And what do you expect me to do about it? I can’t very well march down to the commons and announce that our precious research subjects just ate one of the interns! We’d be lucky if they only strung up by the antennae.

Besides, the lad had none but himself to blame. He was given plenty of time to complete the task. I can’t be faulted for base incompe—

…

What? Whose name was Samantha?

…!

Really? My word. That’s… frightfully unfortunate. Rather a… handsome lass, wasn’t she? < a cough >

Never mind. First, we must concoct some likely excuse as to… her sudden absence. Uh… a death in the family, perhaps? Hmm… no. Too pedestrian. Especially in light of the threats I made during our last conference. Well, never mind. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.

In the meantime, we must make certain our recent unfortunate managed to succeed in disabling that last pod before her demise, so we’ll need to somehow frighten the subjects away first. There’s no telling what they’ll have gained from this, but it can’t have been anything good. If they escape off-world…

Timothy… are you certain about this?

…

Hrm… it would be nice if we had that in writing, but I suppose that would be too much to ask. Can’t expect black market dealings to be above board, now can we?

Oh, and while we’re on the subject…

Don’t mention it to anyone else, but uh… I might have invested in a slight measure of life insurance for each of our staff members. Strictly a matter of procedure, you understand, but… be certain to collect on the recently deceased’s policy the next time you make a supply run, won’t you?

Payroll is about to come around and, when it comes to it, I’d much prefer the staff have a bit of extra pocket money than otherwise. That sort of thing helps keep the pitchforks safely in the shed.

*

“Mike!” Naomi shouted and sprang to her feet. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He turned to stare back at her owlishly, chewing away at his recently-acquired prize like a kid caught with his face in the cookie jar.

She marched forward, incensed. “I hope you weren’t planning on eating all of that?”

He swallowed audibly. The strange insect… thing had only been about a foot long to begin with and, big as he had become, the one bite had reduced it by half already. For a moment, he looked from her to the remains of the creature in his hand and back. Then, with an effort of obvious will, he handed the rest to her.

“Sorry. It’s… hard to stop.”

She smiled instantly and snatched it from his hands. “I know,” she admitted. Truthfully, she had not expected him to even attempt complying. Much less succeed. This was… a pleasant development. “Thank you.”

He smiled shyly at her though his expression was flickering uncertainly. Which was understandable. As flirting went, the veneer was kind of boorish, but the sharing of food—especially when in limited supply—was as basic as it got. Without their shared compulsion to deal with, nothing about this situation would have come across at all well. But as it was… it was kind of sweet.

Now, if only he could manage it without her having to ask…

Swiftly, she turned and began tearing away at her gifted prize. It was delicious, of course… despite its appearance. The textures. The lovely goo dripping from its body… so sweet yet mellow, contrasting nicely with the crunchy exterior. But then, everything these last couple of days had been wondrous in its own way, each seemingly more so than the last.

Her stomach clenched as the first morsels hit her belly. She could almost feel her insides writhing as they greedily digested this new thing, eager for more. Her hunger was such it was all she could do just to savor her meal. You would never know she had just finished gorging herself not an hour ago.

So in a display of incredible patience, she pulled the last few bites away from her face and forced herself to slowly chew and swallow so as to enjoy herself properly. She would not be reduced to the state of some dog inhaling its kibble. Again.

It simply was not lady like. In fact…

Fiercely clamping down on her compulsion to eat and never stop, she turned back to Mike. “Here.” She held out the remains, really no more than a few spindly legs and a bit of the thorax, but she trembled with the effort all the same. “You caught it. It’s only right you have the rest.”

He stared at the offering longingly but shook his head. “It’s… alright. You said it was important we consume evenly, right? That was why I grew so much more? We don’t want just one of us getting the benefits.”

That was base conjecture, but it was more than enough to overcome her brief attempt at restraint. An instant later, she was snapping chitin between her teeth…

…and blushing furiously. Twice! He had refused to eat twice for her sake!

“Oh my god, what is wrong with me?!” she groaned in horror.

“I know,” Mike answered sympathetically… and completely misreading the situation. Just like a man. “But you’re fighting it. That’s good.”

