“Doctor Mendez found a clue to our missing research team, but she needs your help,” the captain says in my comm. “Do you mind checking in with her, we’ll head there too.”
“Copy,” I say. The habitat is a labyrinth of hallways connecting small labs and crew quarters. The emergency lights do little to light the way. My heart thrums in my chest, mirrored as an alert in my visor.
I’d told the captain I didn’t want to spread out when we left the shuttle. The air on this planet is not healthy to breathe. The flora outside the habitat’s windows looks dense and twisted. Anything could have happened to the research team. He’d told me I was skittish.
I find the doctor’s bio sign and traverse the narrow halls.
“You needed a botanist?” I ask, as I step from the narrow corridor into one of the habitat’s small labs.
Doctor Mendez doesn’t respond. She leans over a prone human in an orange environmental suit. When I step closer, I notice the faceplate is shattered. A purple bioluminescent flower bursts from where the victim’s face should have been.
My guts twist.
“What the hell is that?”
“I was hoping you might be able to tell me,” she says. Her scanner band bounces between peaks and valleys.
I tighten the muscles in my stomach, willing myself not to puke, and kneel beside the victim.
The flower has four long leaves with a central bud. It pulses, the phosphorescent glow more intense every third or fourth second. Almost like breathing.
That’s when I notice the rise and fall of the victim’s stomach.
“Oh my god, are they still alive?”
Mendez meets my gaze. She looks spooked, like I’ve never seen her. It unsettles me more than whatever lies between us.
“Something is. But I can’t make heads or tails of it. The vitals I’m getting don’t make any sense. I wanted to know your thoughts as we’re dealing with something from both our backgrounds.”
I nod, close my eyes, and suck in a breath of filtered air to clear my mind.
When I open them, I grab my own scanner from my pouch. The readings are bizarre, but my device is different from Mendez’s. “It seems to have a mix of human DNA, but the structure in the body is changing. Its roots feed on the victim’s veins, worming their way deeper into the circulatory system.”
I stop and look at a patch of floor away from the victim to keep my breakfast down.
“I came to the same conclusion,” Mendez says. “So, what we’re dealing with is no longer human, but not quite plant, it’s an all new creature.”
My comm crackles. The captain’s voice, but I can’t make anything out between bursts of static.
“Try again, Cap.”
A short crackle, then silence.
Footsteps approach from the hall. Slow. Heavy.
Mendez looks at me. I shrug because I don’t know who it is.
“Captain is that you?” Silence in the comm. “Captain, do you copy?”
The sensors in my suit malfunction. I can’t detect anything beyond this room. I start to rise. Doctor Mendez looks over my shoulder, eyes wide.
A huge creature blocks the door, a flower bursting through its helmet. The suit it wears is torn in several places where additional appendages breach, curling with dozens of ivy tendrils that squirm like cilia.
Mendez approaches it, palms out. “We’re here to help you.”
It croaks and surges forward, wraps its vines around Mendez and slams her against the metal wall.
“Mayday Mayday! Captain, we need help.”
I search the room for something to attack with, grab a chair, and launch it at the creature.
It bounces off and clatters to the floor.
Mendez’s screams end in a sick crunch.
I turn to run. Something grabs my ankle. The victim we’d scanned. I pull hard but the grip is a vice.
I grit my teeth as I scream and kick the creature. It pulls me to the floor. Pins me with both hands and shifts its weight onto me.
As I look up at the bud in the middle of the flower, it opens. Inside is the face of one of the researchers, his face locked in a permanent scream, dead milky eyes stare into mine. It vomits onto my faceplate.
No, not vomit. Pollen covered in acidic mucus.
Shards of ice jolt through my veins. I try to push it off me, but the inhuman strength pins me to the steel floor.
I gasp in the cool air until the mucus on the faceplate starts to sizzle and the fresh, cool air turns bitter. The pollen enters my lungs.
I scream and close my eyes.
Eric Fomley's stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Daily Science
Fiction, Galaxy's Edge Magazine, and many other places including, of course, here on Stupefying Stories, where he’s been a fairly regular contributor since 2021. (We’re particularly fond of “Getting Sponsored.”) You can find
more of his stories on his website, ericfomley.com, or in his Portals or Flash Futures collections.
You might also want to check out our mini-interview with him, “Six Questions for...”, which ran last August.
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