Moment

It had been so long since he felt clarity. When he was met with the slightest taste of it, Daniel reveled in it. He couldn’t totally describe why he felt better, but in the first few moments he didn’t care.

It was water in the desert.

But clarity let him properly order himself. He first realized something was terribly wrong when he could see himself.

He was floating in the middle of the mess level with a garden of razor-sharp spikes curling out of the floor and ceiling toward him.

“Daniel!” Caleb yelled.

He couldn’t respond though. He hadn’t expected to feel a voice like that all of a sudden. Especially one that wasn’t his.

“Daniel!” Caleb screamed as a metal blade erupted through the ladder, cutting right through the rungs and almost slicing Caleb’s palm.

Daniel had just heard Caleb’s cry. But it hadn’t come from his mouth, or his body.

Oh no…

Daniel watched from behind Caleb’s eyes. He caught sight of Daniel’s—his own body, and a shooting pain went through both of their minds.

Daniel felt himself… grow within Caleb’s mind. Oh that couldn’t be good. Caleb! Caleb!

But just like Daniel (or his body?) wasn’t hearing Caleb, he couldn’t hear Daniel in his mind.

Caleb lost his grip on the ladder and spun helplessly in the air before he caught the edge of one of the mess tables and managed to just float still.

He watched as Daniel spun together a twisting spiral of steel fibers in the palm of his hand. They spidered outward toward the ceiling, darting in new directions like a tree’s roots probing for water.

Caleb watched in transfixed horror. His thought hammered into Daniel’s mind like a sledgehammer.

This can’t be happening .

The thought shook Daniel like a branch in a hurricane. He hadn’t thought that. That had been Caleb. How was he hearing Caleb’s thoughts? In terms of pressing questions, it was a bit of a step down. But part of him felt well enough to laugh at his own curiosity.

He was seeing through Caleb’s eyes. He was hearing Caleb’s thoughts.

Could Daniel still move his body?

He tried to move a hand, but instead his whole arm twitched upward. Another blast of thought came over him. It was a chaotic mess of grief, anger, and paranoia. For one soul stilling second Daniel felt his own thoughts turn against himself. A schism turning the most paranoid hostile thoughts he was capable of against all the rest of him. He was literally of two minds right now, one of fury, connected to his own body, dragging his hallucinations into reality; and one of clarity, somehow stuffed into Caleb, witness to the insanity unfolding.

Then a titanic force tore ‘clarity-Daniel’ away from his own hostile thoughts. He was still looking out through Caleb’s eyes, but there was a bit… ‘more’ of him doing it now.

Caleb… or something with him, had pulled Daniel’s mind clean in two, rescuing part of himself from his own worst impulses. Except, wait…no…it wasn’t done. It was still pulling Daniel out of himself and…

Daniel began to share the dread he could feel in Caleb’s body. This was bad. He could feel what this thing of Caleb’s was doing, just what it was leaving behind.

Caleb!

The other kid still couldn’t hear him. In fact, he gave no indication he realized what was happening.

Daniel’s body tensed and shook uncontrollably, something was building up in him. Feeling the divide in his consciousness was bizarre. Simultaneously, his consciousness was inside his own body in some ways, and inside Caleb’s in other ways.

But it wasn’t stable. Every second that dragged on made him more and more afraid of this thing that had begun dividing his mind. Where was it?

Daniel felt that he, or at least part of him, was the one creating the spikes poking out of everything, but those were solid, real . Even if he didn’t have the mental cohesion to understand how he’d made them, he could tell that they were his.

Just like how he could tell this thing was Caleb’s.

But it wasn’t… there!

This can’t be real.

The thought reverberated around Daniel, battering him from all sides and his body let out a scream in response.

A fresh wave of sharp edges tore their way into existence around him. Many of them sprouted off things that weren’t secured, shoving them in random directions.

Parts of cabinets, stray pieces of disassembled tables and stools went spinning around in zero gravity, all of them bristling with new razor-sharp edges.

Caleb let out a sharp cry when one of them spun too close to him and left a gash in his shoulder.

