Prodigal (44 page)

Plunging it into his neck, he drained the first ampoule.

A wave of nausea overcame him, making him double over. Where it retreated, numbness followed—an icy sensation that started at Nathan’s fingers and surged inward, wrapping him in an anesthetic cocoon. He slid to the floor again, clutching the box against his chest, not daring to let it go—because seconds later, when the paralysis passed, his implant started firing again.

Nathan grabbed another ampoule.

With each injection, the agony grew more distant. Nathan emptied more betaflex into his bloodstream, acid slowly eating away at his nerve endings until he felt next to nothing. Only then did he stop, in a profoundly disconnected state, the last ampoule goading him into one final injection.

But the implant was dead. His pain was gone.

And seeping in to replace it came the screams of the entire crew.

Nathan stumbled out of sickbay.

He climbed the ladder up to A-Deck, horror opening up above him. With each rung it grew louder—bestial howls, animal sounds, a frenzy of madness that assaulted Nathan’s senses as he tried to shake off the betaflex crash.
Almacantar
had come alive in her death throes, bleeding rage from every corner and projecting it onto her crew, the overflow raining down on him in sheets so thick that it felt like he was drowning. Nathan kept going, even as momentum and fear beat him back down, finally reaching the command level. There, he eased his head up through the hole, checking the corridor that led to the bridge.

Under a cascade of emergency lights, Nathan only saw hints of movement. Guttural cries echoed through the steel tunnel, the helter-skelter of footsteps cutting off with an abrupt shriek. Nathan took another tentative step into the open, dizziness clouding his perceptions, chemicals racking him with the shakes. Blinking into a hard focus, he peered into the shadows, trying to make substance out of suggestion.

Until his crew appeared, straight out of paranoid delusion.

They tore at each other and themselves, running back and forth without direction, smashing into bulkheads over and over again in some mad dance of the damned. Smeared with blood, they ripped at their uniforms—as if something inside wanted to burst out, to get release, a murderous extrusion that left them broken and rattling on the deck. One man wandered away from the rest, clumps of vitreous humor streaming from empty eye sockets, his hands covered in the gore of a self-inflicted wound. Moaning incoherently, he lurched straight toward Nathan—as if he could see, as if he had purpose.

He clutched at Nathan before collapsing with a quiver.

Nathan kicked the man away, overcome with revulsion. When he looked back up, he saw that the others had seen him as well. They came like a horde of jackals, almost in unison, tripping over one another as they tried to get at him—forming a wall of bodies that stood between Nathan and the bridge.

And amid a chorus of screams, they called out to him.

“…help…please help…PLEASE—”

They fell on him.

Nathan struggled to keep his balance, knowing that if he went down, he wouldn’t get up again. He thrashed against their groping fingers, punching at anything that moved, suffocating under the heat of their bodies as he pushed his way through. They piled on, one after the other, threatening to overwhelm him with their numbers—but they weren’t human anymore, just automatons responding to the stimulus of panic and pain. They couldn’t coordinate their assault, much less defend themselves, which allowed Nathan to fight them off one at a time.

“GET OFF ME!”
he roared.

Already depleted, they crumpled against his blows. Nathan pummeled them mercilessly, trying not to see their faces as he trudged past, grabbing one man by the collar and ramming his head into a nearby service pipe. The impact broke a steam vent loose, spraying the crowd behind Nathan with plumes of hot vapor and choking the narrow corridor with the smell of roasting meat. Nathan ducked to get out of the way, singeing one side of his face as he rolled away from the boiling white cloud, a collective wail rising from the tangle of arms and legs he left behind. As he looked back, Nathan watched his shipmates flail aimlessly through the mist—unable to muster the strength and reason to retreat, cooking themselves until they crumpled into twitching heaps on the deck.

Nathan ran.

As fast as he could go, past the point of exhaustion, he raced down the length of the corridor. He jumped over the dead and dying, knocking over the few shuffling apparitions that stepped into his path, letting nobody stand in his way. When he finally reached the bridge, he threw himself against the sealed hatch—constantly looking back as he fumbled with the lock, expecting an army of corpses to be following. His hands were practically useless, quaking so badly that they slipped off the wheel countless times as he attempted to turn it. Pounding against the hatch, he shouted until his throat was cracked and raw.

“Lauren! Lauren, can you hear me?”

The wheel gave a little.

“Lauren, it’s me!”

Active resistance, on the other side. The wheel jerked back, even as he held tight.

“LAUREN, OPEN THE GODDAMNED DOOR!”

With a final, epic pull, Nathan turned the wheel. The hatch groaned as it popped open and the bridge peeled into view. Alarms sounded from almost every console, an interference pattern of chimes and buzzers that indicated multiple system failures. Even more terrifying, the main viewer showed the disc of Mars beginning to tumble. The planet loomed closer, growing in size and steadily filling the screen—a graphic indicator of a decaying orbit.

Almacantar
was spiraling down.

Nathan leaped onto the bridge.

All the officers were slumped at their stations, most of them dead. The center seat was also empty, the captain nowhere to be found. Launching himself at the ops console, he pulled a helmsman off the controls and dumped him on the floor, taking a seat at the station and trying the interface. It responded to his touch, the panel lighting up as he tried the maneuvering thrusters—but nothing happened.
Almacantar
was still losing altitude, drawn into the inexorable pull of Martian gravity.

Nathan hit the thrusters again but still got no response.

“Come on, dammit.”

Warning lights flashed from the console, alerting him that orbital control was off-line.

“
Fuck
it.”

