Author : Roger Dale Trexler

The thing inside Tabitha Sandor twitched. She tried to move, make herself more comfortable, and it did not approve.

Stop. The word danced in her head. She wondered for a second if she had even heard the thought, but she knew she had. Since the scientists had discovered the alien DNA was compatible with human DNA, and inseminated her with it against her will, she knew.

It knows, too, she thought.

She looked around the 6-foot cubicle that they had placed her in for observation. The walls were glistening stainless steel. Only the camera in the corner interrupted their smooth surface. The scientists were watching her.

She ran her hand along her stomach. Two weeks ago, her belly had been flat and muscular. But, then they came in the middle of her sleep shift and hauled her off to a lab. They drugged her. She awoke to find them between her legs, syringe in hand, injecting her with an alien’s seed.

“It’s for the greater good,” one of the scientists told her. “We need to know what this alien race knew.”

Her personal freedoms were secondary to them.

To them, she was disposable.

She stood and walked to the wall. For the millionth time, she ran her hand along the smooth contour, hoping to find the exit.

There, it thought.

She paused, dumbfounded. Over the past couple of days, she had come to realize that the thing growing within her was not only alien, it held all the knowledge of its race. It somehow retained the knowledge of a long dead alien race; the abilities of that race were in her stomach. It was showing her, in brief glimpses, the majestic world, now turned to ash, below. There was a war that had wiped out its people. They had used weapons that made nuclear fusion look like a cap gun. They incinerated their entire planet. It was that planet from which they had extracted the alien’s DNA and impregnated her.

They are coming, It thought.

Tabitha backed away from the wall and, a second later, two white-coated men stepped inside.

One of them stepped toward her.

Tabitha felt a strange sensation and then her mind went blank. When she regained control, the scientists were laying on the floor, both of their necks broken.

She gasped.

“You killed them,” she said.

It was necessary, It thought. They were going to stop the experiment.

It flashed a thought through her mind. It belonged to one of the scientists. In the thought, she understood that they had come to the realization the alien was communicating with her. They understood that some form of muscle memory or genetic memory was telling her things. They also knew that the seed they planted inside her belonged to one of the scientists who helped destroy the alien world. They had managed to decipher some of the alien language.

They feared the alien’s power…and they wanted to kill it, lest they unleash the dragon again.

We must escape, It thought.

Tabitha wanted to protest, but a sharp, agonizing pain shot through her.

Do it!

Then, it took control again, and everything went black.

##

When she returned, she was in an escape pod. Through the window, she could see the massive ship above. It was burning silently in space.

As she watched, the ship exploded.

She gasped in horror.

It had to be, It thought. They wanted to stop us. I could not allow that.

She wanted to fight, but knew fighting was futile.

It was in control.

She fell back into the cushiony seat and watched as they dropped to the scorched world below.