There is a page on enclosure failure procedure in the training manual I received during onboarding, and the good people of the Muir Institute were kind enough to use bold, red text to label the important parts. As such, my panicking mind calls the necessary detail to the forefront of my memory immediately.
1. Institute contracted employees have a responsibility to protect their colleagues, the wider workforce and the general public. Their first priority must always be to limit an enclosure failure to the best of their ability.
No problem. I have already sealed the ‘X’ testing chamber using the big lever outside the main door. Looking back, I see the way out of the compromised enclosure now doubly closed off with thick plates of reinforced metal.
2. Institute contracted employees are a community of intelligence. Their second priority must be to inform security personnel of the extent of the failure so that all may make informed decisions on workforce safety.
I’ve hit the alarm switch beside the corridor seal lever, and I know it worked because of all the klaxons and flashing lights. There’s nobody else about at this hour to relay news of the emergency to. But someone upstairs must have received an alert on their console by now. So, no problem there, either.
3. Institute contracted employees are valuable and respected. They must make all effort possible to keep themselves safe and hidden until help can arrive.
This one is second nature. Just down the main corridor from the testing chamber but before the double doors of the elevator is a changing room. Test Subject X01 doesn’t produce any of the radiation that the big suits hanging up in the changing room protect against, so I’ve never needed them. I dash inside the changing room knowing that someone will be along as soon as they can, once more sealing the door doubly closed with a pull of the weighty lever beside the entrance. Red light from the corridor outside spills into the dark changing room through the door’s thick window panel, but the sound of the alarm is stiffly muted by the layers of titanium.
And that’s all that the training manual says to do if something gets out of its enclosure. I can’t tell whether these scant three steps are all that was written because failure never happens, or because Muir have a lot of faith in their security team’s ability to re-contain anything that breaks its chains. The former, I think. This changing room with its tall lockers, long steel benches and curtained-off shower units has the same smell as much of the rest of this facility. A smell of fresh plastic and clinical cleaning product. A new smell. There hasn’t been time for Muir to test its enclosure failure response process, I believe based on the scent. This one happening right here is the first of its kind. And that is deeply unsettling.
I joined the Muir Institute on one of their short-term ‘Type-Five Tertiary Support contracts’ as a bit of a rebellion against my ongoing, Sisyphean search for a Higher Education research post. Something that will keep my linguistics master’s modern and sharp, and that will pay my way into a proper postgraduate programme down the line. But I started that journey years ago. Odd jobs here and there, mostly tutoring for younger students in the area, has allowed me to hold onto my dingy flat in Glasgow’s West End, just barely. But nobody was interested in hiring someone of my unremarkable background for a long-term gig, especially not after my Uni days left me far behind. My portfolio is nothing special, nothing to brag about. Nothing to make me stand out. Another middling Scottish academic with a 2:1 in a subject that AI seems hellbent on excising from modern study.
The Muir posting was sketchy to say the least. Their writing on the recruitment site was perfectly professional, and the quoted money was very good. But their recruitment liaison made it crystal clear that I would need to sign a mountain of legal paperwork just to apply, and I would never be able to talk of what I had seen here even after I left. Muir could not be used as a reference for future employment, not even as a line on my CV. As far as the rest of the world would know, I will have spent April 2024 to March 2025 doing sweet sod all. Not great for an academic looking to build a professional reputation. But none of the big colleges were biting, and I desperately needed that money. I decided to throw caution to the wind and signed myself up. A helicopter came to pick me up later that month from the roof of the local hospital. Men in suits asked me to cover my head with a black bag so that I wouldn’t see where we ended up.
And a few days after I arrived at the Institute, I met her.
A dull thud brings me back into the moment, and my eyes dart towards the sealed changing room door. It has grown darker in here because something is blocking the little window of thick glass from the outside. My heart leaps up into my chest, and I skitter backwards in a panic and tumble off the bench I had been sitting on. My glasses fall askew on my nose and render the world with an unsettling blur at the edges. I readjust them in the hope that I’d misidentified the shape on the far side of the door. But I haven’t.
