by Weston Ochse
“Put it down,” someone commanded from behind. “Put the gun down now.”
He relaxed his two-handed stance and let his gun hand fall to his side, but he didn’t let go. He turned. Two security guards faced him. One with a pistol drawn and aiming at his face. The other rushed past to the downed security guard he’d just put out of her misery.
“I said put the gun down,” the guard with the gun said. The name tag on his shirt read MAHMOOD. He had dark skin and even darker close-cropped hair. A scar tore through the skin under his left eye.
“She’s been shot,” the other security guard cried. “He shot Fredericks in the back.”
Mahmood stepped forward and pressed the barrel of his pistol into Rawlings’ cheek hard enough to click the teeth through the skin.
“Why the fuck you shoot Fredericks?”
“Tell the other asshole to look at her face,” Rawlings said. Seeing the look of doubt in Mahmood’s eyes, he said, “Ask him. Come on. Ask him.”
Mahmood shouted over Rawlings’ shoulder. “This one says to look at her face.”
After a few seconds, “Oh shit. Something’s been eating it.” The universal sound of retching came next. Mahmood’s eyes went from what was happening behind Rawlings to his face.
“A fucking monster is loose and it was eating her face when she was still alive.” Rawlings pushed the pistol away. “So yeah. I shot her. Wouldn’t you have?”
Mahmood walked over and stared down at Fredericks. Rawlings joined him. Whatever her appearance had been, there was no trace of it anymore. One eye dangled free. The other was missing, along with the nose, lips, and cheeks, revealing open jaw, gums, and teeth as if someone had tried and failed to stuff a human skull into a flap of skin.
“What kind of monster did this?” Mahmood asked.
“I don’t have a nomenclature for it. I’ve been calling it the Fairbanks monster because whatever it is now, it used to be Fairbanks.”
“Fairbanks as in the missing comms specialist?”
Rawlings nodded. His legs felt like lead. “The same, except this one has giant fucking spider legs and a mouth with enough teeth to eat a cow.”
“And it’s loose in the station?” Mahmood asked.
Rawlings nodded and kept his snark in check.
Mahmood grabbed the radio from his belt and called to put the station on alert. Rawlings straightened and headed off in the direction the monster had gone.
“Where are you going?” Mahmood asked.
“There’s a monster on the loose,” Rawlings said without turning. “Don’t you think we oughta be trying to kill it before it kills someone else?”
“Uh, yeah,” Mahmood said, running up beside him. “Let’s go get the damned thing.”
Shoulder to shoulder they moved down the corridor. Finding the creature didn’t prove as hard as it could have been. Rawlings had hit it squarely, and it had left a trail of blood. They found it two corridors to the left, munching on a fabrications tech. It must have preferred the soft skin of the face, or maybe brains, because once again the creature was concentrating on the head.
Mahmood called it in on his radio.
Rawlings leveled his pistol and began to pull the trigger, but he only fired two rounds before he heard an unsatisfying click.
The monster spun and ran.
Rawlings still felt the stitch in his side.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
36
The ruckus was intense. The noise mind-blowing. Every single Xenomorph in every single containment area had begun attacking its glass with fervor. Acid spitting, hand clawing, tail banging, anything they could do to attack the glass.
The only containment rooms that were silent were the one with Seven and the one with Leon-895-B. Seven stood implacable, staring blindly outward. Étienne, Kash, Hoenikker, Cruz, and the synths were busy trying to stop the creatures from attacking the glass. Cruz privately feared they’d break containment at any moment, and was considerably worried that all of his security plans wouldn’t be enough to stop whatever had gotten into Seven.
They’d heard a fire alarm, but then it had gone off.
Cruz got word through the command channel that some creature was loose in the corridors, and people were dying. In the meantime, they were on lockdown and had their own problems.
“When are they going to stop?” Étienne asked, shouting over the din.
“I don’t think they’re going to,” Kash hollered back.
