by Isabel Wroth
“If you’re hearing this, we have moved camp again higher into the trees. The Scylla are ill equipped at this time to climb, but they’re proving to be relentlessly resourceful. It won’t be long before our location is compromised.
“They are showing up with regularity now, every three weeks they’re on the move. Looking for us. Our next projected safe zone is the plains beyond our first settlement.
“If you find us, enact full quarantine procedure and wear full protective gear. Leave no skin exposed. This is Alec, Firstborn Moika, and we hundred and ten are the last of the Sestrenka. Out.”
Silence settled on the deck at the end of the sad, despondent recording, shock seeping into their bones.
“Dax, run voice recognition and find the first entry made by that female.” Dax was already anticipating such an order, because seconds later the recordings were downloading to his unit.
“Jump the ship.”
“Preparing to jump, sir!”
Kalix felt the distinct tug of gravity in his belly as the ship moved into the void, racing through space as fast as possible to reach the humans. He moved back to sit in his command chair, listening to the recording via his private link.
The earpiece projected the voice of the female to his ears alone, and this time, he could hear the tears plainly in her speech, and the fear while she struggled to make her report.
She sounded younger, not as confident.
“November 27th. The year is 3192. Um, this is Alec, Firstborn Moika and... and I think I’m in charge now. There was a raid on our settlement by some kind of... some kind of monsters, thirty-two days ago.
“They came out of the lake and took most of the men. The ones they didn’t take, they k-killed. Sage said they took the strongest members of our colony, so that the rest of us would be vulnerable and undefended.
“Sage, um, she fought from behind the laser fence when they came back? And at first we thought we’d beaten them, but a few of the women, they got slimed by the monsters and have developed some kind of infection. We u-used the last of our antibiotics to try and fight it off, but it didn’t w-work.
“Sage put me in charge, I think mostly just to keep the other kids calm, but it’s for real now. She d-died this morning, and we haven’t been able to make contact with LC Sully or his team for about two weeks. We’re... we’re assuming that they’re all dead too.
“Sage told me to document everything as often as I could so whoever hears this on the satellite uplink, you know what you’re walking into.
“These things must live underwater or somewhere we haven’t explored, because in twenty years, we’ve not seen a single one of them or even a sign of their presence.
“We’re calling them Scylla because it’s impossible to see them in the water until it’s too late. They just sort of appear and disappear like they can melt into it.
“They have big, bony plates that cover most of their body, and protrusions on their heads to protect their eyes.
“Their teeth are like serrated knives, they’ve got webbing in between their freakishly long fingers and toes, and they smell like rotting meat left out in the sun.
“Sometimes the smell comes before they do, so we have some warning. It’s really hard to do, but a straight shot to the eye seems to be the only way to kill them.”
“Don’t forget about what happens, the infection.”
Kalix heard another voice, almost identical to the first, whisper from somewhere else in whatever room they were in.
Alec, the heartbreakingly young female, sniffled louder.
“Right, the infection,” Alec continued. “The monsters spit some kind of slime at us whenever they attack. Before she got too sick to speak, Sage said when she looked at it under her microscope, her blood was teeming with some kind of parasite. I have her personal log with most of her recordings.
“Day one, the infection isn’t noticeable. The slime gets in through any open wound, the eyes, mouth, ears even.
“The Scylla do their best to spit it at our faces, but if you have a face mask on, they cut you instead and spit in the open wound.
“By day four, the blood starts to turn black, and you can see it in the veins closest to the skin surface. The body tries to fight with a fever, and all the infected people want is water.
“More water than the human body can hold. Their skin is stretched tight over their bones, and despite all the water being consumed, they’re dehydrated to the point where they should be dead.
“Day six, they’re in so much pain they can’t even speak. Vomiting up what we think are internal organ remnants, muscle, bones even, as the parasites start pureeing their insides.
“Day nine, the person is basically just um, just dead. But the parasites don’t rupture out of the body until day ten, when you’ve dragged yourself to the nearest body of water.
“We had people wha-watching the infected p-personnel, and they reported that they thought Sage and two of the others were dead.
“They had no pulse, no pupil activity. But they g-got up like zombies out of one of Captain Yuri’s old horror movies, and when we tried to stop them they fought like demons to go free. To get to water.
“We caught up to Sage in time to see her get into the lake. H-her skin sort of just turned to jelly and s-split open. Dissolved into n-nothing and hundreds of little egg looking things poured out of her.
“The Scylla came back and we watched them use weird nets to gather up the eggs. They took them back down to wherever the hell they come from.
“S-so if you’re hearing this, please come rescue us, we need help, I don’t know how long we have, how long we can survive down here.
“Please come, it’s just me and my sister and a bunch of kids. I don’t... I don’t know what to do.”
The breath heaved out of Kalix’s chest when the recording ended. He dropped his head for a minute while he digested the young female’s desperate plea for help.
To absorb the news he would have to tell the Asho’na her kin were long dead. That their deaths had been neither painless nor quick.
