“You guys are gonna regret this!” Ertie shouted from the front.

  “Yeah yeah. That’s nice. Keep walking.” Dereng said dryly.

  I thrust out the barrel of the gun in order to accentuate the point.

  “Ow! Easy there you inbred country hick!” Ertie shouted again.

  I didn’t bother answering and instead led him through the samey-looking corridors. Past the staff lodging facilities and into another set of labs.

  “What do you people do here anyway?” I asked off-handedly.

  “None of your business jock.” Ertie snapped.

  “Now now.” Garko cut in. “No need to get nasty Ertie.”

  “You’re pointing a gun at my back!”

  “Yeah. But we all voted for that. Since you’re the most suspicious.” Yoko added. “But yeah. I think he is right in this case. You really don’t want to know what we’re doing here mister. You probably wouldn’t understand it, and just knowing about the alien is already pushing it as far as the crown is concerned.”

  “Gozo, I just realized. They’re probably gonna kill all of us.” Garko stated. Deflating as the words left his fuzzy pink body.

  “They are not!” Ertie retorted again. “We have produced results that are too good and too groundbreaking. We have not only found proof of alien life, but we’ve also found a living specimen. AND, we have found proof of supernatural abilities beyond our comprehension.”

  “Oh, Ertie. Not this again.” Dereng groaned.

  “No!” Ertie called out, even as the rifle poked his back. “You don’t get to tell me that Dereng! Not anymore! I am no longer some crackpot you can sweep under the rug or pat in the back when it suits you! This thing was able to come back to life after it suffered a total cell death due to cold.”

  He was stomping all four of his fuzzy feet now.

  “You know what happens to cells that are frozen. As well as I do. They explode! All their protein chains and innards go flying in all directions and they become unable to support life. That’s what always happens! Always! But not in this case! Oh no! These cells were not only able to retain their structural integrity in weather that could freeze Gozo’s balls off, but they were also able to snap right back up as soon as they detected warmth! That is impossible. Unless you account for some previously unknown superpower.”

  He huffed in indignation.

  “Not to mention the kind of adaptation it would take for such a monster to not only copy our bodies after eating them, but to also learn all our mannerisms and our language. No. You cannot possibly be stupid enough to think that a normal creature, any normal creature, would be capable of acting this way. And on top of all that! As if the bloody superpowers weren’t enough! This creature is smart enough to keep itself hidden and watch the situation as it develops! Mark my words you louts and nonbelievers! This being would have wiped out our entire species if it had landed anywhere but here in the artic! And it still might be the end of us if we don’t take it seriously!”

  “Oh that might be pushing it.” I said aloud. “I mean we have this rifle don’t we? And I’m sure the turrets in that backup system you mentioned will be something to behold.”

  I had been trying to pry a bit more information out of him. Maybe get a bit more insight into this weapons system I was hearing so much about.

  “Humph!” Ertie made a nasal noise. “Please. You can’t tell me you still think that after what I just said. The bloody thing survived the temperature outside! With the constant storms and the constant hail and the… the… Good Gozo man! Weren’t you there when we went out on the expedition!? Remember the bones!”

  Naturally, I had no idea what he was talking about, so I simply nodded and allowed my eyes to glaze over while I kept channeling Psy into [Echolocation].

  The director was still locked up on the uppermost floor. Still clutching the flamethrower as they shook violently and paced about their own office. While I couldn’t make out the finer details of their face or expression, their jerky sudden movements told me everything I needed to know about their mental state.

  At the same time, a group of three was just now coming across the mess I’d left back at the armory. They were not happy, to say the least. Jumping around like fleas on coke and gesturing wildly at each other.

  The last group of survivors was yet another group of three. A male and two females if my own observations as to their physiological differences could be trusted. This one was close by, in the cafeteria. Huddled together just outside the walk-in freezer with blunted vegetable knives in their hands.

  I could have steered Ertie in the right direction, but that might have given him some suspicions as to how I was able to tell that there were people in the mess hall. So, I kept following his lead as we kept navigating the labs.

  Physically passing by workstations that I had scouted out with [Echolocation] before hand and pretending to be surprised.

  And apparently I was very, very good at pretending to be surprised.

  “I imagine these things I’m seeing would be quite the talking points if anyone ever found out about them.” I commented off-handedly.

  “Ugh! Stop jinxing it man!” Yoko almost wept. “Things are bad enough now with the bloody alien going around and eating us one by one. I don’t need to be thinking about the possibility of being disappeared after this whole mess is done with!”

  “Actually, being disappeared might be the best-case scenario.” Garko countered. “It would mean the crown got its own house in order and that they were able to either neutralize or contain the threat. It would mean that our families would be safe at least. If this thing kills us all and escapes…”

  He didn’t say anything else. Not that anything else needed to be said.

