Marvel Magic Case Files

Dr. Peters was pulled to a halt by a force from the depths of her being. Nothing—not even the filter canister she carried on her shoulder, not even the lives of her crew—was as important as the glimpse of that small figure. That small figure brutally occupied her thoughts, ruthlessly excluding all emotions. She stopped, dropped the filter canister, and rushed toward that figure like a fish hooked. Without hesitation, she stepped into the engine bay filled with massive spikes. The slowly rotating spherical hyperspace engine filled her entire field of vision—as if reminding her of something, she saw her pale, thin, sickly son opening his arms to her—the thought of finding the boy became incredibly urgent, making her breath quicken. Instinctively, she crossed the walkway above the cooling pool and slipped into the maintenance tunnel on the other side.

She caught a glimpse of the boy's fleeting figure, as if he were waiting for her, guiding her to the destination she longed for. She went to where the figure had disappeared, where a straight ladder led directly to the top of the engine compartment. When she looked up and saw the boy in the white down jacket running across the mesh floor, she didn't hesitate to chase after him. The climbing and chasing exhausted her, the maze-like passageways made her dizzy, until she saw the boy stop, stand there, and smile at her.

In that instant, a feeling of happiness filled her entire body, and she couldn't help but relax.

She completely forgot where she was, completely forgot Captain Miller's orders, forgot the video she had seen, forgot Lieutenant Smith's fear, even forgot the bloodied, dying Justin; she only wanted all the warmth of the world to envelop her thoughts. All she could remember was her son, that poor, thin, disabled boy, that boy who would never be able to stand and play with his peers—and now she saw him standing before her, perfectly healthy. At that moment, as a mother, she was overwhelmed with immense happiness. She only wanted to hug him, kiss his cheek, hear him say he loved her, and tell him she had always missed him—she wanted to tell him that he could enjoy everything his peers should enjoy, and that she would never leave him again. Because she was his mother, and she would always love him.

She heard nothing, saw nothing; in the shadows, nightmares danced ecstatically, spewing malice and venomous saliva and bodily fluids. They yearned to satisfy their insatiable hunger, awaiting the souls of the weak to ascend the altar, to desecrate in the sacrifice of the sea of ​​souls all the self-proclaimed superior and beautiful emotions, thoughts, and civilizations created by intelligent beings. She only saw the boy standing not far away, and she longed to give him a hug, just as the ship had hoped.

That's what Dr. Peters did; she went up to her son and hugged him.

Falling, an almost endless fall, as if it were all over in an instant. The steel mesh deck spun and rose before her eyes. She only realized she was falling the moment she hit the pipes. She only had time for a short, terrified scream; the excruciating pain of her broken bones didn't even reach her brain before she crashed into the engine bay's cooling pool. The violent impact shattered every bone in her body; blood gushed from her torn skin and broken bones. Her body, pulverized like a rag doll, lay in the blood-soaked cooling pool, her blurred vision only able to make out the boy standing high above.

He crouched there, head bowed, watching her until she exhaled her last breath, until the adrenaline could no longer propel her heart, before turning away, satisfied. Time meant nothing to him, but the seven years of waiting at the edge of the solar system had taught him patience. He instinctively craved more prey, yet he also knew that making his hunger undisguised would cause him to lose even more. But now he no longer needed to be patient. He had found a way to obtain more prey from the souls of his sacrifices; an entire planet awaited his hunt. Soon, his chosen apostle would arrive, answering the call.

When Dr. Will ran frantically into the engine bay, the first thing he saw wasn't Peters lying in blood and water, but the slowly spinning giant engine. It wasn't until the smell of blood and the gruesome sight of the corpse that he was awakened, and the good side of humanity, like a candle lit in a dark storm, offered a faint light.

He touched the still-warm corpse in horror, even though it was covered in a mixture of blood and coolant.

He saw that Dr. Peters' eyes had turned completely black, perhaps from the coagulation of blood seeping from ruptured blood vessels in his eyeballs, or perhaps just from the lighting, but in any case, he found those eyes incredibly terrifying, and all he wanted to do was stand up and get away from it all. But a voice stopped him, a voice he knew all too well. He slowly stood up, looked around, and involuntarily took a step forward. He entered a bathroom with white tiles and a white waterproof mat.

