ten
Something moved outside the bubble. Used to the motion-sucking properties of the invisible membrane, Kat shifted slowly and methodically and until she faced outward, hands braced against the darkness of space. Her gaze roved over the twisted and shattered wreckage of the Bataille, looking for pieces that tumbled faster or fell away from the scattered ring. Looking for the movement that had caught her attention.
Grey eyes flicking sideways, she fixed her stare on a clump of wire, imagining she'd seen a spark. Then she glanced up and away, distracted by the awkward dangle of a bent strut. A vague shadow on a smooth section of wall pulled her gaze next. The deeper shadow of a jagged scar drifted into the periphery of her vision, dark and foreboding. And then, there, right there, something moved, out of sync with the ballet of detritus spiraling slowly around her.
Kat stared into space and waited for it to happen again, dread creeping down her spine. Her lower back cramped and tension wrapped around her belly. Her stomach clenched. Hunger and trepidation. Her tongue felt like sandpaper as it shifted across parched lips. Her head ached in a slow, steady pulse.
Something flicked up and then glided over the top of a ruined wall, slithering effortlessly across the cracked edge, expanding, thickening…
She tasted blood, hers, and then her tongue throbbed. She'd bitten it. The meagre drop of metallic liquid teased her dry throat. "What the fuck," she croaked.
The horror story had another chapter; more pages before those final two words. She watched, terror defined by the taste of her blood, as black fingers wrapped piece after piece of wreckage. The tendrils lengthened and multiplied exponentially. Her fright grew accordingly.
Smacking her fist against the barrier took more effort than before. She'd rested, but the oblivion of sleep did not refresh her, feed her. Every time she opened her eyes, Kat felt closer to the end, even though she seemed frozen in a terrible moment. Time lost all meaning and the bright columns of figures scrolling across the HUD no longer comforted her.
Ten hours had passed since the panel had shocked her. The small ache at the back of her skull had been eclipsed by larger wounds. Things she barely understood, thoughts she didn't want to have.
"Let me out, please. Or take me away from here. Fuck. I don't want to be…"
She couldn't voice the awful thought, but it was there, in her mind. That thing, those black tentacles creeping across the broken pieces of the Bataille, was advancing toward her. Kat didn't credit herself with a lot of imagination. She had the mind of an engineer, logical and often swayed by superior thought. She saw connections. She knew how to trace circuits, seen and unseen, and extrapolate a course and result. She knew the blackness slowly consuming pieces of the ship, the path of it marked by what it covered, was moving toward her. The bubble had not saved her, it had preserved her. Held her for a fate worse than death.
Shaking off fatigue and the heavy drag of inevitability, Kat grasped at the small, nearly dead ember of fury that still sparked deep in her gut. Gathering it, she pushed out against the barrier, heedless of the suck against her hands and feet. She screamed until her throat burned and the pain flared white behind closed lids. Her arms and legs cramped, the small exercise of struggling against the bubble not enough to keep them limber. Hunger and thirst worked against her. Grief tugged her sideways and the stark realization she was as effective as a fly in amber robbed the last of her strength.
Kat folded her legs and drifted to the bottom of her prison. She leaned back into the cushion of nothingness and closed her eyes against the strobe of purple and black as her head throbbed, pain screwing into her temples and shooting down her neck. Pins and needles pricked her arms and legs. The deep stab of fear turned her heart into a ticking time bomb. Breath misted against the film of her helmet, vile and putrid. The stink of sweat seemed almost pleasant besides. The sharper tang of urine reminded her she'd fulfilled a much earlier promise. Her skin-suit didn't recycle waste, only air and only for a short time.
She reached up to tap the button at her collar, the one that would release the helmet and expose her to the atmosphere of the bubble. Her gloved finger grazed the stud and then, a defiant smirk curving chapped lips, she double tapped. The helmet shimmered and dissipated, the soft echo of a pop bouncing from the walls of her prison. Almost disappointed to find her eyeballs didn't instantly boil and explode, Kat breathed and hiccupped into incongruously sweet air. She sniffled and swiped at her nose with her gloved wrist. The blue-brown glow of her omni-tool lit the streak of snot. She smelled vomit again, and remembered she'd used that wrist to clean her chin. Before.
