Organism Ch. 05

Rebecca felt something drip onto her shoulder, and she looked up. It was smiling, teeth as long and sharp as combat knives, salivating in anticipation for the catch.

"We're not from your realm at all."

She screamed. The engineer spun around just in time to see Rebecca get lifted up into the rafters above by...something. He fired on the ghostly shade as it vanished into an open ventilation duct. Its long segmented tail was the last thing he saw.

"Fuck!" Owen shouted at the top of his lungs. "Fuuuuck!"

"Eighty billion years survived."

He ran for it and didn't look back.

"Now you'll join us in the hive."

Owen jumped up onto one of the crates and quickly climbed like a man possessed. He could see the maintenance hatch.

"You and all your manthing friends. This is how your species ends."

He sprinted to freedom as Mira opened the hatch, his lungs burning, eyes frantic and wild with terror.

"Twinkle, twinkle, humankind."

Owen dove through the opening and crawled to freedom as the hatch slammed shut behind him.

"Your God has left you behind."

--

The moment the alarms started blaring, Chris sprinted back to the crew deck to find Brooke. Everything was falling apart. He'd lost contact with his crew. An unidentified biological contaminant was detected in the security room. Whatever was going on, the situation was spiraling completely out of control.

"Brooke?!" he called out to her upon running into the mess hall. "Brooke!"

No response. He ran to his quarters next.

"Brooke, are you in here?"

Relief washed over his being. Brooke was sitting on his bed, safe and sound.

"Thank God. You're alright. Listen, something's gone terribly wrong. I can't get in touch with Owen or Samantha and..."

It was then he noticed her face. Brooke had been crying; that much was apparent. He could always tell after she'd been crying. The nurse wasn't looking at him. Rather, she appeared to just be staring off into space.

"Brooke?" He slowly approached her. "Is everything alright?"

"I've been sitting here thinking about what I was going to say," she admitted, her voice lifeless. "When I finally saw you again."

"What are you talking about? Brooke, we really don't have time for this. We need to..."

"But what do you say in this sort of situation?" she pondered, cutting him off in the process. "What words are appropriate when you find evidence that your boyfriend of three and half years, the absolute love of your life...is a fucking liar?!"

He was completely taken aback by her words. "Brooke, what's going on? Why are you so upset?

She stood up and walked straight over to his computer. "Oh, no reason. No reason at all, Darling." With trembling hands, she closed out the holographic screen, shut the device, and picked it up. "But next time, you may wanna be more careful cleaning out your fucking hard drive!"

Brooke hurled the computer right at his head. Chris barely had time to duck as it smashed to pieces against the wall. Looking back at his girlfriend's face, he could see it, the hurt, the fury, all of it came boiling back to the surface. Slowly, he began to put two and two together, whereupon he hung his head in shame.

"I know," she declared while taking livid, shaky breaths. "I know everything, Chris."

"Brooke, listen..." He tried to placate her. "...it's not what you think."

"All this time, I've wondered..." She didn't even seem to be listening to him. "...as happy as I seem to make you, why it is you've yet to propose? Have we just gotten too comfortable? I thought. Has our work gotten in the way? Wouldn't be the first time that's happened. But no! Turns out you had a very good reason for not wanting to marry me!"

He braced for what was coming.

"It's because you're already fucking married, Chris!"

"Brooke, I swear to you..." He was practically begging for her to listen at this point. "...I swear to you it's not what you think. I understand exactly what you're picturing right now. But I promise it's not like that. I'm not cheating on anyone. The woman in those messages..."

"Is your best friend's widow," she finished for him. "The one who died on the Chromwell."

He blinked at that in bewilderment. "Wait...so you know?"

"Of course I do!" she shouted angrily. "What part of 'I know everything' do you not understand here?"

"If that's true, then you should know I don't actually have feelings for this woman," he insisted. "I married Abby to give her and her daughter financial support. That's all."

"And at what point exactly were you planning on telling me this, Chris?" she asked, clearly no less pissed than she was before. "The woman you've been dating for three and a half years?!"

"Brooke, you don't understand. Joseph's family had nothing after he died. No money, no insurance, no way to support themselves. They were this close to winding up in a shelter."

