Practical Effects

By Delphi Caldera

There’s something in the room with her. Kai is too sore to stir and terrified besides. It’s shadow extends against the whole wall and when focals blur, the whole room. It’s teeth widen to swallow her whole. Her scream is stifled by hands around her mouth - when it touches, reality pops into technicolor. All the sights and sounds and delusions of dreams are burnt up and forgotten as the scene comes back. The smell of chlorine and lemon pledge remind her of where she is. She remembers who is in the room with her - who else?

“Hiiiiii,” He coos, releasing his grip when there’s no chance of screaming, “Don’t be embarrassed, the ICU Delirium is hitting everyone tonight.”

“I thought I was back home for a second,” Kai shivers, “And one of them had gotten in.”

This was not a completely off-base association, Kai thinks, as the being known as Vitriolic Spine eases himself down onto her bed. He is something of a dead-ringer to the prey they stalk. Long, blood red hair pools up against the white sheets. His sharp claws poke holes into them without a thought.

Kai gets herself up to her elbows so as not to look entirely pathetic. That motion alone puts pressure where she should not feel it; ViSp notices.

“Can’t you come out this morning?” He raises an eyebrow in mock politeness. Poor baby.

“I’m fine,” Kai kicks him.

“Heal any slower and they might just send you home,” He chirps, barely noticing.

“That’s a funny joke.” Kai responded.

“Ain’t it?”

This morning routine is the same as all the others, but just a little less able, with a slight hitch in it’s gait. Kai strips off her hospital gown, avoiding the mirror. The medbay provides fist-sized bottles of 2-in-1, which she slathers onto her wet hair while shedding bandages. A familiar jumpsuit was left outside the bathroom door. When she’s cleared, she jogs down to the armory. Young and wrecked bodies litter the place, only kept standing from the corporate-issued drugs dropped in every coffeemaker. Mostly, the soldiers resemble herself. They’re all organic-looking with cropped hair and minor scarring.In a crowd, they would be indistinguishable from a civilian. It is only in close quarters that you notice the intricacies. The sharpened teeth. The brief glance of nictitating membranes each time they blink. The subtle but natural tone to their muscles. When they ran, it was most obvious. They had all the stamina of a pursuit predator. Once, Kai remembers, she considered this a point of pride. She would give anything to be that stupid again.

The ones that are not like her are the ones like ViSp, called Zygotes. They’re a far more experimental subgenre of super-soldiers who have no hopes of assimilating into normal society. For this reason, they are notoriously hard to bait.

Though lacking in doormat-approved pliability, they make up for it in spades when it comes to athletics - that is, actual, physical flexibility. There’s something decidedly reptilian in their movements. (Though the nondisclosure won’t reveal specifics, they stick to the story that Zygotes are merely the fullest extension of the human form. Absolutely nobody believes this.) Strong, fast, spindly, sharp -  they are the perfect killing machines

Kai finds ViSp struggling with the straps of his armor. He curses at it, then curses at her for trying to help. The armor truly is a hindrance. It limits mobility and is only the visual sort of insurance. Still, nobody else complains about it as much as ViSp does. Nobody seems to take things as personally as ViSp does.

“If you want to get used to the armor, you could try actually wearing it some time,” Kai suggests. ViSp just hisses at her.

The alarm goes off.

In Kai’s dog days, there was only ash and gray trodden grass. The only brightness came in the form of blood that slipped out from the skin or stained the ground. That too faded into dust. The dismal sight seems but a dream now; this new planet’s bursting with color. It’s as vibrant as an oil slick. Something rotten’s gotten into this place, but the way it decays is beautiful. Coral-like formations spring up from the dirt, forming intricate spirals and trim. The purple trees sway and bend, rustling blue leaves, housing cyan creatures. Pink and green flower petals swirl into a flurry as the ship descends.

