Alienation

by S E Anderson

  “Doing what you do?” I asked. Again, he nodded. “But why? Why not stay, for a little while? You said you liked it. Why do you have to keep moving, keep leaving?”

  “It's all I know. It's all I've ever known. I can't remember doing anything else. I just ... have to keep moving.”

  “There's something you're not telling me,” I sputtered. “Look, I know you have secrets. You're good at hiding them, but not the fact you actually have them. Come on, if this is the last time we're ever going to talk, tell me ... just tell me ... tell me what you're running from.”

  “I'm not running from anything—”

  “I don't believe you.”

  “Let me finish,” he snapped. “I'm not running from anything. I'm looking for something. I'm trying to find my home, all right?”

  “Home?” I asked, confused. “But why?”

  Suddenly, the knot in my stomach burst. My belly wrenched in the wrong direction, twisting apart in a way that shouldn't have been physically possible. I fell to my knees, uttering a single, heavy gasp of pain. My body trembled, shuddering, the air catching in my throat.

  “Shit. Sally!” Zander's hand was on my burning cheek, assessing the situation. “What's wrong? What's happening? Can you speak?”

  I couldn't. I felt as if opening my mouth would allow my stomach to escape. Instead, I slapped my belly.

  I almost threw up when I looked down. Slapping my belly had caused things to move there, a wriggling hive under my taut skin visible even through my shirt. Things were crawling inside me. My belly was swelling and writhing like it was a bag of termites and cockroaches.

  My heart pounded. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't open my mouth. There was no air in my lungs, and my head spun until things turned dark and I fell backward, the dark, velvet sky filled my entire field of vision.

  Zander's head was suddenly in front of the darkness, his eyes wild. An arm slid under my neck.

  “Hospital,” he said, lifting me into his arms. He dashed to the rail and jumped off the building.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Exactly What I Didn’t Want to Have Happen, Happens

  Sometimes, you call 9-1-1 if an emergency occurs. In others, your best friend throws you off a spacescraper.

  I probably would have screamed, but I was way past that. We were falling so quickly, I couldn't imagine ever going at that speed. Even with Zander's arms wound tightly around me, trying their best to comfort me, I felt as if I were a boulder and they were string. My head reeled and I jammed my tightly-shut eyes against his neck.

  The wind strangled the air around my ears. It burned my skin with the icy coldness of a million particles being shoved aside by massive, plummeting humans. The drop in my gut was enough to tell me how dangerously fast we were falling, but the wind was an unnecessary emphasis.

  Just when I thought we couldn't fall any further, when I thought we would smash into the pavement, it stopped. Zander was firmly planted on the ground, like he had walked off a boat rather than the tallest building this side of the galaxy.

  But he did not stand still for long. As soon as he was on terra firma, he ran. I didn't think anyone could run that fast, but the wind was back in my ears as if we had never stopped falling. He was a bullet. I was the gun.

  I couldn't see where we were going; my eyes pressed tightly against the cloth of his shirt as I tried to breathe through my nose. I didn't want to see anymore. The last image on my retinas was the horror of my writhing stomach. Zander held me tighter, and I almost imagined I could hear the blood moving through his veins.

  But I couldn’t hear any pulse other than my own blood rushing in my ears.

  “Your heartbeat ...” I struggled to say, shaking.

  “I don't have one,” he replied sharply. “Stay calm. I'm here.”

  My stomach was alive. It pulsed and swirled as it writhed under my shirt, little needles drilling their way out from inside my stomach. I felt numb, the signal coming from my nerves completely saturating my brain. I pushed my hand against my belly, trying to push the swelling down, but it was getting bigger by the second.

  I wasn't helping.

  I was safe, cradled in warm arms. But then Zander was pushing me away from him. I wanted to cling onto my hold, but he laid me on a sticky seat. Cold leather clung to my boiling skin. A breeze wafted over me, and I forced my eyes open to see the same velvety sky I had been looking at when I’d closed them.

  I was in a car. More precisely, a convertible.

