“So, d’you get anything this time? I’m not getting shit from my turf. Either they’re getting smarter, or they’ve decided that they don’t like that place after all.”
“Maybe they would have stayed a bit longer if you hadn’t practically carpet-bombed the place every time you went over there, you know. I swear to god you spend more ammunition shooting the damn things than we get back from whatever’s left of the carcass.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. ‘sit in a ditch for three hours so that I can get a clean kill”. I like make sure that they’re dead first, ok? Remember Peterson?”
“He thought that he could take down half a herd with a shotgun, he deserved it. Don’t bring up the moron as an example next time.”
“Ok, ok, I’m done, do whatever you want. I can have my guns, and you can have your ditch. Just get inside, and while you’re at it, you can answer my original question.”
Matthew shut off his radio and entered the passcode for the station, opening up the fourteen-inch thick blast-shield. Security was a big priority out on the Frontier, particularly when the animals hadn’t learnt to respect your territory yet. You had the door to keep the herds out, you had the floor to keep the tunnelers out, and you had the turrets to keep the flyers out. It was dangerous as hell, but that was why they brought home the big money.
He flicked the safety on his rifle on once he was safely inside, and regretted insulting Peterson. Sure, he was an overconfident moron, but he had died in the second year of the station, not the first, when all of the mistakes you could make out here were established and avoided. Peterson had started bringing in more and more, and he got far too confident for his own good, and trusted too much in his firepower, and now he was just another body to be retrieved and buried somewhere the tunnelers couldn’t gnaw on his corpse.
There were two rules to coming to the Frontier; don’t fuck up, and don’t have anything to lose back home. Matthew definitely followed the second one. No family, no friends, a lot of debt, and absolutely nothing to lose but his life. But it had paid off, and he just had a few more years until he could retire to a desk-job somewhere and try to make sure that the stupid mistakes that had been made when first establishing the settlement here at the station could be avoided.
After all, when you’re a three-year trip away from Earth on a desolate rock of a planet that rains half the year and never has an atmosphere below humid, you really had to not like it back home, or like money a lot more than safety.
He was interrupted from his thoughts by the man he had been speaking to earlier, Ben, who was currently out of his field armour, and looking disappointed by the lack of a carcass behind Matthew. There were a few things you could say about Ben Green; Short, bald, and very trigger-happy when he was feeling nervous, something that meant that there was usually a lot of lead to pull out of whatever game he brought home. Still, he was reliable, and despite the field armour that Matthew was wearing, a reliable partner was far more useful than any armour if something managed to get too close to you.
“So, nothing? Third day in a row, going to have to start taking a truck with me if we can’t get our shit together and find somewhere close.” Ben said.
“Don’t worry about it, I think I found a nice scenic place to camp out. I’m gonna head there tomorrow, bring something big home.” Matthew said, hanging up his rifle on the wall, the room he was in being a small armoury on the way out exclusive to any hunters making their way out onto the plains.
“You know, you don’t have to wear the mask anymore, unless you’ve been skipping your shots.” Ben said, observing the gas mask that Matthew was wearing. In the early days of settling, it was certain death to go outside without a gas mask on, the entire planet being a health and safety nightmare. Eventually most of the airborne diseases and viruses were a non-issue, with each citizen at the station being immunised against them, but some people still kept their gas masks on just in case, Matthew being one of those people, taking the care to wash it each time. Having a phobia of infections, viruses, and general diseases wasn’t a fun thing to have on an alien planet. Either way, he took it off, but kept his armour on, intending to remove it back in his quarters.
As he removed his mask, he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflective metal of the room’s shielding. He had tanned skin from his long days out, albeit with tan-lines from his gas mask, a short and narrow nose that had made it uncomfortable to wear the standard masks until he managed to get one better fitted, and very short black hair that had originally been a buzz-cut, but had grown out a bit since he had it cut.
Even then he considering cutting it again, since he couldn’t afford for anything to get in the way when he was out on the field. He was in the camp that didn’t take chances, despite everybody insisting that he’d need at least eyebrow length hair to start being the slightest bit impractical.
“So, you gonna tell me where your super-secret place is?” Ben asked, Matthew shaking his head in response.
“If I told you, you’d set my alarm three hours later and there’d be nothing left by the time I got there.” Matthew said, Ben rolling his eyes at his remark.
Still, he dropped it, and parted with Matthew as he headed back to his room. It was on the other side of the station, which was about kilometre long, with a few hundred people there. A lot of the space was taken up by equipment and vehicles, and there were better places to live that were much more metropolitan than this, but it was home, and there were always a few people heading down the hallways and making sure it never felt empty.
