by Calista Skye
Alien Creep
Calista Skye
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
1
- Mila -
“This is insane.”
Emma tries to keep her voice down, but still her whisper resonates in the gloomy corridor. I know exactly how she feels. But I'm her big sister, and I have to look like I have some clue about what I'm doing.
“Keep it down,” I hiss. “And stay close to the wall. That security camera could come back online any moment now.”
It's the only reason we've dared to do this. The security arrangements in this alien facility are nowhere near as good as they would be in any public building. The few cameras we see are ordinary models made here on Earth, and they have been clumsily screwed into the alien material in the wall. They can be hacked and switched off remotely, which is what I've just done. But they won't stay off for long. My hacking skills with the pad aren't that good.
Approaching the end of the corridor with no alarm going off, my already crazy heart rate picks up even more. On the other side of this door, we should find exactly what we're looking for.
I throw a glance behind me. Emma is doing as I told her, flattening herself against the wall and making her way sideways, one slow step at a time. Not that it helps much – her generous proportions are hard to conceal. So are mine, even in this lycra bodysuit, but concealment is not the greatest of my worries right now.
I get busy with the pad, not sure if I should be too thankful about things having worked out this far. Because what little security there is in this alien invader regional headquarters exists not to protect the aliens from the outside. It's there to protect any too-curious Earthlings from the aliens and their security. The aliens have perfectly adequate ways of securing the facility from actual break-ins, ways that are far too scary for me to think about right now.
With trembling fingers, I tap the Execute button on the app that took all the hackers in our Resistance group weeks to code. If it works, then the door should open… now.
There's no click or whirr – the door just appears to be suddenly gone. And beyond, all is dark.
“It's supposed to be lit up,” Emma whispers into my ear. “Something's wrong. Let's leave.”
I peer into the darkness. Nobody ever got this far into the alien base. Not that anyone's tried as hard as this before, of course. But this is our only chance.
“It's our only chance,” I hiss, more to myself than to my sister.
I flick on the flashlight app on the little pad and sweep the light cone around the darkened room. Our information is correct – that is indeed a secondary data bank. The aliens believe in redundancy, so they keep important information in several places. Beyond this point, not much hacking is needed – alien tech is surprisingly easy to deal with, once you get used to pulling thin levers and pressing physical buttons the size of pinheads. The Bululg aliens have many fingers and enjoy using them.
I take a deep breath and step into the room. A soft light comes on and bathes all the various technology in a reddish light. It's all rounded and organic-looking and alien. Like the whole room was grown, not built.
A chill goes down my spine. This is the most alien place I've ever been. Right in the middle of a Bululg base, the disgusting aliens that invaded Earth over a year ago and took control of the planet.
The air is hot and smells of rotting vegetation, a reminder that the Bululg prefer their atmosphere with a little bit of methane in it.
“Come on,” Emma whispers as she makes her way past me. “Don't just stand there admiring all this shit. Let's get what we came for.”
It rips me out of my thoughts, and I head for the console that's the furthest away.
I pull the levers and press the tiny buttons, checking each alien pictogram that comes up on the small screens. Our resistance group has some very smart members, and they have told us what to look for.
The only problem is that nobody really knows exactly what we're looking for. We want to find a weakness, a chink in the armor of the inscrutable Bululg. We still have no firm idea exactly why they invaded Earth. Certainly, it has something to do with women, but we also think there's something else. Something that might give us a clue as to how to defeat them, end the occupation, and then kick them the hell off our planet.
Thankfully, the pictograms are not too hard to understand, and I go through reel after reel of them. So does Emma on another console.
I try to ignore the growing uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. This place covers three acres of ground. It's a very alien construction, and some parts of it contain both Bululgs and some of their alien allies. And their pets.
Thousands of combinations of pictograms roll past my eyes, but none of them leap out at me. Mostly, it seems to be some kind of accounting, with lots of alien numbers.
I switch to another console.
“How long do we have?” Emma asks, her voice tight.
I check my pad. “Six minutes before the sentries have gone a full circuit.”
The sentries outside the base are Earthlings – traitors who have taken up cushy and well-paid jobs for the Bululg invaders. Like the cameras, this is on the suggestion of the Earth Advisory Council, a basically powerless group of old politicians who pretend to rule us on behalf of the aliens. Sometimes the aliens listen to them about unimportant things and do what they suggest. But at the same time, everyone knows what the real security is here.
I push more weird buttons and pull more otherworldly levers, seeing the pictogram combinations roll across the screens. “Two more minutes, then we're out.”
