ALIEN THE COLD FORGE

by Alex White

  “When we get back to Earth,” he’d said, “I’m going to make sure the Company knows how valuable you are.” And now, Dorian is out there risking his life for her, with Anne, hunting down supplies. Lucy should be out there, too.

  Lucy takes a moment to compose herself, then dredges up her login ID and password. She’s sluggish and disorganized, and wonders if she’ll be able to code at all. She messes up her password the first two times, frustration building in her gut. She strikes the enter key with a loud clack.

  The front door to Rose Eagle slides open.

  Into the hallway, where the creatures roam free.

  Everyone stops working. The room goes silent. They look from the door to Lucy.

  She gapes like a fish, trying to understand the connection between what she just did, and why the door could’ve opened. Stephen, the tech standing closest to the entrance, stares at her with nothing short of wonder, until black talons wrap around him, snatching him into the hall. He disappears with a shriek.

  His anguished cries echo through the SCIF, disappearing in a muffled gurgle. The others are slow to react, as though they somehow missed what happened. Then Nick, the newly appointed manager, screams to the rest of them.

  “Run!”

  Lucy stumbles upright from her station, her movements sluggish as though she’s trapped in amber. Another hissing snatcher leaps onto the doorframe, then at a shrieking woman who collapses backward out of the way. Lucy doesn’t bother to watch—she can’t care in that moment. All she can do is run.

  She runs to the door furthest from the snatcher and hurdles through, deeper into project Rose Eagle, as screams grow louder behind her. Maybe she can hide somewhere. She charges for the open door leading into the entanglement lab—it has the most nooks and crannies, cable runs and crawlspaces. Surely there’s a place for her there.

  The door slams in her face, and she hits it running full-tilt, bouncing off to the ground. Blood runs from her nose into her mouth, filling her tongue with copper. The lock chime sounds—no more access for her, or anyone. She shakes her head, dazed, lips stinging from a split.

  Arms wrap around her.

  “No!” she cries, throwing elbows, but the hands are soft. It’s Nick. He’s helping her, but she shouldn’t be helped. She needs to die.

  “Come on.” He wrenches her to her feet, taking her wrist.

  Two crewmates rush past Lucy and disappear around the corner, headed for one of the open side rooms. So much hissing, so many screams ring out behind Lucy and Nick, and he jerks her arm as he heads for the next lab door.

  It’s too late. The other survivors close the hatch. Nick pounds on the door, but they’ve locked it. Lucy turns to see if the creatures are coming for her. She wants to watch them come, to feel the biting, piercing, and ripping their dark shapes bring.

  Nick won’t give up on her. Even though she slows him down, he takes her hand once more and sprints for the other exit to Rose Eagle.

  It’s closed. Locked. She can see the red LED indicating that he’s leading her down a blind alley. Yet, as they approach the door, the panel turns green and it opens. Beyond, she sees the lime-green walls of the kennels.

  Lights flash and extinguish behind them. There is nothing but screaming and bedlam, and as Nick drags her away, Lucy stares back into the darkness, just as Lot’s wife once looked upon Sodom.

  But righteous fury never comes to smite her, and they slink away together into the darkness.

  26

  DAEDALUS, WHO BUILT THE LABYRINTH

  Juno’s cage has become a holy temple.

  Dorian opens and closes doors, sounds alarms, silences others, and runs people through the hallways like rodents through a maze. With each passing moment he adds another layer to his map of the SCIF. First the creatures, then the crew, then the doors and access controls, then warnings and alarms.

  He guides the snatchers with a loving hand. On his terminal he sees red dots and blue dots, he can quickly switch to the video feeds to watch the beasts skitter through the hallways.

  There are six people to kill, and one to save.

  The victim is “GRANADE, S,” a blue dot near the front door of Rose Eagle. Dorian selects the door and opens it, and a red dot races toward the bait. Dorian watches camera feed, then sees the beast seize and drag poor Stephen away.

  The other blue dots remain still, and Dorian rolls his eyes. It’s no fun if they just die. They need to play the game, need to try to outsmart him, or at least stretch this out as much as they can. In the end, he’ll feed all the fucking rats to his predators—all except Lucy. Her dot blinks near the back of the room, which is convenient. He can’t have his creatures tearing into her. Not yet. She’s the weak one—the one ready to crack at a moment’s notice.