X01 is a tall humanoid creature with long, skinny limbs and a long, fin-lined tail. Her rubbery, alabaster skin and spined, webbed ears give her the appearance of an axolotl, but she hasn’t always looked that way. When I first met her in April of this year, X01 had been a hefty white blob with big, curious blue eyes and stumpy little limbs. A bit like a three-foot-long tadpole with arms, or maybe a very large sperm. But over the months of my interaction with her, she has changed. Her limbs have stretched and she has arched out her spine, shaped her body into a feminine, athletic form. She’s taller than me now, I can tell when she drifts down to the base of the tank and we compare heights. Nipple-less breasts and rounded hips appeared on her skinny frame almost overnight. A garden of snakey tendrils emerged from the crown of her head like fat strands of long hair, bobbing and floating around her shoulders in the still water of her tank. Her mouth is now wide enough to be uncanny. Her teeth are like sharp pearls and her tongue is blue to match her pretty irises. And her fingers, three on each hand plus a strange, three-knuckled thumb, are dextrous and lithe.
X01 slaps her hand onto the glass of the door’s window a second time. The white flesh of her palm squashes flat on the square portal and demonstrates the alien lack of wrinkles in her opal skin. And her hand is joined by the wide, split grin of her face. Her brilliant eyes sparkle blue like the waters of a tidepool, even under the ruby lighting of the alarm. She fixes her eyes on me and smiles. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I slowly pick myself up and approach.
I am safe in here, I know that to be true. But this still feels like a strange reversal of our usual interactions. X01 is normally the one consigned to the small space behind the glass, and I the one left free to measure her responses in the testing chamber’s expansive laboratory. This situation feels less as though I have sealed myself securely away from her, and more that she has trapped me into a corner. And her smile is excited, not at all phased by the locked door between us. Once I am close, X01 leans back from the door and brings her long-fingered hands up to the glass so that I can see them.
“Door open.”
I gulp, even as a familiar spark of pride jolts in my chest. I had begun teaching X01 British Sign Language when I saw that she was growing confident with the use of her hands, and after many fruitless attempts to get her to vocalise in English. Before my tenure as Communications Research Specialist for the X Programme, Muir’s staff had been getting by with only nods and shakes of the head. I initially had X01 swim to different quadrants of her enclosure to answer my very basic questions. But once she had a foundational medium of sign language to work with, our communication really took off.
Still, I can’t feel all that proud of her with cold sweat running in thick rivers down the back of my shirt. I shake my head to answer her request.
In response, X01 splays out her right hand and twists it back and forth at the wrist. This isn’t BSL, but instead a sign of her own creation. It just means, ‘I don’t understand.’
I pull back the sleeves of my cardigan and lift my hands so that she can see them through the glass. “X tank out how?” I ask.
She grins a smile of pearlescent teeth at me as she replies, “Swim.”
“How?” I persist.
“Swim-swim.” It’s all she is willing to say. And that does nothing to answer how she escaped the supposedly faultless glass of her enclosure. She also penetrated the sealed door of the testing chamber, if she made it into the corridor. And if she can do that, she won’t find the changing room door to be any challenge. Fortunately, she seems content just to talk for now.
She’s signing again, and I pay close attention to the shape of her mouth as she speaks. “Glasses afraid why?”
I have only ever known X01 to be energetic, curious and wonderfully clever. She’s a much better student than those entitled undergrads I tutored through their exams for pocket money. She picks up on new ideas very quickly in her proficient BSL. I’ve talked with her about human society on a number of occasions, and she asks all the right questions. When I showed her a picture of a car, she asked for its purpose, understanding implicitly the concept of tools to accomplish a task. When I presented her with images of humans expressing emotion through body language, she was able to interpret those emotions with little difficulty, even copying the expressions herself once her body had morphed to accommodate them. The lessons I shared on human biology were of particular interest to her, and she visibly hung enrapt on every illustration projected for her, every word I signed for her.
She smiles often, whether she means to or not. X01’s willingness to adopt a humanoid appearance should theoretically evidence empathy for her captors. She even decided to nickname me Glasses after the specs I wear. That was her decision. So, there is a plethora of reasons to suppose that if she was allowed out to wander the facility, she would do so peaceably. But that’s just supposition. Without practical evidence, it’s nothing more than theoretical. She might be feeling something different on the inside, being so utterly alien. She may even be attempting to trick me. If I open the door for her now, X01 is as likely to tear my head off as she is to engage in meaningful discourse.