She grimaced, but thankfully the light at her wrist had started flickering to signal some new addition over Mike’s head, distracting her from the private hellscape of her own hormones. From the intense dissatisfaction in her stomach, it did not feel as though she had gotten enough ‘grasshopper-of-unusual-sizes’ to satisfy the requirements for a change, but to her surprise, a button did appear. Briefly.

Almost as soon as it popped up, a timer flashed into existence around it, ripped through whatever time had been alloted and automatically selected… something. She had not even thought to react.

“No, wai—!”

Before she could finish speaking, her eyes crossed and an intense euphoria washed over her. Dizzily, she clutched at Mike, though from his staggering, whatever this was had hit him just the same as it had her. Neither of them had any choice but to lean heavily against one another as the world spun crazily around them.

Her head throbbed. Her eyes itched. Sight. Smell. Touch. All of it washed over her in a kaleidoscopic dance of color and sensation. It was near overwhelming. She almost feared she might become sick with it, but everything was just too… wildly rapturous for something so base.

She could feel something else, too. Building through the spinning. Welling up from her center like the pivot point from which all else sprang.

Desire. Delicious flowering want.

It was his scent in her nose, she realized. All around her. She wanted to press her nose into him. Rub it all over her face. Sink to her knees, free his burgeoning manhood, take it into her hands, and—

With a pop, everything halted. The euphoria. The spinning. All of it. Over as soon as it had begun.

She was left… disoriented and confused. But then she realized she was still clutching at Mike’s waist—with her tongue on his abs—and she sprang backward guiltily.

A solid three seconds of total silence passed while they stared at one another, neither daring to comment on what had just transpired… to Naomi’s great relief. She had been the one to initiate, but that certainly had not been her fault. The change was quite obviously to blame, and besides…

…there was a height difference! He would have needed to reach down to grab anything significant.

Now if she could just decide what was upsetting her most: that any of it had happened at all or the shame burning in her belly that she had needed to justify his lack of a reaction.

However, all it took was a single glance at his midsection and the straining bulge held therein to quash her feelings of inadequacy.

Feeling self-satisfied, she tilted her nose into the air and turned on a heel. “You should be more careful. Tall as you are, I doubt you can afford the dip in your blood pressure.”

She smiled in anticipation of his response… but there was none in coming. No quippy comebacks. Not even a grunt of confusion. And once the silence stretched beyond the point of simple awkwardness and well into straight-up rudeness, she spun back around, ready to unleash hell.

However, when she latched onto his eyes, she found them not even looking at her. She could not even be sure he had heard. Instead, he was slowly turning, gaping stupidly up into the trees.

Unwillingly, her gaze flickered to follow his own. And what she beheld…

It pained her to admit it, but there might have been some justification for his distraction. The world was… changed. Inexorably different in a way she never could have described before this day. The plants. The leaves. The gently swaying ferns… even the soft rays of the sun streaming into their little clearing. It was all… more. More vibrant. More colorful. More everything! It was like she had been blind and was only now seeing.

“What is this?” she breathed, stepping forward into a patch of sunlight.

Mike shook his head wonderingly. “I… don’t know. It’s like… there’s this new color, but… it isn’t one I’ve ever seen before.”

“Do you think… we could be seeing into the ultraviolet?” she hazarded. “I’ve heard insects can do that.”

“Earth insects.”

She paused her agog staring just long enough to glare at him.

“Sorry,” he apologized quickly. “Ultraviolet sounds plausible. Expanding the visible spectrum wouldn’t be all that difficult… I guess. Just a few added rods and cones, right? But we can’t know which direction the change shifted our range into. This could be infrared.”

“It could be both,” she shot back. Then shrugged. “We’ll know for sure once night falls. Ultraviolet is terrible for night vision.”

“How do you—” He turned back to her finally, and his eyes widened with surprise. “Whoa! You have stripes!”

“What?!”

She looked down at herself in sudden concern. Sure enough, anywhere the light touched revealed bands of glowing striations all across her body. Each was perhaps two inches across at their thickest, though they narrowed and tapered at various points roughly symmetrically along her center line rather like tiger stripes—all in this new color they could only now detect.

And frustratingly, Mike seemed totally bereft of this new feature.

She grimaced. “Well. I guess that answers that. It’s ultraviolet.”

