Jahdeen
Nerf Herder
Inner Sanctum Nobility
"And you're absolutely certain that it needs to be done this way?" Jonah asked tentatively while scribbling down rough sentences in his notebook.
"Yes," Sergeant Malcolm replied, eyes unmoving from the path ahead of him. As the two walked side-by-side down the hallway of the facility, stark white sodium lamps buzzed incessantly like a swarm of insects. The rhythmic clacking of shoes halted, and the Sergeant tapped in an eight-digit code on a metal keypad, which opened a high-security door leading to a rigorously decontaminated sector. Two others inside wore headphones while staring intently at their computers, tirelessly running numbers and data on a subject that Jonah had yet to adequately understand.
"We've had a few others attempt to communicate with this thing, but both of the subjects treated it like an interrogation as I ordered. Being heavily armed and guarded didn't do a thing."
Jonah glanced down at himself, worriedly noting his lack of musculature or attire suited for flexibility. He envied the Sergeant, who donned military-grade armor with a rifle strapped to his back. His curiosity quickly began to shift, morphing into nervous flickers of tension that wracked his nerves and muscles. The sealed double-doors inside the current room drew his attention even more. Judging by the caution stripes running along the middle, this was going to be something beyond his usual research.
"And you think I'm a better fit?" Jonah asked, craning his neck to look up at the man who had enlisted him to be here in the first place--which, like everything else today, was to remain top-secret. "I'm assuming because of my background as a field biologist?"
"I don't think you're a better fit," Sergeant Malcolm corrected bluntly, motioning to one of the computer assistants to power up the lights of the holding cell. "But the research team that's been analyzing Subject M do. I'll admit, your expertise is impressive, but I doubt you've ever dealt with anything as aggressive as this... thing. For your sake and mine, I hope you yield more fruitful results than our previous attempts."
Jonah opened his mouth to protest, but the breath shot wordlessly out as a guard placed a burly hand on his upper back, ushering him to the slowly opening security doors of the cell. Immediately, the scent of heavy-duty cleaning spray assaulted his nostrils, enhancing the vague nausea he was already fighting. He felt his back pocket with his free hand, relieved that the plastic bag he'd been given was still there. He turned around, met with the unblinking eyes of Malcolm, whose expression carried something almost close to grieving.
"What happened to the last subjects?"
"Do you have a strong stomach?"
Jonah swallowed. "Depends on the day."
The Sergeant chewed his lower lip in disapproval. "Then I'll tell you if you make it out."
The sliver of the room still visible closed off with the double doors, just in time for Jonah to realize he was nearly fighting a panic attack. "If I make it out," he muttered, fishing a small earpiece out of his coat pocket. Another item given to him by the investigation team, so they could hear and record findings and observances as he witnessed them happen. What those occurrences would specifically be, he'd little idea, but his drive to find out diminished by the second.
Especially when the wall across from the door lifted, revealing a room seemingly fit for an asylum patient, and the smell of something recently deceased wafted in.
He bit back his hesitation to the best of his ability, taking slow, tedious steps, eyes darting around the room. There seemed nothing remarkable or of note--this was, without competition, the blandest space in the facility yet, like a hospital room stripped of anything visually interesting. Stark white walls, slate grey tile floor, a distinct chill from an air conditioning unit. In the center of the room, a plain table sat with an office chair. A second seat laid knocked over to the side, apparently altered by whatever was in this room.
As his ears atoned to his new surroundings, Jonah had a strange feeling that this organism was the source of the unpleasantly wet squelching sounds coming from behind the table. Urging his body to move, his leg inched forward, and he reached out to grasp the back of the chair, gently shifting it back. The creaking noise that followed evidently alerted the creature, who raised its unsightly head from under the table.
Jonah nearly wretched.
