I started writing this a while ago, and just got around to finishing it. It's an obvious choice to do what Other M failed to do, which is making a creepy and mysterious plot out of the Deleter, so I tried to do that.
It was easy enough to tell them apart, she supposed. Their voices were distinguishable through the modulators, and besides, Anthony was the only one who called her Princess. Her trained eye could even pick out the differences in their heights, so there was really no question of who was whom.
All the same, she didn't like the uniformity. She remembered her military days, and how it always unsettled her to glance over and not immediately know which of her comrades was masked by that reflective visor, and now she found herself constantly checking her suit's scan data readouts to remain absolutely sure who each of the 07th platoon was.
"Samus?"
That was Adam. She snapped out of her reverie and faced the door with the rest of them.
Anthony shared a nod with his team before kicking the door open, and they quickly stepped into the room in formation, Samus just behind them. The chamber was deathly silent, the sounds of sparking wires and staticy comm systems from the corridors fading, and Samus felt unnerved by the sudden quiet. She forced her unease down, though—this was a mission; where were these thoughts coming from? Get a grip.
Two soldiers—K.G. and Maurice?—immediately moved to the body that lay at one end of the room; the other four fanned out and searched the area. Eventually they each called "All clear!" and the group converged on the corpse. Samus joined them, doing her best to ignore the nagging disquiet in the corner of her mind. She hadn't been feeling well since she first set foot on the Bottle Ship…
"He's been dead a while," said K.G.
"What did him in?" James, probably.
"Well…" K.G. reached one hand under the researcher's corpse and tugged it onto its back. Immediately the cause of death became obvious: some kind of small creatures had eaten their way into his body at multiple locations. The holes they had left were hideous, jagged and burned-looking around their edges.
"Looks like—" The soldier's words were cut off by a revolted cry, one they all echoed as, suddenly, the body began to jerk and move. Its arm bent in of its own accord, its head rolled, the whole thing shook…until at last several beetles broke through its skin and began to scuttle about the floor.
Samus's heart was hammering, and her eyes did not leave the corpse as one of the platoon shouted something and began to kick at the bugs. She had seen worse, much worse, and yet…
Her attention snapped back to the situation at hand when she heard laughter. Lyle—she could tell it was him because his visor was up—had opened fire on the beetles, and James was laughing? Didn't they have any respect for the dead? She looked for Adam, and it took her longer than usual to pick him out from among the helmeted soldiers. Why didn't he say anything about the way his troops were acting?
The shooting had stopped, but there was more shouting now. Samus didn't register that the soldiers had all turned in the other direction and were training their weapons on something. All her focus was again on the corpse. It reminded her horribly of a memory from long ago, when she had stood alone amid the burning streets of her home, looking at a field of bodies that spread in every direction. The lucky ones were dead from energy weapons, and the unlucky ones… They were ruined husks; bodies pierced and drained of all life by vicious fangs.
"Samus!" Adam shouted, but she did not hear him. "What are you doing? Hit it with Missiles while we concentrate fire… Samus!"
o – o – o
She found herself in Sector 1 after that.
She must have finally assisted in destroying the bug-creature, she supposed—but how had she gotten here?
Her destination was the Exam Center, a large facility adjacent to the Biosphere's biggest artificial habitat. When she reached the entrance, she was instantly on alert. The door was open, and she could hear sounds coming from within. She cautiously entered, weapon at the ready, and turned a corner to find one of the soldiers kneeling before a computer console, his hands tangled in a mess of its wiring that looked like the torn-out insides of an animal. The trooper's visor was down, and Samus saw only her own reflection.
"Hey, Samus," he said, raising the visor. It was James. "This computer is pretty wrecked… I'm seeing if I can get it back online."
Why was James here? Had he been tasked to come to Sector 1? If he had, then why was she here?
Two more members of the platoon entered the room, rifles briefly cocked as her arm cannon had been, and immediately Samus activated her Scan Visor to determine who they were. She waited, but a few moments later she realized her system could no longer function within the station-wide interference permeating the Bottle Ship.
She wondered, could the intense interference be affecting her as well? She didn't feel well at all, and she couldn't figure out why. But she shook it off. Their voices, she could tell who it was by their voices.
"Hey, Princess," said one. Anthony, of course; she didn't need to listen very hard to figure that out… But Anthony was much taller than the others, so why hadn't she recognized him right away? "We got done early in Sector 2, so we decided to come give you a hand."
