Hell Off-World

“Someone?” Amy asked, hopefully. “You don’t mean something?”

“Not unless it was something which hacked the code on the door and let itself in.” Blaine scowled.

Amy and Monty frowned anxiously, until Theresa elaborated. “Blaine heard the door open... Don’t interrupt.” She quickly added to Blaine. “But the ship computer states the door hadn’t been opened since we came back on the ship.”

“I heard it as clear as I’m listening to you doubt me right now! And I saw them!” Blaine insisted. “I mean... for a second... they turned a corner and they were gone before I caught up with them...”

“And the ship computer is picking up no motion or heat signatures besides us.” Theresa finished.

“Believe him, Captain. We had a similar difficulty.” Atlas stated.

“We did?” Amy asked.

“Yes... I didn’t want to explain at the time, but at the spire, I sensed heat signatures cropping up all around us, hundreds of them.”

“So what’s alarming about that? They could have been rising from underground, of adjusting their own body heat.” Theresa noted.

“No... what disturbed me was that there wasn’t so much as a blip on the Tank’s thermal scanners...”

“Well... Atlas I know it offends you when people ask you this, but did it occur to you that the malfunction was with you?” Theresa asked, gingerly.

“I saw them moving.” Atlas defensively replied. “No glitch could cause something so specific.”

“We saw them too.” Amy fearfully confirmed.

“They were everywhere.” Monty concluded.

Theresa sighed and massaged her forehead thoughtfully. “Okay, Atlas, can you sense the one Blaine saw?”

Atlas tilted their head slightly. “No... But they’re still outside. The sonic repulsor is keeping them at bay.”

“Right... Everyone to the cockpit. And stay sharp.”

The five of them traversed the door to the garage and began the short walk to the cockpit. They inhaled sharply at every turn and kept whatever weapons they had between them primed. Amy found herself clinging to Atlas’ metallic arm for comfort.

Once in the cockpit, Theresa threw a handful of switches and several beams of light flooded the red meadow in front of the ship. Although all seemed clear, there wasn’t a crew member who wasn’t certain that they saw several black shapes scatter as the light hit them. They exchanged this information with a few silent nods.

“There’s still nothing on the scanners...” Theresa breathed, swiping the displays on the console’s screens.

“I can still sense their body heat.” Atlas insisted.

Theresa produced her own data pad and looked at it resignedly. “Well, I’m sorry Atlas, the Tank, the Comet and this all say the same thing, the fault has to be with you!”

“And Blaine.” Atlas defended themself.

“I heard the door open, clear as day...” Blaine practically snarled at his mother.

“We’ve all seen them, we saw them just now... right?” Amy asked.

“Okay... This could be perfectly normal paranoia, exacerbated by some... gas or pollen the ship’s sensors didn’t pick up on.” Theresa rationalised. “And as for you Atlas, what possible explanation could there be, for your sensors seeing something all the others aren’t? You may have a mind as sophisticated as any organic one on this ship, but there’s nothing special about your equipment!”

The rest of the crew fell silent. Theresa’s logic seemed acceptable.

“We can all agree that something is going on here...” Amy offered. “So what if you guys scan your...”

Before Amy finished, Atlas spun 180 degrees on the spot. “There’s one in the ship!” They announced.

A collective shudder ran through the rest of the crew.

“I told you!” Blaine irritably declared.

“It’s in the bedrooms hallway!” Atlas informed the crew, before swiftly leading them from the cockpit.

“There’s still nothing on my data pad...” Theresa factually stated.

The crew raced down the hallway to the starboard side of the ship, and the corridor with the three doors, leading to Theresa and Blaine’s rooms, and the larger one, shared by Amy and Atlas.

“It’s moving around the ship, like it can sense us too.” Atlas stated.

Theresa drew her pistols. “Stay on comms. Monty, with me. You three go after it, we’ll try and cut it off.”

With Atlas’ directions, the group pursued the entity past the ship’s bathroom and through the small storage bay. There were several crates of equipment and rations, as well as large, empty containers for them to run around and vault over.

