Paradise Lost Part 2

Posted on 29 Oct 2023 @ 1:10pm by Lia Quil

1,721 words; about a 9 minute read

Cold Station 31, A few weeks after entering the Other Side

They were running. A dead end had forced them to turn back and now they were running for their lives. Marcus made, in his mind, a mental note that this world changed things. Walls where there were meant to be none, darkness creeping. The smell was getting to him, a sickly sweet hint in the air of decomposition. He jumped over a body, not knowing or caring who it had once been. Now it was melted into the floor, as if the matter had changed around it. He knew Lia was beside him. He made sure he never outran her.

Lia was breathing hard as she sprinted with him, never looking back. She didn't need to. She could feel Aguni behind them, the jagged metal blade that had replaced one of his arms dragging along the ground with a flurry of sparks as he lumbered along, more like an animal than a human.

Marcus ran around the corner with her, breathing harder with it as he slid. But he regained his balance, looking ahead. "We need to hide," he managed to get out. This was new, an area that should not be there. Nothing made sense.

Lia grabbed his hand, knowing it was their only chance. They couldn't outrun him. Aguni was incensed. Hunting for nothing less than blood. She pulled him into the next room, slamming the control to close and lock it with the palm of her hand. It closed just in time for Aguni to run headlong into it and moments later he was hammering at the metal.

Marcus took a step back from the door on instinct, watching it before he looked at her. He gave a nod, looking around to try and find something to maybe use as a weapon if needed. Not that he thought they stood a chance if it came to that.

Lia was looking too, her chest heaving with her need for air after the chase. She was bleeding from an arm, not even realising it as she looked around for anything they could use. Her eyes fell on the panel in the corner, moving quickly to try and get it open. "Left, straight, right, right, straight, left..."

He looked at her, spotting her arm. He frowned as he moved to her, not hesitating before he touched her shoulder. "Give me your arm, I need to stop the bleeding."

"We need to be safe first," she replied breathlessly, frowning with concentration at her work, eyes focussed on the hatch rather than him.

He looked at the bleeding, judging how bad it was. She'd be fine for a little bit before the blood loss would affect her, so he nodded and moved to help her get the panel open. "I trust you."

Lia's body had tensed up to stop from flinching with every heavy thud against the door. "Frontal...parietal...occipital...temporal...nasal...zygomatic...maxilla...mandible..." she whispered the grounding chant to force down the fear and panic. As the hatch finally clicked open, she motioned with her hand to Marcus. 'Go' she pushed into his head emphatically.

He did as told, getting in there and without really thinking about it. It was the urgency in her that had made him do it as he got in. It felt darker here, but he wasn't sure if that was true or his perception of it.

Lia grabbed the hatch to close it behind them before shifting onto all fours. The tube was dark and dirty, like so many other parts of this place, but there was enough room for them to crawl. 'Keep moving...'

He crawled, moving forward, but grimaced when he encountered another body. Whole, but dead. So perhaps a stroke or a heart attack rather than infection. Couldn't be sure though. He pushed it to the side, carefully squeezing past, wanting the least amount of contact.

Lia's throat tightened as she followed in the enclosing space, her eyes fixed on the terrified expression frozen into the corpe's features. She climbed past it even as her mind ticked away on diagnosis, clambering a few more yards before suddenly stilling. She reached out, grabbing Marcus' ankle to stop him. "He's moving away," she whispered, sitting back heavily against the filthy wall of the tube, catching her breath.

He shifted as much as he could in the small space, looking back at her. He nodded, reaching out to touch her arm for a moment. 'Well, this will be murder on my back,' he thought, but with a small smile that was almost playful.

She remained still for him, despite her usual discomfort with other people touching her. She just stared at him though, her breaths eventually starting to slow down. "His mind is pure rage," she whispered.

He nodded, his hands now on his own knees, staring ahead. "I suppose I cannot blame him," he said lightly. "I do wish he'd stop hunting us down." He fell silent when he heard screaming. He hadn't heard that in a while. It was distant, but...a person screaming. Maybe another survivor.