The other soldier spoke up. "The lines are patched, so comms between sectors should work." Samus thought the one speaking was…K.G.? Lyle? "James, you're here? Did you already…"
"Nope." James shrugged. "It was a dead end. If you'd been around, maybe we could have blasted our way through." He shrugged again.
So it was Lyle—after all, he was the demolitions expert. Samus was relieved to finally know who she was with. She walked with the other three to the computer James had been working on, which displayed many error messages and not much else. Lyle sat in front of the computer and called up a list of internal statistics. "This is bad," he said, reaching for his visor's release. "Most of the data"—the visor retracted, revealing Maurice's face—"has been deleted. Someone tried to wipe it."
Samus stared. Maurice? That didn't make sense. Maurice did computers and Lyle did explosives; why had James just said "if you'd been there?" Had she misheard him? She could have sworn the voice had belonged to Lyle…
"I'll see what I can do to recover the files," said Maurice. "If we're lucky, and I can just recover one sector, we could still get something out of this."
Another of the troops, his visor also up but his face turned away from Samus, leaned in to read the screen. "So the system crashed before it all got deleted, huh?"
"It didn't just crash," James said. The soldier reading the screen didn't look up, so James tapped him on the shoulder. "Lyle! I said it didn't just crash. The circuitry took a hit, from an energy weapon or something."
Samus was thrown. The first soldier was Lyle? She had mistaken Anthony for Lyle? But he'd called her—
"Lucky for us," said Anthony, walking back from the wall of plate-glass windows that overlooked the artificial habitat. "Now we still have a chance."
"Yeah," said James, but it seemed halfhearted. "What do you think, Samus? Can your Scan Visor get anything?"
What did she think? She thought two soldiers had entered the room after her, yet here there were three. She knew where Adam was, but didn't that leave K.G. by himself, a questionable tactic in such an insecure and uncertain situation? Samus glanced around, half expecting to see K.G. standing somewhere nearby.
To her relief, she heard Anthony answer for her. "It's like the CO said, there's interference all over the place." He rapped the side of his own helmet. "Even short range, our comms don't work." Anthony had always had a habit of responding to questions asked Samus, a habit which she was just fine with; she was always very reserved in her conversations and having her personable friend speak up made her feel better.
She wasn't willing to trust any of the other soldiers, not even Adam, but she could trust Anthony.
James returned his attention to the computer terminal, and Samus nodded to Anthony in thanks. She'd gotten distracted, but everything was in order now… Although it nagged at the back of her mind that they were all assembled, yet K.G. was still off somewhere, alone, in another sector.
"I've got something!" exclaimed Maurice. They all regarded the screen as a file, apparently intact again, was called up. Immediately the title blazed orange at Samus beneath the words top secret.
Metroid Militarization Plan, it said.
Suddenly, she was enraged. Didn't these greedy, shortsighted fools ever learn their lesson? Every experiment in bioweaponry in the galaxy had ended in utter, costly, and often lethal failure, and those were with creatures not half as dangerous or hard to control as Metroids.
Wait—control? She was only aware she had stepped up to the terminal when the report started scrolling at her touch. She ignored whatever Maurice and the others were saying, her eyes rapidly scanning the text. If they wanted to control Metroids, they needed an entity with certain telepathic abilities—they needed a Mother Brain. But even as she neared the end of the file, there was no mention of such an AI. Perhaps the project had not advanced beyond that requirement.
It flashed by in an instant, and she only registered the words after she had scrolled past them. Pausing for an incredulous moment, she returned to the place where the report's author was listed. Adam Malkovich.
She frowned at the text, as though she must be misreading it. Could Adam really have written such a report? She'd thought he shared her distaste for bioweapons—at the very least, he knew firsthand the damage caused by the disastrous failures of other such projects. And, Metroids? Of all things? The man knew better. She opened a link to Adam's comm, beginning, "Adam—"
A piercing shriek assaulted her ears, coming from somewhere outside the Exam Center. She clapped her hand uselessly on the side of her helmet as the soldiers all ran to the windows. The sound was a train braking on rusty tracks, a bone saw at an acute angle to steel, and it seemed unending. Samus felt like throwing up. She stood frozen while the platoon scrambled for the exits that led to the artificial habitat.
"—amus! Are you there? Listen! Get out there and assist, the — reatures — Respo— mus! Samus!"
