[DATA EXPUNGED]
Ms. Hohlstein
Creative Writing
6 November 2017
Trust Me
You never think about this kind of stuff. Not the hundreds of thousands of bodies lined up in the cargo hold, not the families waiting to see them, nor the morticians, greedily rubbing their hands at the sheer volume of demand soon to follow. What Abby never thought about, sleeping soundly in a cryopod with the rest of the crew of the Aramanthe, was the possibility that something was never right in space. Perhaps it was a rogue asteroid that had found its way into the hull and through a score of war casualties. Perhaps it was the ship's automatic response system, SKyLaR, waking them up barely six years after they had left drydock at Konštrukta M-14-A/112, the station in low orbit around planet F-2-A5-R.
She felt too lucid to be home. Too…sound of mind. It was yet to feel like her dreams had eaten themselves more than thrice, as was common with the Safe Stasis models onboard. With an annoyed groan, Abby sat up, swung her legs wide, and stood to see the white, sterile walls of the Stasis room.
Who was she? She pondered; wakeup had a habit of clouding memory for the hour after it occurred. I am Carmin Abigail; Abby for short.
Why was she standing naked in a white room surrounded by people more than likely wondering the same thing? She again asked herself. The answers were painfully simple: She was a technician for a cargo ship taking bodies recovered from the Camin insurgence on F-2-A5-R, and she was naked because the continued exposure to the sensation of clothing often led people in stasis to wake up thinking that their skin was cotton or whatever fabric it was that they slept in.
She looked left, she looked right. Stella and Klaus, respectively.
"Stella? Stella?" she asked, leaning down to see her face, or at least try to. There she sat, clutching her head in her hands in an expression of pain.
"Stella… I'm… I'm Stella." she managed out before wrenching clear fluid onto the grated metal floor.
"Oh my God!" Abby exclaimed, running over and clutching her dear friend. Was she dear? Were they friends? Neither of it mattered at this moment; something was wrong and Abby was the only person who seemed to care. Still with an arm around Stella, Abby took off jogging towards the nearest door. She needed to get blood flowing so she could remember where the infirmary was, and she knew that even the short 10 foot motion would do wonders. A crop of white robes, hanging from hooks nearest one exit, that was where she ran first; one for her, one for Stella, before running off down a gunmetal hall. The hiss of pressure regulators, the echo of feet slapping on the ground, noises so familiar they failed to register. Abby's mind was free to wander, to consider her current situation. Slipping on their robes, the two were off before hardly anyone else in the room had realized themselves to be alive again.
Stella was...26. Abby thought to herself. She was coming back to herself. To her right, still in her arm, Stella looked on the brink of tears as she slipped on her robe. Abby followed suit shortly after. Why was she crying? Abby wondered to herself; now wasn't the time to ask, as she had in the days before their mission began and knew the answer was in some crevice of her mind. The way to the infirmary snapped itself into her thoughts; left, right, straight, right, left, first door.
"It's gonna be alright, okay?" she said, helping Stella to sit down on the examination table.
"Okay...Okaaaay…" Stella wheezed out, passing out and falling to her side on the table.
"Condition." inquired the onboard computer SKyLaR, possessing the spider-like machine that hovered over the table.
"Unknown," Abby responded, arranging Stella onto the table so that everything was on the table. "Perform exploratory testing procedures please."
"Understood," the machine responded, whirring to life above Stella's face.
A flood of violet, almost invisible light, basked Stella's body as the spider crawled its way over Stella. It was looking for deformities, sicknesses, something wrong, but after a minute, stops.
"No abnormalities detected. Recommending DeepScan of Brain tissue." the A.I. reported. Abby knew the process; the same kind that would detect cancer in the brain and mental instabilities, but only with sufficient time. six hours, to be precise, given that this was one of the earlier models to employ such technology.
"Acknowledged," Abby responded. They were still a lifetime from Home; everyone could wait.
"Initiating scan," the machine confirmed. "You are dismissed for the process."
"Dismissed?" Abby asked.
"You are required in the briefing room; medical assistance deemed secondary directive for Crewman: Abigail."
Nodding, confused as she might be, Abby took slow, turning steps for the door before a hasty march to the room not far to her right.
There everyone was, sitting in rolling chairs while Klaus, their acting leader at the time, stood in front with a dry-erase marker and a large wall-mounted whiteboard. Abby took a seat nearest the back, a seat separating her from two of her more 'immature' colleagues.
