[ 2 ] Babylon

Babylon Loading Station, somewhere along Earth’s orbit

Eva tightened her grasp around the manual navigation shaft until the console in front of her beeped in affirmation. She successfully locked onto Babylon’s docking station, which was in much better shape than Freddy and she had expected.

“Should we wake the others?” she asked, unhooking the restraints draped across her lap.

Freddy looked backwards and into the small corridor that led to the sleeping quarters of Etana One. “They’re in the middle of a session,” he said. “I’ll program them for release but it’ll take at least five minutes until they’re able to walk.”

“God forbid we have a real emergency and need to mobilize the entire crew quickly,” Eva said, finally grabbing the loose strand of hair from her forehead and merging it with the rest of her pony tail.

Freddy grabbed onto the sides of the corridor and projected himself once more through the shaft to program the rejuvenation pods for release. When he returned, seconds later, Eva had already retrieved a pistol from the small cabinet near the shaft entrance. The weapons were never meant for use in the space crafts. A bullet ricocheting endlessly off metal wasn’t exactly encouraged.

“And what in the hell do you plan on doing with that?”

“It’s just in case, Freddy. Let’s go.”

Freddy and Eva maneuvered their way through the passage again and into the small decompression chamber. They braced their feet as close to the crisscrossed metal platform as they could. They could feel the effects inside their bodies as their weightlessness left the room and their heavy boots connected with the floor. Etana One and its inhabitants were no longer weightless.

“It’d be just like NASA to decommission Babylon before we even return home,” Eva said, waiting for gravity to fully return. “How much you want to bet Jackson Pierce is sitting in his pent house suite saying ‘Oh, shit, forgot the Etana crew was bringing the aliens back.’ Hope they aren’t short of supplies.”

“Ha, Jackson Pierce could have stepped down for all we know. He’d be what, 57 by now?”

His question went unanswered as the doors to Babylon opened. Both crew members jolted their heads back as the rancid smell careened into their nostrils. The second set of doors opened, releasing the passengers from the constraints of the small room to reveal a long, empty hallway.

Freddy looked at Eva with an apprehensive glare. “Well, they always say you choose cook or astronaut. Can’t ever be both.”

Eva stared down the hallway, still adjusting to the balance needed to support a human body. ‘This doesn’t look good,’ she thought. They stepped forward into Babylon’s corridor.

∞

Seafarer II, five miles below the Pacific Ocean

Miles nearly sprinted out of the diving pod. The three hour journey to the luxury bunker felt like a lifetime. Kaeya and Malcolm Hadridge had gotten into three fights along the way, the worst occurring after Malcolm repositioned his foot and accidently stepped on his wife’s toes.

Ian Wright had sat most of the way with his eyes closed and hands folded on his lap as he recited his Buddhist mantras he’d learned six weeks ago. They slowly faded from peaceful phrases to things along the lines of, ‘I need to get the hell out of here. You can have your million dollars back.’

“Ah, lovely trip,” Kaeya murmured, appearing to be completely serious from the look on her face. Miles’ face drooped in disbelief that Kaeya was completely unaware that her mere presence gave him a headache.

Ian walked over the foot-high barrier that separated the diving pod members from the foyer of the luxury bunker. “Welcome to your humble abode,” he said. “Perhaps exquisite abode would fare much better than humble.”

The couple entered the foyer and scanned their surroundings as if they were evaluating amateur artwork. Kaeya reached into her purse, pulling out her heels and placing them on each foot while she leaned against her husband. Miles’ eyes expanded in the same way they would if he had walked into a chamber of treasure chests. 

‘He really did it,’ he thought. ‘This would be expensive enough if it was on land.’  Miles was thinking of the man the Hadridges had expected to be present: the architect.

Trevor Cane. Miles never questioned Cane’s requests. In fact, he’d never seen the man. His firm was very adamant about not pressing the issue. “You need to know three things, Miles, which will make your job very easy here at Karst International,” his first boss had told him. “First, Trevor Cane is one of the richest men in the world. Second, you will never see him. And third, you will never ask why.”

