Imposter

John “Gino” Lewis struggled to sleep the night before day seven of living on Mars. The spaceship, nicknamed New Haven, was engineered to act as a temporary base with the crew’s mission designed to last seven Martian sols. The mission has been a major success for the United States, a victory in the Mars race with China. Funding for the USA’s space program in the past few years has tripled with this not-so-friendly competition. The ship was outfitted with the most advanced safety measures of its time, yet the worry of just one overlooked detail ultimately killing the entire crew was able to wrestle Gino’s mind away from any sleep in his cramped, brittle bunk. The repetitious pinging and monotonous beeping of the various gadgets cluttering the communications room are blurred and faint as Gino completes his daily tasks. Sending informational logs to Command is tedious and irritating. When he applied for the space program, Gino was hoping to escape the routine work of an ordinary office job, but he soon realized that beneath the beauty of the stars, the expensive gear, the excitement of the shuttle launch, and the feeling of weightlessness, it was all about the paperwork. Besides, he knows he was only able to be on this mission because the crew needed a qualified communication systems manager who had also happened to be in the astronaut program. Gino thinks about how simple the systems actually are to manage while messaging Command a report on a rock sample that was written earlier that morning by the crew geologist, Charles “Charlie” Martin. As his fingers type, he thinks about his wife, and how excitedly she tells her friends, My husband is an astronaut! Yes, he’s on Mars right now, without even understandi-

The room goes dark. Gino sits up as the screen before him flickers momentarily before a red message alerts him: System switched to reserve power. How could the electricity go out? The most advanced spacecraft ever built can’t even maintain working electricity. The worry crawls back. James “Jesse” Clark is the crew’s primary maintenance worker. If something is broken from the space suits to the lighting system, Jesse can fix it. Unfortunately, Jesse is bed-ridden in the obscenely underequipped medbay with a bum leg. He told everyone on day five that while trying to fix the hydraulic readouts, a valve burst and burned most of his calf. Gino reaches around in the dark towards a flashlight on the wall, grabs it, and switches it on. He continues to work on his tasks for several minutes, assuming one of the other three crew members will silently volunteer to fix the lights in the electrical room, but having completed most of his work and feeling antsy from the wave of adrenaline still flooding through his veins, Gino clambers out of his seat and walks through the hallway towards the electrical room.

The quietness accompanied only by the expected humming and beeping of various machines only accentuates Gino’s squeamishness. With the electrical room a minute away, Gino tries to calm himself by jokingly assuming that an alien had successfully snuck on board and tampered with the lights to eat all of the delicious crewmates. However, this attempt fails as Gino frantically aims his flashlights at various shadows, which his peripheral vision along with his pounding heart believe to be aliens. He arrives and presses the button labeled Open and waits for the two-inch thick titanium door to slide away. Before stepping inside, he flicks the flashlight down towards the slight bump where the door stands to ensure that he doesn’t trip.

Blood is pooling and dripping and glimmering under his flashlight. He freezes. Ricky is dead. Richard “Ricky” Collins, the crew’s youngest member, is dead at Gino’s feet, his blood pooling in the electrical room aboard New Haven on Mars, thousands of miles away from-

“Hey, Gino!”

His arm holding the flashlight jolts towards the familiar voice, and his body turns to follow suit. Heading down the hallway towards him walks William “Willie” Robins, the crew’s biologist, the mission’s designated captain, and a good friend of Gino’s. Gino sees Willie’s face turn smug as he comes closer.

“Having trouble turning on the lights there, Gino?” he scoffs light-heartedly.

He strides around Gino, and almost steps into the unseen blood when Gino grabs Willie’s shirt and pulls back, pointing the flashlight towards the body. They both stare blankly at their crewmate’s lifeless corpse. After their conjoined moment of shock, Willie examines the body and quickly shows Gino a small entry wound in the neck, where a deadly serum was injected. Ricky was murdered.

“We have to find the others. Stay with me and do as I say,” Willie finally declares. 

The blips and dings of the spaceship’s mechanisms are muted as the clanking of the two’s hurried footsteps echo throughout the hallway on their way to the medbay. When they arrive, Gino points his flashlight at the bunk to find Jesse, who now squints his eyes in annoyance.

“What’s the issue? You guys can’t figure out how to turn the lights on? I thought they taught basic maintenance to everyone,” mumbles Jesse. Gino’s panic subsides momentarily for him to pick up the strength to speak.

“Jesse, listen, Ricky is-”

“Where’s Charles, Jesse? We need to find Charles. Where is he?” interjects Willie.

