by Alex White
She’s going to get Marcus to the escape pod. Before she dies, she’s going to herald in a new era of genetic engineering. Blue pulls out the alpha prototype of her BDI helmet—a stringy mass of tangled wires and sensors, woven into a mesh. It used to take Marcus fifteen minutes to get this thing on her. It’s far from sleek, and she’ll have to stick down the sensors by hand, but it’ll work.
The medical cabinet exploded, burned to a crisp, so there’s no chance of supplies. She crawls over to it, and her head begins to spin. Her skin grows sweaty and feverish. Her strength is fading. She wants to lie down and sleep, but when she awakens, will her condition have worsened? She can’t take that chance.
She pries open a drawer where Marcus keeps unopened boxes of medical supplies. There are always more down the hall, but that’s a hell of a crawl, and she still has work to do. After a moment, she finds some surgical tape and a tube of lubricant.
Blue shuffles through the cables in her hand, searching for the visual cortex and gross motor segments. With great strain, she props herself against the wall and squirts a dot of surgical lube onto each sensor. Then, she hoists the harness over her scalp and presses the sensors down. Taking the surgical tape, she wraps it around her head as tightly as she can, creating a band like a baseball cap. She tries to tear the tape from the roll, but she can’t get a good angle, and her fingers don’t want to cooperate. She leaves it dangling at her temple.
Then she hefts the portable terminal onto her lap and opens it, and slots her BDI cable into the bus.
//EXECUTE PILOTSTRAPPER.IMT
>>SEARCHING LOCAL NEURAL NETWORKS…
>>AWAITING BDI CONNECT_
>>CHOOSE CONNECTION:
>>1) MARCUS014385
>>2) CP5000-03
Blue tags the “2” key and closes her eyes, hoping to feel the rush of the BDI washing over her. A queer sensation of separation covers her arms and legs, as though she can move a ghostly form, but not her own body. Blackness covers her eyes, and she struggles to see. For a moment, she fears that something has gone wrong, and she’ll be trapped inside this black nothingness. A servo whines as she moves her right arm.
It’s working. She recognizes the singing of the loader’s joints, but why can’t she see? Marcus should’ve given her access to all the loader’s systems. Maybe there are some lights on board.
As she thinks of “light,” a pair of headlamps ignites on her shoulders, rendering the scene before her in oozing gray and lime green. She “sees” through a forward camera, and a dizzying drop looms before her. She’d always known the power loaders were enormous, but wasn’t prepared for the sense of vertigo.
Her camera swivels back and forth—not like a neck, with smooth articulation, but jerky and lagging. The resolution is poor, but she can decipher the shapes of a nest. The creatures are building something down here—a new home to replace the cells, created in their image.
It’s only been a few hours since she crushed Javier’s neck in the egg-storage area, but the creatures have covered every pylon and crate in obsidian resin. They’ve worked so fast that Blue scarcely recognizes the place where she’s worked for a year and a half.
She takes a step forward and immediately trips on the sticky floor, landing with an earsplitting bang that registers through the built-in communications system. She toggles through the alternate camera feeds until she finds one looking down the power loader’s back, and sees that the creatures built a nest around her legs. The material is strong, and the servos whine as she slowly but surely breaks free. After the last strand breaks, she places her forks against the ground, pushing out to rise to her feet.
When she finally gets upright, she switches back to the forward camera and finds two snatchers before her, pacing and spitting with rage. She considers attacking them, but such a hostile act could bring the whole nest down around her. She wonders what they would do— would they sever her hydraulic cables? Would they tear out her empty pilot’s seat? Better not to find out.
She swivels her clunky yellow body to look around egg storage. Pale hands protrude from the high walls, clutching and unclutching, and as Blue looks closer, she finds faces. This is where they’ve been taking the stolen people, cementing them to the walls. When Blue looks to their feet, she wants to vomit.
There are open egg crates at each victim, deadly payloads already delivered.
She laments the lack of eyelids on the power loader’s cameras, unable to shut them. These people are hosts now, and have no hope of survival. Soon, they’ll add their own fleshy worms to the station’s snatcher population, their last moments lived in utter agony.
