Alien--Echo, page 26
Then, from inside the bag, I hear my sister’s voice, loud and hectoring.
“Look at you, you useless lump! Do you even know what you are? Do you have any idea? You’re ugly even for a lion-worm. Evolution really messed up with you, huh? You should’ve stayed in orbit, at least there nothing would have to see you. I bet your own mama tried to squash you once she realized what she’d done—”
I should feel grateful. I know what she’s doing. All I feel is numb.
The backpack is gone, ripped away by the monster that now has what remains of my sister. To save her, to save Kora, to save myself, I can’t turn back now. My only hope—our only hope—is somewhere up ahead, half-formed and still potentially disastrous. But it’s hope, and so I run, until my sister’s litany of abuse ends in a short-lived scream.
I don’t know whether the creature has crushed her, whether anything remains to repair, whether this is the end. But I know she bought me time, and I am running, I am running as fast as I can.
The catwalk stretches above the launches, transports rowed and ranked and ready for departures that will never come. There aren’t as many of them as there should be for a colony this size. Too many have been dismantled, recycled, reused. I see my family’s transport, sitting at the center of a cluster of docking pads that were empty when we arrived and will be empty forever now.
And I see the construction equipment.
One of the docked transports is halfway through the process of being stripped down and turned into so much scrap. In the normal course of things, it would have become another building, another bridge, another piece of the slowly expanding body of the Zagreus colony. The work has stopped. The workers are all dead.
The tools they were using are still in place. They jut into the air, carelessly thrown aside, transforming that small patch of the launch port into a forest of jutting blades, razored cutting tools, and jagged metallic edges. A catwalk runs directly above it, held in place with suspiciously narrow struts. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, and run like death itself is on my heels, maybe because it is.
It is faster but I am smaller, and I am better equipped to make quick adjustments to my trajectory. When I hear the catwalk shake behind me, I know, without question, that it’s preparing to jump. So I wait as long as I can, and when I hear the softest clatter of claws against metal, I throw myself from the side of the catwalk, into the sickening void below.
There’s a moment—only a moment, more than long enough—when I’m actually falling, my heart in my throat and the hot taste of fear clogging my sinuses, making it impossible to breathe. Then I grab hold of the struts beneath the catwalk, jerking my arms in their sockets, leaving me suspended in midair.
The hybrid creature strikes the catwalk where I was standing only an instant before. It snarls, rage and confusion and what feels almost like petulant disapproval, like it can’t believe I would thwart it like this. I wish I knew how intelligent it was. I wish I could tell whether this was instinct or actual anger.
It doesn’t matter. In the end, the only thing that matters is that one of us is going to live and one of us is going to die, and I intend to make sure I’m the one who walks away. I take one hand off the strut that holds me and draw Mom’s gun, heavy and deadly and mine now, mine forever after this. I take careful aim, and I fire twice in quick succession, pulling the trigger the second time before the recoil even has the chance to travel up my arm. The pain is immense, enough that the world goes gray for a potentially fatal second.
But I hear the struts that hold the catwalk beneath the creature in place give way, their delicate connections shattered by the bullets. The entire section crumples and falls, leaving the creature with no leverage, no way to leap for safety. It falls, clawing at the air, tail lashing and cilia waving, and lands, as I had hoped, directly on the jagged piles of construction equipment.
Chitin makes fine armor, but it’s not enough to protect against impalement. The creature shrieks, loud and agonized. Then it begins to thrash. The motion drives the spikes and cutting metallic edges deeper and deeper into its body. The bleeding has already started, but for once, I don’t think acid is the answer; it won’t be able to melt its way free. Not with those injuries.
It isn’t the only one injured. My arm is still numb, and when I try to lift it, it barely responds. I let it dangle, so much deadweight, as I laboriously kick one leg up, over one of the remaining supports, and begin pulling myself to safety.
It’s hard; almost impossible at times. I don’t have the upper body strength for this. I’ve never needed it before. I nearly fall several times. I nearly join the creature in its agonized thrashing. But I don’t. I know that if I fall, no one will ever come to save my sister. I know that if I fall, Kora dies here, as soon as the next creature shows up looking for easy prey.
