BLACK SITE Read online

  Contents

  Praise for...

  Other Works

  About Black Site

  Copyright

  Stay Updated

  Black Site

  Author's Note

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  A Note to Readers

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Also Available

  Also Available

  Praise for Michael Patrick Hicks

  BLACK SITE

  "A sharp, crackling exploration of man's hubris and science gone wrong. This is Frankenstein for the new millennium."

  - Hunter Shea, author of We Are Always Watching and The Jersey Devil

  "In Black Site, Hicks combines his prowess in horror and dark sci-fi in one superbly composed story. This sharp, horrific vision of the future had me on the edge of my seat, looking over my shoulder, and then left me staring at the ceiling through the night."

  - Daniel Arthur Smith, author of Hugh Howey Lives and Tales From the Canyons of the Damned

  LET GO

  "Let Go is a poignant zombie story. ...an excellent addition to the zombie genre, a study not in bloodthirsty hordes but the internal struggles of one lonely, old man."

  - Hunter Shea, author of We Are Always Watching and The Jersey Devil

  "Emotionally charged, suspenseful and wonderfully written."

  - David Spell, The Scary Reviews

  "A visceral roller coaster ride [and an] excellent literary contribution to the zombie apocalypse genre."

  - Daniel Arthur Smith, author of Hugh Howey Lives and Tales From the Canyons of the Damned

  REVOLVER

  "Revolver by Michael Patrick Hicks, however, takes the 'shocking' gold medal. A classic example of social science fiction … most gripping."

  - David Wailing, author of Auto

  "A lot of what happens in this story resonates with what we see and what we read in our very lives today. Revolver is a great story, bristling with tension, unflinching with its descriptions and thoughtful. I get the feeling that people who misunderstand this may need to perhaps take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror."

  - Adrian Shotbolt, The Grim Reader

  "Revolver is a perfect short story/novella to read right now. The political extremists are gaining more and more power and they aren't easily ignored anymore. Revolver tells the story of what would happen if we let this extremism go too far. And wow was it good. ... Revolver is a big "what if" book that will leave you feeling raw and full of emotion."

  - Brian's Book Blog

  CONSUMPTION

  "Consumption is one of the most horrifically intriguing novellas that I've read for quite some time....a quite different tale of horror that resonates feelings of dread and shock, very well written, some great ideas and some darkness around the invention of various culinary delights."

  - Paul Nelson, SCREAM Magazine

  "Your stomach will turn, your throat will restrict, and jaw will clench tighter than a bull's arsehole in fly season."

  - S. Elliot Brandis, author of Young Slasher and Irradiated

  "Wonderfully macabre! Cleverly thought out, I was both disgusted and excited by this tale. This a MUST read for horror fans."

  - Great Book Escapes

  Also by Michael Patrick Hicks

  DRMR Series

  Convergence (Book One)

  Emergence (Book Two)

  Preservation (A DRMR Short Story)

  Extinction Cycle: From The Ashes (Kindle Worlds Novella)

  Mass Hysteria (Forthcoming)

  Short Stories

  Consumption

  Revolver

  Let Go

  Black Site

  About Black Site

  For fans of H.P. Lovecraft and Alien comes a new work of cosmic terror!

  Inside an abandoned mining station, in the depths of space, a team of scientists are seeking to unravel the secrets of humanity's origin. Using cutting-edge genetic cloning experiments, their discoveries take them down an unimaginable and frightening path as their latest creation proves to be far more than they had bargained for.

  Black Site is a short story of approximately 10,000 words.

  Copyright © 2016 by Michael Patrick Hicks

  Black Site was originally published in 'CLONES: The Anthology' (2016), produced by Daniel Arthur Smith.

  [email protected]

  http://www.michaelpatrickhicks.com

  Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1H8slIg

  Edited by Jessica West

  http://west1jess.com

  Cover design by Christian Bentulan

  http://coversbychristian.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To stay up to date on Michael's latest releases, and receive advanced reader copies of his work, join his newsletter, memFeed: http://bit.ly/1H8slIg

  Website: http://michaelpatrickhicks.com

  E-mail: [email protected]

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authormichaelpatrickhicks

  Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MikeH5856

  Patreon: http://http://www.patreon.com/michaelpatrickhicks

  BLACK SITE

  Michael Patrick Hicks

  Author's Note

  Sci-fi horror is a particular genre niche that I can never get enough of. I blame the films Alien and The Thing for this, along with the cosmic horrors dreamed up by H.P. Lovecraft and the many authors he has inspired across the decades.

  When Daniel Arthur Smith invited me to participate in his anthology about clones, titled, appropriately enough, CLONES: The Anthology, which is where this story first appeared, I knew immediately it was a theme ripe for horrific exploitation. I tossed around a few ideas in my head, and more and more I became drawn to the elements of cosmic horror and how they could intermingle with science fiction.