This is his home.

"Claire?" He held his breath, calling his wife cautiously. He saw himself in the mirror—a disheveled, terrified middle-aged man, his dark blue spacesuit stained with blood and water—but he saw more than that; he saw his wife. She wore an indigo-printed nightgown, her face still beautiful beneath her short, curly brown hair. Dr. Will smiled. "It's me. I'm home."

The woman didn't hear her and continued applying lipstick in front of the mirror.

"I wasn't there for you when you needed me," Dr. Will said, walking up to the woman and trying to soften his voice. "I'm sorry, I let work get in the way." The next moment, the woman came to the bathtub and reached in to fiddle with something. Dr. Will couldn't remember how Claire had gotten to the bathtub, but he knew what was coming.

"Claire, no!"

At Dr. Will's pleading, the woman took off her bathrobe and lay down in the warm water.

Dr. Will couldn't remember how much time had passed; he only remembered pleading and agonizing, but unable to stop Claire from slitting her wrists. When he came to his senses, he saw Claire's pale body lying in deep red blood, her eyelids slightly open, her beautiful brown curls spread out in the water, just like when he returned home that day. Only then, Claire had been soaking in the water for days, her swollen body filling the bathtub. Immense pain and guilt overwhelmed him, like poison injected into his veins. He could only kneel on the ground, weeping, begging himself never to experience it again. Then he saw Claire in the mirror again, the living, beautiful Claire. Time and again, she lay in the bathtub filled with blood, and he could only watch her gradually swell, rot, and emit a foul stench.

"I've always been sorry..."

"Billy, it's alright now." The voice eased the pain. He saw a pair of clean, slender, woman's feet stop in front of him. He looked up and saw Claire smiling at him with her empty eyes. "Stay with me, okay?"

She extended her hand to Dr. Will, and he shook it without hesitation.

Kneeling in the engine cooling pool, Dr. Will strained with all his might to force a mad scream that no human could possibly utter. He had seen it all. He had seen humanity's insignificance and the ship's intentions; he had seen the fate that all intelligent beings in the universe thought they could escape but could never escape; he had seen the point where the universe and time had completely collapsed, and the insane, insane, god-like figure laughing maniacally in the ruins of that timeless, spaceless atomic soup. He had seen too much, and he had to gouge out his own eyes with his fingernails while screaming, just as they had done when they first saw the wounded corpse upon boarding the ship.

Just like Claire.

The place they are going to does not require the primitive visual organs that Earth's organisms have evolved.

--------

Lieutenant Smith slammed all the filter canisters he had collected onto the table and hurriedly pressed the intercom button on the center console. He was the first to return to the Lewis and Clark; no one wanted to leave that cursed ship more than him, and he had felt from the beginning that it was no good place.

"Cooper, how much longer? I want to get out of here as soon as possible!"

Lieutenant Cooper, dressed in his spacesuit, used a special nail gun for space repairs to fasten the final piece of the skin. With the help of special glue and rivets, the Lewis and Clark's airtightness was restored. Lieutenant Cooper scanned the area, confirming that no white condensation was once again rising from beneath the unrepaired skin. He nodded in satisfaction. "You can kiss my ass now, because I'm almost done. Pack up your tools and you can leave. Two minutes at most."

"understood."

Lieutenant Smith stuck his chewing gum to the communication screen. He was about to change the filter canister when the sound of the airlock opening caught his attention. Taking a few steps forward, he saw Dr. Will standing with his back to him in front of the connecting arm airlock through the observation window. "Dr. Will!" he shouted, chasing after him. "Stop! Get back to the ship!" No matter how much he shouted, Dr. Will walked through the airlock without turning his head and into the connecting arm. "Damn it." A bad feeling washed over him, and Lieutenant Smith quickly pressed the communication button. "Captain Miller, respond if you hear me!"

"What is it, Smith?"

"I suspect Dr. Will has tampered with the Lewis and Clark, sir."