"What we have here," started Klaus, motioning towards a model of the ship's cargo section. "Is a ruptured bulkhead in the cargo deck. Somewhere in the region of E-7 to F-8 and the blocks they encompass. So, we are - yes, Tracy."
Tracy, one of their technical workers, raised her hand almost like a schoolgirl. "Yes, sir. Do we have any idea what triggered the alarms?" She asked, standing from her chair.
"At this moment we are fairly confident it to be an asteroid that penetrated the outer hold and dented the inner casemate, severely warping the inner structure of the cargo hold. We're all lucky to be alive, quite frankly."
"And our plan of repair?"
"Yes, yes." Klaus continued. He motioned for her to sit down whilst turning back to the whiteboard. "The plan at this moment is, given the wide area necessary to search, is for everyone present here to fan out in search of the rupture. By the way - where is Stella?"
"She's...in the infirmary," Abby spoke up, thinking of her laying half dead in that cold, white room. "She was experiencing unusual cryo-sickness and I thought it'd be a good idea to take her down there."
"Good to know. Okay!" He clicked the cap back onto the marker and looked out onto the crowd of five. "We're down a member. That means double duty for someone-IVAN!" he called out.
Ivan, sitting next to Adam and swapping dirty jokes, looked up sharply. "What?" He looked like a lost dog.
"All who vote Double Ivan say aye."
A chorus of 'ayes' came out across the room, with a suppressed silence from Ivan and his friend. With a betrayed, angry glare in his eyes, Ivan shook his head and, somehow, simultaneously glared at everyone in the room.
Klaus, uncapping the marker, laid out the routes he wanted from everyone in the room. With a markedly louder voice, he called Ivan who was, in contrast to his normal oddity of a personality, was laying back in his chair, glaring at Klaus. In less than 10 minutes, they were getting dressed in actual clothes, and within 20 they were out in the hold.
Caskets, quickly put together, lay stacked neatly on every shelf within sight and stretching farther into the bowels of the ship that any of them could see. Most had nametags, some didn't. It was an old luggage train they took out to the cargo block, creaking and rattling with every grain-of-sand-sized piece of debris in the tracks.
Abby, couldn't help but feel self-conscious as she felt Ivan and Adam staring down the crack of her pants. She had to remember to sit as far back as possible next time. She was almost lonely; besides her, the short-fused Connor sat with Tracy's hand in a loving grip. He barely moved, she leaned on his shoulder.
Abby wouldn't have been able to take it, the violent outbursts Connor was prone to in aggravating situations. Yet their love for one another was clear; not once had he done Tracy harm as much as he had done to everything and everyone around him.
Behind her, Ivan cracked the can on what she presumed to be beer, snuck in from God knows what little hidey-hole he'd kept.
"Now arriving at Ghost town. Next stop, Bone City." Klaus Joked, pulling the tram to a stop. With the clang of steel-tipped boots, the six of them piled out and started towards wherever they were ordained to go.
Nothing. There was nothing. After close to half an hour circling her path, covering every piece of ground she could, all she saw were caskets, caskets, and more caskets. No dents, nothing particularly interesting, just-
"I think I found it!" Spouted the radio on her belt. It was from Adam, the raunchy bastard who'd tried putting cameras in the vessel's showers an excessive number of times. "E-8, subsection F-130. 'Looks like the entire column exploded from the bottom up. There are bodies everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE."
"You heard the man. Connor, Tracy, E-8 F-130 with your tools," Came Klaus' voice from the radio.
"Over and out." Tracy and Connor responded in unison, accompanied by the echoing sound of metal boots.
"Does that mean I get t- WHAT THE F-" Adam, far to her right, was screaming for help, sounding almost like he'd been set on fire.
It was unanimous and unspoken. Within a minute, everyone present had converged on Adam's location. Abby had out a pocket flashlight and was crouching to Adam as he lay on the ground, gasping
"Adam! ADAM!" She shouted. His eyes darted about like he didn't know his own name. With her flashlight, Abby checked his eyes. They dilated, they followed, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"This doesn't change what needs to happen," Klaus stated. "It was more than likely a Cryotic echo. Abby, take him to the infirmary. Connor, Tracy, you still gotta fix…this." He motioned for the twisted, creaking cargo tower. "And Ivan," He was standing there, a string of three beer cans hung by their pop tabs around his waist and another already in his hands. "Just….go back to the lobby. We need to talk."