All because Blue disarmed the egg crates with her universal code.
If she’s a good person, she’ll kill them. That’s what she’d want for herself. She takes a step toward one of the restrained hosts, and three snatchers jump in front of her, screaming and hissing, clanking their tails against her empty cage. She conjures the image of fire in her mind, and the welding torch on her forearm ignites.
One of the creatures rams her leg with its domed skull, and she almost loses her balance. If she attacks the hosts, they’ll almost certainly topple her and prevent her from leaving. As it stands, she’s not a threat for which they should risk their burgeoning hive.
Her video feed travels over the trapped, half-conscious crew, and Blue doesn’t want to recognize any of them. She doesn’t want to know who she’s leaving behind, and so she turns away, lumbering over to where Javier lies rotting, the egg crate empty before him. Blue needs a crate if she wants her plan to work. They’re airtight, damage resistant, and one will fit into the escape pod. She reaches with a pincer and one of the beasts jumps onto the box, snapping its tail across her metal arm. Blue brings the blowtorch close to the snatcher, and it skitters away, less than eager to deal with fire.
She threads her forks into the crate’s lift points and tries to pry it free of the hardened resin. Servos protest until the crate finally comes free with a crunch. She turns the crate onto its side and pushes her free pincer into it, extracting the empty egg. Its thick, leathery shell comes out like a used melon rind, tearing in places with shearing force. Blue must be extra careful not to rupture any of the lye bottles or thermite contacts, or she’ll have to get a new crate.
“Blue.”
The voice comes from the wall, thin and reedy, but enough for the loader’s microphones to hear it. She turns to find Charles, one of the Rose Eagle lab techs, sunken into the resin like a syrupy waterfall. His hair is matted with mucous or viscera of some kind—her camera isn’t high enough quality to see.
“Charles,” she says, her voice croaking and overdriven like an electric guitar. The power loader’s speakers were meant for blaring safety warnings, not conversation. “I’m so sorry.”
“Knew it had to be you.” He smirks. “No, you’re not sorry. You’re going to get out of here, aren’t you?”
She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move. Around her the snatchers hiss their displeasure.
“You always were smarter than us,” he continues, his raw voice even worse over the ragged connection. “You knew how to get out all along.”
“Where are the others? The ones from Rose Eagle.”
“Scattered. Gone.” Charles shakes his head. “The doors started opening and closing on their own.”
Blue knows exactly what happened. In Juno’s cage, Dorian had power over all access controls. It’s how he led the snatchers to her. He was deliberately killing everyone—but why?
“Listen, smart girl,” Charles says, his head sagging, “kill me.”
She hesitates, unsure if she can do it again. There’s something in his voice, though—a pleading certainty—that reminds her of the alternative. A swift death is far better than the agony a chestburster will bring. So she raises a pincer.
The snatchers descend without hesitation, spitting and screaming. They’re like a murder of crows, ready to peck out anything they can pierce. They’re already pissed off at her
for talking to Charles. He surges up in his restraints, eyes wide with desperation.
“What the fuck are you waiting for? Do it, you fucking bitch!”
He jolts with a shocking strength—that was the phenomenon that drew Blue’s attention in the first place. No matter how weak, the chimps would always be at their strongest right before death. When she’d first seen a live birth, its subject exhibited remarkable vitality in the moments before demise. In that moment, she’d envisioned an enzyme—one she could inject into herself to regain control of her muscles.
From that moment on, nothing else mattered.
“Fucking kill me!”
But she can’t. She turns away from him, and begins tromping toward the door.
“Fuck you!” he calls after her. It will be easier to walk away now. “Fuck you!”
“Goodbye, Charles,” she rasps through the loudspeaker before ascending the loading ramp out of egg storage.
28
THE FREEZER
Dorian has gotten pretty good at avoiding the creatures. Their patterns are becoming easier to spot, and he’s started to intuit their favorite places to hide. His destination isn’t far, just the operating theater in the kennels.