  I began thinking about Eldritch terrors and how in space nobody can hear you scream. Somewhere along the line, I also started thinking about creation myths and evolution and multiple dimensions, until a very Lovecraftian story began to take shape under the auspices of cloning. What sort of secrets are buried in our genetic code, and where did all that stuff come from anyway? I wanted to get big and bold with the weirdness, but also maintain a sense of claustrophobia, confusion, and divisiveness. I also wanted to scare the hell out of people. Hopefully I pulled it off, but that's for you to decide, dear reader (if I can crib from the King, another horror icon who has played no small part in my professional development as a writer).

  Should Black Site convince you to check out my other writings, feel free to pay a visit to my website to learn more about my work and connect with me on social media. You can also sign-up for my spam-free newsletter to receive notifications of new releases. I also run a Book of the Month styled Patreon account where, for as little as $1 per month, supporters get access to my body of work, an exclusive blog feed, and behind-the-scenes content. I'd love to hear from you, and thank you very much for reading.

  ONE

  SKIN SLOUGHED AWAY from the subject, dissolving in the synthesis chamber. Watching the pink tissue drift through the solution, Alpha was reminded of fish food flakes. He'd never had a fish tank, but Papa had. Be
cause he carried the memories of Papa in his own skull, he was able to make the comparison by proxy.

  "Subject Uniform failed to maintain cohesion," he said for the benefit of the record. His voice was dispassionate and wooden, no longer burdened by the personal sense of failure he had once felt during earlier projects. The lack of success, though, was not necessarily a failure. Rather, it carried the potential of a lesson, new data to study and build from.

  Echo stood beside him, her hands hanging limply at her sides. Her fingers fidgeted against her thighs, patting out a tiny rhythm against her slate gray slacks, occasionally pinching at the fabric. As far as Alpha could tell, none of the others, himself included, exhibited such nervous habits. Not for the first time, he thought Echo was simply unique, and not just because she was the only female of the project. That, in and of itself, had been an aberration. A fluke. An oddity that he enjoyed studying, frankly.

  "Victor appears to be gestating regularly," she said. "Systems are normal."

  Even Victor, though, was marred by irregularities, far more than Uniform had been. Yet Echo was correct – Victor, for all intents and purposes, was developing as planned, even if the term 'regular' was a bit of a misnomer. The project was on track, and that was the most important aspect. The loss of Uniform was a disappointment, but hardly more than a minor misstep in Papa's grander designs.

  Drawing closer to the chamber, he studied the developing fetus. The only thing separating the viability of Uniform and Victor were slight alterations in protein sequences. A slight change in carboxyl groups, an alteration in an amino acid that made one's protein either active or inactive, turned a hormone on or off and, in turn, meant either doom or survival for one's genetic sample.

  Victor was nearing the equivalent of its fifth month of development. In a normal fetus at this stage, the cellular formation would have taken on a shape plainly recognizable as human. Yet, Alpha failed to recognize much that was uniquely human in Victor's development. A clearly designed face, arms, legs, and torso were all plainly familiar in terms of categorization but far from human. In fact, the aberrations were so pronounced that studying the subject gave him a mild headache.

  Echo put her arm around his waist, rested her head on his shoulder. He pressed his cheek against her hair, enjoying the warmth radiating from her body.

  "Do you think this is it?" Echo said.

  In the tank, Victor's arm unfolded and smacked against the glass, an eye swiveling toward them. The fingers were strangely elongated, and already they could make out the tip of a sharp, dagger-like nail as he pressed his palm against the thick encasement.

  "We're getting closer," he said.

  Despite the apparent physical differences, Alpha felt a strange kinship to the piebald creature. They did, after all, share a common genetic sequence, albeit one now far removed from each other. He had to still himself against pressing his own hand against the glass, so strong was the urge to make contact in even that minor way.

  Slowly, he led Echo away, back to the work stations where Bravo, Charlie, and Delta monitored the synthesis chambers.

  "Purge Uniform's tank and begin prepping the chamber for Subject Whiskey. Continue monitoring Subject Victor and alert me immediately if any other irregularities arise."

  He couldn't help but notice his headache subside now that Victor was out sight and out of reach. If this current headache were a single instance, he would not have been so troubled by it. The fact that a slow burning pain began to encase his brain each time he personally examined Victor was enough to convince him that their current subject was, if not the direct cause, then at least more than casually related. This oddity was curious enough on its own, but he mentally filed it away for the moment. His growling stomach reminded him of more pressing matters.

  He moved to the door, Echo following beside him as she so often did.

