The ship whirred to a stop. Stytis A and Stytis B opened their eyes. The lights flooded in the spacecraft’s bare interior, crashing against A and B’s clothes. Black boots and pants, white bodysuit, white mechanical masks covering the lower half of their faces. Their white eyes glowed in the shadows drawn by their hoods. Each held a briefcase in hand, weightless; the handles moving in spite of the twin’s stillness.
A lone man hovered at the exit, a long white robe almost touching the stainless steel above which he floated. “We have been expecting you, sairs.” With a snap, the twin’s eyes focused on the source of the sound. Stytis A spoke, “As you should have.”
B walked toward the man, “Useless pleasantries.”
Stytis A followed, their footsteps in sync with B. The bald floating man led the way, his fingertips pressed against each other. “We reached thirty thousand specimens; I hope this will be enough.”
“All human?” asked A.
“Of course,” replied the man.
“What preventative measures in place for staff?” asked B.
“What you recommended, everything was installed and tested two days ago.”
“How many staff?” asked A.
“Staff? A thousand?” the man’s composure shifted. “I can assure you this is all going to remain a secret as we discussed.”
“All present in the station?” asked A.
“Yes but-“
“Question, answer. Not more,” interjected B.
Stytis A and Stytis B walked through the empty stainless-steel hangar and reached a door. It did not open. B’s eyes trailed to the man. He stayed behind them, hesitant to stare at one or the other too long.
“My staff and I are good servants of the Goddess, if anything-”
A gunshot tore the man’s head clean off of his body, the splattering blood pocked B’s mask with red. A lowered their gun, the smoking barrel the size of a closed fist, still thrumming with power.
“Take the body?” asked B.
A nodded and took aim. B knelt and took the man’s hand as A fired, blasting open the wide metal door. Alarms rang through the ship, alternating purple and blue lights bathed the control room where attendants, all wearing the same long white robe as the man, had their bare feet on the cold metal floor. B walked over the torn metal, dragging the man’s headless corpse along before throwing it in the middle of the room where it sprawled over an angled blue screen. The attendants screamed.
B sighed, “Testing site nine, you have been selected…” They stopped when they realized none of the staff were listening and most were scrambling to leave through the side exits. Walking toward the man’s body, B put their briefcase on a nearby desk. The corpse started slipping because of the pooling blood but B slid it back up and threw an arm over the raised edge – for balance.
A walked to the large control panel, a wide titled screen in front of three chairs just by the bay window. Overlaid were numbers, graphs, and camera feeds but beyond the glass was one gigantic room with replica houses and restaurants, replete with people enjoying their time. Then the attendants crashed through secret doors in the walls.
B walked up to A, they held up a severed arm. “Strain B-9 injected and ready for propagation.”
A nodded, “Conditions suitable. Commence.” Without looking, A raised their gun and fired through the window.
In the midst of glittering broken glass, the severed arm flew through the air and landed in the middle of the fake village. Bouncing on a table and rolling onto the artificial grass, the arm convulsed – the bones within broke and poked through the skin and flesh, the blood darkened to a pitch-black bubbling substance. It tried to crawl toward some of the captives but quickly stopped moving entirely.
B grunted and turned away from the window. “I’ll wait on the ship.”
“No.”
A gunshot disintegrated B’s leg. With a thud, B landed on their face. Turning around, deadpan, they looked at A, “This is not protocol.”
A knelt down and opened their briefcase. Twenty syringes labelled one to twenty lay inside, neatly cradled in black foam. A pulled down a tab on the top of the briefcase, revealing a hidden compartment, this one with a single syringe. Unlabeled. “We need a different propagation method.”
“Stytis techna are inert,” said Stytis B. “We need the ship to repair my leg.” Their voice had no trace of urgency despite the viscous black blood pouring from their leg severed halfway down the thigh.
