Paphos 1

  Chapter 6

  Inside.

  The door was open, and Carolina was missing. Austin stood at the top, staring down at the space revealed behind the open door. Beige floor tiles, the rest was waiting for him to come closer. Dmitry stood with his arms crossed, waiting to see what Austin would do.

  “I take it you haven’t gone in there yet,” Austin said.

  “No.”

  “Then I’m going inside to look for Carolina,” Austin finally said. He didn’t wait for Dmitry’s response or approval. This was the last place Austin wanted to go, but he had nowhere else to look for her. Austin took a step and carefully made his way down, sliding part of the way until the floor leveled out. He noticed all that dirt tossing had added some much needed friction. As he neared the energy field he was a little worried that it might come on at random, but nothing zapped him. He walked towards the waiting doorway, noticing the stale air coming from inside. A series of beige floor tiles hinted at the size of the underground room. Taking a quick breath he stepped in front of the gaping door, unsure of what to expect. Inside was a weakly lit space filled with strange tables and chairs. The air was warm, and Austin realized the history he was about to make, being one of the first to come inside a building not built by man. But his mind wasn’t on that, his only concern was for Carolina. And though he was looking for her, Austin didn’t see her at first. Her back was to him, and she was so still he thought she was one of the pieces of furniture.

  “Carolina!” he shouted, running inside. She was facing the wall, her head was hunched over a strange looking key panel next to another interior door. She did not turn when he called her. Austin raced across the huge underground room, oblivious to the litter of furniture and papers inside. Carolina opened the second interior door just as Austin reached her. His hand fell on her shoulder, and recoiled. She was burning up.

  “Honey?” he said, spinning her by the shoulders. Her cheeks were bright red, Austin could feel heat coming off of her.

  “Uhnnn…” she moaned, her eyes half open. Suddenly her legs collapsed from under her, Austin held her upright to keep from falling.

  “Medic!” Austin screamed. Carolina began to convulse, she lurched over and vomited. “There there baby girl, it’s okay honey,” Austin said, rubbing her back and feeling her face. He had never seen someone throw up so violently, every muscle in her back rippled and strained with incredible force. “Dmitry!!” Austin screamed again. Carolina could barely stand, doubling over and holding her stomach. Her back and neck tensed fiercely, veins bulged under her skin as she vomited again. This time Austin heard something plop to the ground, large and round and covered in murky liquid. It had come out of Carolina.

  Austin shrieked, he picked up Carolina and jumped back. It squirmed on the ground in front of them, flapping long spider like limbs to get oriented. It was round with transparent flesh, like a jellyfish, with deep set yellow eyes. He didn’t know they were eyes at first, not until enough goo slid away and they were staring at him. And it had come out of Carolina’s mouth. Austin screamed wordlessly.

  The jellyfish creature stood on those long spider legs, protruding longer and longer. With incredible speed it bolted at Austin. Austin held Carolina in one arm and grabbed a long oval chair, knocking it over at the creature. It dodged, moving in rapid bursts, chasing Austin backwards. Austin hugged Carolina close, trying to kick and scare the jellyfish creature away.

  Dmitry entered the room, speechless.

  “Help me!!” Austin yelled, struggling to keep distance between him and the creature. It slowly stalked Austin, cornering him to the wall.

  Dmitry threw a chair at it. He ran forward, waving his arms as you would a wild animal. The creature looked at Austin and Dmitry, both panting and tense, and then it scurried low to the ground towards the door Carolina had opened moments before. It crossed the floor in the blink of an eye and disappeared to the next room. Austin and Dmitry stood panting, their bodies clenched, ready to spring into fight or flight. This was not good. This was very not good. They were not alone, and that changed things. Dmitry glanced at Austin, he looked as shaken as Austin felt.

  “What was that?” Dmitry asked.

  Austin spun when he heard Carolina collapse to the floor. “Dmitry!!”

  Dmitry snapped out of his daze. “Let’s get her topside,” Dmitry said, adding a final glance towards where the creature was.

  Austin raced out of the large lobby room and up the forty meter incline. With Carolina in his arms he flew, his feet taking long strides up the ramp until the fresh air of the forest hit them outside. It took Dmitry another ten seconds to catch up to him.

  “Lay her down,” Dmitry said calmly. Austin fell to a knee and laid her down as gently as he could. Dmitry lowered his ear to her chest and checked her pulse. “She’s breathing, that’s good. Her pulse is weak… her core temperature is way too hot. We need to get her cool.”

  Austin held his hand over his mouth, shutting his eyes as this all dawned on him. Carolina was hurt. They were not alone on Paphos. This was all wrong. He was scared, he had never been so scared in his life. “Please don’t let anything happen to her, please,” he begged Dmitry. He stood there as Dmitry opened Carolina’s coat, removed her boots, and poured water on her chest. Austin kept an eye on the ramp, just to know that the jellyfish creature wasn’t still coming after them.

