Far out of reach of the sun's warming light was the ringed gas giant, Saturn.
In Roman mythology, when the god of the sky and the goddess of the earth fell in love, Saturn was their child. He'd grow to be called overlord of the harvest and symbol for financial stability. Though the ancient lore was long forgotten, the symbolism still bore true for Saturn. The orbit around the Roman god's dusty striated rings hosted the spreading mass of humanity, eager to stake its claim on the untamed void.
One of these vestiges of humanity was Titan, a moon. Or at least, what used to be a moon. Harvested for materials in the wake of the Resource Wars, hundreds of years previous, the hollowed out chunk of rock only maintained its orbit because of the endless modifications humanity had imposed on it. Titan Station was home to nearly a half-million, most of them workers and their families. A waypoint for further resource harvesting in the galaxy, Titan Station had become known over the years by a new name.
Re-minted The Sprawl by locals, the moniker was homage to how the place's hive-like structure continued to grow and expand despite the perilous lack of hard ground to build it on. The workers' families needed places to live if they wanted to see their husbands or wives on a regular basis. The CEC offered many families the chance to put roots in more comfortable places, like Earth or the newly refurbished lunar colonies. But the dedicated stayed close by, orbiting Saturn in wait. The Sprawl was a hub for most galactic mining operations, and despite the fact the sun's rays barely scraped the station's jagged urban surface, people only wanted to be comfortable, whole, while waiting for their loved ones to shock back into the local system.
So they kept building, kept creating. More homes for the continually growing populace whose loved ones mined resources tirelessly to support their growing bulk. The latest addition to the Sprawl's massive cocoon of life was a condominium cluster called the Cassini Towers.
It was within these newly painted walls that everything went wrong.
The boy ran his knife around the bowl of soup languidly. It caught on cracks in the porcelain, adding punctuation to the already irritating sound. The conversation between the knife and the bowl had been the only one at dinner that night.
The clink of his mother's spoon hitting the bottom of her bowl in desperation. "Seth…"
Seth flashed his eyebrows at her, but didn't look up. The act would require far more energy he had. His dwindling supply was already curbed by uncharacteristic insomnia and fervent nightmares. What little he could muster, he used to provoke his mother. He began to hit the bowl with the knife. Dink. There was another chip in her fine porcelain.
"Seth, stop it now!"
The lights flickered. Mother and son temporarily forgot their anger to look around the room, confused. The vid-link on the front door beeped. Seth's mother motioned as if to rise, but the tone wasn't the doorbell. It was a warning system.
The vid-link buzzed. "Attention: this is Director Tiedemann," said a muffled stern voice from the living room. It didn't sound like a personal call. The Director's tone was that of a speech-maker, a man of power addressing his people. "A station-wide emergency is in effect. All citizens are ordered to remain in their homes until the all-clear is given. If an evacuation order should be given, please follow the designated routes only. Any looters will be immediately shot. Tiedemann, out."
Seth's mother smirked. "Not like we were going anywhere, anyways."
"What do they mean, emergency?"
"The wards are all locked down. The only ones that can get through are the engineers. You know that bunch will fix the place."
"But they didn't tell us anything…"
"Seth, please," his mother was exasperated. "Just eat your dinner in peace."
God, his head was pounding. Was the vid-link broken? What was this incessant static he heard? Couldn't they all just shut up?
Dropping the knife into the soup without a care, sending a splash of red liquid across the white table, Seth stood. Avoiding eye contact still, he slapped the holo-lock on the kitchen door and retreated down the hall to his room. He could feel her scrutinous glare borrowing holes in his back. He despised that feeling, and only let his breath puff from his lungs when his bedroom door slid shut.
Seth mulled over how much he despised her. This had been the routine for weeks. Unable to think or properly sleep, ever since they moved in, Seth hadto direct the pain in his head somewhere. Hate was the natural route. Then suddenly, the headache vanished.
It was as if his annoyance was being broadcasted and the signal had been cut off. The tunnel-vision snapped to full, and he saw how he was behaving. He was a complete idiot. With a sigh far weightier than his eleven years would indicate, Seth ran his hands through his hair.
He went to his closet. Most of his belongings were still in the green-topped crates, and were stacked precisely waiting to be unpacked. In the three weeks he and his mother had lived in the Cassini Towers, they'd only taken out the necessities. Novelties like books, vids and toys remained tucked away. It was as if they belonged to someone else, or a life they'd outgrown and left behind. The urge to reconnect was sudden and desperate.
Seth wished they'd stayed in Solstice. It was an older community, but it had been home. His absentee father's insistence that he treat his family proportionally to the credits the CEC threw at him had changed everything. Filled with yearning for his old belongings, Seth pulled the top crate from the stack and pressed the green lock. He rifled through the toys until he found a pair of dinosaur pajamas. He was warm under his covers, leafing through the old pages of a comic book, when his mother knocked lightly on the door. A painful twinge in the front of his head. The headache would come back soon, just now had been a temporary reprieve. But he'd make the most of it while he could.
