doorway.
Warrick heard him scream, though the sound seemed to be coming to his ears from a great distance. There was nothing in the dark, at least nothing that could be seen, but Henderson was struggling nevertheless, screaming in pain, trying to pull his hand back from the abyss. Warrick and Jones grabbed his shoulders and tried to help pull him back, but Warrick could feel something unseen, but no less real tugging at the hand that Henderson had extended into the darkness. There was a strength there that Warrick was sure could have snapped Henderson into the void with less time than it would take to blink, but the unseen force seemed to be toying with them, letting them continue their futile tug-of-war.
Still, Warrick wasn't ready to give up the battle. "Pull!" he screamed at Jones. "For the love of God, pull!"
There was a sound that Warrick would never have believed human if he hadn't heard it gurgling out of Henderson's mouth himself, and then all three men suddenly lurched backward into the hall. The door slammed shut with such force that the sound rang in Warrick's ears like a gunshot. But then the sounds that Henderson was making, the horrified screams of pain, seemed to overwhelm everything else.
He clutched frantically at the bloody stump of flesh and bone that protruded from the mangled sleeve of his suit, all that was left of his arm, holding it to himself like a wounded child. Warrick could only watch in numb horror, but Jones leaped into action ripping the first aid kit out of his pack and deftly applying a tourniquet to the bleeding stump. Once the worst of the gushing flow of blood had been staunched, he hurriedly wrapped the stump with bandages, using up both the rolls in his pack before he stopped. When he was done, he turned to Warrick with a glare and said, "You still think this is a psych test?"
Warrick shook his head as tears began to form in the corners of his eyes. In another time perhaps he would have thought to be ashamed to cry, but now he knew nothing but the fear. He wanted to be a child again, running to his mother with a bloody knee, wishing the pain away, secure in the knowledge that she would protect him. She would kiss away all the tears. She would make it all better.
But there was no mother aboard the derelict.
"Pull. It. Together." Jones said. "He's wounded. You're not. Quite crying like a baby and help me."
Warrick shook his head. "It won't matter," he said. "None of it matters. We're already dead."
"No," Jones said. "We're not. Not yet. But we've got to get moving."
Moving where? Warrick thought. Wherever we go, the ship won't let us leave. It can't let us leave. But even with his doubt there was a fierce certainty in Jones's voice that was hard to ignore. Jones believed they could get out of this. He believed. And for now that was enough for Warrick.
He wiped the tears out of his eyes and focused on Henderson. The man was curled in a ball on the floor, still clutching his severed hand to his chest. "Henderson," Warrick said. "Can you hear me? Are you with us?"
Henderson didn't say anything, but Warrick thought he saw him nod his head.
"We need to get moving," he said. "Can you stand?"
No response.
"Come on," said Jones. "Give me a hand."
Warrick knew that Jones hadn't meant it that way, but he caught the more literal meaning of the phrase and began to laugh hysterically. Uncontrollably.
I am going mad, he thought in a tiny corner of his brain that somehow remained aloof from the lurking insanity that threatened to overwhelm him. I am going completely and utterly crazy.
And for some reason that thought made him laugh even harder.
"SNAP OUT OF IT!" Jones screamed right in his ear. "Pull yourself together sir, or so help me I will shoot you where you stand!"
The outburst was enough to bring Jones back into some sense of reality once again. "Right," he said. "You're right. We have to get moving."
He helped Jones get Henderson up off the floor. The man was still in shock, but Warrick thought he saw some kind of coherence returning his eyes.
"You're gonna be okay," he said. "We're gonna get out of this hell hole, and you're gonna be okay. I promise you."
It was a stupid thing to say. He didn't know if any of them would make it out alive, and he certainly wasn't in the position to be making promises. Still, he felt a little better once the words were out of his mouth. Maybe Jones was right. Maybe there was hope. And there was a part of him that realized he was not making the promise to Henderson at all.
"Come on," Jones said, pointing down the corridor. "This way."
The three of them moved, awkwardly, slowly, but they moved, away from that cursed door, and the darkness beyond. How far they traveled down that corridor Warrick couldn't say. It could have been miles. It might have been only a few hundred feet. Time was all wrong now. He saw it wrong in his mind. It ran in fits and starts like a sputtering fountain clogged with some horrid black sludge, the blood of the gods. Where did that thought come from? Jones wondered, and it didn't matter.
They tottered along like a trio of old men whose lives had been stolen by age, their youth wasted in immaturity.
Finally they came to a door.
"This is it," Jones said. "I knew it. I knew it would be here."
But of course that was nonsense. Jones hadn't known anything of the kind. You're just as lost as I am, he thought. But at least Jones was still willing to fight, and his courage gave Warrick hope. They had both seen the same horrors, and yet Jones seemed to be unscathed by it all. We can make it through, Warrick told himself. It's not a lie. It felt like a lie.
Jones pulled the door open, and Warrick shrank back a little, half expecting to find another horrible darkness beyond, but instead he saw a long room with a multitude of pipes of various sizes and great vertical steel cylinders spaced apart equally. But there was something wrong. He didn't see it at first, because he had his light pointed at the floor, but as Jones swept his beam across the tangle of pipes and valves Warrick saw that they had been coated in something black and oozing. He could see it dripping down off of the ceiling, and hanging from the pipes, but more than that it seemed to move ever so subtly, as if it had a mind of its own.