The hallways themselves were mostly metal and bland, and the place felt like more of a repurposed military base than a proper town. You wanted a proper town, you headed somewhere else, out on the farmlands, where most of the initial pioneering had been made, and it was a reasonably safe place to live. However, in securing their safety, they had scared off most of the sensible game, and there hadn’t been anything worth hauling home to sell in the first place after the first few months and the predators realised they had been put a lot lower on the food chain.
Matthew thought that he should probably fill out his report and properly map out the location he had scouted, but had decided to say screw it and do it tomorrow, it wasn’t like he was going anywhere anytime soon. It could wait another day, he thought to himself as he entered his room, a small but hospitable place with a proper bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom, most people only getting two of those. He stripped off his armour and collapsed onto his bed, wondering what would have become of him if he hadn’t come out here.
--
Matthew shut off the van’s engine, deciding to make the rest of the way on foot. It wasn’t too far away to drag a body back if he had to, and he didn’t want to scare anything off. As efficient as the car’s engine was, it was loud as hell, and tended to scare away the jumpier animals. He headed towards the area he had discovered, a large lake with a small hill nearby, in the middle of grazing territory for the animals that gathered in herds, transitioning from plains into forest shortly before he found it. The hunters tended to avoid forests for various reasons, but Matthew figured that this place was easy to get out of in a hurry and with plenty of caves to hide in, and worth the risk.
It went from rocky crags directly into lush forest, and the lake itself was highly fertile and covered in vegetation. Since the water had proven to be clean enough to drink, and judging by the few he had seen around the place, it was a popular spot to stop by and drink, for any animals brave enough to risk any potential predators.
There didn’t seem to be any there at the moment though, so Matthew decided to check out the craggy hill to see if there was a good place to set himself down for the day that wouldn’t get him jumped from behind. He primed his rifle and made sure he wasn’t forgetting any of his gear, and made his way over to the lake, walking along its banks. It looked deep, deep enough for him to not be able to see the bottom, and he wondered what was down there.
Still, he wasn’t stupid enough to jump in, and there was no way in hell he was going more than waist-deep until he had a submarine or something. Assuming there weren't alien piranhas or something that ate metal. You never knew out here. Either way, he stayed away from the water, and prospective death.
Eventually he circled around the lake and towards the hill, a rocky place that was practically split in two, with a ton of small caves and cracks for someone or something to hide in. As such, he approached the first cave he could find and took it slowly, making sure there wasn't any sign or sound of a predator waiting for somebody to come in.
The weather was very humid today, and the cave even more so, dripping with moisture, the floor slick and untrustworthy under his thick boots. Light leaked in through the many cracks and holes in the ceiling, so pulling out his night-vision or back-up torch was unnecessary, and made identifying any possible obstacles easy.
Eventually, he reached the end of the tunnel, with nothing in sight, and aside from the occasional drip of water from the humid cave and the sound of his own careful footsteps, there didn't seem to be anything in here.
Listening carefully, Matthew noticed that occasionally the dripping in the cave sounded a bit deeper, like drops were hitting larger bodies of water. Trying to crouch, he sneaked across the cave floor until he saw a ripple on the ground in to the back of the cave, a puddle just out of the light. He held his rifle loose but stable, ready to aim and fire quick of something hostile were to approach.
Suddenly and strangely, a small flicker of light seemed to flash from the puddle like a fluorescent bulb being turned on then quickly back off. Cautiously curious, Matthew approached the puddle, making sure to keep himself steady on the dank stone ground.
A stalactite hanged above the little puddle dripping condensation onto the shallow puddle, where a thin little worm like creature was floating nearly lifeless. It was pale, and every time a drop hit the puddle, it's body flashed, some sort of natural luminescent properties at work. It had no real features beyond that; no jaw, like an Earth lamprey, but with less teeth, a single row of sharp fangs that didn't seem very friendly.
Matthew figured that the lake outside used to be much bigger, filling the surrounding caves like this one, and something was causing it to drain, be it natural geological activity or the inadvertent actions of an invading Earth species settling on the planet and rearranging the ecosystem. Impossible to tell. And this brainless pulsing little fellow seemed to get caught in the cave as it was emptying out, unable to escape its puddle.
Matthew stayed professionally alert on the outside, but internally he shrugged. A dying alien leech would hardly bring in the big bucks, and there didn't seem to be anything else in the cave, so it was off to search for bigger and better prey. Getting up from his crouch, however, Matthew didn't notice how there were more stalactites above him, bumping his head into one.