  The breeze wasn't enough to cool the heat of my skin, though. I realized the seat wasn't sticky: I was. I could barely move my hands, but Zander strapped me in as words flew out of his mouth faster than spilling M&Ms.

  “She needs to go to the hospital, right now,” he said, trying to keep his calm. It wasn’t working. His voice was harsh, but it was commanding and powerful too.

  “Who does?” I managed out of parched lips. Zander stroked my hair—or maybe he was pulling the sticky strands away from my face so I could breathe.

  “No way,” another voice sputtered. “That's my car! That's my car.”

  He repeated the last word as if he couldn't find another to convey how much this car was his. He sounded mad. He sounded distant.

  “I have”—there was a pause, during which Zander reached into his pocket and pulled out every bill and coin he had on him; I watched the scene between fluttering eyelids—“fifty thousand. That's fifty grand worth of Allied credits—all with your name on it. Do we have a deal?”

  “A deal?” There was a hesitation in the man's voice, but the sum must have been impressive because he sounded pleasantly surprised. “Of course you've got a deal. Just let me get my stuff out.”

  The driver’s door slammed, and suddenly Zander was on my right, his hands flying over the complicated driving console. Lights flickered on and off, and the engine revved, coming alive under his deft hands.

  Apparently, people drove on the left in this solar system. Odd thing to focus on as I was dying.

  “Everything's going to be fine, Sally,” he said with as much reassurance as he could muster, but the tremor in his voice told me it wasn't enough to reassure himself. “You're going to be fine. I've got you.”

  “It's Alien!” I screamed as another twist of pain rushed up my spine. It felt as if my stomach was ripping in half. I grabbed my seat, trying to calm the agony, trying not to scream.

  The car shot forward, slamming me against the sticky chair. We plunged off the platform parking lot into the nothingness of the highway, my eyes squeezing shut against the terror of the chasm.

  “Don't be xenophobic, now,” Zander muttered, his focus elsewhere.

  “No, no!” I smashed my fists repeatedly into the soft flesh of my writhing belly. “It's the alien from Alien! Holy shit, it's a chest burster!”

  I sobbed, pushing my hands against my crawling stomach. Whatever was in there was moving fast, sensing my panic and the car's acceleration. I pushed harder, trying to crush the thing—things, I didn't know. I just wanted to snap in half so the thing would break with me. Everything blared and mashed together.

  “Sally, you have to stay calm.” Zander swung the car sideways then down, dropping us a good hundred feet.

  Tears welled in my eyes; from the pain or from the fear, I couldn't tell. They stung like they were liquid fire. Hair whipped my face, each strand going hundreds of miles an hour, ripping at my skin and sticking to my sweat. Even the inside of my head burned. My thoughts spun in circles, faster and faster, faster and faster.

  “How can I stay calm? I can't ... I can't breathe!”

  The car dove. Like dropping a stone into a lake, we went down, and we went down fast. I clutched the seat with both hands, one of my nails snapping on it. I closed my eyes and held them shut. I wasn't going to open them for anything.

  “Then breathe,” Zander ordered, in that voice of a general commanding his troops. “Inhale and exhale.”

  “I can't!”

  “Do it for Marcy,”
he snapped. “Do it for Marcy and Dany and Matt. Breathe.”

  “Matt's dead!”

  “What?!”

  My head swung sharply to the right as a huge, heavy vehicle collided with us.

  Zander wasn't the only one speeding on this stretch of highway, but at least he was a good driver, though that was an understatement. As our car leveled out into one of the hovering lanes, joining the masses, someone sprung from left field and rammed into us. Our car turned into a plunging and spinning car, tumbling out of control, spiraling off and away from the road.

  “Warning, warning,” the car blared, lights flashing. “Out of perimeter bounds. Please readjust course.”

  And then, quite suddenly, there was nothing under me anymore. The seatbelt tore open. I felt my skin peel from the seat, and then nothing at all. I forced my eyes open and saw cars whizzing past me—above me.

