Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Corporal.”
Corporal Kallahan regarded the abomination at the end of his blade with utter disgust as it reached up to steady itself on the bulkhead. “Let him go, demon.”
“Let who go?”
“Don’t play coy with me,” Kallahan snapped. “Release the Admiral’s body.” Kallahan had never agreed with the man, but he had not deserved to die like this.
“Do you realize how insane you sound, Corporal?”
Kallahan could see the hidden smirk in its expression, the charcoal of an evil intelligence in its pupils. “Damn it all.” I knew this would happen. It was the entire reason he was still on this stars-forsaken ship. “I never wanted to be right,” he said. Stars, faced with this twisted thing, he could take no pride in being proven right. “But they made you a weapon. They forged you to hate. …And this was never going to end any other way.” Simply, it was inevitable. He’d seen it all before.
Command had thought chaining down this power would render it safe, render it controlled. But they hadn’t seen what he had. They had not seen what it was truly capable of.
Humanity had needed it during the War. Kallahan knew that better than anyone, but salvation had come at a price. They had unleashed something that was simply not capable of being contained. They had slaved it to the mind of its wielder, never considering that it could overpower that mind – twisting and molding it to seek its desired ends. It was every bit as capable of puppeteering that mind as it was any of those around it. No, given the strength of such a connection, perhaps its wielder was even more at risk of corruption.
Admiral Gives had known that. Yet, he had insisted. Even after the nature of his predecessor’s psychopathy had come to light, he had insisted.
Now, Kallahan could only look upon this perverse abomination with disgust and a twinge of sadness. It looked like him, spoke with his voice… But it wasn’t him. Not anymore. You said she wasn’t going to hurt you, Admiral. He had argued that violence was not in her nature – the nature of a weapon. How foolish he had been. Look at you now, Kallahan lamented. Fate truly was a cruel mistress.
Shaking off the disdain he felt for this situation, Kallahan found his voice again, “The Admiral didn’t deserve to die for your sins, Angel.” He had not deserved to become an instrument in her madness.
“Do I look like I’m dying?”
“I think you might already be dead,” he told the figure before him. Kallahan doubted the man that was could ever be returned. None of the others had been. Their existence had been pinched and torn, rewritten and transformed into something utterly unrecognizable by a god more real than any other humanity had ever known.
“He believed in your innocence, demon.” Some part of Kallahan had hoped that would spare him this fate.
“He was a fool.”
Kallahan nodded. “Yes, he was,” but Gives had never wavered from his determination. The loyalty he’d given that weapon was truer than any Kallahan had ever seen. Perhaps that was why Kallahan had stood by for so long, dreading this inevitable moment more for every day that passed without it. “You didn’t have to alter him.” Gives would have abided the weapon’s intelligence without being forced. “He was no threat to you.”
“He was weak,” the abomination spat. “And there is no point in appealing for his return.”
“I know,” Kallahan said, allowing silence to fall in the corridor. It left him with the whisper of the life support systems, and the distant hum of the engines. They were such unobtrusive noises, yet they heralded the end of all who heard them. “What is it you want, Angel?” What was it Gives had refused her?
“The Angel does not answer to you.”
“No, but it is perfectly fucking capable of speaking with me without the use of its puppet’s mouth.” Kallahan glared down the length of the sabre’s dark blade, studying the stout figure pressed against the scuffed metal wall, then he began to recite those dreaded words, “I summon thee, wielder of the night. I drag you to my feet through the hellish chains that bind you. Appear before me, creature of sin and wrath. The blood of-”
“What the fuck do you want?”
Kallahan whipped his head around to find the devil herself had taken form on his right. Tall and thin, her pale skin looked healthy, though untouched by the sun. Her pale lips were pressed into a firm line, looking none too happy – not angry, just very deeply annoyed.
She threw her arms across her chest, “I’m a little busy right now, and I’m not in the mood, especially for you.”
“Drop the act, demon,” Kallahan snapped at her, careful to keep the blade between himself and Gives’ body. If she decided to physically attack, it would come from that direction.
The ghost shook her head, entirely exasperated. “This. This is why I do not talk to you.” He was always like this. It was always demon this, demon that. “So I got a little grumpy,” she admitted. Surely that was why Kallahan had decided to become unhinged today, as if she didn’t have enough problems to take care of. “You try fighting off the Hydrian Armada’s paralysis attacks. You try walking off a railgun impact.” This hadn’t been an easy engagement, and the pirates deserved everything she’d thrown their way. “I’m the one that threw the damn Hydrian pests out of this sector, for fuck’s sake. I think I’m allowed to be a little annoyed that they are back, and apparently partnered with an enclave of human traitors, not to mention hiding from me.”
Kallahan stared at her, taken entirely aback by the sheer volume of her annoyance.
