Murmansk-13

So when he did strike out, into the forests beyond the limits of the city he did so alone, to escape. To be something, somebody else in a place where his thoughts were no longer drowned out by the noise of his disposable existence. It was never a case of finding himself, but finding a clarity that was engrained within the exhilaration of being lost. The small thrill of fear and comfort of being surrounded by a landscape foreign yet familiar, hidden and astray beneath a canopy of trees whose lives and deaths were measured in decades and centuries, not months and years. Humans were fragile and fallible, their timelines inconsequential. The forests were the only connection Hernandez had left to Earth, the only place where he could be himself; lost and home.

The fear he felt retracing his steps alone through Murmansk-13 was fundamentally different. This fear was vague and implied, it ate away at the psyche like it drained the Riyadh of her soul. Hernandez felt a sudden desire to reconnect to those he’d shed from his life, that support network he’d cast away. For the first time in his life, Hernandez could not tune out the complete absence of being he’d created to protect himself. He was truly alone and truly scared.

Nobody had really known what they were scared of as they had suited up in the evac suite, the Captain unable to vocalize his fears in any sensible manner. But his face, the harrowed empty eyes, were enough to know that Murmansk-13 was a fundamentally wrong place, a place that had driven him to the precipice.

That station is ridden with disease and death and there death walks. Murmansk-13 was manmade and yet wildly alien as Hernandez thought of the forests back home, then his mind switched to Mihailov. He tried to shut out the memories.

Whether it was psychosomatic or not. Hernandez planted each foot lightly as he ascended the treadplate staircase back to the atrium. Without companionship, his fear amplified, there was no thrill, no clarity within the swaddling dread. Just silence and noise, each mag booted step or clatter of lustreless tools augmented by the silence it fed. A silence Hernandez was convinced lay inhabited, either by people or something else. He removed his belt of electricians tools and laid it quietly on the landing. He pushed open the heavy fire door.

The huge atrium for Central Command sat noiseless and still, the puck shaped foyer a symphony of dust covered cream appointments and ominous black shaded glass bulkheads. Silver effect plastic sconces uplit the space in moodily subdued hues lending a cheap ceremonial gravitas. On the faux marble deck a huge mission insignia was emblazoned in front of the curved main desk and a bank of dead eyed CRT’s. Murmansk-13 shown in full silhouette against the Red Supergiant and a backdrop of the starburst constellation. The image was coloured with drab poster paints and encircled by yellow Cyrillic offering an oddly depthless character. The insignia lacked the usual motifs associated with the Soviet Deep Space program, no hammer and sickle, no sense of official state recognition. The insignia were for those that worked here and perhaps those seeking legitimacy.

Much like the rest of the station, the foyer smelt of old ammonia astringent and melted electrical wiring; toxins slowly saturating the overstretched air scrubbers. Hernandez hoped Nilsen and Pettersson could find a store of new micromeshes else oxygen would become a bonded item onboard the Riyadh.

Carefully Hernandez crept across the atrium toward one of the four wide corridor exits, the one they’d overrode earlier. Above it the numbers of the districts most closely serviced was indicated in chipped painted stencils and to the side one of several murals that commemorated a Communist party leader in stark block colours and angular lines. The flat eyes of Stalin, Lenin and Khrushchev charted his progress toward the corridor from the various exit points they held dominion over. Hernandez subconsciously pressed himself against the bulkhead, the outer layer of his EVA suit scraping against the plastic walls.