  I was falling.

  Screaming.

  My stomach lurched as I tumbled. I grabbed wildly at every passing thing, trying to hold onto something, anything to stop my fall. Unfortunately, nothing I grabbed was attached to our car, so we tumbled together, me and the old shopping bag, a random hat, anything the man who had sold us his car had forgotten to claim.

  I got a last look at Zander as he clung to the steering wheel of the pitched car, his hand extended to grab mine. I saw him scream my name as gravity overtook me, pulling me down—

  Crash.

  My back hit a car. My stomach faltered, but now it was my back in pain, bruising, burning as I rolled off the hood of the vehicle, falling again, face forward in a nosedive. My fingers tried to clutch onto something, anything, but they were too slow to respond, and soon I was falling again—falling into the depths of the city.

  Crash.

  The car I slammed into next was driving quickly, and I gripped it. I was in luck. It was an antenna flag. The thing was dark blue and orange, and it burned my hands. We were flying, and I was being dragged forward, clutching the flag, my body flapping backward in the wind like an antenna ornament.

  The driver turned around and glared. It was a big, burly looking thing, all hairy and with a slew of eyes that spiraled on a special head, leaving a round hole for a mouth in the middle. At least I thought it was a mouth. From all the teeth it flashed at me, I was pretty sure that not only was it a mouth, but an angry, scowling mouth.

  It swung its controller sharply to the side. The car swerved. The flag snapped and sent me careening out of control. I was falling again.

  Crash.

  Crash, Crash, Crash.

  All the way down.

  The only upside? The rest of my body felt as bad as my stomach, so things evened out to a general agony across the board. I was going to be bruised in the morning.

  If I survived until then.

  And then the cars were gone. The world around me grew darker, like I was plunging into ink. For a moment, without anything around me to define my fall, it was as if I were floating, albeit on a gusty day. I saw nothing.

  It smelled awful, though.

  At least I wasn't going to see the ground when I slammed into it.

  Only, when I hit it at terminal velocity, I went straight through it, ripping the fabric as I fell—an awning. So old I didn’t bounce but tore straight through it. Or maybe I was just falling too fast.

  An awning, in pitch blackness. I didn't have time to think about how weird that was. Already, I was hitting another, only this time I bounced and rolled downward. My hands were too slow to grab it, so I fell to the next awning.

  And the next one.

  Finally, I saw a dim, gray glow below me. Somewhere between bounces, there in the darkness—light. I hit the ground, hard, landing on my back. My head smacked against the pavement as my lungs expelled all the air I had ever breathed in one go.

  I don't know if I passed out; the world was black, either way. But as my eyes fluttered open, I knew there was no logical reason for me to still be alive.

  But here I was, panting on the hard ground, moving my joints and assessing that nothing, not a single thing, was broken. Everything hurt—oh wow, it hurt—but everything was working.

  I couldn’t believe I could still move. I shouldn’t have been able to. A fall from that height, I should have been dead. And, yet, here I was, with the palms of my hands numb and stinging. My kneecaps felt shattered, but I could still bend them—though that brought out another cry of pain.

  I should have died.

  I pushed myself up, whimpering and brushing the dirt off my clothes. I was alive. I could stand, even, but I was also in a dingy, smelly alleyway. Even looking up, I couldn't see the cars or even the city—only blackness, in every direction.

  I was fucked.

  More like Fucked. Capital F.

  I gagged, feeling my stomach twist. The pain of it threw me back to the ground, back to my knees. I fell into a pool of stagnant water, but I barely noticed it soaking into my jeans. I braced myself on my hands as the contents of my stomach rose and spilled from my mouth. Thousands of beings crawled upwards and out, hitting the pavement and hightailing it out of there the second they were on solid ground, getting away from me as fast as they could.

  I was extremely glad for the poor lighting. I had no urge to see the things that had grown in my stomach. The large, maggoty things escaped into the shadows, gray and fat and covered in slime.

