It’s a strange thing to see the stars you have lived under your entire life from a new angle. Like walking into your childhood bedroom except everything had been moved an inch to the left. This was the first thought of Dr Jessica Yang as she stepped from the ramp of the shuttle Endeavour. The second was that her neck ached.
Her hand went to soothe her neck but met the protective layer of her spacesuit. Chagrined, she quickened as much as she could in zero G to the oxidised refuge of the Mars colony construction site. On the other side of the airlock, stood a secretary in a black pencil dress, her feet were covered by large magnetic boots, keeping her rooted firmly to the ground.
The secretary stared at Jessica as the first airlock door closed behind her and the second one opened. Her pursed, arsehole lips quirked upwards at the corner in the ghost of a smile. If she didn’t look like such a bitch, Jessica mused, she might have even found her attractive. The pang of guilt this thought stirred caused her to overemphasise her own pleasantness as she surged forward with a smile far wider than necessary.
“Hello,” she said in a raspy voice, she hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words in her eight month journey to the planet. It was a wonder she hadn’t gone mad. “I’m Doctor—”
“Doctor Jessica Yang, I know. If you’d follow me this way,” the secretary said before turning around and rushing towards a large warehouse. As Jessica moved to follow, an army of worker drones emerged to unload the cargo from the ship, their human overseers stood idly watching in yellow jumpsuits.
“I trust you had a pleasant trip?” the secretary asked without turning to face Jessica.
“As pleasant as I could have,” Jessica replied, rubbing the back of her neck, “Why’d you have me stuffed in the hold like that?”
“Well, Mr Kunk understandably wants to keep this whole situation as quiet as possible so we couldn’t have you on one of our crew flights. The journalists would have had a field day asking why an archaeologist was being brought to Mars Base 1.”
Jessica nodded, when the offer to go to Mars and be the first person to conduct archaeological studies on the planet’s surface had arrived in her inbox she’d jumped at the opportunity. If she’d known it would have been so uncomfortable she might have reconsidered. Thinking straight became difficult when adventure called. “Where is our generous benefactor?” she asked.
“Mr Kunk is on his way to his private suite freshening up, he’ll be joining us in just a moment.”
Jessica Kunk paused, “Wait, Elias Kunk was on that flight?”
The secretary turned and said in a patronising tone said, “He was.”
“I didn’t see him.”
The secretary scoffed. “Of course you didn’t. Mr Kunk has a deck prepared on all Copernicus ships for his own personal use.”
Jessica’s eyes widened. The man had a whole deck to himself and she had to slum it in the cargo hold? He wasn’t exactly endearing himself to her. Though with the rates he paid, she supposed he didn’t have to. The conversation ended there, Jessica got the impression any more questioning of Mr Kunk’s methods wouldn’t be appreciated.
The secretary led Jessica into the large warehouse which homed the hundred-fifty odd workers who manned the construction of this great commercial hub. Bunk beds filled the building and Jessica shuddered at the utter lacky of privacy. Surely this wasn’t where Kunk expected Jessica to conduct her research.
They reached the end of the warehouse and, to Jessica’s relief, scaled a set of stairs. The second floor separated into actual rooms, for the use of middle managers. The secretary led her to one and slid open the door.
“We’ve set the lock for your biometrics, Mr Kunk’s and the top ranking security personnel,” the secretary said as she stepped inside.
Jessica frowned as she looked around the ten foot by ten foot room. Its furniture consisted of a bed, washbasin, small wardrobe, and desk. “Why does Mr Kunk have access to my room?” she asked. Security she could understand, though she did not like it, but what reason would Kunk have to come into her room.
“While you’re working for Mr Kunk, he expects full and utter devotion. Security access is an incentive to keep you productive,” she replied with a sickly smile, “If you haven’t anything to hide then there’s no worry.”
Jessica shrugged. She wasn’t entirely convinced but had little alternatives but to agree. It wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go, this was the only piece of civilization on the whole planet, allegedly, if they turned her out she’d be hopeless.
“Bathroom facilities are down the hall. I’ll let you freshen up and settle in,” the secretary said. She paused as she turned out of the door, her hand went to her ear to the small earpiece she wore. Looking over her shoulder, she added, “Mr Kunk will be conducting a meeting with you and the rest of the excavation team in an hour, I’ll come to collect you then.”
