Steven McDonald - Steven E. McDonald

The creature squatted over him. “You should be flattered I’ve taken an interest in you. Weir, the others… they were easy. But you will fight.”

Beyond the creature, the Core was a deepening darkness, swelling outward.

All around, the control rods were moving. Darkness seemed to be filling the universe.

Dark fire flashed through the runes on the creature’s face, traveled down the length of its body, revealing more runes, intricately woven together.

“You will struggle against me with every ounce of strength you possess…

right up to the moment when you surrender to me willingly.”

“Don’t count on it,” Miller hissed through clenched teeth.

His fingers touched something small, hard in the coolant.

A great deep rumbling filled the Second Containment. The control rods were entering the Core now.

Hoping blindly, Miller closed his hand.

“I don’t ask you to embrace me with blind faith,” the creature said, softly. “I will win you.”

Will you now? Miller rolled over, getting to all fours, trying to get to his feet. It’s time, he thought, time to go.

The creature kicked out.

Miller slid again, pushing a bow wave of coolant ahead of himself. Pale fire ripped through him. At this rate he would not last much longer.

Sorry, Starck, so sorry, he thought.

He tried to rise again, and could not complete his movement. He fell back into the muck.

In the distance, the Core swelled, its humming reaching a crescendo. Energy pulsed forth, along the control rods, rippling along the surfaces of the walls.

The creature came down to him.

Through a red haze of pain, Miller said, “You want me to pay for… mistakes?”

“I want to reward you for them,” the creature said, smiling. It was a mass of brilliant runes now, growing stronger as the Core continued its progress.

Reality had melted around the Core, the walls shifting, changing, vanishing, becoming part of the Core’s intolerable blackness. The universe was being swallowed by the heart of this ship.

The Core grew, screaming.

“You want me to burn in hell?” Miller said. “You want to take my soul?

Sorry, it’s not for sale.”

The creature was folding its body into a kneeling shape by him. It bent until its face was centimeters from Miller’s. He could smell the stink pf its breath over everything else.

“I will give you endless days of pain,” the creature said, “immeasurable agony. The more profound your despair, the greater will be my pleasure. And, in the end, after all of it… you will thank me.”

A surge of movement. The creature grasped Miller by the front of his flight suit, lifting him from the coolant, holding him in the air, still eye to eye.

Miller glared into the hellish corruption of Weir’s face, unwavering.

“Do you see?” the creature said. It was framed by the chaos that had been the Second Containment. “Do you see?”

“Yes,” Miller said, choosing his destiny there and then, regretting nothing, “I see.”

He raised his fist, held it between their faces. Without irony, he said,

“Go to hell.” He pressed the second button.

Starck and Cooper were in a side corridor when the explosive charges went off. The Event Horizon seemed to lift and leap forward, pulling free, sending them both tumbling to the deck.

They got up again, made it to a window.

The drive section of the Event Horizon had plunged into the atmosphere of Neptune, some of its velocity leeched away by the separation of the foredecks.

A black sphere was growing around the heart of the drive section, swallowing it up, growing. The blue clouds were swirling around it, a whirlpool forming. They were witnessing a black hole forming and working.

The black sphere expanded rapidly, paused as it swallowed the main part of the drive section.

Even more quickly, the black hole shrank, Neptune’s clouds becoming ever more agitated the more the Schwarzschild radius contracted. Within a few moments, all that was left was a dark gap in the cloudscape, and even that was being filled in as Neptune’s winds worked to erase the scar.

Starck touched the cold quartz of the window, her heart breaking, knowing that her captain would not be coming back. The thing that had been Weir had suddenly abandoned its pursuit of the two of them, scenting more interesting game. She had known that Miller would not be returning, no matter how much of a brave face he had put on.

She leaned against the window while Cooper watched the place where the other half of the Event Horizon had been. They would have to get into the Gravity Couches soon, taking their chances that USAC would mount another rescue mission. They might well drift forever, lost.

“Miller…” she whispered, watching the clouds fill in the last place he had been.

She turned away.

Darkness. Three beams of light cut through the darkness.

There were three of them, in full EVA gear, their lights playing over the interior of the Gravity Couch Bay, finding the shattered tank, the bloody floor.

Three tanks were occupied. Two males, one female.

One of the astronauts approached Starck’s tank, his light shining into her face.

Suddenly, her eyes opened.

She struggled, kicked, panicking. The tank drained rapidly, opened, disgorged her.

She fell to the floor, no strength in her arms and legs.

She looked up, wondering how she could have been seeing things outside of her body while she was unconscious in the tank. She could not speak.

The astronaut bent to help her up.

“You’re safe now,” he said, gently.

Her mind filled with thoughts of others. “Cooper, is he… Justin…”

“They’re fine, they’re with us.” The astronaut reached up, undogged his helmet. “You’re all with us now.”

He pulled his helmet off.

Weir smiled at her, his darkened face covered with runes, his eyes strange and alien.

“You’re with us,” he said, softly, reaching for her.

She began to scream.

They had emptied the second tank and gotten the woman, Starck, onto a bio-stretcher, everything going fine until she had opened her eyes and begun screaming for no reason that anyone could see.

The rescue tech ministering to her turned around, yelling, “We need a sedative here!”

Cooper, who had decanted in nothing more than his birthday suit and had yet to put on a stitch of clothing, pushed the rescue tech aside, grabbing Starck’s shoulders, trying to get through to her, to comfort her. No one in the rescue team had a clue as to what had taken place here, only that it had been traumatic in nature.

“Starck, it’s me,” Cooper said, trying to break through her screaming.

“It’s me, come on now, it’s okay, we’re okay, we’re okay…”

But she had seen the face of the beast, and had known it would always be with her.

She continued to scream….