Seth pounded on the door in desperation.
No,Seth rationalized.Thosethingsareontheirownnuclearbatteries.Shelockedmeout.Shehatesme.Dadwasright.Idestroyedeverything…
The door slid open. Seth lost his balance and stumbled through. Fumbling on his hands and knees, he pushed himself to standing. The door slid closed behind him, and he leaned against it, gasping for breath. His mother's window shutter was open. The room was lighted by Saturn's ring. On the walls shimmered the symbols. Perversely familiar, Seth stared. He couldn't quite make out what they were made of, but they looked carved. Mariana was facing towards the window, a silhouette in a nightgown.
"Mom," Seth said. "Didn't you hear me?"
"Yeah, baby, I heard you." She didn't turn, though Seth badly wanted her to.
Something crawled under his skin, and he gripped his forearm to quell the strange itch. "Mom, I saw…I saw…" He couldn't bring himself to tell her. The pulsing in his arm churned, and he thought he could feel his skin swelling beneath his fingertips. No.Anotherhallucination,liketheringpeople.
Mariana reached a hand towards the window and began to draw. Two symbols, then three, then five. The word, whose meaning was against barely out of reach, shimmered in planetlight. She paused, and then turned around. Seth gaped for breath, pressing himself smaller against the locked door. His mother has gripping her own forearm, except through her fingers ran blood. Black as the void, it pitted and patted onto the floor. The symbols, Seth realized, were drawn in blood.
"Mom, no!" Seth sobbed. "What did you do?"
The gash cut a canyon through his mother's pale flesh. The fingers of that hand looked as if they'd lost elasticity, a cut tendon or product of blood loss. Seth looked beside her. The bedside vanity had been shattered, a piece of glass missing.
"What did I do, baby? I don't know…how strange." Her voice was distant, airy. "I just don't know. Say, tomorrow, why don't you and I go to the zero-G park? You can finally make some friends."
Anger rose up in Seth's chest. He growled, "Why does everyone keep saying that!"
"Everyone?" His mother inquired. "Who else have you been talking to?"
"Dad said that…" Seth swallowed. "He's accusing me of that. Mom, please talk to him. Get him to stop."
"John? John's here? No. Daddy is at work."
"No, I saw him. He's…" He'srightbehindyou.During the conversation, John Kerhn, dead white and drenched in blood, had come out from the corner. Barely visible in the shadow of the window frame, the man had ceased his hurtful accusations and contented himself to simply observe. Seth blinked. "You're bleeding, Mom."
His mother looked at him derisively. "Don't you see it?" She said. Behind her, John Kerhn shifted his weight, rapt in interest. She preached: "They want us to speak when they can't, Seth. That's what's been wrong. They have a message. Themessage. Only we're too blind-sighted to see it."
John Kerhn opened his mouth soundlessly, showing his teeth. Seth couldn't interpret the expression, but it frightened him. "Mom, please, listen: something's wrong."
"Yes, by Altman, something iswrong. We need to…"
Looking more decrepit than ever, John Kerhn issued a low, threatening gurgle from his flayed throat. Seth's head rang as he stared his father in the eyes. "Dad is dead."
His mother broke from her wistful, religious gaze. "No, babe, he's…"
"He's right here, and he's dead. Something went wrong on the mining op and he died. He just couldn't tell us, until now."
The corpse of John Kerhn seemed stricken by his son's admission. He walked closer to his wife, drawing his head up the length of her disheveled hair, smelling it with a raspy breath. He raised his hands and laid them around Marina's shoulders. For a moment his face was lost in her mane.
Youshouldn'tlistentoher,he said. She'slying.She'sbeeninfected,mypoorlove,hermind'sforfeit.
"What do you mean?" Seth asked. His legs still refused to budge from the space in the door frame. The worms underneath his skin pulsed and itched.
"What?" His mother asked.
"I'm not talking to you!" Seth snapped. Anger came easily through his vocal chords. "Let him talk, will you?" Something strange was happening in his throat. An asthmatic hiss, a high-pitched whine in disharmony to his natural tone.
Don't listen to the message. Don't heed the call. Stay away, stay back. Leave well enough alone!
His father hissed, moving his rotting hands over Marina's body. She didn't see him, didn't notice him at all. Distracted, Mariana was looking down at her emaciated arm, sobbing regretfully. "Get the med-kid, Seth," she sobbed.
Seth wasn't listening. His father held his attention.
