by Alex White
“Wouldn’t have been my first choice of color.”
“Safety measure,” Blue says. “Human optical response is strongest between bright yellow-green and black… though we also could’ve used a light cyan.”
“Everything looks purple after you get out of here, though,” Josep adds. “Cone strain on your eyes because your green receptors are overworked.” The second statement is enough of an explanation that it rises at the end.
“I’ll… keep that in mind,” Dorian says. “And why do we care about green-black contrast?”
“Survival,” Blue says, ushering them in.
The place feels like a bunker. It reminds Dorian of the subfloors of Weyland-Yutani’s Tokyo office— impenetrable concrete vaults of records and archived hard drives stored in suspension fluid. It would be easier to rob a bank than to get into the kennels. Here, the corridors are claustrophobic, not the soaring halls of the rest of the Cold Forge, and the lights are even brighter, giving the whole place the feeling of a bad computer rendering.
They pass a wide, tempered-glass window with a break mesh on both sides. Dorian leans in for a closer look and sees a dissection table. Along the back wall, he spots specimen jars the size of human torsos, and distorted, bony hands floating inside—tails where their wrist bones should be, scrotum-like diaphragms at the joining. Inside the room, a young black man in a lab coat looks into a microscope.
Dorian stares at the claws in wide-eyed fascination.
“This way,” Blue calls out. The party has already moved beyond him.
Lucy’s eyes are even wider here, her large lips pursed and white. She’s genuinely afraid of this place.
“Is that some kind of trophy room?” Dorian asks her, whispering.
“More like hell,” she replies. “Don’t eat any pomegranate seeds while you’re down here.”
“More of a rare steak man, myself.”
“You’ll get along just fine then,” she says. They round a corner to a tall room, at least the height of the SCIF common area, with a power loader against the far wall. A darkened set of glass panels punctuates one of the walls, and at first, Dorian believes they’re black, or perhaps smoked glass. He notices loading clamps at the base of each panel, making them look as though they’re stacked like blocks. The panels are each ten feet by ten feet, large enough to fit a truck or docking vessel. As he steps closer, he realizes that the glass panels are clear, and the other side is pitch black.
Blue points to the array of industrial lights high above them. “Special lensing. Sheds light on the cell block, but not the cells. Keeps the disturbances to a minimum.”
“Disturbances?”
“They like the dark.” She pulls a tablet terminal from the wall and types something into the control keys. Everyone steps away from the windows, backing up to the observation area on the other side of the chamber. “I think you’ll be more comfortable over here, Director Sudler.”
“Why?”
“The effect can be unsettling.” She shrugs. “Don’t touch anything.”
He shakes his head and steps closer to the windows. “Show me what you’re going to show me.”
The tap of a key echoes through the chamber, then comes the steaming hiss and the rending of metal. Something is screeching. Dorian flinches, but doesn’t move away. He watches the lights flicker on behind the windows, one by one, illuminating the cells in stunning green. He steps closer to the cell nearest him as the last light flickers on.
The creature before him seems to drip from the ceiling before rising slowly to its feet, hateful lips pulled into a sneer around glassy teeth. Its head is a long, smooth shaft of gray like tumbled granite against the oily black of its body. Chitinous protrusions form a brilliant exoskeleton, rippling with muscular potential. Its tail is an array of ever-shrinking bones, tipped by a wicked barb. It is the intent of every murderer, poured into a mold and painted pitch black. It is a symphony of death, a masterpiece of hellish design, raw will.
Blue was right, the effect is unsettling, and he barely notices the yelp that escapes his lips before utter captivation sets in. Dorian walks along the edge of the cell, and the creature stalks along with him, following his movements without eyes. Its posture is sunken, powerful legs bent like coiled springs. Tendrils of sticky drool ooze from its mouth. His heart rises in his chest, and he wants to weep for the beauty of it. Blue is a genius of the highest order.
“Did you… make these?” he asks, his voice almost a whisper.
