Chapter Text
There weren't a lot of job opportunities in the middle of the mountains. Asta had a degree, damn it, and here she was picking up shifts at the diner to try and scrounge together enough money to cover her student loan payments. Not exactly what she had envisioned for herself when she graduated. But after the clinic had closed, Sam and his wife relocating to Florida to do the retirement thing, there hadn't been a lot of other options.
So yes, when she found a lead on a possible new opportunity, she was willing to overlook a few red flags. Things like vague job description, a business address that showed as an empty warehouse on google maps, and most of all— a referral from the village recluse, the doctor in the cabin by the lake. She didn't trust Dr. Vanderspeigle as far as she could throw him. But hey, the starting salary was amazing, and she wanted to move out of Dan's spare bedroom sometime before she hit 40, and this looked like the only way to do it.
"This job will require you to obtain and maintain a security clearance," the crisp-dressed gentleman said, looking her up and down. "You came recommended by Dr. Vanderspeigle, though, so I don't imagine that will be a problem."
"And what exactly would my job duties be?" Asta asked.
"Ms Twelvetrees, have you ever worked in a lab setting?"
Gritting her teeth and reminding herself how much she wanted the money, Asta replied, "Yes, I did a semester internship at a pharmaceutical facility." She bit back the desire to add 'as it clearly states on my resume.'
The man frowned, as if this was not a good enough response.
Well, tough shit. You haven't really given me any reason to want this job.
You know, other than paying 90k a year.
It was too good to be true. It had to be some sort of trap, or scam. But after a bit more of pointless prodding, the man sighed as if he had been beaten into submission and held out his hand.
"How soon can you start?" he asked.
"Uh, well," Asta stumbled.
I still don't know what I'm doing.
"How soon do you need me?"
It was government bullshit. Asta almost smacked herself on the forehead when it finally clicked— the cloak and dagger mind games, the security clearance, the awesome benefits. They were having her do clandestine work at one of their secret facilities, a situation she would have dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory if she wasn't living it.
Her first week of work, of passing training modules and submitting every bit of information she had on herself so they could scour her for disloyalty to a nation that had pushed out her own, finally culminated in someone telling her what the fuck she was here for.
That someone was Dr. Vanderspeigle.
"I need an assistant to hand me equipment, help clean up, and most importantly— keep their mouth shut," he instructed, looking her over like she had crawled up out of the drain instead of being here on his personal recommendation.
She had never interacted with Dr. Vanderspeigle much. He lived in a cabin on the edge of town and was known for being reclusive and 'with a big city attitude that one may admire, but also condemn.' (That last one was an observation from Sheriff Mike). Very quickly, she was realizing that all the worst rumors about him were true: he was kind of an ass.
"No one here will tell me what we're actually doing," Asta said. "And before you hit me with another lecture about security clearance, I get it. I get that the US Government will not be happy if I spill their secrets. All I want to know is how to do my job. What is it you people actually need me to do that you couldn't shove off on a nepo-baby intern?"
Considering her through half-lidded eyes, Vanderspeigle said, "We have acquired a specimen. A species previously unobserved, unrecorded, and possibly extraterrestrial in origin. That last part you should be skeptical about— skepticism is good. It means you won't jump to conclusions. We are here to ascertain if those claims are true, and to learn as much about this creature as we can."
It was clear that Dr. Vanderspeigle viewed himself as being the star of some sort of medical drama, the way he paused for Asta's reaction. She was not about to give him the pleasure.
Extraterrestrials? Okay. Sure. Whatever. They were the ones paying her. As long as the paychecks cleared, for this amount of money, she could do anything.
"All right," Asta replied, pulling a hair tie out of he pocket and tying her hair back in a practiced motion. "So where do we start?"
Asta had been wrong. Money had its limits, and she feared she had reached them.
Strapped to the bed was a man. Not just any man— the spitting image of Dr. Vanderspeigle, except eyes rolling and teeth chomping around the gag in his mouth.
"What is this?" Asta asked, gesturing angrily at the, medically speaking, absolute bullshit in front of her. She went to undo the gag, but Dr. Vanderspeigle grabbed her hand.
"I wouldn't, if I were you," he cautioned. "It bites."
To prove it, he tugged back one white sleeve of his lab coat, showing a swaddle of bandages around his forearm.
"It has some sort of mimic ability, most likely based on acquiring DNA. It took a chunk out of me and then turned into this. And now it won't turn back."
He spat the words, venom curling his lips back to bare fangs. Obviously, Dr. Vanderspeigle did not enjoy his visage being plagiarized— if that was indeed the case. Looking down at the man thrashing against the restraints, Asta couldn't convince herself to believe that this wasn't just a person, terrified and confused.