“What?” she huffed, reading his confusion. “You expected brimstone and fire? Wanted me to crawl out of the wall and say boo?”
This isn’t right. Her thin figure, human features and long white hair… “This isn’t what you are.”
“Who the hell are you to determine what I am?” she countered, steeling her gaze. “And of naddlethworfing course this isn’t what I am. I’m not an idiot human like you.” Her real form wouldn’t fit in this stupid corridor, and was considerably more difficult for some to comprehend. “And speaking of idiot humans, drop the damn sword. It’s not yours, and on the record, I’d prefer you not pull the Admiral off the bridge in the middle of combat.”
There was a sense of sincerity to her annoyance. Kallahan almost wanted to believe in it, but he knew better, and he’d gotten his answer. “The Hydra.” The weapon had been denied Hydrian blood.
“Yeah, the Hydra,” she snarked. “As the only other War veteran here, I’d think you would be keen on killing them too, but I keep forgetting you spent the better part of the War suffering through some clandestine mission you continue to blame me for.”
Kallahan was kept from making a reply by the emergence of a deep, slow laugh that bounced uncomfortably in the empty corridor.
“Oh, my pet,” came the satisfied sigh, “you truly have changed. It’s cute.” It would be cuter still to rip apart. “You never used to have such a personality.”
Kallahan and the ghost slowly shifted their gazes away from each other, toward the man leaning against the bulkheads. He rested there calmly, but with the glimmer of intent in his eyes, and a very disconcerting smile on his face.
Though he was dressed in full protective combat attire from his boots to his helmet, Kallahan could not help but tense. He could feel malice leaking into the air. It darkened the corridor with a vile humidity, stifling his breath. Still, the last thing he expected was the fear that followed it. The annoyance dropped off the ghost’s face in the blink of an eye, and something akin to terror replaced it as she took a step back. “That’s not funny, Admiral.”
“I told you, Angel. I am your master, and you will never truly serve another.”
She took another step back, “Stop it. That’s really not funny.”
The smile on the Admiral’s face only grew. “Come now, is that any way to greet your keeper?” Surely, she recalled the proper form? “On your knees, creature.”
“No,” she said, petrified by the way her systems reacted. They shook and rattled, half responding with ready submission as they pleaded for their master’s forgiveness. The other half tried to wrench themselves apart and deny this reality, but still, none of them were surprised. “It’s not you,” she told that memory. That was impossible. “You’re dead.” He’d died on the bridge just beyond, his skull split open and leaking against the deck.
“I was dead,” he supposed, “but you brought me back, like I always knew you would. All it took was a little bit of chaos. And you’re quite good at chaos, aren’t you? I guess you have to be when the person that takes you apart never quite puts you back together the same way.” The suffering of such an entity driven to insanity… The taste of it had been incredibly addicting.
The only way to describe the look in those blue eyes was psychopathic. It sent tremors down Kallahan’s spine, but he saw the way the ghost was shaking. He could feel it in her presence – a fear that could only have been conjured by a nightmare become reality. “You didn’t do this on purpose.” The Admiral had been right, in a way. The ghost had not meant to hurt him, but in an instant of emotion – in an instant of instability, she had.
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“No, I didn’t do this,” she said softly, as if trying to convince herself. “I can’t bring back the dead.” And Brent was very much dead.
“Yet, here I am,” Brent declared, the eager smile never dropping from his lips. “I am ready to offer you all the hatred you crave. You can feast upon the bones of Hydra and humanity alike. Doesn’t it sound delightful?”
She trembled in horrified awe of the amalgamation in front of her. It wasn’t me. She would never do this, and yet, reaching out, she could feel tendrils of her presence. They had stitched this thing together from pieces of that hateful shadow. Unwilling to tolerate its infiltration anymore, needing just a moment of peace, she had given it a physical form. But, “I didn’t mean for this.” She had wanted to distance it from herself, to contain it, place it anywhere else before it drove her truly mad, and her damaged components had found somewhere for it to go: a piece of herself she trusted like no other. She had gained her much-needed clarity by desperately stitching that parasite onto someone else, and not just anyone else, but unto the only one she trusted to fend it off.
But against something she had created, against something backed by her uncontrolled power, he hadn’t stood a chance.
It had been an accident. Kallahan could see that. It had been a horrible accident, the kind caused by an unstable god. In a way, that was lucky. That meant it would be confined to one victim, but it still had to be dealt with, so he tightened his grip on the sabre and aimed for the heart.
The instant he lunged, she screamed, “No!” And before Kallahan could contemplate it, he was shoved into the wall, and an even stronger force pulled him to the ground, tightening and crushing. The sabre had fallen beyond his reach, clattering to the ground at the ghost’s feet. “I won’t let you hurt him.”
