Chapter Text
"...Are you certain?" Admiral Nestiri asked as he gazed down at the specimen below. The creature continued its curious fits and I found myself watching it alongside him, "The Stawbs on Klithere alter their genetic code during their lifespan, do they not?"
It's always the Stawbs. Why is that the only abberential organism anyone seems to know about...? I clasped my hands and measured my words.
"The Stawbs are single celled microorganisms..." I said slowly, "That level of living morphogenesis existing on a macro scale such as the howler is less likely than every atom in your body tunneling to the other side of the universe."
The admiral flicked an antennae and began to pace, "I should have known that that size was unnatural... What did they change?"
"It's impossible to tell." I spread my hands, "I would need to see an unaltered specimen first, and even then it would take a laboratory much better than this half a Luoman year to finish mapping out every expression of its genetic code."
He thrust his teasing finger into my chest, "I don't care for your excuses and I don't think you grasp the gravity of this situation." He leaned in.
"Guess."
I withered away and brushed his finger off, "I-I really can't say. I don't think the size was changed much. Comparatively few sequences were changed---they were very precise and specific sections, but again, it could be anything."
The admiral fluttered his flanges and then backed off, stepping back over the terraced glass. He gripped the railing and looked down once again at its babbling fits.
"So, it's like that because it's been tampered with."
"I..."
"'I can't say, I can't say'" He echoed, "You've been here for days and you're no wiser than I was just from looking at it. I want to know, is it like that because it's been tampered with?!" He pointed. "Most likely..." I admitted, "It's been impossible for me to rationalize many of its behaviours from an evolutionary standpoint. Several of them appeared to be actively detrimental for survival. Before I'd assumed that there must be some piece that I'm missing, but if it's been modified during its lifespan..."
He didn't speak for some time, watching impassively at the creature rocked back and forth and leaked fluids and mucous from its sensory organs.
"It makes no sense!" Nestiri beat his hand into the rail, "Why would they go through all the trouble if they were going to break the Mandate anyway?!"
"They...?"
He turned, "I'm speaking at you biologist, not with you."
I let my antennae droop.
"Stop that. That impertinent and unbecoming gesture. I'm not one of your offworlder friends who needs the help. I can smell it on you, and I hate how you drag me down to your level." Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to be back at my apartment on Tirotiro. I suppressed the urge to wring my fingers and simply stood there. The admiral was under stress, of course. That was why he was speaking these things instead of merely thinking them. I really, really hated the Fyrix.
I thought back to my Vextrid friend and the way she filled her air sacs to calm herself. It was a steady and mindful in and out. She'd always been excitable, so it was often I'd see this technique in action. After a while I'd thought to try it myself. My respiratory system is utterly unlike hers, relying instead on a system of spiracles and flanges to passively pass air across my vessels, but I focused on it regardless.
I thought about the air flowing through me, each particle slipping into the cracks and crevices of my body to infuse me with the self perpetuating chemical reaction known as life. I felt my heart pushing it around and I felt an odd connection to the world as it blew through me.
My attention turned to the howler as he wrapped his arms around his chest. He just kept rocking back and forth, back and forth... I wasn't upset about the admiral. Not really. It was the howler, I realized. It was so sad, such a beautiful creature being mangled into that thing down there by someone's twisted ambition.
"...Answer me, Zyrrs!"
His voice came as a shock to my antennae, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were speaking with me." I said as if still in a dream, but he remained as implacable as ever. I couldn't even tell if that short stint of courage had affected him at all.
"What are the limits, what are the possibilities." He pointed, and seemed to hate it, "What could they have done to make it like that?"
I resisted the urge to plead ignorance, "It could be anything. It's just code. It's possible they've given it some metabolic requirements that only they could provide as a means to control it."
It fit too well. The howler was mindless and absent because someone had altered the thing's mind. What we were looking at wasn't the bizarre but purposeful behaviour of an organism, it was the confused flailing of a puppet whose strings had been cut. It fit much too well.
After so long working and with nothing to show for it, it was tempting to snatch at the first plausible explanation. It was motivated reasoning. It was confirmation bias. But, it was also very plausible.
"What a nightmare..." Nestiri eventually declared, "I've got to summon the Sovereign Superiors and start an Inquisition of the Mandate."
