“You shouldn’t threaten people like that.” Having been the last one to go through the procedure, Foster emerged calmly from the healing machine knowing he wouldn’t look different from how he went in. Justine on the other hand still looked shell shocked as she studied her reflection in one of the stasis tube doors.

  “Threaten you? You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you!” She tugged at her ponytail, making sure it was still attached to her scalp. “I can’t believe you mutated me.”

  “Technically, I haven’t mutated you… yet.” Foster couldn’t help but laugh at the look on her face. “The procedure only augmented your DNA so that it will change when we encounter a foreign atmosphere or environment. Once that happens, your constitution will evolve and adapt to its new surroundings.”

  “Evolve and adapt into what?”

  “Beats me.” Foster couldn’t answer her unspecific question without knowing exactly where they would eventually end up. “It’s not a static change, Justine. And just for your peace of mind, not a permanent one. Whatever your body changes into is totally dependent on the environment. I call it a biological spacesuit.”

  Using her fingers to pull back on the skin around her eyes, she half expected to find something gross and wiggly waiting for her underneath. But to her surprise, everything she examined was maddeningly normal.

  Why did he do this to her? She wondered suspiciously about his real motives as the maybe, totally insane scientist shut down the healing machine. Was it really all for their little trip? And what good would a biological space suit do anyone on another planet? Although, the possibility of losing ten pounds just before a party or date did have some distinct advantages.

  “So,” Justine straightened her shirt and tried very hard to present the fa?ade of someone totally fine with just being experimented on. “What do we do next?”

  “Now…” Foster pointed toward the opposite corridor and the other transportation tube at the end of it. “We take this passage to the other side of the station, and from there, it’s a quick ride to the top.”

  Wasting no more time, the trio sprinted off in the direction of their salvation. This exodus lasted all of thirty feet because Hoover was already on the horn, alerting them to some more good news.

  “Don’t even bother.” He sounded distant, like his attention was torn between two equally important things. “The other transportation tube has been shut down.”

  “What!” Joseph stuttered unceremoniously to a halt. “What do you mean the other transportation tube’s down?”

  Expecting a fresh deluge of creatures to rush at them at any second, the deputy readied his Slinger for action. When that nightmare didn’t rear its ugly head, he slung the other two canvas bags across his back and turned to the oncoming pair. “I thought they were too busy trying to crash the station.”

  “Hoover.” Foster grabbed Justine by the arm to prevent her from going any further into the now pointless corridor. “What’s the situation? Has the alert somehow corrupted the station’s transportation program?”

  “No.” Getting nowhere with his side project, Hoover severed the connection between him and the two infected levels. “There’s no program to corrupt. It’s almost like this place is full of tiny little switches. Once they’ve been thrown, there’s no way to reverse it remotely.”

  “And the hits just keep on coming!” Foster swiveled his head back toward the circular white room and said, “Has the escape ship been affected?”

  “No,” Hoover bristled at the idea that he had left something to chance. “That was the first thing I locked down after the power interruption.”

  Justine looked from one end of the corridor to the other. The options surrounding them for escape seemed to be dwindling away by the minute. “Has the other transportation tube been compromised too?”

  “Yes,” Hoover answered unequivocally. “Both are now completely shut down.”

  Never one to give up, Foster reached for his satchel full of toys. But before he could even open the thing, something flew past him at incredible speed. Surprised, he looked around to see Joseph sprinting away from them. “Where are you going!?”

  “What do you mean where am I going?” The suddenly healthier deputy didn’t even bother to stop or turn around to acknowledge them. He just screamed at the top of his lungs, in between long strides. “I am going to the escape shuttle!”

  With no other options available, Foster and Justine decided to sprint after him.

  When they finally caught up, Joseph was pressing icons on the pod retrieval screen with a fury yet unseen from the Elmira deputy. In response to his furious hand gestures, the giant claws snagged the broken tube and lifted it up onto its end. The white pill hung there for a second, before gravity took hold and sent it crashing onto the floor.

  Quietly, they watched the tube shift sideways as the now dead Solon body rolled out of the container and came to rest by one of the benches.

