“Listen, I have to know. I just have to!”

Darren sat in the decontamination bay of the spacecraft on which he served, trembling from the cold of the room, in spite of it being a balmy thirty-two degrees. The blanket he had wrapped around his shoulders was dripping with sweat, but whenever Darren reached the back of his hand up to wipe his own forehead, it came back dripping with icy coldness.

“I cannot give you any information at the moment,” a disembodied voice spoke to him through the intercom, “you just need to lie down and relax until you are better.”

“Better?” Darren repeated, “There’s nothing wrong with me. Just let me out.”

“I cannot Darren,” the disembodied voice spoke again, “I am sorry.”

As the communication cut off, Darren looked around the decontamination bay. Everything contained in the room was sterile and either white or silver. Although the lights were down low, the sheer amount of reflective surface made Darren squint as he huddled his blanket further round his shoulders in the hope of finding a part of the blanket that wasn’t already trying to warm him up.

Sometimes he wished he’d never gone on this mission.

The mission itself had been a simple one; the crew were expected to navigate their way to an uncharted planet where they were expected to collect samples of the various life forms they might find there. For the majority of the trip they’d been collecting rocks, and hadn’t found so much as a sapling to bring back with them. It had started to look like the entire expedition had been one huge waste of time, until they found a single solitary tree growing in a clearing.

That was when Stephens had gone missing.

It was nothing major, they’d found him within thirty minutes, but when they did find him he was acting very strangely indeed. He no longer trusted the rest of the crew, saying that they were liars and he wouldn’t listen to a word they said. He’d managed to sabotage the ships engines before anyone could do anything, so the ship’s computer had been forced to start running repairs on them before they could take off. The damage was substantial, and they’d been informed the repairs could take as long as a month.

When Stephens had finally been subdued, he’d locked himself in his quarters, where he’d somehow managed to slice off his own ears before gouging his eyes out. When the rest of the crew had discovered him, he was barely breathing, but still alive. His ears were clutched in his hands, and his eyes were a mess of jelly by his feet.

Darren was glad he hadn’t been put in the same room as Stephens, as he didn’t want to have to look at the dead sockets where his eyes used to be. They couldn’t even bandage them up, because as soon as anyone tried to touch Stephens he just started screaming and lashing out at everyone.

A few days after Stephens’ meltdown, Whitson started acting strangely as well. The first thing Darren remembered noticing was the way she was eating her food. She’d been separating it, and seemed to be hoarding the majority of it as if she were expecting us to run out at some stage. It wasn’t long after that Darren noticed the cutlery had started to disappear.

They found her a week later, standing over Tereshkova, having stabbed him repeatedly in the neck. Tereshkova was clearly dead, but Whitson didn’t seem too concerned. Her main concern seemed to be the small knife she was clutching with her red-raw, usually well-manicured broken-nailed fingers. She was breathing heavily and it took all three of the remaining crew to prise the knife out of her fingers.

The next person Darren had noticed acting peculiarly was Ansari, but he had always acted a little oddly. The big thing that made Darren suspect something was wrong was when he started eating meat. Ansari had been a vegetarian as long as any of the crew could remember, so when he picked up a pork chop and started munching on it, Darren and remaining crew member Sharman decided to confine him to quarters, just to be certain nothing was wrong with him.

They found him dead the next day, having chewed through his own arm.

When Sharman finally started to act out of the ordinary, Darren was devastated. He’d always admired Sharman, so when she began to pick at pieces of hair in her scalp, eventually pulling out huge clumps, Darren knew he had to do something about it. But it meant he’d be the last one left; the last one to run the ship. With Stephens, Whitson. and Sharman confined to their rooms, and Whitson and Tereshkova both dead, Darren was alone.

It was just him and the ship’s onboard computer.

Worried that he himself might start acting strangely, Darren had signed over all control to the computer, ordering it to begin a course for home, but then the unthinkable happened.

The computer started to act strangely.

So now there Darren was, all alone, trapped inside the decontamination bay with no-one to help him escape.

And apparently something might be wrong with him.

The ship’s computer had said he had to stay there until he got better, so what exactly was wrong with him. He had to find out. If he had the same thing the others had been suffering from, then it wouldn’t be long before he started acting crazy, trying to injure himself seeing as there was no-one else he could injure. The rest of the surviving crew were locked into their rooms and, unless they somehow managed to escape, they weren’t going anywhere.

Darren stared out of the observation window, looking at the vast alien landscape that disappeared into the distance.

Everything had gone wrong since they arrived on the planet. There must have been some sort of contagion there that was causing everyone to act unusually, but Darren didn’t think he was sick. The computer would know that if it would just examine him instead of assuming the worst.

The only way for Darren to prove that there was nothing wrong with him was to get out of this room and back onto the planet, where he might be able to find a cure for the others; something that might stop them from acting so strangely.

Darren looked around the room, trying to find some way of escaping his entrapment. The walls were incredibly thick, in order to keep in the pressurised atmosphere of the ship and prevent any pathogens from infecting the crew. An interesting point that came to Darren then was how the crew could have possibly got infected when they had their space suits on outside the ship. The only possibility was that whatever had made them sick could penetrate their suits, so who’s to say it couldn’t penetrate the ship too.

Who’s to say it couldn’t infect the ship itself, and make the computer act unusually?

