Destroyer of Worlds

"This is incredible."

Vally tilted his emerald head sideways curiously, like a green golden retriever puzzled by its owner. It took most of Isabel's professional disciple not to blurt out laughing at the image.

"What...is...incredible?" Vally asked.

"You. This." She said, her hands cradling the microscope as if the steel screws and frame were made from melting ice, and the Ganna blood within the slides were one breath away from evaporating in the air. Iridescent blood strands latched tightly to the crimson, human blood cells like webbing.

"Hoo-man self...difficult. Stubborn." Vally explained, his skin rippled with every word he said, as if a pool of water had taken physical form. "Breaks...before bend."

"We are rather stubborn," Isabel admitted, her "security" shifted uncomfortably in the corner of her eye. She didn't have to turn around to feel Colonel Harding's glare boring into the back of her skull, feel the biased judgement crafted by his brainless, military upbringing. She doubted the man kept his finger three centimeters away from his rifle's trigger ever since she called for Vally.

Everyone is a patient to her, everyone is a threat to him. Isabel was still adjusting to that difficult arrangment.

Isabel nearly cursed herself. She pulled her attention away from the slide.

By the time her eyes refocused in the microscope, the Ganna DNA had disappeared. Only the red blood cells remained--flawless, healthy, round and rosy like beach balls. But there were too many, much too many than she had seen in her first viewing.

"Perfect replication." Isabel said, her voice as soft and reverent as a priest kneeling before the temple of God. Even as she sat in her chair, she could feel her legs threatening to buckle.

"It's a perfect replication of foreign DNA, do you understand what this means?" She said excitedly, her mind already running through the miracles. Vally tilted his head sideways again. This time, she did laugh.

"Organ transplants, blood donations, the entire field of medicine--You've smashed through them all! Ganna DNA can be printed into whatever tissue a patient needs in mere hours!"

Isabel ran her fingers in her hair, the synapses of her brain firing every medical problem she could ever think of, each one once a maze of impossible complications, transfigured into a neat line of dominoes. Ganna DNA was the hurricane that toppled them all to the ground.

"Your blood could cure genetic disorders in a molecular level before they spread--no, not cure. Erase! Cancer, leukemia, Huntington's--"

"Dr. Isabel, a word."

Harding's voice smashed like a mountain onto Isabel's train of miracles. The man stood outside the lab, his thin eyebrows narrowed like an angry father catching his child cheating in class. Isabel could feel her lips pursing as she followed him outside the room.

"You are aware of the protocols you're breaching, aren't you?"

"I spent seventeen years serving as a Medical Officer for the CDC; don't think to lecture me on the importance of protocol."

"Then you're aware how crucial the control of information is with these creatures." Harding's voice echoed with an annoying sense of finality, as if he was resolute on having the final say. "The less they know about us, the better."

"You mean you don't want them to know we bleed like them; we get hurt like them, and God forbid they ever find out that we die like them." Isabel scoffed back.

"You know the policy: until a treaty is legitimized on paper, treat the lifeforms as possible combatants until high command orders otherwise."

"Conversely, until a war is officially declared, I'm allowed to treat the Ganna as possible neighbors until otherwise."

"Can't you see the danger here?" Harding shot.

"Can't you see the potential?" Isabel shot back. "The Ganna's entire biology is the key to finally understanding our own. They can show us our past and our future, lead us to a better future."

"They could lead us, by chains." Harding argued back. "Everything you're doing here is telling them that they are better than us in every regard. It won't be long before they decide that they don't have to negotiate with humans, they can just take whatever they want."

Isabel scoffed. "Because that's what you would do, right?"

He was going to say more, he probably had plenty to say, but the communicator on his chest blinked bright red. He was sure to keep his eyes trained on Isabel as he backed down the hall, his hands pulling the walkie talkie to his ears.

"He...does not trust easily." Vally spoke as he carefully eased his head out of the lab, warily staring at Harding's back.

Isabel sighed, running her fingers through her hair as she spoke. "He's a jarhead; doesn't trust anyone he doesn't have the authority to talk down."

Vally turned his head to stare at her, Isabel could almost feel his cerulean eyes peering into her mind faster than the blood in her microscope could replicate human DNA, yet his eyes studied her equally the same.

"You...trust Ganna more than your own kind?" He asked.

The truth was too quick to slip out of Isabel's lips, yet she held them back. It felt too easy to tell Vally exactly what Isabel thought of her fellow humans, what humans were capable of to anyone they suspect to be a threat, or really anyone who was remotely different from the collective masses. She could tell him how much she envied to be him.

But maybe Harding was right about a few things. Best to not let them know everything about humans too quickly.

"Humans are prone to making mistakes when we act out of fear. We fear because cannot heal ourselves like the Ganna if something goes wrong." Isabel managed. "It's our job to cure human fear and make the bridge between our two species. We can show them there's more to gain trusting Ganna than mistrusting them--"

"Dr. Isabel!"