A rhythmic rumbling echoes from below. Some giant machinery has started up, uncurling like a metal dragon in the depths. Dorian narrows his eyes. It couldn’t be the power loader, could it? Those things aren’t intelligent, not like a synthetic.
What if Blue got ahold of it?
Is that something she can do?
A nervous discomfort tickles his stomach, as he realizes power loaders don’t have verbal overrides. He’d better get a move on if he wants this plan to work—so he sneaks along the edge of the SCIF commons, hiding behind crates and pipe fittings as he goes. The last he checked, the red dots were headed deeper into the kennels, down around the cells and egg storage. That puts the beasts far away from him and his intended path. Hopefully, the racket downstairs will hold their attention.
Plunging into the dim lime-green hallways, he scans in every direction for any sign of movement. The failing, flickering safety lights in the ceiling trigger dozens of false positives as he creeps, each scare sending his adrenaline higher.
He should be allowed to walk among the snatchers. They should accept him as one of their own—an apex predator. He understands what they do better than anyone: acquire, optimize, exploit. He just wishes he could make them see.
Ducking down one of the side passages, one that’s too small for a loader to fit through, he still feels the vibration from below. With any luck, it’ll pass, headed to some unknown destination. Finally, he reaches the operating theater and taps the door panel. It’s locked, and so he gently knocks out “shave and a haircut.” No response. He glances down the hall and knocks louder.
I swear to god, if they’ve fucking killed themselves…
The door opens, and he rushes inside, planting a broad smile on his face. Lucy and Nick stand before him, terrified, but fear quickly turns to elation. Then they pale when they see his sliced face.
“It’s fine,” he says to them, patting it down.
“Thank God you found us,” Lucy says.
“It’s a miracle you did, in all of the confusion,” Nick adds.
“I saw you run off in this direction, but I couldn’t call out, and I had to hide. Just got lucky, I suppose.” He needs to make them more comfortable. “An operating theater, huh? You wouldn’t happen to have any gauze here, would you?”
“What’s that?” Nick points to Dorian’s chest and arms. “Is that… android blood?”
Milky crust covers his upper torso. It was a messy thing, and he’d forgotten all about it. Did that one count as a murder? Marcus was an intelligent being who didn’t want to die, but he seemed beneath the notice of the snatchers. Had Dorian profaned himself by stooping to kill the pointless machine?
“I—” Dorian composes himself. “I was sent to get creamer, remember?”
“That’s right,” Lucy responds. “Where’s Wexler?”
“Dead,” Dorian says, remembering to approximate remorse. “Taken.” He ceremonially clenches his teeth, flexes his jaw muscles. “Like everyone else.”
Nick does something Dorian doesn’t expect. He picks up the surgical mallet.
“That was you moving the walls and doors, wasn’t it?” he asks, stiffening. “You led them right to us!”
Dorian shrugs and rolls his eyes. Poor, sweet, skinny Nick, with his thick-rimmed glasses and spiky black hair. He might’ve been a good match up for Lucy—the gawky couple complaining about late-stage capitalism while working on a secret weapons station so far from Earth. They seem like the sort to have bleeding hearts.
Gasping, Lucy clutches her hands to her chest. Dorian hates her expression of weakness and femininity as much as he hates Nick’s expression of masculinity. She’s preying on Nick, looking for protection. Dorian laughs.
“This is like seeing a cow holding a bolt gun,” Dorian says, and Lucy takes a step backward. “How do you not understand that she’s using you, Nick? She’s used you to get to me, and now that I’m here, you’re no longer required.” “What the fuck, man?” Nick says, stepping between him and Lucy. “You’ve gone totally off the deep end.” She continues to move away.
“You know, people keep saying that,” Dorian replies, cocking his head and widening his stance, “but once I’ve delivered Miss Biltmore to safety, I’ll have completed my mission, and you’ll all be dead.”
Lucy, who had slipped over to the fire axe case, stops short.
“What?”
Dorian slicks back his hair. Time to lie. Lucy needs to give him the escape pod codes, and Nick needs to die. Lucky for Dorian, this little intrigue between Blue, Elise, and Lucy has given him all the material he’ll need.
