Never Underestimate the Ability of the Human Animal to Adapt to Its Environment

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

A body broke the worst of Lily's fall. On her back, on top of this stranger, she stared dazedly skyward. A patch of the starry night showed through the ship's open hatch. Wan illumination glinted off obscure surfaces in the dark cabin. Rolling off the motionless form beneath her, she tried to stand but slipped and fell. Hands and feet squelched into viscous goo coating the ship's interior. An inch of muck covered a springy floor. The rusty scent of blood overwhelmed her. Retching, she put an arm over her nose.


A gurgling, popping sound came from behind Lily. She froze. Sucking and clapping joined the intestinal rumble. Someone in here with her shuffled around. An ascending hum overpowered the quieter noises. The drone preceded a surge of red light which turned her already unearthly environment hellish. She spun round and round while she hugged herself.


The ship's interior was organic. Everything around Lily, from the dash board to the high backed seat situated before the controls, sprouted from the craft like her nose grew from her face. Red light emanated from membranous pustules bubbling the glistening walls.


Discharge wept from the cabin walls and pooled on the floor. Lily pulled a booted foot from the muck. The body she fell on, the entity who pulled her inside, no longer lay beside her. That figure knelt at the dash board. They worked a control panel covered with raised and glowing marks. They trembled. Though they knelt at the far end of the cabin, Lily retreated. She didn't stop until her back suctioned to one of the sticky walls.


The figure that wilted at the dash board was lean and slick with the ship's discharge. A blocky head drooped towards the controls. One of their arms sunk into the panel they manipulated. When they pulled away their hand, loud sucking accompanied its withdrawal. Bracing themselves on the controls, they pushed themselves upright. Tendrils, nerve-like filaments, peeled from the wall above the dash board. The glistening threads reached for the figure as they took a single step backward and collapsed, face-down, onto the floor.


Whoever or whatever pulled Lily aboard convulsed and groaned. A surge of empathy dissolved the terror rooting her to the wall. She rushed to the pilot's side and lowered herself. Pooled discharge squished under her knees. Plunging an arm into the gunk, she hooked her limb under the entity's chest and flipped them onto their back. Shifting her arm under their shoulders, she propped them up.


The entity had a human shape. What Lily mistook for a boxy head and membranous body was actually a helmet connected to a form fitting suit. This might not be an alien at all. Maybe this was a secret military project testing advanced flight technology. If that was true then this pilot was human and maybe badly injured by the crash. Fingers slipped over the helmet at which she pried. The head gear bolted to the suit somehow and wouldn't come off.


The pilot stirred. A gloved hand closed around Lily's wrist. They guided her to the back of their neck. A clasp there fastened the helmet in place. She worked at the mechanism. Clumsy fingers slipped over the lock. With what strength they had left, the pilot helped her. The clasp clicked back. A sharp snap, like the break of dry-rotted wood, made the pilot flinch. Lily sucked in a hissing breath as they drew their shaking arm from behind their head. A gloved hand dangled uselessly from the pilot's wrist. The suit's rubbery material stretched over a large gap where the joint used to connect.


"Oh, my God," Lily whispered and twisted the helmet from the pilot's head, terrified she'd break their neck.


Head gear came free, slapped into the muck and floated at its owner's side. Long, dark hair fanned out from a head too heavy for a weakened neck to support. The pale skinned pilot's masculine features mirrored Lily's. Nose, ears, eyes, and lips were all where she expected them. She thought she cradled a human man in her arms. When he opened his eyes and mouth she saw how wrong she was.


The pilot's eyes were black circles. Pupils eclipsed irises. Belching sounds bubbled from his open mouth. The pointed tips of his canines and eyeteeth peeked from his lips. Lily thought he choked. She started laying him down, but he fought her with his good hand and grabbed her wrist again. Her brought her to his hip where a sphere the size of a peach hung from a utility loop on his suit. The pilot molded her hand to the sphere and pushed it at her. Detaching the device, she held it to the pilot's damaged wrist.


"Will this help you?" Lily gesticulated and over exaggerated her expressions. "You have to show me how it works."


The pilot's severe features twisted.


