The next two days passed in bits and pieces.
They were largely long, dull stretches of mindless tedium, punctuated occasionally and randomly by bouts of ominous foreboding.
Jack was on patrol, though this time he was by himself. He made his way down a long, chromed corridor. The lights overhead seemed too bright, or maybe it was just the reflections. As he reached the halfway point in the hallway, he paused, then glanced back over his shoulder. In the whole length of the corridor, he was alone. That made him uncomfortable for some reason. Frowning, he turned back around and resumed his pace, moving a little bit faster. Things had been getting strange and tense around Mars City lately.
After staying the night with Jennifer, they'd gotten up the next morning around eight. He'd been tired but had pulled through, slowly exploring the areas that were open to him in Mars City. It became immediately apparent exactly how much of the base was locked off to as many people as possible. Even as a Marine, (Space Marine), there were huge sections of his map that were simply blacked out, hidden to him.
It was the same for the others, too.
He tried to ignore it, instead focusing on finding the areas of the base that mattered, like the gym, the shooting range, the rec room, and the mess. They were all close enough and easy enough to find, but ignoring the bad vibes he was receiving got harder very fast. For starters, he'd had nightmares the night he stayed with Jennifer, and then he'd had them again last night. He didn't know what they were. When he awoke, they drifted away like gunsmoke in the wind. All he could hold onto were the maelstrom of emotions that made him fight for control.
It was mostly terror.
Utter, mortal terror, unlike any he'd ever felt before.
If it had just been the nightmares, Jack could have passed the unease off. Not easily, but he could have done it.
But no, there was a lot more going on.
Like the fact that everyone seemed to be haggard and overworked. Everyone had bags under their bloodshot eyes. Or the fact that all the techs were doing double duty, and they were even pulling Space Marine techs. He overheard way, way too many conversations about burnouts and blowouts and power failures and equipment failures. Apparently the city had always been plagued by problems like these, but they had started spiking not long after he had arrived. And then there were the infirmaries. He passed by one and happened to glance in through the glass in the door, and had to stop and do a double take.
The infirmary was full.
Some people were sprawled out on examination tables, others were clutching head wounds or bloody hands, others were being prescribed pills.
And it wasn't just one infirmary, it was all of them he passed. They were all either full or close to. Word got around that job accidents and hallucinations and insomnia were also increasing. To make matters somehow worse, he was hearing more and more about problems up on Mars's two moons: Phobos and Deimos. Whatever they were experiencing down on Mars City, it was apparently tenfold up there.
Jennifer had been put on patrol somewhere else in Mars City today, as several of the Space Marines were either in the infirmary or had called in sick. Some, apparently, were even AWOL. How the hell could you go AWOL on Mars?
It was getting close to his break time and he was looking forward to it. Jack had conditioned himself for endurance, but he hadn't felt at ease or gotten decent sleep since arriving on Mars and it was beginning to take its toll on him. He was beginning to think about investing in some sleeping pills, something he'd hate to do because he didn't rely on anything but himself if he could manage it, and he'd managed it for most of his life.
Well...for the most part.
As Jack reached the end of the corridor, passed through the doorway and came into a junction area, he froze as his radio crackled to life.
"Ward, Blackmore here. Need you for a special assignment. Over."
Jack's heart was jackhammering in his chest. He was more wound up than he thought. He swallowed, made himself respond. "What is it, Sergeant? Over."
"Report to Hangar Two. You're going up to Phobos to drop off and then bring back some cargo. Over," Blackmore replied.
"I'm on it, Sergeant. Over."
"Good. Don't screw it up. Out."
The line stayed open for a few seconds longer, as if Blackmore was going to say something more, then abruptly it clicked off.
Jack sighed softly and started heading for Hangar Two.
The foreboding atmosphere didn't abate as he entered the hangar. If anything, it was worse, palpable on the air. A power failure had caused shadows and gloom to gather in the corners of the vast space within the hangar bay. The Space Marines who patrolled around the edges of the room lurked like malignant tongueless wraiths. For the first time in a long, long while, Jack suddenly found himself aching for a cigarette.
