Sora Park

He woke to someone shaking him roughly. It had only been a dream, or rather – a nightmare. He rarely had nightmares.

“What…?” he asked groggily as he slowly sat up, rubbing the sand out of his eyes.

“Come on, sparky. Something is happening on the ground,” came the anxious reply.

Reece opened his eyes and saw Thomas. He looked white as a ghost. Reece stood and they headed to control. When he got there, everyone was in attendance. Commander Rogers nodded at the two men as they entered.

“Now that we’re all here, I’ve got some disturbing news. They found the Hermes’s crash site. While the shuttle’s cargo bay was intact, the cockpit was completely burnt up. There was no sign of any of our missing astronauts. And for reasons unknown, Ground Control has ordered us to sit tight up here. So, for the foreseeable future, we’ll do just that while they assess the situation on the ground. What situation, I don’t know. I’m not sure if this is related to the shuttle crash, but I can only assume so. With this new information, I feel it is imperative to get Zhengzhou Station ship-shape ASAP. Reece, are you rested enough to finish the repairs?”

Reece nodded. “Yeah, I’m good to go.”

“Also, this may seem overly cautious, but I want us to start rationing, just in case. Zia and Stephanie will set up a meal schedule. I’ll keep you all apprised of the situation as it develops. You are dismissed.”

Reece groaned internally and left to prepare for another EVA as he shook the last of the cobwebs from his mind. Dimly, he thought it was overkill to wake him up and insist on an EVA right now. Plus, it seemed plain nuts to start rationing their food. He couldn’t comprehend the reasoning for such drastic measures. It was hard to think clearly, though. Besides being tired, the whispering voices had started up again. Only this time, they were louder and seemed to be telling him to do something.

That injection must have started to work, or else he was going crazy. Either way, Reece had a job to do. At least this part of the job should be easy. Once he arrived at the airlock, Sora was waiting for him. She was alone and looked scared and somewhat sad.

“What’s wrong?” asked Reece, suddenly concerned.

Sora took his hand in hers and turned it over, placing a yellow capsule into his palm.

“You need to take this right now,” ordered Sora, a pleading look on her face.

“What are you talking about?” asked Reece, confused by the woman’s odd behavior.

“You’re starting to hear voices, right? And having bad dreams? The serum they injected you with is going to take over your mind and make you start to think like them. You’ll lose yourself. I know, because that is what’s happening to me. I think half of the crew is under the influence of this drug. I just gave you the antidote, but you need to take it within six hours of having been injected with the serum. You should know, this’ll only remove one of the effects of the poison they’ve stuck into you. You won’t be so easy to control.”

Reece blinked hard as he processed all the information that she had just told him.

“What about you?” he asked, suddenly worried for the girl.

“It’s too late for me,” she hissed, sadness and anger battling for control.

“What do you mean by too late?” asked Reece, his worry increasing.

“Just listen and do what I say!” she snapped. “There’s no time for anything else.”

The look on her face made clear that the argument was over. Instead, he concentrated on what she had told him. Despite how crazy it sounded, everything she said made sense and was true from what he could tell. He quickly did the math in his head. It had been nearly six hours since the commander had injected him with the first dose of the serum. Since he’d rather take a chance on Sora than the commander, he nodded and took the pill.

“When will I know if it worked?”

“When the voices stop,” she said, sniffling as a tear rolled down her left cheek. “Mine never did, but I didn’t get the pill until a full day had passed. I probably won’t remember this conversation either. That is good for you. My mind won’t be my own for much longer and I don’t want to betray your secret – that you won’t become one of them. Take care of yourself Reece, and if it comes to it...do what I couldn’t and end it all. Otherwise, the choice will be taken from you. But promise me one thing. If it comes down to me or you, choose yourself. I don’t want to live like this. Thank you for being nice to me. It’s rare. Goodbye Reece.”

Sora turned and ran off, leaving Reece to mull over everything he had just learned. He’d have to be very careful now. Especially if half of the crew was infected with this stuff. He recognized the icy tingle of dread as he pondered the possibility that this ‘serum’ had something to do with the zombie rats he had witnessed with his own eyes. It was appearing more and more that Angel was right. There was something truly sinister happening on this station.

