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Tashon stood atop the Ship of Nations, watching a storm rage on the other side of the red mountains. Above him, the night sky shone bright with stars, casting a dim silver light into the forest below. Johann stood next to him, using his fingers to brush his beard. Rosa sat on the edge, her feet dangling over the side. They had spent the entire day looking for signs of Smith and Colony Six, but found nothing.
Tashon saw a slight grin on Rosa’s face as she swung her legs back and forth. Johann stood still, his hands pressed deep into his pockets. Occasionally, he commented on a large streak of lightning or the force of the wind.
Tashon could not tear his eyes away from the deep blackness of the clouds. Watching for the merest hint of a figure breaking away from the storm. But the clouds remained just that, clouds. While his eyes focused, his mind went back to the same guilt and shame that had been tormenting him.
“Tash.” Johann took a step closer. “The first time I killed someone, it was for a good cause, but it was still... painful. For him and me. And—”
He kept talking but Tashon stopped listening. Johann had good intentions, sure, but at that moment it didn’t matter. Tashon admired Johann. The problem, though, was that Johann had killed many more after that first one. If Johann really knew what Tashon was feeling, that first kill would have been his last.
Johann stopped talking.
Tashon looked at him and managed a tired half-smile. “Thanks,” he whispered.
“I’m heading down. You coming?”
“Soon. Can’t get enough of this air.”
Johann gave him a quick hug and disappeared into the ship.
With a sigh, Rosa stood up and joined Tashon, staring out into the darkness.
“It does get better,” she said.
Tashon didn’t respond.
Rosa simply stood, as if waiting for him to speak.
Tashon gave in. “How do you know?”
“What do you know about me?”
“You like breaking the bones of teenage girls?”
“Rumors.” She faked a smile. “Before all of this, back on Earth, I lived in Mexico City.”
Tashon turned to her.
“What? Were you there when—”
“The bombs hit? Yeah. I was about your age, actually. It was chaos afterward. No law. No protection. And I had to kill someone. He....”
She paused and looked away. “I guess, all I’m saying is, it’s a good sign you feel guilt for taking a life. Because... honestly? I didn’t. Not even my first time.” She turned and slowly walked back into the ship.
And Tashon was alone. The one thing he wanted to be but knew he shouldn’t. He walked to the edge and looked down. In the dark, he could barely see past the tops of the gently swaying trees. He could jump and not even see the ground coming. Just jump into the darkness. He inched closer until his toes hung off the edge. He teetered between jumping and stepping back.
The idea of simply ceasing to be called to him. But after seeing Evalee’s face in that fourth-dimensional creature, he wondered whether death would truly be the end of his existence. So, if he were to jump and be reborn as some ethereal being, would he not suffer even more guilt for killing himself? Or would he gain a different understanding of what his current life was, and thus be rid of all his guilt? And added to it all, he couldn’t help but think of how life in that other plane seemed far superior to his current plight. He took a breath and told himself to jump, but his body would not move. He told himself to step back, but his body remained still. If only he could tear his body apart straight down the middle, one side falling to the ground below, the other remaining alive on top of the ship.
A black form darted through the trees beneath him. His breath caught in his chest, and he jumped back. He was sure it wasn’t a leaf this time. And he was also sure that it had not been on the ground. Whatever it was, it had been moving through the highest branches of the trees. It rushed past again in the opposite direction. Tashon’s heart pounded. This time, he could tell that whatever it was had been flying between the trees. With a flash of terror, Tashon realized he recognized the figure. For a moment, he considered falling, letting everyone else deal with it.
No. Within seconds, he was rushing down the stairs inside the ship to find Johann and Bodhi. He slammed through the door into the sleeping quarters, causing a murmur of curses aimed at him. While muttering apologies, he walked toward Johann’s cot in the far corner. It was empty. A gasp from across the room drew his attention. He turned to see a small group huddled near the airlock, staring out the glass. Johann and Bodhi were among them. As quietly as he could, Tashon jogged clumsily to meet them.
