Ishaan Thakkar

The hardest choice that I ever made was leaving home.

At the time all I wanted was freedom--freedom to do whatever I wanted, freedom from parents who thought they knew what was best for me. When the coronavirus of '20 came back almost two decades after its debut, mutated with a death rate three times deadlier, I was doing college classes in the basement of my parents' house, stuck quarantined with the two people I wanted just a little bit of freedom from. I think that was my breaking point.

When I left, I thought I'd be back soon. I thought they'd be messaging me in a week checking up on me, and I'd go home because, well, I had what a lot of people didn't: a caring family. I didn't think they'd take my "give-me-space" speech so seriously that I'd be left longing for their random meme messages every other day. I didn't think I'd get so angry that they weren't coming running after me that I'd join IBTS just to spite my father, and spite him it did.

Now, I think the hardest choice I have to make is going home.

I think about it everyday--when the cold shower-water is splashing against my face, when my phone is sitting on the table, notificationless for a few minutes too long. But I'm never able to make that choice.

I think that's why I hate choosing. I never know what's right or wrong, and I feel like whatever I choose, I'll regret it. It'll have consequences, and I don't want to lose more.

So when Ishaan stares at me through the glass square buried in the steel door, hope glowing in his wrinkled face and making it look years younger, a chilling tingle brushes my spine, crawling just beneath the skin. I should leave--no, I need to leave. But in the end, it's that same glowing hope flushing his cheeks that makes me stay.

"I--I can't help you get out."

"I know you don't trust me because um, I'm here, and you're, well, you're there." Ishaan nods at the steel separating us, stepping closer until his face is almost pressing up against the door. "But how about I...what if I told you why I'm here?"

"I can just look it up in the files." I don't know why I'm lying. Someone like me doesn't have access to those kinds of files, and if Ishaan was ever in IBTS, he would know that.

Ishaan snorts. "The files are bullshit. Look, just hear me out. I'll say my piece and then what you do...well, that's all on you." I don't want it to be all on me. I turn away, fingering the flash drive in my pocket. I have better things to do.

A bang of bone on steel echoes through the hallway. I pause when Ishaan cries out. "I was on this mission, okay? It was for IBTS. I was IBTS. It was a big mission, the kind of stuff I couldn't mess it up. And I didn't--I completed the mission." His words are hoarse, desperation licking his throat dry.

Something inside me shifts, and I turn for a moment. It doesn't feel right leaving him without giving him a chance. "What was the mission, then?"

"Who invented time travel?"

"I don't have time for trivia."

"No one--that's why you don't know. I had to take the tech back to '24, to make sure IBTS can become IBTS."

I pause. I can't imagine a world where time travel doesn't exist, where IBTS isn't constantly intervening to set things right. "You're lying. IBTS is here now, which means if that was your mission, then it's complete. You wouldn't be thrown in here for that."

"I was thrown in here for what happened after." Ishaan palms press against the glass, flushing white. His cheeks are pale, dark circles hanging in contrast. He holds my gaze, and it doesn't seem like the face of a liar. But who am I to decide? It shouldn't matter, doesn't matter. Whatever this--Ishaan--is, it doesn't include me. I turn away, and this time, I'm sure Ishaan sees the finality in the orbit of my heel, in the squeak of my sneaker.

"Read about it!" Ishaan calls after me. "In that little flash drive you shouldn't even have."

I don't just turn. I retrace my steps back to his cell in seconds, leaning against the door. I know he saw it when it fell out of my pocket. "What do you know?"

"CS. Dr. Chiranjeev Srinivasan. I stole his flash drive to store that."

He shouldn't know that name. "You transcribed it?"

"I recorded it."

"I don't believe you." I do believe him. I just don't want him to think I do. I don't want to give him hope--not if I'm going to soon destroy it.

"Read it."

So I do.

AUDIO FILE TRANSCRIBED 02-11-45 BY [REDACTED]

RECORDED 01-09-24

I messed up.

I didn't think I'd have to record again today, but everything's moving so fast and I--I don't know what to do. I know that I shouldn't regret what I've done, but I can't help it. I don't know if there's anything I can do to fix this. There has to be.

It started with this guy--some guy on some dev team (I think it was Lincoln's) that got himself electrocuted doing God knows what, and I think he needed some medical attention or some crap. It doesn't really matter. I was there. I mean, I don't think I was actually that close by but I was in seeing-distance of Lincoln and I'm sure he remembered me from dinner even though I wasn't really all that special. I mean, I tried to avoid speaking to him after he kept bringing up his family, but I guess that didn't get through his thick head.

I tried to leave. I really did. I didn't want to do whatever crap Lincoln decided I was going to do, but then he called out my name in front of all these other people and I didn't want to draw any more attention to myself so like a good samaritan I went up to him and pretended that I was just so glad to help. That's sarcasm, if you can't tell. I didn't actually want to help.

But the more Lincoln looked at me, or well, the more I looked at Lincoln, the more I saw some brown-haired lady with a bloated stomach that I think is the Kara I drew up in my head. I didn't want to think of her. But I couldn't help it. I just...I felt like I owed Lincoln this. If I'm going to do this and destroy America and all later, I owe him at least this--whatever this is.

So then Lincoln handed me some keycard and a shiny aluminum briefcase and sent me in search of some lower deck storage room.

The first elevator I found didn't have a button for the lower decks. At first, I didn't think much of it but the more I thought about it, the more I realized this was an opportunity. I could've kissed Lincoln right then and there. I could go looking for the real biotech, the good stuff they were hiding with this false pretense of some shitty middle-school science fair with research that's going to be a flat-earth soon.

I didn't feel guilty for using Lincoln then. Honestly, I wasn't thinking about Lincoln at all. But now...I wish I had.

I was feeling guilty about everything else--what I'm going to do, what it's going to do to everyone. But I got over it. I had to. If I wasn't going to get over it, I shouldn't have come here at all.

The lower decks were okay, I guess. They seemed pretty normal at first. Then I saw her.

The first thing I noticed about her was her neck. The pale skin was dark with decay, ragged flesh sticking in between soft folds, blood and pus dripping from these circular pores that were like yellow and white and ew, it was disgusting. The second thing I noticed was her belly. It was bloated, but almost overly so, and blood was leaking from her ripped shirt and slathered the dirty skin with this icky layer. I couldn't imagine what the baby inside was like--was it even alive?

The lady was in some kind of cell made of this double-layered glass that was stained with dried blood and dirt on the inside wall. She looked like she was almost at peace, the way she was huddled in this ball in the corner, her right side on the cement ground and an arm draped over whatever was left of her belly.

I didn't mean to make a sound. But I did, and in an instant, she was looking right at me. She started crawling toward me, one arm reaching toward the glass between us while her other arm remained protective of her belly.

She reminded me of that lady in my head--the brown-haired lady with a full belly that Lincoln had put there. The blank face that had been a blur before was finally given features--blue eyes, high cheekbones, chapped lips.

Even now, the features are so goddamn clear. I try to forget them, to see anything but that, but whenever I think of the ship, of the virus, of everything I'm supposed to do, all I see is her. Then I think about the kid in her belly, the kids in the States, the kids everywhere. I see the people I'm going to hurt, the people I'm going to destroy.

I wish I couldn't see at all.

The lady's mouth was open in this silent scream sort of thing, and even though I couldn't hear her through the glass, it was so easy to understand what she wanted. A palm was pressed up against her side of the glass, and on my side, there was this big metal button. It didn't take a genius to know it was the one that would release her.

I wasn't there for her. I was there for what had created her--the icky black thing crawling up her neck that probably invaded her uterus too. I wish I'd just continued on. I wish I'd just left her be and went to go find that virus. But I didn't.

Maybe it's because I felt like I already had too much on my conscience. Maybe it's because some part of me felt like I owed America something. I shouldn't have felt that. I don't owe America anything.

Whatever it was, whatever I felt--it was enough to make me press that button. She didn't do anything when the door first slid open. She just looked at me. I won't ever forget that face, not when I saw the one thing I didn't want to see: hope.

Then she started towards the elevator, stumbling and crawling and leaving this awful bloody trail in her wake. I should've left to go look for the virus then, at least. But I didn't.

Now I'm here, and she's in that elevator, about to do God knows what. I don't even have the virus. I just have this stupid briefcase from Lincoln and God, I've made such a big mistake.

If Lincoln and the rest of fucking America died to the bioweapon, it would've been okay. I could blame it on that, because at least it was doing it for something else, something good. But this...this is all on me. I released her, and this ship is going to be full of casualties that don't need to ex--no.

It doesn't matter. When I get the virus, they're all going to die anymore. I can't go crying over a couple of casualties. This is worth it. This will be worth it.

I can't let us lose the war again.

"You think I shouldn't have released her?" Ishaan's fingers tap against the steel door.

"You did it so you wouldn't feel guilty. What were you planning to do?"

The tapping stops. Ishaan bites his lip, and I know that I won't believe whatever words come out of his mouth next. "I did it because she didn't deserve to be cooped up."

I ignore the blatant lie. "Do you?" When Ishaan doesn't respond for a few moments, I clarify, "Deserve to be cooped up."

"Maybe. I don't know." Ishaan steps back a little from the steel door, and when his voice comes again, it's quieter. "Before the mission I thought freedom was what mattered most. But now...well, things change when you're in the time travel business."

"What's more important than freedom?"

Ishaan meets my gaze. "Why'd you join IBTS?"

I want to say that it's because I wanted to help out the world. I want to say that I wanted to save people. But what good was a lie to a man in a cell?

"I wanted to get away from something else, to have the freedom to do something I chose." A breath catches in my throat. I hate the way the words sound on my tongue. I have a family that loves me--I shouldn't want to get away from that.

"You didn't want to save people?"

"I mean, I do, but--"

"Go home. You shouldn't have run away." I never told him I ran away.

"I wanted freedom."

"Was it worth it?"

I don't reply.

"You came here. You could've gone anywhere with whatever freedom you think you want, but you chose time travel." Ishaan pauses, stepping closer to the door, and I can't help but take a step back. "You regret things. You want to redo things--that's why you're here."

I take another step back. "I--I don't know."

