Alien--Echo, page 19
Nothing comes. Nothing moves. And in the silence, I hear the faintest whisper, closer to a sigh, drift through the motionless air:
“Run.”
My skin is suddenly too tight and my pulse is racing and I can’t breathe, because I know my sister’s voice even better than I know my own: I know the sound of her sighs and the hitches in her breath, and even knowing that those things have always been mechanical doesn’t make them any less familiar. Viola is here. Viola is here, in this cave, and more, she’s awake. The creatures haven’t ripped her apart. She’s here, waiting for me, and all I have to do is go and get her.
I start to take a step deeper into the tunnel. Kora catches my arm, stopping me. I’m stronger than she is, but I don’t dare fight to break free, not when we don’t know where the creatures are. Any sort of a ruckus could bring them running, and then we both die here, and no one comes to save my sister, ever.
That’s a chilling thought. She’s an android. I don’t know how long her power supply can last, but if she’s been hurt—damaged is a better word, I guess—she’s not going to be moving much, and it could take a long, long time for it to run out. I try to remember the longest time I’ve seen her unplugged from her supposed “life-support” machines. Hours. Whole days, sometimes. Assuming that the camouflage that allowed her to pass as a sick human included refilling her power reserves so that she’d never run down enough for me to notice her behaving oddly …
She could be awake and aware and trapped, alone, in a cavern filled with monsters, for weeks, maybe. Months. Even years. I don’t know. I didn’t have time to read her specs, and now it’s too late. All I do know is that I can’t leave her here. She’s my sister. She’s my responsibility.
I try to pull my arm away from Kora. She looks at me, eyes wide, and gives a little shake of her head. I nod, pulling again. She doesn’t let go. Instead, she steps closer, until our lips are almost touching, until I can feel the heat coming off of her skin and smell the pollen in her hair. I can’t smell anything else. It’s doing an excellent job of masking the scent of her. I still don’t know whether that will help. I hope so. We need a break.
After the day we’ve had, I honestly don’t expect that we’re going to get one.
“Michel needs our help,” she whispers.
Michel is beyond our help. He’s breathing, but we don’t have the tools to get him down from the wall, and even if we did, we don’t have any way of fixing whatever damage has been done to him. I feel like a monster for even thinking this, but … I’m not sure he can be saved. The kindest thing to do might be to put a bullet in his head on our way out of the caves. Which isn’t going to happen if we get caught and killed while we’re standing right here.
As if thinking about getting caught were enough to make it happen, I hear something move deeper in the cave. Viola’s voice drifts back a split second later, now loud and hectoring.
“Where are you going, you big, ugly bug? You hungry again? Do you even eat? Or do you just goop things to the wall so you can save them for later? Hey! I’m talking to you!”
Kora pales. I realize what Viola is trying to do and grab Kora by the arm, dragging her in the only direction I can think of that might stand a chance of saving us: toward Michel. She doesn’t fight, not even as I shove her up against the strange shell that binds him to the wall.
The cocoon hangs over the mouth of another, smaller tunnel opening, all but blocking it. There’s room, barely, for me to squeeze through; room for me to pull Kora in after me. Once we’re both through I slip my hand over her mouth, pulling her tight against my chest. The space is too small and the air is too stale and we’re going to die here, I know we are.
“Don’t make a sound,” I whisper. A thought occurs to me. We don’t know how these things hunt. If it’s sound, we may still be screwed—it’ll hear our heartbeats, although we’re close enough to Michel that his may confuse the issue—but there are some predators that follow CO2 to find their prey. They follow our breath. “Don’t exhale,” I add, and take a great gulp of air, filling my lungs as far as they’ll go. Then I push Kora farther behind me, shielding her with my body, and I wait.
“Don’t go!” shouts Viola. “I don’t want you to go, you ugly, predatory horror show of an evolutionary mistake!”
