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Inside the glass cell sat a thing that had once been a man.
The only part of him unaltered was his head. It was entirely intact, even looked healthy. Like at any moment he might open his eyes and awaken.
But his body was like nothing Brooks had ever seen.
The platform he rested upon was much broader than a patient would normally need, and over nearly all of its surface, spreading like weeds, was Michal Denso.
His body had opened like a flower, if the petals had then become tendrils of flesh that grew outward. His ribs rose like stamen, and in the open cavity of his chest his organs could be seen.
His lungs still expanded. His heart still beat.
On the mass of flesh that covered the table, though, new shapes had appeared. Organs that Brooks could recognize existed on there, but so did other, shapeless masses.
And eyes.
So many eyes that Brooks could not count them all immediately, there had to be nearly a score.
He had seen many cases of alteration, nut he had never seen any ike this.
Adrenaline was pumping through his veins, but he felt a strange calmness settle in, as it always did. Detached, he could analyze the situation better, come to better decisions.
He continued to study the man, wanting to take in everything, not miss a detail no matter how unpleasant.
Thin tubes were tucked into his mouth and nose, with numerous IV feeds into his body, some of them directly into his orgns. Some kind of small monitor was held up over his chest cavity, and upon closer inspection Brooks saw tubes coming from it that were carrying blood into his body, suggesting that his kidneys or liver were not functioning properly.
A myriad assortment of machinery was under the floor, which was also clear, and down there Brooks saw techs in their heavy protective suits.
Verena spoke. “Step away.”
Brooks was unsure if she meant him, but then he saw the techs below leave, disappearing out of sight.
“May I approach?” he asked the doctor.
She nodded, and Brooks moved forward, stopping in front of the chamber. The man’s eyes did not open, and Brooks glanced to Verena, who was looking at a readout screen.
“Is he awake?” Brooks asked.
“No,” the doctor said, not moving her eyes from the screen. “I believe he is asleep – he does this only rarely, but he had an incident earlier today, not long after you arrived. It exhausted him, but most of the time he is simply . . .”
“Distracted,” Kell supplied.
The voice came from behind him, and Brooks turned.
The Shoggoth had not approached. He was only halfway from the door, and seemed, for the first time, to be at a loss.
His face was still – blank, almost. Like a human simulation that was not receiving input. His chin was even tipped slightly downward.
“Ambassador?” the Captain asked.
“I am observing,” Kell replied. His mouth moved. But he still did not look up.
Brooks turned back towards Verena, who was watching Kell.
“My god, Verena – how is he still alive?”
“Many of his body’s functions have shut down or are working improperly,” she said. “We are supporting all that we can. In most circumstances, we can simply replace damaged or defective organs or use implants to perform the task – but his body alters even replacement organs in a very short time, and rejects implants.”
She gestured to the glass containment. “For obvious reasons, the room is a clean space. So far we have had no issue with infections – I believe that microbes ght find his body an unsuitable place for habitation, but I will not take chances.”
Brooks shook his head. “Why is he still alive? Has he communicated a desire to keep living like this?”
“No,” Verena replied. “I have . . . wondered this, myself. But I have orders from above, Captain – orders to keep him alive, at all costs.”
Brooks could not know why anyone would want to keep a man alive like this, and it twisted his stomach even thinking about. But now was not the time to question those orders; right now he needed to understand the situation itself.
“What is his name?” Brooks asked her, nodding slightly towards the man.
Verena regarded him as if he’d asked an odd question.
“Michal Denso,” she told him. “He was an assistant Navigational Officer on the frigate Sunspot. It was in Battlefleet A at Terris.”
Brooks took the words in soberly. Battlefleet A had been the point of the spearhead of battle. They had, by far, taken the worst effect of the Leviathan’s reality breaking effects.
Brooks’s ship had not been in that group. He had still seen combat at Terris – a brutal experience. But it had been nothing like the group Denso had been in.
Out of fifteen thousand ships in that battlefleet, less than a thousand made it out. Among them were the most dead, the most insane.
And the most altered.
The sound of footsteps caught Brooks’s attention. Kell was approaching.
He was not the only one to notice. As Kell came near, Michal Denso opened his eyes.
Those on his growths were swollen, grotesque. They rotated all the same, each of them affixing upon Kell.
