Chapter Three

            "Jesus…" a male soldier breathed, slumping down in a chair. "That was one hell of a fight."

            "You can relax when we get back to the station," said Horrigan, who was bandaging that soldier's arm. I noticed it had an acid burn on it.

            "Yes, Corporal."

            "Hey, Horrigan," the Auton said. "This girl… she calls herself Gemini."

            Horrigan stood. "Gemini?"

            "Yeah. Says she named herself cos she can't remember her real name."

            He looked right at me. "So you're Gemini…"

            I stared back as evenly as I could. "Yeah."

            "You don't have to be all stiff, Gemini. Remember—we're trying to help you." He cut me off before I could reply. "And I know the people of the past tried to help you and failed, but we'll get you outta this damned hell-hole and we'll bring you to our base."

            "You can't escape them," I said quietly. "They're come for you like they came for your comrades… and they'll kill you. All of you."

            The injured soldier sat up straight. "Hey, kid, you escaped them."

            "That's because they had no interest in me as food."

            "Oh?"

            "Oh."

            "They just… I dunno… left you alone like that?"

            I shook my head. "They didn't leave me alone. They…" I suddenly realized none of the Marines had seen my tail yet. I moved it slightly, just as a female soldier entered from the door behind me. She noticed it move, and dropped whatever she was carrying.

            "What is it, de Rio?" Horrigan asked, walking over to her.

            De Rio pointed to me. Or, at least, to what was attached to me. Horrigan and the rest of his surviving squad came over to look at whatever had startled the Marines soldier.

            It was the beginnings of my tail.

            "What the hell is that thing!?" the injured soldier yelled.

            "I… I don't know…" the Auton admitted.

            Horrigan was quick to issue orders. "Perigon, do an analysis on Gemini. De Rio, assist her. The rest of you… just calm down."

            I was led to a clean metal table and was ordered to sit down. I glared at Perigon—the Auton—and de Rio as they started analyzing me. It was weird. It felt like Her Majesty was about to do bioengineering on me again, but humans were doing it this time. And there would be nothing implanted in me to alter the way I looked.

            Or would there be?

            After a few moments of silence except for the monotonous beeping of several machines, Perigon turned to Horrigan. "She's bioengineered."

            "So she's not real."

            "She's real, all right, but her tail is… it's just… it's real too. But whatever makes it grow was implanted within her DNA, and now it's impossible to take it out. Her heart and lungs… they're almost twice the size of a human heart and human lungs. I don't understand why we didn't notice it before. She was able to run and run and not even try to catch her breath. It's impossible, though. I don't know how it's done. There are no scientists here that are living that we know of."

            I said nothing. If I had said, There is one, it would've been the end of my mission then and there.

            "So she's a superhuman. What's up with that?" asked one of the uninjured male soldiers.

            "It's just… weird."

            The moment she said 'weird', I felt something strange in my shoulders. I instinctively reached up under my jacket to feel my shoulders, and I almost gasped with surprise. My eyes definitely showed it, though.

            "What?" de Rio asked me. I hugged my jacket close to me, but de Rio was stronger than she looked, and she eventually tore my jacket off.

            Everyone just stared at me.

            If I could, I would've stared at myself.

            I moved my hand over my shoulder again and felt the two ridged bumps that would one day grow into shoulder spikes. They were another Alien feature that had been surgically implanted in my DNA, and I had forgotten about them until now.

            "Now what the hell are those things?" the injured soldier asked.

            Horrigan shrugged. "I don't know, Mitchell. Perigon? What are those things?"

            Perigon shrugged too. "Search me."

            "Wait! I remember somethin'… before the Alien burned me with his blood and guts… I got a pretty good look at it. It was one scary thing, man!" said Mitchell. "Er… I think it had four spikes, two each on its shoulders."

            Now that was the end of my mission, then and there.

            Perigon raised an eyebrow. "That's impossible! Why would the Aliens kill off an entire colony, yet do medical experiments on a human girl? Judging by the length of the tail, she's had it for quite some time, five years at the least."