He'd kicked the habit seven years ago and after doing so, hadn't felt a craving since. Not even in the shittiest of shitholes he'd seen combat in all over Earth, not even in the worst firefights or after. But here, now, in a shadowy chromium hangar on Mars, he wanted one so bad he could taste it. He paused as he stepped into the room, a violent shiver rippling through him. Taking a deep breath, Jack fought to control himself. It was difficult, but that control came. He'd had to develop an iron will to survive the hellish battlefields of Earth.
Up ahead, he could see Thompson's immense bulk accompanying a couple other Space Marines as they pushed crates on hover-dollies up the cargo ramp of a transport vessel. It looked like they were almost done. He fell in with them without question, loading up the rest of the mysterious silver crates with the UAC logo tattooed on their side. As soon as they were done, all the personnel except for Thompson left the shuttle.
The cargo ramp began to close.
"Hey Ward," Thompson said.
"Thompson," Jack replied.
He noted that the man looked...a little haunted. His good cheer and bluster seemed diminished. A thought occurred to him.
"Did you ever find your friend?" he asked.
The man slowly shook his head as they walked across the bay to some seats. Both men sat down and strapped in. The ship began to rumble as the engines spooled up and they were brought out of the hangar.
"No. He's listed as MIA. No one can find him," he muttered.
"Jesus...sorry."
"Yeah..."
A moment of silence passed between the two. Jack suppressed a sigh. "Hey man, you got a cig on you, by chance?"
"Uh...yeah, yeah I do. Hold on."
It took him a minute, as he was handicapped both by his thickly muscled arms and stature, and the fact that he was strapped into a chair, but he managed to fish out a crumpled, half-empty pack of Yeheyuans and a simple throwaway lighter. He pulled two out, lit them up and offered one to Jack, who took it gratefully.
As Thompson put away the pack and the light, Jack took a pull on the cigarette and then almost coughed it onto the floor.
"Damn man, you okay?" Thompson asked, grinning.
"Yeah...fucking seven goddamned years down the drain," he muttered. "Quit these fuckers seven years ago."
"Shit...I was gonna ask why go back, but being up here is enough. You aren't the only one. There's a big black market of booze, cigarettes, weed, all sorts of narcotics on Mars City and up on Phobos and Deimos. Though it's a lot more controlled up there. Had a friend of mine who went up to Phobos, guy named Watts. Dunno what he was thinking."
"Is it like a promotion or something, to go up there?" Jack asked. The second puff went down a lot smoother and he only coughed a little.
The real horror of cigarettes was how quickly you fell right back into the fucking habit. In a wretched way, it was like coming home.
"Yeah. I mean, supposed to be anyway. More pay, and you get your own apartment. But there's supposed to be a lot more control up there, a lot more crackdown on stuff. I think it's fine down on Mars City. I mean...well, sort of. You know what I mean."
"Yeah," Jack muttered.
Another moment of silence passed between them. The shuttle was rumbling now. They were leaving the thin atmosphere of Mars, making for Phobos. Jack figured they would be there before too long, maybe ten more minutes.
When Thompson spoke again, some of his old natural playfulness had crept back into his voice. "So, uh...I've been seeing you and Taylor creeping around a lot. You getting in good with her?" he asked.
"No, we're just, you know, friends," Jack lied.
The truth of the matter was they'd gone to bed together that first night and had been making love every chance they got. He wasn't sure how to feel about it. It was great, there was no confusion about how it felt, physically at least. Jennifer was in fantastic shape and clearly no stranger to sex. But there was a kind of desperation to their sex, their sessions were often frantic and furious. He had an idea that they were both trying to fuck their problems and fears away. It made him feel good in the moment, but it didn't really help long-term.
"Uh-huh," Thompson replied, clearly unsatisfied with that answer.
"Have you heard anything else? Any other rumors?" Jack asked, changing the subject. He wasn't one to advertise his sex life, nor was he normally one to hide it. But unless his partner had given him express permission to talk about it, he kept a lid on it. Didn't seem right to kiss and tell without her permission.
"No, nothing new, but I have been hearing a lot more of the same stuff. It's like all anyone talks about now. And more and more people are either getting hurt, disappearing, or won't come out of their room. It's...kind of starting to freak me out."