Before him was something almost vaguely humanoid, but with features far too alien to classify it anything close to the primate species. Moist flesh colored fish-belly pinkish white covered its body, from the hairless top of its head to the slender muscles of its long neck. A maw full of needle teeth protruded in the center of the face, overtaking the space where eyes and nose would be on a human. Instead of visible ears, its baseball-sized black shark-like eyes were slotted on the sides of the head. A slender hand raised from beneath the table, revealing a dismembered human foot, evidently the source of the congealed blood that dripped down the specimen's lipless mouth, running down like grease from a hamburger patty.
Naturally, Jonah's prey instincts kicked in, but fight and flight came to a standstill, paralyzing his body, no matter how much his mind screamed at it to run. The creature--"Subject M," as Sergeant Malcolm had called it--craned its head to the left, staring at Jonah with a dark eye, then to the right, doing the same with the other side of its head. While the human exhaled shakily, Subject M shifted forward, setting down the severed limb it held, amiably glancing around before it focused on the new arrival.
"You can sit."
And suddenly, Jonah's fear melded with fascination. Though slow, and through a voice like a bear with its throat clogged with gelatin, Subject M had spoken perfect English. In response, Jonah eased himself into his seat, though his limbs remained strung tight like strings on a guitar.
"Uh... h-hello," he mumbled, eyes twinkling with confusion and interest in equal measure.
"Greetings," Subject M said in reply, spraying droplets of blood onto the table as it spoke a second time. Strangely, its lips made no visible motion. Behind rows of razor teeth, hints of a potential secondary mouth could be seen. Jonah tried to peer into it, utterly starstruck with disbelief. Subject M already was proving to be a wonder of nature, albeit an unsightly one to human eyes.
"Hey. Hi. Good morning. Good night."
Jonah's heart nearly jumped out of his throat upon realizing he'd spaced out with unspoken questions--scientific inquiries that, while important, might be impolite to ask on a first meeting with an intelligent species. He reached up and adjusted his glasses, clearing his throat. "Yes, hello. I'm sorry, I just... I'm a little surprised that you can speak our language."
"No sorry," Subject M gurgled, picking its gums with one of its claws. "You do not fight. You welcome. The others fight. The others not welcome."
Jonah quirked a brow, forgetting about his notes entirely, absorbed in this chance to interact. "The others--"
"Angry. Meant hurt. Prey challenges. Prey devoured."
Feeling the urge to pull out the barf bag, Jonah leaned back from the table by a few degrees but maintained eye contact with the creature. "Others like me?"
"Mm. Mostly." Subject M snapped out its limber arm, flesh clinging tightly to the bone, and grasped Jonah's wrist, holding his forearm up to its eye. It seemed to ignore the staggered, panicked breaths of its guest, much more interested in his structure than his well-being. "But more meat. You are light snack."
Jonah tugged his arm free, and Subject M let go. Aware of animal behaviors, he made note of the creature's lack of clear signs of impending attack. No aggressive change in posture, nothing seemed to stand on end, and it seemed to be content to nibble on the human limb it had already been crunching on--though he tried vehemently to avoid looking at that last part. Which was rather difficult when it raised the foot again and took a hearty bite, pooling more blood down its bare, bony chest.
Jonah cleared his throat, shifting his posture forward. "Do you have a name you would like to be called by?"
Subject M responded with a series of shrill chitters and clicks that seemed loud enough to shatter glass.
Jonah ducked and covered his ears. "Now... I-I don't believe I have the ability to call you that. It's simply not in our dialect."
"What they call me?" Subject M asked, crudely pointing to the door.
"Subject M."
"Subject M... I am M. Call me M."
Jonah offered a polite smile and a nod, finding the conversation becoming stranger by the second, but he understood that it wasn't M's fault. "Now, M, I don't know where you're from, but--"
"Up there." M pointed to the ceiling, and Jonah's puzzled eyes followed.
"Up there?"
Jonah's earpiece buzzed, and a tiny voice played in his ear. "Subject M was found near a meteor crash. We believe he comes from a different planet entirely."
Jonah blinked. I'm talking to a fucking alien.
