The pain in Quentin’s side continued to bother him and he walked up to a large cabinet and began rifling through its contents. Sure enough he found some aspirin pills, yet he wasn’t sure about the other drugs and decided these simple painkillers would do for now. He fumbled with opening the small container before popping a handful of capsules into his mouth.
Cathy stood beside him and aimed her light towards a metal tray containing some surgical tools that had been laid out and abandoned. “ Do you want to sit down on that operating table?”
With a grunt Quentin pushed himself up onto the edge of the oversized metal table and pulled up his shirt. The blood continued to seep out of the makeshift bandage they had made in the kitchen, and he was already feeling lightheaded. “Thank you, Mrs. Dirkse. I appreciate it.”
“You can call me Cathy,” she said. Sorting through the tray she found what she was looking for: surgical sutures and tweezers of various sizes. “I’ve done some sewing for the house, though this will be my first time doing this.”
Quentin smiled. “You’ve got more experience than me. Please go ahead.”
“I don’t know which drugs are for easing the pain either.”
“It’s alright. I’ve taken some aspirin. Fire away.”
“I’ll need to use both my hands,” Cathy said. “Can you hold the flashlight towards your wound?”
“Sure thing.”
Quentin bit his lip and stayed quiet as she alternately wiped the blood and stitched up the gash on his side. It took about ten minutes, and by then the bleeding was stopped. Quentin stared at his now scarred rib; it looked like a zigzag of black threads around his pale skin. “Well done.”
Cathy shrugged as she placed an adhesive bandage over the now closed wound. “Thanks.”
Nick poked his head into through the open entryway. “Scott and I checked the other rooms and there’s just lots of complex machinery in them. We found a dining room and a lounge too.”
Quentin lowered his shirt. He felt an aching tightness in his side, but at least the bleeding had been staunched. “Did you see anything that could be a power control unit of some sort?”
Nick shook his head. “Other than a fuse box that doesn’t work, nothing.”
Scott’s face appeared under Nick’s arm. “Lots of machines with plastic tubes going in and out of them. Microscopes and slides too, just like in our science class back in school.”
“I’m guessing those machines are probably DNA sequencers and synthesizers,” Quentin said. “All this must have been used to put together that bloody monster out there.”
Cathy sighed as she took off the latex gloves. “How are we going to get through to the other tunnel? We have to—”
She was suddenly interrupted by an inhuman shriek echoing in the near distance.
49
THE RETURN JOURNEY was slower than it had expected. The gills along its back had dried out somewhat due to being out of the water for a long time, and the pain it caused felt like the time those hated ones were cutting into its body while it was strapped down helplessly on a slab of cold metal. Every time it became too quiet, the recollections would return, along with the sudden flashes of agony it remembered enduring. It was during these instances that its hatred for them all would multiply, and it became empowered, turning into a mindless machine of destruction.
It hated having to leave the new hosts behind, but the first nesting ground was being threatened, and so it left the construct and trudged its way through the leaves and stems of the jungle, back towards where it was born. It could have gone back into the water and eased its rapidly drying skin, but much of the prey were still out there. One against many was obviously disadvantageous, and it needed to stay hidden.
Out in the distance a boat was close to the water’s edge, and it observed a gaggle of screaming people trying to wade out and attempt to get onboard. For a short while it had been tempted to hunt the struggling ones splashing in the shallow waters to try and snatch a few, yet it couldn’t risk showing itself. Individually those humans were weak, but they were formidable whenever they were in a group, so it was best to leave them be for now.
It found a few more of the black-clad ones by the edge of the old territory, looking over their fallen comrades. After easily dispatching them through ambush and stealth, it picked up the fallen weapons and tossed them deeper into the foliage. Proteus had learned that these hated ones were powerless without the black metal things they carried in their hands, and so it would always hide those bringers of pain whenever it was finished with the killing.
When it finally entered the old darkened house, the smell of four new strangers was in the air. Their electrical fields were faint, meaning they had some distance and were partially hidden behind the walls. It would find them soon enough, and perhaps use one or two as hosts for the eggs it needed to deposit.
Coming upon the kindly one lying down in one of the shadowy interiors, it had found him tied up, for it seemed the new strangers were hostile to him too. Since this one’s mouth had been obstructed, it used its forward claw to tear off the gag, though it ripped a bloody gash along the man’s face while doing so.
The man’s voice began speaking to it. “My son, you’re back. I know you can’t speak, but you can understand me.”
It swayed its large, hairless head back and forth.
“Yes! You do listen to me, you always have.”
Letting out a small shriek from its maw, it tried to form a human word but was unable to.
The kindly one shook his head. “You must go now, my boy. Out into the water where they can’t reach you. Your time in this place has passed. There is only danger here. The sea is your new home.”
It somehow understood. But the maternal instinct compelled it to stay. It needed to breed first. Once the young hatched and were strong enough to survive on their own, only then could it begin a new journey into the endless water surrounding the island.
The kindly one bared his teeth. He too understood the internal conflict raging within it. “You must go now! Don’t wait, Proteus. Abandon this place, or it will be your doom!”
It tensed its muscles and roared when its electroreceptors sensed the four others had gone deep down below.
“No, no!” the kindly one said. “Forget what’s down there! You must go… now!”
Rage filled its mind. This one couldn’t understand. It didn’t want to be alone out there. It needed others like it. The prey were all weak, but it could sense their affection for each other, their belonging. To live by oneself was a sad, terrible state of existence, and it couldn’t go on as before.
The kindly one finally seemed to get it. “I’m sorry, Proteus. I wish… how I wish I could accompany you… but this body of mine is… so unlike your own.”
A small whimper emanated from its saw-toothed mouth. It knew what it had to do.
“You must release me.”
When it came to action it didn’t hesitate. It shot out a clawed limb, and buried it in the kindly one’s torso, ripping through clothing, skin, and organs, all the way to the long bone before snapping it like a twig. The man gagged as the blood poured out of his mouth, spilling great blackened pools of it onto the floor. The kindly one’s body convulsed a few times before finally lying still, his eyes still open yet lifeless now.
Its motherly impulses hurriedly manifested at the forefront of its mind. Trudging into the large room, it made its way to the hidden entrance and used the point of its bloody claw to carefully open up the panel. Descending down the narrow steps, it plunged partway into the water, to help ease the burning pain from its dehydrated gills, before bellowing out a challenge to the intruders.