Tabitha (61 page)

Tabitha came around for a moment,
drifted out, came around again. They’d docked and left the transport behind in
a hangar; the watchers must have brought her onto the monstrous
mothership
looming over the mountain. She was being dragged
down a ribbed white corridor brighter than heaven; one long fleshy ribcage. She
glanced down at glowing cuffs on her wrists; some kind of energy. Tough as
steel. She looked up and saw the stretched black figures escorting her, scaled
and armoured. Gripped with panic, she gasped and struggled against a tentacle
grip around her torso. Something was carrying her; something huge and
monstrous. Her fevered struggling earned her another paralysing shot to the
chest. The white living walls faded from sight again as the dark figures
dragged her on down the corridor.

Tabitha woke again to the sound of alien
voices, sonorous and beautiful. Their words were a mystery. She found herself
imprisoned in a beam of light, bound to the confines of a bright circle on the
silver floor. She stood up in a panic, pressing at the light around her.
It
was a bizarre sensation, like touching a rounded wall that wasn’t there. They’d
taken her belt, her knife, her catsuit. Instead she was wearing something
cream-white and fitted like fibrous skin, blinking all over with tiny lights.
Again she tried to push against the beam of light around her. Tried to hit it,
claw at it. Nothing. Pure resistance. The room around her was some kind of lab;
a towering transparent space with walls like twisting sculpted glass. It was a
silent palace, striking and empty. How could such a beautiful place feel so
terrifying? Tabitha turned in the beam to look around her. The light in the
room was coming from the walls itself, a soft cold daylight, coursing up the
glass cliffs like a pulsing current. When Tabitha’s eyes followed the room
around to the back, she froze and stared. Something was writhing there,
half-hidden in a blackness that covered the back of the room. A gigantic black
mass, flowered and
tentacled
. The blue drooling bloom
at its centre looked big enough to swallow Seven whole. Was it part of the
alien ship? Some of its thick arms were melded with the glassy walls, feeding
pulsing waves of power into the room.

Suddenly the far
door melted open. Tabitha turned to see a tall alien figure emerge from the
white corridor outside. It wore polished steely armour, thinly organic and
elaborate. Two hulking monsters followed in after it, sitting like guard dogs
at the door as it slurped shut. The slender watcher approached Tabitha’s prison
and examined her through its mask, silent and staring like the head of a
sinister statue. It touched a gloved hand to its collar, and the mask broke up
into metal ribbons and disappeared. The face staring at her was the most
beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Tanned, smooth-skinned, with fleshy white
feathers in place of hair. More angelic than alien. It was staring at her with
big bright golden eyes, the same colour as her own. The watcher stooped to
study her more closely. The door squelched open again, and more watchers walked
in to gather round her. They came close and studied her, like a horror in a
bell jar. Tabitha looked up into their huge golden eyes; their tanned skin in
pastel shades. They were tall, naturally elegant; like stretched statues come
to life. Different creatures out of their black scaled armour. She couldn’t
understand their strange words, but their body language spoke volumes. They
were the masters here. A superior race. Tall, cold, distant. When the small
crowd withdrew, Tabitha was left standing before two of them. One was the same
watcher who’d first entered the room. The second was older, more cautious,
dressed in some kind of armoured robe.
It came forward and asked the
first watcher a question. It stepped around Tabitha’s prison to study her,
eyeing her hands, as if she were an artefact in a glass case. Tabitha listened to
a sonorous discussion between them that she couldn’t understand. The first
watcher opened its hand to the second to reveal a small hologram of Tabitha,
rotating there on its palm like a virtual voodoo doll. Tabitha saw lights
twinkling on her shining hologram, blinking in time with the lights on her
bodysuit. The watchers must have been recording her biometrics with it. Every
pulse, every breath. So she was a lab rat again, she told herself. The second
watcher spoke with the first and nodded, waving its hand to give some kind of
go-ahead. The others came closer again, studying Tabitha intently. All of a
sudden the beam of light that imprisoned her moved along the ceiling and pushed
against her, shoving her backwards with an unstoppable power. Tabitha stumbled
and shuffled her feet, trying desperately to push against it. She was a spider
trapped under a moving glass. The beam was edging her closer and closer to the
writhing black mass at the back of the room.

