Colony

by Leigh Matthews

  Aliyaah rounded the corner and stepped past the pod where Ansen was getting into a suit. She saw the door to the improvised medical lab just a little further down the corridor, and noticed a whitish-grey patina covering the floor and walls. Stepping closer, she saw that there was condensation on the door to the lab, as if the inside were much colder than the air in the corridor. Peering even closer, she noticed that the whitish-grey coating glowed, as if the door was lit within itself, with the water droplets doing more than just reflecting the dim emergency lights in the corridor.

  Aliyaah traced a gloved finger across the door, then held up her glove to her visor; this was not just water. Like the samples taken from Dominic, the liquid held tiny crystalline filaments.

  She shook her glove and craned her neck to peer at the condensation, watching as the droplets coalesced and ran down the cold metal door to the floor. She looked up again and saw that where the water had run from the top of the door, it had left behind a flaky white residue. To the naked eye, this residue looked like lichen, but as she toggled the settings on her scanner to activate the microscope, she saw that the flakes were composed of thousands of tiny strands, like mycelium. As she stared into the scope, the cells all split at once, instantly doubling their mass. She jumped back, almost dropping the scanner. The organism was reproducing rapidly.

  She looked up again at the top of the door. The area that had been visible just moments ago was now entirely covered with the lichenous growth.

  "Chief?" Ansen's voice came through her ear-piece, and Aliyaah turned to see him emerging from the airlock in the bulky EMS suit.

  She held up a hand to guide the Specialist's eyes to the door, and said, "Whatever is going on in there, it's imperative we stay suited up and on an open channel. Got it?"

  Ansen nodded and stepped to one side of the door, his hand on the release button. Aliyaah took the other side, then gestured to him to open the door.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  A blinding light emanated from the medical lab and it took several seconds before Aliyaah and Ansen could see much of anything.

  "What the," Ansen whispered and looked over at Aliyaah. "What is this stuff?" He took a step forward, but she put out her hand to stop him.

  "Wait. I want to scan for life first." She held up her scanner and then added, "Human life."

  Ansen looked down for a second at the scanner attached to his own suit, then said, "Surely nobody can be alive in there? It's almost zero degrees and the air is thinner than at the top of Everest."

  Aliyaah agreed, but continued her scan anyway. "There might be bodies. The doctor. Her assistant. This thing might be feeding on them."

  Ansen resisted the sudden urge to retch. He studied Aliyaah for a few moments, then said, "What is this thing?"

  She looked up from the scanner and surveyed the room before answering. The walls and floor were thick with the lichenous substance. It pulsed as it grew, causing the walls to close in, inch by inch. There were patches of larger crystalline filaments in places, including on the workbenches and in the far corner. Aliyaah could make out a radioactive hazard sign on an upright cabinet, partially covered with a layer of the white flakes. She figured it was the storage freezer where Schiff would have been keeping the radioactive samples before she tested them.

  There were no signs of the doctor or her lab assistant in the room, but Ansen told her that the doctor had commandeered the adjoining room as a medical ward where she could treat patients away from the lab samples: it was possible that the doctor and missing crew were hiding in there for some reason.

  Aliyaah turned to look at Ansen and said, "This is what happened in the west wing, only it was worse there. The organism appears to rapidly metabolise organic material, and the faster its growth, the larger the crystals."

  "Biology ain't my strong suit, Chief, but even I know there aren't many organisms that behave like this," Ansen said as he followed Aliyaah into the room. He looked at the materials on the workbench, noting the larger crystals and wondering what lay underneath them. "It's gotta be fungal, right? But I'll be damned if it's from Earth. I've never seen anything like it, and I've seen a lot of weird shit."

  "I don't think it's something we brought with us, no," Aliyaah said. "My best guess right now is that it came into the station through the refiner and is Martian in origin. It likely evolved to survive such conditions."