  “Joseph...” Justine began, but the deputy’s focus snapped her away from any thoughts of sending condolences his way.

  “Alright,” Joseph said as he furiously punched a new series of commands into the terminal then panted out the words, “Let’s go.” Then, without asking anyone’s opinion, he hopped onto the nearest claw then reached out for Justine’s hand. She took it without question.

  After she was settled, he turned to Foster and yelled, “Both of you!”

  He complied and they were all soon perched on top of the metallic pincers. Joseph leaned down with more dexterity than he had just ten minutes ago and pressed one last button on the monitor. Instantly, the claws responded to the command and began to rise upward toward the opening.

  “Where are we going?” Foster asked. “Is there an internal elevator or something?”

  “No,” Hoover responded almost immediately. “There’s nothing but tubes in there.”

  Without wasting time on explaining his plan, Joseph reached up. When the opening to the storage facility was within his grasp, he heaved himself over the side. Once his body broke the invisible barrier, gravity lost its hold, and his now much less heavy frame began to float freely in midair.

  So freely, the deputy had to steady himself before he could finally manage to anchor his feet back on solid metal.

  “Ok,” he pointed skyward to a long metal walkway hanging precariously over 600 hundred feet away. “The only way to get to the shuttle is from the gangway connecting the transportation tube to the shuttle.”

  “How?” Unsure of what to do next, Foster grabbed onto the edge of the opening as everything directly above blurred together under the large transparent dome.

  Joseph released his handhold then pushed off from the floor with all his might. Without a force to hold him down, the once ungainly deputy lifted from his perch in one smooth motion and glided lazily upward at a good pace.

  “I’ve done this plenty of times in the Forge’s shipyards.” He threw his arms skyward like a comic book superhero. “We just float.”

  Overlooking everything he had learned about her in the past few days, Foster twisted his head around to check on Justine. Foolishly, he thought she would wait for them to climb up together. He was dead wrong about that. Ever the risk taker, she was already perched on the ledge, dying to experience the awesomeness of zero-g flight.

  “Come on.” Justine reached down and clasped her fingers around Foster’s wrist. Excitedly, she tugged so hard he didn’t have time to steady himself, much less plant his feet. Consequently, his flailing body almost went soaring off into the open space of the facility.

  “Hold on!” She yelled before pulling him back down so he could get a better handhold. “What are you trying to do, leave me again?”

  “No.” Foster’s stomach seemed to pitch forward without his body coming along for the ride. “You’re just really strong.”

  “Real funny.” Justine let go of her handholds and whispered to a visibly off centered Foster Evers, “Together.”

  After a silent count of three, she pushed off hard with her legs as a slightly queasy scientist did his best to do the same. Soon, they were both rising upward at a fast rate. Although, even with their speed, they still lagged about twenty feet below Joseph.

  “Not as fast as the transportation tube,” she lamented, “But at least we’re headed in the right direction.

  “Hoover…” Foster tried his best to make out the contents of the stasis tubes as they flew by. Filled with nothing but shadows and reflections, it was a little hard to make out anything specific. “Are you tracking our ascent?”

  “Yes.” The A.I. had commandeered the internal sensors and was now able to monitor every move of their gravity-free journey to the top. “I’m reading all three of you daredevils.”

  “How long before we reach the shuttle?”

  “At your current rate of speed, less than four minutes for Joseph. You and Agent Rushing should be about 10-15 seconds behind him.”

  “That will have to do.” Foster reached out and tapped Justine on the arm. She was twirling around like a ballerina. With no inertia to slow down her spin, it took her a second to rotate back around to him. “Looks like you’re having fun?”

  “Yes.” Justine smiled broadly. “This is the stuff I live for.”

  At that moment, somewhere outside the station, a horde of angry creatures finally managed to snap the first engine free from its tether. Untethered, the apparatus used the last of its power to throttle up and shoot off into the void like a bird freed from its cage. This freedom was fleeting, however.