  “We need to get her back to the quads, we need the medical equipment there,” Dmitry said. In an instant Austin scooped her up and was bounding through the forest. When his arms ached he pushed on. His chest cried out to stop but he ignored it, instead he ran harder. The sun was not even up yet and twice his ankle landed poorly on the uneven ground, but Austin didn’t stop to nurse the pain. Austin ran with her in his arms, virtually unaware of everything else, until the moment he was placing Carolina on the med table in the quadrohuts.

  “I need the medical kit from the shuttle too,” Dmitry said, coming up behind Austin. Austin bolted to the shuttle a hundred meters away. He wouldn’t want to leave Carolina’s side, but there was no one else to do it. The rest of the crew still slept.

  Austin entered the security code and waited agonizingly for the shuttle door to open. He ran inside, for a split second he remembered the cup of water during planet entry with Carolina. The vessel wasn’t terribly large, just large enough to carry the crew from the deep space Orbiter they traveled in. He broke into the equipment closet and retrieved the medical kit, racing back to the quadrohuts with it in tow.

  Carolina now had sensors running over her chest and head, checking her temperature and blood pressure. “Set it down there,” Dmitry ordered Austin motioning with a dry hypodermic injector. He reached into the med kit and shuffled through some liquids until he found a blue one that he wanted.

  “She’s responding to my efforts to reduce the fever,” Dmitry said. “Austin… was that thing inside of her?”

  “Yes,” Austin said. I never should have brought her here, he thought to himself. Austin buried his face in his hands. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “We will both know in a moment,” Dmitry said emotionless. Dmitry raised the hypodermic injector to the light to ensure it filled correctly, and then he shot it inside Carolina’s arm. All Austin heard was an airless puff, it didn’t leave so much as a bruise. Within seconds Carolina’s color came back to her cheeks. Austin placed his hand against her forehead and smiled at Dmitry. She was slightly feverish now but not nearly as warm as before. Just seeing her color come back to normal let Austin breathe a huge sigh of relief.

  “Her body is responding perfectly to the injection, her synthetic antibodies were out of control trying to cope with that….parasite,” Dmitry said. Austin looked up when Dmitry said parasite.

  “Any permanent… damage?” Austin asked, praying there was not.

  “Her body defended itself with a fever, the parasite cou
ldn’t tolerate such high temperatures. Had this gone on any longer she could have suffered brain damage,” Dmitry said reading the diagnostic screen above Carolina. “…but it appears we got her fever down before that happened.”

  Watching Carolina rest, so peacefully now, he felt his confidence slipping away. He could have lost her, a fear he never really knew until today. What if that thing had killed her? Austin shuddered at the thought, knowing it was possible without wanting to think about it. He forgot she was just a young girl sometimes, she often acted so grown up. Her chocolate hair rested innocently on the table, Austin felt weak from head to toe. He didn’t know if he could protect her, not under these circumstances. How did it get inside her in the first place? Where the hell did it come from, Paphos? Austin felt his spirit collapsing. If there were more creatures like that on Paphos, how would he keep her safe?

  “This is incredible. If we can capture that thing—“

  “Capture it?” Austin asked. They stood over his unconscious Carolina. “You want to capture it??”

  “Relax,” Dmitry smiled, realizing how he sounded just now. He set the hypodermic injector down and gave Austin his full attention. “Carolina is recovering perfectly, and I’ll watch her closely until she wakes up, just to make sure everything is okay,” Dmitry said. “But it goes without saying, that creature holds a significant scientific interest.”

  “Not to me,” Austin said suddenly leaving the room. He needed to excuse himself, this was all too much. He walked into the only place he knew he could be alone in, the bathroom, and gripped the plastic sink so hard he thought it might come off from the wall. He smothered a tear that tried to roll down his face. “Oh God,” he said, pacing in the small confines of the bathroom. He loved her so much. He had never seen her in danger before, and it was more than he could take. He had never known a more terrible feeling than when Carolina was hurt. He found himself staring at the wall, looking for an answer. It helped to remind himself that she was going to be okay, but it would help more if he really believed it. Austin looked at himself in the mirror, he looked deep into his own eyes. The moment he did he found a resolve that had been struggling to come through. In the mirror he saw his face, aged in a way he had never seen, covered in a layer of sweat and dirt. He would not let anything else happen to her. He would protect her, even if it killed him. And when he thought it, the look in his eyes revealed he meant it. He walked out of the bathroom and down the hallway to where Dmitry still stood.

  “I’m sorry. How is she?” Austin asked.

  “I’ve checked her three times,” Dmitry said.

  “Is there anything… left behind?” Austin struggled to ask.

  “Left behind?”

  “Yes.”

  Dmitry examined her chart on screen again. “There’s irritation in her esophagus and her spinal column, I imagine it attached itself to her there,” Dmitry said. Watching Austin’s face, Dmitry adjusted his tone a little more gently. “… and that’s all, really, there are no eggs, or larvae, or anything that isn’t completely human.”

