—
The corridor down which Bennett leads Seth and Lynch bustles with more activity the deeper they go. It widens in both width and height, like a mouth opening to swallow them whole. Seth shivers at the thought. Deeper into the beast they go...
As they pass the white-coat-clad workers and the engineers in their grey jumpsuits, Seth searches for any signs for others like him. More extraterrestrials. Or, more specifically, more terrestrial aliens.
Would he be able to feel them? Could he sense their closeness, the way he can with the coyotes? Is that possible..?
He stretches his sensation searchingly, reaching out with his thoughts and his focus for anything that might be like him.
He doesn't feel anything.
His heart sinks: a feeling something like loneliness, and something like trepidation.
Still, with restless hope, he searches. The scientists pass with their plastic boxes emanating odd vibes: some make him shiver, while others try to draw him closer. Lynch nudges him back into line with her shoe every time.
One set of scientists roll by with a cart on which a vertical glass tank sits, topped with metal on either end and tall enough to hold a fully-grown man. It's empty, yet it makes something ugly churn in Seth's gut, and he hurries to walk close to Bennett.
It's not that he likes Bennett, or even trusts him. He doesn't, not really. But he knows him, where these others are strangers, unknowns.
As they continue down the corridor, they pass a large set of double doors opening into what looks to be an aircraft hangar. Seth's ears twitch with the echoes clamoring from the enormous room, with its vaulted stone ceiling and its hulking aviation machines.
"What... are those for?" Seth asks, staring as they pass.
An engineer passing from the hangar catches his gaze, coming to a jerking halt. In her hand is an extensive plastic toolkit, and she has on a blue USAF ball cap, her ponytail pulled through the back. She stares at Seth the way he stares at the aircraft hangar, the way other scientists have been actively trying not to. He's noticed them trying—the way their gazes linger and follow, their conversations halting or hushing as they pass.
Somehow, the open awe of this lady is less suffocating than all the other looks.
"Oh, you mean Alien Air?" Bennett raises his brows. "The hangar, right? Alien Airport, we call her. She's for big operations. All covert, of course. We haven't really had any of those in the years I've been here, but you know, better have one than not, yeah? She opens out into the desert behind the energy plant. Pretty sure you could sneak half a planet in back through there. Yeah, we've got all the works." He beams, his eyes sparkling.
"A real 'Area 51', if you will," Lynch adds, eyeing the hangar entrance—or, Alien Airport, as Bennett calls it.
"Yes, but better. And real." Bennett stops to lean close, into Seth's personal space. He winks, then grins.
Seth leans back from him, only to find himself leaning into Lynch.
"Right," he says, his voice caught.
"Well! This way, Seth! We're almost there." Bennett takes Seth's arm and turns back to stride down the hall, pulling him from Lynch and the hangar.
He leads them a little further down the corridor, deeper into the rock, before turning down a more narrow passageway that branches off into laboratories. The rows of doors are closed, light metal inlaid with white plastic, a keypad above each handle.
Each door has a little plastic plaque on the wall beside it, each with a name and a number and a colored tab on it. They remind Seth of the ones outside the rooms in the hospital.
One of the plaques reads R. Fennel-Varrens. The next door over simply reads: Bennett.
"Here we are!" The scientist declares after inputting his pin. The door beeps and pops open; he swings it inwards with enthusiasm.
A nauseating feeling trickles through Seth as he looks at the open door, and his feet are suddenly weighted to the ground. This is it. The lab. Bennett is going to do horrible things to him, take horrible tests and do all those experiments to weaponize him just as Joshua had warned him, before all of this.
He really is an idiot for thinking they could make it out of that damn library.
"Well, if that's all you need of me, I'm gone. I've a partner to get back to," Lynch declares, disinterested as ever. "He's probably missing me now, anyway," She adds, slightly less disinterestedly.
"You're probably right!" Bennett concurs, already halfway through the doorway. "Thanks for all you do, Liza. Can't wait to see you again!"
"Mmhmm," Lynch agrees without enthusiasm. She adjusts a velcro strap on her neck brace before turning to head down the hall.
Under Seth's searching, pleading look, however, she pauses. The clicking of her boots halts midstep. With her stony gaze, she eyes the alien up and down. He's still rooted in place in front of the door, the blood drained from his cheeks.
He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.
"Please. Don't leave me alone." He wants to plead, but he can't bring himself to do it. Not to Lynch, of all people. Terrifying Lynch.
Something in the tension around Lynch's eyes shifts. Her gaze flicks over him consideringly, before darting to the door. Bennett has already been set loose on the room, and the sound of clinking glass and heavy somethings being scooted over the floor closely accompanies him.
She doesn't seem to need too long to make up her mind. It's already made up.
