M y eyes slowly blinked open. The world was a blur. The muscles in my chest cramped, and I felt my pulse around my temples. I tried to turn my head to look around, but something had it restrained. Arms and legs, too. A screen switched on, wrapped across my face. I had no idea if I was in my smart-dwelling or in a VR.
All I saw was a single display of her. Mission…
[Ignis Feed Location]
Block C Subterranean Line
<Camera 26>
Mission raced frantically through the dark pipelines somewhere under Block C. The only light emanated from the helmets of sewer jockeys, and she ran to the nearest like a moth to flame. She had to stay crouched to fit as her feet sloshed through water up to her knees and with a heavy current. She held her nose with one hand.
“Have you seen Jacen?” she asked, almost shouting over the gushing water.
The woman lowered her sanitary mask, the same one who’d messed with her the day before in the galley. Her nose was red from snorting too much scrunge. “Lost him again?” she asked. “Not seen him since the galley yesterday. Can’t you have the core track him or something now, Mother?”
Mission sloshed to another and asked the same. She received a similar answer, and when she went to run again, the man grabbed her by the shirt.
“Watch your step!” he said.
They stood on a narrow bridge over the yawning pit all the liquid was draining into, where it would be carried around the outer crust of Ignis , strained, purified by running through ground rocks and minerals, and recycled for reuse. Very few inhabitants clambered down through the darkness to the layer of water churning around the asteroid. Upkeep in those sections was hazardous work. The Ignis wasted minimal water, and so long as all the systems remained operable, the supply they’d left Earth with would last until they reached Tau Ceti.
Mission stared down into the bowels of the Ignis , breathing hard as if finally realizing she was winded. Then there was a bellow, loud and thunderous, reverberating off the metal and rock walls. It sounded like an ancient beast rousing from eternal slumber, but it wasn’t coming from below.
A few of the older workers made a beeline toward the ladders leading out of the sewers. They were visibly panicked. Mission couldn’t help but follow. If Jacen was down below, she knew that awful sound would surely draw him up, too.
Mission spun when she emerged, searching for what had produced the sound, when another bellow filled Ignis , louder and deeper than the first. It made boughs tremble. It came from the core, and for the first time in her life, the light glowing from the reactor at its heart changed. It swelled and darkened in sync with the deafening bellow, so that at the end of every interval, the gaping interior of Ignis was drowned in blackness.
“Another blackout!” some terrified voice echoed throughout the hollow.
The uniform landscape of Ignis became agitated. All throughout the farmland inhabitants stirred, tracing thick lines across the green. All of them were headed toward the ridge where the entryways into Living Block B protruded. Reddish light poured from the openings.
Mission fell in with the nearest throng going that way. Everyone gawked up at the all-illuminating core as they moved, but not her. She searched the crowd for Jacen. He was nowhere to be found.
They weren’t far from her block, just a quarter of the way around the bowing surface. People all around her mentioned the word “blackout.” It wasn’t something inhabitants brought up lightly, and more than enough of them had survived the great one. She was young when it had happened, but this all felt like déjà vu. The core slowly failing, one spine-tingling wail at a time before darkness descended over her world.
The man in front of her stopped when they reached one of the three entry tunnels arranged around Block B’s circular outcrop of rock and metal. She bumped into him. He was too stricken by the sight lying ahead of them to react.
The block’s hatch was sealed, and the red color emanated from flames licking at the inside of its circular viewport.
“It’s locked!” someone yelled from the entry controls. Mission squeezed through the crowd, and as she approached the hatch, a hand slapped the glass from within.
“They’re trapped inside!” someone else yelled.
“Alora!” Mission screamed. “Jacen!”
She pounded on the hatch and tried to peek through the viewport. She’d rushed out of the block in such a hurry, thanks to that cryptic message, that she wasn’t sure who was still inside. All that was visible through the glass was smoke, a hellish glow, and the silhouettes of scrambling inhabitants.
She backed away and bolted through the stunned populace, calling out for Jacen and Alora. She didn’t see them anywhere, but the entirety of the Ignis gathered in numbers normally reserved for ceremonies and celebrations. There were too many faces to count.
The same scene awaited her at the next entrance into the block. By the time she hurried around to the last, the radiance of flames had diminished. So too had the movement of limbs within.
She squeezed her way back to the first hatch and shoved her face against the glass. Nothing stirred inside. “What’s going on?” she questioned. Nobody had an answer.
“Out of my way!” a woman barked.
Cassiopeia, the head of the Collective, as well as a group of Collective members all in white, approached from the direction of the airlock hollow. Enforcers threw aside the inhabitants crowded at the entrance and struggled to maintain order. Mission’s fingers had to be pried away from the metal. Cassiopeia’s people broke open the hatch’s manual controls and started fiddling with the wires beneath.
After a minute of working and ignoring the hysterical screams of their constituents, the hatch popped open. A powerful gust of wind rushed in due to the change in pressure, throwing everybody in the crowd onto their stomachs. Mission gathered herself quickly and used her slight stature to shove to the front. She and the members of the Collective froze only a few steps in, jaws dropping, eyes glued open.
“We’re too late,” Cassiopeia whispered.
“Why didn’t the overrides work?” another member of the Collective asked, voice cracking. “Why didn’t they work?”
