It took a long time for Blair’s stomach to seal itself up again. Even when it did, Blair still felt raw and exposed. McReady reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she flinched away.
“Sorry,” McReady apologized and sat down a few feet from Blair.
“No, it’s not you, I- I could’ve hurt you.” Blair looked away, ashamed to meet McReady’s eyes. “I was so hungry, I’m so sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for? You didn’t do anything to me.” McReady opened her arms as if to demonstrate how safe she felt. Honestly, Blair wondered if she had any sense of self-preservation, but Blair appreciated the attempt to cheer her up.
Blair sat in silence for a little while longer. She was shaken by the thought that she might have hurt a human in her hunger. One thing was for sure, she couldn’t let that happen again.
“McReady, I need to tell the captain.” Blair was scared of how Garry would react, and for sure her life would be in his hands, but she couldn’t move forward from here without the captain finding something out.
McReady nodded grimly. She was probably thinking the same thing, but the fact that Blair said it first saved her from an uncomfortable position. Blair stood up slowly. She still felt a bit hungry, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as before and she felt like she had a firm grasp on her sanity again. Blair swallowed and wiped her palms on her pants.
“Alright, let’s go.”
-----------------------
The office building was very small, only there for the purpose of monitoring security and managing communication between Kypros and Earth. There were also alarm systems for things like a fire or a reactor emergency, but with any luck, those wouldn’t be necessary in the near future.
McReady had sent a message to captain Garry ahead of time, so she and Blair just walked into the airlock once they got there. Captain Garry was sitting on a spinning chair in front of the security feed, and he turned around as the two entered.
“So, mind telling me what this is all about?” Garry clasped his hands together in his lap. He looked between the two of them with an unreadable look. Blair always found him intimidating, especially if he thought something was wrong.
McReady coughed. “Captain, I already told you that Blair had a mishap last night. I thought she needed some time to sort through things, but, uhh-”
“It involves the safety of the crew, so I decided to tell you as soon as possible.” Blair interrupted McReady, who was starting to trail off uncomfortably.
Garry’s eyes sharpened at Blair’s comment, and he shot a glance to McReady. Focusing on Blair again, he gestured for her to continue. Blair took a deep breath and recounted her story.
“Last night, I was working late studying one of the coppershells I had in containment. It was acting strangely, so I wanted to check up on its vitals. When I let it out of the carrier to start the tests, it attacked me. One moment it was a harmless bug, and the next it was a monstrous ball of teeth and claws. It was incredibly fast, too. I managed to catch it before it landed on my chest, but it tore into my hands like they were paper. I dropped it and kicked it away. It bought me a few seconds, and I grabbed a bottle of hydrochloric acid I borrowed from Norris.
“Before I could come up with a plan, it came at me again. It got up on the counter and stabbed me in the stomach with some kind of tentacle. I managed to open the bottle and I poured it on every bit of that monster I could reach. Somehow, it worked. It squealed and squirmed, but I didn’t give up until the whole bottle was gone. I killed it.
“I don’t remember much after that. I lost a lot of blood and I blacked out. I didn’t think I would wake up, but McReady found me this morning without a scratch on me.”
The captain was silent throughout the whole story. As far-fetched as it seemed, he didn’t interrupt at all. Blair swallowed hard and felt her throat start to burn and her hands shake. As terrifying as her near-death experience was, it wasn’t the hardest thing she was going to tell him.
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“Before the creature died, it left a piece of itself inside me, I think. When I burned it, the part of it in my stomach was separated from the main body, but it was still alive. It consumed me and changed all of my cells to be just like it. It’s a miracle I’m still myself, maybe the small piece wasn’t enough to overtake my mind, but…” She trailed off and looked down at her hands. She was pretty sure he got the gist. She saw Garry move out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t look up.
Garry put a hand in front of his mouth, thinking. There was a long and suffocating silence in the room. Just as Garry took his hand away to speak, McReady spoke up first.
“Captain, I think-”
Garry cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand. “Lieutenant, not now. I already know what you’re going to say, and it’s noted.” McReady’s mouth snapped shut. She looked worried, but there wasn’t much she could do to change his mind once he decided on something. “Doctor, I have a few questions.”
Blair looked up but still couldn’t meet his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“You said you are still yourself. Can you prove that?”
Blair bit her lip. That was tough. “I don’t think I really can, sir. I guess the closest thing to ‘proof’ I have is the fact that I’m telling you all this, but a mimic might be smart enough to do the same.”
