For your enjoyment: A SF story

[Deckard1973]

"What do we do now?"
"Make her disappear, of course."
"Not possible. She is the granddaughter to a senior Senator, who just so happens to sit on the Intelligence oversight committee."
"She is that Kolsch?"
"Yes.”
“Damnit.”
“Her disappearing, as you suggest, would not bode well for us or the bureau. Too many questions. I would not even risk an accident. He is in the know of a number of sensitive programs and operations and knows how to ask uncomfortable questions. Too many friends in high places. In control of or direction of too much money."
Through the one way mirror, a young woman sat in a interrogation room. Her brown hair pulled back into a pony tail, her dark blue FBI shirt was sweat and dirt stained. Hands folded before her, she seemed to stare at a nothing. She may have been in an interrogation room, but her mind was someplace else.
"She is taking it better than most."
"You think?"
He leaned forward for a moment, studying the woman.
"Recruit her," he announced suddenly and stood up.
"Is that wise?"
"Do we have another choice? We sit on this," he nodded his head in the direction of the young woman, "Much longer and people are going to notice. As you pointed out, uncomfortable questions may arise we cannot afford right now. No. Recruit her. She maybe a valuable asset. In more ways than one."
He walked out.
The remaining man picked up a hardline phone, punched in an extension, "Where are you? Get down to interrogation room 6 to pick up your new team member."
He hung up without waiting for a response.


The door opened unexpectedly, but Allison did not flinch. She did not move. She would not give them that satisfaction. Allison still did not know who they were. But they would not be happy when she was done with them.
Slowly, with a bored expression, she looked up to see a middle aged agent, smiling broadly.
“Agent Allison Kolsch, I am agent Ken Anderson, pleased to meet you,” he said with an extended hand. “Big fan of your grandfathers. Voted for him, twice in every election!”
Despite her desire to remain non-plussed, she gave him a 'are you serious' look, but ignored his hand.
He laughed, hands up in mock defensiveness, “Kidding! Honest!”
Allison gave him a another look, he choose to ignore as he made his way to the door, opened it and offered her to walk through it in a most gentleman like fashion. She stared. Then got up, again determined not to let this bureaucrat functionary win her over into not filing a formal complaint.
If this was the game they wanted to play, she would go along, long enough for her to let them tie their own rope, she thought darkly.
They walked down the hallway toward the elevators, him in the lead, she stared straight ahead.
“So, agent Kolsch, may I call you Allison?”
“No.”
“Great! So Allison,” he continued with out skipping a beat as they entered the elevator, “I would like to welcome you to the team!”
He was still smiling. He reminded her of a game show host.
As the doors closed, she asked still bored tone, “What team?”
“Why, the team you have been assigned to!”
“If you think a new assignment will convince me to not file a formal complaint-”
“And what would that complaint hold? That the bureau has held you incommunicado for 12 hours against your will? With no legal representation? No explanation? Or that you witnessed an enormous white slug ooze out of a suspects nose?”
Her head snapped around to face him, her eyes wide. The game show host smile was gone. There was a hard edge to his voice and a seriousness in his stare that she immediately knew he was telling the truth.
“You,” she started, “Have seen them too?”
“Since before you were born Allison,” he said quietly.
“Before you were born.”

Ten minutes later, Allison sat in what could barely be called a conference room.
“Team, please meet our latest addition, Agent Allison Kolsch,” Ken announced to the other five agents seated around the tiny table.
Allison was confused. They were all smiling. This was not a normal bureau section.
“Allison, may I introduce you to the Alternative Investigations Team or AIT.”
“Pronounced 'Aay-It',” offered one of the team.
“Quite right, Greg. Alternative Investigations Team investigates into things that fall outside the realm of orthodox bureau investigations.”
Allison stared at him questioningly.
He frowned.
“Have you ever seen the TV show The X-Files?”
Allison rolled her eyes. Of course every bureau agent has either seen or hear of the X-Files. More then a few non- bureau friends and family have asked her the boorish question if The X-Files really existed.
“Ah! So you have! Good! Well,” he walked around the table,
“We are the real world equivalent of The X-Files.”
“I am sorry, but what?”
“Come now Allison,” he said as he walked around the table. “What have you seen that makes it an impossibility?”
“I-,” she stopped as she recalled what she had seen. The white slug thing come out of his nose. Involuntarily she shuddered. The thing on the ceiling.
“What happened Allison,” he asked softly.

