Alpha Colony - Chapter 3

The Main Station was a criss-crossing maze of shuttles, passengers, and automated industry. 

Even in the late night hours, there was still a constant stream of foot traffic. It wasn’t packed full with a throng of colonists like it’d be in the hour before factory labor started, but people still had places to be, and new tram cars were arriving and departing by the dozen. Some only had one or two people aboard, but that was no issue. Solar power was cheap and it kept people from loitering. 

Lucas got off the tram, shuffling behind Sara. The station was easy to navigate, with smooth, polished plasticine flooring and clearly marked signposts, but it was still hard to walk fast enough to keep up with her without doing a little half-jog. “You can’t take on a whole army of-” 

“Shh,” she shot over her shoulder. “I need to concentrate. This isn’t easy.” 

“What isn’t eas-”

“Shh!” Sara repeated. 

They navigated through the station, following signs towards the exit. Lucas was distracted by the expressions of the other colonists, watching with extreme paranoia for wrinkled noses or other reactions to the wet stain on his pants or the muck that was clinging to his thighs.

It did get him a few strange looks, but to his relief, people didn’t stop to laugh. It was a small mercy. 

That’s when he noticed what was going on with Sara. Beneath her skin, her arms were rippling, tensing and relaxing like she was flexing them in a rhythm. She was taking short, deep breaths, huffing like she was in the middle of a workout. 

Lucas almost asked her what she was doing, then caught himself. Right. Shh. 

His eyes wandered back to the other passengers. A couple people were staring. One even pointed, though who he was gesturing to, Lucas couldn’t be sure. 

And he was touching his earpiece, and whispering something. 

Lucas got the feeling that whatever the stranger was pointing at, it wasn’t the wet stain around his crotch. 

“Sara,” he said, quietly. 

“Quiet!” she snapped back. 

“No, Sara, really-” he started. The stranger was already reaching into his jacket, pulling out a handheld stun gun. 

There was no room to explain. Bending his legs, Lucas jumped at Sara, intent on tackling her to the ground to get out of the way of the stun gun shot. 

It was like ramming into a statue. She rocked, slightly, and Lucas bounced off her, stumbling back and landing on his ass. 

The stun gun hit her, little needles sticking into the skin of her arm. Sara froze. 

No, Lucas thought. He could still get the needles out, but if he didn’t act fast- 

Sara looked down at the needles, frowned, and pulled them out herself. Looking up at the man who’d shot her, she asked, “Really?” 

He gaped, staring for just long enough for her to crouch, lunge, and send him to the ground with a single punch. 

“I guess they’re going to hit us before we leave, too,” Lucas commented, looking around for other assailants. 

“Shut it. Still concentrating,” Sara shot back, walking over and seizing his arm. She started to pull him forward, grip iron around his arm, and Lucas watched in alarm as the nails on her fingers grew, sharpening to points. 

When they got out of this and she stopped shushing him, Lucas was going to have a lot of questions. For now, he kept his mouth shut, stumbling to keep up as they pushed their way to the exit. 

They got to the exit. A pair of sleek, sliding doors pulled to the side, transitioning them from the relatively bustling station to an open, abandoned Main Street. 

It would have been suspiciously empty, if Lucas didn’t know exactly why everyone was gone. 

Sara released his arms, glancing back at Lucas. Her eyes had gone completely red, from pupil to sclera. “When you hear my shout, be ready to run.” 

He couldn’t help asking one question. “What are you?” 

That got her to smile just a little, tugging at the corner of her lips just a little. “I’m Sara.” 

She stepped out into the street, hands held by her side, projecting her voice. “Hey there, everyone.” 

Who is she talking to? 

Slowly turning, she looked all around the open street. The space around her was wide, and empty. Pavement for forty feet in any direction, then buildings. Presumably there were gunners in place on the roofs of the surrounding buildings, but Lucas couldn’t spot anyone. 

Sara giggled. “You know I can see you, right?” With her sharpened nails, she pointed, with deliberate precision. “I can see you, and you, and- ah, fuck.” 

Lucas saw the red glow, but now where it came from, followed by a blast of raw energy that flashed in his vision for a fraction of a second, but left streaks in his vision for much longer. 

Sara was in the air before the blast could touch her, vaulting more than ten feet up, arcing towards the direction the blast had come. She landed on something, and there was a moment of shimmering strangeness before the camouflage cloak covering the mounted turret was disabled and Lucas could see the energy cannon beneath. 

It was a mining tool, designed to send out pulses of power that would destroy ten feet of stone in a straight tube. If any part of that beam touched you, your body stopped being biology and turned into physics. Jury rigging it to function as a weapon… 

Or, a former weapon, because Sara was currently ripping the power source out of its chassis with one hand and slashing a clawed finger at the gunner. He barely seemed to get nicked, but from the point of contact, his flesh became red and inflamed and he dropped to the ground, groaning and rolling beneath a metal panel. 

With their lanes of fire relatively clear, the other forces had no more compunctions about opening fire. Guns roared. Nothing nonlethal this time, no stun guns, they were firing steel-tipped rounds that struck the turret and left deep dents in the metal. 

Sara was already moving. She lunged towards another empty space, ripped away the camo cloak, and slashed her fingers across the belly of an assailant. His armor was ripped, claws going all the way through, and then he dropped to the ground. 

Blood sprayed from a wound on her arm, and Sara cried out, but she was on the move again. Leaping up, she seized a light pole, used it as a jumping board, and soared so high into the air that she could clear rooftops. 