“X tank go,” I implore instead of trying to explain all of this to her. “Please.”
I expect frustration. Maybe even anger. I have never seen this feminine, otherworldly creature with her teeth bared, but I expect that today will be the day I do. It may be the last thing I see. But instead of any of that, I witness X01 cooing through her smile. It’s a sound that works best underwater, and I can’t hear it from behind my door. I had thought that noise meant she was excited about something, and that worries me. Then, X01 shakes her head. Her fat snakes of hair bounce across the slim lines of her bare shoulders. And her eyes, as ever, are locked onto mine. A sharp, playful smile works its way across her thin lips.
I hadn’t spotted that there was a security phone in this room, and my eyes shoot towards it, my heart leaping into my throat, at the urgent sound of its ringing. It’s made of the same clinical metalwork and plastic as the whole room, so it blends in with its surroundings too well. I can’t imagine it has ever rung before. But I’m happy to hear it. I leap away from the door, leaving X01 behind, and grasp the receiver in my shaking hands.
“Hello?!” I gasp into the phone.
“Ah, good.” I dimly recognise the voice as belonging to the gnarled, balding gentleman who sits up in the facility’s lab sector reception. We’ve barely spoken, since our need to interact ends with me showing him my badge every morning, him making sure I match my picture, and then a cordial nod before I step into the elevator. He has a thick brogue that marks us as having a shared heritage.
“I see the alarm went off by the X Corridor,” says my saviour. “Is that correct?”
“Y-Yes!” I reply at once.
“Alright, can I get your ID, pal?”
I recite the string of numbers that is my name here in the Institute. We don’t use real names. As such, I’ve long since memorised my ID.
“Type-Five Tertie…” comes the reply. He sounds like he’s checking my records on his computer. “And we have an enclosure failure on our hands, do we?”
“Yes, Subject X01 is out of her tank. Sh-She’s also made it into the corridor, but I don’t know how she managed that.”
“Alright, you keep yourself calm, there. I’ve notified our security force, and they are on their way.”
I breathe out a sigh of relief, though I’m sure this comes out all gusty through the telephone line. “Great, thank you.”
“They’ll be with you in about half an hour.”
“Half an hour?!”
“Aye, there’s a thing going on over on the mainland,” explains security. “Not much I can do to speed them up, I’m afraid.”
Half an hour? He might as well have said I’d be waiting an eternity. I can feel my breath sharpening, and my sole human companion hears it.
“Are you in any immediate danger, pal?”
I turn slowly towards the door again, and I’m not sure how I feel when I see that X01 has vanished.
“I have no idea!” I say into the phone.
“Alright, well…” the man says with a huffing sigh. “I can send whoever I have available down now, but that will mean undoing the sector lockdown. I’d rather not do that unless we have the full team here to cover any breaches in the defensive line. We can’t be having even a chance of this ‘X01’ slipping around them and into the general population, you know? Item one of our containment procedure is to protect our fellows.”
I know that. Of course I know that!
“Mind you, why are you still down there at this hour anyway?” he asks. “I don’t see anyone else on that level besides you. You fall asleep down there?”
“I just…”
It’s not going to sound good. The truth is that I arrived for my shift with X01 today after her time with the woman from nutritional biology and got to talking with my alien charge about something, I don’t even remember what. I was asking X01 about her understanding of the word people, I think. I wanted to see if she could grasp the concept of national and cultural borders and begin to see us as more than just one, homogenous humanity. The afternoon began to wear on, but there was always something to ask or share. X01 wanted to know how much of the planet I had visited, and whether humans were still the same in, say, China. She asked a little about the night sky and I tried to explain what a constellation was. And as we continued to chat, I never once thought of signing off for the day. I remember the IT tech who works with me nodding off at his desk, and I was happy to excuse him to his dorm for the night. But I just kept on talking.
