by Hall, Andrew
Suddenly the far door melted open. Tabitha turned to see a tall alien figure emerge from the white corridor outside. It wore polished steely armour, thinly organic and elaborate. Two hulking monsters followed in after it, sitting like guard dogs at the door as it slurped shut. The slender watcher approached Tabitha’s prison and examined her through its mask, silent and staring like the head of a sinister statue. It touched a gloved hand to its collar, and the mask broke up into metal ribbons and disappeared. The face staring at her was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Tanned, smooth-skinned, with fleshy white feathers in place of hair. More angelic than alien. It was staring at her with big bright golden eyes, the same colour as her own. The watcher stooped to study her more closely. The door squelched open again, and more watchers walked in to gather round her. They came close and studied her, like a horror in a bell jar. Tabitha looked up into their huge golden eyes; their tanned skin in pastel shades. They were tall, naturally elegant; like stretched statues come to life. Different creatures out of their black scaled armour. She couldn’t understand their strange words, but their body language spoke volumes. They were the masters here. A superior race. Tall, cold, distant. When the small crowd withdrew, Tabitha was left standing before two of them. One was the same watcher who’d first entered the room. The second was older, more cautious, dressed in some kind of armoured robe. It came forward and asked the first watcher a question. It stepped around Tabitha’s prison to study her, eyeing her hands, as if she were an artefact in a glass case. Tabitha listened to a sonorous discussion between them that she couldn’t understand. The first watcher opened its hand to the second to reveal a small hologram of Tabitha, rotating there on its palm like a virtual voodoo doll. Tabitha saw lights twinkling on her shining hologram, blinking in time with the lights on her bodysuit. The watchers must have been recording her biometrics with it. Every pulse, every breath. So she was a lab rat again, she told herself. The second watcher spoke with the first and nodded, waving its hand to give some kind of go-ahead. The others came closer again, studying Tabitha intently. All of a sudden the beam of light that imprisoned her moved along the ceiling and pushed against her, shoving her backwards with an unstoppable power. Tabitha stumbled and shuffled her feet, trying desperately to push against it. She was a spider trapped under a moving glass. The beam was edging her closer and closer to the writhing black mass at the back of the room.
‘Wait! No!’ she said desperately, clawing at the wall of light in terror. ‘I’ll do whatever you want! Please!’ the figures watched her, following behind. They were talking, laughing. Tabitha was entertainment; a freakshow to feed the monstrosity. She scratched her claws at the smooth engraved floor, trying to dig her way out from the beam. The watchers burst into strange laughter at the sight.
‘I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!’ she screamed at them, scratching frantically at the curved wall of light. They were fascinated by her anger, watching her progress down the room. Heartcore pounding, every desperate thought ran through Tabitha’s head as the black mass loomed closer. All those writhing arms, oil-black and grasping. That gaping mouth, drooling and pulsing. It was hungry for her. Tabitha panicked. She could kill herself first. A piercing dread shook her body as the drooling bloom opened wide for her, and the beam pushed her close. Yes, she could kill herself. Claw her skull apart. She just couldn’t get her trembling hands to rise up and do it. Instead she could only hug herself tight, shaking in terror. The watchers were talking excitedly, following her down to the end of the glassy room. Suddenly the beam of light stopped moving. Shivering with fear, Tabitha couldn’t bring herself to look up at the monstrosity. Her audience was silent, waiting. She just wanted this to be over. When she finally managed to bring her eyes up on it, the beam of light vanished. A mess of tentacles snatched her up and stuffed her into its slimy gaping mouth.
