Warning: Graphic Violence/Illness

The farmer bolted upright, back stiff and brain a jumble as he tried to take in his surroundings. After a minute of processing, he realized that he was jostling along with the bumps in the road in the passenger seat of his truck.

Behind the wheel sat Shaun, knuckles tight on the peeling leather as she leaned too far forward so she could watch the road. Darkness blanketed the world outside the cabin windows – whether still dark or newly dark Theodore couldn't tell.

Between them, Tuff had both front paws firmly planted on the center consul as she steadily watched the small cones of light from the truck headlights that lit the dark country highway ahead them.

Theodore barely registered the long pink cords that sprouted from Tuff's forehead and curved backwards over the fur of her back before he noticed too Shaun's drawn determination not to look.

He opened mouth to speak, paused, closed it again. He twisted in his seat to look back, saw Cherry sleeping soundly next to Ruff, who cradled the child with one of her new cord-like appendages, the rest of which fanned out from the collie's spine across the seats.

Theodore turned back around to face the front.

He sat for a minute, before starting and patting his chest and stomach in confusion. He poked a finger through the still-bloody bullet holes in his shirt, but felt nothing but smooth, unbroken skin and the rough curls of his body hair underneath.

"I gave Cherry something to help her sleep before I carried her out here, so she wouldn't have to see any of that," Shaun said suddenly, her voice clear and calm in the quiet of the truck cabin. "But by God Almighty, Theodore, what have you gotten us into? Rifles? Men in body armor? What happened while I was away this time?"

"Oh," she said, cutting him off before he could reply, "and let's not forget the fact that both our dogs are aliens now." 

Tuff whined lightly and tried to nuzzle her head under Theodore's arm, but her new...antenna? made her skull much bulkier than before. Theodore patted the top of her head awkwardly, noting the smooth, warm texture of the new growths.

"I...Shaun, honey, I don't know what I can tell you. I'm as surprised as you are." The farmer's voice was coarse, and he felt the harsh rasp of thirst in his throat. He saw an old bottled water in the footwell, grabbed and drained it all in one go as silence filled the space between him and his wife.

"You know what Cherry said? When I was putting her in the car with the dogs and she woke up for a minute?" Shaun asked after a moment.

"No, I don't know."

Shaun put on her blinker, pulling around and passing the first car they had come across on the lonely road.

"She took one goddam look at the dogs' tentacles and she said "Lyly" before falling back asleep. Lyly."

Theodore started, frowning as he looked at Tuff. What had made Cherry think of Lyly? The...color? Was it the color? He squinted, remembering finally the strange pink hair his guest had had at the beginning. He had almost forgotten, after seeing her with brown hair for a few months.

"Where are we going?" Theodore asked finally, having nothing to say to follow up Shaun's statement.

"Well, you'd think Tuff here were part pointer dog with how much she keeps trying to direct me. But I think I know. I think we're going to Lincoln. To Lyly."

Theodore fell back against the seat, letting out a puff of air. His head swam as exhaustion pulled at him, and his eyes drifted closed on their own accord.

He woke, hazily, to find that they were parked outside of Ol' Gerta's boarding house, and that she and Shaun were talking on the porch emphatically. Next to him, Tuff whined, tail wagging low as she stood at attention facing away from them, toward downtown. Gerta was shaking her head, and Shaun patted her shoulder lightly.

"Daddy? Why are we in the city?" a small sleepy voice asked from behind him, but before he could answer the welcoming respite of unconsciousness pulled him back in again.

The third time he awoke, he found himself stretched out on a rough cloth couch with a stiff blanket laid out over him. He didn't recognize the room he was in as he slowly sat up. Dizzy with exhaustion, he cradled his forehead in his hands when the sound of voices outside the darkened room caught his attention.

He stood, still wobbly as he made his way to the door. He felt like he hadn't slept or eaten in years, as if he'd been hollowed out from the inside. His left hand gripped the front of his ruined shirt as his other fumbled for the doorknob.

He opened the thin door and stepped out into a brightly light office space. His head pounded with dehydration, and he took a minute to look around the room before the sound of Shaun's voice directed him to the far end of the room.

