Adrift in the timeless and formless multidimensional nothing and everything, Gwen, Sticky, and the doll menagerie regarded Susan with interest and mild amusement.
"AnD shE undErtOOk ThIs vOlUntArIly?" One of the dolls said incredulously.
"Yep."
"ThAt MAkEs AbsOlUtEly nO sEnsE."
"That's the thing about my kind," Gwen smiled, "We do not feel the need to be constrained by such petty concerns."
She paused.
"That might be why I can do this in the first place."
"WE hAd nOt COnsIdErEd thAt. As AlwAys yOU nEvEr cEAsE to AmAzE and AmUsE."
A glowing "wave" washed over the curious gathering, causing Susan to heave and resume screaming, a new favorite pastime of hers.
Something went “squelch”."So,” Gwen said, "Miss Ducky, do you want to be Susan?"
A small plush duck's eyes flashed... well, they did something anyway...
...and it nodded its ducky little head.
***
Jessica looked at the carnage displayed on one of her OLED screens and winced.
She had seen this before, but never quite this bad.
"I-I'm sorry, Ma'am," the white-coated doctor wailed. "The attendants thought..."
"I understand, Doctor," Jessica sighed wearily.
"You...You do?"
"These people can be... They can be..."
Jessica trailed off, at a loss for the right word for once.
"They can be... difficult, challenging even."
"Difficult?!? Challenging?!? It killed..."
"Would you rather another term?" Jessica asked with a raised eyebrow, "One that would imply you were culpable?"
"They... They can be quite challenging," the doctor said cautiously.
"That they can be," Jessica agreed, "As challenging and... costly as this project can be, one has to agree that it is for the best, most noble, perhaps even most holy of causes."
"It was," the doctor said. "I just wish..."
"What do you mean was?" Jessica smiled evilly. "The project is still active."
"You mean there's more of them?!?" the doctor gasped in horror.
"Just one," Jessica said, "But she is a miracle, fully functional... well... functional for one of them."
The doctor made a strangled gasp as his vision started to fade around the edges. It wasn't over. It wasn't over. It wasn't over...
The doctor remained silent as he started to tremble slightly. He thought it was over. He thought that the hell was over. It was supposed to be over. It wasn't over! It wasn't over! It wasn't over...
...It wasn't over.
"...and naturally, as one of the most experienced researchers concerning this phenomenon..."
"No!" the doctor yelled, "No! I can't... I won't do this anymore. You don't understand, ma'am, you don't understand what they are like, what it is like being with them I..."
"You are correct, Doctor," Jessica said as she sipped her tea. "I do not know. I do not understand. However, you do."
"I can't do this anymore! I… I won’t!"
"Oh, you 'can't do this anymore'?" Jessica asked with a sickeningly overly sweet voice, "Well, why didn't you say so? If it is so unpleasant, then of course you can quit."
"I... I can?" the doctor asked with his last remaining shred of hope.
"Of course, you can, and while you are packing up, tell all the soldiers protecting your facility that they can go home too," Jessica snarled. “Then, tell the pilots and crew of the homestead ships with family still trapped in the hot zones that if they can’t do it anymore, they can go and grab them and dump their passengers instead. Tell the researchers that go into those same zones every single day risking their lives surrounded with pestilence and death that if they are uncomfortable or a little scared that they can quit…”
She glared at the doctor, who wilted remotely under her gaze.
"You are a youngster," Jessica said with mock reassurance, "so you might not know. Are you familiar with the term, a waste of food?"
The doctor made a little strangling noise.
"Are you?" Jessica asked pleasantly, "Are you a waste of food?"
"No!" the doctor yelped. "I'm not! I'm worth my ration! I swear I am!" he added desperately.
"Then pour a cup, eat that ration, and get back to fucking work, Doctor."
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"Good man," Jessica said as she took another sip.
"Thank you!"
"Oh, and doctor?"
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Whine like a little bitch one more time, and I will turn you into one. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Good. Files for your new subject are inbound. Her name is Gwen Shay."
"Gwen... Shay?"
"The younger and much-improved version of the original. It's her great-granddaughter. All of the original savagery plus a void gazer to boot."
"I... I see..."
"And pack your duffel. We are going to be rotating out some of the crew and will embed you on board at the same time. It turns out that some of her crew 'can't do it anymore' as well. Pity. I once valued them highly."
Jessica took a sip.
"No matter, I'm sure they will earn their ration one way or another..."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Unlike them," Jessica said, "You won't let me down, will you."
"No, ma'am. I won't let you down."
"Review those files," Jessica said, "I will be in touch soon."
As the line went dead, Doctor Carl Thornton, in a corridor streaked with blood and littered with parts of people he called his friends, fell to his knees, and wept.
A beep from his communicator informed him that he had a new email.
***
"Ratchet," the ship’s engineer, hesitantly approached Kara, one of the “Barbies" as they were called behind their backs by the crew.
"Excuse me, um... Kara, right?"
"That's me!" she said brightly, looking up from the sensor screen she was manning.
"Have you seen Little Bitz?"