Jessica nodded. The eager politeness vanished, replaced by an earnest desire to be alone. “Thank you…” Jessica trailed realising she hadn’t gotten the secretary’s name and leaving an opening for her to give it.
“You’re most welcome Dr Yang. Good bye now.” With that, the secretary left, her magnetic boots hissing as she walked.
Jessica sighed and put a hand through her greasy hair. She hadn’t given it a proper wash in months and looked forward to a hot shower. As she undid and stepped out of her spacesuit a groan of ecstasy escaped her lips at the release of her flesh from the sealed suit. She ran her hands over the pink raw flesh and had a proper stretch which caused her to groan with ecstasy.
Scratching her breast, she looked around the room in search of her luggage. One of the robots must have brought it in, she reasoned as she pulled a leather suitcase from beneath the bed. Inside the suitcase were some comfortable clothes to wear under her suit, a toiletry bag and her personal archaeology tools. In a pocket on the lid of the suitcase was a file which read “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL PLANETSIDE” in large red lettering on the front. She opened the file and read as she went to the showers.
The file left Jessica with more questions than she had answers. After a meal of a ration bar which she doubted had enough nutrients to keep a squirrel going, a man in an armoured vest and thick padded clothes entered her room without so much as a knock. After the initial shock and beratement, which the man withstood with a stony faced silence, he announced that she was to be escorted to the meeting room to meet her benefactor.
Jessica stepped back. “Where’s the secretary?” she asked.
The armoured man stepped into the room. “She’s busy, now come,” he replied in a threatening growl.
Jessica pursed her lips and grabbed her things, about time she had the chance to chew out “Mr Kunk” for her treatment. The ache in her neck had failed subside. Even medicated it pulled at the edge of her senses keeping her from relaxing, not that she’d be able to relax with the clinical dullness that every building in the colony stirred in her.
She tried to occupy her mind by memorising her journey but after the fifth cold, steel corridor surrendered to its futility. Its labyrinthine design confounded her.
Only one thing stood out in her journey. They passed what must have been the medical ward. As she mindlessly walked past a room with an observation window white walls were covered in markings grabbed her and forced her to stop. Jessica was no expert on human languages, dead or living, but those markings were not of earth. Her feet stopped as her eyes met those of the single patient inside the room. His fingertips were worn to the bone and bloody; some of the markings were etched into the walls by fingernails and others simply drawn with blood. The eyes of the patient stared back at her but they did not seem to see her.
Jessica started as a hand wrapped around her forearm. She spun her head to face the guard who looked at her with an annoyed frown, unphased by the state of the patient.
As she calmed, Jessica swallowed and asked, “What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he see me?”
The guard’s eyes narrowed, “it’s one way glass.”
Jessica turned back to the patient, unsure whether she believed the explanation. She was sure the patient looked at her, stared right at her, he simply didn’t see her. “What are those markings?”
“Mr Kunk doesn’t like to be kept waking,” the guard said, avoiding the question and tightening his grip around Jessica’s forearm.
Jessica’s eyes widened. She nodded. Perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea to chew the billionaire out.
As they carried on, a pang of regret hit her, she missed the markings. Though she did not understand what they said her heart yearned to gaze upon them again. When she closed her eyes and shook her head to rid herself of these yearnings she found the inside of her eyelids covered in the markings, just as the walls of the ward were. A cold breeze climbed her spine, an impossible sensation in the thermally controlled confines of the colony. Perhaps an oxygen leak had surfaced, she mused and found the thought comforting.
It was the lack of sleep, she reasoned, once this meeting ended she’d try to get an early night in the uncomfortable bed she’d been provided. Anything beat sleeping amongst cargo crates.
The guard stopped in front of a door and waved his wrist over the sensor. The door slid open with a hiss and the guard gestured for Jessica to step inside. A large holographic table dominated the centre of the room emitting a soft blue glow. Around it stood the secretary, her lips pursed into that arsehole smile, a man who had the air of a low-level manager and the nervous demeanour of someone in the presence of people far more powerful than he could comprehend, and at the head of the table sat the man in charge of it all, Mr Enoch Kunk.
Mr Kunk had the amused air of someone born into money who had managed to increase it with little to no effort. After buying out the ideas of those smarter than him, he had founded the Copernicus corporation so he could fund researchers desperate for money then plaster his name on the product and take all the credit. Through this Edisonian strategy, he’d managed to accrue far more money than he could handle and just as any man-child faced with the options of helping those worse off than him and pouring money into his own vanity projects, he chose the latter project. Thus came the Wells initiative, a concentrated movement to commence the colonisation of Mars, named with a rather tongue-in-cheek wink, after the author of War of the Worlds.
