ALIEN THE COLD FORGE

by Alex White

  The display on the back of the syringe reads ERROR // RECIPIENT MISMATCH.

  Fuck you, intellijector.

  Dorian raises her aloft, his fingers digging into the loose skin at the back of her neck, her atrophied buttock, and slams her down onto the cold steel table with a force she’s never felt. Her shoulder hits first, then her head whip-cracks the table with blinding pain. A whimper seeps from her mouth, and Blue feels as though she will never breathe again.

  When she tries to draw breath, she finds out she was right.

  “Bitch.”

  Dorian straightens her onto her back, climbs onto the table and straddles her. Distant klaxons sound—the interior emergency bulkhead is opening. The power loader has almost made it to her, but it will be too late.

  He delivers a punishing blow to her diaphragm, drawing out what little air she had left. Blue arches her back, raising her hands to her clogged, spasming throat, but he pins her down. Panic possesses her every muscle. There’s no air.

  He presses his sweaty forehead to hers, lips drawn back in a snarl.

  “Fucking choke.”

  Her eyes feel like they’re going to burst. Her neck muscles are like a tangle of roots. She always thought it would be peaceful to choke out this way, but fear takes hold of her, shaking her, begging her not to leave this mortal coil. Darkness pulls at the edge of her vision. The last thing she’s going to see is Dorian’s smile.

  Her heart slows. Her strength fades. She can’t resist him any longer. All sounds blur together and disappear.

  * * *

  Then comes infinity and the queer sensation of falling out of time.

  A spark.

  A pinprick.

  A rising fire in her chest.

  A slicing sword in her throat.

  Her mind begins to unfurl as she tries to make sense of it. She just needs to get it—

  “Clear,” the computer says. A strength returns to Blue that she hasn’t felt in ages as her whole body spasms. Her heart bursts into flame.

  “Charging,” the computer says. She knows what comes next, and she can’t cry out to stop it.

  “Clear.”

  The tube suctions her lungs as she struggles to scream into it. Her vocal chords won’t make the noise as her eyes flutter open. Dorian stands by, smiling at her, testing a steel scalpel on the back of his hand.

  He won’t let her die.

  “Not until I say so.”

  The medical bed has shoved a tube down her throat to clear it. A needle threads her arm, and Dorian rips it out, sending a spatter of her blood to the floor.

  “No painkillers,” he says, breaking the tube’s articulator.

  The metal stomp of the power loader fills Blue’s ears as it travels the hallway. The long windows of the med bay pulse yellow with its caution lights.

  “Oh, look,” Dorian says, glancing behind him. “Your toy is here.” He turns back. “I want to know something from you before you die.”

  She can barely maintain consciousness through the spiraling world. Her gag reflex goes wild as he slowly yanks out the tube in her throat. She can’t fight back. She can only lie limply and wheeze.

  “The creatures, they’re… poetry. Did you let them loose?”

  Her slow blink darkens her vision for a moment, and he gently slaps the side of her face. She musters enough mental acuity to shake her head no.

  “I think you did,” he says. “I think you made Marcus do it. No one else would’ve deliberately opened the cages.”

  She shakes her head no again.

  “Stop lying. You’re going to die. It’s time to be honest.”

  “Not…” Speaking is like vomiting razor blades. “… lying.”

  “Who else would’ve done it?”

  Then Blue remembers the ship waiting for her escape pod, waiting for her to flee with the sample. How long had it been there? Wireless connections in the SCIF are forbidden—that exposes the SCIF to hackers.

  Someone else had connected to Marcus from outside the station.

  “It could only be you.” Dorian pats her face. “Just admit it, so we can get this over with.”

  A deafening crash rolls through the med bay as the power loader shoves its pincer through the window, trying to get inside. It crouches, unable to fit through the hole, and smashes the wall again. Its yellow pincer quests toward Dorian, a few feet too short to reach him. Someone else is piloting it—someone who doesn’t mind killing people.