Daniel was still stuck on trying to figure out how Caleb had made something that didn’t exist.

Caleb’s own mind forced him to move past the conflict though.

The reaction was automatic. He was still in denial, ‘this can’t be happening’ still bounced around his mind just as intensely. But he was in pain, and his body could still move. Fight or flight kicked in and Daniel found himself caught up in the instinct.

Caleb didn’t accept any of this was real; to him, this was finally confirmation of what had been nagging at him for days, weeks. This was all impossible, and therefore it couldn’t actually be real. It was some cosmic punishment. He’d died and made it to hell somehow. Or it could just be a strong nightmare.

Daniel learned Caleb was the kind of person to run, even if they thought it was a nightmare, even if it wasn’t real. Caleb darted backward, tumbling head over heels into the ladder before pulling himself back up into the dorm levels.

The feeling of draining out of himself lessened and the portion of Daniel still in his body recognized it. In his anger and paranoia, fury-Daniel managed to find the wrong form of the truth—Caleb had taken something from him.

Still blind, only able to see out Caleb’s eyes, Daniel tore after Caleb. New shards of metal piercing out of the rocket, from fewer places now, but in greater concentration.

Water and oil sprayed into Caleb’s face as walls and pipes ruptured, but he didn’t stop running for even a second.

Things were no longer held to the floor so anything Caleb bumped into, he grabbed to throw back at Daniel. It was hard to tell how aware he was while he ran.

Fury-Daniel couldn’t see what his clearer half could, not anymore. But there were flashes of Caleb, every time the other kid touched something. Daniel’s own interconnected sense of touch lit up through the matter of Caleb’s body.

The spikes growing out of the walls were coming faster now, more and more focused on Caleb, cutting him off and skewering him.

The other kid had stopped screaming Daniel’s name, instead he was just panting and crying as he pushed himself off each wall. Caleb went further up to the unused level of dormitories and laughed manically at the clean rooms a few seconds away from being shredded.

Chilling broken laughter peeled its way out of Caleb, his mind thundering the same thought over and over.

This can’t be real.

Nothing was more disturbing to clarity-Daniel, because he had a glimpse of both of them.

This was real, but in the deepest recesses of Caleb’s mind, down to his very bones, he knew he was crazy. He could not have been saner, but presented with this? Daniel understood perfectly how Caleb could make the assumption otherwise.

Daniel had to find a way to stop this. The rest of him was going to kill Caleb at this rate, or maybe Caleb’s creation would kill this half. But he couldn’t move Caleb’s body. He couldn’t even be heard, not even his own body was listening to him.

It was awful. He knew what was going on, or at least understood enough to know that he and Caleb weren’t enemies. They were just two poor kids thrown to the bottom of a dark, dark pit.

Caleb’s deranged laughter got cut off when fury-Daniel improved his method of attack. A set of four crude bars all erupted from each wall. Caleb was stuck moving mid-air when they speared out in front of him, blocking his way.

He’d kicked off too forcefully to catch himself in time. Caleb’s body slammed painfully into the tangle of metal, Daniel feeling every bit of the impact too.

Both his and Caleb’s worries were growing, but they felt like they were all falling on Daniel. Nothing seemed to ‘stick’ in Caleb’s mind. He found himself seeing clearly, even when Caleb himself failed to see the gap wide enough to wriggle through with the same eyes.

Instead, Caleb turned to face the real Daniel as he floated up through the hatch.

“Can’t be real,” he muttered, “…why even bother then?”

A chill went through Daniel as he saw the utter lack of recognition on his body. His eyes didn’t meet Caleb at all. He wasn’t even pointing his face in the right way.

All of Daniel’s attention fell on the lapse between the two halves of himself. He couldn’t believe this was him. He’d felt those very same thoughts, just minutes ago, and he already didn’t recognize himself.

The invisible creation of Caleb’s moved again, pulling Daniel away from his other half, widening the gap and pulling more of Daniel out of his own body.

His body reacted with a feral shout, screaming in pain and clutching his head. More edges shot out from the walls toward Caleb and for a second Daniel thought the kid’s apathy had completely seized him.