Mike looked at her in confusion. Though he might just have been staring.

“Women have stripes,” she informed him, but then she amended, “Well… some of us do. It’s to do with having two X chromosomes. But you have to be under a strong UV light to see them. I guess I’m one of the lucky few.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “They look nice.”

She glared at him again.

“No, seriously. They’re flattering,” he began, but under her intensifying stare, he faltered. “Uh… I mean… I guess… all we’d need is some cat ears, and your Halloween costume would be all set?”

There was a beat of silence.

“Decent,” she allowed finally with a sniff. As insults went, something as tame as that barely registered, but at least, he was trying. “You could do better, though. My mother would have just asked whether it was really so hard to seduce the team mascot.”

His expression flickered uncertainly. “You mother sounds kind of mean.”

“Don’t be an ass, Mike.”

He looked at her askance and spread his hands, clearly lost.

She smiled back happily. He might not have been the sharpest spoon in the drawer, but he was proving fun to toy with.

*

And… it’s away!

Good. Now all we have to do is wait for the device to call in that giant lizard beast.

…?

What do you mean, ‘what do I mean?’ Did we not discuss this earlier?

< sigh > Okay, look. It’s quite simple…

The device is just a simple sonic emitter which I have tuned to call in that four-legged monstrosity our ever-slavering little subjects discovered— which, you will notice, they hastily avoided. So, it should be perfect to chase them off. Then we move in to safely deactivate the remaining pod… and quite possibly obtain some excellent life and death footage while we’re at it.

Brilliant, no?

…?

Scans? What scans? What are you talking about?

…

What?! Why didn’t you say so before? Give me that. Honestly. How many carnivorous lizards could there possibly be on one little island?

< paper rustling >

…Timothy?

…?

Have I threatened to kill you yet today?

*

“So…” Mark began, “I guess we’re not going to address how you were licking my stomach a minute ago?”

Naomi folded her arms and cocked her hip aggressively. “You sure you wanna tilt that windmill, Don?”

He opened his mouth, but there was quite the hostile look on her face. Whatever the rules were to this little game of verbal sparring she seemed to enjoy, he was not yet apprised of them… likely on purpose. Regardless, he had a feeling she could—and likely would—make him regret going there. Changing the subject seemed for the best.

He cleared his throat and jerked his thumb toward the recently-landed pod. “So, uh… the last time I was in one of those, I remember getting prompted with some options. It kind of made me think of what you’ve been talking about with your button and all, so…”

She tilted her head back and narrowed her eyes. “Uh huh…”

Taking that as permission enough to exit the conversation, he started to back-peddle.

“Coward.”

He froze. “What?”

“I called you a coward, Mike,” she said, sauntering forward to close the space between them. “Women don’t take to cowardice, you know.”

“So… you’re saying you wanted me to—”

“Too late,” she interrupted, then quickly side-stepped him. Before he even realized it, she was past him and headed for the pod. Staring up at it, she observed, “I don’t think you’re going to fit into this thing anymore.”

“Uh…” He floundered a moment longer. Admittedly, he was pretty slow on the uptake when it came to that sort of thing, but he would bet money she had just made a pass at him. Or wanted to stab him. Possibly both.

So, he decided to go for it. “Are you sure that’s the thing you want me to fit—”

She whirled on him, eyes flashing.

“—sorry,” he apologized immediately and wilted, sensing the odds of a stabbing rising precipitously.

However, she only huffed and turned to resume her march toward the pod. “Clever repartee, Mike. Keyword: clever. Not crude one-liners.”

He scowled with frustration from the shelter of her turned back. It actually took quite a lot of wit to come up with a decent one-liner. It was not his fault she did not appreciate them, but for his own safety, he was going to have to figure out what she meant by ‘clever.’ And soon.

In the meantime, keeping his mouth shut seemed wiser.

Taste in repartee aside, she had been right about one thing. He would have to contort himself into a pretzel if he expected to ever fit into the pod again. Not that it looked impossible… precisely. Just intensely uncomfortable.

“Well… I guess I’m going to have to squeeze in,” he began. “Otherwise, we’ll never know if I was dreaming it.”

“Or you could just be satisfied with what I pick,” she countered.