Emma doesn't reply, just concentrates.
I glance over at her. She's probably the smartest member in our group of the Resistance, so it makes sense that she's here. When we drew lots for who would go on this potentially deadly mission, and both the Carver sisters were drawn, the others offered to draw again for the second name. But Emma argued that she and I would be the best team, and the others relented without much discussion. She's like that.
The pictograms roll past me, none of the combinations showing what I need to see. This mostly seems to be about certain goods being sold at auction, and the prices each lot fetched. I know all too well what kind of goods that would be. It's totally chilling to read. And it's actually pretty useful information, but it's not what we're looking for.
“One minute. Anything?”
Emma works intensely at her console, as tense as a bowstring. “Yes.”
I step over to her. “What?”
�
��Wait.” She pulls levers and presses buttons faster than I ever could, and the pictograms flash past in a blur.
I look around, itching to get the hell out of this creepy place. “Ten seconds and we're running.”
She doesn't respond.
“Now,” I state, trying to keep my voice steady. It feels like the walls are closing in on me, and the air seems harder to breathe. “Time.”
“This is it!” Emma says. “I got it. Just one more piece…”
I hear sounds outside. The door we came in through is still open, but on the other side of all these walls there's something moving. Something slithering and scraping. Or it might be my imagination.
It all happens at the same time. Emma says “got it!”, the room goes pitch black, and then there's movement all around us.
“Run!” I yell and run away from Emma. I have some idea about what this is, and I want to take all the attention away from her.
I crash into something that's both hard and soft and definitely alive. My skin creeps as alien tentacles curl around my arms. I fumble with the pad, but manage to turn on the flashlight before I hit the Scramble button that makes the hacking software destroy itself.
“Get the hell out of here!” I yell.
The pad falls to the floor with the flashlight pointing up. The scene around me is a total nightmare. It's a chaos of pale tentacles and claws and teeth and dead alien eyes.
I'm being held firmly, and the grip on me is steadily tightening, new tentacles snaking around my arms and legs. But I was able to block the aliens from going after Emma. She's still free. She's by the door, looking back at me. “Mila, come on!”
“Get out!” I scream, kicking and struggling to remain free as long as possible and taking the attention away from her. “Tell the guys what you found!”
Only then does she bolt, out the door and down the corridor faster than I've ever seen her run.
An alien takes off after her, a huge six-legged thing the size of a horse, a vivid green with white stripes. It's a fresk, the very reason why nobody has been too keen to break into any alien facility before. Nobody knows if they're sentient or just a kind of guard dog. We just know that those things rip people apart like tissue paper. And now my sister has one of them at her heels.
“Run!” I squeal before the door shuts.
It's suddenly very quiet. I'm alone with the aliens.
A sickly yellow light comes on. There aren't actually that many of them in here, it's just that they are exactly that – aliens. One of them has its long octopus-like tentacles around me, and the creature actually does look like a cross between an octopus and a gerbil. It has three eyes and two snapping beaks. This is also a guard creature, called a girku. Nobody knows if they are sentient or not, or maybe some weird half-state between mindless and thinking.
There are two of the girku, as well as another fresk that's now coming closer, its four nostrils vibrating as it takes in my scent. These things are the real danger – they're barely tamed predators from some alien jungle, huge and powerful and lethal. The risk of meeting one of these is why break-ins in alien facilities is very rare.
I yank at the cold tentacles holding me. “Let go!”
But it's like being held by shackles of steel – there's no give at all.
Shit. This is not going to end well for me.
The fresk comes all the way up to me, its muzzle dripping with green saliva and its black, needle-like teeth glittering in the white light from my dropped pad. It smells like rotting meat.
I scrunch up my face. This could actually end right now, if that thing suddenly can't keep its murderous instincts in check. Its whole body is trembling in anticipation of biting my head off.
Okay. I signed up for this. Nobody said being in the Resistance movement against the alien invaders would be pleasant. And we all knew it could kill us.
There's a flash of light and a sharp crack. The fresk jerks and pulls back from me.
A Bululg walks up to me on its three spindly legs, gray skin hanging shapelessly off it. There's no emotion in its black eyes that fill almost the whole head, making it look like in insect.
I try to kick at the four-foot high alien, but the girku effortlessly restrains me. “You have no right to do this,” I state, more to steel myself than because I think it'll help.
The Bululg squeaks.
“You have all been advised against entering any of our structures,” my cellphone informs me via its translation app. “It is highly dangerous to be here.”
I decide to change tactics. “Okay, sorry. Let me go and I won't do it again.”