“But that means…” Étienne didn’t have to finish the sentence. Everyone knew what that meant. Cruz cursed. He went over to Seven and stared at the damn thing a moment.
“You want to be the first one to die, you bastard?”
He opened the cover on the abort switch. The difference between the flames they’d been using and the flames from the abort was astronomical. Nothing could survive it, jets of fire firing from all angles, microwave beams designed to cook something from the inside out.
His hand hovered over the switch.
The Xenomorphs suddenly stopped.
The only movement was the constant drip of saliva from their mouths and the swaying twitches of their tails. Hoenikker leaned back in his workstation, out of breath. Kash stared wide-eyed at Cruz. Étienne leaned forward, draping his arms over his panel.
Just as he thought.
Cruz nodded at Seven.
“The next time you do that, I will begin with you, and work my way up.” He replaced the cover on the abort button. “Heed my words.” He had no idea if the Xeno could hear him, or understand.
The command channel on his vid beeped, indicating an incoming call. Cruz answered it. Bellows was on the other end. The station commander’s face was beet red, his eyes wide and veined.
“What the hell have you done to my station, Cruz?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your damn specimens. They’re in my corridors.” He looked away from the screen for a moment, then back. “Reports are that the dead and dying are everywhere.”
Cruz put a hand up to the side of his head. What was the man thinking? “I’m telling you, sir, that all of my specimens are present and accounted for.”
“That can’t be. You should see my station.”
“There may be something out there, but it’s not from the lab. I can show you if you—”
“You can stop right there.” Bellows held up a hand, and looked at Cruz sadly, like a father might to a lying child who was caught in his falsehood. His chin lowered, and he stared down the length of his nose. “My synths have already reported that one of the containment rooms is empty. Number twelve.”
“An empty…” he said. “There’s no empty containment room. That’s where Leon-895 is. He’s not visible!”
Bellows shook his head. “You’re not the right one to lead this, Dr. Cruz. Not only are you not to be believed, but you failed to warn us that a specimen escaped.”
“Bellows. Seriously. Listen to me,” Cruz said. He couldn’t fucking believe he was having this conversation. “For the love of Christ, there is no escaped specimen. All my containment rooms are occupied.”
“That will be all, Dr. Cruz.” The station commander stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head. He moved to turn the vid off and paused. “Oh, and Dr. Cruz?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, to try and explain away your incompetence.”
Cruz blinked several times. “What? What do you mean?”
But the screen was blank.
Cruz looked up and noted that everyone was staring at him.
“What was that all about?” Kash asked.
“I think I’ve been fired,” Cruz said.
“But why?” Hoenikker asked.
“Why would he fire you?” Étienne asked.
“That’s just it.” Cruz tossed the vid display onto the table. “I don’t really know.” He turned to stare at Seven, who stood silently in the middle of its containm
ent room, arms hanging at its sides. The creature was as still as a statue. Was it looking at him? Was it laughing at him? Did it even understand what was going on?
Suddenly the two synths came to life. They’d retreated to the wall when the Xenomorphs had stopped harassing the glass, but now they moved to the workstations for Containment Rooms One and Two. Each of them opened the cover for the abort button.
“Whoa. Wait!” Étienne cried. Closest to them, he reached out for the synth at the workstation for Containment Room Two, and was thrown back as the automaton backhanded him. Étienne fell hard to his back, face bloody.
“Stop,” Cruz yelled. “Don’t!”
The synths ignored him.
Each of them depressed an abort button.
Flames from all angles poured over the Xenomorphs. They began to scream and flop, their arms and legs rattling on the ground as they were consumed. Invisible microwave radiation baked them from the inside. Their animal cries were almost human in their terror, the heat they were experiencing unimaginable. Their skin was on fire, causing the fluids in their bodies to boil, acid dripping into the flames.
The synths remained in place, their hands over the buttons, protecting them, finishing the job, not moving until the creatures had been aborted.
