SSSD - Ask Birgitte

Mouth dry, Ro kneels, peering down.

“Birgitte?” she whispers. “Are you OK?”

The eye blinks. Ro thinks fast, trying to be calm. Her mastery of Norwegian isn’t enough for her to properly ask what she wants to ask, or anything even approaching it. She does what she can: <Who is bad?>

She just needs a name. Instead of a verbal reply, there’s a soft, sibilant noise like a lot of cicada wings or even a rattlesnake. Puzzled, she gets down lower, pointing the light. The beam catches on shiny, tangled, twisted flesh.

She opens her mouth and then shrieks as the board beside her cracks.

Frozen, Ro can only look over with wide eyes as a fleshy appendage rises into view. As she stares, its bulbous head slowly unfolds, revealing flowerlike petals of skin and teeth.

She’s suddenly yanked back by Julie as the appendage snaps forward to where Ro’s face was a second ago. They spill to the freezing floor, boards cracking and groaning. A piercing noise rises up from underneath them. Ro and Julie scramble backward as the others arrive at a run.

“She’s down there! It’s not her!” Ro says breathlessly.

Golda swears in Norwegian.

<Under the floor,> Julie says, although, like everyone else, she’s staring at the dripping, brownish flower thing, which pivots as though taking them all in. Linda lunges to her right, falling to her knees and seizing a tall, metal gas can. She fumbles with gloved hands, trying to unscrew the cap.

Niv waves Golda back, holding up her pistol.

A board snaps and a segmented limb shoots from below, reaching all the way to the ceiling.

<My God,> Julie murmurs. She and Ro are still on the ground, unable to do more than stare uncomprehendingly.

<Where is Birgitte?> Marit demands.

“It’s not her,” Ro repeats helplessly as the thing under the floor lets out another howl.

Linda gets the gas can open and hauls it forward.

<Wait,> Golda says, seeing what she’s doing. Linda ignores her and dumps the can over, leaping back as another limb explodes from the floor, reaching for her. Gasoline spills onto the boards and into the crawlspace below.

<Niv, light it!>

Niv hesitates. There’s no good place to start a fire in this outpost, but this would be high on the list of worst possible places. Linda doesn’t seem to care, and she’s the only one doing anything.

In a panic, Ro pats her pocket and comes up with a flare. She slides it across the floor to Linda, who pops it and throws it without hesitation. Everyone’s pushed back by the sudden bloom of heat as the flames growl. The creature screams and the three exposed limbs flail. More boards snap as it tries to haul itself out of the crawlspace, enveloped in flames. A writhing shape rises into view for only a moment before it drops back down, twitching and burning.

Niv turns from the blaze and hurries away. Julie leaps up as well. Ro comes to her senses and joins them, barely catching the fire extinguisher that Niv throws her. She pulls the pin and joins the others in dousing the smoking, foul-smelling mess in the wreckage of the floor.

A minute later the basement is full of smoke and fumes, making everything hazy. They’re gathered around the charred hole. It’s impossible to make out any detail in the burned remains except the vague shapes of the jagged limbs. Smoke swirls around them as they stand in silence. Ro looks at Julie beside her. Marit appears to be in a state of shock. Niv’s gun hangs at her side, forgotten while Golda and Linda still hold fire extinguishers.

SSSD

“It replaced my rat. It replaced Birgitte. Or that is what it tried to do,” Linda says, speaking in English for Ro’s benefit.

They’re back in the rec room upstairs, and nearly everyone holds a glass of vodka. Marit’s hand shakes as she gulps it. By the door, a pile of sweaters and jackets reeks of smoke.

<What the fuck are you talking about?> The words come out sounding faint and a little aimless. Marit looks truly pitiful as she stares at Linda for answers.

<Marit, we have been studying metal shavings in the ice for nine months. The metal is not from Earth. Neither was that tissue sample,> Julie adds, flicking a glance at a sour-looking Linda.

Marit says nothing. Instead, she perches on the end of the sofa and clutches her glass with both hands.

Ro looks at Niv, who has her back turned. She’s at the window, gazing out at the storm.

Golda hasn’t taken her eyes off her glass.

“What did it want?” Ro asks.

“To survive, I expect,” Linda replies. As she speaks, her eyes go from Ro to Julie. Then from Julie to Marit.

<How long were you alone with her?> she asks Marit.

<What?> Marit replies.

“Move away from her,” Linda says to Ro.

“What? Why?”

Marit gets to her feet, her expression hardening.

“Ro,” Linda says firmly.

Ro raises her hands and takes a step to her right.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

<If Birgitte was this thing, why was she outside? Why was she hiding like that?> Julie asks.

<Birgitte was human when we found her. It got to her in the infirmary,> Linda says.

Niv turns away from the window. <What are you suggesting?>

<One of us isn’t who she looks like,> Linda replies.

<Linda,> Golda warns.

<Hear her out,> Marit cuts in.

<Birgitte broke into my lab. She broke containment and it escaped. Someone was exposed or attacked after that.> As she speaks, Linda sweeps the room with her gaze. <Birgitte saw something.>

Ro feels a chill as they stand there, the storm howling outside the building. The lights flicker. She looks sidelong at Golda. Linda’s reconstruction of events seems plausible if thin. But what if it wasn’t Linda who broke into the lab? SNB.

“What’s SNB?” she asks.

The others look at her.

“SNB. S. N. B. What’s that stand for?”

Several looks are exchanged.

Julie cocks her head. “Swiss National Bank? Perhaps?”

Ro licks her lips. Should she tell the others what she saw on Golda’s computer? Or keep quiet? Things are tense. It might be dangerous to cast suspicion on someone with so little to go on. And she might make an enemy.

Speak up? Or stay quiet?