A few of the conduits running along the walls of the tunnel sparked, the rock around them charred black. Bodies were piled along the passage, many of them with their clothing scorched. There was barely enough space to get down one at a time without stepping on their backs. Inhabitants at the rear ignored the enforcers and forced their way inside, throwing themselves onto bodies and pressing on their chests. Mission was too much in shock to do anything but walk slowly. Not a single one of the bodies breathed. Not even so much as a leg twitched.
She reached the living block caverns to find more of the same, only there, none of the bodies were burnt. And they all wore strangely tranquil expressions, eyes closed and lips drawn in neat lines. It was like they’d all been petrified or formed from wax. Some died hugging each other, others clinging to their sleeping nooks.
A rattling made her and everyone behind her jump. The familiar hum of air recyclers blustering then filled the room.
“I couldn’t get them on…” the Collective member beside Cassiopeia mouthed. “Cassiopeia, I swear I couldn’t.”
Cassiopeia couldn’t muster a response.
Mission stopped by the entry to the galley. Dozens more bodies were scattered within. A mound of them lay by the coverless entrance to an air duct. The scrawny leg of a child stuck out.
“No!” She ran over and found the young boy Harold, whom Jacen liked to tease. Scrapes from fingernails ran up and down his leg. He’d opened the duct and tried to escape, but the inhabitants piled behind him clogged the way in a panic.
A conduit sparked behind the long serving counter. Mission darted over to find half of chef Jorah’s face seared down to the bone. He’d been preparing for that morning’s feed, and a line of bowls along the counter were already half-filled with blended greens and insects.
Mission grew dizzy. She stumbled out of the galley and used a nearby sleeping nook to balance herself. When she marshaled the nerve to look up again, her gaze locked on the illuminated entrance to the med-bay. Birthmother Nixu was sprawled out at the bottom of the silvery ramp. Dead.
Mission staggered over and kneeled by her side. “No…” When she rolled the body over, Samson was cradled in her limp arms.
“No, no, no.” Mission had to look away. She started to breathe faster and faster until she was hyperventilating. Then the light of the med-bay drew her attention, and she realized who might be up there.
“Alora!” she rasped. She scuttled up the ramp, eyes half-open, as if coming up for air after a lengthy swim. The nursery was filled with silent children and Birthmothers who’d been trapped in the block. They’d suffocated. All those times Mission had been locked under the floor just became a reality. Her greatest fear realized.
Mission couldn’t bear to look at any of them long, but none of the bodies belonged to Alora. She ran across the facility toward her room, struggling to breathe. She didn’t notice Paul lying facedown right outside her door, and tripped over his outstretched arm. As she fell, a thin stream of electrical current shot over her head
The crackle when it struck the wall compelled her to roll over, and a second blast hit right where she had been. Mission sprang to her feet and charged. Another bolt flashed over her shoulder as she ducked; then she crashed into the man standing by her terminal. He flew back into the screens.
She grabbed his wrists and forced him to aim his stunner at the ceiling. “What did you do!” she screamed. Even though he was larger and stronger, rage fueled her. She pried the stunner out of his hands, but when she did, she saw his face.
“Jacen?” she muttered.
That second of indecision allowed him to get his arm around her throat and twist her body. He squeezed and drew her to the ground. She kicked and swung her arms blindly, and just as her eyes started to roll back into her head, her fingers found the grip of a pulse pistol resting at his hip. She squeezed the trigger. The sound it released was little more than a whistle, but a bullet shredded the holster and left a gash in the metal floor.
She broke free and backed away slowly. Her hand quaked as she aimed the weapon at him, too perplexed to form words. Jacen raised his hands. His gaze darted between the pulse-pistol in her hand and the stunner on the floor. His eyes were bloodshot, but other than that, he was completely clean. Not covered in grime after a shift like he usually was.
Mission reached the exit and her foot brushed Paul’s corpse. She looked down, then back at Jacen.
“Mission!” a voice suddenly shouted through her doorway. The sound startled her, and she turned and fired without thinking.
The gun slipped from her fingers. Another Jacen stood in front of her, this one’s clothes dirty from the sewers. His hands peeled away from his chest to reveal a hole the size of a fist cutting straight through, ribs splintering flesh and sinew. He crumpled forward, and Mission lunged to catch him before his face smashed against the floor.
“Jace?” Mission whispered. “Jacen!” She shook his body and frantically tapped his cheek. “Jacen, stay with me.”
His jaw shuddered as he tried to speak. A gob of blood was all that came out.
“Jacen, please. Help!” she shrieked. “Somebody help!”
She pressed her hands over the wound to try to stem the bleeding like she’d been trained to, promising him he’d be okay over and over.
“Jacen, stay awake… Please…” She looked around for something, anything she could use. That was when she saw that the Jacen who’d been standing by her terminal had vanished along with his stunner. The screen of her terminal, which had displayed the strange message that drove her into the sewers, was completely shattered.
Someone pulled her off Jacen. The real one. She screamed at the top of her lungs and tore free of them, diving back over his body. She lifted his head. This Jacen’s eyes were stuck open and shimmering like two glass orbs. More hands seized her and ripped her away.
* * *
“What is this?” I yelled. Nobody responded. Then the feed I was watching flickered, and Mission was back in the pipes, searching for Jacen. The entire sequence of horrible events restarted.
“No,” I whimpered. “No!” I couldn’t use my eyes or thoughts to control the screen. Real life or VR, it was locked. Everything leading up to Mission shooting Jacen played all the way through again. And then again. Even if I closed my eyes, I could still hear everything.
Every single scream…