Kala nodded.

“It can’t learn on its own. It can absorb knowledge and memories perfectly and replicate its host, as you said, but it has no way of using that knowledge to increase its own intelligence. It can’t learn; it can only assimilate.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Kala asked. Then she saw the crack running down the length of Stanos’s face. It was so fine that at first glance, it looked like an out-of-place hair, except that it was too precise. It ran between his eyes, down his nose, over his chin, and down his neck, dividing his face into two perfect halves. As he smiled at her, the line crossing his mouth widened a fraction, and Kala thought she saw something dark moving inside.

“We’re reliant on having new knowledge passed on to us through our hosts. You’ve been very helpful tonight, Holcroft. Thank you.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The plethora of little clues Kala had overlooked came crashing in on her all at once. He didn’t help me at all. He knew about the creature but wanted me to examine it and give him my findings. He needed me to explain its weaknesses—

The hairline crack in Stanos’s face widened, peeling back his beautiful eyes and sweetly smiling mouth, exposing the twitching, reaching tendrils inside. Kala opened her mouth to scream, but no noise came out. She tried to step backwards, but the desk blocked her escape. She felt a hot, sharp pain on one of her hands; she’d brushed the heat pen’s holder and scalded herself.

Stanos would always chide me when I forgot to turn it off, she thought sluggishly as the thing that had once been her best friend split its suit in half. The skin was coiling around, releasing more and more of the black, glistening core, and tendrils as wide as her arm extending forward to snatch at her. He’d chide, but in a kind way. He never got angry with me. Not once. Jeeze, I’m going to miss him.

She grabbed the heat pen’s plastic base, which was hot enough to be uncomfortable but not quite hot enough to burn her. To her horror, the tendrils wrapped around her legs. They tightened until the pressure was painful, then began dragging her towards the remains of Stanos’s body. She imagined being enveloped in the inky black mass, swallowed by it, and converted into it. Nausea rose inside her.

She was close enough to see the detail, to watch as the black flesh undulated and see Stanos’s sagging skin hanging limply from the creature. Anger grew to drown out the horror, and Kala thrust her arm forward, sinking the heat pen into the place where Stanos’s face had once been.

She’d guessed fire might be one of the creature’s weaknesses. She hoped the scorching-hot heat pen was hot enough to wound the monster.

She was right. The slimy black skin began convulsing and shrivelling where the pen had touched it, and a terrible screaming, wailing noise rose from the beast. Stanos’s arms, which had shifted to hang behind his back like malformed wings as the body opened up, began twitching. The tendrils around Kala’s legs tightened and sent a shock of pain up her thighs. She pulled the heat pen back, stabbed it into one of the tendrils that clung to her leg, and felt the heat radiating through the slimy, twitching flesh. It tightened more, and Kala bit down against the pain. Then suddenly, the pressure was gone, and she was free.