Fic: (NaNo) The Citadel - chapter 4
title: The Citadel - chapter 4
rating: NC-17, PG-13 for this part
summary: Sci-Fi AU: Several decades in the future, Dominic, Billy, and the rest of the guys work and live on an orbiting space station, which gets infected and taken over by an alien force. The boys have to fight the evil stuff and save the day. :)
wordcount total: 16,518
wordcount for this chapter: 4,025
index
Dominic hurried to the nearest express elevator and typed in his code. The talk with Billy had left him feeling sober, although he knew he wasn’t, not really. However, the chillier, clean air of the hallways helped to clear his head. Even so, by the time he had stepped out of the elevator and around the corner to Andy’s lab, Dominic felt far from alert.
He opened the clear glass door and looked around for Andy; he spotted Elijah first. Dominic greeted his friend and went to stand at his shoulder. Elijah was looking down at the lab counter, where he’d put his sample into a Petri dish.
“Andy said he’ll be right back,” Elijah said, explaining Andy’s absence from the large lab. Besides Dominic and Elijah, the room, all clean, stark white furnishings and clear glass, was empty.
“Did he look at it yet?”
“No. Y’want a chair?”
Dominic accepted the offered stool gratefully and, like Elijah, hunched over the counter to peer closely at the small sample.
“Dominic, great. Let’s get started, then,” Andy said suddenly from behind them. Dominic whirled around and instantly clutched his head. “Alright, mate?”
“Yeah, fine. Headache.”
“Alright, if you’re sure.” Andy pulled up a stool and sat in between the two younger men. “What do we have here?” he mused softly.
Andy’s uniform matched the lab: a clean, stark white lab coat over a pressed white button-down, and a white t-shirt poking out from the unbuttoned collar. Dominic had met Andy several years ago at a mutual friend’s party, and Andy had been wearing all black with shiny leather trousers. Since that moment, seeing Andy in his work clothes had always been jarring for Dominic.
“Have you touched it?” Andy asked, glancing over at Elijah, who shook his head quickly. “Hmm. I don’t recognize it from this sample, but that doesn’t mean much. You could take a chunk of apple and I probably wouldn’t recognize it without my equipment.”
Elijah narrowed his eyes.
“So use your equipment,” Dominic broke in with a lopsided grin. He was more accustomed than Elijah to Andy’s sense of humor.
“Alright, alright, I’m getting to that. So where did you find this stuff, then?”
“Outside.”
“As in, not inside Citadel. Out in zero-atmosphere space,” Dominic elaborated.
Andy looked surprised. “Really? Well, now I’m intrigued.”
Andy hopped off his stool and strolled over to a different counter. Dominic and Elijah followed him like hopeful puppies. The lab technician slid the Petri dish under a microscope and squinted into it.
“Hmmm…”
“What is it?”
“It’s… I’m not sure. It looks similar to those, um…” Andy made an offhanded gesture with one hand. “Dominic, you know what I’m talking about, right?”
“Uh… no.”
“Y’know, those fly things. The plants.”
“Venus Fly Traps?” Dominic asked uncertainly as he tried to connect what he knew of the plant to Andy’s strange hand signals.
“Yeah, right, those. It reminds me of that. It’s like it’s slightly muscular, y’know?”
“No, we don’t know. Care to explain it for us?” Elijah was obviously getting annoyed with Andy.
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You two wait over there while I run a few tests, and then we can talk about the results. You might want to call Viggo up here, if he’s not busy. He might know what it is.” Andy motioned for Dominic and Elijah to go to the opposite end of the lab to give him space to work.
Dominic nodded and tugged Elijah by the arm. They retreated to a counter lined with charts and diagrams of molecules.
“Don’t pester him, okay?” Dominic whispered. Elijah grudgingly nodded. “Um, ‘Lijah? Is it alright if I tell Billy about this?”
Elijah looked at him steadily. “You’ve already told him, haven’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t really say no, then, can I?”
“Do you want to call Viggo? At least you have control over that.”
Elijah sighed. “Let’s only call him if Andy can’t figure out what this stuff is.”
Across the room, Andy was spinning from counter to counter, machine to machine, running several different tests on the sample. Elijah watched him work for a moment, then turned back to Dominic.
“Have you been drinking?”
