The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

‘Pierced’

(mc, f/f, nc, sf)

DISCLAIMER: This material is for adults only; it contains explicit sexual imagery and non-consensual relationships. If you are offended by this type of material or you are under legal age in your area, do NOT continue.

Synopsis:

Alien bioweapons are unleashed on an human colony world.

* * *

‘Pierced’

Chapter One ‘Arc of Sands’

Part Two

* * *

The three of them stood there, panting, as blue swimsuit and tall girl shoved the conference table back across the opening. Margot looked up and had a weird feeling run through her; everyone in the room was staring at them. Eighty, maybe a hundred pairs of eyes, all fixed on them, on Xiulan in her dress uniform, Freckles in her bikini top, and Margot in her cami and short shorts with half a bloody belt and a clump of keys in her hand.

Of course, the audience were no better. Terrified, red-eyed, half of them in swimwear and some of them spattered with blood. All of them glossy with sweat.

Margot was momentarily thankful that there weren’t any children. Arc of Sands was a singles resort, a dating scene. Families were somewhere down the beach.

Probably having a worse time of it.

The young man in naval dress approached them. “Nice work,” he said. “Brave.” He extended a hand. “Let me have the keys, I’ll get that door open.”

“You can fuck right off,” Xiulan replied. “We’ll get the door open and we’ll let you have a look when we’re done.”

He frowned, but didn’t argue.

Xiulan, Margot, and Freckles walked back over to the maintenance room. A small crowd followed them.

Freckles was muttering to herself. “Why...?”

“Why what?” Margot asked.

“Why did it want the body? I mean, it wanted to keep it...”

“Eating them, probably,” Xiulan said over her shoulder. “Not much room for a brain in those things. Whoever’s after the planet probably just dropped in their equivalent of biogeneered tigers to soften us up. That’s why no corpses.”

They stopped at the maintenance room door and Xiulan turned to Margot, leaning in to speak quietly. “I’ll keep folks out for a few minutes, but there are too many of them and this is too interesting to keep the room to ourselves. Can you get what you need fast?” she asked. Margot mumbled a soft affirmative.

Margot took hold of the door knob and began to try the keys. There were almost a score on the keyring, but half of them were obviously incorrect.

The third key opened the lock. Margot had a sudden realization, felt stupid, and turned to Xiulan. “You know, I don’t actually need—we can just use these to open the door downstairs—”

“See what’s in there,” Xiulan said quietly. Margot nodded and pushed the door open.

The room inside was dark; no emergency lights and no windows. Margot opened the door as wide as possible and stepped inside. She peered around as her eyes adjusted to the gloom.

It appeared to be a well-kept maintenance room. There was a wooden surfaced workbench and a large tool chest on casters standing next to it. Along one wall were several metal cabinets and four shelves stacked with cables and cords, rolls of duct tape and paint cans. There was a shop-vac, a couple of trolleys, a hardcased datapad on a workbench.

Margot quickly pulled open the drawers under the workbench. The very first one held a flashlight, which made further ransacking easier. She found a good micro screwdriver set (if the keys didn’t work on the downstairs door, or if they needed to pick other locks on their way to... well, on their way somewhere) and a tool belt, into which she slid a claw hammer and a utility knife.

Xiulan was arguing with someone—no, several people—so Margot quickly tried the tool chest; it held neatly organized tools but nothing additional she wanted, though she took a titanium screwdriver. A roll of duct tape and a small bottle of oil and she turned for the door.

There, mounted on the wall next to the door, was a small gun case.

“We went out and got the keys,” Xiulan was saying. “That means we get first dibs on the room.”

“The fuck it does,” a woman replied. “It’s hotel property, it’s not like it’s yours.”

There was a small crowd now, two dozen people in a half-circle around Xiulan blocking the door. They weren’t ready to force the issue, but might be very soon.

“Hotel property,” Xiulan sneered. “In case you didn’t notice, we have hostile xenos out there murdering people. I’m taking what I need to survive and the hotel can fucking sue me after.”

“And we’re taking what we need,” said a young man with a beard. “And you are between us and it. So step aside—”

“Hey,” Margot said, brandishing a weapon. “Who wants a shotgun?”

The small crowd took a half-step backward. Margot, however, was holding the shotgun in the middle, and tossed it towards the man in naval dress they’d spoken to earlier. “Here you go, navy, you know how to use one of those?”

“Margot!” Xiulan blurted. “What are you—?”