"What happens when you don't get to? What if time travel doesn't do shit. What if there's no do-overs, and whatever choice you make, it's final." Ishaan's voice wavers, and I can't help but wonder if this is even about me anymore. "Choices have consequences whatever you choose. They have consequences if you don't choose. You're gonna have to make a choice one day, and God, whatever you do, don't fucking regret it."

He says "you" so confidently, and when I look at his face as he says it, he meets my eyes. "Y-you know me. I don't get it. You're the one recording but you're here...when are you from?"

"Here, like you said. Born in '23."

The wrinkles in his forehead crease as he says it, and I focus on the few strands of gray hair on his scalp. "You don't look it."

"I went to '24 and then I went to the future future. Lived there for a bit."

"Why'd you come back?"

"There's things I got to do."

"Related to me? You knew my name, so you know me." I pause. "In the future."

"I knew you." It doesn't make sense. How could he have known me, if it's me from the future? He doesn't know me now, he couldn't have "knew" me. The tip of Ishaan's nose brushes the glass, flushing white. "That choice I told you about? You're gonna have to make it soon. Don't regret it."

I move closer, slamming a palm against the door. The skin flushes red, a stinging erupting through the nerves. "What will I do?" Why couldn't he just tell me?

"It's what you did."

"God, just tell me!"

Ishaan steps farther away from the door, retreating back the recesses of his cell. The plain mattress dips as he sits, the bed frame creaking. "Where's your dad?"

"My...dad?" Why is he bringing him up? I don't want to talk about my father.

"Tell him I'm here."

"He hates IBTS. He wouldn't ever come."

"He loves you. He'll come." Ishaan pauses for a moment, and when the hesitation flickers across his face, I wonder about the ones who love him. Where are they? "There's a decision he has to make."

~

Sebastian Creaux

Swallowed teeth whiteners and died.

~

Carrie Liu

When the woman walked into The Horologist on 8th September, 1965, the agency was closed for the evening. She had on her person a key to the office, a 21st Century ID, and a flash drive with a one-way ticket to 6th January, 2024. She'd been entrusted with these things with the exception of the last, which she'd plotted to steal for months prior. She'd made too many risky moves getting it in her hands—many enough that trying again would be foolish—so she went without a return ticket, expecting to be stuck in her new world forever.

She went past the rooms with the typewriters and the copy machines, the dial phones and the cabinets. There was a room hidden behind all other rooms, a room with gadgets she scarcely knew where to touch. All were imports from another time, but none could do what the Timepiece was made to.

She held her face close to the scanner on its door, letting it read the lines in her eye. When the doors to the Timepiece opened, she stepped into its cold, metallic chamber and let them slide back shut behind her. She fed the flash drive into its slot and waited as the chamber began to hum.

When the doors to the Timepiece opened again, it was the 6th of January, 2024, and she had no means of going back.

I stood waiting before the double doors of the Sunlit Mariner's private elevator. There was a wild surrealism about it all—the familiar romance that accompanied a heist, the weight of a stolen key card in hand. Perhaps 'stolen' wasn't the technical term one would use for such things, but its connotation was precise as a micrometer.

I stepped into the elevator as the doors slid open, hearing a mechanical whoosh as they slid back shut behind me. My eyes roved over the buttons. There weren't too many to choose from. Two floors down was where I was supposed to be headed, but that could easily wait. I held Lincoln's card against the scanner by the door and heard beep as the buttons lit up, then pressed the button leading to the ship's lowest deck. There was no indication as to what I would find, but it seemed like the easiest place to start. The elevator started up with a barely perceptible hum, and the metallic chamber began its descent into the ship's depths.

He'd looked frazzled when I approached him, like a college student in the delicate hour of a paper being due. It isn't hard to find something out of place within the chaos if you look closely, and in doing that I'd spotted a component of the device they'd used that I could pocket easily enough.

"I'm really sorry to interrupt," I'd said, brushing the tips of my fingers against Lincoln Gardner's forearm, "but I think this might be yours."

He jumped a little, then brightened. "Oh," he said. "You found the spare battery."

Most of the evening's excitement with the mishap had dulled down by then, but there was more he needed to do. Paperwork, mostly. He returned the battery to its slot in the case, but he had a last request. "Hey," he'd said, patting it. "Seeing as you've now forged an unlikely bond with this case, would it be too much to ask if you could do one more thing for it?"

Thanks to the naivety of a dying breed of nice men, I left the conversation with more in my hands than I bargained for.

The surge of the elevator slowed, and the doors opened. For a moment, I didn't move a muscle. The space within the elevator glowed a crisp, warm orange. Beyond its doors was a patch of blackness so dark it seemed to have been cut right out of the planes of existence. I could sense nothing but secrets swimming within it, like a conveniently deliberate spillage of ink over a page. Whatever question I asked it, the darkness seemed to scream back an answer, its voice warped enough to leave me with morsels and a sinking hunger to chase.

There was something beyond the elevator doors. There was also a familiar churning in my gut that it'd be something I wouldn't like. While I didn't know what I'd find, I knew I'd reached a point of no return the moment I took that flash drive. It was hardly as though I was too used to being tethered to safety lines before taking a fall.

The orange glow dissolved behind me as I stepped into the corridor. Within seconds, the last slivers of it disappeared behind the elevator doors and a soft whirr started up again as the empty vessel rose. I set Lincoln's case down and ventured a little further, reaching into my purse for a lightsource. I had a portable telephone pilfered from the agency's safes, taken from the strongbox labelled with my name. It was what I'd been given when I came, the newest thing on the market in 2019 and a vessel for old contacts. In 2024, it was incriminating evidence against my supposed heritage.

I remembered the basics. Slide to unlock. An unpleasant prerecorded click rang through the hallway. The brightness on the screen was enough to blind me, but also to illuminate the floor a step ahead. I moved forward in a way I could only describe as tottering. There was the hollow sound of a voice echoing through the dark, low and choppy, almost tuneless. Perhaps the disemboweled voice I heard earlier was more than a figment of my imagination. I followed it till the echo around its words dissolved into nothing, leaving behind a hoarse vocal skeleton.

The man was singing an unrecognisable tune, voice parched, coarse. There was a crack in every note that went over his supposed midrange. There was a breathless, soulless fragility in the way he sang, and yet it paled in comparison to the most haunting thing about him. He was alive. Barely ill. Perhaps afflicted with nothing but a common cold. But there was a wretchedness about him far worse than the ailment. Dark circles so strong his sockets seemed hollow. Hair like the nest of rats. Scratches, like a cat's—running down his forearms. And that soulless tune, still going.

He rocked slowly back and forth in a transparent-walled cell, endlessly, like a carousel stripped of its lights, music and beauty. The empty gaze of a wooden horse trodding in circles. The man was the focal piece against a backdrop of decay. Outside of his cell were more enclosures constructed in the same fashion, but unlike in his, their prisoners were still and unmoving. Some without hands. Some without eyes. Sterile and bloodless in a way that was worse than gore. When the man looked up and stared at me, I saw a desperation in his eyes that seemed to stem from being surrounded by death for too long.

His mouth formed a shape, and his lips moved wordlessly. Then he shook his head almost imperceptibly and seemed to get a hold of something fleeting in his mind. "You're not in a lab coat," he said.

It seemed like a joke. There was a shred of sanity in the man that, apparently, could joke. "And you're in a prison cell," I said, torn between stunned silence and wild panic.

He let out a grunt. His body twitched all over. He had the drawl of a drunk man. "Youren't supposed t'be here."

I crossed my arms, hoping to erase the fear from my stance. I wasn't scared of him, but nothing could have prepared me for the regret I felt in taking that elevator. "I don't think anyone's supposed to be here," I said.

The man scoffed. "I'm in trouble as it is. You're about to be."

"How extraordinarily ominous."

"You work for them," he said. He was staring at me, eyes unfocused. It was a question, but to emote that would've been much too draining, it seemed. Or maybe it was an assumption.

"I don't work for anyone you know," I said.

"Not Helius, eh?"

I said nothing, evaluating my next step. I could leave and pretend I saw nothing. Escape this without consequences.

"Not Innology too, I guess," he muttered.

I backtracked. Leaving was no longer an option, and consequences were on the way.

"That means you can let me out."

I looked at the man and his expressionless features, so flat they seemed fearful of betraying anything that could indicate hope. "Well, Mr. Mister," I said, striding towards him. "Who are you, and to what reasons do I owe the pleasure of encountering you in these spectacular living quarters?"

He shrugged. "I'm just a lad."

"We are bargaining for your freedom with answers, so speak up."

His eyes shone with hope and hatred. I knew what I was doing. Putting a price on a man's freedom was crooked at best, but I had an ace and I was going to play it, and I was going to wring every last cent out of it. "The reason I'm here is no secret of mine," he said. "Okay? I'm no one special, and that was exactly it. Until I saw things I shouldn't have." He lifted a finger, and then another, so that he was holding up two. "And then they had more than one reason to want me here."

I leaned back against a table. "What did you see?"

His eyes travelled across the clear wall of his cell and landed on the lock, then roved back up to meet mine as he raised an eyebrow.

"I can promise you that," I said. "But you're playing by my rules."

His expression flared into a snarl. "I haven't been here long. Maybe a month. Less. I don't...count. Every day I grow a little bit closer to death. Your brain...it decays. It's like you're a human, and the next you're an animal. And then you're nothing. And I see it in the rest of them. They were all here before me, and some days I think maybe this will end. But I know it won't. And I think about how they will take body parts from me until I am nothing, like the rest of them, and they will continue until I turn into a carcass. So I want this as much as you need me, and you're playing by my rules."

"Fine." I got back up from my slant against the table. "Bait me and I'll bite. I need to know what you have."

He rolled his eyes in their dark, saggy skin frames. "I was a janitor at Innology Inc. Your eyes lit up when I said that. You're a great actress, but you're not winning Oscars anytime soon."

My right eye twitched. "We have a winner," I said, glancing around at the wire contraptions with a saccharine smile. "Tell me how to get you out. This might take a while."

~

Lana Lopatin

II. GARDENS OF DECLINE.

    "Under no circumstances can you kill the target."

