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.