Somebody was shouting in her ear, but it hardly registered over the endless, reverberating screech. Everything was blurring. The world was out of focus. The sound was death…
o – o – o
"Lyle's down." That was the next thing she heard.
She was standing with Anthony, James, Maurice, and K.G., looking down at the body of Lyle. His visor was open, baring his final look of agony to the harsh light of the artificial sun. The armor which should have protected him was destroyed, with jagged gashes torn through much of its surface, gashes through which dark red leaked out to stain the grass.
His wasn't the only corpse. Dead bioforms of many species littered the field around them, as through they'd suddenly all collapsed where they stood. That wasn't true, of course; many showed unmistakable signs of weapons fire, including some Samus recognized as coming from her own arm cannon. They had possibly killed every creature in the habitat.
"It's like a pile of rags," said James.
"What could have done this?" K.G. wondered aloud.
Anthony knelt, closing Lyle's eyes before straightening and turning to Samus. "Could that giant lizard have gotten him?"
Giant lizard? She didn't know what Anthony was talking about—the reptilian creatures that lay dead around them were not large. She didn't respond, however, for at that moment something caught her eye: a green liquid, viscous but unmistakably blood, dotting the grass. It formed…a trail?
Cautiously, she followed the blood spots to a clump of dense foliage near the border of the environment. A pool of green oozed from the leafy base. Samus reached out a hand, parting the plants and revealing
o – o – o
A ghost. That was the only explanation for her. The way she moved so silently, the way she was always disappearing, flitting around a corner when Samus caught sight of her, the colorless glow of her lab coat under the fluorescent lights…
Her name, she said, was Madeline Bergman. She was possibly the only survivor on the Bottle Ship.
Samus wanted to protect her with all her strength.
Madeline was conflicting. She seemed so relieved when Samus was near, touching her arm, throwing her sincere looks which plainly said, Thank you for saving my life… Yet she also shied away, even ran, as though she were nervous of spending too much time with Samus. The once, when she locked the door with an almost terrified gasp upon seeing Samus… She had yelled out for Samus to go away, leave her alone, but when she opened the portal and walked out, she looked like she was ready to throw herself into the bounty hunter's arms.
They talked for hours, and during those times, the 07th platoon ceased to exist. It was just the two of them, Samus and Madeline, alone together on a ghost ship. They depended on each other for survival (at least, Madeline did Samus), safety, sanity. Samus was amazed there could be a bright spot among so much death.
Somehow, Samus felt as though she could remain thus forever. It made no sense—the Bottle Ship was a disaster area, the site of the Federation inquiry and her own mission, and she had only just met Madeline. And yet…with the alternative of joining the soldiers—those faceless, identical soldiers—and wandering the Bottle Ship's sectors until everything bled together and she lost herself completely…compared to that, playing this game and cat-and-mouse with the girl who seemed to love her as much as she sought to run from her…it didn't seem so bad.
That was the closest she came to sane.
o – o – o
Tears freeze solid in arctic temperatures. Samus could feel them warm, wet, kept liquid by her helmet… But to dry or freeze those tears would have been better.
Why were their visors always open in death?
Maurice's face was even worse than Lyle's had been. Drawn, fleshy gray and pale, the eyes ringed with pink where his own skin had frozen and broken, locked in place like a tableau of ice. With the temperatures of the Sector 2 habitat, rigor mortis was merely secondary.
If it hadn't… If she hadn't just stumbled upon it like that, she wouldn't be crying. Already she could feel the unfamiliar sensation of tears beginning to fade, but that didn't calm her insides. How had the soldier met this fate? He couldn't have just opened his visor and lain down to die, but there was nothing marking his armor but ice.
But then, the 07th platoon carried freeze guns.
Impossible. It made no sense, for one of the troopers to… Did it? Suddenly, her attention was drawn away from Maurice, away from her thoughts of deletion, to an observation window some distance away. A woman stood there, a woman with light blonde hair and pale blue eyes which Samus couldn't have possibly have seen at that distance—Madeline. She could see, actually see, the girl's heart catch in her throat when she saw Samus notice her. Then the next moment Madeline was backing away, turning slowly, and running.
Who was that? Samus gazed at the empty pane. There's a survivor?
o – o – o
It didn't take her long to remember who Madeline was again. And she didn't realize she had ever forgotten.