Isabel nearly jumped when Harding barked her name. She faced the man to see him beading his way towards her, like a tiger on the hunt. Was he overhearing what she said? She hadn't said anything even he would mark as classified--

"Does your lab have environment suits?"

Isabel blinked. "W-What--?"

"Environment suits. Hazmat suits. Anything like that?" He demanded sharply.

"Yes, but--"

"Bring them and come with me. Leave the alien."

The questions filled Isabel's mind with a flurry of concern, each one harking a worse outcome than the last. It was only when Isabel loaded up the hazmat suits, only when the both of them connected with a fully armed military convoy, did Isabel hear glimpses of the emergency.

Situation. Infection. Outpost 11.

It couldn't be much worse.

Isabel had heard of Outpost 11. Every doctor on Gan and possibly Earth has heard of Outpost 11.

It was the first Outpost constructed on the planet Gan with the Ganna's cooperation. It was the first Outpost created with the sole purpose of studying Ganna physiology, with Ganna volunteers who were willing to be case studies. It was Isabel's sole dream--and pretty much the dream of every doctor on the planet--to earn the clearance necessary and become part of the vanguard in this new field of medicine.

So Isabel expected a far better reception than blaring sirens, flashing crimson lights, and twelve feet thick steel doors.

"Any survivors?" Harding questioned.

"We don't know." The soldier answered. "Protocol was to lock the Outpost down until higher authorities arrive. No one in or out."

"Dr. Pershing is still inside?" Isabel asked, her heart dropping to her stomach.

"He was the one who initiated the lockdown."

Isabel felt sluggish. The containment suit she was forced to wear clung to her like a weighted blanket, and her own breath painted glossy fog over her own mask. The dark world was muted against the quickening beats of her breaths.

The smell pierced through her suit before the full horror came to light. Something chemical, and fetid like sterilized rot. It was the sharpened sting of carrion meat doused in antiseptic; the dichotomy more revolting than either individual scent.

Outpost 11 was a relatively small outpost, hosting a half dozen of scientists and more than thirty soldiers, armed to the teeth and eternally alert thanks to an ever shifting roster. What little human life could be found in a metal base was rotted away, corpses in military fatigues and lab coats littered the ground in haunting positions of agony.

Isabel trailed behind Harding, her eyes wide and her breath hammering against the mask as she stepped over the bodies tentatively. No shell casings, no bullet holes, no clear marks of bruises on the bodies to indicate a struggle. It was as if something in the air had turned against them, filling their body with an unknown poison before they could even react...

Harding opened the door at the end of the hallway. The lab was vast, far larger than the hallway it took to reach the entrance. Tables of monitors placed in rows, equipment and computers rested comfortably on top, vats of an bioluminescent liquid gave the darkened lab an emerald glow. It was just bright enough to illuminate a solitary desk at the center of the lab, and the body stretched across it.

"Is that--?"

"Seems to be." Harding said, the end of his rifle pressed carefully into the side of Dr. Pershing's corpse. The body refused to move.

Dr. Pershing was hunched over in the monitor, his blotchy, white skin nearly shone against the light, but his veins pierced to the surface of his body in an unnatural purple hue. A bloody hand marked the edge of a panel in the desk, his hand reaching for a biometric scanner that lay centimeters too far from his reach before whatever grisly fate had caught up to him.

"Don't touch anything." Harding ordered, pacing around the room, his eyes sharpened for any hint of danger. Isabel kept her eyes focused on the corpse of the doctor, the once great legend of Ganna biology, reduced to hollowed meat.

Isabel stared at the scanner between his fingertips carefully. He could have been reaching for his salvation, or a clue as to how this madness had started.

Isabel took a steady breath. She placed Pershing's hand on the biomonitor. A part of her hoped that it wouldn't, it failed to register a pulse in the palm, or it atrophied too quickly to register the fingertips. The monitor flashed green.

"What did I tell you?" Harding yelled.

A consistent hum filled the room as the metallic wall panel slowly opened to reveal...

DNA strands. Medical notes. Data logs of viral tests and failures. Time-lapse of Ganna cellular degradation. No, not degradation. Cellular destruction.

"What is this?" Isabel whispered in horror.

"Doctor--"

"What is this!?" She studied the monitors carefully, watching the strands of neon green blood under the scope. It was horrifyingly familiar to her. The tendrils reached, like webbing, towards the spiked blood cells, wrapping around them like a cocoon. In moments, they copied their form, and then began to shrivel, like all the moisture had been siphoned out of their bodies.

Total cellular destabilization, rapid onset, with a final impulse to seek out like-minded cells to infect.

Infect.

Isabel turned slowly to face Harding, as if he were a tiger crouching low to swoop for the kill.

"This is a targeted pathogen."

Harding said nothing. He said everything.

"Pershing designed it--to see if he could? To see if they could kill us?" Isabel accused.

