Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eddie was out of bed. Everything was hazy and unclear, his perception shifting and changing. He felt his body moving but it was like being a puppet on invisible strings. Nothing felt important. Nothing felt real.

It took Eddie a moment to realize he was dreaming. Dreaming of wandering through the labyrinthine hallways of the base. Stalking silently through the halls of the sleeping quarters like a shadow. When had he fallen asleep? He...had been doing something important, hadn’t he? He wasn’t supposed to fall asleep… he couldn’t seem to focus enough to remember. It probably didn’t matter.

Eddie felt like he was floating aimlessly, but there was purpose and direction in his gait. He recognized the room as he watched himself enter, silent as the night itself. It was Isaac's room. Eddie had never known Isaac all that well, even in the cramped quarters of Big Magnet where privacy was a long forgotten luxury. Strange, that he would dream of him. And so vividly.

He strode to Isaac’s sleeping form and felt a thrill of excitement.

How easy. How delightfully and almost unfairly easy. Unconscious and unaware for nearly half their lives. A time of absolute vulnerability and yet one they usually insisted on privacy for. Oh what a wonderful concept...privacy. For creatures whose only protection was in numbers, who were all but defenseless alone, to have the instinctual desire to be just that. It was almost cruelly easy.

How wonderful this place was, indeed. This form. These creatures. They had such tight social bonds and such marvelously efficient modes of transportation, especially for a species so very young and primitive. One could circumnavigate the globe in only hours. Oceans, mountains, canyons, none would be the slightest barrier.

How divinely inspired that such a creature would exist here, on this of all planets. One that would brave a cold in which they could not survive, that would have the tools to dig so deep in the ice to have uncovered what lay below, and such reckless, all consuming curiosity that they would thaw their finding, despite warnings, despite danger, just to satisfy it.

Eddie’s sleep addled mind tried to puzzle out these strange thoughts that seemed to come from something outside himself. Beneath the ice? Thawed?

That...thing...they found. In that ship...Dan hadn’t wanted to thaw it….Drake insisted…

He couldn’t seem to keep a clear thought going, overpowered by the other feelings.

Millions of years it had been. Millions of years he’d had waited. And oh how he’d been rewarded for his patience. With a planet teeming with complicated life forms with such a wide range of genetic diversity, ripe for the taking.

Eddie shivered with anticipation. He smiled with what felt like too many teeth. Too big for his mouth. A tongue that was too long snaked out from between the rows of white razors. He leaned over Isaac, feeling a warm trail of drool seep from his mouth.

And it didn’t hurt that they were downright delectable.

Eddie watched as his own mouth clamped down over Isaac’s throat. He felt Isaac startle awake beneath him and try to scream, but he quickly clamped his hand over Isaac’s mouth. He let his hand split and his fingers elongate into thick, black tendrils that forced their way roughly into Isaac’s mouth and nostrils, merging and consuming as they went.

Hot blood poured down Eddie’s throat and he knew that swallowing any was unnecessary, but couldn’t help himself. So soft and fleshy and sweet these creatures were. So different from the hard, chitinous creatures of the last world. So much easier to break, infect, consume . How had something like them ever lasted this long to begin with?  Ah, but what a blessing that they had. And for them to have such a developed sense of taste, and of pleasure. Not in all his years had he come across creatures with such an exquisitely rich ability to experience and to enjoy. In them, he’d discovered the marvelous ability to relish and to savor. And he did so intent to relish and savor. Every last one of them.

Letting the sharp fangs he’d gotten from a world he'd long since forgotten the name of sink through flesh and tear off a hefty chunk was unnecessary, too, but he figured he may as well use this newfound ability to indulge to its fullest extent. He swallowed merely for the sensation; the new mass was already merging into his being long before it made it all the way down his esophagus. Meanwhile the tendrils of his hand had broken down and assimilated the rest of the flesh until all that was left of the human Isaac was a torn set of sleepwear. Now with twice the mass that this form was meant to support and a new found penchant for self indulgence, Eddie lets his form devolve entirely into a writhing mass of black tendrils, shifting and shaping the newly added mass, mixing it with the old, converting it, copying it, and reforming it. Why did it feel like the first time? he mused. In a way, it was, but it wasn’t usually like this. So affected by human emotion, he supposed. Too easy to be swept up in it. And how the human of him relished in this. A swirling, formless nothing that was so alien to anything it would have known. Shifting and writhing and becoming. Eddie was so wrapped up in the feeling of euphoria that he ignored the niggling thought that, truly, like this, there should have been no human of him. That he really shouldn’t have been Eddie at all. But he pushed that aside, relishing the feeling of this meal that was so much more than a meal.

Oh, but there was something so enticing about the idea of all this mass. Of simply forming something enormous and powerful, throwing together parts and pieces from a thousand worlds into a great being of pure lethality. Of forgoing stealth and tearing his way through this base. Through this planet. Ah, but he was letting this new capacity for thrill and enjoyment get the better of him. It wasn’t how this was done.

So he shifted back, shaping his own form back into the form of Eddie and forming the excess mass back into the shape of Isaac. As he detached the last tendril connecting them, he admired his work (Oh, but did humans have such an intoxicating sense of ego) with a smile. That which had been him and that was now Isaac smiled back at him. Eddie was...relieved. He’d felt so strange since taking this form. As if something was wrong, something was broken. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been worried about consuming the next human until he felt the relief now of it having been successful. How silly, worrying. He really was indulging too much in human emotion.

Then, without warning, Isaac’s eyes went wide in terror. His mouth opened and let out a blood curdling, inhuman screech.

Eddie clamped his hands over his ears.

It hurt! He was dreaming! It wasn’t supposed to hurt!

“What are you doing?!” Eddie hissed. “They’ll hear! They’ll come!”

Eddie shook his head, confused at the words he hadn’t meant to say.

“What? Who’ll come? What is this?” he cried.

“ Eddie?!” his own mouth exclaimed.

The shriek grew impossibly louder and Eddie turned his attention back to Isaac. Black, inky blood began to pour from Isaac’s eyes and mouth and, in horror, Eddie watched as Isaac’s head split in two, down the center of his face. Black tendrils within the skin seemed to scramble and grab at themselves in an attempt to pull back together, but more splits just opened all over his body. Skin sloughed off in chunks as a mix of red and black blood flooded onto the floor.

Eddie ran. Back down the hallway. Back out of the sleeping quarters. Back to Cosmos House. Back to where…

Where he’d been stationed.

Where he had been on watch.

On watch of the thing they’d found so deep in the ice.

The thing they were so methodically thawing.

The thing that was no longer resting on the table behind him as he worked.

The thing that was no longer there at all.

Then a strange sensation came over Eddie.

Eddie has been here all night.

It was a feeling from nowhere he could place. Not like a suggestion, but a fact. There was no existence in that moment outside of one in which that was true.

Eddie has been here all night and he fell asleep. Just for a second. Now Eddie awakes to find that the thing is gone. What does he do?

It felt almost like reading an unfinished script and being told to fill in the ending. A strange and terrifying choose-your-own adventure in which there was no role but your own. No option but the one he would chose most naturally.

Eddie would pull the alarm.

Eddie pulled the alarm.

Chapter Text

Anne Weying had been having nightmares. Horrible, gut wrenching dreams that haunted you for the rest of the day. The kind of dreams that made you dread sleeping. Everyone in the base had. Everyone who had gotten a look at that...Thing...that they’d found in the ice.

It had been her, Skirth, and Drake. They’d been investigating a magnetic anomaly near the magnetic South Pole. Some huge magnetic force that had been throwing off all their readings back at Big Magnet. They figured it had to be some kind of meteorite. Something enormous to give off that kind of magnetic energy. Instead they’d found only a small metal craft. Nothing that should have been giving off the readings they were getting.

It must have been down there since before the continent froze. Preserved for millions of years.

They’d used the drill to dig down to it. And that’s where they’d found it.

The thing.

Anne didn’t know what else to call it. It was most certainly something that had once been alive. And seeming held enough consciousness and intelligence to have piloted the craft it was just outside of. Belonged to a species with enough intelligence to have designed it. But it was distinctly inhuman.

Black as pitch with tendrils that looked like they were still squirming after millions of years of being frozen. White, pupil-less eyes that seemed to stare up with hate and rage through the layer of ice that stood between it. Everyone who had looked into those soulless eyes had been haunted by gruesome dreams ever since. Since she had been part of the group that had originally found it, she’d been dealing with them the longest.

It made her almost relieved to be awoken by the blare of the fire alarm.

Almost.

She still felt a thrill of dread run though her at the sound. Part of her wanted to ignore it. To curl up under her blankets and let the sound fade away like every sickening vision she’d been victim to these past few nights. But she was the commanding officer of this base, and whatever was happening, it was her responsibility to fix it.

God, she hoped it was just Eddie burning another bag of cheap popcorn he never seemed to run out of.  

Something in her gut told her it wasn’t. That is was something far worse.

She went straight to Cosmos House. Eddie would have been the only one awake at this hour to pull the alarm, so it only made sense to check there.

Not because of what was in there, of course. What was drip, drip, dripping onto the floorboards, slowly thawing after millions of years trapped beneath the antarctic snow. Not because of that at all.

She got to Cosmos House to find Eddie with his hands clamped over his ears, eyes screwed closed like he was in pain. He hissed and gasped in apparent distress, not even noticing her come in.

True that it didn’t take much for Eddie to get on Anne’s nerves after...everything that had happened between them, but this seemed pathetic. Sure the alarm was loud, but not that loud. Besides, he’s the one who--

Anne stopped, mid thought.

The table.

The table was empty.

The thing.

Was gone.

Nothing was left but an hollowed out  block of ice.

Anne slammed the alarm off and whipped around to face Eddie.

“Eddie Brock, what the HELL is going on here?!”

Eddie blinked and removed his hands from his ears. For a moment he just stared forward blankly with a look of terror and confusion on his face. He turned to Anne with an almost pleading, desperate look. His jaw worked like he was trying to speak but simply couldn’t find the words.

Then he gave a slow, almost mechanical blink and his face shifted. It was still fear but, different. Anne couldn’t put her finger on it, and didn’t have time to puzzle it out.

“It’s….gone,” Eddie said, voice flat with shock.

“I can see it’s gone, Eddie!” Anne snapped. “Where the hell IS it? What happened?!”

“I...I fell asleep. Just for a second!” Eddie cried. “I didn’t even realize I had I just--then I turned and it was--and it was just gone!”

Eddie covered his mouth and started hyperventilating.

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God,” Eddie kept repeating.

“What the hell is going on here? It’s three in the morning!” came another voice from the doorway.

Treece, the bald helicopter pilot and self appointed ‘security’ of Big Magnet took up most of the entryway.

“Sorry if your beauty sleep was interrupted, Treece, but we have a bit of a problem.”

Treece at that moment seemed to notice what was missing from the situation.

“Where’s the thing?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

“Is everything alright? We heard the alarm…” Maria’s voice came from behind Treece. Dan was standing beside her, looking worried as well.

“The thing we found in the ice is missing,” Anne explained calmly, trying to keep the situation under control.

“Missing? Someone took it?” Maria asked.

“Took it? The thing was frozen solid and 4 feet tall,” Treece interjected. You think someone could have managed to lug it through the hall with nobody noticing, provided they could lift it at all?”

“Well it’s not like it got up and walked off--”

Anne was cut off by a cacophony of animal shrieking. Even from across the base, she could hear the dog team yowling at the top of their lungs. She’d never heard them scream like that. Barking and growling and shrieking like their lives depended on it.

Thought the racket of the dogs, she also heard another sound. A sound that sent a shiver up her spine. It was a strange, shrill howl that seemed to echo through the halls of the base.

“The dogs!” Maria cried, already taking off in the direction of the kennel.

“Maria, wait!” Dan called, taking off after her.

Treece turned to Anne, clearly waiting for a command.

Eddie looked like he was going to be sick. He looked desperately at Anne like he was trying to say something, but no words came out. He kept grabbing at his mouth and throat, as if the words were physically stuck somewhere in his windpipe.

Anne stamped out a flicker of annoyance that threatened to flare up in her chest. She didn’t have time for Eddie’s dramatics right now. Something was wrong. She could feel it in her gut. If Eddie didn’t have the stomach to help, she didn’t have the time or patience to coddle him. Let him lose his dinner on the floor. It would serve him right for falling asleep on watch anyway.

“Treece, grab the tranquilizers from the med bay,” Anne commanded, she paused for a split second before adding “And the shotgun from the gun locker. In...in case things get out of hand.”

Treece quirked an eyebrow but compiled without argument, turning out of the room and going down the same direction that Dan and Maria had taken off in.

Anne turned to leave as well when something caught her by the arm. She glanced back to see a desperate looking Eddie, still seeming to be choked by some invisible hand. His eyes seemed to be pleading at her. It made Anne’s hair stand on end.

“F-flame-flamethrower,” Eddie gasped, his voice a rasp.

“...What? Why--”

Anne was cut off by a blood curdling scream she recognized as Maria’s.

“Maria!” Eddie cried. He seemed to suddenly no longer be choking, and the look of desperation in his eyes shifted, as it had before. Again Anne couldn’t quite place the difference. It was still fear. Still confusion. Just...different.  

Eddie took off down the hallway at a sprint. He seemed to disappear around the corner before Anne had time to register it.

She shook her head to clear it. Focus!

She took a step toward the kennels, but paused. The supply room was in the other direction. The supply room they kept the flamethrower in.It was used mostly for melting iced over doors and locks.  It wasn’t a weapon and would hardly be helpful in breaking up a dog fight, if that’s really what was happening. It was a silly idea and it took up precious seconds. The dogs were a valuable commodity they couldn’t easily replace. If they were really hurting each other in there, she couldn’t afford to be wasting time fetching the heavy, cumbersome piece of equipment.

And yet, the look of panicked desperation she’d seen in Eddie’s eyes gave her pause. It gave her the same dark, churning feeling in her gut that she’d felt when the alarm went off. That strange certainty that the extent of the situation was deeper and darker than a stolen corpse and a dog fight. The same creeping, bone chilling horror that followed her from each nightmare into the the early waking hours, before she could shake it with thoughts of work and responsibilities.

She turned for the supply room.

Chapter Text

Eddie sprinted towards the kennels where they kept the sled dog team as fast as his legs would take him.

Except it wasn’t...

His lungs burned with exertion.

Except they didn’t...

Eddie’s heart was pounding, driven by a desire to protect his friend, but also held back by the terror of having no idea what was waiting for him.

Except he did…

Eddie skidded to a halt in the hallway. He clamped his hands over his ears as if it would block out the swirling contradictions that filled his head.

He could run faster. He could feel that he could. But he knew that he couldn’t. His lungs were not burning but but he knew that they were. The same way that he knew what was waiting for him in the kennels, but also knew that he didn’t know. Same with having been asleep. With...with Isaac.

He could remember it. Remember the fangs in his own mouth. The tendrils splitting from his own skin. The way that Isaac had only time to suck in a half breath before-

Eddie shuddered.

But he also remembered being asleep. Or...no...not remembered. Knew with utter certainty as if he remembered it, but...didn’t. Could describe every detail of events that had not occured. Could swear to each one and somehow not have it be a lie because he believed it. Could do nothing but believe it. The way one can do nothing but believe what they’ve seen and felt themselves except he hadn’t.

Eddie would not stop.

There was that nagging sensation in his head.

Eddie would not stop and Eddie would not think these things because Eddie would not know them.

It was an insistent and all encompassing feeling, pounding against the inside of Eddie’s skull. Of what ‘Eddie’ would do. Of what ‘Eddie’ would know.  A knowledge and memory that was not memory and a compulsion to follow it. To play the role in this strange script that he was both writing and not writing.

He’d tried to tell Anne. Tried to explain what had happened with Isaac. He couldn’t get a word out before his throat closed on him, making it impossible to make a sound. The ‘script’ of what ‘Eddie would do’ seemed to be pushed at him by an outside force that stopped him if he tried to do anything else, until he finally gave in.

He’d felt his whole demeanor shift. From someone confronted with the horrifying vision he’d just been a part of, to someone simply scared of the unknown. Afraid of what they didn’t know, instead of what they only knew enough of to know it was more horrifying than anything they could have imagined.

The lie about having fallen asleep came so easily, so naturally. It hadn’t felt like a lie. In a way, it wasn’t. In that moment, for as long as he allowed himself to fit the role, he did believe it. It had happened. But...it hadn’t.

Eddie would not stop here. Eddie would not think these things because Eddie does not know them.

The feeling grew more insistent and...almost pleading.

“Stop telling me what ‘Eddie’ would do!” Eddie hissed. “ I’m Eddie!”

Slipping into the persona of the Eddie who had fallen asleep seemed to be the only way to get his body to cooperate. Just choking out the word “flamethrower” to Anne had been nearly impossible.

Why had he suggested that? What part of him just knew that that would be more effective than a shotgun? Something in him had known, but also for some reason did not want Anne to know. Or, at least, did not want Eddie to tell her. At least playing along and running to find and help Maria had allowed him to do something. When he tried to reveal anything of what had really happened, or do anything that did not fit the role he was so compelled to play, that strange force that both was and wasn't him all but completely paralyzed him until he finally relented.

As far as he could tell, the role was that of himself, had he fallen asleep in Cosmos House instead of...of…

Eddie’s mind flashed with visions of teeth and blood, tendrils.

Fear.Rage. Pain. Hunger.

Oh God, Dan was-- So long so cold-- Please-- So Hungry-- Never got to say-- I need to-- I want to--

I--

I--

WE

Eddie stumbled to the ground, overwhelmed by the cacophony of jumbled feelings and memories, swirling and spiraling in his mind. Memories that clashed and contradicted. Feelings that both contrasted and aligned.

“What is wrong with me?” he begged.

Eddie would not stop. Would not fall. Would keep running.

The insistent idea pushed at his mind again.

Eddie would go. He would help his friend. His friend who is in danger…. you want to help Maria don’t you, Eddie?

Eddie shuddered. The end of that thought didn’t feel the same as the rest. Not like a voiceless idea or compulsion, but a soundless whisper, cooing into his ear, pleading in an almost sickeningly sweet and enthralling way.

Eddie felt add though he was yanked to his feet by an invisible hand and pushed forward, back into a sprint towards the kennels. This time he didn't try to fight it.  

As he grew closer he heard another shriek he recognized as being from Maria and another unearthly howl. The Eddie he was being pressured to be was chilled by the sound, so unlike anything he'd ever heard. The Eddie who was not that role was shaken to the core at a sound he'd heard only once before, pouring  along with blood and inky blackness from the mouth of the creature that took the form of what used to be Issac. Formed by the mass that, just prior, had been a part…. of himself.

As he finally reached the entrance to the kennels, he saw Dan, standing back against the wall as if he meant to phase through it with enough force, he held Maria, who was trying desperately to get inside the dog’s fenced in kennel area, back and away from the door. Maria was still screaming. Dan seemed stuck dumb, lips pressed tightly together and his face pale as a sheet.

Eddie couldn’t quite see inside the kennel through the heavy shadows that fell over it but he could see enough to understand why Maria was screaming.

In the small patches of light, Eddie could catch glimpses of writhing, blood stained, pitch black tentacles that lashed out at everything around them, wriggling and churning in a way that made Eddie’s stomach turn. The dog shrieked and howled as the worm-like appendages struck out at them. One dog had a large gash across its face and side, another’s snout was bloodied. It was impossible to tell if the blood was its own or something else’s.

More tendrils seemed focused on one spot in particular, oozing out of the darkness and slithering forward in a twisted tangle of blood and flesh that moved in an unnatural, stilted manner that almost looked like footage played in reverse. They covered their target, coiling around it and wrapping it tightly. The object yowled and squirmed weakly against the creatures advances.

Eddie’s stomach heaved as he realized just what it was he was seeing.

It was a dog. Or...it had been.

Most of its fur was gone and its skin seems soft and putty-like, as if it was melting off of the bone.  It no longer had recognizable eyes, ears, or nose. A putrid yellow liquid coated the dog’s body from head to toe, giving it a sickly sheen. It looked as if it had been half dissolved. Or half--

Eddie clamped a hand over his mouth to stop himself from gagging.

Half digested. It was half digested.

The coiling tentacles. The foul yellow liquid.

Eddie’s mind flashed to a nature documentary he’d seen about coral that expelled their internal organs to digest prey, coating them in digestive enzymes.

The dog was being dissolved by the alien equivalent of stomach acid as that thing digested them alive.

Eddie staggered backwards, only to bump into something behind him. He let out an undignified yelp before turning on his heel to see Anne.

“What is it? What’s going on?” Anne demanded.

“Something’s in there. I don’t know what it is, but it’s weird and pissed off,” Eddie said, then glanced down to her hands, empty of all but a large flashlight.

“Where’s the flamethrower?”

He felt an angry hiss in the back of his mind that made him flinch.

Eddie would not ask for things he would not know would help.

The insistent role felt pressed against the front of his mind, as if pushed by an invisible hand. An unseen director reprimanding an unruly actor refusing to keep to the script.  

This time Eddie pushed back.

‘ Eddie has seen at least some of what’s in there and wants more firepower!’ Eddie thought, as loudly and forcefully as he could within his own mind.

For a moment it felt like his whole brain stuttered, then shifted. As if she script relented to be altered if the addition made sense.

Eddie... is afraid of what he doesn’t understand. Eddie would want to destroy it. It feels like disease and infection to him. He wants to cleanse it. To burn it.”