X is special. She’s the only one of her kind on the whole planet, I have to believe that. It isn’t as though I’ve heard any other mention of a creature quite like her. She’s not human, but she is intelligent. She has a sense of self and an ambition to grow in understanding. And she wants to talk to me. Even when the night approaches, she wants to talk to me. And after the time I’ve had post-Uni, I really need this. Having her eyes on me makes me forget how plain I am.
I also like the shape of her body now. If that’s wrong of me, so be it. But she’s very sexy, my X. I’ll die on this hill if I have to.
“Yeah,” I say into the phone, lying through my teeth. “Yeah, I fell asleep.”
“Well, sounds like you’ve only got yourself to blame for this predicament, pal.” The security fellow doesn’t sound impressed, but I’ll take the hit. It’s better than being honest and admitting that I was lonely and I wanted to keep talking to a pretty alien girl. “You just hang tight, now. I’ll call again when the strike team gets close, okay?”
“Y-You don’t need me to stay on the line?” I ask.
“There’s only the one phone up here, you know!” He’s laughing as he dismisses my anxiety. “What if another enclosure failure happens while I’m stuck on the line with you? Keep your head, pal. We’ll get you out of this.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Bye, now.”
A click, and he is gone. I’m abruptly alone, or so I hope. The man upstairs didn’t sound all that put out consigning me to a possible death down here on the X Corridor. Would he feel guilty if he came down here with this ‘strike team’ and found me as mulch in the belly of X01? Probably not, eh? I’m nothing special. They can just recruit another middling Scottish academic and pick up where I left off. There’s plenty of me’s out there, I know it.
Self-loathing gives way to panic at the sound of groaning from the titanium walls around me. I replace the phone in its unit, staring around the gloom of the changing room. The noise is like straining metal. Stretching infrastructure. I stare at the door, but X01 isn’t there. And then a splattering of water from the closest of the shower units that makes me jump with fright. The curtain is drawn, so I can’t see what is transpiring within. But it sounds like something heavy and wet just hit the tiling. I can’t breathe. I can only stare at the shower’s drawn curtain and listen to the dripping of something moving beyond.
A three-fingered hand grips the edge of the curtain and yanks it aside, and there she is. X01 is crouching low to the ground, bracing her long body with her free hand on the tile. Her finned tail swishes back and forth at her back, and her shoulders are hunched and ready for a pounce. Her brilliant blue eyes are narrowed, and her teeth are, as I feared, bared in a predatory smile. The strong, supple musculature of her bent arms and legs makes her look ready to rip me limb from limb. It’ll come out great on camera, I’m sure. But when I dart my eyes around the dark corners of the changing room, I find them empty. No cameras here to witness my end. Maybe that’s better, actually.
But wow! X has the ability to transpose her body into liquid and come at me through the water system, apparently! She kept that secret well! Could she have gone through the liquid nutrition pumps to escape her tank, then leaked through the seams in the security door? Or maybe the fire suppression system? Either way, it’s very cool! She’s very cool, my X. She’s awfully special, unlike me. Maybe I can take some solace in that as I die. It isn’t as if I was living for anything all that impressive, unlike X the extraterrestrial pioneer. I cling to that thought like a ramshackle life raft out at sea. She deserves to live, and I should be happy to sacrifice myself for her wellbeing.
And then she pounces. Her rubbery, opal body moves like an eel as she rushes forward with a slithering back-and-forth of movement. Her eyes glow in the darkness as she approaches me at speed. I try not to wail. But something does escape my lips as she collides with me and drags me down to the clinical tile of the floor. I find myself on my back with X atop me. Her serpentine limbs tie me up easily. She is remarkably dense, I discover. Her body is slender and graceful but with a surprising weight. It’s a little hard to breathe beneath her.
When I struggle, X pins me down. Her angular fingers wrap around my wrists and push them to the cold floor, and her long legs do the same across my calves. When I push up against her, feeling the pressure of her hips against mine, I can feel X moving her heavy tail backwards and forwards to better balance herself and keep me trapped. And she presses her face against my cheek. I can feel the firm enamel of teeth behind her lips, and I feel hot air from her lungs warming up my skin. She begins cooing, a breathy hooting of excited noise against my flesh, and I can feel the reverberations of her voice all the way down my spine. And her skin, I realise, is slick with a viscous moisture. Something her body produces to keep her hydrated when out of water, I guess. Even in death, I find myself trying to understand her.
