The corridor before us changed, altered, stretched, its far end receding into the distance. The kind of corridor you could travel all your days and never reach the end. The kind of corridor you run through endlessly in the kind of dreams you wake from in a cold sweat. A strange glow replaced the normal corridor light, intense and overpowering, a light not designed for the tolerances of the human eye. Even the air was different, tasting foul and furry in my mouth, and so thin I was half suffocating. A different kind of air, for a different kind of being. Static tingled painfully on my bare flesh, and I could hear . . . something. Something scrabbling at the outsides of the corridor walls, trying to get in.
“I recognise this,” said Honey. Her voice was harsh and strained and strangely far away. “I know this, from abduction scenarios. An intrusion of alien elements into our world. The aliens aren’t waiting for us to track them down . . . They’re coming to us.”
“Let them come,” I said, and armoured up. Immediately I felt much better, more human, more myself. “Stay close to me,” I said to Walker and Honey through my featureless face mask. “Proximity to my armour should help ground and protect you, insulate you from the effects of this alien-created environment.”
Their faces cleared quickly as they moved in close, and they both stood up straight, strength and resolve rushing back into their features.
“I’m even breathing easier now I’m close to you,” said Honey. “How does that work?”
“Do you tell me all your secrets?” I said to hide the fact I wasn’t entirely sure myself. “Just stick close and get ready to beat the crap out of anything that isn’t us.”
“Good plan,” murmured Walker.
“No one takes a Drood anywhere against his will,” I said. “Or his companions. Walker, why are you standing behind me?”
“Because I’m not stupid,” said Walker.
“I don’t hide behind people,” Honey said haughtily.
“Bet you I live longer,” said Walker.
Wild energies crackled up and down the impossibly long corridor, seething and howling. They jumped from wall to wall, fast as laser beams, snapping on and off, leaving pale green trails of ionisation hanging on the air. Malevolent forces surged forward to attack my armour. I stood my ground, Honey clinging to my golden arm, Walker right behind me. The energies raged furiously all around us, discharging on the air with blinding flares and flashes, but still stopped dead, balked, unable to touch or even approach my armour.
As though they were afraid of it.
Lightnings rose and fell, pressing in from this side and that, searching for some weak spot in my armour that would let them in . . . but I stood firm, and suddenly the energies fell away, retreating back down the corridor, fading like the memory of a bad dream. I could hear Honey’s and Walker’s harsh breathing in the sudden silence. I warned them quietly against moving away from me. This wasn’t over. I could feel it.
And then the alien appeared. No door opening in space, no teleport effects; it was just there, right in front of us, no more than ten feet away. Its appearance was so sudden that Walker and Honey actually jumped a little, and if I hadn’t been wearing my armour I think I might have too.
“That . . . is a really ugly-looking thing,” I said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Honey. “Walker? You ever seen anything like that?”
“Thankfully, no. Eddie?”
“Nothing even remotely like that,” I said. “It is quite definitely not one of the fifty-three alien species currently covered by the Drood Pacts and Treaties.”
“Fifty-three?” said Honey. “There are fifty-three different kinds of alien currently wandering around our world? When were you planning on telling the rest of us this?”
“Fifty-three that we know of,” I said. “The Droods don’t know everything, though never tell anyone I said that. And . . . there are always a few species coming and going we don’t have any kind of agreement with or control over. It’s a big universe, and life has taken some really strange forms Out There.”
“Fifty-three . . .” said Honey.
“From other worlds, other Earths, higher and lower dimensions,” I said. “They add up. Droods protect humanity from all outside threats.”
“All right; I’ll put you up for a raise,” said Honey. “Now what is that?”
“Haven’t a clue,” I said.
We studied the alien as it presumably studied us. It looked like a pile of snakes crushed together or lengths of rubber tubing half melted into each other. Each separate length twisted and turned, seething and knotting together, sliding up and around and over, endlessly moving, never still for a moment. The pile was taller than a man and twice as wide, and though its extremities were constantly moving and changing, the bulk and mass stayed the same. Lengths of it melted and merged into each other, while new extensions constantly erupted from the central region. It was the colour of an oil slick on polluted water, with flashes of deep red and purple underneath, and it smelled really bad. Like something dead that had been left in the hot sun for too long. The alien’s basic lack of certainty was unsettling and painful to the human eye and the human mind. We were never meant to cope with things like this. We’re not ready.
Shapes began to form on the end of long writhing tentacles. Things that might have been sensory apparatus . . . or even organic weapons. And then a dripping bulge rose up through the top of the squirming pile and sprouted half a dozen human eyeballs. A pale pink cone formed beneath the eyes, wet and quivering as it dilated.
“Communication,” said the alien through the cone in a high, thin voice like metal scraping on metal. “Speak. Identify.”
And then it waited for an answer.
“I am a Drood,” I said carefully. “I have authority to speak to other species. To make binding agreements. Talk to me. Explain what you’re doing here. What you’re planning. Or steps will be taken to kick your nasty species right off this planet.”
“Drood,” said the alien. “Name. Function. Not known to us.”
“Maybe I should try,” said Honey.
“Hush,” I said.
“You are unreachable,” said the alien. “Explain.”
“Why did you injure, kill, and . . . examine the human?” I said. “For what purpose? Explain.”
“Necessary,” said the alien. “Don’t know Drood. Don’t recognise Drood authority. Don’t recognise any authority. We are. We exist. We go where we must, to do what we must. We dominate our environment. All environments. Necessary, for survival. For survival of all things.”
“Is it saying what I think it’s saying?” murmured Walker.
“Damned if I know,” I said. “At least it looks like we have basic concepts in common.” I addressed the alien again. “What brought you to this particular world? What interests you in our species? Explain.”
“Potential,” said the alien. “Experiment. Learn. Apply.”
“Experiment?” I said. “Why the animal, and then the human? Explain.”
“Learned all we could from the animal,” said the alien. “Limited. Useless for our purposes. Humans are more interesting. More potential. This will be our first experiment on your kind. On this town. This Roswell. Do not be alarmed. We are here to help you. This is all for your own good. Necessary. See.”
A screen appeared, floating on the air before us. And on that screen the alien showed us what it and its kind were going to do. What would happen to the people of Roswell.
Scenes from a small town, undergoing blood and horror.
People ran screaming through the streets, but it didn’t save them. They ran and they hid, and some of them even fought back, and none of it did any good. They were operated on, cut open, violated, and explored by invisible scalpels in invisible hands. Unseen forces, unknowable and unstoppable, tore the people apart.
Cuts just appeared in human flesh, blood spraying on the empty air. The cuts widened, and invisible hands plunged inside living bodies to play with what they found there. Organs fell out of growing holes, hands fell from wrists, fingers from hands. Some bodies just fell apart, cut into slices. Men and women exploded, ragged parts floating on the air to be examined by unseen eyes. Discarded offal filled the streets, and blood overflowed in the gutters.