“Fair enough,” he conceded. “But judging by my lieutenant’s actions, she’s probably given you plenty of opportunities to prove you are a monster, and she’s still here anyway. Let’s say you are still Blair. You also said this concerns the safety of the crew. Are you a danger to them?”
“Yes-”
“Blair, don’t you dare!” McReady interrupted. Blair was shocked, McReady never raised her voice before. “You can wallow in self-pity later, this is your life we’re talking about here.”
Garry put his head in his hands like he expected this to happen. Blair choked on air and tried to defend her statement. “McReady, I got so hungry I saw you as prey. I nearly hurt you! Do you not see how scary that is?”
“Of course I do, but you didn’t touch me. Who cares about your dumb instincts, you don’t want to hurt anybody and you didn’t!”
“Just because I don’t want to doesn’t mean I can’t!”
“Enough!” Garry’s voice carried over the women and they stopped arguing immediately. “Blair, McReady’s right that you haven’t done anything-” McReady threw her arms out to make her point, and Garry pointedly glowered at her. She put her arms behind her back, thoroughly chastised. “-Yet. I’m not going to give you a chance to either, but unless I have no other choice, I’m not going to kill you. You are still my subordinate, and that means you are under my protection, but make no mistake, I will be watching you closely. If you so much as look at someone menacingly I will not hesitate to put you in the ground. There are no second chances on my watch.”
Blair nodded. That seemed pretty reasonable to her. More than fair, even, as she was pretty sure not many people in his position would decide to continue protecting a literal monster.
“ And McReady,” Garry turned to his lieutenant. “Quit it with the faith and trust shtick. Blair is a threat that needs to be acknowledged, no matter how innocent you think she is. And don’t think we’re not going to talk later about how you hid this from me for half a day.”
McReady mumbled a quiet ‘yessir’. Blair felt guilty that McReady’s support got her in a lot of trouble with the captain, but it was too late for that now.
“Doctor Blair, you are going to keep that hunger in check at all times. It would be a shame for you to lose it because you were a bit peckish. What do you need?”
“Normal food doesn’t seem to help at all, but if I can get off base, I can eat the wild animals.”
“Good. Go whenever you need to, I’ll make sure anything you do outside the fence won’t make it to the security backups. Now, if this happened to you, how are we going to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
“As soon as I can, I want to find a way to identify and kill these mimics. I already have an idea about how to kill them, but identifying them is going to be a lot tougher. I also need to warn Van Wall before he goes on any excursions outside.”
“Make it happen, starting tomorrow. It’s too late to get anything done today. I want you to report any progress you make to me. McReady, I want you to watch Blair. Make sure she’s not going to go off the deep end.”
“Yup,” McReady quickly confirmed. She was already practically Blair’s shadow, there was no need for an order.
“Now, as for what we’re going to tell the crew, I don’t want to start a witch hunt before I have definitive proof of what you are. Tell them about the mimics, but as far as they’re concerned, you’re still human.”
Blair nodded. Garry’s thinly veiled hostility aside, Blair was actually relieved by all this. The captain was always going to find out eventually, but at least he was willing to let her prove herself for now. Blair turned to leave Garry and McReady to their impending discussion when something tickled the edge of her senses. She couldn’t put her finger on the feeling, but it was incredibly ominous.
“Captain? Something’s wrong.” She turned her head left and right, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, I just-” Blair cut off when she heard a hair-raising shriek coming from outside. “Did you hear that?”
Garry and McReady both shook their heads. The walls were too thick for them to hear anything.
“I heard someone scream. I think it was Clark.”
Garry leaped to action. The team had its fair share of overprotective people, but no one could top Garry in that respect. Commanding McReady to stay behind to relay messages to the crew, he rushed for the airlock. Blair followed without another word.
Once outside, Blair took the lead, sprinting in the direction that she heard the noise. South of the office next to the labs, she was met with a grisly scene. There was blood and viscera everywhere, but only half of a body and a hand could be found. A goldenrod-colored suit indicated that the dead body was Harvey, the architect. Blair never learned his first name.
Clark and Benning, who stumbled upon it first, were huddled together a few feet away. Clark was in shock, and Benning wasn’t much better off.
“Benning, get Clark to the cafeteria. I’ll be there shortly,” Garry told him. Benning nodded dumbly, and he led his partner away. Garry pulled out his tablet and called McReady. “Gather the crew in the cafeteria now, and get somebody to bring a couple of warm blankets. Harvey’s been killed.”