“You’ve got two seconds to explain what in the living hell is
going on, Krax,” said Markoff. He was gesturing to a series
of open holovids strung over the console that showed the
floating compound in chaos. Here, a table was overturned,
researchers and guards alike crouched behind it. There, a
man was being skewered by a strange creature that looked
like a cross between a spider and the whirling blades of
death. Another showed a scene of carnage, bits and
pieces of bodies strewn all up and down the hallway. In
another, a group of humanoid creatures lurched back and
forth, at a loss.
Krax looked panicked. He was sweating, his eyes
darting left and right. “We’re being attacked. Monsters of
some sort. I don’t know who or what.”
“What the fuck are they, and how did they get on board?”
“I don’t have any idea,” said Krax. “I’ve never seen
anything like them.”
“They look familiar,” said Stevens. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“Familiar?” said Markoff, and squinted at one of the vids.
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I see what you mean.”
“That one there,” said Stevens, “that used to be Molina.
You can tell by what’s left of the face. They’re all wearing
bits of clothing, too, scraps of it.”
“They used to be human?” asked Krax.
Stevens nodded. “But they certainly aren’t now.”
“What’s behind it?” asked Markoff.
“Right now I’m debriefing Hideki Ishimura, one of our
astrophysicists,” said Krax. “He was the first one to witness
one of them—the first one still alive, anyway. But he’s
scared half to death—I’m not getting much out of him. He
keeps saying Guthe’s name, though, over and over again. I
thought he was babbling, but if they come from humans
maybe Guthe was the first.”
“Hurried along, no doubt, by you shooting him in the
head,” said Markoff. “Where’s this Ishimura? I want to talk
to him.”
“He’s right here, ready to be evacuated. We have to get
out of here, sir.”
“I don’t like to run from a fight,” said Markoff.
“You’re not dealing with anything human,” said Krax. “You
shoot one of these things two or three times in the head
and they keep coming. You tear its head clean off and it
keeps coming.”
“That’s impossible,” said Markoff.
Krax shook his head. “How can you fight that?”
“So a tactical retreat,” said Markoff. “We’ll get out and
then regroup. I suppose there are often setbacks like this
on the way to major discoveries.”
“This is not a setback, sir,” said Krax. “This is a disaster.”
Markoff gave him a hard stare. “How many men all told?
One hundred? Two? Even with all or almost all transformed
into those hideous creatures, it’s not much in the grand
scheme of things. Just a setback. We’ll be back in
operation before you know it.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Let’s take advantage of all these cameras set up all
through the facility,” said Markoff. “Set them up to transmit
to the escape boat. No reason we can’t watch and learn. It
should be very instructive.”
“You can’t possibly be thinking—”
“The Marker exists,” said Markoff. “Either we make
something of it or someone else does. The losses we’ve
had and will have are acceptable losses.”
“I suggest we leave, sir,” said Krax, voice strained.
“You’ve already made yourself clear, Mr. Krax,” Markoff
said. “Stevens and I will prepare to evacuate. I’m still
considering what to do with you.”
“You’re not thinking of leaving me, are you?”
“Indeed I am. As I told you before, you’re far from
expendable, Mr. Krax.”
“Craig,” said Stevens in his soft, pleasant voice. “There’s
no point in leaving Krax here. He’ll be much more of a help
to us alive than dead. You’ll not only be punishing him but
punishing us as well.”
Markoff hesitated a moment. “Always the sensible one,”
he said. “Have you at least got a clear escape route
prepared for us, Krax?”
“I do,” said Krax. “We’re ahead of the tide. If we leave
now, we can avoid it.”
“All right,” Markoff assented. “Lead the way.”
59
“What about Markoff?” asked Altman.
“What about him?” asked Showalter.
“What’s he think about all this?”
“I don’t know,” said Showalter. “Been trying to contact
him off and on for quite a while. Nothing doing. Dead
maybe?”
“I’d be surprised,” said Altman.
They were traveling through a sequence of laboratories,
moving first into the control station and then, through the
safety door, into the lab itself. They had seen a few more of
the creatures but had succeeded in dodging all but two of
them, which they’d managed to carve up without losses.
The first lab had been normal, nothing to worry about, but
as soon as he opened the door to this one, Altman knew
something was different. Something was off.
And then he saw it. Growing out of one of the air ducts
and spilling onto the floor was a strange mass of tissue. It
had spread along the floor itself, had seemingly become a
part of it.
He gestured at it with his cutter.
“It’s starting to get around,” he said. “Spreading through
the vents.”
A few seconds later, the lights flickered and went out,
leaving only the emergency lighting on, the room now cast
in thick shadow.
“They’re getting to the power grid now,” said Showalter.
“We’d better hurry.”
They were almost to the door to the next lab when they
heard a scuttling in the vents above them. The grille just
above them was kicked out, and something fell down onto
the deck, just missing them.