“No,” Blue says, to his relief. “I’m not even authorized to know the origin of the eggs.”
“What are they called?”
“I have my own names, but nothing I’ve submitted, since they’re highly classified. One of the Company sourcing guys called them ‘Xenomorphs,’ but that’s kind of a misnomer. Any creature for which we don’t know the taxonomy is technically a xenomorph,” Blue says. “We’ve been calling them snatchers, honestly, because they’re so goddamned fast.”
“And what do we want with them?” Dorian asks, but he’s beyond questioning their presence. “Why research them?”
“They have a broad-based, general application,” Daniel says. “With appropriate control loops, you’re talking about quashing insurgencies, destroying structures, bringing down entire countries. They’re the most potent biological weapon of our age, and if they could be turned to our advantage… Do you even remember the last time the United States Colonial Marines purchased a complete threat response system?”
Dorian rests a hand on the glass as though to touch the creature’s muzzle and it snaps at him like the arc of an electrical current, leaving a smear of ichor across the glass. A klaxon sounds, and a luminous outline of red appears around the back wall of the featureless cell. The screaming from the other cells stops dead. The creature lashes out again, then scrambles into the corner and cowers, wrapping its tail around its legs.
No domesticated creature ever compares to its natural brethren. If this is an example of a creature, a “snatcher,” that’s been raised in captivity, what must a Xenomorph be like when encountered in the wild? His mind races, trying to imagine.
“They’re remarkably capable of adaptation,” Blue says, interrupting his musings. “The first time they hit the glass, we open the heat shield and expose them to the star for five seconds. This marks the first time one has ever taken a second swipe.”
4
PLAGIARUS PRAEPOTENS
Blue had hoped to scare off the auditor with her demonstration. It had certainly worked on the last Company clown to tour the Cold Forge. She considers showing him an impregnation, but given his awe-struck response to the full-grown snatcher, it’s unlikely to have the desired effect.
She regards him as he strides from one cell to the next, inspecting the aliens as if they were his troops. They respond to him with interest and curiosity, causing her to feel a strange pang of jealousy. Whenever she and Kambili check on the cages, they find the creatures curled into a ball in a state of near torpor.
With his tall, slender limbs and black suit, Sudler and the snatchers seem to be the perfect pairing.
“Well,” she says softly, “we’ve got a fucking freak on our hands.”
“I’d consider showing him a little more respect,” Daniel whispers.
She chuckles. “Like he does for you, ‘Commander?’”
Daniel slicks back his short, gray hair. “Sometimes it’s nice for an old vet to be appreciated. It’s not easy commanding on a station full of nerds.” He regards their visitor and adds, “Besides, he’s your gateway to more funding. Look at him. He loves this shit.”
As if feeling their gaze, Sudler turns away from the snatchers.
“Since I’m going to be conducting my research on the station,” he says, “I’ll require quarters with the crew.”
“I told you,” Daniel whispers. “Squeeze him.”
Blue forces herself to smile. “You like the kennels that much, do you?”
Sudler’s pale
blue eyes shine in the lime-tinted light of the cells. “I think it’s the future, Doctor Marsalis.”
“Well, then,” Daniel says, “we’d better get you situated.” He gestures toward the door, and Sudler precedes them. Once on the other side Blue heads toward the vivisection lab.
* * *
There she finds Kambili sitting at his workstation, head bobbing, chewing gum, earbuds in. She’s glad the auditor didn’t ask her about alien reproduction, because that would’ve led to an awkward conversation about the eggs and chimps—and why most of the aliens were terminated before reaching adulthood.
She’s been tasked with finding a reliable way to create and control the snatchers, with an eye toward military deployment. Fifty percent of the way through her funding and eighty percent of the way through her chimps and eggs, she hasn’t even started that task. It isn’t something she relishes explaining.
Up to now conditions have been perfect. The Cold Forge is remote. Elise Coto, the vice President of Genetic Interests, has been willing to lie for her—provided Blue could get what she wanted from the alien genome before anyone catches on. Then they’d be able to unveil their discovery to great fanfare.
