Chapter Text

Chapter 1:
The Noise of Thunder

The alarm blared its harsh tone three times, stirring Cory from his sleepless rest with a raspy, annoyed groan. The alarm switched to radio, playing another propaganda message. Cory resisted the urge to throw the device across the room, or better yet, smash it altogether. Instead he just turned it off with a heavy hand and swung his lumbering frame out of bed. Another night, another nickel he told himself.

He walked through the dark on memory alone to the bathroom to get ready for another night of work. 'Get ready' was a generous notion, given his sparse routine. Squinting against the necessary light, he walked past the purposely-left-open medicine cabinet to take care of business. When he was finished, he brushed his unkempt hair and beard without closing the medicine cabinet to look in the mirror. He knew what he looked like well enough without the reminder.

Heading back to the bedroom, Cory grabbed his glasses from the headboard and threw on a fresh set of clothes. A few calculated minutes were killed by sitting down at the desk and checking the newsfeeds. More propaganda. He got it. They were at war. There were evil aliens out to kill all humans - or worse. Who cared? Maybe it was for the best, anyway. He looked at the clock and sighed, hitting the power button on the computer and heading out the door.

The transport stop wasn't far from Cory's apartment, a fact that he was thankful for. The Efswex Mining Corporation, in its infinite benevolence, had been kind enough to supply regularly scheduled mass transit to the citizens of its Penthe mining colony. At a nominal fee, of course. But Cory was happy to pay it to avoid walking. The first, and last, time he had tried that resulted in him showing up to work late and out of breath.

The transport was mostly empty at this time of night. Or as close to night as it ever got on the rural mining colony. The planetoid was small enough - or close enough to its star, or maybe some combination - that the star it orbited never went far below the horizon before rising on the other side. So while the days were fairly normal by Terran standards the nights were more or less perpetual twilight.

But small doesn't mean worthless. It was an idea that was iterated again and again throughout the colony. It was on the recruiting advertisements. It was on the paperwork Cory had signed to come to the colony. It was even on the billboards next to the roads on the way into Tabp, the smallest "town" in the colony.

Though he'd been on the colony for years, Cory still saw a certain majesty on some nights, when he looked down on Tabp from the window of the transport. The calmness of the place, streets dotted with orange lights and small buildings with warm windows, reminded him of the small town he'd grown up in. It reminded him of looking out over that town from his parent's bedroom window in their house on top of the hill. Tonight was one of those nights.

Cory just stared out the window at the town, wondering what kind of mess his coworkers had left for him tonight. It wasn't an overly long ride down into Tabp from the top of the ridge, and soon enough he was walking into the smallest convenience store on the colony. Work.

But small doesn't mean worthless. The store was located just off one of the main transit lanes that connected all of the "towns" and "cities" on the planetoid. This fact alone made it a regular stop for mining transport and personal transport alike. It probably didn't hurt that they accepted Efswex Company Currency, either.

The mess, for the record, was no better than Cory expected and no worse than he feared. Empty food warmers. Empty coffee pots. Unstocked shelves. Walking past the register, Cory gave a friendly "Hey" to Tobias and ducked into the office. Only when he was out of sight did he curse the man's incompetence under his breath. He clocked in, counted his till, and sent a relieved Tobias home. And then he was alone.

It didn't take long for Cory to get things back in order. Or as much order as he cared to, anyway. It wasn't difficult and he didn't understand how his coworker couldn't do such simple things. It only took a matter of minutes to stock the food warmers and start brewing the coffee. Coffee, for all that it was exorbitantly priced on this outer edge of debatably Terran territory, was a valuable commodity. Cory never touched the stuff, but he hated dealing with people complaining when they couldn’t get their caffeine fix.

With things back in relative order, Cory settled in for a long night. The nights he opted to work were slow, but he didn't mind. He'd never been great at interacting with people, so the less he had to do it the better, he reasoned.

It was about halfway through his shift when he recognized a familiar song starting to play over the store's speakers. It was an old song, he was sure. Hundreds of years old and undoubtedly in the public domain by this point. As if the company would waste the money on modern music. But this song had grown on him and he recognized it just by the scratchy sounds at the start of the track.

"And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder," Cory recited the spoken word intro, deepening his voice to match the singer's, "One of the four beasts saying 'Come and see.' And I saw, and behold a white horse."

