Dead Space: Martyr (25 page)

He looked at the bloody face below him. He’d done that. Maybe he’d had no choice, but in any case, he’d done it, was responsible for it. And was about to be, he realized, responsible for more.

He reached out and put his hands around Torquato’s throat. It was sticky with blood. He let his hands lie there, then very gently began to squeeze.

At first he thought it would be easy, that Torquato would simply slip from unconsciousness to death without waking. But after a moment, Torquato’s eyes suddenly sprang open. Altman squeezed harder. Torquato’s arms began to flail and shake, striking Altman’s shoulders and arms. He arched his back, knocking Altman into the wall of the passage, but Altman held on, squeezing tighter.

In the last moment before he died, a light came into
Torquato’s undamaged eye that Altman couldn’t help but see. Human, pleading. He closed his own eyes to it and turned his head to the side. Gradually, he felt Torquato’s movements slow and stop. When he finally opened his eyes again, Torquato’s eyes had rolled back in their sockets. He was dead.

He dragged himself out of the passage, climbed down the wall and onto the console. There, he reversed the screws, bringing the bathyscaphe backward and away from the artifact. It slowly righted itself, Torquato’s body spilling out of the hatch passage and onto the floor.

Altman climbed off the console and to the chair to start the bathyscaphe rising. The lead-pellet release was jammed, the panel all around it scarred from where Torquato had dented it. The craft started to rise, pellets slowly dribbling out, but not as fast as he’d hoped. Chances were he’d reach a certain water density and then the craft would stop moving entirely and he’d hang there suspended, slowly dying.

He recorded an SOS message and then sent it to loop and broadcast, asking them to come for the bathyscaphe, to make it rise as quickly as possible. Whether they’d get the message soon enough, he didn’t know. He recorded another message for Ada, telling her he loved her and that he was sorry, just in case he didn’t make it.

It was getting very warm. He wasn’t getting enough air. He wondered if the best thing was to go to sleep. He’d use less air that way. He contemplated getting down on the floor of the submarine, thinking the air might be better down there.

But he just stayed slumped in his chair, staring at Torquato’s remains.

And then suddenly, he saw Torquato’s hand move.

Impossible,
he thought.
He’s dead.

He swiveled his chair around so that he could see him better, watching carefully. No, he was dead, he wasn’t moving, how could he?

And then the hand moved again.

Hello, Altman,
Torquato said.

“Go back to being dead,” Altman said to him.

It’s not as easy as that,
said Torquato.
I need you to understand something first.

“Understand what?”

“This,” said Torquato, and leapt forward.

Torquato flew up on him, choking him. He tried to pry his hands off, but they were digging too firmly into his neck. He latched his own hands on to Torquato’s neck, squeezing with all he had; then he blacked out.

He came conscious to find his hands around the neck of a corpse. It was rigid and cold, had been dead a very long time.
What is going on?
he wondered.

He tried to stand up to get away from the corpse, but couldn’t. He moved his fingers away and rolled off, lying just beside it. He hoped he was close to the surface, but there was no way to tell from here.

Suddenly he saw something strange. A woman. She looked a lot like Ada, though it wasn’t her. It was obvious when he looked close. But maybe it was her mother, back when he had first met her, before she had cancer.

But that’s impossible,
he thought.
Ada’s mother is dead.

I’m hallucinating again,
he thought.
Just like with Torquato.

Hello, Michael,
she said.

“Aren’t you dead?” he asked.

How can I be dead if I’m here with you?

For a moment he wanted simply to accept what she was saying, but then found resistance welling up within him. “Who are you, really?” he asked. “Why am I hallucinating you?”

Ada’s mother didn’t answer either question.
I’ve come to give you a message,
she said.
About the Marker.

“What’s the Marker?”

You know what it is,
she said.
You’ve come near it again and again, but somehow you’ve resisted it.
She crossed her index and middle fingers, held her hand toward him.

“Tail of the devil,” he said. “The artifact, you mean.”

