Manifest Destiny

by Allen Ivers

  He would be the first to die. Locklear knew it. He was going to have to stop her. How much blood can you pull from the human body before…

  “Everyone to your quarters and secure the doors. Now.”

  “Why?” Jazmin demanded, bringing that psychotic gaze onto him, as though she could burn him down with a look. He met that stare, his right eyelid twitching.

  “Because I will kill you, Jazmin Reed, if you don’t.”

  Something in that steely delivery. His pallid face and bloody eye. And the demonic pictures that projected forth.

  She blinked a few times, processing that message. “Okay, so splitting up?”

  “Yeah.”

  Piotr nodded, shaking off the same migraine that Locklear could already feel building behind his temples. He was defying the instinct, invoking the master’s whip. This was going to get much worse before it got better.

  “But…” Gamble couldn’t finish her thought, her hands shaking. Her perfect still surgeon’s hands were downright quaking.

  “Secure the wounded. Strap them down if you have to, then seal yourselves in your quarters.” Locklear couldn’t move his neck, but he threw out orders as fast as his mouth could move.

  His teeth ground his skull, sliding and squeaking against themselves. He could swear he was going to crack his jaw.

  “What’re you going to do?” Jazmin asked.

  Leo turned to face them, a smile stretched across his gaunt face. “We’re going to kill a God.”

  Chapter 22

  Murcielago

  Cooperating with the survivors was not its first, or best, impulse. And the survivors seemed to share that instinct. They had seen enough sorcery today to believe whatever wild tale Leo wanted to spin, and the verifiable fact that an actual dragon had just crawled from its geode of an egg made whatever else that followed mere insignificant details.

  Their world had, quite literally, come apart at the seams.

  Locklear led the way forward up the spine of the craft with Leo in tow. The cop kept throwing glances back at him, or rather at the spongy squid-monster sucking on his back. The raw amount of willpower it was taking to prevent a fight right there and then was rather impressive.

  This is foolhardy. We cannot face this challenge with the supplies available.

  What were the available options? Wait for the space whale to swallow them whole, conquer Earth, and turn to the stars with an army? Do a spacewalk for however long it takes for the cavalry to arrive? Assuming that alone doesn’t drive him mad -- what happens to humanity then?

  What concern are they to you?

  None, really. Realistically, mankind had very little to offer Leo these days. The solace of working with machines had been a kind refuge from the people that killed his father and then blamed the one man they had robbed of his voice. But condemning them to the maw of unknowable evil was hardly a fair return policy.

  It was an enticing possibility. Let the world burn. Watch and wait. Take in a whole new universe, broader in scope than any dream could possibly conceive of. Leo joined up to see another planet.

  Now, he might even see other stars. Take that shuttle and drift away from these problems into the unfeeling ocean, waiting to be lifted from this provincial existence up into true civilization, where a small little ape might see the true scope of life.

  He might just get to see what his father worked so hard for -- the future of mankind.

  But would he ever truly join it, or just be an outsider, to be shunned and pitied?

  Locklear paused at a bulkhead, his shaking fingers unable to work the panel. “What’s going to happen to us?” Locklear blurted, like he was trying to hold down vomit.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Amelia.... The colonists…” Locklear couldn’t even put his concerns into words. The Beast was already turning the screws.

  No words could comfort this man. There was no certainty he would live through the process. It might simply overwhelm him, burn away anything that was once his identity, leaving behind an animal husk.

  “I really don’t know,” Leo mumbled, “There’s not exactly a lot of field experience going around here. You and me, whatever we know is all there is to know.”

  “But your backpack knows,” Locklear chirped at him, “Why doesn’t it share?”

  For the first time in a while, Leo couldn’t hear its quiet doubting whispers, that contrary noise guiding his thoughts, flowing against the current of his instinct. It was disquieting.

  “That’s real fuggin’ great,” Locklear slurred. If he could weep, he would be.

  It was a peculiar sight, the once stoic and sharp-tongued military policeman had finally cracked his veneer. Either his experiences or holding fast against the rolling waves of power -- he was breaking.

