Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (34 page)

When we came to the surface we were exactly were Trevor said we
were going to be. The Erebus stood in front of us like a mountain made of
metal and steel. Its massive front ion canons and weapons were suspended
above the ground thousands of feet into the air pointed up towards the
horizon. From miles away they must have looked like thorns sticking
upwards from the ground, metal constructs out of place, intimidating yet so
aesthetic you would have to question whether they were man made or created
by natures own hand. “Everything I have ever known is in there,” I said as
we reached the outer hull, “Not everything, you knew me, Dom, Hayden,
Errikus, all of that before any of this, before you ever even knew about this
ship. You are not a part of their world. Like me you are a child of Errikus, a
survivor, a fighter, and no lesser part of the human race deserving to exist,”
Aira said taking my hand. I was having a hard time with all of it. It was
getting more and more difficult the longer our mission went on. In the
distance we could already hear the gunfire from the bridge. If it hasn’t
happened now it will happen soon, Meddix will be dead and Trevor will be
fighting a losing battle.

It only took several charges to blow a hole wide enough for us to make
our way inside. First we were crawling through small air ducts. We had to
leave our packs, mostly empty food and water behind. When we finally came
to an opening we were in a part of the ship none of us had seen before; we
were inside a prison. All around us we were surrounded by cages and shield
generators made to hold the worst of the worst. Blood splatter covered the
ground and several of the walls. “There were people in here?” I asked the
question knowing the answer; there were people here but no one that I had
ever met. These cages were meant to hold only vicious experiments and
unwanted citizens taken from stasis or areas of the ship that didn’t matter,
taken for genetic testing and experimentation by the elders. We could see
bodies; chimeras of men and animal much like ones on Parcae only these
weren’t in tubes they laid against the walls of cells unclean and unkempt.
Some of them were still breathing whispering for death with several faces
drawn and remade into something else. Aira shot without hesitation into the
bodies severing bits and pieces putting them out of their misery.

“When I took control of the Aelita the
first thing I did was lead a small crew
into the depths, the corridors locked away and only visited by the elders. We
found much of the same as well as variants of scourge and caretakers, all
miserable. We let some free hoping they would join us but there bodies were
sick and all of them were in pain,” she was tearing up while she said it. All of
this time layers beneath the surface while so many of us were living, eating,
sleeping, dancing.

We continued our walk through the prison. It seemed endless. It must have
extended halfway through the basement of the ship. It was a dungeon, a
torture chamber, a lab, each and every corner and crevice revealed more
darker secrets; bones left behind skeletons of creatures abandoned. If these
creatures could think freely; if they weren’t in pain they could have joined our
uprising and lived on Eden-3. In the new world we had been promised this
never would have happened.

A husk seven feet tall stood in the dark hallway in front of us. It had no eyes,
nose, or lower jaw only sharp fangs trimmed and sharpened. Its arms had
been severed from it’s torso and replaced with massive steel blades. We could
still see the metal thread that they had used to sew it all together. The blades
seemed to extend down to its knees. Small mechanical tubes and wires ran
through its dark naked flesh. Aira aimed her rifle at it and it began to lounge
forward towards us. Trey jumped forward and received the full impact of the
monster’s razor sharp arm. It ripped straight through his chest cavity and as it
lifted him into the air he sank closer and closer to the upper jaw. Trey wasn’t
dead he still had a few seconds of life left and with it he shot from his pistol
into the monster’s head. Over and over we heard it cry in grunts and belches
until it finally fell to the ground over Trey’s lifeless corpse. Vale walked over
and put several more shots into it crying and screaming naming off each of
her friends she had lost.