“X!” I try to say through my squashed lungs and into her spine-ridged ear. “W-Wait! Please!”
Her cooing takes on an edge as my words reach her, though I can’t imagine she understands my vocal English. Her rate of breathing increases against my cheek. But she does release my left arm from her pin and drags her fingers along my cardigan, down to my chest. I wonder if she is planning on letting me go.
And it is a surprise when her hand wriggles between our bodies and squeezes at the bulge of my penis over my work trousers. I let out a strangled cough of shock at her touch, and she seems to like this reaction, as she immediately begins trying to undress me with her quick fingers.
“X! What are you doing?!”
I reach down with my newly freed hand and grab her shoulder, trying to push her off me. But her superior weight and the intensity of her latching around me make it impossible to dislodge her. I take a handful of her thick strands of hair in hand in a bid to dissuade her, but her resultant squealing is excited rather than frustrated. I can feel the edge of her tongue lashing against my cheek between her lips.
In no time at all, X has me out of my trousers. For a creature who has only seen human clothing from behind a layer of glass, she has grasped the concept of a buckle and fly very quickly. And now her fingertips are running over the sensitive skin of my shaft. I wonder if she intends to start disassembling or devouring me with the softer parts she learned about in our human anatomy class. But then, her hips begin to rut. She holds my shaft firmly at its base and rubs her slick, hairless crotch against my penis in time with her breathy cooing. And I can’t deny that it feels nice. A little too firm, but no more aggressive than when I jerk myself off in an evening.
And as my erection grows, I find myself cracking a manic smile. There’s no chance of this being what it looks like, right? She’s an alien. I don’t even know where Muir originally found her, but the research records are clear that she isn’t from Earth. She is unknowable. Special. Not like me at all. This has to be some sort of weird, primitive aggression compulsion. Right? It’s not going to be like those fantasies I have been entertaining in the solitary confines of my dorm room these past nights, right?
Right?
When I enter her, it’s a shock like no other. X has a vagina, and that in itself is a surprise. It’s tight and rubbery, but as slick as the rest of her skin. I enter her deeply. X immediately lets out a snarl against my cheek, and I end up joining her. It’s a shock, yes, but not an unwelcome one. It feels remarkable, actually.
Holding me in her restraining embrace, X begins to shake her body up and down atop me. It’s a juddering, rapid sort of lovemaking, but it’s far from bad. It’s the most action I’ve gotten in years. X squeezes my erection with her alien pussy and rubs me up and down vigorously inside herself. Her hand on my wrist grows tight, and I can hear a rhythmic slapping sound from by my feet. Her tail, I realise, thumping against the tiling of the floor. I tighten my grip on her hair as waves of lightning pleasure shudder their way up my bones and into my brain.
X fucks me. She rides me with urgent desperation. Her heavy body winds and bruises my softer form, but I endure it. And my mind escapes me. I thought she was going to kill me. She could still be planning on it. Well, I don’t much care right now. Not when she feels so good around my cock. I part my lips and gasp out my joy against her ear, joining my voice to hers. I pump my hips through her thighs’ grip around my waist in a bid to push myself deeper, to plumb the mysterious depths of her with my rod. And in no time at all, I hit my limit.
When I cum, it’s with a sharp shake of my body like I’ve been electrocuted. The climax is hard won, and the pressure of my cock unloading into X is a fierce one. My eyelids slam shut, and I see colourful stars sparking in the black behind them. And my shivering release of breath has an ugly, ridiculous, desperate sound attached to it. X, meanwhile, purrs through her lips, still attached to my cheek. She holds me tightly as she finishes me off with slowly receding rolls of her hips. And when I am done, her arms around me feel much more like a lover’s embrace than the pinning hold of a predator.
Gently, she releases me. I tear open my eyes and stare up at her in the gloom of the testing chamber’s changing room, the distant smattering of red light from the corridor outside. X leaves me on the floor as she unwinds from around me, then crawls backward into a kneel, supported by her thick tail at her back. She still has her shoulders hunched as if ready to pounce on me again, and her toothy mouth is still grinning sharply down at me. But then she raises her hands up to her softly rounded yet featureless chest, and she signs for me.