Momentarily alarmed, he tried shifting his footing to turn himself around and felt that sickening feeling humans beings tend to get when the ground they're standing on doesn't act the way they want it to; his boot slipped on the wet rock, causing him to topple right onto the puddle with the flashing leech. Matthew would have felt very foolish about himself, had he not crushed the leech, making to poor creature react one last time before it died, biting directly onto Matthew's arm, it's razor teeth cutting through the flexible joint of his field armour and directly into his wrist.
"Fucking Christ..!" Matthew cursed. The leech's teeth hurt a lot more than Earth leeches did (or so he figured; he'd never had the pleasure of experiencing one firsthand). Almost like getting an electric shock along with getting bitten. Something to do with the organic luminosity or whatever; it hurt like hell, in any case. He tore the small thing off, now seemingly dead for good, and carefully yet quickly stomped out of the cave. He needed to get a good look at his wrist; one bad cut could mean many very bad things on the Frontier.
Emerging from the craggy hill into the better lit area closer to the lake, Matthew looked closely at the minor but painful wound. It was a clean cut, and he could see his skin torn open; the funny thing was, no blood seemed to be coming out. It wasn't like how blood usually clots, Matthew noted, more worried than he'd been moments ago.
Matthew started to breathe heavier through his gas mask. Something was feeling very different inside, a soreness that one might usually experience while having the flu, his body starting to ached from the inside out. He had no way to notice, but his bones were softening inside him, the marrow and osseous tissue virtually melting away. The soreness came from the nerve endings inside him being severed and repurposed. Matthew had no way of knowing that, only that the soreness was very quickly graduating with full honours into pain. His legs could no longer hold him up, bending like rubber as his femurs, tibias and fibulas dissolved within him, leaving him to fall face first onto the ground, cracking the gas mask.
Even under the armour, it was clear Matthew's body was doing very inhuman things. Muscles flexed and tried to moved, but with the stable bones liquefying, the muscles had no way to get anything done and simply caused his limbs to wiggle and bend like waves, his chest rising and falling shallowly due to his diaphragm spasming like the rest of his muscles. His short black hair fell off of his head, showing how even his skull was melting away, wobbling like an egg yolk; his jawbone disintegrating as well, teeth simply falling out, making it impossible to even grimace in pain, though there was still plenty of that. In the back of his mind, Matthew wanted desperately to do something about whatever was happening to him, but the inhuman pain was too foreign to overcome; no human being had ever had to go through anything like this, so there was no basis for Matthew to go off on own to deal with it.
His muscles slowed their convulsing until they no longer moved anymore, the occasional twitch being the only movement left. Green eyes looked out lazily, misshaped and bald head to one side, his face devoid of any emotion or intelligence. Inside though, Matthew was terrified; he'd lost all motor skills it seemed, even the involuntary ones, and he thought this must be some kind of alien poison, to totally incapacitate one's victim so it could no longer fight in any way. Between the pain and the fear, he didn't notice as his body seemed to swell, like it was filling with water, and what little exposed skin he had turning from tanned brown to unhealthy grey. The dense white and grey matter of Matthew's brain slowly began to unravel itself, the long nerve cells travelling down his expanding body, leaving his mind intact but brain unrecognizable; his head was no longer the central intelligence centre of his body.
On the outside of his head, Matthew's pupils grew over the rest of his eyes, going from looking dull and lifeless to cold and animalistic. The damaged gas mask burst apart on his rapidly rounding-out head, revealing totally black eyes currently in the process of flattening into discs on his head, changing his sense of sight. "Seeing" was no longer the appropriate word; it was a more basic sense that there was light around him. And the sense was becoming more powerful. As his skin turned grey and expanding, starting to tear the weaker fabrics of his armour and exposing more freakish flesh, it was growing more sensitive and reactive: he could in a way sense the smell of sweat in his armour as it slowly burst off of him, the wet muddy smell of the lake shore, even the faint traces of animals that had been nearby and left particles of themselves behind.
Arms and legs, after building up pressure in their confines, finally burst Matthews armour apart quick enough to appear almost simultaneous, thick tubes of slick grey flesh ending in misshapen hands and feet. The smaller extremities didn't last much longer though, absorbing into the swelling limbs. The inside of Matthew's legs (though it would be incorrect to call them that at this point) grew closer together, sticking like rubber cement had been applied to them. A kind of secretion from his morphing skin below where his waist would have been as a human covered the limbs, closing the space between them and fully fusing them together into one long appendage, almost like a tail.
At the same time, his arms were undergoing their own metamorphosis; were his mind and senses not totally in flux, Matthew would have hoped dearly that his arms would not merge into his torso, and they certainly did not do that. Instead, the grey swollen skin seemed to peel back like a sheath, leaving behind a rigid material, not hard as bone but pointed very sharp. The skin peeled all the way up to his former shoulders, leaving behind two long spikes that twitched and moved in the exposed air. His tube-like body started to bend at the "waist', lifting the upper part of himself into the air, strange feeler spikes swinging and swiping in the air as the nerves inside them grew and intensified, becoming less rigid.
