The airlock doors cycled shut and I let my head sag against the wall for a few moments. The feeling of no longer being dangled over a pit was something I was going to revel for a bit. Seeing the Earth had really crammed the importance of what I had done to me. Virgil Station was no longer in an unstable orbit. It was no longer going to plunge through the upper atmosphere like the fist of a furious god. It was no longer going to smash into one of those massive, blue-blue oceans and create a tsunami the likes of which our poor planet hadn't seen for centuries.
But that left one big question.
"What now?" Lucas asked. His voice crackled in my ear - loud in my helmet. I grabbed said helmet and yanked it off, breathing the station air. I had gotten into the air lock that was on the second level down from Habitation -- Lucas had said that it was PsyOps.
"What does PsyOps do?" I asked.
"It's a fancy term for rest and recreation, La- Bae," Lucas corrected himself. Halfway. My brow furrowed.
"Bae?"
"I'm not callin' ya Beatrice. I'm not paid by the syllable," Lucas said, sounding dry. "PsyOps has a lot of recreational shite. Immersion Rooms, some restaurants, a null-G pool, that kind of stuff. But it also has some working food dispensers, if you're getting hungry."
At that, my belly rumbled. I made a face.
"Way to remind me," I said, pushing away from the airlock wall. "I'll get something to eat, and we can work out what to do next."
The airlock doors opened to reveal a broad, welcoming corridor. The walls were painted a pale blue and the ceiling was decorated with slowly moving cloud motifs. The lights were bright and yet not harsh. Instead, they diffused a warm yellowy glow through the whole place, like sunlight. The only problem was that rather than a soothing breeze, the air was filled with the feted stench of rotting meat. I gagged and put the back of my hand against my mouth to try and block it out. "What is
that
?" I whispered.
"I don't know, Bae. Last I heard from PsyOps was that the Tesc were fuckin everything up, like they did on tha rest of the station."
I nodded slowly, then stepped back and grabbed my helmet. With it snapped back into place, I could only smell myself, but the memory of the scent clung to the inside of my nostrils like a fine film. I wanted to blow my nose. Instead, I walked forward and past several doors that led into open meeting rooms that had a wistful, forlorn air to them. One had a rotting meal set out beside a bench with a book dropped on the ground. Another had some clothes left behind - whoever had been changing or naked inside had run off and left them behind. A third had a single severed hand, still clutching what looked like a baseball bat that had been bent in half.
Then I came to an intersection - more like a courtyard, actually. It was two stories, with the wrap around balcony overhead leading to yet more stores and rooms. The lower level had three fountains in the middle. Each one was choked with bodies. Feet faced me and arms were placidly laid across backs. Heads were forced under the slowly burbling water. Hair floated and tangled together like chunks of sea weed. But the thing that made me want to scream and scream and scream and never stop...were the shoes.
Fifty. Maybe sixty sets. Neatly taken off, paired off, then set to the ground. Almost a hundred people had walked in here, quietly taken off their shoes, then as a group, jammed their heads into the fountain. Their bodies had started to tighten and rot - and I could see the faint squirm of bugs underneath the skin. I stepped slowly back.
"
Jesus
..." I whispered.
Tink tink tink tink
.
The sound - not unlike a piece of bone rapping against a metal wall - echoed from the mall.
I gulped. "Lucas. Go through the networks and find the security footage of this place. Find out what happened." I backed towards one of the stores - a large, cheerful sign overhead announcing that it was a
TempleSoft Toy's For Tots
store. The interior showed large squishy stuffed animals in neat rows on shelves, their button eyes looking out at the mass suicide with clear curiosity. There were several blocks strewn across the ground, each one unmarked. I stepped over them carefully - but my nearness caused one to whir and open up, revealing it was a multi-modular playset. It started to construct a replica of Virgil Station and play a cheery tune.
"Checking," Lucas said.
I crouched down near the corner of the room and tried to get my breathing under control. The
tink tink tink
noise was growing closer. My ears filtered some of the echos out and I breathed slowly in and held the breath.
Tink tink tink
. It was coming from above me. Whatever it was was in the balcony
right
overhead. I looked at the ceiling, trying to gauge the thickness of it. Then I heard a quiet sigh - a very human sigh, as bizarre as that sounded. Then the
tink tink tink
faded away. I remained still for a few more minutes, letting my heart rate slow.
"I think it's gone," I whispered.
"Still working on the camera footage," Lucas said.
"Keep at it." I stood and walked forward.
"I love you!"
I screamed and leaped away from the shelf of stuffed animals. A large teddy bear was looking up at me, it's eyes shining as it cocked it's head. It spread its tiny arms. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
I lowered my shotgun, panting heavily. "Fucking- Lucas, these are smart toys, aren't they?"
