STORM, Part III.

Chapter 6, Madness

"Gonza! What the hell do you think you're doing! Stop it immediately! I'm ordering you! Gonza!" The Captain shouted orders into the microphone, but was powerless to stop the drama unfolding before their eyes.

After a few moments, an anguished scream signaled the end of the fight. Bronte's suit whirled in the probabilistic wind. A gust of colored smoke came out of the open helmet, all that remained of the physicist.

Gonza's voice crackled over the speakers: "This… This is no place for us, Captain! Don't you see the horror of it all? The faces! The faces of the dead surround us! They are here, beside us! The dead live in this place, we have come to disturb them! We shouldn't, really not! But if we join them… If we join them… aah, it's all right then! Isn't that so?"

The Captain was pale and angry. She asked Dr. Marzan, "What could have happened to him? He went crazy?"

The doctor wept silently, shaken by the death of her colleague. Harlan took her by the shoulders: "Don't give in, Marzan, stay lucid! Talk to me!"

"I-I… I think it's possible that the filters in the suits are faulty or insufficient. Gonza has more hours of EVA under his belt than all of us combined. It stands to reason that he was affected by it with exponentially greater effect… We can exclude belonging to the MSU, after the sabotage of the ARC-06 the personnel screening has become much more meticulous." The woman said softly.

"But why didn't it result from the tests? We do them every day!" asked the engineer.

"P-perhaps the effect isn't gradual… Maybe it's all or nothing, once a certain threshold is exceeded… The brain is lost…" The woman replied.

"Damn!" The Captain turned on the microphone: "Gonza! Tell me, why sabotage the hull? You could have detonated the plasma reactor. If you chose such an indirect way to kill us all, it means that a part of you is still intact. Control yourself Gonza, You can do it! All is not lost! There's no one out there!"

After a moment of silence, Gonza's voice answered, "And… Walker…? Who is he…? Where did he come from? The dead sent him… The dead!" Silence descended on the hall.

Walker decided he'd had enough of the brute. In adventure movies there were always characters like him, and he had never tolerated them. He snatched the microphone from the Captain's hand. "Listen to me brainless idiot! Walker here! I'm anything but dead, understand? Spare me your bullshit and come to your senses!"

Silence reigned for a moment on the other end of the line, then Gonza's angry voice was heard again. "Damned bastard! I didn't trust you from the moment I saw you! You're from MSU, aren't you? I…"

Engineer Yaral started to stop Walker, but the Captain signaled to let him speak. He nodded and continued. At that moment, he felt like the protagonist. "Gonza, you're just having hallucinations! I had them too when I was exposed to the wind! You can fight them… Close your eyes and listen to the sound of your heart beating, idiot!"

After a few moments of tense silence, Gonza's voice, uncertain this time, made itself heard again, "What have I done… Poor Bronte… Oh, gods… No… There's nothing else to do… Captain, I won't stay sane for much longer… I'm sorry… Thanks, Walker…" Then nothing.

On the monitor, a second empty suit floated away in the wind. Gonza had committed suicide by opening his helmet and exposing himself to the storm!

Walker was dumbstruck. Gonza had killed himself. He had killed himself because of what he had told him! It was a dream, but he felt terrible. He gagged and doubled over in horror.

Chapter 7, From bad to worse

The captain punched the console and then spoke coldly and decisively: "Yaral I need a complete analysis of the damage. See if you can access the recordings of Bronte and Gonza suits cameras. If we get a decent picture of the damaged panel, we can speed up the repair. Marzan come with me! Walker stop throwing up on the floor!"

She took him by the shoulders and said in a softer voice: "It's not his fault… Gonza was practically insane. You made him come to his senses. He committed suicide because he knew he couldn't last any longer. He did it so as not to inflict further damage at the ARC. I knew him well, he wasn't the type to end it out of desperation."

Walker stood up, the bitter taste of bile in his mouth nothing compared to the terrible guilt he felt. "This isn't a dream, is it? It's all too real… Too…"

"Not now Walker! I'll need you too. Don't give in, take back your aplomb and follow us!" Said the Captain, dragging him out of the room without much ceremony.

The small group ran up to airlock one. The Captain tried to open the door, but it didn't move. "No way! He sealed the entrance, damn it!"

Meanwhile, the doctor checked the spacesuit compartments. "Captain… I'm afraid Gonza damaged the suits before sealing the door. We can't get out, even by opening the door. We're stuck!" She said showing cuts on the chest of all the orange suits left in the compartment.

