The first thing Shainara felt when she woke was the cold floor. Ice cold, like it hadn’t been heated in a long time. She was freezing, but not because of that. It was a coldness that emanated from within. It seemed important.
A glut of sensations flew around her mind, jostling for attention; memories of vague significance, faces she couldn’t name, words without meaning. She felt dizzy, confused, sick. She carefully, unsteadily got to her feet. It was dim, but she could see the others. Lining the walls all around her were people in cryosleep. Their frozen, unconscious forms trapped in small bubbles, cocoons of safety.
Why was she out of hers?
Slowly the answers came back to her. She was a geographer. They were all heading to a new planet: SVG-58, some ninety light years from the Prime Sector, or Solar System. She was part of the crew of over one hundred on the starship Nova Inceptivus. They were to colonize the planet and set up a Relay so the rest could join them.
People of Earth, or of any planet on the network, could travel, nearly instantaneously, to other planets in the galaxy through relays, fantastic technological achievements, to cover the massive distances of space. The only issue was that getting a Relay to a planet had to be done the old-fashioned way: near-light speed travel. It was an exciting enterprise, but the travel could be tedious. The crew slept for most of the journey; hence the cryosleep.
She was told it would take a few minutes to recall everything; sleeping for so long made the brain grow dormant. But one thing still eluded her: why was she awake?
“Nova?” she called, hailing the ship’s artificial intelligence.
“Yes, Shainara?” Nova answered.
“What’s going on?”
“To what are you referring to, Shainara? Could you be more specific?”
“Why am I awake?”
“You are awake because your cryochamber was opened.”
“Well, obviously.” The male members of the crew had joked that the ship had a female voice because it was like talking to a woman who was mad at you. “Are we at our destination?”
“We are not, Shainara.”
“Then why am I awake?”
“You are awake because your cryochamber wa-”
“Yeah, yeah. What year is it?”
“It is Earth year 2566.”
Shainara did a quick calculation. At the speed they were travelling, ninety-five percent of the speed of light, the journey should have taken around a century. She’d been asleep for less than thirty years. She walked toward the private rooms to shower and put on some more clothes, noticing that a few other cryochambers were empty, meaning others had been woken. Better she not be running around the ship half-naked then.
“Why was I woken?” Shainara asked the ship, trying a different approach.
“I cannot answer that, Shainara.”
That gave her pause. “Why not?” she asked, and got no answer. “Nova, answer my question.”
The ship remained silent, and Shainara continued to the showers, more annoyed than anything. She figuring the AI was either malfunctioning or being an ass – more likely the former. One other option she considered was that someone had tampered with the ship’s programming, but she dismissed it as wild conjecture as she studied herself in a mirror, noting her strawberry blonde hair had grown a few inches.
She then hopped into the shower, not to wash but to thaw from years of cryosleep. Normally the shower was a place to relax and escape for Shainara. The hot, distilled water filled the small room with steam, which she liked. Not being able to see the walls made it easy to pretend they weren’t there, that she was somewhere else, that-
A figure was standing in the doorway.
Shainara flung herself against the wall and rubbed the water out of her eyes. When she looked again no one was there, but the door was open. She knew she’d closed it; steam wouldn’t have filled the room otherwise. She wasn’t imagining it: someone had been watching her.
“Hello?” she called. Just like when talking to the AI, she got no response. A mixture of emotions flooded her. Fear – was she being stalked; relief – she wasn’t alone; embarrassment – they’d seen her naked; apprehension – why did they run off? And curiosity – who was it? Shainara intended to find out. She grabbed a towel and dried off, closing the door first, then carefully headed for her locker, alert for anything odd.
What she found wasn’t just odd; it was troubling. Her locker had been opened, its contents strewn all over the floor, and her clothes were missing.
“Nova,” she called, “who accessed my locker?”
“I cannot answer that, Shainara.”
What was going on around here? Her locker was DNA encoded and should not have been accessible to anyone else. The only other way was a computer override.
“Nova, why did you allow someone else into my locker?”
“I cannot answer that, Shainara,” the AI repeated.
She shouldn’t have expected a different response. “Nova I need clothes. Please open locker 4182.” It was the locker next to hers. She’d deal with the consequences later.
“I cannot allow you to access an unauthorized locker, Shainara.”
