ALIEN THE COLD FORGE

by Alex White

  Blue hits the floor and slides into the open, polished duct like a baseball player into home base. She’s astounded by the distance Marcus’s body travels with no sweat in his clothes to cause friction, but as soon as he slows down, she begins a frantic crawl into the blackness. The creatures are behind her, trying to negotiate the opening, and she knows they’ll follow her. She’s seen them fold their bodies in miraculous ways.

  Even Marcus’s eyes can’t make much of the vent shafts— pitch black save for the tiny LEDs of the individual climate sensors and variable airflow valves. Ship designers don’t put lights in the ventilation systems, but she wishes to god there was a little more illumination. All the ducts inside the Cold Forge are vacuum-rated and able to be sealed off, and she’s looking for one of those controls.

  Left turn. She barrels down the shaft as fast as her arms and legs will take her, and the scraping claws along metal tell her pursuit isn’t far behind. Right turn, then down two feet, then left again. She’s taking any branches she can find while trying to maintain her orientation. She’ll need to get back to egg storage, and maybe if all the bugs are combing the ventilation system for her, they’ll be too busy to patrol the eggs.

  Everything in her mind screams for her to panic, but Marcus’s stoic fortitude keeps her from suffering the physical effects. She takes another turn, and another.

  Shit. This looks familiar. Has she circled back on herself?

  As if in answer to her question, she hears the clicking of chitin across the ductwork ahead. She’s facing one of the beasts that was following her. The clicking stops, and she knows it must sense that something is wrong. She can’t crawl backward as fast as she can go forward, and she’ll make too much noise if she tries. So she flattens her chest to the metal, willing herself to be invisible.

  She holds her breath. Even though Marcus doesn’t need to breathe, her brain-direct interface transmits the heaving of her chest to him. There’s no way to address the problem now, other than to slowly asphyxiate in her physical body while waiting for the creature to move on.

  It does.

  Blue sucks in her breath as quietly as she can, pleased that she can control Marcus’s vocal cords better than her own. She can’t wait for the creature to come back around the other side, so she creeps forward, turning left at the junction where it went right. From there she takes her first exit, and is rewarded with the slotted feeling of a vent cover under her palm.

  There’s no variable airflow valve in the way, so this must be a main duct output. Another metallic scream echoes through the vent shaft—other snatchers are searching for her, perhaps talking among themselves. Blue runs her hand over the panel, looking for the latches that will let her slide through. She can’t see anything below, but that’s a good sign. It may be a small, closed-off area, like a closet or something. Finding the latches, she undoes them and pushes through, and everything goes weightless for a second.

  The fall was so much further than she anticipated.

  Blinding pain erupts across one half of her head, then the neck and shoulders as she goes tumbling down a pile of crates. She curses Marcus’s sensitive pain receptors as she goes rolling to the pitch-black deck, skin smarting.

  When she was a child she fell out of a high tree. It had been enough to knock her unconscious. When she awoke her head swam, and she couldn’t feel her legs. She’d never been so scared in her life, and when her mother found her, they took Blue to the hospital to check for spinal swelling.

  The idea of climbing seems so far away now.

  The fall she’d just taken makes her tumble from the tree look like hopping out of bed. It would’ve easily killed a human being, but Marcus is tough, built from the same materials as high-performance vehicles. He bends, but he won’t break. At least, not from unfocused, blunt-force trauma.

  She rolls onto her back, and thinks she can just make out the outline of the vent thanks to the gentle glow of the LEDs in the shaft. It’s far away, but she isn’t judging distance— she’s looking for a black, skeletal bug to peel out of it and drop down onto her. Despite the vigorous activity, she isn’t winded. All her breath comes from the panic in her physical body, and Blue can tamp that down somewhat.

  Surely they heard the fall and the banging around in the darkness. She can’t have gotten away. And yet, as she listens for the pursuers, she hears none.

  “Help.”

  Instantly she tenses. It was a gravelly man’s voice, and he moans weakly. Without a second thought, she shushes the man and bites her lip. The bugs will definitely hear, if he keeps that up.