    Konstantin – which was almost certainly not his real name – was approaching seventy had become bald since the last time Milan had last seen him. Jesus, hadn't it been only three months? Four? That was the last time he'd received any instructions that were even functionally similar to the ones he was currently ignoring. The man sitting on the other side of the stainless steel table leaned back as far as he could in his plastic chair, inhaling long and hard. Feigning importance. Fair enough. At one point, he assumed Konstantin had been hot shit back... when, exactly? The eighties, maybe. Possibly before then. Orchestrating raids and executions before Milan could speak.

How slow, how painful his fall from grace must have been for him to be here, now, doing this. A pathetic, receding echo of a man. A weed decaying in the shadow of a growing redwood.

     The compound they were in was somewhere far outside of Moscow, given how long it had taken to reach it. Their cell was a simple square plastered with yellowing wallpaper. No windows, gray vinyl floors that hadn't been cleaned in years. Empty save the steel table, the primary school chairs, the sickeningly steady fluorescent light strips embedded into the ceiling, sagging under the weight of the snow on top of it. What is this place? It all made Konstantin's situation even more amusing to Milan. Out of all the locations he'd been briefed in throughout his short career, this was by far the worst. Around him, in other identical cells around the compound, other people were receiving their instructions from other Konstantins. As for the other Milans in the building, they would never know each other's names and might not even cross paths with one another during the course of the mission. Complete compartmentalization. There would be no way for any law enforcement entity to create a full picture of what would happen in the following days.

    "We located her an hour ago," Konstantin said, tapping on the table.

    "And you haven't already taken care of it?" Milan asked, growing increasingly frustrated. "Just bring her back to Moscow and let me do my job."

    Konstantin waved his hand dismissively. "It was just a tip from a local operative in Borovichi. Not qualified in the slightest to do anything of consequence, considering the target had the foresight to at least cover her tracks by going there in the first place. And do I have to reiterate the point that she's most likely armed? Dangerous? At least to those without –" he paused, considering his phrasing, "– your type of expertise."

    "I highly doubt she's armed."

    Ignoring him, Konstantin launched into another unbearable monologue. "We all know that she's going to the airport in Saint Petersburg, and we all know where she's headed if she gets there. But we've already wasted too much time and resources trying to locate her, and if she makes it out of the country, it's gonna be a shitshow for all of us." Circular hand motion. "But if we act fast enough, we can intercept her and the car before she makes it into the city proper."

    Milan laughed. What a terrible, pompous little weed you are! "You're acting as though you know exactly where she's planning on going."

    Konstantin smiled. "But we do. You know Miss Lopatin – she's had this planned for months. And luckily for us, she didn't burn her maps completely. As far as we know, she was planning on taking farm roads all the way there. I don't even think she was planning on entering the airport."

    Milan considered this for a moment until a creeping annoyance settled in his gut. "The pilot she hired is no longer an issue, I hope?"

    "Correct." 

    In the cell beside them, Milan heard the faint beeping of a mechanical watch. Two pulses. The annoyance materialized once again, but Milan swallowed it.

    "How far are we from Saint Petersburg?"

    Another smile from Konstantin. "Four hours. If you leave now, you might just catch her."

    Four hours later, at six in the morning, Milan was lying in wait in a forsaken suburb – if it could even be called that – outside of Saint Petersburg with two nearly-identical men he had never met before, who rested silently in the back of the black SUV. No one had lived there for what seemed like decades, which was surprising given the fact that the community itself was most likely older than anything in the city proper. No evidence of any sort of Soviet-style remodeling, no massive block apartments for as far as the eye could see. A community that was almost a century older than the airplanes which flew above it yet abandoned decades before the airport whose shadow it occupied had even been conceived. Or longer still. The houses around him were charred, twisted, sunken, wrapped in plant growth that appeared, at first glance, to be far too colorful and alive with imperceptible motion. Too alive for a place like this. Flowering vines weaved gleefully in and out of broken windows and found refuge inside buildings that, despite lacking roofs, still should have lacked the sunlight necessary to provide a survivable environment. Holes that could have been created by bullets or termites in wooden signs outside of a collapsed hut that once was a farmers market. And that odd taste in the air, almost chemically sweet.

Milan wondered if the town had been destroyed purposefully during the war, wondered if he could have done it more efficiently.

    Milan's SUV, as usual, was positioned diagonally across the road, which was so narrow to begin with that both the back and front wheels of the car had become well-acquainted with the mud and plant growth on either side of the concrete. No one in the car had slept since the day before, and even though they'd only been waiting for less than twenty minutes, even the SUV seemed to be struggling to stay awake, revving up routinely every two minutes or so before letting the engine fall back into a pulsing hum.

Milan considered closing his eyes, but just before his nerves could send the necessary electrical impulses to the ocular muscles, Konstantin's promise fulfilled itself. There it was, just around the corner in his side mirror: a speeding white hatchback, stalling ever so slightly as it barrelled down the road. The most valuable car in Russia. Running out of gas, most likely, as if the woman behind the wheel had been driving as fast as she could for as long as she could. But how could someone afford to act so recklessly in one of the heaviest-policed countries on the planet? Another question, albeit relatively simple to answer if his intel was correct: how could she physically afford to bribe each and every one of the police officers who had attempted to pull her over since she left Moscow? The answer: American money, and a lot of it. Thinking of how much she'd wasted on bribes made Milan's stomach turn with frustration. At some point, someone, somewhere, would be tasked with retrieving that money.

He turned his attention back to the driver. Running out of gas, but running from what?

    Milan's pistol, which balanced precariously on the edge of the passenger seat, rattled with excitement as the SUV trembled once more. It knew.

    Then, as if on queue, the hatchback slowed once it saw the obstruction in the road. What amused Milan was that the driver seemed hesitant to come to a full stop. Pondering her next move, perhaps? Calculating the risk of turning around or simply plowing through the reinforced SUV in front of them? It was interesting enough to think about, Milan supposed. But he'd seen this same scenario play out dozens of times before and he knew how it ended: in his business, loyalty to gods above you trumped the fear of death. And the fear of what those gods might do to you rendered useless any rational instinct that told you how to survive.

    In the mirror, the hatchback stopped moving, but the engine continued to rumble. What arrogance! Did she truly expect to flee once this was all over? Milan trembled viciously, tapping the barrel of the pistol and running his fingers on his door handle before turning to the mirror one last time. Right there, just for a moment, he saw it: a ripple, a disturbance in the windshield. She was moving.

    As painful as it was to admit that Konstantin was correct, Milan whipped around to the men behind him. "Get down," he purred.

    The gunshots that came from the hatchback were powerful, arrhythmic, and stopped after just a few seconds, which came as little surprise to Milan as he squatted in the cramped space between the driver's seat and the steering wheel. What did come as a surprise, however, was the shattering that followed – not just of their back window, but of what sounded like a window of one of the abandoned houses on the roadside. Either she was so incompetent that she had fired half a round completely accidentally, or so desperate and arrogant that she believed she could cause any meaningful damage. Satisfaction flooded every corner of his brain. But despite these alternate realities that Milan allowed himself to explore for less than half a second, the nature of the shots told him everything he needed to know. Somewhere in that white hatchback lay a smoking handgun, most likely stolen and clutched by somebody with little to no knowledge of firearms.

    None of these scenarios, real or imagined, would warrant any mercy for the driver. There is no mercy for the rat in the unhinged maw of the python.

    She'd neutralized herself, and with this at the forefront of his mind, Milan turned to the men behind him and nodded. Not only was she now less than a threat – more of an obstacle, all things considered – she had aided in her own annihilation by giving Milan's men a clear line of fire directly into her vehicle. But the one-way gunfight that followed was carefully constructed, more of a choreographed dance than anything else. It would have been irresponsible to target the car when the entire purpose of the dance was to create chaos and instill shock in the target. So for the meantime, they shot at the road and the dirt and more of the rotting houses on either side of the road, taking special care to hit as many windows as they could and purposefully avoiding the untouchable target.

    Untouchable for the moment. For now.

    When the smoke and residual noise had all but disappeared into the winter air, Milan opened the car door and stepped onto the road, his pistol still yearning for his embrace in the passenger seat. He felt that sweet taste collect on his tongue even though his mouth was closed. No, not necessarily sweet, he thought. Rot? The decrepit, slumping houses around him seemed to agree with that conclusion, but the plants that thrived in the ruins did not. Something invisible dying all around them. Something just out of sight dying very close by.

A sensation resembling the inverse of déjà vu – a premonition, he thought – washed over him as he kicked the glass that dusted the road while his comrades secured the hatchback. It glowed with a celestial, unexplainable intensity.

    Motion beside him. In one of the destroyed houses was a small gray cat, completely still, curled up and on the remains of a blown-out windowsill that had been picked clean of glass during the shootout, sleeping as if it had been there for hours.

***

    Gray eyes. Those fucking gray eyes, that psychotic little smile. That body, which had been carefully and perfectly sculpted over the course of a decade with the sole purpose of making itself more capable of committing any number of horrors. Holding his stare with such non-commitment that it registered as complete and utter indifference.

    He was enjoying himself and making no effort to hide it.

    And in that moment of weakness, although it couldn't have lasted more than two seconds, Lincoln was already lost to her, exchanging pleasantries with the woman sitting next to him. Of course, her target was a millennial with the short-term memory of a pet fish, not the charming socialite she had hoped for as he'd been walking to her table. "Good person" my ass. She'd been trapped in hell, and Lincoln was the stupid, grinning rock she would need to push up an endless mountain until the end of time. But despite this initial fear, part of Lana wondered if something larger had gone wrong since she left her apartment two weeks ago. Lincoln – well, his temperament, at least – seemed to reflect that to some extent. Her targets were usually no younger than forty, experienced in whatever field they were in, and, most importantly, they all had the crucial ability to hold a conversation. How Lincoln had slipped into that mix, she had no idea.

    But her confusion and frustration with Lincoln's flighty tendencies paled in comparison to the terrifying abnormality that was Milan's presence on the ship. Lana had been in the business even longer than him, watched him establish himself from a safe enough distance so that she wouldn't ever have to become involved in his nightmarish world. Even though they had unfortunately crossed paths before CTS, that single experience and the endless stories she'd been told about his work and his emotional shortcomings were enough to tell her that something had gone wrong.

    When she had first spoken with Lincoln, he asked her if she was partners with the "other Russians." Lana only recognized Milan.

    But before she could follow this train of thought any further, she realized that Lincoln had all of a sudden turned all of his attention to Lana and was speaking to her. Fuck! You!

