Excerpt From Paphos: Athen’s Despair

Athen had known despair like this before, the kind that dragged you into unreachable places and you either kept going to live or gave up to die. She had fractured her ankle once on a hike through Kazakhstan Prefecture during the Global Trekathon when she was seventeen. She had stepped badly and twisted it twenty kilometers away from the next checkpoint, the only place she could get any kind of help. One grapefruit sized rock had twisted her ankle just right and dropped her in the dirt. She looked up at the clouds first, instinctively she supposed. Then she looked at the mountains which were forever on the horizon. And with no one and no thing around for kilometers, she looked at her ankle and realized she was in trouble. That part of the trek was a pure and untouched place, and you could go days without seeing anyone else on that race. It took so much willpower to stand, and even more to hike twenty kilometers with a broken ankle. Yet as dark as that moment was, she made it. Athen discovered at age seventeen that she was mentally stronger than others. So when she saw what happened to Orlean, something that would make most people sit and wait for someone to save them, she knew better. She knew that she, and Orlean, were on their own. And Athen, wounded leg and all, was not going to abandon Orlean so easily.
The elevator doors slid open at almost counter angles, a subtle architectural choice. She stood leaning, her weight resting on her good leg, hands clenched. Maybe it was the pain killers making her feel so bold. She staggered out of the elevator cabin using the wall for support.
Orlean had been bleeding. Even in so little light his trail of blood was easy to follow. This hallway was a little more industrial than the others, long metal pipes lined the wall and crisscrossed overhead, gushing hot vapor. Athen shielded herself with her hand as she crossed by. After several steps she begged to know what this place was. The facility clearly spanned far more terrain underground than any of them had expected. She closed her eyes and took a few more steps, still holding the wall. Her leg was angry now, the medication was still working at half strength but the shrapnel was unforgiving. She looked back wondering if there was a better way to go about this.
Athen wiped sweat from her forehead and pulled her hair into a ponytail. Her good leg wobbled, she was running out of strength. She couldn’t see far down this hallway as it arched, and it was taking her too long to make any distance. Frustrated she propped an arm against the wall and stared down at a spot of Orlean’s blood. Her eyes narrowed, she pictured Orlean dangling like a worm on a hook for that thing, and then she slapped her bad leg.
“Ahh, damn you,” she said slapping it again. “Come on!”
The pain in her leg throbbed, fueling her with anger and adrenaline. She used it, forcing herself to limp onwards. It was all but dark in here, and it took a few moments for her to navigate over a pipe protruding across her path. She continued on that way, using the adrenaline to push her, even mumbling to herself about what a great day she was having, until she saw a doorway much different than the ones all over this facility. Large recess lights focused on a rectangular dark set of steel doors. The trail of blood also disappeared here.
“Orlean, I think I found you,” Athen said with her eyes half open. “And I’m not going to leave you down here,” she added staring at the door, looking for a way to open it. Massive hinges weighed in on both sides, and kitty corner to the door was a chest high panel that suddenly turned red. Athen blinked as a hologram appeared.
She backed away instinctively. The hologram came to life with exotic symbols, then a small picture of a round and gangly creature. Athen blinked, recognizing a warning even if she didn’t recognize the language. The hologram then flashed other images, but Athen had a hard time following as the pain came in unbearable waves. It was a short warning that disappeared after playing, and Athen didn’t really understand it. The only part she recognized was the part where the creature in the video was zapped to death by a probe coming out of the wall. Athen looked at the wall, noticing fine grooves where the fatal death probe must be hiding.
“Are you kidding me?” Athen said. She stared and stared at the door, then she looked up and down either end of the hallway looking for another solution. She really didn’t want to go in there. “Damn you, Orlean,” she whined. “You owe me a drink.” From what she could tell on the video the wrong species got zapped, the right species got in. If Orlean came this way, maybe the wall wasn’t going to zap her. Big maybe. Before she had a chance to think better of it, Athen placed her hand on the security panel and watched as a dozen sensors swarmed her. She shut her eyes, too tired to fight being disintegrated. Something turned green and she felt the locks behind the wall click open. Strange how, even here, other life forms considered green as the GO color. Some things really were universal she supposed. The big doors opened, followed by a long sigh of relief. Athen looked inside, wondering what next.
Lunar Central Station… that was her first thought. Her schema of experiences reminded her of Lunar Central Station, which everyone who traveled off planet had been to, or LuCent as most called it. Space travel from Earth didn’t leave from Earth, it left from the moon, from Lunar Central Station. The deep space rigs preferred weak gravity. Eight million people a year flowed through LuCent, she had heard. What Athen saw inside looked like a travel hub to her. Big, gaping entrances and exits, an oval control center in the middle of one giant room, smaller stations and work cubicles, dead screens on faded billboards hung from the ceiling, and the walls were black. The ceilings vaulted up almost beyond sight, and the center of the room raised a step, giving this a unique look compared to the other rooms. These distractions were probably why she didn’t see her friend laying on the ground as she walked inside.
“Uhnn…”
Athen jumped when she heard Orlean’s groan. She saw his silhouette on the floor, he could barely hold his head up. “Orlean?”
Orlean suddenly climbed to his feet. Athen ran towards him, but stopped in the next instant. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t move right. Orlean walked towards her, slowly, coming out of the shadows. “Orlean?”
“Athen…” he moaned. She realized why she stopped. Orlean wasn’t walking, he was being carried, held upright, by those wormy veins that had impaled him and snatched him from the elevator. The ones that had come from the creature’s pod hand, they were still inside of Orlean, controlling him. Athen snatched her pry bar, the heaviest tool she carried, from her tool satchel. “Orlean…” Athen didn’t know what else to say, she couldn’t save him. She wished she had not come inside and seen him like this. She wished she had simply left. What she saw here would haunt her forever, the worms crawling in and out of him, his scared face and eyes. Orlean staggered and fell into the wall, but the worms pushed him upright again. Athen almost threw up in her mouth.
“Help me…”

Thank you for reading this excerpt from Paphos Books 1-5.
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