Kell had a grim look upon his face, almost angry.
“This is not meant to be,” he said.
Verena was watching the Ambassador closely. “Any information might be useful,” she said.
Kell opened his mouth to speak – but then paused. He struggled a moment, then closed his mouth.
“I see, but I do not understand,” he said softly. “Not yet.”
He stepped closer to the chamber and lifted a hand, pressing it gently against the glass.
Alarms began to go off, and Verena looked to the screen on the side. “There is a surge of brain activity,” she said.
Michal Denso lifted his head – and hand. Brooks had not seen it before, it had grown so smoothly among the other tendrils of flesh that it had seemed to be merely one of those.
It was not like a human arm anymore. There was no skin left on it, just raw flesh, and twice as long as any human arm.
It moved stiffly, mechanically, and more alarms went off. He leaned forward, flesh on the table peeling off, and pressed his hand to the glass, opposite Kell’s hand. The tubes and devices moved with him, and Brooks could not imagine how he could have moved in this state at all.
The alarms went silent suddenly, as Verena deactivated them, but the silence was worse than the noise.
Brooks felt sweat trickle down his temple, wondering why Verena did nothing to put a stop to this, but he could not make himself move as he saw Kell . . . commune . . . with the man within the chamber.
And then Kell spasmed. A sound of pain, of fear, came from him – not just his voice, but suddenly a cacophony of them, all making the same kind of cry-
Kell collapsed onto the floor.
“Ambassador!” Brooks cried, dropping to a knee.
His eyes were open, and he was staring sightlessly upwards.
Brooks opened a channel. “Cenz, get to the high-security medical wing, the Ambassador is injured!”
Verena was summoning help as well. “We have no information on Shoggoth anatomy here,” she noted.
“We don’t know much more,” Brooks admitted. “But if anyone has learned something, it will have been Commander Cenz.”
Brooks wanted to pull the Ambassador away, but he could not budge the being. He could not even move a limb.
It would be minutes before Cenz could get here.
A long, piercing shriek brought his attention back to Denso.
He realized that the man was attempting to stand, struggling to pull his own flesh free from the table.
He was staring at Kell, and on his face was rage.
Alarms were building again, and the man was breathing harder and harder, staring at Kell.
He pounded the fist of his horrible, elongated arm against the glass, letting out a voiceless cry of anger.
A moment after he’d struck it, cracks appeared on the case. It was as if something massive had crashed into it, something moving with but just behind his limbs.
“I want to go home!” the man screamed. His voice carried through the chamber walls with unnatural power, echoing in the empty room.
More cracks appeared on the chamber walls. Denso hadn’t even moved.
“We need help in here now,” Brooks said.
“The Shoggoth cannot be moved,” Verena said, with unnatural calm. “And Denso is unresponsive to sedatives. Bringing others in will only endanger them, we must simply wait, and watch.” Without another word, she turned and walked towards the door – but did not leave, only standing near it and observing.
Denso pounded the glass again. A sound like a mighty crash came, and the glass of the floor cracked, nearly but not quite buckling.
Brooks said nothing and looked back to Kell. “Ambassador, if any part of you is awake, we need you to move!”
Perhaps some part of the being was still aware, because the eyes suddenly looked to him. Kell sat up, moving not like a man lifting himself with muscles, but like he was suspended from invisible strings.
He rose and stared at Denso.
Denso was still furious. He had made no other move, but he was panting hard, his face red with exertion.
Verena watched.
Kell took a single step forward, and Denso was shoved back. He fell heavily back onto the table, his body straining, but not moving. All of his eyes were still fixed upon Kell.
He went still, sagging onto the surface.
A single word escaped his lips. “Home.”
Kell said nothing, unmoving, staring at the man behind the glass for a long moment.
Then he opened his mouth, and a flood of thick black liquid poured past his lips. He said nothing as it splashed down his front, onto the floor.
Brooks could not understand it for a moment, before realizing that it was blood.
But before he could say a word, could even ask if Kell was all right, the Ambassador turned on his heel and walked towards the door.
“Ambassador!” Brooks said, chasing after him. He did not try to stop him, but simply came up alongside him.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. “You need medical care.”
But Kell would say nothing.
Even when Verena opened the airlock, the being was silent.
All the way back to the ship.
Other Terrestrial 