Russel stood over the dead body while pointing his laser pistol toward the woman he'd previously believed to be his wife. The corpse at his feet, despite having been dead for more than a week, had been eerily preserved by the sterile atmosphere of the alien planet.

"What are you?" Russel demanded.

The thing resembling his wife looked confused.

"What kind of question is that?" it asked with a shrug. "I'm your wife."

"No," Russel countered coldly. He pointed with his free hand toward the body on the purple soil, his pistol's aim unwavering. "That was my wife, not you."

"It's not what it looks like," the thing defended. "I can explain."

"It looks like my wife is dead, and you're wearing her face," Russel growled through gritted teeth. His finger started to tighten on the trigger.

The thing dropped to its knees, tears cascading down the face Russel had known and loved for so many years. The aim of his pistol wavered for an instant, and in a blur of speed, the thing lashed out with an arm, now twice as large and sprouting cactus style spines from elbow to wrist. The pistol went flying, and the thing was back on its feet, lunging toward him as its other arm split into a dozen tentacles at the shoulder.

Russel, stepping backwards in a panicked flight, tripped over a rock, causing him to twist around and barely miss the tentacles lashing toward his helmet. Clawing at the ground, he bolted back toward the terraforming colony site. He lunged over large formations of iridescent crystal and threw himself across a narrow canyon fissure rather than taking the longer way around to reach the bridge. He came down hard, but shed most of the impact in a painful roll across the alien ground. Alerts from his environment suit flashed to life across his clear helmet as the pressure seals were tested to their limits, but he knew he wouldn't need the suit much longer. Back to his feet almost immediately, he didn't bother to check on his pursuer but ran full out toward the colony.

Established to transform the planet over many years, the small settlement was a collection of silver buildings submerged into the purple soil. The octagonal science lab was the primary structure in the center of the colony. The agriponics building to the north was a cylinder lying half-buried on its flank. The flat squares on the far side of the science lab housed communications and supply storage. Triangular in shape, and supporting a number of vertical tubes from the roof in a resemblance of a massive pipe organ, the habitation building contained enough rooms to support three times the number of terraformers currently assigned there, but it had been designed to accommodate an increasing population level.

Russel's momentum was so great, he had trouble slowing down and rammed his shoulder into the side of the airlock when he arrived, causing him to wince. He forced himself to push the keys slowly and deliberately on the number pad next to the armored hatch. The bulky fingers of his environment suit threatened to make him input the wrong access code. Suspecting the alien thing was near, he couldn't afford an error.

The panel lit green as the code was accepted. When the door hissed open, he dived through and hammered a fist down upon the emergency close button, triggering alarms throughout the colony and instituting a lockdown of the entire settlement. Designed to prevent an outbreak of an alien pathogen, the system was programmed to deactivate all outside door controls and thwart an infected individual from being able to get inside and spread the contagion by accident.

Russel removed his helmet and had barely taken a single lungful of air before a heavy blow thundered against the airlock door. He pushed away from the wall he was leaning against, moving over to look through the reinforced window beside the outer hatch.

The thing appeared outside, still wearing his wife's face. Her helmet was gone, and both arms of her environment suit hung in tattered shreds from when she'd previously changed form.

"Honey?" it called, his wife's voice muffled through the barrier of the airlock wall and hatch between them. "I know you're upset, but we can get past this. Everything can be like it was before."

"You're not her!" Russel yelled back.

"Whatever do you mean?" it questioned, leaning her face close to the window and smiling at him.

"I saw her body," Russel choked out. "Just because you wear her face, doesn't make you her."

"I could be her for you," the thing offered with a cold smile.

"I could never have anything but hatred for you," Russel answered. "You killed my wife."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," the creature laughed. Its guise began to melt, lips vanishing to reveal pale green bone supporting a forest of dark blue needles for teeth. Fingers elongated into miniature whips with curved talons on the tips. Hair shifted to become thin wires adorned with small barbs. Its eyes blinked, changing to luminous orange and the circular iris reshaped into an inverted V. "All animals kill to survive. Even herbivores kill living plants to feed. I'm just doing what I need to survive, same as you, same as any living creature."

Russel moved away from the hatch, opening the door into the habitation building, but he instantly halted when he found another dead body. The uniform belonged to Commander Sterling, but the body itself was unrecognizable, melted and burned into a lump of blackened and misshapen flesh.

"I was hungry," the thing explained, her voice broadcast between the two comm systems in their suits. "Your Commander was rather tasty, but I have to say the Engineer had a unique flavor."

Russel stepped around the body and kept moving. The thing's voice, projected out of his suit's speakers, hounded him through every passage. He considered switching off the system, but it would require opening access panels and altering components. Time was more precious to him than silence.

"I needed to find a way into the colony," the thing went on calmly, still using her voice. "Your wife was a convenient choice. I didn't feed on her as I needed the neural tissue intact to drain her memories. I thought I showed a great deal of restraint considering how hungry I was. Once I could masquerade as her, isolating and draining the colonists was a simple matter. I only needed time."

Russel ripped off his gloves as he reached a control console, so he could key in his access codes. Scrolling through the files, he found the right one and activated it, inputting three more codes to bypass the security protocols. When the program activated, the lights shifted to red and alarms began sounding. Gathering what energy he still possessed, he raced toward the escape pods. Launch tubes mounted in the roof of the habitation building held the escape pods, ready in the event the colony proved a failure or encountered something extremely hostile.

A rapid flashing blue light joined the slow strobing red as a new alert began, warning of a containment breach in the habitation building. He knew the thing would be racing toward the escape pods, not only to catch him but to flee before the self-destruct system he'd activated finished the countdown. Sealing the launch chamber behind him, he flipped the levers beside each pod to fire them off one after another until only a single pod remained. Climbing inside, he settled into the padded seat as the pod door slid shut.

"Honey?" the thing snarled outside the door to the launch chamber. The voice was barely recognizable as his wife's anymore. "We can still make this work. Can't we just talk?"

"I'm only food to you," Russel answered. "You don't see me as anything other than a resource to be tapped, used up, and discarded. Goodbye."

Russel knew the thing was too far from the other buildings to break through all the defenses before the countdown completed, and the blast radius ensured she'd never outrun it. The pain of his wife's loss was still with him, but knowing her killer would die brought him a small amount of satisfaction. Looking the thing in the eye, he smiled at it before pressing the launch button in the pod. The room and the creature outside the door fled from his view as the pod shot away from the facility and into the atmosphere. Below him, the colony, its alien menace, and all the terrain for five miles in every direction vanished in an explosion of blinding white.

As the pod reached orbit, Russel linked his computer with an orbiting communication satellite, transmitting a distress signal back to Central Command. Afterwards, he altered the satellite's broadcast to put out a continuing hazard advisory. No one would ever go down to the planet's surface again. Leaning back in the cramped confines of the pod, he closed his eyes and waited for the rescue ship to arrive.