The Beginning of An Apocalypse

~Seven Years Ago~

“Something’s wrong! There hasn’t been a response in days!” This is the first thing scientist Gabriel Everett heard when he picked up his phone. The first thing he thought of was one of the side projects where he used animals, but it wasn’t. It was his experiment, the one he spent his entire life on. And something was wrong.

Everett rushed down through his office, down the hall, and through the extensive security of his building. His phone kept ringing with phone calls, and the more calls he got the more he felt his chest tighten. He tried to remain calm, but as he pushed people into the wall and didn’t care to look where he was going down the halls, he had no room for calm.

Gabriel found the last door he needed to get to his lab. His lab took the entire floor of level twelve. He bent down to have his eye scanned and then his fingerprint. Once he passed both the eye and fingerprint scan he scanned his ID card and waited for the light of the door to turn green. The numbers popped up and he tapped 55232 once again the screen flashed green and he was allowed in. The metal doors opened to reveal his lab. There were many people in white coats running around and looking for things. There was noise in every direction filling the room.

He smiled at all of it. He had built this, he had been able to do this. He strived for years to get to this one point and here he was.

“Mr. Everett!” Someone from beside him called. “Mr. Everett!”

Gabriel turned to look at whoever was calling him with urgency. He looked to see Dr. Adrian Turner running for him. “You have to come to see this. It’s horrible!” He yelled. Gabriel stared at him and wondered if what he was about to come to see would be the greatest thing to happen to his career or the worst thing to happen to it. But he kept on a calm face and followed him.

They walked past the large equipment. They walked through the many obstacles that stopped them from getting to the stairs to the main room. The main room with the computers and where all the important things were stored. And in this room was where they were monitoring their exploration through space.

Dr. Turner unlocked the door and let them both in. Three other guys in the room were tapping away at computers. One was talking to a speaker. The last one at the end of the room had his hands pressed together over his mouth. He was scared and praying to God. Gabriel couldn’t stand that.

Giving others everything to God. Someone who wasn’t even in there and had never given anyone anything before. God was stories and Gabrial wished that people would stop pretending they weren’t.

“What is it?” Gabriel asked. He looked at the screens, they saw what they all saw. The emptiness of space. The blackness of it. He watched for a while longer as Dr. Turner told him to. He stood there with his arms crossed over his lab coat. He was gone for only an hour, he didn’t know if there would be any progress.

“Walter,” Tony Yate said through his speaker. Josh Walter was the one they had sent to space a year ago, but to them, it was a couple of minutes maybe. That always amazed him. Time was different in every aspect.

They’ve lost most contact with Walter, but they have been able to get in touch with him. Every chance they got, they tried to make contact. And most of the time, Walter responded. But this time, like last week, he didn’t. His crew didn’t either. The only one left was Walter. They were looking through the camera they had put into his suit. Every other one was destroyed. The last thing they saw was complete darkness before it was gone.

There were seven people there, but now there’s only one.

“Walter. If you are there, say something,” Tony said, and still nothing. They heard nothing and it was starting to become a concern of theirs. They needed to find out what was happening.

“I’ve known of this problem,” Gabriel finally said. “What did you want me to see?”

“I wanted you to see what we saw, Everett,” Dr. Turner said. He moved to an unused computer and tapped in his codes and then went through their recorded images.

Gabriel walked over to him and leaned down to get a closer look. “It’s just space,” he said.

“Yes, but we’ll go through it another time…” Turner scrolled through the recorded video and stopped it at the end. “This was from Alders camera. He was there when Cameron stopped responding.” He played the video when he got there.

Gabriel squinted his eyes to see what was there. It was the ship that they were living on.

“Cam!” Alders shouted. “Where’d you go?! Cam!”

That’s when they heard the scream. There was another scream before it wasn’t a scream anymore. It was choking. There was a horrible sound of someone wheezing and choking and vomiting.

The camera moved and they got to see what was happening. Cameron was floating, her body moved back and forth. Blood came from her mouth as she puked up what seemed to be her insides. But that wasn’t what Gabrial was focused on. He looked at what was on her. Something was crawling around her suit making its way up her chest. It wasn’t human, it wasn’t her vomit, it was something else.

Gabriel could feel his lips twitch and turn into a small fascinated smile. His entire body felt electrified and drawn to this. It was amazing. “Cam!” Alders shouted but all he got in response was the sound of her choking on her blood.

Alders floated closer as if he could help her. Gabriel knew that was not the case, but he was excited to see what would happen.

He moved closer to Cameron and grabbed her arm. That was when the shiny black goo that traced up Cameron’s body jumped and fell onto Alder’s hand. It swirled around him as Alder screamed and violently thrashed around. They watched as Alder’s hand went from normal to black-veined. And he started thrashing not because of his fighting, but because something was wrong with him. The same something that had made Cameron puke up her blood and guts.

And now all there was on Gabriel’s face was a smile.

“An alien,” he said to himself.

“It seems like it,” Turner said. He looked up at Gabriel proudly. “We have finally found one, sir.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “But we can not celebrate yet. Get in touch with Walter. We need that beautiful creature and he will bring it to me. He will not be coming back to earth until he has that alien captured and with him.”

“Understood, sir,” Tony said and returned to trying to get in touch with Walter.

“What should we do now?” Turner asked as he turned off the computer.

Gabriel turned back to him and looked at the four of them. “We do not tell a soul about this. What is found stays in this room? And for me and you Turner, we need to go find some people to be a host.”