Monster Girl Read online

  Another sip and Evelyn felt her eyelids droop, and as the quiet of the night surrounded her, she realized there was a sound deep in the background she had all but ignored.

  Other than the fact that it had a higher pitch, Evelyn couldn’t place from where or what it was coming. She shook her head, trying to shake off the dregs of exhaustion. Leaning forward in her seat, looking out the window—but at nothing in particular—she strained to hear more clearly.

  The sound grew subtly in volume and pitch, and then she noticed the movement out the window. With the cloudless night, she could see well enough, and she stood as first one, then several of the two-horned animals she and Joseph had seen earlier wandered into their camp.

  Evelyn squinted to see better. She was tempted to turn on the spotlights, but knowing it was as likely to scare them off as anything else, she thought better of it. Setting her mug down on the console, she retrieved a pair of night-vision glasses from the utility closet at the rear of the cockpit and put them on as she returned to the window.

  Not only did the glasses brighten her view of the cabin, but they illuminated the outdoors as if it were midday, penetrating the shadows and revealing every rock and shrub. And sure enough, a small herd of the little hounds was making its way into their camp. Evelyn momentarily smiled at the sight but then noticed how wobbly they were, swaying as if they were intoxicated.

  Unsure whether the glasses were working properly, Evelyn flicked the frames with her fingernail and then looked again.

  The hounds were still stumbling into one another, and the sound she noticed before was most certainly coming from them. They were swirling their heads in the air as they wandered, calling a high-pitched moan as they went. The whole scene reminded Evelyn of a funeral procession, and even though they didn’t seem in a rush to get there, they were wending their way down to the water’s edge.

  Evelyn cocked her eyebrow and stood straighter, struggling to find a reason for the herd’s strange behavior, and then she noticed more movement out of the corner of her eye.

  It was a much larger animal—and one she didn’t recognize. In contrast to the pale beige of the hounds, this animal was black as a shadow, and even the night-vision glasses didn’t reveal it to have any more color than the blackness in a bottomless hole. If she was on Earth, Evelyn might have thought she was looking at a moose or a longhorn by its silhouette, but it seemed even taller, its spindly legs longer and its horns wider.

  The moose stumbled, crashed through a cluster of shrubs lining the edge of the lake, and landed face-first in the water. Evelyn expected it to pop up, but as the seconds passed, nothing happened. Whether it was drinking or dying, Evelyn couldn’t tell, but she found herself mumbling for the beast to get up.

  Evelyn looked back at the hounds, expecting them to have fled at the commotion of having a thousand-pound animal belly flop in the pool not twenty feet from them, but if they were bothered by it, they didn’t show it. The group continued to meander its way to the water, though Evelyn noticed that at least a couple had fallen in the dirt a little way back and hadn’t moved since.

  Over the wailing hounds, Evelyn heard her heart thumping blood into her ears with the steady cadence of an executioner’s drum march. She felt her chest constrict and then she saw more movement.

  Quickly readjusting her view, she first noticed the flash of blazing red fur bolt through the shrubs. “No,” she muttered as her mind revealed to her the grisly truth of what was about to happen in the middle of her camp.

  Without thinking, Evelyn switched on the outside lights and was immediately blinded by the sudden brightness. Wincing, she tore the glasses from her aching eyes and tried futilely to see. Even through the glass, she could hear the crashing of beasts outside. Hopeful for a moment she had scared away the predators or the prey, she winced again at the squeals and clatter of horns against horns.

  As her eyes adjusted, a wave of sadness washed over her as she saw what appeared to be at least five wolverines tearing into the small herd, and another two or three churning the water around the moose.

  Within seconds, it was all over. The moans of the hounds were silenced. Evelyn wasn’t sure what grotesque sound had replaced it, but she was grateful not to hear. The wolverines dragged their prey out of the water, away from the beach and into the shadows, and even with the lights of the shuttle casting a cool light on the beach, there wasn’t any sign left of the beasts.

  Evelyn fell back into her chair, still staring out the window. If she hadn’t seen it, she never would have known there was a massacre on the beach, and she wondered for a moment if it might have happened before. Shaking her head, she thought it could have, but figured she would have noticed something out there on the beach in the past couple weeks if it had doubled as a feeding ground.

  Evelyn turned off the searchlights and allowed the cabin and the lake beyond the window to grow dark, once again illuminated only by the moons. She sipped her sugar water, which had mostly grown cold. In the quiet tranquility of the moment, something started gnawing at her, and she found herself thumbing through her situation, trying to figure out what it was.

  Her first thought was that maybe she was bothered by not being bothered by what she had just witnessed. Two months before, she was sure she would have been made nauseous by it. But here she was, just sitting and enjoying the quiet. “That’s harsh,” she muttered, but even that bit of judgement seemed forced—out of place. This was the wild of an alien planet. Apparently, her human sensitivities didn’t hold much sway over her tear ducts on matters such as these.

  Shaking her head, she let the judgement fade, but she still felt an unsettling knot in her belly. It could have been the sugar, she figured, but then she thought about Joseph, lying on the bed and writhing in pain. She felt the knot tighten and she knew.