  "This thing is doing more than just goddamn surviving," Ansen said. He moved towards the freezer and ran his hand over the door, knocking a series of crystals to the floor, where they shattered silently before disappearing into the sea of white. "This thing is thriving."

  Aliyaah was about to reply when she saw something shift behind him. She shouted for him to back up and he stepped away just as the cabinet door swung open and something large and heavy fell to the floor.

  Aliyaah tensed, ready for action, but whatever it was lay unmoving on the floor. Ansen stepped aside as she approached, and they both assessed the object. Its size and weight meant that she already suspected that this was the missing lab assistant. She bent down to clear some of the crystalline growths, and revealed what was left of a human head, the flesh now nothing but a gelatinous substrate being devoured by the organism.

  Ansen turned away and started retching, and as Aliyaah stood back up she saw Ansen unclip his helmet.

  "Ansen!" she said, but it was too late. He dropped his helmet to the floor, and vomited against the wall. She walked over and picked up his helmet, then turned him in the direction of the door. "Suit up or get out."

  He wiped his mouth and nodded at the Chief. She handed him the helmet and he took it with a shaky hand.

  "Sorry, Chief. It's different when you're on solid ground. Easier to forgot."

  She nodded. There was something odd enough about zero gravity that it made you think twice about taking off your helmet. In the station, that feeling simply wasn't there. She helped him to put his helmet back on, knowing it could already be too late, then moved back to the body and wiped away enough of the material to access the med port on the suit. The readout told her it was the engineer she had assigned to Schiff as an assistant. She took a moment, then left what remained of his body on the floor and moved back to the workbench.

  After clearing some of the debris, she located the control panel and the data that the doctor had been working through.

  "It looks like Schiff tested herself and several others," she said, recognising the biomarkers that she had seen in her own blood and Dominic's.

  Ansen came over and stood beside her. He rifled through a stack of papers and said, "Looks like the doctor was pretty old school." He found a notepad covered in pencil marks. "It looks like some kind of shorthand." He flipped through the pad and saw that the penmanship devolved as the notes went on.

  He read several notes that Schiff had underlined. "Fungal growth. Chemosynthetic? Rapid growth upon exposure to radioactive material. Prefers acidic environment. Chemotaxis?" he said, then held up the pad. "It's illegible after that. Can you make sense of…"

  Aliyaah interrupted him, asking, "When did you last take anti-rads?"

  "Just before we started work on the walkway, Chief."

  "Orally, or by pump?"

  "Pump. Why?"

  "Take a double dose, now," she said, and handed him two of the four remaining vials she had taken from Octavia.

  He nodded and took the drugs, passing her the notepad so he could use both hands to open the pump interface in his suit. He gave himself a shot, then another a few seconds later.

  "Are you on any stims? Any T?" she asked, not looking up from the doctor's notes.

  Ansen stared at her, wide-eyed and silent.

  Aliyaah looked up and said, "I'm not kidding. If you are, tell me. I don't care about writing you up."

  "No, Chief. I don't touch that stuff."

  "You're absolutely sure?" she said. "I know some of the older guys T-up to keep up. And it was hard work out on that walkway."

  He
shook his head vehemently. "No, Chief. I've always kept my T low. Helps me think more clearly, unlike some of those young hotheads."

  "You mean like Barclay?"

  "Chief?"

  "Just tell me, Ansen."

  "Yeah, Barclay, a couple of times maybe. Yeah. I dunno about the others, but some of them tweak for sure." He held her stare for a second, then pointed at the dead engineer and asked, "What's that got to do with this guy though?"

  She looked down at the body and felt a stab of guilt for having assigned the engineer to the lab. Looking back up at Ansen, and tapping the notepad, she said, "The doctor listed every casualty. Those deaths linked to the organism are all younger males or those on T."

  "You think it's just attacking men?"

  "I don't know if it's attacking as such. But there's a pattern to the infections and deaths, however you look at it."

