Savage By Nature

by Jacob Russell Dring

  “He’s right,” Ngo stepped forward. “Quarantine breach.”

  “But a different pitch, an altered rhythm,” Felina thought out loud, zoning out briefly. Her eyes began to widen. She marched toward Schuman and Lowman, breaking the documenter’s hold on him so as to establish trust. It was a shaky foundation, but the alchemist seemed to temporarily believe it. Felina’s voice was steadfast, dominant, and without fault. “You said you didn’t know what MALBO is. Don’t bullshit us! We’re documenters, we can read right through it.”

  “I give you my word, I’ve not a clue.” Lowman fixed his once again ruffled uniform. His expression became bitter and impatient. “I would love an explanation, though.”

  “Main labs, base of operations,” Felina said without restraint, startling everyone else present, namely Calloway. Felina shrugged and told them it didn’t really matter now, especially if the alarm was for what she thought it was; this statement alone greatly perturbed them furthermore. She returned her attention to him. “They’re right; the alarm’s a variation of the USRD quarantine breach alarm. But the rhythmic flashing, before it stopped, is reminiscent of the USRD HAZMAT spill alarm.”

  “What’re you suggesting?” Lowman asked skeptically, chortling briefly as if to call her crazy. “That the Manticore is housing biological hazardous materials? You’re insane.”

  “I wish I was, Mr. Lowman, I wish I was,” Felina said, backing away. “You clearly don’t seem too intrigued to know the details; nor am I too inclined to spill them. So run along, back to your cheese and maze.”

  The blinking white light was steady, but with the blaring gone—leaving only a residue of its discordance in their temples—panic had lost its claws.

  As Lowman reluctantly marched off down the corridor, probably in search of another lavatory supposing he hadn’t already done so during the foray, Felina and the others gathered around. Calloway now stood among them, undisputed both ways. It seemed they had a common enemy now, although nobody wanted to admit the possibility of their fearful thoughts.

  “You think one of their specimens got loose?” Loudon finally broke the silence among them, albeit keeping her voice low. By now Manticore staff had begun funneling into the corridors, disorientation and perplexity common on their faces. Nobody seemed very fazed by the documenters’ huddle near the lavatory. A few even pushed past them to access it, men and women alike.

  “Yeah, at this rate,” Felina said, “it’s one of the fattest possibilities. But we don’t need any more of a panic with you going around shouting the classified.”

  “I’m not a moron, Sabartinelli,” Calloway said.

  “Whatever you say, Einstein,” she sighed. “Fact is, we need to regroup with the others. Everyone is clearly panicking because there’s an alarm, no drill announcement, and according to Lowman they don’t even recognize it. So I think that’s safe to say it has something to do with MALBO. Anyone wanna object?”

  Nobody uttered a word.

  “So, who wants to follow?” Felina was beyond impatient, and didn’t want the panic in herself to show its true colors. Instead she let these emotions don masks of valiancy and determination, leading her to guide the documenters—yet again, notwithstanding more hurriedly now—back to the labs entrance. In all hopes, the others would still be there alongside Cassel; as for the nature of this alarm, if it did in fact involve the Xeno carnem, she wished with all her heart that it would be swiftly contained.

  She remembered SC6 and felt ironically grateful for their presence; assuming they were assigned to MALBO strictly, Felina experienced crumbs of reassurance returning to her.

  Through a thickening herd of personnel, the documenters moved. It was as if they were sentient rocks moving against the current in a river of animated flesh. Some bounced off of them, others jostled straight past, while the select few didn’t even touch. The latter was so seldom due to the close confines of the corridors and the tight huddle that had become the documenters.

  “This is Captain Keyes speaking,” the intercom crackled with minor interference. “May everyone stay calm and remain in your workplaces. There has been a HAZMAT breach in secondary labs. Please…remain calm. Thank you.”

  The announcement ended and Felina stared at the others, her eyes resonating with skepticism.

  “HAZMAT breach?” Zometa scoffed. “Bullshit.”

  “Much less in secondary labs, not main,” Felina rolled her eyes. Her voice quietened down to a harsh whisper. “Fucking MALBO. Asher.”

