Through Glass Darkly: Episode Two (11 page)

As soon as my mind had found a reasonable explanation for the creatures odd behaviour, courtesy of Agent Fraser, I found my thoughts turning to all the other things I needed or wanted to follow up on, I was so distracted in the end I almost didn’t notice a parcel waiting for me when I entered my cabin, propped up on the small desk I had in the corner for writing up reports and servicing my gun and lensing rig.

It wasn’t addressed, but there was a card leaning against it from Hughes, that simply read ‘I hope this helps – HH’

I couldn’t imagine what he could be referring to for a moment, but then, as it is with many parcels, just as my fingers were finding their way into the string and brown paper, I figured it out.

He’d given me a leather covered journal filled with sheet after sheet of plain white paper. It was a lovely thing that immediately felt good in my hands, and like a moth to a flame I found myself opening it up, and before I’d washed or changed or done a single other thing, I picked up a pen and allowed the things I’d been bottling up inside me to spill out onto the page.

I began with my very first memories on this world, of the rain soaked night on which we appeared out of the void, and everything else between then and now. Nothing too detailed, just enough to keep the memories fresh.

For nearly two hours I sat at my little desk and wrote, and in the process I felt something happening in my mind, perhaps the regaining of perspective that Hughes had mentioned. I still sensed the smouldering pit of anger and rage deep inside me, but committing my thoughts to paper seemed to soothe the glowing coals more than I’d known of late.

I’d spent so long, just sat writing, that when I finally realised the time, I had to hustle in order to get washed and changed before heading off to our afternoon briefing session.

Platt was evidently not a great believer in formality for its own sake, so the briefing moved along quickly. We started with the findings form the rail-yard, followed by what we’d discovered in the sewers and the samples I’d brought back. Hughes offered to have these analysed at a lab his company owned nearby, and have the preliminary results back to us within a day, which was an unbelievably fast turn-around time.

Once we’d finished with the facts of what we’d discovered I mentioned the theories that Agent Fraser had come up with earlier on in the day, emphasising the point that we had no concrete evidence to support either idea.

‘They might not be substantiated by any evidence Mr Hall,’ commented Captain Platt. ‘But they are at least something that we can start to put contingencies in place around, particularly the idea that this creature might somehow be capable of reproducing.’

‘Do you have any idea how these creatures reproduce, the numbers of young that might be born, the time to maturity, anything?’ he asked, looking between me and the Captain for any sign that we could help.

‘We know very little about the reproductive cycle of these creatures,’ the Captain explained, earnestly. ‘From our examination of the dead specimens we’ve recovered on our own world we had thought they might be somehow hermaphroditic, as every specimen seemed broadly similar in physiology, but since then from some of the experiments we’ve done on specimens we’ve killed in the Expanse, we now think it may be more complex and that these creatures actually need something else to help them reproduce, not another gender so much as a substance of some variety that somehow allows fertilising matter to develop within the creature.

‘The thing we don’t know is what this matter is, whether it’s something that just causes a kind of mutation within the creature, or whether it somehow allows the creature to generate new genetic material that is somehow different to its own, our scientific team just couldn’t tell.’

As the Captain had been explaining this to everyone, one of Platt’s assistants had entered the room with message written down on a slip of paper.

He quickly read it, before addressing us.

‘Gentlemen, I’m very pleased to tell you that your colleague, Ms Ariel Shilling has regained consciousness and is asking for you.’

‘She seems to be herself, as we’d hoped?’ The Captain asked.

‘The information I have from Dr Bach at the Sanatorium is limited,’ Platt continued. ‘But he informs me that she regained consciousness at approximately twenty minutes to four. She knows her own name, is not experiencing any pain, and is asking about the welfare of her shipmates.’

‘That is exceptionally good news,’ replied the Captain looking much relieved. ‘Ashton, would you like to head over now, and I’ll try and join you both a little later on this afternoon?’

It was a genuine piece of good news, the first it seemed we’d had since our arrival, so I jumped at the chance to go and see her.

As I excused myself from the meeting, and headed outside to hop in a car over to the Staten Island sanatorium, I realised with a slight twinge that I’d actually been responsible for shooting Ariel on at least two occasions, not to mention chasing after her in a bloodthirsty rage across the rooftops of several warehouses. All of which sobered my mood slightly, as I considered how easily things could have gone differently.

CHAPTER 28 - REUNION

The trip over to the Staten Island Sanatorium took almost no time, though I did pop up to the ship first to pick up some of Ariel’s own clothes, which I’d imagined would just be a spare uniform until I actually entered her quarters and realised she also had a small number of dresses and skirts, casual trousers, blouses, jumpers and of course other altogether more feminine items.

I’d seen Ariel wear clothes that weren’t uniform from time to time before we went into the Expanse while we were on our shakedown flight, but the Expanse had been the equivalent of a battlefield environment, and as such we’d practically lived in uniform.

Pulling myself together, I fished out one of Ariel’s suitcases from under her bunk, and simply filled it with a selection of items of all types, including a dressing-gown a spare uniform, as well as few other items I thought she might like, depending on how mobile she was.

I noticed she also had a spare lensing rig on her desk, which looked like she’d been making a few adjustments to, so I also pocketed that and her tools on the off chance she wanted them.

I briefly thought about picking some flowers up on the way, but decided against it on this occasion, as I still didn’t know what condition she might be in.

As I entered the sanatorium I was feeling distinctly nervous. The ordeal she’d been through could not have been easy, and I had no idea how that might affect her psychologically, but there was also all the other news, the dead and missing members of the crew, not to mention those still seriously injured, the fact we were on a world that wasn’t our home, and countless other pieces of news that would all add yet further strain.

