“Not my exact wording, but yes.”
At this point, the man and woman following me ran off to a corner of the lab. I can see them unzipping the backpack and beginning to take out all manner of things that appear oddly similar to our own technology. I never got a good look back at the cave. I assumed it was a computer of some kind.
“I had my suspicions,” Hammond continues, “so I had blood work done. Admittedly, I should have had it sooner.”
“What did you find?”
“A foreign agent. A microscopic entity ... millions of them. Self-replicating.”
“Nano-machines?”
“Machines would not be entirely correct,” he chuckles. “They are bio-mechanical constructs. Our predecessors programmed them to improve the physical body. Remove imperfections.”
“The tracking chip!”
“And my broken spine. I owe these little bastards my life ...” he pauses with a sigh, “but I'm afraid that's not all.”
“You don't look too grateful.”
Hammond stops wheeling himself short of the cadaver. He spins around and looks up at me with a concerned expression.
“Well, you see ... er ... that was when I realized two things. The first is what was left of Stevenson's brain matter indicated an overload of neural connections. He went insane because his brain was too perfect.”
“Well ... what's the second thing?”
“Right ... well ... you see, we're all carrying them inside of us.”
“What?”
“From the moment this air touched our skin, we were infected ... with the same thing that killed this planet's people.”
The hell? How long do we even have? I mean, “Stevenson turned in a day.”
“He was a special case. If I had to guess, he got a little too curious for his own good.”
“He ate the wildlife.”
“The plants are rich in the nano-machines. It was the equivalent of an overdose.”
“Well, that explains why there aren't any animals on this planet. Plants don't have brains.”
Hammond continues, “They react quicker to injuries, but on a rough estimate, we'll have about one Earth week left.”
“So, what?” I say. “We're just going to die?”
“Don't give up hope yet, Major.”
Hope? Dammit, “A whole planet couldn't fix this damn problem! What can we do?”
“Correction, Major,” he replies. “A whole planet couldn't fix this problem in a week, but they might have come close ... or at least set things in motion.”
Chapter X
Expedition
Ryan wraps his hands firmly around the newly laser-scored edge, slowly cracking open a rusty gate that hasn't revealed its innards in years. I lead the way, stepping through the narrow passage and into something that reeks of wet dirt and rotting filth.
“What do you see, Major?”
“It's clear. Follow me and stay close.”
The facility is huge, but it's not a science building like the cave. The majority of what I can see is a large foyer leading up and down to several layers of walkways. There are compartments on either side and at every level. Each compartment looks sealed with a type of glass. Many of them look cracked to bits, leaving nothing inside except bits of overgrown vines and weeds. The outside didn't look much different from a mound of dirt from the aerial scan, but the coordinates were right on the money.
“Ten years?” I shout. “You have to be joking!”
“All the data points to it,” Hammond replies, casually strumming his whiskers.
That's, “Ridiculous! We would have caught radio waves!”
“Indeed, and Earth certainly would have ... but we've gone for nearly 200 years, Major. There was less time between the radio and the atom bomb.”
I'm surprised to see the man standing, but then again, I was surprised to see him live for what it's worth. Hardly a blessing in disguise. It's a cruel twist of fate to let a person walk again, only to cut his life short.
“Mister Hammond,” a younger scientist interrupts, “I'd like to show our findings.”
“Sorry, Lisa,” he replies. “You may go ahead.”
“What findings?”
So she says, “The technology in this device is analog ... simple in design. Magnetic strips in cartridges hold visual and auditory data. Ironically, it's not too dissimilar from ...”
I don't have time for this.
“Can you play the tape or not?”
“Yes, of course. Sorry.”
“You're doing fine, Lisa,” Hammond says. “Just play the tape.”
The damn thing might as well hold itself together with paperclips. Pieces and boxes of wires laid out so randomly I'm surprised anything works at all. However, they must know what they're doing. Managed to get a working projector in only one day.
She plugs in a cartridge and flips a soldered in switch. The projector hums and slowly but surely, a moving picture shines on the soft white canvas of the lab wall.