“Or that,” he allowed, eying her. She still had that claw of hers tucked away somewhere. “Unless we can get both? I mean, what happens if you eat, and I don’t?”

She glanced away guiltily… for some reason. But then she gestured toward something off to one side. “Hey, look at that.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What?”

That look had him suspicious. With the way she tended to bob and weave through a conversation, she was just the type to try and pull something on him when he least expected it. And that suspicion did not wane on rounding the pod to see the apparent nothing she was pointing at. Other than the open panel and exposed wires, there was just the blank, white, outer shell of the pod.

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“Look,” she insisted, stepping closer and pointing again. “Right there.”

He leaned down suspiciously—still very much on the lookout for the sudden reappearance of that claw—and squinted. But to his surprise, there actually was something there.

Just above the exposed panel, someone had stenciled a few paragraphs of absolutely minuscule text… which might have just been possible to make out had it not been printed in that color they had only recently discovered. With the fading sunlight, even Naomi’s stripes were starting to disappear, so any attempt at prolonged study was doomed to failure. Even so, he recognized the shapes of the characters.

“Can you read it?” she asked, taking in his expression.

He started to shake his head, but then the text fuzzed, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut. By the time he could focus again, any remaining color had become so faded as to be little more than a smudge.

“No. I think it’s their language,” he guessed, straightening. “Or one of them, anyway.” He remembered having seen several.

She nodded seriously. She had made her opinions of ‘them’ quite clear. Who ‘they’ were specifically did not seem to matter.

“Strange that we would only be able to see it now, don’t you think?” she mused. “Why print in ultraviolet?”

He scrubbed a palm over his face tiredly. They were only facing about a million problems. It was only natural she would latch onto the least consequential. “What would have been strange is if we didn’t run into their writing at some point. Besides, they’re aliens. We can’t assume their visible spectrum is the same as ours.”

“And maybe they didn’t want us to be able to read this.”

“It’s still an alien language,” he countered easily, stepping around her so as to return to the open hatch. “You can’t decipher something like that just because you want to. Even a… a translation person would need something to compare it to.”

“A translation… person.” She shook her head sadly. “You do have a way with words, don’t you?”

He sighed. “You know what I meant.”

“A linguist, maybe? A philologist?”

He had no idea what the study of philosophy had to do with anything, but a linguist sounded about right. “Sure.”

She allowed the conversation to lapse for a few moments, but then she tilted her head to one side. “Okay, I’ll grant that we can’t translate it. But what if the things they’ve implanted in us can?”

“They haven’t so far,” he returned, then stepped up into the once-spacious seating compartment. Thankfully, the chair did not have armrests. His butt would have been way too big to fit in there now.

Naomi hitched a shoulder, undeterred. “True. But I’m betting there is a way. We just haven’t figured it out yet. Why else hide this from us?”

He was pretty sure he had already covered that with the whole ‘visible spectrum’ thing, but she had apparently decided to latch on to this. So he humored her. “Good thing we ate that bug, then. Or we’d have never spotted it.”

She frowned again, apparently having considered some other possible link in the tapestry of her imaginings. He had gotten to where he could detect the signs. So he cleared his throat before she got too distracted. “I think we can shelve that for now. In the meantime, why don’t you see if you can push the hatch closed behind me?”

She snorted. “Alright. Watch your knees, S’quatch.”

He grimaced sourly. She had been getting awfully free with the nicknames ever since their little growth spurt—which she had caused. But that could have been one of the ways she liked to ‘repartee.’ He would have to think of something fun to counter with, though. With the way she enjoyed mixing it up, Marlboros was likely getting stale.

However, before she had taken two steps, some sort of swooshing sound from above drew her gaze. Seeing her widened eyes, he hurriedly jumped clear to see what she was looking at. It took a second to spot. The thing was no bigger than a tennis ball, but there, hovering directly over the pod, was a metallic orb.

It was holding perfectly still… on apparently nothing. And he was pretty damned sure it had not been there before.

“Hey… Stripes?” he tried.

“Yeah?”

He nodded faintly, filing that one under ‘inoffensive.’ “Do you have any urge to eat that thing?”

“No?” She glanced at him finally. “Do you?”

