Crossed
#3 of B-Snakes
You only live twice:
Once when you're born
And once when you look dea...
You only live twice:
Once when you're born
And once when you look death in the face.
-James Bond
+++++
Monique Borgier blinked.
Across the room, her friend Dervish Loint pulled the tentacles away from the c-snake host they had been wrapped around. As the black...things...wrapped themselves around her body, they became indistinguishable from clothes-albeit the type of clothes one would *not* see on the runways this season.
The human stepped over the body of what had been the dressmaker.
"I can explain," she repeated. "Only not now. Right now, I want you to sit down."
Monique was somewhat reluctant to comply.
Behind her friend, the pink of the c-snakes was slowly being overtaken by black.
"Sit down, Monique," said Dervish. The human was advancing calmly, and Monique briefly, absurdly, wondered if she could back into the changing room and hide under her dress. Or maybe that one only worked with bed creatures. Was there some kind of exterminator you called when your friend turns out to be a tentacle monster?
"Sit down," Dervish said. She reached out, placed one hand on her friend's shoulder, pushed her back into a chair. Monique sat with a rustle, gathering the lower portion of her dress in her hands.
Dervish gently pushed her friend's hands away, letting the dress fall to the floor. With her free hand, she reached behind her, pulling out a knife.
"What-"
"SIT." With some deftly applied leverage, she pressed the trembling poodle back into the chair, and laid a knife along the gown's center line. Derv pressed a button; the knife's edge suddenly glowed amber, and she slit the dress all the way to Monique's thigh.
The poodle gaped. She would've preferred the disemboweling.
"Do you have any idea how much this dress *cost*?" she raged. "I had to have it shipped from halfway around the world!"
"Yes, and be quiet," Dervish replied, plunging her fist into the hole in the dress. "You haven't shut up about it since you ordered the thing." Her hand emerged holding a struggling mass of white slugs that, judging from the sensations, seemed to be coming out of Monique's vagina. How strange.
"What are tho-"
"Whatever happens in the next few seconds, you have to trust me, understand?"
Then everything went white.
+++++
Some time later Monique woke up.
She blinked at the ceiling. It was the roof of the dress shop, the same ceiling you'd find in retail shops across the cosmos. It meant that either she wasn't dead, or Heaven was a franchise operation.
"I expect you to have a lot of questions right now," Dervish said from somewhere outside of her field of view.
Monique levered herself up onto her elbows, and blinked at the white catsu-*bodysuit* Dervish had apparently dressed her in. Except for the color, it was identical to the human's "First of all, what was that? I was just sitting in a chair, and you were standing over me, and then everything went white and I was in that *place* with the chessboard and the chickens-"
Dervish was standing near the window, peering through the blinds. "Really? I always see it as some kind of taco-eating contest." She turned away from the window, the light casting her face in striped shadow. "Don't worry about it. You won. Or, rather, lost, or I'd probably be dead now. Page 25 of Mater Wolfe's 'The Joker and the Thief'. 'Dieb stared at...?'"
"'...the man in the shadows. He could just make out a sly, confident grin-' Wait, what? I've never read that!"
"But I have." Derv held up the book she had reading, and tapped the screen to take it out of sleep mode. She highlighted the relevant passage with a few swipes and tossed at the poodle.
It bounced off her unmoving hands and fell to the floor.
"Dervish, what exactly is going on?"
"First of all, that's not how you treat a book." Her friend crossed the room. "Secondly, have you realized we're speaking Imperial for the past few minutes? Not Galatean?"
"I don't speak Imperial. Besides knowing how to order a Cosmo-"
"And yet, it's been tripping off your tongue merrily for some time now. Odd that." She sat down on the floor. "You've heard of c-snakes."
"Naturally."
"Well, they're not the only thing that goes bump in the night."
The tentacles were a species called "B-Snakes", though she wasn't sure who, exactly, called them that. They named themselves, maybe. They could do that; the average b-snake was about as intelligent as the average human, though not as much as the average owl. They could "convert" c-snakes to b-snakes, and gain any memories the c-snakes had. And c-snakes could convert them.
"It's like having your own personal army of latex tentacles," Dervish summarized. "Well...more like a battalion."
"And you put those things in *me*?"
"Well, no. They were in you already. I just taught them how to play nice."
+++++
A short time later, the two females were on the roof, peering down at the street.
Dervish had further explained that Monique had been infested by the b-snakes already; all she had done was overwrite them, adding their knowledge and personality to the ones she already had. Usually, the host being converted experienced some sort of hallucination, always in the form of a competition.
"Like the way a strangler fig kills the original tree," Dervish had concluded. "Except with an acid trip."
Monique was still more than a little discomfited. Derv had assured her that the white snakes were benign, but it still felt like she was naked. And since the creepy little crawlies were basically a part of h-
"Monique!" yelled Derv, who had muttered something about "getting the high ground" before dragging the poodle up there.
"What?"
"Down there."
The street was a heaving mass of pink and black.
As near as Monique could tell, bands of c-snake and b-snake hosts had been pursuing several uninfested people. Entirely by accident, they had both ended up running their prey down on the same street.