  “Thank God,” Austin said.

  Dmitry set his hands on the table. “Austin, we need to study that creature,” Dmitry said.

  Austin nodded, rubbing his forehead with thick fingers. “Yes, I know. We also need to know what it wants inside that building,” Austin added. Maybe knowing would help keep them safe, help keep Carolina safe. Dmitry’s eyes lit up.

  “What it wants?” Dmitry repeated, thinking it for the first time. Dmitry had not considered that the creature was intelligent enough to consciously want something. But of course it was possible, how could he not have thought of it earlier?

  “Carolina hasn’t been herself for awhile. She knew things about this place that she shouldn’t know. I think it was using her…” Austin said. Dmitry nodded. He was disappointed Austin had to suggest it first.

  “It was controlling her, sneaking off, accessing the key panels… Orlean couldn’t figure them out, no way Carolina could have all by herself,” Dmitry said in agreement.

  “This is unprecedented,” Austin said.

  “It needed a host to get inside, and to bypass the security system,” Dmitry went on, his voice deliberate. He was reassembling the last few day’s events in his mind.

  “If we catch it, we should kill it,” Austin said.

  “You must be joking,” Dmitry laughed.

  “I’m not joking. If it can take one of us as a host, it’s too dangerous to keep alive,” Austin said. Carolina still slept peacefully. “Not to mention the possibility there are more of them.”

  Dmitry took a long breath before turning his icy gaze on Austin. “I know you must be upset, but we do not kill the first proof of intelligent alien life that we find. Also I doubt there are more, if Paphos were the native home of any civilization, there would be more than a secret underground facility to show for it. I think the parasite is a stowaway, more or less. All in all, this is a huge opportunity,” Dmitry said.

  Dublin came in the room, rubbing his head like he was sanding a tree. “Jus’ what’s this nonsense you all are keeping me awake with?” he asked.

  “We found an intelligent life form,” Dmitry said.

  Austin’s jaw clenched. “It attacked Carolina, used her as a host.”

  “Bloody hell,” Dublin said. “Is she alright?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was this?” Dublin asked. Sleep deprived or not he was wide awake now.

  “Moments ago, it used Carolina to open the interior door and ran inside the building,” Dmitry said. Dublin leaned against the wall rubbing his head.

  “An’ the door is open, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Austin wetted a cloth and gently washed Carolina’s forehead and cheeks. He was a scientist, and this was the discovery of a lifetime. But it also posed a threat. It invaded Carolina, controlled her, used her… and it almost killed her. Austin rested his hands against the table. He had a duty as a scientist and he would respect that, as long as Carolina was not in any danger. If it came down to one or the other, Dmitry would have to bring pieces of his precious discovery home.

  “We should assume it’s at least as intelligent as we are,” Austin said.

  “Aye, perhaps, but let’s not jump the gun,” Dublin said, unable to believe what he was hearing.

  “Alright, I’m awake too,” Athen yawned, her usually hidden curves on full display in her thin pajamas. She was always so covered in engine grease Austin often forgot she was a woman.

  “Me too,” Helena said grabbing a pack of instant coffee.

  “Guess I may as well be up too,” Orlean added, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. His prosthetic arm was still on the bunk. Sometimes Austin forgot his arm was missing until he saw Orlean without it.

  “Is Carolina okay?” Athen asked looking at Carolina.

  “She will be,” Austin answered. “She’s just… sleeping.”

  Dmitry told them what he and Austin had already covered. The crew took turns listening and responding to Dmitry, whose version of the story was far less dangerous than Austin’s version. The room was full of smiles. The crew had already made a great discovery, and now they topped it with an even greater one. This was a fantasy every scientist had, and the events of this expedition would be studied all over the world. Each of them could already picture the glorified history books. Yet Austin did not share their elation.

  He watched their faces as they asked questions, wishing there was more concern than excitement in their eyes. They wanted to know more; how smart it was, why it attacked Carolina, how it controlled her. Austin imagined that perhaps if they really had lost a crew member, then they would be a little less giddy about all of this. Austin noticed too many voices rising, and looking down at Carolina he knew it was time to cut in. He needed a moment to work up the strength to speak first, as he was exhausted from far more than lack
of sleep. The range of emotions that had flooded him had taken a toll. “Guys, we need to take this somewhere else,” Austin said cutting in to the middle of Orlean’s babbling about setting up a research file.

  “Right, she needs her sleep,” Helena said. They all walked outside, into the budding morning rays, and continued the conversation. Austin didn’t stop thinking of Carolina. She was so tough, an attitude charged eleven year old. She was an angel. Austin coughed loud enough to break the conversation once more. There was one question that everyone still overlooked.

  “Let’s get back to the most important question,” Austin said, in full control of the group. “What’s inside that building?”