Lieutenant Smith's intuition was always terrifyingly accurate, as evidenced by his initial aversion to the Event Horizon. Both Justin's ordeal and the restored navigator's logs proved Smith's intuition to be highly reliable, especially on this ship. Miller trusted him without hesitation. The moment he looked down, he noticed that one of the directional explosive bombs separating the cockpit from the engine room was missing from the Event Horizon's long bridge; exposed wires were tumbling together, short-circuiting and sparking. Recalling Dr. Will's words before he left, this discovery filled him with immense dread.

"Smith, get out of there!"

"Say it again, sir?"

"A bomb is missing; Will probably have placed it on the Lewis and Clark!"

"Impossible, the ship was just repaired!"

Lieutenant Smith swallowed hard and began searching frantically. At the same time, Captain Miller rushed towards the connecting arm. "Where the hell is it?" Lieutenant Smith turned over every tool in the repair shop, but found nothing. Just as he was sweating profusely with anxiety, he noticed that the label on his uniform locker was covered in blood, and even the canvas cover had a bloody handprint on it. He opened the dark green canvas, revealing a white warning label underneath.

"Don't mess around, Smith! Wait for me!" Captain Miller shouted as he ran toward the connecting arm.

Lieutenant Smith pressed the flashing switch, and a label popped out, revealing the timer underneath.

00:00:06

00:00:05

00:00:04

Lieutenant Smith lowered his head and closed his eyes, trembling.

Captain Miller lay on the observation window of the airlock, which was covered in ice, and roared as he pounded on the airlock.

He saw the violent flames and shockwaves violently smash out of the control room, shattering the main structure and skin of the Lewis and Clark. He saw the successive explosions ignite the fuel tanks and oxidizers on the Lewis and Clark; the powerful impact was like a deafening bell tolling in near-Earth orbit, the teeth-grinding sound and enormous vibrations traveling along the connecting arms into the airlock, not only throwing him directly onto the deck but also tossing Lieutenant Cooper, who was still standing on the surface of the ship, out of the way. When Captain Miller got up again, he only saw the inferno outside the airlock, the ship's support structure and various pipelines helplessly extending into the still-burning void.

He staggered out of the airlock, despair almost making him lose his footing. All hope was gone; they would never be able to return safely to Earth. Then anger flared up like oil in his veins, like the flames that had set off the Lewis and Clark. He glanced at his watch and pressed the communication device next to the airlock.

"DJ!"

"What is it?"

"The Lewis and Clark is destroyed, and Smith and Cooper are dead." Before Major DJ could process this sudden bad news, Captain Miller roared, "It's Wilgan's doing! If you see him, kill him!"

"I understand." Major DJ picked up the bone saw.

"Watch out, DJ."

"Don't worry, Will, I'll take care of him."

When Major D.J. turned around, he found Dr. Will standing in front of him.

E. stared at him with empty eye sockets, his face covered in deep scratches from fingernails. Before Major DJ could react, Dr. Will grabbed him by the neck and lifted him up, gripping his throat with extraordinary strength. Then, he punched the bone saw out of DJ's hand. DJ felt his finger and metacarpal bones shatter. He was lifted up so high that the blood vessels in his neck and trachea were compressed by the immense force—judging by his expertise, he would fall into a blackout and coma within five seconds due to cerebral ischemia. He tried to attack Dr. Will's arm or face, but Dr. Will simply grinned, staring at him with terrifying eye sockets.

This wasn't Dr. Will's power, but the power of that thing wearing his skin. His struggling voice carried through the microphone to the other side. Although he couldn't see what was happening here, Captain Miller instinctively sensed that something was wrong.

"DJ, what happened? DJ!"

"It is calling you."

Dr. Will, or rather, what was once Dr. Will, swung his arm and slammed DJ against the bulkhead. Like a puppet, he was grabbed by Dr. Will and hurled at every turn. In his remaining sanity, he judged that his ribs were shattered. If he could see his twisted arm, he would add another diagnosis. Meanwhile, Captain Miller sprinted from the airlock toward the medical bay, stopping past the cabinets storing repair tools to retrieve a rotary nail gun with a gas canister attached from beneath items like gas masks and fire extinguishers.

"Alright, Dr. Will. If you don't want to leave your ship, then you can forget about leaving."