They looked through high magnification spotting scopes into the warehouse below.
Six people walked around, almost aimlessly, picking up boxes and moving them to new piles.
Drugs or weapons she could not be sure.
Then two of them seemed to come together to have a conference. All the others stopped, and stood motionless. The two did not speak. They just stood an arms length from the other.
“What the hell are they saying,” she asked the tech next to her.
“No idea. They are not saying anything from what I can tell.” He adjusted the gain on the directional microphones.
“What the hell are they doing then.”
“No idea,” he said again. She gave him a look.
“Thanks for the help. Gawd this just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
After three days of surveillance, boxes coming from a ship from South America from a source they still had not tracked down. Drugs was the likely cargo. But some of the boxes where of odd shapes. Or hinted of massive weight, requiring forklifts to be loaded up on trucks. She was hoping to see someone of importance show up. But they all seemed like low level labor than middle or upper management of a drug cartel.
After ten minutes, they broke and all of them began to move with purpose. What that purpose was, no one could say.
After another ten minutes of what seemed to be direction-less action, she ordered the assault squad in. Either interrogation, their cell phones or maybe a computer will give them more leads then just sitting here watching them mill about moving and loading boxes.
The flash bangs detonated sending shockwaves through the room. Nothing should have been standing after those.
But something was.
An intense flash of light. Then another. But what from? Not more additional flash bang, as no bang followed. And the flash was a weird blue rather than white. But there were screams coming through her earphones.
It was the assault team, both in pain and orders. But it was too chaotic for her to follow. The rapid weapons fire did not help.
Allison ran to the surveillance vans back door and busted out, reaching for her sidearm running for the door the assault team just entered.
Two members of the assault squad lay before her, mangled, and twisted. Eyes open in shock. Both lifeless.
“Crap,” was all she could say.
Allison hesitated, feeling for the first time a twinge of fear, but shoved it aside. She pressed on, despite the other agents request for back up before they proceed deeper into the warehouse. He fell far behind her as she ran forward.
Her flashlight panned around showing the fallen assault squad member on the floor. She stared. His armor had a gaping hole bigger than a fist, burnt and smoldering. Then she caught the smell of burnt skin and flesh. Internal organs and gore visible. One hand covered her mouth as she fought the urge to gag. The urge controlled, barely, she suddenly felt very exposed with only her sidearm for protection.
Allison was just beginning to re-think the need for back up, and was about to make a retreat when something up ahead moved.
“Halt!” she ordered, sidearm aimed at it, the wrist of the hand holding the flashlight supporting her strong arm.
It was one of the people she watched moving boxes. He stopped. His head twisted around. With slow awkward movements, he came to his knees facing her. The bright white light illuminated the blood staining his blue cotton button up shirt from half a dozen bullet hits to his chest. His eyes were vacant from shock. How could he still be moving?
His mouth opened but the sound seemed to come from deep within his chest. A kind of moan.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up, the sweat running down her back went cold. A new kind of fear welled up in her.
His head tilted back, and blood began to run out his nose, adding a new stain to his shirt.
“DONT MOVE!” The fear in her voice bordered on hysterical.
Something crawled out of his nose, and fell to the floor. It was a blood covered white slug, as long as her finger, fatter then her thumb. It squirmed to right itself.
He fell over in a heap.
It reared up, its leggs wiggling toward her, and it made a mewling noise. The slug skittered toward her faster then it should have been possible. She back pedaled, and fired three times, the third round, making contact, blowing the slug in half in a red and black smear.
Allison fell on her backside breathing hard, wide-eyed, her sidearm still pointed at the remains of the slug, but was shaking badly.
Something moved above her. Out of fear, she pointed up and fired five rounds wildly.
At nothing.
The flashlight darted around at the ceiling.
It seemed to be a mirage, something there but not there. She almost could see it better if she but did not look directly at it.
It was not moving but she knew it was still there as she moved her eyes around it, almost seeing it but not quite.
Finally it moved and shifted along the celling. Now she could see it better but only in brief pieces and parts. At an open skylight, the moonlight fully illuminating it. It had a insect head, and body. Long claw like fingers, a segment head and body. The pincer mouth moved and clicked. Black, oval, alien eyes stared at her. Then it turned and was out the window.

