Chapter Eight
Interloper
Lubdan Gallagher awoke inside his cryo-chamber. The chamber finished warming his body temperature and his encasing hissed as it slid open. The young Irishman stepped out of his chamber and stretched his arms above his head yawning.
"Talos?" he called out, receiving no response.
He looked around the room and was mortified to see his entire crew still inside their cryo-chambers, but something was so wrong. Every crew mate's chamber had been opened sometime time earlier. Butch and Nero were very dead. Each face was covered in dried blood from their nose and the corners of their mouth. Their skin was very pale and each of their chests were broken open in the very middle as if something burst through their ribcage from the inside.
The rest of the crew were all breathing and their vital alarms were not sounding but where their face should be Lubdan instead saw some sort of creature wrapped around their faces. It looked as if its skin was completely burned. It had four appendages, two on each side that wrapped around each crewmate's head.
The appendages looked like metallic blades yet wrapped around as if made of a softer tissue. The creatures each had a tail as well and their tails were wrapped three times around each crew mate's neck.
Lubdan rushed to Donella's chamber and grabbed hold of the tail of the creature hugging her face and he tried to pull. As soon as he touched the tail it tightened even more around his boss' neck causing her heart rate alarm to beep loudly. Lubdan immediately let go.
"Saint's preserve us, I'm sorry sir," he said to Donella's unconscious body.
Lubdan scanned the rest of the room. The control panel in the center was destroyed. Sparks jetted out of it and the door that led to the corridor was smoking and a large hole had been seemingly melted into it. He called out for Talos again.
"Talos! Where are you, friend?"
Still no reply.
He was terrified about what may have happened to his close friend. Lubdan ran through the melted door and headed down the corridor to the Nano-Med Lab and found its door was also slightly smoking and a large round hole had been melted in it as well.
He ran inside and saw the lab was in disarray. He glanced to his right and saw Talos laying on the deck next to the main control panel and access screen. He had ran wires out of his index finger into the control panel and appeared to be running a diagnostic on himself. Talos' right leg was missing from above the knee down and sparks shot from it.
"Talos!" Lubdan called out and ran to his friend's side, pulled him up, sat him at one of the two seats at the control panel. "Are you ok?"
"Diagnostic complete, repairing seventeen errors," Talos-16 replied. There were a few audible clicks and Talos' head jerked twice and his eyes closed and opened rapidly followed by a loud beep and the cables running from Talos' finger disconnected from the control panel and returned back into to his finger as the tip of his finger closed.
"Hello Lubdan, I am fine but will require a repair on my right leg. I am glad to see you are okay. When those creatures began attaching to the crew one tried to attach to me but I assume it realized I was not human and went for you. I stunned it and it withered and melted. It was a very strange thing to observe, but I could not stop the rest of them from attaching to the crew. I am sorry, I failed them."
"No ,Talos! You saved me! We can work together to save them!" Lubdan said optimistically.
"I am sorry, Lubdan," Talos said. "I have tried to remove the creatures but failed. An alien creature has attached itself to them and is gestating in their chests. Their vitals are still very much in healthy ranges, but when I try to remove the creature it tightens its hold and causes their vitals to spike. I was researching what they were and how I may be able to remove them when I was attacked by a larger creature. I was able to give it an electronic shock and it ran off. I believe what I fought off was what came from and killed Butch and Nero. These creatures have an acidic spray of some kind. I ascertained they used it to escape the cryo-chamber room and to gain entry to the lab here and also to destroy my leg. If we do not find a way to remove the creatures soon then the rest of the crew will suffer similar fates. We will need a way to defend ourselves. There are two alien creatures that came from Nero and Butch and I believe they have grown rapidly since I fought one off."
"There are plasma rifles in the Cargo Bay," Lubdan said, a new found courage building in his gut. "I can go get them but let's take care of that leg first!"
Lubdan glanced at the nano-beds and saw they were all destroyed, their control panels sparking and smoking. "I assume all our work on Gallagher Sphere 2.0 is toast?"
"Yes, Lubdan," Talos answered. "I am sorry."