Madeline started to run just in time, moving from the path of the falling crate and coming to stand behind Samus, fingertips lightly brushing her armored shoulder as if to say, be careful. Samus aimed her weapon at the cockpit of the industrial mech. Sitting there, she could see
o – o – o
It is all reset. It happens too frequently now. But it's always worse when she hears that shriek.
In Sector 3, when she was just shaking off the aftereffects of that horrible sound, she almost let the creature with the glowing red eye and long tentacles kill Anthony. Her recovery was timely, and she sprinted to join him.
Elsewhere in the sector, she watched as the soldier was pushed off the rocky embankment and into space. He fell like a rag doll, his body showing no sign of the life she knew was still within it, until he hit the lava.
She rained Missiles upon the grotesque bioform to cover Anthony while he charged his plasma cannon. One shot from it would kill the creature, or at least force it to flee, but it was moving faster than seemed possible for something of its size and awkward build.
Whether it was the impact, the heat, or something else, she couldn't be sure, but when K.G. hit the lava, his visor released. He mercifully remained unconscious as she saw his face begin to melt. First it sagged, then it collapsed, then it bubbled and twisted and small fires burned at the seams, and then it was swallowed up by the lava.
Anthony's shot hit the creature in its single, livid eye. It shrieked and dove off the raised platform, heading straight down until it was swallowed up by the lava. Samus felt as though they hadn't seen the last of it.
Three down, four to go. No, three to go…no, five. Three down, five to go.
o – o – o
Madeline was happy to see her. That much was obvious from her small smile, from the relief in her eyes, the way she took Samus's hand for a moment and gave it a squeeze that was surprisingly strong. This time, though, Samus was relieved to see Madeline, as well. She could relax around Madeline, she could forget about dying comrades and secret plots and old friends' betrayals of trust. With Madeline, that girl with the pained smile she wore when she thought Samus wasn't looking, and the small kind smile when Samus looked at her... with her, the Bottle Ship wasn't so bad.
For once, Madeline didn't seem like she was about to run away from Samus, and Samus was glad of that. They talked for a long time, about Samus's past and Madeline's, about the research on the Bottle Ship, about whatever took their fancy. They didn't talk about the present.
When Samus was about to leave, Madeline stood on tiptoes and lightly kissed her.
Impossible. She was wearing her helmet.
Madeline smiled and handed her the helmet, having picked it up from where it lay beside her own clothes.
o – o – o
After that, she found herself at the rendezvous with Adam, left with nothing but a ghost of a memory of a kiss that had probably never happened. Anthony reported that Sectors 1 and 3 were secured—incredibly, there was progress being made aboard the station. James said Sector 2 was still overrun with the cybernetic Zebesians, but the Hub was mostly secured… Adam nodded, and asked Samus if there were any signs of survivors.
The answer, of course was no. Samus had no memory of anyone on the Bottle Ship besides herself and the soldiers.
On her way to the residential area of the Hub, only recently unlocked by James's talents as a hacker, Samus wondered about that. The computer scanners indicated no life-signs in the residential area, yet she couldn't shake the feeling there was someone else on the Bottle Ship.
She remembered something told to her by someone she hadn't met yet. They want this all to disappear. That could mean even you…and it definitely means me. If they find me, I'll disappear.
No, that couldn't be. The Federation would indeed cover up such a facility, but they wouldn't kill witnesses—and besides, Adam's team was clearly not sent to merely destroy evidence. If anything, they were uncovering more of the Bottle Ship's secrets, and letting Samus see them, too. And she trusted Anthony. She believed in Adam's intentions, too, and both of them would vouch for James.
The moment she stepped through the door into the residential area, she saw Madeline disappearing around a corner across the room, catching but a glimpse of her blonde hair before she was out of sight.
Who was that? Samus moved across the room, slowly accelerating to a sprint as she realized just what that meant. A survivor! Someone is alive!
o – o – o
Reset. Delete. In the next room, she found James's body.
He lay on his back in a pool of dark, dark red blood. A charred, sooty burn mark spread over the breastplate of his armor, as if he'd contacted a high-current wire, but the first-sized hole there told a different story. Samus could even see bits of splintered ribcage poking up, shockingly white against the blood.
Once again, the dead soldier's visor was up. Incredibly, James wore in death the same confident smirk he had in life, as though he'd been about to taunt whatever had killed him.
