by C. J. Waller
Now all three of us are down, we turn as one to regard the opening to the corridor and the rooms beyond.
No one has to say it, but I know we’re all thinking it.
Where is the colony?
“We must stick together,” Janos says, as if it isn’t stating the bloody obvious. Marcus offers a tight nod. Me? I just continue to stare into the abyss ahead.
As we knew he would, Janos takes point. It occurs to me that I know little of his background, but it is obvious from his stance and the way he is holding his hands that he has a military background and is used to carrying a weapon. He doesn't creep around, he’s stalks, like he owns this place. If he thinks that lends him an air of confidence, he’s wrong. It just makes him look arrogant.
We descend in silence, pausing every so often to listen and to smell. Each time, there is nothing. What the fuck is going on here? I don’t understand. I thought it would be waiting for us, waiting to pounce the moment we dared set foot in its domain again, but it’s as if it was never here. A horrible thought steals over me. What if it isn’t here? What if… what if we’d had some kind of group hallucination? But then, why would the Company be here, ready to kill us so they could take possession of whatever it was? Another thought creeps up on me, even more insidious and unpleasant than the last one. How did we even know the Company was out to kill us? After all, we only had Janos’ word.
And Janos was the last person to leave the tower.
The last person?
Or the last… thing?
By now, my heart is clanging in my ears, my breath straining my lungs. I’m close to panicking again, and I have to stop it, but I don’t know how. The conspiracy of Janos not being Janos at all, but instead a construct of the sentient alien colony sent up to lure us back into its web, whilst our rescuers search vainly for us on the surface won’t go away. I feel hot, so hot, and amorphous black blobs dance before my eyes. Before I can pass out, my mind throws me a wild card – Brendan’s blank, blood soaked face.
Brendan’s blank, blood-soaked dead face.
They killed him. Not the colony, not Janos, but them. The Company. All he did was wave and yell. And they killed him.
It’s enough to allow my breathing to loosen and my mind to clear, just a little bit, enough to allow me to concentrate on my surroundings.
We’re now in the doorway of the first room. For the first time, things are different. The room is lit, and some of the panels have lights upon them, which blink every now and again. Strange characters spider their way across the panels. I can only guess that they are some kind of language. The viewing window is open, and the sea beyond it teems with life thought to be long extinct. I want to marvel, but I’m too scared, too worried to take it all in. Instead, we skulk through the room, past where we found Clark, inspecting the terminals as we go.
Someone has woken this place up, and it wasn’t us.
“It’s not here,” Janos says. “Come on – we have to go deeper.”
Something that has been niggling at me for some time wriggles its way forward. I frown.
“What is it, Meg?” Marcus asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Just that…if the colony was…trapped in that tank, then what attacked Alpha team? It couldn’t have been that. That can’t be what the Company is after…”
“That’s because it isn’t.”
The answer comes from a far corner. We all jump at it, and Janos snaps up an imaginary gun.
A figure uncurls itself from the corner and stands up.
It’s Yuri.
Funny, I’d forgotten all about him.
“What do you mean?” I ask, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “What are they after?”
“I told you, they showed me. Showed me everything. But I didn’t want to be shown. Not after what happened to Clark. They made me and they filmed it.” He pointed to Janos. “He knows. He saw. There was one in the chair. One. Translucent. Part of the collective. The only bit that escaped. In the…in the tank.” He spins round, his arms thrown wide. “What was left of them. Their consciousness all decayed, all insane. The last one entered me to use my body to escape, but human minds are not meant to do what it wanted to do. We are pure matter. They are not. Many as one, infecting each other, unable to transfer, so they fester, fester together, fester as one…”
Behind him, the shadows grow. A faint smell of metal and brine ripples towards us. I can’t feel my body as my mind reels back, away from the gelatinous monster that looms over Yuri. It is grotesque, yet beautiful, glistening and perfect. Upon its surface, faces appear: mine and Brendan’s. They smile, just as we had smiled at it in the tank. The smiles droop to form leers, and the colony slurps forward. All the while, Yuri’s expression of pure ecstasy never changes. The doppelgänger's faces split and dissolve away as the blob slithers over his body, engulfing him until he is wearing it as a shimmering second skin. It lifts him up, and a thin whine escapes him as his body deflates, as if something vital has been extracted. The whining stops, and there is a sickening sound of tearing. The transparency of its body does nothing to hide the horror as the colony tears Yuri apart, allowing his body to sink through it to the floor, whilst his head is pushed forward until it is extended upon a neck of slime.
“You come here to destroy us?”
There’s no trace of Yuri’s voice left now. What is left has a strange, choral quality to it, like a hundred voices speaking in unison, giving it a metallic edge. The colony stretches up, a glistening wall that towers over us. There is no escape; no way that we could ever run and survive. I shake my head, half to dispute its assertion, half to try and clear the pounding.
“We have survived aeons. You are but a blip – an accident of evolution with ideas above your station.”
