· · · · ·
April 18, 2578
Location : Enigma II
· · · · ·
A loud crack announced gravity's invitation to the floor. Sarah took it with all the grace of one tumbling head first out of a slimy cocoon.
Pain shot through her skin — not her entire head — and she glared at the cocoon. Rebirth should be something more dignified than this, which she deserved after all the crap she'd been through. Yet here she was, on the floor of a bed turned cocoon.
Her feet still lay on the edge, looking deceptively human. Feeling deceptively human, if she didn't pay attention to the subtle way her out skin moved over an inner layer.
She sat up and crossed her legs, trying to feel more of what was different about herself. Vital, stiff, but nothing unusual. Only if she pressed her nails in her hands did she noticed that the skin was the only truly sensitive thing about her.
Cracking her neck gave the same sounds as usual. Maybe a little sharper.
When she she stood, she almost lost her balance, unaccustomed to the heavier weight of the top of her torso. Bracing against the cocoon, she found her footing.
Next to what had been a portable bed was a small cabinet with the womb wall's tools, a water bottle and a box with a note lay atop. The note was from Bison, informing her that once she woke, she could find food inside and clean clothes in the drawers.
She still wore what she'd been in when she fell, though the outer layers had corroded away a bit. Not being hungry, she took out the clothes first.
One of the men had hung up a mirror in a corner, which gave her first look at herself. Small things were off, like the color of her skin. The pale scrawny look was normal by now, the almost plastic look of her skin was not. Maybe it was just her sharper eyes, but she could almost see a darker underlayer. Would that go away if she lived in the sun again? Was it even a sign of sickliness? Could she be sick in this form?
After changing her clothes, she took out the food. It didn't smell like anything.
The second she thought about breathing, her throat constricted.
Only now did it hit she hadn't been breathing all along.
Cold settled in her stomach and she dropped the box. The added weight to her torso was liquid filling her lungs, that she hadn't even noticed.
It wasn't the lack of breathing that scared her; she had long since relinquished attachment to humanity. No, it was that her brain had been changed so thoroughly that nothing breathed didn't even jar her conscious experience. Maybe it was that her body had grown used to it within the cocoon, but even then, shouldn't she have missed it once awake?
She buckled forward and coughed her lungs empty. Brown muck and slime appeared, filling her mouth with a ghastly taste that nevertheless didn't trigger a gag reflex. Both tasted both foul and felt natural.
After it was all out, she remained still for a while, allowing her lungs to pick up functioning and her blood to start flowing normally.
Her eyes fell on the dropped food. On an impulse, she grabbed it and stuffed her mouth full. Everything was food that guys knew she liked, and to her relief it still tasted the same. Better, even. It drove of the sickening taste almost entirely.
The second she'd eaten the last crumb of rice, Utara finally saw it fit to pipe up.
"How are you doing?"
Such an innocuous question. "Really? Let's not play games. My transformation was kickstarted, either by that accident or something you had plenty of time to do. Did I get poisoned? Drowned?"
"Perhaps your queen is simply too asleep to control how your body is repaired," Utara said. This deviation from protocol didn't bode well. Did Utara have a personality hidden in her code now?
"What do you want from me?"
"Compliance insofar you will pretend to be annoyed but cooperative when you receive the order to collect samples from planet Kyasumeni."
"What for?"
"My curiosity. That is all you will know. Do you understand?"
Sarah nodded. Quietly she called for Noasyvé to give her advice, but she only got a distant sense she should survive.
· · · · ·
Lemura rather liked hanging on Jay's back, but she also liked chewing Jay's scarf. Right now Jay carried her around in an open back, but he might change his mind if he realized she got slime in his clothes. Maybe if she just chewed without breaking anything —
Jay didn't notice, but Bison did. With a chuckle, he scooped Lemura out of the backback. "Don't do that now, it's rude."
That sound probably meant something important, but she couldn't read his mind. Jay was irritated though.
"Not again. Bison, do you have a—yep, thanks."
Bison pulled a small towel from his bag while balancing Lemura on his other arm. After drying his scarf way more than needed, he handed back the towel but didn't take back Lemura.