Walker asked, trembling, "Don't you have any others?"

"Yes, in the airlock two… But it's in the sealed area. It's useless…" The captain replied.

She turned on the intercom. "Yaral, can we make it back to base without fixing the Reality Anchors? The suits have been sabotaged, and the hatch is sealed, it would take an hour to open it!"

The engineer immediately replied: "Sorry, Captain. Even if we left the probabilistic gradient at maximum speed, we would be consumed by the storm ten minutes before emerging into reality. We could make it by increasing the speed, but we would not survive."

The two women looked into each other's eyes, then nodded. "Yaral, do it, we have no other chance. At least we will save the mission data." Said the Captain in a toneless voice.

Walker couldn't believe his ears. "What? You're already giving up? C-can't we do something else? Starship captains always have something up their sleeve, don't they?"

Harlan smiled: "I really wish I had, John. I'm sorry that your life with us has to be so short. I hope this is really your dream, so you will wake up without harm…"

"In a hospital bed, close to death? No way!" Said the desperate dreamer. Something had to be done… Something…

"Of course! Walker!" The biologist yelled.

"You were exposed to the storm for more than a minute, without any protection! Even with a damaged suit, you should be able to withstand many tens of minutes of exposure. Captain maybe we can still do it!" The woman practically radiated relief.

Over the intercom Yaral's voice said, "Captain, I have analyzed the damage. The recordings show that we can bypass the entire panel with a simple class 2 quantum bridge. Even a trained monkey could install one, they teach it in school. But We have to do it in 15 minutes, or we're history!"

Captain Harlan, the forceful and determined woman he'd come to respect, looked at Walker with piercing eyes: "I'm not going to force you, Walker. You're not a member of the crew. You haven't been trained for this. I can do it by repairing the suit…"

Dr. Marzan interrupted her, "Captain, even passing through the contaminated corridors, in a patched suit you won't last more than two minutes. And we risk contaminating the rest of the ship if someone doesn't stay behind and manually seal the bulkhead. I'm not really qualified for these operations, and we need Yaral at the monitors."

Walker tried to stay calm: "It's a dream, a dream, a dream, just a dream… Rest easy, serene…" he thought agitated. Once he calmed down, he finally found the strength to speak. "A-alright Captain… I'm going. But… Maybe I'm dumber than a monkey but… How do you use a class 2 quantum bridge?"

Chapter 8, A Walk

Six minutes later, clad in a cumbersome orange suit fixed as good as possible, Walker clutched the aforementioned quantum bridge in his hand. In the end, it was simply a box with adhesive extremities, which were to be placed in precise points. It seemed easy to use, he didn't want to feel inferior to a trained monkey… And then, why hadn't they brought one along?

The idea that it wasn't a dream had made uncomfortably way into his mind. The confidence felt a few hours earlier had completely dissolved.

"So Walker, let's go over the plan." Said the Captain, pointing to the holographic display in the helmet of the suit.

"We will unseal section 7 for a moment. You will pass through this corridor and reach the inner section corresponding to the Reality Anchor. You must not go near the area marked in red. Down there is the leak. You would be sucked out, and you are not EVA trained."

Walker nodded frantically. He had seen what had become of Bronte and Gonza. He didn't want to become a puff of colored smoke, no sir.

The captain resumed her explanation: "Once on target, Yaral will guide you to the installation of the quantum bridge. If you are successful, the probabilistic wind flow will decrease significantly. You will return here as quickly as possible, and we will re-seal the door. Then Yaral will go at full power, and we'll be back on earth, safe and sound. OK?"

"Yes, of course… what if I can't install the bridge?" He said shaking like a leaf.

"Then we'll die, and the autopilot will bring the ARC back to earth at full speed. You'll still be more likely than us to make it, given your resistance to the reality storm." replied the doctor.

"Comforting…" he said as the Captain sealed his helmet.

"Yaral and Marzan will follow you from the control room, and I will wait here. Even if should you suffer any injuries, the doctor will be ready with the med-kit. I have put on the second suit we fixed. I should be able to help you get back, if needed. And now… Good luck!" She said giving him a hard pat on the shoulder.

The dreamer staggered unsteadily on his legs. Walking in the suit was like trying to wade through a mud lake.

As Marzan slipped away, Harlan unsealed the bulkhead, hiding behind the section door. Walker steeled himself and stumbled awkwardly into the contaminated corridor.