This time Samus felt nothing. She felt even less than she had seeing Lyle or K.G.—no, not K.G. He was only missing and presumed dead; she hadn't seen him die. She wondered if that lack of emotion was just because she hadn't liked James much. There was, though, still the question of what or who had killed him. The cause of death was obviously physical, but for a blunt strike to punch straight through the Federation armor… She thought briefly of the forklift of the industrial mech, but that machine couldn't have fit in the room. Something similar?
Suddenly she was confused. Industrial mech? She hadn't seen any industrial mechs, or at least she hadn't paid attention to any she had. A pain behind her eye sockets made her screw her eyelids shut. What was this?
Never mind. She had to focus on the matter at hand.
But the headache only grew worse as she tried to remember where Anthony and James were. James was dead, yes, but where was he before that? She was the one Adam had asked to investigate the residential area, yet for a second time here was James ahead of her, even though she was sure his objective had been elsewhere. She couldn't remember where James was supposed to go, but she did remember that Anthony was making his way to Sector 2 via Sector 3.
Wait…Anthony? What was this recollection of…lava, some kind of creature? They had been fighting it together. Then it had fled after being wounded. This wasn't a memory in dispute, so why did her head still hurt so much? Somehow, this seemed important…but it slipped away from her.
Turning to leave, a glimmer coming from the corpse caught her eye. Looking down, she saw there was a small, golden plate on the upper arm of James's armor suit, with words engraved on it. She almost laughed as she read what was written there along with information like unit and personnel numbers. All her confusion with heights and voices and the Scan Visor suddenly seemed so incredibly silly.
The plate read, James Pierce.
Suddenly she thought of Madeline. Where had she run off to? Maybe she had seen James and hid. But, that would have had to have been before he died… Unless she saw who killed him, and was hiding from them. The thought of Madeline's life being in danger immediately set Samus's heart pounding, and she ran out of the room as fast as she could. A long, curving hallway greeted her, much better lit than the computer room she had just exited. She set off down it, hoping against hope that Madeline wasn't too far.
The well-lit finish of the residential area was slowly disappearing, and as Samus progressed, the surroundings looked more and more like the dark and austere corridors connecting the rest of the sectors' experimental spaces. She was confused; she was heading towards the center of the residential area, not exiting it… Why would chambers like this be tucked away here?
She recalled the door she'd followed Madeline through. Picturing it, she realized it was a secret hatch, made to blend into the wall when closed. That meant she was entering a hidden sector—something the researchers didn't want anyone to see. Did Madeline know Samus was following her?
Briefly, she was distracted by yet another fuzzy memory that almost surfaced in her mind's eye. A hidden sector of the Bottle Ship—why did that seem familiar? Had she come across one before? She couldn't remember anything like that, but…
Samus would have dwelled on it longer, but all thoughts came to a crashing halt when she rounded a corner and beheld what was slumped against the wall there.
It was shaped like a great dragon, bony like a bird but muscular and broad in the chest. Its thick back legs and—forelegs? arms?—ended in vicious, curved talons that resembled meathooks, and its tail was tipped with a spike. The creature had an elongated head, a predator's eyes set in the front of its face, and a long jaw full of razor-sharp teeth. Its musculature, its sharp ends, and even the look frozen in its dead eyes said plainly that this creature was a natural killing machine.
A killing machine, slain. Its body was unnaturally arched, as though it had scrambled backwards even while sticking its head out to roar in defiance. Several deep, tattered puncture marks were present in its chest, but no blood flowed from them. The thick, green liquid coating the floor and walls seemed to have come from other injuries sustained earlier, before the beast had dragged itself to what became its final resting place. The cause of death was entirely different: the life had been sucked from the dragon's body. Its flesh was dry, its body a husk. Whatever pierced its tough hide had drained it of all its energy.
This might have meant many things to Samus, but not even the threat of nearby Metroids registered in her head. She processed everything but thought nothing, for her mind was frozen as utterly as Ridley's corpse.
Ridley?
As she thought the name of her old enemy, or perhaps she shouted it aloud, a flood of memories came rushing back to her—recent memories. All the gaps were suddenly filled in. She remembered the giant lizard that had attacked them in the Biosphere, its reptilian-avian form covered in green blood. She remembered the ugly, flightless bird that had left its shell behind, body split as if something larger had clawed its way out of it, leaving a trail of green blood that led away into the bushes. She remembered finding the shell of the reptilian creature next, rent head to tail, leaving its surroundings caked in that same green blood. And she remembered Ridley, fully grown and in the form she knew from her past, and how he had sent Anthony tumbling to his death.