It was formless and pulsing, a kind of mound that at times
stretched flat and looked like little more than a puddle. It slid
slowly across the deck. As it crossed the floor, it left a
sizzling stain inflicted on the deck itself. Anything it touched
was either sucked in and disappeared or was stripped to
bare metal. In the slow roll of it, Altman glimpsed from time
to time a human skull, stripped to bone, and even once
what looked like a laughing human face.
“How do you cut the limbs off something that doesn’t
have any limbs?” asked Fert.
It moved slowly toward them, attracted perhaps by the
vibration of their voices or propelled by some other means.
It wasn’t aggressive; it seemed to have another purpose.
As it eased them back, making them feel trapped, Altman
began to wonder what it was. It stripped the deck bare, got
rid of all features. Transfixed, he couldn’t help but watch,
thinking they were finally out of time. It destroyed everything
in its wake, living or dead. And he wouldn’t be surprised if,
when it did, it grew. How big would it get? Were there any
limits? Would it consume the entire world?
“We should go back,” Showalter said.
Altman nodded, and they started back toward the door
they had come from. Fert was just about to open it, but
Altman stopped him.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “Heard something.”
He pressed his ear to the door’s panel. Yes, definitely
something out there, just on the other side of the door, and
from the scraping and moaning sounds, he was pretty
certain it wasn’t human.
What now? Altman wondered, his eyes casting around
the room for something to get them out. Maybe they could
leap the creature and run around it. Maybe they should
simply leave the room and start firing at whatever was
outside, trying to incapacitate it before the creeper caught
up with them and engulfed them.
And then he realized Fert was pointing and gesturing.
There, just shy of the edge of the creeper, was a hydrogen
tank, a torch screwed into its nozzle. Altman reached out
and grabbed it, dragging it back with him.
He spun the nozzle as open as it would go, sparked the
torch alight, and adjusted it to give him the longest spurt of
flame possible. He dipped it down, near the floor, and
sprayed the creeper.
Where the flame touched it, it caught fire, burning and
bubbling black. Elsewhere the creeper withdrew from the
flames, trying to get away. He moved forward, spraying it,
coughing in the acrid smoke it raised. Even where it was
black and burning, it didn’t stop moving exactly, the burnt
portions folding under into the core and disappearing. But
at least it was moving in the other direction now.
“I can hold it at bay,” he called back to Showalter and
Fert. “But I can’t get rid of it.”
Fert had just started to respond when the door crashed
in. Still waving the torch, Altman glanced back over his
shoulder to see Fert lopping off a scythe with his laser
scalpel. Showalter was backing away, firing the laser pistol
steadily, a half dozen of the shambling things coming at him
with their bladelike arms. Fert was in the middle of them,
surrounded on all sides, doing his best to cut his way free,
but there were too many. Altman watched as one of them
plunged his face into Fert’s neck. Fert, screaming, tried to
pry it off and finally did, knocking it back and cutting into its
mouth with the laser scalpel, but another was instantly in its
place. Fert was screaming. A moment later his head had
been torn free, his decapitated body collapsing onto the
deck.
Two were down. Another was crippled, one arm and one
leg inoperative, but it still dragged itself forward, hissing.
Showalter stomped on it.
That left three. Altman gave the creeper a last blast and
turned, dragging the cutter out. One was just bringing its
bone scythe down whistling toward Showalter’s back, but
the cutter caught it in time, shaving the appendage off close
to the body. Another scythe tore a gash in his arm, and he
almost dropped the cutter. Cursing, he managed to hold on
to it and sliced the creature’s legs out from under it. A laser
blast flashed by his head and left the arm of the last one half
disarticulated, but with a cry it sprang forward, brushing
past Altman and charging at Showalter.
The latter stumbled back, his laser pistol going off and
singeing the wall. Together Showalter and the creature fell,
toppling backward and into the creeper.
Altman immediately fired up the torch and rushed
forward, but it was too late. Showalter was engulfed and
simply gone, part of the pulsating, shifting mass. Weirdly
enough, it did the same thing to the creature, engulfing it
just as quickly and dramatically, swallowing one of its own.
He stomped on one of the creatures that was still moving
and then lay down a blast of flame along the creeper’s side.
It withdrew, moving back enough to allow him to sidle past
and out the door.
Just me now, he thought. Down to one.
It was hard not to feel that there was no point going forward.
It was inevitable—one of them would catch him, tear him
apart.
But he kept going. He was limping now, though he wasn’t
exactly sure why, not sure what had happened to his leg.
He’d bandaged his arm with a first aid kit from the lab,
stopping every once in a while to drive the creeper back
with the torch.
