Invasive Species

They traveled in absolute silence back to the food court. David couldn’t bring himself to explain exactly what had happened in Bay 20, but their faces when the containment field went down showed that they understood what Dan had done.

Somehow, even though everyone there had lost friends since this invasion began, Dan’s sacrifice weighed on them more than anyone else’s death that day. David pondered this as he guided them down the halls. The only conclusion he could come to was that his death gave them guilt; an irrational, but very human response. Their humanity was all they had left now.

The others had been lost as a matter of circumstance, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Terry was just one of the first victims of a bloodthirsty alien creature. Though Sam’s crew was brought to the station by him, they only met the fate that he would have shared if he had been on the ship with them. Dan, however, gave up his life to protect the others, and that made everyone feel responsible.

Maria was keeping pace with the group, but her previous expression of fear and doubt had been replaced by complete shock. David couldn’t decide if it was better or worse, but he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. Maria was closest to Dan out of all of them, so her reaction was completely understandable. But, David was now responsible for the group as a whole. He couldn’t afford to worry about one person who couldn’t hold it together, no matter how cold that made him feel.

Thinking about his responsibility to the remaining survivors made his surroundings even more terrifying. He was no longer worried about his own well being. Every time he turned to look back at them his heart did a dance as he quickly tried to do a head count. Once, as they passed a crossing corridor, he thought he saw one of the slugs slinking next to Mandy’s ankle. He turned on his heels and fired a shot it; only discovering when the remainder of it swung back towards him that he had mutilated the remains of a damaged utility tube. When Mandy saw what he had done, she shot a dirty look at him, and he turned forward without a word on his embarrassing, paranoid reaction. Every time he thought he saw one again, he hesitated long enough to discover that it was something benign, and this happened frequently. With the stress and fatigue he was seeing them everywhere. Crawling in and out of the walls. Hanging from the ceilings. In his mind the whole station was made of them, having been entirely consumed by the alien menace.

When they reached the staircase to the security office, David stepped aside and let the group ascend ahead of him. He looked up and down the dark and silent corridors, registering for the first time that they hadn’t seen any of the creatures since they left Bay 20. He could also feel the temperature steadily rising, the opposite of what he had anticipated on a space station that was losing power.

He shook his head, too tired to process these things, and ascended the staircase. When he reached the top he sealed the hatch behind him. “Are you sure we’ll be safe in here?” Maria asked.

The sound of her voice startled him. He wasn’t sure she would ever speak again. “The station could blow up and this room would remain intact…mostly. Besides, they don’t know we’re here.” He cringed slightly at the white lie. It was true that the customs office was the most heavily reinforced room in the station, but that strength came from fomalanium, something they already knew the creatures could eat through. He was counting on the fact that the creatures did not know where they were.

He crossed towards the guard quarters to seal the hatch there, and noticed as he went that the closest cell door was hanging wide open. The prisoner was gone. Dumbass, he thought. If you stayed, you might still be alive.

“I just don’t like the idea of staying in one place while those things are roaming around,” Maria continued.

“If we stay out there we’ll all collapse from exhaustion. Then where will you be?” David snapped at her. She shrank back and avoided his eyes. He immediately felt guilty as he watched what little resolve she had left, melt away before him. “I’m sorry. We’ll keep a watch going while we’re here. That’ll give us enough time to escape if they do find us.”

She filled her chest with air, and seemed to regain her composure before nodding her head. He patted her on her shoulder as a silent show of support. He never exactly considered her friend, but knew she was a good person, and certainly didn’t deserve this turn of events.

“I assume you’ll want to hang on to this,” Dalton said, tossing a small object towards him. It was the lockout key for Bay 14-27.

“Right. I guess that should be me,” he said with his much confidence as he could muster. Though the device was thick and durable, he felt like he was holding a Fabergé egg, with only the vaporous lives of everyone present inside. If the shell was crushed, everyone’s chances of escaping alive would float away.

He stuck the device in his pocket as Dalton took a perch next to Maria’ and took a look around the room. Near the main hatch, Tamsyn had propped herself up on the counter, removed her jacket and lifted her shirt to examine her wound. David grabbed the first aid kit from the wall and set it next to her. “Let me take a look at that,” he said, trying to make it sound like a suggestion rather than an order.

She flashed a mischievous grin in his direction before rolling up her shirt. “Sure you’re not just looking for an excuse to play doctor?”

David felt his face heat up and avoided eye contact with her. “You’re the best marksman we’ve got. Can’t have you keeling over from an infection.”

“I’m just messing with you. Don’t have a heart attack.”

“This will sting a bit,” he said as he doused the wound in an antibiotic spray.

“Thanks for the warning,” she said through clenched teeth. “What’s with the Bronze Age medicine, anyway?”

David chuckled. “Sorry. The high-tech stuff is in the station hospital. Usually don’t need it in the field.” He ripped open a fresh regenerative patch and pressed it against the wound. He was transfixed by the motion of her smooth skin; like an ocean tide that swelled on the shore and rushed away to the rhythm of her breathing.

As he wrapped the gauze around her torso, he scrunched his shoulder to dab the beating sweat that formed under his collar when he felt her abdomen tense under the pressure. When he realized that his mind wandered to forbidden realms, he tried to kick-start the conversation. “So, do you think your husband will want you to quit when he hears about all this?”

For a long moment she didn’t answer, but simply stared at the ring on her left hand. Suddenly, the extremity seem to weigh her down; as if the simple band of tungsten carbide was actually made of lead, and much larger than it appeared.

David recognized the burden. It was the weight of a lie. One that was clung to as a matter of self-preservation, or a final barrier at the brink of sanity. He recognized it because he shared it. He carried the same weight in an image file stored on the memory chip of his wrist comp.