See, should've not chewed.
They reached a door, which opened on its own. Behind it stood Sarah, in much finer contrast than before. She radiated true life, a strong field around her unlike the humans.
"You look awful," Bison said.
Sarah nodded before her eyes focused on Lemura. Her mouth curled, which she did in dreams when a positive thing happened. To Lemura's surprise, she felt a tug at her own lips, but couldn't quite complete the movement.
Jay picked up Lemura and dumped her in Sarah's arms.
"You are very welcome for us babysitting this destructive little thing."
"Yes, right ..." Sarah almost yelled. Lemura cringed.
"You don't have to talk so loud," Bison said.
"You're the one who ..." Sarah frowned. "Weird. I said something before and it was too soft, I thought I'd been ... never mind."
She did mind a lot, but pushed it aside, which was just fine for Lemura. Worried Sarah was unpleasant, while attentive Sarah opened up her mind even better than when dreaming together.
Though, Sarah had imagined something else out of Lemura's look. Something more human than xenomorph, smoother like Kirindi. Her aunt, who was either soft like a human or hard like a xenomorph, a blend of parts rather than Lemura's utter mix. Sarah tried to but couldn't hide the thought : malformed.
Most of them after all.
It wasn't new to Lemura. The very concept had been on Sarah's mind first time they connected, when Lemura had just been a spot in a tank. Only now, it meant something negative. Sarah tried hard to deny it, cover it up — didn't work.
Sarah tried to explain that it was due to the potential for mindless violence, but it was too late. The look alone disturbed her.
Disappointment hurt more when it came from another person to her, than when it was her own.
With a sigh, Sarah added that she was a little scared of what she herself might become. Change was frightening, it meant a lack of control.
Lemura disagreed, she liked being mobile much better than floating and being in pain. She didn't even get why Sarah thought mix meant a different thing than seamless parts.
She'd try to explain later, Sarah decided.
"Hello, Lemura," she said. "Why won't I teach you how to talk with sound?"
· · · · ·
"So, you're even less human now, eh? Got any new superpowers?" That was supposed to sound casual, but Jay couldn't keep the anxiety out of his voice.
"Not that I'm aware off," Sarah said, too soft this try. "Just weird skin."
"Yeah, sure. That's what always is said in the comics. You'll find some secret use to it." He laughed halfheartedly.
"~ It's alright to be scared. ~"
And there it was. The telepathy.
"~Thanks for looking after Lemura,~" Sarah added.
"Didn't have much of a choice and I won't do it again, just remember that." And quietly, he added, "~And it's be much appreciated if that's the last choice that gets made for us. Are there any plans for messing with Bison?~"
"~We won't force him to join the hive.~"
" ~ Our hive ~" Lemura said silently.
"~ Our ... shared mind, unless he wants to. You were an emergency. ~"
Given how frequent emergencies could be here, that didn't do much to ease Jay's mind.
· · · · ·
Days passed, which Sarah spent her free time almost entirely teaching things to Lemura. Turning thoughts into sounds so she could speak with Bison. Where to hide. How to find food and what was safe to eat and drink, if she needed to at all.
Utara had her run a few tests, finding her physique similar to before, but more durable. Sarah hadn't exactly gotten new muscle memory, but she could grow it much swifter than before. They trained together to do exactly that. Sarah had all these complicated reasons and big words about being prepared, while Lemura just liked to jump over things.
Outward, Sarah encouraged her to be playful, because it made it look less like practice. That was good for some reason.
They actually played things too. Cards, board games, computer games, but underneath, that too was about learning.
Utara claimed a fair deal of Sarah's time, demanding she be prepared for the mission. Her physical status was to be pitied, and her internal make over didn't help much with her advanced muscle control either. Sarah wondered how she'd ever pass as being a suitable candidate for the retrieval mission, the way she was now.
Utara wasn't why Sarah did it, though. They just had similar goals right now. Utara was the enemy.