  But there’s no sign of pursuit. The voice sobs softly in the darkness. Blue picks herself up, but one of Marcus’s legs feels wrong, off-balance somehow. She’s surprised to find that they didn’t wire him with any “deep pain” receptors, just surface stuff. Weyland-Yutani must have assumed he’d notice if he was missing an arm, or had a knee twisted off. She pats down his leg and finds the ankle out of joint. She can walk on it, but she’s not going to be running any marathons.

  Pulling the flash tool out of her pocket she powers it on, thankful for the orange light of its tiny readout. Through it, Marcus’s sensitive eyes perceive stacks of crates, and shapes in the darkness she can’t quite understand— masses of shadow that glitter in the gloom like a blanket of distant stars.

  This is the general storage for the kennels, but it’s been changed somehow. Her mind can’t quite pick out the borders of objects—they’re blurry and curved where they should be straight. A black column rises in front of her. She reaches out to touch it.

  And it weeps.

  Blue stumbles backward, her bad ankle giving out under her. Recovering her balance, she holds the flash tool aloft the same way the ancients must’ve held their dim torches in caves. Shapes begin to resolve: hands, feet, a mass of inky resin, a slimed and soiled face.

  “Blue—” he breathes. His face is beaten and swollen. She wishes she could get a better look at him. He barely even seems human.

  “What the fuck?” she whispers. “Oh, my god, Javier! What happened to you?”

  He mumbles something, but she can’t quite make it out. It sounds like “the tin cans.” She tells him she can’t understand him, but he just repeats the same slurred phrase. She draws closer, and holding the screen inches away, she sees that he’s been encased in hardened resin, suspended and pinned to the column.

  Finally, she understands what he was saying.

  “They took my hands.”

  More of the oily resin covers his meaty stumps, and upon closer examination of his wounds, she finds that everything past his wrists has been chewed off. He says something about his legs, and she almost can’t bear to look. The creatures have sealed everything up tight. And then she notices the egg crate embedded in the base of the column, its arming panel still closed. Somehow, the creatures knew not to try and force it open.

  Javier isn’t pregnant, but they’re saving him for later.

  “Blue…”

  Her gaze rises to him, and in the orange glow, she finds the watery eyes she once knew as belonging to a proud man. They both flinch as one of the creatures screams in the distance. They’re still hunting her.

  “Hurts so bad—”

  “I know,” she says, shushing him. “I know.”

  “Dorian… don’t trust him,” he sputters. “Fucking cow—fucking coward left me to die. And Lucy…” Did Dorian get Lucy killed, too? She doesn’t understand, but needs little help hating the director.

  “Okay.”

  Another scream. This time closer. She has precious few minutes before she must hide again. Javier looks down at her with panic in his eyes.

  “Please. I want—I want you to…”

  He’s choking on the words. She knows that look of blinding pain.

  “I want you to make this stop,” he says, and her heart sinks.

  “Javier, I can’t.”

  Tears roll down from his eyes. “Please.”

  Marcus’s ha
nds, so soft and sweet with their gentle ministrations, possess more than enough strength to crush his throat. She isn’t ready to put an end to a human life, but she knows the unbearable weight of doom better than anyone. How many times has she wished to slip away in the night?

  Blue takes a wobbly step forward, her good foot landing on soft viscera at the base of the column, and places her hand over his throat. “Like this?”

  Javier closes his eyes and gives her a frantic nod.

  She mouths the words, “I’m so sorry,” as his soft Adam’s apple collapses under her powerful fingers.

  She doesn’t expect him to struggle. It’s just a jolt at first, but as his face turns blue he surges against his hellish restraints, quivering and thrashing. He tries in vain to raise his stumps. Instinct kicks in, and she can see the human Javier fade from this world long before the animal inside is dead.

  When at last he lies still, she steps closer and closes his bulging red eyes. She liked Javier as much as she liked anyone on this godforsaken station. There was a wedge between her and everyone here, because she entered their lives as something other than human. She came from a fringe of existence they couldn’t understand, and suffered all of their ignorance, their foolishness. She imagines meeting Javier during her undergraduate days at Wake Forest, before the diagnosis, and wonders if they would’ve been friends.

