Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (36 page)

I ran towards the door. Locked. Figured. I kicked it with my leg and
punched it with my fist. Somehow in real life there is ever very little good that
comes from kicking or punching a door. My knuckles bled and the more I
kicked the more I began to feel like I was going to break my foot.

I began to feel like I was moving. The air pressure changed and my
ears popped vioelently. The room around me was shifting like some part of a
large rubrics cube. Nausea, upset stomach, vertigo. I could feel my insides
turning as if the gravity around me was heavy on one side and light on the
side. Finally I kicked the wall sprained my foot and opened up a hole that
seemed to pour out into darkness. It was better then being where I was. I
crawled inside the dark hole and onto a cold flat metal surface. The floor was
freezing. Around me I could see the tunnel bend. The walls were shaped for a
sphere to pass through. It was strange. Spaced several feet apart circling the
floor, walls, and ceiling were tentacles just like the ones that attacked earlier
seemed stuck in place. I was afraid to touch one as they hung like webs
around me but had no choice but to keep pressing forward.

I continued to crawl in the direction of a small light. It glowed with a
blue haze that seemed to attract me like a moth. The closer I got the warmer I
felt. When I reached the light there was another wall. The light transformed
into a bright little button. With few other options I decided to push it. I
wasn’t sure what I had expected to happen. The wall in front of me opened
and I could see a large circular chamber with a small pedestal sitting several
feet high in the center. The entire room was lit in various shades of black and
gray. Several tunnels ran out from the center surrounded by grooves that
looked like the bumps on a caterpillar. It felt very foreign. Only a few parts of
the Erebus seemed to match this design but it seemed the deeper I went the
more alien everything around me had become.

I could feel the room around me was at an incline. I was ascending with
every step. Finally I reached another chamber full of massive rotors and
gears. I could see small sparks of electricity surge in and around various
pieces of machinery. I was standing in front of the immersion core. It seemed
to extend up into the darkness. It was impossible to tell where it ended. In the
center there was another door. It was situated below one of the massive rotors
and side by side with two more on the left and right. I walked closer and
closer I could feel bumps on my skin, as the room grew colder. I could see the
fog from my breath. The closer I got the more afraid I became. I could feel a
voice in my head telling me to run telling me I was too afraid of what was
behind the door. I didn’t listen to it. My heart was beating faster and faster. I
couldn’t listen to it now I had come so far and I was dead either way. There
was nothing left but to push myself and move forward even if that meant
walking into the unknown.

I walked inside the room and the
first thing I noticed was the smell.
The smell of flesh and decay so strong I vomited making my mouth even
worst. I would kill for a way to clean my teeth. I could feel my throat sore
from the cold air and now this. I was even more nauseated when my eyes
finally adjusted to the dark.

I was standing in a large hallway similar to the stasis chambers all
around me bodies stood standing straight up wired into the walls. Were there
wasn’t a body there was a head and torso or pieces of a skull. It was like
walking through catacombs. Each body was wired into the wall. The wires
seemed to twist moving in and out of random parts of flesh encased them and
binded them all together. Every set of eyes were wide open and they all
looked like they were staring at me weeping.

I started to run. I couldn’t stand the sight of the room around me. The
farther I ran the older the bodies looked. Some were coated in such thin
layers of skin you could see their degraded muscle and bone intertwined
together the small bits of flesh hung to bone rotting dissolving spaced across
limbs stretched just enough to keep it all together. This was the heart of the
Erebus. All around me staring were the skeletons of the closet of the human
race. I finally slowed down. I was in hell. There was no end. I was going mad
in this place. This was the end.

I had dropped to my knees crying. The room itself seemed to in
flict
emotional pain with every breath. In the distance I saw a guard moving
forward. Another monster I thought; another nightmare coming to end me. It
was one of Balkava’s death squad. They were wearing black armor just
enough to cover the fragile parts of the human body. Its face was warped with
cybernetics the lower part of its jaw had been removed and replaced. It was
carrying a long sword with a rifle strapped around it’s back. It looked like the
embodiment of death had finally come to claim its prey. I should have been
dead a long time ago. I should have died on Errikus with my mother. I was
ready. It finally stopped moving when it was above me. It held up its sword
ready to slash the back of my neck severing my head and spine. I don’t know
why but when it swung I moved. I was still crying. It swung again in
frustration as if I was nothing more then an insect a small pest that needed to
be wiped from existence. I moved again. All I could think about was Errikus.
My mother buried under rubble screaming telling me “Run.” I didn’t want to
die. I wanted to live.

I moved faster then I had thought possible grabbing the gun from the
deathsquad soldier’s back and ripping the strap gunning him down from
behind. I screamed. The faces around me seemed to be watching me in terror.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. All around me were the souls of those trapped
and tormented the dead and forgotten the bodies of the fallen each and every
one of them weeping. I blasted the walls till there was nothing left. When the
rifle was out of ammo I picked up the long sword with two hands and began
hacking at the walls dragging it across the corpses that surrounded me. It was
raining blood. The little bit of light there was around me seemed to flicker as
if I was draining life from the ship itself. Was I? I had desecrated the remains
of hundreds but it seemed like I had done so little. All around me they
continued to stare. Soon I had killed another deathsquad member that came
at me. I didn’t even realize it at first. I had gone berserk. My rage had gotten
the best of me. It was only when I heard them injured unable to move
begging to be left alive that I realized they were human.