With nothing more to be done, for now, he went about his current task. Donning his suit, Reece informed the crew that he was ready for the EVA. They sounded off, stopped the spin, and Reece began thinking that this was his fifth EVA in three days—or was it only four EVAs? Every recent memory was starting to blend in his mind, especially as a whole new level of crazy started sinking in.

The work was easy and went fast. He filled the garden’s gouged surface with the polyfoam before moving on to the lab. Using the torch on his repair job, Reece reinforced the work. Once satisfied, he filled the damage with more poly-foam. A surge of pride flowed through him while inspecting his finished work. It was nearly as good as new, though maybe not as pretty. With the work finished, Reece headed back to the airlock. While making his way along the rungs that traversed the space station, there was a strong and steady tug from the station which Reece could feel through the rungs he was currently using. Then Zhengzhou Station began to spin back up, pulling him along for the nightmarish ride.

“Shit!” yelled Reece to no one in particular as his grip instinctively tightened.

Simultaneously, Reece called control while he removed his lifeline and started climbing along the station’s rungs as fast as he could. He needed to reach the airlock as quickly as possible.

“Control!” shouted Reece into the suit’s intercom.

There was no response.

“Control, do you copy?”

Nothing. Reece was now fully fearing for his life.

Luckily, he hadn’t been waiting for control to respond. Even if they had, by the time they figured out what was happening, the quick-thinking engineer would have been thrown into space by the centrifugal force of the station. Relying on the safety cable wasn’t an option. Even if it had held with the station at full spin, it wouldn’t have saved him. It’d be impossible to hold on and Reece would have been smashed into one of the outer struts of the station, dying instantly. No... his only option was to get to the airlock and close it before the station moved too fast for him to climb through the spin’s increasing momentum.

There were only four rungs to go and his chances seemed to be improving when the bulkhead door suddenly started closing by itself. Either it had inconveniently malfunctioned, or someone was closing it from the inside. Reece did the only thing he could think of and muscled two rungs closer and wedged the empty poly-foam canister between the bulkhead and the portal, keeping it from closing completely.

Reece was able to reach the bulkhead door, strong-arming it open a few centimeters as soon as it was within reach, but the door’s motor was fighting him. He quickly gave up the futile effort. The door was now partly open, but Reece couldn’t squeeze through the small opening. The station was spinning faster and faster. He needed to come up with something fast or this would be the end of him.

As his grip started to falter, Reece fortuitously recalled that the door had an override on the outside, just under an access panel. Jamming his feet into the rungs allowed him to be able to free a hand and activate his torch. The flame cut through the panel easily, disabling two of the screws holding it in place. Peeling back the thin metal revealed just enough of the override lever to get a finger on and pull down. Accomplishing that, the door started opening and Reece hastily pushed the canister out of the way and back into the airlock.

Using what was left of his strength, Reece managed to pull himself into the airlock. Once inside, he laid down near the portal and caught his breath. His heart felt like it was going to beat through his chest at the near-death experience. As he calmed down enough to focus and thought he had enough energy, he reached ‘down’ through the round doorway and grabbed the bulkhead’s manual locking mechanism.

Pulling with all he had, he barely budged the heavy bulkhead door. His efforts were clearly futile. The station was moving too fast at this point. Reece could sit normally or lay down or even walk around, but the bulkhead was simply too heavy to lift with the artificial gravity in effect. It was relatively safe in the airlock for the time being, but there was another problem. Reece wouldn’t be able to get back into Zhengzhou Station proper with the outer bulkhead hanging open like it was. It was a tight spot but at least there was time to think. The airlock was about three meters in diameter, with the one-meter portal in the center. There was also some room to move around if he didn’t get too careless.

Reece contemplated his predicament and any remaining options, mulling over how he had ended up in such a precarious position. It was clear that there were too many coincidences. Someone was trying to kill him, but the motivation or even who it was eluded him. Determination to find out steeled his resolve. The first step would be to survive this incredibly dangerous situation.