“True,” said A as they stood, looming over B, their cold bright eyes piercing through the shadows. “Full reversal of stytis condition and temporary reversal of techna condition are required.” A knelt next to B who followed the needle with their eyes and pressed on the mechanical mask’s black pressure points at the angle of B’s jaw, decoupling it from their face. A and held B’s head down as they plunged the syringe in their neck. Slipping through the skin and extending once inside the flesh, the needle dug its way past the dark threads lining B’s body to reach the vertebrae. The metal scrapped against the bone as A angled the syringe but it finally found its mark.
B lay there silent and inert as the liquid pouring from their stump turned from a viscous black substance to a red liquid. B’s breathing accelerated. The glow from their eyes faded. They looked up, “Ah… Ahera… Get me out of here.” B looked down at their leg, “Fuck! Ahera, A! A! What are you doing? What’s—?”
A pulled out a syringe from the foam and tapped the glass with their nail.
“Ahera, no! What the fuck!” B pressed against the cold metal floor, their hands soon coated with blood. “It’s me! Look! What are you doing? It’s me! It’s Berin! Ahera… A…?”
A knelt down and pulled on Berin’s remaining leg, sliding them closer. Berin howled in pain but A was indifferent.
Through the tears, Berin looked at Ahera. The wrinkles that had begun to form around their eyes from the smiles, the spark in their hazel eyes – they were gone. “There has to be—” Berin felt their throat dry up, “you have to be in there! It’s me! Fuck, just look at me!”
A spun the syringe in their hands like a dagger and slammed down. Berin caught A’s hand. Blood made the grip slick. Berin tried to speak but all they managed were sputtered gasps and grunts as they struggled to keep A’s hand at bay. Berin glared at A’s eyes. The glowing white eyes flicked to Berin’s and that was all A needed. Freeing their wrist from the blood-soaked palm, A stabbed Berin’s chest with the syringe.
Berin cried out, their throat raw from the screaming. A removed the needle and started to rise when Berin grabbed their face with both hands, “I know there’s a little part of you in there that can hear this. I don’t blame you. I forgive you. I love you.” A stood up, Berin’s hands slipped away and fell by their sides.
A turned away, closed their briefcase and walked back to the ship, face half covered in Berin’s blood. They did not slow, or say anything. The only thing they left were the fading sound of their shoes striking metal. Berin sobbed on the steel floor. The modifications done to their body would keep them alive far longer than was merciful.
Holes opened on Berin’s skin, rippling quivering black holes gathering together in clusters on their arms and leg and face. Black and white spores like ashes shot from the openings like locusts. They spread and within seconds the air was thick with them, spilling from the broken window onto the staff and the “specimens.” Scores of them fell to their knees, coughing. Their skin and flesh warped; the bones snapped loudly as the spores altered their shapes from within. With each passing second, they looked less and less human, their limbs turning into black knives and their faces robbed of eyes and mouths.
Berin, still awake and aware, felt their ribs burst through their back, sharpening and turning into spidery legs that propped up the rest of their mangled body. In the ashen haze, the legs shakily moved Berin further into the station, toward the mindless beasts with knives for limbs and fang-filled maws for faces.
The test succeeded.
-
A ship whirred to a stop. Floodlights illuminated the ash-filled box of steel. Armored and armed, ten rustlers emerged from the belly of the small craft, their protective gear a mishmash of what they managed to scavenge from their victims. “What’s with this?” A rustler smudged the ashen spore between his gloved fingers.
“Who gives a shit?” said the one looking down the sights of her rifle. Rustler rifles were usually covered in grime or moss or worse left to fester in the joints that spun the flat barrels, but not hers – all she thought about was cleaning the gun once they were back on board. “We vent this and we’re good. Need the storage space, the last thing they’ll care about is some dust.” She wore a mask with exposed metallic gears, they spun and clicked as she breathed – again, the first thing on her mind was cleaning the cog’s teeth the moment the mission was done.
A rasping wind current pulled the ash away from the rustlers. They all aimed their rifles at the sound, the lights from their shoulder-mounted crystal foci illuminating a blown-out metal door. “Not liking the look of this, boss,” said a rustler.
“Want your next dose of aethiar today? You go first,” she barked. They moved in formation into the control room, a headless three-limbed corpse hung from the ceiling by its one remaining hand, the white robe the man wore in life now shredded and caked with dried blood. Tiny black critters scurried beneath the fabric, peering with tiny eyes from the tears.