“Hey, those things outside are going after the armed people first,” Margot replied. “If having a gun makes you feel secure, you’re welcome to it. Anyway,” she said, taking Xiulan by the elbow, “the tool room is all yours. I took a hammer and a belt and some duct tape. Thank you all for your forbearance.”

“The fuck are you doing?” Xiulan hissed at her as they moved back towards the rear hallway and the north stairwell. “Giving them the gun? I told you, we need guns and we need to get away, and you just gave them—”

“I gave them the highly visible shotgun,” Margot whispered, not looking at her. “And kept the ten millimeter automatic that’s tucked into my shorts. They won’t cause trouble over what they don’t know about.”

The rear hallway was empty, the people who had come down the stairs now out in the main lobby or hiding in the offices or... somewhere. Margot didn’t know. She pushed the metal door to the stairwell open; as she turned, she saw that Freckles was still with them.

“Hey,” the girl said, sliding her glasses up her nose. “I’d like to, uh, stick with you guys. Please?”

Margot looked at Xiulan, who gave a curt nod. “Sure,” she said. “Chain of command is me, then her, then you. Either of us tells you to do something, you do it. That okay?”

“Yeah-yeah,” Freckles replied, nodding quickly. “Absolutely.” Her small breasts wobbled as she nodded; the bikini top seemed so wrong for what they were doing except that Margot was in shorts and a cami and Xiulan was visibly heat-flushed in her long sleeves and pants.

They entered the stairwell and went to the basement floor. The groundcar garage was a separate building; with the resort right on the ocean, underground construction would have been extremely expensive. So the basement level was probably just a single floor for services and utility tunnels. Which was what they were looking for.

Margot fished the pistol out from her waistband. She handed it to Xiulan, who nodded, and turned to face the stairwell.

Then Margot started going through the keys, trying each one in the lock in turn.

When she got to the end of the keyring, she went through them again.

“It’s not- it’s not one of these,” she finally said, looking at Xiulan, who stood next to her, her face beaded with sweat. Freckles was sitting on the bottom steps with her arms around her knees.

“Do you need to go back for tools?” Xiulan asked.

“No no,” Margot replied. “I just—” She didn’t bother to finish, just clipped the keyring to her tool belt and fished out the set of screwdrivers. “I’ve got what I need. Give me a minute.”

She knelt down in the sweltering stairwell and tried to focus.

Click click click- clack. Click click click- clack. Margot took a deep breath and pushed away the pressure, pushed away the worry. Visualize the lock. Visualize the pins.

Click click click- upstairs, the ground floor door to the stairwell opened.

There were some footsteps and several people came into view—the tall girl from the barricade, and the one in the blue swimsuit, and a short woman in a red bikini bottom with a too-large t-shirt thrown over it. They were armed, the tall woman with a table leg, blue swimsuit with a large wrench, and the girl in the t-shirt with a large kitchen knife.

“Hey, uh,” blue swimsuit said, putting up her hands, “we’ve been looking for you. We want to, uh, we want to join your squad.”

Xiulan looked at Margot. Apparently the addition of Freckles had made them a ‘squad’.

“You seem to be the only people around here with a plan,” the tall girl added. “We want to help.”

“Three of you?” Xiulan asked.

Blue swimsuit nodded. “Yeah.”

“Alright. We can use you. But no more,” she said, looking them over. “Don’t bring your friends. More than six and we can’t be stealthy.”

“My friends are dead,” big shirt said. “Those crab things fucking killed them. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“...okay,” Xiulan replied. “I’m in charge.” She nodded at Margot. “She’s my second. You guys can work out whatever other order you’d like.”

“You both Imperial military?” swimsuit asked.

“Questions later, please,” Margot interrupted. “This isn’t as easy as I’m making it look, and I need to concentrate.”

In response, there was a sudden burst of screaming from upstairs, and then the sound of the shotgun going off.

They all looked at each other. The screaming continued; the shotgun went off again, and there was the sound of one or two other small arms being discharged.

“The xenos must be making a move,” Xiulan said. “People are going to be falling back into the hallway, and then into the stairwell. Don’t let them come down here—force them to go upstairs. Here, come on,” she said to the three newcomers. “I’ll take point. Glasses, you keep an eye on Margot.”

Xiulan pushed past the three women, who followed her up to the narrow ground floor landing.

Click click click- clack.

I used to be good at this, Margot thought to herself. Come on, girl.

The door from the stairwell to the hallway slammed open and the noises redoubled. Shouting, and screaming, and the sounds of physical combat.

