by Mia Archer
Fuck.
I opened my mouth to curse out CORVAC, but then decided better of it. If I was falling from this high up then the last thing I needed was to quite literally waste my breath.
A drone grabbed me and arrested my fall just a little. It spun me around to get a look at the shuttle, and so I got to see as its engines spooled up and the thing rocketed out of the upper atmosphere and into space.
My systems turned back on just before the bright flash. A damn good thing, too. I should’ve known better than to look at the source of a potential nuclear explosion, but I had to make sure it was far enough away that it wasn’t going to cause too much damage.
The movies always act like it’s merely a temporary inconvenience if all the electricity suddenly goes out in a city because the non-hardened electronics and power grid aren’t designed to stand up to an EMP. I’m looking at a certain movie starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt thank you very much.
The thing those movies always ignore is the terrible consequences of suddenly turning everything off. What about all the planes moving through that airspace? All the people who have things like pacemakers and breathing machines that are keeping them alive?
Non-hardened electronics frying under an EMP would be disaster on a massive scale even if the nuclear detonation that caused it didn’t physically destroy anything, and that sort of thing wasn’t happening on my watch damn it.
“You’re an asshole CORVAC,” I said. “But you just saved my life, so for the moment I’m going to ignore the fact that you somehow got into my suit’s systems.”
“If I may, mistress. I was able to get into your suits systems to disable them, but I did it in service of saving your life. As you have already observed. Perhaps it is time that you start trusting me a little more?”
“Yeah, well that’s the time that you’ll turn on me if past performance is any indication of future issues.”
“Right. Well in the meantime you should probably get back down to the football field. Something tells me you are going to want to have a look at what is happening down there.”
“What now?” I asked.
“Perhaps I could show you on your way down?”
It didn’t seem that CORVAC had any intention of waiting to see whether or not I wanted to see this super important thing. A feed from my old nemesis Starlight City News Network popped up with a news ticker that made my blood boil.
“You have to be fucking kidding me,” I said.
“I can assure you that I am not kidding you mistress,” CORVAC said. “Though I would remind you that if you do not want me kidding you in the future it would be advisable for you to turn off that facet of my personality.”
“Right,” I said, punching the antigrav so I was falling towards the planet faster than the usual rate.
When I landed on the football field that government puke was still there, and he had a huge grin on his face that I desperately wanted to smack off.
“Night Terror!” he said.
He was entirely too excited. I didn’t like it when a government official talking to me sounded excited. In my experience that either meant that they thought they had the upper hand and were about to defeat me with government resources, which was ridiculous, or they were about to try and pull me in on some pissant evil plan they’d come up with because there was nothing for breaking out someone’s inner villain like going into government service.
“What have you done?” I asked.
Either he didn’t notice my tone or he didn’t care. I was willing to put it down to him not caring considering those asshole cats were down there purring and rubbing their legs against the cops that’d shown up to run interference.
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done today,” the guy said. At some point between me launching myself into the upper atmosphere and the shuttle exploding the asshole had come up with a microphone.
I hadn’t been gone that long, had I? What the hell?
Then I saw what was really going on here. Not only did Starlight City News Network have their drones in the air watching this whole shindig, but on top of that they apparently had a news crew out here to record the game.
Which led to the odd situation of the SCNN senior sports guy reporting on first contact with an alien lifeform, a jock thrust into the middle of a science fiction scenario he obviously didn’t care for all that much, but they were still here.
“Um, right,” the reporter said. “So I’m coming to you live from Starlight City Field where we have just learned about the existence of, um, alien life?”
He looked down at one of the cats rubbing against his legs. I looked at the news crew, the cops, and then to the stadium surrounding us. A stadium filled with drunk people cheering at the top of their lungs and obviously ecstatic about this turn of events.
They thought they really were in the middle of a first contact situation, and I’d saved the cute fluffy aliens they were contacting.
Motherfucker.
“Here! Pose with one of the aliens!” someone said.
Before I could react I found myself staring at the white fluffy cat that had been my nemesis through all of this. I was getting the feeling more and more that this prick was the architect of all my trouble. I wondered if it was the queen and I’d been chasing the mastermind this entire time.
That would be just my luck that I had the alien queen in my grasp and let her, it, escape because I was trying to find her with an overly elaborate plan.
The cat turned to me and rubbed against my cheek. It purred as more reporters moved in taking pictures of us. Then it looked at a news crew that’d set up with a live feed that I could see in my heads up display even as I was looking at everything from a first person angle.
“Greetings humans,” the cat purred, rubbing against me again for good measure. “We come in peace.”
The words were a little garbled, but it got the message across and the people erupted in cheers.
“Again I can’t thank you enough for saving our new alien friends,” the government dude said, his smile making it pretty obvious that he was under the control of whatever localized mind control deal these things put out.