Gasping, yelping, Tabitha felt herself being squeezed down a claustrophobic throat. She felt a wild tangle of current in here, a pulsing web of voltage. It was some kind of brain; a junction for conduits that ran all over the monstrous ship. She felt all of it, a million connections, racing through her mind from the fleshy walls. For one fleeting second she felt what the ship felt. Hunger. Fascination. It wanted her essence coursing through its conduits. Her genes; her abilities. Her healing. It wanted to feed her power to the hive; to breed her blood into the whole. Slow-death synthesis. Moist walls of muscle pressed against her and forced her down the throat. The fleshy press made it impossible to move her arms from her sides; her claws were redundant against the thick leathery tissue. Desperate, terrified, coated in a slick mucus, Tabitha wrestled and struggled frantically against the force of the throat. A big tentacled sphincter opened up ahead of her and pulled her closer. A sudden stench of dead flesh filled her maddening head, carried up through the giant gut on stinging acid fumes. She was screaming, wriggling uselessly. Couldn’t breathe in all the hot sticky press. As the throat pushed her head through the gaping sphincter, Tabitha saw a gushing boil of acid below in a vast veined stomach. The choking acid fumes blinded her, burned her nostrils. She coughed and retched with watering eyes; felt her nose running and itching and stinging at the fumes.
The watchers heard a muffled sneeze and a sudden crackling bang, and the monstrosity’s stomach burst open in a gory lightning storm. Reeking acid gushed over the floor in a caustic tide, and the aliens ran from it in sudden panic. One figure stumbled and screamed in the flood, gripping its slender legs as the acid melted flesh and bone. Dazed, Tabitha realised she was still alive. She clawed her way out half-blind and choking from the sagging dead gut, dropping down to her feet in the open empty stomach. She slipped and clambered out and ran for the distant door, yelling at the acid splashes that burned through her suit. The watchers were pinned to the walls, skirting around the flood of acid that smoked into the floor. The thick cloying stench of bile and putrefied meat filled the room; the watchers were yelling and trying to get to safety. Tabitha just sprinted straight through the acid puddle and felt nothing on her feet, dodging shrieking white laserbolts as she ran for the door. An armoured watcher ran to bar her way. She leapt at it. The figure blocked her claws in a fly of sparks and struck Tabitha hard, knocking her limp. It grabbed her neck and lifted her kicking into the air. It yelled to the others and squeezed tight, choking her. Tabitha grasped at its strong solid hands, clawing for breath. Her claws screeched uselessly against its armour. The hulking black monsters galloped back to block the doorway behind it. No escape. The watcher shook her like a ragdoll, laughing. Tabitha gasped and kicked at the angelic figure as it choked her, passing out in its grip. Suddenly she dropped to the floor, gasping for breath, and the alien strode around her victoriously. It walked like a ballet dancer, slender and strong. She was short and deformed by comparison; crawling fearfully into a corner of the room as the figure paced after her. The other watchers had edged past the acid pool and crowded in to surround her. Some were aiming guns at her, powering up with a high-pitched drone. Tabitha whimpered and tried to hide away but her strangler reached out and grabbed her head. Forced her to look it in the face. With big bright eyes it searched the emotions in her expression. It pulled at her and lifted her up again, this time by the front of her bodysuit. Tabitha was gasping for breath. With a deep hypnotic voice, it asked her a question. She had no idea of the meaning, but it stared at her curiously as if waiting for an answer. When she struggled and scratched again the strangler laughed and punched her hard in the stomach. Tabitha gasped and crumpled limp in its grip; felt broken inside.
‘Just kill me,’ she coughed weakly, giving up, gasping to get her breath back. ‘Just fucking kill me.’ The alien reached out with its other hand and took hold of her head. It began to squeeze, slowly, almost gently. But the pressure was constant, getting harder. The beautiful creature caught sight of the pain in her eyes, and a smile played across its lips. It asked her another question. The others gathered closer behind and made their own comments, laughing. Tabitha fel
t a sudden tingling in her hands. Something seeping into her from the strangler’s skin.