‘Wait! No!’ she
said desperately, clawing at the wall of light in terror. ‘I’ll do whatever you
want!
Please
!’ the figures watched her, following behind. They were
talking, laughing. Tabitha was entertainment; a
freakshow
to feed the monstrosity. She scratched her claws at the smooth engraved floor,
trying to dig her way out from the beam. The watchers burst into strange
laughter at the sight.

‘I’ll kill you!
I’ll fucking kill you!’ she screamed at them, scratching frantically at the
curved wall of light. They were fascinated by her anger, watching her progress
down the room.
Heartcore
pounding, every desperate
thought ran through Tabitha’s head as the black mass loomed closer. All those
writhing arms, oil-black and grasping. That gaping mouth, drooling and pulsing.
It was hungry for her. Tabitha panicked. She could kill herself first. A
piercing dread shook her body as the drooling bloom opened wide for her, and
the beam pushed her close. Yes, she could kill herself. Claw her skull apart.
She just couldn’t get her trembling hands to rise up and do it. Instead she
could only hug herself tight, shaking in terror. The watchers were talking
excitedly, following her down to the end of the glassy room. Suddenly the beam
of light stopped moving. Shivering with fear, Tabitha couldn’t bring herself to
look up at the monstrosity. Her audience was silent, waiting. She just wanted
this to be over. When she finally managed to bring her eyes up on it, the beam
of light vanished. A mess of tentacles snatched her up and stuffed her into its
slimy gaping mouth.

Gasping, yelping,
Tabitha felt herself being squeezed down a claustrophobic throat. She felt a
wild tangle of current in here, a pulsing web of voltage. It was some kind of
brain; a junction for conduits that ran all over the monstrous ship. She felt
all of it, a million connections, racing through her mind from the fleshy
walls. For one fleeting second she felt what the ship felt. Hunger.
Fascination. It wanted her essence coursing through its conduits. Her genes;
her abilities. Her healing. It wanted to feed her power to the hive; to breed
her blood into the whole. Slow-death synthesis. Moist walls of muscle pressed
against her and forced her down the throat. The fleshy press made it impossible
to move her arms from her sides; her claws were redundant against the thick
leathery tissue. Desperate, terrified, coated in a slick mucus, Tabitha
wrestled and struggled frantically against the force of the throat. A big
tentacled
sphincter opened up ahead of her and pulled her
closer. A sudden stench of dead flesh filled her maddening head, carried up
through the giant gut on stinging acid fumes. She was screaming, wriggling
uselessly. Couldn’t breathe in all the hot sticky press. As the throat pushed
her head through the gaping sphincter, Tabitha saw a gushing boil of acid below
in a vast veined stomach. The choking acid fumes blinded her, burned her
nostrils. She coughed and retched with watering eyes; felt her nose running and
itching and stinging at the fumes.

The watchers
heard a muffled sneeze and a sudden crackling bang, and the monstrosity’s
stomach burst open in a gory lightning storm. Reeking acid gushed over the
floor in a caustic tide, and the aliens ran from it in sudden panic. One figure
stumbled and screamed in the flood, gripping its slender legs as the acid melted
flesh and bone. Dazed, Tabitha realised she was still alive. She clawed her way
out half-blind and choking from the sagging dead gut, dropping down to her feet
in the open empty stomach. She slipped and clambered out and ran for the
distant door, yelling at the acid splashes that burned through her suit. The
watchers were pinned to the walls, skirting around the flood of acid that
smoked into the floor. The thick cloying stench of bile and putrefied meat
filled the room; the watchers were yelling and trying to get to safety. Tabitha
just sprinted straight through the acid puddle and felt nothing on her feet,
dodging shrieking white
laserbolts
as she ran for the
door. An armoured watcher ran to bar her way. She leapt at it. The figure
blocked her claws in a fly of sparks and struck Tabitha hard, knocking her
limp. It grabbed her neck and lifted her kicking into the air. It yelled to the
others and squeezed tight, choking her. Tabitha grasped at its strong solid
hands, clawing for breath. Her claws screeched uselessly against its armour.
The hulking black monsters galloped back to block the doorway behind it. No
escape. The watcher shook her like a ragdoll, laughing. Tabitha gasped and
kicked at the angelic figure as it choked her, passing out in its grip. Suddenly
she dropped to the floor, gasping for breath, and the alien strode around her
victoriously. It walked like a ballet dancer, slender and strong. She was short
and deformed by comparison; crawling fearfully into a corner of the room as the
figure paced after her. The other watchers had edged past the acid pool and
crowded in to surround her. Some were aiming guns at her, powering up with a
high-pitched drone. Tabitha whimpered and tried to hide away but her strangler
reached out and grabbed her head. Forced her to look it in the face. With big
bright eyes it searched the emotions in her expression. It pulled at her and
lifted her up again, this time by the front of her bodysuit. Tabitha was
gasping for breath. With a deep hypnotic voice, it asked her a question. She
had no idea of the meaning, but it stared at her curiously as if waiting for an
answer. When she struggled and scratched again the strangler laughed and
punched her hard in the stomach. Tabitha gasped and crumpled limp in its grip;
felt broken inside.