Before he had the chance to speak, Bodhi hushed him. There was a sense of terror in the engineer’s eyes as he discreetly pointed out the window. Tashon turned to look. A short scream leapt from his throat. Aleron stood just outside the airlock.
The mad man still wore his security uniform. A long gash split open his forehead. His hair was plastered to the sides of his face with blood. He hovered nearly a foot off the ground. A black form floated out behind him, seeming to grow out of his body like a cancer. Tashon knew the figure. Knew without question it was the being from the Fourth that Evalee had not been able to get rid of.
Aleron floated motionless. Behind him, the trees gently moved back and forth. Tashon didn’t remember feeling any wind outside. He wondered for a moment if the trees breathed. If they had some type of heart and lungs.
But those thoughts of curiosity were cut short as he turned his attention back to Aleron. No facial expressions betrayed his thoughts or intentions. He stared, eyes still and unblinking. The dark shadow behind him attempted to mimic the human form, but it was too tall, too wide, too round. As though it couldn’t quite grasp its three-dimensional surroundings. A black light pulsed out of it. The onlookers all jumped back, but it soon dissipated. Tashon waited for Aleron to do something. Ram into the glass. Scream at them. But for ten minutes, nothing happened.
Aleron and the shadow remained still, staring blankly at the onlookers. More survivors stood near the airlock, nervously keeping an eye on the man that had destroyed their ship. Their home. Tashon sat, his back against a wall, hugging his knees. He rubbed his palms into his eyes.
Someone sat next to him. He looked up to find Doran, the chef, smiling at him. He gingerly held the half melted knife between his hands, slowly spinning it around. He handed it to Tashon, who grabbed it carefully, holding it as though it were a sacred artifact.
The blade had cooled. He brought it close to his face. Its new edge was perfect. Clean, sharp, as though it were a new knife that was unusually short.
“Did you sharpen it?”
“No.” Doran shook his head slowly. “When it cooled, that’s how it was.”
Tashon nodded and handed it back.
Aleron was in the same place, but the figure behind him looked even darker than it had earlier. As if it were sucking in the light that surrounded it. They couldn’t stay like this forever.
Rosa walked over and sat on his other side.
“Chief Tashon,” she said. “Doran.”
“Miss Rosa,” Doran said with a grin. “How are you this strange evening?”
“Fine as always, Doran,” she said. “Chief Tashon, how are you holding up?”
Tashon shrugged. “Fine, as always.”
“Chief Farmer, I don’t think you’ve been anything close to fine since Cosima cut you.”
Tashon tried to think of a response. One sentence that would prove he was fine, that no one needed to worry about him. Nothing came.
“Hell,” Doran said. “I don’t think any of us are fine. Not even you, Rosa.”
“Probably true,” Rosa whispered.
“I killed on the ship.” Tashon’s voice cracked. “Murdered a man.”
Doran looked up in surprise.
“You did not murder him,” Rosa said firmly, as if it were a fact. “He was a terrorist, Tash. He would’ve killed you.”
“Maybe.” He leaned his head against the wall.
“Chief Tashon,” Doran spoke calmly, as if he were trying to provide comfort.
Tashon wanted none of it. “Doran, it’s fine. Rosa, I hear you. I just never thought I’d be able to do something so... so brutal.”
Tashon realized then the real reason he had not killed Aleron. The violence, the sheer brutality of what he had done to that man, scared him. He feared that if he let that savagery out again, he would not be able to stop it. That he would fight and kill until he died.
Was letting himself become that worth saving humanity?
He told himself that it should be, yet he still questioned what he would do if another time to kill came. But given the sheer instability of their plight, he knew such a time might come.
Someone by the airlock screamed. Tashon and Rosa jumped to their feet. Aleron and his shadow had moved to the airlock, the man’s nose pressed against the glass. It was cold outside, and his breath should have fogged the glass, but the glass remained clear.
