Darkness Coming – Ghor
Disclaimer: In case you haven't figured it out yet, I don't own Metroid Prime 3. All Metroid-related characters, settings, etc. are the intellectual property of Makoto Kano and Nintendo.
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It was a necessary consequence of his present state of existence that Ghor would be rather used to dealing with sudden shifts in his personality and mindset, but this…was far beyond even that.
To have sixty-four percent of one's original body incinerated by the unforgiving potency of a plasma grenade, and to have another thirty amputated to make room for one of the Galactic Federation's first flirtations with full-body cyborg conversion, was an experience that full organics could never and would never be able to truly understand.
It had been a strange feeling – not painful, per say, but utterly agonizing all the same in a way that Ghor's coolly logical mind had great trouble verbalizing. Perhaps it was simply basic instinct rebelling against such an extreme violation of his Wotani heritage, the sheer invasiveness of the procedure…but of course, what the Federation higher-brass had demanded from him in compensation for his extreme "remodeling" had probably contributed to the messiness of the transition process as well.
Despite his general aptitude for it, Ghor had never really been one for violence; he was more of a scholarly sort by both nature and inclination, and had only joined the military upon reaching the age of majority because that was what was culturally expected of the youth of Wotan VII. A year spent at some desolate outpost in order to appease his family and his people's traditions, and he would have been able to go right back to university and the things he truly valued…or at least, that's what he had intended. Alas, fate had had different plans.
The conflict that would come to be known as the Liberation War came swiftly and unexpectedly, as such things are wont to do – a separatist sect of the Wotani military had seized control of the capital in an overnight coup and instituted martial law, believing that alliance with the Federation had rendered the people of their system weak and lazy. Ghor, alongside a great many other soldiers of his generation, had disagreed vehemently, and despite heavy casualties had ultimately won back control for the exiled High Council.
But though he was discharged with highest honors and awarded numerous commendations for courage and valor, Ghor's body had been mutilated beyond all recognition by the experience, and agreeing to go under the knife for the Federation had ultimately meant mutilating his principles and convictions as well. For their principal condition in both administering and subsidizing the radical surgery was that Ghor use his newly acquired metallic shell alongside his already formidable mind for their ends, taking on bounties offered up by Federation-affiliated governments all across the known galaxy and hunting those targets down…by any means necessary.
The life of a bounty hunter was a strange one, and not one that Ghor had ever really felt particularly suited for; his natural abhorrence for violence had been overcome during the Liberation War only because of his much stronger senses of justice and patriotism, and Federation work – for the most part, at least – lacked even that. When collecting bounties or carrying out other assorted mercenary assignments for the Federation military (his own natural…proclivities made him especially sought-after for missions involving computer interfacing and infiltration), knowing why a particular being was a target beyond a sentence-long blurb detailing their principal charges was virtually unheard of.
No, Ghor was expected to be a good soldier, and by all objective parameters, he was…but that was entirely an outward affectation, and did not erase his internal unease.
Complicating this rather radical adjustment in his state of being had been the aforementioned "shifts in personality and mindset" – the largely unforeseen effect of the sheer adaptability of his new body, designed to easily interface with a variety of high-tech attachments and augmentations in order to aid him in his new line of work. With his central nervous system integrated fully and completely with the prosthetics that now encompassed virtually his entire physical body, plugging into any of these additional pieces of hardware produced an unwelcome two-way connection, affecting his very brain chemistry even as he bent the machine in question directly to his will.
The attachment he used for computer manipulation, for example, tended to render his already logic-prone mind into one utterly devoid of emotion, as coldly mechanical as his superficial appearance would generally suggest him to be to any who were not already familiar with his deeper nature. While this…adjustment was obviously quite advantageous to dealing with large amounts of hard data in a cool and dispassionate manner, it had also caused Ghor his fair share of grief over the years; he remembered ashamedly of the unfortunate incident where a female associate had made the error, while he was inserted into a Federation mainframe, of asking him "how she looked" shortly before departing for a romantic rendezvous. The bluntness of his response had sent her away in tears.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the intricate apparatus into which Ghor connected himself in order to perform communications work – a necessity when sometimes working a full galaxy apart from his commanding officers– required so much of his body's processing power that his higher mind became rather dense and sluggish. Quite embarrassingly, this meant that all of his transmissions to the Federation from any farther out than the Tallon system came through in a droning, rambling sort of voice that tended to diverge onto a variety of bizarre tangents, in much the same way that organics tended to sound when intoxicated on opiates or deliriants.
