Terrence wasn’t sure why he’d been summoned in the middle of work, but he had a bad feeling about it. Felicia’s message was formal and concise, and nothing about it betrayed any feeling behind it. It was just cold, professional text.
Making his way across floor 100-B, Terrence found Felicia’s office and knocked on the door. She answered almost immediately. His boss took one look at him, gave a glare that could have shattered ice, and directed him to a seat. “ID card,” she ordered. When he complied, she glanced at it quickly and handed it back with a small nod.
The office was impeccably clean. Part of it, Terrence could take pride in, having emptied the garbage himself just the day before. Still, most of the credit went to Felicia for keeping things organized. Terrence forced himself to look away from the desk and instead at his boss. She studied him carefully. At last, Felicia sighed and turned her CommPad towards him. Its screen displayed a paused video. “Watch.”
His heart having already sunk, Terrence looked on.
It was a security feed of one of the facility’s halls. The video quality wasn’t great, but it unmistakably showed Terrence leaning over the still figure of Sai, digging into his pocket, and running away. The video looped, and as Terrence watched the scene again his confusion gave way to dread. He forced himself to stop watching and looked back at Felicia. “That isn’t me,” he said, realizing how stupid it sounded against such obvious proof. “I-I don’t know what that—is Sai okay?”
Felicia pressed her fingers to her temples and sighed. “Sai will be fine. He has been placed in emergency care, but he’s expected to make a full recovery.” She shut off the CommPad and returned her gaze to Terrence. “Sometime between eleven o’clock and twelve, a monster impersonated you and stole a master key to the containment cells from Sai. All we know is that the monster has shapeshifting capabilities and that it must have been able to study you enough to do a reasonably good impression of you.”
“Prismec,” Terrence whispered.
Felicia raised an eyebrow. “Sai mentioned that you’ve become acquainted with some of the monsters here. I hope this doesn’t mean you sympathize with their escape attempt.”
“I’m not, but—”
“They’re not human. None of these creatures would hesitate a second before killing you.”
As normal as Seamstress and Caliax could seem, it was hard to forget that they were monsters. He watched Felicia’s pointed shoes. “I understand,” he said quietly. Then he looked up. “How do you know I’m not the shapeshifter?”
Felicia ran a hand through her hair and gave an exasperated sigh. “Because nobody is as naive as you are,” she snapped, and opened the door. “The fact that you showed up and reacted to the video as you did, coupled with the fact that it would be difficult for the monster to obtain your particular ID card this early in the breach makes me reasonably certain that you are you. Even so, you’re not to leave this office under any circumstances until the monster has been successfully contained. Then, we’ll discuss what to do about your continued employment here.” She put a hand on the doorknob. “Don’t touch anything,” she warned before locking the door.
If he’d felt a little less awful, he might have broken something out of spite, even if the consequences for it would far outweigh the satisfaction. As it was, everything seemed a bit duller all of a sudden. He’d have to look for another job, and considering how difficult it had been to obtain his current one, he’d be cutting it close with the rent if he was lucky. The worst part was, he wasn’t sure if he even felt mad that Prismec had escaped. The monsters weren’t exactly his friends, but he’d spent more time with them than anyone else in the city and it felt wrong to let them waste away in a prison. But his thoughts and feelings didn’t matter, because the monsters were out and that time was over.
He sank a little deeper into the chair. His mother would want to hear the news, even if it was bad. At any rate, it would give him a chance to see how close she was to the city. Quietly, he powered up his CommPad and waited for her to answer. After a while, it beeped, asking him to leave a message. He lowered the device. Pull yourself together. He took a deep breath. “Hey, it’s Terrence. I, um—”
The desk jumped an inch, and outside, an alarm started sounding. Terrence’s chair tilted back and his CommPad dropped, landing a few inches away. A new crack appeared on its screen, adding a new thread to the existing web of them. Terrence picked it up just as the floor started to shake. He’d have to explain things to his family later—it was probably better that he didn’t pile on some more bad news while they were already in a crisis.
Outside, somebody screamed. A moment later, it was drowned out by the sound of multiple doors being slammed and people shouting in unintelligible confusion. In spite of Felicia’s clear warning to not leave, Terrence took his situation as a special circumstance and opened the door. The monster outside of it, a horse with multiple horns, stared back at him. Next to it, a gored woman lay on the ground, her foot twitching erratically. The horse pawed at the ground around her.
Terrence looked on, unable to move. The dead woman, the escaped monsters…they seemed almost unreal. It was a scene that belonged on the screen of a CommPad, not in real life. The beast tilted its crowned head and suddenly, it charged. Terrence dove to the side just in time to hear its horn enter the door, and as it struggled to free itself, another monster fell upon it. Finding opportunity in the distraction, Terrence bolted.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
When he reached the elevator, he stopped. Terrence had been quite aware, of course, that he wasn’t supposed to use it in an emergency, but the fact that its doors had been utterly rent was enough to quash any remaining temptation. Along the wall, containment cages swung their empty doors. Terrence stepped carefully over a shard of reinforced glass. He wasn’t sure how Prismec had caused a breach of such a size so quickly, but it certainly wasn’t good.
“Don’t move,” a voice behind him ordered. Terrence heard the click of a firearm and thought it best to obey. He stood frozen, staring at the interior of a cage. “That’s the shifter?” the guard asked.