Dominic’s eyes widened, like a deer caught in the headlights. “Um… a bit.”
“You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel very good, actually.” Dominic slumped over on his stool to rest his arms and head on the counter. “Billy ordered us dinner, but I didn’t eat it.”
“Jeez, why not?”
“I had to come here.”
“Oh, Dom. I’m sorry,” Elijah soothed, laying an open hand on Dominic’s back.
An hour later, Andy approached them with a small sheath of computer printouts.
“Does one of those have an answer?” Elijah asked with feigned hope. Andy shook his head sadly. “So, what did you find out?”
“I couldn’t find a match in the database, and I sent my results back to Earth. Maybe they’ll be able to find something I couldn’t, but I doubt it. I hesitate to say it’s something alien, but that’s what we might be looking at, here. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before.”
“What’s so different about it?” Dominic asked curiously.
“Well… it’s porous, like a sponge, but it’s not… not really like a sponge at all. It doesn’t soak up anything, at least not that I can tell.”
“Should we bring it to Viggo?” Elijah asked.
“You can if you want. He might be more open to the idea that it’s alien, but he also knows plants better than anyone up here.”
“Elijah, I think we should at least let him look at it,” Dominic added as he noticed Elijah hesitating.
Finally, Elijah nodded. “Thanks, Andy.”
“Yeah, good luck with it, guys. Let me know what happens, alright?”
“Sure. See you later, Andy.”
Dominic led Elijah, who was carrying the sample, out of the lab, waving goodbye to Andy over his shoulder.
“Do you think it is alien, Dom?”
“I think… I think it could be. But, ‘Lij, look at reality. With all the space travel we, as humans, as Earthlings, have done, nothing’s been found. Nothing in this solar system, and nothing in the nearest ones either.”
“But there’ve been traces of possible life!” Elijah interjected. “What about Mars? And Venus?”
“What about them? Just because they may have had the right environment for something to survive doesn’t mean that life actually did appear.”
“Come on, Dom. I didn’t think you’d be this… against the idea!”
“I’m not against it! If that stuff does turn out to be alien, I’ll accept that and be happy about it. I can’t help but think that there’s something else out there, somewhere, but, Elijah, so far there hasn’t been, and you have to factor that in for anything you say to be taken seriously.”
Elijah sighed. “Will Viggo think it’s alien?”
“Probably. But only if he has a good reason to doubt it’s from Earth. Viggo’s a big believer in aliens, and it annoys him to no end that astronauts haven’t found fossils on Mars.”
“It’s getting late; will Viggo still be around?”
“I’m pretty sure he sleeps in the greenhouse, when he does sleep. I’ve gone in at odd hours and always found him awake, though, so I have my doubts that he ever actually sleeps at all.” Dominic smiled. “I think he just sets up a sleeping pad whenever he gets tired.”
Dominic led the way to the greenhouse, which was located centrally in Citadel. The plants provided oxygen stores. The natural oxygen was then purified and laced with chemicals that killed most malevolent airborne bacteria before being sent out to every corner of Citadel through the air vents.
Dominic, on the life support team, had the tedious job of routinely checking the air purification tests to make sure that the added chemicals weren’t having any long term poisonous effects on Citadel’s passengers.
As they approached the entrance to the greenhouse doors, Dominic saw Elijah become slightly panicked by all of the “Danger” and “Warning” signs. Dominic halted their progress to explain.
“It’s fine, it’s not dangerous at all. The signs are just there because once you go into the greenhouse, the air won’t be purified or have any of the additive chemicals. People survive on Earth without that stuff, but to keep everyone healthy up here, we have to doctor the oxygen a bit. It’s perfectly fine, alright?”
“Jeez, are the signs there to keep people out?”
“Not really. But once you’re inside, the air will probably feel too thick. Where did you live back on Earth? What elevation, I mean?”
“Um… I don’t remember. I wasn’t close to sea-level, though,” Elijah said, catching on to what Dominic was saying.
“Well, this will feel like stepping out of an airplane into the Tropics in the summer. Just be prepared.”
Elijah nodded and faced the door. “Ready?”
“Of course.” Dominic pushed open the first door, leading his friend into a small air-lock, and pushed a few buttons on a control panel on the wall. In seconds, the inside door unlocked with a click and Dominic ushered Elijah through it.
