Let Go
CW: Mild gore
DING Buyu packs away his astronomical equipment. His cameras and telescopes are dismantled and slip into their cases. Those cases are carried through the fast-emptying hallways of APERIS and placed, with care, on the now cleared desk in the Unit 871 bunkroom. They are to remain here; ready in-case anyone is to return. In-case DING is to return.
Out on the snow a fire burns. Heavy black smoke rises from the papers and notebooks as they turn to ash in the small hot flames. Observations on colleagues to be passed up the chain of command vanish. Secret codes known only to DING crinkle and burn just like everything else. He has no need for them; he only has eyes for Antarctica; he only has eyes for the spirals.
A memory stick clenched in a fist leaves APERIS. On it is everything; the spirals in the sky, the creature on the ice. It ties a thread between that Sno-Cat slowly receding beyond the horizon, to the silent station hidden between spires, changed. DING does not let go.
It does not let him go.
The spirals sit on the memory stick, but he doesn’t need it anymore, because he can see it now. Stretching out from APERIS, in the sky, and in the ice. The Sno-Cats trundle onwards, could they hope to outrun the ever-expanding spiral?
A threshold is met and crossed. The Sno-Cats continue along their journey, but now they are falling towards a centre. Spires rise; the arm coils tighter. Ding is the only one to see…
To see the sky awash with colour. Stars, galaxies, nebulae. Their distance is forgotten; the earth is lost in them. The earth falls with them, falling in a spiral.
The ice, the stars, the earth and you. The Spiral cannot exist without them. It is a pattern that the objects are bound to, that the beating hearts trace out as they try to escape it. They do not realise that a memory stick carries it. They do not realise that the mind of one of their companions holds it close, that the mind of the companion is The Spiral.
DING is not alone. Bones breaking, ice crunching, flesh torn and stretched. The whimpering, the scuttling, the cries of pain. Ten bodies pressed into the Sno-Cat, one more pushing in. Walking across the spiral, hand/muzzle/bone against DING, then it pushes.
DING can see it again, dancing away from his peripheral vision. A tail flicks under a foot; a torn and twisted limb disappears into the driver’s seat. It appears more. It becomes present. It is entering the cabin.
The Swiss army knife is out, but before DING can begin to strike at empty air hands fall on his arms. Human hands. Johannes. Andrei. He fights back, they hold him. He struggles and tries to strike at the demons, they hold him. He breaks, as reality and hallucination collapse into one another, they hold him. They don't want to let him go. DING doesn't let them go.
Valerian stands, breathing heavily. Gun in his hands, body on the floor. What have you done? echoes from the cabin, through the forest of spires. He doesn't answer the shouts, he just watches as, without pain, DING drifts away. Now, Antarctica lets him go.