“Little ones,” a woman’s voice cried. “There’s little ones, there’s a fucking thousand of them—”

Click click click- click.

“I got it,” Margot said. She turned to the stairs. “I got it!” she shouted.

Without waiting for a response she got to her feet and pushed the door open. Behind it, a grey concrete tunnel stretched away, dimly lit by emergency lighting.

Freckles was right behind her; the other four were backing down the stairs.

A way out. Xiulan had said there should be access tunnels, maybe a sewer link, something. Margot hurried down the hallway, trusting that the others were behind her. She could hear them shouting at each other. She debated fishing out the flashlight, but she didn’t need it yet...

“—big ones can’t get through there—”

“—can’t rely on that. Can we hold the doorway?”

“—won’t lock without the key—”

“—can’t hold here,” Xiulan was saying. “Too many people. The people alone will push us back. Just fall back in an orderly fashion.”

Margot focused on what was in front of her. Metal door on the left, locked. No time to even try the keys. Metal door on the right, open; the room inside was dark so Margot flicked on her flashlight and shone it around. Stacks of chairs, folded long tables. Storage. No exits.

Freckles had passed her and was already trying the next set of doors. “Looks like a break room,” she said as Margot hurried up, indicating the door on the left, then pointing across the hallway. “And that one’s a service entrance to the elevators.”

They kept moving. Behind them was shouting, and screaming, and the stomping of feet. Xiulan was yelling at someone to get back.

The hallway opened up to a larger room; low-ceilinged but wide and long. Along the right side of the room was a long wall made of metal gratework, behind which were half a dozen generators. They were humming and vibrating. There were crates in the room, and shrink-wrapped pallets, and a forklift. On the left wall, opposite the generators, there was a large roll-up door, closed, with a padlock on the bottom. It had to be a delivery entrance.

There might have been something useful amongst the crates and equipment but Margot was looking for an exit, and aside from the big door leading outside there was only one other door in the room, a metal door on the far side. She raced over to it and pulled the door open.

A woman tumbled into the room, falling at Margot’s feet.

“Close the door they’re coming they’re coming,” the woman babbled; she had been standing with her back to the door when Margot opened it and was now on her ass on the loading dock floor. She looked up at Margot. “You’re the one who went outside,” she said with a confused expression. “What are you—look, it doesn’t matter—just close the door!”

Looking through the door Margot saw a concrete hallway largely identical to the one they had just come down. ‘Of course,’ she thought, ‘it goes to the southeast stairwell’. The generator room / loading dock must be in the center of the building.

There were people in this other hallway, running towards them, and behind the people-

Xenos.

Dozens of them.

Little ones.

They were an order of magnitude smaller than the ones Margot had watched hatch from the insertion pod; these xenos were the size of cats but had the same shape, four knob-jointed legs and and a flattish black body, although unlike the large ones these had tails, half-meter whip-like things jutting from the rear of their bodies. Somehow their legs gave them traction because they were scampering along the ceiling and the walls as well as racing along the floor, crawling over the prone bodies of fallen people straight towards where Margot stood in the open door. Margot didn’t know what had knocked the people down.

“Close the door!” the woman at her feet pleaded.

There were three people left on their feet, a man and two women, only five or so meters from the door, sprinting towards her.

“Wait!” The lead woman said. Behind her, one of the xenos jumped upon the trailing woman and she screamed.

Margot slammed the door closed. She heard the electronic lock engage.

The man hit the door and hammered on the it. As she turned around she could hear him cursing at her.

Xiulan and the others were in the loading dock now, and behind them were a dozen or more other people, screaming, terrified of what was coming down the hall behind them. But there was no door on that side, just the hallway opening. If only they could block it up...

“The loader,” Margot exclaimed. She pointed at Freckles, staring at her with wide eyes, then at the metal door behind her. “Make sure that door does not open!” she commanded, then ran towards the forklift.

She leapt into the seat. Margot pushed the ‘start’ button, expecting nothing to happen, but the electrics engaged and the forklift started up. Apparently the identity fob was on the keychain!

She slammed the lever into a forward gear and lurched into motion, towards one of the pallets of shrink-wrapped boxes. Without stopping she jammed the tines into the pallet, slamming into the boxes, and turned the forklift sharply towards the hallway entrance.