The footage looks shot to hell. Years of corrosion in an unsanitary storage cabinet covered in grime and mud. What little bits of the film are good enough to show an image are hardly of quality. I recognize some figures moving about. I can't make out any details, but they're definitely humanoid.
“It's rough, for sure,” I add.
“We don't have an audio emitter,” Hammond complains, “but it wouldn't matter. The language, of course, would have been alien.”
“We can thank the Major for that,” one of the ones in the back mutters.
I'm sure I got more than a few dirty looks, but Hammond doesn't appear to care much. His eyes closely fixated on the footage.
I watch as the camera awkwardly pans downward to a cluster of ... er ... tiny moving critters. Not sure what they are, but they appear confined for some reason. My best guess from an Earth analogue would be mice in a cage. The cartridge degraded so much it can't make out the finer details of the mesh. After that, about ten minutes in, the larger alien figures vanished. The lights ... the last thing that made even half the image visible, go out.
“What the hell can you get from this?”
“Hope, Major.”
Like I transported across time, the memory fades to the sound of Ryan shouting, “Hey!”
“What?”
“Did you see that, sir? It looked like something moved.”
“Son of a ...”
Chapter XI
A Chance
“Where did it go?” Ryan hoarsely whispers from my right, shouting, “There!”
I watch as a tiny shadow juts out from the base of a wall and scurries across the flooring. Not a moment later, I hear the soft hum of a fusion core as a bullet of ice smacks and cracks the ground where it was.
“Dammit!” I yell. “Don't shoot it!”
He fumbles the rifle in his hands and glares angrily at me.
“You don't expect us to ... catch that thing, do you?”
Well, “If Hammond says he needs it alive, we need it ALIVE.”
“This building is huge! There's no way we can do that!”
I can hear the tiny noises, like little pins scraping an old chalkboard. I wasn't certain if they were real or not this time, but at this point, I'm sure.
I motion to him with an open hand, “Give me your gun.”
“What?” he exclaims.
“I said give ... me ... your ... gun.”
Hesitantly, he hands it over, haphazardly flopping the barrel into my grip. The cores hum with a soft blue glow, and I glance over to my right.
“I can hear them. They're in the walls.”
“Hear what?”
“You two go over there and start banging when I say so.” I tilt my head back toward Ryan. “Could you catch one?”
“Yeah ...” he says with a pause, “I could try.”
“Good,” I reply. “I'd keep those gloves on.”
I give th
e signal, and they start slamming their fists against the siding. To be frank, the racket is enough to make me keel over, like tiny needles scattering through my veins. Come on. Stay focused.
There! Three slimy black crawlers rush out from a tiny crack at the base of the wall. Fire! A pellet cracks the ground and breaks them up. A second! The lights hum as I scare it down the hall and chase after it. Third! Fourth! In the dimly lit atmosphere, they look like tiny bolts of lightning, whizzing through the air and cracking with a tiny light-filled explosion. On fast footing, I chase it through the atrium and underneath the foyer down a corridor near the rear. Fifth! That one scared it stiff.
“Grab it!”
Ryan lunges forward, pouncing like a clumsy cat and grasping at air. The creature squeals as he nearly crushes it in between his gloved shackles of hands, sinking its teeth right through the leather. Hurriedly, he grabs a satchel by his waist and drops the creature inside.
“Damn that hurt!” Ryan moans.
I hear it again. It was a while back, along the way. I thought it was air blowing through the tops of canopies. They felt like soft whispers. Inaudible speech I couldn't understand. Now though, it feels stronger and present. I can hear the footsteps like the beating of drums. Marching. Marching toward us.
“Sir, you don't look so hot.”
“I'm fine,” I say.
“No, you're not. You need to take it ...”
“I said I'm ... ungh!”
The world around me spins wildly, as I hear my rank fading into the background, the beating of drums, “Major! Ma...r! M...r...M...”
