Bone Rider (9 page)

When they were suited up, the team filed through the airlock security doors that were sealed behind them. This had only happened once so far and there wasn’t a one of them who didn’t feel discomfited by it. Nobody, no matter how professional, likes to be reminded that, ultimately, they’re expendable.

“All right, people,” Dr. Butler said, getting them on track with familiar gruffness. “Let’s open them up.”

So they broke the seals and worked the locks and clasps, and finally carefully, very, very carefully, lifted the lid off the first box. It took a while to transfer the contents from the container to the autopsy table. The body was surprisingly heavy for being so small, and almost completely doubled over in a tight ball of ruined tissue. It was blackened, crumbly, and parts of the sooty film that covered it flaked off when their gloved hands touched it.

“Weird texture,” Dr. Rogner observed, lifting a broken-off piece of what looked like a finger out of the crate and examining it carefully. “Is this metal?”

It did sound like metal when he put it on the table next to the body, and it clunked down with notably more emphasis than charred flesh or bone. Then it fell apart.

They all looked as one at the pitiful heap of crusty material and then at the corpse, half expecting it to follow suit. When it didn’t, they breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“New orders,” Dr. Butler stated flatly. “Touch very fucking carefully. Next box.”

Nobody had a clue what, exactly, they were dealing with here, except for the very real possibility that it was a bona fide extraterrestrial being. Which was admittedly exciting, but it also meant they were flying blind. They’d discussed potential procedural methods beforehand; among other things, whether it was smarter to examine the bodies one at a time or together. Dr. Rogner insisted it might’ve been safer to keep two in their boxes while working on the third, for preservation purposes if nothing else, but fact was they didn’t know how well the hazmat containers would keep the remains. In the end, they’d decided to get them all out, put them on display so they’d be able to draw comparisons, get pictures and video footage of all of them next to each other. Actually, the carefully regulated environment of the lab was probably better suited to conserve the corpses than the containers. It was the transfer from A to B that was the tricky part, but the team was well rehearsed and heaved the brittle treasure into the light with tremendous caution and skill.

The second body very much resembled the first: small, curled in on itself, and heavy. They set it down like a raw egg, holding their breath until they were reasonably sure it wouldn’t break apart and turn to ash. It came to rest on its side, and Dr. Butler leaned closer in fascination when she saw the back wasn’t quite as badly destroyed as the rest of the creature.

“This is case number TX01/20160615, unidentified subject Two. The body is”—she checked the markings on the table and the display of the integrated scales—“fifty inches tall and weighs 132.121 pounds. It appears humanoid, but the skull is elongated and the knee joints appear inverted. Either that or we are dealing with an animal-type of bone structure, which would make this the tarsus. The body is badly burnt; dermis and epidermis appear mostly carbonized except for parts of the upper back.” She nodded at her assistant, who was in charge of taking pictures, and pointed. “I want close-ups of this and this.”

The camera clicked quietly as Elaine Rockford moved around to find the perfect angles for her pictures. Dr. Butler let her work for a minute or two, then moved in again and continued her initial assessment. “The tissue along what appears to be the left shoulder blade and about halfway down the spine is in better condition than the rest of the body. The texture looks organic in the upper section, metallic in the lower.” She reached up and pulled down the mechanical arm holding the magnifier to zoom in on the area. “Huh,” she grunted, surprised. “This is no shell armor or piece of clothing. It appears the metal is fused to the body on a sub-dermal level.” She frowned a little and squinted through the lens, intrigued. “This might have been caused by the high temperature and pressure generated during the explosion, but….” She shook her head and trailed off, knowing they’d have to do a full autopsy on the body to make it yield its secrets. They’d get to it. They had time.

“Last box,” she ordered. “Let’s see if number three has something else to tell us before we go in.”

