“Yes, sir.”
Newt felt a little safer. The captain’s voice—his confidence and determination—reassured her a little bit. She could even believe that her father was going to be all right, if she didn’t think about it too much.
She hugged the captain even tighter.
“Thank you,” she whispered into his ear.
Then they were through the door and headed up the metal stairs, boots clanking on every step, and they had all run out of words again.
18
DARK TURNS
DATE: 23 JUNE, 2179
TIME: 1637
Nearly twenty-four hours after she and her family had returned to Hadley’s Hope, Newt lay in bed, legs curled up beneath her.
Mrs. Hernandez had come in the middle of the day to look after her and Tim, and had made them a vegetable stir-fry. She explained that their mother did not want them to leave the family quarters.
Even at six, Newt understood that her mom didn’t want her overhearing other people talking about what had happened to her dad, or about whatever the scientists and marines might have discovered out at that crashed spaceship. Another day, she would have been angry about being left out. But today she was too distracted by her fears for her father.
The night before, she’d had a terrible time getting to sleep. The memory of her own screams kept ringing in her head, and every time she closed her eyes, she saw the pulsing sacs on the body of the alien creature attached to her father’s face. When she’d finally fallen asleep she had slept for ten straight hours without dreaming at all.
Waking, she’d been relieved that she hadn’t had any nightmares… and then she’d remembered the day before, and thought about her father in the medical lab. That was when she realized that the real nightmare had been waiting for her to wake up.
Throughout the day, she’d tried to read and tried to nap. She’d tried to eat, too, but could only manage little nibbles. Tim had been sketching, but when she’d asked him what he was drawing, he told her she didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to see. So she knew exactly what it was he’d been drawing—the same thing she saw when she closed her eyes.
Mrs. Hernandez fussed over them, made sure they ate, but Newt didn’t want to talk to anyone, so she retreated to her bedroom as soon as she’d cleared her dinner plate.
“Ssshhh,” she whispered, clutching her doll, Casey, to her chest. She kissed the doll’s head. “Daddy’s going to be okay. Try not to be afraid.”
Newt had been giving Casey that advice all day, but her dolly didn’t seem inclined to take it. She couldn’t make the fear go away, and neither could Newt.
“Just be brave,” she whispered.
She exhaled and held Casey even more tightly. That seemed to work. Being brave wasn’t the same as not being afraid. Her mom had told her that more than once. Being brave meant you faced your fears, and Newt silently promised herself she would do that, no matter what.
“You and me, Casey,” she said. “We’re gonna be brave.”
She frowned. Had she heard a sound, out in the family room? A thump, maybe. Or a knock. Her pulse quickened and she burrowed deeper under her covers. Then she remembered what she had just told Casey. For a moment she held her breath, then she threw back her covers.
Holding onto Casey, she tiptoed to her bedroom door.
Before she could reach it, the door swung inward. Newt cried out and jumped back, clenching her right fist—ready to fight. Then Tim poked his head into her room. She hissed through her teeth and started toward him, figuring he deserved a punch in the nose just as much as any monster that might’ve come after her.
“Quiet,” Tim whispered, putting a finger to his lips to shush her. He moved into her room, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “Mrs. Hernandez fell asleep in her chair, and we don’t want her waking up right now.”
Her hand unclenched. “Why not?”
Tim looked uneasily toward her.
“We need to go, Rebecca.”
Newt frowned. “What? Where are we—”
“Dad’s awake.”
Her heart fluttered. “He’s awake? Are you sure? Is he all right?”
A shuffling footstep came from just outside her room and she looked past her brother, noticing for the first time that they weren’t alone. Aaron stepped in behind Tim, looking serious and anxious, both at the same time.
Newt held Casey down at her side. Aaron teased her about the doll almost every day, and she didn’t know if she could handle it today. A year older than Tim and physically larger, Aaron usually acted younger.
“It’s true,” Aaron said quietly. No teasing. Not even a glance at the doll.