“Nova please!”
The AI was silent after this. Shainara didn’t want to run around the ship with nothing but a towel on, but didn’t have a choice. She had to locate the computer mainframe and override it – which she wasn’t sure she could do. No, she needed to find the person who was stalking her, and get some answers. And maybe she’d find something else to wear lying around.
Leaving the CryoCentre, Shainara found the rest of the ship eerily silent. It was dark and still, as if asleep like the rest of the crew – apart from at least one other person. She slowly, carefully crept down the dim hallway, barely able to see more than a few feet in front of her face. Keeping one hand on the wall, the other clutching her towel tight around her chest, she put one foot in front of the other, trying to recall the layout of the ship. It had been almost thirty years since she’d last walked these halls.
She stopped, reaching a corner – no, a doorway. After a moment to decide, Shainara entered the room. The automatic lights filtered on, dim at first, slowly brightening to help the eyes adjust. She found herself standing in the galley.
Four rows of tables, pristine from decades of disuse, occupied the center of the large room. All manner of food preparation machines sat on a counter to her right. Most of the food onboard was created by the ship, but a couple actual stoves had been installed for those who preferred to cook manually. A row of refrigerators stood beside the stove, with three huge walk-in freezers the size of apartments that held most of the ship’s food running along the adjacent wall.
Shainara hadn’t realized she was so hungry. She retrieved a glass from a cupboard and held it under the sink, where it was automatically filled with recycled water. After downing half the glass she began opening fridges, unsure of what she hoped to find. They were all empty except for one that had a large, round plastic bag filled with an unidentifiable substance. It was sealed and filled with condensation, making it hard to identify. Before the crew had entered cryosleep all the food was put in cold storage, frozen. This was evidence that someone had since been awake; evidence that someone was still wandering around the ship unchecked; evidence of her stalker. She then recalled the other empty cryochambers and worried there might be more than one.
She picked up the bag; it was heavy, and smelled bad. How long had it been in there, and was it still edible? Her stomach growled as she turned it over in her hands. The plastic was fogging from the warmer air outside the fridge, making it harder to see what was inside. Finding a seam, she carefully pulled it open – and then dropped the bag with a cry of shock. It was someone’s head.
How could this happen? Who did it belong to? What kind of monster would do such a thing? She bent down and gingerly pulled open the plastic, trying to touch as little of the severed head as possible. She’d never considered herself squeamish, but she also never thought she’d find herself trying to identify a human head.
It was a woman, a brunette, but Shainara didn’t recognize her. Rot had begun to set in, but she was still in good form. Did that mean she’d been killed recently? And was Shainara next?
While trying to decide what to do, and no longer hungry, Shainara noticed that the hall lights were finally on. She gently put the woman’s head back in the refrigerator – knowing she deserved better but not knowing what else to do for her – and crept over to the door and glanced out.
The hallway was empty and still quiet, but rather than making her feel better it only increased her sense of being exposed and vulnerable. She tightened the towel around herself and began walking down the hall again, not really sure of her destination but knowing she couldn’t simply stand around and wait for the answers to come to her.
Suddenly the lights went out and she was in pitch black again. Even the kitchen lights had turned off, leaving no residual glow to see with. Shainara stopped moving, but her heart sped up. She knew the man, or perhaps men, stalking her could be anywhere, and she did her best to control her breathing, lest it give away her position.
After a few minutes the lights returned. Perhaps it was a power cycle, or another malfunction, or worse, done on purpose, but to what end she didn’t know. A cursory scan down the hall told her everything remained the same: lifeless and still. Then, behind her-
She cried out, stumbled backwards and fell, the towel spilling open. A figure stood in the distance, a male. He was too far away to identify, but she was sure it was the same man she’d seen watching her in the shower.
Shainara pulled herself backwards, sliding along the floor away from the figure, while trying to fix her towel. Then the lights went out again, momentarily this time. When they came back the figure was gone. Still, she wasted little time gathering herself to her feet and running in the other direction.
At the end of the hall she recognized the elevators. The doors were supposed to open automatically, sensing her presence, like the lights in the galley. As she approached, they didn’t. She waited patiently for the elevator to welcome her into its open, secure arms, the sound of her rapidly-beating heart the only noise she could hear. Eyes were watching her, she was sure of it. Shainara stared down the hallway, not daring to blink, waiting for any sign that she was being hunted. “Nova,” she said quietly. When there was no response she repeated the name, louder.