  "But, Chief, there aren't many women on the planet. You know?" Ansen raised his eyebrows at her and said, "It's probably just sheer bad luck that it's picking off us guys first, yeah?"

  She shook her head at Ansen. "I already did that math. We know of at least forty casualties, and they're all men. That's statistically improbable, Ansen."

  "What about Viper?" he asked, cocking his head.

  "I suspect Jaz was tweaking. Probably T, and maybe some other stuff I don't know about."

  "Shit," Ansen said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "But what about the Commander? You said it was all young guys."

  Aliyaah shrugged. "I said that the casualties so far have mostly been younger males, yes, and those on T. But not all. And the Commander didn't die like this engineer. He died of a heart attack," she paused while she checked the doctor's notes, "brought on by a serious electrolyte imbalance. Looks like it was the same with the other early casualties."

  "OK, OK. So, this thing's like some kind of mushroom that feeds on testosterone?"

  "Perhaps. Whatever it is, it grows faster at a lower pH, invading the skin and membranes first and then digging deeper into tissue." She held up the notepad again to show Ansen more of the doctor's notes. "And GCRs catalyze its growth."

  "So, what, the younger guys, the ones who 'forget' to take their anti-rads are sitting ducks?" Ansen said. "I told them they were being stupid. They've never felt real radiation sickness, so they think it's some big joke and us older guys are too serious about all that shit." Ansen shook his head and added, "We should've put the damn things as standard in the pumps".

  Aliyaah nodded, thinking with anger about the anti-anti-rad'ers back on Earth who had protested the development of the pump technology, citing pseudoscience and anecdata. "It looks like the doctor was running experiments to test similar conditions to those out at the quarry, where there's minimal shielding from GCRs."

  "And where they've been digging up god knows what," Ansen said, "radioactive mushrooms and all."

  She didn't bother to correct his hyperbole as she studied the doctor's notes, trying to piece together the timeline of her experiments before she resorted to a shorthand Aliyaah didn't understand. "So, under certain conditions – high T and radiation – the organism colonises so rapidly that it devastates the host. But, when colonisation is slower, it seems to cause behavioural anomalies, likely by destroying or remodelling parts of the brain that control executive function, just like Silver suggested and like we saw in the Commander, and Dominic." She turned to a page of notes that seemed to show a half dozen numbered human outlines, complete with basic identifying characteristics, "Male, 31, Caucasian, 1 hr. Male, 29, Caucasian, 2 hrs."

  "It's a goddamn man-eater," Ansen said. "So, what, I'm infected and you're immune?"

  Aliyaah thought back to the readouts from her nanobots and hesitated. Then she looked up and said, "I think we have to operate on the assumption that we are all infected. Those of us who appear healthy may just be lucky so far, in that we've avoided high levels of radiation and don't have a lot of T in our systems. It may take longer to become symptomatic under such conditions." She almost added that it was possible they were already symptomatic and just didn’t know it. After all, how would she, or anyone else, be able to tell if their own cognition was compromised?

  "So, the doc could be alive somewhere?" Ansen said, and Aliyaah nodded. "Well, I'd say she's damn symptomatic," he added, pointing his thumb at the lab assistant. "I mean, she shoved this guy into a cabinet and then ran off god knows where."

  "Yes," Aliyaah said, "I think it's safe to assume the doctor is alive and has a much clearer idea than us about how this organism operates and maybe even how to stop it." She had a growing suspicion that instead of working out how to eradicate the organism and protect the civilians and the men in her charge, Doctor Schiff had been working with, or perhaps for, the organism.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Barclay whistled as he walked along the corridor to the lower hangar stairwell. He was confident he would find the rover, along with the missing crew. Everything would work out just fine.

  He was vaguely aware that it was odd to feel so cheerful when all around him was chaos and death, but he couldn't seem to shake the optimism. It was good he was alone. It was so hard to stop smiling, even though he knew it wasn't appropriate.