“An assassin bug,” one of the team responded when Allison finished.
“What,” she asked quietly.
“It is a tier two bug. But nasty,” he went into bureau briefing mode. “The bugs have a hierarchy that we dont quite fully understand. You see-”
“Can you shut the **** up for a moment,” she commanded, one hand upraised, “And please explain to me in plain english what the **** happened?”
The agent looked to agent Anderson for direction. He looked annoyed.
“Fine. Give it to her. Lets see if she can handle it.”
“So, here it is. What you saw was a Brain Grub. It is a three to four inch maggot like bug that goes up through the nose of it's victim, attaches to the frontal lobe, and turns the victim into, for lack of better terms, a zombie,” he said flatly.
Allison blinked.
“I am sorry, did you just say zombie?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
She looked back at agent Anderson, it was a pleading look.
He understood the confusion and the implied ramifications of what she was hearing.
“What you saw,” he started, “Was a small, alien creature that has occupied a human host, to control it for its own purposes. What those purposes are, we are here to investigate.”
“And the assassin bug?”
“The Brain Grubs are a first tier bug. They require a higher level bug to control them, give them orders and direction. That is where the Assassin Bug comes in. You stumbled on something.”
Allison stared at the table for a moment comprehending what was just said.
“Alien bug?”
“Yes. Alien bug. I will let agent Greg brief you on that. But first, coffee!”
The tension ran out of the room, as everyone got up and made their way for the door. Agent Anderson sat down on the table next to Allison.
“Not what you were expecting?”
“No. Not even remotely. Alien. Slugs. Bugs. Who else knows,” she asked suddenly.
Agent Anderson paused and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling.
“Maybe fifty. Not many more. Your grandfather might.”
“What?”
“He is a senior Senator on the Intelligence Committee. I am sure he has some, if not all knowledge. To justify our funding of course.”
She looked at him for a hint of humor, but none was there.
“When Greg comes back, we will give you the whole story. And it is quite a story.”

[Deckard1973]

Rick Carter stared at the computer screen. Five minutes ago he stared at it with disgust.
Why was he here, reviewing code?
Almost a year ago he earned a promotion from software coder to middle management. Getting there was not easy. Not only professionally but personally as well.
Rick was hired right out of college with Micron-System Inc. when the company was still small. Initially he loved his job, coding new software. The company was going in radical new directions, new ideas, the creativity was amazing. After four years he was still a entry level coder. His desire to push the code further was met with resistance from not only the middle management but the upper management and rumor had it even the senior partners were resisting his ideas.
Oddly his resume out on the web on job sites resulted in no leads.
Rick became despondent. Depression set in. He turned to drinking heavily. He ignored his wife and son. He gained thirty pounds in less than six months.
The day before the July 4th weekend, he left his suburban home to go to work but called in sick.
He drove north into the Adirondaks to his college friend Zack's cabin.
Zack was the modern day equivalent of a hippie. Rick referred to Zack as stupid smart. Zack, a physics major, could of work for any university in the country, public or private. He could have had a job with NASA or NOAA for the asking. But Zack opted to live some kind of weird hunter gather and subsistence farming lifestyle in the wilds of upstate NY with his common law wife, Mary-Beth.
After the shock of seeing his college friend at his doorstep, Zack offered Rick some homebrew beer as they sat next to the lake.
Rick then spilled his guts, for two hours and six beers later he finally slumped in the camp chair, his bare feet still in the water.
Zack took Rick's phone, drove into town and placed a call to Susan to inform her where Rick was and that he was alright. Zack made no other promises.
For the next few days, Rick helped Zack and Mary-Beth gather roots, tubers, hunt and skin game from the woods. Other less native or more delicate vegetables were gather from the raised beds gardens.
Every night they spent by the lake side around a small fire, drinking home brew.
The third night, Rick was once again lamenting his situation, when Mary-Beth stood up, walked over and slapped Rick.
It was not just a mild sting kind of slap. But a whip his head around, sober him up right then and there kind of slap.
Mary-Beth then went off on him about how selfish he was being. How he was a son-of a ***** for putting Susan and Jack through all this. Mary-Beth lecture him for nearly an hour.
In the end, despite the hour, Rick called Susan to inform her he would be home the next day. And things would be better.
And they where.
Rick lost weight, paid attention to his wife and son. He followed the companies vision without question, earning him his promotion.
Life was good.
But he stared at this code, brought to his attention from one of his subordinates, Carrol.
Carrol was a very good coder. Rick considered himself fortunate he had her on his team. Only because he thought she may rival his own coding capabilities did he agree to review the new code Carrol was to incorporate into their latest and largest contract with the Department of Energy.
Carrol's email mentioned some anomalies. Five minutes ago, Rick would of considered her concerns as nothing more then a coder looking to make a name for themselves.
Five minutes later, reviewing the code, Rick would of readily agree with Carrol.
Something was amiss.