“Looks like it,” another voice replied.
Terrence couldn’t help but shiver. “Wait, guys, I’m not a monster. I can prove it.” He heard a grunt from one of the guards and took it as a sign to go on. “I have an ID, and I—”
One of the guards grumbled, “Just shoot him. It’ll be easier with only one of ‘em running around.”
Some amount of desperation told him that at least attempting to fight back would be better than just waiting to be shot. Terrence wheeled around with his hands in front of him, but no gun was pointed his way. One of the guards lay dazed on the ground and Caliax was wrestling with the remaining one. The monster wrestled the man’s gun away from him and shoved the guard against the floor. For a moment, it looked as though Caliax was forcing a kiss upon him. Then Terrence saw what looked like a pale yellow centipede scurry out of the monster’s nose and into the guard’s. The man screamed and broke free, clutching his head. Caliax slumped to the ground, limp and silent, while the guard leaned against the wall and seemed to recover. “I must say that gets harder every time,” he grimaced, recovering his gun and casually shooting his dazed companion in the forehead. With a sigh, he pressed his fingers against his temples. “That won’t be necessary, Terrence. For goodness sake, I’m not going to eat you.”
Terrence had taken out his pocketknife and he was holding it in front of him with wide eyes. He glanced from the body on the ground that was—should have been Caliax, and then at the guard who was smiling at him pleasantly. Terrence’s hands were shaking. “You killed them.”
Caliax shrugged. “Well, this one is technically still alive. It’s just his mind that’s gone. But at any rate, if I hadn’t stepped in, they would have killed you. It’s fairly simple, if you think abou—” His eyes rolled back into his skull. He shook his head and they steadied themselves, although the left one still wobbled. “My apologies, they tend to be a bit twitchy in the beginning. Really, though, you can put that pathetic little knife away. If I had wanted to hurt you, there are far less elaborate ways that I would have gone about it,” he said.
Terrence shook his head slowly. “I think I’m gonna throw up,” he whispered. He bent over suddenly and vomited. Nothing seemed right anymore. The dead guards, the monsters out for slaughter…he just wanted to put his head in his knees and be back home. But that, too, was gone.
Caliax waited patiently for him to finish. “There’s a drinking fountain just down the hall. The pipe’s a bit ruptured, but the water is still good.”
Breathing heavily, Terrence gave a faint nod. Then he caught another glance of the dead guards, felt his knees buckle, and threw up a little more.
He didn’t quite remember stumbling down the hall under Caliax’s support, or washing up at the water-spouting fountain, but he eventually found himself clean and seated, propped against Caliax’s shoulder. His stomach was still churning. The past five minutes still felt surreal. A part of him didn’t even care if Caliax crawled out of the guard and stole his body, so long as it was over with before he could regret not caring about it. “I just want to go home,” he whispered. “There’s no way I’m getting out of this alive. My mom and Aure are going to show up and the whole city’s just going to be rubble with no survivors, if they’re lucky enough to make it here at all.” He realized he was crying. “I just don’t want us all to die.”
Gently, Caliax squeezed his shoulder. “In that case, let’s get up and make sure that does not happen. The sooner we begin moving, the better our chances of escaping this place are. Come now, perhaps we can travel together.”
Terrence blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean as comrades, fellows, associates. Am I incorrect in assuming that we both wish to return to the surface?” Terrence shook his head. “Then no reason stands for us to not work together. In fact, I was sent to this human settlement for the express purpose of finding out if your civilization wished to be allies with mine. Getting locked up as a monster was not part of my plan, but I’d be happy to forget that whole business if you’d be willing to help me where your leaders were not.” When he saw Terrence’s expression of curiosity and unease, he explained, “My dear boy, it’s no secret that the human species is on the way out. At the rate you’re going, you’ll be extinct by the end of the century. My people don’t like to see intelligent species disappear, and I believe that feeling is mutual.” He uncrossed his legs. “Therefore, I propose an alliance, in which your people can live under the rule of my civilization. You’ll have clean water and food, your children will be educated, and you will live under the protection of our armies.”
Terrence drew back a few inches. “And what do you want in return?”
“Oh, nothing you’d miss,” Caliax shrugged. “A few criminals each year. If any families have more than three children, we typically ask for those as well, but since you’re an endangered species we can waive that requirement for now.”
“And you’ll eat their minds.” It was a statement rather than a question, and he already knew the answer.
“To put it crudely, yes. But I daresay you won’t receive a better offer from anyone else. Plenty of other monsters would be happy to enslave or slaughter the remaining members of your population. You’re welcome to surrender to them, if you prefer.”
Terrence looked into Caliax’s eyes, and he believed that the monster was being sincere. The parasite would keep his people safe, but they would never be free. “I can’t accept that deal.”
“You’re not saving many by refusing,” Caliax shrugged, looking a bit disappointed. Standing up, he brushed his—the guard’s, for it certainly didn’t count as Caliax’s—hair to the side. “Very well then. My offer still stands if you change your mind. And I’m sure that others will accept it.” He waved casually and took off at a brisk pace. “Good luck, and good evening!”
Halfway expecting Caliax to kill him for refusing, Terrence watched him go. “Um, the same to you.” Caliax tipped an imaginary hat and turned the corner. Terrence headed in the opposite direction, towards the stairs, and hopefully towards freedom.