"Now, M, I hate to tell you this, but I have to: you cannot just go around killing and eating people."
M cocked its fleshy head to an almost comical angle. "Why not?"
Appalled by such a question, Jonah rubbed his temples, fighting a growing headache from all the stress. "You just... you can't. See, we--us humans, I mean--have a system that lets us live with each other without killing each other all the time. Even though you're not a human, M, I'm afraid that won't exclude you from the rules we have here. If people found out that you tore someone's foot off and ate it, you'd probably be hunted down and killed."
"Part of hunt," M replied, eyes seeming to darken, its thin arms crossed. "We are hunters. We see prey. We chase prey. Kill prey. If we challenge each other, fight. Killed loses fight. Winner becomes leader. Winner gains power. Winner gets meat. I need eat meat. Lots of meat. Others challenge M. I fight others. Others lose. Others get meat eaten."
Jonah swallowed, holding his hands in front of him in protest. "For your own sake, M, I would avoid saying anything about eating other people's meat."
M sulked, sinking down in its chair, dropping the severed foot with an audible plop. As it did so, Jonah eyed it with something like sympathy, imagining being in M's place. Separated from home--an entire planet--with a new species that did nothing but confine him and treat him like a test subject. The thought was enough to spark inspiration; perhaps working with those who captured him could yield better results, lest M be slaughtered for its bloody actions. This was a one in a lifetime chance for both of them.
Two chirps sounded in Jonah's ear, signaling that his time was up. He stood up and pushed the table in, hesitating, then spoke again.
"M... if you have no way back home, perhaps we can find you a place here. I don't know where that place is yet, but..."
He sighed, out of words, unsure of where this would go. There were people out there in grave danger if this carnivorous killing machine wasn't assigned some beneficial purpose on Earth. Jonah turned, stepping into the decontamination chamber, and watched the wall begin to lower.
"Man!"
M sat upright now, upper body slumped atop the desk, beady black eyes glistening, pleading to Jonah, who stared back, listening.
"Come back again later. Am hungry for meat. But am also hungry for friend."
"Yes," Sergeant Malcolm replied, eyes unmoving from the path ahead of him. As the two walked side-by-side down the hallway of the facility, stark white sodium lamps buzzed incessantly like a swarm of insects. The rhythmic clacking of shoes halted, and the Sergeant tapped in an eight-digit code on a metal keypad, which opened a high-security door leading to a rigorously decontaminated sector. Two others inside wore headphones while staring intently at their computers, tirelessly running numbers and data on a subject that Jonah had yet to adequately understand.
"We've had a few others attempt to communicate with this thing, but both of the subjects treated it like an interrogation as I ordered. Being heavily armed and guarded didn't do a thing."
Jonah glanced down at himself, worriedly noting his lack of musculature or attire suited for flexibility. He envied the Sergeant, who donned military-grade armor with a rifle strapped to his back. His curiosity quickly began to shift, morphing into nervous flickers of tension that wracked his nerves and muscles. The sealed double-doors inside the current room drew his attention even more. Judging by the caution stripes running along the middle, this was going to be something beyond his usual research.
"And you think I'm a better fit?" Jonah asked, craning his neck to look up at the man who had enlisted him to be here in the first place--which, like everything else today, was to remain top-secret. "I'm assuming because of my background as a field biologist?"
"I don't think you're a better fit," Sergeant Malcolm corrected bluntly, motioning to one of the computer assistants to power up the lights of the holding cell. "But the research team that's been analyzing Subject M do. I'll admit, your expertise is impressive, but I doubt you've ever dealt with anything as aggressive as this... thing. For your sake and mine, I hope you yield more fruitful results than our previous attempts."
Jonah opened his mouth to protest, but the breath shot wordlessly out as a guard placed a burly hand on his upper back, ushering him to the slowly opening security doors of the cell. Immediately, the scent of heavy-duty cleaning spray assaulted his nostrils, enhancing the vague nausea he was already fighting. He felt his back pocket with his free hand, relieved that the plastic bag he'd been given was still there. He turned around, met with the unblinking eyes of Malcolm, whose expression carried something almost close to grieving.