‘Just kill me,’
she coughed weakly, giving up, gasping to get her breath back. ‘Just fucking
kill me.’ The alien reached out with its other hand and took hold of her head.
It began to squeeze, slowly, almost gently. But the pressure was constant, getting
harder. The beautiful creature caught sight of the pain in her eyes, and a
smile played across its lips. It asked her another question. The others
gathered closer behind and made their own comments, laughing. Tabitha felt a
sudden tingling in her hands. Something seeping into her from the strangler’s
skin.

‘Kill me,’
Tabitha gasped, like a prayer, staring into its golden eyes. She was tired of
running, tired of hurting. Tired of fear. ‘Kill me!’ she yelled. She felt her
fingers twitch. Her hands shook for a moment. She felt stings through her palms
then, through her fingers. She screamed as the strangler’s armoured fingertips
pressed sharply into her scalp, and warm silver blood trickled down her temple.
She looked down at the strangler’s big gloved hand, gripping her white
bodysuit. There were tiny silver lines there in the gauntlet, like engravings.
Like fingerprints. She felt the prints in her own hands now. The final piece of
the puzzle. Her left hand shot out to the strangler’s belt; she felt an object
there unfold and react to her new fingerprints. Tabitha pulled the heavy pistol
off the belt, pressed it up against the strangler’s jaw and squeezed the
trigger. A shrieking flash of light. The other watchers screamed and yelled.
Golden blood gushed over Tabitha as they both dropped to the floor. She prised
herself from the strangler’s dead grip and took aim at another watcher in the
sudden confusion. Blew its kneecap apart. The scream was music to her ears as
she tore the belt from the strangler’s body. The others were shouting,
scrambling for her as she ran. Tabitha ducked from a shot cat-fast and opened
fire on them, scattering the crowd behind her. She shot another one down; one
of the few with a gun raised.
Heartcore
glowing, she
took aim on the hulking black monsters running for her. Blew their heads open
with shrieking white shots. Wide-eyed, shocked at herself, Tabitha sprinted for
the door. Suddenly she was free, out of the door, running for her life. White
laserbolts
screamed past her down the corridor, bursting
against the floor and exploding into the walls around her. Tabitha spun and
shot one of the watchers down, and sprinted for the next door. She slammed her
hand down on the door console, springing her claws out to pull at the fleshy wiring
underneath. To her surprise the door opened at just the touch of her hand,
revealing some kind of shadowy control room inside. Not quite the exit she’d
hoped for.

‘Shit,’ she
muttered. A startled watcher turned from its console to look at her. Panicking,
Tabitha fired and dropped it dead. She looked around the room for more figures,
but found herself alone as the door squelched shut behind her. She caught a
glimpse of her own face on the console then; a glowing hologram staring back at
her. A thin gleaming line connected her image to a huge globe across the room,
showing her position on the
mothership
over Florida.
There was a second hologram too, staring from the console beside it. A man’s
face, vague and featureless. A line connected his picture with New York on the
globe. Was he like her then? Another freak the watchers were hunting down?
Suddenly the door melted open behind her. Tabitha ran for a door on the far
side of the room, leaping away from laser shots that exploded the consoles
around her. She ran out into another gleaming white corridor, ribbed and
fleshy. Feathery fronds grew from the walls like lamps, wafting and glowing.
Everything in here felt alive. As she ran she felt the walls
refiltering
the air. Recycling their own light. The whole
ship beyond too, eating its own expended current. A living masterpiece. Even
her own body was feeding off it, that colossal hypnotic power all around her.
She had to focus. She had to find a way out, but where the hell was that? The
ship had looked as big as a city from the outside. Tabitha gasped at the
running footsteps down the corridor, and hid away in an alcove as the watchers
approached. The wall behind her in the alcove burped a squelchy beep as she
backed up breathless against it. Suddenly she was dropping. It was a lift.