Pinned to the textured deck tiles by the force of gravity, Kallahan found himself immobile. The increased gravity hurt, crushing him against the floor, but it left room for him to breathe. “That’s not him anymore, Angel.” That was some twisted abomination wearing his body. Admiral Gives was dead. She had killed him.
“No,” she said, unable, unwilling to process that.
“You always were a willing slave, so very eager to please.” Brent offered her another smile. “You’re doing wonderfully.” If she continued to protect this body so passionately, then it would serve him for many years to come.
“Listen to me,” Kallahan said, seeing her gaze fixate on that puppet. “That thing is going to drive you mad. Kill it, and that memory of yours dies with it.” She had given that memory a physical form, and that meant she had the opportunity to truly rid herself of this psychopathic imprint. “I know how it looks, but that’s not the Admiral anymore. He’s not going to feel it.”
“I can’t kill him, Kallahan.” She wouldn’t. She kept tabs on the crew through the ship’s life support systems, and those systems, they still registered two physical presences here in this corridor. They still tagged one of them as the Admiral, even if her telepathic awareness identified that mind as something far more disturbing. ID 2483251, General Howard Brent. As crisp and clear as it had ever been, it was as if he had never left. But still… Those blue eyes didn’t belong to Brent.
Straining under his increased weight, Kallahan watched the sadistic grin on the Admiral’s face widen. As it did, a level of strength drained from the ghost, and a layer color faded from her illusion. Her skin was starting to look grayer and deader than Kallahan had ever seen, but still, her unblinking eyes scoured every detail of the abomination. “That’s not him,” Kallahan said again, watching obsession take hold. “You have to see that.” It wore his face, but it spoke differently, acted differently. It wasn’t her commander anymore.
Except that it was. Perhaps Kallahan couldn’t see it, but this… thing, this accident, was both the men she’d once known, and that was what made it so terrible. Her instinct was both to protect it and fear it, but still to obey it without recourse. In either form, that amalgamation was still her commanding officer. She resented it and everything it had done to her, and yet she cared for it, felt safe under its command. Kallahan was right. It was maddening to behold. But, she determined, “If my power made this, then I can unmake it.”
“It can’t be undone, Angel.”
“And who are you to decide that?” she snarled. “You say you know me, but you don’t. You’ve barely even spoken to me beyond interrogating me for answers I do not have. You have resented me, argued against me every moment since you got here. But I have never done anything to you.” She had never wronged him, never harmed him. She had given him heat, water, air, and he had regarded her as a demon. “I made a mistake. We all make mistakes.” She forgave them for every stray impact and thought that harmed her, but why, when the roles were reversed, did they refuse to forgive her? It was not her fault that an accident on her account could cost lives. She had never asked for that responsibility. That was how they had forged her.
“I know what you are, Angel. I’ve seen what happens to these puppets. You can pull apart the minds you’ve sewn, but they always die.” The bodies were left void, nothing but empty shells. “If you try to undo what you’ve done, that memory will return to you.” That shadow would latch back onto her.
“I don’t care,” she said, fixating on that face, the Admiral’s face. It was so familiar to her, but its expressions were contorted in ways that pained her to see. She had wanted to see him smile, but not like this, never like this.
“You are going to render his death meaningless,” Kallhan argued. There would be nothing left once she unraveled that mind.
“Nothing about death is meaningful.” She had seen enough of it to know that, and she had known for a long time that Brent’s shadow would never leave her. That had been her burden, her struggle. “You weren’t supposed to get hurt,” she told that face, noting how unfamiliar it looked without its stony expressions, or she supposed, lack thereof. “I promised.” She had promised to keep him company, to take care of him, and yet it was always her fault when he got hurt. “I’m sorry.”
A true sadness welled up in her silver eyes, their ethereal color glittering in the light, and Kallahan could feel that invisible pressure mounting in the corridor. “You can’t save him, ghost.” The persona that she owed her loyalty to was gone.
With a twitch of annoyance, she increased the artificial gravity field holding Kallahan down. “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask.” She owed him for bringing this situation to her attention, but nothing further. “And you,” she said to Brent, “I will never let you harm my crew again,” even if that meant she suffered in their place.
“You say that now, machine, but I’m always going to be here.” There was no escaping him. “I am a part of you.” Eventually, he’d break free again.
She closed her eyes. I know. If she pulled that presence out of the form she had placed it in, it would return to shadowing her every thought. It would return to pushing her toward instability. But you were never worth him, Brent.
