Soul

Before all of this, I had aspirations of becoming a famous poet.

On 12-Freedom, the arts were only available to the rich. Being born into a family of generational custodians, and so, my dreams of becoming a poet had died before they could ever become real. 

Still, when I was cleaning the latrines and sweeping the halls of the active facilities on 12-Freedom- I dreamt. 

I dreamt that maybe one day, my words would mean something; that they had worth in the end.

---

Entering the room, we were greeted by the intensity of a glowing orange rod at the room's center. It was connected to a great machine, and like a heart, it thrummed rhythmically; it was the source of the buzzing. 

"What the hell is that?" I asked Pierrette, but shrugged; she didn't know either. 

I reflexively scanned the room, and on my sensors, it indicated that whatever the rod was; it was worth taking. 

"Look's like we can take it, but it doesn't tell me how much it's worth; it's called an apparatus," I told Pierrette.

"Pierrette: I don't see anything else in here, I think it's our only choice of salvage for the mission; I'd imagine it's gotten quite late outside already now." 

Pierrette was right, we had no other choice- there was no longer any more weighing of risk on the mission, we had to bring the rod back with us whether we liked it or not. 

Pierrette began to walk over to where it was, and stretched her hand out to grab it--

But, I grabbed her wrist before she could.

"Don't, let me carry it. If you carry it, you won't be able to communicate." I pointed to her keyboard.

I didn't want a repeat of what had happened last time. 

I stepped in front of her, and put my hands at the latches that kept the rod in place. I could feel the heat radiate from the rod and seep into my gloves. Whatever it was, it was some form of energy conduit- likely radioactive. 

That feeling of dread returned, it washed over me like a wave as I felt my strength drain from my fingertips as I was about to remove it from its containing vault. 

Once I were to remove it, there would be no going back; is what repeated in my mind over and over again. 

So be it; I'll gladly welcome it if there's even a sliver of a chance of escaping this hellish moon. 

With my resolve steeled and my nerves at a razor edge, I grabbed the glowing rod and removed it from the vault. 

Then, a mind-numbing darkness descended upon me and Pierrette; the rod, to our dismay, was what was powering the facility as a whole; not just this section.

"Shit!" I cursed.

The only light we had access to now was the dim glow of the rod in my arms, it illuminating at most two to three feet beyond me in radius. Making it worse, 

"Pierrette: Stay calm, there is still hope for us yet." 

She reassured me as she began to lead me by the arm back to where the door was in the dark.

---

It was a tumbling madness to slowly creep through the internals of the maze that was the sub-level of the facility. With the orange light only extending so far, and the brief highlight of our scanners illuminating our surroundings, the chances of escape felt near impossible. 

"Pierrette: I believe we're coming near to where we were before, where the red valve was." k

With how low visibility was, I had to take her word for it.

But, with the low glow of the rod, we found the red valve exactly where it was on the wall. 

"This at least marks our halfway point out of here," I told Pierrette. 

"Now just to retrace our steps, but, I don't think that'd be possible." The brief feeling of victory I had felt discovering the valve disappeared as soon as I thought about retracting our steps. The steam had prevented either of us from knowing exactly where we were going then. 

"Pierrette: There's no sense in thinking too hard about it, let us just move forward." 

Pierrette was right, the only true defeat here was to stop. We must keep going forward. 

So we did, we walked forward for what felt like another ten minutes of senseless walking. The previous humming and low droning of the machinery inside of the facility was now dead- all we could hear now was our walking and labored breathing through our filters. 

Then, miraculously, we found an open door. It was the door that we had used to enter the sub-level in the first place. 

"Pierrette! We're going to escape!" I cried. 

But Pierrette didn't share the same enthusiasm as I did, instead, she was tense and on guard as she typed quickly onto her wrist.

"Pierrette: This is wrong, George." 

She paused, she didn't dare move one more step. 

"Pierrette: I had closed this door when we entered." 

Suddenly, we heard rapid footsteps approach from behind us in the darkness.

"Run!" I screamed as I dashed forward with the rod. Pierrette pushed me aside as she closed the door behind us, and from the door's porthole what I saw was-

Fear.