She laughed in angry disbelief, throwing her hands up in the air, not even talking to him anymore, but rather to herself. "Oh...oh my God. Oh my God! He cannot be serious right now."

"I swore to that man up and down I'd look after them should something happen," Chris continued undeterred. "The plan was for us to separate amicably once she was able to stand on her own two feet. I haven't even had direct contact with this woman in almost four years. She's been working her ass off trying desperately to get through school so her daughter can have a future."

"He is being serious!" she declared in exasperation, again not really speaking to him.

"Why can't you understand?" Now he was starting to get angry. "This was my best friend, Brooke. I was just keeping my promise."

"What about the promises you made to me?! You don't get to turn me into the bad guy for this, Chris. Not now!"

He looked away again. It was clear trying to explain would get him nowhere. She already knew the full story.

"You don't even get why I'm upset, do you? Had you just told me from the very beginning..."

"I wanted to, okay?" he finally admitted angrily. "I fucking wanted to, Brooke! But I was scared!"

"Of what?" she challenged.

He didn't respond.

"See, this silence you're giving me, Chris? This is you being honest," she declared. "For the first time in three and a half years, you're being completely honest with me."

"I was...just trying to protect..."

"Don't! You fucking! Dare!" she bellowed at him, turning legitimately red in the face. "Don't you fucking dare try and say you were protecting me, Chris! The only one you've been protecting is yourself!"

All the life and fervor left his being. There was nothing he could say. Nothing that would fix this. It was over, and he knew it.

"So here's what's going to happen now," Brooke continued, having seemingly calmed down now that she got that off her chest. "I'm getting us the hell off this ship, one way or another before you manage to get us all killed. If you try and stop me from doing my job one more time, I will have you reported to the IFC, and they will throw your ass in prison! Do I make myself perfectly clear, Captain?!"

"Crystal..." he responded in a low, defeated tone.

"Good!" she insisted. "Because the only way you walk off this ship a free man, and not in handcuffs, is if you do what I say when I say it until we're safely back at the station. Now then, in regards to what happens once we're back? You and I are through! Permanently! End of discussion!"

That one physically hurt, but he kept it to himself.

"The moment we're back, I'm going to talk to Jacob." Emotion finally started to well up in her voice at these next words. "I'm going to beg that man for his forgiveness and ask if there is any way he would ever be willing to give me a second chance."

He gripped his knees until his knuckles turned white.

"Because of all the stupid mistakes I have made in my life, choosing you over him was by far the worst."

"Brooke..." He finally couldn't take it anymore.

"And I did choose you over him, Chris," she sobbed, at last allowing the pain she felt to come up to the surface. "From the very beginning, you were it for me. Despite the fact he has been nothing but loyal, nothing but honest, nothing but the best friend I have ever known in this life, I still chose you over him." Brooke was racked by pain as she quietly choked on her own words. "That is how much you meant to me. That is how much I was in love with you, Chris."

Tears began to well up in his eyes. This was killing him.

"I chose you over my best friend. That's the kind of trust I had in you. In us."

"Brooke, please..."

"Don't!" She pointed at him severely. "Just don't, Chris."

He hung his head miserably.

"We're getting the hell off this ship," she declared, wiping the tears from her eyes; all business again. "That's all I'm focused on right now. If you wanna live long enough to find the next girl to lie to, Chris, then I suggest you do the same."

With those brutal words, she left. After taking a moment to come to terms with everything he just lost, Chris stood up and followed her. One way or another, he was going to get that woman to safety.

Even if she wasn't his anymore.

--

The moment Brooke stormed out of the Captain's quarters, she headed straight for the medbay. It was time to get Jacob out of quarantine and get off this ship before whatever it was they let loose had a chance to kill anyone else.

"So what's the plan exactly?" Chris asked in a gentle, wounded tone, doing his best not to upset her.

"Mira has the crew deck on lockdown," she explained. "Which means the only ways in or out are the maintenance hatches, which only she and the engineering officer have access to. Whatever the hell is doing this, it can't get up here."

He nodded in understanding. "So we call up the crew, Owen lets them in through the maintenance hatches, then we man the lifeboat."

"Anyone who doesn't show up for launch is either dead or likely responsible for this. Either way, they can stay with the alien for all I..."

