The Fall

The crab is a host. A drone. Utterly possessed by this different species, and compelled to care for the invader’s eggs as if they were its own.

Who cares, right? Barnacles and crabs?

My point is: there are plenty of examples of this in nature.

Creatures invading bodies of species completely unlike their own and changing their essential function.

It’s proven. It’s known.

And yet we believe we’re above all this. We’re humans, right? Top of the food chain. We eat, we don’t get eaten. We take, not get taken.

It’s said that Copernicus (I can’t be the only one who thought it was Galileo) took Earth out of the center of the universe.

And Darwin took humans out of the center of the living world.

So why do we still insist on believing we are somehow something more than animals?

Look at us. Essentially a collection of cells coordinated by chemical signals.

What if some invading organism seized control of these signals? Started to take us over, one by one. Rewriting our very nature, converting us to their own means?

Impossible, you say?

Why? You think the human race is “too big to fail”?

Okay. Now stop reading this. Stop cruising the Internet for answers and go out and grab yourself some silver and rise up against these things-before it is too late.

The Black Forest Solutions Facility

GABRIEL BOLIVAR, THE only remaining member of the original four “survivors” of Regis Air Flight 753, waited in a dirt-walled hollow deep beneath the drainage floor of Slaughterhouse #3, two stories below the Black Forest Solutions meatpacking facility.

The Master’s oversize coffin lay atop a beam of rock and soil, in the absolute darkness of the underground chamber-and yet its heat signature was strong and distinct, the coffin glowing in Bolivar’s vision, as though lit brightly from within. Enough so that Bolivar could perceive the detail of the carved edging near the double-hinged top doors.

Such was the intensity of the Master’s ambient body temperature, radiating its glory.

Bolivar was well into the second stage of vampiric evolution. The pain of the transformation had all but receded, alleviated in large part by daily feedings, the red blood meal nourishing his body in a manner akin to protein and water building human muscle.

His new circulatory system was complete, his arteries now delivering sustenance to the chambers of his torso. His digestive system had become simplified, waste departing his body through one single hole. His flesh had become entirely hairless and glass-smooth. His extended middle fingers were thickened, talon-like digits with stone-hard nails, while the rest of his fingernails had molted away, as unnecessary to his current state as hair and genitals. His eyes were all pupil, save for a red ring that had eclipsed the human white. He perceived heat in gray scale, and his auditory function-an interior organ, distinct from the useless cartilage clinging to the sides of his smooth head-was greatly enhanced: he could hear the insects squirming in the dirt walls.

He relied more on animal instincts now than his failing human senses. He was intensely aware of the solar cycle, even when far beneath the planet’s surface: he knew that night was arriving above. His body ran about 323 degrees Kelvin, or 50 degrees Celsius-or 120 degrees Fahrenheit. He felt, beneath the earth’s surface, claustrophobia, a kinship with the darkness and the dampness, and an affinity for tight, enclosed spaces. He felt comfortable and safe underground, pulling the cold earth over himself during the day as a human would a warm blanket.

Beyond all that, he experienced a level of fellowship with the Master beyond the normal psychic link enjoyed by all the Master’s children. Bolivar felt himself being groomed for some larger purpose within the growing clan. For instance, he alone knew the location of the Master’s nesting place. He was aware that his consciousness was broader and deeper than the others. This he understood without forming any emotional response or independent opinion on it.

It simply was.

He was called to be at the Master’s side at the time of rising.

The top cabinet doors opened out at either side. Immense hands appeared first, fingers gripping the sides of the open coffin one at a time, with the graceful coordination of spider legs. The Master pulled itself erect at the waist, clumps of old sod falling from its giant upper half back into the soil bed.

Its eyes were open. The Master was already seeing a great many things, far beyond the confines of this darkened subterranean hollow.