CHAPTER 3: I Walk in Quiet, as You Bade
AUTHOR: MNEMOSYNE
RATING: R, for violence and some language
CATEGORY: Angst, Drama, Romance, Action, Deathfic
CODES: R/S (heavy on the R) with touches of everyone
IMPORTANT: Starting with this chapter, we begin to get into the gore that warranted an R rating for this story. I don't think it's very bad, but then, I'm not everyone. So be forewarned! Hopefully we'll all make it through unscathed. :D
B Deck was quiet as a tomb, and the air felt rank and stale. That was more a result of the utter stillness of the air than any fault of the environmental systems, but it made no difference to Malcolm as he dropped from the ceiling onto the soft beige carpet of the corridor. Aboard Enterprise, there would be sound here regardless of the time of day; people laughing together, having quiet conversations as they made their way to their posts with every shift change.
The dead air was almost as unnerving as the blood spattered in a V-pattern along the bulkhead to his left, and the sallow gray body from which it had come.
//Bloody hell,// the armory officer allowed himself to think, before quickly snapping into regimental mode and surveying the situation. Kneeling beside the fallen crewman - the uniform identified him as an ensign in the engineering department - Malcolm made a quick diagnosis of the cause of death. A raw, angry red hole in his temple was obviously the culprit. Short range contact with a powerful energy weapon, judging by the charring around the edges of the wound, and the rapidity with which it had cauterized.
The blood on the wall appeared to be alone - only a very small puddle had formed and dried beneath the corpse. //Must have sprayed out immediately after the shot,// Malcolm deduced, forcing himself to be clinical despite the fact that he knew this young man's name: Ensign Grady Marylebone. The blood and horror of his death, and the unnatural gray pallor of his skin, had made him nearly unrecognizable at first glance.
"Rest easy, Ensign," Malcolm murmured, passing a hand over the dead man's eyes to close them. They seemed haunted, as though the ensign knew something he desperately wanted to divulge, but couldn't voice through cold, blue lips.
//Like who killed him,// Malcolm thought wryly, then looked up to gaze down the corridor. It curved away around the corner in both directions, leaving the armory officer feeling uneasy and exposed. Standing slowly, he pressed against the wall of the hall across from Marylebone's body. Gripping his phase pistol in a white-knuckled fist, he slowly inched forward.
After checking the first three cabins he came across, Malcolm came to a conclusion: the crew was not here, and if he wanted to find them, it was time to strategize.
Each deserted cabin felt the same as he keyed in his security override and peered inside. They seemed frozen in time, as though they'd been abandoned in haste, but with the full intention of a quick return. In one of the rooms, a half-eaten plate of Chef's lasagna was holding open the pages of a leather-bound copy of "War of the Worlds." In another, the bunk was tousled and unmade, as though whoever had lived there had gotten out of bed and disappeared. In the third cabin he entered - eeriest of all - soft, reedy music was playing in a never-ending loop.
On a starship of this sort, people did not just disappear. But it seemed, for all intents and purposes, that that was precisely what the crew of the Enterprise had done.
"They can't just go away," Malcolm muttered in frustration as he paused to sit in the third cabin and tried to collect his thoughts. "They have to be SOMEWHERE." Even if they'd been ejected into space, there would have been SOME sign. He would have seen something - a body, a piece of debris. SOMETHING.
"It's like the Mary Celeste," he murmured, looking around the empty crew quarters. The same reedy song finished playing, then started up again. "Even the ghosts are missing."
It was as he sat there, in the missing crewmember's cabin, that the lights suddenly flickered.
His head snapped up immediately, and he fixed the nearest light fixture with a piercing gaze, willing it to dim again. It stubbornly refused, and burned brightly as ever. But it made no matter - Malcolm had his target.
"Engineering," he murmured, and all but bolted for the door.