Prompt of the Week - Week 21

TAGS: Horror, Transformation, Plant TF

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In retrospect, maybe taking the helmet off was probably a bad idea.

He had convinced himself that things were just fine, given that the atmosphere contained no contaminants and had much the same composition as the one back home, not to mention the fact that the wildlife seemed to be extremely similar, down to their chemical make-up. However, what he failed to account for was divergent evolutionary patterns, and that what had created flycatchers back on Earth decided that what this planet needed was a plant that could spit out acid and then try to reel the hapless prey in with vine tentacles. While the damned thing was much too small to do anything but tug ineffectually at him after gushing out its digestive fluids, it did sting hard enough that he had to retreat back to base camp, going through the decontamination procedures three or so times before closing himself off in quarantine. The rest of the research team were put on high alert, and all contact with the potentially-infected scientist was reduced to only the absolutely necessary; from that point onwards, all meals would be left in an airlock, and no one was allowed inside of their medical room.

The first few hours were the worst for the bird, whose reaction to being sprayed with some alien plant’s proverbial stomach juices were a mixture of utter revulsion and existential dread. Preliminary analysis of the local flora hadn’t yet yielded enough results that they could safely determine which poisons were deadly and which were just a mild inconvenience; most of the planet being covered in vegetation that produced some form of active countermeasure had slowed their progress down to a crawl, even if the plants themselves didn’t spray anyone that didn’t get too close for comfort. This alone made it an even harder pill to swallow, as it hadn’t been a surprise or unexpected behavior that landed him in that quarantine room, but his own idiocy and lack of impulse control. The avian thus resolved to spend his time writing down everything he did, just in case he wouldn’t make it, along with further recommendations for best practices for future research, following in the age-old tradition of scientists who fatally screwed up at least trying to make good use of whatever time they had left.

However, rather than a slow, painful death by alien acid, what the bird went through was instead a steady decrease in metabolic rate for some reason, resulting in his movements growing sluggish, his body practically unresponsive after the six-hour mark. He had to practically drag his feet from place to place just so he wouldn’t end up collapsing, and the thought that he might literally be rooting crossed his mind a few times, though he discarded it as being a biological impossibility; after all, why would a flycatcher analogue turn its prey into plants with the same fluids it used to digest them? That made no sense whatsoever… and still, he kept finding himself staring at the lamps on the ceiling for prolonged periods of time, transfixed by their light, his eyes somehow not burning up despite him not blinking even a single time. He bathed in their glow, warm and comforting, and when he allowed his thoughts to drift, all he was left with was a strong, almost irresistible desire to head out and bask in the light of the sun, a proper source of illumination.

Just as quickly as he formulated that line of thinking, he discarded it, knowing better than to indulge in whatever fantasies that alien contamination had planted in his brain. Panic began to rise, as the bird was faced with the dawning realization that the acid did indeed do something to him, and far more than just make him want to lie down; surely, at some level, his brain’s chemistry had been affected, because what had once registered as being extreme tiredness and difficulty in moving around now translated into… a normal state of affairs. He wasn’t graceful, and each motion came at a great cost, but it stopped feeling like it was out of the ordinary, and that wasn’t a good sign at all. He tried calling out for his colleagues, but found that his voice just didn’t work, having been replaced with something akin to the rustling of leaves, or the wind blowing through a canopy. And yet, despite the obvious warning signs, the transforming avian didn’t find this to be at all worrisome; quite the contrary, in fact.

The first signs of change came with the feathers in his wings, which had gone from a deep, purple hue to a much brighter shade, before shifting entirely to green. This didn’t last for long, as they began to recede into his skin, leaving him looking like a plucked chicken, before his wings kept shrinking inwards until all that was left was the underlying bone structure, wrapped in a thick layer of muscle that was itself tinted with the same hue as the vegetation outside. The bones making up their interior began to soften, just enough to become wobbly, before they elongated far past their original length, drooping to the ground and splitting themselves into long, tubular arrangements of interwoven, vine-line appendages, which split upon reaching the floor. For a long while, all the researcher could do was watch as his upper limbs turned themselves into thick bundles of greenery, no longer feeling his hands, before he even attempted to try and move them… and found that his brain, somehow, was successfully tuned into whatever muscles were holding those things together. The bundles unfurled, revealing a dozen vines on each side of him, every one of them malleable, surprisingly nimble, and fully controllable. He attempted to pick a few items up, finding that he could wrap a single appendage around them with ease, as much of it as when he actually had fingers; at least, he thought to himself, he wouldn’t have to sacrifice his dexterity, even if it made holding things slightly awkward.