  While he’s fixated on Lucy, another snatcher bounds into the commons, knocking down “BRYSKI, K.” His quick eyes find the best angle to watch on the video, as little Kay stumbles backward and tries to hide under a table. The creature is quick to slide underneath with her, slicing at her with its tail and claws. Dorian isn’t quite sure what he’s seeing, but he’s fairly certain it rips off one of her arms before dragging her away in a wide swath of her own blood. Near to her, “SANDBERG, T” goes down without a fight, as though he was hoping to die.

  Then Lucy is running for one of the labs and that’s good—he needs her far away from the others. He slams a door in her face and she falls prone in the hallway, the other survivors running around her, all except for “HARMON, N,” who comes to her side. Lucy doesn’t move, though.

  The bitch wants to stay and die.

  “Get up,” Dorian whispers, but she won’t. It isn’t until Nicholas Harmon drags her upright that they start running again.

  Dorian shuts the front door to Rose Eagle, giving them a few seconds to get down the hallway. By then, the other two survivors have barricaded themselves into one of the labs, much to Dorian’s chagrin. He’d wanted them to spread out. This is the most power he’s ever wielded, and he’ll be damned if he squanders it all in a single fucking burst.

  Nick and Lucy are inseparable, which is obnoxious, but he’ll have to let it go. Without Nick, she’s guaranteed to be eaten prematurely. They head for the secondary exit of Rose Eagle, into the kennels, and that’s where Dorian wants them, at least. He begins slowly, inexorably funneling the pair toward the secure operating theater at the front of the complex.

  Then, he notices another set of doors—emergency bulkheads designed to seal off parts of the station during a sudden loss of pressure. They’re designed to be automated, and should boast restricted access, but the new Juno has no restrictions. She’s like a newborn—completely trusting. Dorian drops segments of impenetrable bulkhead down across Lucy and Nick’s path, protecting them from snatchers, keeping them moving.

  At long last, he sequesters the two in the operating theater, and helps Nick lock the door. All that remains is to deal with the remaining two survivors trapped inside Rose Eagle: “HOGAN, C” and “DAWN, M.” Leaning in closer to the monitor, Dorian struggles to decipher their faces from the blurry feed, and tries to remember their first names. When he’d first come on board the Cold Forge, had they emerged to greet him, or had they stayed in their rooms? He touches the knife wound on his face. The other Dorian had come here a lifetime ago, excited by the prospect of corporate politics and balanced budgets. He’d come here to be a cutting agent, acting in the name of order.

  He’d come to trim fat.

  As he opens up bulkheads and hatches, Dorian knows his true purpose. Chaos is the only order, and nothing will be right until this entire station is put in its place. He picks at the loose skin on his cheek, stinging and cracking. By the end of this cycle, it’ll be covered in pus and scabs.

  His red blood feels wrong somehow between his fingertips. He was once a white-blooded drone, but now he’s a yellow-blooded killer. When he’d had a mother, she told him, “You can be anything you want when you grow up.”

  It’s time t
o grow up.

  Dorian opens the final gate between the pair of random losers and the snatcher population, setting them up for a running of the bulls. He expects it to be a short affair. After all, the things can leap ten yards at a gallop. Yet humans are wily. Maybe these two can keep him entertained for a while. He sets off the alarms in their laboratory, and triggers the halon fire extinguishers.

  The blue dots begin to sprint.

  A gap forms between them. One of the runners is obviously faster than the other, so Dorian slams down a bulkhead between the two. Trailing behind, Dawn would be so disappointed to know that Hogan didn’t miss a single step in running away from his trapped companion. She flees back into a different room, the acceleration lab with its many nooks and crannies. It’ll take the devils a while to find her in there, and so Dorian casually routes a trio of red dots, using their curiosity for flashing lights and their disdain for sprinklers.

  Once the creatures enter the lab, Dorian shuts the door behind them.

  Abruptly there’s a frantic banging on the outside of Juno’s cage.