With Adam in arms, Abby, Klaus, and Ivan found themselves heading back to the tram, not yet out of earshot of Connor's rage.
"Oh yeah. Everything's fine. It's not like we're already DOWN TWO PEOPLE with a giant dent in this can a' Spam!"
"Please, Conny. Calm down." Tracy said, trying to calm her long-time partner.
"No! This is bullshit! Fuckin' Jackass fakes a fall and he gets to run off with half the team and WHERE ARE WE? ALONE, SURROUNDED BY DEAD PEOPLE."
The group of four boarded the tram and got away as fast as possible. Behind them, the sound of rivet guns going off resounded.
"Stella!" Abby called in glee. There she sat, still wrapped in a wake-up robe and weakly waving to her. "What happened?"
"There was a bit of SNAFU with last preparations I guess." Stella answered. "The cromaStasis fluid they put in me was apparently contaminated with…Mercury, was it?"
"Affirmative," SKyLaR affirmed. "2.1 parts-per-million bromine contamination within intravenous Cryostasis preparation induced a form of seizure in the cerebellum, decreasing the already slowed rate at which oxygenated blood flowed through the body among other deformities."
"I'm lucky I woke up when I did." Stella continued. "Another 16 years of that and I…Probably wouldn't have woken up at all. Hey, what's up with Adam?"
"Oh, dipshit two faked a fall in cargo and Klaus had me take him here," Abby Answered, shaking Adam playfully in her arms. He was still gasping, a listless look in his eyes.
"Listen." Stella started, standing up from the examination table and walking towards the pair, standing by the door as they were. "I've caused you a lot of trouble today and it's the least I can do."
"Are you sure?" Abby asked.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm feeling a lot better. Just go on to the lounge. You deserve it."
With a smooth motion, the two girls swapped Ivan off, Stella quickly carrying him to the examination table while Abby smiled back.
"Hey, Stella?" Abby called out.
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you're okay."
And with that, Abby was out the door and walking into the lounge.
Crew compartments weren't necessarily that small, but weren't designed for extended use; as in, it was believed that the crew would be in cryo for the majority of the time aboard. For all intents and purposes, there were two hallways for the main deck and a veritable maze for engine functions far back in the ship. The lounge the farthest from the lobby where Abby heard Klaus and Ivan mid-argument. Abby was quick in the door and onto the nearest pinball machine.
It was an hour later. She was onto a random shooting game. The lights were dimming, ever so slowly, to indicate as the relative time at, "home," to be about 10:30 PM.
A Scream. Stella's.
From the Infirmary.
A wet, ripping sound, not dissimilar to the sound of a knife through a booklet of wet paper.
Abby lept from the console and out the door, running down the hall and around a corner to come face to face with an open door, clawed open, bent metal and streaks of blood abound. She raced inside, praying that Stella - SOMEONE was alive.
She wasn't. She was in the room, though; all over the walls and floor, a strange covering of hair and blood over the report screen on the examination table. Were it not for the bright red, flashing anomaly sign, she never would have moved it all away.
Adam's outline, displayed against the blue screen, something coiled, something wrong.
It was faint but noticeable against the X-ray before the screen flashed to what she presumed to be an MRI scan.
Abby nearly vomited, the sight of his chest melting on the screen to show not organs, but a tendril-covered form, a straight beak surrounded by nerve fibers, branching and spilling through his body. Below it, a bony tail that seemed to extend throughout his body, coiled and twisting with even more nerve fibers extending from the spaces between vertebrae. Nerve fibers, spreading and strangling his liver, his lungs, his intestines, his heart.
"SKYLAR!" She called out, adrenaline pulsing through her body with every heaving breath. "SKYLAAR!"
"Abby. Please remain calm." it started, the spider-like scanner resting on the examination table to reveal it's single blue 'eye.' "Stella is deceased, and there is very little to be done."
"SKyLaR, please. What happened? What was inside Adam?"
"Scanner report: Unknown Parasite present within Crewman Adam. Kingdom: animal. Phylum: unknown. Class: unknown. Order: unknown. Family: unknown. Genus: unknown. Species: unknown. Diagnosis: Due to present procedures, it was judged that no action was necessary due to evidence that no physiological changes in the negative spectrum were detected. Conclusion: observe closely for as long as possible, gather biological data, perform an autopsy upon status: Deceased."
