Elvis groaned, responding to her touch. His eyes flickered. Her eyes widened. She was so excited. Did he know what had happened? Did he have any conscious awareness of what he’d undergone? Or was he experiencing something akin to waking from a general anesthetic?
Elvis tried to speak, but his voice was croaky.
Bower helped him sit up, propping him against the wall. Coarse stubble covered his cheeks, his upper lip and chin, marring his usually impeccable image. His sideburns looked shabby.
Bower gave him a sip of water.
“What the hell happened?” Elvis managed.
Bower simply smiled. Something in her eyes seemed to trigger the realization and his hands shot out in front of him.
“Wh- How?”
Elvis turned both hands over. The look on his face was one of awe. He was clearly fascinated by his new left arm and hand. Gently, he ran his right hand over the fingers on his left hand, around his wrist and worked slowly up toward his elbow before moving around to his upper arm and bicep.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel… fine, just a little weak.”
“No pain?”
“None.”
Bower had tears in her eyes.
“How did you?” he asked.
“Not me,” Bower replied. “The creature. Somehow, it rebuilt your arm.”
“But why? What happened?”
“I shot Adan,” Bower replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “I guess the alien approved.”
Elvis laughed. He went to get up but fell back against the wall. His head rolled back. He looked exhausted.
“Does it feel any different?” she asked.
Elvis thought about the question for a moment before replying, “No. It just looks so… child-like.”
Bower smiled, saying, “I suspect with time and a bit of exercise, you’ll be fine.”
“But if it… then why Bosco? Why kill Bosco?”
“I don’t know. The creature must have felt threatened, perhaps scared. If I’d been stranded on an alien planet and they corralled me into some dark, musty prison and spoiled for a fight, I’d be terrified too.”
“You think it’s scared?” Elvis seemed perplexed by the concept that an alien could feel fear.
“We’ve seen too many movies,” Bower continued. “Too many movies with badass aliens that have no remorse. In Hollywood, aliens have acid for blood, or they fly spaceships with ray guns we cannot hope to match. They transform themselves into huge, terrifying beasts. And they can only be beaten by some downcast, reject of a hero, and only after an epic struggle. It seems reality would beg to differ.”
“But… but that thing tore him apart.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Bower replied. “I’ve been able to observe the alien in a number of different settings, and I think we’ve got our wires crossed. What we think of as ‘The Alien’ is probably nothing more than a Hummer or a tank from its perspective. The alien itself seems more like a hive of bees. I guess there’s a queen in there somewhere, but those thrashing tentacles are a diversion. The real creature is in that swarm, or perhaps is the swarm itself.”
Elvis was silent.
“It spoke to me.”
“It did?” Elvis asked, surprised.
“Yes, but not coherently. It repeated my own words back at me, but they were appropriate, they made sense. I’m not sure how, but it spoke, probably not using anything even remotely familiar to us, not using vocal chords. Perhaps it was like an amplifier and a speaker, but it was mimicry. It never said anything I hadn’t said first.”
Elvis shifted his weight, stretching his muscles.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Bower said.
Elvis waited for her to continue.
“Why didn’t they shoot?”
“The rebels?” he asked.
“Yeah. I mean, I’d just shot General Adan. They had me dead to rights. There were so many of them, they all had rifles. Why didn’t they shoot? They could have shot us like fish in a barrel. Why didn’t they kill us?”
“You have to remember who you’re dealing with,” Elvis began. “These aren’t professional soldiers. They’re thugs. And General Adan ain’t no general. He’s an egomaniac. Our closest equivalent would be a mobster, someone like Al Capone. Only Adan is worse. Warlords surround themselves with mythos.
“Up on the tableland, we had one of the outlying chiefs tell his troops he was bulletproof. To them, he was a god. In the same way, Adan would have spent years cultivating a loyal following, building a cult around his personality. Those rebel soldiers were never trained to think for themselves. They were trained to blindly follow orders.”
“So no one told them to shoot?” Bower asked.
“Maybe. Who knows? The shock of seeing their glorious, invincible leader struck down would have shattered their world, perhaps only for that instant, but it was enough for them to leave us to the monster.
“It’s the African big-man syndrome. They demand absolute loyalty. They talk big. There’s a strict hierarchy. Once you shot Adan, there was no one in a position to say, fire. Remember, most of these so-called soldiers were kids or teens when they were recruited into this Mafiosi. There’s no honor, there’s no dedication, not in the way we think of it. The top brass are motivated by ideology, but the rank and file follow whoever feeds them.”
Bower sipped at the water in the jug. She offered some to Elvis. He forced himself to sit up and gulped down the water, emptying the jug.
“Where is it?” he asked, wiping his mouth. “The alien, where did it go?”
“I don’t know,” Bower replied.
“I bet the alien wants to get out of here as badly as we do… I think it helped us so we would help it escape.”
Elvis was stiff as he moved, swinging his legs around slowly so he could stand.
“Whoa, cowboy. You’re not going anywhere,” Bower cried, putting her hands out and keeping him seated on the side of the shredded mattress. “And as for your theory, I’m not sure we should be striking up an alliance just yet. We know nothing about this creature and its motives.”
“It’s trapped,” Elvis replied. “Just like us. We both need to escape.”
“We need to be careful, Elvis. We can’t read our own emotions into those of an alien intelligence.”
“I’ve got to see it,” Elvis said. “That thing saved my life. It didn’t have to, but it did, that means something. Please, help me stand.”
Bower helped him to his feet. His knees were weak. It seemed to take all his strength not to fall back to the mattress. Bower put his right arm over her shoulder and took some of his weight.
Thin strands of light seeped through the cracks in the barricaded windows. Dark shadows spread across the floor.
There was no movement.
Together, they struggled forward. Elvis shuffled his feet as he walked.
Bower heard a noise from the far end of the floor. They hobbled on and found the alien in the kitchenette opening out onto the factory. The creature was examining the drawers Bower had been through the day before.
The alien stopped what it was doing as they approached. Its tentacles froze and for the first time Bower saw some recognition of their presence in its actions. The core of the hybrid creature pulsated with a rhythm that reminded her of a cardiovascular system, but she understood that what looked like a rippling, undulating surface was actually a swarm of individual creatures.
“It’s retracing my steps,” Bower whispered.
“It wants to escape,” Elvis replied.
The tentacles continued sweeping over the drawers and cupboards, touching the counter and the kitchen sink.
Elvis urged Bower on, edging closer, moving to within a few feet.
The tentacles closest to them stiffened into razor-sharp spikes.