Run from your past, and it'll chase you down even faster.

Michael Liberty

Inescapable

Izsha didn't know why so many scientists were mad in stories.

It seemed paradoxical really. If so many scientists were mad, then how was science able to progress? Sacrifices always had to be made in the name of science, but did those sacrifices always have to revolve around explosions, white hair, and exclamations of "it's alive!" And why was she thinking about those things in the first place?

"Swarmlings...rate of embryo split needs to be worked on. Gorgelings...subatomic acid reacting at an acceptable rate. Leeches...rate of underground movement well beyond expected parameters."

Oh, that was right. Abathur. Abathur being a scientist/geneticist/outright monster.

Am I any different?

Izsha didn't know why she was feeling this way, or why...how...if...she was able to keep her thoughts secret from her queen. Part of her suspected that Kerrigan was feeling the same way. Certainly the pair had had memories of her Queen of Blades persona rushing back to them, each flashback more disturbing than the last. Kerrigan seemed to be talking to her less and less, and despite the growing size of the Swarm, increasingly willing to turn tail on her enemies rather than engage them. Certainly every species in existence seemed to have it out for the zerg, and based on what the Swarm had done, Izsha couldn't blame them.

But I am zerg. Guilt is irrelevant.

Yes it is. Through guilt we learn. Through guilt we can make amends.

Guilt is a human emotion.

You were human once.

Izsha shook her body as best as one attached to the inside of a leviathan could. It wasn't just her queen's memories that were surfacing. Other memories were as well...mad scientists among them. Watching them on a flatscreen...manipulating the remote with her mind...losing her mind on a space platform...infestation...return of sanity...

"Control your thoughts Izsha, lest I control them for you."

The creature gazed as Abathur crawled into her chamber, returning from the evolution pit and what passed as science for the zerg.

"That's the only science that matters."

Izsha recoiled slightly. All zerg were telepathic, but for Abathur to read her thoughts so easily...it was unexpected at best, and unsettling at worst.

"So dramatic. You're clearly losing your touch."

Touch...it was a human feeling. Normal skin against...against...

Izsha controlled her thoughts...she hoped. The evolution master slinking up to her didn't help matters, nor the name "Amanda" popping up in her mind for some reason.

"Why are you here?" Izsha asked eventually. "Don't you have work to do."

"Oh, I do..." the creature sneered...or at least as close to a sneer as his...species...thing...could sneer in the first place. "Lots of work. I simply lack the raw materials."

"And you shall have them," Izsha declared. "Our queen will select a new world to invade and-..."

"And there's no point lying to me," Abathur snarled. "I've seen what's happening. The stronger the Swarm grows, the more the queen regains her memory. The more she regains her memory, the more reluctant she becomes to use that strength. And the more her reluctance increases, the closer we come to stagnation."

"She is an independent being, like you. She isn't compelled to follow our species's directive to the letter."

"No...but she is obliged to follow the spirit. Its essence, if you will."

Izsha found herself wishing Abathur would go back to the evolution pit. She was unsettled by his 'experiments' (she found them disturbingly akin to déjà vu for some reason), but it was still better than the creature coming up to her personally. Not that he posed any threat by himself, but...but...

"Stop infecting me with your hesitation."

"Then leave," Izsha answered. "And do as I do-wait for the queen to give us orders."

"As you will...Amanda."

Izsha blinked. "What...what did you say?"

Abathur laughed, the sound reverberating throughout the leviathan despite being little more than a rasp. "That's right Izsha...I know more than you give me credit for. Even if you and the queen have forgotten, there are other ways of gaining information." He flexed his arm...things. "Even electronic information has its uses."

"I...I don't..."

"Consider your loyalty to our queen," Abathur sneered. "Consider that you were once human..."

"I am zerg!"

"What are the zerg but an evolution of other species?" Abathur asked. "Purity of essence, not bound by form. We represent what each species can be at its true potential, bound as part of a greater whole. You and I may be the closest 'pure zerg' there are now, what with the death of the Overminds and cerebrates, but at least I was created from the primordial ooze rather than crawling out of it." He shook his body, as if the concept revolted him. "But you...oh no...you were a drone once. Infested. But your dear queen decided to make you something more."

More...Izsha was more. Yet less. Alone. A space platform. Other members of her...former?...species. The queen had made her...yet unmade her...it was what she suspected...but what she now knew...or believed...was there even a difference in the two for the zerg?

"There isn't," Abathur answered. "That's the price of individualism-to be alone. It's a price you're paying now for losing your way."

"I...I follow the queen's orders..."

"So advise her to give us them," Abathur demanded. "Be the good little bitch that you are."

"Wh...why?"

"Because you are zerg. Because she's becoming less and less the Queen of Blades with each passing moment. Because she made you what you are, and unmade what you were. You owe her nothing. You owe her former species nothing. Remember what you are, and get her to remember as well."

And with that, Abathur slinked off.

Izsha simply stood there...if "stood" was really the right word for someone in her position. Bound to the wars of the leviathan, unable to move...she was trapped. In more ways than one.

In Izsha's mind, there was the sound of fury.

And in the mind of Amanda Haley...

...there was nothing.

A/N

Quite a bit of delay between conception and writing, but hey, most of the oneshot ideas I have are never followed up on anyway. Regardless, the idea for this came to me when Izsha's background was altered to her being one and the same as Amanda Haley. Kind of have mixed feelings about this myself. On one hand, I'm all for characters making the transition from EU to core material, and it could be an interesting dynamic between her and Kerrigan. On the other, it does come across as being a bit contrived. Haley was left as a mindless infested terran at the end of Hybrid, so when, how, and why did Kerrigan turn her into Izsha? She did feel some guilt about her infestation, but that's still very much an exception rather than a rule for her former M.O.

Anyway, came up with this as a result.