Cory bobbed his head along as the acoustic guitar came in and the music started. He didn't know what a horse was or what the song meant, but it sounded like it might be about the end of the world. And that was good enough.

By the time the chorus kicked in, Cory's whole upper body was moving in time with the music. "Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers," he belted out in his best impression of the singer. "One hundred million angels singin'."

"Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum." His heel tapped to the rhythm as the chorus continued. "It's Alpha and Omega's kingdom come."

He kept singing and moving to the music, a small reprieve from the monotony of the job. The entire time he kept one eye on the doors, ready to stop the second a customer came in. Before they came in, even. The inner doors would react to the outer doors opening and that sound was enough for Cory to know when somebody was coming. It didn’t always stop him from blushing and worrying that they’d noticed, though.

Just before the second chorus started, the power flickered. Cory rolled his eyes. It was only a few seconds, but it was long enough to knock all of the equipment offline. Including the music system. It wasn’t a terribly uncommon occurrence between Penthe’s cheap infrastructure and the company’s cheaper construction, but it didn’t usually happen without a reason. Usually a windstorm. But there were no windstorms in the forecast today. With half a dozen devices beeping in as many tones as they came back to life, Cory wandered outside to see if he could see why the power had gone out.

And that’s when he heard it. The unmistakable mechanical whirring of the klaxons. He’d heard that haunting noise only once before, some eight years ago, when they played a sample during colony orientation. Cory knew that if the alarm was going off here, it was going off around the entire colony. And he knew it was bad.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He cursed as he flung the doors open and marched back into the store.

He didn’t know what was happening, but if the alarms were going off, then they were capital F, U, C, K, FUCKed. The instructor had said as much during the orientation. Cory’s mind raced as he tried to figure out what it could be. A rogue asteroid on a collision course? Pirates? Worse?

Whatever it was, he didn’t want to stay there. He didn’t want to die there. They certainly didn’t pay him well enough to risk it. But where would he go? With the entire planetoid sounding the doom alarm, where could he go?

Then it clicked. Underground. The mines. He’d heard the miners talking about them for years on their way to or from shifts. How deep and how cut off from the rest of the colony they were. How isolating they were. It was perfect. If Cory could just make it to the nearest mine entrance, make it underground, he could just ride out whatever it was that was happening. And if it happened to be a planetoid-shattering asteroid, well they were all screwed anyway. And, really, what did he have to lose?

A plan, flimsy as it may be, in place, Cory grabbed a duffle bag off the shelf and started stuffing it with whatever food and water he could. “What are they gonna do, fire me?” He laughed manically, pouring a box of food bars into the bag. When the bag was as full as Cory could stuff it, he ran to the door, checked the Penthe colony map in the lobby for the nearest mine, and went outside.

“Ohhhhhh, shit…” Cory stopped in his tracks as soon as stepped through the door.

He looked up above the buildings, frozen in fear. Hanging there, against the star-speckled purples and blues of the twilight sky, was a ship. Smaller vessels swarmed off of it and streaked across the sky in all directions, but his eyes stayed locked on the big one. It was huge. At least as big as the gargantuan, city-block-sized supply freighters that arrived every month escorted by Cosmic Navy Heavy Cruisers, if not bigger. But these ships, whatever they were, were decidedly not Terran.

The ship was high enough that the star below the horizon still shined on it, highlighting it unnaturally against the sky. And Cory couldn’t look away. Though it seemed to have sections rotating around a central core - a common feature of Terran ships to simulate gravity - this ship was sleeker. Its curves, in stark contrast to the utilitarian geometric Terran designs, seemed almost organic, flowery even.

The oscillating whine of the klaxons, which had faded into the background as Cory became transfixed on the ships in the sky, was replaced with a loud rumbling. The ships were getting closer, Cory realized, and the sound was like thunder ripping across the sky as they descended through the atmosphere. He realized he had stopped breathing and drew a deep breath as the sound pulled him out of the trance, and did the only thing he could think to do. He ran.

×=×=×=×

Five miles. Just five miles and he would be safe. Maybe. And that was if he stuck to the roads. He could save a mile, maybe two, if he cut through the rocky scrubland in between them.

