The new alien audibly ate this flesh, the sound reverberated down the corridor.
Liara’s heartbeat was beginning to escalate.
Down the corridor the third alien was bolting away, it was fleeing in fear.
There was a wet thump as the new alien dropped one of its prey.
It then turned its attention to the other alien in its grip.
Liara witnessed a small protest of punches and kicks but the new alien merely sank its mouth into the aliens’ flesh. The victim spasmed and then went still.
Then the new alien dropped the dead body. It then turned 180 degrees and turned its attention in the direction of the fleeing third alien.
Liara, still from behind the strange box, watched this new creature head in that direction. It’s footsteps were heavy flat thuds on the steel floor.
It stepped into the lights and revealed its back to Liara. It was horrifying. Its colour was a pale grey, the skin much like a whales. She was only afforded a glimpse but what she saw made her gut sink. It was tall, thin and skeletal. Long arms and long legs. Its long bony fingers were sharp and covered in black blood. Its long tail trailed on the floor behind it.
It had annihilated the two squid aliens with ease.
Now she understood why they was trying to escape.
She witnessed it disappear from sight.
She took a breath. She hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath all this time.
What the fuck is that?
She was afraid suddenly, more afraid than she’d ever been in her life.
She heard it shriek from somewhere, the acoustics distorted.
She turned her back onto the wall and took a moment to breathe. Now what the hell was she going to do?
The creature shrieked from somewhere nearby.
She could just faintly hear its footsteps echoing around.
It hadn’t found the third alien.
Or the fourth.
They must’ve been hiding somewhere.
That was a good plan.
Another shriek, this time it was closer.
The footsteps were clearer too.
Shit. It was coming this way. But from what direction?
She craned her neck slowly. The new creature appeared from the right, the same direction it had arrived in. It shrieked again, an ear piercing scream that passed through bones.
Then it was silent. It stood completely still.
Liara watched the strange shadow, she was more disturbed by its silence and sudden freeze than its hunting and shrieking.
After what felt like the longest minute of her life, it sniffed the air and stooped to the dead bodies. It sniffed them both, before choosing the right hand corpse. It took the alien corpse by the ankle and dragged it back the direction it had come in.
There was a few moments and then there was a thunderous clattering and booming. This unidentifiable noise was then followed by thumping and banging overhead. It had climbed back into the air ducts. The banging gradually disappeared and an eerie stillness descended on the corridor.
Liara took a breath. Again she’d unknowingly been holding her breath. She waited a few moments, just to make sure this new alien had disappeared.
The silence was making every hair on her arms stand erect.
Ok, now she needed to figure out a way to escape too. Whatever this new thing was, it was dangerous and bad news. If the squid-aliens were running in fear, then it truly was trouble.
She decided she would see what the door the group had been trying to open was. She crept quietly forward. The sounds of her feet on the metal flooring seemed deafening in the silence. It was like sneaking in the lion’s den. The slightest sound felt like cannon fire and likely to draw attention. She kept her breathing as shallow as she could and she crept forward silently. She had no idea what she would do if that creature came back. She was pretty certain it was going to come back. It had taken the corpse into the ducts, probably to feed on it. It would no doubt return for its second kill.
Suddenly the idea of being anywhere near the second meal seemed stupid, but she had to figure out what the door was that they was trying to open. She reached it, feeling slimy blood seep between her toes as she neared.
A faint artificial glow seeped out from the little opening.
She pressed her eye to the crack. It looked like a small box, was that a control panel? Two buttons, two triangles. Was it an elevator?
My god, they was trying to get into an elevator! Now she understood why they wanted in so bad. She groped around the door, but couldn’t find anything. Did it not have a control this side? Was there no way to open the doors?
She, even knowing it was highly unlikely, pressed her fingers into the gap and tried to prise it open. It didn’t budge. It groaned a little.
There was a dull thud somewhere nearby and she froze.
There was no follow-up sound.
She needed a new plan. There surely must be another way off this floor. She began to padded in the direction of the lighted corner.
“Liara!”
She froze.
“Over here! Quickly!”
She was hearing her own voice, only it was being transmitted through a radio.
She scanned around her quickly but it was impossible to see anything in the dark.
As if life was making a further point the light, that illuminated the four-way junction in the middle of the level, flickered off.
“On the body, quickly Liara!”
Her disembodied voice sounded urgent. She stooped and squinted. She couldn’t see the dead body, it was too dark. There was nothing for it, she knelt onto all fours and began groping blindly. The warm blood was slippery and she did her best to not take note of it. Eventually, after countless blind desperate gropes in the pool of blood, she felt the body. She began to feel this mysterious creature, probing and exploring uncharted flesh in the dark. Her fingers found a recess, she followed it and as her fingers dove to the knuckle she realised she was feeling the wound. She sharply retracted her hand.
“Underneath! Quickly Liara, it’s going to come back!”