“Nope, not doing this, I’ll be on the ship,” said a rustler before turning around. Before their leader could say anything, the rustler cursed beneath her breath. She looked down and backed away from the mound of dark ashes she had kicked. “Did that thing just… cry out?”
“The fuck are you talking about?” asked the leader who turned back to get a closer look but as she did a loud click came from their ship. “Gehrem? Gehrem, answer.” The pilot was quiet.
“We should leave.”
“Fine,” said the leader, “now, everyone.”
A scythe-like black blade swung clean through the leader’s gun, slicing through her arm and chest. The other rustlers scattered, screaming. Skittering blades across ceiling and walls were a staccato prelude to showers of blood. Terrified shrieks were cut short with the sound of fangs gnashing bones and flesh alike. Four scurried into the dark ash-filled unknown of the station.
Altogether they huddled in a corridor away from their ship and the control room. One of them had lost their mask. Within seconds, he fell to his knees, thick blackened saliva poured from his mouth until his throat was clogged with it. Struggling for air, he struck his chest harder and harder until a bloody black mass tore out of his mouth. “Shit.” His bones snapped and twisted and darkened. The last three rustlers ran further in the station as their friend’s bones burst from his body and stabbed everything around it like a spheroid spider web. Not all of these bones were ones he had only minutes prior.
Crystals dim, the rustlers hurried along the streets of the reconstructed village, one of them kicking away a strange grey appendage crawling along with five short blades in the blackened grass. “We’re so fucked…” said one.
“Shut the fuck up,” said another, wincing. “I’m just going to burn them all down.” She lowered her rifle and in her empty palm conjured a ball of flame. One of the others tried to pull her hand down but she elbowed him away. “Hey! Come get this!” The spellcaster tossed the fireball toward the broken bay window.
The arcing flame illuminated countless spider-like creatures clinging to the walls, beady eyes numberless like stars. At the window two smaller creatures raced for the fireball, both tearing at each other, slicing through each other’s bodies with claws and spikes and bones to get closer to the spell. One of them ripped a limb off the other and used it to rip it in half. The defeated monster spasmed on the edge of the broken window, black viscous tentacles from its wounds grasping at each other to reform the beast. The victorious monster leapt from the window and its mouth – a kinder word for the tooth-filled membrane that flared open with a shower of black droplets – gobbled the flames. Torn apart within the creature, the spell’s orange light coursed through its insides and filled its extremities.
It landed on the ground in front of the rustlers. A shrill cry came from its belly as its legs struck the ground in a delighted dance before hurling a bone spear right through the spellcaster’s arm. The last rustlers ran further and further in. The one they left behind torn literally limb from limb as the creature glowed with bright colors with each stab into its victim.
A breathless run later, the last two rustlers stopped just outside what looked like a clearing. Whisper-shouting at each other, they knelt along a wall, “How do we get out? There has to be a way.”
“We’re dead. We’re so unbelievably dead – we’re just prolonging the inevitable.” The rustler stood up and walked into the clearing. The other tried to hold him back but she was too late.
In the middle of the clearing was the only working streetlight. It lit up a table set up with two chairs. White plates with a light dusting of ash lay on the black wood. The rustler reached for the closest chair when something moved in the shadows. The ash, stagnant under the light moved like paint underwater. A snarl sent a ripple through the black and white flakes. Paralyzed by fear, the rustler stood still, watching the creature advance.
Propped up by ten blade-like legs, the monster moved shakily, the top of its body rounder and thicker than its limbs. Frayed scraps of black and white cloth were pinned between the joints and the places where the blades met cracking grey skin. Its lips were gone, uneven fang-like teeth dug into its flesh as it absently gnawed at the air. Its eyes, nothing more than white beads held by viscous grey threads in cavernous sockets, scanned the man. A grumble shook the flakes around it, “Why?” The voice echoed through the clearing as if coming from each individual flake.