From a height, the wandering Adversaries are barely visible. They blend into their surroundings, likely a consequence of the virus, not simple coincidence. The normal coloration on the sprouting monsters is red and white. These variants are like a Lisa Frank creation.

In the distance, a hill shifts.

There’s commotion. Such early activity, before they’ve even landed, is never a good size. What’s more, they’re too far away to tell what exactly is moving, whether it’s an opening or an organism.

“It is too early for this,” A soldier to the left of her complains in a pitched voice. She nods to be polite, but is not personally the type to whine. She just shifts the straps of her weapon to give them more slack. The weight of it has ceased to shock her, but it does inspire dread. The hook of the harpoon gleams in the dim light. Whale-Killer. If the hill does have eyes, she will be the one to deal with. Behemoths are her specialty.

“Hey,” ViSp reaches around from behind her to tighten her gas mask, “The spore is airborne, dummy. There’s easier ways to kill yourself.”
        She swats him away and moves to adjust it herself. The ship settles onto the ground with a bang and the doors fly open. The soldiers rush out and the hill rushes up to meet them.

        Without the ships tinted windows, the surface is so bright and moving as to be disorienting. Wind whips up the trees and flowers and the Adversaries tucked into the treeline scamper quickly towards them. The soldiers towards the back, mostly Zygotes, hold their ground against them. They’re the size of tigers, large enough to kill and determined enough to necessitate execution. Most of the soldiers will straggle back until they’re dealt with. Only a select few will push forward.

Kai takes the lead and the hill head on. It’s still at quite a distance, but each of its legs are taller than her and they carry it quickly. She squints to make out its shape - if pressed, she'd have to call it chelonian. The enormous hump on its back glints in the sun, as shiny and hard as a shell. Even as it charges, its head is tucked within. This is telling. She picks up the speed just as something sleek and quadrupedal jumps at her from the bushes.

She always feels better when the Adversaries do something clever. The fact that they might actually have a plan is the only thing that distinguishes the whole fiasco as a battle, rather than an especially overfunded culling effort. Still, not clever enough. She ducks down so that only her backplate is exposod. When the claws graze her, it makes an awful screeching sound, but she’s unharmed. More than that, the momentum throws the Adversary some several feet to her left. She does not stay around to kill it, in the same way she wouldn’t use a bazooka on a butterfly. Glancing behind her, she sees that several more Adversaries have launched from their hiding places onto the unprepared troops. She does not stay around to watch. The sound is thunderous and then suddenly it is upon her.

She curses herself, diving out of the way of an enormous foot. She’s quick enough to avoid being crushed with not enough time to say prayers. Above her, the shell is hard and impenetrable. She sees no viable clefts in its armor. As it rampages, she jogs to stay beneath, unwilling to cross the threshold of its legs or re-enter its field of view. If it distracts itself with other puny humans, she may actually stand a chance of taking it by surprise. The turtle-hill-alien suddenly lurches forward to eat someone and she takes the opportunity to cling onto its tail, scrambling her way up onto its back.

As she clears the edge of the shell onto the ridge, she sees the last of the soldier’s legs, the barest glimpse of the thing;s head. She is not quick enough to harpoon it, but her balance is good enough to creep forward, onto the crest of its neck, lying in wait.

“Hey,” ViSp calls, digging his claws into the monster’s body, forcing his way up onto the back. Kai is so startled she nearly falls off, “You’re riding it. That’s so cool.”

“Thanks,” She replies. It growls and prepares to bite again. Kai’s hand flies for the trigger.

“Hey, hey,” ViSp catches her arm, “We’re not just here to murder things, come on, we’re not murderers, we have, like, mission statements and stuff. We have to go. I’m not walking.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She asks, only then noticing the body he has in tow. It’s a victim of the Adversaries - the thick claw marks down the torso give that away. ViSp pulls out an extending wand from his pocket. There’s a barbed hook on the end of it, which he clips into the cadaver’s collarbone. The dead body, luckily, does not react.

