The Specter Rising

by James Aspen

  She pulled a small packet from a belt pouch. She tore it open and pulled out a thin sheet of sheer material dripping with a gelatinous gel. Unabashedly, she pulled up her shirt. Paul gagged when he saw her wound.

  Four deep slashes in her stomach oozed blood and revealed a grisly glimpse into her tissues. Torn blue muscle and the curd-like mass of brown fat drowned in her blue blood. Bright red waves of color rippled out from the wounds on her dull lavender skin. He dry heaved in his mouth a little until she placed the sheet over the wound, the slick gel making the material cling to her skin. She let out an animalistic snarl as she pressed the sheet to her skin and jerked her shirt back down.

  “There, that will stop the bleeding.” She glanced at the tops of the buildings and the alley’s intersection. “We have to move in case there are more Varanul nearby.”

  “Uh, okay, this way.” Paul motioned towards the end of the alley.

  “Lead the way, human.” She pulled her cloak on, wincing slightly as a dark red pattern flashed across her face again.

  He stared at her as she moved down the alley. Signs of the brief battle still smoked around him, and bodies of the creatures scattered the street.

  What the hell is happening? he thought, watching the limping alien woman move down the alley with a stoic grace. He shook his head and rushed to catch up.

  “You can call me Paul. ‘Human’ might make you, uh, stand out,” he said once he caught up.

  She glanced at him and nodded. “Okay, Paul. You may call me Edolit Vyn.”

  ***

  They made it within a block of his apartment before the tall woman became too unsteady to walk on her own. Paul had to help her stay upright, draping her arm around his shoulders and putting an arm around her waist. Her muscles rippled against him. Edolit was powerfully built and slightly taller than him, and he could barely handle her well-toned frame leaning down on him heavily.

  Plus, he wasn’t exactly the weight lifting type.

  I need to work out more, he thought, his muscles burning.

  He had her stop and lean against a building a few times as the strain of carrying her wore him down. She never complained, but he felt her studying him whenever he had to take a break. He imagined she was thinking about how weak humans were, judging the species by his lack of endurance.

  They passed a couple of people out for their nightly walks, and Paul imagined how they looked. A wide-eyed nerd, completely out of his depth, and a tall purple-skinned woman bleeding blue beneath a dark cloak. It baffled him that people didn’t give them a second glance, only passed by with a casual smile or nod.

  Guess we look like a couple of weird college kids out on the town, he thought.

  With great effort, he helped her up the stairs into his apartment.

  Paul set her down on his loveseat, and she muttered in pained gratitude. Her skin had lost some of its lavender tone and looked sickly gray. Her eyelids drooped, barely covering her vibrant green eyes.

  “Can I clean your wounds?” He didn’t know what else to do besides clean the wounds and bandage her up. Edolit hadn’t seemed concerned about the severity of her injuries before, but he couldn’t just let her bleed.

  She nodded with a weak smile and a flash of pale green across her skin. Paul found it disconcerting to see how frail she had become after watching her defeat a group of monstrous creatures alone.

  Paul clamored into the bathroom, searching for anything that might be semi-helpful. He cursed his understocked bathroom immediately. As bachelor-pads went, his was more unprepared than most. Hydrogen peroxide and a couple of clean-ish towels was all he could come up with. He didn’t even have any Band Aids.

  He rushed out to find Edolit in an unconscious heap on his loveseat, her chest rising and falling in the slow, steady cadence of sleep.

  Great, now what?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHAT ARE YOU? Paul thought as he carefully cleaned Edolit’s wounds.

  He left the massive stomach wound alone. Ignoring the gory stomach wound, he focused on small slashes and burned holes in her arms and torso instead, trusting her gel bandage would take care of the gash.

  Gently, he wiped away her coagulated blood, the sticky cerulean gel clinging to his warm rag. Her blood was strange, but not completely unheard of. He knew of a few animals that had blue blood. Horseshoe crabs. Spiders. Snails. Octopus. He assumed it carried oxygen with copper instead of iron. Paul found he enjoyed thinking about how her biology worked. He’d been avoiding thinking about anything he’d learned with his degree since he’d found no job remotely related to it after college.

