Project: Revival

Marcus Short lowered his rifle. The lab was devoid of all movement; no sign of life sprouting from the shadows, as if it had laid barren for years. The ship exterior had not given any clues as to the situation inside. None of the landing lights or strobes were functioning, and there were no responses to the attempts at radio communication. He turned to his men and signaled to them through his suit’s com-link.

“Spread out. We need to find this sneaky bastard before he tries anything funny.”

The team fanned out into the laboratory. Short made his way to the opposite side of the lab, where the wall stood lined with several screens. Each one flashed a red symbol indicating the lack of power on the ship. He pressed a few buttons on the terminal, and swore lightly at the lack of response.

Several tables were located nearby, each with various charts and graphs next to personal computers and glass containers filled with different liquids. He sifted through them, unable to decipher any of it. A small black book caught his eye. He was about to open it up when he heard, “Cap, you better come see this.”

Short set the book down and worked his way around the tables to his men, who were crowded around an open chemical closet. As he approached, the group parted, and Short saw on the ground the bodies of seven scientists in pure white lab coats. On the top of the pile lay their prize. A criminal scientist wanted for violations of moral law-human experimentation, illegal possession of banned chemicals, the whole lot- Dr. Atticus Norton lay splayed with an unnatural Cheshire smile.

Short cursed, not for the fact he didn’t get to kill the asshole, but for the state the bodies were in. Each body was missing some part of their face. One was missing an ear, some were missing various teeth, one a nose. Dr. Atticus stared with two dark chasms where his eyes should have been, void and vacuous, as though widening to swallow them all. Despite the unique dis-figuration, the scientists wore the same smile, too wide and too white for any natural human to hold. The entire scene was bloodless.

Short nudged the bodies with his foot and directed his team.

“Continue investigating. We have our target, but there may be more items of value aboard. Federation scientists are suckers for this science crap and will pay a high price for any of it.”

A noise, settling dust. Short looked around, sweeping his rifle across the room.

“Stay on your toes, something tells me these freaks didn’t kill themselves. Move out.”

The group dispersed and began clearing shelves and filing cabinets of anything they could find, stacking it near the exit. Short moved back near the wall of screens he found and continued looking through the documents. He had forgotten all about the little black book.

But as he reached for another paper, something to his right caught his eye. A lone hallway with a single fluorescent light exposed two enormous blast doors. Intrigued, Short moved slowly towards the doors, his rifle at the ready. As he neared, the fluorescent light overhead shattered. Short raised his weapon to the ceiling and fired in instinct, startled. The pop of the silenced round pierced the din of the gray lab. Short felt his adrenaline wisp away quickly, like the smoke from his barrel.

“Everything alright Cap?” asked one of his men through the comms.

“Fine, just startled. Get back to work.”

A muffled snicker sounded over the comms, “10-4. Careful not to shit your suit.”

Short shook his head and focused back on the blast doors. They had electronic locks, but there were physical vault locks installed on them as well, in case the power went out. Short scowled at this. If the scientists wanted the door locked, even in the case of a power outage, then what was behind those doors was either highly secretive or very dangerous. Short hoped for the former.

He fiddled with the door, looking for any sign that it would open, and found a sliding panel near the top. Behind it was a simple observation window. The room he beyond the door was dark, oily and black. Short detached his rifle’s flashlight attachment and shone it into the inky blackness. He was unsure of what he was looking at, but after his eyes focused, he started backwards, dropping his light.

“Shit,” he muttered and picked it up again. He tried one more time, steeling himself, and peered in.

A face sneered back at him, but not one of flesh and blood. As Short looked closer, he saw that it was a painting, mounted on a simple easel. The face was that of a normal Caucasian man, brown hair, green eyes, flushed skin. There was no background to accent the face, leaving the visage solitary in its message. There were no imperfections at all, aside from one within his uncanny smile. The teeth were pearly white and straight edged in their even rows. Yet in the very corner of his mouth, yawning in the absence, the man was missing a tooth.

...

Dr. Isaiah flipped through the synopsis on his tablet. The painting was discovered by Captain Marcus Short of a fringe bounty hunter group often employed by the Federation to find wanted criminals considered impossible to find. It stated that the space freighter it was found on was refitted to be a laboratory. It was found in a derelict state, estimated to be left adrift for almost two yeas in empty space. The entire crew was dead, and the contents were scavenged or sold at various auctions.

