Amongst Us

Chapter 3

Cyan stands with White. Red groans in response. "Fine. The alien stays," this is met with cheers from the pro-alien group, "but, if it so much as sneezes in a way I don't like, I shove it out the airlock, understand?"
The group all nod in confirmation before returning to their tasks. Cyan clocks in and heads for navigation. When she arrives, Red is course correcting. "Captain." She salutes.
"Cyan." He nods in response.
She cleans the vent in awkward silence. The awkwardness persists until she leaves after finishing her task. Sighing in relief at having escaped that situation, Cyan checks her MIRA pad for her next task.

A month later, Cyan was walking past the medbay on her way to the cafeteria after finishing her task with the reactor. Terrifying task. As she walks past she stops to see the red alien goo in a new glass cylinder, thankfully lacking any cracks.

Looking around to make sure White wasn't there, she walks towards it and crouches down. "Hello little guy. How are you doing?" Ok, talking to an alien blob without a mouth might seem crazy, but Cyan was genuinely interested in this thing. It was an alien. She might not be a nerd like Pink and Lime, but you can't expect her to not take an interest. Besides, what if it's like a plant and you need to talk to it? After it gives no response, Cyan continues. "Not much of a talker huh? I can work with that. My names Amanda, but you can call me Cyan."
She continues talking to it for a while until White arrives in the medbay. "Cyan?"

Cyan whips around, mildly embarrassed. "Heyyy White. What up bro?"
White is unimpressed. "'What up bro?' Why were you talking to the subject?"
Cyan shrugs awkwardly. "Nothing?"
White sighs and writes something down on his MIRA pad. "If you are interested in the creature you could have asked me about it."
Cyan sighs in relief at Whites assumption. "Yes exactly that. Tell me stuff."

White strides over to the screen in the medbay. "Well I've done several scans in various forms." He shows Cyan various medbay scans of the alien on the screen. "It's exterior features perfectly mimic that of the things it sees, including inanimate objects." He shows an image of a blender opening its side to reveal rows of sharp teeth. "However, it's interior remains largely the same. It has no distinguishable stomach, so it's saliva is possibly acidic, and it lacks any lungs, so it might take in oxygen through its skin. Although the shape may change, there are three things it does have that remain permanent. It's mouth, that it uses to feed, the black tendril that it uses as a weapon, and an ovipositor."
Cyan tilts her head in confusion. "An ovi-what now?"
White sighs. "It lays its eggs inside other creatures and fertilises them."
Cyan is taken aback. "That is... super weird."

Cyan sees movement in the corner of her eye. "Uh, White." She points at the alien.
White looks at where she's pointing and the alien is changing again. It shifts and compresses until it looks exactly like... a tiny Cyan?
Cyan gasps and gets close to the glass. "It's a tiny me. Hello." She waves at it and it waves back. "Aww how cute."
White is dumbstruck. "Fascinating. It's never imitated crewmates before." White hums in thought before Ponting at Cyan. "Perhaps you should keep it."
Cyan whips her head back to White. "What? Why?"
White is writing in his MIRA pad. "It hasn't shown any hostile behaviour outside of being provoked for the past month, and it appears to like you."
Cyan look down at the mini crewmate and it mimics her movements perfectly. If she raised a hand, it did so too. "I mean, ok I guess. What exactly do I do with it?"

White walks over to the cylinder. "I'll give you my notes about the creature. Be careful though. It hasn't been outside it's cage before."
Cyan slumps in relief at having some help with taking care of an alien pet. "Thanks White." She tenses when she realises the second half of what he said. "Wait, what?"
Before she could protest, White takes the lid off of the cylindrical prison and quickly steps back.

Cyan stays perfectly still as the mini crewmate slowly walks out, a little wobbly on its legs. It looks around the room before its gaze lands on Cyan. It stares at her for a short while before walking over to her and standing at her feet. After a short staring contest, Cyan takes an experimental step backward. The mini crewmate follows close behind. Gaining confidence, Cyan takes a few more steps, watching as it follows her. Seeing that it means no harm, White and Cyan relax.
Cyan crouches down to the mini crewmates level. "Hello, uh, tiny alien me. I guess you're gonna follow me around for a while. Wanna go to bed?"

The mini crewmate just stares at Cyan blankly. Shaking her head, Cyan waves off her own question. "Right, don't know why I expected you to answer that. Well, uh, come on, I guess?" She leaves the medbay with mini crewmate following close behind her on her way to her bunk.