The Alfa

On a vast stone field flooded with an extraterrestrial green glow, an open cocoon waited. Soldiers lifted the limp figure and threw it over the flimsy side. Strong hands gently lowered the woman down until her red hair disappeared into the sticky mass. Brown eyes stared fixedly at the tattooed forearms, afraid to look at the haggard face of her husband standing near. That was the last thing she saw.       Finally, there was silence. An exciting silence before the music starts. A concert of pulses and signals resounding in every cell of the delamination body. Relief. The slime swallowed her up, filling everything with itself. The worn out suit was no longer needed. The real her was free. A lifetime of timelessness lay ahead. The body will forever be enmeshed in the enveloping pulsing walls. The flesh will crumble if the slimy captivity is opened. But the mind fused with the organic network will live long enough to glide through the capillaries and veins of the stalks. From cocoon to cocoon, looking up inside for remnants of consciousness, scraps of thoughts, fragments of memories.       Was the infestation inevitable? The once majestic, winged ones had turned into thousands of puppets under the power of the parasite. She beheld the frightening truth of the cause that happened in a painful vision. The cocoon had been her hope. The body began to decay. For centuries she had searched for the ship. Since the day when she woke up in the remains of a capsule buried underground, lying on a pile of burnt debris. More than her own cycle of life, she had wandered unknown ground. Borrowed bodies from humans were worth thanking. Hundreds years of searching had brought her only bits and pieces: charred wires, shards of negotiators, fossilized cocoon shards, and snatches of old voices. Pieces of a puzzle pointing the way. She knew there had been a catastrophe. An ancient beacon signal had reached her once. Faint and silent, but ringing with the vibrations of the threads of the energy web permeating the atmosphere. Clear to beings like her. She searched for the source. The world had finally changed to suit her. Eric had opened a path here. The carcass of the ship, ruined over the centuries, met her with a nightmare. She cut the rope. She went down to the echo of the signal. In the bloody lake, beneath piles of petrified bodies lay a broken transmitter that had fallen into the rift a millennium ago that had sent out a fuzzy etheric signal.       Then they found the hall. In the part of the deck house that was preserved under the rubble, there were machines. Receivers, navigators, decryptors. The technology of the Winged is unique. The machines were still alive, waiting for their masters. Even this little device that no one noticed. The soldiers paid no attention as she sent the message. It was made for Messengers like her. No words needed, only thoughts. Age is irrelevant. The signal would resound to the universe in all time. She is not meant to live in the conventional sense. She has paid too much.       There are many deaths behind her fragile shoulders. But she was the last one. She made her stop. She took her mangled body out of the car. And entered herself to the world like the new Rachel King. An incredibly lucky investment. Couldn't have been delayed, being so close to the temple. She forced a soldier to fire a missile, which shot down the helicopter that had pierced the canopy of the temple. She wanted to survive. To see what would happen. But the parasite had damaged her real flesh. The flames of the explosion were approaching the cocoon. She could feel the searing heat. Rachel would never be found again.