This time, I honestly can't tell the difference. It doesn't feel like a memory or a dream anymore. I can smell the air and touch the ground underneath my boots. This is ... Earth. An ocean breeze runs up my nose. It's good. It's amazing. It's ... no, it's too good to be true. Earth is a barren wasteland. I don't even know what an ocean smells like! Why is my mind playing...?
“MAJOR! You need to wake UP!”
My body sloshes back and forth as I wipe the drool off my lips.
“W ... Wha ...” I try to say.
“Sir, you had a seizure,” Ryan says. “Can you talk?”
Cries and roars echo from near and far.
“Y ... Yes, I can.”
“We don't have time for this, Ryan!” one of the men exclaims.
He continues, “Follow my fingers.”
“Drop it,” I say, brushing his hand away. “I'm fine.”
“Sir, we've been overrun. They're everywhere.”
“Where did they come from?” I ask.
“Hell, does it even matter?”
“I mean, are they blocking the exit?”
“Yeah,” Ryan chuckles. “Damn things aren't hostile to each other. Convenient, eh?”
One of the soldiers jokes, “For them, maybe.”
Enough of this!
“Listen ...” I start.
“What is it, Major?”
“I ... I don't have any more time.”
“Sir?”
“It won't be much longer before ... it takes me.”
“We can put you in stasis when we get back! When you wake up, you'll be good as new.”
No, “I ... I won't make the trip. The episodes are ... more frequent. Each time, more vivid. I'm ... beginning to lose touch with reality.”
“Sir ...”
I look Ryan straight in the eyes and tell him to, “Give me your gun.”
“You don't have to do this ...”
“I said GIVE IT HERE!”
The thought sends chills down my spine. To throw my own life into the fire. The one thing I've waited all my life for and never to see it. To do it knowingly. It's like tearing off my own arm.
“Our journey across the stars will be in vain without that ... thing. Make sure you get it out ... alive.”
“Sir!” my men salute.
In my final lucid moments, I step out past the corridor. Alien husks trample about like rigid corpses walking the planet for one last time before they melt away. Whatever was left of them is gone now. Mindless zombies. I fire at one. Its skull bursts open, and I now have the attention of the rest.
“COME ON!”
With a rifle in each hand, I fire off salvos, shooting from the hip. Icy bullets rip holes through flesh and crack bone. Monsters are overrunning the facility, but at least their eyes are on me. A creature lunges toward me, its jaws barred by my rifle casing. Its eyes widen and its face swirls into something demonic.
“Bite down hard you son of a ...”
Epilogue
Hope
It's been the whole of a day above this green Earth. Nothing. Not a word. We waited for what seemed like forever. Nothing. Not a word. This will be the Newton's final voyage. This will be my final task.
Starlight glistens through the view port, casting rays of far away worlds I could hardly imagine. Worlds I'll never see. Ten thousand years wouldn't be nearly enough time to visit them all. Human life is so short.
“Hammond, sir?” one of the officers asks, concerned.
“Anything yet?” I say.
“No ... sorry, sir. Nothing yet.”
I can't wait any longer ... not on hope alone. If the Major were alive, he'd have said something by now.
“Lock the sip in orbit,” I say. “Solar power will keep the systems online.”
One officer asks, “And what about us? What's going to happen?”
“We'll be fine,” I say to reassure him. “We can wait a thousand years if need be.”
“I don't fancy going to sleep and never waking up.”
I know, but there are worse fates. So far away from home, we may have to resign ourselves to that.
“Patch me through to Earth.”
The officer to my right hits a few keys on his dashboard. Seconds later, a video screen pops up with my face neatly rendered on it, the camera mounted neatly inside the casing.
“You're clear to speak, sir,” he explains, “but it'll be a while before it reaches its destination.”
“What are you going to tell them?” another officer asks.
“That ...” I say with a pause. “That there's still hope.” I stare blankly at the video screen, perceiving each texture in a vast complexity. It's strange to think that ... underneath this fleshy exterior is a cold-blooded killer coursing through my veins.
“A cure exists,” I say. “Our job, it seems, was to pass it on.”
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