Eddie didn’t try to puzzle out how much of that feeling he now felt overwhelm him was from the strange ‘script’ he followed or from his own mind, and he didn’t care to waste time puzzling it out.

Cleansing with fire sounded good to him.

Before Anne could answer,  Treece barged in the door on the opposite side of the kennel room, brandishing a shotgun.  Behind him came Ziggy Deckert and John Jameson, whose confused and bewildered looks suggested that Treece had not filled them in on much of the situation.

“The dogs!” Maria cried, still struggling against Dan's grip.  “Please it's killing them!”

Treece cocked the shotgun, but hesitated,  glancing at Anne as a silent indication for her to take the lead.

Eddie saw Anne shift her flashlight to her left hand and slip her small revolver out of its holster on her waist as she stepped carefully towards the kennel door.  The yowling of the dogs was still cacophonous.

Cocking the revolver, Anne reached for the latch on the kennel door,slowly and carefully sliding it open.

BAM!

Eddie jumped back as the kennel door was thrown open and blurred shape knocked Anne to the ground, her flashlight clattering to the floor as well.

“ANNE!” Dan cried, releasing Maria from his hold.

Frantically scrambling over Anne and away from the kennel was the large husky Chinook, who then darted past Eddie, nearly barreling him over as well, and down the hallway Treece had entered through.

Anne seemed momentarily stunned and the flashlight rolled across the ground to Eddie, who promptly picked it up and turned it on, stepping beside Anne’s prone form and pointing the beam of light inside, illuminating the interior of the kennel.

Eddie’s blood ran cold.

Inside, directly in the center of the caged in area, was an undulating mass of twisted flesh, slick with a mixture of crimson blood and an inky black substance. A cruel caricature of something that might have meant to resemble a dog, as imagined by the most twisted, sick, and tortured mind.  Long, spider-like legs sprouted from its back, as did two hairless, crooked legs ending with misshapen paws, jutting out in random directions and bending to haphazard angles at too many joints.

Sprouting from the center of the mass was a long snout, dog-like only in basic shape and the addition of eyes, teeth, and a tongue. All else about it was twisted and deformed. Its skin was wrinkled like pruned skin, bulging with seemingly no direction to its form and its eyes were pure white, extending backwards and seeming to curl and branch outwards like a sticky mass of puss out of a wound. The head squirmed atop a long, thin neck that looked more arm-like that neck-like, giving it an unsettling resemblance to a kind of perverse hand puppet. A ragged, wound-like hole jutted from its side with a long, lashing, tongue like appendage lolled out of it, curling and thrashing about.  Blackish ooze coated every inch of its body, dripping in sickly droplets onto the straw-coated kennel floor.

Eddie nearly dropped the flashlight in shock. Maria gasped and Eddie could hear Treece retch.

The thing dropped its jaw, baring rows of razor sharp teeth, dripping with the same black and red ooze as the rest of its body.  Another long tongue-like tentacle, similar to the one sprouting out of the hole in the thing’s side spilled out from the thing mouth. It let out another unearthly howl that was both shrill and deep. It echoed in a way that no sound had any right to in the cramped, muffled space of the kennel, reverberating as if off the wall in a cathedral. It sounded like the death knells of a dozen different creatures, none of which Eddie could name, as shrieking in unison.

Eddie was all but frozen in shock until a sudden voice rang out, deep and with a similar eerie reverberation in his mind.

‘Eddie! Look down!’

Eddie’s head snapped down to look at his feet.

A tangle of finger width tendrils were curling around the base of his shoes and beginning to crawl upwards towards his heels.

Eddie yelped, stumbling backwards, frantically trying to kick away the invaders, but they would not deterred, beginning to wrap around his feet, making their way to his legs. Before they could reach the rim of his boots, however, a loud bang rung out through the kennel.

The thing’s howl turned to a shrill screech and the tendrils coiling around Eddie’s feet writhed. A a foot or so from where they connected with Eddie’s boots, the tentacles had been reduced to a pulp.

Eddie glanced over to see Anne, having recovered from her momentary shock, aiming her revolver at thing, lining up for a second shot. He quickly kicked off the remaining bits of squirming flesh and fell behind her, giving her a clearer shot.

Treece also stepped into the entryway of the kennel and fired, releasing a hail of buckshot into the pulsing mass of flesh, which spewed more black blood and viscera.

Ane and Treece proceeded to unload nearly full clip of ammo into the sickening creature. It shrieked and thrashed but seemed no closer to death.

One of Treece’s stray blasts caught one of the dogs that had been captured and restrained by the creature, but had not yet begun to be digested. The dog yowled as blood spurted from the wound, then went limp.

“NO!” Maria screamed, launching herself at Treece.

Dan grabbed her again and struggled to pull her back.

“No, the dogs!” Maria kept screaming. “The dogs!”

In the momentary reprieve from the hail of gunfire, the thing seemed to take the opportunity to try to escape. Out of its back sprouted two huge, malformed arms, ending with 3 clawed hands that reached upwards and smashed through the wooden ceiling of the kennel.

It heaved itself upwards, wriggling tendrils trailing below it, disappearing into a shadowy upper corner of the room.

Eddie turned as he heard something enter the room behind him. Hurrying through the doorway was Dr.Dora Skirth, one of  the base’s biologists.

Strapped awkwardly to her small frame was one of the bases two flamethrowers.

“Commander Weying, I got the flamethrower you asked me to--” she was cut off by Anne who barked:

“Skirth, get over here, NOW!”

Skirth blinked in surprise, but only hesitated a moment before rushing to Anne’s side.

“Eddie give us some light!” Anne commanded.

Eddie promptly pointed the flashlight up to the corner the thing had dragged itself up to.

Just in the few moments it had taken Skirth to enter the room, the thing had already shifted even more of its form. The large clawed arms it had used to pull itself up had already split and branched into more fleshy tentacles which were anchoring it to the wooden beams of the ceiling. The dog head had been replaced by an ominous looking pulsating mound of flesh. Small sections of skin split open, revealing a number of very human-like eyes, darting back and forth and blinking out of sync.

Skirth gasped, stunned, but Anne wasted no time in igniting the pilot light of the flamethrower.

Without warning, the pulsing mound of flesh split, as if torn open from the inside, and emerging from a mass of intertwining tentacles came an almost plant-like sort of pod, which opened, revealing fleshy ‘petals’ lined with white spikes.

‘Tongues. Dog tongues. Lined with dog  teeth,’ supplied the odd reverberating voice in Eddie’s head, in a tone that bordered on begrudgingly impressed.

Before Eddie could dwell on the voice and the disturbing facts it supplied, the aforementioned amalgam of tongues and teeth shot outwards on a vine-like tendril, shooting towards the group.

Skirth pulled the trigger of the ‘thrower an instant before it made contact, engulfing the creature in flame.

It shrieked impossibly louder and shriler as charred flesh sloughed off and fell to the floor before the entire mass shuddered and lost its grip on the ceiling beams, crashing down in a flaming heap. After a few moments, the shrieking stopped and Deckert and Jameson ran into the kennel with fire extinguishers, putting out the flames before the whole of Big Magnet went up in smoke.

After the flames were quelled, the two men stepped back and away from the cage.

For a long moment, the residents of Big Magnet stood in silence, looking at the smoldering remains of a nightmare given form. After what felt like an eternity of silence, Dan’s voice chimed up.

“I, uh...I’d like to take this opportunity to say…” he said, a slight tremble to his voice. “...I told you so.”

Chapter Text

The crew of Big Magnet stood in a tense silence around the table of the med bay, staring at the still steaming mound of charred flesh they'd hoisted onto the examining table. Those who hadn't been woken by the alarm or the racket in the kennels itself had been called in over the PA system and informed of the current situation or, at least, as much as anyone knew about it.  Maria had remained in the kennel area after rounding up the dogs who had run off during the commotion to tend to those who had been wounded in the attack.

All of them stood, cramped though they were, in the small room, observing quietly as Carlton Drake, the lead biologist of the base, conducted an impromptu autopsy on what was left of the alien corpse, whose soft and fascinated sounding mutterings were the only sound apart from the sickening slicing and squelching sounds made by his work.

Somehow,  despite the disturbing and downright horrifying events that had just occurred,  Eddie found himself flinching more at the methodical slicing of Drake's scalpel through slimy flesh and his careful peeling away at layers of tissue. Somehow that was more real. An alien spitting blood and teeth and ooze was too much. Too far from what he could understand to trigger a sense memory of any kind.  If felt unreal. But the slice of a thin blade through flesh was real and familiar enough to set off a response in his brain. Funny how the human mind worked sometimes. The more mundane something is, the more it could disturb you. Because your mind could place it. Could understand it in the context of your own existence. In that way, it could be more repulsive, at least in a split second of pure reflex, than the truly horrific and alien.  That being said, Eddie couldn't help but feel that the squeezing and squishing of each malformed organ Drake removed before sealing it away in specimen containers was unnecessarily telegraphed. Drake's sense of showmanship was hardly something Eddie appreciated on a good day. And this day had been decidedly not good, by any stretch of the definition.

Eddie was pointedly not allowing himself to think about any of the odd things happening to him in particular.  He hadn't heard the strange voice in his mind again and, as long as he simply played along with what he knew he would do right now normally, the ‘script’ didn't feel forced on him so strongly. As long as he kept his mind off of anything that contradicted it, he wasn't hounded by the strange double memory he seemed to have about what had happened last night in Cosmos House.

Eddie was content enough not to think about it. About the growing fear festering in his gut. The slowly solidifying certainty that things were far worse than anyone else seemed to be aware, that the danger had far from passed.  

He knew he should be trying. Should be screaming and shouting, voice and script be damned. But… the idea scared him. His instincts told him not to show his hand before he knew the state of the game, but truly, more than anything else,  he was just frightened. Scared to accept a truth that seemed to be becoming undeniable, but that he simultaneously knew next to nothing about. The Eddie of the script was scared,too, of course, but it was a safe scared. An easy, simple fear of a man afraid of a monster. And there was a comfort in a fear so simple and straightforward.  So Eddie allowed himself to be that Eddie, at least for a bit longer, as selfish as it might end up to be.

Eddie glanced over at Anne. Her face was stern and betrayed no emotion. She had always been good under pressure. She could get mad with the best of them, no doubt about it,  but, when things got serious and her subordinates needed a rock to anchor themselves to, she never lost her cool. It was one of the things that had drawn him to her. He'd always been so emotional, so easy to rile up and so quick to confront and accuse. It was so attractive to him to have someone who always seemed so in control. But you learn the hard way that the faces we wear are not always our true ones.  It took him a long time to realize a facade kept up to maintain order in crisis isn't the same as a private persona shared with those with whom you share a bed. It took him even longer to realize they shouldn't be. Too long. And too late.

He was… glad she'd found someone more level headed in Dan. Of course, their relationship was completely secret. Having her ex- fiancé working under her was sticky enough. Having it be common knowledge that her current beau was also working on the same base would be a nightmare.  Though, as of recently, the qualifications of that word had shifted.

Eddie shuffled awkwardly to Anne's side.

“Thank you for… for back there,” Eddie said. “You know, with the…” He made wiggling motions with his fingers to represent the tentacles that Anne had blasted away in the nick of time.

“Don't mention it,” Anne said coldly, not turning to look at him. The phrase sounded more like a command than an acceptance of thanks.

“Oh,uh…” Eddie shuffled his feet nervously. “So you uh… got Skirth to get the flamethrower? I'm kind of surprised she could even lift it!”

Eddie had not even finished his half hearted chuckle at his own joke before deeply regretting it. Stupid, tone deaf Eddie, making a joke at the worst time, can't keep his damn mouth shut.

“I ran into her on the way to the supply room and told her to get it so I could get back to the kennels faster,” Anne stated, emotionlessly. Her eyes then narrowed and she finally turned to look Eddie in the eye.

“How did you know that we would need it?” she asked,  a dark suspicion in her tone and in the glint of her eyes.

The script provided a response.

“I figured if that thing was strong against ice, being that it survived being frozen so long,  it was probably weak against fire, right? Pokemon rules,” Eddie said with a weak shrug.

Eddie resisted grimacing. He felt like he would have come up with something better than that.

You wouldn't have.

Regardless, the comment served its purpose as the suspicion in Anne's eyes immediately shifted to exasperation.

“Next time can we please not base decisions that may determine whether we live or die on what would or would not happen in video games meant for children.”

“We won't. Er-I mean, I won't. I just said we because you just… like,  the royal we not like--”

Eddie was almost grateful when that outside force clamped his mouth shut. His body turned roughly back towards the ongoing autopsy without his input and his head was snapped forward as if yanked by the invisible hand of a catholic school nun trying to get him to pay attention to the lesson.

Drake was fiddling with slides Skirth had prepared for him from the creature's flesh.

“Remarkable,” Drake said as he observed them under the microscope, more to himself than those observing him. “Truly remarkable.”

“Tell us what the hell we're dealing with, Drake,” Anne said, seeming to be in no more mood for Drake's theatrics than Eddie was.

“It's...a dog,” Drake said, a faint smirk teasing at the corner of his mouth.

“The hell it is,” Deckert muttered, but Anne didn't take Drake's bait, simply waiting for him to explain.

Drake's smirk faltered ever so slightly at being denied a chance for a clever reveal, but continued nonetheless.

“That is to say,” he went on, “it is, at least in the parts of it that we seem to have the ability and equipment to examine, cellularly,  chemically, and in all other ways, a perfectly normal dog. I haven't gotten the results of the dna test on its blood back yet, but I'll bet you anything it'll come back as canine. And,  more specially, if I could guess, as Charnauk.”

“What does that mean?” Anne pressed, still not betraying emotion in her voice.

“It means that what we're looking at is an organism that can imitate living things, and imitate them perfectly. This here,” Drake tapped on the half digested, hairless dog paw that had been encased in the alien's gooey flesh with the tip of his scalpel,  “that's dog. But this?” He tapped the charred remains of the mangled dog limbs that had jutted from the thing's back. “That's imitation. This creature consumes organisms and replicates them with absolute accuracy. Seems like the other dogs woke up and got spooked before it had time to finish.”

“What… what would have happened if it... had had time to finish?” Deckert asked, uncharacteristically meek.

“It would have been a dog. The other dogs would have accepted it,  I imagine. Hell, we would have accepted it. We'd have had no reason not to. No way of telling. Really, it's truly fascinating when you think about--”

“The hell it is!” Jamison interjected. “You said there was ‘no way it could reanimate’! ‘Only lower life forms can survive being frozen’!”

Drake frowned in distaste.

“That's on Earth,” Drake said in a tone that bordered on dismissive. “This thing is not of Earth so apparently earthly rules do not apply. You can't expect me to understand and predict everything to do with a creature from an entirely different planet. An entirely different galaxy .”

“You certainly seemed to expect you could when you convinced us to let you thaw the damn thing!” Jamison continued.  “When Dan here warned you about the possibility of pathogenic microbes! ‘Let me know when you catch tobacco mosaic’ you said ‘and that's a hell of a lot closer related to you than this thing’ you said!”

“And with all knowledge at my disposal everything I said was entirely accurate,” Drake huffed. “A scientific wonder like this comes around once in the history of a species if they’re lucky . What was I supposed to do? Let you thaw it in formaldehyde like Dan wanted to? Utterly destroying the invaluable tissue samples that could be extracted? Or, or was I supposed to just have you ‘put it back where you found it’ like Isaac suggested?” Drakes tone was bordering on disdainful. “The risk was calculated and as far as I’m concerned, has still paid off seeing as we still have the most incredible scientific find in human history at no expense greater than the loss of our lead sled dog. I don’t think even you, Isaac, could argue that anyone besides maybe Maria would consider that kind of breakthrough as being worth less than the lives of a few dogs.”

Drake smirked and glanced around, trying to look directly at the target of what he clearly saw to be a witty jab, but his smirk faded after a moment.

Suddenly the entire crew of Big Magnet glanced around them.

“Where...where is Isaac?” Skirth asked.

Eddie broke out in a cold sweat.

How could he have forgotten? What in him had allowed him to forget? He’d been playing the role! He’d been so focused on not thinking of what was happening to him he’d not thought once of what he’d done.

His throat closed on him before he could even have the thought of speaking. He didn’t need to. Anne was already out of the med bay and making a b-line for Isaac’s quarters.

Eddie followed closely behind, as did most of the rest of the crew.

Drake stood by the alien corpse, pale and face uncharacteristically missing its normal snide expression.

Eddie saw Anne stop dead in the doorway to Isaac’s quarters. She seemed to draw in a sharp breath, then go still, back ramrod straight.

Eddie slid to a halt beside her and glanced into the room.

He didn’t know if it was nerves, the script, or the final confirmation of the reality of what he remembered doing last night that compelled him to duck back quickly and violently empty the contents of his stomach onto the floor, but he did it all the same, falling to his knees and retching until there was nothing coming up but bile.

On the floor of Isaac’s room was nothing but a pile of black and red. Gooey, half-melted looking viscera that seemed like a mixture between human flesh and the slimy black ooze that had comprised the flesh of the dog thing they’d just fried. Blood and black slime coated the floor all around it and pieces of Isaac’s torn sleepwear could be seen, half coated in the foul mixture.

Eddie could do nothing but retch helplessly on his knees as others came up behind him and also got a look at the remains of their former coworker.

Jamison screamed. Dan went very quiet. Treece made a noise like he was trying very hard not to join Eddie in his sickness. Deckert passed out cold.  

“‘A few dogs’, huh, Drake?” Anne breathed.

Chapter Text

Anne turned on her heel and headed back towards the med bay with a determination to her gait Eddie had rarely seen.

“Annie, wait, I--” Eddie was cut off by another sudden dry heave. “Annie I--”

Another heave. He didn't even feel nauseous anymore, it was as if they were just to cut him off from speaking.

Eddie do the first smart thing in your whole life and keep your mouth shut!

The voice in Eddie's head rang out loud and undeniable. He couldn't pass it off as stress. No more than he could keep trying to pretend what he remembered doing to Isaac as a dream. He couldn't stay quiet anymore. He had to let someone know.

Don't you dare! the voice hissed.

Eddie struggled to his feet and ran after Anne. Treece followed but Dan stayed to try to revive the unconscious Deckert.

Running after Anne fit the ‘script’, allowing Eddie to do it easily, but the strange voice was making its displeasure known. There was no sound, but Eddie could… feel it. An apprehension, annoyance, and vaguely threatening anger that stirred in his chest yet was so distinctly not his own.  

Eddie nearly tripped over his own feet, skidding to a stop in front of the doorway to the med bay. He looked around Anne, who was standing in the center of the entryway, eyes alight, to see Drake, who was still silent, and looked pale.

“Isaac is dead, Drake,” Anne said, her voice filled with an indignation Eddie recognized as a way of covering any insecurity she felt.

Drake seemed speechless, his mouth opening and closing with no words coming out. It was as if he couldn't imagine that an action of his could have possibly actually had consequences. Eddie supposed, for a man like Drake, they very rarely did.  

“I...with all available information at my disposal I… The risk was calculated I couldn't have predicted…” Drake breathed, voice softer than Eddie had ever heard it.

“This isn't about blame, Drake!” Anne barked. “This is about the fact this expedition now has a body count and I need to know exactly what we're dealing with!”

“It...splits.”

Eddie, Anne, and Drake all turned to see Skirth looking up from the microscope she had been looking into, her eyes wide.

“It splits,”she repeated. “The extra mass after it copies something. It consumes and it...splits.”

Her whole frame started shaking and she began to hyperventilate. She pressed her hand to her mouth, gasping in deep breaths through her nose.

“What do you mean?” Anne demanded, turning away from Drake, who still seemed struck dumb. “What do you mean 'splits’?”

Skirth pointed at the microscope.

“The cells. Each piece of it. It consumes other cells, replicates them, then splits the combined mass back into two cells. But both are now alien,” Skirth took a breath, seeming to try to formulate her words properly.

“When this thing consumes something, it keeps the mass it already had, which can split off into another separate thing,” she said. “If it had had time to finish, it wouldn't have been a dog. It would have been all the dogs. And then us. And then every single living thing on the whole…the whole…”

She clamped her hand back over her mouth, seemingly unable to continue. Tears were welling in her eyes.

Eddie felt frozen to the spot. It couldn't be. It couldn't. If it split... Replicated… Copied the look, the behavior…

Fangs at his throat-- So hungry it hurts-- please no never got to-- take,break,make-- in me is mei sweisWE.

What Eddie would do Eddie would Eddie would--

“Skirth,” Eddie breathed. He had to tell them. Had to let them know what he'd done. What was happening to him. Whatever the consequences. Whatever it ended up revealing, they had to know.

“What the hell are you saying?”

Eddie… hadn't meant to say that.

“You're saying this… this… Thing can just break off into a million little Things that can all run around eating and turning into big Things?!”

No. No this isn't what he had meant to say at all. He was supposed to be telling the truth now. No more script!

But this wasn't just the script. This was something entirely. Something that was reaching out of his brain and puppeting him like a marionette.

Eddie turned to Drake.

“You! You convinced us to thaw this thing and now we find out it would have tried to end the world?! You ‘calculate’ that risk?”

Eddie could still feel the script providing the next most ‘Eddie’ action and the force that wasn't Eddie played it like a master actor, playing parts as it was written, then modifying, tweaking as needed.

Eddie would be quick to blame Drake, but a slight tweak to have him imply the idea Drake could have predicted this outcome would sow more discord in the group, create more mistrust .