"You're
big
and smart!" the teddy bear said. "I am not actually a person. I'm just a toy."
"Ah, those fuckers," Lucas muttered. "Teddy Fazbear fucking scared me, even when I was a kid."
I shook my head at the bear. "I'm not a child," I said. "The shotgun and spacesuit gives it away, doesn't it?"
The teddy bear nodded solemnly. "I am sorry. But since you are an adult, I can tell you that the Teddy Fazbear semi-sentient talking bear toy is a perfect toy for a new mother." He sounded so cheery I could almost forget the pile of corpses outside the store. "We can help take care of your baby, and tell you if anything goes wrong. All yours for only three hundred United Nations credits - but you get us fifty percent off using TSPN!"
"TS...what?" I asked.
"TempleSoft Promissory Notes," Lucas said, casually. "The longer you work with TempleSoft, the more your TSPN to credit ratio goes up. Mine was at 1.5. If it was at 1.2, I'd have quit this bloody job..."
I shook my head. I was starting to think it was a good thing I didn't remember Earth. I turned away from Teddy Fazbear and started for the door.
"Achieve death, Beatrice!" Teddy said, cheerily.
I spun around and used my shotgun to bash the bear off the rack. I stomped its head and felt the flimsy plastic endoskeleton crunch under my nanoclad heel. I smashed my foot down again and again and again, until it was nothing more than a mangle of metal, wires, crystal and smoldering fur. I stepped away from the mangled mess, then glared around at the rest of the store. "Any of you else want to say creepy shit?" I snarled.
The bears were silent.
Once I came into the mall again, I looked for a map and found it - blown up big in the corner of the room. There were several dozen TempleSoft brand restaurants. I headed for the nearest one, taking a broad corridor. I would have been more comforted to find signs of battle, or other haunting reminders that humanity had once thrived and walked through this place like the population of a small city. Instead, I walked through a corridor so utterly clean and litter free that it only accentuated how
busy
this place
should
have been.
My mind drifted back to those shoes, lined out. As if everyone was going to get out of the pool. Instead, maggots were eating their fat, chewing underneath their skin. A convulsive shudder tried to crawl from my ankles to my forehead. The next mall had no fountains. Instead, it had what looked like a jungle gym that had been designed just big enough to make adults think they might be able to play on it - but there was a glowing blue fence surrounding the false grass that the gym was built on. The shimmering letters that slipped and twisted along the blueness made it clear:
Kidz Zone.
Four children sat on the swing sets.
They were all dead, but it took me a few seconds of looking at them to figure it out. I saw the tiny bloody dibbles coming from their ears as I walked a circle around the blue fence. I stepped hesitantly over the fence -- but it didn't set up an alarm. I came closer to the corpses and saw they too were slowly rotting, their bodies stiff. I saw that each one had a set of foot prints in the grass behind them, leading to one of the cafes I had planned to eat at. My eyes followed the prints and I tensed.
Four people sat in the cafe, at a round table. They were stock still, but their skin didn't look drawn and greyish. They breathed. They were
alive
. I walked forward, my shotgun at the ready, and the door hissed open and let me into the cafe itself. I was so glad for the helmet - it made me feel secure, even if it was only a thin pane of glass and plastic. I could breathe myself, and not the rot of the corpses of children.
The four people were a mixture of genders and races. A black man, a white woman, a pink haired androgynous person who could have been anything, and an older Asian woman with a strong, mannish chin. They were seated stock still, their faces blank, their hands clasping tea cups. The liquid within looked like it had cooled and concealed into a muck that was as drinkable. As I stood in the doorway, I saw the face of the white woman's face was streaked with tears. She breathed in ragged breaths. Her hands shook with tiny, barely perceptible motions.
Suddenly, each of the people pulled out tiny things. The white girl pulled a screw driver. The tip was black and studded with hardened globules. She put it into the cup and stirred it. The Asian woman had a knitting needle. The black man had a pen. Each one was caked with gore.
I wanted to throw up.
"He's coming," the white woman hissed.
"Kill us," the black man wheezed. He sounded like he could barely get the words out between his lips.
Tick tick tick
.
"Run," the pink haired androgyne whined.
Tick tick tick
.
I stepped backwards, then ran out into the mall itself. I tried to tell where the ticking sound was coming from - but it seemed to come from everywhere. It had been on the second floor back in the toy shop. Run. Run, that was what the pink haired one had said.
Run
. My mind flashed to the people drowned in the pool. The killed kids. I turned and I ran - my heart in my throat, panic rushing through me. Whatever that
thing
was, it had made people kill themselves and each other. If it saw me, who knew what-