“I’m not actually married. Not anymore, anyway,” she said at last.

As he finished and returned the supplies the first aid kit, he furrowed his brow. “A ploy to keep other men away? Are men still that uncivilized where you’re from?”

She sighed and removed the ring, rolling it absentmindedly between her fingers. “No. Well, yes they are, but that’s not why I do it. I guess it just makes things easier. People don’t ask me as many questions. Don’t look at me as strangely for wandering the galaxy alone. I guess when you’re married people think of you as half of a whole, and don’t take too much interest in you.”

“You prefer to be left alone?”

“Yeah.”

David bit his lower lip and seated himself next to her. “You were married once. What happened to that?”

She looked at him, analyzing his face like she had in the food court the day before. Apparently deciding he met her standards, she leaned back and squinted at the ceiling. “I guess I realized that getting married defied the reason I did it in the first place.”

David chuckled. “All right. That raises more questions than it answers, but I’ll take it.”

She laughed and gave him a playful nudge. “Fine. I was restless. I’ve always had the urge to travel. To be where the action is. Guess I get that from my dad. But, I hadn’t been off that rural hell-hole I grew up on since I was born. So I ended up latching on to the first friendly, wealthy man to pass through.”

“Turned out to be a jerk?”

“No, actually, he was really nice. But I guess it was a pipe dream to think I would be able to travel with him all the time. Instead, I stayed locked up in my ivory tower. I had traded one prison for another.”

David stared at her with a new understanding and respect. She was a more complete person in his eyes now, a strong woman with a restless soul, and a little more baggage than she liked to show. “So, how did he take it when you wanted to split?”

“Really well, considering. He was really intelligent, and he understood. He even gave me some credits and helped me get a job that would give me what he couldn’t.”

“Having the urge to travel and being antisocial must be torture.”

She shot him a dirty look. “I’m not antisocial. Just not really outgoing. That, and I have high standards for who I can hold a conversation with.”

David turned away in embarrassment. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I know.”

David watched the ring as she idly twisted around her finger. “So, that really helps you keep to yourself?”

She stopped and stared at it again as her eyes glazed over and her soul seemed to leave the room. “A little. But it would be useless if I took back my maiden name. I think there’s more to it than that, though. I guess I was so intent on running off that I never got closure from losing what little companionship he gave me.” Her eyes came back into focus and she clinched the ring in her fist. “Maybe it’s time to stop living in the past.” She flung the ring across the room and it toppled into a dark corner where David could hear it roll to a stop.

He fidgeted with his wrist comp as he looked at her with wonder. Desperate to keep his mind off the image in its memory banks, he tried to revive the stalled conversation. “What was your maiden name, anyway?”

Her new-found gusto faded as she seemed to deflate under the pressure of what should have been a simple question. She gave him a half-hearted smile. “Maybe when we get out of here.” David pondered on why she would keep her identity so close to the chest, but his thoughts were interrupted when his subdermal audio implant emitted a tone, and his wrist comp displayed a notification.

He let out an underpowered sound of amusement and walked briskly to Dan’s desk, opening the lower drawer to remove a set of glasses and Dan’s bottle of whiskey. As he passed out the glasses, he explained, “On the eastern coast of North America, it is December thirty-first, and less than a minute till midnight.” When he handed the second-to-last glass to Tamsyn, he walked in the reverse direction and began to sloppily fill each one. “We may not have much to celebrate, but we can say goodbye to those not making the journey with us, and hope that this year will be better than the last.”

He filled his own glass, and looked back to his wrist comp to count down the remaining seconds. “Five...Four… Three… Two…”

“One. Happy new year,” he said as he raised his glass. The rest of the group did the same and solemnly downed their drinks. He poured more whiskey into Maria’s glass and she looked at him questioningly. “It’ll help you sleep.” She nodded in understanding and thanked him with a weak smile.

David patted her on the shoulder, hoping she knew that he wasn’t apathetic to her anxiety and fear,. She immediately bundled up her jacket against Dalton’s thigh, and fell asleep after finishing her second drink. Dalton stroked her forehead in a strangely paternal gesture, and David raised an eyebrow at him, but Dalton didn’t make eye contact and leaned back to sleep himself.

David walked over to the portrait of Dan that adorned the wall next to his desk. It was set into a wooden plaque and had a shelf with a small plastic figurine that David assumed was supposed to be a comet. It was an award Dan had received sometime before David had come on, but Dan never explained how he had earned it, or even looked at it as far as David had seen. He finished his drink and set the glass over the figurine, face down, in a sort of tribute.

He turned back towards the rest of them and tried to get a feel for the morale, but they all seemed emotionless and exhausted. “I’ll take first watch and tag someone else in about two hours. You all should get some sleep.”

Without argument, they all found some way to get as comfortable as possible, and one by one, fell asleep. David sat against the hatch that led to the guard’s quarters, and jumped when he realized that he was sitting on something.

It was Tamsyn’s ring. He held it for a moment and looked over at her sleeping form. He was split between admiration and astonishment at how she had identified and cast away the burden of her past. He finally gave in and opened the holographic image on his wrist comp. Staring at the young, beautiful brunette in the hologram, as he had so many times before he came to Akers,he felt no different about it then, than he had the last time he saw its flesh and blood counterpart.

With great effort, he deleted the image and forced himself to confirm. As the image faded away for the last time, he wasn’t filled with the rush of relief he had seen on Tamsyn’s face. He realized that though their burden was similar, she was clinging to her past, while he was really running from his own. What he clung to was a reality in which the events that led him to leave home, had never actually happened, and that someday he would return, nothing having changed.

He powered off his wrist comp and tried to turn his focus elsewhere in the dark and silent room. But, with everyone else asleep, it was only him and his demons.