Then he turned a corner and stopped short. Stared. And cursed.
The corridor ahead was completely blocked by vines, so thickly tangled that he could barely see the vents they protruded from. There was no way to proceed any further along this route unless he cut his way through with his utility knife. Like a primitive hacking his way through a jungle, only the short blade of his emergency knife would take hours to clear a path. He needed a fucking machete.
You can find a way around it, he told himself. But whatever these organics were, they seemed to be clustered in the very section he wanted to enter; the odds were good that even if he could find another approach to the engineering section, that, too, would be blocked.
“Fuck,” he muttered. Then he yelled at the vines, pouring all his frustration and his despair into the cry: “FUCK YOU!”
The mass quivered.
He stepped back quickly, pulling the knife from his pocket. But the vines were still, now. Had he imagined the movement? Was he so tired that he was starting to see things? He looked around for some small object he could use to test the vines, but of course in the middle of a station corridor there was nothing. He started rummaging through his pockets for something expendable, and found the half-empty tube of cheesecake paste. Just heavy enough. He held it in his hand for a moment, studying the curtain of vines in front of him, then threw it with all his might at what looked like the thinnest spot. Maybe if it broke through, he could get a sense of how far down the hall this obstruction went.
But it didn’t go through. It hit the vines and hung there in mid-air, a ghostly white intruder trapped in a black web. After a few seconds it began to slide down, drops of gelatinous sap slicking its bright plastic surface. In a distant part of his brain Micah understood why that image repelled him—he’d once presented a paper on The Emotive Power of Gelatinous Textures in Virtual Settings—but his response was visceral, and treating the cause as an intellectual exercise didn’t help.
A vine moved.
With a gasp, he took a step backward. A tip of one vine beneath the food tube was curling upward, shaping itself around it. As the tube slid into its embrace the vine tightened, wrapping around it like a hungry python—
Micah turned and ran. The whole world was full of black vines, and once he nearly ran face first into a web of them. Another time he nearly tripped over a clump on the floor. Were they all moving now? Would they reach for him if he stumbled? He used the map in his head, retracing his path from before, praying that whatever the hell those things were, they stayed rooted in place. When he reached the waiting room he hesitated . . . but what was he going to do, go back upstairs and face the beast? He ran across the room and beyond it, into a part of the station he hadn’t seen before. The halls were free of organics—thank God!—and he ran until he could run no more, then stopped, doubling over as he gasped for breath. When breathing became less of a struggle, he visualized the icon that would activate his wellseeker. It greeted him by scrolling bright red warnings in the corner of his visual field, listing all the biological systems that were off kilter, but he ignored those and just told it to give him a small dose of sedative. A few seconds later he could feel his muscles begin to relax, and the fear eased its death grip on him.
When he had his strength back he started walking again. He figured he would put a little more distance between him and the vine, and then look for a place to rest. At one point he saw a dark branch on the floor ahead of him and his heart sank, but as he edged carefully closer he saw that it was not a vine like the others, just a piece of a long stick that had been broken in half. He picked it up, then found another piece that was clearly its mate. One had a pointed tip, stained black; an arrow? There were dark spots on the floor near where it had been lying, but in the dim lighting he couldn’t tell if that was blood or just grime. Who would use such a primitive weapon in a space station?
Suddenly he heard a rustling sound: the movement of clothing? He gripped the sharp half of the arrow in one hand and pulled out his utility knife with the other, aware that neither was ideal for combat, but what the hell else was he supposed to do?
A dark shadow moved into the hallway, about ten yards ahead of him. Too far for his headlamp to illuminate details, other than its human shape. “Off!” it demanded. The voice was male, deep-timbered, and in another setting might have been intimidating, but Micah was so glad to see another human being that all he felt was elation. It took him a moment to realize what the man wanted; when he did he reached up and turned the headlamp off, so that it was no longer shining straight into the man’s eyes. Now Micah could be seen.
Slowly the figure approached. He was a tall man, Terran in appearance, with harsh, angular features and a stark silver headset. A breastplate made of layered strips of gray plasteel covered the chest portion of his jumpsuit like an insect carapace, and bracers of the same material were strapped around his lower arms. Makeshift armor? There was a weapon in his hand, pistol-shaped but with a two-pronged tip. He kept it pointed at Micah as he approached, dark eyes taking his measure, up and down. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Micah Bello. My ship malfunctioned and crashed while docking . . . I’ve been looking for people . . .”
The man held out his hand. After a moment Micah realized what he wanted, and handed him the arrow. The man looked it over, studying the tip in particular. Then he glanced at the floor, at the dark spattering that might or might not be blood; his weapon was still pointing at Micah’s heart.
“Who are you?” Micah asked.
“Jamal.” The man finally lowered his weapon. “My name is Jamal.” He tapped a small device that was affixed to his ear. “Serjit . . . you there?” He waited a moment, listening. “I’m in sector five. There was some kind of combat here . . . looks like blood on the floor. One arrow left behind. Are we missing anyone?” Another pause. “Well, let’s make sure of it. And put the patrols on alert. If the exos are hunting in this sector now, we need to be ready for them. Meanwhile,” he scowled at Micah, “I’ve got an unidentified person here. Claims he’s a shipwreck. Ship’s gone.” A longer pause. “No, Variant.”
“Sarkassan,” Micah offered.
“Says he’s Sarkassan.” A pause. “No, not exo. At least far as I can see. Certainly isn’t acting exo.” A pause. “You want me to bring him in?” Another pause, then dryly: “He’s pointing a utility knife at me. I assume if he had anything bigger I’d be looking at it.”
Whatever response he got seemed to end the conversation. He focused his attention on Micah again. “Serjit says I can bring you in to meet the others. Expect to be interrogated when you get there. Standard operating procedure.” He snorted. “Well, no, not standard. It’s not every day we come across an outsider.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “Unless you’d rather hang out here, wait for the exos to find you.”
“What are exos?”