Everyone in this stadium was under their control. That was worrying. I had no idea they were that powerful, and while I’d worked on anti-mind control ordinance that disrupted that crap locally in the past it wasn’t something I’d taken past the prototype phase after I came up with my personal anti-mind control filters.
I glared down at the fluffy white cat. It stared up at me and purred, then spoke in a lower voice. A voice that wasn’t nearly as stilted as when it had been addressing the news cameras.
“Thank you Night Terror,” it purred. “This is far better than anything we could have planned. Your people will beg us to spread to their other cities now.”
Great. I’d helped these motherfuckers in whatever plan they had to take over this world. I didn’t care for it. I also didn’t care what the optics looked like as I tossed the cat to the ground and flew off.
Though I did care that Starlight City News Network followed me on their live feed with overlays talking about how I was a hero for saving the cute fluffy cat aliens.
“Damn it! I’m not a hero!” I screamed into the wind whipping around me.
“It would appear that the city has other ideas about that mistress,” CORVAC said. “The question is what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going back to basics, CORVAC,” I said. “Everything has a weakness. We’re going to figure out what it is for these worms and then we’re going to take these furry fuckers out damn it!”
21
Back at the Lab
“We’re doing it again!” I growled.
“Mistress,” CORVAC said. “I fear you are not going to find a nonlethal way to take care of these creatures.”
“Yeah, well I’m not blasting Fat Louie or any of the other cats that were working for me,” I said. “I owe them more than that after all they�
�ve done for me.”
“Of course you do, mistress. I was simply stating that…”
“I know what you were stating,” I said. “I’m just still a little annoyed that those fuckers were in the ducts for so long.”
Aliens in the ducts. It was like something out of one very excellent scifi movie or a bunch of very bad scifi movies that inevitably came on the heels of that one very excellent scifi movie.
“I am still not sure how they managed to get in there,” CORVAC said. “It is possible that one of the cats brought into the system was already infected but…”
I held up a hand and CORVAC cut off. It was always a pleasant experience when that actually worked.
“I’m not blaming you for this one CORVAC,” I said. “So you can stop covering your ass. The fact that they got into the ducts and into our cat population is as much my fault as it is yours. We got cocky.”
“Of course, mistress.”
“We’re just lucky this Invasion of the Body Snatchers situation is for cats and not humans or computers. Otherwise we’d be in serious trouble,” I said.
“Of course, mistress.”
“You can stop repeating yourself,” I growled.
“Of… Yes, mistress.”
I stared at Fat Louie. He was doing what his fat ass had always done best, which was sitting on any flat surface he could find and snoozing between feedings.
“There has to be some way to get these alien fuckers out of my cats without hurting them,” I said.
I looked over to the Starlight City News Network feed where the mayor was really hamming it up. It turns out the government puke at Starlight Field was a deputy mayor who’d been making an appearance at the game.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “They’re welcoming them as visitors from another world.”
The mayor was handing one of the cats a very small key to the city. It was being broadcast live across the world, and it made my stomach churn.
“You know mistress. They are visitors from another world,” CORVAC said.
“From a certain point of view,” I said.
“Not even from a certain point of view, Ben,” CORVAC said, getting in a little dig at me in the process. “They are, quite literally, alien parasites who came to our world and found hosts that were sufficiently similar to the creatures they hosted with on their world for them to continue their lifecycle here.”
“Makes me wonder what the hell kind of world they come from,” I said. “Do they rule the world on the other side of those portals too? Like are they the undisputed masters? Am I about to lose to an invasion of the pussy snatchers?”
“I feel like there is a vulgar double entendre in the statement you just made,” CORVAC said. “And I am not going to dignify that with a response.”
“Probably a good idea,” I said.
“Right, well might I suggest that you stop watching the coverage of the aliens taking over the world via cuteness and get back to work?” CORVAC asked.
“There has to be something I’m missing,” I said. “Unmute that ridiculous ceremony.”
There were rumors that the mayor had his sights set on the presidency. Being the mayor of Starlight City wasn’t a bad path to that considering all the attention the city regularly got. The fickle public didn’t seem to recognize or care that most of that publicity the mayor of Starlight City was getting was the negative sort.
“…my pleasure to present our visitors with this official welcome to earth, and a rousing Starlight City welcome!”
He held his hands up and smiled. Meanwhile the gathered cats, including that fluffy white fucker who’d saluted me and flipped me off, were sitting on an ornate table out in front of city hall.
“Is it just me, or do those cats look bigger than before?” I asked.
If the cats had looked a little bulkier the last time around, well they looked totally different now. I could see why someone would look at them and mistake them for visiting felines from another world rather than common house cats with alien parasites lodged in their heads.
They were beefier. Like a major league baseball player back in the late ‘90s when the whole world was pretending they weren’t juicing to make themselves into giant home run hitting monsters.
