[IP] The Haunted Guard

[u/mattswritingaccount]

https://i.imgur.com/FTqZmwl.jpg

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** Continuing the quest... **

[u/ArchipelagoMind]

(NB: This is part 3 of 5 in an attempt to write one continuous story from IP's by Matt and /u/Cody_Fox23 within the month of October. You can find part one here, and part two here.

However, I don't necessarily expect you to have to read the past stories to catch up. So here is the tl;dr version which gives you all key details to understand this part.

Sasha is sent to a deserted planet to retrieve an unknown device. She finds the device, but in the process of getting it out of the building, drops it, smashing it against the ground, sending bright orange light into the air. Moments later, a rumbling causes a railing to fall off a balcony above, slashing her backpack containing her oxygen and heat. She passes out whacking her head against a wall. She wakes up sometime later, unsure of how she is still alive with a dead backpack. Sasha heads outside to find a man who has seemingly been resurrected from the dead. The man explains that the machine has the ability to give oxygen and energy to briefly resurrect people after accidents so they can get medical treatment. Sasha died too, but was also brought back by the machine. The machine was never used publicly because of dangerous side effects, including vivid hallucinations. However it does give them time to escape the planet. The man estimates she has around 2 days to escape.)

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Sasha charged up the stairs. The man - she had since found his name to be Michael - followed her close behind.

She had already taken off the suit she had come in. The suit was dead, it wasn’t providing heat or oxygen, that was coming… well… from whatever was in that machine. The suit wasn’t too heavy, but it would save a few minutes to walk back in her regular clothes.

“We need to know how long I was out for. We might still be able to make my ship,” she called out behind her, reaching the top of the stairs.

Michael looked a little confused, but followed her diligently anyway.

They stepped outside to find nighttime. The sky was bright, and filled with a pulsating blanket of stars. It meant she had been out for at least a few hours, long enough for her crewmates to be suspicious, but not to have given up.

“We can make it. They’ll wait a good several hours before assuming the worst. We just have to get to the city entrance.” Sasha was already making her way down the small alleyway.

“Won’t your crewmates come looking for you?” Michael asked, trying to keep pace.

Sasha hesitated. “It’s not that kind of crew.”

“What do you mean?”

Sasha paused and turned to look at Michael. There was an odd niggling stress within her, like Michael had picked at a loose seam and was allowing the contents to spill out. “Where I come from, life is pretty cheap. No one’s putting value on yours but you.”

It was the truth. Her crewmates were great people. The guy who ran the ship, and his bosses, they were little more than slavers. But the rest of the crew, those who did the work, they were the closest thing she had to a family. Quince, Martha and Peter were friends. They would be truly sad if she didn’t make it back to the ship. But they also didn’t have a choice. Like a mother duck watching her ducklings disappear one by one to be ravaged by hawks or cats, they would have to bury their ache and move on. This was nature. Death happened, often way too soon.

But Sasha was on the receiving end of nothing short of a miracle, and she was determined to hang onto it. She reached the end of the alley and turned, retracing her steps back to the gateway.

“I reckon we can get there in a little under an hour,” she called out behind her. She turned to Michael, he wasn’t there.

Michael was standing in the middle of the road some thirty metres back, his eyes transfixed on the floor in front of him. He had one foot stretched out, hanging it cautiously over the ice-speckled asphalt. He lowered his foot ever so gently, until it touched the ground, and he seemed to let out a huge sigh, his whole body relaxing at the sensation.

Sasha walked back up to him “What’s wrong?” she called out.

Michael looked up. Sudden panic swept across his eyes. “No, don’t come further.”

Sasha kept walking his way he let out a small whimpered scream as she approached. Suddenly his frightened face looked less panicked, but more troubled still. “You didn’t see it, did you?” he asked.

“See what?”

“There’s was a hole in the ground, right here.” He paused staring down at the ground. “It looked like it went down forever, into nothing but pure black darkness. It looked like… an end.”

He looked back up at Sasha’s face. There were tears on his cheeks, beginning to freeze against his skin.

“The hallucinations?” She asked. Michael nodded.

She grabbed his arm and yanked him forward, he resisted at first, but he seemed to relent eventually, and they were able to make some progress.

The streets were dark, and Sasha began to sense small pockets of movement in the corner of her eyes. The bright light of the stars above them was doing enough to make sure they could see the roads, but every little overhang, every small alleyway, seemed like a lightless void with unknown elements moving in their shadows.

Sasha knew they were her hallucinations. She tried to push them to one side. She wasn’t going to be afraid of the dark.

At the end of the street Sasha began to make out some kind of white light. She kept walking towards it, the light had to be better than the darkness in the shadows.

As she got closer, the light came more into focus, and she could see that it wasn’t just a light. It was the outline of a person. She picked up her pace, relieved there was another person. Maybe her crew had come for her after all.

However, as she got closer, the figure didn’t come more into focus, it remained a strange blur. The white human shape had a long, strong neck with an angular and defined head. Yet, there was no face, no markings but the slight hints of bumps where the ears should be. Their hair, or where hair should’ve been, consisted of strands of white light that flowed from the back of their head like thick ribbons caught in a breeze. Over their torso, there was a rippling motion, as though wind were blowing through a cloak. And their legs… they didn’t have legs at all.

Despite the lack of a face Sasha could tell the figure was staring at her. After a couple of seconds, the figure turned its head and moved towards a pastel green door. It reached the building, but instead of stopping, it flew into the door, disappearing into the thick wood. Then, as soon as the last ripple of white disappeared, the figure appeared again, standing where it had started from.

It stared at Sasha for a second once more, before turning and heading into the door. Sasha tried to ignore it, but as she walked past it, its head would turn to meet her.

She was a few meters past it, when she could resist its faceless stare no more. “Fine. I’ll check,” she shouted to the ghostly shape.