Xiulan and the three women were standing at the hallway entrance, weapons at the ready as people streamed into the room. Blue swimsuit saw the forklift approaching and gestured frantically at the others, who pulled back from the hallway. Over the swaying shrinkwrap, Margot saw what the people were running from; one of the large xenos was marching down the hallway, blood on its forelegs.

So much for not fitting.

There was a man running out of the hallway; Xiulan grabbed him by his shirt and dragged him to the side as Margot drove the forklift right into the hall. It was wide enough to pass, barely, no more than a centimeter on either side. The boxes didn’t quite fit and sheared on both sides as they were wedged into the space.

Once the forklift was fully in the hallway, Margot stabbed at the power button and the engine died. She scrambled back out over the seat.

Xiulan came forward, pistol in hand, and helped her down. “Good thinking,” she said. “I don’t know what’s in those boxes, but that thing will be hard up to cut through the forklift.”

Margot looked back across the room. “The door,” she panted.

Freckles, next to the door in question, looked back across at her, and gave a thumbs up.

“Little ones,” Margot gasped, “There were a bunch of little ones in the other hall.”

Xiulan nodded. She pointed at two women and a man who had scrambled into the room. “You, you, and you. Push those crates there in front of that door. Make sure you get the heaviest ones.” The three people looked at each other, then hurried to obey.

A young woman in a two-piece racing suit, probably no more than nineteen, pointed at the ceiling above Margot and wailed. Margot looked up.

One of the smaller xenos had crawled in over the forklift; there was easily enough room for it between the forklift roof and the concrete ceiling, though not much more than that.

“Oh God they’re going to get us!” the girl cried.

Xiulan raised her pistol and shot the thing.

The xeno dropped from the roof.

It fell at Margot’s feet, legs curling inward.

“They’re not invulnerable,” Xiulan said in a loud voice. “Just tough. Even a baseball bat will do. You, and you,” she said, pointing at the tall girl and big shirt, “watch the roof over the forklift. Smash anything that comes in.”

“Like those?” the tall girl replied, her voice wavering.

Two—no, three—of the xenos were crawling in along the ceiling. There were more visible behind them. They crawled forward slowly, seemingly reluctant to enter the room itself where they would be outnumbered.

“Everyone grab a weapon,” Xiulan shouted. “We can crush these bastards!”

The xenos paused, clinging to the low ceiling. Their tails waved, back and forth, then curled over their backs like scorpions.

Then they sprayed venom.

The tall girl was hit directly and shrieked; t-shirt got it in the face, snarled, and jumped up to slash at the creature. Xiulan was spattered waist to shoulder, darkening her uniform.

She raised her pistol and fired.

One of the xenos fell to the ground.

But now more of them came skittering in, and this time they did not stop, but swarmed in along the ceiling, pausing only to curl their tails and spray slime at the people striking at them. The knives, the clubs, they worked well enough—though hitting the creatures on the ceiling was hard—but each one that crawled into the room spat sticky fluid over its attackers.

Margot got sprayed a moment later, as she crushed one with the ball-peen hammer. The tall girl had swept two from the ceiling with the table leg, and Margot bashed down on one violently. As she did so, its tail sprayed her with clear goo.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t acid, and it wasn’t poison—or least, not a fast-acting poison. The humans fought on.

A score of the things soon lay twitching on the floor. Even Freckles was pitching in; she had found a broom and was knocking them from the ceiling, allowing others to attack them with sticks and tools and in one case a paint can. The crawlers fought back, but were nowhere near as dangerous as their larger brethren. They jabbed and sliced with their sharp limbs, and were capable of surprising speed, but with only a small opening to enter through they could not manage to outnumber the sixteen humans in the room and were steadily crushed.

Finally, they stopped coming.

Everyone was panting. The bodies of three dozen of the xenos lay on the floor; although most people were bleeding from at least one minor wound, no one had lost an eye or a limb or even a finger. Whatever the clear, sticky goop that the creatures had assaulted them with was, no one seemed to be suffering from it.

Three xenos crouched, upside-down, on the ceiling above the forklift.

“Lost your appetite, huh?” t-shirt woman taunted. “You little fucks. I... I... woah...”

She wobbled for a moment, then sat down.

“That took more energy than I thought,” she said.

Everyone in the room felt it, a wave of fatigue, the adrenaline crashing from their systems.

“We’ve got to, we’ve got to, plug up that entrance,” Xiulan said, unsteady on her feet. She had put the pistol into her waistband and taken up a leg from a chair that someone had torn apart. Now she waved it like a baton. Her dress uniform was soaked in alien spittle, her face glistened with it. “Someone get... someone get...”