Over the sound of bullets, Lucas heard a shout, and then saw two figures fly off the roof of a building across the street. One was in a controlled descent, landing gracefully on pavement and continuing to run. The other fell both stories in a heap, landing on their back, a sniper rifle hitting the ground next to them and shattering into component parts from the force of the impact. 

Sara didn’t look like she was fighting. As she weaved around the aim of the security forces, lunging and striking, it didn’t resemble a soldier. It resembled a predator. Lucas was reminded of footage he’d seen of a nature documentary. There was a creature on the planet, a ‘Styllic’, that filled the same evolutionary niche as big cats on earth. 

In the video, he’d watched it take on a dozen smaller apelike creatures, each as big as the styllic itself. They’d found some sort of food, a body that was still fresh or something, and they wanted to defend it. 

The styllic had ripped them apart. It was one of the most terrifying things Lucas had ever seen. Though the ape creatures had an enormous advantage in numbers and strength, they seemed to almost dissolve before the predator’s claws and instincts. It knew just how much force was necessary to get a kill, how to pick targets, how to engage and then run before it could be overwhelmed. 

What scared Lucas the most, though, was the end of the video. With its quarry stolen, and its prey killed, the styllic hadn’t simply started to eat. Instead, it turned, stared right into the camera that was recording it, and waited. 

According to the documentary, it had kept this up until the video drone had been called back an hour later, due to battery life concerns. When they got a new camera out to see what had happened, the Styllic was gone. 

It hadn’t touched the food. 

And now, Lucas was watching another predator operate with the same ruthless, perfect instincts, only instead of apes, she was taking down armed security forces with armor, camouflage, and an arsenal. 

He felt weak in the knees. He wasn’t just in over his head. He was dealing with a person - a thing - who was so far beyond his comprehension of what a human was capable of that it boggled his mind. 

“Lucas!” 

That was his signal, but he wasn’t ready to run. It took a moment to get his body into motion, stumbling out onto the street. “What?” 

She had the power source from the energy cannon in hand. He wasn’t sure when she’d retrieved it. “Time to run! Get to the end of the street, and don’t look back!” 

No time for questions. He ran, as fast as his terrified legs could take him. Sara was doing something behind him, and whatever it was, he expected lethal results. 

Behind him, there was a flash of light, so brilliant that the reflection on the pavement left him dazzled, and it was followed by almost perfect darkness. The moons were dim, and without the city lights, it was completely black. 

Something grabbed him. Arms. “Sara?” 

“Hold on,” she said, groaning slightly. 

She was holding him from behind. “To what?” 

Her tone was annoyed. “I’m not talking to you.” 

He looked over his shoulder. Sara was mostly a silhouette, but he could make out her general shape behind him, outlined against red flares that the few standing security personnel had lit. It cast her in a hellish light, red and black, the details of her humanity all but invisible. 

She whimpered in discomfort, and then there was a ripping sound. Black, leathery wings sprouted from her back, spread wide enough to occlude his view of the street, and then she leapt one last time into the air. 

The batlike wings had to flap hard to give them enough thrust to stay aloft. Sara was panting for breath. They climbed, getting higher over the city, until they were at enough of an altitude that even the highest building in the colony wouldn’t touch them. 

Her wings spread, locked, and their flight turned into a slow, gliding fall. 

“Holy shit!” Lucas screamed. “You can fly?” 

She concentrated on steering them, directing their descent towards a far edge of the colony. Or… not the edge. Past it. Towards the forest. 

“Don’t scream,” she said, loud enough that he could hear her over the wind. “Please.” 

He knew that asking ‘Why’ wouldn’t accomplish much. Shutting his mouth, Lucas waited, wondering what she thought would make him react that way. 

Then, she leaned forward, sending them into a sudden, sharp dive. 

The ground came up, closing on them, fungal trees threatening to crash into them. Lucas bit down on his tongue, struggling to do as he’d been told. She won’t just kill us, she’s got a plan, she’s going to- 

Sara pulled them level, their momentum turned into tremendous horizontal speed. Zooming over the mushroom-capped trees, they weaved, turning from side to side, getting lower, until- 

She closed her wings, pulling them tight, and they dropped beneath the fungal treetops. As quick as they’d closed, she opened them again, pulling in a tight spin to keep from slamming into a heavy trunk. She flapped her wings once, twice, slowing their momentum, bringing them to a gentler cruising speed. 

They went another five hundred meters, slowly dropping, before she landed. She dropped him onto a soft patch of earth, pulled her wings back, and stumbled a few feet away. 

“I…” Lucas started. “That was…” 

“Amazing, I know,” Sara said, a hand on her belly. “Fuck me, I haven’t pushed that hard in a while. Fuck I’m tired. I just… my safe house is just a little ways up. North. It’s covered in a floral bloom, so nobody should be able to spot it from a visual… inspection.” 

Lucas frowned. “Are you alright?” 

“No, I’m not. I got shot twice,” she said, shaking her head. Her eyes had returned to normal, though the white seemed more bloodshot than it had been. “And you’re heavy, and… fuck. Ow, ow, ow.” 

With a brittle, cracking sound, her wings just… fell off, like dry, dead branches falling from a tree. Sara clutched her belly, doubled over, and whimpered. 

Though it was muffled by layers of fabric, Lucas could still make out a low, rumbling, blorchy sound. Sara let out a few soft grunts, and he couldn’t help but stare as the seat of her pants began to swell like a balloon. 

Her face was red, flush with embarrassment, but she still had the energy to look up and glare. “Do you have to watch?” 

“I… um…” Lucas said, looking up at the treetops, his own face pink. “Sorry…” 

A moment later, he heard a thump and looked back down. 

Sara had fallen prone on the ground. She wasn’t moving.