"It's okay, looks like we got lucky!" Lubdan said as he walked to the counter on the far left side of the lab and retrieved a small leather pouch that had been left there by Varissa before the crew went into cryo-sleep. Lubdan opened it and retrieved the Gallagher Sphere 1.0 he had given her before their trip to Earth-1.
Lubdan returned to Talos and held the sphere to where the Android's knee hinge once was and concentrated, the sphere turned into a bright silver knee, lower leg, and foot and attached itself to the android.
"There! Just like new, old friend," Lubdan said with a smile.
"Thank you," Talos said. "I will communicate with you through your neural implant's comm as I keep an eye on the Beowulf's security systems. Please be careful, friend."
"I will, Talos. I'm so glad you are okay!" Lubdan replied as he embraced his android in a tight hug and then headed for the door.
Lubdan walked down the corridor towards the lift. He passed the cryo-chamber room and saw his crewmates still had the creatures around their faces.
Lubdan prayed he would be able to help save them before anyone else suffered the same fate as Nero and Butch. He also prayed he got to a gun before one of the creatures got to him.
Lubdan scanned his hand at the lift and the doors slowly opened. He entered and selected his floor to access the cargo bay.
"How's it look, friend?" Lubdan asked.
"I am picking up one of the creatures in the sleeping quarters. I am not seeing the other one. I will continue to scan," Talos answered through Lubdan's neural implant comm.
"Aye, Talos. Thank ya."
Everything went dark as the lift started moving and the red auxiliary power light came on. It flashed red and then green in a slow pattern. Lubdan wasn't sure what the green light meant.
"Talos? What's going on?" Lubdan asked concerned.
"Something has depleted main power," Talos replied. "We are on auxiliary at the moment. I will see if I can divert power from—
Talos trailed off into silence. A second passed and then the android asked, "Lubdan, are you alone in the lift?"
"Uh, yes why?" Lubdan asked.
"Sensors state one of the creatures is in the room with you."
"Must be a glitch from power loss, friend. I am definitely all by myse—
Lubdan's eyes grew large as he heard a sizzling noise and saw a whiff of smoke coming from the floor to his left in the dim red and green light.
He glanced slowly up from the floor to the ceiling and saw a small hole sizzling above him. Before he had time to react the ceiling of the lift broke open and a large slimy hand and arm covered with burns shot through the hole, its fingertips razor sharp knives. It grabbed him by the bicep, the blade like claws slicing into Lubdan's upper arm. Pain radiated through his body and warm blood began to ooze from the wound.
Lubdan jerked his arm free before the creature had a full grasp on him and stumbled away. The lift was opening. He sprang through the widening gap in the sliding door and scanned his hand on the control panel outside to close it.
He watched in fascinated horror as a large alien creature dropped from the ceiling and landed in the lift facing him. The creature stood about two meters tall with a long, strong looking tail and four razor sharp claws protruding from each of its two hands. Its head was elongated, its teeth sharp.
The skin of the creature was like the smaller ones, covered in wet burns as if it had once had human skin that was seared off in an extreme fire. Lubdan's thoughts went to Freddy Krueger, the fire, what that diary had said he looked like in dreams. But, he didn't have time to figure it out right now. He needed a gun.
The lift door closed before the creature could escape and it began beating against the door. Lubdan ran to the cargo bay entrance and was stopped in his tracks when he saw the cargo bay door was also wide open as it also had a giant hole seemingly melted into it. The red and green flashing dim lights were disorienting, but Lubdan knew what he was looking for. He ran into the Cargo bay and headed right to where Nero kept a selection of firearms.
As Lubdan ran he almost slipped and fell. He stopped and glanced down and saw what appeared to be nine or more red and green striped eggs that seemed to have split open at some point. They were open on top and folded over on the sides like someone peeling a banana. They were covered in slime. Lubdan stared in shock and amazement. What the hell had happened while they were in cryo-sleep? How in the bloody fuck did alien eggs get aboard the Beowulf?
Lubdan took too long contemplating an explanation. Before he could snap out of his reverie the alien creature from the lift had him. It grabbed him by his arms, lifting him over its head with a monstrous screech, and threw him across the room.