The c-snakes were unrestrained in their approach, simply moving forward and taking any hapless victims in their path. The b-snakes, by contrast, were armed; they even used cover. Strangely, they didn't aim at the milling beings sandwiched between the two factions, they shot the c-snakes themselves.
"Why are they doing that? The c-snakes will just regenerate!"
Dervish's brow wrinkled. "But they'll buy some time for them-"
Several b-snake hosts darted from cover to land in the midst of the beings. The guns the innocents carried weren't much use at close range, and they were converted in a few minutes. The c-snakes hissed in frustration.
"-to do that," Derv finished. She craned her neck a little higher. "Looks like the c-snakes can make themselves bulletproof. That's new. Problem is, they slow down by a *lot*. All the b-snakes had to do was use cover, and they end up, um, taking those survivors a lot faster."
"And now they outnumber the c-snakes two to one." Monique winced as she smelled someone void their bowels in terror. Make that someones.
The b-snakes had a tactic of focusing their attentions on a single c-snake host, apparently immune to the sprays of pink goo. The c-snakes, however, were not as immune to the gobs of black their opponents spat.
"You know, I think I saw a porno like this once," Dervish murmured.
Monique blinked. "So did I. Marcel tried to get me to watch it, just before our...last time."
"Huh. Did you have sex often?"
Monique bristled. "Mademoiselle, I am *Galatean*."
Dervish smiled, the first such Monique had seen that entire day. "I suppose he could have been infested himself, which is how you got it."
"Is there any way we can save him?"
"No," Dervish said flatly. "If he *was* infested, he's been fully converted by now. And that's assuming he wasn't killed by those soldiers who pinched him. And even if he was infested and he's not been killed, my little peashooter and knife here aren't anything close to the firepower we would need." She sighed. "The only reason I was able to save you is that your snakes were too curious about me to convert you on the deadline."
The c-snakes were a little more durable than the survivors had been, but not much.
"Can b-snakes have a name?" Monique suddenly asked. From what she remembered from the attractively-designed little brochures they had handed out on her college campus, the c-snakes were entirely a hive mind.
"I call them Gene. It's short for Eugene," said Dervish, and waited expectantly.
"...and?" asked Monique.
Dervish sighed. "Sorry. Xenobiology joke. Doesn't really translate."
Monique looked down; her bodysuit was similar to the ones of the hosts on the street, though they had given the poodle more of a boost in the bust area. "And those things are in *me*?" She could still hear them, prowling at the edges of her mind. She tried to shut them out.
"Not exactly. Not anymore." Dervish stood up and dusted herself off. "Lets get down there."
"Couldn't they convert our snakes, just like you did with me?"
"They could, if they could tell we were anything besides more hapless victims of the bad ones, turned to kinksters against their will. Allons-y."
"Where are we going?"
"To find a space port. If they haven't changed the codes, I can disable the nav-locks. Or better yet, I can find someone's modded ricer. The fuel consumption is terrible, but-"
"What?"
Dervish stopped and looked back. Her friend had stopped somewhere around the word "space". She marched back to the poodle and pulled them both down, out of view of the street.
"I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry, but we have to leave the planet." Derv clarified. She had found a pair of sunglasses somewhere; round, old-fashioned mirrored things. They sat on her nose with no arms. Her gaze was unreadable, and she somehow looked dangerous. Monique looked into her friend's eyes and saw only herself.
"I won't!" she said in a sudden fit of childlike fury. "This is my home! I won't abandon everyone I've ever known because you're-because you're a *coward*!"
The lines in Dervish's face softened, and she took off the shades, rubbing the bridge of her nose where they had pinched her. "Your home-*my* home, is lost. We can't fight all of them. If I hadn't saved you, you'd be one of them."
"No..."
Dervish sighed. "I'd like to show you something."
+++++
A short time later, both female were walking down a poorly-lit maintenance corridor in some meta-mall. The establishment had become surprisingly successful, despite it's detractors claiming that the notoriously snobby Galatean consumers would never clasp the sprawling expanse to it's breast.
"I never got any implants," Dervish said. Monique suspected
"What?"
"Cybernetic implants." Dervish elaborated. The light was poor, and Monique only caught glimpses of light alone polished curves. "I never got any. I was scheduled to receive a minimum mil-grade interface the week after it happened."
"What does *that* have to do anything?"
"Some people, I hear, get the usual civ-grade interface, and then implant themselves with all sorts of shiny."
"You're not making any sense!" cried Monique. The glimpses were getting less frequent, and she had the sudden urge to run forward and clutch Dervish's arm. She quickened her step instead, only to find her opening what turned out to be the back door of a coffee shop.
"Why are we here?"
"Because my little pad, while excellent for small-scale door hacking, can't access several dozen feeds in real-time." Dervish said. "And because I like coffee. Don't you like coffee?"
"Yes, I-feeds?"
Derv was by the store's security console, checking the external cams. No one in sight. She hit a stud, and the windows shuttered, blocking the last of the late afternoon sunlight. The darkness wasn't as absolute this time, however; it was lit the console's soft glow.