“Was that the auditor?” Kambili asks, startling her. He’s taken out one of the earbuds.
“Yeah,” she replies.
He smirks. “Did you tell him you’re not doing your job?”
“No.” Blue scowls, and judging from the look on Kambili’s face, it’s effectively menacing. “Did you tell your wife back home that you’ve been fucking Lucy?”
“Listen—”
“No, you listen,” Blue says, drawing close to him. Marcus is shorter than Kambili, but the android body could break him in half and he knows it. “Stay in your lane, or I will ruin you. Are we clear?”
He averts his eyes. “I just want out of this shithole.”
“I want you out of here, too, but I need your help for now, so I guess we’re both pretty screwed.”
“I’m not going down for you.”
Blue’s nostrils flare. How can he be so brilliant and so thick at the same time?
“I didn’t ask you for that. Just… just work until I’m dead, okay? Then you can pin this all on me. Don’t get cold feet just because of ‘Director Sudler’ out there. Either I’m right, and we both get paydays and promotions… or I die, and you can tell everyone how horrible I was. No matter what, you’re going home next rotation, so… you know… man up.” She says this last bit in Marcus’s lower register, imitating Kambili’s characteristic eye roll.
Kambili juts out his jaw, shaking his head. His muscles are tense and it looks as if he wants to hit her, but that would be a hand-breakingly stupid idea. Blue crosses her arms, waiting to feel the blow, but it never comes. After a pregnant silence, she uncrosses them again.
“Just tell me what other choice I have, Kambili.”
“In the last test…” he replies, and Blue perks up. “After you were, uh, logged out of Marcus… I think I saw it on the thermoptics.”
Blue inhales slowly, trying to keep her breath from shaking with excitement.
“Saw what, Kambili?”
“I couldn’t let Marcus see, or he might tell someone, so I covered my workstation, but by the time I could look again, the fluid had metabolized with the soft tissues of the host.”
“What did you see?”
He pulls on his stubbly chin. “I think you’re right… Plagiarus praepotens is real.”
There it is. Her life’s work, or the work for her life. The second animal that none of the Company researchers seem to recognize—a bacterial terror that can rewrite DNA orders of magnitude faster than CRISPR technology. Weyland-Yutani thinks the face-huggers are larval snatchers, but they’re really hosts for the deadliest pathogen in the universe. And within the genetic code of praepotens lies an unlimited potential for a cure for her genetic disorder—for everyone’s disorders.
Blue has given the face-huggers a real name, too: Manumala noxhydria. The evil hand, the jar of night.
She clenches her fists. “You should’ve told me.”
“Told you what? That I saw it, and we were still too slow?”
“That I was right!” she bellows, though Marcus could get a lot louder. “God damn it, Kambili. We should’ve been setting up the next test immediately!”
“I knew you’d say that!” He wraps up his headphones and tosses them onto the desk. “You keep blowing through the eggs this fast, you’re going to get caught! You get fired, then you don’t have any medical assistance and—”
She glares at him.
“I’ve…” he starts, but falters and takes a moment to compose himself. “I gave two years of my family’s life to this job. By the time I get back, my kid is going to be five years old, and she won’t even know me. If I lose the bonus at the end of this, if I lose my job, my family is fucked. So it’s not just your ass on the line here. Keep your head screwed on straight.”
Kambili is a cheating piece of shit. He hooked up with Lucy almost the day he arrived and hasn’t stopped since. Maybe he feels some concern for his wife and daughter, but not enough to keep his dick to himself. Blue sees in him what she always sees in distant, unaccountable men—a willingness to break any rule that inconveniences him.
But he’s right about the sample speeds.
Elise can cover up project progress, but she can’t cover for those missing noxhydria egg samples, each of which is classed as individual equipment. The monetary value of the eggs is something like a hundred and fifty thousand dollars apiece, but that’s only the cost of acquisition. The Company tracks them as though they were bars of gold, because they’re irreplaceable.