    "...and we at Helius Medtech were wondering if this would be an issue for you." He buzzed like a hummingbird who had spent its entire life drinking sugar water and nibbling at white chocolate chips. Lana couldn't place his accent or grasp onto any of its specific irregularities, but it annoyed her nonetheless.

    How he hadn't noticed that Lana wasn't paying attention was beyond her, but at any rate, she smiled and fired back the best non-answer she could muster. "I'm sure it won't be a problem."

    That seemed to satisfy him. He put down his utensils less than gracefully – when did the food arrive? – and clasped his hands underneath his chin. It amused Lana that no one had taught this extraordinarily successful engineer to keep his elbows off of the table.

"And let me just ask you this, Esme, er, Miss Duchess, to get it out of the way – and I apologize in advance if this comes off as 'offensive' or 'irrelevant.'" Air quotes. "But why is a Russian construction company offering to take full responsibility for this project?"

Lana allowed herself to smile once more, hoping she wasn't visibly clenching her jaw. Prick. But she had memorized this part of her script long ago. "That question has two parts, doesn't it? Anybody with a basic understanding of the global economy knows that Russia isn't in the best place at the moment. Oil prices, currency instability, you name it. I couldn't even list all of the benefits that would come with working in a country like the United States. That's the first part of your question answered."

Lincoln had a look on his face that told her he was genuinely interested in where the conversation was headed. Wide, questioning eyes, unsuitable for someone his age. "And the second part?" Lana realized that their table was now empty. Somehow those men and women whose names she never knew and faces she could not remember had floated off somewhere else in the dining room without her noticing.

"You want to know why we're the better option. I  think you would agree that my clients back home have the same right to a safe, stable work environment as any American trade union. But they're also more than willing to be paid less than their American counterparts, which is something I'm sure Helius will be interested in."

"That's what Durnovtsev kept saying. Twice the talent for half the cost, or something like that."

What was so tragic about that statement was that it was true.

"A new research facility is one thing. A new research facility attached to a state-of-the-art hospital designed specifically to administer experimental treatments... that's an entirely different beast you need to tackle. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars – if not billions – in basic construction alone. Not including all the equipment I assume you'll need. But both you and I know this, so let me introduce the terms of this partnership." A quick addition: "And if there's anything else you'd like to discuss as I rattle these off, just let me know."

Lincoln nodded excitedly. Like a dog that didn't know it was sitting on its owner's grave.

"On our part: the building will be complete in six years or less, and my associates will take care of all of the costs relating to travel, housing, food, and so on. At no expense to Helius Meditech.

"On your part: any of our clients who wish to remain in the United States after completion of the project will remain officially employed by Helius Meditech for a five-year period. Ideally, this would be made contractual. They would occupy repair, maintenance, and janitorial positions. Your worker bees, so to speak."

This, Lincoln contemplated. Chewed on the bone that had been thrown to him. That critical question was bound to appear sooner rather than later.

    "Why that last part? Why do they need to stay after the building is finished?"

    There it is. "To ensure loyalty and fair treatment between Helius and my clients. This is a partnership, after all"

    Clients, clients, clients. He hadn't yet asked who exactly these unnamed "clients" were, and for that, Lana couldn't help but feel indebted to him, if just for a moment. The simple answer to that question was a lie, and the long answer was an awful, unknowable truth.

    But as far as she could tell, Lincoln was a broken clock: correct twice a day, which meant that Lana didn't know if she could trust him to bend to her unspoken will a second time.

    "And this is really all you're asking for?"

    Shit. She hadn't prepared that lie just yet, and right then Lana remembered that failure was still a lurking possibility. "Well, this is just the framework. I'm sure Mr. Durnovtsev mentioned a meeting at a later date after CTS with Mrs. Perez to discuss the specifics –"

"Oh, yeah, I understand that," Lincoln interrupted with the backhanded airiness of a stoned freshman fraternity pledge. "Pleased to work with you." He extended his hand, and it took several seconds for Lana to return the gesture.

It was seven twenty-six, and the dining room was empty.

    Lincoln excused himself from the room. As much as she hated to admit it, there was something fascinating about him. So young, so gullible, but so successful. Lana knew success like his came at a cost. She'd seen it. And as she wandered aimlessly out of the dining room and through the midship, she couldn't help but think: was it possible that he knew?

    Her phone buzzed for the first time in what seemed like hours. No congratulatory message, no pardon. Instructions to follow Lincoln to a nearby tech display showcase.

    Lana continued walking, but now with purpose through the strangely-carpeted and dimly-lit corridors of the cramped midship. The message raised the questions that Lana had been trying to ignore. Questions that she had no obvious answers to. The "why?" wasn't what interested her, though. That was a triviality, as were most things. But those messages, so curt and unexplainable, so unlike what she was accustomed to – what was happening? That whole time, it seemed clear that the men who took her to the airport and stayed with her up until she boarded the ship would be the same men who were keeping tabs on her now. Sending those messages. Then, again, she hadn't seen those men since boarding, and anything before boarding was hazy at best. If she was wrong to so boldly assume, it would cost her, sooner rather than later. But although Milan didn't exactly inspire confidence in her ability to survive for more than a few days, he was an anomaly, which meant that there might be a chance, however small, that her superiors had cut some unsavory corners somewhere down the line. Anomalies are not by nature weaknesses, but if her theory was correct, this one was – and weaknesses are always exploitable.

Then came the issue of the unfamiliar Russians in the dining room. Were they associates of his? Lana wouldn't put it past the man to get a small army of private mercenaries all for himself, completely independent of the business. Given Lincoln's character, she almost let herself believe that he had merely given their Eastern-European accents the most convenient label in his limited catalog. However, that was just something she held onto out of fear, something that she needed to hold on to in order to continue with her job. It was more than possible that the "other Russians," as Lincoln had put it, were just a new batch from Moscow to replace the men who'd brought her to California to throw her off balance. Lana knew her superiors. But she also knew Milan.

Lana rounded a corner and found herself standing in front of a set of glass double doors. It was seven forty-six. What a world of difference between both sides of that meaningless boundary. The way in which the pure white glow of the miniature convention center in front of her refused to blend with the orange-tinted kitsch of the hallways she'd been meandering. Water and oil, honey and blood. Who built this damn boat?

Through the glass, Lana watched as Lincoln emerged from a crowd of people that had formed around... something. She couldn't tell what was going on from her inadequate vantage point, and the people she could see were facing away from her, giving her no way to examine facial expressions. Then there was just Lincoln, making a beeline for the exit, a suitcase swinging wildly at his side.

    That strange little man. Mista Gardena, she thought, mimicking that peculiar American accent of his. How much did he know about the business, if anything? Any seasoned professional in the world with any inkling of business acumen would've ripped Lana's proposal to shreds. Although her targets often lacked this common sense – which was, admittedly, necessary for her continued success – Lincoln was different. Her initial theory was that he simply didn't know what he was doing. That was absolutely still on the table given Lincoln's attitude, questions, and, frankly, everything about him. But Milan threw a wrench in everything she did and didn't know. And Lana was beginning to suspect that Milan had told Lincoln too much.

    Because there were only two ways to get to the top like Lincoln had: blissful ignorance of the world around him or a blatant, idiotic willingness to do "whatever it took."

And then Lincoln interrupted her thoughts for the second time that day. She hadn't even noticed him push through the doors.

    "Miss Duchess! Esme! Hey, I need to ask a huge favor of you," he panted. Out of breath after running for less than thirty seconds. Cardiovascular weakness. Maybe panic.

    She lifted her arms in confusion, but before she could complete the motion, Lincoln slammed down his suitcase in her outstretched arms and slapped some kind of key card atop it. It all happened so quickly that Lana didn't have time to open her mouth before Lincoln tried pathetically to explain the situation.

    "Take this case to the storage room on the third floor. Get a janitor or a staff member or someone to help if you can't find it. If they won't help you, tell them that Lincoln Gardner sent you and make a big deal about the suitcase but do. Not. Open. It! Capiche? When you're done with that, you need to come back to the midship immediately, and if you can't find me, you need to find someone who will know where I'll be."

    The suitcase was so inexplicably light in her arms.

    Lincoln didn't issue a premature "thank you" or even give her time to ask any follow-up questions. He just turned on his heels and ran down the hallway in the direction opposite of the convention center. But then he stopped and turned around for just a moment, just enough time to shout, "And don't let anybody see you with that card!" He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he never did.

    "What the fuck happened in there?" Lana yelled back, but Lincoln had already rounded the corner, running like he never wanted to see the convention center ever again.

    There was nothing she could do but review her options for the brief amount of time she had before someone saw her in this haphazard state. She quickly shoved the card in between her bra and her dress, letting the suitcase fall by her side, light as ever, before deciding it would be best to get out of sight of the crowd behind the doors. Allowed herself for just a minute to consider updating whoever it was who was messaging her, guiding her. She eventually decided against it.

    More likely was that Milan had caused the unknown event. It wouldn't be the first time.

    Lana continued down the hallway she would've walked down had she not made the turn to the convention center. In her search for an elevator, she got more of a feel for the disgusting architecture – if it could even be called that – of the midship corridors. It surprised her that she couldn't even compare what she saw with the conditions of the floor of her own room, but she figured that she had other, more important things on her mind a few hours ago.

The carpet was the first thing that caught her attention: a kind of red-and-orange distorted mess that looked more like interrupted static than any kind of recognizable pattern. And laid overtop the static – vines of an invasive plant? The unending tentacles of some Lovecraftian beast? Both were guesses of a mind trying to fill in the blanks of an incomprehensible something. They were green, dark green, weaving in and out of each other, the static, everything, for as far as Lana could see. And, if she looked closely at the baseboards on the walls, Lana could see where someone had tried to continue the pattern onto the wallpaper without much success. The wallpaper itself was a dry, creamy orange color that almost crumbled as she ran her fingers across it. A similar texture to bone-dry paper-mâché. The ceiling had a similar dry quality, although Lana couldn't reach high enough to touch it and confirm. There were water stains there, too, although none were green like in her bathroom. There were no light fixtures that Lana could see – and yet she could still almost see down the entire hallway.