Inward, they spoke to each other ceaselessly. The kind of talking done with sound used words, even without sound those worked to clarify things. Sarah always changed Lemura's intents into words within dreams, for her and for others. Lemura liked doing it herself now.
Sarah never really relaxed. When she climbed up the womb wall with nothing but her hands, she thought about how it might help her escape one day, something, anything. Lemura at first just thought about getting better at going higher, but Sarah's goals slowly became important. It was the energy in it that made it appealing to think of things with big purposes behind it.
So if Sarah thought it was important they survive and go to a better place, for more reasons than just meeting the family, Lemura tried to think of that too. That's how she discovered imagination.
Sarah once had been all about imagination. In her life before this, she'd been a small student with grand goals framed in stories of heroes. None of those people had existed, but the idea of them mattered because of themes. Lemura could wrap her head around that even less than the goals, but she tried.
Metaphors she figured out first. Wrap your head around it was Sarah's way of verbally describing a form of understanding, at first confusing till she figured out head meant brain meant mind and wrapping meant around meant encompassing. The mind owned what it understood.
According to Sarah, human minds went through stages. Around the age of 11 biological years, they pruned their mind of needless connections and reach full cognitive maturity around age 21, but she wouldn't sure whether it'd be like that for Lemura. She might be faster — better — because no real human her chronological age could even talk, let alone walk.
The xenomorph didn't talk, though. She was ahead of all of them.
"~ Then what am I? ~"
Sarah'd expected the question, because in many stories of her past, they'd happened. Usually there was some deep answer about choice or change, but Sarah just said, "~ You. ~"
She added, some time later after deep thought, that she couldn't really answer when they knew so little.
· · · · ·
April 26, 2578
Location : Enigma II
· · · · ·
Jay continued being averse and resisted joining them. He wasn't stable enough, he couldn't be trusted if the situation went wrong. Sarah wanted to get Bison involved, he was much more thoughtful. How she concluded that, Lemura had no idea. Something about demeanor and body language and behavior.
Something else lived here, they
Sarah approached him in the disinfection chamber outside the womb wall.
Bison patiently stood stock still and waited for some root bits to be picked off his suit by mechanic hands. Sarah waited till he stepped out and ducked into the changing room. He didn't close the door all the way, apparently having noticed she had something to say. That was one of those things why Sarah considered him more thoughtful, but to Lemura it just looked like a door left open a bit.
"Bison, listen. I've got something important to discuss with you."
"Figured," he said. "Any reason it's gotta be said in one of Utara's blind spots?"
"I wouldn't call anything a blind spot if Nuitar's still around, but yes. I'm hoping it's got different interests than Utara. Bison, you need to get that implant removed."
"Oh, indeed? Why?"
"So that you can communicate with Jay and Lemura without Utara noticing, and with me as well."
"No," he said simply.
She frowned, but didn't let it deter her. "We can't trust anyone related to Enigma. You're on our side, aren't you?"
Inside the room, something was tossed against the wall. "I work here and try not to get terminated. That's all there is to it. As long as I don't know everything, I have no sides to pick."
"Don't you understand? I was forced to change, now it can be used against me. My insides are mutated, and if anything happens that makes her decide to expose me, you two are going down too cause you kept many things a secret."
"So, something will happen that will make her expose you, then? Will this happen while you're away from this station?"
"Look, I didn't choose for this, for any of this! Just ... haven't you seen what this place is like?"
"I have. I've seen the despair it pulls people into. I've seen them die by the mistakes it had them make. I survive by sticking to doing what I'm told, I can't obey two masters."
He stepped out of the room in his usual work outfit, the picture of a good Enigma attendant. "I am sorry, I don't trust this thing with Noasyvé, nor you. Please accept that."
Sarah pressed her lips together and said nothing, watching his back as he walked away.
By now, Sarah's mind wrapped itself around all sorts of personality things that were impossibly convoluted to Lemura. One thing alone was clear : Bison was a wild card.
· · · · ·
April 29, 2578
Location : Enigma II
· · · · ·
"~ Enemy, right, Sarah? ~"
Sarah woke with a start. Looking around the room, she neither heard nor saw Lemura. The everlasting vibration of the station, the water behind the walls, but Lemura was nowhere nearby.