Anthony was dead, too?
It wasn't just Anthony. Now she remembered Adam, how he had incapacitated her before sacrificing himself in an explosion meant to destroy the Metroid militarization program he had created himself. The explosion which had destroyed the hidden Sector 0. And that meant…it was all of them.
They were all dead.
And if they were all dead, none of them could be responsible for killing the others.
If it hadn't been a soldier, it must have been…Madeline. Samus was reeling. How could Madeline have been the one to kill them all? She was so sweet, so innocent, the one good thing to happen to Samus in the waking nightmare this mission on the Bottle Ship had become. But no, even that wasn't it: Madeline couldn't have killed the soldiers. They were trained operatives with lethal armaments, and Madeline was just one young woman. A researcher. She might have been able to survive the catastrophe that had struck the station, but that didn't mean she could have murdered six Federation soldiers. All the same, there was no one else it could have been. Unless…
Unless it was her.
Samus hadn't kidded herself — since arriving on the Bottle Ship, her memory had not been reliable. Something about the endless corridors, the ugly fake environments, those horribly faceless and identical soldiers… She had lost her ability to think straight. Even Madeline, the only thing that convinced at least some part of her to stay on the Bottle Ship, even she was only sporadically remembered. This moment of clarity was a first: a moment where she not only remembered everything, but realized that she had forgotten at all. Even though there were still blank spots at the times she heard those unearthly shrieks, this was the first time she had total vision of her memories. It was the first time since setting foot on this awful graveyard that she felt like herself.
And suddenly she thought it might have been better not to remember. Now that she remembered, she could see how it fit all too well for her to be the murderer.
The first time she heard that screech, she hadn't blacked out for long. While all the soldiers were defending themselves against the agitated bioforms of the habitat, she had gone out to assist, but she hadn't joined the fight immediately. Something had held her back, as though there was something she had to accomplish first. The unevolved stage of Ridley's metamorphoses would have been a perfect tool to use… Couldn't she easily have done something to make Lyle an easy target for the creature?
It didn't end there. The soldiers had freeze guns, but her own Ice Beam was similar and much more powerful. Coming to, standing over the body of Maurice… That blackout hadn't lasted long, either. She'd gone into Sector 2 with a purpose before the shriek had punched another hole in her recollections. With her and Maurice alone in that wasteland of ice, one shot in the chest would have been all it took.
In K.G.'s case, it was even worse. She wasn't even supposed to know where he was going, and none of the soldiers besides Adam should have known, either. She had only happened to hear him grumbling about the heat… Heat meant Sector 3, and from her last trip through that area, she knew exactly which location Adam would need to send a systems technology specialist like K.G. to. From there, it was—no, would have been—only a simple matter of ensuring the evidence was obliterated by the lava. The more she thought about it, the more terrifyingly easy it became to image herself pushing K.G. from a cliff to his fiery demise… as if she really had done it.
With Anthony, Ridley had been responsible…but that was the same as Lyle. Hadn't she been abnormally slow to engage Ridley? Hadn't she stood still while Anthony dueled the beast, a contest she knew he had no chance of winning? But, if she had had a plan like that… Couldn't the other creature, the one with the glowing red eye in its chest, have done the job for her? Of course, Adam was in contact with her at the time; he could see everything she saw, and he had ordered her to go to Anthony's aid… When Ridley appeared in Sector 3, though, interference had long since severed that connection with the commanding officer.
Adam. What about him? She'd really intended to destroy Sector 0 herself, and it was only Adam's own intervention that had put him in that position. Something so convoluted couldn't possibly have been part of any scheme of hers. And yet it would have only taken one more of Ridley's screeches to blank out her memory of what really happened—and, certainly, Adam sacrificing himself was a convenient replacement explanation for her shooting him in the head before jettisoning his body along with the Metroid lab.
That left only James, who, like Maurice, had ended up dead at her feet. A single Plasma Beam shot could have torn right through his armor, not to mention him and anyone standing behind him, while also leaving that burn mark on the plates. It wasn't a perfect fit, since the blow had looked physical and blunt, but it wasn't something Samus wasn't capable of. And if she was capable of killing them, then the question remaining was, why would she kill them?