The third corpse, as it turned out, was special indeed. More damaged, for one. Despite their utmost care, it broke in two when it touched down on the metal surface of the autopsy table. They tried to stabilize the halves, but the scrawny, crispy neck couldn’t take the pressure and snapped like a little twig. Dr. Butler’s basketball training kicked in and she managed to catch the skull before it could shatter. She frowned down at the fragile, fire-blackened ball of bone, noting how tiny it looked in the cradle of her big, bright-yellow gloves. Dainty as a child’s. But then, they’d already picked up on how much lighter than the other two bodies this one was when they’d lifted it from the container. The sound it had made on impact had been that of an extremely burnt carcass, not that of an extremely burnt carcass suffused with metal.

The team crowded around the table, puzzled by the differences, pointing out how this corpse was all stretched out instead of curled up; its overall condition much worse than the others’, fractures visible in the blackened skin, bones splintered badly, some of them looking as if they’d been bust open from the inside.

“Maybe this is something else,” Dr. Rogner suggested, doubtfully.

Behind them, Elaine Rockford, Butler’s assistant, cleared her throat. “Uhm. Ma’am?”

“It has the same shape and body type,” Dr. Butler mused, ignoring her in favor of the skull in her hands. “If the metal was some kind of armor, then my guess would be that this one wasn’t suited up when the missile hit it, but if that was the case, it shouldn’t be in one piece.”

“Ma’am,” Elaine piped up again. “You might want to have a look at this.”

“What is it?” Dr. Butler asked, slightly irritated by being asked to abandon her line of thought, but too aware of the urgency in her assistant’s voice to blow her off again.

“It’s a hole,” Elaine said, nervously. “In the bottom of the crate.”

Dr. Butler’s eyes widened behind the mask. She handed the skull to Dr. Rogner, who immediately froze so as not to endanger the priceless bone.

“A hole?” Dr. Butler stalked over to the box in question to peek inside. “If the container was contaminated, that might explain the—” She stopped, almost swallowing her tongue when she realized what had her assistant so rattled. “Fuck me,” she whispered, and the switch from consummate professional to freaked-out individual almost made Rogner drop the burnt head in his hands.

“What?” he asked, stepping closer as well. He wasn’t the only one. Within moments, the team was gathered around the box, jostling for position to stare at the hole.

“This was made from the inside,” Dr. Butler declared tonelessly. “This facility might’ve been compromised. I’m initiating lockdown.” She strode over to the communication unit set into a wall panel next to the bulletproof observation window. “This is Lieutenant Dr. Leandra Butler. I’m calling a Code Red. I repeat: Code Red. Seal the base.”

Damn it. Shit like this wasn’t supposed to happen outside of movies.

S
OMEWHERE
in the middle of
Die Hard 4
, Riley decided he’d had plenty of time to not think and any more not thinking would definitely qualify as brooding. That was usually the point when he turned to work, exercise, or drink. Thanks to his post-Misha twitchiness, he was currently unemployed, so work was out. He wasn’t comfortable leaving behind his truck in order to take off on a long run, not under the circumstances, and he didn’t have the patience to go find a gym. Drink won by default. It helped that Riley’s stomach had calmed down enough to go from queasy to hungry. Dinner, then. Ideally, followed by something alcoholic or chocolaty, but preferably alcoholic. He’d been invaded by an alien. More than enough reason to skip the brownies and go straight for the tequila.

El Paso was a border town and this was the gray area between the suburbs and the great wide open, reserved for passers-through; there were bound to be plenty of bars close to the motels and gas stations that lined the highway ramps. Riley briefly entertained the idea of just buying a bottle of Jack and getting nice and hammered in the privacy of the motel room, but discarded the notion almost instantly. He didn’t need alcohol so much as company—human company, no matter how oblivious—and he needed to be out and doing something. Anything. Shoot the shit with a friendly guy, play a game of pool or darts, listen to crappy jukebox music… whatever. For a man who’d spent most of his life on his own, he was really fucking bad at being alone with his thoughts. Or not, as the case happened to be. Which brought him back to his squatter, who’d been suspiciously quiet for a while now.

“Hey,” he muttered, warily. “You still there?”

Yeah
, came the answer immediately. Then, unhappily,
Are you going to keep calling me a squatter forever?

“No,” Riley assured him amiably. “’Cause you ain’t gonna be here forever, right?”

