Mimicry

Chapter 13 - Latitant

"Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT," John hissed through clenched teeth. He continued his stream of expletives, before propping himself on the bar in resignation.

"The creature must have somehow figured out we were planning on using the alcohol against it." Kate surmised.

"It... it destroyed everything..." Essie whispered, her voice trembling. The sight of their common room in ruins was a harsh reminder of the reality they were in. This was their home, now destroyed and desecrated by an alien entity.

"But why would it do this? How would it know?" Ceriann asked, her gaze darting across the wreckage.

Jake, who had been quiet, finally spoke. "Maybe it doesn't want us to have any advantage. Maybe it knows more than we think it does. Or maybe, it's just trying to frighten us, break us."

"Oh, cheers, that clears it up," John responded sarcastically. Essie gave him a look of admonishment. "What?" he sassed in response, "the situation somehow keeps getting fucking bleaker by the minute, and I just can't get a handle on what the hell is going on."

"John, this isn't the time to-", Essie started but was cut off by Jake's raised hand.

"No, he's right," Jake admitted. "Things are bleak. But the best we can do is to keep our heads on straight and figure this out."

"There's no figuring this out," John snapped, his hands clenched. "We're not equipped for this."

"But we've got one thing going for us," Ceriann suddenly spoke up, her eyes focused on the scattered bottles of alcohol. "Ethanol. We might not understand the alien, but we know it reacts to ethanol."

"No, a test," Kate offered, catching on to Ceriann's implication. "We dab a bit of ethanol on each other, into our blood. If one of us reacts... we'll know."

"Know what?" John scoffed. "Know that we have an alien amongst us? And then what, Kate? We're no executioners."

"We're survivors," Jake stated calmly, meeting John's hostile gaze. "And if we need to do the unthinkable to survive, we'll do it."

"Surely it would be easier to get some latex gloves and apply those to everyone's skin? When Faith touched it with hers, she said the glove burned." Jake suggested.

"That wouldn't work. It only reacted like that in its pure form. I think the skin is enough of a barrier to latex. I think the alcohol idea would be more potent."

A heavy silence hung over them, broken only by the chilling howl of the wind outside. It was a desperate plan, and they all knew it. Yet, in the face of the unknown terror lurking beyond the walls of their ruined sanctuary, they knew they had no choice.

"Right," Kate eventually said, her voice steadier than before. "What about the alcohol in the common room? Would that work?"

Ceriann shook her head. "It's a risk we can't take. We don't know if the alcohol content is strong enough to trigger a reaction. Anyway, our entire alcohol reserve is literally seeping underneath our feet this very second. Lab ethanol is what we need."

"The Gram stain!" Essie exclaimed, her face lighting up with realization. "It contains ethanol, doesn't it?" She looked to the others for reassurance.

"Surely, that won't work?" Jake spoke up, perhaps quicker than he intended, "After all, it was that stuff that made it react in the first place?"

"From what I understood in the notebook, ethanol causes a violent reaction in the alien's cells. If that's what made it wake up and trigger its potency of shape-changing, it'll certainly make it happen again. I suggest we use two methods. Swab on the skin, and an injection into the blood. Perhaps with a more human-safe solution," Kate responded.