Matthew's toothless mouth, having been left to gape ever since his jaw was no more, started to grow, a grey wet hole spreading on his face. His head and neck thickened and streamlined, becoming a solid uniform mass, making his body entirely cylindrical save for the two wiggling feeler arms. His mouth hole, grown large enough to fit his old head inside of it, seemed to contract and flex, getting used to its new structure. Small spikes on the inside seemed to emerge from the moist inner flesh of the mouth, quickly growing into sharp hooks; rows and rows of teeth in all around his circular mouth, more or less biting down whenever the mouth contracted.
The last bit of Matthew's armour, the chest plate, after surviving the swelling and bulging and flexing of the mutating man inside, finally tore to pieces, the last bit of anything human Matthew had on him gone. The tough material fell off to reveal thin flaps of skin different than the rest of his slimy body: flat and flexible, though too thin to have muscles in them, covering what was once distinguishable as his back. Muscle in his body flexed though, causing the flaps to raise and separate, almost fluttering in the air, looking like some sick version of a lion's mane, or an evil crown.
Matthew felt less and less pain somewhere deep in the monstrous creature he was almost finished becoming, leaving him to realize that he had no idea what he was feeling anymore. All his familiar senses had either vanished or morphed to the point that he no longer recognized them; something most closely resembling his old sense of touch let him know that he'd grown longer and thicker, taking up a significant amount of the ground.
His visual sensory cells- no such thing as eyes anymore, though he had no clue what was replacing them- showed that his height had changed, even bent and stooped over like a giant worm, things seemed farther down than they were as a human. Whatever he'd turned into was damn big.
The seemingly random twitching and flexing his body had been doing almost non-stop since all this had started was finally calming down, front feeler tentacles seeming to rest at an angle in front of him, mouth no longer opening and closing at random intervals, back flaps- fins, Matthew supposed, horrified at the prospect- slowing their fluttering and coming to a loose rest on his back.
Matthew tried to take deep breaths, trying to calm himself, but found that he couldn't. His body no longer had lungs inside them, but rather his gray thick skin absorbed air at a regular pace as his body needed it- another of many changes that seemed impossible and unholy.
Almost unnoticeable among the foreign sensory experience and trying to cope with a nightmare were the series of spikes poking out of his skin of what may as well have been his neck, from just a few feet down his "head" to his back fins and feeler "arms".
Around two dozen sharp foot-long spikes formed a ring around his "neck", some twisting in a spiral just a bit, nearly like antlers, all apparently made of the same material the feelers were only much hard and totally inflexible, like bones.
Matthew waited as he got more used to his senses and ignored the crawling feeling of horror in the back of his mind, trying to stay coherent and not panic, but the changes seemed to have finally come to an end. Whatever had happened to him had run its course, though whether that was something to be thankful for was debatable.
Experimentally, he tried flexing and wiggling his lower half in an attempt to move himself, and with reasonable effort, he managed to make his body awkwardly slither forward, sensitive skin sending all kinds of sensory information to his widespread nervous system. It was a slow, shuddering slither, but it was enough to get him moving.
He had no idea what he would actually look like, or if he could even look at himself in a way he could comprehend, but Matthew very desperately tried to get to the surface of the lake in front of him to try and "see" his reflection. Just getting to the lake was painstakingly difficult, any physical exercises he could have used to keep himself calm were unavailable to him, only his force of will keeping him going at this point.
He rolled over the rough ground and stones as they transitioned to grass, a wave of nausea going over him as he tried to comprehend his new sight. The awareness of things around him had evolved into something like clear sight, but his mind simply wasn’t used to this way of seeing, and it all added up to a painful experience that he didn’t know how to shut off and go on blindly.
He felt the sensations of the ground beneath him and acknowledged it, but it was all garbled and foreign, his mind struggling to bend to his new nervous system. It was extremely uncomfortable, but it wasn’t to the painful extents that his vision had affected him.
He saw that he was getting close to the lake, and his entire body locked up for a moment, a part mind revolting against the idea of seeing what he had become. Another part of his mind fought back and forced him forward, determined to see what he had become, even as it repulsed and horrified him. He felt the grass change to damp mud as he slid across it, and finally reached the water, looking into it.
What peered back at him was the disgusting mouth reflected back at him with, his body starting to convulse as he began to break down, the last vestige of calm that had kept him going failing him, his coherency breaking down, and a hacking hissing sound escaped his maw as his mind tried to access a mouth it no longer had, his screams confined to his own head.