Xiulan swayed and sat down.

“What’s... going on?” blue swimsuit moaned.

Margot realized that she was wobbling as well. The hammer slipped from her fingers.

“The venom,” she realized out loud. “The spit. Itss... it’s a drug.”

The crawlers had begun to creep back into the room again. Not fast, not racing in like before. Just crawling slowly along the ceiling.

“Oh Gods, we’ve got to plug it up,” Margot said, but as she tried to walk to a pile of boxes she dropped helplessly to her knees. Her legs just wouldn’t hold her. She crawled, crawled to the pile, but when she got there she was only barely able to turn herself into a sitting position before her arms failed entirely and hung limply at her sides.

Everyone was on the floor. There wasn’t even any screaming; just moaning, dismayed whining as they all found themselves unable to move, to even raise their arms or shift along the floor.

Margot couldn’t move at all. Her arms, her legs—they simply didn’t respond.

The little xenos crawled leisurely along the ceiling.

“They’rrrr, they’re gonna kill us all,” Freckles said. Margot managed to turn her head ever so slightly, and her eyes slightly more, until she could see that Freckles was slumped just across from her, her back against a second pallet of boxes, her hands limp at her sides. Her glasses were spattered with smeared goop.

Her eyes were on Margot. “Ih wassa good try,” she said. “Thankks for tryin. My name’s Cora. Was a pleasure to know ya.”

“I’m sorry, Cora,” Margot slurred. “Sorry that... my name’sh Margot. You’re a brave woman, Cora.”

Cora moved her lips, but even speech seemed to be beyond her now.

One of the xenos dropped from the ceiling. It crawled over to the woman in the bikini bottom and t-shirt. The woman, prone on the floor, her kitchen knife lying next to her open hand, emitted a “hnnnngg” noise as it crawled onto her, and her entire body shivered.

Margot didn’t know what she was expecting—a cut throat, maybe, or stabbing with those sharp legs—but instead the xeno crawled along t-shirt’s body, eliciting another full-body shiver, and crawled up into her short black hair. Then it crouched.

No, it... it squeezed her. Two of the legs slipped beneath t-shirt’s head, and the other two slid along her face, and it settled down, until the xeno was tight against her skull like a swim cap.

“Nnn!” t-shirt moaned. “Nnnn!”

Margot stared in horror.

Other xenos dropped lightly from the ceiling.

She watched, helpless, as they approached the prone figures. Each one crawled up to its victim’s head, then straddled it and used its spindly legs to pull itself tightly down.

Now a crawler was approaching her.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t move, she wanted to run, to scream, but Margot could only watch helplessly as the four-legged thing approached. She could see the ridge running along its back, the stiff tail it used to spray its venom. It had no face, no eyes.

Then it paused. It turned, and crawled up onto Cora.

Cora whimpered as it crawled up her chest, legs catching on the bikini top, then up over her face. It dislodged her glasses and they fell to her lap as it reached the top of her head. Then it spread its legs and slid down onto her curly reddish-brown hair. It had gelatinous appendages underneath, Margot realized, like the big ones did, and they bulged out as it tightened itself down onto Cora’s head. Some of the translucent black flesh pushed down over Cora’s wide, panicked eyes, which closed as the dangling appendages squeezed down over them.

Part of Margot was thankful that she didn’t have to look into Cora’s eyes as the alien did... whatever it was doing.

Cora’s body jerked. There were thin trickles of blood at the corners of her jawline, where the xeno’s legs gripped her head. She twitched again, then relaxed ever so slightly.

Was she dead?

She was still breathing.

Margot’s eyes rolled back to stare across the room. Any moment now, another one of the horrible things would come for her. Would grip her head and cut open her skull and do... whatever.

But none did.

All around the room, women were twitching, breathing quietly but otherwise not moving. They all had hard shiny black bodies tight atop their heads.

No, not all. Blue swimsuit lay nearby, eyes wide, her short dark hair uncrowned with any alien carapace. And there was one of the two men, there, face up—only he was dead. When Margot hadn’t been looking, something had killed him. His eyes bulged, staring upward.

Xiulan. Where was Xiulan?

Margot couldn’t see her. She was somewhere in the floor full of bodies. Had the aliens gotten her?

They must have. She’d been at the front.

Why had they stopped? Why hadn’t they come for Margot?