We gave her a few moments to collect Trey's tags. Vale began walking back to
us when we thought it was over. We shined our light down on the ground
staring at the monster that began to shiver over and over. Small tentacles
sprang forth from the ground made of metal. Each had a small set of red
spheres glowing at the end. They moved around the creature ripping its body
into pieces. Each of us began to fire shredding the meat of the monster and
tentacles into smaller parts. When more came we began to run. We had set
off some kind of security measure and activated one of the Erebus’s defenses.
To the Erebus we were a disease a virus making it sick. It needed us gone for
whatever reason its programming decided. Vale was slower then Aira and I
and the tentacles wrapped around her ripping at her armor and scalping the
top of her face and inserting several large syringes inside her.

She
fired holding down the trigger to her rifle for as long as she could.
Looking behind we could make out small metal wires moving in and out of
the holes in her body. We were resistant at first but we fired back hoping if
Vale wasn’t already passed then we had ended her pain. The tentacles
continued to move towards us. Cree ahead of us opened another chamber.
The moment we were through she latched the door and shot the lock hoping
that would hold the metal tentacles back. We could hear the banging on the
door as each of us held our rifles pointing ready for it to break its way
through. Silence. Cree was the first to let out a sigh, and then each of us
began to relax. We had walked into a maze of traps hidden inside a house of
lies. Door to the right read 'no exit - elders only'.

We were in a processing center. We could see several holding cells still in
place but it was much cleaner and neater then the prison. Around us there
were several cubes made for offices. Probably were the elder’s analyzed data
or did smaller research. In one of the desks I saw Celes name painted clearly
on display. I wanted to burn it and all of his notes and holos. I wanted to set
fire to everything around us.

“This entire area up to the core is called the driveshaft. From this room out
we’ll be in the lower maintenance tunnels of Erebus,” Aira had pulled up her
PDA and was looking at a holo map checking to make sure we were on the
right path. The prison was one of the blacked out areas in the layout Trevor
had shown us; a part of the ship that didn’t officially exist. “Lets keep moving,
we can’t waste anymore time,” I said knowing time was running down. The
battle at the bridge had begun a few hours ago and by now Trevor had sent
the engineers to the hive. It wouldn’t be long now before I am out of time to
save my friends, to save them all. If I had to I would force Balkava by
gunpoint to help us. It was more likely she would listen to me then Aira or
Cree. Then it hit me. If we could get close enough to talk to her we could just
kill her and take over the ship.

No. As much as I wanted to side with Aira now more then ever I couldn't. I
felt like my heart and mind were playing games. Balkava couldn't be killed in
an assassination. There would have to be another way.

By the time we made our way into the airdrome it was hard to tell what
flashes were the lights and which were laser fire. Small metallic splinters filled
the air as the tentacles we had been running from caught up to us. They came
through the air vents above us first scraping our skin as we ducked and hid
moving from cover to cover. When one of the red eyes went out and a
tentacle died we could still see small surges of ‘life’ left trickling in their
bodies like a body twitching at the morgue. In ten minutes maybe fifteen we
would be too tired to run.

Our bodies were giving up and our adrenaline which had been forcing us to
move was no longer enough. A serious of booms filled the air. Cree shot one
of the massive cylindrical tanks that mixes and produces the oxygen and
feeds the biomass throughout the ship. The pressure knocked several of the
tentacles to the ground causing them to shake and shiver as their red lights
faded into nothing. Another loud sound filled the air, another sharp
concussion. This time it knocked the three of us to the ground.

The butt of my ri
fle hit Cree on the forehead, “Stupid,” she shouted. I looked
up and I could see the ruptured carcass of an antliod hive-queen. It was dead
another victim of the tentacles but this meant we were walking further into
infested territory. Most of our intel said that Balkava had cleared away the
antliods now there were only a few small scavengers left in the bellows.

Not standing. Crawling. We crawled our way through under small pipes and
joints that connected various tanks to one another. The antliods were here
after all hidden in the ceiling above us. Cree had scattered them and now the
tentacles had made a new enemy. There was a threat greater then us to the
ship and we were ignored. Cree trembled suddenly and then let out a small
moan. Her gun had gotten caught on some of the hanging sets of plugs we
were only ten or twelve feet from the next ventilation shaft that would have
taken us into the Arcanaeum.