Kaeya’s heels clanked along the marble hallway as they walked into the expansive area below a spiral staircase.

“Well, let’s get right down to it, shall we?” Ian said.

Miles looked at the man with a curious gaze. Ian’s attempt at sounding affluent and proper as he initiated the tour failed miserably. His rugged appearance and sun-drenched skin cried out to everyone that he hadn’t been raised as an upper-crust member of society. He was better suited holding a surfboard on a beach, not conducting a guided tour through an underwater mansion.

“Seafarer II has all the amenities of Seafarer I, plus a number of enhancements,” Ian started. He guided the trio to the base of the stairs, where they looked at hallways that jetted off in all directions. “To start, the air filtration system has been fixed with the state-of-the-art purification methods. All of the viewports feature self-powering cleaning systems to remove any marine growth. Not to mention the glass is thick enough to withstand 24,000 psi. Much of the exterior is made up of borosilicate glass, which can compress in such a way-”

“Mr. Wright,” Kaeya interrupted. “I am not a mechanical engineer. Nor am I a materials engineer. In fact, I’m not an engineer at all. So please, I don’t need to know about the silicates and filtration systems and whatever else you just babbled on about. All I need to know is that if a nuclear warhead hits downtown LA, I’ll still be able to paint my nails.”

Ian Wright was momentarily speechless. Miles lost his speaking capability several moments prior, when he surveyed the intricate work that went into every inch of this bunker. Malcolm simply placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder and took a deep breathe.

“Please, continue on,” Malcolm said to Ian.

“Let’s head to the kitchen,” Ian managed to mumble.

Another set of footsteps echoed down the furthest hallway. Ian swallowed, the noise of his gulp almost matching the volume of the feet pattering towards them.

“Is there someone else here?” Kaeya asked.

The woman that emerged from the hallway easily matched the beauty of Kaeya, though she lacked the same extravagance in wardrobe. The girl looked easily surprised at Ian and his three guests standing below the stairwell.

“This is my daughter, Corrine,” Ian said, eyeful of the couple’s reaction.

“I thought you were all coming tomorrow,” Corrine said as she approached. She outstretched her hand first to Malcolm, who smiled and introduced himself. Kaeya grasped her purse with both hands and gave a simple nod to the girl.

“Boss man rescheduled it for today,” Ian said. “Would’ve told you, but things have been hectic up there. So, surprise.”

Miles was glad he had backed away from the circle, both in gaining distance from the snotty couple and in hiding his obvious attraction to Corrine. ‘If there is a nuclear war, maybe this place wouldn’t be so bad,’ he thought.

“The surprise is welcomed,” Corrine said as she laughed, brushing her blonde hair from her head and examining the white blotches on her pants. “I just finished putting the last touches on the crown molding in the master bedroom. Forgive me for my appearance.”

‘There is nothing to forgive,’ Miles thought.

“Can we carry on?” Kaeya took the silence as the affirmative and walked into the hallway ahead of her. “I do love how the paintings turned out.”

When they reached the end of the hallway, Kaeya found herself in a room filled floor to ceiling with monitors. “This is the control room,” Ian explained. “Everything is automated – but even five miles below the ocean there may be need for surveillance,” Ian explained. “Cameras monitor the entire exterior of the compound, as well as each room and hallway. Air temperature, humidity levels, lighting controls, and even the timers can all be controlled with the click of a button.”

It was as if Ian had orchestrated the event as he finished his explanation. The click echoed throughout the hallway and darkness filled the control room.

“What button did you click?” Kaeya asked, irritated.

Within seconds faint lights flickered on near the top of the ceiling, illuminating some but not all of the controls. Miles could just make out the shocked look on Ian’s face.

“I didn’t click anything,” Ian responded. “Corrine, has this happened-”

“No, haven’t had a blackout in over three months,” she said. “Everything is just about in its final state.”

“Well there’s no point in living past a nuclear attack if I must do so in the dark,” Kaeya said, waving her hand around the darkness in search for her husband’s hand.