Crackling filled the chamber. Baring his fangs, the pilot spasmed. The legs of his suit deflated. Lily squeaked and shook the sphere in his face.


"Show me how it works. I can't help you unless you show me how it works!"


The pilot shoved Lily's hand. The rapid withering of his body enfeebled him. Torso and remaining limbs stiffened. Thin lips stretched in a wide oval. He moaned as his right cheek crumpled, mutilating the symmetry of his face. Nose followed. Features pinched inward as though someone attached a string to the inside of his skull and pulled back.


Shrieking, Lily dropped him and the sphere and scooted away until she collided with the ship's curved wall. A final breath crested the pilot's chest from the ooze-covered floor before it too collapsed. All that remained of the man she'd held was an empty suit floating in goo. The first extraterrestrial life on Earth died in her arms ten minutes after he crashed.


The half-sunk sphere next to the deflated suit drew her attention. Aliens must have ultra-advanced healing technology. The sphere might reconstruct him. If she figured out how to work his tech she might save him.


Grimacing at the warm gunk through which she crawled, Lily inched to the sphere. The crinkle of wet rubber had her glancing up. The ship's outer skin stretched back into place. Stars and night sky slowly disappeared.


"Nonononono!" Lily scrambled onto the chair sprouting from the floor and jumped at the shrinking exit. She caught the hatch's lip, but her slick fingers couldn't grip. She slipped and caught herself on the seat. The outer skin settled, sealing her within an alien tomb.


Lily shook so hard she had to grip the back of the chair so she didn't fall off. Shutting her eyes, she inhaled deep through her nose. Breath whistled from her lips when she exhaled. Unbearably humid air pumped through her lungs. A coppery tang lingered on her tongue and at the back of her throat. She couldn't breathe this for long. There were two options: fix the pilot or figure out the ship's controls.


Hundreds of multi-colored symbols glowed on the dash board spread before the pilot's chair. Trial and error at the controls would be her last resort. The sphere seemed more manageable. Once she got it going it probably had automated sequences that would heal the pilot. Alien tech was always automated. All she had to do was find the start button.


Lily clambered down from the chair. The sphere floated close to the pilot's suit. Dark patches in the muck surrounded the garment. The largest patch haloed the neck hole. Strands of dead hair sun-rayed from the suit's limp shoulders. Gagging, she snatched the sphere and cringed onto the seat. Glistening slime trails threaded from the device to the foul pool.


The sphere's metal surface was dinged and scratched. A seam around its middle halved the device. What she judged as the underside was smooth. More seams segmented the upper half like the inside of an orange. She shook it. No rattling. She put it to her ear. No sound.


"Open," Lily commanded to no result. Pressing her lips together, she scratched her head.


The pilot belched their words. They didn't speak English.


Forcing air into her belly, Lily burped, spacing out the gassy eruptions in a conversational patter.


That didn't do anything either.


Ringing a fingertip around the sphere's middle, she traced the seam of one segment all the way to the device's apex. When the pad of her index finger brushed the center point something sharp jabbed her.


"Ow." Lily sucked the tiny puncture. She tasted salt and metal.


The sphere reacted to her blood. It shuddered and whined in her hands. A chime sounded and its segments opened like a flower. A thin stem topped with a teardrop-shaped bulb stuck from the center of the orb's hollow upper half. She aimed the blossomed sphere at what was left of the pilot.


"Fix him."


The sphere did not obey.


"Shit." Lily inspected the device's insides. As she gazed into it, the bulb topped needle emitted a Polaroid flash. She blinked. Green spots ghosted her vision. The bulb flashed again and again, quicker and quicker, until it produced a hypnotic strobe that sucked in her consciousness.


Planets, galaxies, imprinted on her mind's eye. Images, sounds, emotions cycled so fast Lily made no sense of their narrative. Fire. Fear. Sorrow. A woman in red, blade drawn. A companion in white, arrow notched. A pale, monstrous face hovered over hers. Cheekbones and teeth like razors, a black diadem about its head.


An enormous entity devoured these sights and sounds like a black hole sucked in light. Something utterly inhuman stole all she knew and all she was in a sucking tide and made her...


One.


