Another awful scenario would be if Oses had to kill me to save the ship and anyone the It might come across. I was fine with giving up my life in that case. I would have rather died then be the vehicle through which the It ‘purified’ the universe. But Oses was still fighting the trauma of not being as much of my protector as he felt he should be. I feared he might not remain sane if he had to end my life. With me dead, the baby would die too.
I considered reasoning with the It. To bargain somehow. Let my child be born and then it could have me. We could ask for a shuttle with which to leave the transport.
The It heard my thoughts. It turned them aside. Even if the Kalquorians agreed to such a deal, they would no doubt blast the shuttle and us into dust the second they could. They considered me too dangerous to be set free. No, the plan was to hide for the few hours it would take to gain command of required brain centers, destroy and expel the child, and finish transformation of the host. Then I would free Other One, and we would carry out our mission.
I battled to cut myself off from the It. I succeeded, once more letting myself be consumed in emptiness. Whether that was a victory or not, I’m not sure. It felt like a substantial amount of time passed as I sat in the dark, blind and deaf to whatever my oppressor was up to. I hid there in the void, marshalling my will as best I could. I visualized the life I had before me, of all I’d survived to get to where I was. I ruminated over my dreams and hopes of the future. I fed my determination with the love I felt for those on the ship who meant the most to me: Candy, Katrina, Betra, and Oses. I thought of the child I had not yet met but already loved.
After psyching myself up as much as I could, I began to fight my way to the surface.
Maybe the human will is an indomitable source of strength. Maybe love is more powerful than any other force in the universe, like the songs and poems have always insisted. Maybe it was just because Oses’s bite had worn off. Or maybe the It believed I had waved the white flag and given up. Whatever it was, I was afforded the might I needed. I not only mentally shoved aside the startled It, I also regained power over myself.
I had no idea where the hell I was. The area around me was empty of personnel. All around me were computer stations and vids, most of them turned off. The three that were on displayed only Kalquorian letters. I had only learned to speak a little Kalquorian. I couldn’t read but a few words of the language, so it was incomprehensible to me.
I could feel the It on the outside of my consciousness, trying to shove in to regain dominance. I didn’t dare peek into its mind for fear of it taking me over again. I had the feeling that if I weakened for an instant, I would never be myself again.
I saw only one thing in that small, dimly lit space that I recognized as something I could use to my advantage. It was a com, sitting on a raised table. I hurried to it and said, “Com Weapons Commander Oses, personal frequency.”
I could have cried with relief to hear that gravel voice issuing from the speakers. “Oses here.”
“Thank the prophets,” I cried, overcome.
“Shalia? Where are you?” He practically screamed the words.
“I don’t know. I’m in some small room that I’ve never seen before. It has a bunch of computers.” The alarms continued to sound from behind the closed door. “I’m afraid to step out in case Security decides to shoot me on the spot.”
“They have orders not to do so, to bring you in alive if at all possible. Stay where you are, though. I don’t want you hurt, which is a very real probability. I can trace this com signal to find you.”
“Hurry, Oses. I don’t know how long I can keep the It under control—”
My words ended in a scream. Vicious pain slashed through my chest. It felt as if my heart was being ripped out. I fell to the floor in a heap, with Oses’s desperate voice calling my name through the com.
“Shalia! Shalia, answer me!”
As I tried to remember how to breathe, the It came at me. It overwhelmed me, demanding my surrender. Its determination to take over lessened the brutal pain, allowing me to recognize the danger of the moment. My sense of self fled from the intruder, retreating into the dark corner where I mentally barricaded myself from being swallowed. I still had that bit of me, retaining my identity as Shalia. It had been close though.
I had no command over myself once more. The It had me. However, not all was dark in my tiny patch of awareness. I could see and hear what was going on with my usurped body.
Now that the It and I recognized each other’s weaknesses, we were both on guard. The next time I took over, the organism would retaliate with mind-stealing pain. It stood ready to demolish what was left of me at that point. I would have to choose my next, and probably last, battle wisely.
Warned that Oses was on his way, I got to my feet. I propelled towards the door, where I spoke with my voice but not my words. “Door, open.”
The door obeyed, humming quietly into the wall. The It looked out into a corridor I was sure I’d never been in before. It listened carefully, past the claxons for any hint of pursuers. There were voices, but they sounded distant, well beyond the corner a few feet away. The It edged out and headed quickly in the opposite direction. I kept hoping Oses would show up, but there was no sign of him or anyone from ship’s security. What remote corner of the ship had I ended up in?
Three turns down other unfamiliar halls, and we stood before an in-house transport. We boarded it, and my voice ordered, “Shuttle Bay Seven.”
A chill ran through me to hear where I was going. It was the same bay where the It had blown out the doors the first time it took me over.
When the transport door opened, the It came face to face with two Nobek security guards. It was ready for them, because it never hesitated for an instant in attacking them.