It had been years since Cory had run more than a couple dozen feet. And that was just on the too common occasion that he had to stop an ignorant customer from using a piece of equipment they weren't meant to. The last time he had run with any gusto had probably been in high school. He hadn't cared about his physical fitness for a long time, but now it was a matter of life and death. A fact that Cory was painfully aware of as the lactic acid burned in his legs.

His heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest. Every ragged breath tore at his scratchy throat as he gasped for air. Arms and legs burned with a sting of exertion he hadn't felt in years. Just when he felt like his body would give out, Cory spotted more ships above the horizon. Farther away than the ones over Tabp had been. The sight sent a new surge of adrenaline coursing through Cory's body and he drove ahead toward what he hoped would be the safety of the mine.

By the time he spotted the guard shack, Cory was limping, his body long doubled over as he clutched at the horrid knot beneath this ribcage with his free hand. His run had slowed to more of a jog, but the promise of safety ignited the last of whatever it was that had kept him going for the past three plus miles.

He broke out into a sprint. Or at least as close as his body would allow. His feet landed with heavy thuds on the dust with every step, trembling legs struggling to keep up and stay under his body. His vision tunneled around the mine's entrance. It was right there. The steel bracing was rusted and falling down, but it was right there!

Keep going! The voice in Cory's head screamed.

And by some miracle, he did. Past the guard shack. Into the waiting mouth of the abandoned mine. Past the machinery the company had decided that it was more profitable to scuttle than retrieve. Down, down into the ground until the light and the echoes of the klaxons faded, stumbling all the way.

Somewhere in the darkness, Cory collapsed. He managed to catch himself with his hands when he fell to his knees, but he couldn't stop the sputtering coughs that turned into dry heaves as his stomach tried to purge contents that weren't there. He didn't know how he made it as far as he did, but he knew he couldn't go one step further. With the last bit of power, he flopped onto his side and let the momentum carry him onto his back. And then, his entire body throbbing to the beat of his heart, he passed out.

×=×=×=×

Cory awoke several hours later in a daze. He shot up and coughed for air, each breath wheezing as it dragged in and out. The air was cold, and damp, and stale. His hands scrambled in the dark against the floor of the mine until they landed on the duffle bag and he wrenched a bottle of water free.

He could barely make out the shape of the bottle before he drank the whole thing in one series of gulps. He breathed heavy, sitting on the dirt, and looked up at the faintest pinpoint of light. The entrance. He'd survived the night.

Cory pulled out his communicator. No signal this far down. No way to tell if it was safe to go back. But he wasn't taking any chances. He turned on the communicator's flashlight, lamenting the less than full charge, and grabbed the duffle bag. He had to go deeper.

It was slow work. His entire body was sore and he had no idea what dangers might lurk in the dark. Eventually, he came upon a mining rig parked against one of the walls. It was a monster of a vehicle, some fifteen or twenty feet tall and fifty or so long. Fighting against his own weight, Cory pulled himself up to the cab.

Locked.

"Of course." The words strained Cory's throat and made him cough again. "Fu-uck!" He cursed, another cough interrupting the word, and slammed the bottom of his fist against the cab window. It dragged across the glass as more coughs rocked his body. In the window, where his hand had smeared and streaked the dust, Cory saw himself, illuminated by the harsh light of his communicator. His nose crinkled and his lip twitched, threatening a snarl, as his eyes dissected his reflection. The dust he'd stirred up filled his nose with the smell of putrid mildew, making him cough yet again. The cough pulled his mind back to the mine, and he started looking for a way down.

Climbing down was just as hard as climbing up due to the unfamiliar footholds, but it wasn't long before Cory was back on the ground and wiping his hand clean on his pants. Only now, Cory realized that the rig wasn't right up against the wall. That had merely been a trick of the shadows. It was parked a couple feet away from it. Not much, but there was enough room for Cory to squeeze between the rig and the wall. It would have to do.

So, after wiping his grimy hand off on his pants, Cory hunkered down between the rig and the wall, tearing into the food bars and another bottle of water, and tried to figure out how long he could make them last.

×=×=×=×

Time went by at a snail’s pace. He used his communicator as little as possible. No point in running the battery down, he reasoned. The duffle bag never left his side when it wasn't acting as his pillow, and it was easy enough to eat and drink by feel. Every so often, he'd check his communicator to see how long he'd be down there, and to see how much was left in the bag.

