Knock Knock: an interactive serial (Part 3)

This is part three of my occasional sci-fi serial about a science team dealing with an alien intruder on their romote research bate. After each installment, readers get a week to make a choice that will inform what happens next. You can read the first two installments on the series page.

When last we left our intrepid heroes, one of them had snapped and elected to threaten the intruder with a gun. I asked the readers to vote on how things played out, and this is how things broke down.

With 50% of the readership choosing the path of peace, we rejoin Captain Finn and the crew of Remote Research Station Denki as they try to calm things down.

KNOCK KNOCK (A Serial With Reader Interaction)

Part Three: Breaking Protocol

Finn broke eight kinds of protocol and turned his back on the intruder. “Luce, I need you to put the gun down,” they said. “Tse’s hurting, but she’s in one piece. There’s no reason to escalate this.”

The shotgun trembled in Lucy’s grip. Tears beaded in the corner of her eyes, and Finn figured the first signs of shock were setting in. They didn’t blame her; the looming presence of the intruder at Finn’s back hung there like a sword of Damocles, and they had no doubt all three would suffer if Lucy pulled the trigger.

“Luce, we’re outclassed here.” Finn kept their voice calm and measured, trying to pull her focus off the intruder. “Whatever our visitor is, it’s not immediately hostile, and it possesses technology that outstrips our own. You open fire, and this goes downhill fast. I’m not sure—”

“DESIST!”

“Shut up,” Finn barked. “Luce, I know you’re scared here. Trust me, I’ve soiled my pants a dozen times since our guest arrived. But this isn’t the way.”

Lucy’s tears spilled over, and the shotgun barrel trembled. Even if she pulled the trigger, odds were it wouldn’t hit the intruder. Best-case scenario, the shot went wide. Worst-case scenario, it caught Finn in the chest and knocked them on their ass.

“DESIST!” the intruder bellowed, and it steeled Lucy’s resolve. She squared her shoulders and ground her jaw, her gaze offering a silent apology to Finn. 

“Luce, I’m giving you an order. Stand down. Stand down, dammit. Don’t do—”

Tse lurched across the C&C and caught Lucy with a shoulder. She spun in place and the shotgun kicked in her grip, submission rounds splattering against the wall. The pair of them fell to the floor, struggling over the weapon, and Finn’s stomach dropped as they to see check the intruder’s response.

“Please, we’ve got this under control. Give us a moment—”

“DESIST!”

“We’re trying, goddamnit.” Finn risked leaving the intruder unattended and vaulted the console, rushing to break up the struggle. They kicked the shotgun away, hauled Lucy off and grappled both her arms, locking them tight against her side. Lucy wept, kicking, but there wasn’t much fight remaining. It’d taken all she had to pull the trigger, and now the adrenaline receded, surrendering her to the crash.

Tse peeled themselves off the floor, wincing as she put her weight on the left arm. The intruder hadn’t moved, a stoic pillar looming by the airlock, observing the conflict between the crew. Finn tightened their grip on Lucy, held her as she wept. “Finn, you okay?”

“Head’s fuzzy and my arm’s frelled, but I’m still kicking,” Tse said. “Want me to grab a terminal?”

“Please,” Finn said. “Stowe the shotgun first. We don’ tneed a repeat of this, yeah?”

Tse scrambled to collect the weapon, favouring her leg. The intruder tracked the movement, the insectoid mask inscrutable. 

“Slow and steady,” Finn warned. “Don’t startle our friend.”

“On it, Cap.”

Finn braced themselves for an incident, or another bellowed command, but the only sounds were Tse’s uneven footsteps and Lucy’s near-silent weeping. Whatever urgency their visitor felt, compelling them to offer three commands in rapid succession, had passed and permitted them a momentary respite. Tse returned the weapon to their locker, although she didn’t reset the case and seal them in. She collected a terminal and handed it off to Finn, retreated to their station at the main C&C desk. The simple act of lowering herself into the smart-foam seat involved some awkward manoeuvring, and Finn thought of rookie pilots trying their first Zero-G docking run. 

Their intruder loomed, implacable. It hadn’t spoken in over a minute, the interval between its admonishments longer than Finn had come to expect. The changed piqued their attention, and they tested a hypothesis. Finn adjusted their grip on the terminal one-handed, still holding Lucy with the other. A thumbprint brought the controls to life, giving them command of the station’s systems.

The intruder’s head swung in Finn’s direction. “DESIST.” 

Finn killed the connection and let the terminal go dormant. They waited, counting off the seconds, barely daring to breathe lest it provoke a response. The intruder loomed by the airlock, still hovering a half-inch above the metal floor, the multifaceted lenses of its helmet staring into the empty space. A minute rolled by without movement, then stretched into a second. Tse drowsed in their chair, fighting the urge to pass out. Lucy finally ran out of tears, the wracking sobs giving way to sagging shoulders and boneless resignation. Finn risked letting her go, easing back to a standing position. 