Lubdan collided with the wall that held the Plasma Rifles. It felt like every bone in his body was hit with a sledgehammer as he struck the wall and fell to the floor. He sat up and backed against the wall, wincing, trying to catch his breath.
He was filled with a new dread as he heard a rapid clicking noise on the floor coming towards him. Lubdan looked and saw the alien creature running at full speed right towards him through the dim red and green light.
Lubdan looked around taking inventory of his surroundings and saw a plasma rifle to his right that had been knocked off the wall when he struck it. It was mere inches outside his reach. He stretched and let his body move just a bit and his hand wrapped around the stock of the gun right as the alien creature leapt into the air. It was coming down straight towards Lubdan, it's razor claws poised for the killing blow.
Lubdan raised the gun in front of him, pointed up, and pulled the trigger.
The alien was struck before it could land it's hit. It flew backwards across the room and landed, unmoving. Tendrils of smoke rose from where the alien landed and an alarm began to sound throughout the Beowulf.
Lubdan recognized it. It was an alarm all crewmates hoped to never hear, a sound only heard when the hull had been compromised. The alien's fucking blood was acidic and was eating through the ship.
"Holy Jesus, Mary, and fucking Joseph!" Lubdan yelled. He sprang to his feet with a new sense of purpose and ran for the lift.
Luckily, the alien had not used its acid attack to eat through the lift door and had somehow opened it instead.
Lubdan ran into the lift and scanned his hand to take him to the corridor housing the nano-lab and the shuttle. He would try one more time to save the crew. But, if he failed, he and Talos would have to leave regardless or stay behind and die as well.
"Talos, I'm coming up. Please prep the shuttle!" Lubdan begged.
He got no response. "Talos?" Lubdan asked again. Still all he heard back was silence.
The alarm blared loudly as the dim red and green light continued to flash. The lift opened and Lubdan ran for the nano-lab.
His heart sank as he passed the Cryo-Chamber room and saw every single crew mate's face was visible again with fresh blood trickling from their noses and their mouths. He watched in horror as all their chests began to pulsate at the same time as something horrible tried to get out.
"I'm too bloody late!" he cried. "Goddamnit, I'm too fucking late!"
Lubdan ran into the lab and fell to his knees at what he saw. Talos was in several pieces, smoke rising off his severed limbs and headless torso, as sparks shot from all the pieces of his beloved android that lay on the lab floor before him.
Tears began to fall down Lubdan's cheeks as he crawled to where Talos' head lay. He picked it up and saw Talos was completely shut down. Lubdan held his forehead to the forehead of his friend and more.
He kissed the inactive android's forehead and sat the head down, wiping the tears from his eyes. He stood back up, holding the rifle at the ready, and ran for the corridor and towards the shuttle bay.
He heard a chorus of shrieks behind him. Lubdan looked back and saw several of the alien creatures. Somehow they had already burst from the crewmates and grown as big as the one he had killed in the Cargo bay and they were running right at him. He turned and fired his Plasma rifle. One fell dead but the rest were still coming. He had no time.
Lubdan ran to the shuttle bay door and scanned his hand. There was a loud beep and an error message flashed across the panel.
"OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! AUXILLARY POWER SHOULDN'T MATTER! OPEN, YOU PISSANT FUCKING SYSTEM!"
He scanned his hand again, slower this time, and it beeped successfully and the shuttle bay door opened. He ran inside and the door closed just as the group of creatures were mere feet away. He could hear them colliding with the door on the other side. He ran through the accordion hallway, opened the shuttle's door, and ran inside. He sprinted to the control panel, began prepping the shuttle for Auto-Escape Pod Mode. Without Warlock it was his only choice.
He heard heavy breathing in his ear, felt hot breath on the back of his neck, as the engines fired. He turned around and found himself face to face with one of the creatures. It snarled and opened its mouth. A much smaller mouth like an inner jaw came out and snapped at him, an inch from his nose.
He jumped back, hands raised to ward off the next attack, and then froze. The creature was making a strange noise that seemed completely insane coming from such a freak of nature. It was a low guttural laugh.