But the doors. What the fuck? The doors unsettled her in a way she could never articulate clearly if ever asked. They were old, reddish-brown, but placed far too close together and so awkwardly on the walls of both sides of the corridor. She felt that if she opened them, she would see nothing but wallpaper filling wooden frames.

Doors to nothing. A ship with no meaning.

Lana passed twenty-six doors on the left wall and twenty-eight on the right – she felt some need to count them, to make sure it wasn't a trick of a mind already under immense pressure – before she found an elevator. When she stepped in, she felt the immediate urge to fall on the floor and curl into a ball. The entire thing was made entirely of reflective glass. The doors closed too soon for her to crawl out, despite how much she wanted to do so.

Another elevator, another wall of buttons. Lana clutched the gold railing that had been superimposed on her side of the elevator. The third floor. The woman who had helped her in the elevator earlier in the day had explained that the ship was divided into five sections – no, she had called them "stages" –  and in each stage, the numbering system for the floors restarted, meaning there were technically five "first floors." But of course, Lincoln had failed to mention anything about a specific stage of the ship.

The elevator doors opened, then closed again as Lana failed to act and as others failed to enter.

What Lana did know was that two stages of the ship required special access, required Lincoln's card: Research and Laboratories. You store clearly-sensitive materials in labs, right?

Wrong, as she was with most everything already.

The card was hidden back in her clothing by the time the elevator picked up speed in its controlled plunge into the heart of the ship. Lana waited, alternating between staring at the flashing floor indicator, too afraid to look into the mirrors, and the complete darkness she faced whenever she closed her eyes. Shame. Scared of your reflection. As if you've changed.

The elevator stopped moving. When the doors opened, what Lana noticed most of all was the silence. No, not exactly silence, upon more thought. Some kind of electrical hum, like the waiting room of a hospital. A steady, high-pitched – monitor? Sensor? – pulsing. Uninterrupted in the vacuum that surrounded it. And even before Lana opened her eyes, she could sense the glow from in front of the open elevator doors; it colored the inside of her eyelids in a sterile white light. How could she tell it was sterile? That was the descriptor that flew to her mind without hesitation, and it eviscerated any confidence Lana had left as she faced the secret in front of her. Allowed her to forget that when someone shines a light in front of your closed eyes, no matter how bright, the color you see isn't white.

Standing, now. She stumbled out of the elevator, immediately recognizing the scent of formaldehyde. Her eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the glow, but she was beginning to make out shapes in the light. Some kind of floor-to-ceiling tubes connecting the floor to the ceiling at the back of the room. Pillars.

Then the sterile light disappeared without warning, taking with it absolutely everything.

Cribs. Coffins. No distinction between the two. Lining the walls of the room, that abominable white room, long and thin, leaving enough room for a person to walk in the space between the two rows. Lana couldn't move, but she could see it all. They were not children. No one common attribute between them with the sole exception of a body position that indicated extreme pain. Or sleep without peace.

And now there was no sound at all. Even Lana's biological systems seemed to fail her. No heartbeat and no blood flow. Were such functions even possible in a place as monstrous as this?

A twitch in the crib – in the container – closest to the elevator. One of the children – God, no, that was not a child – was awake. Skin like reformed molten plastic, or hardened, pressurized silicon. Scarlet red and shiny. And the next container over. Its hands were fused, glowing from within like there was a light embedded deep in its skin.

There were no pillars at the back of the room. Only tubes, filled with the source of the light, but whether that light came from the glass, the liquid, or their contents was impossible to tell. On the left, another one of those hideous red mutants. Fully grown and suspended, motionless. On the right, the source of the light – Lana was sure of that now, but she couldn't explain why. A naked, pale creature. Humanoid, as far as she could tell, with skin similar to the red thing next to it: molten, bubbled, impossibly shiny and tight, yet it seemed like there was too much of it for her meager skeleton. Her. But unlike the red one, the pale one appeared to be... cracking. Flaking, perhaps, was a more accurate word to describe her state. Covered in lesions that resembled broken glass more than anything biological. Completely hairless except for her head, which sprouted two long collections of thin white hair on either side that wrapped around her body like snakes on the caduceus. Huge, round, swollen blue eyes. Clouded and without pupils. Blind.

When the all-consuming light returned from the tube on the right, Lana screamed and staggered back into the already-open elevator. She still couldn't hear the glass shattering behind her as she slammed into its walls. Slapping every non-restricted button she could set her hands on, Lana let out a noise halfway between a scream and something far more animalistic. Why couldn't she feel anything? Why didn't she do anything? Is this what happens to those who witness unspeakable atrocities?

Of course not. Because she had witnessed atrocities before, and she had abetted them.

Belarus returned to her as the elevator finally began its ascent. Lana shut her eyes, and for a horrible moment, after all of the memories had finished obliterating her mind, all that was left was a shadow of a man beyond the darkness she had created for herself, the logical conclusion to all of this. Milan. Fear. One and the same. Does he know? Does he know? Does he know?

The shadow twitched, but when Lana opened her eyes, she saw nothing, not even her own reflection in the mirrors she had destroyed. All she saw, as if space and God had failed her, were the things in the laboratory far below her, now shaking and twitching and moaning in their coffins. The pale one whispering some alien incantation, shrouded in that terrible light.

~

Akane

The ship had descended into chaos.

About half an hour prior, a shrill scream had pierced through the crowds, the initial spark to the mayhem that ensued. Any scheduled events were set ablaze as people hurried to be the first to undercover the story behind the horrific cry. News traveled fast, and before long almost everyone was gathered around the site, watching as a young man writhed in pain, stricken with the panic that comes with the uncertainty of death until he was rushed away by the paramedics. However, that didn't cease the prying speculation about every last detail of what went down, nor did it prevent the cameras from violating the scene. Amidst the science and technology, the drama was an exciting break that revitalized the energy in the air.

Akane, on the other hand, found herself on the fringes of the scene, with her own goal in mind. In her right hand, she clutched a keycard tightly in her hand, her golden ticket to escaping the commotion, not only for her own sanity but for the perfect opportunity to finally review some of the information she had acquired.

Right after the rumors of what had happened were crashing through the crowd, Akane had found herself in another encounter with Lincoln Gardener. He was positioned in the center of the crowd, his stressed state clearly scrawled across his face. His eyes were darting around rapidly, like he was scanning the crowd, before they landed on Akane. In a rushed state, he explained the situation: he needed someone to go down to the storage room and put away a case. It was simple, he explained, only requiring his keycard and a few extra minutes of her time. With an idea already budding in Akane's mind and the slightest hint of a nod, Lincoln handed her the case and his keycard and was already on his way.

Now, the closed doors of the elevator greeted Akane, the sophisticated gold outline signifying its restricted status. She brushed the keycard through the scanner, and with a quick green flash, the doors glided open. Akane stepped inside, her eyes scanning the buttons. There were only two, and her hand immediately drifted over to the top one marked "Storage Room." But her hand wavered in the air as a recollection of her first day of security guard training suddenly struck her. Akane's gaze descended back down to the other button as she read those words of the other button once more: Lower Decks.

The Lower Decks—they're a restricted area. No one from the public is allowed there anymore, not that you would have any reason to go. It's abandoned now. It was the stern voice of the woman who gave all of the security guards a brief overview of the ship. After she said that, another one of the guards had asked what it was used for in the past, but they were only met with a vague response about extra storage, before the woman maneuvered into another topic. However, Akane knew that there had to be something behind the rigidness of her explanation and the sharp change of subjects. She didn't give it much more thought than that, being merely focused on her own task at that time, but now, Akane's curiosity nagged at her. While she knew that the rational thing was to slide her finger up to the first button, something inside of her refused. Something was telling her to stop living life imprisoned under a set of rules, existing with the sole purpose of following other people's orders.

It's okay, Akane. They'll never know. She took in a deep breath and the elevator beeped once, beginning its descent to the Lower Deck.

As Akane began falling to the bottom of the ship, the chaos of the upper levels slowly faded away, being overtaken by a chilling quietude. Once she reached the bottom, it was dead silent. Akane could hear her own pounding heartbeat, a manifestation of the apprehension simmering in her nerves. This silence was an eerie juxtaposition to the rest of the ship, almost striking in a way, like it was a direct message to keep out. Like whatever lay inside the Lower Decks, it was meant to remain a mystery to the outside world—untouched, unexplored, and forever lost with time. The elevator jolted to a stop. Immediately as the doors opened, Akane felt the frigid air from outside settle beneath her skin. The cold was another jarring contrast with the atmosphere above, and once again, Akane felt as if it was alerting her of what was to come.

The final warning was the darkness.

Akane looked out, using the dim light from inside the elevator for her limited vision. It wasn't much, but the light shone just bright enough to reveal that the emptiness was apparent. All she could see were the bare walls and floor, with no sign of what lay further down the halls. She stepped out, finally officially entering the Lower Decks. There was another beep from the elevator, before the doors closed and the single source of light was vanquished.

Encapsulated in the dark, Akane's eyes struggled to adjust as she peered out into the inky chambers of the corridor. Akane's eyes had grown more accustomed to the dark after years of skulking in the shadows, but this darkness was all-consuming, completely masquerading whatever lay deep inside. Thankfully, Akane was always prepared—both as a bodyguard and a a professional spy. She twisted out a flashlight from her belt, clicking it on as the darkness in front of her dissipated by the sudden illumination. The arc of light offered a bit of sanctuary, guiding her route as she began making her way through the walls. However, beyond the glow of the flashlight, it was all still a mystery. Whatever lay within these twisted halls, hidden artfully with the absence of light, it had to be concealed for a reason.

Slowly, Akane crept forward, her footsteps barely perceptible. As hesitant as she was, this wasn't a feeling unfamiliar to her. In fact, this tension that bound her in, this calculating anxiety that prepared for the worst, it was her comfort zone. The rhythm of the steady beat of her heart faded into background noise as she made her way down the hall.

But the more time that passed, the greater Akane's concerns. She had been walking for far too long, with no sign of any suspicious activity, let alone any activity at all. Maybe this really was just an abandoned level. Perhaps her suspicions were just that, and nothing more. Akane let out a sigh, debating whether or not to return to the elevator.

And that was when she heard it.

At first, Akane thought it was just in her head. The faintest wisps of sounds in the background, a murmur she had created in her mind. But as she made her way further down the hall, it got louder, sharper, until Akane was sure she could hear the muttering of words—while still indistinct, they were voices that belonged to humans. And ones that even Akane could tell, from so far away, were not very happy.