"What is that stuff?" Jones asked.
"Blood of the gods," Warrick murmured.
Jones's eyes narrowed. "What did you say?"
"Never mind."
"We've got to go through there."
Warrick shined his light on the black stuff he now saw covered every inch of the engine room. He could feel his stomach turning, and he closed his eyes for a moment praying he wouldn't throw up. He didn't want to touch the stuff, not even through his boots, but Jones was right. They didn't have another way out.
"Right foot first," he muttered.
They stepped into the room, and the moment Warrick felt his boot sink into the black ooze he felt the urge to vomit overwhelm him once more. There was something about the texture of the strange material, something about the way it squished and oozed beneath his feet that reinforced his earlier notion that it was a thing alive. He kept expecting a tendril of the stuff to detach itself from the floor and wrap itself around his neck, and then it would pry its way past his teeth and into his mouth, and it would taste like rotting cabbage against his tongue. All this he saw with such alarming certainty in his mind. Almost as if it had already happened.
But in spite of the worst imaginings of his mind, they reached the far end of the room completely unscathed.
"See now?" Jones said, as they stepped through the door at the far end. "That wasn't so bad."
"Look again," Warrick said, his heart dying within him. "We're back where we started."
It wasn't possible. But that didn't even seem to matter now. All that mattered was what was. They had made it through the horror of the ooze covered engine room only to emerge once again at their point of entry. Warrick looked out at that long white hallway lined with doors on either side, and felt like screaming.
"Maybe it just looks the same," Jones said. "Maybe this is a different hallway."
"No, no, no, no, NO
! It's the same. It's all the same. Always the same!"
"Captain? We have to keep going."
"I can't KEEP GOING! We are going to DIE!"
"I promise you won't die," Jones said. There was something in his voice, something that registered in Warrick's mind on some deep primal level. Something wrong. But the rest of him went on trying to shore up the eroding walls of reality.
"How can you promise?" Warrick screamed. "You can't promise! It's all a lie!"
He was overcome by a sudden urge to run, and there was nothing left in him to fight it. He let go of Henderson's shoulder and sprinted down the hall, completely uncaring about anything or anyone else. He would live. Oh, yes. He would live. Those who tried to slow him down were nothing to him. He would LIVE!
He ran what seemed like hours. He ran until his sides ached, and his breath came in sharp barking gasps. He ran until he could heart his heartbeat in his ears like a drum. He ran until he could run no longer, and still, somehow, he ran. The doors flashed by on either side of him until they were nothing more than a blur, but no matter how he ran, he could not find that blessed ending, that glorious open hatch he was certain would lead to his freedom. Then, finally when it seemed his heart would explode in his chest he sank to the ground exhausted.
"Where are you going?"
Warrick jumped, and turned his head to see Jones standing there looking at him with a strangely familiar smile on his face. Not more than ten feet behind him the door to the engine room loomed open like a great empty eye.
"No," Warrick whispered. "No. It's not real."
"Isn't it?" Jones asked. "How sure are you?"
"It can't be real."
Jones stepped forward, and leaned in close to Warrick's face. Warrick caught something on his breath, a whiff of cinnamon. But no. Not quite cinnamon at all. "You can prove it you know," the Jones-thing said. "If none of this is real then prove it. Take out your gun and shoot yourself in the head. If you're only dreaming, if all of this is only a nightmare...well, I suppose you'll wake up."
"Where is he?" Warrick demanded. "Where's Henderson? What have you done with Henderson?"
Jones laughed, a high barking animal sound that was echoed and amplified by the hard unforgiving walls around them. "He's not here, Warrick."
"What do you mean? Where is he? What have you done to him? What is this place?"
"This place is special, Warrick. Can't you feel it? Can't you feel the power here?"
"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" Warrick screamed. "WHERE IS HENDERSON?"
"I told you. He's not here. He's never been here. But you...you've been here so many times."
Warrick screamed again and clutched at the gun in his holster, bringing the firearm to bear on Jones's head, and squeezing the trigger. The bullet tore off the top left portion of his skull and ripped out his left eye. Something came out of the wound, but it wasn't blood. It was thick and black and it seemed to move with a will of its own. The Jones-thing looked down at Warrick with his one good eye and grinned. "This never gets old," he said. "Never."
"Who...who are you?"
The Jones-thing spread his arms. "But captain, don't you recognize me?"
Warrick shook his head. "You're not him," he said. "You...you're something else."
"Very astute," the Jones-thing said.
"Why? Why are you doing this?"
For a moment, the Jones-thing looked almost puzzled. "Because it pleases me," he finally said. "It's...so nice."
Warrick looked on in shock. But there was something else, something beyond the fear, something that had been dawning on him from the moment he stepped onto this cursed ship.
"What's the matter?" the Jones-thing asked. "No righteous indignation?"
"I've been here before," Warrick said. "This has all happened before."
"Now," the Jones-thing said. "Now your finally starting to get the big picture."
The rush of memories flooded into Warrick's mind, assaulting