  Locklear’s hand hovered over his holster.

  “Clear mind, trooper?” Leo cautioned, reminding him of where he was.

  Locklear coughed, maybe a laugh. “Full heart, grease monkey.”

  But still, nothing. Locklear didn’t move.

  Leo stared at the panel. “Sergeant, open the door.”

  “I’m trying!”

  Well, that was more time than Leo was counting on, anyway. Locklear was a strong son of a bitch, but defying the persistent pliancies of a God was beyond the skill of man. It would wear them all down, pecking away at their defenses, the way a stone chisel carves through wood. Strength, remarkable though it may be, would only buy time.

  Echoes rang up through the ship. Furniture slamming against walls, fists against metal, and the most base of shrieks, caught between rage and pain. If the crew listened to the warnings, they had secured themselves.

  If they had not… the horrors were about to begin.

  Dr. Raines had resisted any attempt at administering analgesics or barbiturates. She wanted full clarity to self-examine. There was no other available method for recording these events other than personal anecdote, and she was not going to have the quality of that evidence tampered with.

  Doctor Gamble might have insisted, if she didn’t have other patients, including the critically wounded Jericho.

  At Raines’ request, Gamble secured her to the cot with cloth straps, to prevent harm to herself or others. Gamble’s annoyance at the direction was well vocalized, but directed thrashing or even simple convulsions could lead to internal hemorrhaging, broken bones, or torn tissues -- something Raines had experienced too much of already. The reservations of the chief physician were of little consequence in the grand scheme of things.

  Locklear had led the symbiote and Leo forward to the shuttle airlock. The others had remained behind, still caught in their dilemma. And based on their interactions, it was easy to guess there had been conflict on this ship for quite some time.

  Piotr was a little man, but he looked ready to rise up to Doctor Gamble and drive his forehead hard into her face like he was five pints in at a pub.

  Gamble wasn’t backing down, having dealt with mouthy patients her entire adult career. What’s one more?

  “I’m sorry, when did the ship wet nurse become the boss around here?” Piotr had decided to go with both barrels right out of the gate. Foolish. Had to take time to reload now, helpless against a counter-offensive.

  “I’ve set a few hundred broken bones in my life.” Her retort was accompanied by a stillness usually reserved for sculptures and graveyards. “I can break a few of yours.”

  The Beast had barely scratched the surface, they were already halfway home. There was so much fuel to burn, kindling aplenty.

  As the two feuded, Raines locked eyes with Mathers, who had decided to hop right back into the newly vacated quarantine cell. He sat on the floor, knees to his chest, happy to be kept away from these people he didn’t really know -- and just maybe, the frightening possibility to come.

  His cold brown eyes stared right through her, his mind back in that colony below them, remembering what it felt like to have something worm its way into his mind. Reflecting o
n that feeling and knowing that cold touch once again struck him right to the bone.

  When he caught on to her stare, he looked away, like he was embarrassed of his own fear.

  “Fear kept you alive, boy,” Raines comforted. “Cling to it. Don’t reject it.”

  “You believe in all this? Mind control, alien gods?” He babbled back to her. He was doubting his own thoughts, his own recollections.

  Belief -- faith in things unseen. Supernatural, unexplained forces. Accepting a statement as true without tangible evidence to support the claim.

  She had plenty of evidence. And so did he. He was just hoping he would wake up, have some reason to coax his mind back to rest, and to defy all evidence of his senses. He would go to work, Raines would walk again, and everything would be like any other day.

  “No,” she whispered, “I don’t have to believe. I have first-hand evidence.”

  He pulled his knees closer, if that were possible.

  Piotr and Gamble stopped hurling epithets at each long enough to grasp their surroundings. Piotr looked down at the patient on Gamble’s operating table.

  Jericho was laid out and similarly strapped down. An oxygen mask gripped tight across his face. Bruising stretched down his arms and across his chest. More disturbing were the concave dents in his flesh, like pits and valleys had been etched by long vacant river beds.