Isaiah looked up and sipped his coffee, deep in thought. He had been sent to the auction by the Federation for a singular purpose, to purchase a painting and conduct an analysis of it in his laboratory. Isaiah was almost insulted, thinking he had been informally demoted with a meaningless task. Paintings had not been made or even found in hundreds of years. They were the stuff of museums and history buffs, collectors of useless artifacts that few showed interest in. Despite his skepticism of the original offer, he was finally convinced with the promise that he could also buy whatever it was he needed for his own scientific studies.

Nobody else bid on it, and the doctor bought it for almost nothing. He was also able to obtain several stacks of documents, sample jars filled with unknown liquids, and video tapes all found on the ship. He would have to sift through them once he got back to his lab.

Dr. Isaiah looked down and began to read the synopsis again. The appraisal summary did not give much useful information on the painting itself. There were no correlations with any of the ancient art styles or artists, aside from simple portraiture etiquette. The age of the painting did not seem to be discernible, and the subject bore no similarity to any specific person. The only defining feature was the missing tooth in the corner of its mouth.

Isaiah sipped his coffee, then set it down and began sifting. None of the liquid samples survived the power outage on the derelict ship, and Dr. Isaiah threw them all away. He was not sure if the papers held any value yet. There were several filing cabinets worth, and the few that Dr. Isaiah looked at were faded. Whatever words were legible were in a language that Dr. Isaiah had never understood, encrypted. However, the catalog was large, and perhaps held something interesting.

He began to sort the documents into piles. After a few hours, he had sorted nearly a third of the documents. He reached for the next paper and was surprised to see it was a small black book. He turned it over and saw in small silver letters: Project Revival.

Isaiah frowned, and turned the book in his hands. He had read up on Dr. Atticus, and found that much of the evidence confiscated from his labs over the years was encrypted, much like the documents Dr. Isaiah found himself with today.

It had been written off as his attempt to prevent the discovery of his scientific efforts, but alas it was all in vain. Survivors of his experiments had come forward and the testimonies were enough to label him a wanted criminal. He fled to the fringes of colonized space.

What Dr. Isaiah found strange about the book was that it was, so far, the only thing related to Dr. Atticus written in an understandable language.

Dr. Isaiah opened it up to see three words on the front page.

It must feed.

He flipped through the remaining pages, unsettled to see that they were all empty. Blank, creamy yellow, and crisped with healthy age. There were no other words to be found. Isaiah shut the book and was about to put it into his desk drawer when he felt movement behind him. Before he could turn, a hand settled itself on Isaiah’s shoulder. Sharp nails dug into the thin flesh of his collarbone, and he thought he felt blood. He jolted at the touch as pain shot up his neck. Immobilized for a moment, he finally broke from the paralysis and whirled around.

There was nothing. The room was empty, aside from the easel in the corner of the room. It was covered with a gray shroud, and Isaiah thought it looked as if it had just finished settling, like someone had just thrown it over the easel. Isaiah let his breathing settle, and he adjusted his lab coat. Abandoning the stack of documents for a later time, he got up and decided to begin his examination.

Dr. Isaiah was a specialist in environmental anomalies. The circumstances of the paintings discovery fit his expertise almost perfectly. Yet he was not familiar with painting structure and history. But he was not here for preservation. His purpose was to expose this anomaly for what it truly was.

He approached the easel and took a deep breath before pulling the shroud off. A simple motion, and the face stared into Isaiah’s eyes. It was incredibly and hauntingly normal. The smile was a bit too wide, and the skin a bit too clear of blemishes, but otherwise it was perfect, almost lifelike.

Isaiah pulled out several printouts of famous portraits—photographed and painted—and tacked them to the wall next to the painting. He remembered the appraiser had tried this, but he wanted to see for himself. After several minutes of comparison, he found the painting seemed to be more similar to the photographs rather than the paintings. The lifelike expression, the natural settling of the skin over the face, the visibility of bone structure and expression, it all was more similar to a real person’s visage rather than a fictionalized recreation like a painting.

The only thing that seemed to stand out was the missing tooth. This nearly perfect, lifelike countenance had a flaunting imperfection. It made no sense, though artists loved juxtaposition. Perhaps the imperfection aimed to do just that: enhance the perfection of the rest of the visage, yet draw a viewer to a slightly unsettling dose of reality. Dr. Isaiah abandoned those thoughts. He was no artist, nor did he ever wish to be one.

Dr. Isaiah moved on to take samples of the canvas, paint, and easel. Taking a hobby knife and several small jars, he scraped the easel and canvas on the back of the painting, depositing the debris into the jars. Then he moved to the front of the portrait and took scrapings of as many colors he could. While he was collecting the samples, he felt he was being watched.