The greenhouse was the largest single room in the entire Citadel structure. It’s exceptionally high ceilings allowed the taller plants and trees to grow to their natural height, although Viggo kept them trimmed to allow the bright sun simulating lights to reach the smaller plants at the floor. There were no windows here, but the plant life was so thick that they would’ve been unnecessary anyway. The greenhouse was divided into sections by both plant type and region, and there were subtle-but necessary-temperature and environment changes between section.
Dominic often visited the greenhouse when he was feeling homesick or just in need of some greenery, and had, over time, become great friends with the head greensman, Viggo. Viggo had seen Dominic at his worst, and had comforted him without judgment. Dominic valued him as one of a few of his true friends and made a point to visit as often as he could.
Dominic also liked the greenhouse for the change in atmosphere. Although he fully supported the chemically altered oxygen that his team was responsible for pumping through the ventilation system, he sometimes felt that the over-purified air was too artificial and stale for his taste. When he’d told Viggo about these feelings, Viggo had given him the first small, potted plant to keep in his room, making it a small sanctuary for him to retreat to when the uniform artificiality got to be too much for him.
Elijah was breathing deeply, and slowly, and staring around at the tall greenery in amazement. It was his first time visiting the greenhouse. Dominic had been surprised to learn that not many people knew that the greenhouse was free for anyone to visit at any time, and that fewer people actually made the short trip to see it. He often suspected that Viggo got lonely, with only a few Citadel employees to help him tend the plants for company.
Dominic knew the winding dirt paths of the greenhouse like the back of his hand, and he pulled Elijah through to the high-tech shed that Viggo kept his tools and equipment in. The shed was the only place in the greenhouse, besides the air lock, that reminded people that they were on a space station and not in the middle of a forest on Earth. Dominic opened the door and, seeing that Viggo was not inside, pulled an intercom microphone off the wall.
“Viggo, it’s Dom. Where are you?”
“Palm trees,” came a crackling reply through the speaker. Everything in the shed was streaked with dirt or grass stains.
“I’ve brought Elijah with me. We have a question for you.”
“I’m on my way back.”
Dominic smiled at Elijah. “He’ll be here in a minute. The palm trees are only in the next section over. That way,” he added, pointing behind Elijah, down a wider, gravel pathway.
Only a moment later, a man appeared, dragging a small cart filled with rakes, shovels, and saws behind him. He was barefoot, and he had a cloth knapsack slung over one shoulder. His trousers had holes in the knees and were grass-stained at the cuffs, and his thin button-down shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest.
Viggo pulled the cart into the shed without greeting the other two men. Only after he’d parked it and set the lock on the wheels, he turned around to say hello. He smiled at Dominic and pulled him into a brief hug, and then held out his hand to Elijah.
“You must be Elijah. Dom’s told me about you.”
“Yeah, likewise. Nice to finally meet you. I can’t believe I’ve never been in here before!”
Dominic laughed. “That’s what most people say their first time.”
“Dom, it’s been way too long. Where have you been?” Viggo asked good-naturedly.
“I’ve got a job, y’know,” Dominic replied. His tone was defensive, but he smiled. “And Elijah’s had me helping him with this stuff that we’ve come to ask you about.”
“Right. So, what’s up?”
“Well, we found-I found-this weird growth on a support beam in sector K a few days ago,” Elijah began. “I called Dominic in and he didn’t recognize it, so our friend Orlando took me out in a Crawler and I got a sample of it. We just came from Andy Serkis’s lab; he ran a few tests and didn’t come up with anything.”
“So we came to you, because nobody knows more about organic life forms,” Dominic added. Flattery will get you everywhere, though he didn’t doubt for a moment that Viggo would help them.
“You brought the sample?” Viggo asked softly, extending his hand. Elijah held it out to him. “Hmm. What did Andy tell you about it?” Viggo raised the small sample up to his face and peered closely at it.
“He said it wasn’t like anything he’d seen before. He said it was… porous, I think. Kind of like a sponge.”
“Hmm,” Viggo said again. “The color reminds me of…” He trailed off, looking at Dominic. “Follow me,” he said.
They left the shed and meandered down a narrow path. Viggo stopped and plucked a handful of berries off an overhanging tree and handed them to Dominic.
