Anatomy of an Invasion Ch. 14

"Julie, Eve's told me all about your work." said Lilli. "I'm looking forward to seeing us all on the inside. I want to know what we really look like."

Cassie began to regard Lilli warily.

She thought that she detected the same predatory gleam in Lilli's eye that she now knew lurked inside Eve.

Did Lilli hold the same secret inside herself as Eve? Was Lilli not a women, but a pastiche of women, a container holding the souls of so many?

Lilli had spent countless months in the FEMA camp, holding prayer sessions with women that did not know what the future held, who knew that detention might be followed by an ignominious death.

How many of them had surrendered? Cassie asked herself.

How many of them had given themselves up to Lilli, just as Gabby had given herself up to Eve?

Given a choice between immortality and death, what would anyone choose?

Lilli greeted Gabby, and kissed, and they held each other very close for a time.

Cassie did not know if Lilli was greeting Gabby, or the Eve inside of Gabby.

Cassie couldn't decide. Everything was so new to her, everything was changing. She would have to watch Lilli carefully, but she knew now that Lilli carried the same charisma as her sister, but that it was a young charisma, playful, not a personality that assumes all it wants by wielding power.

But if Lilli decided to take them, there would be nothing she could do.

It took Cassie a few seconds to realise that the chattering had stopped

Time itself had stopped.

Time had stopped for all.

Except Cassie, and except Lilli.

The others were all silent, and unmoving, in the same slack-jawed trance of those people at the Uni bar, like statues, trapped in a thought.

Lilli ignored the others, and regarded Cassie, questioningly, seemingly attempting to understand her thoughts.

She placed her fingertips against Cassie's temples, just as Eve had done to Gabby, in that fateful night at the hospital, and just as Eve had done to Cassie, that night above the Uni bar.

Cassie wanted her touch, and Lilli's cool fingers felt delicious against her skin.

Cassie closed her eyes.

An image began to appeared in Cassie's mind.

It was Julie, standing in front of Lilli, entranced, embracing, ready to kiss her.

Lilli's lips were red, and beautiful.

They held so much promise for Julie, a promise of pleasure, and passion, and submission.

But Cassie knew that Lilli's lips could take away Julie's soul.

And Cassie was holding Julie, and helping Lilli, feeling the waves of pleasure spilling from that terrifying transaction, the subsumption of one human being within another, and neither Julie nor Cassie were able to do a thing about it as Lilli commenced the kiss, the all-consuming kiss, the kiss that would fill Julie with Lilli's essence, before Lilli opened hers robes and began to draw Julie into herself, consuming Julie with that smiling, hungry, beautiful mouth, pulling her down into the hungry blackness at the core of her being.

As Julie orgasmed her very self away, Cassie would only be able to hold her, and pleasure her, revelling in Lilli's power, worshipping Lilli as the goddess that she truly was.

The vision cleared.

Cassie's heart began to beat in terror, and she broke out into a cold sweat.

Was Lilli showing her the future?

Surely not!?

Again, Cassie repeated the facts to to herself.

Julie, at least, was safe. She had never been host-form.

In all of this, one constant had been Julie's refusal to engage with the worms.

Lilli was still smiling, and her fingertips were still held against Cassie's temples.

Before the invasion,Cassie thought,we all knew what the future had in store for us, what was in store for every human being on Earth.

Old age, infirmity, and then death.

But Lilli and Eve offer an alternative.

Life, eternal life, joined forever to a beautiful, powerful, benevolent lover.

That's not so very different from my Christian heaven.

A sense of peace descended upon Cassie, and Lilli dropped her arms.

But Cassie's thoughts were still all confused.

Consciousness returned to everyone's faces, and, not even noticing the time they had missed, they began to file into the room with the Taubett machine.

Cassie made sure to lock the door.

Gabby helped Anjolie set up the scanner, and they booted it up with Julie's version of the old firmware.

Cassie felt the whole situation was completely surreal.

Cassie wanted to understand, what was happening to herself, and what was happening to Julie.

She was terrified of Lilli, she was terrified of Eve.

She was terrified of the future.

