Chapter 8: Payton

Payton was furious.

Since Bower had been pursued by the hunters, Payton lost all communication with him and feared the worst. One minute Bower was loud and clear then he started breaking up. Now the comm would only emit a constant low hum of static.

The Corporal had been Payton's link to the vastness of the ship outside of this room, this tight cell that filled him with dread. It wasn't claustrophobia that heckled his nerves. It was something deeper and more profound. Something that he couldn't identify, something he couldn't recall.

Ever since he and Bower had discussed their wives, Payton felt a tremor of emotion trickle over him. It wasn't a yearning that he felt, no tinge of guilt weighed down on him nor was it heartbreak. It was an acute anger, a fiery rage that frightened him because it overcame him so thoroughly and intensely. He wanted to smash the panels and monitors at the security station he was sitting. He wanted to cause harm, inflict injury and induce ruin to everything around. He felt so inexplicably enraged that striking himself in the face, pulling out his own hair and clawing holes into his skin seemed the only way to sate his fury and he was barely able to resist hurting himself and destroying everything.

Payton shot out of his chair and began to pace in attempt to stave off his impulses. The worst thing about how he was feeling was the inability to recall what had incited this irrational anger. Had his wife been unfaithful? Had she hurt their children? Did they even have children? Did he even have a wife? The questions he had, unfortunately, bore no answers. Waves of rage washed through him like a tide of a vast ocean. Payton was trembling with fury.

He glared around at the room he was in. He felt imprisoned rather than stranded. He tasted blood in his mouth. He had bitten the inside of his cheek while systematically clenching his jaw.

When he had first awaken from cryogenic sleep, Payton had searched his locker. Nothing had stirred any memories. His uniforms, his dog tags, his personal items and toiletries seemed to be in order but all of them seemed strange and unfamiliar. There had been no photos or letters from home. Certainly he had family to keep in contact with, so why would he not keep things so dear? He had no wallet, no identification, no legal paperwork, no military orders and no personal clothing either. It was as though he had gone in with only the bare essentials when he entered the cryopod.

He was a stranger to himself. A visitor in his own mind.

There was also the horrible fear that he was contending with.

Earlier, Payton had attempted to follow in Bowers' footsteps and enter the maintenance duct. When he reached up and let the hatch drop open, he had been suddenly gripped by a fear that took his breath away. He had collapsed in a terror, hugging himself and whimpering. The mere sight of the opened maintenance hatch was enough to overload his emotions with a panic he had never felt before. What made the matter worse was that he couldn't remember anything to explain his intense terror. The shackles of fear didn't release him until after he had closed and secured the hatch.

So many unexplained problems had arisen, while he was trapped and he had no answers for any of them.

Payton was still pacing and glancing around the room. He felt like a rat in a cage. Was it nervousness he was feeling? Stress? He wasn't sure.

The room was divided into two areas, the control room and the cryopod room. Together, they were easily eighteen hundred square feet and beyond the cryopods was the massive locker room. He was hardly cramped yet he still felt like he was being squeezed. The walls were practically closing in on him from all sides.

Payton used the anger burning furiously within him to extinguish the smaller flame of fear.

The small control room had the basic computers, tracking systems and communication alarm systems. It was mainly for security purposes. He had a lock on Bowers' comm via tracking earlier and was following his movements on the schematics map of the ship. That was the link that had since been lost and so far, he had been unable to reconnect with Bower.

Payton had tried to open the door to the main security room because beyond it lay the main Bridge. The door proved to be impassable. The portal jam was heavily scratched and warped as though someone had spent a lot of time trying to pry it open with various leverages. He had recognized the damage and remembered trying to pry the door open, but couldn't recall when he had done so.

Maddening.

While he paced, Payton became aware that he reeked with body odor. He had been so impatient to get a hold of someone, when he had first emerged, that he had ransacked his locker for uniforms and had immediately set out to get the security terminal up and running.

Payton became aware of the grimy feel of his skin, the stiffness of being unwashed in the soft areas of his body and his itchy scalp.

Maybe the locker room would feel less oppressive. Perhaps a hot shower would make him feel better.

The mirror inside his locker door showed him one hell of a sight. Payton had remembered being youthful and energetic when he had first joined the mission. How old was he now? The mirror reflected an middle-aged, tired man that had seen too much suffering. Adversity was spelled out across his face with thin wrinkles. His hair was peppered with white around his ears and temple. His belly was a slight pooch. His hair was long and unkempt. His beard and mustache were overgrown and shaggy. He was hardly indicative of a Flight Officer.

