Transformation

The ship cradled her now, its pulsing tendrils threading through her veins, knitting her to its will. Her skin, once smooth and pink with the flush of life, now rippled unnaturally, the surface splitting and healing in glistening patterns of sinew and bark. She clutched at her belly, gasping, as it convulsed violently beneath her trembling fingers.

The humming deepened into a guttural chant, vibrating the very air, as the ship called forth its brood.

A sickening crack echoed through the bridge as her spine arched backward, hips dislocating with grotesque ease, making room for what was to come. Her mouth fell open in a silent scream, but no sound escaped—only thick, translucent mucus that oozed down her chin, carrying with it the alien scent of rot and bloom.

Birth. The word reverberated through her splintering mind like a command.

Her swollen belly pulsed outward in great spasms, the skin becoming paper-thin, webbed with purplish-black veins that throbbed hungrily. Something moved just beneath the surface—claws scraping against the tender inner walls of her flesh, angular heads battering against their fleshy prison.

She sobbed and writhed, the tendrils anchoring her firmly against the bulkhead. The captain—no, the first of the changed—stood sentinel over her, whispering guttural encouragements in a language she should not have understood, but now did.

With a sickening rip, the first rupture opened below her navel—a vertical, gaping maw splitting her abdomen in two. Blood, thick and iridescent, spilled onto the trembling floor, hissing as it touched the living metal. Her bones cracked outward, reforming into a cradle.

Something slick and glistening pushed through the wound—elongated, eyeless, with mouths that gnashed hungrily at the stale air. A low, gurgling coo escaped her ravaged throat as the first newborn slithered free, dragging mucous-slicked tendrils behind it.

More followed, writhing and squirming, each birth accompanied by a fresh wave of wet, rending agony that bled into euphoria. Her body reshaped with every spawn—her thighs splitting into thorny, bark-like protrusions to stabilize her, her fingers elongating into wicked, rootlike appendages that dug into the walls to anchor her for the final deliveries.

Her breasts, swollen and veined with alien life, split at the nipples, blossoming into obscene flowers that exhaled spores into the air. Each spasm of her new form filled the bridge with dense, musky pollen, thick enough to coat every surface in a living sheen.

The newborns crawled across the bridge, keening and squealing, blindly seeking connection. Tendrils sprouted from their spines, latching onto the walls, feeding, growing, becoming part of the ship.

She smiled, or at least, something approximating a smile twisted her ruined lips.

Where once her body had been a prison of flesh and bone, now she was endless. A factory of life. A garden of horror.

The ship—her new body—shuddered in ecstasy, sensing the fresh pulse of its brood echoing through its corridors.

More, the voice inside her moaned. More.

And she, herald and mother both, obeyed.