Cruz realized what was happening. Bellows wasn’t taking any chances. Whether or not the creature loose in the station had originated from the lab, none would escape now. The station commander had ordered the synths to destroy them, knowing that the scientists would balk. What a fucking idiot. On one hand, he refused to let Cruz abort Seven because of its value to the company; and on the other, he decided to abort all the Xenomorphs out of fear.
The synth who was sitting at the Containment Room One workstation stood and moved to the workstation for Containment Room Three.
Hoenikker was already there with a fire extinguisher.
“No!” he cried, and he brought the extinguisher around.
The synth deflected it, then pushed Hoenikker to the ground.
But Hoenikker wasn’t done. As the synth gathered itself into the seat, Hoenikker climbed to his feet and brought the fire extinguisher down on the synth’s head. The synth fell forward onto the workstation control panel. Hoenikker brought the fire extinguisher up again, but felt it ripped from his hands.
The other synth was up and protecting the first. Hoenikker spun and found himself being thrown into the air and onto the worktable in the center of the lab, scattering vid displays, beakers, and various scientific equipment.
Then all hell broke loose.
All the Xenomorphs resumed their attacks on the glass. If anything, their frenzy was multiplied. The glass fronts smoked with acid as each of the creatures spit and slammed their teeth over and over, each into a single space. They raked the glass with their claws so quickly that had they been attacking a human, the skin would have been flayed down to tendon and bone in a matter of seconds.
A crack appeared in the glass of Room Four.
The Xenomorph redoubled its efforts.
Étienne took up the fire extinguisher and began to hammer at the synth Hoenikker had hit before. Its head was canted as if it had lost the ability to straighten.
Kash helped Hoenikker to his feet.
Cruz stood in the middle of it all, watching as crack after crack appeared in the glass fronts, spidering, growing and running to the ceilings and walls and floors. A feeling began to grow in his stomach. A feeling he’d last felt when his squad had been overrun and torn apart.
The Xenomorph in Containment Room Four died at the hands of a synth; at the same time, the glass from Containment Room Five shattered. Cruz backed away and grabbed Étienne by the shoulder as he did. The Frenchman stopped hammering, noticed the broken glass, and let himself be dragged away.
Out stepped the Xenomorph known simply as Five.
But it ignored the scientists. Instead, it stepped tentatively toward the containment room holding Seven. It stood there, saliva falling from its jaw and the occasional twitch of its tail showing that it wasn’t some hellish statue that suddenly appeared in the midst of the laboratory.
They watched as Seven and Five seemed to have some silent exchange. With the glass between them, it couldn’t be Étienne’s pheromone that allowed them to communicate. It had to be something else, and the only thing he could think of was some form of telepathy. He remembered the buzz in the back of his head. If his brain had been wired in the same fashion as the Xenomorphs’, he’d have known what it had been trying to say.
Five moved to the workstation and depressed a series of buttons.
He’s been watching, Cruz thought. Then another thought struck him. Seven might be better at management and organization than all the bureaucrats on Pala Station combined.
The surviving synth pulled its pistol and fired several rounds into Five. The creature turned, pushed one more button, and the glass front slid aside.
Damn. How had Seven known the complex combination of buttons needed to do that?
The synth fired again, approaching the Xenomorph. Its implacable expression didn’t reveal anything. If it had been Cruz or any human approaching such a monster, fear—and perhaps determination—would have been plastered over his face. But the synth was eerily passive.
Five whirled and grabbed the synth by the side of its head, bringing it in close. Its jaw telescoped and scored the synth’s metal head. The synth punched the body of its attacker, then brought a palm up, slamming it into the underside of the Xenomorph’s jaw.
“Cruz!” Kash whispered urgently.
The Xenomorph threw the synth across the room, bending one of the wall lockers into Rorschach origami.
“Cruz!” she whispered again.
