The second chapter of our round robin story is below. If you’re just finding us, you can read the first part here:
To Konrad the monastery had been a place of devotion to the faith, but also of great joy. The scene that greeted him was the ultimate negation of his memories. Death and destruction blanketed the sanctuary. Konrad didn’t need to count to confirm that all the brothers had been killed. In his gut he knew.
“Captain?” Eric said, gesturing toward the apse.
Konrad tore his eyes away from the carnage toward the far end of the room. There, draped in his familiar silk stole, was Father Paisios, suspended from the ceiling, his arms extended in a manner that even the most devout atheist could not mistake for anything but crucifixion. Konrad averted his eyes quickly.
“Red. Chase. Let’s get the Father down. Then we can try to . . . figure out what the devil happened here.”
While the other two men worked at lowering the prior’s body, Konrad pulled Eric along with him as they weaved among the benches. There was something odd about the long, wooden rows; they didn’t look quite the way that Konrad remembered them. The once-familiar grain of the wood—one of the few luxury items on the entire station—had taken on a crystalline quality. Perhaps, Konrad thought, the brothers had replaced them after all those years. He reached out to run his hand along the rail, but jerked it back quickly at the feeling of—he wasn’t quite sure what—a shock, almost a biting? He started to lean forward to get a closer look.
“Captain,” Red called, snapping his attention back to the other end of the room. “We have a problem.”
“What is it?” Konrad replied, gingerly stepping over one of the monks and making his way toward the front. “Eric, keep your eyes peeled and move slowly.”
The captain reached the point where Father Paisios’ lifeless body hung. He could see clearly then what his eyes had refused to see before. The white-haired old man was not suspended from the ceiling, but rather fused to it, pulled taut with what seemed to be filaments of light, not the ropes or other bindings Konrad had expected.
“He’s … in there,” Chase half-whispered. “You ever seen anything like that?”
Konrad could only shake his head. There was something off about the cleric’s body. He had seen the dead before, the eyes glazed over and glassy. But this was different: the whites of the eyes seemed impossibly bright and the irises gave off a metallic sheen.
“Well can we at least . . .” Konrad began. “Never mind, just—”
“Captain?”
This time it was Eric.
“What now?!” Konrad snapped. “Can’t you see we’re busy?”
He hated to see what had become of Father Paisios, but neither could he bear to look away just at that moment. Konrad felt that he owed the man’s memory at least that much.
“It’s just . . .” Eric continued. “You should look at this.”
Konrad let out an exasperated sigh. Nothing was going like it should have. Life on Bethlehem Station had been orderly and deliberate; now a sense of chaos seemed to drip from everything.
“What is it?”
“There,” Eric gestured toward the floor. “I rolled him over and . . .”
The Captain glanced down to where Eric had moved one of the brothers’ corpses to the far side of the aisle. There was a footprint—at least Konrad assumed it was a footprint, judging by what appeared to be the spread of several toes. He knelt down and gently touched the mark, finding that it was not blood, as he had assumed, but more like a scorched spot. Not merely a spot, he realized, but a depression.
“How . . .?” he said, glancing up at Eric momentarily. Eric merely shrugged.
Laying his weapon on the floor beside him, Konrad leaned down so that his face was inches from the strange print. The floor of the chapel had been carved directly into the asteroid’s surface; nothing should have been able to put a dent in it. The toes, Konrad realized, were not quite toes; the structure was wrong in a way he couldn’t pin down. As he continued to look, craning his neck to the right and back to the left, he saw that where the foot had landed, the stone beneath had taken on the same geometric patterns he had observed in the pew just moments before. Faint crystal fingers branched out from the mark in every direction.
“What is it, Captain?” Red was standing there now. “We laid the priest up there at the front. He . . . well, you saw.”
“Thanks, Red.”
Konrad got back to his feet and checked the shoulder strap on his rifle as he slung it back over his shoulder.
“I don’t know what this is, but where there’s one of . . . those, there are sure to be more, right? Let’s find them and see whether they lead somewhere. Spread out.”
The crew got to work, carefully moving bodies when required, pews scraping along the rock the only sound to be heard.
“Over here,” Chased called out, beckoning toward apse. “It looks like they lead back there.”
There was, Konrad knew, a rear exit to the chapel; it was never used by anyone except Father Paisios. The Captain paused briefly to say a prayer as he approached the body that Red and Chase had done their best to leave in a state of repose.
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” Konrad whispered.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than another sound assaulted the crew’s ears. At first it was low and deep before resolving into something more like someone pounding his fist against a metal door.
Instinctively, the four men crouched, scanned their surroundings, and brought their weapons to a ready position.
“What is that, Captain?” Red asked.
“I don’t know, but I have an idea. And I have an idea where to look. Follow me and stay alert.”
He switched on his rifle’s flashlight attachment, pointed it down the rear passageway, and stalked away into the darkness.