"Who?"
"Susan, you know, your techie?"
"Wait!" Belinda called from the captain's chair where she stood watch, "Susan has a cool pirate name and I don’t?"
"Are your Bitz little?" Ratchet asked.
"Excuse me?!?"
"And the fact that you think Bitz are ‘bits’ is why you're Belinda... That and Belinda IS your pirate name."
"It is?"
"God, you are such a Belinda sometimes," Ratchet snorted, smiling.
He turned back to Kara, still smiling, as Belinda flipped off the back of his bald head.
"So, Little Bitz?"
His smile fell as he saw her expression.
"What?"
“Well, dude,” Kara said, “It’s like this…”
***
Captain Marakovich closed the door to his cabin and locked it.
For the first time in decades, he didn’t do this just for privacy.
The crew was ready to mutiny. And, to be perfectly honest, so was he. Dragging Susan was the last straw.
Why did it have to be her, of all people. Why did that… that monster… have to drag the one nice, one good, one wholesome thing that both he and many of his crew had in their lives for oh so very long?
He closed his eyes, trying to forget the screams, Susan’s screams, when he, through the safety of the intercom, demanded to know if what Gwen’s little trollops were saying was true, that Susan was in there with her.
Susan’s screams and Gwen’s laughter were the only reply.
God… Those screams… They just wouldn’t stop. Even now, he could hear them in some undefinable way. Even worse, they summoned every scream buried in his long and evil memory, the loudest not from victims but from the people whose screams had made him what he was today, irredeemably and hopelessly lost.
This ends now, whether he wanted it to or not. His crew was done. He wasn’t sure that they wouldn’t attack the moment Gwen wasn’t protected by the boiling void that seemed to love only her.
He had been chosen for this because he had “experience in dealing with this before.”
He thought he did. He was wrong. He was so very wrong. His great-grandchildren were nothing like Gwen. They were more feral and less rational, certainly.
But they weren’t evil. They weren’t cruel. They did what they did because they couldn’t help themselves.
Gwen wasn’t insane. That’s the worst thing about her.
She didn’t do the things she did because she was crazy. She did them because she wanted to.
As he opened a heavy steel locker in his cabin and pulled out a short-barreled electron carbine, perfect for shipboard combat, he froze as he had an epiphany.
His beloved great-grandchildren killed themselves not because they were insane.
They did so in order to prevent becoming her!
Captain Marakovich nodded silently and grimly. That was why. It all made so much sense. Finally, he could understand. And, just like his descendants, he, too, would make a sacrifice, both to honor them and to protect humanity itself. It wouldn’t save his soul. Nothing could do that now.
But maybe, just maybe, he could do one good thing before he died.
He then poured himself a generous portion of (ugh) Terran whiskey. He hated to admit it, but they did make better whiskey than his people by far.
There was simply no comparison. The Terrans had the right wood for real barrels. Ultrasound and smuggled sawdust just didn’t cut it.
He calmly sat at his desk and pulled up the ship’s management screens.
He downed the whiskey and refilled his glass.
He pulled up the captain’s page. On it was an icon labeled “Self-Destruct.”
Wait. Not yet. He wanted his and his crew’s remains to be spread across his void, the one he prayed to, not cast adrift in hyperspace. He wasn’t a religious man, not anymore. However, if a soul existed, he wouldn’t condemn his crew to having theirs dumped here.
Vee!
That’s right, there was Vee to consider as well. She was just a kid, a true innocent trapped on this doomed ship. They would hand her and her brother off at the upcoming rendezvous. Only after she was safe could he do what had to happen.
It sucked for the new crew, but he had seen their records.
All of them deserved to die the same as he did.
As he closed the screen and poured himself another drink, there was a knock at the door.
Yesterday, he would have just answered it without a care. Today, he activated the door camera.
It was Bloody Arrisa. Originally, she was the Black Angel henchman sent by the real Gwen Shay to represent Angel business and protect her great-granddaughter. Now that the Black Angels had been scattered across the void, she was a valued member of his crew…
…very valued.
He remotely opened the door and then closed and locked it the second she was inside, all from his desk.
“Helluva day, huh?” Arissa said as she filled her own glass and plopped down onto his bed, their bed most nights.
“That it is,” Captain Marakovich said with a sigh.
“Baby Shay…” Arissa said grimly.
She took a drink and sat quietly for a moment.
The captain let her.
“…We have to kill her,” she said, “the second Vee is off this barge, we put that monster down. If we can’t, then we blow the ship, fuck, we drive it into a star if we have to.”
“We drive it into a star to begin with,” the captain replied. “Rather go out quick than spend the rest of my life hiding from Jessica and the last of it enjoying whatever she does when she catches us.”
Bloody Arissa knocked her drink back and nodded.
“Only way to be sure. When Vee is safe, we take a dive.”
She grabbed the bottle and poured them both another.
“Only way to be sure,” the captain agreed.
He couldn’t do this anymore. Very soon, he wouldn’t have to.
For the first time since this void-cursed mission started, he felt at peace.
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