[Original Novel] Pressure: First Encounter, Part 6

^{Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5}

“What does it want? It’s been in here four or five times that I can recall, disguised as someone different every time.” Eliot shook his head. “Those were illusions. It was never physically inside the station with us. But it badly wants to be, and I think I know why.” That caught their attention.

Before Leo or Angie could ask, he gestured towards the dream imager sitting beside his bed. “That’s not everything, I think. It’s one half of the weapon we saw in my dream. I don’t know if we have the other half, but it obviously thinks we do.” Leo started in with fear evident in his tone. “But it never tried to hurt us before, just trick us into surfacing. I don’t think it means us any harm.”

In retrospect it was true, the creature had focused up until recently on convincing isolated crew members to break protocol and head topside. Eliot’s episode outside the airlock was the first time it had shown openly malicious intent. “We’re down to two days battery and less than four days oxygen, and I think he knows. We’re no good to him dead, he needs live brains to carry the signal.”

Angie cocked her head. “Him?” He sighed. “Him. Her. It. Whatever. It needs living brains between here and the surface to get a signal topside. But we know all its tricks now, there’s no way it’ll get one of us to surface at this point, and that makes us as useless to it as if we were dead. All that’s left is to finish us off and wait for the NOAA to send replacements, so it can try again.”

“Who says those were lasers? Could’ve been anything.” Leo and Eliot had spent the better part of an hour following the EVA arguing animatedly over possible methods to kill the creature. “They sure as hell looked like our comms lasers from what I saw.”

Angie paced in the background while Nate sat hunched over at the table refusing to acknowledge the discussion. “Okay, so how are you gonna lift it out of the trench so that it’s in range of the array? On battery power, the sub lasers might just give it a blister.”

He seemed to enjoy playing the contrarian foil, even under these circumstances. It no longer frustrated Eliot, instead he’d come to value the moderating influence. “I still say we dump the reactor on it. Not as if it’s doing us any good.” The evidence was all around them. Several days on emergency power had depleted the battery bank to near empty and the air storage indicator had read zero since morning.

Only the fact that the Arygo had been engineered over spec kept them alive. “You keep saying we should dump the reactor on it, and I keep telling you we have nothing that could budge it. The reactor’s what, five hundred feet from the edge? And it’s at least a dozen tons negatively buoyant. The minisub is a backup, not even sufficient for research needs, it’s a glorified elevator between here and topside. It couldn’t tug a mussel off the hull.”

It was by this point a very familiar feeling, to be completely out of options. Nate wouldn’t eat. Angie had given up pleading with him when he told her the average human could survive for a month without food and it was doubtful whether they had even a day left.

“We could try talking to it.” Nate jolted upright. Angie took notice only because of Nate’s reaction. When it became apparent that Nate had nothing to say and was in fact waiting anxiously for Leo to continue, he did: “We keep discussing how to kill it. I dunno if it can hear us while we’re awake or only while we’re asleep or both, but look at us from it’s perspective. Who knows how long it’s been lying down there, crippled and alone? The argyro crews have probably been it’s first contact with intelligent life in what, centuries? More? And all they do is flip out and think up ways to kill it.”

Eliot interjected: “He’s the one trying to kill us!” Nervous glances ricocheted through the chamber. “I’m not sure. For the most part it’s just been trying to trick one of us into surfacing. It does seem to be getting desperate lately, but who here can say that they didn’t at least give passing thought to killing it the moment they first saw it on the imager?"

Another volley of worried looks were exchanged. Angie recalled that moment in the sub when she’d received soundings of the body. Leo was dead on, something primal in her had convulsed at the sight. Almost instinctively.

“Cute, Leo. Enough devil’s advocate. We need to start seriously discussing how to get out of here before-” Nate, who’d gradually settled into his chair while Leo spoke, once again bolted upright and interrupted: “You said it. You named him. I know what you’re going to say but you named him just now and that’s exactly what we dealin’ with here.”

Eliot cradled his brow in one hand, from which Angie inferred that he knew something she didn’t about Nate’s meaning. It became clear before long. “And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

All eyes were locked on Nate, unblinking and glazed over in confusion. “He ain’t done shit ‘cept lie to us whole time we been down here, right? If he wanted to talk he coulda said hi, first contact with an alien race, erryone’s happy. But he didn’t, right from the get go all he does is trick us. Ain’t any honest intention in that, just one illusion after the next. And why not? He’s the father of all lies, even appeared to Angie as a serpent. Ain’t that right Angie?”