He sat there for what felt like only moments, trying to forget the sounds of the female crying and struggling to be strong. Trying to forget the same sounds made by the other young ones in the background.
Great Beast, how could the cubs have survived?
“Commander?”
Kalix sat up and back into his chair, nodding at his second to say that he was all right.
“The female made a full report on what it is we will be dealing with. I want infantry squads eight and ten prepared to engage, and flight squads two and four to provide areal cover.
“Full quarantine procedures, I want medical standing by, and every warrior on the ground with me to take an extra torque.”
Dax relayed his orders, activating the squads at Kalix’s nod. He surged from his command chair, all traces of fatigue gone while he paced back and forth in front on the platform.
“Dax, can you reverse the transmission feed?” Dax tilted his head with a small frown, causing Kalix to hiss with impatience. “To transmit a message to whatever device the female is using to make her reports.”
Dax gave a sound of understanding. “Of course. I will need one rev, perhaps less. Commander, is it wise for you to join the ground crew?”
Kalix ignored the question, pointing a finger at his second as he left the command deck to prepare with the infantry.
“Get me that frequency.”
TWO
Alec sat in the dark, the wind rocking the treehouse back and forth gently. Usually it was a comforting sway, the whistle of the wind through the cracks in the reeds and the constant noise of the insects outside meant they were safe for another few hours.
But tonight neither the whistle of the wind nor the hum of the bugs could drown out the rattling breaths coming from her sister’s chest.
It couldn’t drown out her occasional whimpers of pain, or her soft words assuring Alec that it was going to be okay. T
hat she had to do it. If Alec loved her, she would just do it.
The raid five days ago had been no less brutal or terrifying than any other. The Scylla were getting desperate to get their hands on the older set of kids, and Zhenya had tripped on a root as they’d run for the safety of the trees. He’d shouted out as he fell and Meg had turned back, ignoring Alec’s order to keep moving.
Alec had been closer than Meg, she could have gotten to Zhenya first, but her sister hadn’t listened. Meg had been quick, cutting down the first lumbering beast, but the second had sliced through her suit before she’d taken it down, and the third had stepped over the fallen bodies of his friends to spit its toxic sludge at Meg.
Zhenya was fine, physically. Alec knew he was just outside the door, waiting with the water Meg would soon start screaming for.
Most of the bucket had probably been filled with the tears he was quietly crying, even though it wasn’t his fault.
“Please, please just do it.”
Alec swiped at the tears on her own face, squeezing her sister’s hand gently, but even that made a little whimper of pain leave Meg’s lips.
“Just hang in there a little bit longer. Ilsa took Gregori and Liliya to find some red bark for you.”
Meg managed a grin, but it quickly faded into a grimace, her face twisting in pain.
“It’s the wrong season, and you know it.”
It was the wrong season, and they hadn’t yet been able to find any of the red bark in this sector. It was the only thing that helped dull the pain of the infection as it spread to consume the internal organs.
Sage had taught them how every environment provided toxins and anti-toxins, nature creating balance, but she had died before discovering what, if anything, was the anti-toxin in their environment to kill the infection.
Alec had obsessively gone over their previous leader’s botany notes, over any information their elders had gathered about the unknown planet they’d landed on, trying to educate herself so she could protect the people she’d been left in charge of.
It had been Alec’s burden to bear, her responsibility as the first human born on this planet, to take care of the others, and one by one Alec was failing.
The Scylla didn’t discriminate against human or animal. So long as it had a high enough percentage of water in its body, they could infect it.
Alec had discovered the red bark purely by accident.
She’d been hunting in the forest with some of the others and seen one of the six-legged deer-like creatures, body bloated, with its fur coming out in patches to reveal the black, blotchy skin underneath.
Alec had watched from her perch in the trees as the deer had eaten as much of the red bark off a gnarled tree as it could reach, and then staggered away from the small pond of water nearby to collapse under a bush.
She had been shocked by its behavior and watched the animal for the next three days. The bark hadn’t eradicated the infection, but it had seemed to allow the creature to die with a semblance of peace.
She had gathered as much of the bark as she could find, packed it into her satchel, and marked the area on her GPS to be able to find it again.
Alec had felt like a monster doing it, but the next time one of her people had been infected, she’d steeped the bark in hot water to make a tea and had made the woman, Lida, drink it.
The infection had continued to spread and grow, but Lida had gone into a coma and responded to none of the painful stimuli Alec inflicted on her.
Lida had died, painlessly.
The Scylla had grown in numbers every time one of their people had succumbed to the corruption, and it had become her responsibility to kill them before the infection could spread past six days.
Alec tried to find safe places for them to take refuge. They’d survived, barely, in the desert plains where the only water to be found came from the sky.
But they’d lost people to dehydration and starvation when they couldn’t find any food to sustain them in the harsh heat.
They’d tried the mountains, but had lost more people to climbing accidents trying to get up and down to hunt for food than they had to the Scylla.
