Chapter 10: Nadia

Nadia headed the opposite direction along the same passage. At first, Bower thought the hallways here were very narrow but actually, they weren't. The ceiling was lower here, only about seven feet high. Empty storage containers were stored in the adjoining passages from the storage area. They were lined up along the walls and that's what was making the halls seem so constricted.

"You're taking us to the reactor? I need you to show me the way." Bower called after her.

Nadia spoke over her shoulder, "To the reactor? I don't like going that far down."

"Why not?"

Nadia stopped and turned solemnly towards both men, "No one who goes in that direction ever comes back."

Mahn and Bower exchanged looks. "Well, we're going to have to risk it," Bower said.

"Fuck that."

"We don't have much time," Bower insisted, "We could lose everyone on board, don't you understand?"

"Can you fly it?" Nadia asked.

Bower hesitated.

"Can you fly the ship?" she asked again, her voice silken, "Could you land it if you had to?"

Bower nodded, "Yeah."

She stared at him for a few moments again. Then she told them, "Follow me."

Bower found himself entranced by Nadia. She was dangerous, mysterious, strong, resilient, intelligent and beautiful all rolled up into one extraordinary woman. He wished he had time to talk to her, to find out more about her but they were on borrowed time. What use was it to start a romance if they were just going to wind up dead in a fiery explosion?

Nadia lead them at a brisk pace.

The formation of the walls and ceiling structures were changing. Although spread out, there seemed to be more functioning light fixtures here. Were they heading toward the infirmary wing? She quickly turned down a few corridors, getting Bower a little confused. He doubted if he could find his way back on his own. He was just going to have to trust her.

These passages were better lit and warmer than any others he had seen so far. The humidity was soupy making him sweat in areas of his body he normally didn't. He looked at Mahn who was busy keeping an eye out behind them as they traveled. The stocky man seemed okay with where she was taking them and that made Bower feel better.

"How long have you been awake?" He asked her.

"Too long." Mahn muttered from behind him.

"I don't know for sure," she whispered, "It's impossible to tell time. Five, maybe six months."

"Months? Wow."

"You have been awake long enough to be able to tell us from the monsters," Mahn said quietly.

Nadia stopped again and turned. They locked eyes. She was cold again, heartless.

"There was no reason for you to attack us." Mahn continued in his thick accent.

"You don't know anything about me!" She said. Her tone was icy.

"You could have killed Bower. How many other people have you killed, Nu?"

"Fuck you!"

Bower tried to interject, "This isn't getting us anywhere, Mahn."

Mahn didn't back down, "Yes it is. She attacked us, not the other way around. I want to know why."

There was that look of stark terror again. Nadia stammered. "I wasn't sure-"

"You could tell we were just passing through," Mahn insisted, "You could have ignored us, stayed hidden until we went by. You didn't have to attack."

"I didn't know what you intended and you were not just passing through. He was looking for something." She hissed, jamming a finger in Bower's face.

"I have seen you before and you have seen me." Mahn continued the interrogation.

Nadia shrugged, "I've always avoided you but I was never afraid. I respected you. You kept your distance and I kept mine."

"Then why attack my companion?"

"Mahn, come on-" Bower pleaded.

"I felt threatened." She said quietly.

"Bower did nothing to make you feel he was a threat," Mahn said flatly. He looked at Bower, "I want to know if we can trust her or not, my friend. She was going to kill you. Maybe her pretty face is enough to make you forget that but its not good enough for me."

Bower waited for Nadia to respond.

Nadia looked stricken but then composed herself. She tried to speak but her voice cracked so she cleared her throat and waited before trying again. She leaned against the moist wall as if she needed support. Finally, she looked resolved and determined to explain her actions to them. As she began to whisper the words, she stared at the floor deep in thought and thinking carefully about what she was saying. "I went to school back home with every member of my team. We had grown up together. When I woke up most of them were already gone." Her words drifted off. She was staring at the floor, lost in thought.

"What happened?" Bower asked softly.

"There was one member of the team who had been trying to salvage the lab wing as much as he could. He was a dear friend of mine. After I woke up from cryogenic sleep, he had focused all of his attention on me. It was very strange behavior. We were always very close but he was doting, smothering. I didn't understand what he was thinking. I kept urging him to find a way to open the main door so we could get out. I felt we had to explore the ship and find out what went wrong but he wanted to stay put. We argued about it constantly."

"He wouldn't listen to you?"

"No."

"Maybe he was just concerned for your safety," Bower offered.

Nadia shuddered, "That's what I thought at first but then he attacked me."

"Attacked you?"

"Hit me over the head from behind. Knocked me out." Nadia's voice cracked and again she cleared her throat.

"Why would he do that?" Bower asked, incredulous.

Mahn just listened quietly.

"He beat me, then raped me and locked me into one of the bedrooms against my will. He wanted a sex slave." She was burning with ferocity, visibly trembling with mixed emotions.