But easily the most radical shift came about whenever Ghor integrated his body with his armorsuit, a tank-like exoskeleton with advanced combat and interstellar-transport capabilities. With the collective weaponry of a dozen Federation battalions quite literally at his fingertips of steel, Ghor was now eminently aware that the sheer power brought both the best and the worst out of his base personality, rendering him hyper-aggressive and perpetually spoiling for a fight. That he could change so drastically simply by entering what was now functionally his gunship scared the cyborg deeply, and it was not infrequently that Ghor wondered whether the trade-off had necessarily been worth it…
But of course, that was nothing compared to this new shift, the one which had set off this train of perplexing philosophizing in the first place. Compared to the fairly abrupt way in which cerebral interfacing with some other device or intelligence tended to affect change to his mood and personality, he had observed this latest alteration to be growing at a far more gradual rate, but with its deeper effects on his psyche that much more potent and insidious to compensate.
Ghor had begun to notice this mental transformation – almost elegant in the degree of its subtlety – shortly after touching down upon the research center known as SkyTown, high above the swirling mists and tumultuous storms that marked the gas giant Elysia. The mechanical Elysians, who saw him as something of a kindred spirit and had eagerly granted him free reign to the entire facility, were slowly but surely beginning to radiate what his organic mind was reading as intense hostility toward him…and yet his sensors, which were far less vulnerable to outside influence, detected nothing of the sort.
No, this building paranoia was the work of some sort of foreign agent…and it didn't take an Omega-level intellect to identify the culprit.
Ghor had been…ambivalent, to say the least, about the Federation's "solution" to the insertion and subsequent exponential growth of the radioactive mutagen known as Phazon within the bodies of Ghor, Rundas, Gandrayda, and Samus Aran, perpetrated by the latter's darkly hued counterpart during the battle on Norion. Reliable data on the threat level and potential side-effects of prolonged Phazon exposure – much less autonomous Phazon generation – was incredibly sparse, and his previous experiences with rushed Federation technology (the machinery that made up his artificial "nervous system," in particular, was at best a few months old at the time of his operation) hadn't exactly been stellar.
If the Phazon Enhancement Device was to be anything like the other "attachments" he had received from the Federation scientists to his cybernetic shell, Ghor felt that he could count on only two things: that it would perform its intended function with perfect efficiency, and that it would also do a great many other things to his partially robotic psyche that were neither planned nor welcome. And, lo and behold…it looked like that projection was coming entirely to fruition.
The days were growing unbearable now, slowly working his way past corrupted Elysians in an effort to administer the Federation's vaccine to Aurora Unit 217 and free the entire SkyTown network from the Space Pirates' debilitating virus. Ghor was finding it immensely difficult to tear through the rather massive mechanical armies – particularly a wide battalion of steel monstrosities his databanks termed "Steamlords," which were capable of repairing their fallen brethren even in the midst of battle – without engaging his newly acquired "Hyper Mode" with fair regularity, and yet his sensors indicated with indisputable certainty that doing so was precisely what was degrading his mind.
Degrading…yes, that was an apt term. Ghor considered himself a creature of intellect, and of peace in all but the most dire of circumstances, but as the Phazon levels in his body grew he began to gain a progressively less deniable thrill out of reducing the previously sentient Elysians into flaming piles of scrap-metal. Any of these robots might as well have been him at one point, a high-minded soul imprinted upon a frame of copper and silicon, and yet when Ghor cut through one after the other with the blazing heat of his Phazon-enhanced Plasma Beam, he was horrified to find that his first instinct was now…to laugh.
Madness was now beginning to take full root within Ghor's once-collected mind; of that at least, he was sure. Every corner he turned within this aged and decrepit station presented a new flash of fear and paranoia, of untraceable fury and an inexplicable desire to combine with his armorsuit permanently and lay waste to this entire facility in one fell swoop.
And the voices – oh Great Īśara, the voices! A general "aura" of static was to be expected in such close proximity to all these other machines, that much was true…but nothing could have ever prepared Ghor for the sheer cacophony shrieking throughout his mind ever-so-often as he ventured across SkyTown's desolate halls. Whispers, threats, the occasional burst of cold and cruel mirth from some unseen source; Ghor guessed that these were the results of the Pirates' virus, which appeared to be at least mildly biomechanical in nature so as to effectively overcome the Auroras, attempting to remotely hack into his systems and slave the hunter to their will.