In the darkness, something hissed.
"It's the coffeemaker," said Dervish. "Don't be so jumpy."
Monique scurried to her friend's side, taking comfort in the warmth of another being. Sure enough, the register had controls for the employee coffeemaker. This was a franchise, so the till was easy to operate. Dervish had ordered herself one of those iced-
"There."
Dervish's clothing-the c-snakes-had split into several black tentacles. They had anchored themselves, stretching from the underside of the console to the floor, with a third segment reaching for the controls. Combined with the human's own impressive typing speed, they were bringing up high-resolution live video from all across the planet.
Monique wondered if she could make tentacles burst from her at will. She carefully breached the wall in her mind, to find a feeling of patient expectation on the other side. She couldn't pick out individual signals, but she tried to send an impression of what she wanted.
It was an odd feeling, to have your clothes peel off your body, anchor themselves to unseen points on a console, and then pull you slowly toward it.
It felt like a hug.
"Go to the head of the class," Dervish said. Her clothes whipped back into themselves, and she pushed off the console, rolling toward the coffeemaker. Towards the dark. The sun set quickly on Galatea.
Monique focused on one screen. Security cam feed. The theory was that letting the public see your store increased the chance of someone recognizing the robber. This one depicted a few people huddled behind a gun store counter, shotguns rifles, and handguns all aimed at the front and rear doors.
One looked up.
"They *never* check the ceiling." Dervish said.
Blots of dark goo-black, red, gold-flew through the air. They struck the hands of the beings behind the counter, gumming their weapon hands.
"I thought they were dumb." Monique looked for a chair, but Dervish had taken the only one.
"C-snakes are dumb. B-snakes are not. They can't heal so they have to be. They use cover, sneak up on people, cut them out of the herd. They even use panic. Look, see how the one trying to run with her feet slimed knocks the other one down? See how they kill the lights *after* the victims know they're under attack, so they panic more? If there was a sentry at the back door, they took him out too, probably pretending to be another survivor."
"You know, I did my senior thesis on whether privacy is dead," Monique said. Such a strange thought, here on the edge of the night.
"Oh, no question." From the coffeemaker came the sound of pouring. "It's dead, and we killed it. Big Brother is blogging you."
The night vision on the cam kicked in automatically. The B-snake hosts were visible now, pushing...tentacles into their victims.
Monique couldn't help but look down. She hadn't even thought about the fact that the slickness that was killing those people was that which traced her every curve.
Kinda hot.
"See that?" came Dervish's voice from somewhere behind Monique's right ear. "That is happening all over the city, all over the *planet*." The feeds switched rapidly, and Monique was put in mind of a carousel she one rode when she was a little girl, all flashing lights and color.
The impression was ruined by the sound of Dervish slurping.
"Why?"
"The C-Snakes...it's what they do. They cannot be reasoned with, cannot be bargained with, and absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
"And the others?" said Monique, touching the latex that was like a second hide.
Dervish might have shrugged, in the dark. "Who knows? Maybe they're taking out the competition."
"That's not funny."
"I wasn't joking." Dervish stepped stepped out of the shadows, put down her plastic cup, and manipulated the controls. The torrent slowed, defining the contours of her face in a strange, flickering light. "It's basic biology. Unless a balance is reached, organisms in an environment will compete for resources."
She stopped on one feed. It was night. A pink snake extended from the bottom of the screen. The snake was blurry; the user's -the host's-focus was on the fleeing form ahead of him, a wolf covered in pink goo. The HUD noted the wolf's increased heart rate and pheromone production.
"In this case, the resources are us," clarified Derv.
They watched in silence.
The feeder's head tilted up from what it had been busying itself with. There was an light descending through the clouds, a falling star, tumbling down towards the ground-
"They talked the c-snakes into coming here, starting combat at a given time. From what I've been able to gather online, they were allowed to convert as many innocents as they liked, but not each other. One final fight, for all things." Dervish said, as the star flashed and the display went white. "Whoever wins, we lose. Are you starting to think in metaphors?"
"Yes. A little."
"Good. By the time they reach this point, most of my sideki-my *companions* have collapsed and screamed until they passed out. The metaphors should stop in a few hours."
"What happens when they wake up?" The console said it was trying to resume connection.
"They keep screaming. Usually not for long, though."
"So...now what?" Monique said, as the feed cut to [ERROR 1419: feed lost](/?page=ERROR_1419%3A_feed_lost)
Dervish reached forward and cut all the displays. "Now?" she asked, her voice floating out of the darkness. "We run. We run as *fast* and as *far* as we can, and we find some place where *no one* can get us."
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Precisely three hours, twelve minutes, and fifty seconds later, the pair were standing in the bay of the UNF frigate MAJEL, in front of the open hatch of a freighter. They had their hands up, because of the ten or so guns pointed directly at their heads.
"Freeze!" said a UNF trooper, somewhat unnecessarily.
Dervish looked over at her friend and shrugged. "Sorry," she mouthed.
"Merde," said Monique.
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B-Snakes are based on C-Snakes, a fictional species created by Alyn Gryphon.