Bower could see the impassive survivalist surfacing again within her as her eyes went emotionless and cold. He felt sick. He wanted to comfort her, but he was afraid she'd knife him if he got too close.

They waited patiently for her to continue.

"He would visit me several times each day to rape me and if I refused he would beat me until I surrendered," she spoke the words as though they tasted badly in her mouth, "So I fashioned a knife out of a piece steel shelf rack that was inside the closet. The next time he opened the door I put the knife in his neck. I killed him. It was the only way I could escape."

Bower was stunned, "I don't know what to say."

"I have trouble trusting men after what happened to me," She was glaring at Mahn, "Can you understand that? Does that make it clear enough for you?"

Mahn sighed, "I'm sorry that you suffered but you cannot place blame on every man you meet because one of them was so awful. He was a coward. Bower and I are not."

"I'd known him for over half my life," Nadia's voice wavered. She didn't seem to hear what Mahn had just said, "how could he do that to me?"

"He was only thinking of himself," Bower told her. "It wasn't anything you could have predicted or prevented. He took advantage of your trust-"

He could see Nadia was straining not to cry.

"-but hey, we won't."

"If I was interested in hurting you, we would have fought many times by now, Nu," Mahn told her, "Every time we would run into each other, I would be amazed that you had managed to survive along with me. We have a mutual respect, you and I. You are no longer prey. You have become a warrior." Mahn smiled at her. He had a warm smile.

"It wasn't you I was frightened of," Nadia murmured.

Bower was crestfallen.

Well, shit.

With his soft, soothing voice, Mahn continued, "It feels good, no? Does it not feel good to be among companions after being alone for so long? Do you not feel better being able to talk to others about what happened and rely on others so that nothing like that ever happens again?"

Nadia was silent for a while then she nodded. A few minutes went by as they absorbed the importance of the conversation and the bonding that had taken place. Though she came very close several times, Nadia didn't cry.

She sounded remorseful, "I'm sorry I tried to kill you."

Mahn was still smiling, "You should be saying that to my friend, Nu. Not to me."

Nadia muttered an apology to Bower and continued leading the way.

They followed her. Bower was burning with questions but he decided to wait for a better place to ask. He was also curious about Mahn as well since he had shown such insight, wisdom and patience. Bower had assumed Mahn was around the same age as he and Nadia but now he was convinced that he was a little older. He wondered how old Nadia was.

Further down the hall, there must have been a cracked water pipe overhead or something because water was dripping down on them. It was steamy with limited visibility and the dripping water made it difficult for them to hear.

Nadia strode over to a large white door and placed her hand on a palm scanner.

With perfect timing, far off in the distance they heard tat, tat, tat, tat, tat.

Great.

"What are we doing?" Bower whispered to her.

"We are waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"Shh." She hissed, "It should be any minute now."

"There is a half dozen hunters headed right for us," Mahn murmured to him. He was facing the direction the sound had come from.

"Hey, we have to go," Bower told her.

"Trust me," she hissed again.

They could hear distance calls and roaring from far down the halls. They seemed to be getting closer. The calls and shrieks were also coming from different directions. They were methodically being surrounded.

"This hallway is narrow," Mahn told her calmly, "I can hold a few of them here if you need more time, Nu."

Bower was incredulous, "What is this? Custer's last stand?"

Nadia was adamant. "You want to get to the reactor? Then trust me."

The hunters were even closer. After just a few seconds, they could actually hear the footfalls of their approach.

Bower was in a near panic. He stomach was twisting into painful knots, "We have to go now!"

Nadia sighed, "Trust me."

Triumphant shrieking. They had been found.

"For fuck's sake!"

"Wait. Any second now."

"We gotta go now, right now!" At the end of the long hall, Bower could see a hunter crawling along the floor on all fours like a dog. It was fast. Terribly fast. He raised his anti riot gun at it over Mann's shoulder.

There was another monster down the intersecting hall where they had just come from. It was sprinting full bore at them.

Bower was about to pass out.

Mahn began to chuckle as if thrilled by the incoming hunters. He drew both swords and stood his ground.

You crazy bastard!

Whatever Nadia was planning to do she only had seconds to do it because now they were trapped and had no choice but to fight.

The ship began to rumble. It was another energy purge as the reactor tried to reset itself.

The door panel came to life. Nadia's palm was scanned and below her forearm tattoo was also scanned by a separate display at the same time.

A hunter dropped down a few feet in front of them from an overhead vent. Bower let out a terrified cry then shot it. The blast threw the screaming and writhing hunter away from them just as Nadia got the door opened.

The three of them rushed through the door into a brightly lit and sanitized hallway. This was a lab or a hospital and this long passage was probably an enclosed bridge to the central office.

The heavy door closed before the shrieking hunters could reach it.

Bower breathed a sigh of relief. "What the hell are they?" he asked her, "The hunters, I mean."