In his head, Cory replayed songs he knew to pass the time. Sometimes silently, sometimes bobbing his head to the imagined beat, sometimes murmuring the lyrics or notes to himself under his breath. Old song. New songs. He didn't care as long as they distracted him. But they always came back to the old man singing about the end of the world.

It didn't take long for Cory's mind to wander.

"What the fuck was that?" Cory gesticulated in the darkness, his voice hushed.

He shook his head. There were so many questions and he had fuck all for answers. What were those ships? Were they even ships? What happened on the surface? When could he go back? Would there even be anybody left? What would he do if there wasn't?

His whole body was tense again. A sore little spring ready to pop. "Stop it!" he barked at himself through gritted teeth. He slammed his fist back against the wall he was sitting against until he could breathe again. The pain helped. It always did.

He didn't know how much time had passed after that. He stopped using his communicator. Better to save the battery for the flashlight, he thought. He was almost to the end of another song in his head when he heard it.

Singing.

The voice went up and down, almost like it was dancing a dozen waltzes in the air as it reverberated off the walls of the mine. It was like nothing Cory had ever heard before. It was beautiful. Otherworldly.

And it was the most terrifying thing he had ever heard.

Cory froze, his back pressing against the wall he was sitting against. His entire body tensed. His tired muscles tightened and his hands balled into fists. He dared not move a muscle, dared not breathe, as the sound grew louder. Closer.

While Cory sat there, head turned toward where he thought the sound to be coming from, the darkness seemed to change. As if the hue of the darkness itself was slowly changing from the inky, jet black and creeping toward something warmer. At first, Cory thought it was his mind playing a trick on him. He screwed his eyes shut for a few seconds, and when he opened them, the darkness looked noticeably redder.

As the seconds - which felt like hours but were probably minutes - passed, the singing drew nearer. And with it, the darkness gave way to a red glow. The singing closed in on him and he could make out the outline of the mining rig. Behind it, the red light grew ever brighter, until Cory found himself enveloped in the rig's shadow.

From where he was sitting, Cory could see under the rig. Not only that, he could see the ground on the other side. And in the red light, he could see the footprints in the dirt. His footprints. The singing stopped and Cory held his breath. He could see that the source of the light was moving toward them. And when it did, a soft rustling sound echoed around the mineshaft.

Then he saw it. Whatever it was. All Cory could see was the bottom of a black mass that was tall enough to be obscured by the mining rig. It seemed to move in time with the rustling, its irregular shape quivering as it moved across the floor of the mine. It moved straight to Cory’s footprints and when it reached them, the mass and the light above it stopped. He cursed himself in his mind for not covering his tracks.

Cory resisted the urge to scream, even as he watched the edges of the thing writhe and break apart into dozens, maybe hundreds, of strands like shag carpeting. He tried to fight the heavy feeling growing in his chest as his air ran out. Tried to ignore every instinct telling him to breathe. Just before Cory thought he was about to break, he felt something touch his leg.

He looked down and saw a thick, black strand lying on his ankle, trying to coil around it like a snake. And it broke him.

Cory kicked as hard as he ever had, screaming, and clambered away from the wall and up to his feet. He shuffled to the end of the mining rig, squeezed between the wall and the wheels, and ran headlong into the darkness.

The light, the thing, followed.

Cory couldn't see in front of him. He certainly wasn't looking back either. The only thing he could 'see' was the vague shape of his arms pumping, barely offset from the darkness as they caught the glow.

Without warning, Cory's right side collided with a wall. He hissed through his teeth as it scraped his skin and sent him reeling away. A few dozen feet later, his left side scraped against another. He pingponged back and forth in the dark, but he kept running.

And the thing kept following. Each time Cory bounced off one of the walls, each time he hissed or yelped or cried out in pain, it sang after him.

Cory's feet pounded against the ground, each step making him feel heavier and heavier. Until they didn't. Cory's arms shot out, hands trying to find the purchase his feet had lost. Time stood still and only one thought crossed Cory's mind.

This was it. The end. He was about to die, falling into a bottomless pit on a rock in the middle of fucking nowhere.

