I watched my reflection extend the revolver towards the alien. The hookers rushed to the creature and surrounded it, forming a shield between it and me. As they touched it some of its reactive liquid flesh solidified. Their touch also caused ripples all over it, like pebbles dropped in a dark stream. I’d seen this before. The black liquid on the floor and the cot meant it was injured. Good, I thought. The thing was moving, trying to push its human shield away.
‘Get out the way,’ I ordered tersely. The hookers did not move though they looked terrified. ‘Now!’ I roared. Many of them jumped, a couple of them started crying softly. The tears made me feel like shit. These people were among the lowest on the food chain. The exploited’s exploited and they had nowhere to go but down as they became more and more used up. It was why I’d always preferred the artifice of the sense booths. This didn’t stop me from pulling back the hammer on the revolver, largely an affectation but it was intimidating. More were crying but they did not move; they seemed ready to die for this thing. I wondered if this was some kind of phermonic effect, a form of psychological warfare or mind control that the wounded alien had used to influence the prostitutes.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked softly, though the revolver did not waver. I wanted this bad day over with.
‘Please don’t kill him,’ said one of the prostitutes, a boy whose age I did not want to guess.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘It’s not a bad thing,’ replied one of the other hookers, a slightly older girl. She was not crying, though she looked scared, but her life had probably used up all her tears. She was pretty. The kind of pretty that wouldn’t make her pimp want to put her under a laser to turn her into a sleazier version of whoever that week’s face was and then have her work off her debt for the surgery. She had a bob of black hair, freckles and pretty brown eyes. I looked at her, though the revolver’s smartlink enabled me to keep aiming at the Ninja on the cot.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you think you know, but I’ve seen these things before and they just want to kill humans. It’s doing something to you. I’m not sure what, but whatever it is, it’s not real. I can give you some money but you need to get out of the way.’
‘Have you ever spoken to one before?’ the girl asked. I groaned inwardly. My initial interest was giving way to irritation. To make matters worse, the comms icon on my visual display started winking. The Major was trying to get through.
‘They don’t communicate with humans; all they want to do is kill. Do you understand?’ I told the girl.
‘This one talks,’ the girl said. I was lost for words. I’d never heard of this happening before. Not to the air force’s Space Command first contact team that was initially murdered by the genocidal aliens, nor at any point during the war. I took Rolleston’s call while deciding what to do next. An image of the Major appeared in a small box at one side of my visual display.
‘You’ve found it.’ It was more of a statement than a question.
‘Yes,’ I sub-vocalised.
‘Neutralised it?’ the Major asked.
‘Not yet.’ The digital representation of the Major looked troubled momentarily.
‘Problems?’ he asked.
‘Of a sort.’
‘Of what sort?’ the Major asked, becoming impatient.
‘Collateral,’ I answered. I knew the lack of information would infuriate the Major.
‘Neutralise them as well,’ he ordered.
‘I’m not shooting a sixteen-year-old girl,’ I answered. The prostitutes surrounding the wounded alien were aware that I was having a sub-vocal conversation but their protective encirclement remained firm.
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ the Major growled.
‘If you didn’t want me to do this my way, why bother getting me to do it in the first place? After all, Bran’s here on the ground.’ The Major looked like he was about to issue more orders, probably backed with threats that I would have had to take seriously. Working on the principle that it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission, I thanked the angry-looking Major for his call and broke the link.
I switched my attention back to the girl.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘My real name or what we tell the customers?’ she asked, trying to use bravado to overcome her fear and failing.
‘Whichever.’
‘Morag, Morag McGrath.’ I assumed it was her real name and briefly wondered who would call their child Morag in this day and age.
‘Okay, Morag, let’s hear what it has to say,’ I said.
‘You can’t hear it,’ she said. ‘You don’t have enough flesh.’ Nice, I thought. If the girl was to be believed, a member of an alien race that wanted to wipe out humanity was questioning my humanity. On the other hand, very few of the hookers had any form of cybernetics. They couldn’t afford it, and most of their customers wanted smooth flesh, not hard metal and plastic. I smiled.
‘That’s convenient, Morag. How’s it talking to you and your friends?’ I asked.
‘It’s like a tickle.’ It would seem that Morag was now the spokesperson for both the alien and the rest of the prostitutes. Morag seemed to be thinking about what she was going to say next. ‘Back here,’ she said after some consideration, touching the back of her head.
What the fuck was going on? It was almost like a cult. It had to be exerting control over them. Perhaps they were more susceptible because of their youth. The problem was at any moment Bran was going to turn up and kill everyone.
‘Okay, Morag, you’ve seen the vizzis, yes? Them, the aliens who attack us and are trying to wipe us out, the war we’ve been fighting for the last sixty years, a war for survival, yes?’ She nodded.
‘Well that,’ I said, nodding towards the alien, ‘is one of them. An infiltrator, what we call a Ninja, and it is here to kill someone, and I have to stop it. What it’s doing is called mind control. I’m afraid I’m going to have to move you and get on with it. If you can leave the room, you should. I’ll try not to hurt any of you.’ As one they all wrapped themselves around the wounded alien, causing ripples in its wounded physiology. All except Morag.
‘No,’ Morag said, suddenly sounding more confident. I looked at the human shield and then Morag. Wonderful, I thought to myself.
‘So you’ve been in this thing’s presence for a couple of hours and you’re ready to die for it?’ I asked.
‘It’s hope.’ The girl turned to the alien. ‘No,’ she said, tears beginning to well in her eyes for the first time since I’d entered the room. The young prostitutes began disentangling themselves from the alien lying on the cot. Now all of them were crying. Morag turned to me. ‘It doesn’t understand why you could hurt a member of your own race. It doesn’t understand why we’re treated like this. It doesn’t understand why everyone does not have as much food and safety as everyone else,’ she said through the tears. I didn’t really have an answer. My childhood had been bliss compared to hers and her only way off the Rigs was the draft lottery.
Now I had a clear shot at the alien, I aimed. Once more I caught sight of my distorted burnt features reflected in the black pool of its body. We both looked like monsters. It did not matter if it was talking to the kids, controlling them, I had to kill it, like so many others, to get the Major off my back and return to normality. The fights, the races, the booze and the sense booths, my normality. I lowered my gun.
‘Okay,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Ask it why They fight us.’ Morag seemed to think for a while.