Cree let go of her weapon and unholstered her pistol. It would kill a human
and antliod but it wasn’t nearly strong enough to take on a drone or tentacle.
Behind us we could hear the tentacles and antliods tearing each other apart
like two packs raptors fighting for food. Over and over the sound of pinchers
hitting nails grew louder and louder echoing through the ventilation shaft
until finally Aira pushed her way through a thin membrane of green biomass
and though she was now stuck with the disgusting fluid we were free. Cree
threw the last charge we had into the tunnel bridging the path between our
past and future nightmares. Each of us checked our weapons and reloaded.
Cree made sure she was using armor piercing rounds so as to not overcharge
the battery on her gun. Aira offered Cree her rifle but declined saying Aira
was the better shot. I don’t think it was true. Aira was a good shot but Cree
had shown she could shoot the weld off an oxygen tank in the dark no less.
Aira took the compliment and smiled it was nice for her to feel special.

The Arcanaeum was the data-house of the Erebus. Basically it was a library
filled with the history and personal history of everyone on board. It was also
the first area of the ship we had entered that wasn’t dimly lit or in complete
darkness. We were even able to shut the light from our rifles off. Being able
to see clearly made us feel safe. The Arcanaeum was one of the most secure
areas of the ship. The walls around it were several feet thick. The Arcanaeum
was also one of the oldest parts of the ship aside form the core and several of
the historic halls and the room that use to hold the nexus. Inside was every
vision past, present, future ever seen by a user.

I don’t know why or how but I felt compelled to search. I was probably the
first user to ever have access to an inventory like this – the entire history of
our world. I walked over to one of the several silver consoles. It was covered
in dust like it hadn’t been touched in decades. It made sense. Most
information was sent here via signals and transmissions there was no real
reason for anyone to be here aside from 'research'. The first thing I searched
for was ‘Sev’ and in front of me various images of Narville flashed before my
eyes. Images were he lay dead on the ground wrists bleeding with just those
three words spelled out. Aside from that there was nothing. I couldn’t even
find my own profile. It was like I didn’t exist. Several times I tried searching
then I tried Aira, Dom, Hayden they all appeared. Had Balkava erased me?
Perhaps Celes did it when he tortured me as a way to cover his actions and
dispose of me without too many questions. I searched Errikus. I searched
through the population scanning the names that began with ‘S’ and again
then there nothing. I searched for Aelia and Cross, and still nothing showed.
The last thing I searched for just as I began giving up hope was a name that
always seemed to stick to me, a name that echoed in my mind. I almost didn't
search for it out of some strange fear. Slowly typed the name 'Joseph
Everett'.

Joseph Everett, the ark savior, the hunter, the American, the mad hatter, the
wolf, the snake, the man of faces, the man of sin, the traitor, patient zero, and
hundreds of other aliases and nicknames given to him throughout time.
Several psychological profiles each from different centuries appeared as well
calling him of sound mine, unstable, bi-polar, manic, genius, and on and on
every other report contradicting the prior. Digging deeper there were several
timelines each varied only slightly. Attached to the latest one there wasn’t a
name but a title ‘user subject -77’.

01010011010001010101011000100000010101110100100101001100
0100110000100000010010110100100101001100010011000010000001
0101010101001100100000010000010100110001001100

The rest of the
file was encrypted. How was this possible? It was archaic
coded in binary. The moment I tried to run a decryption it mixed itself up and
started spitting out nonsense and mathematical sequences too hard for any
living human to translate. I longed for the shards in my body to break free
and show me a vision worth having. I had seen so many things were they not
real were they just possibilities laid over one another. An image of myself as a
child appeared. It was an image from when I was first taken aboard the
Erebus and forced inside the nexus. Standing next to me in the image was
Balkava, several elders and next to behind me a little girl holding a stuffed
Zeesk. It was Hera. Over her face there was a note saying “ Subject -16
failure”.