Titans

Unknown Temporal Region [389:01]

Location: The Hermes Starship

When the power goes out, I feel it. The library is black as pitch and we stop moving. Everything falls silent as we stop digging through piles and piles of books and paper for information. And I feel it – I feel it deep down in some untapped part of my being: an alien energy, sliding not through the air, but through our experience of the air.

“Cal,” I say softly, “you feel that?”

Nothing moves. He doesn’t respond.

“Cal.”

I grope around in the dark, running into tables and edges, tripping over books lying haphazardly on the floor. He was on the other side of the table before the lights went out. Now I find the chair he was sitting in, run my hands across its back. He’s not there.

“Cal,” I say again. I try not to let my voice shake. I try not to let my imagination run wild.

It does.

I see a tear in the wall of the ship, gaping wide for the void to flow in. I see myself, alone and trapped in darkness, the rest of the crew vanished. I see Atara standing in the doorway, Cal dead at her feet. I see –

There’s a sound, not too far from where I stand. It’s soft and rumbling, like a groan. “Cal?” I say one more time and inch forward.

And suddenly it’s as if my imagination has become reality. My toes nudge against something shifting and alive and I look down to see movement in the darkness – the barely visible outline of a person on the floor, hands to their head.

“Cal!” I exclaim, and fall to my knees. He’s groaning in pain, fingers digging into his scalp. I get him up into a sitting position. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

He gasps. “My…” In the dark, I see his eyes blink open. “My – head.”

And then as if he’s said some magic word, I’m overcome by a wave of intense pain. It shreds through my skull and sets my brain on fire. It’s the end of days playing out inside my head: molten heat, crashing and rumbling, a world – a mind – splitting apart.

After what feels like hours it eases enough for me to open my eyes. Bright spots dance across my vision, lighting up the darkness like stars. “Lilith,” Cal moans besides me.

“Come on,” I say, and together we stumble to our feet, heads banging and lolling, feet dragging against the metal floor. He puts his arm across my shoulders and I wrap mine around his waist and we move forward like that – out of the library, down the hall, a lurching mass of limbs wading through the void, trudging forever onwards while our respective minds burn.

Somehow we find our way to the control room. Maybe it’s luck. Maybe it’s muscle memory. Maybe it’s the universe – some universe, if there’s one out there – handing down divine knowledge to our limbs, whispering, This way, into our bones. Either way, when we arrive my mind feels too fried to have been of any use.

And it no longer matters how we got here – because what we find is a billion times more shocking.

Merc on the ground, one white-knuckled hand pressed firmly against his skull, the other gripping a chair as he strains to hold himself upright. And in the pilot’s chair – now spun around to face us – Atara sits serenely, her eyes wide open and glowing and completely and utterly white.

My heart tremors as my worst fears come to life, as the ship around us begins to shake and convulse. The ethereal figure I saw late one night in my doorway has returned to haunt us all.