But it was a quiet terror, buried underneath a sea of contentment, a wonderful sense of physical well-being.

It was like treacle.

Sweet, sickly sweet, but so easy to drown in.

***

Cassie was to be scanned first.

Cassie moved behind the machine, pulled off her pants and her T-shirt, and donned a hospital robe. She thought herself fortunate that she didn't need to remove her piercings for the X-ray scanner.

Cassie climbed into the machine, put her hands by her sides, and held herself still.

"Okay, Anjolie, I'm ready."

With a single key-press, there was a high-pitched whine as the stepper motors started to move the X-ray laser and the opposing sensor in a spiral.

The machine had commenced scanning Cassie's innards.

The spectators looked on, but there was nothing yet to see: they had all agreed to look at the scans together.

Although the scan only took a few minutes, Julie started jiggling her foot in impatience. They had to do lots of these, and process the images. Only then would they see what Stefan had been hiding!

Next up was Gabby.

She changed out of her clothes into a hospital gown right in front of them, showing a remarkable lack of modesty, and slid herself into the machine.

Cassie held Julie from behind while they looked on, and it felt nice.

They were a couple now, and Julie looked forward to spending the rest of her life with Cassie, near her side.

Anjolie was next, with Gabby at the controls, and then Julie.

Julie felt comfortable in the group of five women. After an uninspiring start, the worms had brought all of them together, and they had become firm friends. Lilli had always been a presence in their lives, since Cassie's first day of chatting, and Julie hoped that she would get to know Lilli better.

Finally, Lilli entered the machine.

When all the scans were done, they gathered around the workstation, and Julie moved into the driver's seat.

They looked at Cassie's image first.

Julie's worm-trail detector was not in the processing chain, as this firmware was too old to have included it, so she didn't expect to see very much.

Cassie's skull and brain appeared first, and, for the first time, Julie really saw inside her lover's head.

Julie tapped the down-arrow, and the image moved up. They saw glowing tendrils begin to emerge, and when Cassie's brain-stem appeared, they saw it was surrounded by a glowing mass.

Julie blanched.

It was worm tissue, wrapped around Cassie's brain stem, with fine glowing tendrils extending upwards, into the base of her brain.

This was no ancient worm trail.

This was worm tissue, alive, and glowing.

Cassie smiled.

Julie continued to scroll the image, and they could see that Cassie's spinal column was plaited in glowing, writhing tendrils. All of Cassie's spinal column had been colonised by fine filaments of worm cells, and, what was more, there were dozens of tiny glowing islands of worm cells scattered throughout her body.

Julie ran her worm-trail detector on Cassie's image, and now they saw the previous tracks left by the worms. The whole of Cassie's torso and neck had at one time been host to the worms' invading tendrils.

She was riddled with trails.

Cassie, still smiling, felt very special.

"Four worms," she said, "I had four worms. Oh, that was nice.

"And I still have a mistress. I'm so glad. She has been quiet. I've missed them since they left me at the Hospital, but I've always hoped that my mistress would return."

When the whole render was completed, Julie zoomed out to see Cassie's whole body.

They could see that the worm tissue made a long, glowing skein, from the base of Cassie's spine right up into her brain-stem, and the glowing islands of worm tissue looked like the night sky.

"Those glowing stars in Cassie's body," Gabby explained, with some pride in her voice, "that's what Stefan's program detects. That's how the Taubett knows when to make cured women look like normal women. Those bright constellations of worm tissue will hide Cassie's secret from the world, and she will always scan as normal.

"And the tissue in the spine, and the brain, is always hidden. The Taubett will never reveal our masters to the world. We all get to appear normal. Infected, cured, clean, nobody will see our masters."

Julie wanted to look at Cassie's ghostly form for hours, but she could see that Gabby wanted to see her own scan.

Gabby's skull and brain appeared first, followed by her familiar nose-ring.

How many hours had Julie stared at that thing on her own computer monitor, looking for evidence of corruption?

Well, now she had found it.

When the scanner reached Gabby's brain-stem, again, they saw a glowing mass appear.

Again, Julie blanched.

Cassie and Gabby smiled.