The sound of motion comes closer. The creatures may be smart enough to set ambushes and follow trails, but they’re not intelligent enough to know what she’s saying to them. They’ve decided that she isn’t good prey. The noises she makes now don’t mean anything.
I don’t breathe. I huddle with Kora in the narrow space behind the vast, terrible cocoon that surrounds most of Michel, one hand over her mouth and the other resting on the butt of my mother’s gun, the one that fires bullets designed to pierce through steel plating. If we’re seen, I’ll shoot. I’ll shoot, and I’ll shoot, and my last bullet will be for Kora, because I can’t stand the thought of her going into one of these cocoons, saved to be a later meal for a monster.
No one’s coming to save us. Not the frightened, untrained colonists, not my parents, not some kind of miracle. The corps don’t care about Zagreus. They haven’t dispatched a platoon of marines to come and get us out of here. We do this alone, or we don’t do this at all.
The creature steps around the corner, barely visible in the narrow slice of open space between us and the main chamber. Kora, frozen against me, doesn’t make a sound.
The thing is moving slowly, casually, like it doesn’t have a care in the world. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe being a horrifying apex predator from space, on a planet where nothing seems to be in its league, has left it fully relaxed.
It’s impossible not to remember what the seastead said about the creatures, that they were made of knives, because it’s true. Every line, every angle is perfectly designed for killing, from the sinuous curve of its spine to the bladed shape of its limbs and curling tail. My lungs are starting to ache, but I can’t stop myself from admiring the thing, even as it moves closer. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect and it’s terrible and it’s going to be the death of so many, and none of that can stop it from being beautiful. I can feel the shape of it in my fingers, where it aches to be drawn, put down on paper and pinned in place, so that I can study it at my leisure. I wonder if there’s a clear image on the recording of my father’s death, a single still shot that I could study. I wonder if I’ll ever have the chance.
My lungs are starting to burn. Not badly, not yet, but that’s coming. People need to breathe. If Kora and I won’t do it on purpose, our bodies will eventually overrule us, and we’ll breathe anyway.
And then we’ll die.
The creature doesn’t seem to have noticed us yet. I want to attribute that to the pollen, but somehow, I don’t think so. That would be too easy of an answer, and if there’s anything today has taught me, it’s that the easy answers are rarely the right ones. We’re pressed up against Michel’s cocoon, we’re not moving or breathing, maybe that’s enough to keep us—
Michel moans. It’s a small sound, barely audible even in the silence, but the change in the creature is instantaneous. It moves so quickly that its outline seems to blur, going from the middle of the cavern to only a few feet away, its long, terrible head trained on Michel’s. Not moving takes everything I have in me. I remain perfectly still, my hand locked over Kora’s mouth, fighting the animal instinct that orders me to run, run, run as fast as I can. Even knowing that it could never be fast enough, it would still be better than standing here, waiting to die.
The creature makes a cooing, clicking sound. It’s nothing that could ever have emerged from a mammalian throat. Part of me wonders idly what the structure of its throat and larynx must look like—does it have vocal cords? Is it capable of more complex vocalizations? Does it even need them? The rest of me is frozen in animal terror.
Then the creature opens its mouth.
It seems to keep opening forever, sliding down, down, down, not gaping wide like a normal predator. A second mouth edges forward, tiny and fetal and terrible, dripping with strings of thick mucus. It extends until it almost brushes Michel’s cheek, then clicks, the sound soft, delicate, and appalling in a way I don’t have words to describe, a way that makes my skin crawl until it feels like it might rip itself clean off my body and slither away into the depths of the cave.
The second mouth opens again. This time, it croons, low and oddly sweet, like it’s calling to an infant. Michel moans again. The second mouth closes, and withdraws, vanishing back into the creature’s jaws. I can smell it. It smells like hot metal and formic acid, a dark, feral, oddly insectile scent that reminds me of sitting by my father’s hip while he performed dissections on wild-caught examples of the native fauna.
My lungs hurt. Badly. I’m going to lose control of conscious breath control if I have to wait much longer, and that means Kora’s time must be even shorter: she doesn’t have the physical conditioning I do.