“I want to see him for myself,” Tim said, studying his sister. “But I didn’t want to leave you here, not without telling you where I was going, and asking if you wanted to come along.”
Newt was confused at first, trying to figure out how they would get there without being discovered. Then she understood.
“Through the ducts?” she asked.
“Of course. We know which lab they’re in,” Tim said. “We’ve peeked in there before, when we’ve been playing Monster Maze.”
“I don’t know—”
Tim rolled his eyes in frustration. “Newt, are you coming or not?”
“But—”
“C’mon, Tim,” Aaron said, “let’s go without her.”
Newt sat on the edge of her bed, laying Casey on her pillow. Indecision paralyzed her.
“Mom said we weren’t supposed to leave our quarters,” she reminded him.
Tim glared angrily at her. “I don’t care. Aaron heard his parents say that Dad’s awake, and I’m gonna see for myself.”
“Let’s go,” Aaron prodded, turning to leave.
Tim followed him. “See you later, Rebecca.”
Newt watched him walk out, feeling frozen on the outside but frantic on the inside. She wanted to see her father, too, but their mother had told them to stay put, and she didn’t want to make her mother angry. More than that, she was afraid of what they might see if they crawled through the ducts and spied on the medical lab where her father had been taken. What if he wasn’t really awake? What if that thing on his face had hurt him, or scarred him?
No way would their dad approve of them spying.
“Tim, don’t leave me,” she said softly, not wanting to shout for fear of waking Mrs. Hernandez. Taking a deep breath, she stood up, turned, and pointed at Casey, who lay against the pillow. “You stay right there and don’t move,” she said. “I’ll be back.”
Slipping on her shoes, she darted silently from her room, glanced once at Mrs. Hernandez napping on the sofa, and then went out the door. She caught up with the boys around the corner, moving down a wide corridor.
“Hey, you guys, wait for me!” she called.
Tim glanced back at her and smiled a little, slowing down until she reached him.
“We’re gonna get it if Mom catches us,” she said.
“Aw, quit your whining,” Aaron snapped.
Tim glared at him, and Newt felt a little better. Her brother didn’t always come to her defense, but she hoped with Dad not around they would stick together more than ever before. Aaron could be nice, but mostly he didn’t seem to like having a little girl tag along.
Well, it’s my father in there, Newt thought, so I don’t care what you like.
She didn’t want to get into a fight with him, or to have Tim end up in a fight with his friend. But she had been through too much in the past two days to put up with him being a jerk.
They took a side corridor on the left that was mostly used by maintenance workers. There was a service elevator at the back, and halfway along the hall there was a big vent. Tim and Newt kept watch while Aaron jiggered off the grate, then they snuck in quickly, with Tim bringing up the rear. When they were all inside, he pulled the grate back into place.
Enough light filtered through the vents and grates that they could see where they were going. They c
rawled quickly along the smooth, rectangular tube for several long minutes, turning this way and that, moving toward the science and medical labs. Usually they kept away from that part of the complex when they were playing—their parents had warned them to stick to the residential areas of the colony. But all of the children of Hadley’s Hope had explored far and wide at some point or another.
Still, when they came to a duct that angled downward into darkness, she realized this was a way she had never gone.
“Do we have to go down there?” she whispered.
“What are you, scared?” Aaron scowled, then turned to Tim. “Maybe you oughta send your sister back, before she starts bawling or something.” Then he went feet-first down the sloping duct, moving carefully. As soon as he was out of sight, Tim turned to his sister.
“You okay?” he asked. “Look, if you want to go back—”
Newt went head-first without waiting for him to finish. She slid on her belly, dragging the toes of her shoes and using her hands to slow herself, but she still crashed into Aaron at the bottom. He yelped in protest, then clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Sorry,” she said, but she said it in a way—and with a smile—that made it clear she didn’t mean it.