Liara groped the body desperately. She took as good of a grip as she could muster with blood covered hands and rolled the dead alien over. A little yellow orb attracted her attention.
She reached for it. The orb was a little light on something she determined was rectangular. It was built out of some hard substance, like plastic. She tugged it but it held firm to the body.
“It’s clipped to the belt Liara, quickly!” her voice crackled through the mysterious object in her hand. The voice sounded increasingly desperate.
Liara groped around, trying to find some clip she could undo. This would be hard enough to do in the dark had it been human technology let alone alien tech! There was a loud thump overhead and then that recognisable thumping and banging.
Liara felt the clip.
The thumping was quickly passing above her.
She unclipped it and tugged it free. She stood sharply.
She hesitated. The thumping was heading towards the centre, the spot where it had disappeared into.
It was coming back for the second body.
She was beginning to panic. Head towards the lights? Or head back to her hiding spot. She chose just as the creature dropped out of the vent behind her. She slipped through the darkness and headed for that mysterious metal pillar. Her steps were as quick, and as quiet, as she could manage. Her heart began pounding in her chest with every step.
It shrieked and then slowly padded towards the corpse.
Liara reached the hiding spot, slinking up against it and disappearing into the shadows just as the creature reached the corpse. It shrieked again, that high pitched sound echoing all around her. Her heart was hammering in her chest and her pulse was thumping in her ears. She was holding her breath and she was flushing with adrenaline.
The new creature sniffed at the pool of blood, found the corpse and took hold of it. It then turned on the spot
and dragged this new meal back to the vents. There was a loud clattering and crashing once more, then Liara listened as it disappeared deeper into the ventilation system. The silence was a relief.
An unnerving relief.
Hopefully it would now be distracted eating its two meals.
That might just give her some time to figure out the means out of this place.
“Well done,” her voice crackled in her hands.
Liara almost screamed.
CHAPTER THREE:
Liara took several deep breaths and calmed herself.
“On the side, there is a dial that you can roll… This is the volume, turn me down if I’m too loud…”
Hearing her own voice through the mysterious object in her hand would’ve been mind-blowing and absurd had it not been for the mysterious predator that had vanished into the vents. Her tolerance of the insane and unbelievable had swiftly built back up since the panic attack downstairs.
Liara found the dial, she turned it down a little.
“Above that dial there is a button,” Liara adjusted the volume a fraction more. It was still a little too loud for her comfort levels. The last thing she wanted was to draw the attention of that creature. “click it once and the light will turn blue, this means the radio is on a two-way exchange. The yellow means you have to push the button in to talk… Press it to blue,”
Liara did so.
“Now, we probably don’t have much time so we need to get this done quickly,”
“Wait, get what done quickly?” she whispered into the rectangle in her hand.
“Get you out of there. I have a plan, if you can head upstairs to the observation deck, there might be the means to begin unlocking some doors…” Perhaps she should’ve been resistant to the sound of her own voice speaking to her over the radio, but this voice had a plan and she needed that. It appeared that this voice also knew their way around this facility and with some strange predator lurking above her head that was enough to convince Liara to follow the instructions.
“Ok… How do I get upstairs?” Liara whispered back. She liked the plan she just wasn’t sure there was any means upwards.
“In the opposite corner of where you are now, there is another stairwell,”
“Wait, where I am now? You can see me?”
She suddenly didn’t feel comfortable with that.
“To a degree, I’m patched into the system but half of it’s fried to death and some of the cameras are offline…”
“Who exactly are you?” Patched into the system? Watching through cameras? This seemed pretty improbable for one of her own clones. The taunting thought that she was just a little cog in a big machine appeared in the corners of her mind again.
“…My name is not pronounceable by your kind,” the voice stalled.
Liara stared at the little blue light in disbelief.
“By my kind…?! You’re not human?” Who the hell was she talking to?
“Remember the Tethu from Procella-77” the voice sounded like it had a difficult time using these words. It made no sense to Liara.
“What the hell are you on about?” She returned shaking her head. Not that anyone was going to see it.
“Erm…” The voice was clearly stumped suddenly.
There was a long pause.
“Just call me Krahm, we have met before. I’m the one who gave you that vial…”
Suddenly Liara understood who she was talking to.
She was talking to the alien she’d met on the Four’s planet. She recalled how the alien had done something with the dead Liara clone and then begun speaking in her voice. Quite how it had done that she’d never had the chance to consider.
“I remember…” She whispered aloud without realising it.
“Good. Now we need to move, that thing could come back at any moment…”
“What is it?”
The voice audibly sighed at yet another question. It reminded Liara briefly of Fork, the alien she’d befriended. He had called her “Question Girl” because she was so inquisitive. The recollection made her smile for a moment. Her friendship with him had been unexpected but nice. Shame it ended the way it did. Her smile dropped as she recalled the gang of her clones beating him to death.
“That’s a really long story that I’ll tell you about later, right now you need to get out!”