  “Remember what he said, Sabartinelli,” Calloway’s voice was considerate for once. “Asher mentioned Keyes signed off on the Xeno Project; he would’ve had to, obviously. He isn’t in the right, then…”

  “True,” Felina replied, reservedly yet. “But we don’t have all the details. We shouldn’t jump to any—”

  “I’ve already jumped,” Calloway bit at the air, brandishing his PDA. “Call it a leap of faith, but I already have my details.”

  “Show ‘n’ tell is next up on our agenda, then,” Felina’s expression was a dash of resentment mixed with a sprinkle of respect. He was a go-getter, alright, but his timing was out-of-orbit and his gravity off the wall. Felina put her foot down. “For now, we make a beeline to the labs entrance, as we were. With any luck we’ll reach Cassel and the others before shit really hits the fan.”

  That’s reassuring, spoke Baxter’s eyes without a word. Felina read it clear as day, while Calloway’s surprisingly bore a level of respect she took under consideration.

  Regardless, they proceeded as they had been but with a heightened sense of urgency than before. Felina felt herself adhering to the left side of the corridors as she led the documenters along the portside intestines of the Manticore. It was as if she were blind and the bulkheads were braille; her left hand glided over the smooth walls, no one panel different than the prior. Still, she did this in conjunction with scattering her eyes like a bio-scanner. She read signs like memory maps and mundane specifics as if a topographer.

  Fortunately, the lounging facility she had gone to after eating in the company of the Samum crew was astern. Their return to the labs entrance was quick, but not without incident. As they crossed over into the all-white corridors that felt narrower than they had before lunch, a cacophony of sounds rattled their bones. There was that of ripping metal, like bulkhead panels being impossibly torn from their foundations. Pipes burst and hissed, paired with a metallic shrieking that had a peculiar guttural background to it.

  Felina absentmindedly attributed this sound to ruptured ventilation ducts, vibrating through bulkheads in the corridor.

  This mental reassurance was soon debunked as they turned a corner and witnessed the unspeakable.

  It was roughly a hundred feet from where they stood to the high-ceilinged wide-mouthed fork in the corridor. Where a simple auto-door on the right led to secondary labs, its main counterpart left of it via a glass hexagonal entrance. They were too far to discern specifics, but the auto-door on the right appeared malformed and convex, as if something failed to bust through from the other side. The glass hexagon, on the other hand, was terribly open—its top portion stuck halfway up, but the bottom impossibly fragmented.

  Between the documenters and the two lab entrances was sentinel Belle and Wisniewski. Wisniewski looked a wreck—sweat matting hair to forehead, tears streaking his cheeks, and vomit specking lips that quivered without relent.

  Belle’s semiautomatic pistol was clutched in both of her hands, undoubtedly sweating beyond reason. It was being held from locked elbows yet not entirely raised, its muzzle instead pointed at the floor. She and Wisniewski were not alone in the corridor; like a boxer, she treaded carefully, knees bent but weapon armed and ready for a quick uppercut shot. Her opponent was not human; the creature stood upright but with a hunch. Translucent saliva resembling watered glycerin seemed to pour from its ajar jaws, making its teeth shine as if metallic. It hissed with every breath, and behind it a severed pipe did the same, jutting steam int
o the corridor. This didn’t appear to faze the creature, which easily dwarfed both Belle and Wisniewski.

  As if charming a snake, or trying to, Belle did not just shoot at will. She probably already had, and reloaded, according to a magazine on the floor not far from her feet. Felina glimpsed this, along with blood splatter on the bulkhead panel that had been ripped from the wall behind the creature.

  No corpses, human or otherwise, could be seen.

  The Xeno carnem finally stopped its boxer’s dance and hissed fiercely, jaws agape. Belle screamed in return, her voice scraping, desperate abandon overwhelming her. She raised the Deci and squeezed its trigger, capable of only one shot before the thing was upon her. The 10mm round struck the creature in the lower stomach, seemingly ineffective. Its jaws latched around her neck, spraying blood across the floor and in an aerial arc that misted Wisniewski’s face. He screamed shrilly, his voice dipping high and low, then ran past them—toward the frozen-in-fear documenters.

  “Where are the others, dammit!?” Loudon asked him, her voice low, teeth gnashing.