As always the reception staff were prepped and waiting for me, and as soon as I arrived they had me escorted straight through to the area of the hospital where Ariel was recuperating, but instead of being shown straight in to see Ariel, I was first taken to see Dr Bach.

‘I’m sorry to delay you on your way to visit your friend Mr Hall,’ he began. ‘This won’t take long I assure you.

‘We thought it would be best if some of the more difficult news were to come from a friendly face,’ he continued sombrely. ‘So we haven’t explained anything explicitly to Ms Shilling yet about the circumstances she now finds herself in.

‘Firstly, we need you to explain that she appears to have gone through some kind of physical and biological change that we don’t yet understand, and while she still looks relatively normal, even on our x-rays, we know her blood chemistry has been radically altered, and that’s likely to impact on several of her other systems.

‘For example - We don’t know what she can safely eat, or whether her sense of taste and smell will have been affected. We know her vision appears to have been affected as she’s currently demonstrating acute sensitivity to light, but her sense of hearing seems normal, her skin and sense of touch seem extremely delicate, though that might change now her skin is exposed to the open air again.

‘I could go on, but the point that it’s imperative for her to understand is that she’ll have to take things easy for a while until she figures out what’s what. On the plus side the wounds from the surgery have already healed more than I would expect a normal person to heal in a couple of weeks.’

With that he escorted me through to Ariel’s room, where after knocking and receiving a reply he opened the door and we stepped in.

There she was sitting upright in bed with the curtains at the window half drawn to dim the bright sunlight that would otherwise have been streaming in.

‘Ash, is that you?’ She said with more than a hint of hope in her voice.

‘Yes, it’s me Ariel,’ I replied, unexpectedly relieved at being able to speak to her again, after thinking she’d been dead for all this time.

‘I think they’ve been waiting for you to arrive, so you can be the bearer of bad news,’ she guessed, before I’d had chance to say another word.

‘A lot has happened,’ I admitted openly. ‘Most of it is not so good, but first, why don’t you tell me how you feel and what you remember?’

Her memory was patchy to say the least after the Captain released the Arc energy around the ship. She remembered breaking free of the seat she’d been tied into by the traitors, just as one of the Lamphrey had broken past the dead or dying traitors to attack her, after which it was a blur of light and pain. The next thing she remembered was waking up on one of the rooftops near to where the ship had appeared, looking up at the clearly stricken vessel and struggling at first to understand why she couldn’t see things properly, or feel or move her body.

For a long time as she lay there the only idea that made any sense to her was that she must’ve broken her back in the fall, and was lying paralysed, but gradually some sensation returned and was followed little by little with movement, only for her to discover that the limbs she could move were now those of the creature she’d been attacked by.

Thinking her mind must’ve been transferred to the creatures body in some way was another shock, but days later when she’d first sensed and then seen the creature in her body that was almost unbearable.

I tried not to interrupt her to ask what she meant by sensing the creature, but she clearly saw something in my expression.

‘I didn’t understand it at first,’ she explained. ‘I kept getting this impression that somebody was watching me, looking over my shoulder, even when I holed up in places where nothing could be behind me. And then I started to see these glimmering images of places and people that I was sure I’d never been to or seen.

‘It was only ever for a few minutes at a time, and I got a clear sense of the direction they were coming from at the same time, so the next time it happened I followed the signal and came across the creature, just as it killed that first poor homeless man.

‘I was too far away to help, but even if I’d been closer the strength of the image became so powerful during the attack and the feeding, that I could barely stand, let alone move, and then as it finished, it turned toward me and I saw my own blood stained face and hands with that creature trapped behind my eyes, just as I was trapped in its body.

‘I was confused and fled the scene to try and get away from it all. But of course as soon as my nerves settled I realised the dire situation I was in. Nobody would be able to tell we’d swapped bodies, so if I ever wanted my own body back it would be up to me to fix things. Otherwise either I would be hunted and killed, or the creature in my body would be, and then I guessed any chance of reversing the process would be gone.’

She went on to explain how after tracking her own body for a couple of days she’d decided to try and enlist our help, but before she could figure out how to communicate with us without being killed in the process we’d found her and chased her across the warehouse rooftops.

As she described the pain of those incendiary bullets I’d fired into her as she fled, I wanted to stop her and apologise but she pushed on clearly wanting to get the rest of her account out.

‘If it hadn’t been for the pain of those bullets burning a hole in me, I think I could’ve seen the opportunity when it happened more quickly. After you fell and were hanging from the edge of the building all I could feel was relief that you weren’t firing even more bullets into me, and then just as it occurred to me that you’d dropped your gun so if I helped you back up onto the roof you might just realise something was off. But then those other people were firing at me and I knew I’d missed my opportunity.

‘How I swore at myself for that Ash, you would’ve been shocked,’ she continued, nearing the end of her story. ‘The rest you can probably figure out. I holed up long enough for the incendiaries to burn out, and recover slightly and then I slipped past the search teams and found somewhere to hide out while I healed.

‘I hadn’t eaten properly in several days by that point so was already feeling weak, and then of course you found me and shot me . . . again!’ she said with a small smile while slapping my arm as though I’d merely stepped on her foot at a dance. ‘The next thing I know I’m waking up, still starving incidentally and you’ve somehow go me back in my own body.’

She obviously saw something in my expression as she said this last bit.

‘Ok, out with it Ash. I know my eyesight is messed up for some reason, but these look a lot like my own hands and feet, not claws or pincers, and this is definitely hair and skin rather than shell, so what gives?’

I wasn’t sure where to begin with it all, but I couldn’t not answer so I went right back to the start.

‘From what we can tell Ariel, it wasn’t just you mind that was moved from your body to that of the creature, when the Captain flipped the switch.