“It would appear they have grown in size, yes,” CORVAC said. “Interesting that we are seeing this in animals that have had the parasites in them for a lengthy period of time.”
“Interesting indeed,” I said.
The mayor held his hand up and it looked like they’d planned some sort of salute for the fluffy alien invaders. A bunch of police sirens and fire trucks all went off creating a ruckus.
The view pulled back to a drone shot of the proceedings that showed the SCPD and SCFD had shown up in force to give the aliens one hell of a welcome.
My eyes narrowed.
“Mistress. I really think it is not a good idea for you to watch these proceedings. You were already having a difficult enough time with what is happening and…”
“Hold it CORVAC,” I said. “There’s something going on down there. Why aren’t they returning to the close up shot?”
“I do not know mistress. They would still have their cameras running down there so if you’d like…”
“Make it so,” I said.
It was difficult to make out exactly what was going on down there, but it looked like the craziness from the PD, FD, and the cheering crowd was causing another brand of craziness down below.
“I have the feed now mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Show me on one of the other screens.”
The big board came to life next to me and I turned to watch what had happened. I stared in confusion, then I couldn’t help but smile.
“Huh. Looks like the mayor didn’t know that a cat’s natural instinct overrides those alien fuckers,” I said.
The aftermath of a cat freakout was obvious. Microphones had been tossed everywhere and the papers the mayor had been using for his speech were scattered and shredded. A couple of deputy mayors looked like they’d been used as scratching posts, and a bunch of cats were hunkered down on the ground puffed up to twice their size.
“Hold it CORVAC,” I said. “There’s something else going on there. See that cat at the corner of the stage that’s flopping around? Rewind the footage to where all those horns and sirens started going off, and get one of the miniaturized drones down there so we can have a look at what’s happening with that other cat.”
“On it mistress,” CORVAC said.
The footage rewound, I guess CORVAC was able to get into whatever archive they had at the network, and I was treated to a view of all the cats jumping in the air with their hair standing on end as the sirens and horns started to go off.
Right. Loud noises. Cats hated loud noises. One alien cat that had been contentedly purring in the arms of a deputy mayor shredded the poor bastard’s suit as it climbed over him to get away from the loud noise. Loud noise that was inescapable because it was bouncing off the buildings creating an echoing cacophony that was deafening even through the TV speakers.
“Turn down the surround speakers the next time it gets loud like that,” I said.
“Of course mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Do you have the visual on that cat that fell off the edge yet?” I asked.
“Coming up now mistress,” CORVAC said. “It is somewhat more difficult navigating the airspace considering everything that is going on down there.”
“Right,” I said, leaning forward and staring at a drone feed that came up on yet another monitor.
“Here we are mistress,” CORVAC said.
It might have taken a touch longer than I would’ve preferred, but once CORVAC got in there he really got in there with the money shot. That money shot made it immediately apparent why he’d been having so much trouble getting the shot in the first place.
There were official types all around the cat looking at it with worry. The thing was still twitching on the ground.
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“CORVAC,” I said. “Have we ever removed one of those worms with a cat that wasn’t immobilized to some degree?”
“I do not believe we have, mistress,” he said.
“But every time we try to remove one of those fuckers the cat twitches and hisses like it’s fighting me, right?”
“That would be correct, mistress,” he said.
“Now I’m wondering if that twitching and hissing is a result of the worm trying to keep us from getting it out of the cat, or if it’s a natural byproduct of one of those worms being rejected by its host,” I muttered. “Like what if yanking them out helped jumpstart the rejection process and that’s what the clawing and hissing and spitting was all about?”
“An interesting observation mistress,” CORVAC said. “You think that this entire time we’ve been mistaking one set of symptoms for another?”
“Something like that,” I said. “Zoom in around the cat’s ear.”
The cat was a fat grey fucker with light grey stripes running down its back.
“There it is,” I said.
Someone claiming to be a vet had burst through the crowd and was leaning down to look at the cat, but that erupted into a small argument with some EMTs on the scene who asked why the hell a vet would have any experience with alien biology.
I smiled a thin smile. Obviously one of those EMTs was a fan of the science fiction genre. It was a fair point and a good question to ask, though the vet also had a good point when she asked the EMT how the hell working on human biology made them qualified to assist an alien that looked like an oversized house cat.
I tuned out that turf war argument. It wasn’t important.
What was important was the little worm wriggling out of the cat’s ear and onto the pavement. It was twitching and seemed to be having a very bad day. A bad day that got even worse because none of the humans gathered around the fluffy cute little kitty alien seemed to realize the worm was there.
The thing was small enough that I could forgive them for not noticing it if they didn’t know what to look for.
The practical upshot was the worm was smashed under the foot of a well meaning cop who came in to start running crowd control and settle the argument between the EMT and the vet.