  “The foyer, the foyer!” Wisniewski bawled. His voice was jagged and shrill all at once, bouncing off the corridor walls. He pushed through the documenters and past, bouncing just the same.

  “Grab him!” Felina snapped under her breath, her eyes however not leaving the creature. It was still hunched over Belle’s corpse, its voracious jaws nearly decapitating her as it devoured. She felt her heart beating so hard and fast that a stethoscope wouldn’t suffice.

  “I got him,” said a familiar voice from behind them. Felina took her eyes off the creature now, to see Connell standing by the corner with a firm handful of Wisniewski’s uniform.

  “What the flying—” Palmer gawked, dropping his rifle; fortunately it was slung around his shoulder.

  “Get down,” a deep voice said, and not very loudly either. The bass and gravity in his tone was more than enough for every documenter present to abruptly squat, hands over their heads. Felina, Loudon, and Baxter were the ones that covered their ears. The owner of the voice, Mikhail Landham she recalled, had shouldered his Seighty battle rifle with an eye to its fixed sights. He fired a quick burst that caught the previously oblivious creature in the lower jaw, impaling its bony cheeks and splashing the floor with its own blood. It howled stridently, gurgling blood as it scampered around the floor, its clawed hands and feet inadvertently mauling Belle’s corpse.

  Tight-lipped, the rigid Landham strode forehead with rifle shouldered and face expressionless. He pumped a few more bursts into the creature as it finally struggled to climb back through the rugged bulkhead hole. It managed to get its upper half in when Landham halted twenty feet away and spat at least a dozen incessant rounds into its waist. The Xeno carnem became messily halved, spewing gore through the air, landing both portions on the floor. What remained of the lifeless creature were its corpse halves in a widespread splatter of purplish-red blood.

  Expletives started spewing from the mouths of the SC6 members, but the group was incomplete. Wincott, Skugs, and Arevalo were absent, which worried Felina but not as much as the present situation did. The overall significance of this calamity was already rattling her veins like tributaries in an earthquake. She felt sick, what she’d just witnessed; the sounds, too, they bounced around her skull and didn’t have the mercy to relent—

  Baxter suddenly staggered to the side and vomited her lunch onto the white running board. This created a domino effect; Ngo contained it, but via dry retching, which didn’t help Baez from regurgitating her lunch as well.

  Palmer started to heave, then Connell grabbed him by the shoulder and glared into his eyes. It was beyond evident that even the leader of SC6 was shaken up, but it wasn’t about to break him.

  “Where’s…where’s Wisniewski?” Felina panted.

  “Right here,” Connell said, nudging the unconscious man with a boot. “He passed out when Landham started shooting.”

  “Great. Well…can any of you carry him?”

  “Landham?” Connell turned to the big square-jawed man. “Duty calls, since Skugs ain’t here.”

  Landham sighed gutturally. He let his Seighty dangle from its strap while stooping to scoop up the unconscious documenter. He then slung him over a shoulder before replacing the emptiness in his palms with the satisfying metallic figure of the Seighty.

  “Now what?” Baxter asked, her voice hoarse.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Felina insisted.

  “I’m sorry, lady,” Connell said, “but right now nothing is that obvious. Unless you’d mind throwing more than just a suggestive statement our way.”

  “I didn’t know this would happen,” Felina said, practically begged to be believed. Her eyes started to well up and her hands shook as they took on clawed gestures, palms facing the ceiling. “But a sentinel…a woman…is fucking dead because of it! Because of what Thomas Asher has been conducting in MALBO ever since you were invited aboard. Inert DNA…” Felina spat off to the side, her scowl nonetheless prominently residual. She stepped aside and pointed down the corridor at the two disparate corpses. “Does that look fucking inert to you!?”

  Her strong feminine voice reverberated through the corridors. Palmer winced and Wisniewski muttered until he was awake. Landham set him down, helping him stand and reorient.

  Felina took a breather, but it didn’t last long.

  “So, we’re heading back to the security center, right?” Palmer said, half-statement in his tone. “Stock up and contact the bridge, get a hold of the assholes at Central Command—”

  “Shut it, Palmer!” Connell snapped.

  “Which door?” Palmer said in distress.