An awkward silence stretched thin the air between them. “Nate, I don’t think Leo literally meant that-” Nate started forward and pounded the table. “Don’t. Don’t you patronize me Eliot. You done this from the moment I set foot on this tub, from when you saw the Bible in my bag and when I prayed over our first dinner. I dealt with guys like you erry step of the way up the ladder, fags who thought I wouldn’t do my job right ‘cause I’m a man of faith. Well here we are, maybe three miles above the devil or whatever’s so close to the devil you can’t call it nothin’ else. Now’s not the time, Eliot. Now’s not the time to call me the crazy one for believin’ in what’s right down there in the trench, same as what it says in scripture. I see you tryin’ to find some place to stop me and tell me to shut my fool mouth but I ain’t gonna. You sit there and listen till I’m done. We seen it in the dream, it fell from space just like scripture said, and God sealed him away in the deep until the stars are right. Well, maybe now the stars are right, Eliot. Maybe that’s why we down here and got no choice left but to go up. We ain’t here to keep it trapped. We here to set it free, so the end can get started, just like in my dream. We gotta set it free so all that’s written can come to pass.”

He stood absolutely rigid for a few moments following the end of his tirade, possibly to gauge reactions or just for added effect. Either way he didn’t wait for questions. Angie, Leo and Eliot were left speechless, all eyes on Nate as he climbed up into the observatory.

The hatch was left slightly ajar but it was plain to everyone that he wasn’t interested in company. The remaining three parted ways. Angie spent the next two hours going over the dream recordings while Eliot went to manually measure the remaining oxygen, and Leo prepared supper.

She couldn’t figure out when he got the chance to do it, but when Angie opened the hatch to her bunk she found a small written note from Eliot which said simply “Keep an eye on him”. An implicit alliance. Perhaps Leo was given a similar note. It wasn’t clear yet whether they’d have to do anything about Nate, but it did seem as if Eliot’s EVA encounter was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Some straw, too.

After a moment’s reflection Angie decided she couldn’t find it in herself to blame him, and that at some point after supper she’d set aside some time to talk him down.

“I need to speak with you. Privately.” Eliot’s eyes said as much as he pulled her by one arm into the lab module.

“It’s fine, I got your note.” He seemed elsewhere, peering both ways through the narrowing gap as he eased the hatch shut behind them. “There’s more. The last team through here weren’t astronauts.” Angie laughed despite everything. “No Angie, listen. They were Navy Seals. It was a Seal exercise.”

Before she could connect the dots, he did so for her: “There are guns onboard. High pressure models, supercavitating rounds, designed to work with the suits. I’ve told Leo, and now you know, but Nate doesn’t. At least not to my knowledge. Do you want to know where they’re stored?” She was by this time wide eyed and stiff.

“I....I don’t know, do I? Eliot, are you planning something? Nate’s not that far gone, let me talk to him.” He shook his head and grimaced. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. But if he does go for the guns, and he figures out you know where they are, he might hurt you until you tell him. I’ve never known him to lay hands on a woman that way, but he’s not in his right mind. That’s why I want you to know where the cache is. So if he goes after Leo, and Leo tells him where to find it, you can get there first.”

A few things struck her in sequence as she inched her head around the corner, peering into the galley. First was the powerful stench. Some patches of wall were visibly discolored by the beginnings of a microbial film. The meager illumination from the emergency lights was apparently enough, along with the now intolerable humidity, to start a bacterial garden on the inner hull.

Momentarily overcome, Angie realized that in a few days’ time the bacteria, algae and other growth might be all that survived within the Argyro, slowly growing over and feeding on their remains. Just briefly her legs wavered beneath her, but recalling her purpose she quickly regained composure.

Inwardly, she reviewed the most likely scenarios. The first, that Nathan was reachable and only temporarily unstable because of fear and stress. It was not an unfamiliar condition. The next, that Nathan had selectively interpreted his dream and the others in a way that confirmed, for him, an apocalyptic narrative of which he could not be disconvinced.

Angie had met through friends working in more traditional areas of neurology a handful of individuals who satisfied that description. A few believed they were messianic figures, one of which ran off and started a commune in the Arizona desert. Another believed world leaders to be shape shifting reptilian extraterrestrials, something that had seemed a whole lot more far fetched before her recent encounters.

The last spoke very convincingly of an ability he believed he had to perceive ‘false humans’ walking among the general populace, spying on everyone else and reporting to monstrous, inhuman masters. In each case every piece of news, every article and scientific study they came across was in their minds further proof of their worldview and anything to the contrary was a sinister deception orchestrated by enemy forces.

For a tense moment, Angie wrestled with the idea that she might be under the same spell. While lost in thought, she’d wandered down the staircase and into the engineering section. It was more brightly lit and a cursory glance around the room revealed the source.

Strings of LED lights dangled from overhead netting, plugged into what looked to be a suitcase sized utility battery. It was at 98%...someone must’ve set these up very recently. Was it Nate?

“Eliot came down here earlier to check air and power levels”, she thought, “it could just as easily have been him.” The possibility was mildly comforting, but her gut suspected the worst and was vindicated when a powerful, hairy arm slid around her neck and yanked her into the shadows.

“Just looking for tools, right? Save it.” In the moment where she might’ve cried out before the meaty forearm compressed her windpipe, Angie instead gambled on plan B. “Be quiet” she wheezed, “Eliot will hear us”.

A painfully long ten seconds passed, then the arm loosened and offered no resistance as she pulled away from it. “Don’t scare me like that. I might be the only friend you have on this tub. What were you going on about earlier?”