Jessica smirked at the size of Kunk, he seemed cartoonishly small. He barely fit in the chair and when he moved his head it almost wobbled on his slender neck.
“You’re late, Yang,” Kunk said.
Jessica registered the barb in the neglect of her honorific but ignored it. She had been delayed by a matter of minutes but it an apology was clearly expected. “I’m sorry, Mr Kunk. I was distracted by the patient with the markings on the wall.”
The room went icy and the secretary’s smile faltered as her lower jaw trembled. Jessica frowned as Kunk’s gaze turned to the poor women and the genuine fear he aroused. The tension in the room threatened to suffocate Jessica, her instincts yelled to escape yet memories of the markings called her forward.
“So you’ve met Jeremiah,” Kunk said, forcing a smirk back onto his face but clearly displeased.
Jessica swallowed. “Met is rather a strong way of putting it, merely watched him through a window.”
“And what do you think?”
Jessica blinked. “Excuse me?”
Kunk’s eyes narrowed, this was a man who didn’t care for repeating himself. “In your educated opinion… what do you think of our friend Jeremiah?”
Jessica paused, her mouth open in confusion as she turned over the question. Those markings burned in her vision, irritating her eyes and forcing her to blink and rub them. Raising her head, she said, “He’s clearly insane—” though as she said it she became less convinced “—What happened to him?”
“That, Dr Yang is what we hope you can find out for us. Take a seat,” Kunk said, pointing at a chair with its back to the door.
Jessica sat and suppressed a shudder as the guard slipped behind her. A shaky breath escaped her lips. “What have you brought me here for?”
Kunk turned to the managerial looking man who straightened in his seat and looked at his hands as if collecting his thoughts then met Jessica’s gaze. “Several months ago, one of our excavation teams was tunnelling into a mountain in search of precious minerals. Our excavation teams are usually made of around eight robots and two overseers, these were Jeremiah Notts, and Oladotun Musa. Everything was going as planned when the team came across this tunnel, intersecting with their own.”
The manager swiped on his wrist pad and transferred an image from it onto the table display. Jessica studied the image of a tunnel its walls too smooth and uniform to be naturally occurring. Its ceiling was lost outside the top of the picture making it look like the bottom of a canyon. “This looks like it was dug.”
The manager nodded with a grave smile. “The overseers thought so too. Oladotun went back to report to HQ, they were too deep to get a decent signal, while Jeremiah explored the tunnel with the robots to collect images. When Oladotun returned, all the robots were shut off and Jeremiah was staring at this.”
Another image this time a close-up of the wall, it showed the same markings as Jeremiah’s wall. Jessica stared at it with wide eyes and only looked away when it dawned the room was silent. All eyes were on her, she must have been staring for some time as they all looked at her as if they expected her to speak. “Sorry what was that?”
The manager swallowed. “When one of our teams was sent to investigate Oladotun was dead and Jeremiah’s hands covered in blood.”
“Why didn’t you take him back to Earth?” Jessica asked.
“We tried,” Kunk said, staring at his fingernails as if he had no interest in the conversation whatsoever, “he killed four of our strongest men with his bare hands as soon as we tried to put him in the shuttle.”
“Did you interrogate him?”
“Tried to. He wouldn’t speak to anyone and when we recorded him from his room he either stared straight at the hidden cameras or making those markings.”
“Why don’t you restrain him?”
Kunk shrugs, “He breaks out of his restraints. But you don’t need to worry about him. You’re here to figure out what those markings are.”
“You want me to go into the tunnel?” Jessica said, her voice trembling with excitement.
Kunk smirked. “Scared?”
Jessica fixed the billionaire with a determined stare.
Kunk cleared his throat. “As per the NDA you signed, nothing you see here can become public.”
Jessica baulked. “Mr Kunk, we’re talking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial civilisation. To not share that with the world breaks every ethical code I hold dear.”
Kunk’s face went stony. “Nevertheless, nothing you see comes to light, just figure out what it is, take the money, and be on your way.”
Jessica considered it. She could always break her promise as soon as she landed on earth. They might kill her for it but the knowledge this represented was worth the sacrifice. “I understand,” she said.