  As he reached the door to the steps, he remembered that the Chief had told him something important. There was something he was supposed to do before going down to the lower level. He laughed. It couldn't have been that important. He reached out to press the door release and felt suddenly dizzy. He held onto the wall and tried to steady himself. He was sweating profusely and his breathing was ragged. He tried to compose himself, but began to feel angry. What was happening to him? Why was he laughing and smiling? It wasn't right when his friends and colleagues were dying.

  Barclay's mind raced, and he began to feel as if he were observing himself from outside his body. His earlier optimism had dissipated. He was spinning out of control.

  Clawing back some rational thought, Barclay checked his med pump, wondering if there was a malfunction. Maybe his blood glucose was dangerously low. Or his system could have flooded with excitatory neurotransmitters. He had been tweaking a lot lately, so it would be his own damn fault if it had started malfunctioning.

  Barclay's fingers slipped on the pump's controls and sweat dripped down his face, mixing with tears. He hadn't realised he was crying, and now the readout on the control panel became too distorted for him to read clearly.

  The low-level emergency lights in the corridor made it even harder to see the blurred readout, so he opened the door to the stairwell, hoping for better light.

  A blast of cold air came rushing up from the lower hangar, and it had a momentary sobering effect. He stepped forward, glad for the cool air as he descended the steps.

  The handrail was cold against his bare skin, and Barclay remembered too late that the Chief had told him to suit up before entering the hangar. The rail also seemed wet, and he shook his hand, then wiped away his sweat and tears. As he took another step, his boot slipped and he clutched at the rail again to stay upright. He didn't think to turn back, but he couldn't quite remember why he was heading to the lower hangar.

  The metallic grey steps seemed to glow beneath his feet, and Barclay rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes, hoping that he could clear his vision and see the ordinary grey of the metal steps. When he opened his eyes again he knew he wasn't hallucinating. This was real.

  He stopped whistling, and while he felt somber now, his facial muscles remained pulled tight in a garish grin. He imagined what his face must look like and started to laugh and laugh. He couldn't stop, and as the tears snaked down his face, he felt his chest grow tight. His muscles began to cramp and spasm as he hyperventilated, and he clutched his hand to his chest, letting go of the railing.

  His body wracked with laughter, and he lost his footing and slipped down a couple of steps. He tried to right himself, but fell forward, still laughing. As he reached the bottom step, he put out his hands to try to break his fall,
and his fingers plunged into a soft, gelatinous mass. He lay there for a second, the shock of the impact halting his hysterical laughter. The mass around his fingers twitched and seemed to latch onto his skin.

  Barclay tried to pull his hands out, but they were stuck, held by this strange material that seemed both fluid and crystalline. Flat on his belly, He pushed himself upward and craned his neck. He could see someone sitting perfectly still and silent just a few yards away. A bright light emanated from the hangar, silhouetting the figure, so Barclay couldn't make out who it was.

  He called out as he tried to free his hands, and something moved, blocking the light from the hangar and plunging him into darkness. He heard machinery, and when the light returned it flooded the stairwell, illuminating the carnage.

  The figure ahead of him was the body of one of the engineers, and behind him was another body and another. He looked out across the sea of limbs and torsos, but began to doubt that these were in fact corpses. The hands of the men seemed to be reaching out to him, their faces contorting. He couldn't tell if they were really moving or if this was an illusion, created by the rapid dissolution of their flesh, and the growth of crystals from their arms, their heads, their eyes.

  He closed his eyes, not wanting to look at what lay beneath him. He tried once more to free his hands, but they were stuck fast. The light shifted again, as if a vehicle was moving away, its headlights receding.

  He tried to remember why he was down there, in the lower hangar. He had been sent to find something. A vehicle perhaps? He tried, but couldn't remember what it was. He became furious with himself, and thrashed about in a rage. Finally, he got one hand free and tried to stand, but his feet were trapped, as if they were being held down by something heavy.