"So you left it in him!?" Abby screamed. "Are you kidding-"
The sound of screaming from the Lobby, but without the wet, tearing sound. Abby found herself bolting away, down the hall and around the corner in the hope against hope that Stella was alive, somewhere.
"IVAN!" She screamed, stumbling into the lounge to see Ivan huddled in the corner, a fire ax clutched in hand, beer spilled on the floor and still dripping from an unfinished can.
"What the hell was that?" Ivan asked. In a moment, Abby realized what was wrong with the picture.
"Ivan, Where's Klaus?"
"Whatever that thing was, it got Klaus." He replied, standing up, hefting the ax onto one shoulder mid step towards Abby.
"Well then where the hell did it go?"
"Crew quarters. Must be looking for more people."
"And why'd it leave you alone?"
"This thing," he replied pompously, hefting the ax back into two hands. "I did a nasty number on that thing. It's weak now; I bet if we can catch it, we can kill it."
With a shaky nod, Abby turned and walked for the hall to Crew Quarters, Ivan in hot pursuit.
"You got a key, right?" Ivan asked, padding the area around his thigh with a sheepish grin. Abby unclipped the magnetic card from her belt and, squatting in front of the door, slid it in. It was a process that took roughly seven seconds for full affirmation, almost seven seconds too late.
From behind Abby came the sound of bones breaking, of pain and of torment in its purest form. She turned around to see Ivan, split across the stomach with his head and arms hanging limp behind. From within his popped chest cavity came a white form, pale like a corpse and bony like a starving child. Its jagged beak had ripped through the remainder of Ivan's chest, tearing tendrils from his chest with a grotesque crackcrackpop sound. In hunger, it stretched claws and tendrils to its next host, Abby, huddled against the door and unable to make a sound. It was silent but for the wet, organic sounds of it tearing itself away, the almost clinical silence of a hospital full of those with incurable diseases. Abby shuddered, closing her eyes to the nightmare in front of her; maybe it would dull the pain, not to know when it would strike.
The door opened to a spray of rivets, her salvation, puncturing and staying within the thing before it ruptured itself from Ivan's body and leaped through the ceiling's grating, scurrying off to God knows where.
She turned around, the glow of fluorescent lights casting an angelic glow onto Klaus' vindictive form, heavy rivet gun braced in both hands.
"Oh God, Klaus!" Abby cried in glee, leaping up and pulling him into a thankful embrace.
"Oh God, Abby," Klaus responded, returning the embrace, "What was that thing?"
"Hell if I know," She responded, pulling away and looking into his teary eyes with her own tearful eyes. "It killed Stella, it's killed Adam, and it took Ivan. that's three crew dead to that thing."
"We need to regroup." Was Klaus' solution. "If we're all in one place, it'll have a hard time singeling the rest of us out." He relayed the order through the ship's speakers for everyone to regroup in the lobby due to an uncontained biological hazard.
Connor came running into the lobby, Tracy lagging behind about 30 seconds yet clearly exerting herself much harder that Connor.
"Where were you guys?" Abby asked with a harsh tone..
"I was in the bathroom," Tracy answered, a slight blush on her face. "Sorry."
"And what, you didn't go in with her?" Abby screamed at Connor.
"Why the hell would I want to?!" Connor shouted back, matching Abby's anger.
"Because we're dealing with an unknown parasitic hazard and it's already killed three of this crew!" Klaus shot in. "We need to stick together."
"What we NEED to do is find this thing and Burn it Alive!" Connor screamed. He was growing red in the face, neck pounding with veins.
During the chaos of the boys' continuing argument, Abby moved her way to Tracy, hiding behind her hair near the door.
"Hey." was Abby's opener.
"Hey," Tracy responded. "What happened? Have you been crying?"
"It….it got Stella," Abby responded at the thought of her dead friend. "She's just… Gone."
"It's gonna be alright," Tracy offered, pulling Abby into an embrace. "Okay? We're gonna kill this thing and that'll be the end of it. Okay?"
"…Okay," Abby agreed, sniffling.
That was when Tracy started coughing. A deep, wet cough mixed with the sound of choking, the sound of her inability to breathe and need to vomit at the same time.