  Dorian cackles and steps toward the back wall, amused at the loader’s antics. Blue musters her last ounce of strength to roll from the bed, and the hard deck slams into her like a truck. He steps down onto the hem of her shirt, and Blue can’t pull away.

  “Where the fuck are you going?” he asks. “I’m not done with you, not by a longshot.” She rolls onto her back and tries to get loose, but he’s got her dead to rights. The power loader’s yellow caution lights fill the room with twisting shadows—

  —some of which persist between flashes.

  “Dorian,” she whispers, her voice sucked away from the intubation. He doesn’t hear her. He just keeps mumbling what he’s going to do to her before she dies.

  The snatchers draw closer, like stalking cats, as the power loader pounds away at the med bay wall. Its noise must’ve drawn them here through the maintenance tubes. Blue smiles. This might be the last thing she ever does.

  Chitinous black arms wrap around Dorian’s chest, and his eyes go from joy, to shock, to anger as the creature sinks its glassy teeth into his shoulder. Rivulets of his blood spill from the wound, but he never breaks eye contact with Blue. He raises a leg to crush her neck, but the beast snatches him from his feet.

  Dorian Sudler disappears in a furious blur, screaming her name all the while.

  A rough hand wraps around Blue’s ankle, and she looks down to see one of the creatures looming over her, dripping saliva through parting lips. She’s not scared anymore, because she knows there is justice in the galaxy, after all.

  It yanks her toward the med bay door, the skin of her back rubbing against the deck. It hurts, but the pain no longer overwhelms her. She’s at peace. In spite of it all, she finds a deep and abiding sense of well-being as the creature drags her into the hall.

  Then a scarred, yellow pincer comes down on the creature, folding it in half with a splatter of yellow acid. A glob of its blood strikes Blue’s foot, and like a fool, she tries to scrape it off with her other foot. The snatcher acid burrows into her skin, chewing away at each individual pain nerve. Her feet begin to smoke and her eyes fill with tears. This new agony is unlike any she has ever experienced.

  “Get in,” the power loader rasps, gesturing to the egg crate and shoving it toward her. She shakes her head, willing herself back into the moment, out of the hellfire. The wounds will cauterize. She just has to get to the box.

  Once she’s pulled herself up the side of the crate, she punches the button to open it. She isn’t prepared for the powerful stench that the egg had left inside—rotten meat and antiseptic. She swallows her bile and, with the loader’s assistance, plunges headfirst into the airtight chamber. Then the lid closes over her, sealing her inside with the brimstone sulfur smoke of her own burning flesh.

  32

  MASTERPIECE

  Dorian awakens in darkness, his world swimming. He remembers nothing of what has transpired. When he tries to pick himself up, his face sticks to the ground, as do his arms and legs. Pain sears his cheek. With a slurping noise, he attempts to pry himself free, but he’s glued down tight.

  A warm tickle runs down his face and neck, whispering to him that he’s reopened his knife wound. He can move one hand, sliding it along his belly to find the emergency release for his spacesuit. Pulling a few tabs and twisting some seals allows him to get his other hand free. Then, he works his way up and down his body, unlatching everything he can find until he bursts forth from the back of the suit, gasping and covered in viscous gunk. Humid air hits his wet skin. His only modes
ty is the pair of briefs he wore when he donned the spacesuit.

  Eyes adjust. Lime-green walls come marching into focus. Their iridescence reflects and falls upon the cave of chitinous resin, where Dorian now kneels gasping. He reaches out for something to hoist himself up, and finds a solid metal box. Its LED panel strobes to life, acid green, and he shields the lamp to preserve his night vision.

  It’s an egg crate, wide open, its lethal contents long since evacuated.

  His gaze drifts to the floor, and in the sharp relief of electronic light, he finds a fleshy, withered, arachnid form. It rests flat on its back, long fingers curled inward as though grasping at something precious. Dorian instinctively knows what lies locked within those fingers—his own life.

  He’s infected, and he’s going to die very soon. That thought gives him an immense measure of comfort. From Dorian’s barren breast, a life will be born, bearing some genetic semblance of him. It will enter this burning ecosystem as his child, more intelligent than the chimpanzees, more beautiful than all the others.