  Regardless of the tragedy before her, she knows this is her chance to gather a sample. She chides herself for not doing a better job of studying the behavioral characteristics of the noxhydria specimens, the face- huggers. Who could be sure if they would attach to a synthetic, much less impregnate her? What if it refused to come out of its egg? Her eyes dart to Javier’s rapidly cooling body. His heart might not have stopped. If she moves quickly, maybe something about him—his scent, his brain activity, something—will draw the creature out.

  She breaks away some of the dark resin from the surface of the egg crate, sliding aside a protective metal sheet on the control panel. A tiny red LED pulses peacefully within, indicating a locked state. Blue taps one of the buttons, and the Weyland-Yutani logo materializes the card-sized screen. It’s the same orange as the flash tool, shitty and hard to read against black glass. It gives her a prompt:

  >>DISARM CODE?

  If she attempts to force it open, flaming thermite and concentrated lye will fill the container. Blue checks the crate number: thirty-two alpha. There are two codes she can use. One disarms the crate, and the other disarms the entire set of them. Besides Dick, she’s the only person in possession of the master unlock. The other crew members would have to look up the individual crate disarm code in the catalogue, located inside the impreg lab.

  She tries to recall the codes. She has sixteen passwords for use on the Cold Forge, and she’s gotten quite good at dredging them up at a moment’s notice. But this crate is one of dozens, and she’s not sure she’s ever even seen it before. Instead, she takes the first steps of the master unlock protocol.

  The procedure is simple and straightforward—slide aside the panel cover, press the arm button, press it again to confirm, and slide the panel closed. The system was designed to lock quickly, without requiring authorization, because its cargo is the most dangerous creature in the galaxy.

  Aside from mankind.

  The disarm, on the other hand, drives Blue to the brink of madness. The instructions are written in a tiny font, and the light of her screens is dim, even for Marcus’s superior vision. Every time she makes an error, the system knocks one of her ten tries off the list, then pauses for five seconds. It takes her six tries to get it right. Finally, there’s a tiny clink, and the LED turns from red to green. Up in egg storage, the other crates will have followed suit.

  She swallows her nervousness, and knows she’s not in mortal danger, but instinct and training tell her to fear an unlocked egg box like an uncaged tiger. Instead, she’s going to put her face in it.

  Blue has to yank the lid to crack the resin from its hinge. Even disarmed, it’s a pain to open with all the caked-on sludge. The lid hisses as compressed nitrogen leaks out the side, cooling the moist egg and off-gassing tiny jets of frigid steam. The pressures equalize and servos engage, swinging the heavy steel plate free of the casing. Cold light emanates from the interior of the egg case, illuminating Javier’s corpse and the glossy curvatures of his secreted restraints.

  Then there’s nothing between her and the fleshy ovoid. She stares down at the crossed meaty lips, slicked through their opening with viscous goo, and waits. The egg doesn’t react to her as it does for the terrified chimpanzees. For the chimps, the eggs open immediately, their deadly payloads springing forth with dark intentions. She’s seen it a hundred times, and she knows this egg isn’t interested in her. Blue has never tried to force one of these open before, and she hopes there’s no procedure built into its biology to stop unwanted impregnation, as there was with the female ducks in her undergrad work.

  There’s a readout just inside the lid, smudged with grime, but clear enough to see what’s happening inside. The ultrasound sensors on the case indicate some small movements, but not enough.

  To an untrained person, her synthetic form appears as human as any, right down to the pheromones they incorporate upon creation. The egg should accept her as a viable host. She reaches out and strokes the soft nubs around the top.

  The egg grows still, and Blue’s heart sinks.

  The ultrasound goes dark.

  She scowls and, in her disappointment, lets out a long sigh.

  The readout lights up.

  “Come on, you little fucker,” she says, running her hand over it again. Once again, activity diminishes. Is she not supposed to be touching the egg? Blue has to be the only human in existence attempting to lure out a face- hugger, and the little bastard won’t come out. It must be something about her synthetic body that stops the embryo’s awakening process. Finally, she hooks her android fingers into the crossed lips, and attempts to tug it open.