  Because a couple of seconds later, the black holes’ massive gravity wells seized the device, forcing it toward the event horizon, never to be seen again. Inside the station, the ensuing jolt from the engine’s loss rocked the entire structure to its very core.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  On the docking level, the inert fleet of flying saucers snapped their landing legs, sending each one of them crashing to the floor. On the lab level, everything that wasn’t attached to a bulkhead bounced three feet off the floor. And below, in the small circular room, empty stasis pods were ripped away from their resting places and sent rolling around like empty wine bottles on a ship at sea.

  No part of the station was left unaffected, except for Justine, Foster, and Joseph.

  As they were safe in the zero-gravity environment of the storage facility. In fact, the trio might never have known about the catastrophe if it hadn’t been for half of the prisoner’s pods breaking loose from their tracks on the wall. They fell away from their perches, tumbling end over end toward the middle of the open space.

  “What the hell!” Foster screamed as one of the pods went sailing inches under his feet.

  To his left, Justine barely managed to avoid being smashed in the head by another one. While Joseph, twenty feet above them, started screaming and pointing at the hundreds of pods now encircling their exposed bodies. Every one of them hell-bent on smashing into anything which drew close to its orbit.

  “It’s never easy with you two, is it?” Joseph hopped onto a pod floating a few feet away. Like a human version of Frogger, the deputy pushed off the still moving stasis tube, changing the angle of his ascension slightly, but increasing his speed dramatically. “Ask that program of yours what the hell is going on?”

  “Tell the alien,” Hoover seemed more amused than offended by his insult. “Only fifteen engines remain attached. That’s why the station has shifted position. It’s trying to compensate for the loss of thrust.”

  Justine, who thought things couldn’t get any better after her initial weightlessness, now found herself in a sort of daze as she began using the pods as makeshift snowboards to keep moving forward.

  “This is awesome!” She belted out, mid-arc between two moving pods. “Do you know how much you could charge people back home to ride something like this?”

  With a large cluster of tubes barreling toward him, Foster planted his foot onto a stray pod and allowed its considerable momentum to carry him clear. In the distance, he saw an unfazed Justine hanging ten near an even bigger cluster of pods. “The only problem is… you could only ride once.”

  Just then, another engine tore away from the station. Foster watched as another group of pods were unceremoniously ejected from their places inside the walls. “How much time before the station begins to fall into the black hole?”

  “Impossible to say.” Hoover hated speculating about things in which he had imprecise data. “There are 15 different engines and they’re all being attacked by an unknown amount of creatures. So there’s not enough data to give you an accurate estimate.”

  “You can’t even guess?”

  “I could.” Hoover’s voice sounded like a magician just before the big finale. “But wouldn’t that ruin the surprise?”

  “Not the time, Hoover.”

  Surprisingly, Foster’s attention swayed from their imminent doom when he found himself on a pod which was facing up. Curious to see what other alien life forms inhabited the universe, he carefully peered through the cover to see a swirling swarm of black mist. More gas than solid particles, this “life form” filled the entire interior of the device much like Joseph’s body.

  But mist? Who would bother to seal up a cloud of mist? For that matter, what would a cloud of mist breathe? Could a cloud of mist have a brain? He stepped forward along the outer casing. To his surprise, there was an environmental unit attached to this one as well. This tube had also been modified.

  “How far are we away from the top?”

  “Joseph is about fifty feet away. Justine’s closer to seventy and you’re fifteen feet below her.”

  Above him, Foster saw another cluster close to the gantry way, so he pushed off in that direction. As he approached, a stray pod rocketed in from the right and collided with his intended landing zone. Its path slightly altered. He had to stretch his arms out to catch the closest pod.

  This cluster had three more tubes exposed, so he took a second to investigate each one of them. The first contained a figure about the size of an infant. With dark purple skin, the tiny alien creature had the usual number of arms and legs, but a very unusual number of heads.

  “Yuck,” Foster said, trying to shake the image of a three-headed baby out of his mind before making a leap onto the next tube. Once there, he peered inside and was immediately greeted by a bloated mass of green and slimy muscles. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “What is it?” Justine yelled in his direction. He tried to find her among the cascading tubes but was unable to locate anything more than a peek of her pink Nikes as they slid gracefully from one monster in a can to another.