“You look hungry,” he explained. Dominic smiled at popped one of the berries into his mouth gratefully. “Help yourself, if you want some,” Viggo added, nodding at Elijah.
They continued along the path until they reached one of the pale blue-colored walls, where the path turned sharply to the right and ran alongside the wall. After a few more minutes of walking, Dominic felt a drop in temperature and he shivered involuntarily. The light in this section was tinted a faint red, and in front of them, rows of tables held various pots and trays beneath specifically calibrated heat lamps.
“This is my experimental section,” Viggo said quietly. “Some of these mutations occurred naturally, so I moved them here, but most of these plants are my own creations. This row here has several species with a few added chemicals, and even though the additives were exactly the same, look at how different the results are.”
Dominic examined the strange plants with interest, but Elijah looked nervous. “So… what?”
“This one,” Viggo said, pointing. “Your sample reminds me of this.”
Elijah bent over the table to look closely at the small, horizontally-growing plant. It looked like a pale red blob, or, more specifically, like a fountain that had spurted a glutinous liquid and then had frozen in place.
“What is it?” Dominic asked.
“It was a type of fungus, but I added some specific strains of bacteria to the soil. No fertilizer.”
“It looks kinda like it, don’t you think?” Elijah whispered to Dominic.
“You said the organism was in sector K?” Viggo interrupted. Elijah nodded. “Can you take me there?”
“Yeah. That’d be good idea,” Dominic said. “It looks a bit like this fungus, but more… tough, I think. Can I touch it?”
Viggo nodded. Dominic reached out with one finger and poked the plant. It felt springy, like a tough sponge, but also soft and slightly fuzzy, like the skin of a peach. After watching Dominic, Elijah also touched the small growth.
“Yeah, the stuff outside is definitely tougher than this. It was kind of difficult to get a sample of it,” Elijah muttered.
“Hey, Viggo?” Dominic said suddenly, straightening to look at his friend. “What should we call it?”
“Technically, the next name on the list is ‘KD-142’, but that’s not very imaginative.”
“How do you know that shit?” Elijah asked with a raised eyebrow. Dominic chuckled, shrugging. “I guess it could shorten to ‘Katie’, but that reminds me of my old girlfriend Caitlyn…”
“Names should mean something,” Viggo continued. “Why don’t we go up to sector K and take another look at it. Maybe, between the three of us, we’ll think of something better than an alphanumeric code.”
Elijah nodded. Viggo led the other two back to the shed so that he could find a pair of sandals and a light jacket, and then they exited the greenhouse through the airlock. As they walked to the nearest elevator, a non-express one, Elijah asked, “Can anyone visit the greenhouse?”
Viggo, smiling gently, nodded. “I’d be very happy if you came back soon. It’s a beautiful greenhouse.”
“Yeah. It reminds me of home. Though I’m not sure why. I lived in a city before I came up here.”
“That’s how I met Dominic. He was homesick and I found him wandering through the small forest of oaks.”
“You remember where I was walking? That was almost seven years ago!”
“I remember because the trees were still very small. They weren’t much taller than me, then. And you had gotten yourself lost, as I recall.”
“Yeah, well, that was my first visit.”
Viggo draped his arm over Dominic’s shoulders and kissed the top of his head. “It didn’t take you long to find your way around after that.”
“I had an excellent guide,” Dominic answered, relaxing into Viggo’s muscular body.
Elijah grinned at them and typed their destination into the elevator’s control pad. The elevator stopped twice on the trip; a young couple got on and then off before they reached sector K. Elijah quietly grumbled about the fact that the public elevators offered them no privacy, but Dominic didn’t mind. Soon enough, Elijah was leading them through the confusing maze of corridors, searching for the one specific window.
When they reached it, Elijah and Dominic’s jaws dropped.
“Holy shit,” Elijah murmured. He slowly stepped closer to the window and stared out of it, as if in a daze.
The organism had grown. It had grown enough to cover the entire portion of the support beam, and it was spreading down towards their window.
Viggo gazed at the thing. “I’m assuming it wasn’t this size the last time you saw it?”
“Right.”
“How big was it?”
“About the size of my head,” Elijah replied. Now it was the size of his head, plus his body, plus Dominic’s body as well.