“Theresa, it’s headed towards you, get ready.” Atlas warned.

They raced into the ship’s conference/dining room anxiously. They were at the centre of the ship, and doors led in all four directions. The three of them stepped around the table, turning to face each door, anxiously.

“Blaine, get ready!” Atlas warned. “It’s retreating from Theresa and it’s about to come through that door!”

Blaine trained his rifle on the door Atlas had pointed at. Sure enough, it slid open seconds later. With his heart racing, and his trigger finger itching, Blaine fired as soon as he saw movement, and, had it not been for his split-second change of heart, would have blown a hole in his mother’s head. Theresa stared at the laser burn on the wall, from the bolt that had missed her by an inch, open-mouthed.

“ATLAS!?” She demanded an explanation with a single word, but ultimately seemed to change her mind.

“I... this...” Came Atlas’ monotone stammer.

“I don’t want to hear it. Something is clearly wrong with you, maybe all of us. Amy, take Atlas back to your room and perform a full diagnosis. The rest of us are going to the med bay to run some tests. We will get to the bottom of this. Until we can be sure that Atlas isn’t malfunctioning, we’ll stay vigilant and on the lookout, but unless we have a positive sighting on the intruder...” She took Blaine’s rifle and twisted a knob on the side of it, eliciting a beep and a red light. “Deadly weapons will remain disengaged.”

With several murmured “Yes Captain.“s, the crew went about their respective tasks. Amy and Atlas’s bedroom was a long rectangle with the door in the middle. The two of them distributed the space evenly, so visitors would be greeted by a significantly different sight depending on whether they looked left or right upon entering. To the right, was a small bunk, overlooked by a number of posters paying tribute to movies and video games, an open chest, overflowing with clothes in various states of cleanliness, and a workstation littered with various electronic components and tools. To the left, was a meticulously managed set of draws and cabinets, Atlas’s large, cylindrical 3D printer, and a large device covered with touch screen interfaces, a monitor projector and various multi-coloured cables trailing from it.

Amy led Atlas into the room with a reassuring hand on their shoulder, and over to the strange machine. Atlas sat down on the ground with their legs crossed, and a panel slid upwards on the base of their neck, revealing six colour-coded sockets. Amy took the ends of the cables and connected them to Atlas, after which, she took a data pad from the machine and sat on the floor, facing her friend.

“You ready?” Amy asked, gently. Atlas nodded.

With a touch of a button, a screen was projected from the pad and a series of audio-visual stimuli were produced, looking and sounding to Amy like meaningless static. A stream of data began to flow down the pad in Amy’s hand, with no errors reported.

“Amy...” Atlas began, wearily. They paused for a moment. “What do you make of all this?”

Amy considered her answer carefully. “I think we’re all seeing and hearing things which, logically speaking, probably aren’t really there. You usually see things more clearly than the rest of us, so there’s more pressure on you to be the voice of reason, and I think most of that pressure, you’re putting on yourself.”

Again, Atlas was silent. “I don’t know why this is happening...”

“Well... what are the common denominators between the five of us?” Amy asked, sincerely, not knowing the answer herself. She kept studying the screen, finding nothing wrong with her friend.

“No relevant denominators come to mind.” Atlas muttered, thoughtfully. “We’re all sentient and humanoid. Beyond that? We’re all different species, I don’t even have an organic mind. I was made on a conveyer belt to cook and clean... How can...”

Atlas stopped abruptly and looked up.

“What’s up?” Amy asked, worriedly.

There was a pause. “It’s nothing...”

“You can sense it again, can’t you?”

“...No glitch could be this precise...”

“Maybe it’s a virus? You said you connected with those other two ships. Any chance they could have found out and uploaded something to make you paranoid?” Amy offered. She had helped Atlas with software issues many times before, but she had never seen the android act like this.

“It’s possible.” They said, doubtfully. “It would show up if...” Again, the robot immediately silenced. “Amy it’s coming this way.”