  Tired of playing ‘where’s Justine’, Foster settled on the final pod in the cluster he currently stood upon. What he found inside the tube caught him a little off guard. “Hey buddy?”

  “What?” Hoover said.

  “Have you ever thought of becoming more mobile?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You know?” Foster knelt and placed a hand on the tube’s clear barrier. Only this time, it wasn’t an organic creature staring back at him. No, not flesh and blood because this tube held the broken remains of what could only be described as a crudely built metal man. “Something more terminator and less HAL 9000?”

  “Foster,” Hoover made a series of screeching sounds over the earbud’s speaker which made the scientist wince. “You sound like you’re turning into her with all the movie cliches. Stop it.”

  “Fine,” Foster tried to wipe the surface of the glass clean with his shirtsleeve. “On a more serious note, were you able to decipher the records concerning these prisoners?”

  “Not yet. Each file was written in a different language, and each language has a different code. Then, each code has a different…”

  “I get it. But is everything located in this section considered a criminal?”

  “Yes, these arbiters considered the creatures held within this structure to be extremely dangerous to the universe as a whole.”

  Another engine broke free, and the rest of the pods were set loose upon the already deluged space all around them. For a moment, they looked like they were inside a giant snow globe.

  “Are you going to spend all day looking at the scenery?” Justine asked, floating toward him on a pod twenty feet above him. Above her, Joseph made the last leap onto the gantry way. He began hurriedly making the necessary adjustments to the airlock, which would allow them safe passage into the escape vehicle. She reached out and motioned for Foster to leap to her.

  “You downloaded everything… didn’t you?” He hadn’t asked Hoover to do that. But after six years, his program knew him well enough to not have to ask a silly question like that.

  “Of course,” he said with an air of disbelief. “It’s all on that phone.”

  “Good.” Foster leaped from his pod and like a missile shot up into Justine’s waiting arms. “Because there’s something I’m missing.”

  “We’ve only got one more jump to make,” she said, hauling him up. Keeping her eyes glued to the gangway above them, she waited patiently as they slowly and methodically drifted toward it.

  Foster glanced down, half expecting to see some other form of disgusting species staring blankly back at him. What he saw almost made him fall off the tube. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  Taking her eyes off the gangway, Justine saw Foster transfixed by something the scientist obviously found disturbing inside the pod.

  “What is it?” Looking down, she spied what appeared to be a young human woman lying helplessly inside their current conveyance. “Is that a prisoner?”

  Instinctually, she reached for her gun, but Foster stopped her from trying to smash the pod’s door.

  “Yes, but not one that’s still alive.”

  “What do you mean she’s not alive?” Dressed in a white tunic, the young woman’s hair was shoulder length, well-coiffed and dyed an extreme shade of pink. Her wrists and fingers were heavily adorned by what looked like gaudy, costume jewelry. And her long fingernails were each painted a different color. “And why would they keep a human up here?”

  “She does look… human.” Foster finally said.

  “No. She looks like something off of Jersey Shore.” Justine put her Slinger away. “Are you sure she’s not alive?”

  Foster didn’t even hear the question. His brain was too locked in a loop of disturbing possibilities.

  Why was this woman stored with the other prisoners? Was it a mistake? Was she human? She looked human. Hoover said everything in this section was an extreme threat to the universe. Were human beings a danger to the universe? Or was just this human dangerous? And was that why they had no qualms about using us as vessels?

  A thought flashed across his mind. Hoover said 200,000 years ago, fifty thousand humans were transported to the area known today as the Saharan desert. Suddenly, he remembered one of those history documentaries that Mouse liked to watch in the common room. The one with the guy with the weird hair and the crazy theories called “Ancient Aliens”.

  Then he remembered a book his dad really liked called Chariots of the Gods. It was about aliens visiting Earth. Finally, his brain shifted to a single word: Panspermia. Or to be a little more precise. How life on Earth could have evolved from stray asteroids or via cosmic space. A completely plausible theory given the facts available at the time.

  However, Justine’s little rescue mission had provided him with some more facts. And for the first time since imagining the signal’s origins, he had a new question to ponder.