  “We’ve been fightin’ this thing all wrong,” Piotr pleaded, “And more people are going to die.”

  Gamble leaned in. “If we had killed this thing when we had the chance, Romanov would still be here.”

  Piotr stood his ground, but his lip curled back, ready to spit some fresh emotional violence without point or relevance. He held back, instead giving her the ground. “I’m going to my cabin, and sealing the door. Nobody else dies today. You okay with that?”

  “I am,” Gamble said, “But I know otherwise.”

  With a shake of his head, Piotr darted up the access ladder.

  Jazmin had handcuffed herself to a railing, but turned to allow Raines to patch up the exit wound in her shoulder, “Is he going to make it?”

  Gamble shrugged, as she cracked open a tin of medical gel. “Decompression like that, I’m impressed he’s alive right now. Might have an arterial embolism, might be paralyzed. For sure, he’s probably going to have a headache for the rest of his life.”

  “I meant Piotr.”

  Gamble glanced at the ladder. “Oh, no, he’s going to get everybody killed. But in case you were wondering, your big friend got well and truly fucked down there.”

  “Thank you,” Jazmin hissed back, “I was there.”

  Jericho’s condition was concerning. Perhaps they might be able to rig together a hyperbaric chamber using one of the airlocks, slowly bringing up the pressure over time to equalize him normally.

  It might also be pointless, if the damage is already done. If his body was ripped apart, bleeding, collapsing, there was very little any treatment could do to save him.

  Interesting. Violent imagery. Almost emotional. Stage one? Did Amelia suffer this?

  Jazmin was noticing it too. She shook her head, sending a shiver down her spine. Her wrist tight against the cuffs. She took a deep, steeling breath. “Doc, you should strap in.”

  “If we’re all restrained,” Gamble mocked, “who is going to let us all out when it passes? And if it doesn’t happen at all, the evil starfish has a captive supply of food. No, thank you.”

  “No joke, ma’am. You should really lock down. Like, now.” Mathers’ voice quaked like someone was shaking him about the shoulders, like he might have already pissed himself. Not surprising, seeing as he’d been down this particular road once before and was in all likelihood uninterested in returning.

  “That thing--!“ Gamble stopped her own explosion mid-sentence. “That thing killed two of my crew and who knows how many colonists. I’m not believing a damn thing it says, and I’d be plenty happy if our resident White Knight chopped the thing up with a fuckin’ icepick. But that’s not the world we live in. Instead, we all believe in ghost stories.”

  “A fuckin’ planet cracks in half,” Jazmin snapped back, “And you say ‘ghost story?’ I can look out the window and know you’re wrong.”

  “I never said -- what I am denying...” Gamble was no longer tending to Jazmin’s wounds, but shouting at the back of her head, “...is the notion that we’re all about to go homicidal at the drop of a hat, and we have to put our trust in the tentacled alien marshmallow!”

  “Your answer is?” Raines dared to ask.

  “Kill the alien marshmallow.” Her response was tinged with all the creative plans she had for such an objective. “Why is that idea so hard to sell?

  “What is the Hippocratic oath, Doctor?” Raines challenged, putting her head directly in the lion’s mouth. Nothing this woman could do would even scratch what she’d already handled. So bring it on.

  Gamble pasted the bandage across Jazmin’s back, and marched over to Raines. “Does not apply in outer fuckin’ space, peg leg.”

  Everyone recoiled at what came out of Raines next. “You are a Doctor! You are a policewoman! And you... are a child! Nobody here has a mission of violence! Push everything else out of your mind, and grab hold. Anything that reminds you of why you came out here.”

  Gamble folded her arms across her chest, like she was going to pout. “Alright, enough with the speeches, Dr. Faustus. Some of us have to work.”

  “You know how to kill me?” Now, this was playing with fire.

  Gamble dropped her hands to her side, chewing on her cheek. “Yes.”

  “Then think about some puppies if you have to, because you don’t have to believe the stories. Believe me.”