“Nick. Nick. Nick. This is the part I hate to tell you, Nick. I work for Seegson. Lucy Biltmore over here has been feeding us valuable information, and now I’m here to extract her.”
Nick laughs and raises his mallet, but hesitates when he sees Lucy’s reaction. She’s scared, but she also looks ashamed. Dorian nods to her.
“You wanted to destroy this place, and you got your wish. It’s too late to turn back now,” he says, then he rushes Nick.
The loser takes a furious swing with the surgical mallet, striking Dorian’s shoulder. It’ll leave a bruise, but no permanent damage. Dorian reaches out with slender hands and wraps his fingers around the young man’s face and neck.
Nick screams, his breaking wail at odds with his heroic posturing. Dorian tangles his feet into his target’s and shoves, sending Nick sprawling across a table full of glassware. He pins the nerd down, smashing the back of Nick’s head as hard as he can. Shards of equipment fly in all directions, and Nick seizes a broken stem, stabbing for Dorian’s neck.
Dorian easily stops the man’s limp attack. He’s a ten- time decathlon finisher. Nick is a fucking code jockey. Dorian twists the glassware from Nick’s hand and pauses. It’d be an easy shot straight into the man’s eye, but Dorian isn’t ready for this to end—not yet. He could go through the neck, and while it’d be spectacular for a moment, that moment would be altogether too short. In the second of indecision, Nick shoves Dorian’s arm down into the table, and the glass shatters in his hand, slicing his palm to ribbons.
Dorian stumbles backward. It doesn’t hurt. It’s one of those itchy cuts made by a too-sharp blade. There’s a lot of blood, and Dorian makes a fist, drawing forth rivulets of red. He slaps Nick with his glass-laden palm, smearing his blood into the man’s eyes. Then he kicks Nick as hard as he can in the balls.
Lucy—bug-eyed Lucy—just screams and screams. The screaming is good—it works for Dorian. As long as she doesn’t interfere, he’s happy. Stepping back, he searches the room for some exciting feature, some climactic finish to this too-easy fight. Nick’s life can’t go to waste. There’s a glass cage in the corner, lined with drab ceramic tile and all sorts of brassy nozzles. It’s abo
ut the size of a shower, but the glass looks bulletproof. He sees a surgical robot in the ceiling.
“Uh, oh, Nick,” Dorian growls, taking his prey by the collar and laying a hard punch across his jaw. Nick retaliates with a few limp slaps, but he’s already beaten. Dorian smacks him around some more, just to ensure compliance. “Uh, oh, Nick!” he repeats, maneuvering the man toward the glass enclosure. What pisses Dorian off is the suspicion that Nick could be fighting back, that he’s chosen to comply in the hopes that the predator will leave him alone. The man is wasting the last moments in this life, praying for mercy.
That’s why, instead of just throwing Nick into the glass cage, Dorian stops and lands a few body blows. Fuck this little nerd for giving up so easily. Nick coughs up blood, which is funny to someone like Dorian, who’s literally stared a snatcher in the face. Men like Nick don’t deserve to draw breath. They have no redeeming qualities. They only survive at the fringe. They only mate through pity. They’re an evolutionary maladaptation.
“Uh, oh, Nick.”
Dorian shoves him into the glass cage and slams the door, engaging the magnetic lock. He looks back at Lucy, his murderous eyes momentarily softening.
“I want you to remember that you chose this,” he says. “You chose to betray all of these people, and that’s why you’re going to get to live today. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” she whimpers.
“Tell me how you’re committed to your betrayal.”
“Yes.”
He bores into her with his eyes. “That’s not a question, much less a yes-or-no question. I want to hear you say that you want to get out of here.”
She starts crying again—it’s always crying or shouting with her. She isn’t qualified to be operating at this level, to be running a Seegson operation in a protected Weyland- Yutani lab. She’s not like Dorian, who knows everything. He takes a step toward her, dripping with blood like a furious wraith.
“Fucking say it, Biltmore!” he bellows. “Say you want to live, so your little friends have to die.”