  “Come to think of it. How would we know if someone is the alien if they are in a group of people? And if we do come across a group of people, how would we be able to tell if they were all normal or if one or more of them is an alien?” I asked innocently. Trying to figure out how they planned to go about it.

  “I have absolutely no idea. And neither do them.” Ertie started.

  “No. No we do have an idea Ertie.” Dereng chided him.

  “Oh yeah? Well let’s hear it. Because from where I’m standing it looks like you’re trying to sus out who’s an alien by their taste in books. Pardon me for not falling in line behind your research methodology oh wise one.”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Shut up Ertie. You’re lucky Sully didn’t shoot your dumb rear end after the smut we found in your room. Having that stuff should be enough to get you hanged.” Yoko growled.

  “Oh! Oh yeah! Let’s all turn on the creatives in the world! How dare they go about and try to bring in new and interesting ideas! How dare they try to depict love in new and interesting ways! How dare they…”

  “Oka enough.” Dereng hissed. “As disgusting as Ertie’s tastes are, we can use them.”

  I felt everyone’s eyes turning to him.

  “Now hear me out. His tastes might be shocking and amoral, but they are indicative of our species. An alien would not have any reason to lust for teens.”

  “I DON’T LUST FOR..!!”

  “SHUT UP ERTIE!!” Dereng snaped. “Talk over me again and I will take the gun from Sully and shoot you myself!”

  Ertie made a face, but otherwise said nothing.

  “As I was saying, those books would have meant nothing to an alien. The chances that any alien species would be afflicted by those depravities is exponentially low. An alien probably wouldn’t bother with those books and an alien certainly wouldn’t want to do anything to alienate us, the prey, before they pounced. If Ertie really was an alien, then he would have been able to let go of the stuff and say that he didn’t care in order to suck up to us. We likely wouldn’t have believed him, but he wouldn’t have found himself marching in front of the security guy. We can tell that Ertie is not an alien because he is trying to be less helpful, where any logical alien would put aside their own feelings in order to better blend in with us.”

  He paused to take a deep breath. Apparently not realizing that he’d been repeating himself somewhat.

  “So, we might be able to find the alien if they act in a way that is foreign to us, while also shifting around their behaviour to match ours once we catch them in the act.”

  There were a few nods after that.

  “That is stupid.” Ertie countered.

  “Would you rather we kill you now?” Garko asked quizzically. Raising the wrench-holding hand as if by instinct.

  “No imbecile.” Ertie snapped again. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t be on the lookout for suspicious behaviour. That should obviously be our first priority. No. I’m saying that the whole idea of us catching the alien is stupid in the first place.”

  ‘Oh?’

  “How do you figure that?” I asked.

  “Because we, and by we I mean Dereng, are acting based on conjectures. Self serving conjectures at that.”

  No one else said anything. The others apparently realizing what he was saying at the same time as me.

  “I see even you get it, farm boy. We’ve been walking by and preparing to fight on the supposition that this alien is still weak enough that two or more of us attacking together could pose a threat. With wrenches no less. Mind you, all of us here are desk workers and lab-bound researchers. Before this expedition, the most exercise I ever got was in the pool with my harem. What do you suppose are the real odds of two of us winning against an alien that was able to survive Gozo knows how many eons frozen in ice? What do you suppose are the real odds of all four of us killing the bloody thing for good? Even with that rifle of yours?”

  Ertie made another rude noise.

  “I don’t think our chances are good either. Which means that we have to stop thinking about ourselves and start thinking about our families back home. We will never leave this place alive, but we might still be able to save them if we act fast enough.”

  I lowered the barrel of the gun.

  “What’s your plan then?”

  “Simple.” Ertie answered. “We go up to the command center. Shoot the director between her beady little eyes and then enact the GD-27 protocol”

  I said nothing as I had no idea what that meant, but the gasps from all around me told me everything I needed to know.

  “So your solution would be to blow us all up!?” Yoko shrieked. Her nerves spiking from one second to the other.

  “Of course it is.” Ertie said, in a voice devoid of the previous fire he’d had. “I’m actually surprised none of you have reached the same conclusion.”

  He turned around and his eyes found Dereng’s own.

  “You should have realized it too, old friend. We’ve spent enough time together since childhood that I can tell that much.”

  Dereng said nothing.

  “I thought so.”

  Then he addressed the rest of us.

  “Farm boy. Or, Sully. Was right. Credit where credit is due, he pointed out a very important facet of this alien that we had all missed. The fact that because we know next to nothing about it, we have no idea what its limits are. The thing might be releasing spores into the air to self-replicate even now. Infecting all our breathable air and our food supplies so that we all become walking brood-mothers by next week. Or the thing might have impregnated several others with a parasitic larva. If the person that survived the encounter was selfishly trying to survive, which is the natural reaction to being attacked by an alien, or if they were injected with some kind of postattack amnestic, then we wouldn’t know unless we were willing to search every nook and cranny of each researcher in this facility. And even if we all got together and all cooperated starting now, there is still the possibility of the wound having completely healed over due to some supernatural process. In short, there are too many possibilities where this all goes extremely wrong and the thing kills us all and uses our biomass to prepare itself for the eventual consumption of our species.”

