“I promise, I won’t tell anyone. Please--please, you have to believe me. Do whatever you have to do to me. I promise, I’ll take it; I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ll do anything that you want me to do. Just let me walk out of here when it’s over. I have a mama, you understand, and she can’t get around like she used to. She can’t work. She can’t hold a job. She can’t even drive. My mom needs me. I still love her though: I love her so much. I promise; please, you have to believe me; I won’t say anything. PLEASE!”
Johnny winced mildly as the speakers distorted Host 5054’s voice into a cutting wail. He shot down the volume, turning from the monitor with the bulky form of an apparently mother-loving meth junkie in a steel and concrete cell to a homeless woman in a similar situation. Number 5053’s violent sobs and occasional vomiting was equally annoying as ‘54, so she was skipped over as soon as he had recorded the time and presence of the small, tentacled body discarded on the floor.
Mike’s voice came in on the intercom. “So, how’s your side coming along.”
Johnny liked Mike: Mike knew that he had gotten the cleaner of their two jobs, and made an effort not to remind Johnny of that fact. Johnny cleared his throat and said, “Monitor One and Two are giving me nothing but normal results. Host 5053 was released from procreation five minutes after the facehugger latched on to her, the average.”
“What about Monitor three?”
“Your turn will be up soon.”
There was a moment of silence. Host 5054 filled in the gap, seeming to ascend in intensity to make up for his crippled volume, “You don’t understand. You must not understand. SHE NEEDS ME! My Mama needs me! She’ll die, do you understand, she will die! My Mama!”
Johnny’s subjects were the trash of society; junkies, the homeless, death row inmates who ended up with a fake death certificate rather than a lethal injection: people with no bonds to others who might ask where they are. He didn’t make his business to know who the people he worked on were: it was easier that way. But Johnny had seen Subject 5054’s face in the paper with big, bold letters marked above it, Meth Addict Kills His Mother.
Mike spoke again, “So how does it feel to be a married man?”
“Nice, actually. Christie really loved the Grand Canyon; I want to go back someday.”
“Why not soon? You’ve been working here ten years straight. You know you need a break, and honeymooning a day or two at the Grand Canyon doesn’t cut it.”
“How do you think I paid for that? Sitting on my couch, watching TV?”
“Don’t give me that. We both know you’re loaded.”
“Hold on. It looks like we’re getting something on Monitor Two.” Subject 5053 was screaming mutely her cheeks flushed red and limbs flailing about her. It wouldn’t be long now.
Host 5054’s voice cut in again, a whisper, “Please. You don’t understand. It’s not for me, it’s for my mama. I promise; you have to believe me.”
The resident of the cell on Monitor Two gave one last shriek as the chest of her blue hospital gown burst along with her innards, spraying the gray walls with red. A slimy head pushed out of the wreckage of her rib cage; it hissed, looking around.
“Looks we’re done rinsing; gotta repeat”, Johnny muttered as he pressed a quick series of buttons into the machine in front of him. He saw the desired effect on Monitor One, a facehugger squealing as it fell from a hatch in the ceiling; a thick, blue liquid (a sort of nutritious preservative meant to keep it alive and functional for years at a time) splattering around it
Host 5054 backed away from the creature, mouthing, “No . . . you don’t understand . . . please . . .”, a trembling arm the only thing between him and death. There might as well have been nothing.
Johnny, no matter how many times he witnessed the feat, could never understand how something as small and oddly shaped as a facehugger could leap so high and so accurately; they always did though. It crouched, as far as it could crouch without legs, pushed off the floor, hurled across the room and past Subject 5054’s outstretched arm, slammed into his head and gave him its lethal kiss. He sprawled to the floor, where he stayed, writhing. He tried to claw the thing off: it showed no signs of caring.
Johnny scribbled down the time and subject’s number onto a small slip of paper. He leaned towards the intercom, saying in his most professional voice, “Both hosts are done. 5053 burst at 5:07pm, twenty seven seconds towards 5:08. The process started with 5054 fifteen seconds after.”
“What’s going on on Monitor Three?”, Mike asked. Johnny scowled: that was exactly the question that he didn’t want to be asked. Mike guessed from his silence. “Time to call the boss?”
“Yea”, Johnny grumbled, picking at the Lexcorp logo on his uniform.
. . .
Lex Luthor, easily one of the richest one and most powerful criminals to ever live, walked into the office at 5:45 on the dot. He squinted at Johnny, then marched towards him.
Boss or no boss, he despised Luthor. Ten years on the job and seeing him two or three times a day, he still hadn’t managed to scrunge up the least bit of professional courtesy. Johnny might have mumbled something under his breath at his employer’s approach if he wasn’t paid so handsomely.
Johnny stood up and off to the side, ignoring the prick in his numb foot, allowing Lex Luthor to slide into Johnny’s chair as if he owned it (Which he technically did, but that wasn’t the point). He leaned towards Monitor Three, lips curling into what might have been considered a smile on any other face.