He snapped out of it. “What?” He glanced at the other scientists. All scared. All desperate to leave. Étienne was grabbing a container of some sort. Hoenikker looked like he wanted to cry.
“We can’t leave.”
More crashing from behind.
“They put us on lockdown,” Étienne said.
Cruz glanced behind him.
Another Xenomorph had freed itself.
They were all going to die.
Still, they had to try. “There’s an override,” he said. “Try 198473 in the access panel. Hurry.” He turned back just in time to see Seven step from its containment room. It turned to face him, standing in the middle of the lab as chaos raged around it.
The synth had managed to kill the Xenomorph from Five, but it was surrounded by three more. Leon-895 flashed in the background. That meant all the containment rooms had been breached. Cruz laughed. Bellows would really be pissed now.
Fire roared from Containment Room Eight. The glass had already broken and even this far away Cruz could feel the heat.
Then the door to the lab sssked open.
Seven stood there. It didn’t say a word, nor did he expect it to, but by the buzzing in the back of Cruz’s head, he would swear it was smiling.
He turned and ran.
37
Hoenikker flinched as Étienne poured liquid from the beaker over his head, all the while giggling like a child. If the pheromone was going to work, it was do or die.
Kash pulled at Hoenikker’s elbow.
“Come on,” she said. “We need to leave, now!”
Now out in the corridor, Hoenikker stared into the lab. He had lost count of the Xenomorphs, but they all seemed to be swarming around the strange white-colored one known as Seven. Hoenikker found himself looking for Three—what had formerly been Monica. For a moment he thought she might have already died, but then he saw her, the light striping on her arms and torso so different than the others. She held the head of the last synth in her hand, before turning and hurling it toward him.
Both he and Kash dodged the missile.
Kash grabbed him one last time.
This time he followed her lead.
They ran into a pair of security guards, who grabbed Kash’s free arm to stop her. T
hey ended up swinging around so their backs were to the door of the lab.
“What happened?” one asked.
“The Xenomorphs,” Hoenikker said. “They’re all free.”
“The fuck you say?” the other replied.
“Go see for yourself,” Kash said. They turned to leave, and the first security guard stopped them.
“I wouldn’t go that way.”
“Why not?” Hoenikker asked.
“Another fucking monster is why,” the second guard said. Hoenikker stared at him. How many monsters were out there? What had happened to the nice peaceful station they’d had?
Who was he kidding? The station had been infested since the moment he’d set foot on it. Once again, he wondered why the hell he’d left his cushy corporate job to come to this godforsaken place.
Just then a Xenomorph shot into the corridor, grabbed the first security guard, and jerked him back into the room. It all happened in the blink of an eye, and the man didn’t have a chance to make a sound. The other guard turned and looked from side to side.
“Barron? Where the fuck are you?” He turned back around. “Where did he go?”
It had happened so fast that both Kash and Hoenikker stood like idiots with their mouths open. Then another Xenomorph grabbed the second security guard and jerked him inside the lab before he could even reach for his gun.
Kash and Hoenikker glanced at each other. They prepared to run…
“Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques. Dormez vous? Dormez vous? Sonnez les matines. Sonnez les matines. Din din don. Din din don.”
Étienne came walking out of the lab. Somehow, some way, the Xenomorphs hadn’t taken him, or even noticed him. The pheromones had worked.
A Xenomorph popped into the corridor in front of Étienne, who stood swaying gently from side to side as if he were on a ship.
“I once saw a man in India reach out and pet a King Cobra,” Étienne said without a trace of fear. Hoenikker wondered if he’d gone insane. “The idea was to lull the snake into a false sense of security. He would sway from side to side and the snake would mimic him.”
Hoenikker watched in horror as Étienne reached out with his hand. The Xenomorph wasn’t swaying from side to side. It was leaning forward, saliva dripping, tail snapping the air, claws opening and closing. But Étienne wouldn’t stop. He reached out and ran a hand down the side of the torpedo-shaped head.