From within the safety of the security control room, the rest of the staff looked on in horror as their colleague was transformed into some sort of plant monster. What the avian didn’t realize, being so engrossed in his new wings-turned-vines, was that the rest of his body was quickly going down the same route; within a short hour of him experimenting with picking things up, his legs too began to thicken and bloat, this time expanding outwards into bundles of their own, rather than receding inwards. This, the other researchers assumed, was due to the necessity of keeping the former bird in an upright position; much like the infected avian had assumed, he was indeed rooting, seeing as the vines underneath his waistline were starting to crack through the floor and search for any earth underneath. He seemed to pick up on this, though he did little to stop it, as he looked down with a quizzical look upon his face; within moments, the other scientists watched with equal parts awe and terror as their colleague began to walk again, this time by ripping his vines from the ground and stretching them in front of himself, pulling his body a few feet before rooting again. It was like watching a small tree attempt to move, except one that happened to have an avian torso.

Back in the room, the infected researcher was having the time of his life, what with the transformation coming packaged with a seemingly endless amount of serotonin being dumped into his brain, allowing him to bypass the concern that he normally would’ve felt and go straight through to acceptance. After all, he hadn’t felt that good in years, so good that he couldn’t quite think properly and was more than willing to simply accept it and move on with his life, even as he felt something well up inside of his chest. He knew what was going to happen, and yet, even with himself being drunk off the transformation, seeing vines burst from between his ribs was nothing if not frightening, potentially traumatizing… for all of about ten seconds, after which he was back to drooling over the possibilities that the process was giving him. Most of which, surprisingly enough, revolved around spreading it amongst his fellows.

After all, they were all there to research and catalogue the fauna and flora for a potential colonial opportunity, so didn’t it stand to reason that they should do their level best to get as close to their object of study as possible? And what better way to discover brand new information about the plant life than to become an extension of it? That way, not only could they conduct experiments in real time whenever they damn well felt like it, but they’d have privileged access to the sort of firsthand experience that other fields of science could only ever dream of; what he had in his hands (or, well, vines) was nothing short of a complete revolution in the way that biology was studied! Of course, that this revolutionary method was most likely destroying his ability to think critically about himself didn’t seem to matter much to him, nor the fact that he was being transformed against his will by a predatory species of plant; all the former bird could really think of was how much better his fellow scientists would be if they simply partook of the same bounty as he.

Thus, when he began banging at the door to his room, which the personnel at the control center had wisely locked down remotely, there wasn’t much of the avian left in his mind. Not only was their head the last thing that was left of their original body, with their chest having turned practically inside out into some sort of trunk-like thing that just barely resembled a torso, complete with wriggling vines coming out of everywhere, but it too was starting to show signs of an impending change: his eyes were glowing a bright emerald green, his tongue had begun to elongate, and soon it’d turn into his own vine bundle, something that so horrified the researchers watching through the cameras that several of them demanded they be shut off and the whole room purged immediately. This was a last-ditch effort, to be used only in times of extreme necessity; it activated a set of sprinklers designed to fill the room with a specially-crafted neurotoxin, deadly to both the staff and native lifeforms, before the whole space was torched via the application of highly flammable gas and a single pilot light. It’d be gruesome, it would probably put the whole research base on complete lockdown, and it would certainly attract the attention of the Board of Directors, but it was the only thing they could do that wouldn’t lead to an out-of-control infection.

Unfortunately for them, no one wanted to pull the trigger. It was one thing to discuss theoreticals and potential disaster scenarios, another to watch in real time as one of their colleagues, one of their friends with whom they had spent years working, turned into some sort of mindless plant monster, continuously making the kind of noises that belonged only in a low-budget horror production, constantly smashing their full weight against the magnetically-sealed airlock. If they didn’t do something soon, then they’d have a much larger problem on their hands, and yet not a single one of them had the wherewithal to press the button and consign the former avian to a horrible, fiery death… that is, until a member of the security team pushed his way through and slammed his hand over the control panel, with the whole base immediately lighting up and the warning klaxons blaring.