But once again Caleb’s body moved itself out of sheer habit. With the invisible creation pulling Daniel further and further into Caleb’s mind, he was being exposed to Caleb’s thoughts more and more. Caleb was downright bewildered that he’d lunged forward.

For a moment, Caleb hurtled forward, without touching any wall or surface, carried by his own momentum. And through what tenuous connection to his body remained, Daniel realized that his body wouldn’t see Caleb, even as he tackled him back into the ladder.

The invisible force held Daniel’s mind harder, preventing him from reaching his own body.

Daniel’s consciousness couldn’t do anything more than watch as his own body tried to throttle Caleb in midair. But Caleb was no less energetic trying to get an arm around Daniel’s neck for a hold. His heels found the lip of the hatch and he kicked backward trying to slam Caleb into a wall.

Simultaneously Daniel made a spike from that same point on the wall to pierce Caleb with.

But Caleb had let go of Daniel the moment he’d started to push off. Daniel’s body flew toward his own spike, and he thought he might watch himself get impaled. But his body was still horribly cogent enough to twist out of the way, earning a long gash on his hip instead of a torso piercing.

The invisible force however hadn’t been so optimistic. Daniel had felt it move in the moment his body had almost been skewered.

It severed the connection.

The other half, ‘fury-Daniel’, whatever share of his mind was devolving and lashing out, it disappeared from his awareness entirely. He (they?) had been split, between Caleb’s head and his own.

Daniel saw his body regain eyesight.

They were upside down to each other, both of them battered from throwing themselves and each other into anything nearby. Blood was oozing out of both of them, joining the droplets of water and oil that were already drifting through the air.

‘Daniel’ blinked and fixed an unhinged gaze on Caleb, letting out a bloodcurdling scream. Caleb and Daniel both felt the same fear. Caleb hooked his foot on one of the ladder rungs and pulled himself downward, toward the mess again.

They both heard the twist of metal as ‘Daniel’ made another twisted hunk rip its way out of a wall, but the pitch of the sound screeched upward as he did something different.

A second later a crack like a piece of firewood popping went off. A hundred little dings rang out around Caleb as he pulled his way down the rocket. It was the sound of dozens of flecks of metal bouncing off everything around him.

The sound was so disturbing, by comparison it was almost easy to dismiss the new stinging welts on Caleb’s shoulders and back. Except they weren’t welts at all. Each one was a scrap of metal ‘Daniel’ had sent flying somehow.

Caleb didn’t stop at the mess, going straight down into the cargo bay. He was just trying to get as far away as possible.

He pulled himself through the hatch and dove toward one of the shelving units, lurking between the top shelf and the ceiling.

This can’t be real .

Daniel wanted to scream at Caleb. Thinking that wouldn’t help them.

“Huh,” Caleb said absently, I actually understood that one. But a few weary breaths later he thought, but is it even worth trying to figure out why?

Daniel thrashed however he could inside Caleb’s mind. He could hear him! The connection was severed now. Whatever wires had been crossed, weren’t anymore. Daniel’s body had its eyesight back, and Caleb could hear the portion of Daniel in his own head!

Come on! Daniel was practically screaming the words at him.

Caleb didn’t even pay attention to the words and Daniel’s heart sunk. That’s right, Caleb might not have been seeing the same visual hallucinations, but he’d spent days hearing indecipherable voices. Ignoring them was harshly ingrained on him.

‘Daniel’ floated down through the hatch slowly, fuming. He put a hand on hatch lid and looked down at the cargo bay. His eyes lingered on the coffins, especially the eight ones that had previously been on the ground, now floating disparately in odd directions.

As he swept his gaze around the cargo bay, Daniel realized his body might not be able to sense them with the touch spreading. ‘Daniel’ was touching the cargo bay ceiling right now, and for the strange sense to reach Caleb, it would have to go down the wall, across the floor, and back up the scaffolding before it would sniff out Caleb.

Don’t move. Daniel tried to warn him, but Caleb was only in ‘run’ mode.

