To The Moon And Back

Chapter Eleven

"Cosmo! What the hell do you think you are doing?" Selene yelled, shocked to her core to see her usually passive and kind friend helping the big, burly Atlas to set what looked to be metal sticks into the rocky wall. "Are you crazy? How could you be so stupid?"

Their list of offences was growing longer by the minute. Unauthorised landing on the Moon, intention to protest, disobeying the rules of a government facility, breaking into an active mine and restricted access areas, and now it appeared they were adding the use of restricted materials with intent to cause damage. When would this madness end? This was so unlike the friend she knew that her mind was struggling to make sense of anything that had happened in the past eleven hours since they had taken off from Earth.

Cosmo, seemingly immune to her screaming accusations, turned slowly from his task, his face an emotionless mask, seemingly not even recognising her. "We are doing what we must to protect our mother Moon," he intoned, his voice sounding flat, without feeling.

Selene stumbled back a step, the bleakness of his face so creepy she wondered if she had somehow fallen into the plot of a horror movie.

Yet, no matter how strange the situation, she still felt the need to ask, "How? By blowing a chunk out of her and killing people in the process?" She tsked, unable to believe she was actually asking such a question. "You can't be serious?"

It had to be some kind of joke, an elaborate prank that she hadn't been informed of. Please, please let it be a prank.

"Oh, but we are serious," Cosmo drawled, his tone even, calm... too calm. He reached behind him to a natural ledge in the rock and grabbed what looked to her like a TV remote control, but whatever it was, it couldn't be good.

"No! I won't let you do this!" she declared. "There are people here, good people who-"

"Good people?" Cosmo scoffed, finally showing some emotion, even if it was contempt. "They have ignored every attempt we, and others, have made to dissuade them." He clutched the remote so tightly it bleached the colour from his fingers. "We have to take matters into our own hands. We have no other choice!"

He's gone crazy, Selene realised, the horror of the situation dawning on her. There was a maniacal gleam in his eyes that she had never seen with him before but had been apparent within every extremist who had ever gone too far. He'd gone beyond caring about others, about the damage he might do in his single-minded pursuit of his goal. She had to do something, she couldn't just stand by and let them do this. She had to at least try, her friend had to be in there somewhere, she just had to make him see reason.

"Yes, we do! The workers are just trying to earn a living, they don't make the decisions, they follow orders. Please," she implored, "please think of them. They don't deserve to get hurt because of their jobs. These are human beings, they aren't collateral damage, they aren't disposable!"

"Ah, that is where you are wrong, my beautiful friend," a deep voice said, interrupting them. The sound, and the words themselves, send a shudder of revulsion down her spine, her every instinct screaming at her to move, to get out of there. This was not a regular person, this was something else entirely, someone evil, dark, and very dangerous.

Atlas, speaking up for the first time, emerged from the shadows. She realised then that she knew he'd be there somewhere, Cosmo surely hadn't dreamt this plan up on his own, he wouldn't have had the guts, but now it was like she was seeing Atlas for the first time. Everything about him seemed different somehow. The way he carried himself, an air of menace, of terror, seemed to surround him in an aura of darkness that her highly developed senses wouldn't allow her to ignore any longer. It was as if he had been wearing a cloak of invisibility that masked his true nature and now he'd cast it aside, letting his true intentions show through. His face seemed crueller, his eyes darker, his muscles bigger, his voice deeper and more accented than it had been.