"What am I doing here? I'm really risking nothing? What if I die? Do I wake up in the hospital? And maybe I won't be able to dream anymore… I'll die there, old and infirm… No, no, no, no… Walk stupid , it's just a dream, just a dream… You can do it, you can do it, yes!" The Dreamer was thinking frantically as he made his way through the corridors of the ARC.

Compared to when he had been there, a few hours ago, everything had changed. He looked as being in the stomach of an alien creature. A stomach of plastic and metal, slowly mutating, turning into… Something?

His attention was drawn to a mineral concretion that appeared to have grown on the wall. It was a marble-like, polished stone. Blue in color with red veins. The same colors as the reality storm.

Impulsively, Walker reached out and took a piece. It weighed very little. He put the stone in one of the pockets of his suit and continued on.

He tripped. Suddenly the corridor had become so distorted that it was difficult even to walk on it. An unearthly light filtered through a tremendous gash in the wall adjacent to the airlock where he had appeared.

Could it be possible that Gonza had gone mad because of him? Maybe he'd exposed himself one too many times to get him out of there… Or maybe it was his fault, opening the door without following safety protocols, who had weakened the ARC structure beyond its breaking point.

He shook his head and tried not to look at the terrible Maelstrom that swung like an evil eye beyond the hole. Once past the risky area, he finally arrived in front of the panel he was looking for. It had been easy to find, thanks to the three-dimensional map projected into the helmet.

"Walker here, I'm in front of the panel… I'm starting to open it… Stop me if I'm doing something wrong, ok?" He said starting to work.

Chapter 9, Until the very end

In the control room, the doctor counted down the minutes they had left. "187 seconds to go… Yaral, can he do it?" She asked the engineer.

He watched Walker's movements calmly. "I would say yes, Dr. Marzan. We are 20 seconds ahead of schedule."

The man leaned forward to speak into the microphone. "Rightmost Walker. Yeah, like this, great. Now hook the first bridge connector onto the blue patch. Yeah, right there. And now the other one onto the yellow patch. Great. Get out of the way now, you must be out of there before we go full power, or you'll be pushed out by the stochastic gradient normalization! You've got fifty seconds!"

Walker hadn't figured out exactly what it was that would push him away, but he knew enough. He quickly slipped away, satisfied with the good work done. He had almost soiled himself with fear at first, but now he felt like he could handle it. It really was a dream after all.

Yaral kept counting: "Forty seconds!"

Once gone past the breach, the Dreamer swallowed up all his self-confidence. The corridor had changed again. A veritable web of pulsating wires blocked his way!

"Captain… I have a problem. I can't go on…" He said in a tremulous voice.

The captain gritted her teeth and opened the bulkhead. Wasting no time, she ran down the corridor and stopped in front of the obstacle. She reached out to Walker through the gaps between the web of wires, "Grab my hand, Walker! I'll pull you in. These wires aren't stiff, we'll make it! Yaral, can you stop the activation for a moment?"

The countdown went on…" Twenty seconds! I can't, we're already at the limit! One second late, and we'll never be able to come back, sorry Captain!"

Walker held on to the hand the Captain offered him, then began to press against the obstacle. They both made an effort, but those cursed cables didn't want to let him go on.

WHAMMM! The reality anchor came back online. The pressure wave lifted Walker, pulling him inexorably toward the breach.

He desperately tried to hold on, but he couldn't. The pulling force was large, too large. Inch by inch, he was losing his grip.

"Damn Walker! Hold on! A few more moments and the pressure will stabilize!" Shouted the Captain.

But Walker noticed that the woman's suit was beginning to deteriorate. They didn't have those seconds… To save him, she would die…

"It's just a dream… Just a dream…" he thought.

Yet the grip of her hands was so warm, real! He sighed deeply. He knew what he should do. John had never been able to take responsibility until then, but there is a first time for everything.

"Save yourself Captain. Don't worry about me…" He said in a calm voice. The dream was already over, but after all it was worth it.

"Don't, Walker, I'm telling you! Hold on!" The woman cried in despair.

"You can't give me orders, Captain." He replied smiling, "It's my dream after all…"

He let go.

He was pulled away by an immense force. He was sucked into the Maelstrom vortex by the storm.

As he flew, he finally saw the ARC from the outside. A beautiful silver disc. The Captain's voice still reached him through the static.

"Walker! Walker! Nooo!"

Then the wind took him.