“Last I heard, he was in the containment room testing some rocks,” he replies, rolling over to both continue his painful nap and silently end the conversation.

Before he can speak, Gino is pulled by Willie back into the hallway.

“Use your head. It’s better not to tell him until we understand what’s going on. We need to find Charles and make sure he’s okay,” whispers Willie.

The similar clink-clank of their hurried footsteps echoes as they reach the airlock before the containment room. In order to keep samples in as best condition as possible, the airlock acts as a decontamination room between the hallway and the specimen room. Willie presses the button, opening the outer door. Once inside, Gino begins to finally process what has happened in the last five minutes. Normally, crewmates would don proper gear, high-tech bio-suits, before opening the inner door, but there is no time. The outer door closes. With all his justified worry, Gino fails to notice Willie’s glaring eyes watching him with a hint of distrust. 

“Where were you before you came to the electrical room?” asks Gino.

“I was helping Jesse wrap his leg,” replies Willie without taking his gaze off of Gino.

Air hisses as the inner door slides open. The two find Charles testing several samples under a flashlight.

“Woah, woah. What are you doing? You two need to have the bio-suits on before you come in here. You could be ruining these samples! Besides, shouldn’t you two be fixing the lights anyway?” shouts Charles as he points his flashlight at them.

Suddenly, sirens blare. A calming, female voice echoes over the intercom - Warning. Oxygen Unstable. Warning. Oxygen Unstable. Warning. - Gino is terrified. Two major malfunctions in the span of ten minutes?

“Charles, come with me to Oxygen! Gino, I need you to go turn the lights on now!” yells Willie.

After the three of them make it through the airlock, Gino watches as Willie and Charles head down the hallway towards the right. He then heads towards the electrical room, to the left. As he walks, his arms begin shaking, and his breath becomes erratic. The light from his flashlight bobs around the walls. The siren continues to shriek. The calming, female voice echoes - Warning. Oxygen Unstable. Warning. Oxygen Unstable. Warning. - A minute later, Gino spots the silhouette of a figure standing in front of the doorway entrance to the electrical room. It’s Jesse, holding a drill.

For a moment the two of them stand, flashlights aimed at one another, like a standoff from the midwest, devoid of pistols. Somebody on this ship was a murderer. The murderer used a needle. The blaring siren stops as the calming, female voice echoes - Oxygen stabilized.

“Y-you’re not limping,” Gino blurted out. Jesse didn’t respond but shook his drill slightly as if to say - Prove to me you’re innocent.

“L-l-listen, I’ve been in comms all morning doin-doing my tasks, Jesse. When the lights went out I-I-I came down to electrical to fix ‘em, b-but I found R-R-Ricky there, and-and then I met up with Willie who said h-he was with you, and I was g-going to tell you, but Willie told m-” Gino stopped. A slow, rhythmic clanking struck his ears as he saw Jesse walk past the doorway entrance towards him, drill firmly in hand. Gino’s panting turns into loud wheezing as he struggles to breath. Jesse was almost upon him now. Gino audibly whimpers with each outgoing wheeze. His arms are shaking so much that he struggles to keep the flashlight pointed towards Jesse. His knees start to buckle. He closes his eyes as Jesse stands in front of him.

“Willie wasn’t with me this morning,” says Jesse.

The two of them sprint towards the oxygen systems on the other side of the base. Gino is panting and struggles to keep up with Jesse. They dash through hallway after hallway, and when they arrive, they see Willie.

Willie is standing over Charles’ dead body with an empty needle in hand. 

Gino and Jesse tackle Willie, and the three wrestle until Gino hears a whirring and the splattering of blood, and they stop. The sound of panting and wheezing and beeping and humming is all that is left.

Jesse and Gino head to the communications room. 

“My suspicions began on day three,” Jesse began, “Willie was acting strange, wandering the halls at night, using the communications room while you were asleep, and spending an oddly large amount of time in the containment room. Knowing that I don’t really do much unless something breaks, I faked my leg injury to monitor him more closely. When he was asleep, I checked his logs in the communications room. He’s been working with the Chinese; they paid him off. Apparently, they planned for this whole mission to occur, so that it would fail and the United States would be in deep shit. He has control over all of the emergency systems; he can sabotage any one of them from anywhere in the ship. That serum is a virus that they’ve developed that can kill a man silently in seconds. After you and Willie left the medbay, I went to go fix the lights for good, but found Ricky. It’s just you and me left, Gino.”

Back at his desk in the communications room, Gino types up a new report for Command.