"I have my suspicions but I never felt like sticking around to confirm," Nadia said over her shoulder. She strode briskly into the main chamber and it was indeed a observational lab center. "Running was always the best option."

"They can't be from this ship." Bower said to Mahn.

The stocky man shrugged at him.

The large windows showed an expansive room that filled with rows and rows of storage tanks and bins. Since the actually office space of the lab was suspended from the ceiling, the huge room seemed to encircle them but it gave them a clear view of everywhere within the storage facility. All of the storage units were meticulously categorized, all of them were numbered. Inside the bright lab, everything was white and he saw computers, bookshelves, closets of scrubs, lab coats, lab equipment and monitors. It was quite impressive.

"What is all this?" Bower asked her.

"Ecological development. This is an embryonic charter, livestock and wildlife re-population." Nadia said.

"You live here? You've been protecting all this?"

She nodded, "To us it seemed worth protecting."

"Us? How many of you were there originally?" he immediately regretted his question because it might get her thinking of the team member that kept her hostage.

"There were seven of us total. When I woke up there were only two of us left and that story didn't have a very happy ending. I was part of the Brandenburg Institute's genetic sampling team. We spent seven years collecting and preserving the Earth's biosphere. There was no way I was going to let any of those things in here."

"There is a similar containment unit in the agriculture wing, Nu. All the genetic plant and algae material from Earth ranging from seaweed to crops." Mahn told her. "It is still intact but about twenty percent of our specimens have been lost."

"Why do you call me Nu?" She asked. "What does it mean?"

Mahn blushed, "I am sorry. It means girl. Does it bother you?"

Nadia flashed a smile back and Bower nearly swooned. What a lovely, brilliant smile she had despite all of the grime. "No, I don't mind. I was just curious." Her smile vanished as quickly as it appeared.

Bower looked back out at the massive containment room. It was mind-blowing what her team had accomplished here. They could introduce indigenous farm animals on Pandorum. After a few years it would be like they never left home.

Nadia joined him at the windows. "I volunteered because this truly is Noah's Ark. This archive holds the world in which we are going to live. We've lost around thirty percent of the specimens here. The lab has its own generator but without the reactor working, I don't know if they'll ever make it to Pandorum."

"When I first woke up I couldn't remember how far away Pandorum was. Now I know it was a one hundred and twenty-three year journey so we have to reset the reactor at all costs." Bower told her.

"You're lucky," Nadia said, "It took me months to remember that much." She threw a few switches and detached the enclosed bridge that lead to the door they had entered through. The bridges extended to the top levels of the massive storage facility and terminated where all the doors were. The only way to get out was to rotate the laboratory center to line up with whatever bridge and corresponding door you wanted to use. "It took me even longer to get that goddamn door opened. My memories come back in pieces. I know everything about this vault and its systems but I still can't remember where I grew up or my brother's name."

"I can not even remember where I slept last night." Mahn announced.

They shared a light chuckle.

Nadia set out bottled water for them to drink.

Bower took a few super snacks from his cargo pocket and offered one to the others. With unrehearsed timing, they simultaneously prepared themselves. Then, in unison, they tossed it into their mouths, chewed and swallowed it as quickly as possible, washing the nasty morsel down with the bottled water and matching grimaces.

Bower fought against the urge to cough. "How could we get like this in only eight years?"

Nadia was sipping water, "This ship was built to outlast our children's children. I think we've been asleep a lot longer than we think."

"I do too." Mahn quickly agreed with her. " I have my own ideas on where the hunters came from as well."

"Really?" Bower was interested.

"I think it was the mutagen."

"The what?" Bower asked.

"The hormonal mutagens that were fed to us through the feeding tubes during cryogenic sleep." Nadia clarified. "I've thought about that possibility too."

"Which possibility?" Bower still wasn't following their conversation.

"It would take quite a long time for the mutagen to cause such a massive genetic shift but it is not at all impossible." Mahn said to them. "Especially if we are right about being asleep a lot longer than initially planned."

Nadia continued the discussion, "Also, the levels of mutagen intake would be increased by the ingestion of saturated flesh."

Mahn nodded in agreement, "That could be enough of a catalyst to trigger such a complete mutation."

Bower was looking back and forth at them.

Nadia continued as Mahn left off, "The number of chromosomal similarities are stunning. They're nearly a perfect match, give or take a couple of DNA strands. They have to be related."

"Exactly," Mahn agreed. "Genetically speaking, they can not be too far off. In fact, since we know they are breeding, their mutated DNA must have been transferred to later generations. They might not even be the original passengers, but their offspring."

Bower slowly began to understand what they were saying and he didn't like where this conversation was ending up. "You mean to tell me," he said slowly, "That these things, these hunters are mutated humans? That they were once passengers like us and after years of cannibalism and multiple biological mutations, they transformed into these monsters?"

Mahn looked grim, "It is a good possibility, my friend."

"Holy shit."

"Exactly."