"It's been..." She gives a small, wry smile. "It's been a time, Seth. Good luck to you."
And with this, she turns and leaves. The clicking of her heels follows her down the hall, and she's gone.
"Seth! There you are! What are you doing? Come on, the door doesn't bite." Bennett leans out of the room with a pearly grin. Then his eyebrows shoot up, and intrigue sparks in his eyes. "Wait, do you?"
"What?" Seth looks back from the empty hall, feeling faint. "Do I what?"
"Bite!" Bennett takes his arm and pulls him into the laboratory before Seth can think to resist—he's too distracted by the question.
The scientist excitedly maneuvers him to a chair and sits him down with an easy nudge. Seth blinks at him from the metal chair with its dented single leg welded to the floor. The seat isn't even level.
The room around him is nothing like what he expected.
For one, it's smaller. It's a square of a space that's a little bigger than the interrogation room, with less of a damp, cramped feel to it. There's a counter on the wall by the door, lined with cabinets above and below. In the off-center of the room there's a metal table that matches the chair—the skid marks behind it indicate Bennett just recently pushed it away from the chair.
Doing so has left him enough room to kneel in front of the chair. He presses his thumb to Seth's lips to pull them back, forcing him to bare his fangs, and he shines a penlight very similar to Marlowe's into the alien's mouth. His piercing eyes glint in the light as they gaze up at sharp teeth.
Seth flushes, in his cheeks and over the back of his neck, and he's so flabbergasted, he doesn't know how to react.
"A mouthful of dog teeth..." Bennett mutters to himself with awe. "It's a wonder you don't immediately scare people off more often!"
He's tactile and tactless, Bennett is. Does he always just say everything that comes to mind? Does he always just touch without thought?
"Mng..." Seth grumbles in his chest.
Frustration simmers beneath his skin; Bennett's fingers taste like metal and lead. The scientist pulls his cheek up higher, and Seth opens his jaw.
The thought flashes through his mind: he could bite him. He could do it, and it wouldn't even be that hard. His hand is already there. And Bennett did ask, after all. What's a finger or two, in the long run, anyway?
Bennett's gaze flicks to Seth's eyes. Seth glowers at him, a growl bubbling up from his throat.
He leans forward and snaps his teeth over Bennett's hand. At least, where his hand was. The scientist yanks his hand back a moment before Seth's jaws close, a delighted yelp escaping him as sharp canines graze his knuckles.
"Oh! Shit, I should have expected that! It's the personal space thing again, isn't it? Shit, sorry. I'm just very excited to have you here."
He peers up at Seth with the face of a man who hasn't almost just lost a hand to deadly teeth. He looks... ecstatic.
Even so, he still holds his precariously saved hand close, almost subconsciously guarding it in the other.
Seeing this, Seth feels a swell of triumph. He doesn't know if he'd really have been capable of taking a bite out of the intrusive man, but he does know it's given him room to breathe regardless, and that's something he can be grateful for.
The hand is the one with the tattoo on it; the one that he noticed earlier in the hall. A grey, faded galaxy dotted with pricks of scar tissue. Something about it makes him pause. It strikes a paranormal feeling in his gut, similar to the feeling he expects to get with the coyotes...
Seth shivers, disbelief creeping up his back with icy fingers. This can't be real. This scientist, this feeling, what his gut is telling him... Bennett can't really be... No... Can he?
He was looking for other terrestrial aliens earlier, could Bennett be...? No. That's even more outrageous.
Something in Bennett's face has changed. As though he feels something too. He looks to his hand, then to Seth's gritted teeth.
"Sorry." He apologises again absentmindedly, his mind somewhere else. "The personal space thing. Marlowe says I do that a lot. I can try to be better," he mutters mostly to himself, pensively rubbing his hand.
Seth eyes him restlessly, trying to figure out what to think of this scientist. First impression tells him he hates him. The guy is excitable, insensitive, annoying. All this, and he doesn't seem like much of a threat. Just a nuisance.
Yet instinct warns him to be wary, and Seth can't shake the feeling.
"I've got something to show you," Bennett says, snapping out of his thoughts.
He stands up so suddenly, his knees crack, and he stalks to the table. From beneath it, he pulls out a black plastic case the size of a regular mailing package. It's the same kind of case Seth had seen those other workers carrying around out in the hall. Trepidation catches in his chest as he watches Bennett heft the thing onto the table.
Bennett pops the latches on the case.
Somehow, Seth expects a glow as he opens the lid, yet one doesn't come.
Gently, as though holding some sort of egg, Bennett lifts from the padded crate a meteorite. It's barely larger than his hand and shines with a coarse, porous metallic rock. Chunks of yellow-green catch the light like little gems set in the rock, and Seth can't look away.