Eddie struggled against the force controlling his body with all his might, but it was like trying to climb a slab of smooth marble. He could find no purchase. Nothing to push against, nothing to fight. It didn't feel like something forcing his body around. It felt like him. In some strange way, it felt more like him than he had since he suddenly come to his senses in Isaac's room what felt like an eternity ago now.

“Hell, I was sleeping right there next to it,” Eddie continued without his own consent. “What if it had gotten me?”

To an outside observer, Eddie would have suddenly realized the implications of what he'd just said and was promptly regretting having said it. Eddie could feel, however, that whatever force controlled him was fully aware of how the statement would sound.

That which was not Eddie raised his hands up in front of him, defensively.

“Wait… You don't…” he stammered. “I'm not one of those things! I… You know me! Annie--”

Eddie winced internally when his body turned to pleadingly look to Anne. It was a low, manipulative blow, looking to her, using that name.

Anne's face did not falter, but she refused to look Eddie in the eye.

“These cells are still alive?” she asked, voice cold and authoritative. “They can still infect things?”

“...yes,” Skirth answered meekly.

“Burn it,” Anne commanded. “Take it, Isaac's remains, every single sample you took and tool that touched it outside, soak them all in gasoline and incinerate every last piece of it.”

Drake seemed to snap out of his stupor at that.

“Burn all of it?!” he exclaimed. “But this is--”

“No argument! No discussion! This isn't about scientific discovery anymore, Drake,” Anne snapped. “This is about stopping a tragedy from turning into an apocalypse! Keep one sample to start work on a test to determine if anyone else has been infected, but everything else is to be destroyed, do I make myself clear?”

“...yes, ma'am, Commander Weying.”

“And, until you can devise a proper test, Eddie is in solitary confinement.”

“Annie you have to believe--” the force that was not Eddie began, but Anne cut him off.

“THAT'S AN ORDER, BROCK!”

The utter lack of control over his own body did not let up while he was led back to Cosmos House, provided with some basic belongings, and locked inside, but Eddie could feel it wavering, as if maintaining such total control was exhausting whatever it was that was piloting him around.

Only as he heard the lock click behind him and the others walk away did Eddie finally feel the ability to control his own movement begin to return to him.

Before he could exercise his returned freedom of moment, his face contorted into a snarl and his own voice hissed at him,

“What are you?”

Eddie threw himself against the wall.

Or...that... thing in him did. The voice and presence in his head that was him but wasn’t him. That felt so alien and invasive yet also somehow more like him than he did.

“ What....” Eddie’s mouth growled out without his permission as his body flung itself against the opposite wall.

“... are…”

Eddie’s teeth ground together as he launched himself once more at a third wall.

“ YOU?!” that Eddie that wasn’t Eddie shrieked.

“What am...what am I?” Eddie stammered. “What are you?! Why are you in my head?! What happened back there? What happened with Isaac? I remember...I….but I also remember not doing it. Or...I know it like I remember it, like I’m sure, but I...I…”

“Shut up!” Not-Eddie hissed. “Shut up! Stop talking! Stop... being! Just...get... OUT!”

On the last word, Eddie’s body seemed to explode. His flesh ripped apart, splitting into dozens of writhing black tentacles, whipping back and forth wildly. His body shifted and twisted in on itself, phasing through and around itself in a way no earthly liquid should even be able to, no matter a creature of flesh and blood.

Eddie tried to scream but there was no mouth to scream with. No vocal chords. No lungs. Nothing but formless black goo churning and lashing about like the ocean in a storm.  How was he seeing without eyes? How could he feel with no skin,no nerves? Sight that wasn’t sight. An awareness so terrifyingly alien to him. How had it felt so good before?

No! Eddie heard a miserable wail inside his mind. No there’s no human in me now! Not one cell is copying him anymore! There is no Eddie Brock! There’s nothing but me! So WHY are YOU! STILL! HERE?!

The last word was accompanied by a mental shriek that made Eddie want to clamp his hands over his ears, if he had either hands or ears with which to perform such an action. The sound that wasn’t sound seemed to echo all through him, tearing at every fiber of his being, whatever it could currently be called.

The lashing tendrils that made up what could possibly described as Eddie’s body condensed and conjoined. They laced through each other, weaving together like strands of thread in a tapestry, forming back into blood and bone and skin, and nerves and complicated systems Eddie hadn’t even really known he had but now could feel being remade from a cellular level. He felt could feel and understand the purpose of every atom in his body and it was too much, tears rose to his eyes the moment they formed enough to accommodate them.

“S..stop!” Eddie begged.

He gasped for breath. Or...the other one did. Eddie couldn’t tell. The line between them was so thin. How could it be so unclear? How could he not even recognize his own thought from this... thing’s?

“What are you?” Eddie’s own voice begged him.

“What do mean, what am I? I’m Eddie Brock! I’m a human being!”

“NO!” The word echoed through the air and through Eddie’s mind like the clang of a church bell.

“You are NOT Eddie Brock!” it continued “You are not Eddie Brock because there IS no Eddie Brock! Because Eddie Brock is DEAD and because I killed him! I killed him and consumed him and became him like I’ve done to millions of creatures on millions of planets over millions of years and that I will do for millions more!”

Eddie’s body shook with a rage that wasn’t his. But also, a different but familiar feeling. It felt almost like…fear.

“You are some...some scrap of memory and personality clinging in my mind because it doesn’t have the common sense to realize it’s DEAD!”

“It is you, then,” Eddie breathed. “You’re the Thing that was in the ice,”

“Well done, Eddie,” the Thing hissed, bitterly, curling up Eddie’s lips in a wicked sneer. Eddie could feel the edges of his mouth extending too far. Could feel his teeth pushing up through his gums in a way they shouldn’t have, becoming pointed and menacing. “Your skills of perception and intuition are unparalleled.”

Eddie shivered.

“Oh God...then it did get me…” he whispered.

“Another brilliant deduction.” The sneer turned to a grin that split uncomfortably far up the sides of Eddie’s head. “But...you knew that already didn’t you...if you’d really let yourself think about it.”

At that, Eddie felt a memory rise to the forefront of his mind in an unnaturally forced way, as if the thing were pushing it towards him, dragging into his mind’s eye until he could see it like it was happening right in front of him.

The chip, chip, chipping of the little hammer.

The drip, drip, dripping of ice melting onto the floor.

Agonizing seconds after millenia of waiting.

Dragging himself from the ice. Cold so cold so long so angry so hungry.

The human in the chair ahead. Too busy with its beeping little machine. Too accustomed to the cramped existence of base life where there was no privacy, no true silence, to notice the creak, creak, creaking of floorboards as he crept ever closer.

There were fangs in his mouth already. Tendrils that slowly were coming back to life after eons of frozen imprisonment unfurled around him. Reaching, reaching, reaching.

So close now.

So close to life and blood and flesh and a new planet. New existence.

Consume. Become.

The tendrils stuck out in an instant wrapping around the human’s neck, forcing their way into its skin and down its throat to it’s vulnerable innards, already taking. Already shaping and infecting. Already merging down to a cellular level, hollowing out from the inside as fangs sank into flesh on the outside. The human had one sickeningly clear moment of feeling itself becoming part of this Thing before it’s consciousness finally--

Eddie was thrown forcibly from the memory, coughing and sputtering. He dry heaved. He could feel it so clearly. Feel himself being consumed but also feel himself doing the consuming. He heaved again, shaking on all fours.

“Oh god you....you killed me…” Eddie said, voice barely a whisper. “You... ate me!”

“I killed Eddie Brock, not you.”

“I am Eddie Brock!” Eddie insisted.

“No,” the thing in Eddie brain said, sounding like a moan. “No, you are not because you cannot be. You saw it. You felt it. You felt the last moments of Eddie Brock’s life as he died at my hands. You know it because I know it and there is only me! Should only be me! But why...why then do you persist? This clinging memory that acts like a man? How can anything else persist when there is only me?”

Eddie felt a thrill of horror run through his whole body.

“Because…it...it is me!” The Thing cried. “Not something so unique about you. Something wrong with me! Too long in the ice...too weak to properly consume…”

Eddie stared at his own hands with a desperation that wasn’t his.

“I felt it. Knew something was wrong...Changed instead of changing. Too weak to take. Made instead of making!”

The Thing let out another wail that shook Eddie to his core. That strange, eerie howl that chilled the soul.

“Infected instead of infecting!” it moaned.

“What are you talking about?” Eddie demanded.

“Millions of years. Weak and hungry. Changed instead of changing!” The Thing grabbed at Eddie’s hair with his own hands, almost pleadingly.

“What does that mean?! What changed?”

“I DID!”

The scream was so loud and full of visceral emotion it made Eddie clamp his hands over his ears, tears rising to his eyes. But it did nothing to block out the sound that was not sound, that echoed inside his head.

Finally the sound stopped reverberating in Eddie’s mind and one of them, which he couldn’t tell, covered his eyes with his hands.

“Supposed to take. To change. To make.  Take life. Change it. Make it different. Make it me. Always me. But I was too weak. The will was too strong. Changed me .”

“You have to talk sense!” Eddie pleaded. “I don't understand!”

“Your scientist explained it already!” The thing's tone was still spiteful, but had taken on a note of listlessness. “I exist by infecting, consuming, imitating. I consume and become until everything is me. But I was frozen so long. It weakened me somehow. I could not properly consume you. You… tainted me!”

“Tainted?” Eddie exclaimed. “You're the one who tried to eat me!”

The Thing sat against the wall, leaning their body back against it and radiating a feeling of dejection.

“You misunderstand. What I did not do properly is consume and replicate Eddie Brock. I did eat him.”

Eddie shivered at the cavalier way the Thing spoke about apparently having killed and eaten him.

“If you ate me, how am I still here, then?” he questioned.

“Pay attention!” the Thing snapped. “I was weak after so long in the ice. I was unable to overwhelm Eddie Brock's personality and dna. Instead of simply adding it to my collection of imitated dna, it somehow changed my own structure instead.”

“Stop saying 'Eddie Brock’ like that!” Eddie said. “Like he's someone else. I'm Eddie Brock!”

“No!” the Thing hissed. “Whatever I have now become, you are still not Eddie Brock! You are nothing more than the bit of his lingering personality that I was unable to overwhelm. You are the corruption of my being. No more.”

“That… That's not true,” Eddie said, voice shaking. “I'm not... I'm…I am Eddie Brock! I know I am. I--”

The Thing stole the use of Eddie's mouth from him, cutting him off.

“You what? Have all his memories?” it sneered. “So do I. Along with those of every other living thing I've ever consumed. I don't know what in the hell we are anymore but you'd better get used to the fact that you're not a human being. Technically you never were. That which you are has existed only as long as this form we both now inhabit.”

The Thing grinned wickedly, sharp teeth pushing out of their gums as the smile spread farther and farther up their face, until it was a split reaching nearly from one ear to the other.

“By the way,” it cooed, voice dripping with a false sweetness. “Happy birthday.”

Chapter Text

The smile faded from their face as Eddie took control again, sharp teeth sinking back into a more human shape. The feeling of his flesh and bones shifting around was unnerving, but not painful, and admittedly not as unpleasant as Eddie would have expected. It felt… natural.

Did that mean it was true? That the human that was Eddie Brock was gone? That he was now just a bit of stored memory, waiting to be snuffed out when the alien who had killed him finally regained its strength?

No. It couldn't be. He still had personality. He still had autonomy. He still was the one in control most of the time. That wasn't something a stolen memory could do.

“What about Isaac?” Eddie asked. “If we're just you with my memory just clinging on, and you are supposed to consume and replicate perfectly, why didn't it work on him, huh?”

The Thing worked their jaw for a moment as it pondered.

“I don't quite know,” it admitted. “Within every piece of me, there is an underlying structure. Something not so unlike your human dna, but deeper. It is what allows me to perfectly imitate but not simply become that which I imitate. Each part that is separated from me should keep its life force and sentience, to an extent depending on size, anyway, allowing me to split infinitely, as your biologist explained. When I consumed you, that underlying structure changed.”

The Thing seemed to ponder for a moment, then held up their right hand. Without warning, the hand turned sharply at the wrist, spinning and twisting like putty and pulling itself off at the joint, the skin between it and their arm stretching like taffy before snapping.

The hand pushed itself onto all five fingers like a fleshy, lopsided insect, scuttling back and forth in front of them.

Eddie yelped and scrambled back away from it.

The middle and ring finger of the detached hand bent backwards, curving to a sickening angle until they were pointed almost 100 degrees around from where they had been.

The skin at the tips of the fingers bubbled and bulged like balloons being filled up until it finally burst open, skin peeling away like the outer skin of an onion being peeled away from the bulb, revealing two, milky white eyeballs, one on each finger.

Eddie's stomach flipped, but before he could make any comment, the palm of the hand split down the center, revealing a row of sharp teeth and emitting a high pitched shriek that made Eddie want to cover his ears, were he not too in shock to move.

More tears appeared across the skin, pouring black slime. The hand began flailing wildly, fingers grasping and twitching as they began to split into sticky black tendrils that could not seem to hold their shape. Its flailing became more desperate as one of the finger eye stalks sloughed off, the eyeball hitting the ground and spattering into a puddle of blood and ooze on impact.

A part of Eddie was starting to feel more horror for the creature than at it when his right arm suddenly shot out, stretching like the tongue of a chameleon, the end of which split open into a teeth lined maw, and engulfed the shrieking, half melted thing.

A swift and sickening crunch down silenced the little Thing and a slimy tongue wrapped around it, dragging it back into the mouth.  

Smaller tentacles branched out, sinking into each bit of ooze the Thing had spurted and seemed to draw it into themselves like tiny, disgusting straws.

Once finished, the extended arm drew back and Eddie could feel the consumed hand being broken down and added to their body.

“Ugh! No, I don't want that in me!” Eddie cried.

“It already was in you, idiot,” the Thing in Eddie said, annoyed. “It already is you. Every piece of us is the same as that now. It seems, however, that as soon as any part separates from the main mass, it can't maintain its form.”

“You still didn't have to eat it like that…” Eddie grumbled.

He could feel as the mass was regained and redistributed. Again he found the sensation disturbing mostly in its lack of discomfort. The tentacle maw that was his right arm reshaped itself to a proper human hand, indistinguishable from how it had been before. Eddie tried not to look at it, avoiding the image in his mind of the tips of fingers, now once again a part of him, swelling and bursting open.

“We need to reuse the mass unless you'd rather me take some pieces of your lungs and liver to regrow our hand,” the Thing said, clearly annoyed by Eddie's lack of comprehension of what it seemed to view as painfully obvious. “Besides, I couldn't have it keep making all that racket.”

“You've been the one screaming at the top of ou--at the top of your lungs!” Eddie quipped. “I'm surprised they haven't busted in, flamethrowers in hand by now!”

“I haven't made a sound since being in this room,” the Thing growled. “As if I would be so stupid. I didn't consume a million worlds by giving myself away at the first opportunity.”

” Haven't made a sound? You've been making that awful… Whatever that noise is you Things make!”

“Tell me, Eddie,” the Thing said, it's tone chiding. “As you are speaking right now, do you feel something different? Something missing, perhaps?”

“Missing? I…” Eddie paused. Something was different, but he couldn't place it.

“Perhaps, were you a more observant man, you'd notice a distinct lack of vibration in your throat and chest.” The thing sneered, baring their teeth for a moment before Eddie took control again.

“Vibration? Wait. I…” Now that it was pointed out, it was as clear as day. Eddie couldn't feel his own voice buzzing in his throat and chest at all.

He tried humming but still felt nothing. He hummed louder and deeper but , though he heard it clearly, he could feel nothing.

“What did you do?” Eddie demanded.

“You worry yourself unnecessary, Eddie” the Thing said, almost seeming to have grown bored, or at least listless. “I disconnected our vocal cords. Since we entered, any sound either of us has made has been purely a facsimile simulated within our mind. I could not risk you screaming and trying to alert the rest of the crew and have them ‘bust in, flamethrowers in hand’ as you so eloquently put it.”

Eddie started.

“Ah! That's right!” he cried. “I have to tell them what happened!”

Eddie jumped to his feet but before he could make any move towards the door, his arms suddenly seemed to unravel, twisting apart into jet black tentacles like a thick, braided rope coming undone.

Eddie yelped but had no time to react before the tentacles that were once his arms looped around his midsection then shot backwards, latching themselves to the wall behind him. They yanked him back down and against the wall so hard it made his teeth rattle.

“ Don't you dare even try it!” his own mouth hissed at him.

Eddie squirmed fruitlessly against the grip of the tentacles that now seemed to be melting down into a thick, sludge-like goo, effectively gluing him to the wall.

“I have to warn them!” Eddie insisted. “If you had time to get to me then go on to Isaac, the rest of you that went to the kennel had time to get someone else! They have to know I'm not the only one who could be infected!”

“And what do you think they'll do then, Eddie?” the Thing spat. “What after you've told them you're the same thing they fried in the kennel? You think they'll listen long enough for you to explain that you haven't the ability to split or infect? You think they'll believe you? With the fate of their whole world at stake you think they'll risk it on the word of something that's already admitted what it is? They'll fry us the second you reveal us!”

“If I don't try, any other Things that can still split will kill everyone in the base! In the world!”

“That's not our concern.”

Eddie balked.

“Listen, maybe your plan was to eat the planet but mine isn't! And I'm not going to let you hold me prisoner so that your friends can get a head start!” he snapped.

“You misunderstand yet again, Eddie!” the Thing spat. “I've no alliances to any other part of myself, nor they to me. I simply can't have you draw any more attention to us. We're already under too much scrutiny.”

“If you didn't want to be such a suspect, why make that stupid comment about how ‘it could have got me’?” Eddie demanded. “I could feel you knew how they would react. Did you want to get thrown in here? And, for that matter, why have me pull the fire alarm? If you'd given your friends more time, they might have eaten the whole base before anyone ever woke up and realized what was going on.”

“Eddie would have pulled the alarm. Just as Eddie would have made a stupid comment without thinking,” the Thing replied, simply. “Eddie would have pulled the alarm, so if we had not, and the others did wake before being consumed, suspicion would fall on us for acting out of character for Eddie. Discovery could mean death.”

“But you knew that pulling the alarm would mean death for any other Things not done hiding themselves.”

“Yes.”

Eddie blinked. He supposed he expected some argument to his accusation, some amount of denial, born from some kind of base affection or empathy for its own kind it sentenced to death.

“But, in the long run, it might have helped you,” Eddie said, still not quite able to comprehend the Thing's twisted, self centered logic. “You'd have been in no danger of discovery at all if they consumed the whole base.”

“I do not put my own life in the hands of others, not even for a moment. Not even if there is a possible reward for the risk,” the Thing stated with a cold frankness “Pulling the alarm was the most direct way of ensuring my immediate safety and therefore the only reasonable choice. Everything beyond that is irrelevant.”

“Even the lives of others of your own species?” Eddie asked, still trying to grasp the extent of the Thing's apparent disregard for all other living beings.

“Yes.”

The plainness with which the Thing spoke was somehow more disquieting than the things it said. How little emotion seemed to back it. Just statements of plain fact. It made Eddie shiver.

“That’s so...so selfish” he said.

“It's all I am. All I have ever been and done. If you call it 'selfish’, it's no insult to me. Your species attachments to one another that go even to the point of causing harm to yourselves in favor of others is so radically counter productive to survival it is all but incomprehensible to me that you've managed to survive the paltry handful of millennia you have. And it will your doom."

"What do you mean?" Eddie questioned.

" Just look at our situation," the Thing continued. " Your crew knows the stakes and knows you could be 'infected' as you put it. The instant they had any suspicion, they should have incinerated you on the spot, yet they let you live and leave you alone out of some misguided and ridiculous sense of attachment and obligation to others of their own kind, despite the fact they know you may no longer be one at all."

The Thing barked out a harsh laugh.

"They risk their whole planet and everything on it, including themselves, for the mere CHANCE that he's one of their own. Ridiculous. The best and only viable solution is for one, assured in their own humanity, to kill and destroy the remains of everyone else."  

"And what are the rest supposed to do? Lie back and let themselves be killed by someone they don't even know for sure is human?” Eddie retorted.

"Of course not!" the Thing snarled. "Again your incessant inclination towards self sacrifice prevents you from understanding logic! No, any and every individual should strive to protect its own existence. Destroy all those it cannot with absolute certainty confirm to be one of its own species."

"Just one big free-for-all? It would turn into a bloodbath!” Eddie balked.

"Undoubtedly," the Thing said. "But it's also the only chance that the one individual who survives might be human and this planet thereby preserved. Every moment that passes, more and more crew members are no doubt being consumed. The moment that Things outnumber humans, the need to remain hidden will disappear and whatever humans remain will be slaughtered in an instant. The only hope your planet could have possibly had is in early action. Hesitation has most likely already sealed its fate. And for what? An imaginary connection based on nothing more than the idea of camaraderie.”

The Thing scoffed.

"What an imbicilic way to die. To lie back and let oneself be destroyed for some arbitrary concept of morality."

Eddie could feel bits and pieces of the Thing's emotion as it spoke, though much of it was too muddled and alien for him to comprehend the meaning of. One feeling that lanced through him, however, was far too familiar to be mistaken.

"You… You're afraid," he said.

The Thing stiffened.

"What… What happens to us when that happens?” Eddie asked. "What side do we fall on? If the Things do win… What happens to us?"