The forest had so far been their best option. Their only option, really.
They could pick up and move from the different forested areas and use the trees as cover, the heat of the trunks and the disturbance the constantly moving branches made it so the Scylla’s echo locators couldn’t lock on to them unless they were within a few feet, the heartbeats of the animals and the movement of the trees messing with their range.
So, what humans remained alive had built treehouse-like huts high up in the canopy, securing rope bridges to travel along the green highway, taking them down and moving them as they went.
The red bark had become the only kindness Alec could offer her people when they became infected. In the last fourteen years, she’d gone from being responsible for just under a thousand to now having only seventy-five left.
By morning, the count would be seventy-four.
Meg’s veins were black under her fair skin, her body shivering now as the fever raged, and soon Meg would begin to vomit the gelatinous mess of her internal organs after the parasites were done sucking the water from her cells.
A few more hours.
Alec was determined to spend every last one of them with her sister. She brushed her hand through the curly mess of Meg’s hair, choking with the effort it took not to let the tears burning up her throat be heard in her voice.
“You’re right, it’s not the right season. But they’re looking anyway, and they’re not going to stop looking.”
Meg hummed a soft sound, her lashes falling down over her eyes, hiding the black streaks starting to feather into her pupils.
“You shouldn’t be the one to do this,” Meg rasped, exhaustion and pain covering the gentleness of her words.
Alec forced a laugh. “Are you kidding? I’ve been threatening to kill you for years now. You think I’d miss out on the chance to finally make good on that?”
Meg smiled back, the lines of pain around her lips softening for just a moment. “Of course not. What was I thinking? Did you report?”
Alec snorted derisively, winding her fingers around every curl of her sister’s hair, remembering how they’d done that as children.
When they’d lay alone in their bunk, whispering back and forth about where their parents might be, if they’d found the others yet, when they would be returning.
But it had been twenty years.
Twenty years without word from the Sestrenka or any of the other ships. Alec had given up hope about fourteen years ago after Sage had died. But not Meg. Meg was convinced they were going to be rescued.
Alec wasn’t sure if her sister truly believed it or if she was just refusing to give in and share her despair. If she was just being unfailingly hopeful in order to keep everyone else’s spirits high. Hopeful, to keep Alec from giving up.
“No. I’ll do it in the morning.” She didn’t tell Meg that she’d stopped making the daily reports three months ago. She didn’t tell anyone.
Even if by some miracle one of the other ships picked up the distress beacon and listened to her reports, it was likely that they wouldn’t be rescued.
The other ship wouldn’t want to take the chance of any of the people on the ground bringing the infection aboard, when there was no humanly possible way of treating it.
Alec had recorded everything they needed to know about the planet. About the Scylla. It was enough. And if someone did come down to rescue them, only to find no trace of them left, it wouldn’t be a mystery what had happened.
Meg opened one bloodshot eye and gave her a droll look. “Bullshit. You haven’t made a report for months now.”
Alec laughed, a few tears streaking down her cheeks, because she should have known better.
Meg was her twin, her identical twin, and there was no lying to someone who had the same facial expressions and tone of voice as you.
“What’s the point, Meg? It’s been twenty years. No one is coming.”
“I know.”
Her mouth dropped open in shock to hear her sister agree with her. After all these years of Meg’s annoying hopefulness, insisting to anyone who ever made comment that they wouldn’t be found or rescued, that it would happen if they just stayed strong, now her sister was agreeing with her? It only made Meg’s imminent death that much more real.
“Don’t say that. You don’t get to be a pessimist. That’s my job.”
“Pish,” Meg slurred. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been all this time, being the dopey optimist? Your job, oh illustrious Firstborn, is to lead us, and mine is to support you. Was.
“I have to tell you, it’s kind of a relief to know that job is almost over. You’re a tough act to keep up with, sister. Exhausting, actually.”
Meg’s attempt at playful banter made Alec’s tears fall and her laughter sound thicker than normal. Like she was choking on it.
Meg squeezed her hand and all playfulness ebbed, while she shuddered as the pain of her internal organs being sucked dry of water began to intensify.
“Meg,”
“Make your report, Alec. Sage made it her last request. I’m making it mine. Keep making the reports. Someone will find it, some day. Don’t let them forget us.”
Alec took shallow, panting breaths to get past the sobs that built in her chest. That was as good a reason as any to keep making the reports.
Sage had asked, Meg was asking, and Alec would do it even if no one ever heard them, so that they weren’t forgotten. She nodded, hoarsely calling out to Zhenya.
The boy who ducked into their little cabin was only thirteen. His mother had been infected five years ago, and once she’d succumbed to it, Meg had made it her personal mission to see Zhenya survived for as long as possible.
The dark-haired kid worshiped Meg, and the guilt that ravaged his pretty face was almost as excruciating to see as it was to watch the parasites take over Meg’s body.
“Go get my pack. Meg is going to make the report with me.” Alec didn’t say it, but the end of the sentence hung heavily between the three of them.