I work my mouth, knowing this may be our only chance at survival, but the words won't come. The surface of the colony ripples again, subtly shifting its bulk closer to us. My heart, already pounding, feels fit to burst.
“That may be,” I manage to whisper. “But we’re not here to destroy you. Not us. Not the three before you. We just want to go home. We’re trapped -”
‘Trapped?” The colony withdraws just a fraction of an inch, as if in confusion.
“Yes,” I say, diving for the one common thread we have. “Trapped. All we wish to do is escape. Go home. Nothing else.”
The colony pulses, and Yuri’s face is sucked back into its body. Now there is no pretence at language, no common form of communication. The whole entity shudders and surges forward without warning.
***
Where am I?
Wait… What is I?
‘I’ is…
‘I’ is…
Light, bright and white. Then colours, so violent they hurt. A blast of cold against wet skin.
This is ‘I’.
There’s nothing I can hide. Nowhere to escape to. It inhabits every part of me, every fibre of my being, sorting through my memories as a researcher tears through old records. It is too much. Pain beyond pain as I am forced to relive every moment of my life – every triumph, every failure, every pleasure, every agony – everything all at once. Just as I think I cannot take any more, that I will explode from the overload of sensation, it withdraws.
Something cold strikes my cheek. It takes me a moment to realise it’s the floor. I have collapsed, or so it seems. Or maybe I was dropped. I don’t know.
My head is killing me. It thumps as it hurries to re-order my memories, to prioritise, to re-bury. I can’t stop shivering. I try, but it’s pointless. Every part of me trembles, recovering from the invasion of my being, my consciousness, my soul.
I have no idea how long I lay there, shivering, desperately trying to figure out who I am again. It could be seconds; it could be hours.
Time means nothing, a human construct, a useless conceit of our species’ importance. That is the one overriding sense I am left with. Time is meaningless. Time is nothing.
Finally, I manage to blin
k and open my eyes. It takes a moment for me to remember how to focus. When I do, no concerned faces stare back. Just a wall of translucent matter that undulates with every beat of my heart.
I am left with one certainty.
It believes me.
I haul myself up to my knees. Both Marcus and Janos are staring at me, a blank, wide-eyed horror staining their faces. Should the colony decide to judge them next… well, let’s just hope they leave Janos alone.
Nothing is left of Yuri now. Of that, I am sure. I’m not even all that sure the person we recovered from the chair was Yuri at all now – I wonder if he was more colony than human. A buzzing sensation at the base of my skull reverberates through my body, telling me I’m right. He saw too much, too soon and it fragmented his human consciousness. But lessons have been learned, and that won’t happen again.
I hear the faint but rhythmic tread of stealthy boots upon stone. I whip my head around to the source.
“Someone is coming.”
Are they the ones?
“Yes,” I say.
“Yes, what?” Marcus asks. He sounds hoarse, like he is in need of a stiff drink.
“Nothing,” I reply. They don’t need to know.
The colony glides forward, past me. Marcus and Janos plaster themselves up against the wall. They’re terrified. I can smell it rolling off them in waves. They needn’t worry. They’re not the targets.
“M… Megan?” Janos asks.
I say nothing. I don’t need to. Instead, a smile curls my lips, and I follow the colony down the corridor.
Chapter Fifteen
It’s amazing how quiet you can be when you know how. I creep down the corridors, keeping to the walls. Marcus and Janos are some ways behind me, but I still wince each time they move. Amateurs.
I can hear movement from up above. I wait for a moment, just to check that all the clean-up team have descended and are now in the corridors. The last thing I need is for one to escape up the rope.
The colony is all but invisible, clinging to the ceiling, waiting. I flatten myself against the wall and do the same. Not long now.
The red pencil-thin beam of a scope-light sweeps the corridor ahead. They’re not taking any chances. I’m not really sure why I worried so much about their intentions. They're no match for us, not now. No, now they are the ones who should be worrying. They just don't know it yet.
I sense another set of footsteps behind me, and I turn my head just enough so I can mouth stop whilst raising one hand. Janos and Marcus do not question me. Something deep within them, some animal instinct, knows better than that. Instead, they copy me, folding themselves into the ridges of the walls.
The clean-up team are close enough for me to identify them individually. There are four of them, four skittering hearts that belies their steady hands. They’re frightened.
Good. They should be.
Another scope follows the first. Interesting. No headlamps or flashlights. Not that it matters. Night vision isn’t going to help here, no matter how sophisticated the technology. There is a faint slurping from up above – the colony drips down long, thin pseudopods of matter that sways despite there being no breeze, not so much to ensnare, but more to warn the mother organism. I’m not sure exactly how it senses the world, but I do know it has no need for sight, smell, or sound, despite it speaking through Yuri to me. That was entirely for my benefit. Judging its hunting method, it lives in a world of touch a world of vibration and sensation.
We wait.
My breathing is steady. For the first time since I landed on this godforsaken island, I actually feel…calm. I shouldn’t, and part of me knows this. It runs around my body, looking for loose threads to tug at and unravel my resolve. Finding none, it slinks back and gives up.
