Murmansk-13

Tor fought back another gout of bile that fizzled the back of his oesophagus and stood up, hoping gravity would drive the acidic substance back to his otherwise starved stomach. His head swam and he could make out the quiet searching of Tala and Mihailov in the adjacent cabins. Listlessly he hobbled to the closet, a blokovi styled pictograph of an escape suit sparkled reflectively green on the bottom drawer. Tor pulled the drawer back, bearings softly screeching, and found it empty. He let the drawer clatter to the floor and turned his back on the cabin and its artefacts.

Tor closed the cabin door, remembering the time capsules he’d buried as a school boy in the dells of Gudbrandsdalen. Little trinkets of his life, immured in cleansed mackerel tins, an old school photograph, notes to the future and a prized GI Joe figurine stolen from a forgotten classmate. Those tins had probably rotted into the earth, relinquishing their contents to the elements. He wondered how long the memories of the cabin behind him would endure in the vacuum of space.

Beside him Mihailov stood rigid, peering down the gentle curve of the corridor, his hand still on the cabin door handle from which he exited. His pose perturbed Tor. “What is it?”

Mihailov fanned his free hand, gesturing Tor to be quiet. In the apparent silence of the corridor he listened. Tala was still in a cabin, Tor could hear her opening a closet drawer, her suit creaking just louder than the insidious hum of the station. Beyond that he heard nothing. “Sec, what is it?”

Mihailov took a pensive step forward, his mouth opening as if to answer when Tala emerged from a cabin, two down. Her features shrouded by the gloom. Tor could see her turn toward Mihailov, his postures aggravated. In response she turned to look down the corridor. The sound of scuffling feet, childlike, reverberated like a wave in the emptiness, followed by the plastic clack of the doors.

Feeling suddenly cornered, despite the cylindrical design of the corridors, Tor began backing up, head swivelling to look forward and back. He felt the metal coupling for the suits helmet rub and clip the skin of his throat. “Tala. To us.” Tor hissed, the stocky Filipina hadn’t moved.

“Wait.” She whispered back, heading the opposite direction down the passageway.

“Tala!” Tor whispered, sotto voce as he watched her disappear into the darkness of the corridors braced curve. “Fuck.”

Unsure what to do, Tor and Mihaliov listened chill and breathlessly caught in indecision once more. “Captain,” Tala called back, Tor heard her mutter an indecipherable expletive. “You need to see this.”

☣☭☠

Katja pushed through the double doors into the stairwell. It was decrepit, dust motes drifted like snow around her. Up was bad, up was how this had all began. Down was easy and all she wanted was to be somewhere else, somewhere far from the people who murdered her father.

An image, animal, feral flashed in her head. Horrible glassy eyes. She felt drunk, she’d been drunk the night Arty had put her to sleep. Why had that happened? Something bad. Alarms.

Her tongue was large in her mouth and furry as if covered with moss, her cranium felt overfull. Katja lurched forward, grasping the cold metal banister that burnt her palms. Her legs were weak and wobbly, her body saggy and empty, each heavy difficult footstep caused loose skin and wasted fat to jiggle under her surgical gown.

They’d been green, she remembered removing her jumpsuit and donning them. Had Arty watched her undress? That would have been weird, why did she remember his eyes, behind those little round glasses on her body?

They weren’t green anymore, not her legs. Her legs were crimson and bulky. For a scared second Katja wondered if it was her blood, then she remembered the killers who strapped her to the horrible chill metal board. It all seemed so primitive, like Neanderthals. Memories of the Flintstones and drinking games, they weren’t supposed to watch American TV.

Katja wanted the numbness in her legs to go away, she looked back at the swinging plastic doors, she thought she’d come further. She thought of dead flesh, her legs necrotic and frozen. Fiercely she coiled her hands against the handrail, a great spume of yellow vomit gushed from her mouth colouring the bulkhead, pattering heavily to the bottom of the trunk. Her eyes watered against the force, her stomach acid burnt chapped and cracked lips.

She pushed herself away from her effluence, suddenly realizing how cold her body was as she teetered atop another flight of metal steps. Treadplate seemed to shift in little wavelets beneath her. One moment she was paralyzed by shivers, the next by her knotted stomach. Neon escape lights seemed to twist around her vision, turning fisheye as she tried to focus on the descent.

“Katja, stop!” The foreign sounding voice echoed down the trunk. Wide eyed she peered up at the doors, a flight above her. The man with scraggily shoulder length blonde hair and a wild gaze was shouting at her.