Knowing what this meant, the transformed scientist redoubled his efforts in getting out of his room, ceasing his obviously-fruitless attempts at breaking through the door and instead trying to force his vines into the airlock via any opening he found, no matter how small it was. For the first time since he had embraced his new form, he felt true fear, seeing as he was now living on borrowed time. Despite his ears being little more than vestigial organs, he could still hear the hiss of the neurotoxin being pumped into his room, along with the firestarter gas that would finish everything off. He put more strength behind his attempts, more force, more franticness, but to no avail; the door refused to budge, to given him even the slightest of openings, and thus the plant monster slithered backwards, resigned to his short-lived existence, cursing his former colleagues for having betrayed him like that.

But he didn’t die. In fact, he felt better than ever, as if they had mixed up the neurotoxin canister with an aerosolized stimulant; could it be that his body’s transformation had brought together the best of both worlds, rendering him immune to the very same toxic material that had been designed to kill off anything on that planet? Could it be, perhaps, that as a hybrid of an Earth-based creature and an alien plant thing, he had surpassed the bounds of both, becoming neither… but something better? Something that took the best elements from each side and amplified them to create the perfect lifeform, the one that would take the universe by storm as soon as they figured out how to open magnetically-sealed doors? Could be; at that point, just about anything was a possibility, though he doubted that he’d be fire resistant, making it even more important to get out as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team could only sit back in utter terror as they witnessed the neurotoxin fail to yield any results, the security member that had started it looking especially mortified for a few moments before turning around and yelling into his headset, ordering every officer to arm up and establish defensive positions outside the quarantine room. Soon enough, the unfamiliar sound of the general security alarm joined with the rest of the cacophony, overpowering everything and making talking even harder than it already was; not that anyone was in the mood to have a nice chat, not after what happened next.

Despite his best efforts, the former bird and now plant-thing failed to get the door open in time, resulting in his room being torched with him still inside. Much like with the toxin spray, he had begun to panic, knowing for a fact that, as a creature built mostly out of plant matter, fire was his Achilee’s heel… but somehow, he didn’t actually burn. He felt the heat, uncomfortably so in fact, but no matter how much it was raised, no matter how hard the flames lapped at his back, they didn’t seem to stick; a few outlying leaves were toasted and made into charcoal, but apart from that, most of him was… fine? A bit singed, sure, with the remnants of his old clothes having burned away, but his body, his glorious body, was still just as functional as it had been, even as the rest of his room was turned into a mess of charred metal and smouldering wreckage, the shockwave from the gas burning up having turned everything that wasn’t nailed down into a broken version of itself.

Except for him. In fact, as soon as the automated fire sprinkler system was activated, he felt even better! Now he had confirmation that not only did his body not react to deadly neurotoxin, it seemed to be immune to flames as well, and if that wasn’t enough, the base’s automatic systems were giving him fresh water to work with! He allowed his “head” to tilt backwards, now little more than a flower bud, absorbing the liquid with what could be a contented sigh. His vines grew longer, thicker, the many smaller flowers on his vine body opening up and bathing themselves in the sweet nectar of the gods. He was becoming a small ecosystem, spreading across the charcoaled room and making good use of whatever nutrients he could find, his bottom-most roots having already pierced through the cold, metallic ground and finding refuge in the delicious dirt beneath him. He no longer had to pull them up to move, as his form was now malleable; all he had to do was develop a new set of vines to help pull him along, while keeping his nutrient pumps attached to his back!

Left without any other options, and having witnessed the sturdiness of that creature, the staff began evacuation protocols, with the head researcher calling corporate HQ to demand an orbital strike after most of them were onboard the escape vessels. The security team had set up a chokepoint just outside the quarantine room, breaking out the heavy weapons with the intent of, at the very least, slowing down that monster for as long as it took for the scientists to get the hell out of dodge. But the plant thing was stronger now, and growing stronger still with each passing moment that he was allowed to drink greedily from the nutrients in the soil. Soon, the strikes upon the airlock grew heavier, weightier, more frequent, and the metal began to bend with each time a vine was thrown at it. The whole assembly buckled underneath the assault, with a few members of the sec team flinching each time the dull, reverberating thud coursed through the air. Eventually, with a final, tremendously loud crash, with the grinding of metal filling their ears, the airlock was utterly destroyed, revealing the full form of the plant thing, in person, for the first time.

Shots were fired, and yet they did nothing. Nothing but hold the attention of the security personnel and allowi them to miss the vines flying through the air, wrapping around their throats and invading their mouths. Soon, they too would blossom, they too would become as he was… or extensions of him, if they failed to survive the transformation.

And then, the whole planet.