Akane's pace faltered slightly as she followed the voices, with each step she took being weighed down by the possibility of danger. Her flashlight examined each of the walls, the floor, searching for anything that could give her some sort of insight into what was going on. Slowly, the volume of the voices increased. She couldn't pick out any words, muffled by whatever barrier separated her and them, but she could hear them nearby.

The light stumbled upon a door. There were no windows that offered a glimpse into the secrets that were buried inside. The apprehension that grasped Akane when she first stepped out of the elevator was beginning to escalate. She reached for the door knob, feeling the cold metal graze her skin. She jerked slightly, chills racing across her back. Something was behind that door that was purposely meant to be a secret And whatever was lurking here, hidden in the lower levels of the ship, it had to be for a reason.

Akane prepared her body. Eyes ready to rapidly scour the room, to locate the source of the sound while simultaneously searching for any possible dangers. Legs bent slightly, creating the possibility of sprinting in any direction necessary. Her right hand placed on the doorknob, with her left placed by her belt, ready to grab any tool necessary, And her mind, beginning to look for the worst, prepared to calculate the best possible option in any scenario.

The door creaked open, and the sudden noise ceased all of the voices. A light flashed on from overhead, and Akane froze in place as her eyes scanned the scene that lay in front of her. Her eyes were wide with shock and even in her prepared state, her brain struggled to register all of the information she was taking in. In front of her lay tens of bodies, each one trapped in their own compartment, and each one appearing to be in immense pain.

But, these weren't normal humans. Each one had something off about them. Some with missing limbs, others with facial deformities. Skin that seemed to indicate rotting, bloody wounds with completely mutilated bodies. Most of them were slumped over, unmoving, with any hint of life that might've fuled their body in the past now barely a whisper. A few were hooked up to fancy machines, and those ones looked the most monstrous, with bodies that no longer looked functional, as if those machines were their last link between human life and a hollow shell of flesh.

Akane's jaw was dropped, breath lodged in her throat, horrors creeping through her mind. She could only move with her eyes, pupils frantically darting around as she struggled to even move a finger. Suddenly, they fell onto a sign in the back of the room, and the words and sudden realization sunk into her skin—Trial #6.

These humans were being experimented on.

Disgust grew like vines throughout Akane's body, latching onto her as it began suffocating the air out of her body. She just stood there, forgetting to move, to breathe, even where she was. She had been through many different scenarios, ones where people were brutally injured, ones where she had seen the life of another drain away from their face, but never anything like this with such horrrific acts of torture. Never somewhere that screamed with such malicious intent, without any care for the people who suffered from these gruesome deeds. Any other thoughts she had coming in, they were all stamped out as all she could see was the monstrosity in front of her. Pure horror drowned out everything else.

Suddenly, one of the bodies spoke, pushing Akane back towards reality. "Please...help..." It groaned out, unable to say much more of anything else. More voices chimed in, but Akane couldn't pick out the distinct words. All she could hear was how their voices were stained with desperation. She looked around the room, not knowing if she could help them even if she wanted to. But a strange button to the right of the entrance caught her eye. Underneath it were the words "Release" in large letters.

Think about it rationally, she told herself. If she pressed that button, that could unleash a chaos in the ship that could completely upend her task. She didn't know who these people were, if they were innocent, if this was their punishment. Nor did she know what their intent was, and if they would try to attack her once they were released. She didn't even know if this was for sure human experimentation. Maybe an accident had happened, and the people behind this lab were actually just trying to save them.

But even with those thoughts running through her head, Akane couldn't bring herself to believe them. She couldn't help but continue to feel that revolt boiling inside of her. No matter what, she did know that no one deserved living like that: being stuck in a deformed body, helpless against the pain that you were scorched with. Confined to this prison, being treated like nothing more than a lab rat, manipulated and abused a single thought of your feelings.

Akane shuddered as she imagined it. Losing herself in the emptiness as the days would meld together. Feeling trapped in her own body, unable to barely move or speak. Having her destiny just be a tool for sick humans. How could they live like this? Akane squeezed her eyes shut, trying to find herself back in the darkness again. Even being in the void, that was better than being here.

Leave, she heard the rational part of her brain working again. Just leave. The part of her brain that she had grown up honing, every lesson that her brother had taught her, refused to be overlooked by emotion. Those thoughts were perfectly crafted, as if they were manufactured to tell her what was right and what was wrong. This is not what you're here for. Focus on the task, and the task only.

Despite that, she couldn't help but look at the bodies one more time. Some of them, their eyes were glazed over with an emptiness that could only reflect themselves within. Their minds completely null, now just a collection of body parts and organs—and not even all of them at that. Their eyes were drained of light, simplifying into a void that stared far away but saw nothing. But there were others, the ones that terrified Akane the most. Even among their disfigurement, she could see the pain in their eyes. It was that hopelessness tainting their gaze that really terrified her, as if Akane was their only chance of getting freedom.

"Help..." One of the bodies spoke up again, pleading with its eyes. Akane felt vulnerable, like it was staring into her soul and analyzing who she was as a person. Did she have enough good in her to let them free? Or would she leave them here, as cold blooded as whoever did this to them? Akane stared at it despairingly, hearing its voice ring in her head, over and over and over until it was all she could think about. Until that single word "help", became torture within her own mind.

Akane broke.

The pain glistening in its eyes, but especially the voice pleading with desperation, was too much to bear. It was a type of desperation that Akane had heard before, and one that she had hoped she would have forgotten already. But, just like these bodies, it was still inked into her brain. The deadly scream. The blood splattered on the ground. That same blood smeared onto her skin.

A stab of guilt punctured Akane in the ribs. And Akane didn't even know if these people would survive. All she knew is that she couldn't let them live like this. These were people beneath their scars—people who had lives before, and who deserved them.

She turned around and pressed the button.

~

Lindsay Ann Miller

LindsayAnnMiller02: Having a GREAT time here at Helius! Can't wait for the event to start. Dinner was delicious. Missing my hubby but enjoying the #girlstechnight!

MillerHobbyHouse: Miss u baby, see u when you come home! Love that smile!

PeaceNWarrens: Ahh, I'm SO jelly!! Your HAIR! Can't believe you got those highlights. See you next Friday?

GinaW: #girlstechnight 😍😍

The night was going perfectly. Ann posted to her Instagram a colorful picture of her food, and a picture of the ladies she'd been eating dinner with. The girls came up with their own hashtag, #girlstechnight, and were planning to meet up again after everything ended to go bar hopping. Getting drunk with a bunch of woman near her age, with a few exceptions, sounded like just the thing that Ann needed to feel alive again. She wanted to be young and beautiful and wanted.

And, for once, things seemed to be going swimmingly.

The first real event was Helius Meditch, where they'd get to listen to the Cardiovascular team and Mr. Lincoln tell them all about where Helius was heading in their cardiovascular developments. They got to go a floor up from where they'd eaten to Deck 8, Conference room #2, where the ship had a gorgeous set of windows showing the wonders of the ocean. The lights were bright on the outside and Ann relished in the simple beauty of a half-alive coral reef, while also hating the fact that, as colorful as it seemed, she knew it was set for destruction soon. As was all that came with planet Earth, things were only pretty for a second. Lindsay saw herself in the coral. She saw the white creeping up on her own skin, watched as it sucked her dry and left her withered.

Oh, at least try to pay attention. They were having some trouble getting the screens working, so while she waited, Ann pulled out her phone and opened up her favorite romance. It had just started to get heated between Sandra and the housemaid they'd hired. She was, in effect, being seduced by the young and attractive redhead. It seemed that Pam, the maid, had forgotten her underwear and was bending down awful far to clean. Sandra was horrified, and whispered to Pam that she could borrow Sandra's own just as--

"Is anyone here a doctor? No, not like--is anyone here a nurse?"

She heard the scream just a second too late. It registered that it was real, but not until she'd dropped her phone and looked up to see that she was the only one still sitting.

"What's going on?" she asked the man next to her.

"I think he's having a stroke!"

"He electrocuted himself!"

"The ship is on fire!"

"It's just smoke-"

Everyone was talking at once. Ann couldn't think. She immediately jumped toward the action to try and get a better sense of what was going on.

"How can I help? Has anyone called the staff?"

"Here, can you bring this to the storage room? We need a new one immediately." Someone pressed an ID into one hand and a large case in the other. It was quite heavy. "Thanks. It's just three floors down and then you'll take a right, then it should be there. Follow the signs."

She started walking and that is exactly when she found herself lost. The storage room? Ann wasn't an employee--okay, well she was, but not for this cruise ship. She had no idea where the storage room was, let alone how to get there. And an ID? What would she even do with that? Shaking her head, Ann forced herself to get walking. She'd find it soon enough.

She walked for a few minutes before she got tired, and went back to the dining hall. She knew where that was at the very least.

"Hey, uh, can you help me?" she asked someone cleaning one of the tables. She held up the case she was given. It looked important and was marked with a lot of words that sounded like something she should be aware of, but it wasn't any of her business and she wasn't in the business of asking questions for things she didn't want to know. "I need to take this to the storage room. I have an ID but no one really told me where to go."

The busboy smiled at her and pointed towards the bathrooms. "If you go that way, there's an employee elevator. Storage is the button on the last row to the left. Let me know if you need anything." He went back to cleaning off the tables and Ann walked towards the bathroom.

Her heels were really beginning to hurt. Once inside, she took them off and placed them against the wall. She hit the last button on the row to the right and waited for it to take her there. The music they played was loud and obnoxious, like a movie from the 50s, but one that no one would have ever considered a classic. It was just like Ann to get herself stuck doing something stupid that she was unqualified for--that's where she was stuck at work constantly because everyone thought she'd be okay doing anything for them. It was how she'd managed to work herself to the position she was in now.

There were pros and cons to not being able to say no to people.

The pro--everyone thought she was capable of anything.

The con--everyone thought she was capable of anything.

When the elevator finally stopped, it beeped loudly. An automated voice read out a basic message that told her to insert authorized ID, so she put in the one she'd been handed. Lincoln Gardner. What a nice man. She shrugged her shoulders and tossed her hair like she really was in some 50s movie.

