Chapter Text
───※ ·❆· ※───
It shouldn’t still be rattling, you thought.
The Maginot had plummeted under the weight of greed and human ego to gouge a smoking wound into the soil of mankind’s home world. Gradually, you realized that the ship isn’t still spasming in its death throes. The one shaking is you. You don’t know how to stop—aren’t even sure you can.
Your mind plays the events of the final hours over and over. With every shuttering of your eyelids, you can see the way the Xenomorph had gone after Zaveri all over again. You weren’t sure if it was a mercy that you’d not born witness to her final moments. The noises had been so terrible. But maybe your mind is conjuring up an even greater horror than the nightmare that had actually transpired.
Voices drag you out of your looping spiral. You stir for what seems like the first time in thousands of years. Your body lights up with pain that had lain dormant as you twist and push at the metal grate that had kept you sealed away in your sanctuary. It clatters to the floor like the doors of a gallows. You drag yourself free. You try to stand only to get knocked down to all fours when your knee rebels—nerves twisting with fire. You don’t make another attempt.
Stinging with open scrapes, you crawl in the direction of the unknown voices.
The first thing you see when you drag yourself over the threshold of the specimen lab is the ship’s cat. His back is to you, and you think nothing of Johnny’s presence. He’s been a fixture off and on during your waking hours for the past six and a half decades. Looking away from him, you see legs. There’s three people in room, young, all wearing the same uniform. You open your mouth to ask for help but something twists strangely in your peripheral vision. Johnny has turned to face you. There’s something wrong with his back legs. He looks… broken.
His face seems to bubble and distort while blood clots in his orange fur. You stare, uncomprehending, until his eyeball pops free and dangles like a grotesque Christmas ornament against his cheek. It hangs there for a frozen moment before landing among the wreckage on the floor.
Without thinking, you lunge at the animal. The thing that had once been Johnny doesn’t fight you. The multi-pupiled eye stares intently at your face. Distantly, you’re aware of raised voices and bodies trying to cross to the other side of the room away from you and the overtaken cat. You ignore them, not daring to look away from the specimen that had been given the designation Trypanohyncha Ocellus.
“Please stay put,” you tell her, “Just… please.”
The creature’s eye dilates and contacts at your words, but doesn’t move to strike. All but holding your breath, you shakily get to your feet and carry T. Ocellus’s host body to an undamaged containment canister. You place your fingers in a cage around the eye socket, fingertips pressing firmly against the still intact orbital bone. The bulbous body of the alien presses wetly against your palm.
“Good girl,” you breathe and carefully slip the unresistant creature into the canister before locking it.
Unable to stand any longer, you turn and sink to the floor. Johnny’s body is cradled in your arms. The wall is inhospitable against your back. Somewhere by your head, one of the other specimens clatters against the reinforced glass of its prison.
A sensation like water trickling down your back trails over your spine. You struggle to make out the faces of the strangers now crowding around you, fear evidently having given way to curiosity. Blinking doesn’t clear your vision. You have the vague sense that they are talking at you. It reminds you of the time you had crouched with your ear against the wall, desperately trying to make out the words of one of your parents’ argument, but liquid rushing from the pipes above had drowned their voices down to an indistinct smear of language.
With a sensation like falling, you go under.
───※ ·❆· ※───
A firm hand on your shoulder drags you back to the waking world. You open your eyes to see a man down on one knee in front of you. His expression is blank, dispassionate, as his mouth moves. Johnny is no longer in your arms and there's a part of you that mourns the slight weight of his cold body.
You drag a noise from your throat in the effort to tell the man you can’t hear him. He doesn't seem to be dissuaded. His thumb presses harder into the breakable bone of your clavicle. The starburst of pain from the pressure makes something in your ears pop. Your hearing dials back just in time to catch the tail-end of his sentence.
“—r role on the ship.”
“I’m a science officer,” you manage. Something shifts about his expression, a softening of the lines around his eyes. Belatedly, you offer up your name.
“What—”
“She saved us from the thing in the cat,” pipes up a young man you haven’t seen before—he must have arrived with your would-be interrogator, “It was going to get Nibs.”
Around the man’s shoulder, you can see one of the strangers cross her arms. Her face is so rawly upset that you think she would protest in any other setting. It’s odd, you realize, how the only one to display truly adult mannerisms so far was the pale haired man.
He signs, accepting the interruption with the grace of someone who made an agreement with themselves to hang on to patience by only their fingernails if they must. His face relaxes into something more natural. He looks almost approachable like this.
“You are you?” you ask, voice hoarse.
Before he can respond, one of the others crowds in and jostles the hand the stranger still has on you. He doesn’t let go.
“He’s Kirsh, and I’m Smee. That’s Curly, Tootles, and Nibs,” Smee says, pointing at the others in turn.
Kirsh raises his eyebrows and tips his head. “There you have it… Can you stand?”