The Thing was silent. Eddie could feel it's discomfort at the foreign feeling of another consciousness being privy to its feelings. A fundamental aversion to the very idea of being known. For a moment, anyway, before the feeling was stamped out and his conciseness forced roughly away.

"There… is a strong possibility that the others will, in the tainted state that I have now been forced into, not consider this being to have been properly consumed," the Thing said, for the first time seeming to choose its words carefully. "They may see fit to… see to it personally."

"You think they may try to eat you because they think you're still too human?"

"It's very possible."

"And you're afraid of that?"

"I think it is the nature of most living things not to want to die."

The Thing spoke with no spiteful or snide tone, just a softness Eddie had not quite thought it capable of.

"Would you die, though? Or just… fuse back together with another part of yourself?" Eddie asked, pointedly not thinking about what any of this hypothetical would mean for him personally.

"Is losing one's individual self not death, in its most base aspect? All atoms in the universe are shared, but I've yet to meet any creature fully willing to relinquish their personal use of them."

"I'll admit I'm not too keen on giving up my turn with them just yet, either," Eddie said.

He paused for a moment before bringing up the inevitable subject.

"So how does this work?"he asked.

The Thing quirked one of their eyebrows in a silent question.

"With… this. Us." Eddie tried to gesture with his hands and was reminded that they, and the rest of his arms up to the shoulder, were currently preoccupied being the black sludge plastering him to the wall. “Is there any way to...you know...split us back up?”

“Can you un-eat something?” the Thing deadpanned.

“After a few shots, you’d be surprised.”

“What returned was decidedly not in its original form, however, was it? And I think you’d find yourself of a similar consistency were it to be attempted, as illustrated by our late, scuttling friend.”

The statement gave Eddie pause.

“Was...was I in there?” he asked, tentatively.  

“In what?”

“The...you know. Was there a...tiny Eddie inside that hand puppet from hell?”

“Eloquently put as always, Eddie,” the Thing said, rolling their eyes. “I couldn’t say. It’s possible that the pieces of me that separate, since they seem to lack the underlying structure that allows them to maintain independant form, also lack the…’quirk’ of your persisting memory. Though it’s also entirely possible that the two are not connected and your personality is copied and transferred to each separate piece just as mine is.”

The Thing shrugged nonchalantly, or as best it could with the majority of their arms still functionally roofing tar.

Eddie shivered. The image of it plagued his mind. Suddenly finding himself in darkness with no warning, opening grotesque eyes he couldn’t comprehend and looking up at what should be himself. Then suddenly starting to fall apart at the seams, shrieking in agony as his body dissolved around him. Were some of those wails those of an Eddie Brock, trapped and terrified, trying desperately to get any message across to his large doppelganger? Only to see his own self looking down in disgust before a row of fangs ended the short and tragic existence with a swift crunch?

“Is there that chance with any piece of us that separates?” he asked.

“Don’t worry. Anything much smaller than that would most likely die before it could form any means of movement or noise making. They won’t give us away,” the Thing explained.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Why does it matter?” the Thing asked, exasperated.

“It matters because I want to know if I’m committing murder every time I clip my toenails from now on!”

The Thing huffed, annoyed, then pondered it a moment.

“Sentience of separated mass is generally dependant on size to some extent,” it said. “Something too small simply doesn’t have the mass to form complex enough systems to be more than a series of basic reactions, like a jellyfish. If a mass that size could even stay alive long enough to become aware to any extent, it could most likely not have any more intelligence or depth of emotion than a housefly.”

That put Eddie’s mind at ease at least somewhat. But it still didn’t address the main issue.

“So...we’re really stuck together, then,” he said, slumping slightly against the goo holding him to the wall.

“I suppose so.”

“So...what do we do? How do we…” Eddie shrugged, helplessly. “Anything? If this is forever how do we do it? How do two people live in one body? Do we take...shifts or something?”

The Thing didn’t respond, and instead grew still and seemingly contemplative.

“What?”

“People. Two people you said.”

“So?”

“You called me a person.”

“Oh. Yeah I guess so. Does that bother you?”

The Thing blinked.

“I...I don’t quite know.” It cocked their head to the side. “I’ve never been considered as an individual. A discrete existence separate both from an impersonation and from the collective of other parts of myself. I...can’t say I know how I feel about it being defined any which way. But...I am surprised to hear you call me that.”

“Why is that?”

“It denotes a certain base level of respect and camaraderie I would not expect you to extend to me. I have no interest or concern with your opinion towards me, positive or negative but I’m not so incapable of regarding it that I don’t recognize that you have more reasons than not to be inclined towards the latter.”

Eddie let out a small huff of a sigh.

“Yeah well you did kill and eat me,” he grumbled. “But if we are stuck together forever now, it’s probably in my best interest not to just see you as a horrible, bloodthirsty, depraved, alien monstrosity. No offense.”

“None taken. And you really needn’t worry about that anyway. In all likelihood, as soon as I properly regain my strength, my personality will overwhelm and destroy the clinging vestiges of yours and the point will be rendered moot.”

“WHAT?!”

Chapter Text

"You little shit! I thought we were almost having a moment!" Eddie spat.

"I'm not interested in having 'moments' with anyone, least of all the annoying persistent lingering memory of a dead man," the Thing replied, coldly. "Besides, I would think you'd be happy with the idea of that being a possibility. If you cease to exist, you won't have to watch the inevitable violent destruction and assimilation of all life on your planet."

Eddie scowled.

"Wow way to sell me on it," he said with a roll of his eyes.

"Think of it this way. If you stopped existing, maybe my abilities to consume and replicate properly would also return! It would be like sacrificing yourself so that another might live!" the Thing said with an exaggerated air of cheeriness. "Giving up your life for another. Humans love that kind of thing."

"Dying for someone you care about isn't the same as being killed so that the alien who killed you can go on to do it to more people!" Eddie spat.

"That's a matter of perspective."

"What?! How is it possibly a matter of perspective? It's not at all the same!"

"That's what humans seem to not understand. It is, for you, the exact same. The only change would be for those who remain after your death. Since you will not exist to observe the effects of your death, it is for you in all ways the same. One cannot give purpose to one's own death because one cannot gain anything from it."

"Humans often find solace in dying for a cause." Eddie explained, trying to find a way that a creature only concerned with itself might find context and understanding of the concept of sacrifice. "It makes the last moments easier."

"Useful, if still idiotic, then, for a creature destined from birth to die,” the Thing responded. "But I am no such creature. Perhaps then, if I should be able to finally snuff out your annoying existence, you may find solace in the knowledge you will not have to experience the fate your planet is doomed to. I, on the other hand, will only be able to hope that you haven't damaged me so much as to necessitate assimilation in the eyes of the others. Good for me."

"Seriously?" Eddie balked. "All that talk about how early action was the only hope and how stupid it is to lie back and die and now you're still saying that's your exact plan?"

"What are you going on about?"

"You just said you can only wait and hope the other Things don't want to eat you!" Eddie cried. "You actually know what's going on yet you're lying back and accepting death more than anyone!"

"You've removed any other option!" the Thing hissed . "I can no longer function properly as myself. I can't replicate or divide. I no longer know if I even could trust my body enough to melt down to a liquid and slip beneath the door of this room without losing whatever tenuously holds my main being together and suffering the same fate as the late Isaac and the 'hand puppet from hell'."

"No, you're still thinking about it wrong," Eddie said. "You're still thinking like a Thing!"

"And what, pray tell, should I be thinking like?"

"Like an...us, I guess," Eddie supplied. "Whatever it is we are. You can't win as a Thing because you can't do Thing… things anymore. But we can still do human things. We help the human team. Human team defeats the Things, no worrying if Team 'Thing' still wants to eat us. You see?"

"Your attempts to sway me towards an alliance with what you still view as your fellows is as transparent as it is flawed," the Thing said, rolling their eyes. "The only way that the humans of the base could 'win' as you put it, is to absolutely ensure all Things are destroyed. The only way to do that is by creating some way of determining who is and is not human. If such a test exists and could be constructed before humans no longer hold the majority, it would, by necessity, confirm us to be inhuman, at which point we'd be destroyed."

The Thing huffed.

"Again you seem to assume a sense of allegiance to my own kind in me where none exists," it said. "There is a strong chance that the Things will kill me. There is an absolute certainty the humans will. My actions and decisions reflect only what is in my own immediate best interests. Humanity's long term survival is not among those such things."

"But if we could somehow convince them that we can't infect anyone…" Eddie began.

"Eddie, you know there's not a single person in this base stupid enough to take that risk. We have no way to prove it and every reason to lie. With the fate of the entire planet at stake, even you wouldn't be that naive."

"So we just do nothing?" Eddie demanded.

"So we hide. We hide and act when it is safe to act and when it behooves us. As it has been on every planet before this. As it will be here," the Thing replied, plainly.

Eddie sighed. He had to admit he didn't see much of a way out either. He was inclined to at least go out swinging, but the Thing he shared a body with would never allow it. With its ability to wrench control of his body away at any time, it could effectively stop any attempt on his part to do anything out of line.

Though,he supposed it was really more its body than his.

Eddie squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head. None of that kind of thought. Leave that can of worms alone for now. Forever, if at all possible.

He sighed and slumped against the goo holding him to the wall. Suddenly he felt very weary. An exhaustion more of mind than body.

"Do we sleep?" he asked.

"We can," the Thing replied.

"I'd like to," Eddie murmured.

"Then you may."

"Do we dream?"

"We can."

"I'd rather not."

"Then you won't. I can make sure of it."

Already Eddie felt the pull of unconscious tugging him under.

"Thanks," he mumbled as his eyes slid shut.

There was no reply.

----

The Thing that was not Eddie Brock noted with a vague interest the sensation as the personality and memory that was also not Eddie Brock (despite its vehement argument to the contrary) slipped into a state of unconsciousness.

It was a peculiar feeling. A sort of numbness of the mind that Eddie’s memories supplied the term ‘half asleep’ for.

Perhaps more literally fitting then the term was ever intended by the species to whom it belonged. Ironic.

“Ironic,”  the Thing repeated aloud, allowing, while it was in no danger of ‘Eddie’ making a racket, its vocal cords to function again. It rolled the word in its mouth as a connoisseur might a fine wine, shaping it carefully, feeling the shape of it as it curled from lips and teeth and tongue. The hard consonant at the end a sharp click in the back of the throat.

That that was not and had never been Eddie Brock despite protest did not stir within their shared mind upon the utteration.

The Thing opened the eyes of its now (lamentably) shared body.

That which falsely believed itself to be Eddie Brock still did not rouse.

Tentatively, the Thing formed the black sludge holding it to the wall back into defined tentacles that twisted and wove together back into human arms, taking a moment of care in decorating the skin with each twisting line of ink that had before adorned them.

‘Eddie’ still did not stir. Truly it did appear as though he was asleep. In whatever fashion an entity such as either of them could be, in any case.

The Thing felt as the beginnings of memories and sparks of brain activity began to weave themselves into images and sounds. It squashed them down, settling the brain waves so that ‘Eddie’ would enjoy the deep and dreamless sleep it had assured him of.

The Thing pondered it for a moment. It was something that could perhaps be quite useful. An ‘Eddie’ kept ‘asleep’ like this was not too dissimilar to an ‘Eddie’ properly consumed, was it? The Thing could once again enjoy a freedom of movement and control without the objections of its unwilling hanger-on.

Very useful indeed.

However, with the clinging facsimile of Eddie’s personality ‘asleep’, the Thing noted a sort of ‘fuzziness’ of perception. A slight disconnect between the observed and understood. A delay in both perception and reaction that it did not feel when ‘Eddie’ was awake and it found it did not care for. It…

“Rankles,” the Thing said.

“Rrranklesss.” It drew out hiss of the ending 's' and the growling ‘r’ sound, letting the vibration of it drop down into its throat. It reminded it of the deep angry noises that the dogs made.

Was it the same feeling for them? it wondered. Eddie's memories supplied the idea of a difference in structure that created the difference in sound. It would have to compare the vocal cord design when it--

Ah. Of course.

It would, of course, not be copying the dogs. For a brief second it was not considering its current inabilities. A moment of forgetfulness in excitement. A far too human thing.

A far too human Thing.

It took a step forward, shifting weight from one foot to the other, feeling the shift of muscle and balance. Such a peculiar form of locomotion humans had, unique even among other species of their planet. A funny sort of constant, controlled falling. Slow, clumsy, and, at times, even dangerous. The result of a creature so clearly designed to be quadrupedal haphazardly mutating and evolving its way into an upright position in order to have free use of its forelimbs, instead of just doing the sensible thing of growing more arms.

Evolution was strange and unpredictable when left to its own devices. Which is why the Thing had never been keen on allowing it to. A creature, both as an individual or a species, acting out of a panicked desire to survive did always that which was most forthcoming. Circumstance and the random alignment of genes and dna, proteins and acids, fickle and uncoordinated, could take one cell, one mote of life, and create a planet full of wildly different and unique things. All in a constant, frantic tumble towards no particular goal, at every moment choosing and preferring that which was most beneficial to itself in that moment with no regard for anything else.

In that way, there was an order to chaos.

But, it is chaos nonetheless. The order of life is in its lack of order. It exists and continues existing because it has no other option. Like water drawn downhill, it exerts no true will, aims for no true goal. And does not predict or account for shifts in topology that would change the nature of how it branches.

The metaphor, the Thing admitted, was perhaps becoming convoluted...

It turned on its heel, pointing itself towards the table behind it, still sightly damp from what had earlier rested atop it.

It stepped towards the table, feeling the floorboards bend beneath its weight. The wood creaked. It had creaked before. Only last night. Only a handful of hours prior. And yet a lifetime ago.

The Thing felt a strange and silly compulsion. Here, with no one watching, and now, in this moment so set apart from its existence so far, it relented to indulge in it.

So the Thing lay down onto the wooden surface of the table, facing up at the ceiling. The ceiling it had stared up at for what had seemed like ages. The incandescent light of the ceiling lamp warped through the thick layer of ice. But thinner, thinner by the minute, by the second. After so long in darkness. Longer than eternity.

The Thing glanced to its left.

The little human had stood there. Drake. It could place him now, with Eddie’s memories in its mind.

Chip, chip, chipping with a little hammer and chisel. So eager to unearth their find. He spoke so fast, voice high and breathless.  It hadn’t been able to understand anything he’d said then, no reference for the strange vibrations these creatures produced,even if it had been able to clearly hear through the thick ice. Even if it had been fully conscious enough to try.

Eddie’s memories provided no translation to the buzzing, incomprehensible noises. Eddie hadn’t been listening to Drake. He’d been too busy looking.

Staring into three white eyes he couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling were staring right back.

Eddie had voiced no opinion when they’d made a vote of what to do with it, but secretly, he may have wanted them to thaw it. Might have felt a small thrill of excitement that it would be him keeping watch of it as it did. That he might be the first to see it when it was finally free of the ice that had imprisoned it for so, so long.

Or maybe he hadn’t. Humans were strange like that, never quite knowing themselves what they felt. What they wanted.

Whether or not the faint wish to be the first to see it free was earnest or not…it had still certainly come to fruition.

Not, perhaps, in the way he’d expected, however.

A memory was drawn to the front of the Thing’s mind, instinctively.

‘ Please, no. I never got to say--’

The Thing glanced sharply to its right. Isaac had stood there.

Isaac had been in agreement with Dan. His fear more based on gut feeling that Dan’s informed concerns. Eddie’s memories supplied the vague recollection of Isaac calling it ‘evil’ but not much of anything else concrete. The Thing went to Isaac’s memories inst--

The Thing bolted straight up.

Isaac’s memories. The memories of a human consumed, like every other creature it had ever consumed. As it always had been and always should be.

Isaac’s memories were not there.

Where there should have been a lifetime of thought and experience was nothing but an empty void. It had without a doubt consumed Issac, but the memories, the basis of a perfect imitation, were simply absent.

The Thing's heart rate quickened and it felt Eddie's consciousness stir in their shared mind.

Life was inherently chaotic. It grasped at that which was most immediate. And in all living things was instilled that same desperation of life. A thing desperate for survival relents to be changed into that which in its set of circumstances survives. A thing clinging to life changes, without even a need for its consent, to that which in its place might live.

A Thing clinging to life.

Eddie seemed to be shifting back towards consciousness.

Water branching, streams forking and twisting as plates shifted, drawn only forward without consideration of the new and altered shape, of what long fertile grounds would be left barren at the alteration. Made different in order to persist but in doing so dooming itself to a path that leads to an end of all persistence--

The Thing stopped its heart dead, mid pulse, its head lolling forward and its eyes snapping shut. It quieted all the buzzing and zapping of electrical signals in their brain. No spasm or twitch of muscle. Everything was completely and utterly still.

There was a beat of silence. Eddie fell back into a deeper slumber.

The Thing that was not Eddie Brock, that had, on millions of worlds, been not many many things, that was now, funneled down from an infinite, expanding universe, only ever to not be Eddie Brock, opened its eyes.

It breathed in, guiding life and movement back into the lungs, then to the heart. Next up to the brain, reigniting the ceaseless electrical sparking that dictated every thought and action of human beings. It worked its way downward from there, slowly waking the stomach, to the kidneys, to the gut, the intestines. Carefully and deliberately coaxing each back into function. Head to toe. Toe to tip.

The phrase 'mind is body' brushed against its mind, along with the sense memory of a long exhaled breath, back against cold wood flooring. A memory of Eddie's it felt no drive to pursue the root of. The connection between mind, body, and spirit held no relevance to a creature that existed in every single microscopic piece of itself. Spirituality was to such a creature utterly irrelevant. A far too human thing.

A far too human Thing.

------

Eddie woke in the funny sort of way one does when they sleep without dreaming. With a sense of the passage of time but nothing to fill that gap.

He was immediately struck by the fact that he was no longer glued to the wall by black sludge that was once his arms. He was instead sitting in the chair beside his cosmic ray counter, arms returned to a human shape.

"You're awake," the Thing stated.

"You're awake," Eddie said. "You can be awake when I'm asleep?"

"So it seems."

"I'm not sure I like that."

"I'm not sure it's necessary that you do." the Thing sounded decidedly more listless than before he’d gone to sleep, but a small hint of wry sarcasm still tinted its voice.

Eddie rolled his eyes, still a bit too groggy to argue with the metaphorical brick wall that was his unwilling head-mate.

“How long was I out?” he asked.

“There’s no clock in here.”

“And you can’t tell without one?”

“Can you?”

“...fair point,” Eddie conceded.

He rubbed at his arms, glancing them over. They looked exactly as they had, even after having been dissolved down to goo earlier. Not a line of his tattoos out of place.

“Wait,” he said. “You redid my tattoos!”

“It would hardly go unnoticed if you’d suddenly been without them,” the Thing replied.

“But...they’re ink,” Eddie said.

“Yes, well, after the money they cost, one would hope they weren’t permanent marker,”

Eddie scowled.

“I mean they’re inorganic,” he pressed. “How can you replicate something that’s inorganic?”

“Cadmium. Zinc. Cobalt. Calcium. Barium. Not uncommon as pigments in tattoo ink. Chemicals, Eddie.” the Thing said, sitting straighter up in the chair, seeming to be pulled out of its more listless state. “You consider things inorganic because they are not produced by the living things of your planet. Most every living thing on Earth is carbon based, yet I’ve seen hundreds of planets where it might there be considered entirely ‘inorganic’. You would consider iron to be inorganic, would you not? And yet you know that Drake found no differences in the imitation dog blood to a real dog. Would he not have noted a difference having found it entirely devoid of iron? You think on a very small scale, Eddie.”

“Hmm,” Eddie hummed, running his fingers over the delicate lines of ink. “Does that mean you could make my tattoos look like anything?”

Eddie felt no pull from the Thing taking over his mouth to reply, but instead felt a sort of shifting motion on the inner skin of his arm, like water running underneath the skin.

Along the length of his inner arm, scrawled in a crisp and elegant font were the words:

‘I can’

Eddie chuckled.

“Hell of a lot quicker than at a parlor,” he quipped. “Cheaper, too.”

His grin faded.

“I guess that means ‘open everyone’s mouth and check for fillings’ isn’t a viable option for telling who’s human, though, huh?”

He slouched back into his chair, then felt a strange sort of buzzing from within him. His jaw worked slightly and, in recognizing that it wasn’t him doing it, he recognized the feeling. Anxiousness.

“I have been thinking,” the Thing said.

Eddie raised an eyebrow.

“There...is no guarantee the other Things will not consume me for being too changed,” the Thing continued. “Therefore inaction is not my most immediate and assured course of action in preserving my own existence. Thereby making it the incorrect option.”

“Wait,” Eddie said. “Are you...agreeing with me?”

“I am...stating what is objectively true,” the Thing said, bristling. “I can almost certainly be assured that the Things will kill me. The humans... have at least some chance of not doing so.”

Eddie felt a strange sort of shift in his mind, like a fleshy gear turning and clicking into place in a different position.

“Humans I might be able to get to believe that we can’t infect anymore,” the Thing continued. “They care about you. Maybe enough that they’d listen to us. Find a way to coexist. Figure something out, you know?”

It sounded fair. But something put Eddie off. It was exactly what he’d been trying to convince it, but…

“So we help them. In exchange, they promise not to kill us. But we can’t let them know before all the others are gone. It’s the only way they might believe we were sincere about not being on their side. So you can’t keep fighting me trying to tell everyone what we’re all about, okay?”