“Aleron!” a voice screamed from outside the ship.
Aleron and the shadow turned to the source. A man slowly came into view through the glass.
“It is!” The man smiled, then laughed. “Oh, our goddess has turned you into something amazing!”
The man fell to his knees, lifted his arms straight into the air.
“Oh, goddess, universe herself, I desire only to bring about your retribution. Please, let—”
He was cut short as a black tentacle burst out of Aleron’s chest in a spray of blood. It sped at the man’s face, wrapped around his head and pierced the back of his neck. The man’s eyes went blank.
Across the room, Bodhi and Johann yelled for Tashon to join them. He did, and they jogged away from the group of horrified spectators. Out of earshot, but close enough to keep an eye on the airlock.
“Is it what I think it is?” Bodhi bounced up and down on his feet.
“Yeah,” Tashon confirmed. “It’s from the Fourth. Johann? What do we do?”
Johann sighed and yanked on his beard. “Need my comb,” he mumbled.
“Johann?”
“We should try to get them,” Johann said. “Before he does... anything else.”
“Get them?” Bodhi questioned.
“Capture them. Kill them. We’ll see how it pans out.”
Tashon opened his mouth to protest, but decided not to.
“I’ll keep a group by the airlock,” he said instead. “Hopefully it stays focused on us while you guys do whatever you’re going to do.”
“It?” Bodhi looked at Tashon.
“I don’t know,” Johann said to the engineer, “if Aleron or the others are still in there.”
Tashon looked back out the airlock. The man now had countless tentacles piercing his body, extending out to a second shadow identical to the one behind Aleron.
Two martyrs for the universe, two dark figures seemingly from the Fourth, all connected into one new being.
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter right now. Are there any other airlocks we can get through?”
“Uh, yeah. A few. I’ll have to manually override the codes.”
“Good. You get on that. I’ll get anyone with security experience. We’ll want to come at them from every angle possible.”
***
Tashon tried to stay calm as he and an even larger group stared out at Aleron and his new appendages. All had remained motionless. By that point, nearly all of the ship’s survivors were awake and aware of what was happening. The children had been taken further into the ship, as far from any airlock as possible. There was an air of anticipation and fear that hung over everyone and everything. Tashon had to fight the urge to pace the room or chew his fingernails. He didn’t know how aware the thing was of its surroundings, but he didn’t want to risk it noticing his nerves and realizing something was about to happen to him. Tashon looked at the time on his wrist comm. It should have happened already.
Johann had gathered eleven men and women who had been in security. Two were going to come at the hybrid creature from either side, two from an air lock above them, and the last five were circling out into the trees to come at it from behind. They should have made their move already. Tashon sat on the floor, feigning boredom so that he wouldn’t go insane. He kept Aleron in the edge of his vision and tried to take slow breaths.
It didn’t help. As he stood up, he caught a glimpse of Johann and four others behind Aleron. They slowly made their way forward, pausing to duck behind trees every few yards. Soon, they were almost on Aleron. Johann lifted a hand in the air and all five stopped. He quickly dropped his hand down, and the attack began.
Two women fell from above. One looped an arm around Aleron’s neck and brought him to the ground. Another followed an instant later, bringing the other man down. The shadows moved their right arms in unison, and the human arms followed. Each grabbed a woman and effortlessly tossed them to the side. They slammed into two of the others. And just like that, eleven became seven. The shadows and their puppets floated back up.
From the other side, two large rocks flew through the air. One slammed into the side of Aleron’s head, the second struck the other man in the temple. Both fell to the ground, unconscious. The shadows remained attached to their bodies, hovering above them.
The seven rushed the bodies and shadows. But just before they got there, the shadows lurched into the air and flew off, carrying the limp bodies of Aleron and the other Extinctionists beneath them.
After a few seconds of piercing silence, the room erupted in shouts and curses.
