Fabricated Chapter 17

 As he makes his way through the facility, PC feels Elyion grow more and more agitated. This doesn’t dissipate when PC finds a key card loose on the floor as he ducks and shuffles past what he assumes is a security station (the officer on duty is fast asleep, thank God); in fact, the alien only grows more insistent. 

He’s not sure why, until it lights up a room in his vision as he turns down another hall. There’s a nagging in his head, and he frowns.

“We need to go,” he says, quiet.

There’s something there, it insists. Something hurting. Something Psionic. Please help it. You helped me.

PC takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, “but only if it can go fast.” He shuffles over to the door, and swipes the card- he hears the locks in the door open, and slides through the small space he can make by pushing. The door locks again behind him.

Elyion pushes he past dark storage boxes, to a 3 foot long canister. It’s marked as BIOLOGICAL and wrapped in caution tape, with more writing warning not to open it, as it’s federal property. PC snorts- because ‘you’re not a human you can’t invoke Miranda rights’ applies here, right?- and turns the canisters top. Air hisses as it comes off, freezing cold billowing out as smoke. 

PC hefts the canister off the shelf and holds it against his chest. He gazes inside. A dark goo sits a few inches down, but as he looks, it begins to ripple, and then a strand of it rises, rises. 

A voice emits from the canister: “You are not human.”

PC blinks. “You’re... not a stuffed animal,” he says, and frowns at it. 

The tendril of goo waves itself at him a little, eventually reaching out to touch him; he recoils, and it pulls away, going toward his arms; when it phases through, it cocks itself like a dog might cock its head. 

“What are you?” it asks.

“What are you?” he counter.

“Humankind calls me Spartan,” it says. “That is not my designation.” 

“My name is PC,” PC says. 

“But you are not human,” it says. “Are you captured too?”

“In a sense, yeah,” he says. “I’m hosting another alien, called a Ethereal—“

“I know the Ethereal race! One of them resides alongside a member of my kind in the Deep South, I hear it is very kind,” says  the Spartan. “But it is not the rule. I hear the rest of the Ethereals, those called the Elders, are cruel and hasty...” It bobs again. “I would not know, that war was far before my time.”

“Your kind has fought the Elders?” PC asks. He hesitates. “No offense, but how?”

“We do not look as I do,” the Spartan says. “We are a race of exoskeletal beings. Our outer bodies are much like that of your humans in shape, and within them we can fight.“

“Did you lose your exoskeleton?” PC asks.

“The humans took me out of mine to study me,” it says. “I wish greatly to return to it.”

“Are you the only one of your kind to be here? I mean, on earth?”

“Yes! I was not supposed to be,” it says. “My ship crashed, in one of your oceans, and for a while I survived there. But I grew curious, and breached into human lands. I was quickly found, and like my ship, the humans took me to a initial ‘laboratory’ and then when they realized I was not of this planet, they sent me here.”

“Do you think your exoskeleton is here, too?” PC asks.

“I think so,” the Spartan says. “Please look around; it looks like human armor would, if that species had reached our point of technology yet.”

“So you’re more advanced,” says PC as he begins to walk, holding the canister out so the Spartan can look around. The tendril taps boxes it thinks might contain the exoskeleton, and Elyion lights them up in PC’s vision. 

“Yes,” the Spartan says as they reach the back of the room, “we are more advanced. But you, a not-human, seem to be as well. Your limbs—“

“—are more magic then science,” he interrupts.

The Spartan makes a ‘hmm’ noise at that. 

PC makes his way back to the first box marked, and cracks it open; he rummages through three more until he is back at the back of the room, sliding out a large box, lifting off the top after unlocking it—

The goo rushes out, and PC turns the canister over, watching in awe as the goo flows over the ‘armor’ pieces, and slowly, slowly, turns them over, brings them together, and then, all at once, there is a humanoid shape standing before PC, clenching and unclenching three finger pronged hands.

The Spartan looks at PC, cocking its head. “You are a rectangle,” it says. 

“Yeah, I’m a body pillow,” he says.

“Are those usually sentient?” it asks.

He shakes his head. When it doesn’t react, he adds, “No, no, I’m... special. But stuffed animals and others like me can be sentient. It’s, uh, a lot of secrets and magic and power of love.”

“Power of love?”

“Human concept,” PC says. 

“I know my kind has what they would call ‘love’, that does not confuse me,” it says.

“Oh,” says PC. “It’s still a human concept, that love can overcome anything, and similar.”

“I see,” it says. “A strange race, humanity is.” 

Yeah! says Elyion, materializing. 

The Spartan looks up, its visor glowing suddenly, along with the lines on its body. “Psionic being sensed,” it says as the lit up lines and visor fade. “Ethereal?” The word is a question.

Elyion nods at it. I am bonded.

“Your host is not organic,” it says. “You are dying.”

If PC’s ears could perk, they would. “You’re dying?”

It is fine. We will remove the Elders. That is my mission, because it first was yours. 

“You’d do that?” he asks. 

You are resolute in your wanting to protect humanity. I am happy to go along, if you feel so strongly. 

“Let us go,” says the Spartan. “Before we are caught.”

“Right,” says PC. “Elyion—“

There is a ripple, and the Ethereal and him are one again. He turns to the Spartan. “Keep close to me,” he says. “We’re just a left and a right from a exit door.” 

He leads the way out of the room—

—and that’s when the alarms start.

“Oh, that’s not good,” he says. He looks to the Spartan. “Do you know left and right?” 

There is a moment of hesitation. “Yes, generally; our translators have enough of your planet’s languages cataloged for me to understand.” 

“Then run.”

“What about you?”

“Go!”

The Spartan hesitates once more. “This will not be forgotten,” it says. Then, finally, it flees; PC hears the metal twang of the push bar, the additional siren wailing through the facility to create a terrible cacophony of sound. 

PC hears footsteps, and sighs. 

“It was a good try,” he says to Elyion.

We almost made it...we could have made it. 

“It’s ok,” he says. “We’ll be okay.”

The humans come, and they absently pick up him and take the key card, they tuck him in a box that locks when they close it. PC lies there, slightly squished, breathing heavy in the dark as they leave him on a shelf back in the storage room he found the Spartan in.

There is a commotion then, and he can hear the scientists panicking, the sound of boxes being pushed around, and he smiles to himself. Eventually it quiets though, and he is left alone. 

What now? asks Elyion, and it is a scared child.

We’ll wait, he thinks back. We’ll wait, and we’ll try again.