That was the Kalquorians’ Achilles’ heel: they had to react rather than carry the fight to their foe. The transport’s security was on alert what with the alarms going off. No doubt they’d been told to look out for me. It didn’t change that the It was already fighting before they realized they were in trouble. The It had a plan, and they didn’t know what it was.
There was also that matter of instinct to protect rather than attack a woman...not to mention the order to take me alive if possible. The invading organism had no such restrictions. That put the Kalquorians well behind the eight ball as far as halting it.
I cringed in my corner of my senses as the It went low to knock out the legs of one man with my reinforced arm, simultaneously kicking the knee of the other. There was a lot of cracking noises, sounds that sickened me. The guards’ howls rang.
Had the It stood and fought, I think those bruisers would have still triumphed. They each had a leg sticking out in strange angles, but they reached for me nevertheless. Nobeks are awesome creatures. They don’t stop.
Unfortunately, neither did the It. Other members of the bay’s security were rushing for us, coming fast. The It did its own quick move, snagging a percussion blaster and darting out of the owner’s reach. It opened fire at the charging defenses, forcing them to duck for cover.
As hard as I fought to keep separate from the It, the high emotion of the fight made it wide open to me. I suddenly knew its plan for escape and that it also plotted to destroy the transporter.
The It wanted to grab a shuttle and launch from the shuttle. It knew the transport would lock on to the shuttle via system controls that linked the crafts together. Once the transport opened the computer links between the vessels, the It could send a feedback loop to the Pussy ‘Porter. That would knock most systems offline, including life support. From there, the It hoped to also access weapons command to turn the transport against the accompanying destroyers.
The It had not been able to access codes for life support and weapons before. Yet there was something about the link that would be established between the transport and the shuttle that the It believed would leave those vulnerable to this feedback loop...something about getting access to priority code
override commands. Whatever it was, the It was determined to exploit that weakness.
It headed toward the shuttles, racing for the nearest one. Shouting guards were rushing for me, held off at a distance only by my blaster fire. I was too close to the It’s goal for Security to stop me before I got on board an escape vessel. If I was to retake control, now was the time.
“Shalia!”
The sound of Oses’s voice sealed the deal. All at once I rose, shoving the It aside with all the anger and will I had. Feeling flooded me; my legs, arms and all the rest were mine again. I whirled around to confront Oses and the Nobeks charging toward me.
“It wants to take a shuttle and destroy the transport through a feedback loop,” I shouted.
The men surrounded me. A circle of percussion blasters pointed straight at me. Good; they were taking no chances. Oses pushed to the front to deal with me.
“Your passenger is operating off old information,” he told me. “We changed those protocols years ago when we fought the Bi’isils. There’s no access the transport’s controls through a feedback signal. You may as well surrender.”
I heard the It shriek in fury inside my skull. The next instant, brutal agony walloped my chest.
I had expected it. The It had learned earlier that pain could disable me. It was horrendous, as awful as anything I’d ever encountered. I kept telling myself it was only suffering, that I wasn’t actually being damaged.
It’s one thing to understand it on an intellectual level. It’s quite another to feel you’re being shredded from within, ripped to pieces without mercy.
I screamed. I looked down at my chest, expecting to see blood spraying everywhere. Of course, that wasn’t the case. The It was setting off nerve endings, brutalizing me in a way that wouldn’t actually kill.
Oses got in my face so I couldn’t see anything but him. “Hold it off just a few seconds, pet,” he told me. “Just a few seconds is all we need. Look at me, Shalia. Look at me and hold on.”
In hell, a few seconds is a million eternities. I tried to shriek my lungs out as jagged blades seemed to tear and tear and tear me apart. I’m not sure how I obeyed Oses and maintained dominance for those infinite forevers. I can’t tell you how his determined stare sustained me or his insistence kept my grasp strong. All I know is I wanted to give in and he wouldn’t let me.
My arms jerked out to the sides. My feet left the ground. I drifted upward and Oses said, “We’ve got you. You can let go.”
I did, realizing I would not return. After the pain, it was a relief to give up myself as lost. The It grabbed power again, and the anguish ended.
I was done.
I went to my corner of my mind, observing myself under the rule of another. I huddled there, defeated as I have never been defeated before. My only hope was that the Kalquorians would find some way to save my baby. That they would have to exterminate me in order to defeat the It was not a question as far as I was concerned.
The It glared at Oses and then looked at my upraised arms. Hovercuffs circled the wrists, including the fully armored one. Those adjustable metal rings had also been placed on my ankles. I hung in the air, about a foot and a half off the floor.
The It snarled at our captors through my mouth. “The host’s mind is gone. This body belongs to me. I will not be stopped. You cannot hold me forever.”