I couldn’t take another life. He lay on the ground in front of me
begging. The look in his eyes so afraid of what was to come. He was bleeding.
There was probably little that could be done but he was numb to the pain. He
just didn’t want to die. I looked at him and the dozens of bodies that lay
around the hallway and walked away towards the end were I could see the
center console where there stood one body in particular. I recognized it from
visions, from history books. I recognized it because it was an image that had
been engrained in my mind and the mind of every human survivor for the last
three hundred years. It was old, fragile, and decrepit shriveled nothing but
bones and a thin layer of skin kept alive in a cryotube that seemed to connect
from top to bottom with wires that ran across the ceiling and floor. It held its
arms against its chest in a fetal position. I could still see the cars from where
he had slit his wrist with glass. S E V His last words. Had he known this
moment would come? Was he alive now a younger version of himself
witnessing this moment?

I smiled a crooked evil smile that came from years of abuse, horror, and
war, all attributed to this man, Narville, the man that saved the human race
from the first invasion, the man who commissioned the trinity and did nothing
to stop the Skrav from destroying the sun. He was alive. His eyes followed
me as I paced around his cryotube holding the long sword down at my side.
Finally they shut. I had a choice. I could swing my sword and slay him or
walk away. He had written my name in blood naming me; no one knew what
it meant. Some thought it was to be the name of his successor, the name of a
prophet, a ship, a planet, a random person in the future. Most dismissed it.
My mother had given me the name telling me that it meant severity. She told
me the weight of the human race was dependent on the children of the future
that it was our burden, punishment that we would have to live with the
mistakes our ancestors made that we would have to build a better tomorrow
but we could only do that by remembering the past. My name was meant as a
reminder for the rigor we had endured for hundreds of years but she had
always said to think of it as being hope. Even in our darkest hour when life is
its most severe we are free to hope. Our freedom, our hope it makes us
human. Now I see it was more. My name was written on that floor because
Narville was naming his killer. I was the harbinger, the bringer of death, and
the final punishment for his sin against his own kind. There were other ways,
other ways we could have fought against the Skrav. Other ways we could
have saved billions of lives. I should have walked away. I should have shown
him the future could be changed and nothing was certain. I stared at him and
let him know my name. Narville’s blood covered the edge of my blade.

His body lay naked the cold air shriveling his skin on the broken glass
his bones were so brittle they practically withered. I cut the wires that ran
from the back of his head and spine. His eyes were still staring up at me as I
planted the blade inside his chest leaving it there as I fell backwards. I shut
my eyes and stretched my arms out to my side. The lights around the ship
turned off. I was right. The bodies were the heart and mind of the ship. Each
and every one of them had been linked together in a hive mind their brains
used as processing centers.

I understood now. Narville saw the future he wanted just as Balkava
had. During his time the process for uploading consciousness into an organic
computer had just been developed but you still needed a part of the human
body specifically the brain to survive. He must have thought once the journey
was complete technology would have developed far enough that he could
upload himself into a new body. Eventually he would have been a complete
bioorganic cyborg the way Lore turned out or at the very least been able to
copy his consciousness. This was what the Valkyrie program had been about;
thousands of tests supported by the elders and those in control. Even the
drones were controlled as avatars by the 'dead'. It took thousands to control
the Erebus; the same was probably true for the Aelita and Tritan. Hundreds
of human lives, human bodies used as processing units to control the ship.
Balkava was the one that disagreed. She was power hungry, the war had
driven her mad. She saw Narville when she became an elder and was led
down here into the abyss of the ship. They thought she would fall in line but
she had other plans. Narville and the Erebus were nothing more then tools
for her to get what she wanted and now that she had control she had planted
me down here to take care of the rest.

Aelia’s decision planting Mace onboard the Aelita had affected the future in a
way Narville had never imagined. He thought he had everything under
control. The ‘Sons of Sol’ were at his every command and he had planted the
seeds that would become the future. He had seen and planned everything and
had he not killed himself when he did he probably would have found a way
around it instead he had created a fixed point. His pride had become his
downfall. If Aira’s ancestor Mace hadn’t killed the captain of the Aelita and
taken his place she never would have been born. She never would have saved
my life on Errikus. I never would have been here or been Balkava’s pawn. I
never would have killed Narville.

I
finally stood up. The lights flickered on. I guess since we were no longer in
space they found a way to divert the life support and navigation to more
important essentials. If I don’t find a way out of the core I would probably
run out of air before long. I could already see the small scattered pieces of
biomass like moss that produced oxygen beginning to wither and die without
nutrients from the ship. The long sword was sticking straight out of Narville’s
corpse like a grave marker. I was too sick to pull it out. I had to continue to
find my way out. Too much time had passed now. Trevor, Meddix, they
would already be dead the bridge would be destroyed and the Skrav would
be making their way here.

I chose a random hallway and began walking. The other hallways were
connected to different rooms in the Erebus so I knew I was at least walking
away from the core. I would either end up walking into one of the two rooms
that housed the ion drives or I would end up in the bunker or some other hell.
It didn’t matter at this point. There was nothing worst I could find. I just
needed to move. If I could eventually reach the surface I could find my way
back around.

Several hours past before I reached the veranda that stood above another
control room. Inside I could see holos showing the views from several drones.
Some of them had crashed probably when I severed the connection between
Narville and the ship but others preprogrammed flew in cycles over the ruins
of the bridge. There was nothing left but charred bodies. Hundreds of
humans must have died and from the way it looked the Skrav were just as
scattered - enough they would no longer be a threat. Instead of sending
dropships or help to secure the site and creating a truce between her army
and the resistance she used one of the weapons onboard the Erebus, the grid
to create a devastating attack that wiped out both groups. Should have
known. We never should have turned to her for help. We should have taken
our forces and attacked. The resistance was over. Soon Balkava would have
the last of us captured or killed. She already had Hera. There was no
difference we could make now.