Samus remembered the industrial mech that had attacked Madeline, piloted by one of the soldiers. She had already grasped that the soldiers would try to cover up the illegal activities sanctioned aboard the Bottle Ship by the Federation, but at the moment when she saw at least one of the soldiers wanted to kill Madeline, her rage had been blinding. Was that why she had murdered them? But that assault had only happened the second time she met Madeline, and Lyle and Maurice were already dead then.
Finally, for the first time since she saw Ridley's drained corpse, Samus's mind caught up with its own thoughts. Instantly she felt sick. She dropped to her knees, arm clenching around her midsection. She was alone. Everyone was dead, and she might have been the one who killed them. Why? Why? Even now, with her memory as clear as she felt it could be, she couldn't remember certain portions of this disaster of a mission. Everything was going wrong.
Madeline. Madeline could save her. Madeline could make everything right. She was on her feet in a flash, stumbling a little, running with a hand touching the wall here and there to steady herself. The other woman couldn't have gotten far, and Samus realized she was still heading deeper into the hidden sector. That's where she would find Madeline, at the very heart of the Bottle Ship.
And Madeline was waiting for her.
o – o – o
Her chest burning, her heart pounding, a shooting pain racking her skull, she stands in the doorway of the spacious room where Madeline is. She stumbles the last few steps to her, and raises a hand to remove her helmet, but Madeline takes the hand between her own, stopping her.
"You'll need it," she whispers.
Samus doesn't know what the woman means, and she doesn't care. Suddenly she wants to take off her entire armor suit, not just the helmet, and maybe even what's underneath that armor, because she wants to feel Madeline's skin on hers. She needs it, craves it; she must feel that contact with another person, or she thinks she'll die. The Bottle Ship has worn her down to frayed nothingness. Humanity. Comfort. Love. If she doesn't feel those things soon…
"I'm sorry." Madeline shakes her head, holding Samus's gauntlet-clad hand gently but distantly. "There's no skin here, anyway."
What? What does that mean?
"Just listen," Madeline says, her tone becoming urgent. "They're already here. It's all going to end soon. All I can say is thank you for all you've done… and that I hope you don't forget me." She looks as though she could be crying, though there are no tears in her eyes. "Samus… We were…" She trails off. Then, hurriedly, as if in place of what she was about to say: "My real name is—"
Bang. One of the doors to the room is blasted from its frame, and in streams a platoon of Federation troops, weapons at the ready. Those cold, reflective visors—at least a dozen of them—gleam in the dim light as the soldiers spread out in formation. Moments after their entrance, another door opens, revealing a woman with red hair and a researcher's outfit, who lets out a gasp when she sees Madeline. Her attention is caught the next instant by the Federation soldiers, several of whom train their rifles on her.
Samus hardly even registers the woman's presence. Seeing the group of faceless soldiers, it is as if the ghosts of the 07th platoon have come back to haunt her. And this time, it looks like they will do their job properly, and kill her Madeline.
She is preparing to break the standoff by raising her arm cannon and opening fire, an action which would certainly be her last, when Anthony strides through the door and into their midst.
"All right, stand down," he orders, and the troops lower their arms. Throwing Samus a wink, he turns to the woman with the red hair, giving Samus a glimpse of something shiny on the shoulder of his armor suit. "Are you Madeline Bergman?" he asks. The woman nods in response.
"It looks like it isn't ending after all." The girl who told Samus her name was Madeline Bergman puts a hand on her shoulder, and Samus turns to face her to find a strange expression on her face. She says, "Melissa." It's enough for Samus to know what she means. For some reason, though, Samus doesn't feel surprise. It doesn't really mean anything, after all—it's not what's important about the woman. Still…
Melissa is a nice name.
Anthony walks over to them. "Well, Samus, our work here is done…once these guys take care of the computers in this area, of course. But you probably already knew that, right?"
Of course. Why hide it?
"We'll be taking these two with us," Anthony continues. "There's a lot to sort out. You want to ride along, Princess?"
An invitation like that could only get in the way of their plans. Why would Anthony offer that?
"Well, whatever you choose, choose fast. We're going to blow this place up in a few hours."
Delete the computers' data, and then demolish the station? That was hardly a reasonable precaution. Anthony had contradicted himself.
Anthony is regarding her carefully. "Better make sure you take what you want with you, know what I mean?"
Take with her… Something the soldiers are taking with them? Something besides Melissa and Madeline?
