THE FALL OF ROSENROT STATION

HEART OF DARKNESS

Even strode forward and stepped over the lip of the still descending door and into the other half of the laboratory. He felt around on the side of his gun and found a latchkey and clicked it down. Immediately a beam of light lanced out from beneath the muzzle. He scanned it across his field of view. In the middle was a rotunda where the light reflected and refracted off glittering electronic towers, banks of vacuum tubes, wrapped by polished cooling vanes. Each side was a curving passage. The rear wall was not visible just a blank blackness.

The righthand wall contained several curtained alcoves and designations above each one that were illegible from this distance. The lefthand wall had doors spaced at irregular intervals with little clue as to where they led.

When he swept the light rightward again it caught on a figure that was now lurching towards him.

It was a woman or at least it had been. She was dressed in the blue and black of station security, this uniform now torn and stained with blood and other fluids. The light scalded her eyes, but she did not flinch, driven onward by an alien imperative to reproduce. By the look of her she had given birth already, her body covered in ulcerated fistula from which the biomorph larva would crawl.

She reached out for him, her fingers held like claws meant for her neck. One of her legs dragged behind her as she made her way slowly towards him by this strange broken ambulation.

Unlike other nesters he had encountered she made no noises neither babblespeak nor even the minimally expected shrieks and screams.

Instead of firing Even stepped back as it shuffled forward. He held his needler in both hands, covering her center of mass. As he went back another step he looked about then back at her.

He heard a sharp intake of breath from the synthetic behind him. She moved out of the way as he took another step back.

Now there were shouts. The others in the room behind him were shouting at him or perhaps arguing with each other. A name was repeated several times. Megan.

Megan. Even said. Stop.

She paused for the smallest moment and some kind of awareness flickered through her eyes. It was a cruelty calling her back like this.

Even took careful aim. Before he could fire there came the crackling sound of automatic weapons. Needles traced the darkness either side of him and converged on the woman then exploded out her back tearing away gibbets of flesh and bone and a bloody red mist. She toppled onto her face.

He looked back. One of the guards was weeping. Moreno was beside him giving aid or comfort.

Get that door closed. She called out. Now.

The grind of metal on metal began again. The pitch was different now, smoother, as if the metal was eager to be joined. The horizontal strip of light narrowed until it was just a thin band across their backs. They did not turn too watch its parting.

Check your link to sysnet. Even said.

Sarah took out her palmcoder. Connection is good.

A clunk reverberated through the deck. Behind them the door locked into place, cutting them off from light and safety. Now they only had as much of those things as they had brought themselves.