“Please, just a minute,” Ian said. He reached for a small headset hanging from a peg near the entrance of the control room. “Everything runs on a back-up system, so we should be fine until the power comes back.” He fumbled his fingers along the headset until a tiny green light came on.

“This is Ian Wright broadcasting from Seafarer II. Anyone copy up there?” The only noise to respond was the subdued sound of static. Moments later the compound shook in virulent spasms. Over the thunderous roars, Miles could have sworn he heard the heel of Kaeya’s shoe break.

The tremor lasted half a minute, and when the compound sustained its last seizure the five terrified guests to Seafarer II slowly stood up, legs trembling.

Kaeya ran her fingers down her arms and legs, checking for any signs of injury. At that moment she thought she experienced her first hot flash as her heart pumped much too rapidly for its own good. She steadied herself against the wall and looked to the four silhouettes in front of her. “What in God’s name was that?”

∞

Babylon Loading Station, somewhere along Earth’s orbit

Eva kept her left hand fastened on her gun’s grip while her right hand shielded her nose from the powerful stench. Freddy followed.

The loading station was eerily silent. The escape pods that were fastened to the outside of the station were present and intact, so the only way for the crew to leave would have been through a pick-up from an external source. ‘We should have waited five minutes for the others,’ Eva thought.

It was only after fifteen more steps that Freddy noticed the rusty stain at the end of the hallway. As they neared he was all but sure it was blood. They passed two other passage-ways as they approached the stain.

“Safety off?” Freddy whispered, looking at the pistol. Eva nodded.

They turned the corner to the first bunk room, and Eva nearly stepped on the limb before she saw it. Just below the barrier that separated the hallway and bunk room was a severed hand lodged up against the base of the wall, wedding band still around one finger. Gagging was the last thing on Eva’s mind. They weren’t safe, and someone or something was the cause of it.

“Maybe we should have waited for the others,” Freddy said, glancing behind him to check their backs.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

They slowly walked forward, checking each of the bunk beds for any signs of an intruder or, for all they knew, another severed limb. The bunk room was small and in no time they reached the command center. The upside-down scene entering Eva’s iris made it look like the room and all the people in it had been passed through a blender. The overwhelming smell was secondary to the boldness of blood patterns strewn across the wall.

“Jesus Christ,” Freddy murmured.

Before they could fully process the spectacle, a metallic clamor hit their ears. “That sounded like it was coming from Etana,” Freddy cautioned.

“They’re awake. If they think we’re missing and see this, who knows who they’ll shoot.”

Eva led the way back to Etana One. Freddy, who was walking backwards to mitigate any potential ambush, backed out of the command center and followed Eva.

When they turned the corner to the rejuvenation pods, it was not three lively astronauts that their eyes fell on. A man hovered over one of the pods, sinking his teeth into their comrade’s neck like a vicious dog. Eva didn’t think twice. She pulled the trigger on her Walther P99 and the intruder fell lifeless onto the floor.

Michael Cassidy didn’t stand a chance of surviving the attack. The blood that was gushing from the occipital vein of his neck carried a death sentence, yet Freddy still ran up to him and held his hand firmly on the back of Michael’s neck. The man had now been pulled from his slumber, eyes wide with astonishment and fingers grasping at the air.

The other two astronauts, still strapped into the rejuvenation pods, had woken from the chaos and surveyed their surroundings with confused guises. After a couple choking spasms, Michael’s gasps for help died down.

Eva stood over the body of the man who attacked one of her crew members. She pointed her pistol at the corpse again, releasing another round into the back of the attacker’s skull. Crouching on her knees, she heaved the body over. The lesions that decorated the deep craters of the man’s face looked oddly similar to the scorching brands that were on Babylon’s hull. The scabs and lacerations continued past his forehead, filling the voids on his head where hair had fallen off.

Tallah Balewa unlatched herself from her rejuvenation pod and sat up, gasping at the gruesome scene in front of her. The dark skin of her forehead released all wrinkles as it stretched, surrendering to her expanding eyes. “What is going on!”

Eva looked up from the corpse of the deformed intruder and locked eyes with her comrade. “We’re leaving.”