Space is Big

Part 5: The Building

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Aiden, Ashley, and Lexi were having a talk about Heron;
"I don't know, Lexi, he's still out there trying to prove this building exists. Plus, this is a completely new planet. I know it's really similar to earth, but the gravity is slightly less than earth's, but who knows what else could be different here. Besides, Heron's really determined about this and he doesn't seem like the type to prank people he cares about." Ashley said, trying to keep the tensions between Lexi and Aiden at a minimum.
"Yeah, I'm with Ashley on this one, Lex." Aiden said, "Heron's not the pranking type."
Their phones chimed in unison, signaling that Heron had sent something. Aiden opened the video and Ashley and Lexi gathered around him to watch.
"Okay, I don't know what's going on here." Heron's voice was shaky, like he had been crying. "I can't see it without looking through the camera, and I can't actually feel it, but I can feel... something. There's no wind or anything, but something is trying to push me out of here. Like those video games where you start to slow down and can't go any further when you reach the edge of the map. I'm not crazy and I'm not trying to trick you guys. Please believe me. Can one of you guys come down here and at least verify that I haven't lost it? Please?"
The video showed the huge building that Heron appeared to be walking through with only a little difficulty. It was made of a dark stone that none of them could identify and occasionally, they caught glimpses of glyphs and images on the walls. The next minute or so of the video was Heron wandering through this building, walking through walls and seemingly not able to see the building around him. As they watched, Ashley caught a glimpse of something in the background of one of the shots.
"Hold on, go back" She grabbed the phone and rewound it until all three of them could see what she had seen.
It was a person. It wasn't Heron, Heron was behind the camera. This person was tall, dressed in what looked like robes with a long cloak and high collar. They seemed to fade in and out with the building as Heron moved. Just before Heron turned away, the person raised its hand as if reaching for him.
"Oh shit." Aiden whispered. "We have to get him out of there. Ashley, get the truck ready. Take some guns, just in case. I don't know what the hell that thing is, but I will not have one of my crew getting in trouble, especially on my watch. Load up. Lexi, you're coming with us too."
Lexi rolled her eyes, but grabbed her things and trudged to the trucks.
It took them about ten minutes to finish loading the truck, but with the way Aiden was driving, it only took them five minutes to reach the north marker. Ashley kept looking over the videos until she was fairly confident about generally where Heron had wandered off to.
"I still think that this is bullshit. Heron's just messing with us." Lexi grumbled.
"If he was messing with us, he wouldn't still be out here with no knowledge of the terrain or fauna or whatever the hell is out here or.... Holy shit. I see the patch of ground he was talking about. Like he said, there's nothing here. Lexi, start recording and tell us what you see."
"Fine. But if he is crazy or fucking with us, I'm walking back." Lexi held up her camera and hit record.
"Anything?" Aiden called back.
"What the hell." Lexi whispered before shoving the camera into Aiden's hands, "He wasn't fucking with us. There's actually something here."
"Speak of the devil, do you see him anywhere, Ash?" Aiden poked the woman next to him who nodded and scanned the surrounding area with her binoculars.
"Found him." Ashley said after a moment, "Looks like he's about half a mile towards the center. He's upright, but he doesn't look... I don't know, conscious? His eyes are rolled up and his mouth is open. Doesn't look too aware of his surroundings. I'm going in."
"Right behind you." Lexi said as she clambered out of the back of the truck. Aiden turned off the truck and grabbed the biggest gun he had brought before jogging along behind the two women. They reached the edge of the dead ground and paused for a moment, Ashley sending up a quick prayer before taking a step into the ring.
"Heron!" She yelled, trying to get his attention. "Lexi, keep that camera up and tell me if you see that thing again." Lexi nodded and held the camera up to her face. Aiden and Ashley noticed that she kept drifting away from them, so they followed her.
"What do you see, Lexi?" Aiden asked quietly, not sure why he was whispering.
"I'm following the hallways. Maybe, and hear me out, maybe Heron is stuck in a wall or something and that's why he can't move. I'll watch the halls and you guys keep watching Heron."
"I'd try and argue that but this whole thing defies everything my college professors taught me about literally everything." Aiden laughed nervously, "I'm still in shock about all of this to begin with, but hey, Heron's probably stuck in an invisible wall, right? That makes sense."
"Keep your head, Aiden, we need everyone sharp here." Ashley slapped Aiden's arm and he seemed to snap out of it. Lexi kept following the halls until they were standing right in front of Heron.
"There's a door here. I feel like I'm back in that VR headset that my girlfriend insisted on buying. I'm going to try and open it." She reached out, but her hand passed right through the door.