  “You don’t know any of that for sure.” Dereng spoke, though his voice was barely a whisper now.

  “True.” Ertie said. Doing what I was sure to be the equivalent of shrugging his shoulders.

  “I am talking out of my rear end. I don’t know that the thing can release spores or reproduce without asexually. I don’t know that the thing can survive our rifle rounds. For all I know Sully could be well on his way to being the greatest hero to have ever lived. Right up until our overlords slit his and everyone else’s throats for the debacle here.”

  Yoko paled and changed color.

  Garko’s mouth turned into a straight line.

  “Oh come now. I know I’ve been calling him farm boy this whole time, but Sully does have good ideas. His brain isn’t a total waste at least. He must have figured out he’d be silenced too by now.”

  “Yeah.” I admitted. Surprised at how readily the words came out of my mouth. “I was kinda sorta hoping you guys could come up with a brilliant plan at the last minute.”

  Ertie changed the way he looked at me for the first time.

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence.” He said. “I really do. I know… I know it must be hard to keep looking for ways out when you know in your gut that there is no way out. I know it must be hard to keep yourself from breaking down. I appreciate that strength.”

  He paused.

  “And while I’m not sorry about my culture in literacy, I am sorry I got us into this mess by finding the thing in the first place. We should’ve taken it apart right then and there and isolated each individual organ in its own containment area. It isn’t protocol and it might have seemed crazy, but we should have seen something like this coming the second we found a specimen that was so intact.”

  He puffed out his chest. Balancing all four legs so that he stood taller.

  “And it is because we unearthed something like this that we must all take responsibility. For the sake of everyone else in our world.”

  His gaze became hard as iron. Cold as the raging storm.

  “We have to blow up the compound. Because it is the only way to ensure that the alien is destroyed. Anything else, even a full mobilization, still leaves doors open for things like spores or, Gozo save us, another bloody alien. Hidden beneath the snow outside or even deep beneath this compound. It is the only way to be sure.”

  “It isn’t the only way.” Dereng countered.

  “I didn’t say it was.” Ertie continued. “I only said it was the only way to be sure. Because it is. And you know that as well as I do. There simply is no other way.”

  He started walking towards me. His body touching the barrel of the rifle.

  “Anything else would rely on chance. Maybe it all works out and we live long enough for half of us to be jailed forever in some black site. But maybe we fail and all life on the planet is doomed because of our mistake.”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t like those odds.”

  “We don’t even know our odds for sure.” Yoko stepped in. “Maybe this thing really is weak. Maybe it’s on its last breaths because it used up so many calories staying alive and mimicking one of us.”

  “I will not deny that it is a possibility.” Ertie allowed. “But we are both Gold-Tier researchers Yoko. I know you’ve studied statistics and advanced projection models. One can never accurately account for factors one has no knowledge of. This is not hubris. This is math. If all the variables do not add up by the end, you will be subtracted from the equation. And now we have a choice with a 100% chance of success and another with an estimated 2% chance of success. Based off my own simple calculations off the top off my head. That 2% representing the chance that at least half of us make it out alive and uninfected, while also killing the alien and everyone else who might have been infected. And we both know damn well that number is probably lower in actuality. If the spore theory has any credence, then we’d be smart to send a message out to HQ via the command center before we blow ourselves up. So that they can blast the whole plateau from orbit a few hundred times before stepping foot here again.”

  He stared her down and when she didn’t offer any retort, he turned to the others.

  “I know my own failings. I know I am prideful. I know I am rude. But I also know that I never give up. That I always keep trying to find a way forward even after a hundred different rejections. I only see one option now. One way to make sure this thing doesn’t get out. We should not waste time now, because every second wasted is another second the alien has to carry out whatever goal it has.”

  All of us were quiet. With Dereng being the quietest of all.

  “We will consider it, depending on how the situation plays out.” He said finally. “2% actually sounds better than I originally thought. I like those odds.”

  Yoko and Garko seemed to be on board.

  Ertie sneered. Sighed. And turned right around to keep on walking.

  Meanwhile, I was more or less fascinated by how human these guys were. Not in their appearance or their mannerisms or their expressions, but in the way they went about navigating social constructs.

  Everyone was scared and everyone was paranoid and everyone was more or less ready to sell out all the others if it meant saving themselves on an instinctual level. Yet guys like Ertie were willing to put aside their fears in order to ensure the survival of their species.

  It was heroic.

  The kind of thing I would have done if I found myself in the same position.

  I started feeling pangs of guilt then.

  Because I knew how this ended.