LITMIR.BIZ

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I knew that could explain that sensation—my suit was torn. I was going to die.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      I remember the steady stream of water splashing all over me, the wetness spreading out all over my back and running down my legs. Even after years of reading Stephen King novels and watching horror movies, it took that sensation for me to finally understand what true terror felt like. My father always told me, I’d have to wait until something I truly loved was threatened for me to really get it. Funny, I never in a million years thought it would be my own life.

      I remember thinking, clear as day: “This is it. I’m dead. I just killed myself.”

      I ripped off the helmet, suit, and the rest of my clothes as fast as I could. The disinfectant liquid stung my eyes and my sinuses instantly felt like they burst into flames, but I didn’t have a choice. The suit’s integrity had been compromised—I needed to be cleansed.

      That’s when I noticed the burning sensation coming from my shoulder blade. The same area where I first felt the wetness.

      I had no way to check myself in the airlock, but I knew that pain couldn’t be good.

      I remember I grabbed the suit and clothes and helmet and dumped them in the incinerator. It was more of a bittersweet moment than I expected it to be. I know it all had to burn, but part of me had hoped I could hang on to that suit. After all, it was one of the few things my parents ever touched that I still had left.

      I hit the extended clean button, which meant I’d get disinfected again and then rinsed thoroughly with water. The fluid was cold as ice, but I had to let it run over every part of me. When the water mercifully stopped flowing, I hit the airlock release button and dashed out the door. I remember racing over to a mirror that was built into one of the locker doors, and for the first time seeing the injury on my shoulder. A three-inch long gash started at the top of my shoulder blade and sliced down to just below the bone. I’ll never forget the way the blood was gushing out. So not only had the integrity of my suit been compromised, but my skin as well.

      I threw on a pair of my emergency surgical greens that I kept in the lockers and my shoes and raced down the ladder. When I got to the bottom I stumbled into my room, grabbing a bottle of iodine to pour over my shoulder. I remember I was wholly unprepared for the pain. It felt like I just poured molten metal or sulfuric acid all over my back. I’m not sure how loud I screamed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents had heard me in the afterlife.

      Once the burning subsided, I wrapped up the wound with an ace bandage and put a surgical scrub back on. I tried to convince myself that everything was going to be fine. That it was just a scratch and nothing to worry about.

      But I didn’t believe it.

      I went into my bathroom and popped the last of the penicillin I had. For all I knew, it could have been the last bottle on the planet, because no one else I knew could get the recipe right. My mom, being the genius that she was, had taught me well. Not that penicillin would do a thing against The Darkness. But it would have killed any bacteria in the wound. If I were lucky, it would kill them before they had the chance to spread. There’s no guarantee the bacteria wriggling in the wound had the bacteriophage, but I was taking no chances. Plus, I’d always been slightly allergic to the stuff, so I knew once I took it I’d be out like a light.

      And it worked, because my head barely hit the pillow before I was asleep.

      ***

      It’s weird how you remember the worst days of your life for ever and yet lose all the little details. Maybe it’s a survival instinct to dump the really difficult moments, or maybe our brains just don’t have the ability to store that much data—I don’t know. But all I really remember about the day I tore my suit was that it was a Tuesday. All the details of what happened after I got infected are so fuzzy I barely remember anything. For example, I have no idea how long I was unconscious—I mean it could’ve been a couple of minutes or several days. All I know is that when I did open my eyes I was completely plastered to the sheets and, oh yeah, my mouth was dry.

      No, not just dry, but totally devoid of all moisture.

      I remember that the crazy thing was, even in that cloudy state of mind, I still recognized that symptom for what it was. I’d seen it a thousand times. First came the fever and then came the thirst. Thirst so intense that I’d drink till my need was sated, which was the tragedy of it all. Because the need could never possibly be satisfied. I’d just keep drinking till I either drowned or started convulsing.

      Then—I’d be dead.

      There’s a certain level of calmness that takes over when you face your own mortality. My whole life I fought every day to stay alive, but when I was faced with the knowledge that my time was short, the end certain, I wasn’t scared or desperate. I was almost relieved. Life had always been so hard, so the idea that I’d finally get to rest was actually comforting.

      But even through the haze of sickness I knew I couldn’t just roll over and die. There was no way I was going into The Darkness like a wuss, I had to connect the uplink and talk to Ellie. I just couldn’t let the question burn in her mind forever about what happened to me.

      I owed her that. I owe everyone that.

      But in order to do that I had to warm up the server and I couldn’t do that from my bed. I remember I even toyed with the idea of stopping by the bathroom for a drink of water from the tap on my way. But luckily I snapped out of it. I couldn’t let myself drink. It just sped everything up, that was the last thing my mother learned before my father died.

       Water equals death.

      Of course, no water equaled death too, but I never would have had time to get the uplink connection ready if The Darkness progressed too quickly.

      I just needed a little more time, a precious commodity.

      Somehow I rolled out of bed. I don’t know how, all I know is I found myself on the floor and in pain. My bed was really far off the ground and I remember telling myself that in my next life I had to remember to make my bed lower. I dragged myself along the floor and every inch was like a dagger jabbing into my brain. At first, all I felt was the pain, but with each wiggle, the dizziness and nausea hit me like a hammer.

      I was too late. I knew by that stage that The Darkness had me.

      My last thought before I drifted into the abyss was of Ellie. How she’d never know for sure what happened to me. There were hundreds reasons to lose contact, after all. She might waste years hoping I was still alive, never letting herself consider the truth. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

      I was just dead.

      * * *

      But I hadn’t died just then. Instead, I’d woken up on the floor to the sound of my alarm clock ringing in my ears.

      My head was on fire. I grabbed the cord to my clock and ripped it out of the wall. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure where I was. The confusion must have started, another symptom of the fever.

      I didn’t have much time.

      I crawled towards my server and hit the emergency power button. I dragged the keyboard off my desk to the floor by the cord. When I heard the distinctive ping of my cursor appearing on the monitor above me, I typed my macro and hit enter. I knew I only had a few minutes to complete the uplink and get through to Ellie, but I didn’t have the strength to panic. I just lay my head on the cool floor and closed my eyes.

      My room is suddenly filled with light, as all eighteen screens switch on at once. I heard my CPU whir and buzz. I heard a few screens sync up. Probably New Zealand, those bastards always pop up first. They must have the most powerful antenna array on the planet—at least the biggest one that’s still online.

      Finally, I heard So Says I softly playing through my speakers. Ellie had started playing The Shins non-stop since we found an old archive of music files in the UNN mainframe. I remember I instantly wished I had an emergency

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