Chasing Ghosts VII: Neon Pill
19 Jan 2024Maul Montresor
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"It takes one to know one
Back at it again
Birds of a feather
Until the end"
"It takes one to know one
Back at it again
Birds of a feather
Until the end"
I was resting my head on a cold steel table. A table that I'd been cuffed to as a preventative measure, I guess. It felt good on my forehead. Slight relief of the headache. I was alone in a room again. Well lit this time. Too well lit, in fact. The bright lights overhead hurt my eyes, so I kept them shut. I wasn't sure how long I'd been here. The escort from the security officers felt like hours ago but I barely trusted myself to keep up with anything at this point.
During the escort they had tied a rag around my eyes and told me to keep my mouth shut. I felt like a prisoner of some war that I had no part in. The officers spoke very little. A few confusing directional callouts here and there. Moments before I was brought into this room, I could hear hushed voices. I couldn't understand a word they were saying and it didn't matter, there ARE survivors here. I wasn't crazy.
I raised my head up and looked around the room through squinted eyes. The room looked clean. Empty and brightly lit. A stark contrast to what I'd seen since I forced my way onto this megaship. A single table sat in the center and nothing else. Walls like any other walls on a ship and a door like any door.
No chance of escape. Besides, I wasn't sure I even wanted to escape after what all I'd seen. I just felt tired, physically and mentally. I laid my head on the table once again.
The door slid open. I didn't look up, I couldn't face the bright lights again.
"Mr. Montresor?" A man's voice called.
"Are you okay?"
I raised my head and pried one eye slightly open to look at the man. The white medical coat he was wearing only served to hurt my eyes and head even more. I blinked and tried hard to open both eyes. The man was of average build and had slicked back dark hair that was beginning to grey on the sides.
"My name is David Karazija. I'm here to check that head wound of yours."
The only response I could muster was a simple nod.
David walked over behind the chair I was sitting in and placed a case of medical supplies on the table next to my head. My hands were cuffed around one of the bolted down table legs. There was no way of getting my hands on any of his instruments. I posed no threat and the doctor knew it.
"This is a pretty serious hit you took. What exactly happened?" He asked as he began tending to the wound the best he could with the limited supplies he had on hand..
"Some big oaf slapped me with a chair." I said, recounting the events in my mind.
The doctor paused for a moment and tilted his head to the side in a contemplative manner.
"I- I'm sorry to hear that. Things are worse than-"
The doctor cut himself short. As if he was about to say something he wasn't supposed to say. He cleared his throat.
"Well, I suppose that's best left to Destiny Darling."
"Huh?" I asked, furrowing my brow as I looked hard at the steel table in front of my nose.
"Yes, one of the officers that brought you here. Officer Destiny Darling."
I scoffed. Almost laughed even. So, it was 'Destiny that brought me here'. The irony of that wasn't lost on me. It was almost funny but with everything starting to feel like a dream now, and this conversation being no different; I wasn't sure how to react.
"She knew my name. You know my name, how is that?" I asked, turning my head to see the doctor in my peripheral vision.
David sighed and gently turned my head forward again to finish up patching the wound.
"I'm sorry but I really can't say. However, Officer Darling is eager to speak to you and you do seem to be in better spirits than when you first arrived. Perhaps she'll be able to explain some things."
The doctor gathered his things and approached the door, leaving a bottle of pills on the table. "Those are to manage the pain. Take them as needed." He stopped and gazed at me from the door way with a look of concern.
I was staring at the pill bottle and my stomach began to churn. A part of me wanted to tell him about the mystery drug that was forcibly injected in me but I hadn't been able to discern if that was even real or some fucked up delusion. The same could be said about this meeting with the doctor. If this was all happening in my head, at least some of the things were staying consistent. My head was still shaved, and I was still wearing the bloody medical scrubs. Consistency within delusions seems unlikely, right? Maybe this all was real.
Suddenly my cybernetics started to go on the fritz again. The pill bottle rapidly going in and out of focus, making me feel disoriented and sick. I squeezed my eyes shut and groaned in pain.
"These damned eyes." I said, with a frustrated grunt.
"Yes, I thought I had spotted cybernetics." said David.
"I wish I could be of some assistance but I'm afraid that's out of my field of knowledge. You're the first person I've ever seen who has had both eyes replaced. In fact, you're the first person I've seen with cybernetics at all. A side effect of growing up in a system on the fringe of the bubble, I suppose."
"No idea at all on why they'd be acting up?" I asked.
"Honestly, I imagine a hit like that to your head has to be bad on the hardware."
It made sense to me. I'd been having issues on and off for years with them and the issues only worsened as the physical toll grew with every hard slam or hit I'd taken over the years. What a hit to the head didn't do, the drugs surely did.
"Thanks, doc." I said.
David curled his lips inward and nodded as he stepped through the threshold of the door. Mirroring the motions of a disappointed parent.
After a few minutes, Officer Darling walked into the room. This time without the helmet to hide the stern look on her face. She looked to be in her early 30's. Her complexion was dark, her eyes even darker. She had her hair braided in tight rows close to her scalp. A sensible style for the type of work she was in.
"Maul Montresor." She said with a smirk, pulling a chair up to the table opposite of me and sat down.
"Darling, right?" I asked, knowing damn well it was.
She nodded and placed her side arm on the table. Keeping a firm grip on it.
The tough act didn't appear to be an act at all. This was a woman who was tired and nothing seemed to faze her any longer. Another person broken by the act of simply existing.
"So tell me Montresor, how is it you're even here? We flagged you, on what few functioning cameras we have, a few days ago using a fellow officers I.D."
I'd been here for days? That can't be right.
