Qureshi washed her face at one of the sinks in the women’s head in Habitation. The cold water rinsed away the sweat and fatigue. She hadn’t felt well since returning to the Nineveh. And she suddenly felt sick after hearing of Zhu’s passing. The news had hit them all hard.
Her mind reminisced. She hadn’t wanted to go along with the mission. The Officers should have told them more before they left Zeta-Reticuli, when it would have been easier to decline. Nobody could have foreseen what happened though.
She dried her face and looked into the mirror, gazing at her bloodshot eyes. I really am sick. Her aching and nausea had come on so suddenly. She patted down her neck with a towel and looked down at her shirt which clung to her breasts. If it was any other day she would go to Sci-Med.
She placed the towel back on the rack and then, hearing the sound of another faucet, turned to her right. She had believed she was alone. She froze in shock with a tightness in her throat. There was a woman of her size at the other sink rinsing off her face. She was wearing the same clothes. Her face had more pronounced lines and her hair was thoroughly greyed. But the woman clearly had her nose, eyes, and cheeks. The woman was her. Somehow, only older.
The woman dried her face and set the towel down on the sink. Then she turned and headed for the door, sullenly looking toward Qureshi as she passed by. She didn’t appear natural or alive. A ghost. She kept walking and fingered the console to open the door, and then she turned and began briskly down the hall.
Qureshi nervously approached the open door, thrusting her hand through the open doorway in disbelief. She had reasoned that she had simply seen an illusion, a figment of her imagination. But now she could feel the open passageway. She could see her arm reach out into the hall. A bout of nervous energy filled her being. She could practically hear her heart beating in her ears as she stepped out of the head and into the open corridor. She looked both ways but there was nobody around to ask about what she had saw. Although afraid, she headed after the intruder who shouldn’t be there.
They crossed through Habitation and then went through the ring section to Propulsion Two. She followed the woman straight through the Gate and then reached Aux Systems Two. The old woman seemed more real the further they went. She paused for passageway doors to open and stepped over low obstructions. She knew the ship. The apparition – for it had to be – was certainly only in her mind, but it moved and behaved like a living person.
Qureshi continued to keep her distance as a precaution, but the woman never turned towards her or seemed to notice her. The woman stopped once to retrieve a small bag from a damage control locker. Nearing a comms transducer, Qureshi detoured over to it and spoke.
“TURING, come in.”
“I’m here.”
“Are there any other persons in Aux. Two?”
“No.”
She expected that answer. It had to be an apparition, and this was a dream. She felt her heartbeat subside. The woman had closed the locker and began walking again. She jogged to catch up and watched the woman go up to the airlock to Sci Med. The woman took a brush from the bag and began to paint something on the window of the airlock. It was a sort of message, but she could not read it with the woman in the way.
It then turned towards her, and she gagged from its putrid smell. It was dead. Its eyes were whited over in deeply sunken sockets and its flesh was rotted and covered in maggots. And in the blink of an eye, it was standing right in front of her. She stumbled back and fell to the deck in panic.
“You won’t live to grow old!” it said in a raspy voice.
Screaming, she ran. She bolted clumsily through the corridors of Aux Two toward the access for Propulsion Two. She stumbled through the hatch and crashed again onto the metal deck plates with a loud thump. Whimpering with pain, she pushed herself back up as she felt the salty taste of blood fill her mouth. She watched drops of her blood pool on the deck and she felt wet streams of it running down her face from open lips. She got up to her feet and touched her face with her hands while everything seemed to spin. She gazed in shock at the blood on her hands as her vision faded to white. The injury shouldn’t be this bad.
And then her vision returned, and she was staring at her wet hands in the head in Habitation. She felt the wetness on her face and quickly looked in the mirror. Trickles of water, not blood, ran down her face. The dream seemed so real. There was even lingering pain. She felt sick and now was hallucinating. Any other day she would go to Sci-Med and report in sick. But not today. Today there was a quarantine, a full decontamination, and poor Zhu. She shut the faucet off and headed for the door hoping to soon get some rest.
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Soliman stood in administration watching the monitoring videos with his filled bag of samples beside him. He had swiped the exposed portions of his deck before disinfecting everything and his bag was ready for collection. It had taken longer than he thought it would. Zhu’s death filled him with greater regret and it slowed him down. Chandna had pulled him off for a thirty-minute side job collecting reptiles and insects for their experiments too.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
He told Patterson several minutes ago that he had everything ready. She didn’t seem interested, and with Zhu’s death, he couldn’t totally blame her. She certainly had other priorities simultaneously pressing on her. So did he. This work was a waste of his time and keeping him away from his actual job.
This whole mission had been a waste. It had only harmed them. They had lost their ENG, it would be almost two years before they made it back home, and a lot more could go wrong during the return voyage. The Captain and the Officers should have told them more before they left Zeta.