I wasn't sure whether he was talking with me or at me, so I kept quiet as he walked across the room. He reached the door and I realized he was about to just up and leave.
"What do you want me to do?"
"You can go back to Tirotiro if you wish. As far as I'm concerned you've done your job."
"W-what?" I startled, "But admiral, there's still so much we don't know about the howler! I've got so many more tests I'd like to run!"
"For what purpose...? This isn't anything you could put into your database. It might've been a creature once, but now it's a genetically altered biological weapon. Beyond that, it's about to be the center of an interplanetary crisis."
"What are your plans for him, then?"
"Him...?" The admiral asked, but ignored it, "We'll hold the creature until the Superiors can examine it themselves. After that, we might dissect it and see if we can't learn anything useful should we be forced to encounter them again."
I felt ice in my veins. I was no stranger to dissections, but the howler's mimicked speech made it feel too familiar, "Regardless, I'd like to continue my research until then. If it's being controlled it's probably by some hormone or compound, if I could find what it is..."
The chances of that were about a trillion to one, but he didn't know that. I wished I could tell what he was thinking, or read anything from his blank expression and black eyes.
"If you think it will---"
A jagged burst of sound ripped through the air. My limbs stiffened in instinctive alarm as it rattled off the walls and through my body. Admiral Nestiri gripped a nearby desk for balance. We exchanged looks in the fragile silence the sound left behind and winced as that sound came again. It began with a sharp, forceful onset before stretching into an erratic oscillation.
I ran to the balcony and stared. The admiral fell in beside me. The howler was standing, gripping his head. He let out a meandering whine that morphed into another stentorian roar that strained his vocal cords. I gripped my antennae to dampen the painful vibrations and watched as the specimen paced around heavily.
"What's wrong with it?!" Nestiri shouted at me.
"I'm not sure...! He must be in some kind of distress due to whatever was causing him to discharge all those fluids!" I barely managed to say before another roar tore through its throat.
The howler's spherical eyes rolled in their sockets, taking in anything and everything with a frantic thirst. It was completely different from before. This was an intensity and state of arousal that I hadn't seen even when the thing was stalking me. There wasn't a trace of the detached fugue which had defined it, nor the constant near-lingual babbling. Both me and the admiral watched with morbid fascination as he stumbled around, snapping his neck this way or that to peer at everything. The protective lids over his eyes were blown wide and revealed the full rings of green and black.
Then he saw the door.
His stare carried the kind of dark promise that could only come from a predator. He bellowed and ran across the room, throwing his weight into the reinforced door. The impact was like a clap of thunder. I felt the rails shudder in my hands as it reverberated through the very foundations. He stumbled back, and hurled himself at it once again.
"It's trying to break out!" The admiral gawked.
"Don't worry...!" I assured him weakly, "The howler's body is massive, but it's much weaker than steel. He's going to break himself before that door!"
In fact, that was what I was worried about. He was throwing his weight against the door without any regard for his body's limits. It was looking like he really would break himself. This wasn't normal animal behaviour. Was this on account of whatever tampering had been done to it...?
The thunderclaps came one after another. The howler's teeth were exposed and slavering, its eyes wedge shaped under scrunched up flesh. Despite the ferocious display, my mind was elsewhere. It must've known that that door was the only way out of the room. Why else would it attack it so ferociously...? That showed some degree of object permanence, as well as the basic reasoning that destroying it would allow it to escape.
There were some frantic calls coming in from the other wings of the facility. It was difficult to explain the situation while my whole body was shaking from the constant impacts. Finally the howler seemed to slow, collapsing against the cold steel with one lingering impact. His chest rose rapidly, mouth agape to suck in the great volumes of oxygen necessary to fuel such power. His left side was bright red as he slumped to the floor.
"Well, that gave me quite the fright!" I wished I knew the emanation for mild humor, but when I looked over I saw the admiral's hands well still shaking.
"The sooner we dissect this thing the better..."
My antennae drooped. I turned my attention back to the creature. He stood and rubbed his arm as he walked back to the chair. He looked defeated. I supposed he would sit down and nurse his wounds, but instead he stalked around it. His massive hands wrapped around the backrest and then his whole body tensed. Every muscle seemed to bulge with the effort.
"What's it doing now!?" Cried the admiral.