She looked out, helplessly, across the carnage. Blood and xeno slime covered everything. Women’s bodies lay, with their horrible black skullcaps, strewn bonelessly around the room. The corpses of dozens of the xenos lay among them, concentrated towards the entrance of the room, their black legs jutting skyward like a field of ebony stalks.

Margot rolled her eyes back to Cora. She sat motionless except for her breathing. Then the xeno moved; it curled its tail, drawing the tip up Cora’s face, until it was pressing against her lips.

Then it pushed the tail in. Cora’s lips parted, just enough for the black appendage to slide inside. The xeno fed its tail into her mouth until it was flat against her face, from between her now-hidden eyes down along her nose and then between her lips.

And, presumably, on down into her throat.

The other xenos were doing the same, snaking their tails into the unresisting mouths of their victims.

What were they doing?

More venom, to keep their prey helpless. Feeding it to them. It must be that.

Margot managed to close her eyes.

When would they come for her?

She sat there, utterly helpless.

* * *

They didn’t come.

Unable to move, barely able to look around, Margot lost track of time. She had no idea how long she’d sat there, slumped against the boxes. Small motions had become large; the rising and falling of her own chest, Freckles’ breathing in her tight bikini top. The slow pooling of blood around the dead man, three meters away.

Maybe they’d run out of xenos. The insertion pods were, after all, finite. They’d killed a lot of the little black fuckers. If she was honest, it was probably more relevant that there were simply a lot of people out there. Lots of potential meals. The rest of the crawlers were busy.

How long had she sat there? It felt like hours.

Maybe when the one that was eating Cora’s brain finished, it would crawl over and start on Margot next.

She stared at Freckles’ body. She had no choice, she couldn’t move; could barely blink. Cora was still breathing, so the crawler’s tail couldn’t be blocking her airway. Her lips were parted around it as though she was sucking on a... on a popsicle. Sweat was beading on her freckled chest, on her bare shoulders, and trickling down her arms and belly. It ran in strange patterns where it encountered the alien spit splattered across her torso.

Margot shuddered. It was the most motion she had been able to make in- in who knows how long. She tried turning her head and, to her surprise, her head slowly responded, turning away from Freckles to look elsewhere. At the roll-up door, the big lift door that would open to allow trucks to unload. Away from all the bodies on the floor. This morning had been so normal. So... good. Margot thought about Xiulan, about making love to her, that squeaking noise she made.

Now Xiulan was lying somewhere across the room, helpless food for aliens.

Margot grunted and turned her head again, and this time her arm raised a few centimeters from the floor. The venom was wearing off! She tried raising her other arm, and it, too, lifted a few centimeters before flopping helplessly back down.

She didn’t try to speak. She didn’t- couldn’t.

Couldn’t handle the answers she wouldn’t get.

She began rocking slightly back and forth. Soon she could move her legs, sliding her feet closer to her body, then out again. It wasn’t much effort, nor was she stiff or paralyzed—her muscles simply refused to do work. Tranquilized.

Margot raised one arm, put it down. Raised the other, put it down. Slid a leg in, out. The other leg in, out. She leaned forward, away from the crates, then sat back.

“Gggggeeellppp,” someone gurgled.

It was blue swimsuit. Margot looked over at her, and the sensation of turning her own head felt almost normal.

“I’m hhheere,” Margot rasped.

“Whhhoo?” blue swimsuit moaned. Her arms were moving, flexing without much control.

“Mmmargohhh. Llockpick. FFforrkllift.”

“I ccann’tt mmmooove,” Swimsuit said.

“Nno sshit,” Margot replied. She could move, a bit—now she could lift both arms at once, and hold them up. She doubted if her legs would hold weight, but they seemed to otherwise be obeying her.

She took a deep breath, and rolled all the way over, onto her hands and knees.

It seemed to work. Her arms didn’t give way. Slowly, she started to crawl.

“I c-can’t, c-can’t,” Swimsuit was repeating. As Margot got closer, she saw that the woman was crying.

“I’m h-here,” Margot said, “Th-the poison is w-wearing off. But th-they got everyone else.” She looked down at Swimsuit’s upturned face, at her dark eyes.

“I c-c-can’t,” Swimsuit sobbed.

Margot shook her head. “N-no. I n-need you to b-be strong. You want to give up, you can give up. If you want to c-come with me,” she said, and now she was right over the woman, an arm on either side of her head, “you need to be sstrong. Because that’s the only way we’ll h-have any f-fucking chance.”

Swimsuit took a few ragged breaths, her eyes staring upward at Margot.