"That's..." He stars breathlessly, feeling the tug in his chest almost fearfully.
Holding this meteorite, Bennett leans back and perches against the edge of the table. He turns the extraterrestrial object this way and that, inspecting it and watching it catch the light, before turning his gaze to Seth.
"It was you... wasn't it? This meteor, nine years ago."
Seth can't find words. He can't speak.
Bennett peers at the meteorite again. "It matches your eyes," he observes thoughtfully. He seems to get lost in the small hunk of space rock. "I was there... that night. You know the one. I was one of the first responders, if that's the right word to use. We knew you were coming, or, well... we knew this was coming. We knew nothing about you."
He lifts the meteorite up as he mentions it, and Seth follows it with his eyes, a yearning need to hold it tugging him towards the thing. For once, Bennett doesn't notice. He's wrapped up in his story.
"We were prepared and excited to meet it once it landed. This thing. We were just astronomers. We didn't expect... well, you."
He flexes his left hand, looking down at it. Seth's gaze is yanked from the meteorite; it falls to Bennett's scarred hand. His heart thrums. This can't be real. This can't be.
"You're..." He whispers.
"Yeah. I suppose I shouldn't have gone down there, into the crater. They told me not to. But I had to see. There was something down there, clearly! And well," Bennett laughs at the irony of it all, startling Seth with its abruptness. "I did see. I saw you. If that really was you."
He squints at Seth from across the room, as though trying to piece together a different appearance, a monstrous appearance, in his mind.
Seth trembles in his seat, hanging onto Bennett's words just as tightly as he does the edges of the chair. With each one, the situation becomes more and more clear.
"I wanted to know what it was. What you were, because I know it has to be you. It all lines up: the time frame, the sightings, your eyes. I know it's you, and I'm never wrong." He beams. "God, I can't believe it's finally happening. We've found you. After nine years. Do you know what it's taken to get here? For me?"
He doesn't wait for an answer. Not that Seth is prepared to give him one anyway. Pushing off the table, Bennett crosses the space between them in eager strides.
"I tracked down the place that would let me do the research, that would let me try to find the creature that cracked from this bad boy like a fuckin' chest-burster. I tracked down this top-secret facility like a bloodhound, I went through so many places, but I found Dulce. Eventually, finally, I found Dulce, and I landed this job.
"I love Rosalyn and the others in our department. It's great here. I get to do what I want, learn what I want, discover. And it's not like I have anyone in the outside world to make the secrecy clause hard. My work is my life, and you're my work."
He stops in front of Seth's chair. Leaning close. "And here you are."
Seth leans back in his seat, forgetting how to breathe. Bennett observes him almost unblinkingly.
"Tell me... Do you remember doing this to me?"
He holds up his scarred, tattooed left hand. Seth swallows.
"Yes," he says hoarsely.
Because he does. He remembers the fear and the panic, lashing out and sinking his teeth into that frightening mass reaching out to him. The liquid coppery taste that filled his mouth. The pain, the sand, the running. The shifting. He remembers.
"Amazing," Bennett says softly, eyes wide.
In his other hand, he holds the meteorite, and Seth finds himself drawn to it. It distracts him from Bennett's encroaching tendencies, and he can't keep from staring at it. There's something about it... something... It doesn't feel alive.
It feels dormant, almost dead. It's just... Just a rock. What did he expect? Something more? The answers to his existence? The answers to everything. Yet here it is, no more fantastic than any other rock on the road.
The realisation sinks like a stone in his gut.
He always wondered what happened to the thing, this other part of him responsible for his birth.
It's been with this scientist the whole time. The whole damn time.
Strong emotion shakes through him, and he feels the creature writhing through him. Frustration, shock, relief. He wants to tear the thing from Bennett's grasp.
Bennett finally notices the way Seth looks at the rock. A thought crosses his features, and without any prompting, he sets the thing down in Seth's lap. Seth jumps, and his breath catches. His hands come up quickly to take the meteorite, and he lets out a slow exhale.
Carefully, he lifts it up, peering into its gemmy, metallic core and watching it glitter under the light. On one side, it's concave, as though something has burst or seeped out of it, crumbling the side. Seth holds the rock a little tighter.
"Where did you get this?" He says finally. His hoarse voice is accompanied by a low rumble in his chest, something that hardly sounds human.
Bennett's smile shines in his eyes. "Where do you think? A crater in the desert, of course. I've had that for a long time. Most of the time it's just sitting in my office, or my appartment, not really doing much. I thought it'd be more excited to see you, honestly..."
He regards the meteorite with the same sort of thoughtful pensiveness as he does Seth.
