Isaac stepped into the darkness of the Vanguard One entryway. His stomach lurched, every part of his being requiring micro-adjustments to the change in atmosphere and setting. The beam of his flashlight crawled over the ultrametal surfaces of the floor, walls, and ceiling, revealing nothing more than a utilitarian corridor that snaked into directions unknown.
If he hadn't forced himself forward, his body would have been content to stand at the sealed entrance forever. The corridor – undoubtedly some kind of service tunnel – was intermittently illuminated with the red flash of emergency lights bolted onto its walls. The radial symmetry was hypnotic, coaxing Isaac further into its dark labyrinth.
Relax, he told himself. Breathe. You can do this.
A nice, encouraging thought, but in practice he wasn't sure it held up. He had three crew members to find in a vast, multi-level dungeon floating in the hostile vacuum of outer space. Could he actually do this?
Isaac followed the corridor with slow, halting steps until he came across a junction. The hall split in two directions with signs helpfully pointing to each area: maintenance access on the left, and, somewhat disarmingly, a food court on the right. With visions of a creepy, wet boiler room in his head, Isaac went with to the right. He supposed it made sense for Vanguard One to have a food court, given that a layover station was essentially a giant mall with a hotel attached to it.
He pushed through a heavy set of double doors and found himself standing in a vast, pitch-black room. Small tables and plastic seats were scattered in front of him. Isaac heard the sound of churning water before his flashlight beam caught the fountain twenty feet away. Surrounded by fake trees, it definitely screamed 'food court' to Isaac, as did the empty brand-name fast food storefronts that lined the room's oblong perimeter. After months skulking around The Tenjin, it was startling to be in a space so wide. It was the sort of space that didn't make sense without any noise or activity or people.
And yet.
Isaac swallowed a rising lump in his throat, moving quietly as he traced his flashlight beam along the empty room. Where was everyone?
The fountain sputtered mindlessly, ignorant of the emptiness that surrounded it. Isaac drew a curious finger across the water's surface. Pleasant and cool to the touch. He wished he was back home, on Earth, taking a bath. If only.
Isaac wiped the damp finger across the canvas material of his jump suit just before he heard something, a soft hissing somewhere above him.
"Hello?"
Nobody answered.
He looked up and found a vent set into one of the walls. Air rustled through it. Isaac blinked, then sighed, relieved the noise's source was something so mundane. But it made him wonder, why the station's atmosphere and oxygen systems were online but the lights were dead.
With nothing left to do or see in the deserted area, Isaac looked for an entryway that would take him deeper into Vanguard One.
The man who called himself Mr. Midnight looked up from his comfy seat in Vanguard One's central control room when one of security monitors lit up with activity.
"Again?" he asked aloud. For a station that was essentially dead, it had seen its share of visitors the past couple of days. Most recently, there was that trio of men that came from landing strut four. What was that ship they docked called again? The Ten Cent? The Tenjin? Whatever. It didn't matter. They were all easy enough to take care of. Mr. Midnight's gorgeous little pet made sure they didn't get too close to his secrets.
But even a few days before The Tenjin docked, Mr. Midnight noticed another cabal of men had invaded Vanguard One, his precious castle. They wore armored suits, wielded swords, and had strange, garish markings on their faces, like war paint. He'd never seen anything like them before and had no idea what they were doing on his station. Some sort of roving warrior group? When he listened in on their conversations, he surmised that they were looking for his pet – they wanted to capture it, fight it, or kill it. Mr. Midnight couldn't, and didn't, let that happen.
He wondered, briefly, if there was some sort of connection between the sword-wielding men and the men from The Tenjin. Was it a coincidence that both groups had arrived in his labyrinth of nightmares within days of each other?
The man took his feet off the dashboard and concentrated on the monitor that fed him footage from Tower 2, the commercial habitat of the station. He hadn't yet allowed power to be restored to Tower 2, so the images were conveyed through the ghostly green of a night vision filter. He could tell some interloper was moseying along the first floor, through the food court and into a feeder corridor that led to the reception and administrative offices.
