Chapter 82: Collect All the Symbiotes Before Anyone Else Gets There
In the endless dark of space, a ship drifted toward Earth like a grain of dust moving through nothing.
Aboard the Life-1.
The crew stood at the viewport and looked out at the lightless universe beyond the glass, something close to awe moving across their faces.
It had a way of doing that to people. Something vast enough made you understand, without being told, how small you actually were.
"Out there it's just black. Nothing but black." A blond middle-aged man spoke to the others behind him, still looking out. "Sometimes when I stare at it I start wondering whether we're really the only living things in all of it."
A hand landed on his shoulder. He turned.
A dark-haired young man was standing behind him. "Griffin. You're overthinking it."
"The universe is full of things. Has to be."
"And besides, haven't we already brought back proof of that? Something that isn't us?"
He nodded toward the rack of glass containers fixed to the wall.
Inside them, masses of fluid in various shapes and colors shifted continuously, pressing against the glass without settling.
Griffin followed his gaze and smiled. "Fair point."
"Their existence alone is enough to put the question to rest. We're not alone."
"Though." He moved closer and studied the containers. "What exactly are they? Carbon-based? Silicon-based? Something else entirely?"
The question pulled the others into the same thought.
A Black woman cut through it before the silence went too long. "Whatever they are, one thing is certain."
"We are going to be famous."
"This is the first time in human history that a living organism has been brought back from a meteorite in deep space. When we land, we're getting everything. Money. Recognition. Our names in every textbook."
The mood in the room shifted visibly. Grins spread across faces.
That was exactly right. Whatever the science said, this voyage had just changed all of their lives.
"To new lives." Griffin raised an unopened water pouch toward the group.
The others followed. "To new lives!"
Laughter filled the cabin.
In a corner they weren't watching, an improperly sealed container was being very slowly turned open from inside. A mass of blue-black material pressed through the gap it had made and slipped out without a sound.
The laughter was still going when the ship entered its designated orbit.
The alert tone brought everyone back. They stopped joking and opened the channel to the Life Foundation.
"Life-1 to Foundation Control."
"Sample collection complete. Returning now."
Control responded immediately, as though they had been waiting at the console.
"Control copies."
"Cleared to return."
"Understood. Initiating atmospheric entry sequence."
"Coordinates: zero-point-four, one-zero-point-three." Griffin fed the coordinates through steadily.
None of them were looking at the ceiling.
A single drop of blue-black fluid fell from it without warning and landed on the dark-haired young man's shoulder.
Before he could react, the fluid moved as though it knew what it was doing. It surged upward and covered his face entirely.
He couldn't breathe.
Then he felt the fluid forcing its way into every opening. Nose, mouth, ears. A consciousness that was not his own rose up inside him and took over before he could resist it.
The blue-black symbiote erupted across his skin.
In the moment before he understood what was happening, his hand had already become a blade. It drove through the Black woman in front of him. His jaws closed around Griffin's head.
The woman beside Griffin felt something hot hit her face.
She turned and saw what was behind her.
She stood frozen for a moment, then lunged for the door control.
Too late.
The symbiote pushed through the door mechanism. It looked down at her from above.
It showed no hesitation.
It bit down.
Blood hit the walls.
The Life-1's return system was not fully automated. Manual input was required at certain stages to ensure correct reentry.
The symbiote looked at the panel. A dense spread of controls it had no framework for reading.
Its expression, already not pleasant to look at, became worse.
It smashed the instrument panel with one strike.
Then it looked at the blue planet through the viewport with fixed, unblinking attention.
It didn't know how to operate the ship. But it understood that whether it did anything or not, the ship was going to fall toward that planet. The landing point would be off from the intended target. Not by a little.
Earth. Malaysia.
The Pursuer moved through the forest, its specialized equipment already active, and looked up at the section of sky where the trajectory was pointing. No pause. It began running through the trees.
The impact shook the air hard enough to feel in the chest. A section of forest in eastern Malaysia roughly one tenth of its total area was leveled in an instant.
Fire moved along the dry undergrowth in every direction.
The Pursuer looked at the fire, which had by now committed to consuming most of the forest, and walked into it without slowing down. Flames went out under its feet. Its pace did not change.
It tore the burning door of the ship open.
Its eyes went to the rack of containers on the wall.
The symbiote that had killed the crew had not survived the heat. The others were in various states of distress from the rising temperature inside the hull. Some had already died.
"Targets located."
"Confirmed surviving count: five." The Pursuer spoke without any inflection.
"Recover all."
"Understood."
No careful handling. It pulled the containers off the rack the direct way and loaded them into the temperature-controlled case on its back.
Away from the heat, the symbiotes showed visible improvement almost immediately.
Recovery complete. The Pursuer turned to leave.
A corpse on the floor opened its eyes.
The colors of a symbiote moved through the whites of those eyes in shifting patterns. The body rose to its feet with the lurching, structural instability of something being moved by something else. The original host was gone. What was driving it was looking for a better one.
The Pursuer's next step stopped mid-air.
It turned its head and looked back.
Their eyes met.
Nothing in the Pursuer's expression changed.
It raised its radio and spoke into it without inflection.
"Correction. Confirmed surviving count: six."
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