“How did it grow so fast?” Dominic muttered, pressing his nose to the glass. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a flash of color amongst the silver and glowing blue of the grid. “Elijah!” Dominic pointed.
Elijah’s eyes followed the direction of his finger. Dominic had spotted another growth on a different beam. It was smaller than the original organism had been, but what Dominic most wanted to know was how it had spread so far and grown so much bigger in such a short amount of time.
“I think you should let your team in on this,” Dominic whispered. Elijah nodded absently, staring out at the plant.
“I think we need to run a scan of the entire grid,” Elijah whispered back after a moment.
“That’s probably a good idea,” Viggo agreed. “I’m not sure how it’s surviving out there, or how it’s spreading so quickly. Have you considered that it might be an alien species?”
“Yeah, we have… but I don’t think…”
“Dominic, it must be alien. Have you ever seen something act like this before?”
“We can’t judge it too quickly,” Dominic replied forcefully. “It might just be an unknown strain of something, like Viggo’s mutated plants. It may’ve been contaminated by something Citadel releases into space.”
“Elijah,” Viggo broke in quietly. “Now is the time to alert other people to the situation. Dominic, I think you need to eat something and sleep off that headache. I’ll talk to Andy tonight, if he’s not already gone to bed, and we can all discuss this tomorrow, okay?”
Dominic sighed, deflated. “Yeah. Thanks for your help, Vig.”
“My pleasure, as always.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Elijah added. “And it was nice meeting you. I’m sure I’ll be back to the greenhouse sometime soon.”
***
Dominic was rubbing his forehead as he typed in his code to open his door. He found Billy inside, at his desk, reading something on the computer. Billy turned around as Dominic entered. Dominic didn’t say anything; instead he walked forward a few steps and collapsed face-down onto the bed with a groan.
“What’s happened?” Billy asked, standing up from Dominic’s swiveling desk chair.
“It grew. Andy couldn’t find a match. Viggo created mutant plants that have similar characteristics. Viggo and Elijah both think it’s alien. And it grew.”
Dominic’s voice was muffled by layers of blankets and pillows and his own arm, but he didn’t move. He felt Billy sit down beside him on the bed, and seconds later, Billy’s hand started rubbing Dominic’s back soothingly.
“What do you think?”
“I think I drank too much. I think it’s not alien, but some kind of mutation. I think I’m about to pass out. I think… I think it’s suddenly turned into something to worry about.”
Billy hummed noncommittally.
“I think I need you to kiss me.”
“I think you’ll have to roll over for that,” Billy replied.
Dominic did as Billy suggested and rolled onto his back, his arms extended above his head in an exhausted stretch. Billy bent low over him, supporting himself with an hand on the bed on either side of Dominic’s abdomen, and bumped noses with Dominic before kissing him softly.
“Are you hungry?” he murmured as he pulled back. “You never ate anything.”
“Viggo gave me a few berries, but now I don’t feel well,” Dominic whispered. “Tomorrow this stuff will have grown onto another support beam, and nobody can figure out what it is or where it’s come from.”
“Is it something bad?”
“That’s the thing. Nobody really knows. Might be benign for all we know, but at the rate it’s growing, I doubt it.”
Billy sighed. “Are you tired?”
“Yes.”
“You should go to sleep. Tomorrow will be another long day.”
Dominic nodded slowly, his eyelids drooping. “What did you do all evening?”
“Nothing much. I’m sorry you didn’t get good news from Andy and Viggo, Dom.”
“Me too. Now… I can’t help but worry about it.”
“Just go to sleep now, love.” Billy kissed Dominic again. “Don’t think about it for tonight. Tomorrow you can worry about it again, but for tonight, pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“Easier said than done,” Dominic mumbled. He kicked off his shoes, which fell with two soft thumps to the floor, and curled his arms around Billy’s neck. “I wish this hadn’t happened now.”
“I know, but there’s not much we can do about that now. I’ll be here for a while, Dommie, don’t worry about that.”
“I just… I wanted to spend time with you, and now all this shit is going on and-”
Billy interrupted Dominic with another gentle kiss. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. We have time for that later.”
In moments, Dominic had fallen asleep. However, his dreams made his sleep restless, but every time his eyes flew open in alarm, he sought out Billy in the darkness and wormed his way back into his lover’s arms.
***
chapter 5