Now he could chalk-up self-loathing with all of the other emotions he was being overrun with.

Payton showered, shaved, trimmed his beard and trimmed his hair. The hot shower, fragrant soap and shampoo was invigorating. The whole time while he was grooming himself, most of the negative feelings seemed to be washed away with the rest of the filth. The fresh uniform and the sensation of his scrubbed skin and clean cut hair was a nice change. By the time he arrived back at the terminal, he felt a lot better. He was focused again, ready to guide the Corporal through the ship and to the engine room where he would have access to the reactor.

Payton began to relay over the comm: "This is First Lieutenant Payton, if anyone can read me, please respond." He spend a few minutes keying the same message over and over again. While he waiting for a response, his mind began to drift to the same negative thoughts.

Payton could feel the anger welling deep from within like a geyser of hot fury ready to burst forth. Where was this rage stemming from?

Think!

Payton knew instinctively that he needed to retrace his steps from where he could last recall. The last thing he could remember was being trapped in the storage control room. He remembered the feelings of being a prisoner, of extended boredom and being utterly alone. Despite the vivid recollection of being stranded, Payton could not recall anything before or after being trapped.

Suddenly, he remembered getting lost in the maintenance shaft.

Payton had locked himself in the storage area control center because it was the safest place to be at the time. He couldn't recall why he was safer in such a small office but he recalled that he had a great view of the warehouse and that gave him an advantage over the others that were awake at the time.

Had there been a mutiny on board? A virus outbreak? Payton was unsure.

The control center had proven to be a good safe house. There was water, he had a large supply of food, even a bunk to sleep in and a shower inside the restroom. He couldn't remember how long he had been barricaded inside but the boredom had been too much to cope with. One could only play solitaire so many times on the computer before becoming sick of it. Payton must have been there a very long time because he had become so desperate that he had risked traveling through the maintenance shafts.

Why hadn't he just exited the control room by the main door? Had the other passengers been that dangerous? They had to have been.

The maintenance shafts had been a nightmare. Shortly after entering, he had gotten turned around because of a fall and could not find his way back to the control center. He had been trapped in endless and almost complete darkness after his flashlight batteries had died and his chem lights had been used up. Payton could still feel the coldness of the passages around him, the hunger that he suffered and the feelings of destitute he had endured. The thick black wiring were like cold wet intestines, the innards of the ship ready to digest him upon death.

Knowing that one misstep could end in a horrible death, Payton had felt his way along in the complete darkness like a blind man. He probably traveled in circles because he had no method of navigation, no sense of direction. For days he crawled along the tunnels until he passed out from exhaustion and then he would wake up with his whole body aching. He would spend hours crying and screaming for help in the blackness.

After his water ran out, he had finally given up. He had laid in the same spot for what to him seemed like days just awaiting death but every time he would pass out, he would somehow wake up still breathing. It had seemed that even death itself, had abandoned him.

One day, Payton was in so much pain from hunger and thirst that he couldn't wait to die any longer. Not caring if he fell, he had stood up on shaky legs and staggered down the passage as quickly as he could. He closed his eyes, knowing that he could fall down a vertical shaft at any moment and he welcomed the end to his miserable existence.

Payton did fall but it was a short plunge right through the very hatch that had terrified him earlier. Now he understood why he was so scared of it. He remembered finding and gorging himself on the super snacks and bottled water. He could recall prying at the security door, trying to gain access to the main bridge. He could also remember programming the cryopod and entering it. Everything else was a total blank but at least he was starting to regain some of his memories.

It was imperative to Payton that he figure out why he had retreated into the control room. He must have gone into the computer system and locked the door electronically. Then he somehow triggered the emergency alarm system in order for the door to stay locked. It was the only way he could think of that would prevent the others from entering all that time.

The main thing that was bothering him was, if he had traveled to this area via the maintenance tunnels and had accidentally fallen through the hatch, why was his locker and cryopod here? The odds of him randomly ending up in his own service area, when the vessel was this large, was nearly impossible.

Payton knew that cryogenic sleep could affect memory, but only after extended hibernation closer to a decade or longer.

Also, where had the others gone? Had they re-entered their cryopods as he had? Did they perish in the sealed storage area? Perhaps they had tried the same tunnels and had lost their lives there.

Payton was furious.