“Yes, Shainara,” came the ship’s AI, deafeningly loud in the silent corridor.
“I need the elevator. Now!”
“I am sorry, Shainara. The elevators are down for maintenance.”
That, of course, was bullshit. No one was awake to be performing maintenance – unless it was her stalker. But she couldn’t argue with the ship over it. The stairs were her only other option.
Just as she was starting to make her way towards them, the lights went out again. She expected this. What she didn’t expect was to hear footsteps coming down the hall in her direction.
Trying to remain calm, Shainara inched in the direction of the stairs, hoping the man pursuing her was also blind. Her memory of the ship was still returning, and far from whole, but she knew the door was close. What she didn’t know was whether or not the door would open automatically, or if it too was down for supposed maintenance, and would need to be forced open manually. In the dark, she could walk right by it without knowing, and so took painstaking time to be thorough, running her hand along the wall, feeling for a seam. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness but not fast enough. Her stalking was gaining on her. His footsteps grew louder with every passing second, as did the beating of her heart. She picked up speed, silently begging for the door to reveal itself. The rasp of laboured breathing reached her ears, sounding right behind her. Any moment hands would reach out and grab her.
Finally the door slid open, sensing her presence. Light flooded her vision as she darted blindly inside – and fell down the stairs. Too shocked to cry out, Shainara tumbled down the steps and lay prone at the bottom. Her towel had unravelled, leaving her naked, yet she didn’t move. She remained still and silent, holding her breath. Then, through blurry vision she watched as a figure entered the stairwell and lumber blindly up the stairs, presumably following her.
Shainara knew the bridge was above her, but it was no longer her immediate direction now, not if her stalker was heading that way. Who knew how long it would take for him to figure out she wasn’t up there?
Turning her attention to the floor below, what could help her? The Nova had three main floors; the first was the bridge and all functional areas of the ship; second floor was the living quarters; and the bottom floor was maintenance and storage.
And the loading bay, where planetfall suits were kept. They were meant to keep a body safe in any type of environment, and while bulky they’d certainly do better than a towel. She quietly got to her feet, wincing in pain, and continued to the bottom floor.
As expected, the door opened into darkness, and Shainara once again had to feel her way through the hallway. Brief memories of the ship’s layout came to her as she tried to remember which direction to go, but they weren’t enough. She hadn’t spent much time in the bowels of the ship before going into cryosleep, and she knew better than to ask the AI to help with the lights; it seemed to have been reprogrammed with new instructions, or was now taking orders from someone else. So she made her way back to the stairwell, disrobed and left her towel in the doorway. This would prevent it from closing completely behind her and allow light to spill out and illuminate the halls. It wasn’t much, but still far better than that stumbling around blindly in the dark.
Wandering quickly down the hall, her soft footsteps the only sound, Shainara prayed she found something familiar, something to jog her memory. An armoury was on the lower deck somewhere, but she doubted she’d have access to it, even if the Nova was cooperating. Many of the doors she passed did not open as she approached, and of the rooms she could see into, she couldn’t discern much without more light.
Then the light grew suddenly brighter. Shainara looked back to see the stairwell door now open, and her stalker stepping into the hall. He was a tall, lanky man, almost desperately skinny. Black, scraggly hair sat atop his head and hung below his chin, at odds with his clean, form-fitting attire. He was holding her damp towel to his face, breathing it in deeply, like an animal.
Diving through the nearest open doorway, Shainara hoped he hadn’t spotted her. The extra light allowed her to see she was in another hallway, narrower than the last. The floor was cold against her skin, but she didn’t need more encouragement to get to her feet and keep moving.
Further down the hall a bank of windows sat in the wall to her left, looking out onto what must have been the loading bay. It was barely lit, but the largest room on the ship wasn’t hard to recognize. Around the next corner a door opened to a set of stairs that led to the main floor.