  Once Edolit’s wounds were cleaned, he poured hydrogen peroxide over them. She flinched and stirred while the liquid bubbled in her wounds, but remained unconscious. Rippling waves of various shades of dark red spread along the surface of her lilac skin in quick pulses.

  I wonder how her skin does that. And why… His mind pondered the possibilities of what might drive such an evolutionary adaptation, straining a little as he tried to recall his anatomy classes. Camouflage would be an obvious reason, like most of Earth’s chromatophores, but the way the pulses spread from her wound sites made him think it was a form of non-verbal communication.

  He paused and looked at the bottle of peroxide.

  Crap, what if this stuff is poisonous to her? Could those pulses be a warning or pain reaction?

  Feeling a little foolish, he screwed the bottle closed and set it aside. He’d better wait until she was awake to ask. Plain soap and water would be enough to clean bacteria anyway, she’d have to heal on her own.

  Blood and grime washed from her wounds, he got a good look at the extent of her injuries. He expected to see horrible laser burns and deep gouging tears from shrapnel, but most of her wounds were almost completely healed already.

  What the hell…

  Looking closer, he could see her flesh was growing back at an extraordinary rate. Grisly tendrils of flesh were growing across her wounds in a webbed patchwork of proliferating tissue. The edges of this new skin glowed faintly, and he thought he saw something moving across the surface, too small to see clearly without a magnifying lens. He quickly checked one of the smaller wounds that he had cleaned earlier and saw that it was completely healed, with no signs of a scar.

  “Wow,” he whispered. He traced his finger lightly over the soft, fresh skin where the wound had been and watched the myriad of colors ripple through her skin in response to his touch.

  A flashing light caught his eye, and he glanced at the metal device embedded in the skin on the inside of her left forearm. The device was a smooth silver metal mounted directly into her skin with soft edges. A screen took up most of its surface, with buttons and slots along its edges. The screen was mostly blank, but had an array of small, multicolored dots along one side blinking in a vaguely familiar pattern. As he stared at the thing, trying to decipher its meaning, another dot appeared next to the other ones.

  “Is that a health meter?”

  It was exactly like the health bar of dozens of video games he’d played over the years. He leaned back, staring at the blinking lights. Once again, he became overwhelmed with the burning question that had been plaguing him since Edolit saved him.

  What the hell is happening?!

  The laser burns and minor scrapes taken care of, Paul peeked at the gel bandage she had put over her stomach wound. The gelatinous sheet still pressed firmly against her skin, and the thin sections of her wound were already knitting themselves back together. They oozed with a clear viscous liquid between the incomplete patchwork of fresh skin, but were no longer bleeding.

  Paul relaxed. She might be unconscious, but she wouldn’t bleed to death on his couch.

  That’d be fun to explain. I swear, officer, this alien was alive when I brought her home. I didn’t kill her.

  Satisfied that she was out of danger, he poured the bowl of bloody water into the sink and washed his hands. He watched the pale blue blood spiral down the drain with fascina
tion while he scrubbed his hands clean.

  Paul walked into his room and pulled the blanket off his bed. He grimaced as he caught a whiff of it - he’d been telling himself that he’d take it to the laundry mat “any day” for weeks now. The woman stirred slightly as he placed the blanket over her, but stayed asleep. He kept his eyes on her as he sat down at his computer desk.

  Propping his elbows on his knees and placing his chin in his hands, Paul filled with a growing sense of wonder as he realized the implications. There was an alien in his apartment. Between the strange biology and the tech he’d seen, he could think of no other explanation. Unless faeries were real and in some sort of interdimensional battle with terrifying reptilian beasts. But that just seemed far-fetched to him.