“No,” he agreed. “Probably not an animal, then.”

She settled her hands to her hips and rounded on him. “It’s metal, Doofus.”

“Well…?” He spread his hands, uncertain as to what defense he could offer—and cursing his apparent foot-in-mouth disease. “Okay, maybe ‘animal’ wasn’t the word I was looking for, but I’ve certainly never seen anything like that outside of a sci-fi movie. So far, every time that’s happened, we’ve been… kind of forced to shove whatever it is into our mouths.”

“It’s me-tal,” she repeated slowly, making certain to heavily enunciate each syllable. And for good measure, she added, “Doo-fus!”

He rolled his eyes. “Do you want me to grab it or not?”

“Obviously.”

He nodded and began to ascend the escape pod—this, at least, made much more feasible with his added height. The interior of the ship had several small but usable footholds along the sides, so it was the work of a mere moment to achieve the summit. However, just as he was beginning to stretch toward the strangely-stationary orb, it unleashed such a horrendous cacophony of sound that he nearly lost his footing.

It kind of reminded him of some middle-schooler tunelessly blatting into a French horn… but at the decibel level of a jet engine.

“Mike!” Naomi shouted, covering her ears. “What did you do?!”

“I didn’t do anything!” he yelled back. “The second I tried to—”

The orb blatted again, if anything louder.

“Argh!” Naomi scuttled backward as though chased by the sound. “Cripes! Can’t you turn it off?”

Mike looked again at the perfectly smooth… thing hovering above his head, desperate and confused. It was not as if there were buttons.

But before he could contemplate the matter any further, something else drew his attention: an answering series of blats. This time from some distance away and behind him. Followed by the sounds of limbs cracking and trees crashing to the ground.

A chill rolled down his spine. “Naomi… do you hear that?”

“Of course, I—”

The orb released another series of horrendous blaring noises, which were answered almost immediately. But from a different direction. And then several more, all around.

And then, the radar in his ears started to squeal its warning.

“Naomi… I’m getting a really bad feeling about this.”

“A bad feeling?!” she shouted sarcastically. “No shit? Are you sure it isn’t skin cancer? Now, will you quit gawking and do something? Break it! Smash it against a rock! Anything! Just shut that god-damned orb up before whatever is crashing through the trees out there shows up and—” She paused her tirade just long enough to thrust a finger in a direction over his shoulder. And up. “—eats us!”

His head swiveled only to be greeted by a familiar and not-at-all welcome face. It was far too reptilian…

Far too big…

Far too many teeth…

Too close…

Way too close…!

Staring right at him!

Before he could even put conscious thought to the action, he leapt down and started pelting around the wellspring toward the opposite side of the clearing. He spared a brief moment of regret that he had not thought to hide in the pod—not that he could have realistically fit inside—but it was too late for that. And besides, Naomi was practically to the tree line already.

The radar abruptly started squealing its warning in his ears.

“Naomi!” he yelled. “Look ou—”

The orb again blatted its call like some primordial signal drum, drowning out his words, but it almost did not matter. In the next instant, another enormous centaur-like Tyrannosaur emerged, this time, so close to Naomi’s fleeing form, his heart practically tore itself from his ribcage.

Naomi squawked with gibbering panic and just managed to dodge clear of its snapping jaws, prompting the beast to scream at her loud enough to leave his ears ringing and Naomi stumbling to the ground. The beast took a single step forward, it’s fanged maw gaping wide with anticipation. Without a moment’s thought, he shouted in challenge, snatched up a rock and hurled it with all his might at the beast descending upon her hapless form.

Surprisingly, it left a pretty decent dent in the side of the four-legged monstrosity’s skull… which then turned to look at him. Angrily.

He swallowed and started backing away, cursing whatever instinct had prompted him to just do that.

The beast took two steps toward him, reared up, and blasted him with a yell that could have put an erupting volcano to shame.

“Good point,” he agreed and turned…

…only to freeze in instant terror.

Another pair of the beasts had just emerged from the trees behind him. One was yet focused in the direction of the pod and whatever it was that had called together this astute caucus of gigantic lizards, but the other was looking at him—if he had to put words to it—something like how a cat might look at the dot of a laser pointer.