"Captain!"

As they passed through the mess hall, Brooke about nearly had a heart attack upon opening the next door. Owen latched onto Chris, a wild, panicked look in his eyes. He was sweating bullets and clearly out of breath. The engineer looked terrified.

"Wh...Owen?!" Chris finally managed to pull away. "What's going on? Why didn't you ever respond to..."

"It's Jess!" he declared frantically. "Captain, it's Jess and Samantha! They're the ones behind all this!"

It took him a moment to fully process what he just said. "Wait...what?"

He nodded, panic in his eyes. "They've been turned into these...these things! I don't know what they are, but they've got glowing yellow eyes and massive fangs! They're not human anymore, Captain! Whatever we brought onto this ship, it's infected them both!"

"But...but that doesn't make any sense! How come we haven't shown any symptoms? How come Jacob hasn't shown any symptoms?"

Owen shook his head vehemently. "I don't know. But there's something else. Captain, I saw it!"

"Saw what?" Brooke asked when it suddenly dawned on her. "Hold on...you mean the thing that popped out of Kevin?"

"It's massive," Owen insisted gravely. "Whatever that thing is, it's huge."

Chris swallowed nervously. "How huge?"

"Like the size of a man. It's big!"

The nurse shook her head vehemently. "That's...not possible. This thing was no longer than a foot several hours ago. How can any life form possibly grow that fast?"

"Look, I'm just telling you what I saw! It took Rebecca and crawled up into the ceiling. That's how these freaks are moving around. They're using the air ducts."

A sinking feeling came over Brooke at that moment. "If that's true, then the crew deck's not safe anymore."

"Did Jess tell you why she was doing this?" Chris asked.

"Hell, I don't know! She was spouting some nonsense about freeing her Master. Then she started singing. Whatever that thing did to her, she's fucked in the head."

She blanched at that moment upon realizing. "Jacob..."

The two men both looked at her. Moments later, another alarm started blaring.

"Emergency! Quarantine breach!" the ship AI declared.

She sprinted in the direction of the medbay.

"Brook, wait! Wait!" Chris called out to her before cursing under his breath and gesturing for Owen to follow. "Come on! We can't let her go in there alone!"

The three of them ran to the medbay. Something had torn its way through the door. Upon looking around inside, Brooke could see the entire room had been completely turned up on its end.

"Jacob? Jacob!" she called out desperately, eyes scanning over everything.

Her heart stopped dead in her chest. The glass had been completely melted through. Jacob was nowhere to be found.

"No..." She backed away, shaking her head in utter denial of what she was seeing. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Brooke clasped a hand over her mouth and fell to her knees, pain racking her body. "That's not fair. That's not fair! You can't! You can't do this to me!"

Chris and Owen finally managed to catch up to her. Upon entering the medbay, they looked around, their hearts sinking much like hers. While Brooke sobbed on the floor, burying her face in her hands, the Captain and the engineer took a moment to look around, noting that not only was Jacob gone, Kevin's body was gone as well.

"Why would they take the cadaver?" Chris pondered in a somber tone.

"Biomass," Owen explained. "That's what these fuckers are using us for. Breeding and biomass. They're trying to form some sort of hive."

He took all of this in, contemplating the grave nature of their predicament as Brooke continued to cry on the floor over everything she had lost. Chris moved to comfort her when something brushed against his foot. He looked down.

On the floor was a positive pregnancy test.

~~

They were all that was left. Just the three of them. Chris, Brooke, and Owen. Everyone else was either dead or infected. And the more the survivors thought about this fact, the more hopeless their situation began to feel.

Chris felt hollow at that moment. Numb to anything going on around him as he sat silent as the grave in the mess hall with the surviving members of his crew. What was he supposed to do here? He'd failed as Captain in the most spectacular way possible.

Whatever turmoil he was going through was nothing compared to Brooke, however. While the two men desperately tried to think of a plan, she sat away from them, knees tucked up to her chest, eyes sunken in, a vacant expression on her lifeless face as she stared at the wall.

"Blow the fuckers up!" Owen suddenly declared. "That's my plan. We detonate the ship and send them all straight to hell."

Chris looked up at him from his misery. "And how exactly are we supposed to do that?"