“Thank you.”
I stare at her. I stare down my body, at my clumsily open trousers. The wet, wilting rod of my cock, still gooey with cum and her aberrant lubricant. I reach up and adjust my glasses, since her rough treatment has bent them slightly out of shape. Then I sit up. I can’t find my voice, as I think my lungs are bruised. Lucky we have another way of talking, then.
“What?” I ask her with a sharp stab of my hands. “What-what?”
X grins proudly. “Sex!” she signs, using the word I taught her all those weeks ago.
I roll my eyes. “Why?”
Finally, her smile blinks away. X stares at me with a curious pout on her thin lips as if the answer should be obvious. Then she signs a response.
“Baby,” she says with a matter-of-fact back-and-forth swing of her hands. “Pregnant.”
Oh, fuck.
“Not possible!” I insist with shaking hands.
“Possible!” she argues with a new smile.
“I human!” I tell her needlessly. “Human! X not human! Baby not possible!”
X begins to wobble back and forth on her hips. She opens her mouth so that I can see the blue of her tongue, and she gasps out a few noisy breaths of air. I wonder what this means. She isn’t quite laughing. Is this the sound of X01 pondering?
“X body change,” she tells me eventually. “Not human first. Human next. X see, X change. Data take and change. Thank you,” she says again with a wide smile and a pointed glance down at my cock. “Glasses data thank you.”
I realise a little too late that I am neglecting to breathe. The air hits my lungs suddenly, and I cough and splutter, but sorting my throat out is a good way to stall for time.
Data? Meaning, my cum?! I think X is saying that she plans on adapting a reproductive process for herself, the same way that she reshaped the rest of her body to look more human. She’s going to use the thick load I just deposited in her to build herself a child! Half of me and half of her! Now, I’m a linguist, not a biologist. But Jesus Christ, if it doesn’t sound a little plausible, given what I have seen of her transformation so far! And that realisation makes my head spin.
“X… pregnant?” I ask her.
“Maybe,” she replies with another wriggle of her hips. “First time. Maybe only maybe.”
I begin to laugh. How can I not? I’m picturing myself standing before some sort of Muir Institute ethical science committee, ultrasound images of Test Subject X01’s alien womb up on a ludicrous, damning PowerPoint presentation beside me. They’ll have to label the child as X02, I guess. They’ll glare at me with glowering eyes and shocked, disapproving shakes of the head.
And I’m amazed that the scene I’m picturing doesn’t make me more afraid. I thought I was going to die, after all! Muir was happy to let me drown down here in X’s belly! Fuck what they think!
What X thinks is all that matters…
“Why?” I ask her now. “Me why?”
“Glasses male.”
“Ah.” I say this out loud with a sighing laugh, shaking my head. I grimace to myself. I was nearby and I had a penis. Convenience was all I had to offer her.
But she isn’t done. X leans forward and grabs my wrist to arrest my attention, then continues.
“Glasses smart,” she says with a pinch of her fingers up at her brow. “Glasses smart-smart. Data-data.”
I shake my head dismissively, reaching for the BSL for ‘only a master’s degree’ before realising that she wouldn’t understand that.
“Glasses kind,” X continues with a touch at her breast. “Glasses X understand a long time.”
I shrug my shoulders.
“Glasses special.”
Now I frown. Maybe I’d misread her use of that sign. But when she sees my confusion, X repeats herself, pressing both alien thumbs and forefingers together to create twin ‘okays’ at her chest.
“Special-special.”
“No, X,” I say out loud. “I’m nobody special. Sorry to disappoint.”
Her smile falls into a frown, the first time I have seen her produce such an expression outside of lessons. Sighing heavily, I explain.
“X few humans see only,” I say. “X other humans see, understand. I not special. I…”
I can’t think of the word. Unimpressive? I don’t know that sign. Pointless? I think I can guess at that one. But before I can make the damning motions, X is arguing. She sets as a background to her gestures a low, threatening gurgle in her throat.