He eases back, letting you make the attempt to rock forward onto your knees in order to get upright. You have to suppress a yelp, turning it into a choked sound as you fight to not lose the ground you slowly make. Kirsh adjusts his grip. He wraps secure hands around the backs of your upper arms and all but lifts you upright. Your fingers catch on something underneath his sleeve. He has a port built into his forearm. He’s a Synth.
You might have recoiled once. There had been a time, years ago, where you might have been disgusted at what he is, but the only emotions you can dredge up is relief that there is no meat inside of him to be contaminated by the horrors you and your team had brought onto the Maginot and gratitude that his facsimile of humanity is bringing you comfort. He is careful with you as he guides you to one of the chairs not overturned in the chaos. You have to make an effort not to clutch at his arms when he withdraws.
“So fragile,” he murmurs when he lowers himself to examine your swollen knee.
Kirsh’s fingertips are too smooth against your skin. You know that if you were to take his hand in yours and tilt it to the light, there would be no sign of fingerprints. He had been painstakingly constructed, not born of a mother.
Under his scrutiny, you remember that your outerwear consists of nothing more than a thin-strapped tank top and a pair of pants. You had lost your shirt somewhere in the scuffle. Your boots had been tossed for fear that heavy steps would betray you to the creatures roaming the halls. Everything you still have on is some degree of filthy and ripped. Irrationally, you feel your face grow warm.
The white-haired man neglects to comment on the biological tangle he must be picking up on. Instead, he speaks in a level voice. “Smee, go to the cargo hold and assist Wendy.”
“But—”
Kirsh glances skyward, “Go.”
The young man lets out an exaggerated sigh. His shoulders droop dramatically and he lets his arms dangle at his sides like a puppet with its strings cut. He slumps out of the room.
Again, you’re struck by how childlike everyone but Kirsh seems. It’s uncanny but it’s enough to divert your attention. With the receding tide of embarrassment, you shiver. The latent heat of the crashed ship is doing nothing to combat the way your body wants to forfeit. You wrap your arms around yourself, fingers digging into the soft tissue of your biceps.
“There’s one of the adult specimens on the loose,” you tell Kirsh.
He does not seemed to be bothered by this information. “It’s dangerous, I suppose?”
“Very.”
He hums and straightens up. With perfunctory gestures, he dusts off his knees. It seems as though he’s done poking around your myriad of injuries.
“Where are we? I mean, where did the Maginot land exactly?”
“The USCSS Maginot crashed into Prodigy City, a metropolis located in the Prodigy owned Earth-region of New Siam. The vessel is currently located in the basement levels of a commerce tower with residential floors in the lower levels.”
Your throat goes dry and you have to close your eyes against the sting of your tear ducts. The population density is worse than you had dared think when Dinsdale had broken the news in the mess. How many will lose their lives over Yutani’s project before all is said and done?
“Who is Prodigy?” you ask woodenly.
Kirsh’s response is immediate. You wonder if he can sense your need for distraction. Probably. Morrow had an uncanny ability for reading emotion and he was less artificial. “The Prodigy corporation was founded by Boy Kavalier in the year 2110. A little after your time.” He pauses, then continues, “You have been in space a very long time by human standards, haven’t you, Officer?”
“Sixty-five years.”
“The world has changed in your absence,” he acknowledges.
You’re sure it has. You are not the same person who boarded the Maginot in 2055 as you are now so it stands to reason that the world you have finally come home to would not be the same either.
Your eyes feel heavy with the weight of all that you’ve experienced during a trip that should have taken four months but instead had taken a mere handful of hours due to the uncontrollable speed with which the ship had raced towards Earth. You can’t help but shiver again. It wracks your body so strongly that your teeth clatter together like a wind chime.
Kirsh cocks his head in the same way that you’ve caught him doing. It must be an unconscious reflex when he’s processing. Strange, that Synths can have mannerisms just like a human. You wonder if he knows he does it and if he resents what could be considered a flaw. You don’t know him well enough to ask.
“Shock is a behavior exclusively limited to animals,” he remarks.
You give him a twist of your lips, not quite a smile but close. You can’t manage anything more. “Normally the whole hairless ape thing isn’t so bad but…” you shrug.
He raises an eyebrow, a smile of his own teases the corners of his mouth. Before he responds, something changes. His eyes grow distant. That same detachment you’d witnessed when you’d first opened your eyes settles back over his face. It strips the human out of him.
Kirsh presses a finger to the implanted comm link behind his ear and speaks in an even tone. “Yes… Yes, I remember. I am on my way. Stay right there.”
His gaze flickers to the others in the room.
“Tootles, Nibs, Curly.. stay and make sure this room remains secure. I am leaving for a moment.”
He ignores their protests and focuses back in on you. You don’t argue when he gives you your order of “Stay. You are under Prodigy jurisdiction now.” Besides, where would you even go? Any effort for escape would only end up disastrous. You’re injured and Yuanti would see your head roll for the failures of the Maginot’s crew.
No, you decide, it is far better to sit in this uncomfortable chair and wait for Kirsh to get back. He had not been unkind. Perhaps you could still scratch out a life if you cooperate with Prodigy.