Fast (14 page)

            Coleman had grown sick of explaining his motives to her, a contributing factor of their break-up, but he reminded himself that today it was professional, not personnel. He pointed out the surviving members of Third Unit, naming them. ‘King. Marlin. Forest.’

            Introductions done, Coleman explained, ‘We were escorting weapons inspectors into the Complex when we came under attack, first by these things and then by another armed force. We’ve been fighting our way through the Complex ever since. I’ve lost half my team, and we’re out of radio contact with the other four teams. The only other two FAST Marines we saw alive were sent down the evacuation tunnel behind the evacuees. The weapons inspectors are dead. They didn’t even make it out of the helicopter. I have to assume that your radio jamming hardware is still operating, so we have no way of getting a message out of the Complex.’

            Coleman clipped out the details like he was reporting to a superior officer, delivering the most important points in the shortest possible time. ‘Any other questions, Doctor?’

            ‘Not yet,’ she said, ignoring his tone and absorbing the information without interruption.

Vanessa turned on the spot, her eyes roaming over the Marines. ‘Now, King, may I borrow that knife?’

King raised an eyebrow at Coleman, but before Coleman could nod affirmative, Vanessa snapped her fingers to reclaim King’s attention. ‘Hey, big fellah! I didn’t ask him, I asked you.’

            King smiled and drew the heavy SOG combat knife from his shoulder drop-sheath. He flipped the knife over in his hand, catching the blade while offering the black, crosshatched handle to Vanessa. ‘Anytime.’

            Vanessa tested the weight of the knife and examined the blade.

            ‘Stand back,’ she said, leaning over the creature and lifting the knife. Grunting, she stabbed into the creature’s abdomen between two tentacles. Using two hands, she inserted the blade to its serrated base.

            Then she started cutting.

            Coleman watched the creature’s skin resist the razor-sharp blade. At first he thought the skin was mottled with a grey camouflaged covering, but now he saw the truth.

            The skin was
transparent
.

            The mottled effect were the organs under the skin moving as Vanessa cut. No – not organs, but fibrous bundles, like muscles filled with liquid. The liquid-filled muscles undulated away from the blade.

            The effect looked visceral, like those medical training dolls with revealed anatomies, or a skinned animal wrapped in plastic film.

            Vanessa threw her full weight into the task, rocking backwards and forwards, sawing a large incision down the creature’s abdomen. White fluid gushed from the wound. She withdrew the knife and stabbed down again, repeating the process, but now making a curved incision to dissect a large wedge from the creature’s abdomen. She twisted the knife to excise the piece of flesh. Like slicing a wedge from a giant lemon, the wound presented a cross-section of the creature’s innards.

            She peered into the creature. ‘It’s a crude dissection, but this will have to suffice.’

            Coleman squatted beside her, taking his
second
good look at one of the creatures up close. The last time he had been fighting to keep his head out of the creature’s mouth.

            It smelt of putrid, stagnant water. The smell of water stored for a hundred years in a rusty can.

            Coleman ignored the smell and looked closer. Vanessa’s cut exposed a network of chambers honeycombing the creature’s abdomen. Ghastly white pockets dripping with milky fluid, each chamber looked as large as Coleman’s forearm. The chambers were arranged in rows, separated by valves, until they reached the tentacles. Dedicated sets of chambers served each tentacle.

            ‘It’s like a giant complicated heart,’ observed Coleman.

            Vanessa scanned the antechamber. She pointed to where jets of the creature’s internal fluid had sprayed up the walls from the bullet wounds. The fluid streaked the walls like the arterial squirts of a murder victim. ‘These internal chambers shunt the hydrostatic pressure around the limbs. The pressure must be incredible. Each limb is basically a hydraulic jack. This creature’s entire anatomy is a giant pump. There are no stomach or digestive organs.’

            She drew back thoughtfully from the creature. ‘Has anyone seen it feed?’

            ‘I have,’ answered Coleman, revisiting his disturbing memory of Private Gill’s horrific death. He moved to the front of the creature and lifted open its mouth. Its flesh felt tacky and slippery at the same time. The mouth spread open like a giant fleshy flower full of shark’s teeth. Coleman probed between the teeth with his knife tip.

            ‘Here’s one,’ he said, withdrawing the knife to extract one of the creature’s feeding filaments. ‘There’s hundreds of these between the teeth. After inflicting massive flesh trauma, it feeds with these filaments.’

            Vanessa examined inside the creature’s mouth. ‘Absorbing its victim’s bodily fluids eliminates the need for a complex digestive system.’

            ‘What I don’t understand,’ began Coleman, ‘is how it can move
so
fast. It’s all arms and no legs, but I’ve seen them moving like a charging bull.’

            ‘So have I,’ she agreed, pointing into the dissection with King’s knife. ‘Their internal anatomy explains a lot. They move by shunting liquid around their limbs under high pressure. Their body is a giant multi-valve pump. The surge of pressure is more than enough to launch them forwards. Combine that with a dozen thorn-lined tentacles and you have a very fast predator. Its speed will vary depending on how many limbs it has contacting a surface.’

            Coleman realized that Third Unit was lucky to have first encountered the creatures out in the open. In a confined space like a stairwell, the battle would have been very different.

