Futures Past Ch 01 Past Perfect

Future's Past

Chapter One - Past Perfect

Throwing away one's past was a prerequisite of joining a team of problem solvers. Especially ones involved in black operations that could never be made public. Plausible deniability was key.

That was one of the reasons Kate had done everything she could to expunge her history. She was far more interested in discovering the dirty secrets of others than having hers exposed, and her current employer was an expert at making problems go away.

In return, she ate shitty food, slept in strange places, and had to travel at a moment's notice. She couldn't scoff at the paycheck, however. Being an agent wasn't easy, but it was certainly profitable.

Take this situation. A standard case of mad science gone wrong, promulgated by

Expedient Tech Inc

. An apropos name, if she had ever heard one.

There had been the usual excited and garbled nonsense reported by the press in the last few weeks, heralding their discovery of a new kind of portal technology, then everything had gone silent. They were either trying to figure out a way to monetize it, or they had made an enormous mess.

It was her job to find out which, take their tech, and shut them down. By any means necessary.

The first step was an infiltration mission to get the lay of the land. Who knew what, where things were located, that sort of thing. The plan was to steal anything she could, and figure out a way to access the most restricted zones. Bringing in heavy explosives right away would be a waste of time, especially if she got caught.

It was child's play to slip past their first security layer by dressing up as one of their scientists and tagging along when one of them opened the door. A quick smile and a flirty wink, and the nerdy guy she had accosted had become so flustered he even dropped his badge.

It wasn't too surprising. Her heart shaped face was framed by two strands of black hair, cheeks dimpling when she smiled. Beauty enough to make any red blooded man blush, and very few could resist her bobbing ponytail. He probably hadn't had any in ages. Too easy.

The second line was tougher to get through, but not because of the security guard, who was nodding off in his booth. No, instead it was because she needed to roam the halls for a good half hour, looking for the appropriate mark to pickpocket for his badge.

Now she was in, and in a good spot, by the looks of things. She had found what appeared to be a conference room, with closed shutters, blacking out the interior. Likely a place for them to discuss things that shouldn't be seen by just

anyone

.

Better yet, the room possessed what she was looking for - a computer terminal. Sitting down at the desk, she turned the computer tower to look at the case. Examining the screws on the back, she grinned devilishly. Perfect.

Pulling the power cord, she slid her fingers into the pocket of her lab coat to retrieve a screwdriver, which she used to pop off the side panel. Glancing at the motherboard, she sniffed. This was hardly worth her time.

Removing the connectors to the primary drive, she slid in a replacement above the original, pressing the cords back into place. It was but a matter of moments to replace the side panel, turn the case to look like nothing had been disturbed, and replace the power cable.

Pressing the power button, she folded her hands, waiting patiently for the hacked OS to boot to the login screen. She cracked her knuckles, typing in the user name and password that had been given to her. Soon enough, tiny icons of applications gazed back at her from the desktop.

This was so much easier than having to rely upon her personal hacking skills... all the hard work had already been done for her. The machine was already on the network, she simply needed to do a little poking around.

For any normal person, this might have taken a long time, but she had been given the name of their project,

Stargazer

. Running a quick search, she was amused to find folder after folder popping up on her screen. Was their security really

that

bad?

She knew the answer to that question, and didn't bother bemoaning the current poor state of corporate IT. Especially when this particular oversight had made her job a darn sight easier.

Diagrams, spreadsheets, and oodles of documentation. She would want to save it all to her flash drive, of course, but before that, she wanted to make sure she wasn't stealing garbage.

Double clicking on a sample document, she frowned as an alien looking creature popped up on the display. She thought she was looking for technology, not bio-organisms! Just what, precisely, was this company dabbling in? They certainly weren't a biotech firm.

She frowned, examining its grotesque form. Its ribbed abdomen was colored purple, two dangling claws hanging from its front. A short, stubby sucker protruded from the bottom, while a long, ridged tail extended from the rear. White bony spikes were attached horizontally along the length of the tail, turning it into a deadly weapon, if swung with force.