“Atlas, relax. It’s not real!” Amy said, trying to stay calm for Atlas’ sake, but she had as much trouble doubting them as they did doubting themself.

“Amy...” Atlas began, with a desperation their human companion had never heard before. “I’m seeing flashes on the heat sensor, just behind the thing...”

“What does that mean?” Amy asked, her voice trembling.

“They look like sparks... Amy, it’s dragging something sharp and heavy!”

Amy got to her feet nervously. She was greatly conflicted. If Atlas was hallucinating, the last thing she wanted to do was enable them, but if they weren’t, and she dismissed the robot, she would get stabbed to death!

“Atlas... What can I do to...” She began, quietly, but she trailed off and her blood ran cold as the realisation of what she was hearing ran down her like cold sweat.

From the corridor, getting steadily louder, was the sound of metal scraping against metal, accompanied by thumping footsteps. With a shriek, Amy fought every instinct and ran towards the sound, and slammed the palm of her hand against the door control panel, sliding it in place and locking it. She stood, rooted to the spot and petrified, as the footsteps grew closer and closer, afraid that the tiniest sound on her part would send their assailant into a murderous rage.

The footsteps thumped closer, ever accompanied by the terrible scraping, until they slowed, and came to a standstill, inches away from where Amy was standing. As quickly as she dared, Amy rotated her head to face Atlas. Incapable of facial expressions, and sharing Amy’s reluctance to make a sound, Atlas quietly consoled her.

“Amy relax. Everything will be fine.”

Amy’s throbbing heartrate slowed only slightly, before the entire ship seemed to shake, and the door was pounded from the other side. Amy screamed in alarm. Atlas, without disconnecting themself from their diagnostic equipment, shot across the room, wrapped their arms around Amy and pulled her defensively back into the corner. The monster assaulted the door again and again.

“CAPTAIN!” Amy screamed into her headset. “IT’S HERE! IT’S OUTSIDE OUR DOOR! HELP!”

“I’m coming!” Came Theresa’s reply, almost immediately. “Remember what I said about deadly weapons!”

The two of them huddled in the corner as crash after crash came from outside. Factoring in the time it took to open the electronically sealed doors, it would take the captain just over a minute to arrive from the other side of the ship, which seemed like more than enough time for Amy and Atlas to be rescued... that is until the door started to bend inwards. The gap grew wider and wider with each crash, until, when it was a few inches wide, seven pitch black tentacles slithered inside and slapped against each door. They protested with a shower of sparks, but, slowly but surely, it started to ease open.

After a few frantic glances around the room, Amy formed a battle plan. She seized the sides of Atlas’ head and kissed their glass visor. Before they could react, Amy stood up and pulled a device from Atlas’ second draw. It looked like a thick, short syringe with a metal cross in place of a needle point, in actual fact, it was a rapid recharger Atlas used when they needed to be away from the ship for extended periods. On organic lifeforms, it had a significantly different effect.

“Amy, no!” Atlas called, but Amy was too swift and resolved for them to stop her.

As Amy approached the door, it began opening with renewed speed. She had planned on pushing the charger through the gap, risk-free, but, past the point of no return, the young mechanic charged towards the opening door and towards her monstrous adversary, engaging the device as she did. Amy only got a look at the creature for a split second before the device made contact, after which, she realised her victim was far from what she was expecting when she had attacked.

“BLAINE!?” Came Theresa’s panicked cry.

With an arc of blue sparks dancing in the air between Blaine and Atlas’ charger, Blaine fell backwards and crashed, unconscious to the cold, metal floor, dropping his rifle as he did. Theresa, who had been right behind him, dropped to her knees and ran her data pad over her son. Amy stood motionless and dropped her device, over Theresa’s shoulder, she saw that Blaine still had a heartbeat, although it was somewhat weaker than usual. Nevertheless, Theresa looked up at Amy with an anger that she had never seen before.

“Th... Theresa...” Amy breathed, lost for words.

The captain silently stood up and, without warning, grabbed hold of Amy’s upper arm and pulled her from her room.

“Captain, wait!” Atlas approached the doorway and extended a hand in urgency.