Margot tucked her legs beneath her, sitting back into a squat. Then she reached down, took hold of Swimsuit under her armpits, and leaned backwards. Nothing happened for a moment, then Swimsuit got the idea and tried pushing her heels against the ground, and between the two of them they got her up into a seated position.

Swimsuit looked around at all the bodies, each with a hard black shell atop her head, a black tail snaked into her mouth. “What... what are they doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Margot replied. “I thought the crawlers were eating them, but they’re all still breathing. Maybe they’re laying eggs.”

Swimsuit winced. “That’s ffucked up,” she replied, then gave a few soft barks halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Five Gods, how did this happen? Where did they come from?”

“I don’t know. My- my friend. She told me that the local defenses had been reassigned out of system to help the Emperor in his fight with the Pretender. And that Chancellor Ratne might also have decided to play for the throne... but I have no fucking idea where these things came from. I think I can stand up.”

“What?”

“I think I can stand,” Margot repeated. “Hold still.” She put her hands on Swimsuit’s shoulders, and unsteadily pushed herself upward, until she was erect. She took a wobbly step, and then another.

“Is there anyone else?” Swimsuit asked. “...alive?”

Margot looked around. Counted. The two men, dead. Freckles... enshrouded. The same with the tall woman, Swimsuit’s friend. And t-shirt. Margot looked around.

Everyone.

Everyone but herself and Swimsuit had one of the black creatures clamped tightly to the top of her head. Their lower faces were visible, but their eyes were mercifully hidden beneath the bulged-out membranes of the xenos.

She didn’t want to.

She had to.

Somehow, Margot staggered towards the forklift. Towards the heap of dead crawlers piled up in front of it.

There, right at the front, was Xiulan.

A xeno nestled firmly atop her head.

Margot stared down at her. She should... should...

The pistol lay on the floor next to Xiulan’s unmoving hand.

Margot picked it up.

Friend. Lover. They had only ever known each other on vacation, corresponding over fleet vidlinks from their distant postings.

Xiulan’s mouth was an expressionless line beneath the dark jelly covering her eyes. The black tail passing between her lips barely disturbed it.

Her throat pulsed.

Margot raised the pistol. Her vision swam.

She mouthed the words.

The pistol was empty.

Of course it was empty. Xiulan had emptied it into the aliens. Dropped it when it had run out of ammunition; why would the staff of a hotel have kept more than one clip, anyway?

T-shirt’s knife also lay nearby. Margot picked it up. Looked down at Xiulan’s defenseless throat; it had a scabbed-over red line from where a xeno leg had stabbed it.

The knife wavered in Margot’s hand.

She lowered it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

“Fucking FUCK,” Swimsuit blurted. Margot turned. She had crawled across the floor to where her tall friend lay, and was pulling at the black legs of the xeno clinging to her head. “Fucking thing!” She looked over at Margot. “Bring me the knife,” she said. “I’m cutting this fucker off.”

Margot looked at Xiulan, then walked over to Swimsuit and handed her the knife. She felt stupid for a moment, stupid and evil, pulling that trigger, but then—what would be left of her, even with the xeno removed? Xiulan would have preferred death.

“We know you things can bleed,” Swimsuit hissed as she took the knife from Margot. The xeno was latched tight to the tall woman’s head, its legs indenting her skin where they crossed her cheeks and dug in beneath her jaw, its tail between her lips. Swimsuit started to work the blade under one leg, next to the woman’s right eyebrow.

“You can’t have her,” she muttered. Blood sprang up as the tip of the knife appeared on the other side of the leg. “I’m going to—”

The tall woman began to hack, soft choking noises; then the xeno’s tail whipped out of her mouth, bending into a tight arc, and sprayed slime all over Swimsuit’s face.

Swimsuit screamed and the knife clattered away. “Oh Gods,” she said, “oh no, not again, get it off, get it off!” She rubbed her arms across her face, smearing the translucent slime around.

Margot looked around the room. There was no water to wash her off with, nor any rags... everyone’s clothes were soaked with sweat and venom, although that venom must have worn off by now or Margot would still be slumped against the crates.

The crates. Margot grabbed the knife and walked over to the crates that she’d been slumped against; her legs weren’t sturdy enough to move quickly. She stabbed into the cardboard and sawed one of them open.

T-shirts. “I left my heart at Arc of Sands” they read.

Margot took a handful of the souvenir t-shirts from the box and returned to Swimsuit, who was rocking back and forth, moaning. “My eyes,” she was saying, “everything’s blurry.”