"Well, damn it." Ashley sighed when Lexi shrugged in defeat. "We have to get him out of here. Aiden, grab one of his arms, let's see if we can pull him into the hall." Aiden nodded and gripped Heron's left arm and Ashley grabbed his right. It took about five minutes of pulling before Heron finally fell through the wall and onto the floor. As soon as his head hit the floor, his eyes shot open and he inhaled so aggressively, it made the other three jump.
"What the fuck just happened? How far in did I get?" Lexi dropped to her knees and pulled Heron into a hug.
"Don't scare us like that. There's something here and I'm so sorry I yelled at you."
"I told you there was something here." Heron chuckled.
"No, there's something in the building. It was trying to grab you." Lexi said, not trying to hide the concern in her voice. Heron blinked up at them.
"What are you talking about? There's a living, biological being here? How did I miss it?" Ashley sat down next to him and pulled up the clip of the being reaching for Heron.
"Oh, this was the last video I sent, right? Yeah, this was right before I passed out. I didn't feel anything touch me, but then again I was walking through walls like a southern ghost or something." He laughed, but everyone could tell he was shaken up.
"We should get you out of here. We need to figure this shit out and keep a log of everything we do here." Lexi helped Heron up, but kept a grip on his hand.
"Heron, do you mind if we use your videos as a part of this log?" Ashley asked softly.
"Oh absolutely. Just make sure I get my credit for all this."
"And, there's the American Heron." Lexi laughed as she pulled Heron along behind her.
"Hold on." Aiden said suddenly, "Nobody move. Do you hear that?" The group froze in place and turned to Aiden who had gone as pale as a ghost. After a moment, they heard it: A hollow, consistent tapping sound that sounded eerily like footsteps.
"Those sound like shoes on stone. Flats or business shoes don't tap like that, those are heels. Getting closer." Lexi said quietly.
"Camera. Now." Aiden hissed. Lexi held up the camera and slowly turned.
"I don't see anything." Lexi whispered, "Let's just leave before whatever it is, finds us." Since there were no exceptions, the group began to move at a brisk jog towards the exit. Heron kept looking back before taking his camera out and hitting record.
"Oh my god. I had a dream about this place. This hall, I was by myself and I was running. There was someone behind me trying to get me to come back to them. This is insane. And I had the dream before I even found this place. This is freaky." As they ran, Heron turned the camera behind him so he could get a full shot of the hall and then he pocketed the camera and kept running. They got back to the truck, but instead of going back to camp, they began to rewatch the footage.
"I'm getting sick of this bullshit. I want to be able to see this whole building with my own eyes." Heron groaned.
"I agree." Lexi joined. "There has to be some sort of trigger for this cl... oh."
"Oh?" The other three echoed.
"I wonder if it's cloaked like our fighters." She mused, "This has to be some sort of security measure to protect whatever valuables this building has stored. If that's the case, I've never seen cloaking on this scale or this advanced before, but then again, I've never seen anything like this before, period. If it's cloaked, and I'm assuming that this tech is anything like ours, there has to be a manual off switch somewhere either on the grounds, in the actual building, or hidden somewhere around the property. Right? I could be waaaaayyy off base here, but no one goes to the trouble of building something like this just to hide it. Also, let's brainstorm this whole thing for a minute. Why is this building here to begin with? What is its purpose? Who built it? I want to hear some speculation people, let's go." Lexi waved at us to talk and Ashley chimed in,
"Based on the actual structure itself, it looks like it could be a temple. The glyphs and pictures on the walls that we saw in Heron's last video could be images of gods or deities."
"I'm going to disagree with that one, Ash." Aiden piped up. "If you look at those spires, they look more like antennae. I'm going to say that this is more of an exploration base, like ours."
"What about the glyphs?" Ashley shot back
"Research. There were only a few images, those glyphs could very well be scientific scribbles."
Lexi and Heron listened to the two of them bounce back and forth until Heron spoke up,
"It could be both." Ashley and Aiden stopped and looked at him.
"Elaborate." They said in unison.
"The building looks like a temple, but looking at this picture on the wall, here," He held out the camera and pointed at one of the clearer images, "this looks like a diagram of one of the Asteroid Crawlers or at least something similar. Can y'all see it or am I nuts?"
"I think you may be right about it being a diagram." Lexi agreed, "But the question at hand is, how on earth are we going to study this structure if we can't see it unless we use the cameras?"
"We could map it with a camera mounted to one of the drones." Aiden offered, "Wouldn't be hard to scan the outside of the building. It's the inside that I'm concerned about. This plot of land is huge and if this building spans the whole plot of land, we're going to be here a while. And we still have our other exploration responsibilities that we need to complete before we get called back home. We need to figure out what our main priority is."
"The fuck do you mean, main priority?" Heron hollered, "This building is evidence of intelligent life outside of humanity and you're asking about priorities? You can set up your sensors around the equator of this planet all you want, I'll be here studying this behemoth of a discovery. Also, is no one going to bring up the human figure in one of the videos? I feel like we moved past that way too fast. What do we think it is?"