She scrolled down, grunting as she noted more photos taken from different angles. The rubbery flesh was more than a little unappetizing, but worse was the gigantic eyeball mounted on the creature's back. The scientists had gone through the effort of dissecting one of them, and it was the size of a giant peach. Terrifying.

She was going to have nightmares about these things, ugh. She closed the document and opened another. Yet another, similar creature, but this one was smaller. Perhaps it was a juvenile, but the appendage on its bottom was longer, rounder. Ridged, with a head, almost like... a penis.

Closing her eyes, groaning. She was acting just as bad as the scientist she had bamboozled earlier. She'd have to deal with her needs sooner or later.

She sighed and closed the document. The creatures weren't sexual. They were disgusting.

She'd seen enough. Whatever these monsters were, they should be destroyed. Her employers would definitely want to know about them, however. Reaching into her pocket, she plucked out a flash drive and plugged it into the front port on the computer. When a file folder popped up, she dragged over the directories she wanted.

Pressing her lips together, she sat back to wait. There was a

lot

of data to copy, and their networking speeds apparently weren't the greatest. Tapping her fingers silently against the table, she pressed her palm against the edge and stood up.

This was the part she hated the most - waiting. She shouldn't get complacent, however. This would be a good opportunity to examine her surroundings more closely. Being disciplined was key, and getting caught here would be difficult to explain, given that the picture on her stolen badge looked nothing like her.

Faint motion caught her eye, and she froze, breathing slowly. Was it...? No, there was nobody at the door - but one of the windows didn't have shutters on it. She hadn't caught

that

when she had entered the room.

Quickly, she moved over to the wall, being careful to make sure that her body wasn't backlit by the conference room lights. Sliding towards the window, she took a peek outside.

She could see almost nothing in the murky blackness besides the looming forms of large, metallic objects. This must be an observation point for a lab, perhaps. There might be a lightswitch nearby, but did she dare?

There was a large utility box on the wall with a series of switches. Her curiosity was aroused. She

needed

to know what was in the next room, even if it might force her to grab her thumb drive and run.

Making sure to stay out of sight, she ran her palm under the switches and pulled up decisively, flicking them on with satisfying clicks.

Giant floodlights bathed a double story room beyond the conference room's window. Looking down from above, Kate ran her eyes over a gigantic circular steel structure that was built into a metal platform. Large tanks of unknown gas or liquids were situated around the structure, along with a row of terminals. This was probably the portal device she was looking for.

That wasn't what made her gasp, however. The floor in front of the machine had been subsumed by a purplish, organic kind of

carpet

. Small creatures, similar to those she had just seen in the documents, were crawling quickly across its spongy surface to hide themselves in cracks and crevices between banks of equipment.

The ground was throbbing, as if

alive

. Gross.

That wasn't the worst of it, however. A large, purple, worm-like organism had wrapped itself around a rack of computer equipment, grasping the servers with oversized black claws. Striped in green, its entire body thrummed with energy as its bottom end twitched. Its tail flipped over, flexing as a pile of small, white eggs spilled from its end.

A faint humming sound echoed from the other side of the thick glass, the long, rounded proboscis on its head dipping towards the floor. She couldn't even imagine what it might eat with that thing, but its wrinkled skin could probably stretch wide enough to fit a cow. She shuddered.

Another creature stepped out from behind the momma worm, its arms hanging slack. This one was a vaguely humanoid female, but she had been extensively altered. Nude, her body was a fluorescent purple, swirls of color whirling under her skin in random twisting patterns. Rubbery knobs decorated her shoulders, growing smaller as they raced down her arms. Her feet were raised on fleshy heels, talons growing from her toes.

Her breasts were tight and pert, but were decorated with small bumps. Dark holes in her flesh circled those breasts, filled with small, glowing green blobs. Her belly was swollen, as if pregnant, her chest swaying with each step.

One of the smaller alien creatures had locked itself around her waist, its tail dragging on the organic carpet. Another was wrapped around her skull. As she stepped forward, it moved its tail over to her mouth and she sucked on it, her throat bobbing as she took a drink.