“We don’t have to.” Tep came through the guards, a device in his hands. I recognized the portable stasis box attached to straps. He wrapped this around my torso, just above the bump of my baby. The next moment, I was like I’d been in Medical...unable to move from the neck down.
“Even full stasis won’t impede me,” the It promised. “We adapt. We overcome. The stasis will fail. I will kill the obstacle within the host and complete the transformation. You cannot fight that which is wrought in perfection.”
“Then you cannot win,” Tep answered grimly. “Your so-called perfection is a lie. Full stasis on.”
Darkness closed in and I was aware of no more.
May 26 – June 19 (postdated)
For a long while, things were hazy. I moved in and out of visions, unable to tell what was dream and what was real. Often, there were only voices or sounds. I heard a baby wailing at some point. It sounded so weak, more like a kitten mewling than a human, but I knew what it was. I dreamed of my baby’s cry, a beautiful noise to be treasured. I wondered if my friends would be able to save her before the It silenced her.
Figures came and went before my faded vision. Oses, Betra, Feru, and Tep. Even Captain Wotref. They were all high above me, like dark and grim angels. The kinds of angels that visited plagues on mankind when God was displeased. I heard myself screaming for the antidote. Ha. There was no antidote to the It. The organism would kill my unborn daughter now that it had swallowed me. Why wouldn’t they just destroy me? I wasn’t coming back.
Sometimes I was aware of things. I jerked. I was wracked with pain. My lungs heaved for breath. My heart skipped, unable to maintain its rhythm. I felt these things dimly, since the It had won everything but the tiny corner I huddled in. The hurts didn’t matter, not to me. Not anymore.
Tep, booming and far off all at once: “Go into hibernation. It’s your only hope. Either way, this host will not serve you.”
My trailing scream, uttered by another’s defeated fury. “NO!”
Into silence and darkness. Only the feeble sensation of ultimate loss. Shattered, unable to defeat the chaos. They would terminate me. My mission had failed. That meant I was not perfect, as I had been intended to be. I was flawed after all, created by the imperfect Maker. As such, I had no place in an orderly universe. No wonder the Bi’isils had sent me off, abandoning me and Other One. They had recognized what fallible creatures we were. We were not fit to serve them.
There was nothing left but to allow these awful Kalquorians their victory. That I had been thwarted by them, by this incredibly flawed host and her pathetic weakness – I was not worthy of the Bi’isil’s perfection. It was too clear. My only comfort was to die pure, unsullied by a creature even more defective than me.
I withdrew, going where I didn’t have to endure the inadequate world I’d awakened to. I went to where I didn’t have to face my own deficiency, my great inadequacies. Being in the midst of nothing was soothing.
Both parts sharing the same existence sank into the void, separating as we each fled from our unique torments and losses. We were grateful to be gone. For a single glorious moment at the end I was Shalia Monroe again, happy that the It couldn’t savage me. Horrendous agony filled me as my body returned to me and only me, but that was okay because it was fading already. I was me, and I was falling free into a quiet, painless chasm where there was no fear, no suffering, nothing.
After all I’d been through, nothing felt pretty damned good.
June 20, postdated
I couldn’t believe it when I opened my eyes in Medical. I should’ve been dead, whether by the Kalquorians or the It’s hands. Yet I knew that this was no dream or hallucination. I was awake. I was on the Pussy ‘Porter, in the medi-bed where I’d spent so long as of late. Crazier still, I was me again. Fully in my own skull, feeling myself heavy and sunk deep into the cushion beneath me.
I blinked, searching around inside my mind. I detected no trace of the It. My mind seemed to belong exclusively to me once more.
Before I thought about it, I raised my arm, which had been encased in organic armor. I should have been frozen in partial stasis, but the limb stirred and drifted up a few inches. I looked down at it to see my flesh – my skin, released from that bone-plated exoskeleton that had enclosed it. My thin, wasted arm shook violently for the two seconds I held it wavering over the bed, then it thumped down. I was insanely weak, but I was me. Me, alone. Even the bracelet hibernation chamber of the It was gone.
It was a simple matter to look past the foot of the medi-bed to the door of my room. No Nobek guards stood watch over me. I could hear the distant hum of conversation beyond
the opening.
I became more aware of myself as I woke further. My guts were trembly and weird, the way they are after getting through the worst of a vicious stomach flu. I was weak and fluttery all over. Yet I was alive without the presence of the It.
I heard a buzzing sound to my left. It took effort to roll my head in that direction, but I managed it. Betra sat by my bed, his chin resting on his chest as he slept. He was snoring.
“Hey,” I tried to say. All I managed was a wheeze, as insubstantial as a wisp of smoke. I tried again. “Hey.”
Betra blinked heavy lids and licked his lips. He turned to look at me with drowsy slowness. He blinked a couple more times before reaching real wakefulness.
“Shalia,” he whispered. “You’re conscious.”
Shalia's Diary Omnibus Page 114