The elevator opened and it shot out the ID with a click. The lights turned on as she walked out, each one set to a timer it seemed. It was a rather large area for storage, but the pipes running overhead told her she was definitely in the right place. But there wasn't any boxes that looked like her case anywhere.

"Let's just put it down and head back," she told herself.

But then she stopped.

It was just like her to do that. To be the boring housewife who did exactly what she was told and went back. She was just given private access to a storage room of Helius, the company who'd owned her soul for at least ten years. Maybe it was time she actually looked around. Maybe it was time she actually did something.

So she sat down the case and started walking, letting more of the lights turn on as she went. It was really cool to see everything look so futuristic. In her office, the best technology they had were the computers they used to put together the prosthetics. It was boring.

Here? Everything was alive. It was breathtaking.

She passed a door that said 'Do Not Enter' and felt something surge inside her. Don't enter. You shouldn't enter then, Ann. She pressed the ID into the slot. But I'm not Ann, am I? I'm Mr. Gardner, doing some important work for Helius.

She chuckled as the door opened.

Chuckled as she walked inside, looking at the large polycarbonate enclosures that filled the room. Her lips open in excited exploration as she grew closer to what lay inside. It looked like some type of cell-regrowth. A small, bubbled form existed inside. It had one large eye and a heart that she could see through the thin layer of skin that covered it. Almost like a fetus. It couldn't be human, of course, but it looked so...real. What? Is this a cow fetus? No, it's too large. Maybe something else?

She walked further. Deeper into the world of science she'd never seen. What are they doing on this ship? Isn't this just for the show? It was wild to her that Helius would rent a ship and bring everything onto it for just a show. They must have actually owned it and used it when they weren't doing exhibits.

But the farther she walked the larger the blobs became. One with two hearts enclosed in a small sack of skin and a hand that reached out towards the glass, it's little fingers extended towards her. Another with a larger form, a hand close to the size of her own, and when she placed her fingers against the glass it moved.

It blinked.

It twitched.

It winked.

Ann stopped breathing for a second. She stopped thinking. She clutched the ID in her hands and looked down at the smiling face of a man who seemed so kind, so gentle.

Why did he have access to this?

Why was it there?

Who was experimenting on--on--on...people?

And why was this one reaching towards her. Placing its hand against her own. Two souls, three eyes, staring into one another. Staring with horror and fear. Staring with regret and remorse. Staring with pleading eyes that looked to her and a mouth that released bubbles when it opened. They had tubes filling their body. Tubes filling every inch of everything. Their rubs poked out when they breathed and Ann wanted to cry.

Tears filled her eyes the longer she stared.

"Who did this to you?"

They couldn't hear her. They didn't know.

Next to them was a control panel that showed their vitals. She could read it fairly well--she'd seen enough at her job. They always kept vitals when they helped replace body parts that stayed inside the skin, such as joint-replacements and fingers. There was an ID slot for this one too, and she couldn't help herself but to place it on there, her hands shaking as she held it against the cold, cold machine. It beeped. It beeped. It beeped.

It beeped.

It beeped.

Ann didn't know what she was doing.

It beeped.

She couldn't stop herself.

It beeped.

It beeped.

A hiss filled the air as the top slowly lifted and the water drained.

It beeped.

It beeped.

It beeped.

It beeped.

It beeped.

It beeped.

It beeped.

And they reached for her, hands against hands, its own eye staring into her own, and she held the poor, frail woman and felt something akin to horror rising in her soul. They whimpered in her arms. She didn't dare move.

It beeped. A final warning before the siren turned on.

~

Leif Takshou

That morning, Leif wakes to a dark morning, and it takes everything out of him to get out of bed. Sluggish and drained, his throat is dry as he moves lazily around the small room, a ghost in mourning of itself. He forgets to shower. Forgets to brush his teeth, leaves the oils on his face and the grime in his hair. A man so used to having a purpose now suddenly without one; is there anything else to do, but drown?

     Leif isn't good with his own thoughts. They're intrusive, yet quiet to the point he forgets how persistent they are. Like scabs over scars you forget were there, shadows left in the corners, the echo of a scream from so many years before. It's not a surprise he works in the business he does, traveling the world just to follow someone else around, finding the words to translate their life into language. He wonders if he could do the same for his, but he shakes his head.

     Once, when he was still in school, he'd translated for a man who'd fought in the Korean War. He was an older gentleman, aching even beyond his eighty years, and the subject of a documentary—this is where Leif scowls. This man had the stories and a lifetime that were worthy of spanning hundreds of societies, crossing dozens of different languages, making it across the world. While all Leif has is this: himself, all alone, remembering other people's lives more clearly than his own.

     It's almost too loud, that knock on the door, making him flinch and rise from the edge of his bed. He'd just finished tying his shoes, and he flicks on the light as the pounding continues, reverberating throughout the weak, hardwood walls. He pulls the door open, and his head tilts slightly upward to meet eyes with the taller man. Iivo, the man from yesterday, leans against the doorframe, smirking in a white dress shirt with the top two buttons loose.

     "Hey," he says, a certain mischief in his eyes. A playfulness. A molten whimsy. "Or should I say Guten Tag." Leif doesn't laugh, and Iivo stops leaning on the wall. "Konnichiwa? Hola?"

     "Hey is fine." Leif forgets to smile, pushing past Iivo and shutting the door to his room, first checking his pockets for his key card. "How'd you find my room?"

     Iivo blushes. "I asked the bartender. You owe me for the drinks, by the way."

     "Hm." Leif regards Iivo's full body, the length of his legs covered in a pair of casual slacks, different from the shorts Leif had thrown on. Despite the heat, the only skin Iivo shows is that peek of his collarbone, his sleeves pulled back to uncover a watch around his wrist. "I don't think I do."

     Leif turns and starts walking to the end of the hallway, where it opens up to the first deck. Maybe he'll go get breakfast. Maybe he'll lay in the sun, or order a mimosa to start the day right. The hours spread out before him, unplanned and empty, waiting to be filled with absolutely nothing.

     "Wait!" Iivo catches up with him. "Aren't you going to ask why I'm here?"

     "No," Leif says. "You're gonna tell me anyways, so."

     Iivo matches Leif's pace. Perhaps he glances sideways, and takes note of the slight blush that's painted itself into Leif's cheeks. "Sure, sure. Well...would you like to get brunch with me this morning?"

     Leif stops. Pauses. Then, "No, I'm okay." A spark of him thinks to just say yes, and give up on defending himself against the man, but he's done that too many times before. Let someone steal the words from his tongue. There are few phrases that define lust as accurately as this: it's demanding, and asks of you things you'd rather not let go.

     "Come on," Iivo urges. There's a desire in his tone—one that Leif can't quite place. It could be attraction, a simple kind of fun, but Leif can't imagine why he'd be the Iivo's sole target. Surely there're plenty of bachelors on the boat to paradise. Ones with bigger wallets, and more enthusiasm for risk. And yet, maybe that's why Iivo's chosen Leif: because he's not a risk. He's an easy find, someone Iivo predicts to have the inability to say no, a quick reel in the vast ocean.

     Leif hesitates, keeping Iivo's gaze for a second too long. Then, he keeps walking. "I'm getting breakfast right now regardless. I can't stop you from joining, I guess." Leif foregos the struggle of keeping him away. Besides, Leif's certainly a fan of that peek of collar, those veins in the wrist. Attraction without action. Easy conversation. Iivo's someone he'll forget when the cruise ends, anyway.

     "Good," Iivo says. "I was worried you'd say no."

     "I did say no."

     "Yet I'm still walking beside you. Funny how that worked out, huh?" Iivo quirks an eyebrow down at Leif, and the softer of the two can't resist but chuckle, forgetting to acknowledge the eagerness that finds itself in his steps, that spike in a heart that's been otherwise silent. "You had to say yes. How else would you meet Miina?"

     That pause doesn't go unnoticed. "Miina?" Leif asks.

     "She's a friend. And she's saved us a table." Iivo and Leif walk alongside one another, but Leif can't help but notice Iivo stepping a half-pace ahead, the leader, even though they both know the destination.

     When they reach the restaurant, a woman with plain features but a broad smile stands to greet them. For a moment, she eyes Leif warily, and turns to Iivo with a concerned stare. Their silence holds a full fifteen-minute argument, and finally she shakes Leif's hand.

     Leif sits opposite Miina, in a booth next to one of the windows looking out at the ocean. The expanse of blue surprises him at first, as if he didn't realize the vastness of the sea, but it's only because of the beauty of it all. The loneliness. The nature of the sun gleaming down on everything, even the places that no one ever sees.

     Iivo contemplates, looking at both seats next to his friend and...Leif, whatever he is. The third set of silverware resides next to Miina's, and while the woman and the man she's never met start to exchange pleasantries (Where are you from? Oh, I've never been there! Maybe someday), Iivo grabs the glass and the fork and the knife and scoots it across the table. He sits by Leif, which halts the conversation, and earns a hard laugh from Miina.

     The men blush, and Miina puts both palms on the table and stands for the second time. The three of them grab their plates and pile on food from the cruise's breakfast buffet; an assortment of American breakfasts find their way onto Leif's mind, all dessert-like with maple syrup and whipped cream for company. The chatter is subtle, Iivo and Miina exchanging whispers as Leif begins to crave being by himself. The one thing about beautiful men is that they never leave you alone. Something can't be pretty without eyes looking upon it, and right now Leif wishes there was nothing to look at.

     When they get back to the table, however, there stands one of the figureheads of the conference itself. He taps his shoes in wait, the blue fade beneath his eyes apparent even in the broad sun. He checks the time on his phone, then looks up with relief to find the three of them sauntering back to their chairs, stomachs ready to devour.

     Lincoln clasps his hands together, a smile without glee forming on his lips. "There you are," he says," turning to face the window once all three have maneuvered around him to sit.

     Iivo speaks first. "Do you need me for something?" Miina and Leif then ignore the conversation as it continues, both slicing into their waffle and rolling their eyes. It seems Miina has dealt with this before—someone needing Iivo, and not her.

     But then Lincoln scratches the back of his head, a quiet um slipping past his lips. "Actually," he says, pointing at Leif. "I'm here for Mr. Takshou."