  Humanity wasn’t alone in the universe. Aliens were among us and they had come to Franklin of all places. A town of 79,000 people that survived off of a tiny college, failing mines, and sheer obstinance had attracted cosmic forces somehow. And by pure, dumb luck, he was the one who stumbled upon them.

  What is happening?

  Paul stayed up and let his imagination run wild, imagining what their ships and worlds looked like. He tried to come up with theories about why those grotesque creatures were chasing her, and what kind of conflict was hitting Earth. His mind buzzed with a myriad of questions and wild scenarios. Exhaustion eventually became more powerful than his curiosity, and he fell asleep in his desk chair watching over a sleeping alien woman.

  ***

  Paul jerked awake. His neck hurt from sleeping sitting up in his chair and drool dripped from a corner of his mouth. He wiped it away quickly and yawned.

  “You make strange noises in your sleep, human,” Edolit said.

  “Sorry, I snore sometimes. How are you feeling?”

  “Better. My healing protocol is complete. Thank you for bringing me to your....” She trailed off and her eyes narrowed as she glanced from side to side critically. A flash of dull yellow spread along her neck. “... dwelling and cleaning my wounds. I must get back to my ship.”

  Paul jumped up with a wave of panic. “Whoa, whoa, hold on, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on.”

  “No. I do not.” Casually, she pulled the gel bandage off of her stomach and tossed it on his counter. There was no sign the wound had been there. She considered the space-ship shaped clock Paul had hanging over his cabinets, cocking her head to the side, her skin pulsing a wave of pale pink.

  “But I can help you. I want to help you.” He wasn’t exactly sure how he could help, but whatever it was, he would do it.

  Edolit turned and studied him. The emerald green of her wide-set eyes flicked back and forth, reading his expression with an otherworldly gaze. Paul had always found it hard to meet people’s eyes directly. Somehow, even though her alien eyes should make him more uncomfortable, he found a resolve deep within him to meet her gaze. He didn’t know what lay ahead of him if he stayed with this being, but he knew he’d spend the rest of his life wondering if he didn’t get her to explain what was happening.

  Her shoulders slumped a little and she exhaled, her skin fading to a duller heather tone.

  Was that a sigh? Weariness? he thought, trying to decipher her shifting skin.

  “Your world is in danger,” she said, finally.

  “From those… Varanul? That’s what you called them last night, right?”

  “Someone has sent them here, yes. They appear to be scouting their last targets before an invasion. I was sent to gather evidence so we can help stop them before they act.”

  She looked at the panel on her arm and pressed on the screen twice, and sliding her finger in a swiping motion. The air in front of her filled with a star map. Paul recognized it in an instant as the Milky Way, its familiar swirling arms of the galaxy making his inner child grew more excited.

  “This is our galaxy,” she started, and pressed on her screen again. The stars in a small section changed from white into an array of colors. “These are the systems explored by The Federation, thousands of worlds scattered across hundreds of systems.”

  As a child, Paul was always flabbergasted whenever he tried to wrap his head around the scope of the galaxy, millions of stars and worlds separated by unfathomable distances. He wasn’t remotely surprised the conflict was in a comparatively small corner of the galaxy.

  She placed her hands beside the map and spread them wide. The map zoomed in to highlight only the explored area. The map became full of stars and tiny plodding planets in an array of colors. Most of the central systems were green with other colors interspersed more frequently the further from the core they were. He assumed the core Federation worlds were the ones in the center.

  Grimly, she pointed to dozens of red worlds on the edges of the sector map. “These red worlds show where we have seen evidence of Varanul scouting parties in the border regions of the Federation. We don’t know who is sending them or why.”

  “Which one is Earth?”

  “This one.” She pointed to a red system on the map’s edge. She pressed her screen again, and the map zoomed onto a familiar map of the solar system, complete with swirling asteroids in a cloud between Mars and Jupiter and a haze of comets and rock of the Oort Cloud. Blinking next to Earth were some numbers.

  “What do those mean?”