She nodded.
You need to forget about it. The Marker is dangerous. Above all, you need to leave it where you found it.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” said Altman. “What do I have to do with the Marker?”

Not just you,
she said, and spread her arms wide.
You. Whatever choices are made will affect all of you.

She cocked her head in a manner very similar to the way Ada often did. A tremendous pressure built rapidly in his head; then it was gone.

“What’s the message?” asked Altman.

Convergence is death,
she said.
You must not give in to the Marker. You must not allow it to begin Convergence.

“What does that mean, Convergence?

It means you shall finally begin, from the new beginning.

“The beginning of what? And just me?”

She again spread her arms wide.
You, all of you,
she said. Then,
for a moment, she seemed almost exactly like Ada in a way that he found very disturbing.
I love you, Michael,
Ada’s mother said.
I’m counting on you. Please help me stop it. Please don’t fail.

And then, as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone. He tried to get up again, fell back. The world around him was growing dark, as if seen through a black veil. Slowly it grew darker still, and then, suddenly, it was gone.

44

He woke up with an oxygen mask strapped to his face, surrounded by a series of seemingly identical men dressed in white, their faces covered by surgeon’s masks.

“He made it,” one of them said. “He’s alive.”

“Any evidence of brain damage?” asked another.

Altman tried to speak, but couldn’t get his tongue around the words. One of the doctors put a hand on his shoulder. It was Stevens, he realized; he could recognize him by his eyes. “Just relax,” he said. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

He closed his eyes, swallowed. And then a terrible thought hit him: What if this was just another hallucination?

He tried to move his arms, but couldn’t. He opened his eyes, looking desperately around.

“He’s confused,” he heard one of them say. “Disoriented. He doesn’t know where he is.”

What was it she had said?
You must not give in to the Marker. You must not allow it to begin Convergence.
He had to tell them. “The Marker,” he whispered. Markoff leaned close. “The Marker,” he repeated.

“The Marker?” said Markoff. “What Marker? He’s talking nonsense. Give him another shot.”

Altman shook his head. Or tried. Whether his head moved or not, he couldn’t say. Either it didn’t move or they ignored him. He watched one of them fill a syringe and prime the needle, without being able to do anything about it.

He tried to speak, made instead a gurgling, inarticulate cry.

“It’ll be okay,” said Stevens, patting his arm. “Don’t worry, Altman, we’re here for you.”

And then he felt the prick as the needle punctured his flesh. His arm burned a moment, and then went numb. The men in white were there for a moment longer; then they slowly blurred and ran together and finally disappeared entirely.

When he came conscious again, the room was empty, except for three men: Stevens, Markoff, and another man from Markoff’s inner circle whose name he didn’t know. He was as large as Markoff but thicker, with a brutal, flat face. They stood to one side of the bed, speaking in whispers impossible for Altman to make out.

Stevens was the first to notice he was awake. He gestured at him and whispered something. The other two stopped talking. In unison, all three moved closer and stared down at him.

“Altman,” said Markoff. “Still alive. You seem to lead a charmed life.”

Altman started to respond, but Markoff held a finger up to stop him. He reached down, removed Altman’s oxygen mask.

“Are you feeling up to speaking?” asked Markoff.

“I think so,” Altman said. His voice sounded like it no longer belonged to him, or belonged to someone that was him but much older.

“You remember Stevens,” said Markoff. “This is Officer Krax.”

Altman nodded.

“It’s very simple,” said Markoff. “I want you to tell me everything.”

He did, starting with the moment when Torquato had suddenly attacked and moving through to his hallucinations.

“Tell us more about these hallucinations,” said Krax.

“Does it matter?” asked Altman. “They were just hallucinations.”

“It does matter,” said Stevens. “Indeed, it matters a great deal.”

So, Altman, too tired to argue or make up a lie, told them. When he was done, the three men withdrew to the far side of the room, started whispering again. Altman closed his eyes.