Please, I think. Hold on. Just a little bit longer. I need you to hold on, for Viola. I need you to hold on for me.
The creature closes its primary mouth and steps backward. It stays there for a moment, perfectly frozen, head slightly cocked, like it’s trying to make sense of something complicated. Then it turns and scurries away, moving with more urgency than it was before, heading toward the mouth of the cave.
I wait where I am until the creature is gone. Then I take my hand away from Kora’s mouth and slowly exhale, trying to make the sound as silent as possible. It isn’t easy. My body fights me, wanting to cough, to gasp, to glut itself on air until there’s no more room in my lungs. Kora shakes beside me, her body pressed to mine, and clearly joining in the same rebellion. Our eyes lock. She gives a very small, very tight nod. She’s fighting as hard as I am to keep things under control.
Bit by bit, I calm my breath, until I feel like I can safely straighten up and pull away, letting her stand on her own. I don’t know if the creature missed us because we were silent, because we didn’t move, or because of the pollen … but I have a terrible suspicion. I squeeze through the opening, Kora behind me. Once we’re in the clear, I reach up and press my fingers to the side of Michel’s neck.
His heart is racing even faster than before. Whatever’s happening inside that cocoon, it’s putting the kind of stress on his system that he may never be able to survive. If the creatures can hear our heartbeats, his may have been enough to mask ours, making them inconsequential. The boy who tried to kill my sister probably just saved my life.
“I forgive you,” I breathe, softly, and pull Kora with me as I step away from him, heading deeper into the cave. I don’t look back. If Kora does, I don’t see it.
It’s time to save my sister.
17
BROKEN PIECES OF ME
The bioluminescence is steady, and bright enough that we can see the cocoons studding the walls. Michel was the first, but he’s far from the last, or the only. Paul is here. Several larger animals are here—a few hippos, a meat-deer, and what looks like an entire family of lion-worms, some of them even larger than the one outside. Their bulk blocks out the glow from the walls in patches, casting those slices of the cave into shadow. I try not to look at them. It’s impossible. There are too many, and they’re everywhere.
Then we come around another bend in the cave, and I stop, my own heart suddenly beating even harder than Michel’s, beating until it feels like it’s going to burst inside my chest. I don’t think I can survive this. I’m going to drop dead where I stand. Kora will have to leave my body behind, and that’s fine, that’s absolutely prime, because when she does, she’ll be leaving me with my family.
My mother is cocooned on the wall.
Like Michel, her head is exposed, lolling forward, her hair covering half of her face. What I can see of her looks mostly undamaged, and almost peaceful, like she’s only sleeping. Please, she’s only sleeping. There’s a smear of blood on her temple, but she has no visible wounds. Unlike Michel, she isn’t bleeding. That could mean she’s dead. Maybe she’s dead.
She can’t be dead. She’s my mother. My mother isn’t allowed to be dead. And on the ground at her feet …
Viola raises her head, looking at me with desperate misery in her eyes, and presses a finger to her lips, signaling me to silence. Her left leg is gone, severed cleanly at mid-thigh. I can see wires and metallic cables, exposed to the air for maybe the first time since she left the factory. Ugh. Factory. My sister came from a factory. Any hope I’d had that this was somehow a nightmare, that I might wake up, dies with the sight of those wires. She’s an android. A damaged android, and our mother—
I take a step forward. Kora grabs my arm, trying to stop me. I shake her off and keep walking, one unsteady step at a time, until I reach the cocoon, the great dark bulk of the cocoon, until I press my hands against my mother’s cheeks and push her head up.
“Mom?” I whisper. My voice seems horrifyingly loud. “Mommy?”
“She can’t hear you.”
I look down. Viola’s eyes meet my own.
“I tried. I yelled and I screamed and I tried to break off pieces of the cocoon. Those things just put another layer on. When I kicked them, they kicked back.” She grimaces, nose wrinkling. “That’s what happened to my leg. They’re sharp. I don’t suggest kicking them.”