  Underneath the flesh, she finds a stony shell, far too strong for her bare fingers to penetrate. Without a decent purchase, her hands come free and she stumbles backward with a grunt.

  The ultrasound readout illuminates once again.

  It’s her breathing—the sound of healthy lungs and fear.

  Blue stares at the egg and tries to conjure what she would feel if she stood before it in her human body. Closing her eyes, she sifts through her memories for something to use. What if it were to choke her out, to force its fleshy appendage between her lips and down her throat? What if she were to lie helpless and used, while some horrific creature metabolized her DNA into raw malice and murder? The thought ripples through her human body, lying back in her quarters. Her chest rises and falls faster, prompted by her fraying nerves.

  The ultrasound lights up like a Christmas tree.

  The outer lips peel away like the petals of a blossoming orchid. She recognizes the stench that fills the air, like freshly turned earth, mixed with the musky stink of an open abdominal cavity. There’s a hint of sulfur, though that could be from the acid—or Javier’s recently loosened bowels. She’s performed so many extractions that the stink is routine, and yet she tries to recall the fear that came with the first time she smelled it. The synthetic body mimics her reactions.

  This is going to hurt—she knows it. She steps closer, her chest heaving in anticipation of the strike, her eyes watering. Then she finds the memory she requires. The first time she died.

  It was two years ago. Her esophageal muscles had begun to deteriorate to the point that she could no longer eat, and she’d aspirated a tiny bit of food. That was all it took for her reflexes to close her throat and choke her to the point of unconsciousness. She’d been alone and terrified as darkness closed in on her from all sides. It was the first time she’d awoken intubated, gagging and panicked, in her bed.

  The birthing membrane, with a texture like raw chicken, slides out of the top of the egg and down to its base, where it will
rot. Blue knows what comes next, her breath huffing quick and fearful. The noxhydria preys on the innate curiosity of intelligent beings, and she must commit. She must feel that terrible intubation.

  It happens faster than she’d imagined, the palm of the spidery face-hugger smashing into her face, crushing her nose hard enough to make her eyes tear up. All lights wink out as its powerful phalanges lock to her skull. Its tail whips around her neck in the blink of an eye, tightening like a steel cable, trying to make her gasp. The second her lips part even a little, its slithering pharynx shoots between her teeth, painfully wedging her jaws apart.

  Conflicting instincts rage within her. One tells her to bite down, the other to gasp for air. Her hands fly to her face, desperate to tear the thing free, everything inside her screaming, You’ve made a mistake. But when she doesn’t lose consciousness, Blue remembers that she is the predator, and the noxhydria is her quarry.

  It notices, too.

  Its grip around her skull slackens, and the tail unfurls as it tries to get away. She slaps her hands to its back and slams her head to the ground, pinning it underneath Marcus’s weight. It tries to retract its pharynx, and she sinks her teeth into its tough skin. It has acid for blood, but its hide could never be cut without a laser scalpel, so she holds onto it with Marcus’s inhuman jaws. Its tail whips wildly, trying to break her hold on it, but to no avail.

  Then she sucks as hard as she can, drawing on the synthetic’s strength, crushing the monster’s flaccid glands with her palms. A cold trickle seeps into her stomach, then a flood of bitter oil fills her guts. She rips her head free, the frigid liquid leaking down her chin, and gasps. Blue stares down at her prey, watching it shudder violently. She wipes her chin and glances at the streak of jet-black fluid on her pale skin, like octopus ink. The noxhydria weakly flips itself onto the tips of its phalanges, and unsteadily tries to skitter away.

  “No you fucking don’t,” she gurgles, and plants her boot onto its back, flattening it to the deck. It scrabbles madly, but the toll of losing its payload is too great. She reaches down and gathers its long fingers into each hand like a bouquet of flowers. Then, with Marcus’s muscles, she snaps them backward. A satisfying crack fills the cavernous space. Releasing her prey, she stands up straight. The face-hugger thrashes upon the metal plates, broken fingers limply bobbing at its side. Then it shivers, and dies.