V
But were that hope of pride and power
Now offered with the pain
Ev'n then I felt末that brightest hour
I would not live again:
VI
For on its wings was dark alloy
And as it fluttered末fell
An essence末powerful to destroy
a soul that knew it well.
末Edgar Allan Poe;
from "The Happiest Day"
ghost
Not a sound escaped the penultimate black, and neither joy nor tears could break the silence. Cold stars traced their tired paths, dragging earthbound souls behind.
They were the chain.
Then, for a moment, sparks danced. Unseen, the gates opened: not for the eyes or the ears to know. The opening was felt, as if a gaping hole had opened within the observer's heart.
This was a broken link.
The hole snapped shut, leaving behind a demon on wings of black thunder. Within, small frail things mused that such a beast should consent to be their slave.
Foolish assumptions.
She unfolded a silent limb and pointed to the distant末a burst of noise, and a question.
Do you know me?
Zero woke to the scent and sound of aging machinery. Burned dust floated in, tinged with a hint of friction-tested alloy. Above him, the vent cage rattled and and wheezed as if a nearby giant were having an episode. The room was dark: only bars of pale light falling between the rotors of a broken fan dared break the limit of the shadows.
Everything here seemed familiar to him, somehow. Maybe it was the feel of the air, or the way the hallways all seemed to go to the same place. Or maybe it was just the cell they'd tossed him in. His bunk was thin, but serviceable. Through a patch of deeper black, the low sink with its cracked mirror displayed bloodlit eyes末his own末and the reflection-scrambled numbers of an antique clock, glowing redly. That was all there was; the blue streams of heaven pulled everything else away. He sighed and rolled into a sitting position, trying not to shiver at the touch of the floor.
Drops of crimson, caught in the palm of a pale hand. He flinched, but the illusion was already gone. He closed his fists, half-wondering why he couldn't feel the stains.
It is the soul, not the act, that repels you.
Zero had to disagree.
His first real memory, outside of the shouting or the pain, was darkness. His eyes had taken a few moments to adjust to the apparent dimness of the room. Computer banks squatted in rows, projecting their red-gold warnings into empty air. SYSTEMS ERROR_ He could see his reflection in black pools and shards of broken glass末as if a thousand alternative lives had sprung up in the aftermath of whatever battle had taken place here. There were two bodies, each with the spine broken at the base. Those didn't explain the stains.
A few drops fell from his mouth to merge with the spill beneath him.
Slowly, careful of slipping, he walked toward the door. The source of this mess had passed through, clawing it open and leaving tracks of wine where careless hands had been. The door was partway open along its tracks, and he had to force it to get it ajar.
The third body was against the wall, slumped forward as if in slumber. Only a young girl, it seemed, ivory skin desecrated by her own mortality. She moved slightly, as if she wanted to see who was there, before her heart stopped beating.
Her eyes were open, staring blankly at a spot beside his feet. Zero knelt and closed her eyes for courtesy, then stood and walked away.
Once-white hallways had led to a series of rooms, each numbered and marked for a different purpose. They all looked the same to him: shelves of old books and annotations, pages yellowed; chemicals stacked in dusty, labeled rows beside long-bladed scalpels or a jar of infant's brain. There were cabinets, filled with row upon row of what appeared to be body fluids, each given names and catalogued in black pen. One read, in stark black print, EXEGENSIS POSITIVE SUBJECT: 0000 0000 0000 DM14. That was empty.
He walked onward, into a room with the marking DEUS MUNDUS 14 RESEARCH AND DISPOSAL, 3. The door slid aside more easily than the others, admitting him into a dim chamber about thirty feet in length and width. The floors had once been white.
Once.
Now they were aged and grey, caked with a hundred years of dust and dirt, of footsteps, of cast-off ash.
Of blood.
His eyes went slowly from side to side. The main bookshelf had toppled, leaving a mass of paper and leatherbound journals in their heap on the floor. On his left, the humors were mostly intact末but some force had struck the center, sending a cascade of rust-red over the wood and onto the tile. Zero drew himself forward, to where the lab table would have been.
Fighting back bile, he collapsed against the tray of scalpels. They hadn't been cleaned, and he scrambled back in an attempt to free himself from the image of what had happened here. But no matter how tightly he closed his eyes, he could never forget.
Pulled into a grimace of horrible pain, a young man's empty eyes stared upward. The face was all that was truly recognizable as human: steel restraints had bitten into his arms and legs, pinning him in place as he had been painstakingly ripped apart. The organs lay separated along a broad island.
The mess on the scalpels was still warm to the touch.
Zero had lingered there, shaking, until the aroma of false rose overcame him.
Now he lay in darkness, fighting tears because he couldn't let the sight of a human vivisection out of his head. It was as if the boy's ghost had followed him here, as if the red-drenched girl had lifted her head and whispered, "Avenge me."
Red light flared. Once, twice, a third time. Pause. One, two, three. The rattling in the vents grew louder, then quit, revealing the sound of footsteps pounding across the floor above him. A deep, heartfelt rumble passed through everything, followed by silence.
Then the door exploded open, rolling across the tracks fast enough that sparks flew. Zero waited for a few seconds to see if any movement followed, but silence reigned around him.
He picked himself up and ran, turned by catching the doorframe as he passed. Other entrances flew by, other dark, uncompromising corridors, but he stayed straight until he came upon a familiar junction.
Straight ahead, he could see the spillout of light from the chamber he'd first awoken in. To the left were the laboratories. He hesitated for a moment. Then he turned toward the chamber marked in human blood..
Grabbing up a sack from the back of a stool, he dumped it out and began stuffing folders and other records into its pockets. After a moment's hesitation, he snatched up a leather-bound journal末a face he'd seen before was peeking out from beneath the cover末and tucked it under his arm, then turned to go.
But something held him back.
Steeling himself, he turned to look at the table that had made him a thief. It remained much as it had been, though most of the stains had been wiped away and the organs were gone. One tortured hand reached toward the five-pronged light, on a side that only one restraint had held properly.
A silver cross hung on its chain from the hand's fingers.
Zero reached out and grasped it. Shaking, he whispered, "This is yours, my friend. You may not have lived to see it, but at least this part of you will watch them pay for what they've done." As a final decision, he brushed the eyelids closed. "Your ghost runs with me."
Then he turned and ran once more.
The hallways continued to look exactly the same with every footstep末branching off into the shadows, or doors labeled by inhuman hands. Soon, his lungs were burning, and he couldn't go faster than a trot. A jog. He was walking. Waves of doors, jetblack and looming, followed one another into eternity.
Shuddering blue-white light shocked away crimson shadows, cast words upon the floor ahead. SUBJECT VITALS末CONFIRM_
_FUNCTIONAL
Voices. He found his lips moving in synch with the letters scrolling across the pavement, anticipating every word. Zero had heard this before.
And if he knew where it was going, it had to stop.
He blurred through, slamming the door ajar so quickly that it flew from the track. For a minute he stood there, wild-eyed, looking for some sign of what to do. The sight of her stopped him cold.
She was small, almost childlike, and impossibly pale. Bleach-white eyes locked with his, a bizarrely human contrast to the pulse-green veins that crawled over her skin and sprouted from her back in the caricature of wings. She watched him, oblivious of the error message that had suddenly shrieked in crimson static across her face.
Zero felt something cold press against his neck.
"You aren't supposed to be here, boy. Why don't you come with me?"
ｩ 2007 crimson echo
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Submission Name: Zero: Ghost