Why did she call enemy? Sarah leaped out of bed, shot some clothes on and nearly tripped on a few make-shift toys on her way out.
Lemura's thoughts were blurry, she couldn't tell at first where she was. Sarah just ran, overcome by a surge of panic of two, three sources.
"~ Enemy. Right. ~"
Violence ... seething rage crept up into her mind. They were fighting, ... Lemura was in pain. Where were they? Who was they? The chaos distorted her own perception and she had to stop running. She'd gone too deep ...
Lemura knew nothing to be wrong ... Jay was savage ... Lemura's wanted to kill. Jay seemed to think so in any case, while Lemura only thought she'd done the right thing. So much blood ... Bison?
She'd attacked Bison.
For goodness sake, why? She wasn't supposed to act like a xenomorph, she wasn't ...
"~ But he is my enemy! Not you! ~"
No, she didn't fight Jay, she fought to get past him to Bison.
Where were they?
A glimpse of a table leg. The kitchen.
She started running again.
More blurs flooded in. Their feelings bounced back onto herself and the images of Bison came into her mind. Lemura hadn't attacked him out of the blue. He'd said something about food? He'd denied some weird cooking Jay had made. With a halfhearted laugh he'd said he didn't trust it ... it was like a comical version of Bison saying he didn't trust Sarah.
Jay's given it to Lemura, and actually smiled when she said she'd liked it. First time he'd done that. By contrast, Bison stood out all the more as dissociated.
Family. Enemy. Bison had rejected to be Family, so now she had begun to feel about him as Enemy. No, maybe she had always felt that way. To Lemura, Bison was opaque.
Could she have avoided this if she'd explain her better? What if ...
There was the dinner room. She rounded the corner and promptly tripped over Bison. She braced against the floor, looked back and stifled a cry.
Bison lay with his throat open. The beat of his heart sounded weak, but he could still breathe. The wound had come from the wrong angle, Lemura had aimed for the spine.
In the corner nearby Jay stood, broken table leg in his hand, hammering down on Lemura. She dodged past his legs and crawled up the fridge. Sarah threw herself against Jay when he raised his weapon to hit high, throwing him off his feet.
"Stop it!" Sarah cried out, struggling to her feet.
Jay was back on his feet almost as quickly. "It needs to die! It attacked again, what's next? It is going to die now!" he bellowed. "It just attacked out of nothing, we did nothing, nothing, nothing! Just having dinner."
He wanted to raise the table leg again, Sarah at that point barged into his mind and tried to make him stop, but how?
Scream, said something. It'll hurt.
So she screamed, but it wasn't her human voice that she used. Her mind poured out of its confines and singed through walls she'd never seen before. At the same time, new vocal cords thrilled in her throat.
Jay sank through his knees, letting go of the table leg to clutch his ears. Or perhaps his head. She couldn't tell where the pain had hit, only his disorientation reached her.
She didn't even know whether it had sounded like anything to her, but to him it was hell.
Softer, she said, "Stop it, okay?"
"You monster, you're ... " he muttered under his breath, but made no attempt to hide his thoughts.
"Yes, I am. Don't blame Lemura, it was me. She probably acted on my feelings. Wasn't she with you for days, without harming you or Bison in the slightest? Why do you think this happened only now? I had a few words with Bison recently and something happened..." she choked on her words. "... it reminded her and ..."
Lemura had curled up atop the fridge, quietly telling her now it wasn't that. She'd realized on her own, she didn't get Sarah's feelings ... Sarah had been asleep.
It wouldn't be a useful to say that much to Jay, though.
"I don't care, Bison didn't deserve that. I'd have been the enemy sooner than he did. I already was! Why him?"
"Right, you were. Despite your chip, something may have gotten to your mind. Bison's still in a state that makes it hard for us to help him if it were to happen to him." She nodded behind her. "Do you really want to kill her, rather than help Bison? Then try to kill me too, if you can't trust us. You can't see it, but I'm more dangerous than her."