  Dorian cocks his head slowly, making certain he heard correctly. He moves away from the terminal console and peers around the edge of a server rack. Through the clear stripe in the frosted glass, he sees HOGAN, C. The man’s face is the picture of panic, and Dorian is impressed with how quickly he made the journey from Rose Eagle. Or maybe it wasn’t quickly at all.

  Time flows so strangely when Dorian plays God.

  But here is HOGAN, C, who climbed Mount Olympus. He shouldn’t be here—the very act of begging for entry is a mortal insurrection. Dorian regards the lock on the door—human-proof, but not guaranteed to keep out the snatchers. He can’t have HOGAN, C, bringing the creatures up to meet their master. Not yet.

  He opens the lock and the man rushes inside, all apologies and trembling. He hugs Dorian tightly and begs him to shut the door. Dorian strokes HOGAN, C’s curly brown hair, shushing him.

  “What happened to Dawn?” Dorian whispers into his ear. HOGAN, C, backs away, horrified.

  “I didn’t,” he says. “Something got—somehow the pressurization s-system—”

  “Separated the two of you?” Dorian asks, flexing his fingers. His hands itch. He wants to feel what the creatures feel. “Started acting up on its own?” HOGAN, C’s eyes dart across the server control room. The dumb mammal has started to put two and two together.

  Dorian takes a step forward, spreading his arms wide.

  “Was it like something was guiding you? Shoving you out of your cowardly little holes?”

  “S-stay back,” HOGAN, C says. His rearward steps take him out onto the catwalk. There Dorian looms over him, his unusual height coming into play as he loses his humble slouch, like a raptor stretching its wings. He smears away a stringy black tangle of hair from his forehead.

  “What was your plan?” he demands. “To run? Did you come to my temple to beg? Where’s your offering?”

  HOGAN, C’s back strikes the railing.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “People keep telling me that.” Dorian knocks on his forehead with his knuckles. “Except—I’m still alive.” He rushes HOGAN, C, pummeling him across the chest and abdomen. Slashing at the man’s eyes with his manicured nails, wishing for all the world that he possessed the talons of the devils below. He grabs his prey’s love handles, pulling his gut like fresh bread dough. Though Dorian is unable to do any real damage, he can inflict pain. Unhappy with the result, Dorian switches to his teeth, biting HOGAN, C’s chest and neck, nose and brow.

  Sinking his teeth in as hard as he can, he is rewarded with the taste of warm, wet copper—and shrieking. Dorian grabs a fistful of the man’s hair and yanks his head to one side, pressing his teeth into his Adam’s apple and biting down with every last newton of force. The neck gives off a soft crunch, and HOGAN, C stops screaming.

  With a gurgle, he slowly goes limp.

  Dorian pulls, his teeth sunk deeply into the man’s throat, but he can’t cut through the skin. He redoubles his bite force in anger, shaking his head, trying to tear loose a chunk, but gets nothing. Finally, he lets go, and HOGAN, C slides to the ground. A distant beast cries out as it enters the SCIF commons in search of prey. He leans HOGAN, C onto one side, then pushes him out between the rails of the catwalk.

  The body appears to go weightless for a full second, then falls and bounces off the lower deck with a thunderous bang. Two black shapes rush forward to tear it limb from limb, neither bothering to look up.

  By the time he can return to the console, DAWN, M is long gone, dragged away toward the depths of egg storage, her worthless frame the foundation of greater things.

  The beasts are born of human weakness.

  This will be Dorian’s birthplace, as well. Once he escapes, no one will ever know what happened here—no one but him.

  He sets off in search of Lucy.

  27

  INVIGORATION

  Blue hasn’t dared to leave the ventilation duct. According to her computer link, it’s been an hour. She’s moved neither forward toward her ruined room, nor backward toward the variable airflow valve. She’s remained perfectly still, her heart breaking with the knowledge that no rescue will come for her. Marcus isn’t coming. Her sample lies dead inside Juno’s cage, his synthetic brain split open like a melon.

  Her chest rumbles with each breath, as if the sprinklers had begun to flood her lungs. All the smoke and ash constricts her sensitive throat.

  As a child, she’d once had a pet parrot. One day her mother had burned something in the oven. Her mother sprayed cleaning solvents on the hot pan, and the parrot dropped dead from the fumes. Blue finally understands that bird—choked as she is by solvent and ash.