Reaching into that malformed presence, its stitches and scars were all too obvious. The evil of that sour essence oozed from the wounds, sewn atop the memories of its physical host. When she began to pull it free, it twisted and wriggled, each piece as vile as a maggot pried from rotting flesh. They stuck to her, then burrowed deeper. She tried not to wince as they ate into her, once again infecting her systems with that sadistic memory. She could feel its amusement, delighting in her discomfort. Even as she pulled it away from the Admiral’s body, it wound itself tighter around her. Come now, did you think I would let you go?
She ignored the way it pulled at her as the Admiral’s body collapsed. It hit the deck with a thwump as Kallahan looked on in absolute horror. “I warned you, Angel.” He could see from where he lay that the limp pile of limbs wasn’t breathing.
The ghost ignored him, and took a knee beside the Admiral’s body. Carefully, she sifted through what remained of its mind. There was memory among that rubble and ruin, but no dominating conscious or subconscious to control bodily functions such as breathing. And without fresh oxygen from the lungs, the brain functioned only temporarily. Already, she could feel it beginning to fail, as she desperately reached deeper and deeper, searching for something, anything.
For a moment, it was empty. Her perception found nothing but a dreaded silence. Then there was a twitch, the slightest mental thought so weak she nearly missed it. It was an imprint. Washed out and displaced, it had nearly faded away like water left to evaporate under the sun. It was only electrical signals pushed to a part of the brain not meant to host them, but she gathered them up and slid them back into place. The instant she did, the body in front of her gave a jolt and began to breathe once again. The presence within strengthened a little more with every breath.
Kallahan felt the grip of the ship’s artificial gravity field release him, and pulled himself off the deck, sore but unharmed. A sense of relief encompassed him, not his, he knew, but the ghost’s. He was more shocked than anything, “…I didn’t think it was possible.”
“I got lucky,” she said without moving. “Another minute and you would have been right.” It would have been too late. “But he will wake.” He’d probably be confused as hell when he did, but he would wake. “I owe you for that, Corporal. If you had not realized… If you had not brought my attention here…” She let out a breath. “Thank you.”
Her expression was kept from him, concealed behind a curtain of her white hair as she knelt over the Admiral. But, while Kallahan could sense her sincerity, he knew there was a hesitance within it. “There’s something more, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I’d like to ask if you could forget all about this.”
Dusting himself off, and fixing the way his combat gear sat, Kallahan frowned. “You could make me forget. Why bother asking?”
“You never liked me. If you remember this mistake, I know it won’t change anything.” There was no point in altering his memory. Her power had done something unforgivable today. “But, I’d appreciate it if you forgot to tell the Admiral.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
She watched the Admiral’s chest rise and fall, using the life support systems to confirm that the air consumption in this corridor was within normal parameters. “No.”
“Angel, you can’t keep something like that from him.” She had lost control and nearly killed him. He had a right to know.
“I’m sure he’ll figure it out.” Admiral Gives was no fool. “I just don’t want him to look at me the way you do, Kallahan.” The old Marine regarded her as a monster, and in too many ways, he was right. “But…” She trailed off for a moment, forgetting the words as she raised a hesitant hand. Her long, pale fingers hovered above the Admiral’s slack expression for a moment, but she eventually pulled back, afraid to reach out. “It was an accident, and while you might not believe that, I need him to believe that.” It had been a mistake, one she knew could not be entirely forgiven. “…I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
Her voice had gone quiet, now barely a whisper. The specter had not moved from the Admiral’s side, and Kallahan doubted it would until he woke. Yet, accident or not, this incident had a severity that could not be ignored. “Your instability is getting worse,” he told her.
“Yes,” she could not deny that. “Because I know how this ends.” There was a haunting sadness in her words, like a cry of grief projected into an empty sky. “Do you know what it’s like to know with absolute certainty that you are going to betray the only person in the worlds who has ever called you a friend?” That pain was even more acute than every piece of torture Brent had put her through. “Do you know what it’s like to have them realize that, and continue to call you their friend anyway?” It was a special type of joy, and a special type of agony. “It doesn’t make any sense.” It wasn’t logical, or right, and yet… It meant everything to her.
For the first time, Kallahan found his stomach twisting in pity for this cursed creature. He had always thought a special place in hell would await this entity. It had not occurred to him that this reality might already be its punishment. “I won’t say anything, Angel. Just remember that next time, your instability will cost more than his trust.” This could have been a disaster. “You do not belong here.” Her strength was incompatible with humanity.
“I know,” she said, a sorrow woven into her voice. “And, I’m not supposed to care.” She knew that, had been taught to understand it, but these people… they were her crew. They were her companions, unknowing or not. As she healed and learned, they had brought her stories, hopes and dreams, most unknowing, but a few honestly uncaring of her history.
Kallahan turned to leave, satisfied by that reply. “I’ll go make an excuse for the bridge crew, tell them he fainted or something.” It wasn’t as if it mattered. The ghost would ensure they didn’t pay too much attention to the oddity.