Echoes of Olympus Mons by Eric Malikyte

Author:Eric Malikyte [Malikyte, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astral Lands Press
Published: 2019-04-10T22:00:00+00:00

IX

I stared blankly as the cleaning crew scrubbed away at the mess on Dane's dorm room floor. They wore masks; their eyes seemed disinterested with the bloody horror that rested at their feet. They placed the two severed halves of his body into thick black bags as if they were simply cleaning some mess left over from a chemical spill in one of the labs. The smell of bleach and chemicals burned my nostrils. They were sweeping Dane's blood down the drain when someone grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the corridor. I was too lost in my own head to focus on the face of the person who dragged me out.

Was it my anger toward Dane that had caused this? Maybe my dark matter aura was a beacon for these creatures? A flash of emotion, and it pulsed, luring the creatures to it, like blood at the bottom of the ocean might bring a hungry shark to unsuspecting prey.

“I'm away for half a day, and you go and do something completely stupid.” Only when he spoke did I realize that it was Clarence who'd dragged me from the room. “What were you thinking?”

Dane was guilty of making and distributing contraband, there was no doubt about that. The investigation that followed would show that. The cameras outside his room had been compromised, hacked by an invested party to play the same loop over and over again so prying eyes wouldn't guess that he was making contraband for students. Emma would know I wasn't a murderer—at least not in the traditional sense—but the general population of Olympus One would be hard-pressed to believe that, despite evidence to the contrary.

In my mind's eye, I kept seeing Dane's body split down the middle. His mouth agape, a thin line of blood oozing from a cut that was perfectly symmetrical with the rest of his body. And as his eyes separated with his two juxtaposed halves, blood gushed forth, pouring out into a puddle around his feet.

A fountain of death.

Why? the halves of his horrified expression asked. Why would you do this to me?

“Don't let this distract you,” Clarence said.

But, how could I not? It was hard to ignore the connection each victim had to me. Would it be better to simply shut myself off from the rest of the colony? Would that solve the problem?

I think you should take that camera and flush yourself out an airlock.

That'll probably solve it.

I had been piecing a theory together since Wolfrik's death, and now I was almost sure that I was right. The concentration of dark matter around me in the test panorama, and every other image after, was muted, dulled, while Davin's had been bright with youthful rage and a healthy hatred for the corporations that seemed to dominate our society. My theory was that my dark matter aura did indeed pulse like a beacon, but only briefly, possibly during an altercation, at the climax of an emotional high or a fit of rage.

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