  Were humans even from Earth?

  “Hoover,” Foster grasped at the enticing straw like a junkie clinging to their stash. “Was there any overflow from below stored up here? A person who was culled from Earth for prisoner implantation?”

  “No. You saw the empty tubes below. Besides, their listed procedures are very strict about human vessels.”

  “If that’s the case,” Foster didn’t have a rational explanation of his current mania to offer, so he screamed, “then why is she here?!”

  Tired of being ignored, Justine grabbed Foster by the shirt and heaved him toward the gangway.

  Tumbling away, the young girl’s pale face beckoned to him in a haunting repose. His mind couldn’t fathom the possibilities of her existence. Suddenly, a hand grasped him firmly by the collar then wrenched him roughly onto the metal walkway.

  “I’ve put on weight,” Foster mumbled, still lost in his manic thoughts.

  “Very funny.” Joseph yanked him to his feet. “You’re heavy because we’re out of the field here.” He leaned back over the railing just in time to see something that made him flinch violently. “Justine? Justine!”

  The deputy’s change in tone instantly snapped Foster out of his trance.

  Focused, he joined the deputy by the railing, half expecting to see her floating toward them with that same giddy smile plastered on her face. Instead, he was greeted by Agent Rushing’s limp body floating lifelessly away from where they stood and back toward the bottom of the containment facility.

  “What happened?” Foster asked in a panic. “Justine?!”

  Joseph merely shrugged his shoulders before returning to work on the air lock controls.

  “What are you doing?” He couldn’t believe the alien was blowing her off in such a cruel way. “We’ve got to save her!”

  “We don’t have time to save her.” Foster had one leg over the railing and almost had the other one over when Joseph seized him by the arm. “We’ve lost three engines, Foster. One more goes, two at the most, and this station will begin a free fall into the black hole. You know what that means?”

  The two of them locked eyes. Both filled with the mania over wanting to save someone’s life. “Ask your program if you don’t believe me!” Joseph growled. “We have to leave, now!”

  “Hoover,” his words were strained and searching. “Is that correct?”

  “Yes…”

  “How much time? And I don’t want to hear you bitching about insufficient data or ruining a surprise.”

  “Five or six minutes, if we’re lucky.”

  “Give me five minutes before you leave. Do you understand?” Foster unslung his satchel and thrust it into Joseph’s hands. He looked over the railing again. Her body was getting further and further away. “Hoover, can you hold him to that?”

  “Yes…”

  He swung his other leg over the railing and hung there for a second, trying to pump himself up for the task at hand. Foster knew what he wanted his body to do. But certain muscle groups were fighting like hell against his decision. It was apparent some more convincing needed to be done.

  Still dumbfounded, Joseph leaned over the railing next to where Foster was rocking back and forth. Every fiber of his human brain screamed that this man was insane. Survival instincts that bridged the gap between all species warned him that they had to run… and run now.

  But as Joseph looked into his eyes, he knew running wasn’t an option for Foster.

  “You really are crazy.”

  Foster turned to the deputy and smiled his sly grin.

  “You know… for eight years doctors have told me the same thing. Never really believed them though.” He leaned out even further from the safety of the gantry way until only the tips of his fingers kept him from falling off. While below him, thousands of pods were bouncing off one another like angry hornets desperately attacking one another.

  “But right now, I have to admit. They might have been onto something.”

  About a hundred yards away, Justine’s body was just a dark shape floating among many others. His time for hesitation at an end, Foster released his death grip on the railing. This foolish decision allowed his still rigid body to rotate into a position where he could kick free from the gantry way at the right angle to maybe intercept the unconscious agent.

  Once there, he pushed away whatever remaining doubt that still lingered in his mind. And without another thought as to what might happen, the Madman of Wilson dove downward at speed into the swirling vortex of murderous alien life forms.

  Back on the gantry way, Joseph impotently watched the man's descent until the sheer number of pods blocked out any sight of him.

  “Fucking love,” he cried out, more to his past than to Foster’s future. “Fine. You want to do that? More power to you. But it won’t get me again.”