I didn't have an answer, or at least I didn't until the chair started to bend.
It didn't matter. It was bolted down. That chair wasn't going anywhere, but it was difficult to remain levelheaded as its feral growled mixed with the sound of bending steel. Only two of the feet had been bolted down. Any more seemed like an unnecessary effort, but now I wasn't so sure.
It soon refused to bend anymore no matter how much the howler grunted and strained, but then he started pulling it back. The metal screeched in the opposite direction, groaning all the way back down on all fours, and then he pushed it back forward, twice as fast this time. Back again, forwards again, back again, forwards again, faster, faster, and as I felt nanthe rising up my gorge, the steel chair snapped.
He let out a mad roar and charged at the door, slamming steel against steel with a deafening clatter. His arms were like the stroke of an engine, hammering the corner of the chair against the reinforced steel. That was multi-step problem solving. The admiral had said it seemed capable of tool use, but this was beyond anything I was prepared for.
The door dented under the savage, slavering onslaught and we watched in disbelief as a sliver of light peeked through the top corner of the door.
"Rot and musk!" The admiral swore, "Enough of this!"
The howler dropped the chair and seized, falling to the floor. The paralyzed muscles could only produce one tone of its scream as it convulsed. I watched as the admiral thumbed the controls, then watched the howler writhe a second time. He rolled. Each time he tried to move earned him another shock, like something turning from a liquid to a solid over and over again.
He reached up towards his neck. His face was twisted into the most ferocious snarl I'd seen yet, but the longer it went on the less it seemed to affect him. He pushed through the electricity until his trembling hands wrapped around the collar. He pulled. He must've deformed it enough to separate the contacts from his skin because the shocks immediately weakened, but he wasn't done.
He pulled and pulled and pulled, fleshy skin peeling back to reveal clenched teeth. Blood leaked from his fingers and down his arms. It was terrifying, knowing that it could summon more strength than even its own body could handle. The clasp gave way with a loud pinging sound and the broken collar was thrown against the wall with another wild roar.
With bloody hands he lifted the steel chair and bashed it into the door. The gap at the corner grew imperceptibly wider as the howler cried out with each booming strike. I couldn't look away.
"Bless the bleeds---!" Nestiri pressed the comms on his suit, "Numbers 4, 6, and 10, get to the complex now! Yes, armed! Now, curse it, now!" He pressed his comms and ran for the exit, "Civil protectorate, this is Admiral Nestiri, I need---!" And then he was gone.
I wasn't sure he was going to make it. His strength was flagging, each strike slower and weaker than the last. The gap was substantial, but the heavy bolt and hinges held fast. He stopped, breathing, and then jammed the leg of the chair into the gap. With what was left of his strength he pushed it up, levering the creaking steel. The door peeled back. I was awestruck.
The howler threw the chair to the floor and lifted his body into the gap between the bolt and the hinges. It didn't look like he should fit, but his body squished and contorted in ways that felt wrong for something so large. His legs dangled and then disappeared.
I ran to the monitor and switched to the cameras just in time to see the howler fall to the floor. The fact that it had escaped seemed distant, something that had to be poked and prodded at before it registered as reality. This fact seemed to confuse the creature just as much, because he stood there, staring blankly down the wide hall. I wasn't thinking about that so much, I was overcome with a perverse glee, It was intelligent. Very intelligent.
Then with another shout from its raw throat it charged down the hall. A Fyrix appeared. He was wearing combat livery. One of Nestiri's men. My heart froze. It was too late, they'd met at the corner. Not even enough time to lift his weapon. The howler seized him. Threw him to the ground hard. He bounced. The sound made me ill. This was its nature.
The whift sprawled. The howler loomed, face contorted and teeth on full display as it bore down. The whift threw out his arms and cried out. Pathetic. Helpless as he curled into himself. I couldn't watch, couldn't stomach the sight of splattered chitin and organs that was about to explode beneath its fist. My hands couldn't cover my eyes in time before---it stopped.
The howler's face contorted a different direction as it stumbled back, and then disappeared around the corner. The whift was left trembling on the floor.
Fear...?
Why...?
Something else...?
Certainly not compassion or empathy, because those only came with the theory of mind, and if it had that, and the intelligence, and the capacity for language...
I felt ill.