Absolute, bottomless fear.

It was a man or a doll, I couldn't exactly tell, but whatever it was, it stared at Pierrette, and I through the porthole. 

Raw, unnerving fear. I felt like a child in its presence, I wanted to so badly look away, to close my eyes, and to hope that it was all just a bad dream. 

From its gaping maw on its plastic face, I sensed an evil that I would never forget as long as I lived. 

I felt as though I was going insane, the longer I stared at its detached head atop of the coiling spring that connected it to its body. 

"Pierrette: We have to run!" 

Pierrette forcefully yanked me away from the gaze that the monster had on me through the door. We had to run, we had to run away from here- we had to run away from this monster. 

But as soon as we turned our backs to it, we heard it begin to fiddle with the door's handle. 

"Run! Don't look back, run!" I screamed, the weight of the apparatus made me sluggish in the awkward suit. But I ran, I ran through the corridor with Pierrette a yard or so away ahead of me. 

Then, the door opened- it had easily caught up to us just as we were at the foot of the entrance. 

I looked back instinctively as Pierrette ran out, she had escaped this hell but here I was still stuck within it. 

It towered over me, it looked like a mannequin- but corrupted, and a far cry from its original purpose. It bled from countless nails that were struck into its synthetic body, why did it bleed? I did not know, but there was a great evil that hid within its body that oozed into the air around it and choked the air out of me. 

Damn it all, we were so close. So, so close. I couldn't blame Pierrette for abandoning me, if I were in her shoes, I might've done the same. 

She had survived once before, and now, well, she might survive once again. 

I'll make it easy for her to grab the apparatus once this thing has killed me; I'll make my peace with that. 

But, as I took a step back to position myself as close as I could to the door; I felt my boot clink against something. 

It was the stun grenade; primed by Pierrette as she had made her escape. I hadn't noticed her dropping it as I had looked back, and neither could she have told me verbally. 

 Even within this chasm of fear that I was in I felt an inkling of an emotion spark to life deep within me. 

It was hope. 

From my feet, a blinding white light exploded into the room- and a familiar hand grappled my shoulder as I was pulled out from that true evil that was that doll in the darkness. 

---

--

-

I am old, now.

That time I had spent being an employee for that company, was now, well, a distant, dull nightmare. 

The horrors that I had experienced on those moons, well, they only surface occasionally like bubbles on a water's surface.

Pierrette and I had escaped 56-Vow by the skin of our teeth, having to practically swim the way back to our ship. The apparatus that we had recovered was valuable and allowed us to reach the profit quota. 

Once we had finished our first week, we were then assigned new crewmates for the next quota. 

Their names were... Carlos and Octavia, I believe.

They both died on the final moon due to a lightning storm. 

Then, it was Jackson and Trevor. 

Bo and Xavier.

Jeanne and Gideon. 

It was like a curse for Pierrette and I. Anyone who would join our crew would ultimately die. 

This continued until our seasonal contract was finally over, and at long last, we were set free. 

On our report, we were then told of our crew's identification number: 2909. 

For the company, we were marginally profitable. That is all that they had told us as they gave us our payment. 

Pierrette afterward disappeared, leaving me nothing of telling me where she would be going. 

And I, well, I went back to 12-Freedom.

There, I became a journalist. 

I wanted to explore the truth, to reveal what was happening to people like me, all in the pursuit of profit for the companies that controlled us. 

It was a difficult time, I had spent most of it in poverty as a purveyor of truth.

But, eventually, I made enough to finally leave 12-Freedom. 

I'm now on 01-Perseus, a quiet, tropical planet. I'm living on one of its countless islands, counting the days until I too, meet my old friends in the afterlife. 

It's a peaceful life, albeit lonely. 

The weather report had stated that today would be a tad rainy, but, I had forgotten to get an umbrella for myself; a result of an old man's memory. 

I didn't mind, however, a little rain never hurt me; nothing could ever compare to the tempests that were on those moons. 

I opened the door to the outside. 

And under the sky's sunshower--

"Ah, it's you." I gasped in surprise, looking at the older woman with the familiar scar on her face.