Blood and Profit: Chapter 37

Mew’s bandage was sloppy but it was holding the syrupy flow of blood back. Even still it flailed and was speaking nonsense. “Must Run! Stay in the light!” It tried to stand and fell back as the bandage around its midsection soaked through.

She glanced back at the hole in the wall where the leaf ship breached the station and was surprised to see nothing. Not the hall, not the wall, not the hole. Just infinitely darkness, a black so black that it ceased to feel empty and became predatory.

Mew felt the icy grip of fear crawl down her back. “Screw that noise.” She said to herself, lifting the tree person by what felt like his shoulders. The tree person got to his feet and they made their way to the shuttle dock, slower than she felt comfortable with largely because she could feel the darkness, stalking them. By the time they reached the shuttle airlock, the tree person had passed out becoming almost entirely dead weight. She held up her hand to open the airlock door and stopped short. It suddenly occurring to her that the darkness was letting them live. That it needed them to escape so it could get to the planet below. Her hand hesitated over the button. She could keep it here, seal her and this already wounded alien’s fate and keep this dark predator from ever reaching her home below.

“It would find a way to reach the planet even if we die here.” The Alien explained.

It was all the convincing she needed, pressed the button, opened the door, and carried the tree person into the escape shuttle. As she strapped herself into the pilots chair it dawned on her that she had not spoken her worries about the darkness. The tree person had read her mind. She flipped a switch and the airlock hatches closed and the magnalocks released the escape shuttle. She moved away from the station and spun the shuttle around so she could see the station. The Darkness had done an incredible job of hiding the damage the leaf ship impact had done. It had crashed into a section divider and the station was slowly tearing itself in half. She thought she had hated the station she had spent most of her adult life, but watching as it fell apart and be swallowed up by the darkness filled her with an odd sense of remorse.

“I fear that before this is over.” The plant person was doubled over holding the end of its appendages against its wound. “The station will be the least of your losses.” She looked back at the tree person realizing that it had again read her mind. She saw its mouth flicker, double, then completely disappear with the rest of its facial features. The entire body shape of the tree person lost cohesion and became just a huge pile of vines. She shook off the questions she had and focused on steering the escape shuttle safely through atmospheric re-entry.

The back of the ship was layered with the heat shielding to make it through re-entry, which meant she couldn’t see through the front windshield and until she was through to the lower atmosphere the ships cameras were guarded behind solid heat shielding. So it wasn’t until the ships parachutes had deployed to slow her decent and the heat from the shielding had dissipated before she could engage the cameras. What she saw as they descended shouldn’t have shocked her but it did.

As each leaf ship made it through atmospheric entry and impacted with the ground a new tree grew tall and proud. The forest that had already emerged below her was getting bigger by the second, and she assumed it was very likely each one of those trees had at least one of the creatures like her new friend inside it. She looked back to check on the pile of vines and saw that the sap had hardened in the last few minutes and was no longer dripping everywhere. She didn’t know if that meant the tree person was doing better or worse.

She also couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a third passenger on the shuttle, one that could be hiding in any and every shadow she saw.