Kunk clapped his hands. “Good! Are you ready to go?”
“Now?”
“Why not? There’s no time like the present,” Kunk said as he rose from his seat.
Jessica’s hopes for an early night were lost. Her eyes ached with the burning of the symbol yet her mind throbbed painful and alert. She stood and followed the procession out of the room.
They rode in silence to the entrance of the mineshaft. Jessica sat, watching the red dust of Mars kicked up by the wheels of the rover, frowning in deep thought. She should be amazed, she reflected, this was another planet’s dust, the rocks and dunes of the landscape she regarded with boredom were completely alien. The opportunity to see such a sight remained closed to a few hundred. Beyond her scientific mind there should at least be a primal child adventurer stirring, marvelling at the New World.
Instead the mountains ranges bored her in the way one is bored of their hometown’s streets. Paths yet unformed by the movement of many feet seemed like paths she had walked a hundred times or more. Behind these thoughts, like a constant hum of static, were the markings she could see when she was not seeing. As they closed to their destination their vision became louder, more pronounced until they stood at the entrance, Jessica, the manager, Kunk, and his bodyguard, and the markings were shouting.
The darkness called to her and her fear returned. “Has anyone been down here since?” Jessica asked, she shouted over the markings grateful that she could explain it as unfamiliarity to the private radio signals.
The manager didn’t answer. Perhaps he had shook his head in silence but in his vac-suit such a gesture was impossible to see. Clearing his throat, he said, “No, drones don’t make it any further than we already have records of and the guys refuse to enter the tunnel—”
“They think it’s haunted,” Kunk scoffed, “even when I offered anyone who went in there more money than they could possibly spend they refused.”
A bristle of annoyance struck Jessica. What someone would have to do to have enough riches to treat such sums like nothing spoke to an inhumanity Jessica could not fathom. Kunk was vermin.
“Shall we get a move on?” Kunk asked and the manager stepped forward. He removed an orb from the belt around his vac suit and with a squeeze it emitted a bright white glow. The manager’s hand fell away and the orb stayed in place. They ventured forward into the tunnel and the orb followed them, lighting their way.
The journey through the mineshaft passed in eery silence. They were, of course, free to converse, the seal keeping their air inside their suits worked to keep any noise they made inside too so it would not disturb the external silence. Yet, except for occasional grunts from Kunk grumbling about how tired he was no one dared speak a word lest they disturb the stillness.
At the end of the mineshaft gaped a hole in the forward wall to an intersecting tunnel. Jessica licked her lips, the tunnel in question. The markings had begun to speak to her, whispering her name and it took all her effort to ignore them and take in the magnitude of what lay before her. In this passage lay the first empirical proof of civilizations beyond humanity, such a discovery demanded a certain respect.
Jessica’s moment of silence was punctured by Kunk’s voice crackling in her ear through their radio signal, goading her to lead the way. Jessica turned on her heels to face Kunk, the arrogant look on his face bristled with a fear at the corner of his lips. Gratified, she smiled and nodded stepping into the passageway.
There shouldn’t have been air in the passage. Even if there had been once it would have been lost in the vacuum caused by the miner’s breach. Nevertheless, the tunnel was thick with old air, aged for millennia. Jessica’s hand itched and she went to scratch it before she remembered the futility of the gesture.
As they ventured into the tunnel, Jessica gazed at the tunnels, intent on seeing the markings in their original form. These walls were plane, she ran her hand along them, and smooth as glass. No smoother, it felt like liquid, a dense liquid she could not pass through. The ceiling stretched high above them, the light of the orb did not reach it. It must have dwarfed them fourfold.
The markings called her name, begging her to remove her helmet and she pondered, why not? Why shouldn’t she remove her helmet? It seemed the most obvious thing that the tunnel was full with air. The markings were so loud and yet they spoke to her in suggestive whispers. Salaciously licking their lips as they brought her hand to the notch on her vac suit. Her finger flipped the notch and the airtight seal hissed a breach.
Jessica closed her eyes. When the suffocation came she did not want them open. She took long breaths, desperate to prolong her death. She continued to breathe long beyond the point she should have been gasping for air. Her eyes opened and nothing had changed. Her companions in the tunnel hadn’t even turned to check on her.
As she brought her breathing back to normal, she removed her helmet and called to her comrades.