As the thick tail slid out, she dropped her jaw, pearlescent liquid dripping onto her chin. The tail slid down her back, plugging into a hole between her shoulder blades. The end of it pulsed, as if it was feeding something into her body. Perhaps it was.

To her horror, she realized that the two creatures weren't alone. Near the edge of the organic mass, scattered men and women were embedded into the surface of the carpet, their limbs flailing uselessly. She could hear faint noises as their mouths moved, but they were indisputably stuck.

Like food

.

Whether they had been gifted to the creatures by the company, or had experienced a misadventure while attempting to examine them, she couldn't tell. Whatever the case, she could do nothing but watch as the humanoid creature approached a curvy blonde.

Hovering over the trapped scientist, the creature's mouth opened wide, liquid pouring over her victim. The woman shuddered, her name tag jiggling as it splashed over her chest.

At first, Kate thought it was some kind of acid, but it didn't appear to eat through the woman's blouse. Instead, her wiggling body was coming loose from the organic mat, threads of the material sloughing off as she stood ungainly.

She expected the scientist to put up a fight, to throw a punch, anything, but the woman did nothing. The creature took her by the hand, and turning, led her towards the large worm.

That was when she noticed that the scientist had a creature attached to her skull. Two pronged limbs were wrapped over her head, holding it in place, while its tail draped over her back. Its solitary eye blinked lazily, the blobby body parked against the back of her skull.

She couldn't see the creature's central sucker under its body, but knew instinctively that it must be penetrating straight into the woman's brain. She shivered as her imagination took over. What must it be like to have that

thing

riding on your head? Was it actually in control of the scientist?

Whatever the case, the scientist appeared to line up willingly in front of the giant mother worm. Stripping her clothing off, she handed the articles to the humanoid alien, who folded them neatly and laid them on a desk.

Nude, she waited patiently as the large creature snorted a dollop of slime from its proboscis onto her face. This didn't appear to disturb the scientist, although what happened next certainly

should

have.

The mother worm leaned over, its sagging proboscis spreading wide to engulf the woman's head. In one quick motion, it dropped downwards, muscles surging up its trunk. One moment, the woman was there, the next, she was gone, slurped up the creature's mouth.

Kate stared, wide eyed. It had flat out

eaten

her!

The center of the worm began to glow yellow, the light highlighting the green stripes on its main body. Flexing, the worm began to contract in upon itself, the ridges on its body touching together. The light grew brighter, and the worm lengthened.

This process repeated, over and over, a mesmerizing sight that Kate had problems turning away from. She wasn't certain how long she stood there, watching the undulations, but eventually the glow began to fade, and a lump appeared at the tail end of the beast.

The contractions continued, as if the monster was giving birth. The lump grew, pushing down the length of its tail, in a parody of a snake

un

-swallowing its prey. The egg laying end widened as the edge of the lump pressed into it, revealing two, small feet.

When the feet curled downwards, talons grew from the toes, the heels permanently arched upwards on spongy, rubber platforms. Next came feminine legs and a pregnant belly, followed by two enlarged breasts with dark, hollow pockets around them.

As the worm's tail finished disgorging this new beast, Kate knew in a flash - this was where the other creature had come from. More of them were being made!

"What the hell are those

things?

" she hissed in panic.

They certainly weren't from

this

world, damnit!

"They are

Takrin

," breathed a low voice gruffly. "We need to stop them before they enslave everyone."

Startled, Kate fell on her ass, turning to look at the figure crouching next to her. The woman was dressed in a lab coat, the fabric torn and tattered. Splotches of color decorated her face, making it difficult to determine the definition of her features. Her hair might have been long at one point, but it had been cut unequally, the dark frizzled mass hanging around her shoulders.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked in a high pitched voice.

The other woman remained where she was, chuckling bitterly. "My name's Katy. I work here. Well, I

used

to work here, that is, until they opened

that

."

