Dead Space: Martyr by Brian Evenson

experience, that when people went out of their minds, they became unpredictable. They could do things you’d never expect and they’d do them with a strength you’d never expect them to have.
    He just wanted to come through this alive. They’d made it halfway. They were here now, right beside the monolith, which, he had to admit, also scared the shit out of him. But it filled him with awe as well. It had been there more than fifty million years if the geological data was to be believed. Which meant it predated humankind. But it was clearly man-made—or made by some intelligent life. It was mind-boggling.
    Hennessy was staring out the porthole at it, lost in contemplation of the thing, looking like his brain had been switched off.
    Dantec had the core sampler primed. It was readied and partly extended. He’d tested the molecular cutters that would slice into the stone. Carefully he extended the arm until it was touching the monolith itself, and then he thrust it forward and started to cut.
    Almost immediately his head was filled with a piercing pain, so intense that he felt he was going to pass out. His vision first seemed as though it had been coated in blood and then it vanished entirely, being replaced by an empty white expanse. He gripped the control panel, struggling to breathe. Hennessy was screaming behind him.
    Very slowly, the pain began to ebb away. His vision crept back. Hennessy was moaning, all but passed out behind him. The core sampler had kept cutting—very slowly, but it was still cutting. All they needed was a little bit, just a little bit, and then he could turn the F/7 around and get the hell out of there.

18
    One minute, Hennessy was sitting there, looking at his brother, everything fine, and the next there was a piercing noise and his head felt like it was going to burst. His brother began to shake all over. His head tilted to one side, his neck tearing open just where it did when Shane had been killed. He shook more and in a burst his body exploded, spattering everything with blood. Hennessy began to scream and suddenly couldn’t breathe. A moment later the ship around him was spinning, and then darkness.
    When he came to, Shane was back, looking just as he had before he’d dissolved into a burst of blood, the same strange fixed expression on his face. He’d moved, though, and was now sitting next to Dantec, facing the other way, looking back at Hennessy. Or not next to Dantec exactly: he seemed to be sitting, so it seemed, partly on Dantec. But as Hennessy pulled himself up, he saw. Shane was partly in Dantec, their hips fused together, his legs somehow jutting through the back of the command chair.
    “You’re all right?” asked Hennessy.
    “Yes,” said Dantec. “Except for my head. And you?”
    He shouldn’t be doing this, said Shane, his mouth movingsoundlessly in the air, like a fish out of water. It’s dangerous. Looking’s bad enough, but touching is too much. Neither of you should be doing this. Jim, I thought you were better than that.
    “Doing what?” asked Hennessy.
    “I’m taking a core sample, of course,” said Dantec. “What did you expect me to be doing?”
    This is not something to be examined, said Shane. This is not something to be understood. It needs to be left alone and untouched, where it’s been lying undisturbed for millions of years. Do you think they would have buried it this deep if it was meant to be found?
    “What does it do?” Hennessy asked.
    Dantec still wasn’t looking at him. “It’s a molecular cutter with a titanium cylinder behind it,” he said. “The circular cutter makes a round hole and pushes slowly in. Once the cylinder is far enough in, the cutters rotate to shear off the end of the sample. I thought you knew all that. Don’t worry, not much longer, we’re almost done.”
    You don’t want to know what it does, said Shane. You shouldn’t try to destroy it. You shouldn’t listen to it. You should just leave it alone. You must