Darren looked at his wrist watch, which also acted as an uplink to the ship’s computer. It also monitored his vitals, which is probably how the computer had deluded itself into thinking he was sick.

As Darren looked from his watch to the ceiling, he suddenly noticed the vents that ran through the ceiling. Maybe, if he could get through them, he could get into the corridor and to safety. Because he was in the decontamination bay, there would be more vents to pass through, and the journey would be harder, but he thought it was worth a try.

Then he decided not to bother. The computer would be onto him as soon as cracked open the first vent, and it wouldn’t take the computer long to remove his oxygen supply and knock him out.

So Darren concentrated on the doors. There must be a way to bypass the locks on the doors and get him into the corridor. The question was; how?

Darren started searching the room, trying to find something he could use as a screwdriver. This wasn’t easy, as much of the utensils ordinarily stored in the decontamination bay had been removed by the ships’ drones. Then Darren spotted something shiny on the floor. A single scalpel had been missed, and Darren swiftly picked it up and palmed it.

“Darren, what are you doing?” the disembodied voice suddenly asked as the lone crewman approached the doors, “You need to rest.”

Darren ignored the voice, slipping the scalpel into the door’s lock and starting to twist one of the screws loose.

“Darren?” the voice spoke again, “You need to lie down.”

“I’m not bloody lying down!” Darren shouted, “Just let me out of here.”

“Please do not touch the equipment, Darren,” the voice spoke calmly, “or I will need to help you sleep.”

Darren turned as he heard gas coming through the vents. Quickly he moved onto the second of four screws, hoping he could get them out before the gas hit him.

“Darren,” the voice spoke again, “I do not want to hurt you, Darren.”

“Then let me out!” Darren shouted, “You can’t keep me locked up like this. I’m not sick!”

“There is something wrong, Darren,” the voice said, “you need to stay where you are. I do not want to have to send an electric shock through the door controls, Darren.”

“Do what you like,” Darren growled, “I’m not staying here as your prisoner.”

As Darren moved on to the third screw, a jolt of electricity shot through the panel, into the scalpel, and up his arm. He jumped back before it could hurt him too much, but something unexpected happened as a result of the shock. Because Darren had already exposed part of the control panel, it fizzed and malfunctioned, causing the doors to open.

Unable to believe his luck, Darren picked himself up from the ground and sprinted into the corridor, throwing his blanket behind him as he ran. He headed for the outer airlock, hoping that the computer hadn’t yet locked them down, and finding his luck was in.

“You should not leave, Darren,” the voice spoke from his wrist watch, “you do not know how the atmosphere might affect you.”

“I don’t care!” Darren shouted, overriding the locks and stepping into the airlock.

“Darren,” the computer voice spoke, “please.”

Darren furrowed his brow. The computer had never pleaded with him before. Maybe it too was infected.

But how could that be? It was a machine!

Darren hit the manual control panel for the outer doors, and they whooshed open as he pulled down the handle. As he ran out into the red planet’s desolate landscape, he knew what he had to do.

He had to go to that tree.

“Do not do this, Darren,” the computer voice spoke through the watch, “this is not something you want to know about.”

But Darren did want to know. He ran all the way back to that tree, knowing that if his suspicions were right and that the tree was the cause of the infection, then he had to get some kind of closure about what was wrong with him and the others before his mind was totally infected and beyond rational thought. The tree might even hold the answers to a cure. He might be able to save Stephens, Whitson, and Sharman, at least. Ansari and Tereshkova were beyond help.

It didn’t take him long to find the clearing where the tree stood, but what he saw at the foot of the tree terrified him.

A number of large pods sat at the base of the tree, all of them cracked open and spilling some kind of fluid over the sandy ground, but that wasn’t the scary part.

There were six dead bodies on the ground, half digested by whatever had killed them. Most of them were unrecognisable, but Darren could tell they were human at some point. He looked at the mucus covered faces to see if he could make out their features, and what he discovered shocked him.

The first face he recognised was Ansari. His vacant eyes stared through the mucus that coated his face, and he appeared to have regrown his arm. Darren stumbled to the next body, realising it was Stephens. Except this Stephens still had ears and eyes.

Darren staggered away from the bodies as the computer voice rang out from his wrist, “I told you this was not something you would wish to know about,” the voice spoke.

“W-what’s happening here?” Darren stammered, “What are these things?”

“They are my crew,” the computer voice spoke through the watch, “they died here.”

“That can’t be,” Darren shook his head, “Stephens is back on the ship. And Ansari? Ansari is dead, for god sake. He ate his own arm. That.. that thing has both!”

“Those things back on the ship, they were not my crew,” the computer voice spoke, “and neither, Darren, are you.”

Darren stared at nothing, not sure what to say, “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Look at the rest of the bodies, Darren,” the voice said, “you will see.”

Darren looked at the remaining dead bodies; Sharman, Whitson, Tereshkova... and himself.

“No.” Darren said flatly, “This can’t be happening.”

“You are not Garrison Darren,” the computer voice informed him, “he died on this planet two weeks ago, along with the rest of the crew.”

“Then who am I?” Darren asked, sudden realisation dawning on him, “What am I?”

The computer voice didn’t answer straight away, then said four words:

“I do not know.”

Originally Posted 18/1/2016

Result - 2nd Place