Confusion quickly became anger. It bubbled in Mr. Midnight's veins, turning his skin hot and red. How could this keep happening to his beautiful Vanguard One? Why did these strangers keep invading his space, his home, his kingdom? Who was this hooligan? It couldn't have been another one of the sword-and-war-paint men, they had been kept to Tower 3 and thoroughly slaughtered by his pet. Nor could it have been someone from that rude Tenjin trio. The last he saw of them, they were in no position to be standing or walking.
The anger cooled until it became resignation. He would have to forsake his carefully cultivated atmosphere so he could see the face of his new enemy. Mr. Midnight wanted to enjoy the sight of this intruder dying, painfully, and begging as the life drained from their pathetic body.
The more Isaac explored, the less comfortable he felt. A station of this size just shouldn't have been so silent and empty. It was unnatural, and deeply uncomfortable.
He froze as a deep hum echoed from somewhere in the station. He was in a nondescript hallway that followed a short set of stairs he found just north the food court. Signage overhead indicated that he was about to enter reception and administration. He'd been wondering if that's where Michiel, Kaysar, and Wheeler had ended up when a series of lights blasted overhead.
Isaac threw an arm over his eyes, squinting and blinking at the sudden, startling brightness. The power was back on. But how?
Feeling a sudden need to get moving, he rushed until the passage opened into a large, ornate lobby. His boots echoed on the marble floor as he spotted a reception desk beside a bank of elevators and behind several leather lounge chairs.
Hope surging, Isaac raced to the desk's console and tapped the power button. If Vanguard One's holonet was operational again, he'd hopefully be able to read the employee and staff pings and solve the goddamn mystery of the mass disappearance. But the console just beeped mournfully before going back to sleep.
"Fuck."
So the lights worked but the communication devices didn't. Why? Something about the whole situation felt oddly deliberate. Like he was being watched from the shadows by someone with the power to pull strings. It was an unpleasant and paranoid thought, and once it entered his mind it was difficult to dispel. Even beneath the jumpsuit, which felt more restrictive now than it did when he first put it on, his skin was covered in goosebumps.
The reception desk itself was a disaster, the chair overturned, spilled coffee that was now dried and sticky, and a mess of pens and office accessories scattered across the teak surface. Who was working here and why was everything in a state of disarray?
"Mysteries, mysteries," he muttered, absently tapping his flashlight against his thigh.
He thought about trying the console's power button again when he heard someone cry out.
A survivor...
Isaac didn't hesitate as he ran toward the source of the sound. He slammed through a door, down a narrow corridor, into what looked like a collection of offices and administrative spaces. The voice came again, closer now and definitely male, groaning in tremendous pain.
"Who's there? Can you hear me?" Isaac called.
"Huh- help! Isaac?!"
Isaac shot through the open-plan office, noting in his adrenal rush that it was a slaughterhouse, equipment shattered and broken, exposed electrical wires spitting white sparks, and dried blood spattered against every possible surface.
"Jesus Christ." The words escaped his lips as he searched the office in a frenzy. There was more blood than he'd ever seen in his life. It stank, too, metallic and rotten.
"H-here…"
Closer, Isaac could hear the suffering in the man's voice, and nearly jumped out of his skin when a crimson hand lurched from the floor and grabbed his ankle.
"Wheeler!"
He could have fainted. The Tenjin's largest, toughest crew member was sprawled on the carpet, his strike uniform shredded. Exposed skin was cut and bruised in painful splotches of yellow-ish red. Isaac couldn't even begin to imagine what could have done this to such a big man.
After some moments of struggle, he helped bring Wheeler into a sit, propping him up against an overturned desk. His eyes, swollen and black, finally connected who he was seeing.
"Hey pretty boy," he managed to say, coughing.
"Wheeler, what the fuck – where did – how-" The words escaped in jittery, panicked slivers. He stopped himself and tried to breathe. He didn't normally have to be the strong one on the crew, that was Wheeler's job. "How bad are you hurt?"
"How bad do I look?"
"Being honest right now might actually kill you."
Wheeler tried to laugh but only managed another painful, wracking cough. "Bastard."
Isaac gave him the water bottle from his satchel. He watched as Wheeler drank, noting that he didn't appear to have any open wounds. The copious amounts of blood everywhere didn't come from him...
