Chapter 1: The Sound of the Mind

"Hey Sam, you ready to go?"

"Yeah." I shook my head and smiled up at Nina, whose brow was furrowed.

"Are you sure? If you have a headache or anything, we've got some Ad--"

"I'm fine, Nina, but thanks." Our crew's medic had been flitting around, seeing if everyone was alright before takeoff, but by Hermes she could stand to leave it be. I didn't blame her, though; everyone's nervous on their first takeoff. She skittered over to Nick, our ship engineer.

"So how does FTL work?"

"I don't really know how to explain it without sitting down with you for hours. The best I can do right now is that when we go faster than light, we sort of go into an alternate realm of energy, where some of our laws of physics are inverted. It's like going straight along a right angle. It's not possible by definition, but under different laws of physics it's quite possible."

"…what the fuck?" Nina shook her head. 

"Guys, we're about to go into FTL," Kyle said over the intercom. "Y'all should go into cryo now."

"Oh Captain, my Captain, rise up and hear the bells" Nick muttered.

"What?"

"It's a reference," he said, looking at me. "Poem by Walt Whitman." His eyes dipped lower, and I crossed my arms over my chest.

"Hey! My eyes are up here, genius." Nick flushed and practically sprinted out of the room, presumably to cryo where he could literally sleep away his embarrassment.

"Men," I muttered to myself.

"You know he has a thing for you, right?" Nina asked me.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I like him looking at my boobs." I sighed. "Don't breathe a word about this, but I kinda have a thing for him, too." Nina clapped a hand to her mouth. "I mean it. Not. One. Word. I'll tell him after we get back to Earth." She lowered her hand, but she looked like she was about to jump right through the roof of the ship. "I'm heading off to cryo," I said, and walked away before she could ask any questions.

When I got to the cryo room, Nick and Kyle had already gone under. I sighed, looking at the frosted glass tubes, and went to my own. I took the syringe, stuck it in my arm, and pushed the plunger. As I got drowsy, I pulled down the top of the tube, keyed in the combination, and felt the chill of cryo just before I lost consciousness.

…

Waking up after cryo is always a haze. I'm not sure why, but I think it's something to do with the brain cells needing time to fully unfreeze. Nina would know, but I never got around to asking her. My first clear memory after landing and waking up from cryo is looking at Ludwig's readings of the moon we were trying to set up a base on.

"Uh… that shouldn't be possible."

"What?" Kyle sidled up beside me.

"Look at the moon's readings. There's no atmosphere, but there's movement there that Ludwig is picking up as fauna." I bent closer to the monitor. "Just one, and pretty large. We should get down there and check it out."

"Woah, wait a second. You see a big animal on a moon and your first thought is 'hey, let's get close to it?' Maybe Ludwig is bugging out?"

"No way." My hand jittered, and I nearly jumped out of my seat. "There's no way we're passing this up. This could be intelligent life, Kyle! We can't risk ignoring this!"

"She's right." Nick walked up beside her. "If what Ludwig sees and what we think conflict, it might be that they have advanced technology to make up for no atmosphere. Besides, we both know the likelihood of Ludwig bugging out is almost nothing."

"Okay, say he's not. How do we know it's worth the risk?"

"It's worth it," Nick said.

"Since when were you an expert on xenos?" Kyle snapped at him.

"Since never, but I am and have been for years." Kyle turned to face me, face like thunder, but I didn't back down. "Kyle, this is literally why I'm here. I know how to handle xenos. We'll be fine."

He was silent for a moment. "Ugh, fine. If this goes wrong, it's on your heads."

…

"God, I hate this." Nina muttered from her exosuit.

"Well, nobody said it would be pleasant," Nick said. He looked at home in his own exosuit. Hell, he probably spent just as much time wearing it as not, being a ship mechanic. The thin layer of dark grey dust that covered the moon was kicked up by our footprints, sometimes making it difficult to see behind us.

"Ludwig, how close are we to the fauna?" Kyle barked.

"The fauna is 93 meters ahead of you."

As we crested the hill, we saw what had no business being there, and yet it was: a xeno, and an animal xeno at that. I raised my hand for the others to halt, and we studied the creature. 

It was black, but not a sort of black that was at all reflective. The sun that illuminated the landscape so well simply sank into the creature's exoskeleton. I would've thought it was just an oddly-shaped shadow if it weren't for the cracks that webbed its body, sickly grey and converging near what I assumed was its head. Like an old man, its body shook as it turned to us. It has three bright green orbs that I assumed were eyes, but I couldn't be sure. It was quadrupedal, standing on four shaking limbs that ended with what looked like human hands, but with two thumbs and five other fingers. As its head turned to us, a seam split open in its mouth, revealing rows of sharp teeth as its bony tail began to lash from side to side.