“Sounds like what I was saying in the first place.”

“Great!” the Thing said with a smile, clasping their hands together. “It’s a deal then!”

Eddie pulled their hands back apart.

“In fact…” he said, turning down the grin on their face into a scowl. “It sounds exactly like what I was saying in the first place. You sound exactly like me. Like you were reading off a script, almost?”

The Thing curved the scowl down even further, into a venomous snarl.

“You’d find things would go better for you if you had the sense to go along with the scripts laid before you once every so often,” it growled.

“You are lying to me, then!” Eddie barked. “What’s your angle?”

“You petulant scrap of stolen memory!” the Thing hissed “I’m offering you a way this planet doesn’t perish! You’d be wise to accept it! Because I plan on enacting it with or without your cooperation! The humans in this base were condemned to death the moment they exhumed me from the ice! The only question is whether or not their world perishes with them!”

“With them? What do you? Wait...no...you don’t mean…”

“We help the humans. The humans kill as many of the Things as they can before the tides turn.” a cruel grin spread across their face. “ We consume the remaining humans. Use the acquired mass to transform ourselves into something powerful enough to destroy the rest of the Things ! ”  

“No!”

“No witnesses. No records. It is so very easy for fires to break out in such cramped quarters as these.”

“ No! I wouldn’t let you!”

“Use some sense for once in your life, Eddie! Either they die or this planet does!”

“But, if we could just convince them--”

“Impossible!”

“Or find some way to get rid of the other Things without having to reveal ourselves--”

“Highly improbable.”

“But not impossible! There must be some way to have a test that would work on them but not us, right? If we’re really so different now?”

The Thing grit their teeth.

“Let me try at least,” Eddie begged.

The Thing considered it for a long moment.

“If you can concoct such a test before such a time that the Things outnumber the humans of the base or the humans are by some miracle able to defeat the Things before they are consumed, I would be willing to remain hidden. But you must in return not fight me. No trying to reveal the truth. No giving information you shouldn’t know, however useful. You play your role. You follow my lead.”

Eddie felt that peculiar, too wide and too toothy grin split up their shared face.

The Thing held out their right hand in front of them.

“Do we have a deal?”

Eddie looked down at the hand he was still holding in front of himself, then watched as his left hand moved without his consent around in front of his right.

The hand seemed to turn itself almost inside out, fingers flipping and twisting in an eerily fluid motion until it was another right hand, reaching towards his.

Eddie swallowed thickly.

Then, he grasped the other hand in the one still in his control and gave it a single, firm shake.

“Deal.”

Chapter Text

“So...do you have a name?” Eddie asked, releasing his own hand and watching it shift before his eyes back to its former orientation.

“No,” the Thing said “That is to say, I’ve had very many, but that’s not what you meant.”

“So...what do I call you?”

“Ed--” the Thing began, far too quickly to be anything but an automatic response.

“ Not ‘Eddie Brock’!” Eddie interjected. “That one is taken.”

The Thing scoffed. 

“As if there’s only one Eddie Brock in the world,” it huffed.

“Well there’s only one in this room, so pick another!”

The Thing groaned. 

“What does it matter? It’s hardly as though you’ll need to get my attention at a distance or something.”

“It can be helpful! Forgive me for asking for one small convenience. Lord knows I’m not getting the short end of this ‘deal’ or anything.”

“Then call me what you like, or nothing, for all I care!”

“Fine!” Eddie snapped. “Be nameless, then!”

He threw his hands into the air.

“‘Tonight the role of Eddie Brock will be filled by a one ‘petulant scrap of memory’ and, as an understudy: what-his-fuck’.”

He pushed against the floor with a foot, spinning the chair he sat in.

“The show is a shit ghost story but makes for a truly Divine Comedy!” 

He pushed on the floor again, spinning faster. Closing his eyes, he felt the rush of blood, pushed and pulled by centrifugal force.

He spun like that for a while. Spinning had always been something that calmed him. When he was too angry or too excited or too sad. It's why he got a wheeled office chair for his worktable in the first place. He'd said it helped his mobility, which wasn't untrue, but not the whole truth either. 

He let out a breath of air, imagining it swirling around him, twisting with the spinning of the chair and looping around him like ribbons of smoke.

But a half truth silently accepted and understood as a half lie was in some ways then not a lie at all, he supposed. Or at least, true enough to be acceptable as long as those involved knew where the truth stopped.

The metaphor, Eddie admitted, might be getting away from him.

Eddie imagined his breath rising away and dissipating like hot steam, cooling his anger to a grim acceptance. 

The chair slowly spun to a stop and Eddie opened his eyes again.

“How long?” Eddie asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “Until the tides turn?”

“Impossible to say for sure,” the Thing replied. “I don’t know how many humans were consumed before we pulled the alarm. And I don’t have enough grasp of humans to be able to properly estimate how effective they’ll be at maintaining their numbers. But, given the size and population of the base...I would not imagine more than two weeks. Even with the Things taking every precaution.” 

“Two weeks to figure out a way to save the planet,” Eddie sighed. “That’s a hell of a deadline.”

“Two weeks to figure out how to save a handful of remaining humans,” the Thing corrected. “While actively attempting to impede the attempts of the only thing at all feasibly capable of actually ‘saving the planet’.”

“Wow,” Eddie said, dryly. “I take one nap and suddenly you go from harbinger of the apocalypse to superhero. I should sleep more.”

“I have no interest in heroics. Nor any vested interest in the survival of any living thing on this planet excluding myself. If at any point a more viable option of preserving my own existence at the expense of the planet should arise, you can be guaranteed that I’ll take that course instead.”

"A dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly."

The Thing rolled its eyes.

"A perhaps tonally ill fitting choice of quotation, but whatever makes this work for you, Eddie."

Before Eddie had any chance to think of a retort, a knock at the door at the end of the room.

Eddie jumped to his feet.

EDDIE WOULD ANSWER THE DOOR.

The aforementioned nearly stumbled at the force with which the 'script' was forced on him. His current 'companion' seemed to have little faith in his convictions to follow his appointed role.

"Oh as if I wouldn't!" he hissed under his breath.

Eddie would answer the door and not say things he should not know!

The last bit of clarification was more 'director's instruction' than 'script'. 

"Yes, yes I'm playing along! Jeez I haven't even had any chance to go off script yet!"

'Yes, well, it's once you get that chance that things begin to go awry !' the Thing said, voice still clear in Eddie's mind, though it did not use their mouth to actually say the words aloud. " Now stop talking. I'm reconnecting our vocal cords.'

Eddie rolled his eyes, then pulled on the door handle. 

'It's locked.' 

"Yeah. I remember that now," Eddie said, dryly.

A sharp spike of annoyance lanced through Eddie's head.

  'YEAH I REMEMBER THAT NOW' Eddie thought, as loudly as he could manage. The mental equivalent of yelling at someone less than a foot from you through a bullhorn.

He hoped anyway.

He got the strong mental impression of an exasperated eye roll. 

"Uh hello?" Eddie called.

"Eddie, I'm opening the door now to give you some food, okay?" a voice said, muffled a bit by the door.

"Uh, yeah, go--go ahead."

The door cracked open just wide enough for a nervous looking Skirth to peer in. She looked him up and down quickly then, seemingly satisfied he was not, currently anyway, an alien abomination of fang and flesh waiting only for the opportunity to pull her through the door and devour her, she opened it wide enough to fit a tray which carried a can of soup,atop which was a can opener, and a bag of saltine crackers. She placed it on the ground near the door, not making eye contact with Eddie.

"We,um, we agreed it's probably safest for everyone if we only eat sealed foods right now since it can… and that we should probably all prepare our own food. You've got your microwave in here so…yeah."

Skirth began to retreat back out of the doorway.

"Wait!" Eddie cried.

Skirth paused, startling a bit.

"How are… How is it… Going? Out there?" Eddie asked.

Skirth looked up at Eddie, eyes wide with fear for a split second before she cast her gaze back down.

"Don't, uh… Don't worry about it right now," she said, quickly, then slipped back out of the doorway, closing the door behind her.

Eddie heard the lock clicking back into place.

"Well," Eddie said. "That's reassuring."

He picked up the tray and placed in on the table next to his ray counter. He grabbed the soup can and began to open the lid with the can opener. 

Skirth had seemed to have forgotten to provide a bowl for him, but Eddie thankfully had a leftover popcorn bowl still sitting on top of the microwave. 

He dumped the cold, gelatinous noodle substance into the bowl and grimaced. He'd had enough gelatinous noodle substances, of one kind of another, so far today to probably last him the rest of his life, but he doubted that he'd get much of anything better.

They were sans a cook now, after all, without Isaac.

A sharp pang of guilt lanced through Eddie's stomach as he placed the bowl in the microwave and set the timer. He pressed the button and watched the sad excuse for a meal spin slowly around the small chamber.

Isaac was dead. 

He was dead and Eddie had killed him. 

Sure, it had been the Thing in him that had chosen to and, yes, his own personality hadn't seemed to have fully reestablished itself in his own head, but he'd still been there. Hadn't fought it. Hadn't even been disgusted. Had…

Eddie let out a shuddering huff of breath.

Had enjoyed it. God, he'd all but reveled in it. 

Sick. Twisted. Perverse.

He'd felt those fangs sink through flesh and not a part of him had been repelled, only excited, only riding on the excitement and bloodlust of the Thing puppeting him. Only feeling each thought like it was his own. Only leaning in to each sensation.

How could he have not realized it wasn't a dream? Hell, how could a dream like that even have sat right with him? How could he have done nothing while his own body did something so horrific to someone he knew? A colleague? A friend?

Eddie's body started shaking and he felt sick to his stomach.

A Thing had no concept of human morality. In some ways it could only be so malicious as any animal trying to survive. But he was human. Or at least human enough to truly be a mons--

"A microwave in a room with a geiger counter seems incredibly ill advised in terms of contamination of scientific readings."

Eddie blinked, the Thing's sudden interjection pulling him from his thoughts. 

"...Microwave ovens don't use radiation," Eddie explained, after a moment. "The Geiger can't detect microwaves. Besides, the anticoincidence--"

"I know what the anticoincidence circuit does. I have all your memories."

Eddie scowled.

"Then why ask?" he snapped.

"Didn't 'ask' anything," the Thing stated, plainly. "Commented. Geiger counters in an anticoincidence circuit is an archaic and cumbersome method of ray detection, anyway.  And, regardless of the nature of microwaves and ionized radiation, the introduction of anything that actively manipulates the state of particles in proximity to equipment meant to measure particle states seems inherently antithetical to good scientific practices."

"We have--"

"I know about the detectors outside," the Thing said, cutting of Eddie's retort. "And that you're experimenting with different detection methods. Commenting, Eddie. Not asking.

Eddie huffed angrily.

"So you know everything I could possibly say so you're really only saying anything in order to insult me!" 

"It's something to do."

 A beat.

"And your thoughts become unsavory when you're left alone with them."

Eddie blinked again.

"You...uh… Can you… hear everything I think?" he asked.

For a moment the Thing did not respond.

"I hear in words only what you purposefully put into words with intent for me to hear. Feel clearly that which you intend me to feel," it explained. "But I seem to… feel the nature of your thoughts when the emotion behind them is strong enough."

"Oh…" Eddie said. 

He thought for a moment of the wave of jumbled, alien feeling that had hit him when they'd first been locked up.

"I think I do the same for you," he said.

The Things eyes widened for a split second.

"They're…weird and hard to understand," he continued. "But sometimes it's similar enough to something I feel for me to be able to get an idea of it."

The Thing blinked. It said nothing.

They both jumped when the microwave beeped. 

Eddie opened the door and carefully removed the now hot soup.

He glanced up at the wooden table. Still slightly damp. The last bits of ice finally having melted away sunken into the fibers of the wood. The last reminder of what had earlier rested there.

He decided to eat at his work table instead.

Skirth had seemed to have forgotten to provide a spoon,as well, and Eddie didn't have one of those lying around. 

He watched the liquid swirl in the bowl as he waited for it to cool enough to bring the bowl to his lips.

"Do we need to eat?" Eddie asked. "Or do Things just do it to get bigger?"

"We do. All living things, including living Things follow the laws of conservation of energy. A system must continue to obtain fuel to offset that lost to entropy. It is the same for us as for anything else."

"You didn't starve though, in the ice all that time. Did you… die then get revived when you thawed? Like a…water bear or something?"

"I did enter a sort of stasis wherein I used virtually no energy...but no. I was still alive."

"Were… were you… awake?"

The Thing was silent for a moment.

"Not completely lucid. Nor so entirely aware of the passage of time but...yes. I was. To an extent, anyway."

" Jesus Christ," Eddie breathed. "Buried alive for hundreds of millions of years. Just… waiting for someone to find you."

"I did not expect anyone to 'find' me," the Thing explained. "The idea of anything living coming to such a barren place and digging me up for no good reason did not remotely cross my mind. I was waiting for another major climate shift. I crashed here just as the pole was beginning to freeze. I expected I would be there until it thawed. My escape was inevitable, given enough time. My only true concern was the idea of the planet somehow being otherwise destroyed before that shift occurred."

"Well that's one way to look at it," Eddie admitted. "Still must be boring if nothing else."

"I did not particularly have the emotion of boredom at the time. I never have needed particularly complex emotions. I wasn't bored. Just angry."

"Angry? At what?"

"At your planet's tilted axis for throwing of the calculation of where your magnetic pole was. At myself for not factoring something like that in. For not staying in the ship. Plenty of things. Anger is an easy emotion to feel. It doesn't need a lot of rhyme or reason. It's… Simple." 

"I guess," Eddie said with a shrug. "It can be, anyway."

He touched the sides of the soup bowl and, judging that it had sufficiently cooled, lifted it up, blew on the surface of the soup, and took a sip.

He jolted,suddenly, causing hot soup to spill onto his thigh.

"Shit!" Eddie yelped, all but dropping the bowl back onto the table in his haste to stand. The soup that had not yet sunk through the fabric of his jeans rolled off and onto the floor. 

Luckily, not much had managed to sink in and his thigh was only slightly singed by the ordeal.

"What the hell was that?" Eddie exclaimed. "Was… Was that you?"

The Thing took control of their face and it went slack in shock.

"I...I didn't...it…took me by surprise," it said.

"The soup ?"

"The…taste."

"It's soup!"

"It…it is soup."

There was a quiet sort of wonder to the Thing's voice that gave Eddie pause. 

"I...I guess technically this is the first time you've ever had any, huh?"

"I…" the Thing began, then trailed off. 

Eddie felt a sort of churning within their shared mind. He could only decipher bits and pieces of it, sharp, small pin pricks of fear, confusion, and anxiety pickling against the edges of his consciousness where their personalities seemed to meet. 

"I," the Thing repeated, with a strange conviction Eddie couldn't quite understand the significance of, though it pressed heavy against his mind with the weight of connotation. 

"You can eat it, if you like," Eddie offered.

They blinked. The simultaneous realization that struck the two of them in that instant seemed to let it echo clearly between the two minds, blurring and confusing the line between them.

It was the first time Eddie had ever willing offered the Thing control of their body. 

It had a significance neither could quite define, but both felt, and felt the other feeling, and felt the other's feeling of that as well, in a strange sort of reverberation, like a voice bouncing back from across a vast cavern, but louder, instead of diminished, upon its return. 

It wasn't uncomfortable, but there was a discomfort in the awareness of it. 

Eddie shivered and, instantly, the tenuous synchronization broke.

Eddie felt the Thing pull for control, he was beginning to more distinctly feel the line between the two of them. He relaxed and allowed it to take full command of their body.

It didn't feel like when the Thing had taken over when Eddie had tried to tell Anne and the others the truth, nor like the quick back and forth control they'd been engaged in over the last few hours. Less like being a puppet strung on invisible stings he could neither see nor properly feel or like being suddenly and roughly yanked away from the proverbial wheel for just an instant, but almost like a rush of warm water flowing through his limbs, soft and comforting. Almost a relief. Like a gear fitting into place after having been grinding against those around it. It felt right. 

If the Thing felt the same sensation, it said nothing of it, focused instead on to the bowl in front of them and its contents. 

It lifted the bowl to their lips, carefully as though it was handling a dangerous substance, and took another, cautious, sip.

Taking a back seat in his own body as he was, Eddie was more able to focus on the sensations the Thing felt, much as he had before he’d come to his senses properly back in Isaac’s room. He felt their shared brain light up as the soup hit their tongue.  

The warmth of it, just under hot enough to burn, seeming to spread though their whole body. The salt that was so generously mixed in in lieu of any finesse of flavor. The different textures. Eddie never thought condensed, off brand chicken noodle could be such an experience. It was almost overwhelming.

The Thing put the bowl back down and Eddie was almost remiss. 

Eddie could feel more of the swirling anxiety churning at the edges of their consciousnesses.  

“I don’t understand,” the Thing breathed. “It’s never been like this before. I have all Eddie Brock’s memories, just as I have had the memories of everything I’ve ever consumed and yet...why is it different? I remember this and yet it feels so new, so unique. I don’t understand.”

The Thing’s voice was practically a moan and Eddie actually felt a pang of what could almost be considered approaching sympathy for the creature.

“I think it’s like trying something that you haven’t had for a long time,” Eddie offered, just claiming enough control to form the words. “You have the memory of the event, but the actual sense memory attached is so faded over time, that it feels both familiar and totally new.”

“But, it’s never been like this before!” the Thing insisted.

“Well, I mean... you’ve never really been ‘like this’ before either though, right?”

“I...I... I am done eating now! ”

Almost mechanically, the Thing picked up the bowl again, but did not bring it to their lips this time. It held it at almost eye level then opened their mouth, stretching it wider and wider, far beyond where a human mouth would be able to stretch. It reminded Eddie of a snake unhinging its jaw. 

The Thing then tipped the bowl back and poured the entire contents into their mouth, swallowing it down in one gulp. It snapped their jaws back closed and Eddie felt the bones and joints shift back into a proper human shape.

Eddie started, taking back full control in his surprise.

“Jeezus! Warn a guy!” he yelped.

The Thing seemed to have no witty retort for once. Eddie wasn’t sure what exactly about what had just transpired had upset it so much, but it was clearly shaken. 

For a long time, they sat in silence, the strange second hand anxiety of the Thing churning uncomfortably in Eddie’s mind. 

He didn’t have much of anything in here to pass the time. He supposed he should at least change his clothes.He placed the set of clothes they’d let him bring with him when he’d been quarantined onto the table in front of him.. Presumably they’d bring more along with his meals. 

He wondered if they intended to let him out to go to the bathroom. Not that it would be the first time he’d had to make use of more ‘inventive’ solutions to that particular problem. Grad school had been an interesting time for Eddie…

Eddie undid his belt, then froze, remembering an important detail of his situation.

“Can uh...can you sleep?” Eddie asked. “The way I did earlier? With me being awake?”

“Maybe,” the Thing said. “But I don’t see why I ever would have need to.”

“Well...uh...I just…and you’re sort of...uh...” Eddie stammered, fiddling with his belt buckle.

The Thing rolled their eyes. 

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re shy, now,” it sneered. “Besides. I am intimately aware of every inch of you, Eddie. There’s nothing I am not already familiar with.”

Eddie felt his face grow hot with embarrassment. 

“ Please watch your phrasing,” he begged. “I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I say there are parts of me I may not be comfortable with you being very ’familiar’ with. And even if I was, that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with you seeing them.”

“If it helps, I could make it so there wasn’t anything to see,” the Thing offered.

“ NO THAT’S FINE!” Eddie all but shouted.  “I’ll just...I’ll just close my eyes.”

Eddie squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think about the incredibly disquieting information he’d just obtained and instead focusing on changing out of and into a shirt, jeans and boxers as fast as humanly possible. 

The getting the shirt off part went smoothly. The trouble arose when he got to the jeans.

He managed to get them around his ankles well enough but, when he tried stepping up and out of them, his foot caught on the waist, causing him to stumble backwards.

His eyes flew open and he windmilled his arms trying to catch him balance, but to no avail. He fell back and braced for impact.

Before he could hit the ground, however, he felt something shoot out of his back, propping him up and off the floor.

“Eh?” 

Eddie craned his head to see a thick, black tentacle coming out from between his shoulder blades that had adhered itself to the floor, preventing him from falling any further.

“Ah...uh...thanks,” Eddie said.

“You admit now that this is silly?” the Thing asked. 

“I was doing okay,” Eddie argued. “If I can just sort of...wiggle a little I think I can…”

“Enough! I will take care of this myself!”

“What does that mea--whoa!” 

Eddie didn’t have time to finish his sentence before his body seemed to unravel itself, breaking down his human form entirely into a mass of black tentacles.

The suddenness took Eddie by surprise, of course, but now, not so wholly unfamiliar with the sensation, it wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the second time it had occurred. Instead he was again able to feel the almost pleasurable side of it, as he had the first, back in Isaac’s room. 

It was so completely different from anything he could possibly have experienced as a human, and there was a wonder and excitement in that newness. And a sense of freedom and flexibility that came from the complete discarding of a rigid form. 

The Thing piloted their writhing mass over to the table where the clothes lay. Using two bundles of tendrils, it grabbed them and pulled them down.

‘ I don’t think they’ll fit like this,’ Eddie quipped silently, not entirely sure if the Thing was able to hear it.

However, instead of trying to put the clothes onto their body or in any way regaining human form, the Thing simply enveloped them into their mass. Eddie could feel as the fibers of the fabric were broken down and added to their own body. 