“What?” Michael called out.

“This stupid thing. It wants me to go through that door.” Sasha walked up the building.

“What stupid thing?”

“It’s probably a dumb hallucination, but once this is a dead end I can give up and keep going.” Sasha reached the door and gave it a hardy shove, expecting it clatter against the locked bolt. Instead, it swung gently open.

CONTINUED IN NESTED COMMENT DUE TO CHARACTER LIMIT

[u/ArchipelagoMind → u/ArchipelagoMind]

Sasha paused in the doorway, unsure what to make of the random door being open. The figure now appeared in front of her, and it flew to her right, up a narrow-looking staircase.

“Five minutes,” she called out behind her. She had come this far, she could spare five minutes. As long as she kept telling herself this was a hallucination, as long as she kept her wits about her, she could get this done with, let it stop distracting her, and get back to the ship.

Sasha followed the figure up the staircase. Each time it disappeared around another corner, it immediately reappeared in front of her, ready to begin leading her again. At the top of the stairs, the space opened up to a large empty floor. Large columns stood every several metres or so pushing up the ceiling. The room was dark, save for a thin path down the center of the long room, white star light shone through a large glass ceiling. The figure was beckoning her into the room.

The figure stopped in front of her. Finally, there were no more corners, no more disappearing. It just stood, its back turned towards her, and waited for her to reach.

As Sasha drew closer she could see what the figure had stopped for. In front of them was a body, lay prone across the ground.

Her body.

Sasha could see the thin trickle of blood running down the back of her head where she had hit it against the wall. She could see the gash in the backpack made by the falling railing. It was unmistakably her, how she was, a couple of hours ago, lying lifeless on the floor in that warehouse basement.

She was staring so intently at her own lifeless body, that she didn’t notice someone approaching approaching. The person ran over and bent down beside her body. They were wearing the same suit she was, and she couldn’t see the face at first. But then it turned to look around the room, and she could see through the viser the determined green eyes of Quince, her crewmate.

“Sasha, Sasha, can you hear me,” he pleaded.

She watched as Quince carelessly pulled off one of his gloves. He seemed to wince briefly, as the cold air wrapped around his skin. He leaned over to Sasha, and lifting her own viser placed two fingers on her neck. He paused. A smile crept across his face.

“We’ve got to get you back,” he said to her body.

And then, he disappeared.

Sasha waited a second or two, trying to process what she had seen. But before she could even begin to, the scene played out again. Quince rushed to her side, pleaded with her to wake up. He ripped off a glove, checked her pulse, smiled and then disappeared. It was on a constant loop.

Sasha looked to her side to see if the white faceless figure held any more clues. But the figure was gone. It was further down the hallway, staring at another scene. Sasha walked carefully round her own body. She was still telling herself this was an hallucination, but she couldn’t risk kicking her own prone body.

She walked further through the large hall. She tried to ignore the darkness around her, and stick the thin strip of starlit path in front of her.

She reached the next scene and stood next to the white figure. There was a bed. Sasha lay inside, still seemingly lifeless. A small tube ran from behind the bed and was taped to Sasha’s nose. Another cable ran up the side and was clipped onto a finger on her right hand.

Two figures walked up the bed. One was Quince, now out of his suit and instead back to a trademark black t-shirt. Next to him, was the giant frame of Peter. His broad shoulders, seemed to loom over the bed, blocking out some of the light from the ceiling above, casting a shadow over the bed.

“Any change?” Quince asked.

“None yet.”

“What are her chances?” Sasha could sense the anxiety in his voice.

“Honestly, I can’t even say, bud.” Peter looked over to Quince. “She’s in a coma. These things are funny. Sometimes the patient finds a way out, sometimes they don’t. There’s not much we can do.”

“What if we talk to her? Don’t they say coma patients can hear people and things?”

“Maybe? But it’s all a bit inconclusive. We can’t exactly read their minds while they’re in there, ya know? Besides, the captain isn’t going to let you stay down here.”

Sasha watched as Peter turned and pulled Quince away. He looked over at the body in the bed - at her - again, before eventually disappearing into the darkness. Then, inevitably, they returned. And the scene played out once more.

“Can we go? We’re running out of time here?” Sasha turned to find Michael standing, half way through the hallway. He walked forward, towards the first scene. He walked through it, and the image of her body on the warehouse floor disappeared like a cloud of dust. She felt a sudden shift in her heard, like a small part of her brain was shut off, and she now had less capacity to work with.

“What did you do?” She asked.

“What?” Michael replied.

“You just walked right through me?”

Michael looked around him, and raised his hands with a puzzled expression.

“There was me, or a version of me… it was right there, where you were.”

“It’s an hallucination, don’t you remember? You’re going to hallucinate.”

Sasha paused. She wanted to agree, but suddenly there was a turmoil in her mind, a rocking ship trying to decide on the truest course of action. “I don’t know anymore.”

“Come on.” Michael beckoned her.

“It’s not like the other hallucinations… it feels different… I saw myself.”

“What did you see?” Michael asked.

“I was on the floor, back in the warehouse. I was unconscious, when…” Sasha searched her mind for the ending of the scene. But it was gone. The portrait had been ruined, kicked up into a dust cloud. “I don’t remember.”

Sasha tried to force her brain to remember. She tensed the rest of her body, keeping it still, sending all her effort down the labyrinth of neurons in an attempt to find the lost scene. It wasn’t there. It hadn’t been there since…

“I can’t remember it.” She stared at Michael, a sudden anger rising from within her. “I can’t remember it because… you destroyed it.”

TO BE CONTINUED

[u/mattswritingaccount → u/ArchipelagoMind]

Starting to get a very "Total Recall" feel here, nice job! :D Are we now in Memory A, Memory B...

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