He never saw the table. He just crashed through it in a cacophony of splintering wood and twisting metal. With ground under him again, Cory groaned and rolled over onto his back.

It hurt. Everything hurt. He was sore even before battering himself against the cave walls and falling who knew how far, but now he hurt. He was pretty sure he felt blood where his skin had been raked against the rocks, but in the dark it could have just as easily been sweat.

When Cory's eyes opened, he saw it. The shaggy black mass loomed above him, the twin red lights above its head illuminating the ledge Cory had blindly run off of and baubling as it turned one way and then the other.

Cory grit his teeth and pushed himself to his feet, stumbling and falling into a workbench. All manner of tools and detritus exploded from the workbench as Cory's arms swept across it in an effort to brace him. When he managed to turn around and half-lean-half-sit on the edge of the workbench, Cory saw the thing. It was coming toward him, descending a half-flight of stairs in two or three steps.

Cory's hands reached blindly at the workbench, searching for something to defend him. His hand found something and he pointed it at the thing as threateningly as he could muster.

"Get back!" Cory barked the command.

The thing slowed, but didn't halt its advance. It sang again, softly, and held up two shaggy appendages.

As the thing got closer, Cory could see the lights above it were hanging off of the top of the thing from wispy stalks. They lit the front of the thing and two purpley-blue sparkles shined through the front of the mass as it rustled closer.

Now that the thing and its lights were closer, Cory realized that the tool in his hand was a sonic drill. He held it like a gun and pointed it at the thing.

"I said get back!" Cory's throat burned as he rasped out the words. He gestured with the drill, pushing it toward the shaggy mass and pulling it back. It whirred softly as his finger teased the trigger.

It sang again, moving its appendages and moving toward Cory at a snail's pace.

"Stop!" Cory shouted, edging across the workbench and away from the thing that had chased him. "Get away!"

It moved closer again, swishing softly. And it sang again.

And Cory realized.

It was singing at him.

"Stop! Stopstopstop!" Cory's words ran together. He kept trying to back up. To get away.

It sang at him again, reaching one of its appendages toward him.

Cory's jaw clamped like a vise. He winced and turned his head away and…

A deafening CRACK ripped through the air and echoed through the cavern.

Cory felt wet. Everything smelled like it does right before it rains. Earthy and damp. When he managed to unscrew his eyes, he could see why.

The shaggy thing that had followed him was on the floor of the cave. One of its appendages dangled off of it haphazardly and the one stalk that it had left twitched frantically.

"Fuckfuckfuck!" Cory's feet moved back and forth but he didn't move.

The thing sang again. Its song warbled weakly. It almost sounded sad.

Cory's face twisted. The corners of his eyes glistened in the red light. He sucked air through his teeth as he looked down at it.

"I told you to get back! I didn't…" Cory's own voice wavered in kind. He held the hand still holding the drill to his head, the butt of the handle pressing against his temple. "Why did you make me do that?!" He shouted, smacking himself in the head with the drill's grip three times. "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

His entire body rocked, each wet breath threatening to drag out more and more emotion. His arms fell and the drill slipped his grasp, hitting the dirt with a soft thud. He didn't dare look at the thing again as he pulled out his communicator and looked for a way out.

"I'm sorry," Cory muttered, wincing with every step as he limped away as fast as he could.

When he thought he was far enough away, Cory fell against the wall and curled into a ball. He wailed long and hard as he sobbed and didn't know why.

×=×=×=×

Some time later, Cory managed to pull himself together. Scanning the walls with his communicator light, he realized that at some point during the chase they had entered a natural cave system. And if that mine connected to this cave, it stood to reason that others might as well.

He couldn't go back the way he came. Not where that thing was. More of them might be coming. Maybe looking for the one that wasn't coming back.

It was a reasonable postulation in Cory's mind.

After he checked himself over in the communicator light - the scrapes and bruises weren't that bad, and he was pretty sure the red gunk splattered on him wasn't his - he managed to get up from the ground, using the wall to support himself. He had to keep moving. He had to find a way out.

But he only had so much time, and he knew it. He had already been rationing his supplies before. Now he had none. He didn't know how long he could go without food, but he knew it was a lot longer than he could go without water. With that in mind, Cory set out deeper into the cave, knowing that he would either find another way out, or die down there.