The app remains silent. It is only designed to translate Bululg speech into English, not the other way around. The implication is that no Bululg would ever be interested in anything an Earthling might say.
The fresk comes in close again, and once more the little Bululg zaps it with a small device it holds in a thin hand with eleven long fingers. The fresk withdraws marginally.
Damn, I hope Emma is okay.
“If you do anything to hurt my sister, I'll kill you all,” I promise.
The Bululg turns and waddles out the way it came, and the two girku follow, bringing me with them despite my struggles. The fresk is behind, bouncing and rearing with barely restrained energy and a blood-chilling whine that has no equal on Earth.
I'm dragged through various corridors looking all the same until the Bululg stops and opens a door in the wall. The girku shoves me inside, a little harder than necessary, causing me to hit the wall on the other side of the room and fall to the floor.
The door shuts behind me, leaving the cell in a dim, red light.
I get back on my feet and immediately hit my head on the alien ceiling. “Fuck!”
It's very quiet, and the cell is bare. Half the floor is a grate and the other half is some kind of hard material like concrete, except alien.
The ceiling is too low to stand up. I sit down against the organic-looking wall and take out my advanced AI cellphone. After the Bululg invasion, those became compulsory to carry at all times, to the point where we all were forced to get chips implanted in our arms that are coupled with the cellphone and give nasty shocks when you're more than two feet away from your phone.
The big technology companies in Silicon Valley were falling over themselves in their eagerness to assist the invaders in suppressing the population of Earth, and this particular idea came straight from them. It happened so fast that it seemed like the tech giants had that kind of system ready to go even before the aliens came.
But my Resistance group has some pretty good hackers, and they have subverted and modified all our cellphones. The devices already had pretty good artificial intelligence in them, but their personalities and functions have been distorted.
“Ingrid?”
“Hi, Mila! How are you today?” I've picked a cute name and a chirpy voice for my phone, but now I kind of regret not going for a less upbeat one. This one could get on my nerves, the way things are right now.
“Is there a signal?”
“Nope! We're all isolated. Please move to a location with sufficient signal strength to check in with Population Control!”
It's one of the things that the hackers couldn't remove from the phones – the device's constant insistence on being put in contact with the hated agency that keeps all Earthlings in check and knows where they are at all times.
“Ingrid, is there a way to contact base?”
“There is no way to contact anyone. Sorry, Mila. You really should check in with Population Control!”
“Can you call Emma? Or Davis?”
“No chance, sweetie! But I'm sure Population Control would love to hear from you.”
I put the phone back in the pocket on the sleeve of my figure-hugging black lycra outfit. Those things can go several weeks between charges, and the implant gives a bad shock if you forget to charge the phone and so go offline.
“Fuck.” I try to stay angry and keep the adrenaline flowi
ng, because right underneath is the fear for Emma. That fresk that ran after her would rip her up and feast on her remains if it caught her. And they run fast.
I'm so full of stress, I get back on my feet, but I can't stand up straight.
“Typical,” I seethe. “I can't even pace back and forth.”
I sit back down and go through the contents of my pockets. We didn't bring any weapons, because what would be the point? Only an anti-tank missile could take down a fresk.
There's not much. Chewing gum and a military first-aid pack. We knew we wouldn't need much to get inside this place, just some serious hacking, a good amount of luck, and the tablet that's now lost.
I suddenly notice that I'm bleeding from my thigh. Something has slashed through the fabric and into the soft flesh underneath, cutting a four-inch-long gash. I hadn't even noticed.
It must have been the girku that held me – their tentacles have thin little claws at the end, like fish hooks. And despite their strength, those creatures don't have the best motor skills or precision.
Of course now that I know the cut is there, it starts to sting pretty bad.
I roll up the suit, rip the plastic off the first aid pack, and fix myself up as best I can. The cut is pretty deep in places and it bleeds merrily. I can only hope it's not poisoned or infected.
Needing something to do, I examine the cell. It takes about two seconds. It's empty, and the walls are some kind of alien material that's slightly springy to the touch, but which has a hard center that won't budge. Breaking out of here is not going to be an option.
I go through the prisoner routine we've all practiced in cases like this. It's a matter of not losing hope and not dwelling on things I can't control right now. Don't think I'll soon be out of here – that can only crush your spirit of it doesn't happen. Better to think I'll stick it out however long it takes. Also, I will not give up any information about our Resistance group. Those groups are kept small exactly so that one person being tortured to give names will only blow her own little group and not the entire organization.