Reece had a good idea that it related to the shuttle tragedy, horrific science experiment, and most likely of all, his induction into the secret organization. It seemed unlikely that the commander would offer him an opportunity to join his cult, only to try to kill him mere hours later. Maybe Jared... he was very disagreeable and clearly didn’t trust Reece in the least.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t any evidence of anything at this point. Again, Angel was right. It seems like there was something very nefarious going on and whatever it was, it had just kicked into high gear. Reece shook the thoughts from his head, deciding to worry about it later. Right now, his focus needed to be on getting back into the station. Reece swiftly began going over the airlock’s systems in his head. Anything that could help him shut the exterior door would be a blessing from the gods.

The bulkhead was typically operated manually, but it did have electric motors that would shut it remotely. That’s just what had happened to him earlier when someone seemingly tried to shut him out of the station. If any of the circuitry that controlled the motor’s power was within reach, he might be able to hot-wire the bulkhead door. The problem was that all the cabling was behind panels. Panels that could only be accessed from outside the station.

“Shit!” Frustration and fear flowed through Reece, causing him to punch one of the walls of the airlock. “Think, come on...think!”

Rummaging through his inventory, the mostly empty canister of foam gave him an idea. Something could be created out of the foam that would be large and strong enough to block the portal. Once the makeshift door was in place, it would be a simple matter of sealing it with the remaining foam. The foam would stick to the floor, making a strong barrier. It would also stick to the floor during the creation process, which would be an issue.

Reece needed something to spray it on that could become part of the makeshift door. There were enough rags in his tool kit to create a base for the foam to set upon. He used the canister to start spraying around and around over the rags to create a roughly round mass of foam. Just as his plan looked like it was going to work, the foam ran dry before the crude door was complete.

“Fuck!” yelled Reece as he tossed the canister over by the toolkit. It rolled around and bumped up against the torch, causing a new plan to form in his mind.

“Son of a bitch!” Reece excitedly whispered to himself as he smiled and picked up the welding torch, hastily checking the fuel gauge.

It was still over half-full, which gave him another idea. Zhengzhou Station’s schematics were ingrained in his head. He knew right where the cabling for the bulkhead’s motor ran. They just couldn’t be accessed from inside the airlock because there wasn’t an access panel installed there. Reece would just have to make one. He knew where it was safe to cut and started working immediately, cutting through the airlock’s metal wall like butter.

After cutting through three edges of a one-foot square panel, Reece ran the torch quickly over the last edge, weakening it enough to easily bend. With a prybar from his toolkit, he pried the newly created square panel open enough to access the cables. Once they were cut, they’d be spliced together, essentially hot-wiring the door’s motor. Reece thanked the gods for the old technology. It took some time and wasn’t easy with his gloved hands, but the brilliant engineer had all the tools he needed to get the job done.

Within a few minutes, Reece touched the last two wires that had been freed from the cabling together. The motor immediately hummed to life. Unfortunately, it was under a great deal of extra weight due to the station’s spin. It whined and struggled to close the door. Just as Reece began losing hope, it overcame the resistance and the door slowly closed, causing him to blow a sigh of relief.

The task wasn’t yet complete, however. The door hadn’t latched shut. Reece had had to cut the wire that automatically engaged the bulkhead’s locking mechanism in order to activate the motor. Instead, it was a simple matter for him to manually secure the bulkhead. Spinning it shut, Reece smiled. He had done it. The airlock was secured. Now there was just the matter of getting back inside.

Fortunately, there were only a little over two meters between the inner and outer bulkheads, so Reece could reach the inner bulkhead by standing on his toes. It took a few tries with the lack of leverage, but he was able to disengage the lock. Opening the door was another matter. It was simply too far out of reach to push open with any force. Reece looked around, noticing the empty canister lying on the floor. He figured it would give him another 50 centimeters of reach.

Picking it up, Reece used the canister to push open the free-swinging inner bulkhead door far enough to fall the rest of the way open. He carefully tossed his tool kit, the canister, and the welding torch through the inner portal. They loudly landed next to the opening. Removing his helmet and suit, they were tossed through the opening as well. The airlock was now empty except for him. Jumping up, Reece caught the edges of the portal and pulled himself through. He was finally back within the station proper. Oddly, no one was around.