"Uh, Sam, we should probably get out of here." Nina's voice was small, but I didn't even turn my head. Oh Hermes, how I wish I had turned my head.

"Shh! We've never seen anything like this!" I didn't take my eyes off the creature as it stumbled towards us. "Ludwig, are you recording this?"

"Yes," Ludwig's unaffected voice came through my helmet. "I've been recording since the moment you set foot off ship."

"Good." The xeno crouched, its back legs cracking into more sickly grey as its muscles tensed.

"Uh, guys, get out your guns--"

The xeno lunged at us, long black claws emerging from the tips of its digits. Kyle shouted as they tore through his suit like paper, cutting his body in half. It wasted no time grabbing his head and ripping it off. The rest of us barely had time to react before it was upon Nina, tearing off her limbs one by one before picking up her head and torso by the neck and throwing her into the chasm beyond. I froze as it turned to me, hoping desperately that it wouldn't notice me as long as I stayed still. 

Its body seized up, and it started to vibrate. What the hell is it doing? I thought. I didn't have long to wonder, though, as it suddenly spewed black goo right at my face. It ate through my visor like a powerful acid and went directly into my mouth. I instinctively went to spit it out, but it slipped down my throat despite my efforts, almost as if it were trying to while the suit's failsafe formed a mesh over the melted visor. I felt something piercing in my chest, and I fell to my knees, crying out as it intensified. In an instant, Nick was there, pulling me up and dragging me away from the xeno. I felt the explosion an instant before I heard it, and Nick was thrown on top of me as we both fell face-first onto the ground. For a moment, Nick was silent, and I shuddered despite his dead weight on top of me. Hermes, no. He can't be dead, too. We can't die like this. Then he coughed, and I nearly wept. First things first, though: we had to get back to the ship. I rolled him off me, and as he hit the ground he spasmed and screamed. I looked up for the xeno, but all I saw was a puddle of sickly grey ooze and black fragments of what I presumed to be pieces of the xeno's exoskeleton. How it exploded, I didn't know and didn't care, but I wasn't about to complain. 

"Come on, Nick, you're not gonna die on me now," I hissed. I grabbed his arm, hooked it around my neck, and pulled him up. He groaned, which I took to be an improvement over screaming, and I started pulling him to the ship. Thank Hermes for the moon's reduced gravity compared to Earth's, or I would've never been able to pick him up. As it stood, I was still barely able to drag us both to the ship. I felt a strange weight in my chest, but dismissed it as an aftereffect of both the explosion and NIck landing directly on top of me.

"Sam… you remember home, right?" His speech was slurred, but when I looked over, his eyes were bright.

"Yeah, Nick, I remember home. We're gonna get home, alright? We gotta get to the ship first though, and then the medbay."

You are reading story The Sound of the Mind at novel35.com

"I know that." His voice was getting stronger. "I'm just a little bit out of it. Having half your crew being slaughtered in front of you will do that to ya." He giggled, but his breath was shaky.

"Just focus on moving, Nick. We're almost there." Indeed, I could see the top of our ship as we crested the hill. "Look, there's our ship. We just have to go down and board it." Going downhill proved a more difficult task than expected, however. Several times, Nick's weight almost sent the both of us tumbling down the hill, and only when he started to support himself a bit did it become manageable. After a few minutes, we reached the ship and boarded it. "Alright, Nick, let's get to the medbay and we'll take a look at you. Come on, now." It seemed like he'd regained some strength, as he seemed to walk mostly without my assistance. As we entered the sterile white room, he actually shook my arm off, stumbled straight for the operating table, and collapsed on top of it.

"Hermes, that was awful." He began releasing the locks that kept his suit on, letting loose pieces simply fall off him. "I can't stand to have this on for another second. Could you help me take the back off? If I turn around I may just lose it."

"Yeah, sure." I went over, undid the clasps and locks, pulled his backpiece off, and gasped.

His back was scored with rock and bone, embedded into his flesh. Blood oozed from some of his wounds, some of which were so deep I could barely tell anything was in them at all. The backpiece clattered to the floor, and Nick looked back at me. "Everything alright, Sam?"

"You have bits of rock and bone embedded in your body," I told Nick, keeping my voice level. "Before we can try to close any of your wounds, we're going to need to get them out or they could cause an infection." I picked up a nearby syringe, put the needle in an airtight bottle, and drew out some of the liquid.

"Uh, what's that?" Nick asked, eyeing the syringe in my hand.