"What happened to the last subjects?"
"Do you have a strong stomach?"
Jonah swallowed. "Depends on the day."
The Sergeant chewed his lower lip in disapproval. "Then I'll tell you if you make it out."
The sliver of the room still visible closed off with the double doors, just in time for Jonah to realize he was nearly fighting a panic attack. "If I make it out," he muttered, fishing a small earpiece out of his coat pocket. Another item given to him by the investigation team, so they could hear and record findings and observances as he witnessed them happen. What those occurrences would specifically be, he'd little idea, but his drive to find out diminished by the second.
Especially when the wall across from the door lifted, revealing a room seemingly fit for an asylum patient, and the smell of something recently deceased wafted in.
He bit back his hesitation to the best of his ability, taking slow, tedious steps, eyes darting around the room. There seemed nothing remarkable or of note--this was, without competition, the blandest space in the facility yet, like a hospital room stripped of anything visually interesting. Stark white walls, slate grey tile floor, a distinct chill from an air conditioning unit. In the center of the room, a plain table sat with an office chair. A second seat laid knocked over to the side, apparently altered by whatever was in this room.
As his ears atoned to his new surroundings, Jonah had a strange feeling that this organism was the source of the unpleasantly wet squelching sounds coming from behind the table. Urging his body to move, his leg inched forward, and he reached out to grasp the back of the chair, gently shifting it back. The creaking noise that followed evidently alerted the creature, who raised its unsightly head from under the table.
Jonah nearly wretched.
Before him was something almost vaguely humanoid, but with features far too alien to classify it anything close to the primate species. Moist flesh colored fish-belly pinkish white covered its body, from the hairless top of its head to the slender muscles of its long neck. A maw full of needle teeth protruded in the center of the face, overtaking the space where eyes and nose would be on a human. Instead of visible ears, its baseball-sized black shark-like eyes were slotted on the sides of the head. A slender hand raised from beneath the table, revealing a dismembered human foot, evidently the source of the congealed blood that dripped down the specimen's lipless mouth, running down like grease from a hamburger patty.
Naturally, Jonah's prey instincts kicked in, but fight and flight came to a standstill, paralyzing his body, no matter how much his mind screamed at it to run. The creature--"Subject M," as Sergeant Malcolm had called it--craned its head to the left, staring at Jonah with a dark eye, then to the right, doing the same with the other side of its head. While the human exhaled shakily, Subject M shifted forward, setting down the severed limb it held, amiably glancing around before it focused on the new arrival.
"You can sit."
And suddenly, Jonah's fear melded with fascination. Though slow, and through a voice like a bear with its throat clogged with gelatin, Subject M had spoken perfect English. In response, Jonah eased himself into his seat, though his limbs remained strung tight like strings on a guitar.
"Uh... h-hello," he mumbled, eyes twinkling with confusion and interest in equal measure.
"Greetings," Subject M said in reply, spraying droplets of blood onto the table as it spoke a second time. Strangely, its lips made no visible motion. Behind rows of razor teeth, hints of a potential secondary mouth could be seen. Jonah tried to peer into it, utterly starstruck with disbelief. Subject M already was proving to be a wonder of nature, albeit an unsightly one to human eyes.
"Hey. Hi. Good morning. Good night."
Jonah's heart nearly jumped out of his throat upon realizing he'd spaced out with unspoken questions--scientific inquiries that, while important, might be impolite to ask on a first meeting with an intelligent species. He reached up and adjusted his glasses, clearing his throat. "Yes, hello. I'm sorry, I just... I'm a little surprised that you can speak our language."
"No sorry," Subject M gurgled, picking its gums with one of its claws. "You do not fight. You welcome. The others fight. The others not welcome."
