Shadowplay

    The lights were off on the ship when I woke up. I felt around inside my pod for the emergency light, panic threating to overwhelm me. The lights flooded the small chamber, momentarily blinding me and scattering ghostly after images across my vision. I leaned against the door, my atrophied muscles struggling to overcome the airtight seal. Eventually it gave, sending me and the door to the ground. The sharp sound of the door echoed loudly in the still, dead air. The meager light from my pod floundered feebly in the vast space of the sleeping chamber.
    “Hello,” my voice was weak from disuse. “Are any tenders active?” I called into the void.
My words were thrown back at me from a thousand different angles. The echoes faded and I was alone again with the silence and my circling thoughts. If the tenders were gone, then all of the sleepers had awoken, except me. Why had I been forgotten? I checked the read-out on my pod, the digital panel coated in a fine layer of dust. They must have shut the air filtration system down when the tenders had left to conserve power. The pod’s read-out was gone. It looked like someone had pried it out with something sharp. There were scratch marks all around the display. It didn’t make any sense. The tenders should have stopped anyone from tampering with the pods. Collecting my thoughts, I picked myself up, my muscles trembling with the effort. I pulled the portable light fixture from inside the pod and began to look around.  I started down the aisle, shining the anemic light across my path. As I continued my fruitless search, the light cast long shadows between the empty chambers. I was almost to the emergency ladder when I heard the first noise. It came from behind and above me, somewhere near the top of the massive chamber. I thought I saw something moving down the wall of empty pods, but after a few moments of staring into the dark I realized it was just my mind playing tricks on me, trying to give some character to the hollow pitch. I rubbed my eyes, sore from straining against the dark before opening the hatch. The ladder ran the length of the ship and ran right past the living quarters of the ship. That’s where the rest of the crew would be. They’d know what happened.
    The ladder was no improvement over the sleeping chambers. Four feet around and five miles straight down, the shaft was enough to make anyone claustrophobic. I took a breath and began my descent, my uncovered feet slick on the smooth metal rungs. By the Maker’s grace there was a break every twenty yards, but the journey was still arduous. My mind continued to play with me.  It wasn’t until halfway to the third break that I began to register what my senses were telling me; a sound above me and a smell below. It wasn’t a trick, there was really something there. The noise stopped and started too regularly, too in sync with my own motions to just be a trick. It sounded like metal scraping metal, like the mechanical legs of the octopodous tenders when they dodged and weaved between the rows of sleeper pods. Their legs were scalpel sharp, allowing them to climb and hang from nearly any surface. While efficient and essential to life in space, most sleepers didn’t want to wake up to a ten foot mechanized spider. Their solution? To graft synthetic human bodies to the top. They had dexterous, over-sized hands and pallid, androgynous bodies mounted above the sharp metal of their original design. There was nothing behind their eyes and no mirth in the sickle-sharp smiles plastered across the waxen skin of their faces. You can teach a dog to walk on its hind legs, but it’s still a ten foot tall mechanical spider-monster.
         A handful of rungs before the third break I slipped in something. I could do little to stop myself as I fell the last few feet to the rest platform. I landed hard on my foot, wrenching my ankle out of place. The pain took my breath away and I sat for a long while in a puddle of whatever it was I had slipped on, waiting for my head to stop spinning. The light had rolled away, casting its wan light towards me. As I reached for it, the light caught my wet hand and it glistened, slick and red, in the flashlight’s glow. Bile rose in my throat as I realized how much of it I was sitting in.  I stared up the shaft, trying to calm my roiling stomach as I felt around for the first aid kit.  I found it, intact, and brought the light over to it. I wrapped my ankle with a quick-setting soft cast, my mind racing with questions. There’s no reason for a tender to be following me, but what else could it be? And why was I left behind? After testing my ankle, I set off down the shaft again and before long I was able to put a face to the blood coating my hands. I saw him hanging a few steps down, his arm twisted through a rung as if he had tried to stop himself from falling. I guessed that falling would have been the least of his troubles; he had a cut across his throat, razor thin and surgical smooth. I didn’t know what else to do, so I unhooked his arm and let him fall the rest of the way down the shaft. I hoped that someone would find him and give him a proper burial.
         My descent continued, though slower than before, my ankle throbbing dully with every step. The tender continued as well, mirroring my every step and stop. I was exhausted by the time I reached the halfway point. I needed to sleep, but the idea of closing my eyes with that thing hanging above me was terrifying. I had no choice, though. I pulled an emergency blanket from the chest of supplies and tried to get comfortable. I switched the tiny light off, my lifeline, to preserve the charge and laid down. As I began to relax it moved again. My skin prickled as the sound moved closer, and I began to search around my makeshift sleeping quarters for my flashlight. In my panic I knocked the light off the platform and it shattered several levels below. My palms began to sweat and my hands shook as my pulse quickened to racing. I had to run. I hopped off the platform and began to climb down again. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, but that didn’t matter, I didn’t want to face that thing. My heart continued to pound and my breath came in ragged gasps. Soon, stars began to blossom in my vision and I could feel myself losing consciousness. As my hands slipped from the rung I prayed that the next platform wasn’t as far as I thought it was.
         I woke up a few minutes later, bruised and groggy but intact.  I sat up and felt the back of my head, it was tender but there was no blood. As I continued to survey myself I felt something metallic brush across my face. The familiar panic welled again within me. I could feel it perched on the platform next to me, its massive body flexible enough to squeeze itself onto the small ledge. I pretended not to notice it and hoped its intentions weren’t malicious, but I had a terrifying suspicion about what had happened to the man further up the shaft. My hand closed around the flashlight in the emergency kit and I flipped it on before I made for the next set of rungs down. When the light hit the tender it screeched and skittered back up the shaft. That must have been why it hadn’t approached me before; the light had kept it at bay. As long as I keep the light on, I’d be alright.
