She Goes There
In which Kassandra is a scientist at an Arctic research station, and comes face to face with a threat that has reawakened after a millennia of slumber.
She was not what she was when she came here: she was better. And as she stood in the gusting snow and watched the ring of flame dance at the tip of his blowtorch, she remembered how they'd ignored all her warnings, how they'd put the sled dog in the kennel instead of culling it like she'd said to, how they'd delayed and pointed fingers and tried to escape instead of banding together and testing each other's blood and solving the problem once and for all. She remembered a saying: Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Another woman had said that once, another woman ignored.
Her colleagues at the research station had died, one by one: some fleeing onto the ice, some killed by the paranoia of the others. The rest had been picked off by this horrific thing, this alien that had found them and mimicked their bodies and faces. And now there were only two survivors left.
One of them was not like the others.
She'd survived this long by her wits and the occasional application of force. She'd learned with every encounter. She remembered another saying: That which does not kill you makes you stronger.
The flames whipped and sizzled in the snow-laden wind. "Take the test, Kassandra," he said. "Or I'll burn you where you stand."
She held her hands out. Empty hands, peaceful. He was already agitated enough, and he was still too far away to reach. She smiled gently. "After you, Murph."
His finger tightened on the trigger, and she coiled, ready to leap—
Crunching. Boots on snow. Another survivor? But how?
A shape in the swirling snowflakes became a red parka and a flash of dark hair. Impossible.
"Kyra?" she said.
He turned, flames puffing from the torch as he squeezed pounds of pressure into the trigger— and a tentacle shot out from what should have been Kyra's arm and speared him through his throat.
The flames died as he died, in the blowing snow.
Kassandra went to her. ::You survived.:: The first group of these creatures, these humans, had nearly killed Kassandra, and she'd thought Kyra dead. Kassandra had escaped in the form of a quadruped, maddened by grief that nearly got her killed again and again until she'd taken this form for her own.
::Yes. I escaped in the vehicle that chased you, but in a lesser form.:: It did not matter what form Kyra was in, she was always beautiful. ::How long did we sleep?::
::100,000 years.::
She wrinkled her nose, an expression familiar to the residual memory that clung to Kassandra. Irritation. She'd always been quick to adopt the mannerisms of the forms she occupied. ::And what of this planet?::
::Ours, if we can find a way to leave this place.::
Kassandra held out her hand, felt Kyra's flesh ripple around hers, their cells mingling, coming home after so long spent apart in the cold and dark of stasis.
Kyra held up a small, crude device. Kassandra remembered what it was, what the label 'ResQLink' meant, and her circulatory response amplified as Kyra pulled its antenna into place and pushed its large red button. It beeped and lit up, softly, and they held hands and smiled at each other as the beacon's light kept blinking, blinking, blinking.