"I'm a fucking mess, Finch."
The stupid dumb bubble hadn't responded, and any caress of her cheek had to have been imagined. She'd been wearing a fucking helmet. She was trapped. Bait or part of something—Oh, God—that she didn't even want to think about. Did Jormangund send her out here for this? She'd done the requisite research, learned enough of the right words to snag the contract, but she hadn't really looked into the company's business. Wasn't her business. They needed a pair of merc engineers to repair panels on a derelict tub. It wasn't a glamorous assignment and the pay hadn't seemed outrageous, suspicious. There were rumours, though, about their work with alien technology.
Is that what this is? A grand experiment?
"Pay is not fucking good enough!" The walls of her prison absorbed her voice in much the same way as her flying fists and boots. Hot tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. Kat blinked and sniffed. "Man, I never used to be such a cry baby." The soft admonishment seemed to unblock the dam and tears spilled from her eyes quicker than she could wipe them.
Her shoulders shook with quiet sobs. She felt weighed down by indecision and thought. Through the mist of her self-indulgent fit, she finally understood why tears were considered a sign of weakness. She didn't even have the energy to lift her hand to swipe at her cheeks. Not anymore. Hell, she almost welcomed the approach of death. Not the fucking black tentacles of doom, she couldn't welcome those. But the after. The sweet oblivion. It would be a release from uncertainty and sorrow. A respite.
"I've had a good life."
At thirty-two, she'd only just stopped being young, even though youth and vitality still infused her limbs (usually). She had a place, an apartment she'd paid for. On Earth. London. She couldn't say what had drawn her to the city, not exactly, but suspected it had to do with the fact it had been rebuilt, like, a dozen times. It was resilient, a constant work in progress, a symbol of humanity. She didn't buy into the whole human superiority thing. But she liked being human and a woman and thirty-two and the owner of a really fucking nice two bedroom flat, as the Londoners called it, on the seventy-sixth floor of Victory Towers.
She didn't have a spouse or any kids; hadn't wanted the complication. Now, she felt torn between a need she'd never really had and relief she wouldn't be leaving anyone behind.
Kat found the energy to wipe her nose and then let her hand flop to the floor beside her. Her fingers tangled in the tools tucked inside her belt and she looked down. Even as she considered the collection—small combination laser torch/solder, pattern disrupter, and good, old-fashioned knife, she knew none of them would penetrate the barrier.
She'd be the galaxy's biggest damned fool if she didn't try them, though.
Fucking invisible piece of shit between her and the galactic octopus of doom didn't even smoke when she pointed the torch at it. The disruptor failed, too. Nothing disrupted. In fact, the small burst of energy looked as if it had been interrupted.
She dropped back to the 'floor', legs splayed across the round metre of space she had all to herself. All. To. Herself. The disrupter rested against her thigh, her fingers still loosely wrapped around the handle. She swiped her index finger over the trigger, then thumbed the safety forward. The stylised dragon etched into the ceramic stock drew her eye. It was a Jormangund weapon. Not their best, not even their tenth best. It didn't fire torpedoes the size of bullets that could punch a hole in the side of a frigate like the Bataille. But, it would put a neat hole between her eyes.
Slowly, Kat turned the weapon on herself. A fatalistic sort of calm swept through her as the dark, unwinking eye at the end of the barrel lined up with her nose. She tilted it back a bit, raising the aim to her forehead. There, she hesitated, thumb resting against the safety. She'd seen what a disrupter round did to human flesh; there was always work for a merc engineer with one of the hundred or so private armies strung across the galaxy. Not her favourite contracts. She only took 'em when she needed the money and never re-upped. But she'd used a weapon, dodged enemy fire and dragged a screaming kid away from the line. She'd watched heads explode like ripe melons. The weird, ripple effect of a disrupter against skin was somehow worse. And what was left behind? Might as well be dead, man.
Kat looked outside at the advancing tide of black. Then, drawing in a steady breath—almost steady—she thumbed off the safety and looked back down at a more immediate death. One of her own damned choosing.