            ‘So in a tight corridor it would move like lightning,’ reasoned Marlin from across the antechamber.

            Vanessa moved to the least damaged part of the creature’s abdomen. She scraped King’s knife over the surface, then held the knife so everyone could see. Clear jelly dripped from the blade.

            ‘Their skin secretes a lubricant. They could fit down a tight passageway very fast. You might not even have time to squeeze your trigger before it was on you.’

            She stepped back from the creature and offered the knife back to King. King took the handle between two fingers, grimacing at the messy blade.

            ‘And I’m pretty sure they can climb,’ she added. ‘I mean
really
climb.’

            Coleman knew they could climb from his experience in the elevator. They must have climbed down the shaft after the lift. Those long tentacles and hooks would be perfect for reaching and grasping.

            Coleman had a more important question. After seeing Vanessa distract the creatures with the fire extinguisher, he guessed she had reached the same conclusion. ‘They’re detecting our vibrations, right? That’s how they
sense
us. Through our vibration when we move or shoot. Otherwise they’re blind.’

            Vanessa answered as she studied the creature. ‘Yes. They’re blind to light, but sensing vibrations is like x-ray vision. They can sense us from all over the Complex. Through the walls, through the floor, through almost anything. He’s used vibrations as their primary sensory function.’

            ‘Who is ‘He’?’ snapped Coleman quickly. ‘Who’s responsible for this?’

            Vanessa quirked an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Well, Francis Gould, of course. Only Gould could have made these. That’s why you’re here, right? Because Gould stole my genetic templates and we can’t find them?’

            She was right. Gould’s theft had triggered the operation, and part of the weapons inspectors’ brief was to locate the missing genetic templates.

            ‘How can you be sure that Gould made these?’ tested Coleman.

            ‘I know Gould’s work when I see it,’ she answered. ‘Gould’s area of expertise is bio-mechanical interfaces. In particular, translating a plant’s sense of vibrations into electrical impulses. All plants sense vibrations through tiny fluctuations of pressure and chemical responses in their cells. If those responses can be measured and transmitted electronically, then you would have a plant that could act as a surveillance system, say, to monitor an enemy’s troop movements.’

            Sensing Third Unit’s suddenly undivided attention, she continued, ‘Certain projects inherently help people, like purifying water or developing drought-tolerant crops, so that’s where we focus our research. But Gould’s interests were never in those areas. His research was consistently challenged by our ethics committee due to potential military applications. I assumed that he was studying the vibration-sensing traits of plants to produce a biological surveillance system, but really he was giving these creatures a sense of touch.’

            She looked at the dead creature with a very strange expression. It was equal parts disgust and regret. ‘Perhaps I’m not so paranoid about the military after all, huh Alex? This is exactly the type of stuff we used to argue about, except now it’s right in front of us. These things were grown from
my
genetic templates. They’re a corruption of
my
bio-survive system. I’ve never included any of these offensive traits in my projects. They’re dormant and forced into genetic recession. Gould redesigned the templates to do the exact opposite. These things are designed to hurt and kill. Now I wonder who Gould is working for…?’

            ‘Are you saying these creatures are
plants
?’ scoffed Forest incredulously.

            ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ replied Vanessa. ‘Their genetic material comes from thousands of different plant species all meshed together.’

            Coleman took a moment to form his next question. The entire situation felt so incredible it proved difficult to absorb everything she was saying. ‘Your bio-survive project is incredible, but nothing I’ve read explains how these things can be mobile.’

            ‘Exactly,’ cut in Marlin, clearly skeptical of Vanessa’s explanation. ‘How can those things be plants? How can a plant move like that?’

            Vanessa’s eyes flicked up to Marlin. A small smile tugged one corner of her mouth. ‘These things move exactly like a plant. Specifically, they move like the species
Impetus pespedus
.’

            Coleman clicked his fingers. He recognized the Latin name. ‘I’ve heard of that species. It was all over the news about three years ago. It came from Indonesia, but was wiped out by a logging company.’

            She nodded. ‘Nearly wiped out, actually.
Impetus pespedus
was discovered in Borneo in 2004 by the botanists Cartwright and Johansson. You’ve probably never heard of them, but in the scientific world they’re highly regarded for studying species from the oldest remnant forests in the world.’

            When none of the Marines recognized the names, she shrugged and continued.

            ‘They were searching for the cancer-fighting compounds found in some deep-valley fern species, but what they discovered was a population of small plants with the ability to travel fifteen centimeters an hour in search of sunlight. They published a joint paper with a very controversial theory. Basically, they claimed that
Impetus pespedus
was proof that under different evolutionary pressures, plants could evolve locomotion comparable to modern vertebrates.’

            Coleman recalled seeing a discovery channel documentary about the moving plants from Borneo. They were nothing like the dead creature lying on the floor. ‘I don’t recall anything about those little plants in Borneo eating people.’

            Vanessa pursed her lips at the dissected creature. ‘These aren’t plants the way you’re used to thinking of them. They’re a combination of genetic traits from thousands of plants all spliced together. Remember, many plants are
very
dangerous. Many are carnivorous. They’ve just never been
mobile
before.’