As with Cassie, they could see that all of Gabby's nerve tissue had been colonised, and she also had dozens of glowing islands of worm cells scattered throughout her body, pinprick points of alien invasion, left by the worms as markers to trigger deception in the Taubett machine.

As it reached her pelvis, they saw what Gabby had hoped to see.

"Congratulations, Gabby, you sly girl! You're pregnant!" Cassie said. "You and Stefan have been busy, haven't you?"

Julie looked on in growing horror as the rest of the foetus appeared. The spine of any human foetus looks like an alien at the best of times, but the way that Gabby's child glowed in the X-rays, it was clear that it actuallywasan alien, at least in part.

Gabby's tiny baby had been colonised by the worms, too.

Julie knew then that the worms had found a way to escape. The security at Lennox Hospital was moot.

There must be hundreds of cured women in Australia now, all of them full of worm tissue.

The Taubett scanner had been subverted, and the evidence of its deceit, the images of worm tissue, would never be seen outside this room.

Julie had always thought that the invasion could not proceed without the worms, and, other than in the hospital, she still believed that there were no worms in Australia.

But with that degree of infestation, both Cassie and Gabby must be under the worms' control. And if the children of the cured women were infected, where would it end? How could it be contained?

Cassie held Julie from behind, then, and Julie felt a warm pulsing in her spine.

The warmth spread upwards, into her neck, and she felt a burst of arousal, and of love, for Cassie, and for Gabby, whose image on the monitor was only just now getting down to her toes.

"My spine is an antenna now," said Gabby. "The adult master lives in our spine. It communicates with electromagnetic radiation transmitted from our spinal column. That's how adult masters communicate.

"I've started to feel my baby in the last few weeks," said Gabby "I know that he's a boy, and I can feel him in my mind. He already loves me, he loves his mum, and he's only six weeks. Can you believe that? I can't wait to hold him, and to feed him, and to help him grow into a man.

"Eve and I will bear the first new humans in Australia, into a brand new world."

Cassie voiced her thoughts.

"Gabby. That's beautiful. We look beautiful. We're all beautiful."

Lilli looked on in amazement.

"I have never seen this before. All my life, I never knew ... It's so beautiful."

Gabby continued her explanation.

"The worms are only the juvenile form, the fruiting body. Their role is to infect as many hosts as possible, in as short a time as possible.

"That is not the natural state of the masters. None of us would ever get anything done if we spent all of our time chasing, fucking and infecting other women.

"A worm will remain only while it is breeding to infect other hosts, or until it acquires enough nutrients to leave its larval form.

"When a worm is ready, it will then squirt itself into a hidden channel in its host's spine, and begin growing, joining its intelligence with its host, first through the spine, and then with the brain.

"The vaccine does not kill worms. It's a nutritional supplement. It provides a master with enough arsenic that it can join with its host immediately.

"My master has never left me.

"But I shall bear fruit for the worms, one day, and I am looking forward to it."

Julie's feeling of horror was threatening to overwhelm her. She was looking at images of living alien invaders, infesting Gabby, and Cassie too, and they were talking about infecting other women again, another invasion, as if all of the security around the hospital was irrelevant. Surely they knew that they would be stopped? If infected women began to appear on the outside, they would all be killed. They were suicidal.

When Anjolie's image appeared on the screen, they all saw the mass on her brain-stem, the silvery threads making a skein down her spine.

"The twins," Anjolie said, "The twins saved me."

"They educated me.

"They ... pleasured me. It was all for the best."

Anjolie turned to Julie, and held Julie's cheek with her hand, in affection, but also in sympathy.

"Julie, I think that you are the only clean woman here. You are the only one that has not been taken, that has not given in to temptation.

"And I feel sorry for you, sorry that you have missed out on so much.

"Eve must trust you, Julie, she must know your mind.

"She took a big risk with you and Cassie, you know ...

"But you can visit the hosts, if you wish it. You can join us. You can become host-form. You can feel the pleasure."

Julie did not find Anjolie's words convincing.

Ever since Cassie had returned from the hospital, Julie had known that something had changed in her life.

When Julie began to display her own scan, she did not know what to expect, but soon breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Finally, her life made some kind of sense.