Tim came down behind them, but managed to stop himself in time. A dim light from ahead gave some gray illumination to the duct, and they quickly moved on. The metal felt cold to the touch, and the chill crept into Newt’s bones.
Another few minutes and three more turns, and then Aaron stopped at a vent illuminated by bright white light.
“Here we are,” he whispered. “I told you I knew the way. Keep it quiet, now, or they’ll hear us.”
They took a few seconds arranging themselves so that they could all see through the vent, the boys stretching out in either direction and Newt—the smallest of them—kneeling in the middle. One hand on the duct wall right above the vent, she bent to peer through the slats.
At first she could only see her mother and Dr. Komiskey—a curly haired, fortyish woman who gave all of the colonists annual checkups. But then Newt shifted slightly, cocked her head to the left, and she could make out a third person, sitting upright on an examining table, legs hanging over the edge.
Suddenly Newt grinned, a huge weight lifting from her heart. It was her dad, looking awful silly in nothing but his underpants.
“I know how you feel, Annie, but I just can’t let him go,” Dr. Komiskey said to Newt’s mother. “He’s not leaving here until we have a better idea of what happened to him. Even if I was inclined to discharge him, I couldn’t. I’m not his physician—I’m just the staff doc.
“Dr. Reese is the director of the science team,” she continued, “and there’s no way he’d allow it.” She looked at Newt’s dad. “We’re talking about a newly discovered, extraterrestrial, possibly endoparasitoid species. As yet, we know nothing about it.”
Newt had no idea what Dr. Komiskey was talking about, but then she heard her father laugh quietly, and she grinned again.
Her dad shook his head.
“Honestly, Theodora, it’s fine. Honey, tell Theodora it’s fine. That thing was disgusting. If it was breathing for me—and it had to be, right?—I’d like to know what, if any, effects it had on me. It had its tongue down my throat, and only Anne’s allowed to do that.”
Newt twisted up her face, and she heard Aaron chuckle quietly. She elbowed him hard and he glared at her, but she kept her focus on her parents.
Someone coughed, and Newt shifted again, craning her neck the other way. She was surprised to see that Dr. Reese had been in the room all along, with Mr. Simpson beside him.
“Believe me, Mr. Jorden,” Dr. Reese said, “we want to get you out of here as quickly as possible—get you back with your kids and back to work. But it’d be irresponsible to do that without making sure you haven’t suffered any harm.”
“That I haven’t picked up some sort of plague or something, you mean,” Newt’s father said.
“That, too,” Dr. Komiskey agreed.
Newt’s mother took her father’s hand. All this talk of ugly things made her anxious, but it soothed her to see the love between them. They squabbled plenty, but they really did love each other.
“Truthfully, Russ,” Mr. Simpson began, “the science team wants their crack at you now. Dr. Komiskey has done what she can for you, but the team needs to study you, and for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, we sent some men out to the site last night. Maybe they can bring back something to work with.”
“You sent men?” Russ said, his voice louder. “That’s my claim, damn it.” Newt flinched at her father’s anger, glancing away as he went on. “That’s an authorized find, and nobody had better get any ideas otherwise.”
Dr. Reese strode across the room to a wheeled table, on which sat a metal tray. Newt blinked and a sick shiver went through her as she saw the spider-like legs sticking up from the tray. Gray and dead, the creature lay on its back, stiff, and trailing the tail that had been wrapped around her father’s neck.
The doctor picked up a scalpel and pushed back the legs.
“No one’s arguing your claim, Mr. Jorden,” Dr. Reese said. “But we all have our jobs to do. Try to remember that you had this thing wrapped around your head for nearly twenty-four hours.”
Dr. Komiskey turned to Newt’s mother.
“Look at him. He’s half-dead after playing kiss-face with a lobster, and all he can think about is his claim.”
Her father shot Dr. Komiskey an angry look, but Newt realized the doctor was right. He looked pale and exhausted, and more than a little sick. As she watched, her father clutched at his stomach and winced in pain. He groaned and lay back down on the cot, both hands on his belly.