If Nathan couldn’t nudge the ship back into orbit, he would blast her out using the ship’s main engines. Bypassing the safety overrides, he accessed the pulse-fusion system to cold-start the reactors. One by one, they appeared on his panel—core temperatures rising slowly, his finger hovering over the button to engage—while outside,
Almacantar
’s hull plates were buffeted by their first brush with the Martian atmosphere

Just don’t blow up on me,
Nathan prayed.

And felt arms wrap around his throat.

Brute force yanked him out of the chair, dragging him away from the console. Sporadic pressure crushed against his larynx, cutting off oxygen in spurts—as if his assailant didn’t mean to strangle him, but refused to let go. Nathan’s hands pried at the vise that held him, clamping down on one wrist and twisting himself free. As he whirled around, he prepared himself to confront another rabid crewman—but nothing in his imagination could compare to the ghastly face that returned his stare, the cracked mirror reflection of an old friend.

“Lauren…”
he whispered.

Farina snarled at him, lashing out like a woman possessed. Behind that face, Nathan saw the anguish of his captain—the shocks that prodded her against him, the desperation of her torment. Only half-there, she barely contained the forces chewing her up from the inside.

Her eyes rolled over white, then locked once again on Nathan. A deep, anguished cry erupted from within—a sound that chilled him to his soul, as if
Almacantar
’s entire crew had channeled their suffering through the captain. Farina then hurtled toward him, guided by insanity and inertia. She caught Nathan full in the chest, knocking him down as the two of them entwined in a deadly embrace. They rolled across the deck, with Farina digging at his arms, his chest, his face—anyplace she might draw blood. Nathan winced as fingernails sliced open his cheek, the betaflex short-circuiting his nervous system like a lingering anesthetic.

But not his reaction.

Drugs sparked an adrenal surge, targeting the reptilian core of his brain. Nathan punched Farina in the side of the head, catapulting her off him while he wiped his eyes. By the time he recovered, she was on him again—only now, he didn’t hesitate. Kicking Farina’s legs out from underneath, Nathan dived onto her. She kept clawing at him, even as he landed one blow after another, screeching between mangled lips and teeth caked with blood.

Nathan cracked her skull against the floor.

Farina went limp on impact. A dark red pool expanded behind her head, shocking Nathan out of his violent fugue.

“Oh, Jesus—
Lauren…
”

Nathan scooped her up, cradling Farina gently while she lolled back and forth in his arms. Still half-conscious, her eyes fluttered—struggling to keep a focus on him, fading in and out.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Raising one hand, she brushed his cheek. She trembled, but not from pain. She was past that now, grateful for the peace—but lacking absolution.

“My fault,” she said. “Should have listened…”

“Just hang on, Lauren. We can get through this.”

She smiled weakly. “Too late for me,” the captain told him. “Not for you.”

Nathan shook his head slowly, but she saw through his denial.

“Take care of my ship, Nathan,” she ordered. “Get her home.”

His hand closed around hers.

“I will,” he promised.

“I know,” Farina said, and sank into darkness. Nathan pressed her up close, gently rocking her as he felt the waning beat of her heart—its rhythm contrasting with the insistent toll of the alarms that rang throughout the bridge.
Almacantar
rocked from even more turbulence, spinning ever closer to a fatal altitude. He didn’t have much time.

But he didn’t want to let go.

“Lauren—” he began, angling to see her face.

She jerked out of his grasp and hit the floor again.

A seizure turned Farina into a tangle of limbs, her torso heaving up and down as her lungs gasped for air. Nathan held her shoulders down, hoping to steady her long enough for the episode to pass, but her breaths only turned more labored and desperate—starved for oxygen, her lips turning blue.

Like the others.

Those bodies also began to twitch—anyone who might have been alive when Nathan stormed the bridge, including the helmsman splayed out next to him. The ones with strength enough clutched at their throats, though most could only flop around as their respiratory systems began to shut down. By then, Farina had gone cyanotic—her mouth drawing air in hitched gasps, her eyes glazing over.

Nathan shook her hard.

“Lauren!” he shouted, his own voice a distant echo.

She didn’t respond.

“Come on, Lauren! Breathe!”

Dizziness intruded on him. Nathan shunted it aside, leaning in to give her mouth-to-mouth—until he tumbled over, suddenly losing his balance. Flat on his back, he stared into a shrinking ceiling, vision compressed into a soft gray tunnel. A narcotic wash bathed his thoughts, while his chest expanded under decreasing pressure. Nathan kept exhaling, an instinctive measure to keep his lungs from popping—but as he inhaled, he quickly discovered that there was nothing left for him to breathe.

That’s when he heard it: the tinny, almost inaudible hiss emanating from the vents.

Losing pressure…

The atmosphere was venting into space.

Nathan peered through spots, the bridge a massive smear around him. He found the environmental controls and rolled over to reach for them—but that was as far as he could go. His body no longer obeyed commands. Moments from complete blackout, with no oxygen anywhere, all he could do was wait—and die.

Your belt…

Nathan seized upon the portable O
₂
canister strapped to his belt, making sure he hadn’t dropped it. Only then did he remember his helmet, still attached to the back of his biohazard suit. He pulled it over his head, starting the flow as he zipped the seals shut. He doubled over hacking as his lungs inflated with air, his vision igniting in a bloom of harsh colors. In the grip of that receding rush, he found his legs and picked himself up. He collapsed into the center seat, gripping both sides of the chair while
Almacantar
re-formed around him.

The macabre dance had stopped.

The bridge crew lay still, frozen in suffocation. All sound bled into nothingness as vacuum descended, alarms reduced to an ominous series of blinking lights that popped off in random succession. On the main viewer, the surface of Mars rotated in a blur—flat plains blending into canyons and mountains, the white wisp of clouds streaking by. Passing through that illusion, Nathan imagined Olympus Mons gazing up at him in ruinous contemplation: yet another survivor, cast out into exile.