He’d been lucky. Creeping through the half dark of the
emergency lights, he’d met five of the bladed creatures
since Fert and Showalter had died, never in sets of more
than two, never in a place where one could get around
behind him while the other tore him up from the front. The
single one had been easy, but the pairs had been harder,
and he couldn’t help thinking when it was all over that if the
cutter had just once gone a little high or a little low one of
the creatures would have sunk its maw into his neck and
that would have been the end of him.
And then he saw Ada. She contacted him by holovid, a
static-thick message.
“Michael,” she said. “Are you there?”
“Ada,” he said. “Is that you?”
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m safe for now, but I don’t know
what they’re going to do with me. If you get this, please
hurry, Michael.”
“Ada, where are you?” Altman said.
But she didn’t seem to be listening. She reached out
beneath the camera, and the image flickered and shorted
out, then began again.
“Michael, are you there?” she said.
A recording, then, being rebroadcast over and over. Still,
it was enough, just enough, to get him going again.
As he moved higher in the facility, he saw fewer of the
creatures. Those he did see, he either hid from or killed as
silently as he possibly could, trying to avoid attracting the
attention of the others.
Nevertheless, he was surprised when he realized that he
was one hallway shy of the airlock. Suddenly he began to
believe he might make it out alive after all.
There was only one problem. He almost walked straight
into a creature assembled from not just one corpse but
several. It looked like a spider, but with the scythelike
appendages of the other creatures serving as legs, seven
of them in all. The body proper consisted of overlapped and
buckled torsos awkwardly melding with one another. Two
heads dangled weakly at one end, as if ready to drop off.
He hid partly behind the doorframe, furtively examining it.
On its underside was a pulsing yellow and black lump,
maybe a tumor of some kind.
Rush forward, start cutting, he thought. Not much of a
plan, but it was all he could think of.
He stayed for a long moment hesitating and then, taking
a deep breath, rushed out and at it.
It immediately turned to face him and hissed. It scuttled
toward him, the tips of its bonelike appendages thunking
against the tunnel’s floor.
But before he’d gotten close enough to hit it with the
cutter, something unsettling happened. One of the heads
that had been dangling loose scrambled to the top of the
body and launched itself at him. It struck him in the chest,
wrapping a set of sinewy tendrils around his neck. It started
to squeeze.
Holy hell, he thought. He stumbled back, trying
desperately to pry it off. The spiderthing was still coming,
still scuttling forward, its other head alert and on top of its
body now as well. He struck the one already on him hard
with the side of the cutter, again and again. It loosened just
a little, enough that he could breathe, and he forced his
hand in between it and his neck and tore it off.
It tried to crawl up his arm and back to his neck, but he
held it tight by its writhing tendrils and didn’t let go. The
other head launched itself at him and he batted it down to
the ground with the first head, stamping it to a pulp. The
head in his hands he slammed into the wall, then cut in half
with the plasma cutter.
The rest of the spiderthing was on him now. He sliced off
the tip of one appendage, and it reared back on its three
hind legs and struck at him with the remaining four. He
managed to parry two of them successfully and dodge the
third. The fourth, having just lost its tip to the plasma cutter,
struck him hard but bluntly in the chest. He fell to the floor,
the wind knocked out of him.
Then he was beneath it as it danced about, trying to
skewer him. He cut off one leg, then another, but it didn’t
seem to hurt its balance. He kicked it hard and knocked it
back and scrambled back himself and then, knowing it
would do little good, just to buy time, he whipped out the
plasma pistol and started firing.
The shots flashed off its legs or entered the flesh of the
body with a hiss, but hardly seemed to slow it. It was nearly
over him again, and he kicked it back with both feet this
time, succeeding in turning it off balance and flipping it
over.
As it struggled to right itself, he saw again the pulsing
yellow and black lump. He fired at it.
The lump exploded, the blast knocking him back through
the doorway, deafening him. Bits of the creature struggled
about, including one whole enough to come at him. He
stood, stumbled toward it, sectioned it with the plasma
cutter.
The blast had stressed the corridor, covering the walls
with hairline cracks. Stumbling up, he inspected it for leaks.
For now it seemed to be holding.
Limping, still deafened, he moved to the end of the
corridor and pounded on the airlock hatch. No answer. “It’s
Altman!” he called. “Let me through!”
When there was still no answer, he realized there was an
easier way and established a comlink to Field through his
holopod. Immediately the airlock slid open and he stumbled
through.
“Altman,” said Field. He was clutching his Marker icon tight
in one hand, closing the airlock behind him with the other.
“Thank the Marker. I had just about given up hope.”
“Where’s Ada?” was the first question Altman asked.
“What do you mean?” asked Field. “Still confined to the
mainland, I presume. I haven’t seen her in days.”
“But I saw her,” said Altman. “I saw her vid. She was right
here.”
“I’m sorry,” said Field. “I haven’t seen her.”