They all saw the mass on her brain-stem, the silvery threads, the skein running down Julie's spinal cord.

Anjolie looked surprised, and perhaps a little disappointed, as she gazed at the evidence of Julie's infection.

"Julie," said Anjolie, "Of all of us, I thought that you were untouched.

"When did you visit the hospital? When did you have the ointment?"

A possibility, too terrifying to contemplate, had been confirmed in Julie's mind.

Julie finally knew how she was being manipulated, how she had become infected.

Julie knew now that she had a mistress, and knew who had given it to her.

"Cassie," Julie said, "Cassie gave it to me."

When Cassie had given Julie her first experience as her lover, Julie had unknowingly been infected.

The venom.

"Cassie gave me the venom."

The venom contained microscopic, invisible, eggs.

Anjolie smiled.

"Of course. You're lovers. It does feel nice, doesn't it? Eve has a most remarkable attention to detail. None of us ever really had a chance."

Julie could only gaze in wonder at her own mistress, all grown up from a finger-full of venom, grown from a single larvae that had wriggled into her skin, nourished by arsenic, all of those months ago.

Her mistress had been with her since then, growing, observing, communicating with the other aliens, planning, and, no doubt, pushing her emotions around, directing her thoughts, ensuring that she could do nothing except advance the interested of the worms.

But she felt so normal.

No she didn't.

Over the last few months, she had felt so much better, so much happier, so much moretogetherthan she had ever felt before.

Julie realised that she was no longer an individual. She was host-form. She was controlled by aliens.

It was horrible. She was a pawn of the worms now, just a piece in the puzzle whose solution would be the enslavement of humanity.

She loved her companions, the women who surrounded her, but they were all trapped in a sick conspiracy to enslave the human race.

No.

Not enslave.

Complete.

She had never sensed the presence of her mistress, she felt no sense of otherness.

She knew then that her mistress was a part of her, integrated into her own, complex, personality. She would never talk to her mistress like Cassie did, because shewasher own mistress.

The two feelings, of horror, and of love, merged into a single, unfathomable whole, a loss of control, which curdled into arousal, and desire.

When Julie showed the scan of Lilli, they all saw the new world.

Lilli's scan shone like a supernova, the ripples and folds glowing with a light that was wholly alien, tiny rootlets of worm tissue spread throughout her brain.

But the worms were not her master.

She was the culmination of a perfect symbiosis, a vessel for holding humanity within herself, a new life form, no less than a goddess.

All the women surrounded Julie and held her close, feeling her emotions within themselves, enjoying her new sense of wonder, and sharing all the pieces of the story they had collected.

Julie felt a meeting of minds, and shared their thoughts, and knew now that she was a full participant.

This was better than sex.

This was love, a boundless, overpowering, love which would sweep all before it.

For the first time, Julie understood what the big deal with religion was. Seeing the future laid out in front of her was a spiritual enlightenment.

But this was no mere superstition. The world really had changed.

She understood the future of humanity.

The abstract idea of alien invasion had been with Julie for months now, but it had suddenly become real, and close, like a raging bushfire, out of control, almost before she knew it was burning.

But the fierceness of this fire was purifying, and, as it consumed the world, for consume the world it surely would, it would burn out all of the hatred, all of the violence, all of the misery, and decay, and sickness, and greed, leaving the world innocent, and fresh, and new.

All would feel the pleasure.

All would be brought into the fold.

All would be cared for, and loved, and allowed to fulfil their potential.

And soon, maybe in a few years, maybe in a generation, Earth's humanity would strike out for the stars, just as had Lilli and Eve's people, finally ready to work with a common purpose, finally ready to join the community of life in the universe.

It was overwhelming.

And Cassie was right.

Lilli was so beautiful.

Cassie was beautiful.

Anjolie, Gabby, Julie.

Jessica, Sophie, Joan,.

Anita, Jane.

Maryanne, Sheyda.

Eve.

Lucille.

Stefan.

John.

All host-form.

All beautiful.

They were all so beautiful, so very, very beautiful, and Julie loved them all.

Life was beautiful, and Julie loved her life.