He was on the verge of falling back asleep when they returned.

For a moment they just stared at him. Stevens started to say something, but Markoff touched his arm and stopped him.

“I want you to tell Stevens everything from here on out,” he said. “Any dreams, hallucinations, anything at all out of the ordinary, you contact Stevens right away.”

“This is crazy,” said Altman.

“No,” said Markoff, “it isn’t.”

And then they were gone, leaving Altman behind to brood. He felt more confused and apprehensive than ever.

But a few minutes later the door opened, and a distraught Ada rushed in, and he had other things on his mind.

45

After nearly dying in the bathyscaphe, it was as if he was living a different life, as if the world he had known had become overlapped by another, ghostly one. He began to see more people whom he knew to be dead: his father, sister, a teacher he’d been close to who had committed suicide, an old friend killed by a car in high school. They would appear, looking nearly as real as anybody, and offer vague and sometimes puzzling messages. Some spoke against “Convergence,” urging him to hurry and “focus your attention correctly” (as one of them put it) before it was too late. Others spoke of unity, suggesting to him that it was somehow too late, that he had misused the resources given him and showed no signs of learning from his mistakes. All urged him to leave the Marker alone. He told Ada about seeing her mother. At first it made her angry, and then it made her cry. But then, a few hours later she asked him to tell her about the experience in detail.

“But why you?” she asked. “Why not me?”

A day later he woke up in the middle of the night to find Ada staring at him. “I saw her,” she said, her face radiant. “Like a vision. She was as real as you or me. She was standing right over there, near the door.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That she loved me. And that we needed to leave the Marker alone, to forget we ever found it. It must be dangerous. Or powerful, anyway. What do you think the Marker is?”

He explained to her what he knew, described the way the Marker had looked underwater.

“It’s all connected,” she said. “The stories in town, these visions we’re having, the artifact in the center of the crater. I’m sure of it.”

At first she was ecstatic about seeing her mother. It had been, Altman realized, an almost religious experience for her in a way that it hadn’t been for him. For the rest of the night she was manic, elated. But by the next morning her mood had begun to turn. She was moody, depressed.

“Why can’t she be here all the time?” she asked. “Why can’t she stay with me?”

“But it’s not her,” said Altman. “It seems like her, but it isn’t. It’s a hallucination.”

“It
was
her,” said Ada, with a sense of conviction that worried him. “And I need her. I need her back.”

And just when Ada was at her most depressed and listless, her mother came back. Altman was in the room at the time, beside her, and saw it as well. Only what he saw was not her dead mother but his own dead sister. They both agreed that something had happened, but had experienced it differently. They were each shown whomever they wanted to see. The words spoken were different as well, phrased to fit the way the person herself spoke when she was alive. But it all, with a little interpretation, fit into the idea of one crowning event, Convergence, though the dead were less clear about what exactly that was, or what could be done to stop it.

Altman was suspicious. “It’s not real,” he tried to tell Ada. “We’re being manipulated, used.”

“I know what I saw,” said Ada. “It was as real as anything I’ve ever seen.” She wanted her mother back from the dead so much that she wouldn’t listen. It was strange, Altman thought, that the hallucination—or vision, as she called it, was constant for her, always her mother, when his kept changing from one loved one to another. But perhaps it was simply because he was too skeptical to accept the hallucinations as anything but delusion and so it had to keep trying different strategies.

As he’d been ordered, Altman told Stevens about his hallucinations, mentioning Ada’s as well. Stevens just recorded what he said and nodded. He seemed tired, overworked.

“What do you think it all means?” Altman asked.

Stevens shrugged. “You and your girlfriend are not the only ones having them,” he said. “Others are experiencing the same thing, and more and more frequently. Only dead people, loved ones—the sort of people that you’d want to take seriously. Some people, like you, believe they’re hallucinations. Others, like Ada, believe they’re something more.”

“Whatever it is, it wants us to do something,” Altman said. “But it doesn’t know how to communicate it properly.”