  How could Dorian care about balance sheets, performance appraisals, and quarterly earnings reports when his destiny is to co-mingle his starstuff with that of the greatest race of killers ever to grace the galaxy? He touches his naked sternum, pleased with the knowledge that he’s finally part of a joint venture worth pursuing.

  He pushes to his feet, and the distention of his gut tells him the time is nigh. Dorian shambles toward the door, but in truth he’s physically more fit than he’s ever felt in his life. He’s taken so many injuries, but they’re all ignorable under the circumstances—noise in his model of self. He takes a step toward the egg-storage exit, then another. When he reaches the door, two of the creatures descend before him, hissing and shrieking.

  They can’t kill him. As much as they might enjoy posturing, they’re benign now. He reaches toward one, and it snaps at him, the clack of its jaws echoing into the warehouse. He doesn’t flinch. He can’t. He’s becoming.

  Fingertips come to rest upon the smooth skull of the beast, and its steaming breath emerges in angry puffs. It hates him, wants to tear him in half, but Dorian is teaching it something he’s known his whole career: the power of leverage.

  “I’m not going to hurt anything,” he says, though whether or not they believe him is questionable. “Just let me pass.”

  He pushes the beast’s snout, and it moves.

  Dorian wanders up, through the kennels, through the SCIF commons, across the central strut and into the maintenance tubes. He wants to leave something to them, a gift to commemorate his evolution. He crawls through the maintenance tubes and marvels at the heat they’ve acquired. Warmed by some tiny sliver of exposure to Kaufmann, hot wind spirals through their depths, blowing against his face.

  All the while, the creatures follow at a distance. Either curious or protective, he cannot say. Dorian emerges beside the med bay and walks toward the crew quarters. The only indication of impending doom is the occasional twitch in his gut, like a muscle spasm, but deeper. Its effects on him are almost euphoric. He can do anything he wants now. He wonders if that’s some chemical secreted by his passenger, or if it’s the simple relief of being divorced from all expectations of civilization.

  When he reaches his room, Dorian understands that he’s come to his long journey’s end. No one can touch him here, in the furthest reaches of space—not the Company, not those fools from finance, not his father. He can finally witness lonesome perfection with no obligation to appear as a human to all the others around him.

  Dorian opens the door to his room to find an ever- changing light slashing across the darkness to the beat of the Cold Forge’s spin. Some might find it dizzying, but this is where his oil paints live. This is where he can be the man he was always meant to be.

  He walks into the center of his quarters to where his easel stands, absorbing the light and shadow, caught between an angry star and uncaring space. That unforgiving balance is where all of humanity lives, they just don’t have the vision to understand it. His paints still rest where he left them.

  Dorian picks up the brush and his oil palette.

  Gestures form out of the chaos, a shape in transit, condensed into a set of flowing lines and hard angles. He dips his brush and brings the fire to it, then the shadow. He wants to teach his heir what this life means, shortly before it’s consumed in the fires of an unforgiving sun.

  Yellow ochre for rare evolution. Burnt umber for consumption of all living things. It is to be Dorian’s only masterpiece, as fleeting as an ice sculpture. His failing condition gives him a rare focus he wishes he’d had in life.

  He never should’ve joined the Company. He should’ve brought his myriad worlds to the hearts and minds of any who would’ve listened. He was cunning. He was beautiful. He could’ve been an artist, no matter what his father told him.

  But here, in the last studio on the edge of a galaxy, Dorian finds all that was missing. He works in the character of the souls he’s ushered into the hereafter: Javier, Nick, Lucy and fierce, fierce Anne. They’ve all made indelible marks upon him, which he transfers onto the canvas. And still, the painting is missing something.

  When all cultural, corporate, and human expectation has fallen away, Dorian finds his own perfection. A dull ache, then a sharp pain.

  It’s coming.

  It rocks him harder than any punch he’s ever taken. It gnaws against his ribs, pushing between them, parting his chest like a curtain. It strains against his skin, every nerve in his body lighting up in tandem.