A black clad figure turns the corner. I keep perfectly still. He should be able to see me – after all, my body heat must be like a beacon in the night, but he doesn’t react. Whether it’s because he’s too busy sweeping the walls to notice me, or it’s something else, something innate to me now, I don’t know. He inches forward in a half crouch, military style, bearing a kind of high-tech crossbow as a soldier would carry an M4, ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. He flinches ever so slightly when the tendrils of mucus touch his cheek, and raises a hand to bat them away.
Then he screams.
It echoes throughout the complex, summoning his friends. Eager to aid their comrade, they are quicker, less cautious than they might have been, allowing the colony to ensnare another of their number before it detaches itself from its hiding place and engulfs them whole.
The scream is cut off. It reverberates in the air for a mere fraction of a second afterwards, but to me, it feels like an age as I watch it ricochet off the walls, a wave of crackling energy that lessens with each surface it strikes.
The two helpless members of the clean up team are now plastered to the floor, almost as if they’ve been shrink-wrapped. I raise a hand to stifle the urge to giggle. They look so surprised. They thought they were the predators down here – how wrong can you be? The colony constricts again, forcing themselves into the very pores of the men, splitting skin and rupturing organs. The men can’t move, can’t make a sound as the colony seeps into them, invading every part of them until they turn to mush, mere nourishment for the collective. There isn’t even a bloodstain to tell where they had once been. All that is left is a shredded uniform and their weapons.
As the colony regroups, I wander over and pick up one of the crossbows. It looks easy enough to use. Small yet wickedly sharp bolts are loaded in a cartridge that protrudes from the stock, with a high-tensile string that you just pull back when you’ve fired, allowing another bolt to slide into the chamber. You fire it in the same way you might a gun. I’ve not had much experience past shooting my older brother’s air rifle when we were kids, but that doesn’t bother me. I’ll pick it up. Picking things up is easy.
“Walker? Walker? Come in. Do you read me?”
A little black box crackles to life from within one of the shredded uniforms. Walker. A curiously unimaginative name. He might as well have said his name was Smith if it was anonymity he was after. The colony thrusts out a spindle of jelly and plucks the radio from its nest.
“I read you, Point – nothing here.”
Crackle.
“I read you – nothing? Are you sure? Where the fuck did they go?”
“Dunno. Walker out.”
The colony’s ability to replicate human voice patterns is remarkable. I can’t help but be awed by it. Its surface ripples again: do not concern yourself. I have no idea how I understand what it is saying, but I do. It’s like reading words on a page now.
“What the hell is going on?” Marcus whispers from behind me. In the past, such a sudden enquiry would have made me jump, but not now. I knew he was there. I know where all of them are now. Every single one.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Everything’s being sorted.”
“Sorted?” Marcus sounds incredulous. “What is wrong with you, Meg? What did...“ His voice drops down to barely a whisper. “What did that thing do to you?”
Janos is behind him staring at me. What has happened to me? So hard to explain without it sounding like madness. I smile slowly.
“We have a new ally,” I say.
“A new… a new ally? That thing? Meg… come on.”
“It tested me and found me truthful. It trusts me. We helped liberate it, so it owes us. The collective is back together now, and so it will help us.”
“Help us… and then what?” Janos asks.
“It can go home,” I say.
“It can go home?”
“Yes.”
Well… it’s as good a reason as any.
“Oh, dear Lord…” Marcus sounds both awed and revolted, so I turn around. The colony has shrunk in on itself, creating the perfect replica of a man, just as it did to Brendan and me when it was in the tank. Only now, it looks like what I expect is Walker, complete w
ith his uniform. A few moments more and colour blushes its surface, filling in the transparent gaps until the illusion is flawless. The Walker thing then scoops up the remaining crossbow, and stalks away.
The hunt, as they say, is on.
We keep our distance, and only the threat of death by crossbow bolt keeps Marcus quiet. I can tell he doesn’t trust the collective, which is stupid – it is helping us, after all – but his fear of the clean up team is even greater. Janos, on the other hand, is as inscrutable as ever. His expression is hard, his body language stiff. Out of the two of them, I know he is the one I’m going to have to watch.
Another shriek punctures the silence, followed by the dull thud of something striking a wall. I scurry up the slope towards the antechamber where our rope dangles. There’s a bolt stuck in one of the walls. Well, at least they tried. We burst in to find the replica of Walker busily engulfing another figure. I can’t work out if they’re male or female, but it doesn’t matter. They’re dead. In the corner, someone else whimpers – the last of the clean up team, huddled, stinking of piss and terror. I raise my crossbow and pull the trigger. The bolt leaves with a sigh and buries itself into his head with a soft thump. See? I told you it was easy enough.
“Meg!” Marcus is shocked, but I ignore him. How else did he expect this to go down? It’s kill or be killed down here – dog eat dog.
“Now what?” Janos asks. The Walker-thing shudders as its body snaps back into its human form. I look at it, and it nods.
“We leave,” I say.
“We leave?”
“Yes.”