"If I may, Captain, the Cordoba comes equipped with a self-destruct protocol in the event of a catastrophic emergency," Mira spoke up. "By detonating the ship's warp drive..."

"We would have to get all the way down to the AI core and manually input the command, Mira," the Captain insisted in a defeated tone. "Not to mention, there's no guarantee we'd make it to the lifeboat before the ship erupted."

Owen slammed his palms down on the table, an angry determined look in his eyes. "It's the best plan we've got, Chris. There's a lot that's worse than death, and one of those things is just sitting here waiting to die."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose in thought. "What about weapons? Aside from Samantha's gun, we have no way to defend ourselves."

"We've got portable mining lasers, don't we?" the engineer insisted. "Give me a few minutes with a couple of those. I'll rig us up some plasma throwers that should do the trick."

The Captain considered all of his options for a moment before finally taking a deep breath and turning towards Brooke. "Well, what do you think? Got any better ideas?"

She didn't respond. Brooke didn't even seem to be present at that moment. Chris sighed in a melancholy tone before turning to Owen.

"Could you give us just a minute?"

He nodded. "I'll be right outside."

Owen left to give them some privacy. The Captain tentatively made his way over to Brooke and took a seat opposite of her. She didn't so much as acknowledge his presence.

"He's right, you know? At this point, blowing up the ship and heading for the lifeboat is the best plan we've got."

She remained silent.

"This goes beyond just us," Chris insisted. "Brooke, we cannot let whatever has gotten onto this ship infect anyone else. We have a duty to act."

Again, nothing. Chris sighed woefully.

"It should have been me. From the very beginning, it should have been me who was infected."

Her brow furrowed somewhat, though she still didn't move.

"Jacob would have known what to do. He would have stopped things before they managed to get this far."

"Is this supposed to make me feel better?"

He shook his head. "It's just a fact." Chris moved to place a hand over hers, but she pulled away. "Brooke...I know I don't deserve to say this to you. I can't imagine you'll ever forgive me after everything I've done."

She didn't respond.

"But if I could take his place, if I could switch roles and have him standing here right now instead of me, I would. Because then you'd be happy again. And that would be enough for me."

Slowly, the pain started to show on her face again, the sorrow at what she had lost.

"Because of all the lies I've told, the one thing that was never a lie was that I love you, Brooke. And I've only ever wanted your happiness." With a mournful look in his eyes, he added. "That's something the two of us had in common."

"Why couldn't you just be honest with me?" she asked, finally looking at him. "Why, Chris? All of this could have been avoided if you had just told me from the very beginning."

"I can't take back what I did, what I hid from you. All I can try to do now is make things right."

Brooke turned away again.

"We don't have the luxury of quitting," he insisted desperately. "That baby deserves a chance at a life."

She clutched at her belly thoughtfully.

"If you tell me that alone isn't enough reason to try and escape, I won't believe you. And if he were standing here right now with me, you know he'd say the same thing."

Brooke balled up her jumpsuit in her fist as the pain hit her all over again.

"There's no fixing this. I understand that. I accept that," he assured. "But the least I can try to do, the least we can try to do, is save as many people as we can. Starting with our child."

For the longest time, she simply sat there, thinking. Finally, with a deep, pained breath, Brooke responded.

"There are so many things I should have told him. So many things he deserved to hear me say and..." Try as she might to fight it, the tears came again. "...and now I'll never get that chance."

He turned away from her guiltily.

"Jacob was...the best man I've ever had in my life," she declared while wiping her eyes dry. "The most honest. The most humble. The most kind." Brooke turned and looked at him. "What's more, he went out of his way to see the best in you. Even if it broke his heart doing so."

Chris perked up, giving her a curious look.

"If I have to live, then so do you," she insisted. "Because this child also deserves to have a father in their life."

"Brooke..." It was almost too much to hope. "...what are you saying?"

She cast her eyes away for a moment as if wrestling with her thoughts before taking a deep breath and sighing in resignation. "I'm saying...that Jacob died believing you were an honest man. I refuse for him to be wrong."

Slowly, the light returned to his expression.

"He's given you a second chance, Chris."

The Captain leaned in to hug her. "Brooke, I swear to you, I won't..."