I wish I could have saved them.
I wish I was with them again.
Three
Naomi
“Get up. We found another body.”
Those are the words I hear as I wake, and the first thing I see is Roy’s ugly face peering over me. “Come on,” he says. “It’s urgent.”
With my clothes still on from the night before, I lower from the cot and stumble past Roy. I have to blink my eyes to find my focus.
Once I’m outside, I’m fully awake. Another corpse has been nailed to a tree. It rests in the center of the compound.
My adrenaline spikes. My head spins. There’s a darkness to this fantastic planet, and it’s following our every move.
Roy turns and holds his nose. “Lord have mercy,” Roy mutters.
I catch my breath. “It’s been dead for a while. It’s just the last one we found,” I say. “Fassbender, you were on night watch. What happened here?”
Fassbender eyes the alien body. He doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“Hey, pal. Lady’s talking to you,” Roy says, shoving his shoulder.
Fassbender snaps out of it. “The alien is playing a game with us,” he says.
Hugh sighs. “What game is that? The one where you fall asleep on night duty and get us all killed?”
Fassbender whips around, stuttering, “He must have snuck right past me.”
“Worthless son of a bitch,” Roy mutters under his breath.
“What was that?” Fassbender replies, heated.
“You had one task to watch over the grounds. The beast could have murdered us,” Roy says.
Roy’s right, but it doesn’t change us not getting killed. Something else is at play here, but I can’t quite wrap my mind around it.
“He didn’t kill us. He wanted us to see this. He planned for this,” I say.
And that means, he must be watching us right now.
I spin, eyeing the dark green surroundings. The crew does the same. There’s nothing. Fucking nothing.
He could be hiding anywhere.
Fassbender declares a state of emergency. “Get your weapons out. Discovery base isn’t far. We have to keep moving.”
We walk until we find another trail. More walking leads us into denser jungle. Another trek toward disaster, coming right up.
Captain Halloway sighs. “Why?” he asks, out of nowhere.
“Why, what?” Roy replies.
“Those weren’t human bodies. Why would they kill their own?” he asks.
“Because they’re sick fucks,” Fassbender says. “What other reason could there be?”