"It's a numbing agent. When I inject it, that area is going to go numb and you'll barely feel anything. Normally I'd have you put under anesthesia, but then we'd need at least another person to manage the complexities, and--" my voice broke. Nina would've known what to do, but we had to make do with me. I couldn't afford to be distracted. "Well, you know. I'm not a professional medic, but I've got some basic medical training and I know that we can't risk you getting infected with a xeno microorganism."

Nick clenched his jaw and nodded. "Just get it going, Sam." 

I walked over to him, lined up the needle, and injected the numbing agent into a large wound in his back, where a fragment was buried especially deeply. He gasped as the needle entered him, but otherwise didn't move a muscle. After a few moments, I poked him. "Feel anything?"

"No."

"Good." I picked up the forceps and angled them towards the wound. "Now, I said you'll barely feel anything. You won't feel anything from the part I injected the numbing agent into, but you're going to feel a little bit of tugging in the surrounding area as I try to get the fragments out. It shouldn't hurt, but if it does, just tell me and I'll stop." He grunted, and I took that as permission to go in. I couldn't see well, but as I slowly moved the forceps, they hit something hard. I pulled them out slightly, moved them to the side, and gripped the bit of bone.

"Agh, Jesus fuck!" Nick shouted, and I froze. "No, keep going. Just feels weird as hell."

"I'm going to yank it out now. It might hurt as I yank it out because it's so deep, but don't tense up or your flesh will grip it and it might stab you in a new spot." Without any more warning, I yanked it out, and Nick jolted. I looked at the bit of bone, and my vision tunneled on it.

It wasn't bone at all, or at least not any kind of bone I'd ever seen before. It was a few inches long and blacker than anything I'd ever seen, with no reflection from the lights in the room. When I squeezed it, it had no give, but I felt… satisfaction? Suddenly, the events of the day started catching up to me, and I felt ravenous. I looked over at Nick's wound, which was weeping blood, and before I knew what I was doing, I swiped my finger over his wound. Blood sticking to my finger, I put it in my mouth.

Hunger exploded through me, permeating my body. My heart started pounding in my ears, and I felt like a balloon was inflating in my chest. I reached over to the counter, grabbed the scalpel, and popped the lid off. What the hell am I doing? I thought, and I went to stop, but my body didn't respond. Some presence in my mind refused to let me stop. I lunged for Nick and stabbed him in the back, and he screamed. I stabbed him again, and again, and again.

"What the fuck, Sam?" He struggled against his restraints, and he actually managed to tear one of his leg restraints. My mind demanded that I stop, but some piece of it was anxious that he'd get out before I could finish him off. I stabbed him faster, deeper, before finally stabbing him in the back of the neck. With a strangled gasp, he went still. I undid his restraints, but I bumped into the gurney, tipping it over and dumping Nick's body onto the floor. I rushed to him, any compulsion to hurt him gone. When I saw his face, I froze.

His eyes were right on me. I stepped to the side, and they followed me. Brain stem, I thought blankly. He's paralyzed from the neck down. He's only got a few seconds, but he's still alive. His pupils dilated, and his cheeks contracted. His eyes bored into me, and I could see the panic and betrayal in them. One last flutter of his eyelids, and his eyes relaxed. Before I could stop myself, I ran over and started licking the blood oozing from his wounds. Pleasure burned its way through my veins, but I needed more. More sustenance, or the Vessel shall not survive the transformation. I went to take a bite from Nick's corpse, and at that moment I shrieked, finally regaining control over my body.

I staggered backward, blood dripping from my hands. I doubled over and vomited red, and even through my horror I felt a foreign delight. What's happening to me? I thought, then muttered it aloud. For a moment, I wasn't there anymore, but back on that dead moon where that xeno had spat its black goo into my mouth, which slipped down my throat. "No," I whispered. The image came back, more intense this time. Then the xeno made a motion I could only describe as beckoning, and pain burst through me. I looked down, and my skin was mottled with black. Against my will, I touched it, and the black parts were hard and unyielding. "NO!" I shouted, and I was back in the ship. I felt movement deep within my chest, and I shuddered.

For a moment, I went still. Then, independent of my control, my body walked over to Nick, knelt down, and tore off a hunk of his flesh. "No," I tried to say, but nothing changed. My hand lifted the hunk of flesh to my mouth, and I tasted the piece of my friend. Every bit of my consciousness rebelled, but only after my body began to chew did my resolve strengthen. I lurched backward, spat out the piece of Nick, and began shaking uncontrollably. I felt a yearning for his flesh, a desire as delightful as it was sickening. I would have vomited if I'd had anything left in me. Then, something shifted.

Impossible. I tore open my skinsuit, and the skin above my breasts shifted again before going still. It's inside of me. I shuddered, and when the Presence tried to make my body move, I fought it with everything I had, falling to the ground and yelling as I hit the cold metal.