“Carrot on a stick,” He smiles proudly. Kai thinks about pushing him off onto the ground to be trampled. Before she can decide, he extends the rod out in front of the turtle’s face. It lunches forward to snap at it, but cannot reach. ViSp maneuvers it so that they all do a wheelspin turn, almost toppling with the momentum. They’re rushed into the unknown.

        “I’m going to keep it real with you,” Kai dodges out of the wall of a tree branch, “I didn’t read the mission statement.”
        “We’re supposed to liberate the lab or something,” ViSp replies, laying down, apparently undisturbed by the creature’s rambunctious movements, “Eggheads got swarmed by the Adversaries and are running out of rations. They were preparing us to go on this whole hike through deadly forest to find them, but that’s stupid, so we’re doing this.”

        “Couldn’t they have just dropped us off at the building? Wouldn’t that be easier?” Kai frowns.

        “I don’t know. Just another stupid arbitrary thing that we aren’t supposed to question. We aren’t the scientists.” ViSp closes his eyes. Kai watches the forest fly by them.

        The only man made structure for miles comes into view. It’s ugly concrete against the lush jungle, haphazardly put together with no evident artistic counsel. Kai scoffs at it, mourning the beauty she once favored. She shakes ViSp to get his attention; he opens one bloodshot eye, narrowed in disapproval.

        “You have the brakes, sister,” He closes them. Kai sucks in a breath and crawls back towards the neck. She pulls the trigger on the harpoon gun and the world around them comes to an abrupt stop before they all tumble onto the forest floor, the dead and the living both. Kai wraps her arms around ViSp’s waist, jumping out of the way of a hurtling nuchal shell. He yelps in surprise, but doesn’t crack his skull open, which is always a plus. The turtle skids to a stop. It doesn’t move again. Kai tugs ViSp away towards the building before either of them can think too hard about it. He takes the lead, being a much more formidable opponent than she when it comes to close quarters combat. Kai’s weapon is too unwieldy, too destructive. She slides it back into its sheath as they move through the lab’s entrance.

        It’s dark inside - powerline’s been chewed through, probably. Both Kai and ViSp have spent an unfortunate amount of time in laboratories, as much as a normal kid would spend in a doctor’s office. This one has the same sterile smell and hollow sound as all the others, but the tragedy is denser. ViSp runs his claws along one of the tables. Dried blood scrapes up beneath them.

        “Liberate it?” Kai asks, “I don’t want to jinx it, but this place looks pretty deserted.”
        ViSp doesn’t respond. That alone is a problem. Wordlessly, he pushes on through the lab, towards a set of double doors in the back of the room. A strange, artificial light is cast from them. ViSp’s hand settles on them. Kai kicks it open.

        It takes them a second to even process what they’re seeing. The lights are blinding. Nothing crawls or bites or scratches. Humans huddle around in groups, handling equipment, reciting lines. Kai blinks. They’re operating cameras. They’re operating cameras.

        Everyone in the room turns to stare at them.

        “Human embryos,” Kai repeats.

        “Ain’t that something?” ViSp sips on a cheap grape juice box from the refreshments’ table.

        “I can’t believe this.”
        “It’s a much safer bet. Alien gene splicing would be too imprecise. If they stick to what they know, they make much more predictable monsters. That way crew members don’t get mauled.”
        “They deserve to get mailed,” Kai says decisively.

        “Yeah. Well,” ViSp pulls a stagehand’s laptop from a passing cart.

“And now we’re on a gag order.”

        “At least we’re out of the forces. Who would’ve thought, right?”

        “There’s...nothing we can do about this, is there?” Kai looks around as they set up the scene and arrange the Adversaries in their rightful places. Soon, the rest of the soldiers will arrive. Another round of fighting will begin. The crisis actors will be sent out. And all of it will be broadcast across space to entertain the masses.

        Kai steals a glance at the computer screen.

        “Are you seriously streaming that?”
        “What? It makes for good television.”