He darted out, kicking off the ceiling. The moment his shoe made contact, ‘Daniel’ snapped his head toward him, and yet another set of spikes erupted from the square foot of wall.

Even so, the fluctuation made Caleb snap his head.

Caleb wanted to make it to the other hatch and go back up—keep running. But he didn’t have the energy. He was flagging too much.

‘Daniel’ stretched out his hand and instead of a spike forming out of a nearby surface, a thin tangle of crystalline metal grew in front of his palm. It twitched and wriggled as more mass was added to its interior.

It made the same shrill squeak as before, when the first metallic knot must have exploded into flecks of shrapnel.

Daniel’s attention was dragged along for the ride when Caleb noticed the red pock marks that littered Daniel’s face and arm. He was bleeding from his own shrapnel too.

From the first piece of metal spike to spontaneously appear before Caleb, he’d been critically aware of his neck. Even with small wounds, a scrape near the wrong artery would kill you. And ‘Daniel’s burst of shrapnel would probably fill the cargo bay.

He wouldn’t make it to the hatch in time.

It was barely a conscious thought on Caleb’s part, but it was their only chance.

A wave of dejection welled up in their shared mind from Daniel when he realized what he’d just resigned himself to. It just wasn’t something Daniel would have considered. Even in a desperate situation like this, he would have never been willing to get back in one of the coffins. Not even partway.

Caleb’s body still moved though. He was desperate to survive.

He dove behind the coffin, practically inside it, and let the shower of metal shrapnel ping against the steel box. Caleb planted his feet against it and kicked off of it, sending it tumbling toward Daniel.

Spikes grew out of the coffin as soon as it drew close enough. But Daniel seemed to turn his whole body toward it, ready to catch it.

But Caleb kicked himself off one of the other unsecured coffins floating freely in the cargo bay. He crashed into Daniel with a desperate shout. It seemed like Caleb might try to strike Daniel’s face again, like to wake him up.

But Daniel raised a hand and Caleb’s mind panicked, shriveling up having seen what Daniel was capable of.

Caleb lashed out, violently shoving Daniel away from him. Simultaneously, something lurched in the rocket, and for a moment their trajectories changed.

Daniel crashed into the wall Caleb had shoved him into, and his mind inside Caleb’s head grew twice over. Caleb screamed when he saw the piece of twisted metal poking through Daniel’s belly. The fluctuations around Caleb changed and he felt them swiftly draw toward Daniel, like he was sucking them back up.

This couldn’t be real .

Caleb’s strength gave out, and he wound up partially caught between two shelves.

He watched the blood run down the spike in zero gravity, form little red droplets, and pop off the sharp tip of the spike where they floated around the cargo bay.

The pieces of Daniel inside Caleb’s mind watched in transfixed horror as more and more of them drained out of his body. How much ‘Daniel’ was even left in his body?

He pushed back against the thing gripping him, keeping in Caleb’s mind. If he could just stop it, then maybe his body wouldn’t rampage any further.

For the first time, the grip around Daniel’s consciousness loosened.

Caleb was teetering on the edge of consciousness when something in his mind finally reacted to Daniel’s presence. The same inscrutable force pulling Daniel out of his own body stopped cold. He had the overwhelming feeling of attention suddenly bearing down in him, as if up until now it had been acting absentmindedly. Its grip came back like a vice, crushing Daniel from every side.

He didn’t give up though. It was a feeble effort, but he tried to push back.

Daniel trembled before this thing inside Caleb’s mind that was pulling him in, and he flinched first. He felt himself shatter inside Caleb’s mind. It wasn’t just Daniel. It was Daniel, and Daniel, and Daniel, and… on and on.

·····

Caleb’s eyes twitched open for a second. A bright light on the far end of the cargo bay stirred him. But even the tiniest motion to adjust his gaze was a herculean labor. A bright orange line glowed where metal was being heated. A few moments later something stabbed through the molten door, prying both halves aside.

A few oddly hunched figures floated into the cargo bay. Space suits.

One of the lights hit Caleb’s face, making him wince. Even that sharp motion was enough for his eyes to start rolling back in his head again. Blackness took him.