  Jazmin closed her eyes, a softness there. Hard at work grasping at some long lost kindness. Mathers stared at the ceiling, wrestling hard with the presented challenge.

  Gamble just stared back at Raines, like a ram with her horns locked. Finally, she closed her eyes, shivering against the chill in the room.

  And her back straightened.

  Oh no.

  With a simple sigh, Gamble marched over to the unconscious Jericho.

  “Gamble?” Raines implored, “Gamble, are you hearing me?”

  No response, as Gamble drew a syringe from her pack, drawing the plunger back, filling it with air. Without even looking, she slipped the needle into Jericho’s arm and dropped twelve cubic centiliters of air into her patient’s radial artery.

  Nobody said anything for the longest moment, uncertain of what she had done. Until Jericho started convulsing. Muffled behind his mask, he screamed.

  He pulled at his restraints, snapping an arm free of the bonds. His hand whirled about, searching for the hallucinations that were causing his agony. His fingers clawed at his skull, his chest, and wrist.

  With one large spasm, he flipped over his restrained arm to the floor, sending his bed tipping over with him. Everything clattered to the floor, where his gloomy eyes glared at Mathers, pleading with an unseen light for one last moment before the dark.

  Gamble turned to Jazmin, scalpel in hand. Jazmin’s lips curled, almost drooling as she leaned forward, cuffed wrist already dripping with blood as the steel bit into her skin.

  Gamble slithered forward, quick steps, stooped over, head bobbing with each stride, lunging at the captive Jazmin like it was one solid movement. The good Doctor was a pharmacist and surgeon, knowing full well where to go with that blade to cause maximum damage.

  However, she lacked the fighting instinct and training of her prey. Jazmin twisted out of the way, and threw an elbow on the rebound, slamming Gamble in the temple with all her weight. The wet crunch betrayed some kind of vile injury, but to skull or arm was unclear. Blood coated both.

  A hollow thud drew Raines attention, where Mathers was huddled in his cell. Curled up in an unnatural twist, he drove his head into the ground again and again, like he was trying to paint a mural with his now broken jaw.

&nbs
p; It hung from his head, dislocated but kept in place by skin and muscle. It bounced with each impact as it clicked and slid past its socket.

  As if he felt her gaze, his eyes snapped up to her, the jaw seeming to tremble with a kind of anticipation, like an insect’s mandible tasting the air.

  He never spoke, and it wasn’t the voice of young Mathers she heard in her head: You think you know pain, little one?

  No follow up required. The inference was clear.

  Think. What is known? Focus on data, facts, observations. Anything that might betray a weakness or flaw. Fight it.

  Gamble picked herself up from the floor, blood leaking from her ear. A low hiss from the back of her throat, somewhere between a growl and flesh skidding along a cement sidewalk.

  She lunged again, slapping Jazmin’s free hand aside and driving the scalpel into her thigh, digging for the femoral artery. Jazmin’s scream didn’t stop her from head-butting the doctor, knocking her assailant back.

  She grabbed the scalpel, easily pulling it out. No geyser indicated that the blow had missed its target. But it was still a heinous wound.

  Think, goddammit, focus. Dive into the data and away from the viscera, or she would lose herself too. It wanted her to hang on to the gore, the sweet-tasting blood and fuel herself with a reptilian satisfaction in the kill.

  It wanted her to regress to a base demand for violence.

  Was it really so simple? Was it highjacking the hindbrain, the impulse toward violence pre-built by nature, flooding a circuit until it shorts out and overrules all other commandments?

  No, that would prohibit self-destruction. Its goals are scorched earth, conquer and consume. Totality. What does it want?

  Why did it remove the suit?

  Because it wanted to see if she would die. It was just plain curious.

  I have learned all there is to know of your kind. You are not so complex as you believe.

  Pride. The unwavering belief in superiority and unknowable majesty.

  It shall descend on Earth to collect its riches and move on to plunder other shores. It was not so complex, either.