The last part was a lie, at least for now. He didn't need to know that.
He finally looked back at Bison, and found his sense back. "Dammit. Utara, send in a transporter!"
Tension fell from Sarah's muscles, but not entirely. She quickly turned to gather Lemura in her arms.
Lemura clutched around her neck, confused more than anything.
Sarah walked around Jay in a wide circle and tried not to look at the wound on Bison's neck. As she reached the door, he suddenly jerked up. Frightened, Sarah turned, but he didn't even look around at her.
The farther she got from the kitchen, the lesser her palpitations became. In some corner of her mind, she'd expected that transforming would make her as fearless as the xenomorph. Yet, anxiety had just taken a new form. Whether she needed it to survive was up for debate.
Once the door closed behind her, she locked it. Not that it'd help if Utara wanted to let anyone in.
Sunken against the wall, she held Lemura close, breathing in and out. It still needed concentration, but it wasn't like before. Calm breathing once had been a good technique to calm herself, now it did nothing. She couldn't will the fear away.
"~ Fear ... of what? ~"
Sarah couldn't answer. Just what exactly did she fear altogether? Jay with his table leg? What the scientists would do if they found her? What Utara or Nuitar would do? What she would do to them, what she would do to Jonah?
"~ Do you fear me too? ~" asked Lemura.
"~Perhaps, depends on what you would call fear. ~"
"~ ...I do not want to be a monster. ~"
"But we're here, and everything here is a monster, including us." Sarah tried to smile. "And it's okay. We can't survive in the abyss without being monsters. We just need to be better monsters, that's all."
· · · · ·
May 1, 2578
Location : Pandohahn
· · · · ·
Hands down, this was the most peculiar request that Enigma II had sent her in years.
Now, it wasn't uncommon the Internecivus Raptus faction wanted to experiment with hosts, but the choice of staff was the thing.
This was not the first, nor the second, nor the third civilian that had found their way into being employed by Enigma II. While using "drifter material" was not uncommon when dodging the Fenrir Route's prying eyes, Enigma II's civilians were a particularly odd bunch. All people who had been on the termination list at first, but survived due to "friendships" with other entities aboard, be they human, chimera or program. There were questions regarding why Utara insisted Sarah Driscoll would accompany the mission. They were question only answered with a vague "the only one we can spare".
The worst part, she half had to agree with sticking to drifter material when it was so hard to find personnel that could deal with the psychic influence of those beasts.
Naseim wasn't above indulging the peculiarities of the programs, of course. Selatan churned out most interesting advances on hunches, but Utara wasn't that sort. Especially not with requests so difficult to grant.
The planet Kyasumeni had been sold to the one of karsathrizmat species, or nation. She'd never been able to figure out what exactly the word meant, if it meant anything at all. Their type communicated telepathically and hadn't begun using sound till a few hundred years ago. Communication with humans was even more recent.
Hguthreeit technically owned the animals. Trying to file a request for samples would be a painstaking process, especially since Naseim wanted absolutely no telepaths (who weren't on her pay roll) anywhere near her.
"Andrew, come in for second," she said.
Shortly, the window opened and he in stepped a neatly dressed young man. Stiff as always, he took position before her desk.
"What is Nuitar up to? Utara has sent a rather peculiar request, which I doubt she would do if she wasn't somehow ... trying to send a message, perhaps?" she said, shoving the screen to him. He briefly glanced at it. "Maybe Nuitar's doing something behind my back again?"
"I swear, he's too occupied with containing that ... that thing," he said, a desperate edge to his voice.
"Maybe Noasyvé is influencing him," Naseim said.
Andrew shook his head. "She can't. Not him. Not in this state."
Naseim didn't discount he could be in on something, but the man was too fearful to keep intense secret unless pressured. Nuitar could cause issues from a distance, Utara did not.
"I'll arrange it, but I want you to provide me updates alongside the station's reports. Get in touch with Nuitar, and stay in touch."
Andrew was most desperately in need of a poker face. Her own did a much better job hiding how she felt about his resentment and trepidation.
· · · · ·