×=×=×=×

The communicator was gone within hours. There was no flicker. No dimming of the flashlight beam. One second it was on and the next it was out.

Cory sighed and shoved it back in his pocket. Pushing his glasses up to his forehead, he pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. Still pinching, he shook his head. When he finally dropped his hand and opened his eyes, he realized that he was glowing. Or, at least the sticky red gunk plastered on him was. It wasn’t much. Maybe a few feet’s worth of light. But it would keep him from running into anything. Or taking any more unexpected drops.

He moved slowly, trying to focus on the ground in front of him. And when his mind couldn’t do that, when the thoughts about what had happened and what may still happen were too loud, Cory drowned them out with imagined music. He mumbled lyrics almost incoherently under his breath and kept limping along.

At first, Cory’s stomach twisted and turned into knots. It ached as it begged for something, anything, to fill it. Sometime around the second or third time Cory resigned himself to fitful sleep, those hunger pangs disappeared.

The thirst never did.

He hadn’t had a drink for some time before that thing had shown up. Before it chased him. Before he was running and panting and gasping for air. His throat was as dry as the cave walls and it hurt to even breathe anymore.

Then the dizziness came. It came in small bouts at first. They were manageable, if Cory used the rocky walls to brace himself. But when they came more often, when they were longer and when closing his eyes no longer fended them off, Cory was reduced to crawling. Holding onto the floor of the cave and feeling like he might fall off any second.

He kept moving. Despite the pain. Despite the thirst. Despite the entire world spinning. He kept moving, the songs in his head pushing him forward despite their becoming less and less coherent.

He crawled until he couldn’t anymore and weakly pounded at the ground. He had no tears left to cry, but that didn’t stop his body from folding over and letting out a sorrowful whine from the pit of his chest. His body tightened and he dug his head into his collarbone as the darkness took him.

Cory mumbled in his sleep, grumbling as he put his hand up to shield his eyes. He tried to roll over and grab blankets that weren’t there. The realization woke him with a gasp and his eyes fluttered open.

Light.

He could see light. Off in the distance. It was blurry and dancing, but it was light. Golden and crisp light of day. He rolled over with a drawn out shout, willing himself to his hands and knees.

The light multiplied into four as Cory crawled toward it, swaying and moving out of focus in his vision with every step. But the closer he got, the bigger the light became. The more unified the lights became.

The old man was singing in his head again. ”Till armageddon no shalam. No shalom.”

Cory clawed at the dirt below him, unwilling or unable to feel the rocks jabbing into his palms. Into his knees. A twisted grin stretched across his open mouth as he tasted the fresh air and each strained pant came out like a laugh as he got closer and closer to the surface.

”The father hen will call his chickens home.”

He could see it. The sky. He couldn’t stop now. He wouldn’t.

”Listen to the words long written down”

He felt the wind as he neared the entrance. It spurred him to try to take to his feet, to fly, but he only managed to stumble and fall back to his knees and keep crawling forward.

”When the man comes around.”

The gravel sifted under Cory, crunching as he swam on top of it. He squinted against it all. The light. The spinning. The pain in every part of his body until…

He was out. And then he collapsed. Gravity carried him tumbling down the hill until he came to rest in a heap at the bottom. The star above beat mercilessly on him, oppressively hot after days spent underground

Cory tried to push himself up. He wanted to stand. To walk, run even, back home. Back to his bed. Even back to the stupid, menial job he hated. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even get back to his hands and knees. He just managed to roll himself over.

He smiled. The star’s rays felt so good. So warm. He was going to die. He knew it. But at least he wasn’t going to die in that cave. So he closed his eyes and he waited, the world swaying around him. The wind brushed his face and rustled through the scrubgrass. And the song in his head kept playing.

Just as he thought he was going to pass out for the last time, something pricked Cory’s ears. He forced his eyes open against their leaden weight and rolled his head on the ground toward the sound. Something was moving in the scrubland. Something tall and pale.

Something human.

He tried to look at it, to see who it was, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. Unable to keep looking, Cory let his eyes fall shut and his body go limp as he heard the spoken word outro to the old man’s song in his head.

"And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts. And I looked, and behold a pale horse. And his name that sat on him was Death, and hell followed with him."