  “That’s the date of first system survey, about 12,000 Earth years ago. This is the projected date of invitation into the Federation given current rate of development, about 200 years from now.”

  “So the Ancient Astronaut theory was correct!” His voice was soft, reverent. He’d always assumed the notion of alien beings influencing the growth of human society to be sensationalist nonsense, but the thought now filled him with quiet awe.

  She cocked her head, blue waves spreading over her cheeks. “I’m not familiar with that theory. We’ve watched your society grow from afar while we explored and mapped your system. We are forbidden to interfere or make direct contact until you are advanced enough to settle other planets. Our civilization wants you to develop your own culture before being exposed to ours. At least, according to Federation guidelines.”

  “Oh.” Paul scratched his head, feeling a little foolish. “But, why are you here now?”

  “Our civilization has grown fractured,” she said. “Many feel a war is looming. Our government has grown more concerned with internal disputes and ignored worlds outside the core for decades.”

  “Is that why Earth is in danger?”

  “With no one watching the borders, worlds are being exploited by criminals and opportunists among the Federation. Vast, powerful companies pillage worlds of their resources and marauders enslave their peoples within shadows of the law.”

  “And these, Varanul, are some of them?”

  “They’re a private army, warriors bred in vats to be completely loyal to their master. The problem is, we’ve never been able to discover who they serve. The broad range of their activities makes us think their owner is about to seize the entire border region in a coordinated attack.”

  “Those things bow down to someone else?” A shiver spread down the base of Paul’s neck and burrowed into his spine as he imagined what could control those beasts.

  “My group has been trying to figure out who is pulling their strings so we can figure out how to stop them.”

  “Your group?”

  Her skin flashed a deep maroon shade he hadn’t seen on her skin before. She growled and spoke with a biting tone. “The Federation would not stop what was happening without indisputable evidence and let our concerns languish in committee hearings. Our leaders suspected whatever group is behind these incursions has reached the deepest levels of government. They started a private group to go where the Federation will not.”

  He watched her for a moment. She was bristling from talking about the state of things, her skin pulses flashing chaotically with violent waves of maroon. This was more than a noble battle for her. This fight was deeply personal. He hesitated.

&n
bsp; “You’ve lost someone in this, haven’t you?,” he asked.

  Edolit looked up at him, emerald eyes wide and a flash of bright blue bursting along her skin that quickly faded to gray. “I’ve lost everyone. My entire world was pillaged. Now my crew…,” she whispered in a haunted tone. “I’ve lost one for sure, K’tal. The others are likely dead or captured, too.”

  “So what now? How can I help?” The room was heavy with Edolit’s grief. He could feel it in the air. She leaned against the counter in silence, her hand gripping the tile and waves of red spreading up her forearms. Is that anger or pain? he thought.

  “I need to get to my ship and get the information I’ve gathered back to our leadership. They can make the case to the Federation Council to protect Earth and send a guardian force in the meantime.”

  “Can’t you call for reinforcements or extraction?”

  “No, our ships can jump between worlds, but messages still need to pass through real space. There are quantum relays built into the Gates, but they aren’t secure. Sending a message could cause the leaders of the Varanul to act before help arrive.”

  “So where’s…”

  “Wait, quiet,” she snapped. She cocked her head to one side and held up her hand.

  “What?”

  “Get down!” She pulled Paul behind the couch.

  The apartment door exploded under the barrage of close range laser blasts.

  “They tracked us,” she hissed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “IS THERE ANOTHER way out of here?” Edolit’s voice was steady despite the chaotic blasts filling the room.

  “Just my bedroom window!” Paul shouted over the bursts of blaster fire splintering the door.

  She narrowed her eyes at the loveseat shielding them and jerked her head towards his room.

  “Get ready to run,” she growled.

  Edolit pressed against Paul’s cheap couch. Her arms tensed, surges of vibrant green pulsed along her bulging muscles. She watched the door splinter apart under the hail of laser blasts until it finally fell from its hinges.