"Too bad James isn't here to help us with the computers, like in Sector 1." Anthony shrugs. "Well, I'll see you on the way, Princess." He walks off to converse with a soldier.
Take…from the computers…like James was doing… The data! Samus understands what Anthony is trying to tell her. The soldiers aren't erasing the experimental data, they are recovering it. In light of that, the 07th platoon's initial mission to the Bottle Ship was likely meant to secure the station for the recovery team's arrival. Adam would have known… Why destroy Sector 0, arguably much more important than the data, then? A change of heart? Had he felt regret for writing the report that had led to the research on the Bottle Ship?
A nagging voice at the back of her mind has an answer: Adam never destroyed Sector 0. You did, and you sent Adam to his death along with it.
But there's no evidence of that. No proof.
Because it was all incinerated in the vacuum of space. Or melted in a pool of lava. Or frozen over with ice.
But James's death didn't look accidental.
Even you can make mistakes. Or maybe he was your scapegoat, and it was an easy claim of self-defense after he was dead.
As for a motive?
Anthony motions towards the door as they all begin to troop out, and Samus realizes these questions couldn't be less important. Soon she'll leave this horrible place, and in honesty, if she murdered a hundred people aboard the Bottle Ship, she wouldn't care after she had left it. That dreamlike desire to get off the station, suddenly close to realization, overcomes even those worries.
Now, going forward, only one thing matters, and that's protecting Melissa. So she agrees to go on board the Federation transport with Anthony as pilot.
o – o – o
She sits in the main bay with the dozen Federation soldiers, and Melissa. Madeline is in the cockpit with Anthony; if it wasn't just Samus's imagination, it seemed she was wary of being near Melissa. Samus's helmet is removed, and she breathes so much easier in air that isn't the Bottle Ship's.
There are things Samus wants to ask Anthony, but at the same time she is nervous of leaving Melissa alone with the troopers. Glancing at the woman, though, she finds a look glinting in Melissa's eye which seems to say she understands what Samus is thinking. Then, she nods. That's good enough for Samus, and she stands to walk to the cockpit.
"Anthony."
He turns to face her. "What's up, Princess?"
"Let me see that plate on your arm."
"Oh, this?" Anthony smiles knowingly. He shifts his arm so Samus can read the engraving there. It reads, James Pierce.
"I see…" It doesn't surprise Samus at all. "The others, too?"
Anthony nods, still with that small smile on his face. "All of them."
"Maybe that explains why I failed." Her voice sounds dead. Her face is expressionless. "If I failed. I don't even know if I was trying."
"Princess," Anthony says with a chuckle. "It doesn't matter who killed them."
She nods. "Mind if I finish up?" Slowly, she raises her weapon to point at his head. Her face looks dead now, too.
"Be my guest." The smile never leaves his lips.
In a flash of light and a horrific splattering sound, the walls are painted bright red.
Madeline screams and scrambles to get away. She falls off her chair and backs up until her back is pressed against an instrument panel, but Samus has only to turn to face her, aim briefly, and fire a second time. Then, she walks back into the other partition of the ship, to go and see Melissa.
The bodies of all twelve soldiers lie at the girl's feet, armor crushed, spines snapped, limbs at the wrong angles, electrical burns covering some of them. She calmly looks up at Samus, quiet affection in her wintery blue eyes, and slowly the girl smiles at her. Samus can't keep a smile of relief from her features, either. Just seeing Melissa there, alive… That alone is enough to make her smile.
Samus thinks she will dream of ranks of faceless, identical soldiers for months to come, but with all this behind them, perhaps it won't last too long.
With Melissa at her side, everything is all right.
She has only one thing left to do. She walks to the terminal onto which all of the Bottle Ship's data has been loaded. First she confirms the space station's demolition order, which will be carried out before the transport they're on is due back. Then, she enters a command to access all data and selects delete.
A/N: Did you know that the models for every soldier in Other M have a plate on the arm which reads James Pierce? Anthony, Adam, Lyle, K.G., Maurice, and James all share that one texture. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
(Like a lot of things in Other M, it was probably done to conserve space on the disc, but it makes for fun fanfic ideas!)
For what was supposed to be an "edgier" Metroid game (it failed miserably), things like this are what Other M really should have had. This idea came from the aforementioned "James Pierce" thing, and just a desire to write something creepy and deliberately not straightforward. Maybe someday a survival-horror Metroid game will be made...