ButIknowyou,Sethy.Iknowyourmother.He put his hands around her head, gripping her strongly. Marina didn't notice, but Seth was beginning to see the potential energy building in his father's ragged muscles.
"Dad no, stop! You…you're just a hallucination. You aren't real!" What was wrong with his voice? It was as if the whispers in his skull had stolen his tongue.
She'llturnyou.She'llhaveyouworkingforit.Ican'thavethat…John Kerhn began to twist his hands, taking his wife's head with them.
"No, don't! You don't exist.Youcan'ttouchher!" Seth roared, edging away from the door. His fists were clenched so tight, he could feel the skin on his hands breaking at the knuckle.
Isthatwhatyouthink?John bared his teeth. It was a smile, Seth realized. The smile of a dead man.
There was a juicy series of pops as John twisted his wife's neck. Her eyes rolled to white. With a flourish, John opened his arms and her body crumpled to the ground. Seth was screaming, tearing his own vocal chords with his voice. The high-pitched whine reverberated in his eardrums and he fell in a panic to his mother's side. Calling her name, he pawed at her uselessly, trying to twist her head back to the front. A pointless endeavor, for her head flopped from side to side, bones in neck building blocks loose in a sack.
"You!" Seth looked up at his father. "You did this! Why? Why would you do that?"
John Kerhn's yellow pupils dilated and he ground his teeth in satisfaction.
Promise me the next person you see, you tell them to leave it alone. Tell them to not listen, to never listen. The Marker is far beyond what humanity is ready for, and is capable of nothing humanity needs. Remember that. Tell them all: leave it be.
His father backed into the shadows.
"Seth?" A voice said timidly from behind him. His mother'svoice. Seth's stomach turned. If it hadn't been empty, he was sure he would have vomited again. She'd joined the ranks of the eerie dead and Seth felt like a little boy again, but a million miles apart from his parents and utterly alone.
He looked at the carpet.
There was nothing in front of him. No body, no John Kerhn. Seth twisted around and faced the door. The holo-lock, functional, was in the open position, and his mother stood in the doorway. Her woundless arms led to her hands, which were clenched around the hilt of a large kitchen knife.
Mom…?Seth tried to speak, but a feeble raspy whine was the only thing that issued from his throat. His hands pawed at his throat. Something was wrong, very wrong. The worms crawled up his jugular to his eyes.
"Seth, no, no…" Tears streaked down his mother's cheeks. She looked around the room. From the walls to the window, bloody symbols glittered in planetlight. Seth clutched his arms, feeling the warmth of blood and the sting of the cuts. His mother continued as Seth sat bewildered. "I'm so sorry baby, we're out of time. I wish we could have had longer. It's time for unity. And all this? It's what we've been waiting for. The holy convergence Altman promised humanity hundreds of years ago. Oh Seth, I love you so much…but you have a purpose so far beyond my humble love."
Seth realized, as his throat wheezed and his arms bled, she was saying good-bye.
Marina charged, plunging the knife deep into Seth's chest. She withdrew it with a sickening slurp. The piercing detonated the air from his lungs and the hole bubbled as precious oxygen leaked out. Seth fell to the ground, instantly numb.
He could do nothing but watch half-conscious as his mother then turned the knife on herself.
Seth awoke to the whispers. Everything was so quiet, and without the cacophony of life, he found the whispers were finally starting to make sense. The first direction was a simple one: get up, get into the vents. The pull was magnetic, and difficult to resist. When Seth protested, wondering where his father was, the answer was simple.
The connection has been severed. You don't need him anymore.
Seth rose shakily and crawled over his mother's corpse. Was it real? Was his father real? He'd seen Dad break her neck. He saw her do…this…to herself. But what was to say what reality was? Seth put his hand on Mariana Kerhn's face. The ragged flesh of his knuckles was a messy dichotomy to the unmarred flesh of his mother. Her death gaze was distant, pious. Devoted, but not to him.
Though she'd been dead for only an hour, maybe less, he could smell the decay moving over her like a fine lattice. He smelled it in himself, too. Out of curiosity, Seth looked at his chest. There was a large red blotch in almost the same spot that John Kehrn's wound had been. He peeled the bloody pajamas back, and looked at his skin. Gray, no wound, but a badly sealed hole. His chest was messy, patchworked. Whatever had been crawling under his skin had been busy, apparently. Thathad been real. It worked at him still, he could feel it.
