Prophets

“Freeze!” someone yelled at her. “Drop the shotgun!”

Tetsami glanced behind her and saw a trio of Sheldon’s security goons leveling more shotguns at her. She spread her arms, holding the gun by the barrel to keep them from freaking out and shooting her.

“I’m not your biggest problem,” she said.

One of the other guards had already come to that realization. He was looking past her, where the egg/seed was. “Fathers save us,” he whispered.

Klaxons sounded throughout the compound. Someone in the stellar security staff must have just realized that they were down three mining lasers and one prisoner.

The first guard decided to stay on task, though. “Drop the gun, Flynn, and get on the ground. I will shoot you.”

“Do what he says, Gram.”

“Don’t rush things, kiddo.”

She did her best to remain calm and move slowly. No need to add to the chaos. She slowly knelt down, arms out, still holding the shotgun by the barrel.

“I said, drop the fucking gun!”

She carefully laid the gun next to her as she lay facedown on the ground.

One of his friends yelled, “Holy shit!” and started pumping shells toward the crater.

A distraction was a distraction, and Tetsami used it to roll away into a drainage ditch next to one of the prefab buildings. More shots exploded above and behind her, but none came near her. She scrambled out of the mud and crawled up to the lip of the ditch to look over back toward the crater.

The floating black seed was leaking. Black poured out of it, spilling into the crater below it, oily tendrils that seemed almost tears in the fabric of space.

“Why the hell are they shooting at it?” Tetsami whispered.

“Do you see the same thing I do? It ATE those mining lasers.”

“Yeah, and a shotgun shell is going to do what, exactly?”

The three guards must have come to the same conclusion, as the firing ceased. They stood, facing the crater, as the egg dissolved into a viscous pool in the crater.

“Did they shoot a hole in it?” Flynn sounded confused.

Tetsami shook her head. Whatever was happening, it was not that simple. The black pool in the crater was no longer the black nonstuff that had made the egg. She could see reflective highlights and ripples. There was something there.

No. Tell me you aren’t going to do that, she thought as one of the guards knelt down and poked the substance with the barrel of his shotgun.

Black tendrils shot up the barrel, crawling across the man’s arm before he could react. His two companions stumbled back as a net of shiny black threads wrapped every surface of his body. He didn’t move, aside from a tense vibration. His eyes bulged as the net seemed to tighten, the threads forming it thinning.

For a moment it gave every appearance that the net was going to crush the man alive. Then the threads constricted and pulled into his flesh. His head snapped back and he released a strangled gurgling sound. His body shook as the tendrils withdrew along his arm and down the shotgun.

He collapsed backward as the last black filament let go of the gun barrel. He fell into a fetal position on the ground, hyperventilating. The parts of his skin that Tetsami could see bore a fine webbing of welts that corresponded to where the fluid web had penetrated.

“What the hell was that?”