He anxiously waited for several minutes, watching the various displays at the reception desk. Patterson and Chandna were methodically examining Zhu – postmortem autopsy. He simmered in resentment. They should have known about the dangers the Nineveh could face. They had certainly failed Zhu, and they had failed the ship also. What cost would they all have to pay?
He switched off that display and began to watch Stocky taking swipes in a hall before decontamination. He was almost finished and moving at a brisk pace. Neither Zhu losing his life, nor the injustice of him being burdened bothered him at all. He hoped the one who would take over from Zhu would be an actual person – with the full range of human feelings. He was grateful for both Stocky’s company and support. But one replicant was enough. Bordering on too much even.
He scrolled through the video feeds for the lower deck, looking for the elevator. The image of the lobby went away, then he breezed through consultation, and then the image of the airlock access to Aux Two caught his eye. The access warning light was flashing as if someone was passing through. But nobody should be because they were quarantined. He left administration and angrily went down the main hall, leaving his bag behind. Whoever was trying to enter needed to be turned back.
Soliman looked in the window of the door to airlock access on Aux Sys Two side. The warning lights flashed repeatedly, signaling use. He didn’t see anyone inside, but he did see that the airlock door was slightly ajar. And the light was on in the airlock too. He looked down both sides of the hall. Nobody appeared to be around, but he wished that he could hear right now. Did they already come in?
He set his comms for Stocky. “Stocky, are you still on deck two?” Certainly, he had to be given that he had seen him working seconds ago.
“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”
“Nothing.” He used his comms panel to switch to Patterson. “Hey doc, is your team together in the Isolab?”
“Yes,” she said. “Do you need something? I’ll come for your sample bag shortly.”
“I don’t need anything. It’s just…someone’s got the inner airlock door open.”
“What? Close it! Who’s been down there?”
“I don’t know. Stand by.”
He looked down both sides of the hallway again. He thought he saw something momentarily. A fleeting blur of something seemingly ducking into storage. But nobody else was on his deck. He ignored it and opened the door to the access room. The room seemed to be in order, everything undisturbed. Except for the airlock.
“Is the door shut yet?” Patterson asked.
He went up to the door without answering and opened it. Nobody was inside. But he immediately saw the note painted in red on the window glass of the other door. He stared dumbfounded.
BEYOND HOPE
“What?” he asked himself. He entered the airlock slowly, looking all around in front of him because of his nerves, and then he shut the door behind him. He held his breath while he walked up to the far door and pushed against it. He then sighed in relief when it proved to be sealed, and he wiped his hand against the glass. It wasn’t possible to feel through his gloves but the writing seemed to be on the other side. He quickly set his headcam to record. “Patterson, take a look at my video feed. What is this?”
He was being watched. The Traveler knew that easier game was beyond that door. Soliman didn’t see the lanky camouflaged creature pressed against the ceiling in the airlock. He didn’t know how it had broke out of the glovebox by puncturing the relatively thin polymer gloves. And he didn’t know that it had baited him.
“I can’t explain it,” Patterson said. “I’m calling…”
A sharp pain in the back of his neck and a loud crack from breaking bone interrupted her message. He tried to scream as his head fell forward, and he was unable to raise it. And he could not scream. Terror filled his mind and hot blood rushed over his back as he choked uncontrollably. He spasmed in an awful dream.
What’s happening?
He placed his right hand on the console to start the airlock sequence and initiated it. He didn’t mean to. He hadn’t tried to. He screamed in his mind to stop. But his arm was possessed by some other force. The EUV light sequenced to sterilize the airlock and then his hands worked the door’s handwheel and opened the airlock to the accessway to Aux Systems Two.
No! God, help me! Stop this!
He pushed the door fully open in his living nightmare and stepped through into the accessway. (He didn't want to and desperately tried to stop.) Then he began to run, and he watched his legs move awkwardly as his head bobbed around unsupported. The emergency lights flashed for quarantine breach. Surely, the accessway would be sealed in time. Or maybe he would wake up later, perfectly fine. This couldn’t be real.
But he knew it was. Whatever had killed Zhu had now got him. He would die. His vision was blurry and he couldn’t tell whether he was now breathing. But he tried to command his body to obey – to tell it to stop, to take a dive to the deck, to do anything except continue foreward.
His body no longer obeyed him. In fact, it now seemed to punish him with stinging pain. Something hit him hard on his head and his neck twisted so that he was looking back at the accessway. His vision was still good enough to make out the open door.
No!
He was inside Aux Two, and he watched the accessway door close behind him. Blood now began to cover his visor. He felt himself fall and then he blacked out. He never felt his body hit the deck. A thunderous voice within his head declared him to be a failure and that the Nineveh was glad for the chance to replace him with somebody of worth. But it also told him that everyone would pay for his mistakes. And then there was darkness.