Much of the equipment within the station was destroyed, though we don’t know whether that was intentionally or unintentionally done. No signs of animosity are within the personal journals of the team members. While our equipment currently hasn’t picked up anything unusual in the blood samples we’ve examined or in the food and water supply, it is possible there was a poison, fungus, parasite, or another such thing that made its way into the team members, causing them to lose control. Currently, this is our only theory.
It’s been a while since I touched this. Wanted to, a few times, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. “Yeah, there’s just more water. Dr. Federman keeps drawing really creepy stuff.” That would bore even me. At least he threw all the drawings overboard when he was done with them.
Dry, solid land. Didn’t realize how relaxing it would be. That, and having freedom of movement again. It’s been just a day under two weeks since we left Facility D, and most of that was spent in cramped below deck rooms with the rocking of the water beneath us. I got used to it after a little while, but it took several bouts of seasickness and cornered panicking before I did. Dr. Federman wasn’t much better off than I was, especially when we got rid of the last three aliens and had nothing more to distract ourselves with. By the end of the first week, we’d more or less settled into calm, but it was an empty calm with hardly anything to do all day but sleep and eat.
I wanted to talk — I actually wanted to have real talks for once, with another human being, my mom would be so proud — but despite what we’ve already been through together, what we’ve already helped each other through, we still don’t know one another very well. Neither of us offered any personal information unless it was a necessary distraction from something terrifying, and those moments didn’t come when floating across an empty ocean in an empty boat.
The pain from our injuries died down after a few days. I worried at first that whatever poison was in the cuts would kill us, with how terribly it burned after two days had passed, but then it just faded away. I hope that means there’s nothing to worry about.
I’d wondered if we would see any marine life, now that we know it exists, but I knew how small the likelihood of that would be. What we’ve already seen is amazing — if that’s the right word for it — but all signs say it’s an exception to the rule on POGE. I still sat out on the deck for hours, though, legs through the railing bars and chin on folded arms, and watched the water. Or the sky. It was hard to tell the difference without light. Oftentimes we’d turn the ferry lights off as well, make ourselves inconspicuous to whatever might possibly be out there, and then it was as if I was floating in nothing. No stars lit the sky above through the thick clouds, no luminous life swam below. There was only darkness.
I imagined I could feel the sea breeze against me, the cold salt water splashing my legs and crusting my hair, but I felt nothing but a vague chill through the walking suit. And we saw nothing.
I don’t want to believe they killed each other. Objectivity is my strong point when it comes to my job, but this is — it’s too much, too cruel. The bedroom I’m in right now is pristine, as are all the bedrooms, but outside it looks like a war zone. Like someone ran out of paint and tried to paint the walls with blood instead, some sick bastard tearing apart their teammates for fun.
Not for fun, I… I hope. We have no way of knowing. Security cameras are only in the sensitive areas — the garage, the lab, the airlocks, and the control room. None of the carnage happened there, but even if it did, it wouldn’t have mattered. Someone took a chair leg to each of the cameras, sticking to the blind spots so we can’t even know who the aggressor was.
This would be easier if there were bodies. Easier on the job, obviously, but also easier on me.
Nessi’s Island is a nice place. The first people here, those who’d set up the station, had a sense of humor. They named it after the Loch Ness Monster for all the twisted, strangely-shaped trees growing in the middle of the lakes farther north. North is a prettier part of the island, from the pictures I’ve seen, but Facility H is in the desert south half.
The desert is pretty, too, though. Unlike the ones on the southern continent, this one is rolling sand dunes and rocky hills. There are mesas farther north, and then the mountains, tall and jagged like the sky was torn in half around them. Again, pictures. Even if I walked right up to the base of them myself, I’d have no idea what they’d look like without the lighted photographs the original explorers took.
Facility H is right against the beach, on the sand itself as opposed to the overlooking cliff Facility D sat on and in. This was built as one of the life study stations. There are more than enough lakes and forests on POGE, so study on the northern half of Nessi’s Island wasn’t quite necessary yet. When more funding arrives and there is less to learn in the already-established stations, scientists will probably head up there anyways, but we’re still in the first decade of exploration on POGE. Nowhere near far enough to spread out so thinly, or rich enough to send up materials for more stations and the scientists to man them.
No preserved animal specimens are here, either, but that’s to be expected. The team here had a similar idea to mine, that some extinction event took out all or most of the non-plant life long before POGE’s exile killed everything else. Much smaller skeletons have been found and studied around the station, with larger ones in the mesas, nothing yet found that’s as big — or long, depending on how these things oriented themselves — as a human being. Plant life was less of a focus until the more recent months, and — …
[sigh] No, I can’t do this. I don’t care. Who does? Who cares what they were studying? One of their specimens may have made them kill each other.
So I’m not certain about this, but… well, we have plenty of free time for the rest of today and tomorrow as the ferry’s batteries recharge so we can head out again. We have learned that the distress signal didn’t originate on Nessi’s Island, nor has it repeated since that first time at Facility D. And there are no bodies. Nothing else to do but look for them.
A lot of tracks leave the facility’s borders. In many of the facilities, there was so much within the bounds of the station lighting to study that there wasn’t any reason quite yet to leave, but excursions were common here. There was just so much sand and so little in that sand, and it’s not like anything out there would’ve attacked them. [snorts]. The trick is to find which trail was the last one made, which trail would lead us to the bodies and any survivors that may still be around. If they are, I hope whatever brought them to kill their fellow scientists has worn off.
I double checked all of the food and water supplies just now, and nothing is missing that wasn’t logged for daily use, so anyone out there would be dead anyways. No survivors. That’s the norm here, but I can’t help but be disappointed. After all they’ve been through, they couldn’t have thought to leave with food?
Or maybe they had planned on returning after they did who-knows-what with the bodies, but something found them and made that an impossibility. They would have been more caught off-guard by inhuman sentience than Dr. Federman and I were, and whatever they’d been on that brought about the violence we’d seen wouldn’t be likely to leave them in a state of mind necessary to be faced with such a discovery and keep their wits about them during it.