Lia tilted her head back against the wall, her eyes staring emptily upward, but her mind retreated into his as she let out a long, tired breath. "He's gone," she whispered bluntly.

Marcus nodded, looking around before he reached for the notepad, to draw out where they had been. "We should rest while we can," he said quietly, looking over at her for a moment. He knew he didn't have to speak now...and decided not to. To stay silent while she took the break she needed.

Lia lost herself. She retreated into her own mind, and his, for several long minutes. She ticked over familiar scientific formulae that offered the reassurance that most people would usually find from another person. "The quantum particles' behaviour should have changed when we observed them..." she murmured. "Not enough is different in this place. But it keeps changing. Like the particles...." she looked to the dark end of the tube. "It smells of death in here, we should get out."

Marcus nodded in agreement, taking a breath as he started to move. "It's like...trace paper," he said, remembering something from his youth. "The same things written but smudged, one press that doesn't show on normal paper will show underneath, on the trace." He knew she wouldn't know it, wouldn't understand it...so he closed his eyes and remembered himself as a child, using it to play, having had some replicated. Playing for Marcus had been mapping stars and working out different theorems. He had been a strange child.

Lia crawled slowly after him, but she didn't see anything, lost in the memory of the human. "I would have liked that," she suddenly said, quietly.

"When we're back to our world, I'll replicate you some. I liked it because it was art, without getting messy hands," he admitted in a soft whisper, the thought carrying more than the words. He reached the end of the corridor and moved his hand to the panel.

Despite everything, a small smile came to Lia at his thoughts. It was something she could understand in a strange world. "Petals of the same flower."

"Different yet with similarities," Marcus whispered and got the panel open. He hesitated before exiting, taking a moment to look around. Nothing was reaching for them and it was quiet. The air was fresher too without the decaying body.

Lia let out a soft breath, her hunched shoulders dropping a touch with how still the room was. "It is safe," she assured quietly, reaching to close the hatch for good measure.

He looked around for a moment before he motioned to what seemed to have been an office at some point. "We can rest up here for a bit. And I need to look at your arm," he said softly, walking to the chair and dusting it off.

She sat herself down with quiet obedience, her gaze moving over the desk. She frowned, leaning in closer as she inspected the scattered objects, barely noticing him trying to get the overalls down over her shoulder. "This is Dr. Barker's office," she murmured matter of factly.

"Not seen him for a while," Marcus said as he got her arm free. He reached for the med kit, taking out the hypos. One to stop infection, one for the pain. He was glad they were colour coded. He pressed them to her before he inspected the damage. "I wouldn't call him a complete waste of time and effort, but..."

"...but you should have been in charge," she finished, holding still for him as she sat back in the chair, staring at the dust covered wall. At least it wasn't blood covered. They had encountered more than just a few of those.

"Am I that transparent?" he asked her, to distract her as he worked. He used the uniform shirt from his pack to wrap her arm up, as a first layer. Once the bleeding had stopped they could inspect closer.

"To me you are," she replied bluntly and honestly, as always. She glanced upwards as the gloomy emergency lights flickered, but after a few moments they returned to normal. "We shall have to prioritise systems before the backup fails," she said quietly, but as if it were just another variable in their work. "We could isolate air and gravity through the auxiliary biology labs...they have their own emergency generators to ensure sample viability...then choose whether to prioritise light or heat on the backup system. The choice is not as simple as it seems. Heat is vital. But those…shadows live in the dark."

Marcus nodded as he glanced at her, a small smile on his lips before he finished. "We should have a rough idea where the controls are, based on our current location. We will figure it out, little bird, as always." He pulled back, not meeting her eyes. He didn't need to. They communicated in other ways.

Lia fell silent for several long minutes, just sitting back with exhaustion, her mind with his, relishing the quiet. "We will have a lot to write when we get back..." she finally whispered, closing her eyes.

[OFF]

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