Nate’s face hovered in the sweet spot where one side was illuminated by the harsh LED lights, and the other was cloaked in shadow. His eyes stayed trained on Angie but only barely, wavering with the telltale signs that he’d been drinking before a look of sudden comprehension overtook him.

“Wormwood! You saved, Angie?” She was ready for the question and answered without hesitation. “I gave my life over to Christ when I was twelve. I had a hard home life and it was only the strength given to me by God that saw me through it. I don’t know scripture like I should, but I want to. Tell me about Wormwood.”

It was as if, faced with an elaborate and impossibly convoluted lock designed to stymie thieves, she’d inserted a matching key which depressed every pin to the precise degree required.

“I saw it in you. You got the spiritchal understandin’ to grasp what Eliot and Leo don’t. They’s spiritchally dead, always have been, some just ain’t meant for the kingdom of God. I knew you was different, there’s a light in your eyes.” He caressed Angie’s cheek, now moist with nervous sweat she hoped he would mistake for humidity.

“It’s jes like you saw in the dreams. Leviathan risin’ up out the ocean, Gog here on Earth and Magog waitin’ up in th’ stars. What you think happens when they come together, Angie? What happens when the two come together?”

She widened her eyes and muttered “He comes”. The key rotated, and the deadbolt fell away. “Good girl. You saw it same as I did. All just like Revelations, the faithful left on Earth after th’ rapture strikin’ down Satan under the banner of Heaven.”

The connections were so tenuous it took several seconds to pin down which dream he meant, and how the elements matched up in his mind. It was eerie, like all at once being forced to look through a uniquely distorted lens at what seemed like madness before, yet seductively plausible so long as the lens remained in place. Tearing it away was like once again lurching between alternate realities.

Disorientation enveloped her. Whatever portion of her brain categorized ideas as fantasy or reality began furiously sorting through everything anew. No. No, what little she knew of scripture didn’t describe what she’d seen in the trench.

It was obvious now that Nate saw what he wanted to, believed what he wanted to and would soon act on it, which reassured her that she’d been right to scoop a small handgun out of the locker behind her while he was distracted.

It felt like the telltale heart, burning a hole in her pocket, crying out to catch Nate’s attention. Natural paranoia mingled with what she knew were the early signs of hypoxia on the way up the staircase. Nate continued whispering scripture to her the whole way, none she knew offhand but all of which had vague parallels to their dreams.

Carefully picked from memory by a man she suspected was building, in his mind, a justification for something terrible. Intuition told her the time was drawing near when she’d have to decide what to do with him, and she once again became uncomfortably aware of the pistol jostling around in her coat pocket.

Fear gave way to confusion when they reached Nate’s apparent destination.

By chance the mess was empty, he dragged her into the observatory unseen and for a moment she wondered if he meant to rape her. It wasn’t consistent with Eliot’s opinion of him, but in the humid, cramped confines of the observatory with red emergency lights faltering, no nightmare scenario seemed beyond possibility.

Yet, he wasn’t looking her way. By edging along the perimeter of the bubble she was able to see around the considerable bulk of Nate’s body and catch a glimpse of what he was working so feverishly on.

“Lifeboat separation”, read illuminated text just above a series of toggle switches on a panel that were folded flush with the floor a moment earlier. No wonder she hadn’t noticed it before. But at that moment, it was of no concern to her.

He’d held fast to her arm until now, and was engrossed in whatever he was up to with the control panel. Angie was painfully aware that she would get no better chance than this, and had no choice but to act.

Her hands quivered as she reached for the concealed pistol.

A moment later Nate lay slumped against the observatory wall. It was so quick, it took her a moment to register what had happened. Eliot’s breathing slowed.

The ratchet, still held overhead as if to strike, dripped fresh blood. “Oh my God, Eliot. I think you killed him.” He turned to meet her accusatory gaze but seemed more than anything surprised to see her.

Had he not acted to protect her? Did he even realize she’d been taken? “Did he hurt you?” She shook her head, tearing up. “He didn’t...do anything to you, did he?” Again, she shook her head, then crawled across the grated floor and into his arms.

The embrace was brief. Once he examined Nate and confirmed that he was only unconscious, the two cooperated to slide his corpulent frame bit by bit down the stairwell, and to heave it into the nearest bunk.

“What are we going to do with him?” Nate rummaged through some boxes at the end of the cylinder and barked back “Leave him behind.” It seemed practical, but uncharacteristically cruel.

Even so there was no room aboard the Argyro in which he could be imprisoned and no safe method of restraint if they were to take him along as they evacuated. Unless he were kept unconscious. Eliot obviously hit on the same idea, retrieved the EEG gear and began setting it up.

Soon after wiping the blood and sweat from Nate’s forehead, the crown of electrodes was tenderly put in place. Suppression of consciousness was an ‘undocumented feature’ of the device,. It was originally intended to study prolonged dream states. Almost out of reflex, Angie initiated visualization.

---

^{Stay Tuned for Part 7!}