She was standing with Cherry in her arms, talking to a well-dressed African-American man who looked to be in his mid-thirties. As Theodore drew closer, he noticed that Lyly stood beside him, with Ruff and Tuff sitting quietly at her sides.

"That's about all I can tell you, Mr. O'Lane. We don't know much about why we were targeted, and we certainly don't know what happened to our dogs," Shaun said. She looked over as Theodore approached, and Cherry put out her arms to be transferred to his. Theodore tucked his daughter into his chest, convinced she weighed several hundred pounds at the moment.

"Ah," the man said, "You must be Mr. McComb." He stuck out a hand, and Theodore shifted Cherry's weight to shake it. "Lyly and your Mrs. have just told me all about you."

"And you are...?" Theodore asked, too tired to do more than offer a weak wave to answer Lyly's expectant smile as she stood by the dogs.

"Randal O'Lane. I'm the agent in charge of Lyly's case, and we just flew in a few hours ago after a call-in tip located her."

Theodore's eyebrows shot up. "So you're with her family?" he asked, thinking back to the strange condition he had found her in. Maybe this wasn't for the best – he darted a look at Lyly, who was watching him closely with her customary silent stare.

"Her family will be coming in the next day or so – there were some complications getting the mother on an airplane right now, so I went ahead to verify if this is, indeed, Emma Thompson. Although," he paused, sighing, "I'm not so sure it would be good for the family to meet her just yet."

"You seem to be taking all this rather well for this to be a simple missing persons' case, Mr. O'Lane," Theodore said, eyes drifting over to his two dogs, who, in the bright lights of the office, were almost comically disturbing to look at.

Lyly beamed back at him, letting one hand fall to each dog's head. "Nest!" she said proudly.

"As do you, sir," O'Lane said causally, with a look to Lyly, and Theodore huffed a dry laugh. Lyly's brow furrowed slightly.

O'Lane sighed. "Truth is, we've seen worse in the years we've been tracking the group that attacked you," he admitted, tucking his hands into his front pocket. "And on that note, we'll send a team over to your house to pick up the bodies," he said, waving over a woman in a suit.

"Oh, there's no need for that," Shaun interrupted, raising a shy hand into a small wave. Randal looked at her with eyebrows raised.

"I...well, I had a feeling we'd end up in the thick of things, so I brought them along. The," her eyes slipped to her child, who was watching everything with wide, scared eyes, "B-O-D-I-E-S are in the truck bed, under the tarp," she explained, spelling it out with a weak smile.

A pregnant silence fell over the group as the agents looked over at the woman who had, apparently, dragged her injured husband out of the house, packed up her mutant dogs and sleeping daughter, and dumped three adult bodies into her truck bed before driving for hours into the city, and somehow stood--still calm and collected--in front of them.

"...Ok," O'Lane said after a prolonged hesitation, "Mrs. McComb, would you mind leading us to your vehicle?" he asked, and he, Shaun, and two agents in suits headed for the elevator.

Cherry began to squirm, and Theodore set her down with a relieved sigh. When he straightened back up, he saw that Lyly now stood right in front of him, a determined expression creasing her face. She held out a finger, pointing into the middle of his torso where the tears in his shirt were.

"Nest," she said with emphasis, a wide smile blossoming across her face.

~Part II~

Takeda blinked as he faced off with two familiar figures, utterly at loss for words.

He had gotten the call just as he was easing himself down to bed, and learned that a pair of individuals matching the description he had provided had stormed into the precinct office.

The officer on the phone seemed unsure what to do, after, apparently, the taller of the two men had slammed his hands on the desk and demanded to talk to "that cop with tha accent that don't match 'is face," a declaration which was followed by a scathing look from the other man and an aggrieved "Fukkin' hell, Larry."

Now they sat across from him, cuffed to the table, as he studied the faces that had eluded him all these months.

He wondered, idly, how Randal's day was going over in Nebraska.

"We want amnesty, y'hear? Complete amnesty. That's 'ow this works, yeah?" the tall one, Larry, said with curved brows. Sweat beaded his forehead and upper lip, and he repeatedly tried to reach for his jaw, a motion that was stymied by the metal restraints that kept both of his hands close to the table in front of him.

The other man, Gary, met Officer Takeda's eyes evenly. He seemed calm, much calmer than Larry, but the look in his eyes was...off. They were scared, much more scared than he had seen them even during the shootout.