“Please, Theodora,” Anne said, “just let me take him to our quarters. I’ll watch him every minute.”
Dr. Komiskey glanced at Dr. Reese, who shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Annie,” Dr. Komiskey said. “We just can’t. Why don’t you go and get some rest?”
At that moment none of them was looking at her dad, but Newt saw the pain etched on his face. He bared his teeth, and his hands seemed to jerk where they covered his stomach.
“What’s wrong with him now?” Tim whispered into her ear.
Newt shook her head. She didn’t know.
Her mother hesitated, glancing up at Dr. Reese and Mr. Simpson.
“Go on,” Dr. Komiskey said. “I’ll stay here with Russ, and wait for them to return from the site. Who knows, maybe they’ll turn something up.”
At that moment another man rushed into the room, a balding man with a thick brown mustache who Newt recognized as one of the mechanics who repaired the crawlers.
“They’re here,” the man said, breathing heavy from running. He looked worried and afraid. “They’re back…”
Two other men hustled in, carrying someone on a stretcher.
“…and they’ve brought friends.”
To Newt’s left, Aaron swore under his breath.
“Oh no,” Tim whispered.
Newt felt tears spring to her eyes as a fresh fear took hold of her. A sick feeling started in her stomach and spread from there, because the man on the stretcher had another of those face-hugging creatures attached to him, pulsing and breathing for him. The one on the metal tray was gray and brittle and dead, but this one was very much alive.
“Help me,” her father groaned.
Newt bent closer to the vent.
“Tim, what’s wrong with—”
Russ screamed and arched his back, roaring with pain. His chest bulged, right at his mid-section. He threw his hands to one side as he bucked again. Newt stared, wide-eyed, as something pushed up from inside him.
“Daddy?” she whispered, tears coming hot and fast now, burning her cheeks.
Her mother spun, staring at him. “Russ!” she cried.
Again he screamed and bucked. His chest burst open with a spray of blood and a sickeningly wet crunch of bone and splitting
skin.
“Daddy!” Newt and Tim screamed together.
“Oh shit! Oh my God!” Aaron whimpered. “What is this?”
Then her father lay motionless on the table, but something moved in his chest, rising like a snake from the gory hole. Pale and bloody, it hissed, revealing sharp teeth, its head turning this way and that, eyes shut tight as a newborn’s.
Unable to make a sound now, or even to breathe, Newt realized that in some way that must have been exactly what it was. A baby.
The people in the room shouted at one another to do something as the thing slithered out from her father’s chest, slid to the floor, and then darted off into a corner where it smashed through a small plastic grate and vanished into the guts of the colony. Still painted with her father’s blood.
Newt glanced around at the dimly lit duct.
It’s in here now, in the ductwork with us, she thought. Monster Maze.
She started screaming again.
And this time she couldn’t stop.
* * *
DATE: 23 JUNE, 2179
TIME: 1830
In the small exam room where she usually had her annual physical, Anne sat on the floor with her children huddled on either side of her. They burrowed against her and she held them tightly, whispering to them that it would be all right now, though even six-year-old Newt had to know that was a lie. Their father was dead, cold and bloody and already turning blue in the lab only twenty feet down the hall, where Dr. Reese had evicted Theodora Komiskey from her own med lab.
“Hey,” a gentle voice said.
Anne looked up to see Dr. Komiskey standing in the open doorway. She’d been talking to several people, and arguing with Dr. Mori, but this was the first time the doctor had come in to speak with her.
“Theodora,” she managed to say, and then her tears came.
She forced herself to cry quietly, and not to tremble too much, hoping to hide her tears from her children. Newt had fallen asleep against her, exhausted by grief, but Tim looked up at her face, his eyes red but his expression hard and grim. She hated seeing that look on his face—that look that said his world had broken in half, but he expected things to get even worse.
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