“Is it an Alien?” Liara enquired.
“It’s… it’s complicated. In your language you would call it…” the voice groped for the right words, “a mutant. Our word for it translates as Progenmorph. All you need to know is that it is very dangerous!”
Liara had already concluded that, she didn’t need the alien stating the obvious.
Liara took breath like she was going to ask another question but she halted.
“Please, we need to act quickly. I’ll answer all your questions later…” Krahm pleaded.
She turned and followed his instruction. She headed towards the lit corner rather than pass through the centre. She wasn’t sure she felt confident enough to pass under the vent. She found a loop on her bodysuit that she’d not taken notice of before. She clipped the radio upon it. As was most things, it was a variation on human technology. It was long and black, rectangular and made of a durable hard synthetic material. The front panel was three quarters mesh, which Liara assumed as the speaker. The aerial protruded from the bottom, a long sculpted curve that protruded half the length of the radio. It looked like a realisation of a redesign for redesigns sake. She rounded the corner and padded forward. Her eyes subconsciously trailed upwards. She couldn’t see any cameras, or anything that might be a camera at all. A blur of movement down the corridor to her right caught her attention briefly.
It had ducked into a room and disappeared. It wasn’t the creature, she knew that much. It was maybe one of the squid aliens hiding? What had Krahm called them…? Tethu?
She finally had a name for them. And the creature too.
Translated as “Progenmorph”…
Liara knew enough Latin to know “morph” meant “shape”. But “progen” that was almost like someone couldn’t decide on “progeny” or “progenitor”. She understood the words had been mashed together, but which was it? Was it progeny or progenitor? Was this creature an offspring or a parent?
The idea unnerved Liara just that bit more.
She reached the orange door, it slid open with a hiss. Automatic lighting blinkered on and she was greeted by a stair well. She climbed it.
“Shit… You’re leaving footprints!” came Krahm over the radio. Liara recoiled and glanced down behind her. Sure enough there was a fading set of footprints behind her. Of course! She had stood in the pool of blood.
Oh god. Suddenly the gravity of this foolish mistake hit her.
She was covered in blood. Her hands were black with it, her knees and arms too.
“Ok, in the observation floor there should be water, use that to clean yourself…”
Liara understood why. She’d just left a visible trail for this Progenmorph to follow. She needed to cut the trail immediately. She arrived on the observation deck and was greeted by something new. She emerged on what appeared to be a two rooms. Before her, almost spanning the entire width of the room, was a long window made out of glass. Tucked neatly on the left side and set a little lower than the window was a door. The room on the other side of the glass appeared to be a little lower than the platform she was stood on. She scanned this level, discarding the sights of strange plants, neat cushioned chairs, desks and other clutter in pursuit of water. She wasn’t sure what to look for, she hoped that water might just be recognisable if she clapped eyes on it. She couldn’t see anything.
She headed further in. There was a neat set of stairs that led downwards to the door. The door was grey, with a little red pulsing light in its centre. She approached it slowly. There was no movement. The little light continued to pulsate. She neared the window, wondering whether it was a two-way mirror much like the police’s in
terrogation room. She could see into a very strange room. There was a long circular platform and several desks, tubes and floating glass screens surrounding it. Whatever was contained in the encased tube in the middle of the room was hidden from sight. It was very securely ensconced in its metal casing. She wondered what it was. It definitely appeared to be the focus of the room. A large vat of water caught her eye. It was a round clear tank in the corner of the room, it was just the thing. If she could only get inside.
She suspected the red light on the door next to her meant it was locked and there didn’t seem to be any other way in. Just bloody typical…
“I found some water… Only it appears the doors locked,” She spoke aloud.
“Ok, ok. If you can go up to the data banks, maybe we’ll find something that can hack through the door,”
“Hack?! I’m not exactly familiar with your language, I hardly think I can-”
“Don’t worry about that, I can guide you through it!” Krahm cut her off.
“Where are the data banks?”
“The next floor up, if you take the nearby stairwell…”
She turned, sure enough in the opposite corner of the room was yet another orange door and presumably another stairwell. Between these two stairwells, hung on the wall, was a large LCD display. It was a collection of icons, alien text and graphs. Black crisp characters on brilliant white backing. Was it their research data?
Back on Earth it would’ve been statistics and research related spiel.
She headed for the new stairwell. The little light on the door was pulsing red rapidly. As she approached the door it gave a little electric whine and a feeble hum but it didn’t move.
“Slight problem, the door is broken…” Liara remarked aloud. Her hands touched the door, she could feel it vibrate slightly. It was like the machinations were struggling to work and she could feel the machines protests.
“Damn…”
“Now what?”
She turned back from the door. There was a faint thump and clattering somewhere nearby. Was that? She sharpened her hearing, focused hard. She couldn’t hear anything else. False alarm? Regardless her skin still prickled over.
Progenitor Page 3