"Come in."
The door slid open and his mother appeared. Her face was relaxed and sad; apparently her head was clear for the moment as well.
"Mom," Seth said easily. "I'm sorry." The apology had been a long time coming. During their stay at Cassini, the normally close mother and son had drifted apart. They never verbally connected about the headaches and the nightmares, but each knew the other was inflicted. The two minor annoyances combined in a terrible harmony that did nothing but drive them to mutual solitude.
A relieved look flooded his mother's face. She smiled familiarly, a relic of their past in the Solstice Apartments. "Look at that," she said. "I thought you'd thrown that old thing away."
Seth waved the comic happily. "No way."
He sat up in bed, making room for his mother to sit down. Back in Solstice, she'd read to him at night. Paper-paged books were a rare luxury their status could afford. Mariana had made sure to collect all the Earthen classics before the practice of traditional binding fell to history. But the books were all still packed, of course, so she sat and pressed the shutter control. Very few of the Cassini condos had such a view. They were lucky, or so it said on paper.
Seth fell into the space his mother's arm provided for him and together they looked into the void. Saturn itself was barely visible in the window, but that gave ample room for its tan rings. The gradient grew from black to the lightest peach, striations in the rings giving a sense of depth and grandeur. The CEC had once proposed to mine the larger stones in Saturn's rings for resources. The bill had been shut down with astonishing majority. It seemed humanity, in its never-ending hunt for life-sustaining elements, still harbored a soft spot for the beauty of nature.
Something irrevocably sad stirred in Seth's chest, and he found himself wanting to cry. As he spoke, it was with a sob, the tears riding his words. "When is Daddy coming back?" Maybe that's what was wrong. Maybe his absence let in the presence of the vile disease that had been plaguing their relationship. When Daddy came back, everything could be all right again.
"Oh, kid," his mother said. Seth hadn't called John Kerhn 'Daddy' since he was six. "Altman willing, he'll be back next month. Right before Christmas."
Seth nodded. It was a long time from now. Something rang sinister in the back of his head: toolong.Bythen,itwillbetoolate.
Mariana furrowed her brow at her son's downcast stare. "Hey, tomorrow why don't you go play with the other kids in the ward? See if you can make some friends."
Seth just shrugged at the empty suggestion. Both knew that no one had energy to leave the apartment but for necessity, and that Seth's mood couldn't withstand interaction with another. The truth was he was lonely as all hell. But there was nothing he could do about it.
After a while, his mother closed the shutter. She walked over to the crate he'd opened and fished through it. Seth only watched sleepily. Headache gone, the exhaustion was quick to take over. After a moment, his mother said "A-ha!"
She removed his night lamp and set it on the vanity alongside a toy dinosaur he loved. "There we are," she said. "Rex and Lampy, ready to go." She plugged the nicknamed lamp in and turned the dial. It began to rotate, sending soft silhouettes of stars on the wall. For a welcome moment, Seth's heart felt full. He was warm, happy, and with his mother. Dad would be here soon.
But as he examined his old toys, his mother next to them, something felt wrong. Was it the same lamp? To Seth, it looked different. His heart sank; he realized he'd lost the bond with his night light. His mother began to sing, and Seth's head began to hurt.
He pressed his palms to his head, the sharp line of pain being drawn like a razor from one temple to the other. His mother's singing began to ring in his ears. He wished she'd stop it. He obviously wasn't a baby any more. He was about to tell her to go away when he heard a voice.
Hey, Sethy.
Seth opened his eyes. They widened considerably. Behind his mother, who was obliviously singing fairy tunes to Rex and Lampy, was John Kehrn.
"Dad, is that you?"
Whisper, son. I don't want your mother to hear you just yet.
Seth buried himself in his covers and drew the comforter to his mouth, hiding it. The room was cold. He whispered: "But why? We miss you."
A cunning look crossed his father's face. It'sasecret.Iwanttosurpriseyoubothlater.Isthatallright?
"Why ask me?" Seth was suspicious, suddenly.
I see how much you've grown, Sethy. You'll always be my boy, but you're big enough to help with the family decisions now. Can you do that for me?
Suspicions fell away, and Seth found himself smiling. "Yeah! All right."
Good. So we agree to keep this a secret?
Seth nodded. His father put a finger to his lips and backed into a shadowed corner, out of the night-light's reach. In the darkness, all Seth could see of the man was the vague outline of his CEC uniform and the eerie yellow pinpoints of light reflecting from his eyes.
"Well Seth," his mother put a hand to her head, wincing. "Good night."
Seth's attention was drawn to his mother, and when he realized he'd looked away from Dad, he looked back to the corner. Nothing there. The headache hissed in his head, burning in the lonely pit his father had just dug.
"Good night," said Seth, tersely.