  “The fucking front,” Connell growled, leaning in to glare at Palmer. In the next instant he was standing between Felina and Landham, with Wisniewski and Loudon nearest. Connell readjusted his voice while Palmer gathered his bearings, which included some slapping of himself in the process. He then spoke to Felina, eyeballing Wisniewski simultaneously. “I heard your colleague here say something about the foyer earlier…”

  “Not to mention Marlboro, whatever the hell that means,” Palmer mumbled in the background.

  “Dammit, Palmer, will you shut the—”

  “No,” Felina interrupted Connell. “He’s right; you all deserve to know…from the get go. And I said MALBO—short for main labs, base of operations. Consider it the main labs’ HQ deep within, housing the universe’s most awful secret.”

  “Those monsters,” Connell said spitefully.

  “No,” Landham insisted. “Animals. They’re just animals. But they’ve come a far way.”

  “Yes and no,” Felina said. “They’re actually part human. Bioengineered by Asher and his associates as per a direct order from Central Command…after Manticore mentioned the capture and analysis of spatial debris, which happened to have extraterrestrial blood on it. A sustainable DNA source.”

  “Oh, well that’s just fuckin’ great, man!” Palmer whined. “Now we got a handful of half-human alien killing machines running amok in the labs—”

  “Not quite,” Wisniewski started babbling, right forefinger raised. Everyone turned to face him with their own version of shock and dismay. “See, there are twelve s-specimens, according to Asher. Now…let’s say, eleven. W-when Godunov and I were waiting with Cassel down there, for the rest of you to f-find—”

  “Get on with it. How’d that thing escape?” Calloway pressed.

  “I-I don’t know. But…when the alarm went off, Belle there…sh-she…ah…she was closest t-to this p-part of the ship. So she…she found us, and then…and then…it came through the wall. I stayed close to her, but Cassel and G-Godounov, they retreated into the f-f-foyer. Then the others…oh, no, the others…two others chased s-some scientists out the door…crashed through the glass…killed them, a-ate some of them…and then dis-disappeared, they fucking disappeared into the…the walls, oh…they…they took the remains and…and just disappeared, they left us. Th-they left
us…”

  “Wait, you’re saying two other creatures attacked some fleeing scientists from main labs, but didn’t mess with you, Belle, or Godunov and Cassel for that matter?”

  “I-I…I don’t know about them…I don’t know.”

  “We have to C&S main labs,” Connell said without hesitation. Landham seemed born ready, but Palmer not so much.

  “Are you kidding, Connell!? Not with those things crawling around in there! Fuck that, man.”

  “Hey!” Connell barked, getting in Palmer’s face. His voice took a step down but the gravity in it intensified. “As long as Ensign Cassel—or anyone else for that matter—is in mortal danger, especially the defenseless, then we – will not – leave them. We may be Remora but we swim with the sharks, right?”

  “Fucking-A, man.”

  “That’s the spirit, Palmer.” Connell smirked briefly and slapped his comrade in the shoulder pad.

  “Excuse me,” Baxter said, “but what is C&S?”

  “Clear and secure, ma’am,” Connell said with a firm nod. “Clear and secure.”

  “Um, no offense, but…eleven of those monstrosities running amok and you want to go on a search-and-rescue mission with three guys?” Baxter scoffed. “Where’s your backup?”

  “She’s got a point, boss,” Landham admitted.

  “Negative,” Connell said resolutely. He sighed. “Think about it…this guy—Wisniewski right?—yeah, he said they chased out, attacked those fleeing, then entered the walls. Well, the Manticore’s substructure is largely hollow; ventilation ducts, crawlspaces, etcetera. So for all we know, these things have already begun permeating the rest of the vessel. I think it’s best then that Wincott, Skugs, and Arevalo remain where they are. Worst case scenario? They’ll get more kills than us. Got it?”

  Nobody contested Connell, not even Palmer.

  “And that?” Felina pointed at the outwardly bent auto-door leading to secondary labs.

  “I don’t know…I-I must’ve missed it in the f-foray.”

  “Alright, Wisniewski, we need you to calm down…short, controlled breaths.” Connell said. “Stay close to Landham, he’s a fucking redwood. Everyone else, behind me and Palmer. Don’t branch out, keep your voices down, and—”