‘Kill me,’ Tabitha gasped, like a prayer, staring into its golden eyes. She was tired of running, tired of hurting. Tired of fear. ‘Kill me!’ she yelled. She felt her fingers twitch. Her hands shook for a moment. She felt stings through her palms then, through her fingers. She screamed as the strangler’s armoured fingertips pressed sharply into her scalp, and warm silver blood trickled down her temple. She looked down at the strangler’s big gloved hand, gripping her white bodysuit. There were tiny silver lines there in the gauntlet, like engravings. Like fingerprints. She felt the prints in her own hands now. The final piece of the puzzle. Her left hand shot out to the strangler’s belt; she felt an object there unfold and react to her new fingerprints. Tabitha pulled the heavy pistol off the belt, pressed it up against the strangler’s jaw and squeezed the trigger. A shrieking flash of light. The other watchers screamed and yelled. Golden blood gushed over Tabitha as they both dropped to the floor. She prised herself from the strangler’s dead grip and took aim at another watcher in the sudden confusion. Blew its kneecap apart. The scream was music to her ears as she tore the belt from the strangler’s body. The others were shouting, scrambling for her as she ran. Tabitha ducked from a shot cat-fast and opened fire on them, scattering the crowd behind her. She shot another one down; one of the few with a gun raised. Heartcore glowing, she took aim on the hulking black monsters running for her. Blew their heads open with shrieking white shots. Wide-eyed, shocked at herself, Tabitha sprinted for the door. Suddenly she was free, out of the door, running for her life. White laserbolts screamed past her down the corridor, bursting against the floor and exploding into the walls around her. Tabitha spun and shot one of the watchers down, and sprinted for the next door. She slammed her hand down on the door console, springing her claws out to pull at the fleshy wiring underneath. To her surprise the door opened at just the touch of her hand, revealing some kind of shadowy control room inside. Not quite the exit she’d hoped for.
‘Shit,’ she muttered. A startled watcher turned from its console to look at her. Panicking, Tabitha fired and dropped it dead. She looked around the room for more figures, but found herself alone as the door squelched shut behind her. She caught a glimpse of her own face on the console then; a glowing hologram staring back at her. A thin gleaming line connected her image to a huge globe across the room, showing her position on the mothership over Florida. There was a second hologram too, staring from the console beside it. A man’s face, vague and featureless. A line connected his picture with New York on the globe. Was he like her then? Another freak the watchers were hunting down? Suddenly the door melted open behind her. Tabitha ran for a door on the far side of the room, leaping away from laser shots that exploded the consoles around her. She ran out into another gleaming white corridor, ribbed and fleshy. Feathery fronds grew from the walls like lamps, wafting and glowing. Everything in here felt alive. As she ran she felt the walls refiltering the air. Recycling their own light. The whole ship beyond too, eating its own expended current. A living masterpiece. Even her own body was feeding off it, that colossal hypnotic power all around her. She had to focus. She had to find a way out, but where the hell was that? The ship had looked as big as a city from the outside. Tabitha gasped at the running footsteps down the corridor, and hid away in an alcove as the watchers approached. The wall behind her in the alcove burped a squelchy beep as she backed up breathless against it. Suddenly she was dropping. It was a lift.
Tabitha caught her breath and watched a muscular lift shaft rushing past her on every side. The lift was dropping fast, dropping forever. The floor was an artwork, just like everywhere else in the ship; smooth rubbery stone etched with glowing geometric patterns. Hypnotically complex; super-clockwork circles shifting and blooming and shrinking endlessly. The whole ship filled with an alarm sound then, blurting a weird organic boop all around her. A thought flashed in her head. For a brief second, she saw another place. A hangar. It was Seven’s vision. Tabitha looked up in shock. Her heart leapt at the thought of him being alive. It felt like he was reaching out to her from the walls; from the lift itself. As if the whole fleshy fabric of the living ship had carried his mind to hers.
‘Hold on,’ she said desperately, trying to grasp at the thought of him. She was getting closer; she could feel it. She was coming to save him.
The bony elevator slowed, stopped and sagged open in a vast gloomy cargo hold. The alarm echoed in the endless space. Tabitha checked around her for watchers and crept out of the lift, pressing her back to the dull grey wall. She sprinted down a corridor between cliff-walls of giant containers, skidding to a stop on whispering feet when she heard running footsteps up ahead. She ducked back behind the containers as a watcher ran past. She checked around the edge to see it disappearing into the distance, and ran across the pathway towards the far warehouse wall. Her mind felt drawn to Seven’s like a magnet, pulling her on as she sprinted breathless through the far door.