I don’t rush, either. I try to think about Viola, about giving her a new body and a new chance on Earth, or somewhere else even, somewhere far away from anyone who’s ever heard of Zagreus. I go as slowly as I dare, and I still feel like it’s not going to be enough, not until the moment when I land facedown on the catwalk, safe. No longer a plaything for gravity.
I take a few seconds to let myself cry for everything we’ve lost, everything I’ve lost.
Then I stand. There’s still work to be done.
My backpack is about ten yards back, caught against the rail. I pick it up with my good hand, unable to work the zipper. “Viola?” I ask.
“Here,” she says, voice soft, subdued. She sounds hurt. Can androids be injured? Losing her body didn’t seem to slow her down, but this is one more thing to worry about in a day already full of them.
“We’re almost clear,” I say, and sling the bag over my shoulder, and walk on.
Descending the ladder is almost impossible. Feeling starts to come back into my arm when I’m about halfway down, which helps a little, but not as much as I would have liked. Still, I make it. Shipps always make it.
“Shipp sisters forever,” I whisper, and step back onto solid ground. I start walking, not toward the hallway where Kora may or may not be waiting, but toward the construction site.
The creature is thrashing when I get there, the tools that pierce its armored skin more than halfway melted. It senses my approach and turns its head toward me, hissing. No pleas for mercy here, no tricks; it still wants me dead.
The feeling is mutual.
“Fuck you,” I say, and switch the gun to my good arm, using my weak one to brace myself as I fire the rest of the clip into the creature’s skull, shattering it.
By the time I lose feeling in my arm, the creature isn’t moving anymore. It looks smaller now that it’s been broken. It looks no less horrific, no less alien. It and I were never meant to share a world.
So let it have this one. Zagreus is a graveyard. Let these things be its ghosts.
I’m leaving.
I turn away, shoulders slumped, and walk off to find out whether Kora is still alive.
24
THE LONG WAY TO THE STARS
Kora hasn’t moved. I roll her onto her side, away from the acid that has eaten a hole in the wall, and grimace at the acid burn on her shoulder, at the slack set of her jaw. But she’s breathing, and there are no splits around her lips. She hasn’t been impregnated with one of those horrible things.
She could still be okay.
My right arm is almost back to normal, although my shoulder aches like it never has before, and my left arm is mostly useless. Still, I’m able to rock her to her feet, slinging her arm over my shoulders, and start walking toward the berth where my family’s transport is waiting, her feet dragging on the ground.
“I don’t feel good,” whispers Viola.
“I’ll check your schematics as soon as we’re on the transport,” I say. Maybe she needs power. The machines that were supposed to monitor her health back when I thought she was alive, they were probably keeping her batteries charged. With most of her body missing, I don’t know how much battery her head has.
“Thank you,” she says, and doesn’t say anything else.
I keep walking, and when Kora starts picking up her feet and putting them ploddingly down, I almost topple over.
“Kora?” I ask.
“Hurts,” she says.
“I know.” I do know. My arms ache, and I think I may have fractured my collarbone, and all I want to do is leave. This world, this launch port, this colony, let it all fade behind us. Let it be forgotten.
It’s just another graveyard, after all.
“Can you walk on your own?” I ask. I hate to make her do it, I don’t want to let her go, but my arms ache, and I hate the idea of dropping her even more.
We keep walking, another step, and then another, and finally Kora says, “I can try,” and pulls away from me, taking her first wobbly, independent step.
We’re going to get away.
It becomes a chant in the back of my mind, motivating me forward, keeping me moving, until we turn a corner and there’s my family shuttle, dull and old and serviceable and waiting for us. Ready for us.
I have more strength than I thought I did.
I have enough strength to run.
I reach the door and punch in the code, and the door opens and the air that flows out is cool and sterile and doesn’t smell like acid or blood or anything other than freedom, freedom, freedom. I turn, my sister’s head safely bundled on my back, and I wait for Kora to reach us, and then I close the door. I close the door on Zagreus. I close the door on everything that happened.
I can’t forget everything I saw. I can leave it behind me.
Kora settles in the co-pilot’s seat. I pull Viola’s head out of the backpack before sitting down behind the controls. I place her in my lap, eyes turned toward the screen. Then I punch in the code to let us leave this place, this haunted, haunting place.