“Glasses kind, good father,” she insists. “Glasses baby smart, kind, strong. Baby special. Father special, baby special.”
I smirk. “Mother special,” I correct.
Slowly, the heat fades from X’s expression. Something much colder is left behind. She shakes her head.
“X stupid,” she says with a forlorn knock of her knuckles against her temple. “X humans talking not possible. X people explain not possible. Baby possible. Baby smart, X people explain.”
The alien gently rubs her hands together. At first, I think it’s a sign that I have forgotten. But looking at the creasing around her lovely blue eyes, I can only interpret her gesture as a bid for self-comfort.
“X not special,” she concludes. “Baby special.”
Stunned by her words, it takes me a while to compose a reply. “X people this?” I ask her. “X people space travel, baby make, baby… friends?”
It’s too difficult for me to explain properly. Hell, I can barely grasp it in my own mind! But X nods her head slowly.
“Maybe,” she says.
Her people, X’s people. Travelling the stars and breeding with the people they meet. X01 has said that she herself was never meant to be the diplomat for her species. Instead, her child, the hybrid offspring of her people and mine, will be the one primed to make peace between our cultures.
And she chose me. That’s the bit I’m really struggling with. X01 chose me to be the father of her infant. My genes will help decide whether Earth’s first contact goes well.
But she is not stupid, like she seems to think. She’s not stupid at all.
“X special,” I tell her. “X special-special. I X like.”
X01 opens her mouth and hoots loudly. Her smile is infectious indeed.
“I Glasses like!” she replies at once. And then she assaults me, wrapping her angular arms around me in a tight hug. I laugh as I return the embrace. She’s heavy enough that I’m almost bowled over. X replaces her lips on my cheek and breathes against me. It’s almost a kiss, so I tilt my head towards her and push my lips against her face in return. She coos happily.
“Glasses taste like,” she says once she has pulled her hands around to her chest, close to mine. “Glasses sex like.”
“Really?” I ask with a laugh. She didn’t climax, after all, not that I could tell.
But she nods her head vigorously, and I’m flattered. The way she is touching me, she must get something out of any physical connection, not just intimate. I decide to believe her, and I can feel my cheeks reddening.
“Sex like,” I agree, but then fix my eyes on her when she begins gasping excitedly. “X please ask first!” I tell her. “No surprise! Ask first!”
Her grin is sharp and dangerous, and I have to wonder whether she’s actually understood what I’m trying to tell her. But despite this aggression of hers, I can feel a stiffening low down on my body. Because of it, maybe. X is sexy, after all. She’s outrageously sexy. That thought is great and grand enough to push all others out of my mind.
X nods her head at me in a suggestion of understanding, and we are still, staring into one another’s eyes.
“X pregnant maybe?” I sign eventually, and she nods with wide, curious eyes. “Sex again, pregnant definitely?”
She nods her head with vigour, bonking herself in the face with some of her strands of hair.
“Please-please!” she says.
So, she had understood. “Go on, then,” I say out loud. “I’d love to.”
After all, why the fuck not? In for a penny, as they say.
This time, X is careful with me. She sits herself tall on her knees and holds out her arms to either side, watching me expectantly. When I don’t react, she taps herself on the chest with both hands, then points at me. She wants me to take charge. Okay, then. It isn’t as though I’ve not thought about this. Knowing how her body works only makes my late-night fantasies all the more viable.
I take X in my arms. On her knees, without the bonus height of her long legs, we almost see eye to eye. Then I turn her about so that she is facing away from me. Leaning around her fat tail, I push on her shoulder blades gently. She catches on, falling forward so that she is resting on all fours. She raises up her bum. I can see her vagina now, little more than a featureless, puckered, wet hole below her tail and between her thighs. No anus, curious. She still only eats through nutrients in the water, even in this humanesque form, so I guess she doesn’t need one.
I wriggle forward on my knees before my mind can get too involved in its own academic wonderings. The tiles beneath us are a little sharp, but I don’t much care. My trousers, bunched up at my thighs, grant some cushioning beneath me. I take my cock in hand. It’s hard. It’s very hard. And I slowly push X’s tail to one side to give myself access.