The man fell back and scrambled away. Bursting from the shadows, the female rustler opened fire, the spinning flat barrel of her rifle blasting molten lead toward the creature. It shrieked. Its legs skittered about, struggling to keep the body up. With a thud, the beast fell. She rushed the to man mumbling to himself.
“Get on your feet…” she grunted as she pulled him up, “I’m not dying here.”
“No,” the voice came from the flakes around them, “no die.” The woman turned round and fired. Bolts of molten lead ripped into the creature, its body trying to get up or move away but each shot pressed it into the black grass. It slowed. She shot three more times, a bullet for the head and two for the body. The thing’s limbs clattered together one last time on the grass. The blades unmoving.
She gritted her teeth behind her mask, her breath shaky. Pushing away from the table and the streetlight, they ran. Quietly enough, they made it past the bodies of their friends slowly shredded from within. Their screams slowly, too slowly, becoming less and less human.
The beady eyes along the large enclosure around the replica village closed one by one. In the dark, their shoulder-mounted illumination crystals guided them back to the ship. In the control room, the body hanging from its lone arm slowly spun on itself as it swayed from side to side. Their ship was a short sprint away. He whispered, “Slow, we have to go slow.”
She grabbed his arm and ran. Shadows moved closer, blades in the dark struck the steel of the ceiling and walls, piercing right through. The sharpened bones drew closer, fast. Leaping over mounds of black honeycombs, the rustlers emerged from the control room. In a blaze that rocked the entire station, their ship exploded.
The rustler let her rifle fall as she screamed at the top of her lungs. The man sunk to his knees.
In front of the fire, Stytis A stood, hood up, their dark hair flying wildly with the wind born from the flames. Their glowing white eyes scanned the two rustlers, their patched-together armor, their stolen masks made of a blend of metal, crystal, and cloth. Modern, efficient, unlike the mechanical mask of their leader. A raised their pistol, the barrel thrumming with energy paired with a faint blue light.
“Do you hear a song, a voice, or nothing at all?” asked A, words void of emotion.
“Nothing,” said the ashes, a weariness to their voice. “Say nothing.”
A fired, blowing off the man’s arm. “A voice!” He screamed as he held onto the stump, he shouted over and over before slumping to the floor. A’s eyes snapped to the other rustler. “You?”
“Nothing,” she lied.
A tilted her head, her glowing white eyes locked on the remaining rustler. The woman dropped down, taking hold of her rifle.
“No,” said the ash, “do not!” they screeched. “Shut up!” screamed the rustler. She pulled the trigger but a flurry of black blades ripped her rifle into pieces. A finger gone, she recoiled from the pain, holding her hand as she starred at A. She peered over her shoulder at the mass of shadows coiling in the dark. “What sick fucking game are you playing?”
“No game,” replied A, “testing. You too hear a voice. Good.” Stytis A turned back and walked toward a ship uncloaking next to the flaming carcass of the rustler’s spacecraft. The rustler screamed a litany of insults at A and a blade bore through her chest, yanking her into the shadows.
-
More than a hundred years after it had first done so, Stytis A’s ship whirred to a stop. They were not alone. Walking ahead of A, a woman dressed in black with long auburn hair looked at the empty steel hangar. With a delicate unfurling of her fingers, an orb of light materialized on her palm.
A series of shrieks and rasping cries came from the deeper into the station. Thrashing rocked the floor and the walls, a singular mass of black pitch with limbs like swords and spears crawled through the broken bay window of the control room. Its countless maws and eyes shifted over its tar-like skin, rearranging themselves to get a better look at the woman. A, quiet, listened to the overlapping screams dissonantly rising with wrath born from rabid hunger.
Something shot from the beast’s body, a black bone spear that shattered before it came anywhere near the woman. The creature’s limbs sliced at the floor and walls and ceiling before firing more blades and spears. All of the projectiles broke apart midflight and each fell to the corroded steel floor before crawling back to the main body.
“Excellent work, Stytis A,” said the woman. She smiled, “A good strain after all. B-9, is it?”
“Yes, Mother,” replied Stytis A. “I used Stytis B to accelerate the propagation.”