"Alien. Hopefully friendly." Aiden chuckled like he'd made a joke although no one else seemed to find it funny.
"Its clothing suggests that it's a monk of some sort, which corroborates the theory that this is a temple, not some sort of research facility. Aiden." Ashley hissed playfully.
"It could be a non-native. Maybe from another planet and it's trapped in the building, like I almost was." Heron tried,
"Yeah, but this thing can see the building. At least I think it can." Lexi chimed.
"And since we've seen it twice in the building," Ashley said, "we can rule-"
"Hold on." Heron cut her off. "Sorry, we've only actually seen it once. It was on my video from earlier. Did you see it again?"
"Did I not tell you?"
"You most certainly did not!" Heron said in an offended tone.
"When we heard the footsteps, I kept my camera on the end of the hall and I caught it walking through the door. I'd say it looks kind of curious about us. I got a good shot of its outfit too."
"Oh my god, show us!" Lexi crowed, "Why didn't you say anything sooner?"
"I got caught up in the theories and kind of forgot." Ashley said as she pulled up the video.
Sure enough, they got a good look at whatever had been in the building with them. It wore what looked like a mask that covered its whole face, but it had some cracks and parts of it were chipped away to reveal rich red skin. The robes were black with gold trim and a huge red jewel hung from around the being's neck. The hood was up, but tufts of black hair hung down to its chest. Its hands were covered in gold lines that looked like they were glowing slightly. Heron tried to trace the lines and noticed that the tiniest bit of skin that they could see on its neck also had the lines and he made sure to point them out to the others.
"I wonder what it is." Lexi whispered. "It looks kind of ethereal."
"I hope it's friendly." Heron agreed. "I want to talk to it at some point. I hope there isn't much of a language barrier."
"Okay." Aiden said, "I think we have enough information for the day, let's head back and figure out what to do next."
"Spoilsport." Lexi grumbled, but didn't contest him.
The drive back was quiet, the adrenaline had worn off and Heron's eyes were starting to droop.
"I'm gonna need a nap when we get back. What a day we've had. And I haven't eaten yet." He leaned against Lexi who patted his head and let him use her as a pillow. Since they weren't in as much of a rush, they Aiden drove slower and gave everyone a chance to collect their thoughts, most of which were of fame and fortune. Heron was fast asleep when they got back and Lexi carried him in and to his room. He woke up for a moment and commented on how impressed he was that Lexi could carry him before falling right back to sleep and staying that way until Ashley came and woke him up for dinner.
Over some very good salads and handmade pizza, they talked about their findings, and pooled their collective knowledge about what they had seen.
"We should have gotten a soil sample and tested it against the soil from around our camp." Lexi groaned. "Damn, I can't believe I forgot that. I guess we'll have to go back down soon."
"Lex, you know we are going to spend most of our time down there." Aiden patted her back, "Don't worry, you'll get your soil samples."
"Oh!" Heron shot his hand up in the air like he was in class, "I have an idea about how we can tell where the building is without having to constantly use the cameras!"
"Go on." Aiden said, a curious look on his face.
"We can use the stakes and rope to mark out the edges of the building, like how construction workers map out the house before they build it. We have like twenty miles worth of rope in the hold that they made us bring for some reason so why not use it? Then we can at least be able to tell where it starts. Then if we have extra, we can map the inside."
"That's... actually really smart." Ashley chuckled.
"I agree." Aiden said, "Let's get that project started tomorrow. I'll keep an eye out for communications and I'll let the commanders know of what we found."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Ashley queried, "If they know what's going on here, who knows what decision they'll make without us knowing. The last thing I want as a researcher is to have a perfectly good and delicate exploration get ruined by some big trucks and what is essentially a huge military occupation of a peaceful operation. Plus, you know Commander Xander, he's trigger happy, money hungry, and power crazed. I don't want him and his steel toed boots fucking this whole thing up. If anyone is going to be good for first actual contact, it's probably going to be us. We'll give them the minimum, but do not, under any circumstances, tell them about the thing in the building or that the building is cloaked. For all they know, we found a dilapidated temple and there is nothing in it." Aiden looked a bit nervous, but agreed.
"I don't like the idea of lying to our superiors, but if you guys think it's a good idea to keep them in the dark, then that's what we'll do."
"Until we know more about this whole thing." Ashley assured him. "We won't keep them out of the loop forever."
"Thank god." Aiden breathed. "Alright. We are going to digitally and physically map this building to the best of our ability. Then we are going to figure out if there is some sort of mechanism to turn the building back on, and meet this red guy. Then we  prioritize exploration of the rest of the planet. Do we like that plan?" Everyone agreed, finished their dinners, and went back to their own rooms.