They raised the terminal and thumbed it to life, activating the low-level scan. 

“DESIST.”

Finn desisted, killing the sweep with a flick of the thumb.

“Alright,” they said. “We can work with this.”

At first, it took focused concentration to ignore the intruder and tend to the crew. Finn collected a medkit and inspected Tse’s injuries, established the concussion was mild and the arm merely sprained. Bindings and pain relief soon followed, and Finn set Tse the task of watching the intruder for any signs of movement. “Don’t touch a console unless you have to,” Finn ordered. “Whatever that is, it’s responding to scans and weapons. Call me if anything changes.”

Tse attempted a half-hearted salute with her injured hand, eyes already locked on the looming figure by the airlock. Finn moved on to Lucy, dragging the ensign to her feet. The tall woman refused to look at the intruder, huddled close to Finn as they hustled her into the living quarters in the next compartment. For all they lived in tight quarters, it was rare Finn found themselves pressed close to either of their crew. They could feel Lucy’s hammering pulse and the warm exhalation of her unsteady breath. 

They made it past the bulkhead before Lucy lurched and clutched at Finn’s arm. “Chest hurts,” she murmured. “That thing’s doing something to it.”

“Maybe, but I’m guessing that’s the adrenaline talking.” Finn pried her hand loose and squeezed it, trying to give her a focus other than racing thoughts and the flight-or-fight impulse. “Remember your training: everything’s going to be hazy while your body purges the stress hormones.”

Lucy nodded, already sucking down a deep breath to steady herself. Probably not even conscious of it—basic spent a lot of time instilling breathing slow as the first response to panic. It saved more lives than guns and pikes, and consumed less oxygen than the rapid inhalation that accompanied the limbic system’s response to danger. 

“Good word,” Finn said. “I’m getting you to your bunk, Luce. I want you to breathe and pull your shit together. Don’t come back until you’ve got a handle on things. Whatever else our friend out there might be, they’re responding to scans and displays of anger, which means we’ve gotta play this calm and slow for a stretch. Can you do that for me?”

Lucy answered with a mute nod, and she permitted Finn to guide her into the corridor, into the next compartment. The intruder’s eyes burned a hole in Finn’s spine, and they were acutely aware of every moment being tracked even as they passed the bulkhead. No way of telling if the damn thing could see through walls, but Finn assumed it was operating on a sensor array far more advanced than their own. They got Lucy to her cramped quarters and sealed her in, then affected a sense of calm as they hustled back to C&C.

Tse sat in their foamcore chair, staring the intruder down. Her jaw set, her hands idly sketching the intruder’s features onto the surface of a tablet, capturing a visual record to supplement any images stored on the station’s drives. An archaic habit, but a useful one. Digital imagery skewed perspectives, and supplemental sketches could restore a sense of context. Finn crossed the room and settled into the empty seat beside Tse, and the Intruder tracked the movement.

Finn glanced over Tse’s shoulder and nodded their approval at the sketch. “How we doing?” 

“Like a statue you killed the scan,” Tse said. “How’s Lucy?”

“Shaken, but fine. You?”

“Meds are kicking in. I’ll heal,” Tse said. “You got a plan for dealing with this, cap?”

Finns shook their head. “Protocol’s out the window and we’re flying blind,” they said. “Figure we’ll take it slow and steady, gather data the old-fashioned way. Let’s see if we can provoke something other than a defensive response.”

Tse bit her lower lip and tensed up, but she didn’t object to the plan. Finn motioned for her to keep sketching, then eased her weight off the chair and cautiously approached their visitor. With each step, she waited for the order to desist, bracing herself for a violent rebuttal. Instead, she got within an arm’s length before she came to a halt, trading a long stare with the impassive facemask of the encounter suit.

“My name is Captain El Finn of the Remote Station Denki. My colleagues and I are here on a research mission, and we mean you no harm. Any hurt we’ve caused so far was the result of scans—scientific data-gathering with no overtly violent connotations. You have our apologies, but we’re a skittish species and you scared us half to death. We like to understand what we’re dealing with, so I’m going to ask you straight up: who are you? What do you want?”

The Intruder’s head swung in Tse’s direction with a whir of gears, then back to Finn a moment later. It stared impassively, but without the adrenaline surging, Finn could hear the faint whine of mechanisms inside the encounter suit. The whisper-soft interplay of moving parts allowing the neck to articulate. 

“Please,” Finn said. “We’re not trying to hurt you. We’re just want to understand. What do you want?”

The Intruder lifted its head and stared into the distance. Finn caught a click, some audio mechanism coming online, a split second before the intruder spoke a single word.