Nobody had entered the room, the door stood stoic and still. The humming of a space heater was all that disturbed the air. Yet Dr. Isaiah did not feel alone. The hair on the back of his neck tingled in anticipation. A cold sweat dripped from his brow onto his nose. He backed away slowly to face the painting. The eyes caught him, like moth to a flame, and he thought he saw the smile on its face tighten. The skin around its eyes pushed up into sharper lines, the teeth baring with the gums as pink crowns. Dr. Isaiah knew it was watching him, it wanted him.

He stumbled back, unaware of his speed, and squeezed his eyes shut. As the feeling left his body, he nearly collapsed in the aftermath. A few moments passed, and he finally shook his head and walked to an examination table in the corner of the room. He deposited his samples onto microscope slides and began to examine them.

Everything was normal until Isaiah got to his last slide. The easel and canvas were made of common materials, with some synthetic elements thrown in as alternatives just for the ease of production. The last slide was of the paint. Dr. Isaiah loaded it into the microscope and peered into the eyepieces. The slide indeed held paint, the cell structure reflected as much. The different colors each showed unique characteristics. Each one synthetic in nature yet customized to fit each color.

Just as Isaiah was about to look away, something caught his eye. Isaiah could see, mixed in with the paint, were dying blood cells—human blood cells. There was not a lot, and Isaiah would have believed it to be remnants from contact with Dr. Atticus’s team, but the report from Captain Short had stated the scene was bloodless, almost sterile. It was still possible, but Isaiah felt his confidence for the theory falter with every minute. The more that was revealed to him, the deeper he felt the hole in his stomach became.

Dr. Isaiah took the slide out and secured it for further analysis. He looked back at the painting and stared for several minutes. It stared back, and Isaiah felt it had entered the room with him. The lone hole in its mouth widened like a cavern, daring to swallow all that was illuminated in the room. Raw presence, dripping with greed and jealousy, poured from it. Dr, Isaiah could feel the room shift, air displacing as if a presence had entered the space. The air crackled like lightning, and Dr. Isaiah felt as though something would soon snap.

A very small thud sounded. Dr. Isaiah jumped from his chair. Behind him, on the ground, was a tape. It must have fallen from the stack of documents on his desk. He had forgotten about it in his infatuation with the painting, and he picked it up. Dr. Isaiah had bought an old tape player and TV for this purpose. Tentatively he inserted it to watch the footage.

It was surveillance footage of a cell. The meta-data in the corner of the image was from three years prior. At the top of the image, increasing numbers showed that time was passing. The video was rolling. The first few minutes were made up of a scientist adjusting the camera. Yet after the scientist left, Isaiah was presented with the face of the painting.

The painting in the footage was vastly different, but obviously related to the one in Isaiah’s lab. It was like a grotesque framework, the flesh a kind of scaffolding. The face he saw on the TV was sparse, with no eyes, ears, or nose. The cheeks were sallow, the skin pale and tinged. It was bald, with tiny hairs dotted here and there on its head, and the mouth…there were no teeth.

Dr. Isaiah whirled to look at the other painting. The smile had definitely become wider, he was sure of it. With it, he could see that the eyes had come alive. They were glistening, and the capillaries in the corners had reddened. The face stared, haunting, enraged. Dr. Isaiah remembered the words he read in the little black book.

It must feed.

The empty hole, reaching out. Dr. Isaiah was not staring into the eyes of the image any longer, but that glaring hole where the tooth should be, needed to be. He felt drowsy, and before he could turn to leave, a thought forced itself into his brain, a tendril of black silk and saliva, warm and wet and rotten.

And I will be the one to feed it.

Before he could shake the thought from his mind, he felt a gentle push toward the painting. He was drugged, and no matter how hard he willed himself to turn away, he couldn’t move. The opening in the mouth, cavernous and glaring, a maw of void reaching out into the world, grasping for anything to fill it called to the scientist. Isaiah stumbled forward, and reached his hand out to touch it. Just a small caress. And as the pad of his fingers touched the canvas—

Snap.

...

The orderlies gathered the papers together and deposited them into large plastic bags. All equipment was packed safely into boxes and placed on dollies to be taken out and incinerated. They were told everything had to be destroyed, hidden and buried. Nobody must find it. There was an empty easel in the corner of the room, various portraits tacked around it. Right in front of the easel, being zipped into a body bag, was Dr. Isaiah. His mouth was curled into a grimace, or possibly a smile. It pushed into his dead eyes, and tightened the skin around his gray lips. His face, otherwise, was serene in death. His hair was well done, his skin clear and unblemished. The only strange thing about his appearance were his teeth. One of them, in the corner, was missing.