Klaus and Connor stopped their argument, turning around to see Tracy doubled over and clutching her stomach as a slurry of impacted rivets, hair, and fabric strips came gushing out of her mouth with a large volume of blood to accompany it. There was a moment of silence as what just happened slowly set in.
Connor looked at Klaus, then back to Tracy, then repeated the cycle as he said "Rivets, huh? Bunch'a rivets in its chest?"
"Y-yeah." Klaus answered backing away. Abby followed suit, skirting the edge of the room to hide behind Klaus. "Same model as the ones I used to drive it back just a bit ago." There sat Tracy at the far end of the room, shaking, weeping.
"Is that you, Tracy?" Klaus asked, crouching and picking up a rivet from the pile. "IS THAT YOU?!" He shoved the rivet in her face.
"DON'T LIE TO ME YOU FUCKING-" He screamed, slapping her across the face. Klaus, in unison with Abby, gasped, not just from the display of uncharacteristic violence, but the sight of Tracy's face splitting apart to reveal a slew of tendrils headed by a smooth, almost beautiful beak. It wrapped itself around Connor's hand, the beak biting in and leaving a large bloody chunk missing from his hand. That was when Connor's shock left him and the pain made itself known. He was screaming bloody murder, trying his best to pull away from the monster as it bit through the rest of his hand, a straight path to his head.
The shock settles, Abby and Klaus came to realize the terrifying situation, and the pair started running. Their directions were separate, but both went the way to the engine's maze. Trying to escape the echo of the screaming, trying to escape the sight of Tracy devouring her lover.
The screaming stopped. Abby was alone surrounded by brass pipes and industrial lighting. Panic, the thought of tracy or Connors mangled corpse headed by that impossible horror shambling down the hall only fueled by the sound of every creaking pipe, every popping metal sheet, every sound.
"Klaus?" She called out after a minute. Though she knew this pipe nightmare like a child knew it's first home, Klaus did not. He was lost here without her.
"Abby!" Came his echoing voice, ever so quietly.
"Klaus!" She called back, walking towards the voice.
In a matter of minutes, they had met in the maze of brass pipes, And in a second of meeting, they were in a tight embrace.
But something was wrong.
That thing was still out there.
Klaus had been alone.
Abby had trusted Tracy, just as she had trusted Ivan. She wasn't going to be fooled again.
"You…YOU MONSTER!"
"Abby! ABBY!" Klaus called back. He was backing up at the sight of Abby taking a brass pipe from the wall, the scalding hot steam mattering not to her as she tore it free.
"YOU KILLED STELLA!" Abby scream, swinging and missing Klaus. He was backing up, all too aware of the dead end behind him
"YOU KILLED TRACY!" She swung again, this time hitting the side of his face. Klaus was on the ground, clutching his head where the pipe had struck and broken the majority of his jaw.
"YOU KILLED KLAUS!" Abby shouted in fury, savagely swinging down on Klaus' stolen body. Every swing reduces his movement until, finally, he was not but a sobbing heap on the ground.
"JUST DIE DIE DIE!" she said in final, stabbing the hollow brass tube through the center of his chest in hopes of killing the parasite within.
But there was no scream.
There was no monster.
Klaus was human, but Abby was the monster.
There sat Abby, sobbing, over her dear friend's corpse.
There collapsed Abby, passing out on top of his corpse.
"Preparatory serum injection successful." SKyLaR reported. Abby had awakened 10 minutes earlier to the sight of her greatest sin. Whatever it was, it didn't want her. It wanted to torture her. To tear her apart.
"SKyLaR, please prepare the examination table as a cryostasis chamber. I'm….I'm not gonna be able to sleep next to empty pods."
"Affirmative."
Abby stood up and backed away from the table, watching metal casings slide out from the floor and meet with the table in a satisfying click. A triad of glass, asymmetrically aligned on the metal, would show her face to anyone who found her, and she hoped someone found her. She dropped her robe and lay in the cryopod, letting the great metal jaws close over her.
She was losing consciousness slowly. Above her, the old A.I. ran one last scan through the glass. She could see the screen from her position, oh so clearly.
The flashing red unknown entity detected warning flashed just as she fell to her deepest slumber.
Second try, edited for most everything; spelling, capitalization, ect.
Thank you all for reading. Updates for my other work are going to be on hold for a period of time.
Sincerely,
Abbhorase.