With awkward legs, Seth made his way to his mother's desk. He climbed atop it, knocking over family pictures and trinkets. Wrenching the screen to the vent off, Seth pulled himself inside, bare feet scrambling against the wall. Inside the vent it was dark, and he crawled and crawled, the only sound his wheezing breath and his clattering limbs on aluminum alloy. The whispers urged him forward, forward! A call of the wild, a call to something greater.
The air vent approached another apartment. Emergency lighting from the house filtered up into the vent, and Seth stopped, clutching his stomach. He peeled away his soiled top and threw it aside. In the dimness, he could see the worms crawling underneath his skin.
Why are you stopping?
Seth tried to speak, but his voice was an animalistic whine.
You're so close.
But, close to what? Seth remembered the ghost of his father, the variety of corpses of his mother. He was close to death. He shuddered, the pain dark and cold. He was dying. Seth ran his hands through his hair. His fingernails, too long, caught on his hair, and pulled it out. More and more came out as he tried in vain to put what he'd first taken back. Seth grimaced and rolled onto his stomach.
Not death. Not like you know it. Can you sacrifice individuality for the opportunity to be whole?
The pull nagged at him again, and Seth pushed past the pain, determined to follow the call. His body was the one doing all the work. The subdermal worms yanked his flesh forward.
There was a clatter ahead of him, and Seth instinctively stopped. It was the now-familiar thundering of someone crawling in the vents, only this time, a large body. Seth vaguely recalled his mother saying engineers had vent access during the lockdown. Scuttling into a corner between vent connections, Seth hugged his knees. The blue glow of an engineer's visor lit the corner, and the worker slowly came into view.
The man stopped and tried to reach a hand to his hip, but the vent was too small, and he was forced to withdraw his arm back to front. An inquisitive moment passed, and the engineer asked, "Are you… are you all right?"
Seth, knowing he could not speak, shook his head no.But the whispers in the back of his mind hissed malice at the man, and Seth, in a last vestige of free will, began nodding his head. Yes.YesI'mokay.Leavemealone.It'sdangerous.
And then, he remembered the message. The promise his father had him make.
Seth took a deep, raspy breath, and focused all his energy into forming words. To his surprise, they came out, but not in his voice. The discharge from his throat was shrill, bestial, gurgling with fluid and vitriol. "Leave…it alone. Don't…disturb…the Marker. It's bad. Bad, bad, bad…"
The engineer seemed stunned. "You know about the Marker?"
Seth, out of energy to speak, shook his head no.Idon'tknowabouttheMarker.I'veneverheardofitexceptwhenMomwouldgetreligious.ButtheMarkerknowsaboutme.Andyoutoo,probably.We'realldead,justsomeofusdon'tknowityet.The reality of the situation hit the eleven-year-old boy. His family was dead and he was caught somewhere horrible between. Seth was rendered a little boy again, and he began to cry. He coughed wet sobs in a strange, inhuman voice.
Crawling over the apartment's vent, a larger space than the regular tunnel, the engineer found room to draw a dangerous looking tool from his belt. He must have known something Seth didn't, for he had no reservations pointing the gun straight at Seth's legs. "Sorry. Better this way," he said tersely.
Seth closed his eyes as the voices in his skull screamed in rebellion. He shrieked too, the monster's roar, his instinct crying out in terror, but his mind resigned to accept death. He waited for the shot to be fired.
Instead there was a crash, and a yell. Seth opened his eyes. The engineer's weight had broken through the vent, and the man had been sent sprawling to the house below. A gurgling roar from beneath him, and the engineer gasped in surprise. He began to fire at the corner, each plasma blast illuminating the shadow of something large, something with huge claws.
Seth scooted around the hole in the vents and scrambled onwards. Twists and turns in the vents, Seth couldn't bear to think what had happened to the engineer. All he knew was that he had to follow the pull, and without its gravitational guidance, he'd surely be lost in the maze of vents.
Leaveitallbehind, they said. And he did; the rest of his pajamas, and his fingernails. Thoughts of his parents, of his terrible fate. The last of his hair, and eventually, his lips and eyelids. They splattered the vent's surface like lost dimes. He didn't need them anymore.
When Seth finally burst from the vent into a large, spacious room, he was Seth no longer. All around him, the gray wraithlike bodies of the pack circled. He saw himself through their eyes as well as his own, and the feeling was one of acceptance. Like him, they had no mothers, no fathers. No life, no animosities, no headaches and no hurt. And best of all: no loneliness. He'd answered the call, and it was good.
Altman be praised.