     Leif raises his eyebrows, hurrying to finish the bite stuck between his teeth. "Me?" he asks through a full mouth. Part of him is shocked that Lincoln knows his name, but then he grows anticipatory. Perhaps the man he's supposed to be interpreting for has shown up after all, and Lincoln's been sent to tell Leif to get to work. Or maybe the man is still missing, and he's been sent to tell Leif to leave at their next port. Essentials only on the cruise of the century. Can't have unnecessary bodies.

     Leif swallows what he was chewing, and Lincoln nods. "Yes," he starts, but when he opens his mouth a second time nothing comes out. He closes it, ponders something. Then: "How are you, by the way? I hope everything's been okay for you."

     It stuns Leif. "Good! Good, yeah. It's been good." He sets the fork down across the waffle, now getting cold, the whipped cream dissolving onto the rest of the plate. Miina and Iivo don't speak. The air turns uncomfortable. "Um...how are you, Mr. Gardner?"

     "Call me Lincoln," he says immediately, a grin filling his face brilliantly, the man's teeth shimmering in the sunlight. "And I'm doing well. I heard the man you were here for never showed up?"

     Leif's stomach drops. His appetite disappears. It was only a matter of time before someone came and told him to leave—he just wishes he'd finished his waffle first. "Jae-yoon Park. He's uh...one of the donors."

     Lincoln crosses and uncrosses his arm, and starts to look around. The whirlwind in his head is almost tangible, his feet tapping the ground in a paceless rhythm. "Yeah, yeah," he says. "So you have nothing to do, right?"

     "That's right," Leif laughs. "Just me and this waffle." And Miina and Iivo, but Leif doesn't want to do anything to let Iivo know his flirts are working.

     "Sorry for the rush, but..and to ask a favor...could you do something for me? I'm the one who approved Mr. Park to bring you along, so you're the first one I thought could help."

     "I can help," Iivo interrupts, but Miina shushes him and demands he keep eating. There're pancakes on his plate. Somehow that's disappointing to Leif.

    And so, Lincoln leaves a case to them and then Miina dips and Lincoln does more blatant flirting until they go to the bottom deck and find human experiments and then Leif is like "ohohoh we have to let them go???" and Iivo is like "STOP" and of course he's a loud white man so they don't release the experiments i'm sorry i have chemistry homework and can't finish my brain horts

~

Aaron De Monte

The elevator was in a small, poorly lit hallway where nobody who didn't need to know about it would find it. Even Aaron, who had worked on the ship for what felt like an eternity at this point, had only ever been inside it a handful of times. His access card would get him to the storage level, but no further. They'd explained to him before when he was first hired, why that was in as few details as possible. It was all research labs, highly delicate work that wouldn't require his assistance unless absolutely necessary. The details were left at that, and he was content not to press further. Snooping around was not high on his list of things to do while employed on board the Sunlit Mariner.

But today was different.

The case in his hands felt heavier than it should have. Its leather grip was sandpaper in his hand, grinding against the calloused skin as he waited for the elevator to arrive. It wasn't his access card that was bouncing against his thigh, tapped in a steady rhythm as he eyed the cargo he carried cautiously. He said it was a prototype for something. Curiosity ached in his fingers, begging to look at what was inside, but he refused. Keeping the job was too important. He swiped Mr. Lincoln's access card against the small panel by the door, and the elevator opened with a pleasant chime. I can't jeopardize this, he warned himself as he pushed the button for the storage room. Especially not now, especially after—

"Aaron!" The sound of his name pulled him free of his thoughts. Aaron looked up, a familiar face grinning out at him as the doors began to slide closed. He jammed his foot between the closing metal, allowing the boy time to sprint down the hall towards him. "I've been looking everywhere for yo⁠—"

In one fluid motion, he grabbed the android by the collar of his shirt, yanking him into the elevator as the doors started to close. "I told you to wait for me to come back!" Panic pounded in his veins, fresh and hot as a warm blush spread over the android's cheeks. "Someone could have seen you, Eros!" he scolded. "They're going to report you missing and if they find you like this I'm going to get fired."

"I'm not missing, though," Eros corrected, snuggling against Aaron's chest even as the other boy released his grip. "I'm just where I want to be." A dull throb started in his temples, promising to bloom into a headache at any provocation. He stepped away from the bot, relaxing ever so slightly against the cold wall of the elevator. God, I need a drink, he thought as he shut his eyes. "Where are we going?"

Slowly, his eyes fluttered open again. Aaron pulled the case up to his chest, turning it so that Eros could see each side. "I'm putting this back in storage," he explained, watching as his companion's eyes grew wide with fascination.

"Is it important?" Eros asked. "An important job at work?"

There was something almost cute about the interest, gone too quickly to really be evaluated. The elevator shuddered to a quick stop, accompanied by a pleasant chime that marked his arrival. "Very important," he promised. "So stay here."  Aaron gestured with the case as he stepped out of the elevator."This will only take a second." Eros was happy to comply, moving forward to lean against the open door as he waited.

True to his word, Aaron hurried to make the trip a quick one. The storage deck wasn't difficult to navigate, he'd been there plenty of times previously. Boots squeaking against the floor, his eyes skimmed over the boxes and crates that were so neatly stacked deep below the feet of every passenger above. This was the part of any project that he liked the most. Deep in the underbelly was where all the true magic was hidden. All the props and trick wires, pulling off the perfect show, sometimes a little too well. With careful movements, he placed the case gentle down on a mostly empty shelf, where it would be easily seen by anyone looking for it. There. He stepped back, satisfied with his work. Let's get a grip on problem number two now.

The elevator was still waiting, open and ready, when he came back to it. "I think I'm starting to figure you out, Aaron," Eros commented as he arrived, the two of them slipping inside once more. The android leaned back against the panel of buttons, biting his lip as a grin spread over his face. With his arms clasped behind his back, the android looked to him for confirmation and in spite of himself, Aaron had to smile.

"Oh, yeah?" It was a halfhearted reply, given over his shoulder as he pushed the button for the ground floor.

The engagement was enough to make Eros's face light up, excitement quickly taking over his features. "You want this to feel more real, right?" he guessed, brown eyes burning with curiosity as he pushed himself closer to where Aaron stood. "I have to win you over, like a real human." Something heavy thumped in his chest as he listened to Eros puzzle out the situation. Warmth spread across his cheeks, pulling color to his features as he tried to turn away from the android.

Get a grip, Aaron. He's not real. His fingers reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose as if somehow that would save him from the other boy's stare. "Sure, Eros." Why is this taking so long? Aaron's eyes flickered upwards, widening as he saw the digital display above the door. It counted down, pulling them lower and lower into the belly of the ship.  Behind the android's body, the button for the ground floor glowed a warm yellow.

"Would you like to go on a date then?"

Aaron barely heard him, anxiety forcing itself through his feeble heart as he stood up straighter. "Did you press a button?" he asked, sidestepping to get a better view of the buttons as Eros turned.

On the bottom row, the button for the lowest level was illuminated, prompting their sudden descent. "Oh, oops." Guilt flooded Eros's face, eyes wide as he looked back at his owner. "I'm sorry, Aaron. I didn't mean to." The android's voice wasn't as smooth as normal when he spoke as if some new protocol had been activated. He's waiting to see how I react.

There wasn't time to respond, not fully. The elevator came to an abrupt halt on the bottom floor and the doors slid open into pitch black. No music accompanied their arrival, only the hollow silence of somewhere they weren't supposed to be. Only a voice, feeble and shaking, broke through the quiet, too far away to be audible— but Aaron could feel it vibrate down the hallway. It shook the walls with a trembling force, calling him forward. And for some, unknown reason, he answered.

Each step out of the elevator felt like a violation. As if at any moment, the lights would slam on and the sirens would begin. But as his feet moved against the cold tile floor, nothing of the sort followed after. A dull fear stirred in his chest, fueled onward by his desire to understand. Eyes squinted through the darkness, clinging to the speck of light that promised to lead to the source of the sound.

"Aaron." He'd almost forgotten about Eros, trailing so diligently behind him, his eyes perfectly equipped for the dark. There was a softness to the robot's voice, a hesitation that hadn't existed before. "I don't like this," he admitted. His arm wrapped around Aaron's pressing his chest against him. Beneath the soft fabric of his shirt, Aaron could feel his mechanics spinning, modulating the breathing that left Eros's lungs and the warmth that was steadily beginning to increase between his fingertips.

They reached the light quickly. Too quickly. In the darkness, the hallway seemed longer, but that first pool of light made everything seem small. In it, Aaron could feel his breath stick in his throat, like a hand wrapped around his windpipe. Within the light, was the glass, and the shapes behind it that stilled his heart to a stop.

Dozens of eyes stared at him from behind the plexiglass. There was too much to take in but at the same time, it was so simple. It was like staring into a painting, still and silent. But the suffering was real. The agony, oozing out of every suture and stitch, was real. Aaron found himself fixed on a monitor, watching the steady rise and fall of a heartbeat, as wires extended out of it like the crooked arms of some monstrous beast. For a moment, nothing else existed. Just the fall. The rise. Tears stained bedsheets and pillowcases— wept from yellow eyes that had long forgotten the taste of the sun.

Aaron's eyes broke away just for a moment. Just long enough to watch Eros's lips part, horror burning hot in his dark eyes. "Shh!" He slammed his hand over the android's eyes, yanking him against Aaron's chest. "No, no, it's okay," he lied.

But it wasn't enough. Eros was practically vibrating beneath his fingertips, skin burning hot as his processors struggled to comprehend the scene in front of him. "Don't look." Aaron kept his free hand firmly around the bot's waist, pulling him back down the corridor as gently as he could. "Don't look. We're leaving." Aaron could do nothing to stop the shaking in his hushed voice. No words of encouragement or comfort would come.  His heart was in his veins, pounding against the other boy's temple as he kept his eyes covered. "We're leaving," he promised. The hallway had never been so long. Each step only took them further away from the exit.

The patients, watching their chance at salvation drift away, began to wail. The sound pierced his ears; a deep, guttural grief shared by even those who no longer had their tongues. Aaron could still hear it even as he pulled them both back into the elevator. "It's okay," he whispered again, through gritted teeth. Soft, wet tears kissed his hand as he felt the first sob work its way through Eros's chest.

Slowly, the doors slid shut.