Maybe it was the Marker, he thought. But how could that
be? The Marker only showed dead people. But Ada wasn’t
dead. And then his blood froze as he realized what he’d
known ever since he’d dreamt of her earlier: Ada was
dead.
Field grabbed his arm. “We have to go,” said Field. “I
don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep them contained.”
“Where’s Markoff?” Altman asked.
“I don’t know,” said Field. “I think he must have packed up
and left. Either that or he’s dead. Doesn’t matter much to
me either way.”
Altman nodded.
“We’ll have to come back, you know,” said Field.
“What?” said Altman.
“We need to go get help and come back. We have to
make sure this is contained. We have to protect the
Marker.”
Altman followed him away from the airlock and upward,
through a series of open chambers and then around a
curving corridor to the main dome. They got on the lift and
prepared to take it to the top, but it didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” asked Altman.
Field shook his head. “Apparently the lift won’t run on the
auxiliary power,” he said. “We’ll have to climb. After you.”
Altman slung the cutter over his back and started up the
access ladder, Field right behind him. It was a narrow
climb, not much room between the ladder and the wall, and
it quickly became an arduous one as well. Already
exhausted by what he had just been through, Altman found
he had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
Behind him, Field wasn’t doing much better; he was
wheezing like he was about to pass out.
“Everything okay, Field?” Altman called down.
“I’ll live,” said Field. He started to say something further,
then made a choking sound and was suddenly cut off.
Altman glanced down and saw that Field was being
choked by something that looked like a whitish gray snake
or a length of intestine. One end was curled tight around the
ladder, the other tight around his throat. Field was
scrabbling at his throat with one hand, trying to hold on to
the ladder with the other. Altman started down toward him,
shouting, while Field let go of the ladder, both hands on the
strangler now.
Altman was still clambering down, just heaving the cutter
off his back, almost ready to cut the thing in two. But Field
wasn’t holding the ladder. If he cut through the creature,
Field would fall.
“Field!” he cried. “Grab hold of the ladder!”
But Field didn’t seem to hear him. His face was purple
now, and Altman saw that blood was leaking slowly from his
ears. Altman stretched down and stamped on the end of
the strangler holding to the ladder. It squirmed beneath his
foot but didn’t let go. At the other end it gave a little
wrenching jerk, and Field’s head popped off like a grape,
thunking down to the floor below. The body, knocking
against the walls and the ladder, swiftly followed it.
He watched the strangler slither down, moving swiftly and
sinuously. When it reached the bottom, it moved in twisting
undulating motions until it reached Field’s headless corpse.
He watched it prod his stomach and then one end of it
narrowed to a point and it stabbed through the skin. Slowly,
throbbing, it forced itself into Field’s belly. The belly swelled
and slowly distended, until with a last wriggle the creature
had disappeared entirely.
Altman felt sick. He clung to the ladder a moment, staring
down. He might have hung there for longer, but then a
thought occurred to him. There might be more of them.
Glancing nervously about him, he forced himself to continue
up the ladder.
When he reached the hatch, he opened it and clambered
out onto the deck, making sure it was securely closed
behind him. He hoped the creatures wouldn’t be capable of
opening it, but he didn’t know for sure.
He started clambering down the side of the dome,
following the narrow steps cut in the glass. Below was the
boat platform, slopping up and down with the swells. Most
of the boats were gone, but one was left. He undid the
mooring and climbed in.
The motor started immediately. Only then did it start to
seem real, like he might actually get away, like he might
actually survive.
And then he remembered Field, dead because he had
waited for Altman. We’ll have to come back, Field had
said. Make sure it’s contained.
No, thought Altman. I’m free of it. I’m not going back.
And then suddenly he felt a presence in the boat beside
him, just behind him, just out of sight. He was afraid that if
he turned, he would see Field, his head loose, in place but
not connected to his neck, threatening to fall off at any
moment.
Hello, Altman, someone said.
“Leave me alone, Field,” Altman said.
Are you coming back for me? Only, when he thought of
it, it didn’t seem exactly like Field’s voice.
“You’re dead, Field. I can’t come back for you.”
But what about me? it said.
Definitely not Field’s voice. It was the voice of a woman
now. He turned his head, saw Ada.
“Where are you, Ada? Who killed you?”
I’m right here. I need you, Michael, she said. I need you
to finish what you started.
He shook his head. “You’re not Ada,” he said. “You’re a
hallucination.”
It’s not finished, Michael. Everyone is in grave danger.
You have to stop the Convergence.
“What is Convergence?” he asked.
You’ve seen the Convergence, Ada said. You need to
stop it.
And then she disappeared. He put the boat in gear and
pushed the throttle down hard. Damned if he could figure
out what exactly she wanted from him. What it wanted from
him. I’m not going back, he told himself, I’m not going back.
But he already was afraid he would
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