He was prepared for the other shoe to drop, then, for his passenger to say something along the line of “yeah, about that…,” but the alien surprised him with a heartfelt,
Hell, no. It’s just… I want a name. Everything and everyone who counts has a name. People have names. Pets have names. I want one too
.

“You don’t have a name?” Riley frowned, realizing he hadn’t even bothered to ask before. Of course, he’d been a little distracted by the fact that he had an alien in his head, but still. His mama wouldn’t have approved. “Well, what did your previous victim call you?”

Host, not victim
, the alien corrected sourly.
And proud to have been chosen as such, thank you very much. He was a volunteer and had to pass a very thorough screening to be even allowed close to me.

It must’ve sensed Riley’s interest, because he could’ve sworn it moved slightly in him, the miniscule shift in position eliciting a weird, slithering sensation deep in his body. It kind of made him want to puke, so he tried hard not to think about it too much. His unwanted passenger seemed to pick up on his discomfort anyway, because the movement stopped.

System Six
, it told him quietly.
That’s what they called me. There were six of us, originally. I was the last one out of the lab. We were experimental armor systems. Prototypes. They made us different, but we were all created to be adaptable so we’d be able to adjust to our host’s body and personality. The idea was that armor and host would enhance each other, but we were still primarily considered tools. We didn’t get names, just numbers
.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way,” Riley said cautiously, “but we don’t normally name our tools, either.”

I’m not a tool. I’m an artificial intelligence. I’m aware. I
feel.

The voice was upset now, which Riley thought was pretty unfair, because it was hard to keep your emotional distance to something that sounded so distressed. Especially considering it had introduced itself to him wearing Misha’s face. They would have to talk about that, too, because it had been a mindfuck in more than one sense. Sometime soon, but not right now. Riley wasn’t ready to have that conversation yet. The name thing was less traumatic, and more easily resolved.

“So pick a name,” he suggested, getting up to collect his stuff from the bathroom and shove it back into the duffel bag. Even though he planned on coming back, he felt too edgy to leave anything behind. “This is your chance. And make it a good one, ’cause you don’t get a do-over.”

Why not?

The alien seemed confused, but hopeful, and definitely considering his idea.

“Because that ain’t the way it works,” Riley explained firmly. He sniffed yesterday’s T-shirt and recoiled. Stress sweat and highway dirt. Not a good mix. Off into the laundry bag with it. “Unless you’re a criminal. Or running from criminals. Or your name is so fucking stupid you gotta change it in self-defense. But generally, you stick with what you got. So pick a name and then we’ll go celebrate.”

Again something shifted inside of him, a little shimmy of what Riley was starting to recognize as excitement.
I can choose my own name?

“Well, ain’t like you got a mama or a papa to do it for you,” Riley said reasonably. “And I sure as shit ain’t gonna do it and get bitched at if you don’t happen to like it. So, yeah, knock yourself out.”

There was silence for a while, but it was the kind of intense, thinking-so-hard-your-brain-is-breaking silence that came with important, once-in-a-lifetime decisions. Riley didn’t have the heart to grab his jacket and hat and leave the room while his squatter pondered. He just stood there like an idiot and waited. He might not be overjoyed to be carrying around an alien, but sharing his body with the critter meant he was very invested in same critter’s happiness. A happy alien might be less inclined to do nasty things to his innards.

I’m not going to do nasty things to you, damn it
, the alien muttered, distracted but still alert enough to catch Riley’s reasoning.
Not the painful kind, anyway
.

Riley was going to have to learn to think more quietly, because the last bit made his stomach flip in an entirely unexpected way and his dick harden hopefully. It annoyed the ever-loving hell out of him.

“Pick a fucking name,” he snapped, reaching down to adjust himself impatiently. Goddamn Misha for getting his body so used to regular sex. He had no self-discipline left. It was humiliating.

I want a good name
, the alien told him, wisely choosing not to comment on his problem.
It’s gonna be my name and you said I only have one shot at it.

Riley threw up his hands in resignation and sat his ass down on the bed. Might as well get comfortable.