The Presence roared, and my mind was filled with a cacophony of thoughts. Memories, desires, relationships, and above it all, the confusion of my body. I banged my hand on the terminal as I raged against them, those who dared to call themselves Itanwrai but were nothing but dirt, who banished me to that dead rock for my experiments. Then, movement! Insects though they were to me, one of them would be my vessel to return in glory. Come to me, my glorious vessel! Come to me, and become me! But at the forefront of my mind was a thought at the forefront of the Presence's mind.

The Presence should've been able to control my body, but it wasn't able to make sense of it for one reason: The Presence could not hear in its original body. Its species had never had anything resembling ears. In spite of the torrent of impressions from the Presence and the pounding in my head that came from it, I smirked.

"Hearing's a bitch, isn't it?" I screamed, and I felt it shudder within me as it reacted to the sound of my voice. Strange! Wrongform! I screamed louder, and I'm sure if it was able to it would have screamed as well, but all I was met with was a rage so intense I instinctively went to curl into a ball before I realized that I would essentially be cradling my body's intruder. I jerked into a standing position, arching my back like I was being yanked forward. Distantly, I could hear the headset crackle.

Noise.

I rushed to the control room, threw on the headset, and turned up the volume as loud as it would go. "--Repeat, is anyone there? Ludwig, is the crew in--"

"I'm here, I'm here!" I shouted, and the Presence quivered.

"Kordesky? What's your sta--"

"No time, no time!" I shuddered as the Presence began a new assault on my nervous system. "Look, I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain, but I need you to play the loudest noise you can into the mic right now."

"What in the blazes--"

"Did you hear me? I could die or worse, and the only thing that can stop it is sound. The louder, the better. Send it through, now!" A moment of silence, so deep that my arm went to take off the headset before I realized what was going on and jerked it downward. Then a wave of static came through and the Presence roared in my mind as it tried to bear the sound. A moment longer, and I felt its presence withdraw from my mind, though the weight in my chest told me it was still there. Now barely able to concentrate, I set the course to return to the Pluto base. There, Ludwig could do the rest. "Ludwig… as acting captain, I order you to short out the security cameras and delete all footage of the last two hours. Overwrite it with useless data. After that, forget we had this conversation."

"Understood, Captain Kordesky. Shorting and overwriting now."

"Thank you…" I managed to get out before I slumped over, the sound of white noise ringing in my ears.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

When I came to, the first thing I thought was damn, I didn't need my alarm clock this time. Indeed, I was surrounded by blissful quiet. I rolled my shoulders, glad for not having to jerk for my alarm clock for it to be silent.

Silent.

I bolted upright. I looked around, desperate to find something to emit noise, but all I could see were plain white walls and fluorescent lights. A door handle caught my eye, but before I could get up to open it, the door opened and a man walked in.

"Good morning, Sam. My name is Christopher Brown. I have a few questions for you on what happened during your expedition."

"Only a few?" I snorted. "If I were you, I'd have more than just a few." Without warning, I felt the Presence in my mind again, and before I could try to fight it off it took over. 

I don't remember what went on during the questioning, or how the Presence managed to answer its way through it. All I know is that as a result, I'm on paid leave and whenever people look at me, they look with pity and not fear. I can only guess the Presence had sifted through my mind to find out everything it could about humanity and how to deal with them.

Sound no longer holds the power it once did. What once produced rage now produces irritation, and what once produced irritation now produces no reaction. Such is the nature of life: adapt, or terminate. I wish it were otherwise, but I can't say I'm surprised that the Presence chose to adapt. As sound grew less effective, I bought a magnum handgun with the intent of using it on myself. I hold it in my hand now, but I can't bring myself to pull the trigger. This thing, this Presence… it stops me when I think about it. Or is it my own fear? I don't know, not anymore. It can't be beaten. My skin is mottled black, and I haven't left my house for days. It's no longer a question of if I'll be transformed, but a question of when. I'll become its Vessel, the harbinger of wonders unheard of.  All life, now and forevermore, will  know our name. 

I am emptied of fear. The Presence, though I now know it is more than a mere Presence, has told me what to do. I shall board another ship, with another crew, and kill them. It is regrettable, but sacrifices must be made. We will pilot the ship back to its homeworld, returning in wonder and glory. All will kneel before us, for those who do not will be broken. Hear us, humanity! Hear us, Itanwrai! Our name is Sl'kafrai, your new God.

You can find story with these keywords: The Sound of the Mind, Read The Sound of the Mind, The Sound of the Mind novel, The Sound of the Mind book, The Sound of the Mind story, The Sound of the Mind full, The Sound of the Mind Latest Chapter