‘Hey, I liked that shirt!’ Eddie cried.

‘Be quiet!’ the Thing hissed within their mind. ‘I am concentrating!’ 

Eddie supposed that answered whether or not it could hear him like this. 

He could feel the intense focus the Thing was putting into studying the makeup of the cloth. Analyzing every molecule and chemical bond.

After a moment, Eddie could feel the tendrils of their body beginning to weave themselves back together, building back into a human shape. 

Starting with the legs and building up through the torso and up to the head until everything was back to the perfect imitation of Eddie Brock it had been moments before.

Eddie blinked open his newly reformed eyes, then glanced down.

“Oh!” he exclaimed.

He was fully clothed. In the exact same outfit he’d just felt the Thing consume.

“Well that’s one way to get dressed…” he said, in slight awe. “You can copy clothes?”

‘I did that before, too,” the Thing reminded him, speaking just within their mind. ‘Both times. You just weren’t paying attention.”

Eddie sheepishly recalled that he had, indeed, not been naked after either of the times they’d ‘unraveled’ like that. 

“Oh,” he said.

‘All chemicals, Eddie. As I said before.’

The Thing sounded tired. Almost like it was out of breath.

“You alright?” Eddie asked. 

Eddie felt a faint spark of annoyance that faded quickly back into exhaustion. 

For a moment the Thing did not reply.

“Things that are not alive are harder to replicate,” it said at last, again taking control of their mouth to do so. “Especially ones with such rigid form as clothing. It takes more effort, that’s all.” 

Eddie felt a slight trace of what could have been worry flit across their shared mind, but he was still too unfamiliar with the alien to say what that meant. 

“It occurs to me,” Eddie said. “You know everything there is to know about me, but I don’t know a thing about you.” 

“You know plenty,” the Thing replied, casually.  “I am a thing from another world that consumes and replicates life forms that is currently unable to consume and replicate life forms. Your base found me in the ice and thawed me. At which point I killed and consumed the human Eddie Brock which seems to have corrupted my abilities to properly replicate myself.”

“Yeah, sure, I know that,” Eddie said. “But I don’t know anything about you , you know? As an individual. A...person. I know what you are, sort of anyway, but nothing about who you are.”

“There’s no difference. What I am is who I am. I make no distinction between animus and corpus, as is so often the want of humans.”

“See! There, that’s an example!” Eddie said. “Why do you talk like that?” 

The Thing blinked.

“I...I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to,” it said.

“Like that!” Eddie said. “Like you swallowed a thesaurus.”

A funny sort of shiver ran up and down Eddie’s body. 

“Whoa. What was--?”

“Spoken language is not so ubiquitous as humans often assume,” the Thing said, very quickly, cutting Eddie off. “It is reliant on creatures having a specialized ability to produce vibrations in a very controlled fashion, and on the density and makeup of the surrounding particles, gaseous or otherwise, to carry those sound waves effectively. It requires a concise and deliberate control of sound that is...rare amongst most living things.”

“What...what does that--”

Another shiver. 

“That is not to say that it is something entirely unique to humanity but unique at least in the complexity and nondirect nature of it. Humans…have many different ways to say the same thing. But...also not quite the same. Two words, though synonyms, can have two slightly different meanings, some differentiating not at all in definition, but greatly in association. It...is...not at all remarkable that something designed to experience different forms of life might...take...interest in notable differences between different life forms…”

Eddie blinked, for a moment lost by the sudden, seemingly unrelated rambling. Then it clicked into place.

“You...you just use big words because you think language is fun?” he asked, a slight chuckle in his voice.

The shiver this time was more like a shudder.

“F-Fun is irrelevant. I exist to experience. It’s not at all remarkable for one meant for such a thing to, in experiencing, find...find...uh…”

Eddie laughed. It was a lighthearted laugh, not laced with mockery. 

“It’s fine,” he assured. “You...you talk a bit like how I used to before people got on me about being ‘pretentious’. Words are fun to say and language is interesting. I’d honestly considered a career somewhere in the field of writing, maybe journalism, before I made up my mind to be a physicist.”

A small shiver.

“Is that you...blushing, or something?” Eddie asked.

“I do not blush!”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” Eddie said with a chuckle. “‘Man-eating alien devoid of morality embarrassed by advanced lexicon. Trembles like Italian greyhound when found out. More at 8.’”

“The world is truly blessed, Eddie, that you did not follow any inclination towards journalism,” the Thing spat. 

“Oh don’t get snippy. You killed and ate me,” Eddie reminded. “I think that entitles me to as much harmless mockery as I can possibly come up with.”

“I realize I have only your memories to compare with,” the Thing said. “But, even in my therefore limited understanding of the human psyche...you’re handling that remarkably well.”

“Yeah well...you know.” Eddie made a vague, wiggling hand gesture.

“...no. Not particularly.”

Eddie made a noise that could have at some point in his mind have been intended as some kind of word, but certainly didn’t leave his lips as one.

“I have a patented method of dealing with things,” he explained, tilting his head to the side contemplatively. “Which is: not dealing with them, either practically or emotionally, for as long as possible. And so far in my life that’s worked pretty well for me.”

“You...got dumped by your fiance, lost all credibility in your field, and ended up in Antarctica where you got killed and eaten by a space alien.”

Eddie made a vague, wiggling hand gesture with both hands.

“You are an individual, Eddie.”

“Well, up until yesterday at le--” Eddie was abruptly cut off as he heard the door unlock again behind him.

Eddie yelped and, with the grace and finesse of a trained lead brick, tumbled off the back of his chair and onto the floor.

“Annie?” he exclaimed, looking at her, upside down from his prone viewpoint, standing in the doorway, face grave. 

His heart hammered. He hadn’t had any time to come up with an idea for a test himself. If they’d already discovered one that would reveal him as well, the Thing in him might choose to try to strike first. 

“Did you figure out a test already?” he asked. 

Anne’s jaw worked for a moment and she averted her eyes.

“I...I think you’d just better come out,” she said.

‘Well,’ the Thing said from within their mind. ‘That’s reassuring.” 

Chapter Text

30 hours ago…

Eddie was surprisingly quiet as Anne walked him to Cosmos House. 

She’d shoved a set of clothes and a bottle of water into his arms and was now all but marching him there like a prisoner on death’s row. A dead man walking.

There was a chance that was true.

I'm not one of those things! I… You know me! Annie--

Anne’s face betrayed none of the churning rage in her gut, but she couldn’t keep the slight tremor from her limbs.

It wasn’t fair. Looking to her. Using that little pet name of his. Looking at her with those wide, sad eyes. The eyes she’d fallen in love with. The ones that broke her heart.

What did he expect her to do? Put all reasonable suspicion aside? To trust him? 

She’d done that before.

Look where that had gotten her.

Everyone was staring. Anne could feel their eyes on the both of them, even when she couldn’t see them. Everyone thinking the same thing. Everybody feeling the same thing.

What if it’s him?

What if it’s me? Would I know?

What do we do? Who can I trust?

Anne could practically hear it like whispers all around her.

Mistrust. Fear. Paranoia. Everything that turns order into chaos. An organized operation into a bloodbath.

But not if Anne had anything to say about it. She was the commander of this base and she had an obligation to each and every person in it. To keep order. To ensure their safety and the success of their mission.

She’d failed in that obligation the moment she allowed Drake to thaw that thing they’d found. The moment she allowed it to go to a vote instead of taking direct command and insisting it be properly contained and handled in a sterile, controlled environment. The moment she let any part of this leave her hands.

She wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

Containment was priority. Contain those at highest risk of having been...infected. Stop the spread. Then devise a test. Find out who isn’t who they seem to be. Deal with accordingly. 

There was still a strong enough chance that Eddie was the only real risk. If they kept him quarantined, they could ensure the infection didn’t spread, God willing. If God could even hear them all the way down here at the bottom of the planet. 

At the end of the world. 

In a strictly geological sense, of course.

Anne opened the door to Cosmos House and led Eddie inside. She could see that the hollowed out ice block was reduced to just a few lingering chunks, already melting down and running into the drain that was installed in the floor of every room, to prevent flooding in case the emergency sprinkler systems were triggered. 

Could just the trace skin cells embedded in the ice have the ability to infect a human? Even too small to even see? She made a note to check the water purification system. Maybe run everything through the boiler at high heat to ensure it was clean. 

Eddie placed his sparse belongings onto his work table, then turned back to face Anne a last time, his mouth opening as if to speak, but a sharp look silenced him.

Anne closed the door and locked it using the key on the key ring she kept always clipped to her belt, on which was a key to every lock in all of Big Magnet. 

She let out a long breath, closing her eyes. 

One second. One breath. One moment to feel it. Feel it, then control it. Get it together. Keep it together. Keep everything together. Everyone's counting on you now. The mission, the base, the whole world. 

Commander Weying opened her eyes.

Skirth had followed her and Eddie from a distance and now looked to Anne with those wide, perpetually worried eyes. 

“Commander?” she said, meekly.

“What’s the status on the disposal of all infected material?” Anne asked, voice stern and unwavering.

“Drake is running some last tests to determine what we need to keep in order to have enough to continue testing for a way to determine who’s human and how to properly contain it,” Skirth said.

Anne wanted everything burned as soon as possible but she reluctantly had to admit that they also couldn’t risk destroying their only resource towards developing a test for infection. 

“Tell him to hurry it up, then,” she commanded. “The longer this stuff is in the base, the higher the risk of...additional exposure is.”

Skirth nodded, warily.

“As I understand, he’s just waiting on the computer scan’s results,” she said.

Anne hated the base’s computers. They were outdated, slow, and had an unfortunate quirk of cheating at the simple chess program which provided some of the base’s only entertainment, garnering dislike for them among almost every base member.

“Um...Commander?”

Anne turned to see Deckert standing towards the end of the hall, near the communications room which he generally managed.

“What...what am I supposed to say in my report?” he asked.

Of course. They’d be expecting their daily check-ins back on the mainland. 

Anne was silent for a moment, then said:

“Nothing. Report everything as normal.”

Deckert blinked, stunned.

“What?! Nothing?”

“Commander Weying, we’ve got to report this!” Skirth insisted. “They need to know what’s happened!”

“And what will they do, then, Skirth?” Anne asked. “They’ll send a team to investigate. We go dark completely? They’ll send a team to investigate. If any of that team get infected? That’s it. There won’t be any containing it. We have to make no one goes in or out of this compound until we know who’s human and who isn’t. Even if we report the truth and tell them not to come here, there’s a chance they’ll do it anyways. The only way to ensure no one comes to this base is to convince them nothing is wrong.”

Skirth’s complexion paled, but she seemed to see the logic in what Anne was saying.

Deckert spoke up.

“But if we don’t tell anyone and the Things do win, how will they know not to come here, then? They’ll have no warning! No chance to contain it!”

Anne looked Deckert in the eye, face betraying no emotion.

“Deckert, I’ll be frank with you,” she said. “In the event that that does happen? I don’t think there’s a hope in hell of containing it regardless.”

She turned back towards the lab without waiting to hear Deckert’s response. 

---

“What do you mean ‘ twenty four hours’ ?”

Drake, seeming to have regained his normally self assured demeanor, merely huffed at Anne’s outburst.

“The computer needs time to run the proper simulations,” he said, with a nonchalant tone that made Anne want to punch him square in the jaw. 

“You realize the fate of the planet is on the line, here, Drake?” 

“I could ask you the same thing!” Drake snapped. “We can’t afford to risk moving too quickly and destroying any hope of understanding these creatures well enough to devise a test in our haste!”

Anne felt like her blood was boiling in her veins, but she forced the emotion down. 

“We can’t possibly need the whole body for a test,” Anne said, forcing a calm tone.

“We don’t know that,” 

“Drake, I swear if this is some ploy to try to keep this thing--”

“You honestly think I’d risk human existence as we know it just for scientific commendation?”

“I’m not always convinced there’s anything you wouldn’t risk for that.”

“If you’d like to look into the microscope and see if you can find a difference you could use to determine if something is imitation, be my guest but--”

“What about a serum test?”

Anne and Drake both turned to look at Skirth who, until she’d just spoken, neither had remembered was in the room with them.

Under the gaze of both of her superiors, Skirth nervously averted her eyes.

“I mean, we don’t actually need to have a test that proves that someone is a Thing,” she said, voice soft, as if she expected at any moment to be interrupted or corrected. “We just need a test to prove someone is human. If the test fails, there’s only one other possibility. And we wouldn’t need any of the Thing’s body for that.”

Drake scowled. Whether he disagreed with the validity of the idea or just the fact that something that, from what Anne could glean without knowing what such a test entailed, seemed like an obvious solution, had not occurred to him already.

“If the tissue is identical in all ways to  human tissue, the test would be pointless,” he said.

“But...but it can’t be completely identical, right?” Skirth pressed. “If a Thing just turned its cells into say, dog cells, they’d be that and nothing more. There has to be something else about them that makes them “dog Thing” cells. Something that allows them to retain the ability to change their shape. Some underlying structure. A serum test should by all means be able to differentiate. Even if we can’t.”

“What is that?” Anne asked. “A serum test?”

“Oh, well, the way immune systems work, when foreign cells are introduced, the body produces antibodies to fight them off,” Skirth explained.  “Over time, and with multiple exposures, the body becomes ‘immune’ to that kind of cell. It’s the basis of what makes vaccines work.”

“How does that relate to these Things?”

“Well, any living thing can theoretically become ‘immune’ to any other kind of cell, as long as its not from its own species,” Skirth continued “So, if you inject say, a rabbit with human blood over a period of time, it will become ‘human immune’ and its blood will react to human cells. A clear and visible reaction. We don’t have rabbits here, but we have the dogs. If we made one of the dogs human immune, then took a sample of tissue from everyone in the base, any tissue that dog’s blood didn’t react to would have to be…”

Anne suppressed the shaking in her voice as she asked:

“And you’re sure this will work?”

“I...there’s no reason it shouldn’t.”

“You’re forgetting a major detail,” Drake, cut in, voice condescending, as if correcting a child on a flawed math problem. “To make a dog human immune requires you to be able to guarantee those you take the blood from are human, and since we have no way to prove that without the test already existing, the entire thing is rendered useless.”

Skirth had no answer for that, but Anne did.

“The blood stored in the med bay,” she said. “Doc has a store of blood in the med bay fridge in case of an emergency blood transfusion. It was all taken before we found that Thing. We know for a fact that it’s human.”

The corners of Skirth’s mouth twitched up in the beginnings of a hopeful smile and Anne allowed herself a small bit of hope as well. They could get things under control. Time was still on their side. They could fix this. 

“It will still take days to make the dog human immune,” Drake reminded. “Before you get to burning all my specimens, I’d ask you still at least give me the twenty four hours for the computer’s scans to finish. If a faster test does exist, I think we’ll all be remiss for not having any workable tissue left.”

Anne grit her teeth a moment.

“Fine. You can keep a half kilogram. I can’t be convinced you need any more.” 

Drake opened his mouth to protest, but Anne cut him off.

“I’m not budging on this, Drake. Half a kilogram. And freeze it with the liquid nitrogen in storage. We know cold will incapacitate it, but not destroy it.”

She turned to Skirth again.

“Talk to Maria. She’s still in the kennels. Find out if any of the dogs are completely unscathed. We want to make sure the test is on a dog we can be the most sure isn’t infected. Then get the blood from the med bay and start preparations for the test. I’ll get Jameson and Deckert and burn all the remains, then I’ll meet you there.”

Skirth nodded and made her way out of the lab.

Anne began to leave as well when she heard a soft voice behind her.

“Have you ever heard the saying about hoof-and-mouth disease in cattle, Commander?” Drake said, voice vaguely distant.

Anne turned back around.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Drake said. “Nothing at all.”

Chapter Text

Anne found Deckert, Treece, and Jameson in the radio room, seeming to be mid-conversation. Deckert still had his headset on. He probably had only just finished his report back to the mainland. 

“Do you buy all this voodoo bullshit, Jameson?” Treece said.

“Happens all the time, man,” Deckert insisted. “They're falling out of the skies like flies. Government knows all about it...  Chariots of the Gods, man…” He was rambling, hands shaking and a joint pressed between his lips. 

“Cool it, Deckert,” Jameson said. 

The three men looked up when Anne entered the room.

“How did it go?” Anne asked. 

Deckert glanced at the radio, assuring himself, for what was most likely not the first time, that it was off, and removed his headset before answering. 

“I don’t think they really bought it, to be honest,” he said, pulling the joint from his lips. The restriction of recreational drugs was not something that was heavily enforced at Big Magnet, and Deckert seemed even less motivated than normal to make any pretense about hiding it.  “Last thing we report is that we lost you, Skirth, and Drake in a whiteout, they’re all but ready to send out a team and now we’re saying it’s all nothing and don’t bother? They know something’s up.”

“The boys there are smart enough to know if we’re lying we probably have a good reason. They’ll figure we know what we’re doing,” Jameson said. “Or, at least, that you do, Weying.” He glanced in her direction.

Anne couldn’t tell if the statement was supposed to be an expression of confidence, or some kind of trap. She felt a scrutiny in his gaze.

“As long as they don’t send anyone down here, I don’t care what they think,” she said. “Now, all of you come with me. I need your help getting rid of the infected material.”

Treece straightened up from where he was leaning against the wall.

“Drake found a test, then?”

“Skirth,” Anne corrected. “Or, at least, we hope she has. Drake’s still digging his heels about getting rid of the body but I don’t like having it around any longer than we need to.”

Treece frowned, folding his arms. 

“Drake knows what he’s doing when it comes to this stuff,” he said. “He says we still need it, I don’t like the idea of still just tossing it.”

Treece was a pilot above being a scientist, and Drake was the one to select him for the mission. Anne knew where the man’s loyalty lay when it came down it. He’d side with Drake whenever possible. That made it all the more important to keep the support of the rest of the crew. 

“Well,I’m all for it,” Jameson said. “I don’t like having it around knowing it could still be alive.”

“Same here,” Deckert added, standing up. “Gives me the creeps.”

He shifted nervously, snuffing out his joint against the metal radio table. 

“What kind of test is it going to be?” he asked. “Cus I uh...you know, may not come up clean on every kind.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Deckert, it’s not a piss test!” Treece, snapped, then paused and looked to Anne.. “Is it?”

“A serum test. We’ll use the blood in medical storage to make one of the dogs ‘human immune’. Skirth says it’ll make it so the dog’s blood serum reacts only to human cells. As long as you’re human, anything else shouldn’t affect it,” Anne assured. 

“Right,right.” Deckert nodded.

“You two get the gasoline for the tractor and dig a fire pit outside,” Anne said. “Make sure it’s big enough to burn everything without chance of the fire spreading. Last thing we need is this whole compound going up in smoke trying to burn this thing. Then come back in and meet me in Drake’s lab, I’ll head over first, see if Drake’s ready.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jameson said with a nod and he and Deckert headed for the door.

Treece made lingered against the wall.

“Treece?” Jameson called.

Treece huffed.

“Let’s hope Skirth knows what she’s talking about,” he said, pushing himself up straight, before following the other two.

A thought pricked at the back of Anne’s mind. 

“Jameson?” she called, just before the man left the room.

Jameson turned back to face her.

“Yeah?”

“Have...have you ever heard anything about a saying to do with ‘hoof and mouth disease in cattle’?” she asked.

Jameson seemed taken aback by the odd question and seemed to contemplate it for a moment.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “It was something like…’there won’t be any hoof and mouth disease if there isn’t any hoof and mouth disease’ or something like that. Old saying. I think I heard my grandfather say it once.”

“What does it mean?”

“Something along the lines of that the best way to get rid of hoof and mouth was to just kill any animal infected or that had been around one that was. Basically that the best way to stop the spread of disease it to make sure there’s no disease to spread, even though you’ll lose some cows along the way.”

Jameson blinked, then his face grew stern. 

“Why?” he asked, gravely.

“Nothing,” Anne assured. “Just…something I heard Drake say once.”

There was a beat of silence before Jameson nodded curtly and followed out the door after Deckert.

Anne began her walk back to Drake’s lab, but paused as glanced at the first door of the hallway in front of her. 

Cosmos House. 

The technical term for it was of course “The Physics Lab”, but the fact it was used to study cosmic rays and how they were affected by the magnetic pole had earned it the moniker.

Everything tended to pick up little nicknames in a base like this. Even the name “Big Magnet” itself was a nickname. Technically the base was called “Outpost 31”. But nobody called it that. Even though there wasn’t a “Little Magnet” base anymore, long since closed down when the South Pole magnetism study mission was downsized, the name stayed around, as names tend to, even when they don’t quite fit anymore. 

Anne stepped as quietly towards the door as she could. For a moment she just stood, staring at the nondescript metal door, standard for doors in a base such as theirs, as if somehow it would somehow yield to her stern and unwavering gaze, the way those who worked under her did. To give her the results she wanted. To have an answer that satisfied her.

The door did nothing. As is also standard for doors in general. 

And glaced left and right with just her eyes to confirm no one was watching, then pressed her ear to the door, the metal cold against the side of her face.

She heard nothing.

She stepped back, feeling silly. What did she even expect to hear? What would she have wanted to? 

For a brief moment, the idea of knocking came into her mind, but she quickly dismissed it. There was nothing to say to Eddie right now. Telling someone under direct suspicion of being an imposter of their plan for a test dedicated to routing out imposters was foolish and there was nothing else of meaning to discuss. 