The orb blared its call again.

“Fuck…” he wheezed, then, hearing still more trees crashing to the ground off to his right, he said it again several more times for good measure. Before this moment, he had never had the urge to wet himself. He had thought it a simple expression borne out of too much imagination.

What was he supposed to do? Oh, sure. A man might have the occasional delusion of grandeur during idle moments, perhaps indulging in fantasies of fending off a tiger or a bear with nothing but a club in his hands. However, he had left his walking stick over by the wellspring…

…and the only way his imagination was playing this out for him was something like that guy in Jurassic Park who had died on the port-a-potty.

Neither he nor the beast moved for half a second. They simply stared at one another. But then its eyes twitched, following a movement behind him.

Quickly, he spared a single glance that way only to spot Naomi running full tilt back toward the center of the clearing with the one he had beaned trailing close behind.

“Run!” she yelled. “Run, you lummox!”

He jerked back around just in time to catch the second of the pair in front of him apparently lose interest in the blaring orb and take a step toward him. That was all the prompting he needed.

With a quick juke toward the tree line—and a sudden realization that there was yet another of the bastards emerging from the trees in that direction—he started putting knees to chest in Naomi’s wake. Yes, she was on the other side of a T-Rex…taur. Tyrannotaur? Rextaur? Whatever. The point was, there was only one between them. And it was kind of injured. Who could ask for better odds than that?

Trailing F-bombs like they might somehow discourage his pursuers, he tore across the uneven ground, sparing no notice of the long ferns whipping across his thighs as he passed while multiple sets of thumping footsteps trailed in his wake.

Meanwhile, across the clearing, the first lizard he had spotted had decided to investigate the still-blaring orb. In its curiosity, the beast managed to accidentally topple the oblong capsule the orb had been hovering over, leaving the shiny bit of metal undisturbed in the air. A moment later, he paled—if that was even still possible—as the behemoth began crushing his once-supposed sanctuary beneath its feet in its attempts to playfully jump for the stationary bit of silver… if a giant fang monster could be said to ‘playfully’ do anything.

Jerking his eyes away from that horror—and the realization of the fate he had narrowly avoided—he found Naomi once more. She was only just maintaining her lead against the beast on her tail and, on seeing the terror one of them could unleash by sheerest accident, she apparently decided she had had enough of this entire situation…

…and jumped feet first into the pit of the wellspring.

He blinked once in shock. That had been her plan? Yes, she had escaped being eaten, but there was no telling how deep that thing was or what was at the bottom of it. It could have as easily been a pool of water as a nest of adders. A complete gamble no matter which way you looked at it. But it was a chance more than he had.

And he was hardly going to leave her down there alone.

So, he ducked under the stymied beast that had been chasing her, fortunately still screaming its frustrations to the heavens, which in turn caused his own pursuers to crash into its unsuspecting backside. Dodging this way and that to avoid the resulting crush of claws, confused and stumbling legs, and questing jaws, he dove after her just in time to avoid the subsequent dog-pile of reptilian flesh.

*

…?

Yes, I see that, Timothy.

…?

No, I’m not happy.

…?

Because, Timothy. I wanted to disable the pod. Disable. Not bloody impound! Do you know how much one of those—no, of course you do.

…

Yes, I know the other one is undamaged, but…

< a sigh >

Blast. Problems on problems. What are we going to do now? Do you think a bunch of black market gangsters are going travel all the way out here and catch them themselves? All while paying us full price for the trouble? Not on your insignificant life!

Hmm… I don’t suppose we could your uncle to lend us another one? Perhaps a touch larger this time?

Actually, put a pin in that. With the biological data available on this planet, there is the distinct possibility… Yes, perhaps we ought to consider investing in a freight carrier? Mmm…

Find out how much one of those will run us, won’t you? Or better yet, check with one of the rental companies. One of the ones with good insurance. Just in case.

…?

Hmm? Oh, right. Well, I certainly hope they’re still alive.

Actually… we’d best run a camera drone down that hole before anything. Ha! Can you imagine? Spending all that money and them dead? We’d never recover the losses!

…?

Well, with the remote, of course. How else would we turn the signal device off?

…

…

…

Timothy… Where is the remote?