"Oh, don't get squeamish now," Dr. Vanderspeigle sneered, seeing the look on her face. "Look, once we open it up, you'll see that there's very little human about it."
To prove his point, Vanderspeigle snatched a scalpel off the table and, with a fervent serial killer concentration, sliced a long stripe into the man's side. Before Asta could act on her natural instinct to tackle Vanderspeigle to the floor, a thick flow of blue seeped out of the cut.
"What is that?" she asked, voice pitched high.
"Its blood."
The liquid rolling viscous down the side of this… creature… it was like no blood Asta had ever seen in her time as a nurse. Not just because it was the color of high fructose candy and faintly fluorescent— it moved more like tree sap than blood.
Then again, tree sap is sort of like a tree's blood. And this thing.. who knows how it works? Maybe it has more in common with a tree than a person.
Did she believe the extraterrestrial thing? Not yet. Like Dr. Vanderspeigle said, it was good to be skeptical. However, as Asta took her side by the doctor, handing him equipment, she was surprisingly ready to be convinced.
"It took my form shortly after arriving," Vanderspeigle explained, siphoning some of the blood into a vial and handing it to Asta. "I think out of spite. The damn thing loves wearing my face. But we've found that put under enough duress, it can't maintain the form."
Under the doctor's direction, Asta pasted electrodes in strategic points across the thing's body. Through her latex gloves, she could feel the pliant squish of skin. Convincingly human. More convincing— and troubling— was the way it flinched away from her, the way its eyes burned with hate.
You have to be sentient to hate. That's something people do, not animals.
"I have to shave some of this hair so the patch will stick," she explained patiently, the same way she would to a child. But of course it didn't understand her, just sneered at her and made some sort of clicking noise under its breath.
Language. That's got to be how it communicates.
When she turned on the electric razor, it flinched all the same. Her bedside manner apparently did not cross the language barrier. That wasn't going to stop her from being as professional as possible. With expert precision, she mowed away the carpet of soft, dense hair on its chest. She tried not to think too hard about the fact that this was a copy of Vanderspeigle's body tied to the operating table, and that her boss looked like this under his lab coat. It wasn't even that she was attracted to Vanderspeigle, but the situation was strange enough to give her vertigo.
When she looked into its face, it was the same shape as Dr. Vanderspeigle's. That big nose, the wide set mouth, the hair that was too gray to be brown. But those eyes, blue like the ocean before a storm, were more haunted than she suspected Vanderspeigle's had ever been. Rapidly, she was forming theories about this creature. What sort of environment had it come from? Where were others like it? Was it far from home? Judging by the sorrow in its eyes, probably.
"Just relax, okay?" Asta said. "We're running some tests. It will be over soon."
"Spare me the sentimentality," Dr. Vanderspeigle sighed. "I guarantee even if that thing could talk, all it would have to say is profanity. Now here, you're going to need this strap for when it grows its second set of arms."
He did not pause to let her ask questions. The machine flipped on, and on the table, the creature convulsed.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing?"
"Don't touch it. Its got 50,000 volts running through it. I'd hate for you to get caught up in that." Dr. Vanderspeigle did not sound like he would hate it— he sounded like he couldn't care one way or the other.
"You're killing it!"
"No," he said simply. "It's a lot tougher than this."
Asta was crucified somewhere between fawn and freeze, wanting to stop the shrill, inhuman trill of pain the thing let out but not knowing how. Before her eyes, the shape on the table… it wasn't holding shape. It was morphing, going putty around the edges as it melted and rippled into something else. For a brief, horrifying moment, Asta thought it was bleeding from every pore, the blue in its veins seeping out like a squeezed sponge. But no, that was its skin becoming blue. Blue, and mottled, a galaxy of variation in the shade. It was undeniably breath-taking.
As it morphed, its body stretched. The restraints were flexible, and the size of its wrists and ankles (or what it had where those should be) wasn't much thicker. But it elongated, unfolding from that body into a creature eight feet tall, spindly, limbs contorting wrong ways, the blue of its eyes sinking in on itself to be replaced with black like the abyss of space.
This wasn't just a creature. It was a monster. And it was a beautiful and terrifying thing.
"The arms," Vanderspeigle snapped. "Before it shakes it off. Tie them down."
His demands snapped Asta out of her trance, and she realized that the creature (alien) did indeed have a second set of arms, wispy and grasping at nothing. She moved the strap across, pining them to its front.
"Good," her associate said, shouldering her aside. "Now the real fun can begin."