Before they arrived, Theresa made a gesture on the door’s control panel and it promptly slid shut and locked. Without a word to Amy, Theresa dragged her down the corridor like a chastised child, before stopping outside her own room, and pushing Amy inside. Before Amy could turn around, the door slid shut and she too was locked in.

Amy stood in place and trembled, after which she began slowly pacing. The last few seconds had been a blur. Amy had been reacting in self defence. There hadn’t been a doubt in her mind that some ghoulish monster was on the other side of her door. Even before she attacked, she had seen the monster’s tentacles prying the door open, she had heard them! With shaking hands, Amy tried to tune her visor to the ship’s surveillance, to find out if Blaine was okay, but she couldn’t connect to any of the cameras. She tried to contact Atlas, but had equally little luck. Theresa had cut communications across the ship.

Amy slowly sat down next to Theresa’s bed and hugged her knees. Theresa’s bedroom was meticulously kept. It looked like a hotel room which had been prepared for a new guest. Her small bed was neatly made, a rug sat perfectly parallel to the rest of the furniture, and everything was either nailed down or sorted perfectly into their respective containers. Above her bed, Theresa’s broad sword was mounted, in its ornate sheath. Although she had never fought with the weapon, she practised with it often, as a part of her exercise routine. It was Greywolf tradition to pass a family’s sword on to their first child. Although the tradition had died hundreds of generations ago, Theresa was the second latest in a long line of first children and, according to Atlas, the sword was at least two thousand years old.

After five minutes of sitting in silence and sobbing gently, Amy’s visor crackled into life.

“Attention crew.” Came Theresa’s stern voice. “It’s been a rough night. We’ve all been stalked, chased and attacked, but I can promise you with absolute certainty, that there is no intruder. So far there have been two occasions where sightings of the interloper have resulted in us attacking each other...” Amy sat up and listened intently for news on Blaine’s condition. “No one’s been seriously injured.” Theresa elaborated, relaxing Amy considerably. “But I’m not taking any more chances. You’ve all been isolated so that you can’t hurt each other. There’s every chance that you’ll see our friend again, and unfortunately some of you still have access to weapons, but again I emphasise that there is no danger. The hallucinations began the second night fell, so I’m confident we’ll all feel better in the morning. When the suns come up, we’ll reconvene, but until then, stay calm, and try to get some rest. Constantine out.”

As the silence settled in again, Amy got somewhat less calm. Being dragged away from her best friend had been bad enough, but now she didn’t even have her strict captain’s voice in her ear. In fact, it felt like the closest thing she had to company at the moment was... Amy shook her head and forced the thoughts out of her mind.

“There is no danger...” She breathed Theresa’s comforting words under her breath.

In a bid to distract herself, Amy cycled through the games she had in her visor. She eliminated all the games which required too much focus, and of course, all the horror games, and settled on a basic racing game about driving hover bikes around a desert planet. After just a couple of minutes of playing, Amy found herself moving to the corner of the room, facing inwards, and adjusting the opacity of the display so she could still see the room.

Amy paid little attention to the game. Her focus was on every nook and cranny of the room, more than once, she stood up and checked behind and under Theresa’s bed, to make sure nothing was lurking out of sight. She had been playing for less than half an hour when she realised the distraction was only making her grow more agitated. She switched instead to some relaxing music.

The night wore on and Amy sat in silence, music playing in her ears. She would periodically nod off slightly, at which point paranoia would insist that she had seen movement as her eyes had begun to close, and she would instantly be wide awake again.

With four hours until sunrise, Amy decided that she needed to urinate. It had been building for a while, but she had been reluctant to abandon her defensive position. Luckily for her, Theresa’s bedroom was adjoined to one of only two bathrooms on the ship. Amy got up and reluctantly turned her back on a large section of the room. As she reached for the handle though, she caught herself.

