III. Danilo
Danilo remembered he’d been going over a new datastream, a variant structure for venom glands, indeed a glandular network. He worked in his own laboratory, with an office and small library adjoined. He was a chief biomorphicist and as such had perks like his own lab. This sector of the level held many other labs and offices of similarly high ranking engineers. All of these men were obsessive about their research, a lot of them slept in their offices, when they slept. Danilo was different, he had a daughter, a beautiful, shining light in his life. He never slept in his office. He was no less obsessed with his work.
Danilo created life, he made it from component parts, what’s more is Danilo designed life. How could one do such a thing? That, was easy for the obsessed. Details, the tiniest of things, the minutia compounded exponentially that made the whole what it was. Danilo could focus on the details, could become the details and not be distracted by the resultant composite.
The venom glands, yes, what after that? Had it been then, that the panicked group of sciencemen had burst into his laboratory? They’d looked like dead men dressed like laboratorians. What the fuck had they been thinking, breaching his lab? What the fuck were they doing? They crawled his office and lab for, for what? Places to hide is what it had seemed. It had been Whittison that spoke to him urgently. Danilo! He’d cried. We, we have to go, have to leave! He, at that moment thought better of coming into Danilo’s workspace. We’ll be trapped in here… he’d said.
“Fuck!” Danilo had long been interested in ontological theory and bioelectrical resonances emitted from cadavers, and the like; he created life, and so he needed to know death, the two parts of the cycle. Death was a proposition, he’d found. It is at once an end and a beginning. Phasmatis Vita was common and accepted amongst the living, Victusorbis itself had a very large deadkin populace, how large was unknown. They was seen as another culture in a city that accepted many, almost a separate race or species. Very introverted, these deathlings. They held strange beliefs and practices by living eyes, erratic behavior and liminal movements from here to, somewhere else and back. A vague threat could be felt in their company. Perhaps the potential of life to become death caused a friction, like a sexual tension betwixt people attracted to one another, though unable to act upon their desires.
As soon as the agitated group burst in, they left. Whittison had harshly whispered something to him. He didn’t catch it. Some sort of chemical reaction, contagion released… many things could go awry in a facility such as this. No alarm had sounded though. Danilo walked at a leisurely pace in the direction the sciencemen had come from. He wasn’t given to histrionics, was a bit off put by his collegues, but curiosity was a deeper motivation, a primal drive. He wanted to know what had triggered such behaviour.
In the sector of the chief sciencemen’s laboratories the lights were kept dim. The halls were white with a pellucid skin that scintillated with colors, a simulated aurora that was meant to stimulate thought. Mostly, the chiefs had a large budget to spend on such things that were of little consequence to their respective projects. Now the halls were lit solely by the fake aurora. Twilight purples and blues faded into sunset hues of orange and red. He rounded the corner and came to the lift doors. They were unresponsive. He half expected it.
Walking down another corridor, toward the memory storage facilities, and then the general floor where most of the subordinate sciencemen performed their tasks. It was silent. A disturbing silent that only settled on the facilities after work hours. There was a composite aluminum catwalk that made a circuit around one of the bullpits, Danilo ascended, from there he had a view of most of the floor.
Everybody was dead.
A steely wrenching began in the lower part of his spine. Their was no blood, but these co-workers were quite clearly deceased. Their pallor was, ashen, skin loose and hanging from faces and hands, pooled fluids gathered under the bodies and now he was aware of the stench of loosened bowels and bladders.
Danilo had no urge to panic. He was a pragmatist. What was he looking at? What could have caused such instantaneous death and deterioration? A few things came to mind, none of which were being worked on in his department. Was this an act of terrorism? Danilo considered his options and the probabilities of outcomes to courses of action. He went back to his lab and locked the entrance. He went to his office and attempted to access the facilitiy’s nexxus. Nothing. None of his electromagnetic apparatus were functional.
Danilo saw something in his periphery. With a deliberate slowness, a blackness entered his lab, coming through the the composite metal door. The room felt as if it was being leeched of breathable air and all warmth. He began to gasp involuntarily. A hideous coupling of deadly points and curving talon-like extensions, a queer gracefulness, a mankin-like shape gathered from a storm of shadows, completely silent. As he’d been submerged into another reality, a timeless place of primitive fear. He sweated in the cold. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. He was stung by this ragged darkness.
Johtua avulla we lapsi. It spoke… an unwelcome seed placed into his mind with brute force. He felt his skin slacken, a stinging in his joints, it was the cold. Danilo saw clearly a darkened horizon roiling with a beast, a indistinct beast; its hunger was terrifying and all consuming.
* * *
Danilo thought of Bella. He gripped that thought as tightly as he could. His situation was dire, he knew this. Death was not an option, he could not leave her alone.
I jälkisäädös johtua jotta te. It spoke again, and moved closer.
“I, I have much to offer deadkin. I can help you. I create bodies. I can create one for you.” Danilo knew his chances were slim that this would interest the apparition. It was folklore known in the region that some deadkin wished to be incarnated. They wanted a body to taste and feel, smell, all the pleasures of the flesh. Others hated the living and sought to blight or kill them whenever the opportunity arose. And still others were less definable in their intentions. Danilo was hopeful that this one wanted a body. He did not recognize its language, it sounded like a northlands dialect, he dug through his mind for a northlands word for body.
“Aine hipiä.” He said, almost like a question. “Muodostaa aine. Me, I can.” Danilo gestured to himself. “Muodostaa aine.” What he thought he was saying was that he could build a body or skin. The black form had not moved further. It was perfectly and disturbingly still. Then a cold rasp came from it.
Aine… body… yessssss…
Danilo felt a small thrill go through him. “Thank god” Danilo whispered, in a small voice and to himself. Another rasp emitted from the blackness, this time, it was laughter.
©2009 Jeremy Ryan Kerr
