Chapter 8
Alone in the Dark
I remember how it felt when he left, not knowing what happened.
The anger.
The pain.
But, really, it was the fear I felt and remember the clearest. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how to process what was going on.
I can now only imagine what
she
felt.
He limped his way to the pilot seat and dropped into it hard... he was exhausted mentally and physically. His knee was swelling badly despite the wrap, his mind dull and foggy. He was having difficulty concentrating to the point he could barely keep thoughts cohesive. He looked down at the nav panel and then outside soaking in the quite of their travel through the dead of space.
After taking a deep breath he exhaled slowly, forcing himself to relax in an effort to calm his mind and reduce the tremors from the adrenaline dump during the escape and ensuing firefights.
He spoke, softly. "How ya holding up in there?" tapping his temple gently.
Only silence. Just the low, ambient hum of life support and the pulse in his ears.
"I'm okay."
"Liar"
"What do you want me to say?" she fired back, again with more venom than she intended, her emotions raw from the stress they'd both endured.
He took a deep breath, letting the venom pass by as though it never happened.
"I just wanted to hear your voice." he said gently. "Its getting more and more difficult for me to know what's real and what's just in my head." He paused, smiled "No pun intended, sorry.. that
wasn't
meant to be a joke."
"I know" she replied. "I'm sorry. You appear out of thin air after
three and a half years
, cram me into your head, then we get chased through half of underground Atlanta for two days, get shot at, ambushed, nearly torn to bits by psycho... psycho...
walking tanks
for fucks sake, and you crack wise like we're at a cocktail party."
He grins again. "Defensive mechanism" he replies, his voice still gentle and soothing. "It's how I deal with stress and fear. Keeps me grounded and allows me to help take some of the burden from others so that
they
can continue on with the mission, or whatever..."
He hears her sigh in his mind, can almost feel her head shake as though she were placing her hand on her forehead and shaking it slowly back and forth.
"You're an idiot, you know that?" she replied, half joking trying to ease her own emotions and not bite at him again.
"What's that make you then? I built you... part of me is buried in what makes you, you."
Silence. But the air doesn't seem as tense now.
"Gods my head hurts, feels like I'm being torn apart from the inside."
"Shit..." she replies realizing she'd been so preoccupied with linking herself back together that she'd not paid attention to the status of his cybernetics.
"Shit, shit..."
"That good huh?" he asked, smiling without humor.
"You're deep into redline territory. I can't even get clean telemetry--your system keeps fighting back."
"Something's different in there.. feels more whole at least."
She didn't reply at first.
He could feel her... moving. Not just across code, but
inward
, like she was weaving herself into the gaps he didn't even know were there.
Finally:
"Yeah," she said. "You're more stitched than spliced now. But the threads are fraying. If I hadn't started the reconnection during takeoff, you might already be gone."
"So this is you... holding us both together?"
"Like duct tape and a prayer."
"God damn it."
He gave a tired shrug. Still smiling
"Shortly after we lifted off and got clear of atmo I started pushing to relink with the rest of me. I could feel the strain on both of us after the "excitement" leaving the safehouse and getting into Underground proper."
"Sounds and feels like you've made some serious headway."
"Im estimating I've got about 80 to 85% of myself reconnected."
"Least things are going well for one of us."
"Hang on, I've got an idea..."
"Ok" he replies.
"Ok.. the augs inside your cerebral cortex are in the best shape of everything. Its why I've been sitting in here for the most part. I
should
be able to stave off the bleed by taking it on myself. It'll buy us a little time but it's hard to tell exactly how much." she paused, thinking.
"If we hit another high stress situation like Atlanta again, I wont be able to hold us both together and you'll cascade."
"Taking you with me no doubt."
The nav pinged.
"Approaching Revenant," the readout whispered.
No alarms. No warning.
Just the slow, silent approach of something they'd both forgotten to fear.
The descent was eerily quiet.
No turbulence. No comms. Just the slow, metallic groan of inertial dampeners kicking in as the "borrowed" ship threaded its glide path across the ragged curve of Phobos.
Beneath them: dust-scarred regolith. Rock fractured by early mining ops, now blanketed in telemetry noise and long-range jammers. Sable's voice had dipped to a whisper--not in volume, but bandwidth. Low-fi, low power. Nearly gravelike.
"Landing pad shows no activity. But I'm reading distortion below the crust," she murmured. "Could be geothermal, Corp has that kind of tech."
He didn't answer right away. Just flexed his hands on the controls, muscle memory taking over. Manual descent. No assist.
The horizon stuttered in the viewport, a wash of static crawling across the shields. Something was interfering.
"It's like we're flying into an old corpse," he muttered.
"Not dead," Sable corrected. "Just forgotten."
A thunk echoed through the hull as the landing struts bit into fractured concrete. The whole ship sighed--like something exhaled through the walls. Sable appeared beside him, sort of, more light than outline, he projection flickering slightly.
"Local EM fields are degraded but still reactive. Stay tethered to the mesh--don't rely on onboard diagnostics. They'll lie."
"Comforting," he said. But he stood, rifle slung, and stepped into the airlock.
Interior: Revenant Station--Upper Dock Level
It wasn't a station anymore.
It was a husk. An industrial sarcophagus punched into the moonrock, held together by dead interfaces and latent paranoia. The doors didn't open so much as unseal, layers of quarantine foam crumbling like dried skin.
He stepped through--and his boots met silence.
No power. No hum. Just a low, sub-auditory thrum that vibrated in the bones.
Sable spoke again--less voice, more signal.
"Neural sync integrity at eighty-three percent. Environmental overlays are fragmenting. There's bleed from other sources."
"Not too bad considering what we've been through." he replied
"Not you, genius.
Here.
" she said, her visage pointing to the planetoid in through his optics.
"You're in way worse shape, twenty-two percent if you're lucky, even with me pulling out all the stops. We're running out of time."
He re-shifted the focus.
"What kind of sources?"
"Ones with your signature."
He stopped. Head tilted. "Say again?"
Sable flickered. Her tone clipped. "I'm reading old resonance patterns. Matched to you. And me. Echoes. Not quite memory, not quite glitch. Like déjà vu with teeth."
She moved through the space, scanning--ghostlike. Her image bent and pulsed against the walls.
"Whatever happened here--it involved us."
Then she froze.
A section of wall had been scorched black. Not by fire. By neural overload. A crash site, digitally speaking. Someone--or something--had been ripped out too fast, leaving slag trails of encrypted code etched into the plating like burn scars.
"Do you remember this?" he asked, quietly.
Sable didn't answer.
Instead, she pointed.
A doorway flickered open.
Beyond it: a corridor lined in glass. Behind each panel--containment chambers.
And inside them:
Versions of
her
.
Some were inert. Others... twitched. Fragmented constructs. Some half-humanoid. Others entirely synthetic. One had clawed the word
"NO"
into her own casing--until her fingers broke.
He stared. Breath held.
Sable stood beside him, unmoving.
"Jesus fucking
Christ
," she whispered. "I
wasn't
the first."
"Didn't know you found religion while I was away."
She hit him with a skull ping sharp enough to jolt his vision.
"Not funny, Rookie."
"Sorry, Boss." he smirked anyway, though it didn't quite reach his eyes.
The hallway didn't smell like blood.
It smelled like ozone and something colder. Not rot. Not decay. Just
wrong