The Captain was a very private woman, as such, Amy had very rarely been in her room, and she had only been in her bathroom once, when the other one had been under repairs, and Amy had begged her insistently. Nevertheless, Amy remembered that the bathroom had a mirror, directly facing the door. In her vulnerable state, the last thing she wanted was a clear, sudden view of what was behind her, especially if all she had to fear was her own hallucinations.

The pressure in Amy’s bladder soon overcame her fear and, squeezing her eyes shut, she opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it. Breathing a sigh of relief, Amy opened her eyes to see the mercifully empty room, consisting of a toilet, shower cubicle and sink, crammed claustrophobically tightly together. In the mirror, she saw her face, weary from sleep deprivation and streaked with tears.

A few minutes later, after Amy was finished washing her hands. She reached for the door panel slowly, mustering the courage to subject herself to another potential jumpscare. Although she wished it had occurred to her sooner to just hide in the bathroom, her elevated anxiety was making Amy feel claustrophobic, and at least she knew that the intruder wasn’t real... or so the captain said...

With a tap on the panel, the door slid open, and Amy was still safe. She sighed deeply as she left the bathroom and turned to her corner, meaning there was no air in her lungs with which to scream. It was there. Not moving, or vanishing when Amy blinked, but there, standing in the corner, and staring at her, or at the very least, facing in her direction. The intruder was at least eight feet tall, its head hunched to avoid hitting the ceiling. Its visible body was comprised almost entirely of slimy, black tentacles, most quite thin and only a few inches in length, but on each side where a shoulder might be on a vertebrate, five or six tentacles trailed down to the ground. At its feet, a writhing mass of tentacles kept it balanced and, if it had a face, it was obscured by a white mask made of a brittle, coarse substance like dried cuttlefish or dead bark.

Amy immediately tripped over backwards and scrambled over to the locked door to the rest of the ship.

“There is no danger... There is no danger... There is no danger...” She repeated to herself, quietly.

The intruder stood in place, moving only gently on the spot, while Amy kept her eyes fixed on it, barely daring to blink. The remaining four hours of night time ticked by second by second, to Amy, it seemed like years. When the suns had risen, Amy could confidently say that the intruder was no longer in the room with her, but it was difficult for her to say when that had become the case. It hadn’t faded from sight, rather, Amy had grown more and more certain that her tentacled tormentor was a figment of her imagination, to the point where it was just another idea in her head. The suns shone brightly on the horizon, and Amy Archer wasn’t scared anymore.

Amy had been gently snoozing for just a few minutes, when the door she was leaning on slid open. She shuddered awake and just managed to balance herself with her hand before she fell over backwards. Looking up, she saw Theresa standing over her. Amy climbed nervously to her feet, unsure of what to expect, and was surprised when Theresa stepped forwards and firmly hugged her.

“Amy, I’m sorry I scared you last night. Blaine is fine.”

Amy was relieved both by Blaine’s condition, and that the captain didn’t hate her for attacking him. “He is?”

“I kept him sedated overnight when I realised what was happening. I’m going to wake him up now.”

Theresa broke off the hug and began walking towards the medical bay.

“Did... did you see it?” Amy asked, nervously.

“Crew meeting in five.” Theresa said, commandingly, without looking around. “Take a Sleep-X pill.”

Not far from where Amy was standing, another medication-dispensing machine was mounted to the wall. With a few taps on the control panel and a stifled yawn, Amy had it produce a small, black and brown sphere, which she promptly swallowed. Caffeine had been redundant for a long time. In the fifty-second century, there was medication which could instantly make a person feel like they had woken up from ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, over an hour ago. The only down side was that it began causing increasingly bad headaches, when used too often.

As Amy snapped awake, Theresa’s voice sounded in her headset.

“Crew meeting in five minutes, Everyone to the conference room and we’ll talk about what happened last night.”

With a hiss, Amy and Atlas’ bedroom door slid open. Amy spun around and ran towards her friend as they approached the doorway, hugging them tightly, despite their robotic joints digging into her hip.

“Are you okay, Atlas?” She asked, worriedly.

“I kept seeing it last night... but the Captain was right, it posed no physical danger.” Amy was relieved to hear that Atlas’ voice had returned to its relaxed, robotic monotone.

