test, and results in instant contract termination. Is that what you are doing? Because I would love to…” Janice said, but Jacoby wasn’t listening, he was too distracted by the ringing in his ears and the rising anger that he couldn’t quite suppress. His knuckles had gone white around the armrests.

  “Can I talk to you outside for a moment?” Shane interrupted, and abruptly the two pushed their chairs back and disappeared out into the hall.

  Jacoby sat, his fingernails tap-tap-tapping a cadence against the table. He didn’t consciously do it, but his hands needed something to do. The fluorescent light bank flickered overhead, the ballast buzzing in time with the ringing in his ears. His fingernails dug into the table, the urge to gouge the thin veneer off the cheap furniture abrupt and almost undeniable. Shane and Janice’s muffled voices echoed in from the hall, their words unintelligible and hollow – more white noise to grate against him.

  They conspire. Peel, peel, peel away the false faces. The truth lies beneath, the voice urged, strangely fixating on the cheap table, as if it was Janice, the source of his troubles.

  “Who said that?” he asked, but there came no response, save the buzzing of the cheap overhead light.

  His gaze snapped up - first to his water bottle and then to Janice’s cup of coffee. He looked to the door, and grabbed the cup, but the hot liquid slopped over the side and onto his hand, dribbling down onto his pants. The pain snapped him to clarity, the red haze of anger fading away. Suddenly, he didn’t want to throw the scalding coffee in Janice’s face when she reemerged. That would get him more than fired, but perhaps detained for assault and thrown in a station security cell. He’d find himself stuffed on an ore transport back to Earth and God knows what else.

  Anna would have to leave, too. Her parents would be vindicated, and she would run home to what’s his face Kopecky, his well-appointed condo in the Cloud Towers, and his private shuttle. Their friendship would fail just like her mom predicted.

  Jacoby lifted the coffee and licked the rim, running his tongue all the way around the cracked mug, and quickly set it down in its previous spot. Enjoy that, old prune, he thought, wiping the spilled coffee on his pants below the table.

  Should have spit in it, all the better for flavor, the voice said. Jacoby smacked the side of his head and turned in the chair, but he was all alone. He looked at his hand, several of the nails cracked and split.

  The door clicked, Janice and Shane reappearing from the hallway. Jacoby took a deep, cleansing breath, and willed himself to stay calm – no matter what happened. Janice pulled a wad of tissues out of her pocket and blew her nose loudly, then stuffed them back into her pocket. She scooped the coffee mug off the table and lifted it to her lips. Jacoby leaned forward, coughing into his hand to hide a smirk. She moved over to stand above him, the overhead lighting making her eyes look sunken, the lines and wrinkles even deeper and harder.

  Prune.

  “Thank your, foreman,” she said, turning back to Shane. “Jacoby, you will take two days personal, and as long as your screen comes back clean, you can return to full work. We’re done here, I don’t have the patience for more,” she said, coughing into her arm, then pulled the papers together and stuffed them in an envelope.

  Jacoby cleared his throat and stood, swiping his sleeve across his forehead. It wasn’t warm in the office. Quite the opposite, but he’d started sweating anyway. Janice lifted the coffee mug to her lips and took another long pull, grunting when she was done, like usual.

  Little piggy pig pig, the voice chimed in. Jacoby looked to Shane, but the foreman hadn’t said anything. Was he really hearing voices?

  “Enjoy your coffee and have a nice day,” he said and walked out of the room. He turned the corner, desperate to put as much distance between him and Janice as possible. He considered taking a trip up to see the doctor again, but wondered if admitting he was hearing voices was perhaps not a good idea.

  It’s stress, that’s all it is. Fix things with Anna, and talk it all out. She always knows what to do.

  “You just hit your head when you fell. That’s all. Just hit your head,” he mumbled, and stepped back onto the elevator.

  0830 Hours

  Anna tidied up the bedroom, folded the blanket on the bench by the window, and reconstituted a coffee cube. Steam rose from the machine, the smell of brewing coffee almost instantly filling their confined space of D ring. It smelled less like coffee and more like hot rubber – nothing like the premium organic roast her parents always bought, but it was better than anything they served in the employee lounges.

  The thought of home instantly threw her back into a funk. Even millions of miles away, her mother was controlling her life. It was bad enough when they were still planet side, her mother almost constantly questioning, doubting, and redirecting, always subtly, and always just loud enough for her to hear. How far away did they need to go to shed her parent’s bigotry and derision? Could they ever go far enough, or was the damage already done?

  “No daughter of mine is going to be friends with a mechanic’s kid,” she cursed and shook her head. Her folks never took the time to see Jacoby for who he really was. He was the only one who listened when she talked…who took the time to actually know her.

  I hope you’re happy, mother…not that anything could ever make you happy, she thought bitterly, pulling a ceramic mug out of the cupboard.

  Anna filled the mug and lifted it to her lips just as her PDP vibrated on the counter next to the sink. A heartbeat later and it started to ring, The Great Gate of Kiev by Mussorgsky breaking the silence. Anna set her coffee down and picked up the data point, the transparent polymer shell reading her handprint and glowing to life. A triangle flashed on screen, indicating a waiting message.

  Coby, she thought, her stomach lurching. He didn’t talk about it, but she knew things hadn’t been going well. She felt a wave of guilt rise up inside. She knew he was struggling with work – the long, back to back to back shifts, and yet insisted on struggling in silence. He’d plucked her away from her fucked up lif
e back home, even when her parents cut her off, and now he was killing himself to make sure she had everything she needed.

  “Anna, you dumb bitch,” she whispered, taking another sip of bitter coffee. He’d taken the new contract because they didn’t know where they would go or do if he hadn’t. Hell, their plan never really extended far beyond get off Earth.

  Anna opened the message with a swipe and her hope fell. It wasn’t from Coby, but Lana in Sys Ops.

  [Lana] - I know it’s your day off, and you’re only part time, but could you cover a shift today? Everyone is f*&#!g sick.

  Anna read the message and took a large sip of coffee before responding.

  “That’s fine, I guess,” she said, the data point transcribing automatically, “how soon do you need me?”

  [Lana] – As soon as you can get down here. We’ve got overdue maintenance on C ring’s faulty O2 recirculation module today, and just sent another operator home after he hurled all over his dash. Place smells like old CO2 scrubbers and barf.

  Anna cringed. Nothing unraveled her stomach faster than the sound or smell of someone else’s puke. She wanted to stick around and talk things over with Coby, but knew Lana wouldn’t have reached out if she had a host of other options.

  “I’ll be right down, but you’re not sticking me in his control pod,” she responded, and downed the last of the coffee.

  Lana’s response chimed in almost immediately - an animated hand forming a thumb’s up, followed by a winking face sticking its tongue out.

  Dropping the mug into the sink, Anna set the data point down and headed for the bathroom. After a quick shower, she pulled on a work jumpsuit and tied her hair up. She closed her bedroom door and walked by Coby’s room. It was a mess, dirty work clothes strewn across the floor, a few vaccu-seal wrappers scattered amongst them.