  Leaving the lab, he was greeted immediately by Papa's face. His own face, in fact, albeit one that was substantially older and wizened, the shared furrows of their brows and the lined recesses around each side of their mouths far more pronounced in Papa's features.

  The corridor was lined with imagery of Papa. In each of the photos, Papa proudly displayed his Raëlian pendant, the large silver icon of the Star of David intertwined with a swastika hanging loosely over his chest from a long gold chain. There were photos of the orbital mining magnate christening his latest asteroid platforms–one of which Alpha knew was this very same base–more of the man shaking hands with UN representatives and various presidents and dignitaries, and images of him with staff, researchers, lab workers, and miners.

  There were no more rock pushers at this facility. No more researchers and lab techs, aside from Alpha and his team. The veins of this particular asteroid had run dry ages ago, and the platform had officially been shuttered for more than twenty years. Papa's deep pockets, though, and some fanciful accounting kept the lights on and the equipment running.

  As they passed through the corridor highlighting Papa's achievements, Alpha was again struck by the disparity in Echo's appearance. While she carried many of Papa's features, she was unmistakably softer and appealingly feminine. Her skin carried a more youthful appearance, the laugh lines around her lips gentle and more charming than the severe set their old progenitor was marked with, and which, in time, would mar Alpha's own features. For her part, Echo looked as if she had merely inherited his features, as if she were Papa's daughter rather than a genetic duplicate. A mishap with the protein loads, some fat-fingered amino acid sequencing, and a minor dose of genetic gap filler during the earlier stages of synthesis had flipped a few too many switches. This was not to say that the production of Echo was a failure so much as it was a decidedly welcome outcome.

  Alpha was, strictly speaking, the purest of Papa's clones. He was the original, second only to the progenitor. As they worked further down the line, each successive generation grew a bit more distant from Alpha and Papa, and were nurtured to be more distinct. Echo had been the apex of that distinctive cultivation, and Alpha had been convinced they were edging that much closer to the truth, stripping back the layers of genetic impurities to achieve something nearer an answer to a question that was virtually indefinable by admission.

  Where did humans come from?

  That was the question. Papa believed he had both the answer and the method for discovery. And that the necessary research could be conducted here, in this defunct orbital mining station operating as an off-books, privately funded black site.

  Sometime during their walk, Alpha realized that Echo had hooked her hand around his and that their fingers were intertwined. When they reached his quarters, his hunger was momentarily forgotten and replaced with an equally base desire.

  Their lips pressed together, her hands pulling his body close. In the tight confines between them, he worked loose the buttons of her blouse and slacks, and she shimmied out of her underwear while he stripped.

  Not for the first time, he questioned the nature of their lovemaking. They had been partners for a handful of years, nearly the entirety of Echo's life. At the start of their affair, Alpha had been hesitant to pursue her, struck by the strangely incestuous nature of such a fling. Being nearly an exact genetic duplicate, he began to view sex with Echo as a nearly masturbatory experience. Although she possessed female anatomy, Alpha was keenly aware that he was, in essence, making love with, and to, himself.

  While the nature of their relationship was an intellectual curiosity, the physicality was unbridled and shameless. They enjoyed both their own bodies and one another's with frequent abandon.

  Even as her body bucked against his, his mind turned over the riddles of Uniform's failure and Victor's early achievement of cohesion. There was so very little separating success from abortion, and the genetic lines they used for replication were altered only slightly. The aim was to reach an answer that was as genetically pure as possible. To discover and recreate the common ancestor that had made progeny of Homo
habilis, Homo gautengensis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo erectus, and down through the evolutionary chain that led to Homo floresiensis and, finally, Homo sapiens.

  As Alpha and his kin carried out their work, this latest iteration of Victor and its achingly unfamiliar construction appeared to be proving Papa's hypothesis correct.

  Whatever had given rise to those early attempts at humanity had not been a purely simple act of evolution. Like Papa, he was hesitant to call it creation, for that carried many unseemly religious connotations that spoke more toward fantasy than any scientifically proven reality. He preferred to think of it more as manipulation.

  Witnessing the trajectory of Victor's development, though, a single negative, but pervasive, thought began to wriggle through his mind. He couldn't help but wonder if, perhaps, given the gross disparities between Victor's form and the modern human, that the answer may ultimately be even simpler. Certainly not creation, perhaps not even manipulation. He worried that the answer boiled down to pure tragedy. That Papa's hypothesis was only party correct in its presumptive capacity, but less so in its explanations.

  Laying in the heated afterglow, with Echo pressed tightly against his side and lightly snoring, her head resting on his chest, he began to wonder at the possibility that the answer to humanity's rise had come as a result of nothing more than a simple mistake.