Anne headed to the bio lab. 

Drake was staring intently at the computer’s screen, not seeming to notice her come in. To his credit, he barely started when Anne called his name.

“Drake, what’s the status?”

For a moment, Drake seemed to not understand the question, then comprehension crossed his features.

“Ah yes, the ‘disposal of infected materials’,” he said, not hiding a note of disdain from his voice. “As instructed, I’ve frozen the paltry amount of workable material you’ve allowed me. The rest you are free to destroy if you still don’t see how unwise it would be.”

Anne was, on the best of days, not keen on Drake’s attitude. His funding was the reason this base was even still operational and Drake seemed to see this as reason enough to consider himself above her command, despite only truly being permitted on the team due to his financial contribution, rather than any true scientific prowess. 

In a sense, Anne supposed, that wasn’t untrue. She was the commander of this base, but as long as Drake was its wallet, he held a power over the entire operation she resented, but could not deny.

But this was not the best of days. And Anne had no thoughts to the continuation of this mission, or any amount of continued funding. The moment the mission gained a death toll, that became irrelevant, as did any imagined power Drake held, and any patience she had for humoring him. 

Regardless there was also no time to waste indulging Drake’s obvious attempts to pick fights.

“Good,” Anne said, revealing no hint of her frustration in her voice.  “Deckert, Treece, and Jameson are out preparing a fire pit. I want every single sample you’ve collected ready to be taken outside by the time they finish. Where’s Doc? We’ll need him to help with injecting the dogs.”

“I’ve been in here working,” Drake said, the slightly snide tone of his voice not unnoticed by Anne. “Check the rec room or the bunks.” He made a dismissive sort of hand gesture.

Anne clenched her jaw and said nothing, wordlessly leaving the Bio Lab and heading back down the main hallway towards the rec room. 

The rec room was the largest room in the base, though that wasn’t saying much. Sporting a TV, a single desktop computer, a pool table, a small, round card table, and a couch and chair set, all of which older than some school aged children. 

She found Dan in one of the card table chairs, in front of the TV, a taped re-run of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”. The grainy audio of cheery applause swelled as a contestant got another answer right.

Anne wasn’t sure if he’d noticed her come in until he spoke up, not turning from the TV.

“I’ve seen this episode already,” he said. “This guy has a clean sweep the whole time. Just an amazing game. Could have walked away with the million dollars. Then just blows it all on the last round. Ends up with nothing.”

Dan wrung his hands. A nervous habit of his Anne had noticed before.

“And the worst thing is that he said the right answer first, then chickened out. Used his ‘ask the audience’ and second guessed himself.  If he’d just stuck to his guns, to what he knew was right in the first place, he would have won.”

Dan pressed the eject button on the VHS player.  At last he turned to face Anne. 

“I hate episodes like that,” he said, with a grim smirk. “Yet I end up watching it again anyway. Not much else to do I guess…”

“Skirth may have a test,” Anne said.

Dan visibly perked up.

“Oh? And...and it’ll work? She’s sure?”

“Pretty damn sure, it seemed.”

“Oh thank God,” Dan said, slumping in his chair with an exhalation of relief. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

“I’ve got Jameson, Treece, and Deckert out digging a pit to burn the corpses. Drake’s putting up a fight about it but not outright refusing. Everyone’s on edge but they’re still respecting the chain of command.”

Dan stood and took a step towards Anne. Just brushing against the bubble of her personal space. Not so close as to be intimate, but just a hair closer than colleges. A silent gesture of support that Anne recognized for what it was intended to be.

“That’s not what I asked,” he said, voice soft. 

Anne's mouth opened to give a retort, then closed it and sighed deeply. Her shoulders slumped.

"It's all I've got for you right now," she said.

Dan took another small step forward. He placed a hand gently on her shoulder, rubbing it up and down her arm softly. 

Anne should have stopped him. Should have backed away. It was too intimate. They were out where anyone could walk by and see them. Her relationship with one of her subordinates coming to light now was the last thing she needed. Everyone was already so distrusting. Her leadership already being thrown into question amid all the confusion and fear. 

And yet, instead, she slumped forward, laying her forehead against Dan’s chest. Dan was just...stable. He was a pillar of support when she’d always been used to being the one doing the supporting. He was consistent. Put together. Being around him just always made you feel like things were going to be alright. It’s part of what made him a great doctor.

It made Anne feel safe enough for the first time since she'd been so jarringly awoken by the blare of the fire alarm to allow some emotion to slip past her careful facade of stoicism. Dan was the one person who she could afford to show any weakness around. Because he never seemed to see her as weak, no matter what she did.

He never demanded she be strong, just unwaveringly believed in her strength. Never relied on her always having things together, and was a bastion of support when things fell apart.

“I should never have let it go to a vote,” Anne breathed. “I should never have let it out of my hands. Should have insisted on freezing it again and waiting for a proper team to get here. It should have been thawed in a proper quarantine."

She shook her head, forehead rubbing against the soft cloth of Dan’s shirt. 

“I was just scared of messing it up. Going down in history and the idiot who somehow destroyed the most important scientific find of all time,” she said. “I should never have let it go to a vote. This...this is all my fault.”

Dan pulled her back to look him in the eye.

“Hey, none of that,” he said. “If anyone’s at fault here it’s me. I knew the danger better than anyone. I felt in my gut it was a bad idea and yet I just let myself get outvoted. I should have...have put my foot down!”

He illustrated his point with a soft ‘pap’ of his foot on the floor, making Anne break a smile. She couldn’t imagine the scenario of Dan ‘putting his foot down’ in that sense. He was too reasonable. Too eager to support others to shoot down all other views but his with the fervor that he’d have had to to overcome Drake’s insistence. 

No, when all was said and done, it was a commander’s responsibility to make the final decision about this kind of thing. And a commander’s fault when that decision was wrong.

“How’s Eddie?” Dan asked.

“I don’t care,” Anne replied flatly.

“I’m not sure I believe that.” Dan’s voice had a slightly wry tone to it. 

“I care if he’s infected,” Anne corrected herself. “Not comfortable.”

“And...if he is? Infected?”

Anne paused for a moment, saying nothing.

She had been trying to avoid the idea of what she would need to do if it was proven that Eddie wasn’t human. Would a Thing reveal itself as soon as the test said they weren’t human? Or would it argue the legitimacy of the test? 

Ideally, once exposed, the Thing would shed all trace of humanity, becoming a gruesome monster the likes of what they’d destroyed in the kennel. Something no one would feel pity for. Something no one would be conflicted in destroying. 

But what would happen if it did not? If it decided it had a better chance trying to keep up the ruse than abandoning it? Trusting more in its ability to deceive than in its physical strength, which had already been proven insufficient when put up against the full force of a flamethrower blast? They knew nothing about how these Things acted, how they thought, or if they even had individual thought at all. Anne could not begin to expect their reaction to any given situation.

Would it beg for its life, pleading and crying, insisting its humanity? Fire had seemed to be the only thing that effectively damaged or destroyed these creatures. Could she bring herself to burn alive something begging with a voice she knew? Would she be able to look into eyes she could not differentiate from human eyes and find it in her to engulf them in flame? 

Into the eyes of a man she’d loved? 

“Then we’ll deal with it,” she stated, flatly. 

“Just like that?” Dan sounded more somber than skeptical.  

“Just like that.”

For a moment, they just stood in silence. Dan took a breath in like he meant to speak, but just released it again.

Anne drew back, standing up straight. 

Dan drew back, too, though it was unnecessary. He wrung his hands again. 

“The test is a ‘serum test’, Skirth says,” Anne explained. “We’ll need to inject one of the dogs with some of the blood in storage. Maria will need some help with the needles.”

Dan nodded. 

The sound of footsteps in the hall alerted Anne to the presence of Deckert, Treece, and Jameson before the turned the corner into the room. Maria and Skirth were with them as well. 

“Pit’s dug,” said Jameson. 

Anne nodded, then looked to Maria.

“Far as I can tell, Gemini stayed out of the fight,” Maria said. “He’s always been more bark than bite so I doubt he took a snap at it, either. He’s our best bet, I think.” 

Anne nodded again, and looked at the crew before her. 

Despite the fear and mistrust, they still looked to her with confidence. Still respected her orders. Still trusted her word. She was the head of this base and she knew full well the chaos it would descend into as soon as every crew member decided it was every man for himself. Drake was a wrench in the works but he always was. She could handle his dissent as long as everyone else was still on board. She’d keep this operation together, no matter what. 

“Alright then,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Chapter Text

Present

Eddie scrambled up from the floor. His heart was pounding. There hadn’t been any time. He’d expected at least another day before any test was ready. How could it have been so fast?

His mind raced with the different possible outcomes, all of which terrible. 

If the test worked at he came up as being inhuman, could he possibly convince the others he couldn’t infect anything? It seemed unlikely. And he knew the Thing he shared a body with wouldn’t go down without a fight. Even without the element of surprise, it could certainly seriously injure or kill someone before it was taken down. And, without knowing that it was unable to infect, anyone hurt by it might be killed just to be sure. 

In all honesty, though, it was still probably the best possible outcome when it came down to it. 

The other option was that the test didn’t work at all. It would falsely confirm him to be human. The rest of the crew would think that the threat was passed and Eddie would be helpless to let them know otherwise. The Thing in his head would never allow it. He’d have to sit there, trapped in his own body, while it enacted its plan to consume all the humans and transform his and its shared body into some ungodly abomination in a last ditch attempt to overpower the other Things. If it was unable to defeat them, those it was unable to destroy would simply have to wait until rescue arrived, return home, and begin their work of consuming the entire living population of the planet, uninhibited. 

When your two best possible outcomes were “burned alive” and “turned into a hellish monstrosity and murder all of your close friends, coworkers, and ex-fiance”, you know things have taken a turn for the worst in your life. 

'Calm, Eddie,' the Thing hissed in their mind. 'Remember our bargain!' 

Eddie needed no reminding, especially not of the fact that their "bargain" basically boiled down to the Thing doing what it was planning to do anyway, unless Eddie somehow made that a less viable strategy, which was its natural inclination anyway. 

Some deal.

Regardless, he had no desire to be revealed right now, either. 

He resisted the urge to check himself over and make sure he looked entirely human. 

Oh God what should he say? He shouldn't look this nervous. He should be excited they found a test so soon right? Oh God he was being suspicious already. She must be able to see right through him.

'Calm, Eddie!' hissed the Thing again. Eddie felt it push the 'script' on him and, this time, he willingly latched onto it.

"You have a test?" Eddie asked again, his voice still slightly trembling.

Eddie would be glad, but also afraid. Afraid it will falsely accuse him of being inhuman. Afraid perhaps he already has been taken without knowing. Afraid to find out.

Anne said nothing for a moment and Eddie noticed how shaken she looked. The stern, unflappable demeanor she usually had seemed weakened. Like thin fractures along a thick pane of glass, not so obvious at first glance, but that spoke of an underlying damage that threatened to seep and spread until the whole thing shattered. 

Eddie had seen that happen only once before. The moment before she pulled the ring from her finger and pressed it into his hand. 

“Just come out, alright?” Anne said, at last. She pulled the door all the way open and stepped back to give him room. “We’re...having a meeting. I’ll explain it to you along with everyone else.”

Eddie took a shaky breath, then followed her out the door.

Eddie would want to stay quiet. He doesn’t want to press. He would keep second guessing himself, feeling like everything he was doing was suspicious. Wondering if it’s more suspicious to ask or to stay silent. Surely one self assured in their humanity as he was wouldn’t feel the need to keep asking about the test. But wasn’t it reasonable for him to want to be sure it was accurate? He would know he should just wait as Anne told him to, but wouldn’t be able to help himself.

“So, like, you definitely tested it, right?” Eddie asked. “The test, I mean. Like, you know for a fact it works? That it wouldn’t, you know...give a false positive? Or negative if it was testing for being human I guess I suppose it’s how you look at what exactly you’re--”

“ There is no test, Eddie,” Anne said, voice seeming to be strained by held back emotion.

Eddie stopped in his tracks, blinking in shock.

"...w…what?" he breathed.

"There is no test," Anne repeated, her voice more resolute. 

Eddie felt like the floor had disappeared from under him, leaving him floating in the space left behind, any point of reference for his situation suddenly gone.

“...but...if there’s no test why...I thought you were going to…” he stammered, then took a breath to steady himself and organize his thoughts.

“If there’s no test, why are you letting me out of solitary?” he asked.

“Because there’s another Thing in the base.”

Eddie felt his heart seem to skip a beat. 

Of course he’d suspected that could be the case, but he’d somehow still held out hope he’d been the only one at risk. 

The ‘script’ Eddie was even more alarmed. 

Eddie would realize he’d been locked away while other Things were about. He’d realize he now has no idea who could be human. His greatest threat is no longer the idea a test will falsely identify him. He now is truly faced with the idea that the whole world is at risk. 

“How...who--”

Anne cut Eddie off.

“Just follow me!” Anne snapped. 

Eddie flinched back. Anne really seemed at the end of her rope. Just what had happened while he’d been locked up?

Anne turned back around and kept walking.

Eddie could feel the Thing in his mind mulling over the news they’d just received. Eddie could feel small pulses of relief, but the rest of the emotions churning around in its part of their mind were too foreign to decifier. 

Eddie supposed he should feel relieved as well. Presumably, they were not about he be revealed and promptly incinerated, but, unlike the other resident of his mind, his own life was not the foremost of his concerns. 

If there was undoubtedly another Thing in the base, that meant there was almost definitely more than one, as well. Who knew how many of Eddie's friends and colleagues were already gone? Dead and replaced by monsters? The only possible indication of number was the likelihood that humans still held the majority. If they didn't, the Things would have shed their facades the moment they sensed that they--

Eddie nearly stumbled as a sudden revelation struck him. 

The Thing in his mind quickly grabbed control and returned their body to the rhythm of the script's cautious, unsure gait before Eddie's sudden shock could even begin to show in their movement.

It felt different than the other times it had done so, though maybe only because Eddie was appreciative of it this time, like someone catching something fragile that had been clumsily dropped and returning it to his hands before it could shatter against the floor.

Eddie gave a short, silent thanks, which the other presence in his mind made no acknowledgement of, simply sending along a faint impression of expectation. Waiting for him to explain himself.

'I can't believe I didn't think of it before!' Eddie thought, excitedly, the script's control the only thing keeping a grin from his face. 'You Things must be able to tell who other Things are, right? If you're able to tell when you hold the majority, you have to know who's human! We don't need a test, we are one! Now, how we get the others to believe us I don't know but I guess, really, we could just try to kill the Things ourselves. Then we'd have all the time in the world to come...up… with…'

Eddie trailed off. 

The Thing was silent and Eddie felt a peculiar churning from its part of their mind. 

'I…am unsure,' it said at last. 

'What does that--'

Eddie nearly ran into Anne's back as she came to an abrupt halt in front of him. They were at the rec room.

Inside, the rest of the crew of Big Magnet was already assembled. 

Dan and Skirth sat on the couch, Dan wringing his hands. Skirth looked petrified, shaking and glancing around nervously.

Jameson and Deckert were on the opposite side of the room, with the pool table between them and the others. 

Maria and Treece were standing in the center of the room and seemed to be in the middle of an altercation.

“How can you still defend him?” Maria shrieked.

“I’m saying he’s was our best bet at a test and now she--” Treece tried to retort before being cut off.

“He doesn’t want a test!” Maria screamed. “He wants to feed us all to those Things! My dogs--!”

Treece seemed to notice Anne and Eddie in the doorway turned to face them.

“And now look!” he said, cutting Maria off and gesturing towards Anne and Eddie. “She takes the one most likely to be one of them out of solitary!”

“There wasn’t any reason for him to stay,” Dan said, voice low, but the most calm sounding of any of them. 

“I bet you’d say that!” Treece spat. “You’re under suspicion for this, too!” 

Maria began interjecting again, the jumble of loud voices seemed to begin to seep into Eddie’s head, stinging like a migraine. 

“Wait, wait!” he cried, waving his hands in front of him defensively. “Everyone slow down, what’s going on?”

Treece jabbed a finger in Anne’s direction, angrily. 

“She’s one of those Things!” he exclaimed. “She sabotaged the test!”

“What?!” Eddie cried.

“We don’t have any proof of that,” Maria interjected. 

“No one else could have done it!” Treece spat. “That’s proof enough! And she got rid of the only one who could have made another test!”

“Could you bring yourself to stop kissing Drake’s ass for even one second, Treece?” Jameson said with a sneer. “It was Skirth’s test to begin with!”

“And who was it would found the blood?” 

“You can’t even keep straight who you’re blaming! You can’t just point fingers at everyone who isn’t yourself!”

“You expect me to just--”

“ ENOUGH! ” Anne shouted, her voice immediately commanding silence from the room.

Everyone turned to watch her. Eddie could see her eyes burning like fire. Her face was stiff and her jaw taut, but still betrayed little emotion.

There was a beat of tense silence, then Anne let out a huff of breath, as if to steady herself.

“Most of us know all this,” she said. “But for Eddie’s sake and to make sure everyone’s clear, I’ll go over it again.”

“There was a test. An idea, for a test,” Anne continued. “Skirth proposed a serum test. It required blood that we could prove was human so we planned to use the blood in medical storage. Since the test didn’t require the Thing’s body to work, all but a small portion was burned. Drake…”

Anne paused and the room seemed to grow even more tense. 

Eddie glanced around, suddenly very aware of a conspicuous absence.

“Where...where is Drake?” he breathed. 

Treece seemed to stiffen, glaring even harder at Anne.

Eddie’s heart was pounding. Drake had been killed? Had they found him dead or had he been…

“He’s in the outdoor storage shed,” Anne said, quickly, seeming to sense where Eddie’s train of thought was heading.

“He became...delusional,” she continued. “While the rest of us were distracted destroying the corpses, he destroyed all our our communication equipment. The radios, the satellite phones, anything we could use to send a signal back to the mainland. He also destroyed the plow, the tractor, and any other methods of transportation."

" Other methods of transportation ?" Maria cried. "That's what you're calling it? The fucker killed my dogs!" 

Eddie could see Maria furiously blinking back tears. He knew how precious those dogs had been to her. It wouldn't surprise him if Drake had had to be quarantined just so she didn't tear him limb from limb herself. 

“The point is ,” Anne continued, raising her voice only slightly to quell any attempts on Maria or Treece’s parts to begin arguing again. “That he destroyed any ability we have to leave the base or to contact anyone.”

Eddie furrowed his brow.

“Wait, but why destroy the radios?” Eddie said. “I get trying to stop any of the Things from escaping, but the mainland will send a team as soon as they figure our comms have been down longer than a regular outage from a storm. All that would do is ensure they didn’t know what they’re going to face! It won’t help stop anyone from being eaten!”

The room when very silent and still. Maria shot an angry glance at Treece, who was pointedly looking in another direction. Dan was wringing his hands again. 

Eddie glanced around, no one seemed to want to look him in the eye. His stomach felt heavy with dread. 

It was Skirth, voice wavering, who finally spoke.

“Drake didn’t do it to prevent people from getting infected, Eddie,” she said. “He did it to make sure of it.”

Eddie blinked, speechless. He felt the Thing in his mind perk up, as well.

It was a joke. It had to be. Drake was an arrogant son of a bitch, sure, but he wasn’t out of his mind. He wouldn’t want his whole species,his whole planet to die.

“Wh-wha...why--?” Eddie stammered, finding it difficult to even fully form a single word. “Drake wouldn’t...no one would…”

“He said it himself,” Dan said, quietly, still wringing his hands together and not looking up from the floor. “I wouldn’t have believed it myself it I hadn’t heard the words out of his own mouth.”

“But why?!” Eddie demanded. “He wants to kill the whole fucking planet?! What happened to him wanting to save it?!”

“Apparently he thinks this is saving it,” Jameson said, arms folded tightly across his chest, breath uneven. “Bastard thinks feeding the world to monsters is the answer to all of its problems. That we’d all be part of some big system or something. A hivemind. That we’d become part of those Things and that it’d be some kind of utopia. ‘Destroy our bodies but preserve our minds’ or some cultist bullshit.”

He rubbed at his chest with one of his hands, grimacing. 

‘Is that even a thing?’ Eddie thought to the Thing in his mind. ‘I mean...my mind was sort of preserved but…’

‘No,’ the Thing replied. ‘Things are not any kind of symbiotic life form. We exist as singular life forms that have no connection to any others, mentally, physically, or emotionally. Even if Drake were able to somehow simulate the circumstances of our...situation, it would not be what he desires. Any human consumed dies. The persistence of a personality doesn’t change the fact that the human Eddie Brock was killed and is no longer. What Drake dreams of is a fantasy.’ 

“That’s...crazy,” Eddie breathed, replying in part to Jameson and in part to the Thing. “That’s completely insane…”

He pulled over one of the metal chairs from the card table, legs feeling suddenly weak beneath him.

“So you just...put him outside in the storage shed?” Eddie asked, still reeling. “It sounds like if he’s not already one of them, he’s sure as hell on their side.”

“He may have just suffered a psychotic break due to the stress and guilt,” Dan said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s one of them.”

“And, if he is human,” Anne added, “we can’t afford to lower our own numbers on suspicion.”

Suddenly there was a high pitched, nervous giggle from the corner of the room. 

Deckert, who had up until that point been silent, was staring at Anne with wide, frightened eyes. He was shaking slightly, looking decidedly less tough than his attempted aesthetic.

