The Myconian way of life was one that consistently tested the boundaries of peaceful living. Zailaa rode the elevator down into the depths of the colony. The tendrils of red infestation stretched from the mesh-screen floor up to the disheveled ceiling tiles. Creatures from inside the walls skittered on black keratin claws. She ducked under a familiar mass of pulsating flesh that was anchored past the doorway. The gelatinous spires breathed. Ichor passed underneath the flexible layers and pumped life into colonies of red bioluminescent tumors. A thick cloud of orange spores rode on the breeze offered by the corrupted ventilation shaft. She heard buzzing; like a propeller struggling against a combination of overexertion and unoiled bearings. Each chamber and walkway she passed through made the noise seem more and more organic. The doors opened to the derelict of the generator room. The room was three stories high and flickered with failing lights running along the room's thick metal spine. The chamber was divided. On the right was the infestation; spread like the solid form of billowing smoke. It encroached underneath the hex paneled floor while it enveloped the walls. On the left was a semblance of the Corpus past; handrails and workstations with brightly lit screens and measured efficiency. Zailaa peered over the corpus workstation. She anticipated a grim scene near the fan blades of the fission generator. The source of the buzzing revealed itself. It was a Mutalist Osprey trying wholeheartedly to lift a whole-bodied Corpus Crewman off the ground by his shoulders. Zailaa watched the scene in awe.
Did he lose his crawler? She wondered. Does he think that is him?
The Mutalist Osprey detached from the shoulders of the Crewman. It circled around, revved both propeller engines, and returned for another attempt. The Osprey wrapped tendrils of muscle underneath the arms of the compliant Crewman. The propellers displaced a torrent of air, but the boots of the Crewman did not leave the floor. The Osprey was visibly discouraged. The Crewman less so. It began to walk with a lightened stride. What began with tested footsteps became far reaching hops with the aid of the Osprey's engines. They both were elated. Zailaa's heart went out to them.
The skittering of keratin claws stopped. Zailaa looked to the walls to no avail. The busy maggots were nowhere in sight. She placed her ear against the shallow metal wall and rasped her knuckles against the ventilation grate. The knocks echoed. No movement was stirred in the lifeless cavity. She turned and found that the Osprey and Crewman duo were also gone. Zailaa was troubled.
They're moving together. They never move together unless they are fighting something, she thought. What tripped the alarm?
A beast howled. It brought his front legs up in the air and smashed them against the ground. A slime mold of light gray and red blistered flesh spread from the point of impact. It encroached on the panels and blossomed on the bodies of fallen infested. It was a Juggernaut. Zailaa cowered behind the doorframe. The subject of the Juggernaut's wrath was hidden from her view. The Juggernaut however, was rattled and wounded. She leaned closer to see around the pillar obstructing her view. She saw the floor that they fought under. The Juggernaut's slime mold was being devoured by a darker and more virulent strain. The Juggernaut's target was humanoid in shape but every instinct Zailaa had said that it was infested. The swollen tendrils of muscle binding muscle to bone – the outcroppings of armored flesh - the hallowed and egoless stance. It was a monster.
The Juggernaut unfurled tentacles of dark red from a spinal cord agape and torn. The tendrils moved like whips. They broke the air in sharp cracks and lobbed a sinister hail of bullets. The volley tore through the monster as it approached. The bullets dented the walls behind the peppered form and shattered panes of glass with thunderous power. The humanoid's infested flesh was butchered. It hung by flat threads from pulsating organs and twitching muscle. It still approached. Creatures of the infestation rose from the Juggernaut's mold. They tore at the monster with bloody claws and vile sinew. Zailaa thought she saw the monster waver, but it was merely lowering its stance in preparation. The monsters scream was leagues above the Juggernaut's own. It was ethereal and dark, like a creature that drank from the abyss and walked untethered from flesh. The virulent strain of infestation was a bioluminescent blue like a dwindling and distant star. It billowed over the red in bubbling clouds and sprung up spires of organic matter. Zailaa then knew the name Nidus- the name whispered by the lips of ancestors long passed.
The spires brought forth maggots engorged by the cosmic blue energy and armored by bone. They leapt from the obscuring blue grass and divided sections of the chargers and crewmen like a colony of ants. Nidus closed in and delivered a punch to the carapace of the Juggernaut. Two strikes glanced harmlessly off of the beast's armored carapace but the third rattled the Juggernaut's skull. The Juggernaut Leaned forward to launch another salvo of puncturing bullets- but Nidus was already prepared. His muscles overflowed with shining energy. He brought his heel down on the Juggernaut's exposed spinal cord. The kick cleaved through flesh and bone until it passed through the Juggernaut's shoulder and took the armored mass of its arm off with it.
The Juggernaut roared. Propelled by strong rear legs, it rammed Nidus in the chest. Nidus left the ground and joined the wall. The Juggernaut prepared to charge again. It balanced on three legs before rushing with horned head and armored shoulders near the broken target. The footfalls of the Juggernaut echoed in the wide clamber. Nidus launched an infested seedling from the palm of his broken hand. The seedling lashed out with tendrils and wrapped around the body of the Juggernaut while rooting itself into the floor. The seedling slowed the Juggernaut greatly but was unable to halt the force of the kinetic missile. Blue maggots scampered from the tall grass and latched onto the Juggernaut's legs, shoulders and neck. The tendrils of the seed pulled to the point of snapping. They raised the beast to its rear legs and an exposed the creature's soft underside. Zailaa watched Nidus fall from the wall on a broken body. Blue energy leaked out through torn armor. Nidus rose to his feet, muscles and bone snapped back into place accompanied by the hiss of the infested material binding bone to muscle. Nidus slammed his heel into the floor and from the epicenter rose slender blades of mutated blue flesh. They raced towards the Juggernaut as it broke free from the tendrils and renewed its approach. The blades did not waver as the Juggernaut passed over them. Each edge caught the underside and carved more and more of the Juggernaut's mass until little was left behind.
Nidus caught the Juggernaut by the horn. Muscles popped and tensed against the weight. Displaced air rushed over the wall and made the blue grass underfoot dance. The Juggernaut's red luminescence flickered before failing entirely. It crumbled to the floor- and was consumed by the blue grass.