Next to her, her tall friend lay placidly on the floor. The xeno was still attached, its tail still curled in a scorpion arc. The tall woman’s lips, still slightly in an ‘O’ shape, twitched, as though missing the appendage they’d been sucking on.

“Hold still,” Margot told Swimsuit. She mopped her face and torso where the xeno had sprayed her as best she could, being careful not to get any of the slime on herself. She tossed the used t-shirts onto the floor.

“There,” she said. “There.”

“How are we going to get them off?” Swimsuit asked her. “They’re too strong to just pull off. Was there a saw in the tool room? Like a little rotary saw?”

Suddenly there was a crashing, ripping sound. They both turned their heads to look at the forklift.

On the far side of it, black bladed limbs were thrashing at the boxes.

“It called for help,” Margot said in disbelief.

“What? What’s going on?” Swimsuit demanded, squinting and staring.

“It’s one of the big ones. It’s trying to get in again, past the forklift.”

“I can’t see. Can it get to us?”

“I don’t think it can cut through the metal, but—”

As she was speaking, Margot realized there were more than one of the things on the far side of the forklift. The boxes were destroyed, a mass of tattered cardboard and shredded plastic; the xeno’s black bodies were clearly visible in the yellow emergency light.

Their bodies were too wide to fit through the metal bars holding up the forklift’s roof. The women ought to be safe.

Then the creature raised its front legs and stretched them along the top of the forklift’s roof. Its legtips hooked over the roof’s rear, and the xeno began to pull itself between the forklift and the ceiling.

“Oh, shit,” Margot said. “We’ve got to go.” She grabbed Swimsuit under the arms. “Can you stand?”

“What is it?” the woman asked, her eyes going wide as she tried to scan the room.

“It can get in. It’s squeezing over the forklift.”

“Oh no. Oh no.” She grabbed Margot’s arm. “Oh please don’t leave me here.”

“I don’t want to but you’re going to have to stand up,” Margot grunted, leaning backward. Swimsuit pushed with her legs and they managed to get her to her feet.

“Quickly,” Margot hissed. The xeno’s body had squeezed over the forklift’s roof, and it dropped into the room. It landed lightly, and rose up on its four legs.

There were no options. Hiding would have been pointless; although the things didn’t seem to have eyes, there was no question that it had ‘seen’ them. The lift door was closed and led outside anyway. So, with Swimsuit leaning heavily on her, Margot shuffled over to the metal door at the far side of the room.

Quickly, she undid the lock. As she turned the knob, Margot looked over her shoulder—the xeno was charging directly at them.

Margot jerked the door open, thrust Swimsuit through it, and darted in after her.

She turned to yank the door closed and a blast of slime spattered her face and chest.

The door slammed into place.

Margot turned. The hallway held more bodies. Margot recognized the man and the women who had run towards the door as she closed it on them. The man was dead.

Both of the women had xenos tightly attached to their heads.

At least with their eyes covered they couldn’t look at her accusingly.

The door gave a metallic clang behind her as the xeno struck it. Then again.

If it could figure out the door handle they were fucked.

There were four more bodies further down the hallway, their heads all capped with hard black carapaces, their mouths parted around black tails.

Thankfully, there didn’t appear to be any unattached crawlers in the hall.

Margot’s legs wobbled.

“The damned thing spat on me,” she hissed. “We’re going to have to stop.” It seemed unfair that the big ones could spit, too. Had they been doing that earlier? She didn’t recall it.

Swimsuit, slumped against the wall, grunted an unintelligible reply. She was already more or less a dead weight.

There were two doors in this hallway other than the door at the end that Margot was certain must open on the stairwell. She tried the first door, on the right. It was locked.

The other door was five meters down the hall. Margot didn’t know if she could make it that far. Slumping down helplessly in the hallway would be irrecoverable.

Behind her, the metal door clanged again.

She started fumbling with the keys. Fortunately, fine motor control seemed to be the last thing to go. The eighth key she tried slid into the lock. She pushed open the door; the room inside was dark.

It hardly mattered. As Margot slumped to the ground, she used her falling weight to haul Swimsuit in after her; the other woman collapsed right on top of Margot, forcing the wind out of her. Margot rallied, pushed Swimsuit’s limp body aside, then wriggled forward into the room, dragging her unresponsive legs far enough forward to let the door close.

In the pitch blackness, she reached up to engage the lock, then leaned back against the door and gave up.

* * *

END Chapter One