"We know you aren't our friend," Gary said, his voice and breathing labored. "But shit's going down with our employers and we want out of it."

"So you come to the cops?" Takeda asked, speaking for the first time since he had entered the room. He spread his hands across the cool surface of the table.

Gary raised his arms as far as the cuffs would let him, palms angled upward. "You don't know the kind of power they have. We saw the Feds come sniffing around, and figured we could offer our services in exchange for some protection."

"And amnesty, dammit!" Larry added, twisting his head from side to side as he strained to look around the room. His coloring was off, too, Takeda noticed, the pale skin he remembered now ashy and waxen.

"Yes, Larry, they understood that from the first forty times you said it," Gary growled, more baritone to his already deep voice. The open palms clenched into fists as he spoke.

"And just what do you expect me to do? As I understand it, you sold—" Takeda's voice cracked, and he pressed his jaws together "you sold that woman's body to these employers of yours," he said in a quieter tone. "Why shouldn't you meet the same fate?"

"Not just 'er body, chump. Sold 'er whole and alive," Larry said, tapping his feet violently enough to reverberate through his whole body.

"Hold on now—is she—is there a chance she's still alive?" Takeda asked, spine straightening as he sat further forward. If there were, then maybe the tip the Thompson family had received wasn't just some attention-seeker like he had feared.

A brief, nasty smile broke across Larry's face before he bent over, a wet cough shaking his frame. When he sat back upright, his teeth were tinted red with blood.

Gary's exaggerated sigh broke through the room.

"Alive? Hell—maybe," he shrugged, "But you won't want to see what's left of her," he said slowly.

"But still," Larry said, leaning to the side and spitting a red glob onto the floor, "I saved yer life that time, when they put a 'it on ya. Ya owe us."

Officer Takeda's mouth drew back into a firm frown, but before he could answer, Larry's head sank back into his neck, like a little kid about to retch. The man looked over at his partner.

"Gary, shit, Gary I don't feel so good," he said, his voice weak, before he gagged on the blood that spurted up from his throat. He coughed a deep, wracking cough that shook his whole body and sprayed his slowly liquefying insides across the table.

Takeda jumped out of his chair and backpedalled as the man bent over the table, wet, rasping grunts escaping from him as he convulsed. He vomited up a viscous brown lump about the size of a football before going limp, his face splashing down into the pool of blood that coated the table surface. His open eyes stared blankly at Gary as he let out a last, sputtering gag before falling still.

"Oh fuck!" Gary said, yanking on his cuffs for the first time as he tried to scramble away from his dead companion, the weight of those eyes mocking him as Gary's own stomach began to churn. The warm smell of bile and blood coated his sinuses and tongue, and he wondered if he'd ever smell or taste anything else again.

Then the lump on the table began to move.

Long, thin tendrils sprouted from the mass that the dead man had vomited up as it began to lift and drag itself across the metal surface. At each spot it touched, the residual blood diminished as it sucked up what remained on the table.

Takeda went immediately for his weapon, discharging two bullets into the lump as it surged forward toward him. The bullets hit, tearing the lump to pieces as they ripped right through it and embedded themselves in the opposing wall.

The lump collapsed, its pieces slowly stretching toward each other as Takeda went for the keys to release Gary's cuffs from the table. One of his only witnesses had just died, and he sure as hell wasn't about to leave the other one behind.

"Move!" Takeda commanded, managing to free Gary's cuffs and grabbing the man by his shirt. He shoved him toward the door, turning back to watch the lump as it pulled itself back together on the table.

It was moving sluggishly, now, as it finished knitting its pieces back into place. As Gary yanked open the door and Takeda backed his way toward safety, the lump crept its way back to the body, prying open the mouth and shoving itself back in. A single, rough tendril swept the table, picking up the last bits of blood before retracting back into the main body of the creature.

The last sight Takeda had before the door closed was of the trailing tendrils sliding down a dark gullet as the lump retreated into the open maw of the corpse. The unblinking eyes of the dead man watched him as the door swung shut.

Takeda leaned against the door from the outside as he took in two shaking breaths. He turned to the remaining witness, who stood with both hands clamped over his mouth, eyes wild with fear.