In all honesty, Seth thought it'd give more of a reaction to his presence too. But it makes sense that it doesn't. Of course it feels empty. Everything that was in the meteorite... it's him now. It's been nine years since it "hatched" him, and he's taken everything inside it.
It is, however, still a part of him. One he's been wondering over for so long. And here it is.
Something in Seth's chest twinges, and he holds the meteorite a little closer to him. Even with its hollowness, something makes him clutch the rock possessively, and he does not want to let it go.
"Tell me..." Bennett puts his hand over the meteorite and pushes it down, meeting Seth's eye. "What is your home planet?"
"You mean... Windsor?"
"No, your home planet. Where you come from. Where that comes from. I've been dying to know."
Seth frowns, averting his gaze. "This is my home planet," he says firmly, for what feels like the hundredth time.
"Fascinating..."
Bennett tilts his head, considering. He's still uncomfortably close. Braving a glance, Seth finds the scientist retreated into his own thoughts, calculations flickering across his eyes.
As though a lightbulb goes off above his head, Bennett straightens suddenly, and goes back to the table with its case, leaving the meteorite with Seth. He mutters to himself as he does so, and Seth catches the words "here" and "formed here" and "is it possible?".
From the other side of the table, Bennett grabs a chair. This one is different than Seth's in that it has four legs, and it's not welded to the ground. Bennett picks it up by its seat and carries it over, setting it down backwards in front of Seth and straddling it in one fluid motion. He crosses his arms over the back of it and rests his chin on them, his bright eyes observing again.
"And how old are you, exactly?" He asks, peering at Seth.
Seth fidgets with the meteorite in his lap, feeling the sharp points against his fingertips. He debates answering and he knows Bennett can see him doing so, so in the end he goes with the easiest option.
"...Nine."
He gets to watch as Bennett's brows shoot up. "Nine?! Nine years old?"
Seth looks away, uncomfortable and unsure of what to say. Bennett has that look again, like a world of calculations is going on inside his head.
"...Remarkable!" He says finally, and he stands up from his seat.
Pushing the chair aside, he takes Seth's face in one of his hands and turns it this way and that, looking at everything from his nose to his ears to his jawline.
"Cognitive and physical development are unbelievably advanced— I imagined it was possible, but only in possibility, not reality. Yet here you are." He's muttering to himself, and Seth fixes his gaze on Bennett's tie.
It's a deep blue, with a sort of shimmery design over it, and it's undone. Loose around his neck and over his dress blouse as though he just didn't have the time to do it this morning.
"Would you say you're fully grown for your species?"
The question comes suddenly, directed to Seth. The abrupt address startles him, and he blinks back to reality.
"Huh?"
"You. Your age. Would you say you're fully grown for your species?" Bennett repeats, still holding Seth's chin and tilting his head up.
"I... I wouldn't know..." Seth swallows. "I haven't met anyone else of my species," he admits in a smaller voice.
"You don't say..." Bennett says softly, a breath of a reply. He's lost in his thoughts again.
He lets go of Seth's chin to pace the room, scratching his own bearded chin thoughtfully.
"He says this is his home planet. He's only as old as the meteorite itself, and he hasn't met anyone else of his kind... When we first saw him, he was a little beastie, but now he looks passably human. He allegedly can still be the beastie. He bit me that night, right out of the pod. Mmm... This all seems to imply..."
Bennett stops in his tracts, turning to face Seth. Seth's shoulders rise under the attention, and he squirms in the seat. He can feel a revelation building, and he doesn't like how close Bennett seems to be to figuring out the truth.
He wasn't even trying to reveal it to him! In fact, he'd told himself that if the scientist ever outright asked him, he wouldn't tell him a thing about his origins.
But as it is, Bennett never outright asked him. Just a bunch of little questions, after, of all things, he shocked him with his identity. His identity as...
Well...
The gears in Seth's own head are turning.
If his own theory is correct, that he's able to appear human because of the human blood in his system, and if that blood is Bennett's...
He suddenly doesn't feel well.
This was not where he expected to find a pseudo-father. This is not who he expected it to be.
He doesn't want this.
Bennett is regarding him consideringly, standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed. He's stopped murmuring aloud. He looks to Seth, as though grasping for answers, for confirmation.
Seth doesn't want his revelation to be painted over his face, but he knows it is. It doesn't matter what he wants, the connection is there.
Bennett meets Seth's stare. With a shared look, a mutual understanding passes between the two of them.
For once, Bennett seems self-aware. Even a little uncomfortable as he grasps the full scale of the situation.
"You really are something..." He mutters into the quiet room.
Seth doesn't know if it's a compliment.
.
.
.
This chapter is a little earlier than usual, since I won't be able to post it tomorrow proper!
Plot is so much fun >:-)
What are your thoughts? I'd love to know! I wish you all a stellar weekend!