For once, nothing goes wrong. The engines engage; the magnetic launch pads let us go; we lift off, and then we’re gone, racing through acceleration and out into that orange sky. For a moment, I can see the curve of the horizon, and I wonder how long it will take for the creatures to conquer Zagreus, to make it a hell in more than just name.
Kora moans softly. When I glance at her again, her eyes are closed. She’s hurt. I knew that when I saw her on the floor. But she made it to the ship, and she’s with the Shipps, and we’re going to be okay. All three of us are going to be okay.
We have to be.
Our shuttle isn’t designed for interplanetary travel. It’s meant to go from big passenger or survey ship to the surface and back again. We’re never going to make it to an inhabited world, not on our own. Maybe we could find a moon with an atmosphere, maybe, but it won’t heal Kora’s injuries, and it won’t build Viola a new body. So as soon as we’re completely free of Zagreus’s gravity well, I flick on the emergency beacon and reach for the comms.
What I say now has to be precise. It has to make it clear that we need help, and that we were attacked, not infected: there is no disease on Zagreus, not in the traditional sense. If we get dropped into quarantine … that would be bad. That would be very, very bad. We need a rescue, not a mercy killing.
I take a deep breath, and I begin.
“This is the privately held vessel While There’s Hope, requesting immediate medical assistance. My name is Olivia Shipp. I have one badly injured passenger. Do not make landing on Zagreus, repeat, do not make or attempt landing on Zagreus. The planet has been compromised by … things … they’ve killed everyone. They’ve killed … everyone. This is the privately held vessel While There’s Hope, requesting immediate medical assistance—”
I reach over and take Kora’s hand, cradling Viola’s head against my chest. Neither of them responds as I speak into the void, over and over again, pleading for help. Space is vast. We’re so small.
Someone will find us.
Someone has to.
We got away. Doesn’t that mean we deserve a happy ending?
I close my eyes and keep calling, and I wait for someone to answer.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This was so. Much. Fun.
I don’t have a lot to say here, but what I do have matters, so:
Thanks to my mother, who let me wrap myself in my sleeping bag and spend every Saturday night of my childhood watching horror movies in our living room. She raised me with a heart full of monsters and a keen awareness that inside everyone is a skeleton just waiting to break free.
Thanks to my agent, Diana Fox, who knew as soon as she heard about this book that I wanted to be the one to write it, and to my editor, John Morgan, who was a genuine delight to work with.
Thanks to Ripley and Newt, and to every Final Girl who ever hacked, slashed, and screamed her way to the finish line. In a very real way, this book is for them. They were my heroes and my idols as a child, and I am so proud and so honored to add Olivia Shipp to their number.
Thanks to all my horror movie buddies, past and present, but especially to Michael, Chris, and Brooke, who have watched more people melt than is strictly kind. You are all very good sports, and I adore you.
They say that in space, no one can hear you scream. In my living room, on a Saturday night, they definitely can.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mira Grant is the author of the New York Times–bestselling Newsflesh trilogy, along with multiple other works of biomedical science fiction. She has been nominated for the Hugo Award, and her book Feed was chosen as one of NPR’s 100 Killer Thrillers. Being part of the Alien universe is a dream come true. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
1. Zagreus
2. Viola
3. Kora
4. Fields of Flowers
5. Predatory Instincts
6. Family Meeting
7. School’s Out
8. Get This Party Started
9. Among the Trees
10. Secrets
11. Swing for the Fences
12. Something to Hold On To
13. Blood and Water
14. You Can’t Go Home Again
15. The Narrow Places
16. Into the Black
17. Broken Pieces of Me
18. Car Chase
19. Broken Walls
20. Broken Homes
21. Adaptation
22. Fly Away Home
23. Run
24. The Long Way to the Stars
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
A part of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
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ALIEN: ECHO. TM & © 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
All rights reserved.
People contain many things that can be stolen.
Organs. Blood. Bones.
It’s impolite to steal pieces of people.
It’s also impolite to steal books.
Don’t do the one, and the Bone Gnomes won’t do the other.
Sleep tight.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
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Book design by Elynn Cohen
Imprint logo designed by Amanda Spielman
First hardcover edition, 2019
eBook edition, April 2019
eISBN 9781250306302
Mira Grant, Alien--Echo