Tabitha jumped in fright. A sprawling hangar stretched out ahead of her, packed with grey dragons lying comatose. She ran inside in search of Seven, ducking down beside some kind of console to hide away from more searching figures in the distance. Creeping along beside the wall as quickly as she could, Tabitha quietly ran the length of the hangar. She searched, paused, and froze when she picked him out. Seven lay still as she watched him from her cover, huge and black compared with his grey brothers and sisters lined up alongside. But he was lifeless. Tabitha felt shell shocked as she stared over at him. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. She’d felt his thoughts. She ran across the hangar towards him when she spotted her chance. Hoping against hope she put a palm on his snout, and… nothing. There was no warmth to feel there, not like before. No thoughts of his to mix and mingle with her own. He was cold, unmoving. There was no tingle of a current between their skin. Tabitha looked to the ceiling, blinking the tears away. Maybe his mind had been swallowed back into the mothership. Maybe that was what she’d felt in the lift.
Seven’s cockpit was dark and empty; Fishbowl was nowhere to be seen when Tabitha peered inside. The console wouldn’t respond to her, no matter what she tried. There was no feeling of him in here. Seven was dead. Tabitha sobbed quietly, pressing a hand to her bruised face. But she had to stamp that cold black feeling back down. She had to survive. Pulling the boxes out from under the seat, Tabitha saw that the contents were still plundered like she’d left them. She hurriedly prised open the hatch of a lifeless grey dragon beside Seven, and tore open the boxes under the seat. She pulled a lid open and peeled off her white bodysuit, unfolding the black material from the box. She watched the cockpit wall with a weary stare as the scaly fabric fitted itself to her skin. Dead-hearted she pulled the new grey belt around her waist, clipping on the water bottle beside the knife and the pistol. Tabitha edged her head cautiously out of the hatch, and climbed down the grey dragon’s back to the hangar floor.
‘I’m going to come back, and I’m going to slaughter them,’ she promised Seven, kissing his dead snout. ‘For you.’ Tabitha laid a hand on his snout and breathed deep against the lump in her throat, feeling the tense grip of grief winding tight around her chest. A shot of light tore past her ear suddenly, and another exploded against Seven’s shoulder. Tabitha fired back on the running watchers, forcing them behind a pillar as she sprinted away. More of them filled the wide doorway and came flooding into the hangar, with a sudden storm of laser fire. Tabitha shot at them and ran for the nearest grey dragon, banging her palms on its head to wake it up. Nothing. She tried to prise her claws into the saddle, tried to open it up. Nothing. It was locked down. She cursed and ran as the gunshots pummelled into the dragon’s side. She ran instead for the end of the hangar, where the daylight shone from a gigantic opening. Tabitha sprinted for cover as the shots shrieked and burst all around her. She aimed her pistol, fired, sprinted again. Ducking and weaving as the floor around her feet erupted in bursts of light.
Another shot blew a crater in a pillar, and the rubble burst against Tabitha’s head and knocked her sideways. She steadied herself and shook off the sting, still sprinting for the opening as the watchers hunted her down. Her first pistol was empty; another sat unused on her belt. She threw the first one down as she ran, dodging another hail of shots that punched into the floor around her. Adrenaline forced her on. Her muscles burned. She had to keep running; that was all she could do now. She had to escape and survive. The hangar opening was a shimmering wall of energy; a barrier of light. Tabitha ran for it and braced herself to collide against the wall, but felt nothing. She stumbled on, fell through the wall of light… and the next thing she knew, she was dropping into open sky. The wind rushed in her ears as she flailed, terrified. The vast sapphire sea sprawled infinite, shimmering far below her as she fell. She felt a sudden shadow above, and spun away from the grey dragon’s snapping jaws. Before it could lunge at her again the dragon burst into flames, dropping dead out of the sky. Human artillery crackled and boomed from the shoreline below, raining hell on the mothership as it passed by the Florida coast. Gasping desperately as she fell, Tabitha dived after the wreckage of the dead grey dragon as the sea loomed closer below. Sinking her claws into its grey armour, she hung on tight and braced for the impact. The sea hit like a wall of rock, smashing the dead dragon to pieces. The force threw Tabitha back up in the air, flailing as she dropped and crashed down into the clear water in a bubbling plunge. The sky was a deafening chaos of shells and gunfire above her when she surfaced, treading water and blinking back the salty sea. The huge black mothership reeled away from the roar of a hundred tanks and howitzers biting into it, retaliating with shrieking white artillery of its own. Tabitha had landed in a warzone.