They turned and their eyes widened in horror. They calmed as they grasped, if she had not died there must be air.
“How did you know?” asked Kunk, a wary tone in his voice that sounded unnatural to him. Had the man ever been wary?
“Isn’t it obvious?” Jessica replied, she didn’t dare try to explain that the markings on the wall had told her to remove it, nor did she have any idea how she would do so. Better to feign confidence.
They stared at her a moment, nervous of some trick, but eventually they all removed their helmets and breathed in. The air tasted of sand aged upon eons of wind.
They continued their journey.
“Stop!” Jessica called and the glowing orb stopped in its tracks.
Jessica’s hand went to the wall as a high laugh escaped her lips. Running her fingers on the wall she felt the grooves which she recognised immediately.
“These are the markings from Jeremiah’s wall,” the manager said with awe in his voice.
Only Jessica fathomed how accurate this was, she could tell. Jeremiah had made identical copies of the markings. Down to the depth of the grooves, it was like they had been transposed into the medical ward’s wall.
The markings were screaming, causing her eyes to water with the terrible pain they seemed they might burst and she rubbed them with the balls of her palms to try and soothe her.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kunk said with disgust.
Jessica shot a glare at him then smiled. “Nothing, just a headache, let’s keep going.”
As they continued, she stared at the markings and as she stared she read them. She spoke in her second voice, the one hiding beneath breath, never heard but ever there. She spoke the ancient language she had only known of that day.
“What are they?” Kunk asked and when Jessica did not reply he turned to look at her whispering form. “Hey, what’s going on with you? I didn’t pay so you could babble like an idiot. I thought you were supposed to be professional. Now do what I bought you for!”
A blood curdling scream cut any chance at further conversation and the manager came barrelling past them, running back to where they came from. The glowing orb followed him in time with his panicked runs.
“Hey! Get back here!” Kunk said.
The bodyguard drew his pistol and aimed it at the retreating man.
“If he doesn’t turn back, open fire,” Kunk ordered.
A hesitation as the bodyguard understood the order, his jaw hardened and he straightened his aim. The shot rang and the glow from the orb ended. The hurried footsteps of the terrified man continued until they faded into silence.
The bodyguard turned on his own orb and lowered his pistol. He faced Mr Kunk and said without emotion, “I missed.”
Kunk’s mouth hung open in stunned silence. It only closed when the trio became aware of a presence from where the manager had come from. At the edge of the orb’s light a huge mass unfurled to its full height. The top of the mass, for it was impossible to call such a thing a head, slunk forward as it reached the tunnel’s ceiling. There were no eyes by any known definition yet Jessica felt its stare on them with a gaze of abstract intrigue. The markings were screaming, liquid streamed from her eyes as she stared at the creature.
The bodyguard raised its gun and fired, causing Jessica to blink. When she opened her eyes she peered at the three of them, from the creature’s high perspective and frowned at how pathetic they were. Bullets passed through its semi gaseous, semi solid form flinging harmlessly behind it as it encroached on the trio. Its emotions overcame Jessica, idle curiosity and amusement.
She saw herself, screaming with what remaining humanity she had, blood streaming from her eye sockets in long rivulets that stained her suit. She recalled her thoughts touching down on Mars, of looking at something familiar from an unfamiliar vantage and grimaced at how ugly and pathetic she was. Something inside her pulled her back to her own body but she ignored it, the markings enticed her, luring her further into acceptance of the thing’s primal psyche.
The creature swept away the firing bodyguard and Jessica turned remorseful as if she had done it herself. It closed on Kunk tearing him apart like a cat playing with a mouse and Jessica smiled with grim satisfaction as she pulled his arms in opposite directions.
Centuries passed as she watched her body scream, unspeakable tragedies unfurled and were forgotten as the creature’s tendrils which were now her own tendrils wrapped around her body and she panicked and wanted to go back. It was too late, the markings were too loud like an orchestra stuffing her mouth and mind with knowledge arcane and unnatural swamped her mind, overloading her senses until all turned white and those damnable markings. The blood drained from her eyes, turning her skin sallow and loose as it fell away and still she screamed, all she knew was to scream.
The name which she had gone by was gone, lost in a library of indescribable horrors. She wanted to close her eyes but could not. She wanted to shield them with her hands but she had no hands and when she moved there was no muscle to correspond to. Pain and madness like nothing she had seen before gripped her then she was lost.
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