Harding maintained his silence, his mouth fully devoted to the life of a military jarhead. But his eyes were less obedient, the answers were so obvious behind the mask it forced a hateful laugh out of Isabel's mouth.

"To see if we could kill them." She deduced. The truth was so painfully human. "Well, you have your proof now. We can kill them biologically. Add that to our list of ways to kill our friends."

"They won't be our friends long, not after we're done with this place." Harding said, his gaze focused down the darkened halls of the exhibition room.

"What are you talking about?" Isabel demanded, her mind traveling to the dark places to find where the soldier's head was going. "Nobody survived. We can just wipe the data, and cover this whole mess--"

"Jesus, did you get a PhD to get this dumb, or does it come with the stick up all your asses?" Harding cut through. "You're always going on about how curious the greenskins are, you don't think some of them are going to ask questions about this place? Stick their fingers in their dead friends and find out they've been experimented on?"

"You don't know that. You don't know what they'll do."

"Yeah, and you don't know either. You have no idea if they'll complete Pershing's work and use it as a weapon against us."

Isabel didn't have to think about what could happen. All of human history mapped out the inevitabilities of war, and it was drawn in blood. Humans win, Ganna win; the outcome was the same for doctors everywhere. Instead of curing diseases, they will spend their days fighting infections. Painless organ transplants, replaced with endless hours of surgical amputations. The cure for death itself, lost on one of the hundred battlefields that claimed the lives of a thousand souls.

A fruitless future watered by rivers of blood.

"We can't just give up on their potential." Isabel said softly, her voice echoing the remnants of past resolve. "We have to...there's a way we can salvage this."

Harding turned to study her, his own face lathered with indifference at her futile pleading. "You're the head lab coat of Outpost 11 now. Tell me how you're going to make this mess not look like biological terrorism."

Isabel studied the screens carefully, watching the Ganna blood reach out to each blood cell like a virus.

"A virus."

"An unknown, malignant virus had incubated in the Ganna patient, something neither the patient nor our human scanners could detect." Isabel spoke evenly, hollow. The words flowed from her lips with the sickening ease of practice. She could feel Harding's glare at the back of her head, seeking for even the slightest hint of deviation. She gave none, standing as still as a statue as they both addressed the council of Gannas' elders.

The Gannas held no official government body, but the elders of their tribes gathered around Isabel and Harding like children huddling to the warmth of a fire. Their fluid skin rippled and babbled like troubled waters, their thoughts practically written across their bodies.

"I theorize that when Dr. Pershing demonstrated Ganna replication on human DNA, this unknown infection metastasized and simultaneously evolved into an airborne pathogen, virulent and lethal to humans. None of the original team survived the outbreak."

"Such an event...unknown to us. Did not think...possible." An elder said.

"It was an unexpected situation, but one we should've anticipate." Isabel said. "Humans...we hit snags like these all the time in the field of medicine. We should've foreseen complications."

"Complications...killed your kind." Another Elder spoke, one with silver locks trailing down her back like a waterfall. "We must...seek amends."

"Some of our leaders from our home world are traveling to meet with this council." Harding spoke up as he stepped forward. "They are willing to forgive this accident if your people agree to give doctors like Dr. Isabel here whatever they need to make sure this outbreak never happens again."

The Gannas' heads all faced each other, their faces void of human expressions. A terrible breath held itself inside Isabel's lungs as the silence reigned among them group. She knew they would accept. They were pure, honest creatures. They had to accept fixing what they thought they had broken. She didn't want them to accept. She wanted them to kick her, Harding, and every other human polluting their home back into the cold, black expanse of the stars.

"We will...meet with them." They finally spoke. "We heal...what we have broken."

Harding nodded. "Good."

Isabel needed a bath. The disinfectant spray of Outpost 11 clung to her hair, leaving an acrid odor of chemical death. She could feel it seeping into her body, transfusing into her skin, becoming a part of her. She wanted to scrub it out, vomit it out, scream it out--

"Not....worry, Isabel." Vally assured, the ripples on his face curled upwards, as if they were made by a dozen reassuring smiles. "Ganna...find cure. Stubborn like humans."

Isabel chuckled softly. Had it really only been a day since she saw Vally last? Marveling at the miracle of their blood, exploding with the possibilities of Ganna blood applied to human science?

"Vally, I can confidently say that Ganna are infinitely better than humans in every way."

Vally waved his hands dismissively. "Always...so critical of humans. I must stay...with Elders. Will see you soon?"

Vally outstretched his hand, his skin parting and shifting to form fingers, an emerald copy of Isabel's own hand reaching out to her, a symbol of trust transcending space and species itself.

"...I'll be in my office." Isabel said as she walked away from Vally. She knows his head would twist in confusion. She couldn't turn to see his innocence. Couldn't let him see her guilt, watch it crawling around in her guts, twisting around her heart, and mind.

Burrowing deep, that human virus of fear.