"What happened? I stopped hearing from you guys hours ago."
Wheeler finished the bottle in two huge gulps. "We got separated."
"Separated how?"
"After we noticed our radios weren't working anymore, it was the weirdest damn thing. The power came back on, lights and locked doors opened. But after a while, the power cut again. Kaysar was in another room at the time, checking things out, but when the power failed the door slammed shut and locked all on its own. Michiel wanted to circle back around and see if we could free him from another room somewhere. I wanted us to stay by the door in case it opened again. Michiel said no, he didn't want to stand around. He left, and then…"
Wheeler's voice disappeared, as did something behind his eyes. A memory was scratching to the surface, bringing with it a quiet, devastating trauma. "Then… I heard something… in the room. With Kaysar."
Isaac suddenly felt cold. "What do you mean, something?"
"I couldn't see it. It sounded big, heavy. Tall. I heard Kaysar's screams… I heard… I just ran, okay? I ran because I was hearing something really fucking bad. And the power kept going on and off, on and off. And it was following me. I didn't want to look behind me. But I could hear it following me. I couldn't find my way around, I just ran and ran - it was like a nightmare. Then it grabbed and threw me or I blacked out here, I don't remember."
Wheeler shivered at the raw memories. Isaac took him by his shoulder and knee, two places where he wasn't injured, and held tightly.
"Hey. Stay with me. You're here now. It's okay."
"Nuh- no." His head shook. Spit and blood shook off his face. "Not okay. We have to get out of here. Back on the Tenjin. Get Thea to take us back the fuck home."
"Where's the room you said Kaysar was trapped in?"
"NO." Wheeler shot forward, innate strength blasting through his physical pain. He grabbed a handful of Isaac's flightsuit and balled it up in a bloody fist. "You're not going back there."
"If there's a chance he's still alive-"
"Tell Thea to take us home!"
Wheeler's desperation and madness was startling to Isaac. He was so cool and stoic usually – just what exactly had reduced him to this? Isaac explained, reluctantly, about the situation on board The Tenjin, how Thea had gone M.I.A. Wheeler shook his head and laughed, a strange, almost childish giggle.
"We're fucked," he said, his voice at its highest register, "We're fucking fucked."
Click.
Mr. Midnight had thrown a switch. It was that easy. He smiled, watching power return to Tower 2 room by room, corridor by corridor. Many lights blinked and hesitated, too damaged to properly illuminate. Of course. The initial panic that he incited on Vanguard One a week ago turned the station's residents into panicked mobs. He delighted in watching them turn against each other as they were picked off one by one. There was resistance, there was struggle, gunfire and death. And the station's infrastructure suffered for it. Unfortunate. But necessary.
On the monitor, Mr. Midnight watched a young man in a pilot's jumpsuit stop dead in his tracks as overhead lights burst into view. The jumpsuit hugged his body pleasantly, revealing a lean, athletic frame.
Not what he was expecting at all.
Unlike the previous intruders, who were brutish, hairy, and ugly, this one had silken, almost androgynous features. His appearance pointed to both East Asian and European ancestry, with sharp green eyes and dark hair that fell over his forehead in a beguiling wave.
It was rare for him to be so utterly transfixed by another human. He liked this new feeling, the way someone's appearance made his stomach twist and his heart race. He continued to watch the young man adjust to his bright new surroundings. He observed steps being taken, confused glances being thrown, questions being shouted that would never be answered. The innocent confusion only stoked Mr. Midnight's lust.
As the attractive stranger entered Tower 2's reception area, Mr. Midnight's eyes wandered freely down his body. He wondered how he would feel, secure in his arms, as the boy pressed himself against Mr. Midnight's strong, muscular frame. The mere thought drove him crazy.
Mr. Midnight decided right then and there that this new player in his dark game wouldn't be another victim. The young man would be a playmate. His playmate.
Smiling again, he leaned back in his seat and ran the scenarios through his mind. He'd make sure all the pieces and players fit together in the correct order. He would make them. There were knights and pawns in Mr. Midnight's kingdom… but he was more than a king, he was their emperor.
And once everything was in its rightful place, he could finally open the Black Corridor and show everyone how meaningless their lives truly were.