It began to shimmer and morph and within seconds the alien creature was gone and in its place stood a man in boots, dark pants, a red and green sweater, and a black hat. He was covered in burns just like the alien creatures and on one hand he wore something Lubdan was very familiar with. It was the exact same bladed glove they had analyzed before their cryo-sleep.
Lubdan knew in that moment that he was actually still very much in that cryo-sleep. He was dreaming and Freddy Krueger was here. Everything they read was true and if he died now he died for real. But where could he go? Sorrow and defeat spread across Lubdan's face and Freddy smiled.
"Yes! YES! It's all coming together isn't it, lover boy?" Freddy crooned. "I gotta say, you people in the future took sex dolls to a whole new level!"
"It's not like that, ya arsehole!" Lubdan said defiantly. "Do your worst, Frederick! Ya don't scare me!"
"I think I'll make it nice and slow just for you calling me that fucking name!" Freddy growled, lifting his bladed gloved hand above his head. He was just about to bring the blades down on Lubdan when the shuttle door opened with a whoosh behind him.
"Hey, Ballsack Head!"
"What the Fuck?!" Freddy said, perplexed as he turned to face the real Talos-16.
"That's right, I'm not one of your deceptive illusions. Now leave my friend alone!" Talos barked at Freddy in his android voice.
"HOW THE FUCK DID YOU GET HERE, ROBO BOY?" Freddy growled. "Oh, well, now you can watch me kill your little boyf—
Talos grabbed Freddy by the neck before he could finish his threat, turned around, and threw him down the corridor with astonishing strength and speed. Freddy slammed into the inner airlock door on the opposite end of the corridor and fell to a crumpled heap on the floor.
Talos turned to Lubdan and handed him a small bracelet that had a timer on the face, the numbers counting down. It currently read fifty two hours twenty four minutes and sixteen seconds.
"This is how much time until you come out of cryo-sleep, friend. You have to keep moving, you have to run. He can change the world around you and he will come for you again I may not be able to come back again after I leave but I will hold him off for you as long as I can." Talos noticed the injury on Lubdan's arm, reached out and touched it gently, then looked into Lubdans eyes with concern. "Fly the shuttle away. Once you are far enough away I suspect the dream landscape will change. At least I hypothesize it will. Do not stop, keep running, and do not look back. Do not try to fight him. He's already killed Candilynn and Christina. Stay safe, my friend and I shall see you in two days."
"Oh, saints preserve us, the poor girls. But I don't understand… Talos, you're...you're alive," Lubdan said with a smile of wonder on his face. "I saw you torn to pieces."
"That was not me. That was a deception by Freddy Krueger. I did not believe it logical that he could be real but I was incorrect. I saw you were in distress and, though it took me longer than I'd hoped, I used the neural implant tech to upload my program into your consciousness." Talos explained
"Thank you, Talos. You are a true friend, but one question...'Ballsack head?'" Lubdan asked with a grin.
"I needed to get his attention and desired to insult him and his burned epidermis does resemble the human scrotum," Talos responded as a look of humorous pride showed on Lubdan's face. "There will be time to talk at a later time my friend. I will try to visit all the crew to give them the countdown device as well. I will also continue to monitor you all from the Beowulf."
Talos paused when he heard Freddy getting up somewhere behind him. "Go friend, survive and I will see you soon."
Talos reached out, putting his hand over the scanner and the door whooshed shut.
"No! WAIT!" Lubdan yelled as he looked through a small window on the shuttle door. He saw Freddy running towards Talos.
Talos turned to face the dream demon and threw a punch as soon as Freddy was close enough but Freddy proved too fast. His claws came down on the android's hand, but instead of sparks Lubdan saw blood shooting from the stump where his android's right hand had been seconds before.
Talos shrieked in pain realizing, in the dreamscape he was no longer an android. He knew Lubdan would be concerned for him. Talos turned to Lubdan, "I will be okay. Trust me and run, friend."
Lubdan did as his friend asked him. He activated the escape pod mode, wincing at the pain in his still bleeding arm, and the shuttle took off into deep space within the dreamscape.
He put the countdown bracelet around his wrist. It now read fifty one hours fifty minutes and twenty two seconds. He guessed time moved differently in the dream. It had felt like no more than a couple minutes had passed since Talos handed him the bracelet but the countdown showed over thirty minutes had passed. He had a little over two days to try to survive, but he knew now with Freddy Krueger on his heels the odds were stacked against him.