  It bothered her that Joseph had gotten sick, especially with how fast it had happened. She felt like she was being dragged underwater worrying over him. In the six years they had spent on Vista, there had hardly been a cold reported, because of the efficiency of the purification systems. And even though Evelyn figured Joseph’s immune system might have grown weak from not having to do much for years, she didn’t think that was the case. No, there was definitely something about the virus he had that was nasty, and the fact that she had to tranquilize him to help him rest made her restlessness grow.

  Evelyn sat forward on the edge of her seat, placing her mug back on the console, and then, as if an ethereal hand swept the images of the day together for her in a collage, she stopped. Two different types of animals—a moose-like creature and the little hounds. Joseph getting strangely sick. The animals bumbling their way to the water’s edge, clueless about the danger they were in. Joseph collapsing and becoming delirious.

  Evelyn’s breath grew short. She looked at her arm where one of the pink petals of the plume had melted on her skin, and then she glanced quickly down the hallway in the direction of her quarters, where Joseph lay sedated.

  Evelyn jerked her head back to look out the window and she knew. Somehow everything was related to the plume. It wasn’t just the hounds outside who were in danger, and as the realization hung in the air around her like a thick fog, she feared that the worst the virus had to offer was still to come.

  PAINED

  The inky-black tendrils of smoke billowed before her eyes. She couldn’t see. She held her breath, gasping little gulps of the dry air, trying not to choke, but feeling her lungs burn all the same. The gravel dug into her knees where she knelt, a soreness that radiated all the way up her aching thighs, an eternal ache that seemed to have always been there. She rocked in place, feeling the soreness in her knees.

  “I don’t want this.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  She looked toward the voice, squinting in the smoke.

  “I … I don’t want this. It’s too much.”

  “It is too much. You will break.”

  She shuddered, the gravel digging further into her knees. She touched the dirt, her gnarled, frail fingers unable to feel anything but the growing heat.

  “Fire.”

  “Yes, you will burn.”

  “Jane? Help me?”

  She looked down again. In the dirt before here, a lily, brown at the edges and black in the center. She touched it and watched as the wisps of smoke licked her fingertips, searing away the flesh, revealing the white nub of bone in the tips. She clicked the bones together.

  “I’m not Jane, you filthy, disgusting worm.”

  She looked up, wanting the welcome relief of tears to come, but there were none.

  The woman stood over her, the haggard lines of her open mouth stretched, distorted, her stringy black hair taught against her skull.

  “Wooorrrrmmm.”

  A gasp. The knot in her chest growing, heavy like a tumor, cracking, breaking her ribs.

  “Buuurrrrnnn, worm.”

  “Help … someone.”

  She looked at her burning hands, the echo of her screams wilting in the smoke as the lily caught fire in the dust before her.

  Evelyn gasped, jerking her head up, and immediately felt a dull ache between her temples. She propped herself up on her arm, disoriented, her mind struggling to emerge from the swamp of sleep.

  The blood on her pillow was the first thing she noticed. It wasn’t a lot, but it had dried and was enough to cause the fibers in the pillowcase to stick to her cheek. She felt the lingering sensation of the sheet that had been pulled free from her skin. She struggled to keep her head lifted.

  “Joseph,” she said in a creaky voice that didn’t sound the least bit like her, unless she had somehow aged eighty years overnight. She glanced out of the corner of her eye, enough to see him lying still in the bed beside her, a pained exp
ression on his sweaty face. He was mumbling something, but Evelyn couldn’t understand any of what he was trying to say.

  How much time passed as she lay still on the bed, she didn’t know. But with each passing second, the thumping in her head grew worse. In her scattered thoughts, she knew she needed to sit up.

  Mustering every ounce of willpower she had, she reluctantly swung her legs off the cot and then gasped at the searing pain radiating from her legs. Just the touch of the fabric against her skin felt like it was peeling it off. Evelyn knew she was trying to scream, but no sound was coming out. The tears running down her face felt like they were turning to steam, her face radiating heat like it was the surface of the sun.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her mind scrambled, her only thought was that of stopping the runaway train of pain she was riding. She froze, afraid to move again, barely able to think coherently, and then one word popped into her consciousness. Nanites.

  Before she was a girl, Evelyn was artificial intelligence, but to get her consciousness into the body the doctors were growing for her in the lab, they used the nanotechnology she developed. Billions of microscopic nanites were injected into her spinal column, and within minutes, they had reordered themselves into miles of threads connecting her brain to every part of her body. They allowed her consciousness to flood the soft tissues of her brain, and once her brain was programmed, the nanites enabled her brain to run her body perfectly. She never got sick, because her nanites helped her brain keep her body in perfect health, all the time. She never even knew what it felt like to sneeze.

  She had known pain, however. Pain most humans would never comprehend or survive, and the pain she was feeling in the moment as the cotton sheets brushed her skin was almost enough to make her pass out.

  A second later, she felt a pop in the back of her head as she activated her nanites. A second after that, she felt a wave of numbness wash down her neck, her back, and arms, down to her fingertips, her hips, and thighs and calves, through her arches and out through her toes. It was like her skin had fallen asleep, and at first, the tingling she felt was unnerving, but it quickly subsided.