Lily tore her gaze from the sphere. Sense of self flooded back. Warm wetness tickled her ears and trickled under her nose. A hand swiped across her upper lip. Inky darkness stained the side of her finger. The sphere's bulb darkened and would not reactivate.


"Piece of crap." Lily tossed the thing over her shoulder.


Emergency response arrival shouldn't take long, but breathing became more difficult by the moment. Whoever happened upon the ship first wouldn't extract her before she suffocated. She was down to the last resort: pressing a bunch of buttons on the dash board.


As she approached the controls, Lily chewed on a fingernail. Accessing the dash board meant disturbing the floating suit and surrounding...debris. Shoulders straightened and chin jutted out. As respectfully as she was able, she nudged the suit out of the way and avoided the dark patches of hair and disintegrated alien.


The dash board burgeoned from the ship's wall. Controls curved around the pilot's chair, the raised glyphs, switches and levers in easy reach. Lily hovered a hand over the controls. A blue symbol caught her eye. She curled and uncurled her fingers, swallowed then pressed the glyph.


Nothing happened.


Lily blew out a gusty snarl. "Do I have to bleed on everything?"


She pounded more and more useless symbols then noticed the shafts.


Two holes gaped on either side of the dash board. Before he collapsed, the pilot pulled his arm from one of these openings. She vee'd her arms. The holes were spaced for the comfortable insertion of both hands. She wriggled her fingers over them.


On a whispered count of three, Lily braced herself then plunged her fists into the dash board. A few inches down the canals, clenched hands squished into slimy, fibrous matter.


"Ugh." Lily forced her arms deeper, stretching her fingers for a handle or button.


Forearm deep in extraterrestrial pumpkin guts, something finally brushed Lily's grasping hands. Whatever she touched tickled her skin and placed sucking kisses on her palms. The strange sensation spread. Hundreds of tiny mouths nuzzled her flesh. She yanked out her arms. Shiny strands of the ship's innards came with them. Nerve fibers stuck to her skin. She flapped her hands, but they clung to her no matter how furiously she shook.


Grabbing hold of the tendrils by the bunch, Lily yanked. Where they latched, her skin tented and burned. Mouth opened in a silent shriek. The slick fibers burrowed into her. They snaked beneath her skin. Sound ripped up her throat and she screamed and screamed.


The ship responded.


Every light pustule in the cabin flared with blinding radiance. The craft shuddered. The convulsion sent Lily into the pilot's chair. Whimpering, she pulled at the writhing cords tethering her to the controls. Several ripped free in tiny sprays of blood only to shoot back at their host.


"Get off me!" Lily tried to stand, but she stuck to the chair. More tendrils rooted her to the seat. She was a human component in a crippled ship that fed off her terror.


Holographic screens flickered on above the dash board; blue monochromatic images of the outside world. Fibers laced beneath Lily's skin burned white hot. Bright circuitry traced her vision. A blinding network overlaid her sight. Mouth stretched wide. Chapped skin on her lips opened in stinging cracks. She gasped. She had to get up, had to get the ship out of her and she had to get out of it.


Jaws clenched, Lily wrenched herself from the chair. Nerve connections tugged at her clothes, at her bare legs and arms and back. Two thicker tendrils shot from the dash board. They struck her chest and knocked the wind from her. The larger tentacles bored into her. They drilled her to the pilot's seat. When she screamed again, the ship convulsed. Walls pulsed and rippled. They contracted as stinking fluid poured from blossoming fissures in the interior walls. In seconds, warm stew lapped her belly.


I'm going to drown, Lily thought. Tears shimmered the bright graphics seared onto her retinas. I'm going to die.


Closing her eyes, Lily blacked out her alien surroundings and the overwhelming sensory information the ship fed her optic nerves. Fluid reached her craning chin. Drawing in all the air she could, she held her breath as the ship's discharge closed over her head.


Submerged in liquid warmth, Lily's heart thudded and her chest tightened. Lungs and throat burned. Inevitably, her lips parted. Thick fluid filled her mouth. She choked, thrashed in her chair. The ship reacted to her distress. It lurched and rocked. Connections chaining her to the controls sent molten fire surging through her circulatory system. A single thought shrieked in her mind before her brain shorted out.


I want to go home!

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net