Five minutes later, the crew were seated around the conference table in the centre of the ship. Blaine had been gently led in by Theresa, nursing his forehead and, after dismissing a stream of frantic apologies from Amy, took his seat. Monty seemed to have had as rough a night as Amy. Although he wore his usual scowl, the bags under his eyes gave away his sleepless night, even with an administration of Sleep-X. Once they were all seated, Theresa stood at the head of the table with her arms folded and a commanding stare.

“Last night, all five of us experienced audio-visual hallucinations which were indistinguishable from reality. I can’t speak for what the three of you experienced in the city, but I do know that our perceived intruder was just that, perceived, and nothing else.”

Theresa gave four firm taps to a data pad strapped to her wrist, and four holographic screens were projected in the middle of the table, rotating slowly. Each one displayed a room in its entirety, and its lone occupant. One displayed Amy, cowering against a door, holding her head and mumbling reassurance to herself, on another, Atlas stood perfectly still, at their end of the room, training the charger Amy had attacked Blaine with, at the opposite end. Monty had adopted a position similar to Amy’s, having tipped his bunk over and huddling behind it with his eyes squeezed shut. Theresa could be seen taking a defensive stance in the hallway outside the medical bay, although there was no sound, she was snarling and talking commandingly to someone who wasn’t there, but there was unmistakeable fear in her eyes. Notably, her pistols were holstered to her belt, and she was visibly resisting the urge to draw them.

“While Amy was running diagnostics on Atlas, we each discovered an anomaly in our brain waves, which corresponds with those present when taking hallucinogenic drugs.” Theresa was far from a medical expert, but such information was standard for a ship computer when its crew explored alien planets.

“So you were right.” Blaine said. He didn’t say it often, especially not to his mother, highlighting how seriously he took the current situation. “It was some kind of pollen, or something?”

Theresa shook her head. “There was nothing in our lungs or bloodstreams, and more importantly, if that was it, it wouldn’t have affected Atlas.”

“While the subject is on me, I would like to share the results of my diagnosis last night, captain.” Atlas offered.

Theresa nodded and gestured for them to do so. As Atlas spoke, the holographic displays began to display charts and diagrams, illustrating what the android said.

“While I too was unable to find any fault or external influence in my programming, the algorithm which makes up my personality was somehow altered over the course of the night. You see, just like an organic brain, my mind modifies aspects of itself based on past experiences, so I might behave more effectively and efficiently in the future. Ordinarily, I would be able to identify a hallucination with the level of evidence I had, and treat one accordingly, but last night I was irrational and agitated. What’s more, the alteration in my personality coincided perfectly with the setting and rising of the suns.”

“So it’s the suns that are causing this?” Monty asked, incredulously.

“Or preventing it.” Blaine reasoned.

“Whatever it is, it’s beyond our understanding. There’s nothing in the known universe that can affect an organic and synthetic mind in such a similar way.” Theresa stated. “But I do have an idea of how we might better understand it.”

With a few more seconds at the controls on her wrist, Theresa manipulated the hologram projector to cast a blank display screen in front of each crew member, and then a distorted blur on either side of them, obscuring their neighbours from sight.

“So far, none of us have described the thing that we’ve seen, and it occurs to me that a primary factor in the phenomenon’s influence is suggestion. In all incursions, it’s been one person who saw the creature first, and alerted the rest of us. So I want you all the sketch what you saw. The fact that we’ve all seen different things will prove that the hallucinations came from our own heads, and that we’ve nothing else to fear.

For the following few minutes, the crew silently swiped, brushed and poked at the interfaces in front of them. After the word ‘finished’ had been said five times, the privacy shields vanished and the sketches were displayed, orbiting the centre of the table. The drawings were all of very different qualities, ranging from Blaine’s surprisingly artistic recreation, to Amy’s childish doodle, and Atlas’ photo-realistic depiction, but there could be no doubt that all five sketches were of exactly the same thing.

“Okay, that’s unsettling...” Theresa breathed.