  Evelyn breathed a deep sigh of relief, and felt her jaw unclench. The tension in her head and neck started to unknit.

  Unsure she really wanted to test herself, she lay still for a moment and then rubbed the back of her hand against the sheets. Nothing. She had no pain, but she could barely feel anything at all, which was more than a little creepy. A shiver shot up her spine, and her whole arm jerked, but still nothing. There was no pain.

  Evelyn slowly sat up on the edge of the bed. Her mind still felt like it was submerged in swamp water, but she felt less nauseous, and she wanted to cry at the relief of having the pain gone. She rolled her head, heard her neck pop, and looked once again at the grimace on Joseph’s face as he lay motionless, still mumbling and obviously unaware of what she had just experienced.

  Evelyn reached around his waist and placed her hand on the small of his back. Joseph also had nanites. He had suffered an injury when he was too young for anyone to remember what happened, and for years he couldn’t walk without an enormous effort. The nanites connected his brain to the nerves in his legs to help him walk without a limp.

  Some of Joseph’s nanites ran into his brain, but most of his were congregated in his lower back and ran through his hips and into his legs. Even though Evelyn knew they weren’t ideally located in his body to help dampen the pain he must be feeling, she knew anything was likely to help.

  As she lay her hand against his skin, she saw the twitch in his features telling her his skin was radiating pain just as hers had. The heat coming off his body hadn’t lessened much in the two days she had been caring for him on the shuttle either.

  As gently as she could manage, she let a single thread of her nanites slip through her skin and his skin to connect with his nanites. The sharp snap of static between them made him jerk, but the reprogramming sequence worked quickly, and as she pulled her hand away, she watched as his contorted features relaxed.

  Moments later Joseph opened his eyes, his whites glowing red from the strain of sickness.

  “You’re awake,” she whispered, only then realizing it felt like she was fanning smoldering coals in her throat with each breath. She winced, swallowing hard against the burn.

  “Yeah,” he said, his eyes fluttering against the artificial light in the room. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ve been asleep for a couple of days. We’re on the shuttle.”

  “We’re not back on Earth?”

  “No,” she said in a long and loopy tone, immediately feeling the burn again in her larynx, and getting annoyed with herself for not being more careful.

  Joseph rolled onto his back, running his pasty hand through his sweaty hair and groaning. “I’m confused,” he said with a sigh. “I was talking to Father Tate back at the … back at … oh, I don’t know where.”

  “Tate? It must have been a dream.” Evelyn winced again at the burn and immediately pressed her nanites to deaden more nerves. She was sure she was going to be mumbling like she was drunk, but she didn’t care. She was tired of pain.

  “A dream? It was so real.” Joseph sat up on his elbows, looked at himself, and grimaced. “He told me something.”

  “What?”

  “That I would see him again soon.”

  Evelyn felt a ripple run up her back. Tate was dead, Joseph looked almost dead, and she was teetering toward wishing she was dead, given how she felt. “It was just a dream, Joseph,” she said quickly through the mumble, trying to leave the moment in the past but feeling stupid for sounding as ridiculous as she did.

  Joseph looked at her with a raised eyebrow and a curious look on his face, even if it did lack energy. “You sound drunk.”

  “It’s my nanites,” she mumbled.

  Joseph looked back down the length of his body. “My legs don’t work.”

  Even through the sluggish fog she still had lingering around her mind, she knew why. His nanites were having to reorient themselves in his body to dampen the pain from the virus. She didn’t know how long it would be before they adjusted to their new role, but until then, she knew he was going to have trouble walking. Even so, Evelyn didn’t feel like trying to explain it to him when it felt like she had marbles in her mouth.

  “It’s your nanites.”

  “Are they broken?”

  “No.”

  “Am I getting better?”

  “I don’t know.” Evelyn leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and her forehead in the palms of her hands. She felt the heat of her skin, and the throbbing was beating a steady rhythm against her temples. Even through the cadence, she knew what they needed to do. “I think we need to go back to the colony.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  “I’m feeling better, Evie … really … and we can’t go back …” Joseph’s voice trailed off, his unfinished sentence lingering in the space between them. Both of them knew how it ended. The council was clear when they exiled her. The penalty for returning was death.

  “We have to, Joseph.”

  She felt Joseph’s hand on her back. “You’re sick?”

  Evelyn nodded, the reluctant acknowledgement of being sick causing her gut to swirl with anxiety.

  “You’re okay now, though?” Joseph asked.

  “Okay isn’t the right word, but I’m here.” She shifted her weight, feeling a burning sensation in her abdomen, and glanced again at the pillow.

  “Why was I bleeding?” she mumbled under her breath, unsure she really wanted to know.

  “What?”

  “The blood … on my pillow … I’m trying to figure out why I was bleeding.”

  “It looks like it was coming from your nose.”

  Evelyn turned to look at Joseph as she reached up to touch her nose and felt the tenderness of the tissue around her lip. She could only figure that maybe she also had been flailing around in her sleep and had accidentally hit herself in the nose.