X hoots encouragingly as she peers at me over her shoulder. Her smile is sharp, strange and lovely. Then she gasps as I penetrate her.
“Oh, X!” I say with a laugh as I begin. “Fuck!”
She really does feel excellent. I wonder how she told her body to make this tight recess for my cock. Was she using prompts just from our biology lessons? She must have paid very close attention, if so. But that she looks like this at all is miraculous. I wonder if she could even be manipulating the walls of her vagina right now, while I am fucking her. The thought is strangely flattering.
Holding onto her hips, I push myself deeply into her over and over. I’m happy to take my time, and X seems equally happy to accommodate me. Her firm body rolls back against me and engulfs me in response to my movements. She purrs pleasantly at my invasion of her multi-morphous body. And then, just like in my dreams, she curls her thick tail around my waist and holds me with it. It’s very comforting, and it keeps me upright and inside her.
“X!” I gasp, raising the tempo. “Oh, X!”
We rut together for long minutes. I want to savour this moment, since it may never come again. I want to get the full experience of impregnating a gorgeous alien girl with my human seed! I slide my hands up the gooey skin of her hips, up her waist and along the curve of her back. I commit to memory the sensation of her rubbery skin beneath my fingers. So firm and dense, but warm and welcoming as well. X squeezes her tail around me as she sighs with my motions. She certainly sounds like she’s enjoying herself. When I push myself against her with a little more pressure, her sighing becomes a throaty rumble. Maybe the more of her I touch, the nicer it is for her.
With this in mind, I hold her tightly, leaning forward and kissing her spine. I press my legs up against the backs of hers and push my fingers more firmly against her skin to maximise our contact. X moans loudly as I maintain a deep, entwining, romantic hold around her. I can feel her pussy closing in on me in return. She squeezes and envelops me.
Miraculous. That we fit together like this is simply miraculous. That we could complete each other so wonderfully, despite being so different, is a miracle. Is it folly to wonder if she feels the same way? Are X’s people even capable of love? I hope I get the chance to find out.
A couple more thrusts, and I am done. I sigh X’s name onto her skin as I ejaculate. It isn’t as much as before, but it may still turn me into a dad. I shiver as the pleasure of climax races through me, and I coat X’s inner walls with my semen.
“Yeah!” I groan. “Oh, yes! Oh… yes!”
X parts her lips and moans out a response. She’s trying to copy my vocalisations, which is sweet of her. Still, the sound of her ‘talking’ is a little bit funny, and I start to laugh, my stiff cock juddering inside her pussy. Fortunately, X grins at me over her shoulder rather than getting annoyed at my mockery. She smiles for me, and I smile right back.
We remain motionless together as my legs regain their blood, and my back aches when I stretch it out with a wince. X pulls herself off my cock gently and crawls around in a circle to face me. Then she embraces me. She is purring against me as we hug in the cold dark of the changing room. When she pulls back, I kiss her on the lips.
“Kiss,” I teach her with my hands.
X grins. “Kiss like,” she signs. “Sex like. Glasses like.”
“Me too,” I say, stroking her cheek with my fingers.
A rumble in the facility infrastructure beneath us heralds the descent of the lift and the arrival of the strike team, so X takes her leave. We don’t have time for a proper goodbye. X insists on drawing the curtains before doing whatever she does to move through the pipes. “Shy,” she explains with a smile as she does. I hear the sound of straining waterworks, a scattering of fluid into the shower basin behind the curtain, and then silence.
Basking alone in my afterglow, I have to wonder what happens now. If X really is pregnant, how long will gestation take? She morphed her body so quickly in those first days, it can’t be longer than nine months. Hell, she may give birth tomorrow! I’ll have to ask her when my shift starts in the morning. I can’t wait. There’s still so much I have to ask her…
When the strike team arrives five minutes later, they can’t see into the changing room because the window is all fogged up on the inside. Once their overrides have let them in, they enter to find just me, smiling calmly from my seat on one of the long metal benches. Just a dishevelled, middling, Scottish academic, ready to tell them that the crisis has been averted. Ready to face the exciting, pioneering days ahead.
shortstory
Ewan Stone 
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