         It was the most draining few hours of my life. I couldn’t stop or even slow, my fear driving and sustaining me. It followed me all the way down, staying just out of the halo cast by my flashlight. When I reached the hatch leading to the passenger deck my relief washed over me, cool and calming. I pushed the hatch in place at the exit of the shaft, hoping to trap the tender in and away from me. It slammed into the door in a crash of metal on metal. The hatch seemed to scream as the tender tore at it with its sharp pointed legs. When I saw the first leg slice its way through I took off down the corridor, following the glowing arrows on the floor towards what I hoped was safety. I picked up my pace when the tender burst through the hatch. This time, it didn’t follow me. It ripped at something near the shaft’s exit, but soon after I was left with only silence.
         The journey to the living quarters seemed to take forever. It got hotter with every step I took and eventually I continued on in only my under clothes. The skin on my face itched where the tender had scratched me, the thin line puffy and painful to the touch. My body was drenched and I soon grew too hot to continue. I sat on the floor, setting the little flashlight down next to me. It rolled a few inches away and, as soon as the light was no longer on me, I began to feel better. I hadn’t realized how hot the light had gotten. Once I turned it off the journey was much easier. The lights on the floor were incredibly hot and bright too. I had to get away from them somehow. I began to run down the violently lit corridor. Once I found the others they would be able to do something about these lights. The tender was behind me again as I drew nearer to the living area. It kept pace with me as I ran, never coming within more than a few feet. I understood why it had reacted so strongly to the light in the shaft, it must have blinded the poor, stupid creature.
I rounded the final turn before the door and the light from inside hit me with such a force it felt like my flesh was burning. I think I screamed. I must have because someone inside heard me and carried me in. I tried to tell them that the light was burning me, but my throat was so parched I couldn’t speak. I thought my skin would come off in their hands when they touched me. They carried me somewhere dark and my senses returned to me. I laid there with my eyes closed while they spoke in hushed tones on the other side of the room. It was like they were talking through cotton and I only caught a few words.
    “—missing sleeper – unknown contagion – quarantine—“
They were gonna lock me up! It wasn’t fair, not after all I’d been through. I wouldn’t let them, but I was too weak to fight them all. If I could just sleep somewhere dark, somewhere cool I would be strong again. Thoughts of escape cycled through my head and I soon drifted into a heavy and dreamless sleep.
         The sounds of someone moving around the room woke me up. My eyelids were heavy and I couldn’t recall where I was or who I was.  There was light, white and hot, pouring in from underneath the door. It made my head so fuzzy. I had to shut it off or I’d never have any peace. It was a woman in a long coat, her hair tied up in a severe bun. She didn’t notice when I jumped down from the bed. I moved quietly behind her and, placing my hand on the back of her head, slammed her face into the metal table until she stopped gurgling. I stepped over her prone form and out into the blinding light of the hallway. All I had to do was find the main generator then maybe I’d open the door. That corridor was so nice and dark and cool, and it would be even better if I could just get the power off. They had healed my ankle so climbing the service shaft to the main reactor was easy and quick. I had to hurry, once they found the woman they’d be looking for me.
         The reactor room was deserted. The computers ran everything with precision and efficiency, and the maintenance bots paid me no mind. I picked one up, its spindly legs working frantically in the air. The master override button was under glass and I used the bot to smash it open. My finger froze over the button. Why was I doing this? I dropped the mangled bot and tried to think. My memories were foggy and my head hurt with the effort of recalling anything before waking up in the room with the dead girl. All I could remember clearly was the pain of the light. I was sure that turning off the light would make everything clear. I pushed the button in as hard as I could, using the broken bot to jam it. The sound of everything grinding to a halt was so soothing and I wanted to relax, but not here. In the corridor.
         By the time I made my way back to the entrance, everyone was in a panic. I wished I could help them to relax, help them find comfort in the shadow like I had. I couldn’t but it could. I could see it through the glass in the door. It was already trying to work its way in, slamming its metal body into the door over and over again. My head pulsed with pain as I approached the door.
    “Stop! Get away from the door! Don’t let it in!” Someone screamed when they saw me at the door panel.
I ignored them. They didn’t know what it was like out there. There was nothing bad in the corridor. It kept banging and it hurt my ears so much. If I could just let it in, they would understand. The person who screamed ran up to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, dragging me away from the panel. They just kept screaming in my ears and I just wanted them to stop, just wanted to let it in. The tender snaked a single leg through the door and scythed off the screaming person’s leg. They kept screaming so I stepped on them until they stopped. Then others started. I knew I had to get the door open. It was the only thing that mattered. I punched in the sequence and the doors opened. It scurried in and squatted in front of me. It extended an oversized hand to me and I took it. It held me against its soft, pliable flesh and I knew that I had found the peace I needed. It carried me as it moved through the stunned crowd. Its legs moved in a blur of silver and crimson as it worked its way towards the flight deck. Every so often it would stop and touch one on the face. The others fell where they stood, silent. It dropped me when we got to the flight panel. I knew what it wanted from me. I could hear the others sobbing and screaming, but they would understand soon enough. I punched in the coordinates for the nearest inhabited planet and walked back down to the others. I had to help them get ready, we would have company soon.