  She opens her laptop again and checks the connection. Wireless still registers in here, and she doesn’t feel quite so exposed. She connects to Titus and signs in.

  >>QUERY?

  //ESCAPE POD STATUS

  >>ONE ESCAPE POD PRESENT. CONDITION UNKNOWN.

  Blue sighs. The chance of getting out of this place still exists, no matter how slim the hope. She can’t give up.

  The loading cursor flickers on her screen. Someone is trying to talk to her. Blue struggles through a hard swallow as she waits for info.

  >>NEW CONNECT. ID: MARCUS014385 / INIT CHAT PROTOCOL

  >>SIGNAL COMPENSATE AND BOOST 1534 + QRAT

  >>FINE MOTOR………CRITICAL DAMAGE

  >>ISIS………CRITICAL DAMAGE

  >>OSIRIS………WARNING

  >>SET………WARNING

  >>RA………SUNRISE

  >>MARCUS ONLINE

  She can’t believe it when she sees it. She watched Dorian beat Marcus’s head in with a fire extinguisher.

  Marcus: Blue.

  Blue: //Marcus? How are you alive?

  Marcus: My model possesses numerous regenerative functions.

  Blue: //Can you walk?

  Marcus: I will never walk again.

  Blue: //Are you okay?

  Marcus: I will never be “okay” again.

  She closes her eyes. “Fuck.” She begins to type once more.

  Blue: //At least I understand how you feel.

  Marcus: You could never perceive how I feel. You are a murderer.

  “Well screw you, too, buddy,” she whispers.

  Blue: //Where is Dorian?

  Marcus: Unknown. I have only just come online.

  Blue: //Is he still in Juno’s cage?

  Marcus: No. I am alone.

  Blue bites her thumbnail. If Dorian isn’t overseeing things from Juno, where the hell did he go? Does he already have the escape pod codes?

  Marcus: Blue, I have just interfaced with Juno. The only remaining survivors are Lucy Biltmore, Nick Harmon, and you. Director Sudler is en route to the Impregnation Lab. We have to stop him.

  Blue: //Yes we fucking do. Thanks for joining the goddamned living, Marcus.

  Marcus: No need to be unpleasant. Before you ask, I will
not kill him.

  Marcus: I am not a bad person, like you.

  It’s cramped in the vent shaft, and extremely hard to type. There are a billion things she wants to say back to him, but she’ll have to be more utilitarian than that.

  Blue: //I can handle Dorian better than you. A single command from him stops you in your tracks. Can you get to an escape pod? My survival depends on it.

  Marcus: Calculating… 100%

  Marcus: At current rate of locomotion, I can reach the escape pod in two hours. One of my eyes still retains nominal function.

  Blue: //Can you make it if the snatchers spot you?

  Marcus: I don’t think they care about me. In that, they are no different from other species.

  Blue swallows. Her synth is emotionally falling apart, and she needs him more than ever. She flexes her fingers.

  Blue: //Meet me at the escape pod.

  Marcus: Confirmed.

  Blue snaps shut the portable terminal to save battery. She’ll need every kilowatt of juice for what she’s about to do. Her eyes rise to the vent shaft exit, and her ruined room. She drags herself from the shaft and onto her sloping floor. The place where her bed once stood is a gaping hole, with stringy bits of melted steel hanging down like Spanish moss. The running water has cooled the deck, and she prays the contents of her hardware cabinet are okay.

  Slithering across the wet floor, she’s unwilling to consider what she must be doing to her immune system by dragging her cut belly over corroded metal. She reaches the cabinet beside her nightstand and tugs on it. The metal must’ve warped in the fire, because the door won’t come open.

  Yanking hard enough to get the door slightly ajar, she wraps her fingers into the crack and pulls. The rolled steel door cuts her skin, but pops open, almost hitting her face. Blue sweeps the door aside and looks down at her palm to find crimson dripping into the puddle on the floor.

  Underneath everything that the others see, the disease, the anger, the pain—she’s just red. How many times has she lost sight of her own humanity in pursuit of the sample of Plagiarus praepotens?