"Has it ever gotten this bad before?" Jack asked.
"No. It's always been kind of funky up here, but never like this. Never this bad."
Both men lapsed back into silence and neither spoke for the rest of the trip.
Phobos Base didn't really look any different from Mars City, although Jack could only see the hangar area he and Thompson had unloaded the crates into. There were no windows in the bay of the shuttle he was in. He wondered what the facility looked like. It was all going pretty routinely so far, except that the Space Marines up on Phobos seemed more...rigid, more apprehensive and anxious, and worked with an almost painful haste. Jack and Thompson found themselves struggling to keep up as the men and women unloaded the crates they'd upshipped and then load up the cargo they were going to haul back down to Mars City.
When they saw the cargo, that's when things got weird.
They didn't look like crates. They looked like coffins.
And there were a lot of them, almost a hundred in total.
He and Thompson shared an uneasy look as soon as they saw the crates, but had to work quickly to get them all loaded up. As soon as the task was finished, they walked back into the shuttle bay and took a seat. The ship began to rattle as it took off, heading back down to Mars City to offload its brand new cargo.
"We've got to look in one of these," Thompson said after a long moment.
Jack wanted to argue with him, wanted to tell him it was a terrible idea. He didn't want to make waves, hadn't his life gone to shit enough already? But that other part of him, the one that was voracious for knowledge, for new intel, because it wanted to stay alive against all odds, that part was stronger.
And it was what decided him.
"Yep," he replied grimly.
Both men stood up and moved over to the nearest coffin-crate. It could be nothing. It could just be a strangely shaped crate. But there was something just too coffin-like about it, the dimensions were too perfect. Both men spent a moment looking over it and finally found a little keypad. Electronic lock. Well, fuck.
"It could be anything," Thompson muttered.
Suddenly struck by inspiration, Jack reached out and punched the six key three times in a row. There was a small chime and the lid popped open.
"How the hell did you know that?" Thompson asked.
"I...don't know. I just...guessed," Jack muttered.
"Lucky guess, man."
They knew something was wrong even before they got the lid open, because they could smell it. They could smell death. But they didn't know how fucked up the situation was until they got the crate open and unzipped the black bodybag inside.
"Oh fuck!" Thompson moaned, stepping back, covering his mouth.
"Jesus," Jack whispered, staring in shocked awe at the corpse. It looked like someone had taken a fucking can-opener to the guy.
"What happened to him!?"
"It looks like...some kind of animal attack," Jack muttered. "See, look. There, claw marks. Looks like something clawed his stomach open...and then teeth marks on his neck. It ripped his neck out, whatever it was. And his arm is...gone."
"What the fuck could have done this to him, man?"
"I have no idea. A...a bear? I mean, there's animals back on Earth, but why the hell would they be here?"
"God, cover it back up, I'm gonna hurl."
"Okay, okay."
Jack zipped the bodybag back up and resealed the crate. The pair moved back over to their seats, buckled in, and lit up two more Yeheyuans.
Again, neither man spoke the rest of the way there.
Jack lay on his back, naked and sweaty beneath the sheet, with Jennifer, equally nude and slicked with sweat, lying against him, his arm around her shoulders. They were passing a cigarette back and forth. He'd broken down and bought a pack of Yeheyuans from a vending machine after he'd gotten off his shift that day.
"Are you okay?" Jennifer asked. "You seem really distracted."
"I'm sorry. I..." He'd been debating whether or not to tell her, and ultimately decided that it would be wrong not to. "Thompson and I saw something today."
"What?" she asked, her tone becoming flat and serious. He spent the next few minutes relaying the shredded corpse they'd discovered, one of nearly a hundred. When he was done, both of them laid there in silence for a long time.
"I almost wish you hadn't told me that," she said quietly.
"I'm sorry. I almost wish I hadn't found it out," he muttered.
"Almost...but not quite. This is need to know information. Okay, obviously something is going on up there. But what?"
He thought it over, but he didn't have any answers. There could be anything. They could be looking at a single piece of a vast and complex puzzle. He had no idea what was up there on those two moons.
And he hoped he never had to find out.