  And then, with a spray of blood, emergence.

  His crimson life sprays across the canvas, gouts here, speckles there, completing the composition. Dorian stares in shock as the wormlike being emerges from his form. Together, they have made a gorgeous collaboration. This is his best work, and it shall descend into the gravity well of a star.

  The beast burrows back into him to give suckle at his arteries, and a great peace floods Dorian’s body. Darkness closes in upon him.

  He is complete.

  He has rendered unto the universe what it will accept. He is a father.

  And he shall pass beyond this veil of tears.

  * * *

  If choking to death was a peaceful exit, the egg crate is the opposite. Blue can’t be sure what drugs the bed gave her while she was unconscious, but her throat remains open, allowing every shallow breath of smoky flesh to fully penetrate her lungs. Her feet burn like candle wicks, and Blue wonders if the acid will eat into her forever. She dares not touch the wounds again.

  The egg crate sways nauseatingly, left to right, in a pendulum swing. The scrabble and scratch of creatures outside fills her ears. They want her so badly, and they assault the egg crate with deafening claws, teeth, and tails. Then come klaxons and hissing.

  Then comes the silence of the vacuum.

  Blue remains alone in her tiny, smoky coffin, waiting for whatever deliverance might await her. She’d intended to pilot the power loader herself from the inside, but she’d left her portable terminal in the med bay. So now she’s in a submersible, sinking into the blackness of space.

  There’s a gentle thunk and the swaying stops. She’s been put down.

  Some time passes, but she can’t tell how long. It could be minutes or days. Her existence has become atemporal. She only knows that she’s starving yet sick, dizzy yet aware, cold yet feverish.

  The lid clicks and blinding light spills inside with her. Fresh air floods her lungs, a feeling she thought she’d never have again. She shuts her eyes as hard as she can, then reopens them, willing the bright blur to become something. The shape of Marcus’s ruined face resolves from the ether, and Blue has to blink again to loosen up the tears that flood her vision.

  He doesn’t smile like he usually does. She thinks of all the horror stories of synthetics losing their minds, and wonders if she’s come so far to die by his hands.

  “Marcus,” she breathes in the remains of a voice she used to have.
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  He doesn’t reply. He crawls to her on his knees, his feet beaten to milky stumps, and lifts her out of the crate like a baby. With plodding movements, he takes her to one of the two cold sleep beds, raising her up over the lip of it. Arms outstretched, on his knees, he must look as though he’s offering her up as a sacrifice.

  Gently, he rests her onto the cushions, making sure she has no sudden movements. Her feet still burn, but the pain has grown dull compared to what it was.

  “Marcus,” she whispers again, and he stops, awaiting her question. “Are you happy that I got out? That… I came back, and not Dorian?”

  “My happiness is irrelevant to my duty,” he replies, his voice metallic and chorusing out of sync with itself. He positions her limbs and pulls a cryo cap over her head, then runs his hands over her shoulders, settling her clothes, his crooked eyes traveling over her body in search of any impediments to the sleep process.

  “I did the right thing, Marcus.”

  He smiles, his lips canted. “You have never given up, this entire time. As long as there was a glimmer of hope, you pursued it.”

  The smile fades.

  “But when it was Javier’s time to give up, you ended him. You used me to conspire with saboteurs and murderers. Dorian would’ve come back and terminated my life. You will force me to carry on.”

  He presses a button, and the lid of Blue’s cryo pod hums closed. She reaches up and presses a palm to the glass.

  “So, no,” he says. “I am not happy.”

  Then he taps a few controls and sleep overtakes her.

  * * *

  A red light passes over Blue’s eyes. Then another, and another. Nausea fills her stomach, and dread. She opens her eyes to see red warning lights bouncing off the escape pod ceiling. A voice repeats the same phrase over and over again, and Blue strains to make out the words.

  “Warning: unidentified life form detected.”

  Her breathing comes faster now, and she shakes the cotton from her brain. Reaching up to touch the glass, she draws back fingers blistered from the cold.

  “Hello?” she calls, her voice distant somehow.