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Back on the dreamscape Beowulf, Talos turned back to face Freddy.
"You know I'm going to catch him, don't you? They're all going to die, and I'll make your little boyfriend suffer most!" Freddy snarled. "I'll make sure you get a show back on your ship when he dies in his tube."
"You talk too much," Talos said as he swung out with his left hand but again Freddy deflected it, this time by completely disappearing.
Talos looked to his left and right to try to see where Freddy had went and then for the first time since his creation he felt real pain, first when his hand was lopped up and now as Freddy appeared behind him tapped him on his shoulder and then drove his blades through Talos' lower back and moved them around. Freddy controlled everything in the dreamscape and he had chosen to make his uninvited interloper know what it was like to be human, to feel pain and to die.
Talos fell to his knees, blood bubbling from his mouth, and Freddy yanked his blades from his lower back and walked around to stand smiling above Talos.
"I won't let ya come back, Johnny-5. I hope your trip was worth it. Because now I think it's time I turned the heat up a bit BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Freddy laughed as he grabbed the back of Talos' neck with his ungloved hand and reared back his bladed gloved hand and drove it forward through Talos' eyes.
Talos screamed out in pain as he felt intense burning and then cold steel pierce his dreamscape human brain. Then he saw darkness and felt nothing as Freddy pulled his blades free and Talos fell dead at Freddy's feet.
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Talos' eyes snapped open at the control panel in the Nano-Med Lab. He was out of the dreamscape and back in the actual Beowulf Nano-Med Lab. There were no destroyed beds and the Gallagher Sphere 2.0 was still there at the control panel of Nano Bed #1. He still had both his actual legs and the pouch holding Gallagher Sphere 1.0 was still on the counter on the far left of the lab where Dr. DeGennaro had placed it before heading off to be put in cryo-sleep.
Talos felt immense relief. It was not a nice feeling finding out what pain and death felt like, but it was an interesting experience. However, he was glad to be back in the real world.
Talos retracted the cords from the control panel he used to access Lubdan Gallagher's neural implant to enter his consciousness and access his friend's sleeping and dreaming mind. The cords retracted into the tip of his index finger.
He may have been cast out by Freddy but not before he gave his friend a fighting chance and a means of knowing how much time he had left to keep running. He hoped the time he had bought Lubdan was enough to give him an edge going forward.
The idea had struck him when he had seen Lubdan's vitals hitting critical levels in the Cryo-Chamber room earlier. Talos had felt something he didn't know he could feel until that moment. He felt panic, anger, fear and sadness. It drove him to concentrate like never before and he had looked at his friend in the cryo-chamber and by chance his eyes had fallen on the jack that connected to Lubdan's neural implant.
Talos had rushed to the nano-med lab and connected to the Beowulf's system and had spent hours creating a program that let him connect his AI interface to the neural jack monitoring system of the crew and it had worked. Shortly after Lubdan's Emergency Level Alarm joined the first alarm Talos had implemented the program in the nick of time.
But now the screen in front of him was blank, the program data that was there before was now gone, replaced by the image of a giant middle finger surrounded by the words, "GET FUCKED, ROBO BITCH!"
Talos tried to re-access the program, but every attempt was met with the program resetting and giving a message of corrupt program data.
Talos would have to build a new program if he wanted to reach the other crew members and give them a way to keep track of how much time they had left as well.
Another thought hit Talos. What had Freddy meant by 'I THINK IT'S TIME I TURN THE HEAT UP A BIT!"
Talos felt a sense as close to dread as he was capable of feeling and he tried to process an answer to what Freddy had meant. At that moment the answer came to him, not from inside his own systems or by process of elimination, but in the form of three crew mate's vital alarms beginning to sound from the Cryo-Chamber Room.
Talos moved swiftly to investigate. As he entered he immediately saw that Butch, Nyquilio, and Donella were all three showing signs of distress. If Talos didn't think of something soon he knew he would be hearing their vital alarms being joined by their emergency level alarms and then death would shortly follow.
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