Jonah quirked a brow, forgetting about his notes entirely, absorbed in this chance to interact. "The others--"
"Angry. Meant hurt. Prey challenges. Prey devoured."
Feeling the urge to pull out the barf bag, Jonah leaned back from the table by a few degrees but maintained eye contact with the creature. "Others like me?"
"Mm. Mostly." Subject M snapped out its limber arm, flesh clinging tightly to the bone, and grasped Jonah's wrist, holding his forearm up to its eye. It seemed to ignore the staggered, panicked breaths of its guest, much more interested in his structure than his well-being. "But more meat. You are light snack."
Jonah tugged his arm free, and Subject M let go. Aware of animal behaviors, he made note of the creature's lack of clear signs of impending attack. No aggressive change in posture, nothing seemed to stand on end, and it seemed to be content to nibble on the human limb it had already been crunching on--though he tried vehemently to avoid looking at that last part. Which was rather difficult when it raised the foot again and took a hearty bite, pooling more blood down its bare, bony chest.
Jonah cleared his throat, shifting his posture forward. "Do you have a name you would like to be called by?"
Subject M responded with a series of shrill chitters and clicks that seemed loud enough to shatter glass.
Jonah ducked and covered his ears. "Now... I-I don't believe I have the ability to call you that. It's simply not in our dialect."
"What they call me?" Subject M asked, crudely pointing to the door.
"Subject M."
"Subject M... I am M. Call me M."
Jonah offered a polite smile and a nod, finding the conversation becoming stranger by the second, but he understood that it wasn't M's fault. "Now, M, I don't know where you're from, but--"
"Up there." M pointed to the ceiling, and Jonah's puzzled eyes followed.
"Up there?"
Jonah's earpiece buzzed, and a tiny voice played in his ear. "Subject M was found near a meteor crash. We believe he comes from a different planet entirely."
Jonah blinked. I'm talking to a fucking alien.
"Now, M, I hate to tell you this, but I have to: you cannot just go around killing and eating people."
M cocked its fleshy head to an almost comical angle. "Why not?"
Appalled by such a question, Jonah rubbed his temples, fighting a growing headache from all the stress. "You just... you can't. See, we--us humans, I mean--have a system that lets us live with each other without killing each other all the time. Even though you're not a human, M, I'm afraid that won't exclude you from the rules we have here. If people found out that you tore someone's foot off and ate it, you'd probably be hunted down and killed."
"Part of hunt," M replied, eyes seeming to darken, its thin arms crossed. "We are hunters. We see prey. We chase prey. Kill prey. If we challenge each other, fight. Killed loses fight. Winner becomes leader. Winner gains power. Winner gets meat. I need eat meat. Lots of meat. Others challenge M. I fight others. Others lose. Others get meat eaten."
Jonah swallowed, holding his hands in front of him in protest. "For your own sake, M, I would avoid saying anything about eating other people's meat."
M sulked, sinking down in its chair, dropping the severed foot with an audible plop. As it did so, Jonah eyed it with something like sympathy, imagining being in M's place. Separated from home--an entire planet--with a new species that did nothing but confine him and treat him like a test subject. The thought was enough to spark inspiration; perhaps working with those who captured him could yield better results, lest M be slaughtered for its bloody actions. This was a one in a lifetime chance for both of them.
Two chirps sounded in Jonah's ear, signaling that his time was up. He stood up and pushed the table in, hesitating, then spoke again.
"M... if you have no way back home, perhaps we can find you a place here. I don't know where that place is yet, but..."
He sighed, out of words, unsure of where this would go. There were people out there in grave danger if this carnivorous killing machine wasn't assigned some beneficial purpose on Earth. Jonah turned, stepping into the decontamination chamber, and watched the wall begin to lower.
"Man!"
M sat upright now, upper body slumped atop the desk, beady black eyes glistening, pleading to Jonah, who stared back, listening.
"Come back again later. Am hungry for meat. But am also hungry for friend."