"Our techs grabbed some stills of your face from the footage and ran it through the onboard criminal database and wouldn't you know it, your little mug appeared on screen. You really have quite the history."
Shit, I guess that's to be expected. I'd wiped myself from as many of these pigs' systems as I could back in the day but I'd gotten lazy and careless.
Darling inspected her sidearm and continued.
"Now we find you running around the halls covered in blood. Blood that doesn't appear to be yours. The doc said your headwound had previous treatment and was unlikely to bleed THAT much. So with all that said, Maul Montresor...how about you catch me up on what's going on."
"Well," I said, sighing. "First off, it's news to me that I've been here multiple days. Before this moment I thought I'd just arrived a couple of hours ago."
Darling leaned back in her chair, giving me the same confused look I'd given her.
"But to sum it all up, Julie Carte hired me to find this ship. The previous owner Stefan, her husband, your...uh ex-boss, lost it in the divorce. She seemed to be under the assumption that Sepultus Memoriae was a science vessel. Not a megaship. Told me that she wanted it found so she could resell it. Though, now I'm starting to wonder if she was just lying to me so I'd agree to the terms of the contract. I'm not sure about that one though."
"Goddamn, so you're with the Carte family?" asked Darling, cutting me off as she holstered her sidearm. That seemed to change her entire demeanor.
I nodded.
"We've not had any communication with the outside for over 2 months." Darling sounded mad, relieved and desperate. "So what now? Is someone sending a rescue vessel to get us?"
"I don't know." I said, shaking my head. "I sent the coordinates to Julie just before I boarded the ship. But according to you, that was days ago at least..."
Darling sighed heavily. Her eyes darting franticly as she was deep in thought.
"Okay, what about your ship? You came here on a ship. We just need to get you back to your ship and you can go get help and get us all out of here."
I took my eyes off Darling and peered at the table between us trying to muster up the courage to tell her the bad news.
"I- uh- modded my suit with a built in authorization access chip. Without it, there's really no way to gain entry to the ship without the defense systems arming and frying the ships computer system. So the only person who has access to my ship is, whoever has access to my suit, which someone stole."
Darling looked pissed. The same look she'd given me when she first entered the room. I couldn't blame her really, I felt the same way. There's always downsides to tinkering with things you shouldn't.
The room was silent for a few seconds while Darling shuffled the thoughts in her mind. I had so many questions of my own about this nightmare of a megaship and if I was ever going to get answers now was the time.
"Alright Darling, I've answered your questions and I'd like you to answer a few of mine."
Darling sighed heavily and nodded.
"What was this ship being used for and what put it into such a fucked condition?"
"Where to begin?" said Darling. She relaxed back into her chair.
"Well, the techs could give you a better explanation on this than I ever could but for all intents and purposes, this ship is...or was...being utilized as a testing ground for the development of new forms of surveillance technology and various forms of medical research."
Her face grew sorrowful. Her tone changed. She didn't want to speak the words but she needed to.
"As for the condition of the ship, riots caused it. Whatever kind of medical research was going on here was being done on...death row inmates. Ones that, on paper, are already dead. Their essentially ghosts, no way to track them."
My eyes unlocked from Darlings in that moment. I'd heard and seen a lot of fucked up things in my line of work and this made it onto the list.
"You seriously don't know what kind of things they were testing on these people?" I asked.
Darling shook her head.
"No, none of us do. We were hired to protect the white coats and keep our mouths shut...and now, talking to you, I've failed my mission in every way."
Her eyes began to fill with anger and sadness.
"Doctor Karazija and the handful of us here have been stuck in this part of the ship ever since the first explosion in sector D. That explosion caused the ship to go into red alert and set off all of our security measures. Access to other sectors where blocked by the blast doors with no manual override. Once the second explosion in sector D happened, the ship began power cycling in an attempt to repair itself and doing so had reset the alert status. That was the first chance we had to go look for others but by then it was too dangerous. Every person we'd found was either dead or appeared to have gone...crazy. They would attack us on sight. Inmates, scientists, security. Everyone. The few that didn't would just run from us."
Darling leaned forward, putting her arms on the table and shrugged.
"And because of the paranoid nature of the backers, the ship has been outfitted with scrambler arrays. We can't even get an S.O.S message out. Before all of this, our only form of communication had been through our own couriers but no chance of that now."
Again, I had more questions than answers. It was becoming a theme.
"The doctor doesn't know what kind of research was going on?" I asked.
"Of course he knows, he refuses to speak on it though." Darling scoffed.
We sat in silence once again. Both of us at a loss for words. I wanted to tell her what I'd seen, what I'd experienced. The large man with a Scottish accent, the drugs I'd been injected with, the deer...but she'd think I'm crazy and really, who could blame her?
"Well, I believe that's enough for now Mr. Montresor. I'll be back to check on you later." said Darling, as she rose from her chair and approached the door.
"Wait, you're not gonna get these damn restraints off me? I answered everything honestly!" I said, becoming more agitated with every step she made further from me.
"Of course not. You're covered in someone else's blood and can't remember the last few days. "W̸h̸a̷t̴ ̶h̶a̷p̴p̴e̵n̷s̸ ̸o̵u̴t̷ ̵t̷h̸e̵r̶e̴.̵.̴.̶" She pointed in a seemingly random direction behind me. ".̴.̴.̶n̷o̸w̷ ̷h̸a̴p̷p̷e̴n̸s̵ ̷i̶n̴ ̵h̶e̵r̷e̸." She said, smirking while pointing the same finger then at her head.
The door slid shut. I cursed under my breath and glanced at the bottle of pills.
Empty and brightly lit. I was alone in a room again.
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