There was a xenomorph walking on the screen: Subject 5052. It had long since eaten the body of Host 5052, but there was still blood on the concrete; it colored the alien’s footprints as it paced the space of its cell. Occasionally it would scratch at the walls or floor, but not often; and even when it did, it seemed to know the futility of breaking them.
“What number subject is this” Luthor asked. His voice was like a whip.
“Five thousand and fifty two” Johnny said. The last part came out despite himself; “Sir.”
“Have we ever had one this shade of purple?” His eyes were gleaming.
Johnny and Mike had found a correlation between the effects of genetic modification and the purple hue of the xenomorph’s skin a couple years ago. Luthor had been obsessed with it ever since. Johnny decided to tell him what he wanted to hear: “This is the deepest shade we’ve had yet. Sir.”
“And this is a queen, correct?” Now his eyes were gleaming in a different kind of way.
Johnny wanted to yell at him in annoyance: Of course it’s a queen! Only queens can reproduce, so they are the only type of facehugger that we keep in stock! If we didn’t know that much, we wouldn’t have made this much progress! How stupid do you think we are? Instead, he responded with a “Yes, sir.”
Luthor went back to smiling. “The eggs are probably fully developed by now.” He leaned toward the intercom “Prepare trial one.”
“Yes sir”. Mike had a way of saying the words without losing his dignity. There was the rustle of fingers on a keyboard, then, maybe through some sort of trap door, a pig ascended in one corner of Monitor Three, a goat rosing in the opposite. Both were chained in place by a hind leg to the floor. Both shivered and screamed when they saw the glistening, purple xenomorph between them. It, for its part, froze in its bloody footsteps and looked back and forth, snarling.
“Connect me to the room” Luthor casually commanded. More typing from the other end of the intercom. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Subject 5052, kill the pig.”
The words echoed on Monitor Three a moment later. The xenomorph pounced like a tiger or owl, laying one hand against the side of the head and crushing the swine’s head against a wall. The goat’s flailing became even wilder as the alien turned towards it.
“Trial one complete, sir” Mike said.
Luthor continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “Subject 5052, don’t kill the goat. And don’t eat the pig.”
It stood still. No sign of life was present other than the rise and fall of its armored chest.
“Trial two complete.”
“Prepare the next one”, came Luthor’s order.
“Roger.” A blue gas drifted into the room. It was designed to intensify feelings of hunger, simulating, in seconds, what it must feel like to go weeks without food. The original purpose of the stuff was to mentally prepare units of the military or explorers to live in barren environments for extended periods of time. Johnny had no idea how Luthor got his hands on it.
Subject 5053 growled at the stuff, swiping at it with spiny hands and backing up to farthest side of the cell. It didn’t matter. The blue drug hit, and it hit hard. The xenomorph crumpled to all fours, its entrails must have felt as if they were fire. Its inner jaws extended and screamed in agony, a string of saliva hanging from between thick teeth. One long arm reached for the goat-
“Subject 5052. You’re orders still stand. Do not eat or kill either the pig or goat.” The arm still reached, only inches from precious meat. “Subject 5052, will you ever leave that room? How many times will you make the wrong choice?”
The xenomorph screamed again, this time in frustration, as it retracted its arm. It fought to pull its body back, clutching its own head so hard with repressed need that acidic blood sizzled on its thin fingers.
There was a moment of silence. “We did it!” Johnny exclaimed. “We completed the experiment! After ten years we finally, finally, have-“
“Commence trial four” Luthor said into the intercom.
Johnny was shaken out of his excitement. “What trial four?” he asked.
Luthor sighed in annoyance at having to answer the question. “I decided to administer a fourth trial when we got this far.”
Johnny suppressed half a dozen exclamations that would have gotten him fired, if not killed.
The blue gas was vacuumed into the ceiling as fresh air filled the room. The goat, chains and all, sunk back into the floor as something new rose up from it. The thing was a facehugger egg.
“Crush the egg.” Luthor’s voice once again filled the cell. “Subject 5052, crush the egg.”
It raised one hand, prepared to bring it down and kill its kin. Then the muscle slacked, its arm fell and Subject 5052 backed away.
Luthor sighed into the intercom. “You were about to leave, 5052. You could have gotten away from this. Oh well; maybe next time.” The room was filled with a different kind of gas, this one invisible and paralyzing. There was hardly a breath before the thing fell to the floor, limp.
“Remove the eggs and send them into storage. Then dissect the body.” Luthor said this to Johny as if he hadn’t been doing it for the last ten years. As Luthor left, Johnny grimaced and snapped a rubber glove over his hand, preparing for the worst part of his job.
Lex Luthor allowed himself another grin as he walked up the stairs. It wouldn’t be long now, maybe a few dozen more subjects. Then they would be ready. Those xenomorphs were make him a lot of money.
Luthor grimaced when he reached the top of the stairs, “Damnit.”
“Hello Lex”, Superman said.
Thanks for reading. From now on I'll try to get a new chapter out every Saturday. Any comments, critiques, complaints or any other feedback will be much appreciated.
Log in to comment