When she was gone, Seth got out of bed and turned the lamp off. He opened the shutter window and looked out at Saturn's ring, another sleepless night ahead of him.
Seth hadn't realized that he'd fallen asleep.
He didn't think it was possible, after all, to fight through the deluge of fear that had plagued him. Paranoid hours dovetailed together, cold sweats and volcanic fevers alternating like a sine wave. Staring into the void, he'd begun to see people on the ring. Schoolwork had taught him that the ring was actually very far away, though it appeared close, so the scale of the people he was seeing should have been solid proof that it wasn't real. But there they were anyways, and ever fiber of Seth's being believed it was true.
It is true, isn't it?
They walked along the ring like passersby's walking on mobile paths to the mall; that is, the pace of their strides didn't match the speed of their progress. The image was innocuous enough, and through his seething headache, Seth watched with fascination. The figures faded in at the start of the ring's curve, then faded out right before they could round the next. It was like a tide of bodies. And then, they began to look at him.
Nowaytheycanseeme.We'rethousandsofmilesapart,Seth told himself. But doubt stirred his blood. Butifthat'strue,thenwhycanIhearthemwhispering?
One of their blank, dusty faces turned to him, its mouth agape and gnawing uselessly at the stellar dust. Then another, and another. Seth's stomach flipped. Their eyes were that of his father's – solid black, save the pinions of burning light in their cores.
Seth spasmed back from the window, overcome by terror. A shiver shook him from his toes to his ears, icy cold and painful like the headache. His hand batted for the shutter control. He finally made contact with the switch and the shutter hissed closed. Saturn's light was eclipsed by the darkness of his room.
The whispering persisted, clawing through the dark as if it were a softer medium than Saturn's light. They were right behind him, no matter how he turned. And he did turn; Seth twisted his head this way and that, trying to get a bead on the unintelligible sea of voices. The headache pulsed with new fervor and Seth's stomach turned into a variable gravity zone. In a panic, seeking to relieve his innards of last night's barely-eaten soup, he ran to the bathroom.
Hot water, bright light, and soon the stainless steel walls and mirrors were covered in steam. Seth bent his head under the scalding water and grimaced. Nothing in the material world granted him an ounce of relief. Frustrated, the pain yearned to take him to his knees, Seth slammed his hand against the mirror. The whispered echoed a pattern, and in the steam his hand unconsciously traced it.
That's it. That's it!
The pain subsided in a decrescendo of throbs as he frantically scrawled anywhere he could. When Seth finally opened his eyes, blinking back tears in the bright lights, he discovered the entire room was tattooed in symbols. A foreign language whose meaning was just out of reach, as if he'd known before, but hadn't the mind to pay attention. It was as if someone else had drawn them.
Seth's hands shook like loose cables. He was about to touch the symbol nearest to him, retracing the motion as if it would bring clarity, when the lights went out.
The hallway breaker popped with a thud and the lights flickered in a death throe. In the last of the three weak flashes, Seth saw the silhouette of his father behind him. He yelped and turned around to see nothing. But as his eyes adjusted, the emergency lights on the floor casting ghostly orange into the air, his father was indeed there. He had the same ashy coloring of the ring people, and the same fire-pinion eyes.
"Dad," Seth said. "What's going on? Is that that emergency Tiedemann was talking about?"
But his father didn't answer. The child's lamp on Seth's desk flickered to life. Rotating, it cast blood-red stars around the room. John Kerhn was silent, but his body spoke for him. Seth lost his breath at the sight. The streak of blood across his chest. The cavernous maw in his shoulder, sinewy strips of flesh dangling across the CEC logo. The loose, rubbery texture of his father's skin.
"Y-y-you're…"
His father interrupted, his voice flanging with necrotic takeover. You'rejustlonely,Sethy.
"Dad…"
So lonely, you're losing your mind.
"I'm not…"
I spent a half year of my wage to move my family here. But you repay me with misery? Have you seen the way you treat your mother?
Seth's chest caved. "Daddy…"
The least you could have done is make some friends. Gone out, bothered to talk to anyone at your new school. But you got lazy, you got angry, and now I've got to step in again.
Seth pushed past his father and scrambled for the bedroom door. His chest was tight with terror, his legs digging into the carpet as if it were sand. Hands flailing, he accidentally sent the lamp flying. It shattered on the floor, taking with it the spinning starfield. The room was once again endarkened.
You be careful, Sethy. If you don't go make some friends, the friends will come make you.
His father's voice nearly growled, but Seth made it through the door. He stumbled out into the hallway, scrambling on hands and knees towards his mother's bedroom. His father didn't pursue, but Seth was chased nonetheless. The whispers and something else. Something vile was closer on his heels now than it had been in the previous weeks.
"Mom," Seth called out, his voice cracked from stomach acid and fear. "Mom, please!" He banged his forearms on her door. The ceiling creaked, rumbled, as if something were in the walls. Damn the power outage! The holo-lock had vanished. He was sealed out and there was nowhere to run.