“And it’s still alive? How many have you fed it?” The woman walked nonchalantly towards the hulking beast flinging more and more bones to try and skewer her.
“I have lost count. Thousands.” A’s jaw tightened. They were not wearing a mask; the ashes had all disappeared. Everything that had lived on that station, everything that had been brought to station, was now part of the black mass blindly tearing at the woman’s invisible shield. Nothing but wrath, bone, muscle, and bio-engineered war machine lived there. Whatever humanity it housed before in each body, whatever individual thought could have occurred within the station, it had all been devoured by the beast’s ceaseless hunger.
The woman was within arm’s reach. With a series of loud muffled thuds and cracks, the formless core of the creature opened wide revealing a maw filled with broken bones for teeth that descended on the woman. She blinked and the beast exploded- ripped apart from the inside out. Splattered on the walls, the black substance painstakingly coalesced back together, slowly. “Terrific work, Stytis A.” She did not look back but if she did, she would have seen the tears streaming down A’s cheeks, the flickering of the white glow in their eyes.
“Now, you asked for a reward,” said the woman, amused, “what does a low-level utility techna strain… desire?”
“Make me…” said A, their voice trembling, “a part of it.”
The woman turned back, her light green eyes scanning A’s face. A’s eyes were turned away from the woman, their lips pursed and their brow furrowed. Tears ran down their neck and faded into the cloth of their black shirt.
A smile grew on the woman’s lips, not a twisted or dark smile – the woman was… moved. “I was told your story.” She walked to A. Putting her hands behind her back she leaned forward, trying to get A to look at her. “How long has it been, since you started feeling again?”
“More than forty-thousand days, Mother,” replied A, their eyes cast straight down. “I apologize.”
“Oh no. This is unexpected but a very important data point. Now I wonder if Stytis One and Two developed the same way,” she straightened her back. A plume of glowing blue smoke trailed from the ship, transporting a small rectangular case. Propped open, the case released a cluster of white wisps clasped around a glass vial filled with a black liquid. Taking the vial in hand, the woman turned to A. “You understand what will happen, don’t you?”
A brushed a tear away, “Yes. I’d rather it be this way, Mother.”
“You know that I never chose to be called Mother? It was another independent strain like yours that started that, and now you all do it,” she chuckled. “The least I can do is make sure you understand that you are now giving up higher cognitive function. Once you merge with strain B-9, there will be no going back, and once I attune B-9 to the choir, all that you are will cease to exist.”
“I understand.” Despondent, A looked to the bubbling viscous mass pulling itself together at the edge of the control room.
With a wave of the woman’s fingers, the black substance in the vial rose through the air. It thinned into a spike, then a single strand of hair. “You will usher in the promised dawn. Until then, rest. The choir’s hymn is a beautiful one. I made sure of it.” A flick of the wrist sent the black liquid straight through skin and flesh and bone. It bore through the walls of A’s heart. The mangled dark threads in their body spasmed and shivered.
Ahera felt the pitch beneath their skin – the darkness that coated their insides for over a hundred years, it seeped from their pores and their eyes and their mouth. The first thing that returned was pain, it would be the last too. Their organs failed one by one, no longer held together by what spilled around them.
The woman stood in silence as Ahera grasped their chest and fell to their knees. She took a deep breath then whistled. In a split second the gathering mass in the control room rushed like a black wave toward Ahera. It crashed into them with the sound of bones and hardened skin crushing flesh into paste and pulp.
Ahera ceased to exist. All that existed was the hunger and then the hymn.
-
Long after time lost any meaning, a spell coursed through the creature’s body, it struck the scattered and churned neurons that once made up Ahera and Beryn. It would be a failure, what the spellcaster attempted, but for a moment imperceptible to a human mind Ahera and Beryn had one last chance. Free from the hymn and the hunger, free from the pain of the last hundred years, in a forest clearing drenched by torrential rain, they found each other’s arms.
The spellcaster swore loudly and slicked his black hair back. Purple lightning faded from his limbs as the rain washed away the last of the creature.