Thinking only of finding a place to hide, Shainara headed for the bay, but two feet passed the door she was shoved from behind and sent tumbling down the unforgiving metal stairs. She came to a rest at the first landing, her world spinning and the agony of dozens of cuts and scrapes filling her senses. She looked up after a minute to see her stalker leap down the first flight of steps toward her, and rolled out of the way. The man’s landing wasn’t clean, however, as he sprawled onto all fours, half on top of her.
Her instincts kicked in and she began bucking, trying to scramble out from underneath. The narrow landing didn’t afford much room, and breaking free of his clutches might send her through the bars and into a freefall to the hangar floor. They struggled together. Despite his light, wiry frame, he was strong, manic. He punched her sides, slammed her head off the metal landing, even bit her in his efforts to subdue her, but she would not go easily. Managing to turn over, she kicked back. One of the blows landed between his legs, and his aggression ceased.
Able now to pull herself away, Shainara weighed her options: to her right the stairs lead up; to her left they went down; and behind her was a catwalk that lead presumably to the other side of the hangar. The first two options brought her toward her attacker, so she began crawling toward the catwalk.
On the ledge the darkness was more noticeable. She could barely see to the main floor below her, and the other end of the hangar was an imperceptible distance away. Still, she pressed on into the unknown, crawling on her hands and knees. Small, sparse emergency lights offered vague glimpses of what loomed in the darkness beneath her. She wondered if she could survive a fall.
Suddenly her attacker was on her again, shoving her onto the cold metal catwalk. She tried to roll over so she could use hands and feet to defend herself again. Instead, she found herself in open air. Her stomach lurched, then spun. All sense of time and space disappeared.
Together they had tumbled under the safety bars of the catwalk and were now falling to the hanger floor. Her stalker, perhaps oblivious to the perilous situation, continued to attack, biting viciously into her shoulder. Shainara had no recourse but to allow him to relentlessly sink his teeth into her skin. As they fell into the darkness, her world spinning out of control, she could neither focus nor articulate enough to form any defence.
Two seconds later the frantic, turbulent mess of tangled limbs came to a bone-crunching halt.
Shainara woke some time later on top of a man she didn’t know, surrounded by a small pool of blood. She was stiff and sore all over, but alive, which was more than she could say for her stalker. He was sprawled under her, head split wide open. He was dead. She pushed herself away from him, slower than she wished because of the pain it caused her. Dried, sticky blood coated parts of her arms and torso, and crusted her hair. She thought she was going to be sick.
“Congratulations, Shainara,” spoke the ships AI.
Startled after the silence, Shainara slowly stood on wobbly legs. Even though the voice of the ship’s AI was coming from everywhere, she looked up instinctively. The whole bay was lit up now, and the light, coming from overhead, nearly blinded her. She brought up her hand to shield her eyes from the light, saw that it was covered in the man’s blood, and was sore as hell. She thought it might’ve been broken. Above her loomed the catwalk, some twenty feet up. They must have fallen together, and thankfully she’d gotten the better end of the deal.
When her eyes adjusted she looked down, able to see the man up close for the first time. He was indeed emaciated, as if he’d been starving to death, and he smelled and looked horrible, as if he hadn’t been keeping proper hygiene. But she didn’t recognize him. This didn’t surprise her; there were over one hundred people on board and she hadn’t seen any of them for many years. It was quite possible she hadn’t met him yet at all, seeing as how they’d all gone into cryosleep shortly after they broke atmosphere around Uranus. Everyone was to awaken a couple months prior to planetfall for training. “Wha…what happened?” she asked the AI. “Who is this man? Why was he trying to kill me?”
“His name was Raynor Creaton. He was the reigning champion of the Hunt. Now that title belongs to you. You were his only source of sustenance. He almost starved to death until you came along.”
“What are you talking about? He was going to eat me?”
“Yes, Shainara.”
This came as a shock, though she’d heard stories about people going crazy on long space flights; it was one of the arguments in favour of cryosleep. “What was he doing awake? And why had no one done anything about it?”
“You just did, Shainara.”
“I mean someone else.”
“There is no one else, Shainara. The Hunt is a game for two. This hunt has ended; the next will begin in fifty days.”
It seemed no matter how many questions she asked, the answers only begat more. “How can there be no one else? Who is running the ship? And what is the Hunt?”