            "She's an Alien!" one of the soldiers yelled then. He pulled out a handgun and squeezed the trigger. But I saw the bullet before it even left the barrel. I dived onto the floor and rolled onto my side, hitting the floor just as the bullet shattered a piece of equipment.

            "Velasquez! Stop!" Horrigan roared, wrenching the soldier's gun away. "How do we really know she's an Alien and not one of their scientific experiements?"

            "It's… it's just a hunch."

            At that moment, I winced as my shoulder bumps rose a little, efficiently tearing holes in my shirt. "Ow…" I muttered.

            "It's growing rapidly," observed de Rio. "How long before the shoulder spikes are at full length, Perigon?"

            Perigon studied me carefully. "Judging by the sudden change… three hours?"

            Oh, great, I thought. Now I really want to go home. How am I supposed to carry out my mission when I'm transforming right before they're eyes!?

            "We have to kill her," said Velasquez, glaring at me. "She could kill us all in three hours or less!"

            If only Kaylon could've heard that… I mused, smiling inwardly.

            "No! We can't," countered Horrigan. "We'll bring her to the Narcissist. We'll do something about her condition."

            "Like what?"

            "I don't know… replace the DNA with regular human DNA, maybe!"

            Perigon interrupted. "That's not possible. She's transformed too much for us to save her."

            "So what do we do?" asked Mitchell. "Freeze her or something?"

            "…Maybe."

            I snapped my head up at that. No way were they going to freeze me! I guess they noticed my sudden tenseness, my sudden refusal to be frozen, because Horrigan then said:

            "No. We're not going to freeze her."

            I stifled a sigh of relief. I wasn't out of the fire just yet.

            Five hours later, I rested on my back on the bed I was given and stared at the ceiling. It was such a boring color: white. And with my lamp on, it was orange. So boring.

            I ran a hand along one of my shoulder bumps again. They hadn't grown since they'd torn holes in my shirt, which was a good thing. Not only were my changes random, but they allowed me to get a feel for them before becoming bigger.

            I heard the footfalls of an approaching human even before he opened the door.

            "Hey."

            I turned my head slightly and saw Corporal Horrigan stand nearby, placing a tray of food on my table. "What is it?" I asked.

            "The food?" I nodded. "Soup. It should warm you up."

            "I'm already warm."

            "Don't you know it's the middle of winter on this planet?" A long pause. "How did you survive thirteen years alone?" More silence. "Well, if you don't want to tell me now, I'll tell you about myself, if you want."

            What was he after? "…Okay."

            "Well… I grew up on Earth. My brothers were already enlisted in the Marines by the time I started high school. By the time I was done high school, I knew I wanted to be in the Marines, just like my brothers and father. So I underwent training and emerged as 'the perfect soldier', as my comrades would joke. I didn't give a damn whether anyone lived or died. It was just… who I was. Well, anyway, the first time I saw the Aliens was on a mission with my former corporal, Dwaine Hicks. It wasn't much to see, really—just a shadow. No one else noticed it, so they all thought I was just seeing things back there." He suddenly smiled at me. "Turns out they were wrong. The same group of men—except Corporal Hicks, because I was the corporal—went out on our first colony rescue mission. Everyone died." He paused. "Except me."

            "So you're a survivor, huh?" I said.

            "Yeah. Kinda like you."

            "You're nothing like me."

            He nodded, glancing at my tail (which was hanging off the edge of the bed). "Yeah, I know. But we're both human, right?"

            "…Don't remind me." I turned over on my side so my back faced him, then turned over again on my back. I had suddenly remembered that if I were to lie on my side, my shoulder bumps would make dents in the bed.

            Horrigan sighed. "Like I said before," he continued after a moment, "it must've been tough living here by yourself."

            "I'm not by myself."

            "I mean, living here as the only human."

            I was going to answer, So? But instead, I just shrugged.

            "Well, anyway, we're leaving tomorrow. Let's hope none of those Aliens have sneaked aboard our craft."