Elise’s last transmission rings in Blue’s head.
NEEDED RESULTS
CANT PROTECT US ANYMORE
GOOD LUCK
What changed? Is it the auditor? If Blue accelerates her plan, will they smoke her out?
“It’s been a week,” Kambili says. “Maybe we could, like, go back to plan A. Try to find praepotens inside the body of the face-hugger. We’ve got ultrasound and microsurgical—”
Blue shakes her head. “You know that won’t work. We melted our extraction tools last time, and we don’t have any more spares. Plus, we never found a decent concentration.” The pathogen won’t concentrate without a live victim. The noxhydria has to be aroused, and the greater the fear, the more of the praepotens it will pull together for payload injection. She imagines securing one of the chimps over an egg with some mechanism to catch the face-hugger’s slithering pharynx and milk it when it attacks. It’d frighten the shit out of the chimp, for sure.
In their own ecosystem, would the adult snatchers try to help face-huggers propagate the pathogen? Blue imagines them restraining the victim somehow, and wishes she had more information on the behavioral patterns of the creatures. She doesn’t even know where they’re from.
Constructing a milker would take time, and she’d need help from engineering. It would draw Sudler’s attention, since both the articulated restraints and the mechanism would be substantial. Some of the machine-learning devs would have to help her with a targeting system, too.
Marcus could do it if Blue wasn’t piloting him. He was fast enough to snatch the pharynx, strong enough to wring out its contents, plastic enough that it couldn’t infect him. But he’d be obligated by his programming to tell others at the Company what he’d been forced to do.
What if she explained her situation to Marcus? He might deem her safety to be in jeopardy and preserve her confidence. He might also recognize that she’s taking dangerous risks and force her into deep freeze for a flight home. Blue wishes she had more training in synth psychology.
“Blue? You still in there?” Kambili says, and she blinks.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“I asked you what you wanted to do.”
She nods. “Fear,” she says. “We’ve got to find a way to stimulate the chimps and capture the pathogen directly from a surfac
e it won’t metabolize…” She needs something antibacterial, or maybe plastic. “Oh, my god… I’m an idiot…”
“What?”
“We put a puncture into the dorsal side of the chimp’s esophagus and fuse in a bio plastic lining up to the throat. We can do collection next to the spine. Keep the chimp restrained, but not sedated.”
Kambili smiles, not his usual baleful, sarcastic smirk, but the genuine smile of someone witnessing a breakthrough. “Just like a colostomy bag.”
“How soon can we set up the next test without breaking cadence?”
“Four days.”
“Thaw one of the chimps. Get started on the surgery.”
* * *
Blue returns to her own body to find it reasonably pleasant. Her guts hurt, but that never changes. Her breath rattles a little when she inhales, the sound of all the fluid aspirations she’s had over the years. Her esophageal muscles don’t work very well. Her back stings a little from the bedsores as she rolls over.
The Company had agreed to furnish her with a bed that would prevent them, but when she’d first arrived at the station, it wasn’t there. It didn’t show up in any resupplies since then, either, and she complained to her management once every three months.
Being Marcus tires Blue, not because it takes spectacular activity to pilot him, but because she must eventually return to this room, this body. Sometimes, it seems easier not to be able to escape into the android.
“Lights,” she calls, pulling off the headset as the vibrant day cycle fills her room.
She needs to contact Elise back on Earth—get her to stall somehow. Blue doesn’t know what pressures her co-conspirator faces, but she needs another month. She knows she can isolate the raw pathogen and start reverse-engineering it from there. When Marcus arrives, he can give her the terminal and some privacy so she can encrypt a message.
Her buzzer rings. “Enter,” she says, and it unlocks.
When the door slides open, Dorian Sudler stands on the other side like a knife, perfect, hardened and sharp. Blue’s heart freezes over. No longer is she ambulatory, looming over him in a powerful synth body. She’s alone in her hospital bed, feeling small and weak.