“The Hunt is a game of survival. Its creator, Teeo Raataan, was an engineer on this ship. He reprogrammed me in 2538 to play the game. Only two people play at a time; one the hunter, the other the prey. The rest of the population remain in cryosleep, awaiting their turn. The hunter stalks its prey throughout the ship, eventually killing and eating it – unless the prey defeats the hunter, as you did. In fifty days a new person will be selected at random to be the new prey, then the Hunt will begin again. You are instructed to make the hunt memorable for future viewers. For now your only task is to survive until the next hunt.”
The more Shainara heard the more sense it made, but the less she liked it. All this sneaking around, Nova acting funny, the stalker, it was all part of some elaborate, insane game some lunatic programmed the ship to play. What was the point? And who was watching it?”
“What viewers, Nova?” she asked.
“All footage is sent back to Prime Sector to be distributed throughout the network. There people will vote on the episodes. Unfortunately we cannot know their respective ratings since our current velocity exceeds transmission speeds. However, I have over ten hours of footage for your perusal in my video catalogues, which you are welcome to view any time. They made give you a better understanding of the game than I can.”
Prime Sector, Shainara knew, meant the Solar System. She wondered if she’d ever get to see it again. Some thirty years ago she’d signed up to be one of the first people to explore a new world, not become some pawn in violent reality TV show. “Nova, don’t you see how…how monstrous this is? It’s inhumane. You have to stop the game.”
“I am sorry, Shainara, I cannot stop the game. It is against my programming.”
“The game is against your programming. You’re supposed to keep us alive, not help kill us!”
“I am sorry, Shainara. My programming now is to play the game.”
“Well, I’m not going to play it. I won’t be a hunter and I won’t kill anyone.”
“I am sorry, Shainara, but you-”
“Stop saying you’re sorry, Nova. You’re not sorry.”
“You are already playing the game,” the AI continued. “As soon as you awoke it began. Everyone plays.”
Shainara felt tears stinging her eyes. This couldn’t possibly be happening. It had to be a sick joke, or a bad dream – though you weren’t supposed to dream in cryosleep. She looked down coldly at the corpse of Raynor, feeling sick. She walked away from it, not knowing where she was going, only that she couldn’t be around it anymore. There was no way she was playing this wretched game. “Then I will be killed. I – I will kill myself, Nova. What about that? The game ends with me.”
“The game will not end with you, Shainara. Once you are deceased a new player will be woken and the game will continue.”
“Why? That’s insane! Nova, wake everyone on the ship.”
“I cannot do that, Shainara.”
“Nova please!”
Silence followed, during which Shainara fell to her knees and wept. How could this be happening? What had become of their mission, their humanity? And what would become of them now?”
“Nova,” she said, her voice frail, “what did you mean I had to survive until the next hunt?”
***
For nearly a week Shainara refused to eat the body of Raynor. Despite her once hating him, hating that he’d stalked her, hated that he was going to eat her, hated that he was playing the game, she eventually realized he was just a pawn. It wasn’t his fault. He was probably once like her, until the game turned him into a monster. She promised herself she wouldn’t end up like him.
She searched everywhere on the ship, desperate for the tiniest morsel of food, but Teeo had been creative and thorough in his design of the Hunt. All the food had been removed, jettisoned from the ship. All the freezers had been turned off, and all the food within had surely spoiled years ago. Even still, the freezers remained locked. As the days wore on she grew hungrier and hungrier.
Shainara cried as she dragged Raynor’s body up to the kitchen, nearly delirious and weak from starvation. He’d begun to putrefy, but she had no other alternatives. The ship had told her to act quickly and she regretted not listening. Cutting through the meat and bone was an arduous task, but worst was the scent of cooking flesh. Shainara didn’t know what she hated more: the smell of it, or the fact that it made her mouth water.
The first meal she threw up. But she learned quickly to keep it down. She meant only to eat enough to keep herself alive, but after the second week she’d carefully chopped up the body and kept it refrigerated, rationed it out. By the third week she was eating parts she never thought she would; liver, brains. At the end of the fourth week she was picking the bones clean, sucking them dry, trying to scrape out every last ounce of meat. Five weeks in she was grinding the bones into pieces small enough to swallow. It was a painstaking learning experience, and she vowed to make the food last longer the next time.
At the sixth week mark, Shainara was desperate for the Hunt to begin again.
The Chris Effect 