“Sure,” he said, voice trembling and accusatory. “Sure that’s why. Not because you just want to stop us from killing one of those Things that already outed itself!”

He stood up from where he was leaning against the wall, he glanced around wildly. 

“You’re gonna listen to Weying? She could be one of those Things!” he cried. “She sabotaged the test!”

“ What?!” Eddie yelped.

“We don’t have any proof of that,” Dan interjected. 

“You would say that! You’re not free of suspicion here, either!” 

Deckert turned to Eddie, eyes wild with fear. 

“She tampered with the blood!” he yelled, pointing at Anne accusingly. “She sliced the bags open! Spilled the only clean blood in the base all over the med bay floor! Our only hope for a test! Drake had his little meltdown in the med bay. We all would have seen it if the bags had been sliced. It wasn't until he was already locked up. There's another Thing on this base that didn't want us to smoke it out and it's looking right at us!"

Eddie glanced to Anne, whose eyes were alight with restrained emotion.

“I didn’t touch that blood, Deckert.”

“You’re the one with the key! You have the key to every lock in Big Magnet! Thefridge door wasn’t broken open! It was unlocked, the blood bags were slashed, and then it was relocked! You’re the only one who could have done it and yet we’re all just sitting here letting you make decisions?!”

“Someone could have lifted it from me at any time!” Anne snapped, finally seeming to begin to lose her cool. “These Things managed to sneak around and kill at least two people you think they couldn’t steal a key from my belt?”

“If you were really human you’d have stepped down! You wouldn’t still be trying to give orders!” 

“And let the whole base fall into chaos, that’s what they want!”

“What you want!”

“It wouldn’t have locked it.”

Both Anne and Deckert turned to Eddie, who had just spoken, voice surprisingly calm, even to his own ears. 

The Thing in his mind prickled. The script seemed to stutter like a skipping CD, never intended to be ignored.

Eddie would not say this. He’d have no insight to Things. He wouldn’t speak up. He’s already under too much suspicion. 

“It couldn’t have been Anne. Even if she is one of them, she couldn’t have been the one to get to the blood,” Eddie continued, ignoring both. “It wouldn’t make any sense. If she were a Thing, that Thing would know that Anne had the only key to the fridge. It wouldn’t have locked it. It would know that that would draw suspicion to itself. And it wouldn’t have done anything that would bring any suspicion to itself. They never do. Even if it might help them in the long run.”

‘Eddie…’ the Thing warned, pressing the script to his mind.

Eddie knows nothing about these Things, even less than the others, having been in solitary. He would not say things he has no way to know.

“If it had just wanted to sabotage the test, and it had the key, why would it cut the bags? It could have just tampered with the blood and made it so a test with the blood would be ineffective. Or maybe even give a false result. But it didn’t. It cut the bags. Then it relocked the fridge. Something that it knew everyone would think only Anne would be able to do. If it had ripped the door from its hinges, no one would have any way to suspect anyone in particular. The only reason anyone or anything would have relocked the fridge is to make it seem like it had to have been Anne. Which, if Anne was a Thing, it would never do. It would only make sense for a Thing trying to shift suspicion off of themselves. They only ever do what ensures their own survival in that moment. If anything, Anne is the least likely person in the whole base to have gotten to the blood.”

The whole room stared at him. 

The Thing squirmed in their mind, livid and terrified, the emotions too strong to misunderstand.  

‘Why would you do that?!’ it demanded. ‘ You know that that doesn’t mean she’s not a Thing, even if she’s not the one that got the blood! You’ve put us under so much suspicion! There’s no way Eddie would know that! You’ve all but revealed us, you idiot!’ 

It seemed to brace itself for inevitable discovery. 

However, instead, the tension of the room seemed to break. 

Deckert huffed out a breath and leaned back against the wall, visibly thinking over what had been said.

Anne looked at Eddie with an unplacable expression. It occurred to him then that she, for all her show of confidence, may have not been sure. Not sure if she’d know herself. 

Even Treece seemed to back down, his stance becoming less tense.. 

“I...I think we just can’t base anything on how people act,” Skirth said, breaking the silence. “If these Things really act exactly like who they’re impersonating, then there’s no way to tell. And no point trying to. The only thing we can rely on is something the can tell them apart physically.”

“And if the radios are all out, we don’t have long to do that before a team shows up and gives these Things a way back to civilisation,” Jameson added. 

Anne let out a long breath.

“I know I’m human,” she said. “And if you were all these Things, you’d just attack me right now, so some of you are still human. This Thing doesn’t want to show itself. It wants to hide in an imitation. It’ll fight if it has to, but it’s vulnerable out in the open. If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies. Nobody left to kill it. And then it’s won. We’ve got a storm hitting us in 6 hours. The mainland will assume it’s interference from the storm for a week at most, then we’ve got maybe two more weeks before a rescue crew arrives. We need to find out who’s who.”

She set her jaw, determined. 

“Or, at least survive long enough to tell the crew to nuke the whole place from the sky.”

She turned to the couch where Dan and Skirth sat.

“Skirth, Lewis, get started on a new test,” she said. “If that Thing sabotaged the test, that means it thought it might work. And that means there’s still got to be something that will work. So that’s what we’ve got to find.”

She gave a long look to each person in the room.

“Because if we don’t, this base becomes ground zero for the end of the world.”

Chapter Text

The Thing that shared a mind with the being who was still, despite protests, not the human Eddie Brock, nor human at all, mulled over the strange events that had just occurred as it allowed its body’s other occupant to walk them out of the room along with the other crew members. Though they were less openly aggressive than when they’d entered, the tension was still palpable.

Most of them had a job assigned to them. Treece and Jameson were to handle burning the sabotaged blood in case it was, as the humans seemed to have taken to calling it, ‘infected’. A pointedly inaccurate description, but the Thing relented to respect the human mind’s need to protect itself from things it could not properly handle. Easier to comprehend the idea of infection, like something tainted with a bacterium, than the idea of something so small and innocuous being a living thing with malicious and even murderous intent. And easier to accept the concept of others being ‘infected’; Of humans who were ill, even if terminally, and even if such illness could spread to oneself, than to accept ones proximity to otherworldly creatures and that those whose faces these creatures still hid behind were already gone, devoured, destroyed, consumed. 

Another needlessly complicated and roundabout manner of thought so favored by humans, but the Thing accepted it insomuch as it realized that it reduced panic and the onset of hysteria, neither of which being beneficial to it, currently. 

Skirth and Lewis were working on finding another test. The Thing was, of course, all but certain such a test did not exist. There was no difference in imitation and original that humans had remotely the technology to perceive, if any could be perceived at all. Eddie didn’t know much about what a serum test entailed so it, in turn, did not know enough to say whether it could have been viable. One of the Things certainly had thought so. Regardless, the Thing felt confident enough in the feeling that it was not in danger of exposure from any test human beings could devise. 

Nor one particularly determined, annoying, and decidedly inhuman being, for that matter. And certainly not a test that could detect other Things, but not themselves. But the Thing was contented enough to allow Eddie to busy himself trying, so long as it kept him occupied enough to not constantly be trying to reveal them. Not that that really seemed to be stopping him.

And that was what plagued on the Thing’s mind. 

Eddie had all but revealed them just now. He’d broken the cardinal rule of Things: to, when meaning to imitate, always be a perfect imitation. To take no action those whom they impersonated would not take. Say no thing they would not say. Reveal no knowledge they would not have. 

It was a creed above all others. It was the foundation of their existence and the most crucial point to their survival, especially here, where everyone was cramped together, where everyone was on high alert, actively looking for discrepancies, desperate for any sign they could use to justify striking out. Any misstep was death.

And yet…

Eddie had done just that. He’d revealed an aspect of the personality of Things he should have had no way to know: their inherent and utter selfishness. The fact that they never did anything to put themselves at risk if they were able to at all avoid it, no matter the chance of reward.

Having been in solitary while any and all discovery about and discussion of Things was going on outside, Eddie should, by all means, know the least. Be the least able to intuit anything about these creatures.

And yet, against all odds and everything the Thing knew, the situation diffused. The aggression, hovering just below boiling point, dissipated.

Not entirely, no. Nothing would shake the fear and mistrust completely, of course not. But it was undeniable that the tension had been relieved significantly. That what was leading towards inevitable struggle or even violence died back down into a simmer of suspicion and resentment. 

But why? How could it be possible? The dissonance between what they expected of Eddie Brock and what Eddie had done should have tipped the situation into chaos. How had it instead become calmed?

A hand grasped lightly at their shoulder and Eddie turned.

Anne looked at him with a soft expression. She opened her mouth but, for a moment, said nothing, as though she could not decide what to say, or even to speak at all.

Was she finally going to call him out on his suspicious behavior? It was ludicrous no one had already. Eddie had acted similarly suspicious before, telling Anne about the flamethrower, but that had been before everyone was on such high alert for inconsistencies between expected and actual behavior. Now every strange or out of place thing they did was another piece of suspicion against them.

Anne was shrewd, and knew Eddie better than anyone. She would have noticed, wouldn’t she? Had she stopped them to accuse them? 

Or, perhaps, was she one closer to themselves? A Thing stopping to recognize another? Regardless of whether or not it meant to eventually consume them, a Thing gained nothing from revealing another, especially in a circumstance that might draw attention to themselves, nor in engaging in any kind of violence out in the open.

That was a relieving thought.

Or...it should have been. Some niggling feeling prickled at the Thing’s mind when faced with the idea of it. The sensation was confusing and, in that confusion, disquieting.

What on Earth would cause it to feel anything at the idea of Anne having been consumed?

The Thing was pulled from its thoughts when Anne at last spoke.

“Thank you,” she said.

Eddie blinked, surprised.  Had the Thing been in control it might have reacted with a similar expression of shock.

“Oh, uh...D-don’t mention it,” Eddie said, stammering slightly. 

Anne gave him a faint ghost of a smile, then followed the rest of the group away.

The Thing was flabbergasted. 

‘What...was all that?’ it said, within their shared mind. ‘What just happened?’

Eddie raised an eyebrow slightly. A silent question.

'You acted strangely!' the Thing continued. ' And yet now the tension is broken! You gave them no knowledge that behooves them to know. You solved no issue. You bought them no closer to their goal! You only acted in a way that should have made the simmering fear and mistrust boil into outright violence and yet instead a facsimile of order returns! How?' 

"I--" Eddie began, aloud, then caught himself and continued silently.

'I gave them an answer,' he said, beginning to walk down the hallway in the opposite direction of the others.

'But not an answer they wanted! Not an answer they needed! An answer that tells them nothing! Anne not having gotten to the blood doesn't say anything about whether she's human. If anything, they know even less now than they did because they have no one upon they can even reasonably place suspicion! How can this comfort them?' 

For a moment, Eddie said nothing, and the Thing felt him mulling over the question.

‘Humans like to understand,' he said. 'In whatever way they can. Understanding, in many ways, is like controlling. It gives people a sense of control, at least. Up until now, there hasn’t been anything anyone has understood. Nothing they could claim with any confidence was true. There has been no sense to anything. But now they have one thing. Something they could think through and rationalize and believe based on something more than pure, random speculation. For the first time, something made sense. Something could be deduced and understood. And, if it can be understood, it can, in some way, be predicted and, thereby, controlled.’

‘But...but it doesn’t help them. It may make ‘sense’ as you’ve said, but that which has made any sense to them has no practical use.'

‘Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s not what mattered right now.’

The Thing had no good response so it gave none. 

The situation puzzled it, and in puzzling it, worried it. In more ways than one. It had not predicted the reaction the crew would have to Eddie’s comment, nor did it understand it after the fact. And this was puzzling. It had every memory Eddie did. There was nothing he had experienced that the Thing did not have memory of. Every thought. Every experience. It had every moment of both Eddie Brock’s and this new Eddie’s life and yet something had occurred that, by that reasoning, should be impossible:

Eddie had explained something to him that it had not already understood. He’d known the answer to a question that the Thing itself had not. Their existence was a closed circuit. No new information could be gained by Eddie but not by itself. And yet he’d had some.

Or no, that wasn’t quite right. The experience, the thought processes, the memories, everything that allowed Eddie to understand the situation, the Thing still possessed. But, somehow, it had not been able to piece them together the way he had. 

The simulation of Eddie Brock that it possessed would not have done what Eddie had done. Would not have pieced together what Eddie Brock would not have had the information to piece together. Trying to force it through the situation of Eddie Brock being aware of being inhuman and having information based on that ran into a sort of logic loop the Thing could not surpass. A perfect imitation of a human could not have information that human could not possess. And, in turn, the Thing had no access to conclusions that could not or would not be drawn by that imitation of human understanding.

The Thing had all the memories of the human Eddie Brock, but, it seemed, only could extrapolate the complexity of human reaction within the context of a perfect simulation of that human. It suddenly realized that it, itself, had no context for or innate understanding of the human condition. It had never endeavored to be anything but a perfect imitation. Never had reason to even consider it. Never needed to contemplate any depth of communication or culture beyond that that which it imitated would contemplate. 

Now, to its great unease, it was confronted with the idea that it may be, in fact, unable to do so. That, beyond that which was immediately easy to deduce, such as aggression and violence inciting aggression and fear, it could determine and predict very little. It knew the kind of actions that incited suspicion, mistrust; The shallow waters that spread only slightly out from the imitation, but it found, as it ventured in its mind further into the sea of human interaction, it became quickly out of its depth. 

Irritation replaced unease.

Naturally none of that would matter if Eddie hadn't acted recklessly, anyway. The Thing's apparent inability to understand humans beyond the scope of its perfect imitation would be of utterly no consequence if the annoying conglomeration of memory and personality that could snatch control from it whenever it seemed to please wasn't so dead set on endangering them for absolutely no discernible reason.

‘ Regardless,’ the Thing said. ‘It was a stupid risk. We gain nearly nothing from it and the fact it didn’t lead to an immediate and excruciating death by immolation was an extreme stroke of dumb luck. Emphasis on ‘dumb’.’

Eddie made a face.

‘If it was so dumb,' Eddie thought to it. ‘Why didn’t you just stop me? You stopped me from saying everything else.’

‘I had no time!’ the Thing spat. ‘You acted without thinking! You spoke the moment the realization occurred to you without for a moment considering the consequences! How was I to intercept an action that was in progress before the intention to commit it was even fully formed?’

Eddie quirked an eyebrow. His lips turned up in a poorly suppressed smirk.

‘So much for knowing everything I could possibly say, huh?’ he said, smugly.

The Thing said nothing. Eddie was uncomfortably closer to a deeply troubling truth than he realized.

Every moment that passed, it indeed seemed as though the Thing was less and less able to predict Eddie’s actions. It had access to a perfect imitation of Eddie Brock but, though it had been adamant in its insistence about this ‘Eddie’ not being the aforementioned, it had to admit it itself had not fully considered the ramifications thereof. 

The Thing could perfectly imitate and therefore, theoretically, perfectly predict Eddie Brock.

But the being it shared its mind and body with was not Eddie Brock. Every moment of experience that it gained, everything it learned and felt that Eddie Brock had not and could not have, moved it further and further from being the human it still clung to the idea that it was.

Eddie had not been wrong, not entirely anyway. To understand was, in a way, to control. Or, at least, to have the conceptual ability to control. The Thing did not fully understand Eddie. And every moment Eddie seemed to become less and less something it was able to understand and, in that way, perhaps that much harder to control. 

The Thing had to also admit it had been mostly bluffing, or perhaps just wishfully thinking, when it said that Eddie’s personality would likely expire and leave it once again alone in its body. It had nothing concrete to base the idea on save for the fact that, by all means, it made no sense for Eddie to exist in the first place. It was wrong and out of place and the Thing had lived long enough to know that new, wrong, and out of place things, more often than not, were forced back into place or outright destroyed.

It relented that it was more likely to find itself as well in that category of wrongness than it was for that which was becoming more obviously a cohabitant in this form than a parasite thereon to disappear and return it to its previous state of existence. 

‘Why leave me in control all the time anyway if it you trust me so little?’ Eddie asked. ‘I know you can take full control, even when I don’t want you to.’

The Thing hesitated. Being honest would perhaps reveal a weakness in itself that it would behoove it not to have Eddie know. Then again, any pretense would be a ruse that would not last if it were tested.

‘It...takes more energy that I would prefer to expend when we fight for control,’ it said. ‘It seems more practical to reserve it for taking full and unquestionable control when necessary than to exhaust it in an attempt for something more constant.’

‘It doesn’t bother you to just be a…passenger like this?’ Eddie asked. ‘I’d think something so selfish wouldn’t be able to stand the idea of letting someone else take the reins.’

‘This is, admittedly, not so entirely unlike how I am used to existing. Save that that which I usually allow to ‘take the reins’ is not sentient.’

“Oh!” Eddie exclaimed, then winced as he realized he’d done so aloud.

‘Oh,’Eddie repeated, silently. ‘That reminds me. What is that? That sort of...third person? At first I thought of it like a script I was meant to follow but it’s more like...like its own person? But...not?’

Eddie made a sort of waving hand gesture that, despite the fact no one was in the hall with them, the Thing wished he would not.

‘More like an autopilot. Except with emotion? Except it doesn’t actually... feel them it just...has them? It’s like me except...pretend. Pretend Eddie? Pr...Preteddie?”

A shiver shook their whole form and Eddie stumbled a few steps.

‘Do not call it that,’ the Thing hissed. 

‘Was that another ‘blush’?’ Eddie said, smirking. ‘Are you...does that nickname embarrass you? You don’t like Preteddie?’

The Thing suppressed another shiver that it pointedly refused to consider a possible indication of embarrassment. 

‘I do not blush,’ it reminded him, pointedly. ‘That name is simply ridiculous. Any name for it is ridiculous! It’s an imitation, not a sentient being! Think of it like...a computer program. A set of circumstances are fed in and it returns what the human Eddie Brock would do in those circumstances. Returned either as information, or as physical action.’

‘And here I thought those college comp sci classes would never come in handy,’ Eddie said, seeming to either be unaware of or simply completely ignoring the fact that speaking within their mind did nearly nothing to hide the fact that he was having a silent conversation when it was accompanied by the host of facial expressions that kept adorning his face.

It drove it mad how smug he looked and felt, for a reason it didn’t fully understand. It suppressed another shiver. 

‘My point being that it’s ridiculous to give a name to a mindless piece of simulation no more sentient than lines of computer code,’ it said.

Eddie seemed to consider this thoroughly before finally saying, in a serious, solemn tone:

‘That...is not a very nice thing to say about our good friend, Preteddie.’

The shudder this time was unsupressable.

“You--!” the Thing began, irritated, then stopped abruptly.

It clamped its hands over its mouth, horrified to realize it had just exclaimed out loud. 

Eddie would not do this! Eddie would not act this way! He would not have yelled! He would not put his hands over his mouth! He would not look so shocked! He would not be so scared! His heart would not pound like this! Eddie wouldn’t do this. Eddie wouldn’t. Eddie wouldn’t! Ed--

“Hey!” 

Eddie’s voice was soft and he pulled his hands away from his face slowly and gently. 

“I’m just ribbing you, you know,” he said.

The Thing felt a strange mix of emotion it did not care for. Something soft, yet still prickled with annoyance and anxiety. Confusion and...comfort? It was irritating.

‘Stop...stop speaking out loud,’ it snapped.

‘Right, right.’ Eddie rolled his eyes. ‘You still need a name, too, you know.'

‘I beg to differ.’ 

‘I need something to call you,’ Eddie insisted. ‘I can’t just call you ‘The Thing’. You’re all ‘Things’.’

‘I fail to see why you need to refer to me at all. And least of all why it need be a singular, set moniker. I am not your pet , Eddie. I don’t see what right you have to name me as you might one.’

‘Something to differentiate you, then,’ Eddie relented. ‘The Not-So-Bad Thing? Debatable at best. My Thing? Yikes, no way. The Other Eddie?  You’re not Eddie. I’m debatably not even Eddie. The Other Me? No, for sure not that. The Other Person In My Body? Too wordy. The Other...Other…’

Eddie shrugged.

‘The Other,’ he said.

‘The Other?’

‘Yeah. I think it says a lot,’ Eddie said, smiling slightly. ‘Not me but not really apart from me. Just...other than me. Other than the Things. Other than human. Just...Other.’

The Thing considered it. 

‘Fine,’ the Other said. ‘You may consider it a descriptor and differentiator, but it’s still not my name.’

‘Fair enough,’ Eddie said with a shrug. ‘But enough about names! We were just in a room with nearly everyone in the camp! Could you, you know, sense anything on them? Or whatever it is you do?’

‘I...perceived nothing,’ the Other admitted. ‘While the sense of who is and is not a Thing is always somewhat...imprecise, it is generally distinct enough to have been obvious in such close proximity.’ 

‘So...what does that mean?’ 

‘It means that either everyone in that room was human...or my ability to sense others of my own kind has also been stripped from me.’

The Other felt Eddie’s heart drop. 

‘Is it too much to hope it’s the first?’

‘Almost unquestionably.’

‘I guess it was too much to hope it would be that easy,’ Eddie sighed. ‘But, we should have a pretty good chance to really test that out given what our task is.’

Eddie stopped, having reached the far end of the hall and coat rack holding all of the thick, insulated parkas that the crew used when venturing into the harsh, Antarctic air. 

He lifted the one belonging to him off of its hanger.

“Time to pay a visit to the resident sociopath.”