She gestured at the circular apparatus sitting ominously in the rear of the room, past the alien creatures. "That's called a

Gate

, and it's what's caused this disaster. While messing with the harmonics, they managed to get the Gate to open to an alien landscape. At first, this was heralded as a great discovery. Until

they

started coming through." She shuddered. "We must stop them, or we'll be overrun."

Kate frowned. "Don't you want to know who I am?" she asked, still cautious. Where had this woman come from, anyway?

"Don't know. Don't care," she replied easily. "If you don't work for

Expedient

, it's all the better, really, as those idiots think they can study and

understand

these... things. I've seen what they can do, and they need to be destroyed before they bring more of themselves through that portal."

Kate flicked her eyes to the monitor, noting that her download was complete. Being careful to avoid the window, she backed over to the computer. "How do you know that they're called

Takrin

?"

The woman shrugged and stood, apparently not worried about being seen by the aliens through the window. "Whatever that worm thing does to them doesn't seem to remove their brains. It just...

twists

them to do whatever advances its cause. They're more than willing to talk about their utter devotion to the

Takrin

and the

Mother

, whatever that is. They could be talking about that worm, or something else, we don't really know."

She folded her arms together. "That's why the higher ups have stupidly decided to proceed with the research. They think that they can figure out some way to bargain with these aliens. To find a way to use the Gate for their personal profit."

Her eyes widened with fanaticism. "They're wrong. These aliens are abominations and should not be allowed anywhere on this planet."

Kate, with her back to the computer, retrieved her thumb drive and palmed it carefully. "Let's say I believe you. Do you have a plan to stop them?"

The other woman smiled, in a way that seemed eerily familiar. "I do. If we overload the power supply, that will destroy the portal, and prevent any more aliens from getting to this world from theirs."

Kate frowned. "Won't that kill us, too?"

Katy laughed. "This isn't the movies. The Gate isn't a reactor, and not everything explodes when it fails. Besides, even if my idea works, we're still going to have to do something about that giant worm. Try to come up with some ideas while we're getting to the power room, I'm fresh out."

Slipping the thumb drive into her pocket, Kate thought speculatively. She didn't have explosives on her, so that was out. Oh, how she wished she could have had advanced warning! The tranquilizer blow darts she had secured to her thigh could possibly help, but she had no idea what the dosage would be for aliens, or if it would even work at all.

She hesitated. Was she really going to go through with this plan? Unknown quantities were expected during missions, but so was betrayal.

The risk wouldn't be too bad if she expected it, however - what was one wimpy scientist going to do to her? If she let the woman wander off, she could easily hit the alarm on the way out, and then she'd be in hot water. Best to keep this one close.

Still... "What happened to your face?" she asked, pointing at the ugly splotches that marred her complexion.

Katy quirked her lips, her voice harsh. "I was 'voluntold' to gather a specimen for the next experiment. It didn't go well. You saw the other members of my party below. I was the only one to escape, although..." she pressed a hand to the back of her head. "I can't be certain whether I've been infested. The gigantic worm thing splattered some kind of liquid over me, and it messed with my skin." She shrugged. "I guess we gotta hope I don't go crazy before we can close down the portal."

Kate stepped around the side of the conference table, watching the other woman carefully. The scientist had admitted she posed a threat. Paradoxically, this calmed some of her paranoia.

"Very well," she said slowly, reaching an open hand towards the door. "Lead the way."

Katy nodded, a quick tuck of the head, then turned and walked in front of the window as Kate hissed. "Don't worry, they can't see us through the one way glass. We need to hurry, before the other scientists figure out what we're doing."

She paused at the door, hand on the latch. "It would be best if you went first. If they see me wandering the premises, they might get suspicious."

Kate narrowed her brows. "I don't think so. I have no idea where I'm going. It's going to look weird if I have to constantly pause for directions."

The scientist rolled her shoulders. "Suit yourself. If we get caught, just remember, it's your fault."

Kate stared at her, waiting patiently for the other woman to open the door. As the scientist left the room, she pressed her shoulder up against the door frame, scanning the hallway beyond. It was clear, but that meant little.