She’s whispering, but not as quietly as I was. I raise my eyebrows. She shakes her head.
“They don’t care if I make noise. There’s nothing in here for them to hunt, and they don’t see me as prey, since I’m not fighting them and they can’t … kill me.”
I don’t like that pause. Something in that pause whispers about “killing” not being her only concern, about bodies being used for things other than something to save for later. I look at Mom’s face again, studying it, not only for the familiar, but for the unfamiliar, the things that seem even a little out of place.
If, you know, being glued to the wall in a creepy glowing cave wasn’t subprime enough.
It only takes a few seconds for me to realize what’s wrong. She has the same tears around her mouth as Michel, the same splits in her lip. With him, I’d been able to attribute it to rough handling from his capture and imprisonment. With her … it doesn’t make sense for that same, very specific pattern of damage to appear on both of them unless it means something.
I leave my thumb resting against the soft, warm slope of my mother’s chin as I try to think. I’ve seen native creatures on a dozen worlds. I’ve studied them from three dozen more, preparing for the day when I’d be old enough to take a more active role in my parents’ work. I’ve seen injuries like this before. Never on anything the size of a human, and never with this much regularity, but similar enough that a feeling of dread settles in my stomach, growing heavy there, weighing me down. I turn to Viola.
She nods. It’s a small gesture. It’s enough to tell me that she knows where my thoughts have gone—that she was waiting for me to finish—and worst of all, that I’m right.
“Kora.” My voice sounds exactly like Viola’s, and the creatures are used to her. I have to risk speaking a little louder, because I need to be heard. “Come on. We need to get Vi out of here before they come back.”
“What? No!” Viola grabs the hem of my tunic, alarm written plainly across her face. “I’ll slow you down too much. I’m damaged. You have to leave me here.”
“You’re not damaged.” I stare at her, appalled. “You’re my sister. Shipp sisters forever, remember? I’m not leaving you behind.”
“I’m not your sister,” insists Viola. “I’m an android. I’m a thing, and your life is more important than anything I am ever going to be. You have to go. I’ll stay here.”
Viola glances at Mom as she speaks. She’ll stay here with our mother, and this cave will be a tomb for the two Shipps who never get to leave Zagreus.
Like hell.
“You were my sister yesterday, you’ll be my sister tomorrow, and you’re my sister right now,” I say. “You don’t even have to pretend to be sick anymore. Can you imagine how much trouble we’re going to get into? You and me. Forever. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s how it’s going to be. Kora, come on, help me lift Viola up.”
I reach for Viola. She bats my hands away before she takes a deep, deep breath and looks at me resolutely. She’s always been stubborn, even more stubborn than I am, and every drop of dogged determination she has is shining in her eyes.
“I know you have a knife or a saw or something in that pack,” she says. “If you want me to go with you, you need to cut off my head.”
I stare at her. Kora stares at her. Viola shakes her head. She won’t be able to do that if I decapitate my own sister. This is ridiculous. I don’t understand why—
“All my essential systems, all my memory and processing power, they’re all stored exactly where my brain would be, if I had one,” she says. “And without my body, my head only weighs about ten pounds. You can carry ten pounds. You can fit ten pounds in your backpack. You can’t fit my whole body in your backpack.” She looks at the place where her leg isn’t and chuckles, darkly. “Not that I have a whole body. C’mon, Olive. You’re already going to have to pay for repairs. Why not get started?”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I whisper.
Her expression softens. “You won’t. As long as you cut here,” she touches the soft center of her throat, below the chin, above the collarbone, “you can’t hit any vital systems. I won’t feel any pain, and I won’t black out. My head has its own power supply, in case of damage to the body. This is the only way we get out of here together.”
Slowly, I move toward her, and kneel, slipping out of my backpack. “You promise?”
Our mother’s body hangs above me as Viola nods, expression solemn. “I swear.”
