I don’t know what happened. It all happened so fast.

I sat on the makeshift medical bench while the medical team tended to my wounds. I stared out at the shipwreck in front of me. The shape of the ship stood out to me, a heavy disk sitting below the globe on top of it. 

I couldn’t believe it myself, but we had come across a real-life, honest-to-god UFO. Well, no. That doesn’t come close to it. I had been _onboard _an honest-to-god UFO.

The worst part of it all, though, was the fact that wasn’t the most unthinkable thing to happen today.

I still remember last night pretty vividly. The expedition was starting to settle in for the night and John needed someone to complete the nightly patrol. Nobody offered, he asked me, I relented, and there my skinny, petite ass was, out in the snow.

A small blizzard was about to roll in, so I had to patrol the area quickly for any polar bears or man-eating walruses of the like. I assumed it would be like all the other nights, and for a few minutes, it was. Like always, I walked through a rainfall of snow, the tip of my nose dripping from mucus, the cold air gnawing at my face until there was nothing left, with not a single carnivore in sight to put me out of my misery. Just when I stopped to turn back, however, I heard something.

_“Help!”_

I jumped at the shrill cries for help and responded.

“Hello?! Is someone there?!” I screamed through the wind.

_“Help! Is someone out there?!”_

I cautiously moved in the direction of the voice, my flashlight dimly shining a way through.

“Don’t move! I’m coming to you! Just stay there, ok?!”

_“Help! Help!”_

“I’m coming, don’t panic!”

It took some time, but after moving towards the rapidly climbing snow at my feet, I finally reached them. A woman, who also seemed to be from the expedition judging from her red jumpsuit. 

“Hey, are you hurt? Can you move?”

I would have used her name, but for the life of me, I couldn’t recognize her. I make an effort to try to get the names of my fellow researchers, so this had slightly bothered me. But, then again, the expedition had grown in size over the years from all the giddy college interns, so I paid it no mind.

_“Help! Help!”_

“Hey, it’s fine, I’m here!”

_“Help! Help!”_

Despite my efforts to calm her down, the woman just kept shrieking, over and over. Once I got closer, the snow causing my head to ache, I reached my hand out to gently grab her shoulder. 

“It’s alright now, I can take you bac—”

I didn’t get to finish my sentence before I turned the woman around and saw her face. Well, _a_ face. Her eyes had no whites, being nothing but black augites, shiny and cracked around the corners. Her nose was just a bud, with two small holes at the very bottom of it. And her mouth. Good god, her mouth. It was as though a rotten garden had finally sprouted some perverse form of life for the first time in fifty years. 

Small, veiny, green sprouts wriggled in and out of her mouth, the corners of which were bloodied by the viscera she was holding in her three-fingered hands. The sprouts blew against the gust of air from her mouth as she continued her cries.

_“Help! Help!”_

I stumbled back, horrified at the sight of what I can only presume to be the remains of a young woman, and thoughtlessly dropped my flashlight into the snow. The creature stood, not stopping its mimicry, as fleshy, skeletal legs sprung from her back.

_“Help! Help!”_

Before I could scream or run, the legs lunged towards piercing my left arm. I black out. My body is slowly dragged towards a vehicle. A ship.

I slowly come to. I feel an overwhelming sense of panic when I realize that I am not lying down in bed, but rather floating in a strange liquid. Through the blurred waves and bubbles of the solution I’m in, I see two figures.

They’re speaking, or, at least, emitting sounds. I couldn’t make out anything they were saying at first, which I couldn’t tell was due to being trapped in liquid or the entities themselves. But soon I hear a voice, two voices speaking.

_“We found them. Why are we keeping them here?”_

_“We don’t know what contagion they may have acquired from their time on Earth. We can’t be too careful.”_

_“I have a hard time believing that. We acquired all the others with no problem. What makes them so different.”_

_“Unfortunately, I cannot disclose that.”_

_“I see it’s for XXXX, isn’t it?”_

My headache returns. Stronger and heavier than before. The two creatures continue.

_“You saw what happened to the last one. Why are we wasting precious resources on this, again?”_

_“They have the organs to sustain their lifespan. We just need enough to complete the operation.”_

_“These are our people. Our population. I feel to see how the whittling down our numbers is going to further our race—”_

A garbled noise booms through my mind. Like a foghorn burrowed deep in the Earth.

The noise brings about a pang that violently vibrates through my skull, and with it comes voices. Visions. Memories, maybe? Several of the voices talk over each other. Buzzing and warbled voices. A man’s voice. A woman’s voice. A man screaming. A woman carrying me. A creature with a bug-like head. More buzzing. Suddenly, something large, no, gargantuan, looms over. I only see its leg, the width of which perfectly matches the hole of Lake Michigan. The skies are black. Smog covering the roads. People in the streets, sprout legs, eyes black. Some survive the transformation. Some can’t. And through it all, I see…._it._ I see XXXX .

I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. Instead small green veins slowly grow from my month, growing more and more until they take up most of the pod. I can’t hear the voices anymore, but the garbled noises from before. The veins completely encompass my body, and the last thing I remember is glass breaking and being pushed out of the pod by its liquid.

I have small blips of the ship itself. The emergency sirens blared overhead as I ran through the long hallways, illuminated with the red lights overhead. 

Before I knew it, I was lying down in the snow as my colleagues clamored around me, yelling to get the medical team. And there I was, on the medical bench.

I continued to stare at the scene in front of me and looked down at my hand. I notice a small green vein buried underneath my ring fingernail before feeling something watching me. 

I look towards the pair of eyes and see a blond woman in a red jumpsuit. Our eyes linger on each other for a bit, almost as though there is a familiarity. She finally walks off into the chaos of the crowd, leaving me to my thoughts.

I’m still not completely sure what exactly happened today. Hopefully, I never will.