  The sight of them, the thought of where they had been, twisted my insides again. I threw up in pure revulsion. The idea that those creatures had been crawling through me sent my stomach back into knots.

  Next time, no matter what I thought of the woman, I'd take Blayde's advice. I really should not have had that pizza.

  I let myself breathe for a minute, but I knew I had to get up and going. I didn't know where to, though. There didn't seem to be much else down here, and I wasn't looking forward to wandering around and getting lost.

  Zander would be searching for me right now. I shouldn’t go away, but I couldn't sit around and do nothing. I was in pain. Every muscle screamed, and my entire body was probably one big, purple bruise. Just getting on my feet hurt like crap. Part of me felt better now those things were out of me. A rush of endorphins hurried in to fix me.

  “Okay—assessment time,” I said aloud, which proved that at least my mouth was working.

  The rest of my body seemed in order. All my joints were stiff, but they bent where they needed to. Nothing felt broken, though it hurt worse than anything I’d experienced before.

  Mind? My anxiety was strangely under control. Thank god for therapy and Prozac—neither of which I had with me right now. Crap. Just thinking about my anxiety was triggering my anxiety, so I forced myself through the breathing techniques, attempting to break the spiral before it began.

  “Don’t. Even. Think. About it.”

  Instead, I focused on standing again. I felt my wet knees and shrugged—a bad idea; my shoulder blades were not happy—and wiped my muddy palms over my jeans. Then, gingerly, I forced myself to walk, to put one foot in front of the other and head toward the source of light.

  I guess miracles did exist. The light was coming from what looked remarkably like a telephone booth.

  It wasn’t a TARDIS, but it would do.

  It was probably the warmest gray glow I had ever seen, like a beacon beckoning me to come closer. I didn't need to be asked twice. I scurried in, closing the door behind me. It even smelled nice, radiating an air of freshly cleaned sheets. The little room was a haven of warmth in this weird darkness.

  One wall held what looked like a very large mirror. Apparently it was a video chat booth as well. While I didn't like where I had landed, I had to admit the aliens had some cool tech. The little black disk on the top of the screen must have been the camera, watching me from its perch above.

  What was the emergency number here? Not nine-one-one from back home, certainly—that number was of no use in my protection on an alien world—but there must have been a movement sensor because t
he computer powered up on its own, and the screen flashed blue. The first thing that flashed was a big, pulse button marked “Emergency Services.” Perfect.

  I tapped it, and a fresh face appeared on the screen. She looked human. Maybe they paired dispatchers accordingly. There was even a serenity about her, like she would lead me through a yoga meditation. Her cheekbones were high, and her skin polished like she were an opal.

  “Emergency services, how may I help you?” she asked, giving me a motherly look. I tried to let her reassure me, but the smile ended on her side of the screen.

  “Hello, I'm Sally Webber,” I said awkwardly, my knees trembling. “I just fell to the bottom of the city. I need help.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “I threw up some parasites, and I'm not sure what shape I'm in. I don't understand why I'm in one piece—”

  “Ma'am, I'll send a dispatch right now. Where are you?”

  “I have no idea. Can you trace the call?”

  “Easily. What did you say you name was?”

  “Sally Webber.”

  “Can you stand still for a minute?”

  I obliged and waited, not quite sure what was going on.

  “I'm sorry. We don't have your name or face registered. Are you from an Alliance planet?”

  “No, I'm from Earth.”

  “Never heard of it.” Her patience visibly flickered. “Anyone we can contact for you?”

  “My friends don't have phones,” I said, realizing just how bad my situation was. “They could be anywhere.”

  “Don't worry, ma'am. We'll have someone bring you back in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Please present your hand for scanning.”

  “Scanning?”

  “Yes,” she said, annoyed. “We need your Identichip so we can process you.”

  “That's a bit problematic. You see, I don't have one. Our planet doesn't require them.”

  “Any other identification I could use? An ID card?”

  “Sure.” I reached to my side, and my heart dropped. My wallet was in my duffel bag, with Blayde. “I lost it in the fall,” I answered sheepishly.