Brian Evenson - Dead Space - Martyr

The Colonel gave him a shrewd look. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “At this point, you’re less expendable than nearly anyone else. But yes, if the circumstances develop in the wrong way, you’re expendable. Does that bother you?”

“Yes,” said Tanner.

“Then don’t let the circumstances develop in the wrong way,” the Colonel said. He looked at his chronometer. “I’ll give you until morning. Find out how widely the vid is spreading and how much of it people have seen. Get some people on the ground who can ask the right questions without raising suspicions. Once we know where we stand, we’ll figure out what to do.”

The call came around 1 a.m. Altman lay in bed, watching his phone buzz on the table beside the bed, like a trapped insect. It buzzed and buzzed and then stopped. He checked it — no number listed and the hologram image was blocked. Almost immediately it started buzzing again.

It could be Hammond, he thought, I should answer it. Or Showalter, Ramirez, or Skud. But he just watched it buzz until it stopped.

The third time, it woke up Ada. She yawned and stretched, her body arching. “What time is it?” she asked drowsily, and then she sat up in bed, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Michael, aren’t you going to answer that?”

He watched his hand reach out and flip his phone open, bringing it up to his ear.

“Hello,” he said. Even to him his voice sounded dry and crackly, as if he hadn’t spoken for years.

“Is this,” said the voice, and then paused. “Michael Altman?”

“Who is this?” asked Altman.

The man on the other end of the line ignored the question. “I have a simple question I need you to answer,” he said. “I’m curious if you’ve managed to pick up anything unusual lately. Intercepted something.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“I can see that you haven’t,” said the voice quickly. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

“Do you mean a signal of some sort?” he asked, thinking of the pulse.

There was a silence on the other end of the line.

“Some sort of transmission?” said Altman.

“Maybe,” said the voice slowly. “Do you have something in mind?”

“Who is this?” said Altman again.

“That doesn’t matter,” said the voice.

“What kind of transmission are you talking about?” he asked. “A pulse of some kind?”

The voice suddenly turned nasty. “You’ll have to do better than that, Mr. Altman,” it said, a harsh note to it.

“Wait,” said Altman. “Let’s make a deal. If you tell me what you’re looking for, I’ll tell you if I come across it.”

The line went dead.

“What the hell was that about?” asked Ada.

“I don’t know,” said Altman. “I wish I did. Someone trying to pry something out of me.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

He got out of bed. He went into the bathroom and washed his face, stared at the man looking back at him from the mirror. There were dark circles under his eyes, his eyelids puffy and swollen. He barely recognized himself. He hadn’t been sleeping well. Bad dreams and, on top of that, all the excitement and fear associated with whatever was going on in the crater. Plus a headache that seemed to go on and on.

What if something had happened to Hammond? he wondered. What if they had killed him? What if they were coming after him now?

No, that was crazy. There was no point being paranoid. It was just a phone call.

He went into the other room, switched on the computer, connected to the secure server. Nothing new from the others since he’d last checked.

“What are you doing?” Ada asked him. She was sitting up in bed again, hair falling partly over her face.

“I have to check on something,” he said. “It won’t take long.”

“Michael,” she said, her voice stern now, “I want to know exactly what’s going on. You shouldn’t keep secrets from me. You’re not in trouble, are you?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“If you were in trouble, you’d tell me, right?” she said.

“I’d like to think I would,” he said.

“What do you mean you’d like to think you would? What kind of answer is that?”

“I mean yes, of course I would.”

“There,” she said. “That’s better.”

She ran her fingers through her hair and twisted it so it fell behind her shoulders, then got up and went into the bathroom. He turned to the screen and quickly typed: Strange phone call this morning, just after 3 AM, asking me if I’d intercepted something. Thought he was talking about the signal from the center of Chicxulub, but when I hinted at that, he rushed to get off the line. Maybe a transmission of some sort, but what, I don’t know. Anybody else get the same call?

He waited a minute, staring at his screen until Ada came out and climbed back into bed. Then he logged out and shut the system down, climbing in next to her. Probably nothing, he told himself.

“You promise me you’d tell me?” she said, sleepy again now.

“Yes,” he said.

A few minutes later, he realized she was asleep. He lay in bed, eyes open, staring up at the darkened ceiling. It was a long time before he was able to fall asleep as well.

In the morning, logging on, he discovered all three of the others had had the same call, all well after he’d had it. Ramirez first, then Showalter, then Skud, which suggested that maybe the person making the calls was simply moving alphabetically down a list. They were all as puzzled as he was. Ask around, Altman wrote back. Find out if other people had it, and what they make of it.

By noon, they had the answer. Every scientist in Chicxulub they’d contacted had been called. Most of them had no idea what was going on, chalked it up to a crank call or the work of some paranoid. But Ramirez had finally talked to someone who seemed to know.

“He’s talking about the vid broadcast,” a man named Bennett said, a geologist and amateur radio enthusiast. “I figured it out right away. He called, all cryptic, fishing for something but not wanting to give away what. I said, ‘You mean the vid broadcast?’ He pretended not to know what I was talking about, got me to describe it, then he thanked me very politely and hung up.”

Bennett had only part of the vid, a few brief seconds, something he’d come across broadcasting on not just one band but several, and so, out of curiosity, he’d recorded it. There were about three seconds of static, followed by five slightly distorted seconds of someone talking, followed by eight seconds of static. A few other people, said Bennett, had gotten other bits of it, and someone at DredgerCorp seemed to be gathering copies of all the bits. Why, he didn’t know. Bennett was pretty sure it was a hoax, somebody’s idea of a joke. But how they’d got it to seem like it was being broadcast from the center of Chicxulub, he didn’t know. Probably a transmitter on a boat or—

“It was broadcast from where?”

“Somewhere near the center of Chicxulub crater,” he said. “All part of the hoax, I’m guessing.”

“Can I have a copy?”

“Why not?” he had said. “The more, the merrier.” He spun it over.

It was a strange document — a man, naked, his body covered in symbols written in a substance that seemed to be blood, staring with a strange grin into the camera. “understand it—” he said, “destroy it—” And then static.

Altman watched it again. There wasn’t much to it, just a few seconds. Maybe Bennett was right and it was a hoax, but there was something about the man’s expression, the tightness of his features, the dead, mad emptiness of his eyes, which made Altman feel that it was not. Where was he? He watched it again. It was a small, confined space, the walls, too, smeared with symbols written with the same substance as was smeared on the man. Something at one point cast a reddish glare under the man’s chin, when he bobbed forward. The lighting was industrial, harsh and unfriendly. “Understand it — destroy it,” the man said. I’m still working on understanding it, thought Altman. To be frank, I’m not even sure what it is.