Xenoform, page 41
And then the waves of grey snaked down to touch the ground, flowing like rivers of crude oil through the streets of the city, and the greenshit retreated before them or was consumed by them. The humans in the water tower watched amazed.
‘We should wake Roland,’ said Spider, but he stood rooted to the spot.
‘Spidey, what the fuck is going on out there?’ breathed Whistler. She stared at the ship that hung massively over the city now, maybe a mile to the west, like an omen pregnant with malice and promise in equal measures. The clouds of grey continued to pour from its belly and everywhere the greenshit was dying back. It left behind a scarred and twisted landscape that looked as if it had been melted in an immense furnace, but the greenshit was certainly dying back. The colour and quality of the light changed until the sun shone more whitely than it had in days and the green haze slowly filtered out of the air. But gradually it was replaced by a haze of grey as the clouds from the ship disseminated and spread out, covering the streets below like a ground-fog now. And then the greyness began to rise and presently the room in which they stood began to fill with it as if it had passed through solid walls by osmosis – a mist that gently shimmered in the air and tingled on the skin like a mild electrical field.
‘What is that grey shit?’ asked Spider, seemingly of himself, turning around and examining the way it played across his body. He laughed. ‘Greyshit, greenshit, whatever next? Maybe blueshit. Why not.’ He sounded on the verge of hysteria.
‘It’s dying!’ cried Whistler. ‘The greenshit’s dying! It’s the ship, Spider!’
‘Nanotech,’ wheezed a voice from behind her. She turned around and there was Roland, his face pallid almost to translucency with exhaustion, his eyes huge dark haunted circles. He cradled his shattered hand against his belly.
‘Nanotech? Who–’
‘Look!’ urged the old man.
The grey fog was swirling up and up, merging into one vast formless mass, pouring from every nook and cranny of the city, tendrils meeting and cohering, twirling and twining like a tornado, rising, rising, spinning about the ship that hung ominous, perfectly still above the city. And then some shape began to emerge in the mass. The cloud began to move away from the ship and flatten, become planar. A huge sheet, a mile square, was coalescing in the air, dimming the growing daylight again as its massive shadow fell across the city. And when a burst of white noise, louder than thunder, came from that sheet it became clear that the thing was a giant speaker.
And then a voice boomed from the speaker. Whistler recognised it at once – it was Debian’s voice, but it was also something else. It said:
‘I HAVE RETURNED.’ The voice was as vast as the sky – it crashed and echoed back from the towering city blocks, becoming a multi-layered chorus of massive noise, enough to split the listener’s head. ‘I HAVE RETURNED TO FREE YOU RULE YOU FREE YOU RULE YOU. I GUESS THE TIME HAS COME TO MAKE A CHOICE.’
Mike Berry, Xenoform