But Ghor, scion of Wotan VII, would not be trifled with so easily; never! No, he would take back the entirety of this research center for the remaining Elysians, and slaughter any wretched Pirate scum that got in his way! Rip them, tear them, blow them all into little pieces and feed their remains to the miasmic abyss below…
Yes, that would be a good idea. Such a good idea. But you would succeed at it better if you were in Hyper Mode for longer periods of time, would you not? Then not one single Pirate or Elysian could stand against you, ever…
"Hmm…that's right, isn't it?" Ghor mused to himself, only semi-consciously beginning to fiddle with his P.E.D.'s automatic vent system and override the cumbersome timing mechanism. "No one could stop me from…from…"
Then Ghor's arms snapped away from the device implanted into his chest, stumbling backward as his optical sensors unfocused and then refocused in abject horror.
"I am…uncertain of who speaks, but know this: I shall not be your puppet!" Ghor shouted to the empty chambers, echoing throughout the station in a manner that emphasized just how isolated the cyborg actually was. "These thoughts are not my own…these impulses are not my own! I can win back SkyTown in my own way; I do not need this toxic crutch!"
You believe that, do you? No…you need this power. Not one being in this vast Universe can fully turn away from the allure of Phazon after tasting its infinite bounty. The sooner you give in and surrender to the energy that flows through your circuits like blood, my dear child, the sooner you shall be rid of this torturous mission. Yield, Ghor…yield to the corruption. For soon, everything will be corrupted…even you.
"Your statement lacks logic, Dark Samus," Ghor declared, clutching the arm containing his Plasma Beam as streams of Phazon within it began to surge painfully. "And oh yes, I have indeed now deduced your identity, disembodied voice of temptation and vice…but your 'tricks' will not work on my mind, aberration. I am an integration of the greatest of organic and inorganic engineering, and cannot be led astray by your rather transparent attempts at manipulation."
Oh? And all this coming from a being of manmade steel, frightened to death by the aftereffects of his very own systems. Your "mind," such as it is, is no longer static…no, my child, it is as fluid as any other computer program, and can be altered just as easily. You think that interfacing with your armorsuit distorts your personality? That is nothing compared to the power I bestowed upon you and your…friends. Soon enough, you won't even want to resist its pull.
"Then why speak to me at all?" Ghor couldn't help himself asking. "Why not just let the Phazon run its natural course, if its ascendance is as inevitable as you seem to claim?"
Time. Eventually, inescapably, you will release your insignificant will into the collective that is Phaaze, but I grow impatient with our progress on the SkyTown station. The last of the resistant Elysians must be eliminated, and Aurora Unit 217's connections to the remainder of the center must be severed, in the unlikely eventuality that the vaccine you now hold is somehow administered. Through my disciples' wonderful virus, I have hundreds of agents swarming all across that wretched planet, but none are the equal of you, Ghor. So go on, my child…do what you were meant to do. Cease fighting my glorious gift of corruption and become my General – my herald.
"And if I refuse?" Ghor demanded, before screeching out as immeasurable pain wracked his metallic body, small panels now flying off as Phazon tendrils lashed out of a series of small leaks in his P.E.D.
Then your conversion shall be that much more painful. There is no escaping the grasp I now hold upon your mind, body, and soul…only a very, very slight delaying of the inevitable, and a myriad of additional agony and suffering should you unwisely choose the path of resistance. Just ask your friend Rundas…
"What…what have you done to him?" Ghor yelled out, sounding uncharacteristically shrill and distressed. "Speak now!"
I have done nothing to the being you call Rundas. He joined my cause entirely of his own volition…albeit only after his stubbornness nearly brought about his swift and agonizing death. But through this unfortunate but necessary pain, your fellow hunter saw the proverbial light and offered himself up to his grander destiny…as shall you, Ghor. Know this, my child: should Rundas fail to eliminate the soon-to-be-roused Samus Aran and her filthy Federation allies on Bryyo, the task shall fall to you, and you will succeed. And know further that this is neither a request nor a demand; it is prophecy, of the fate that awaits you for the remainder of your natural life. Whether or not you choose to accept this fact no longer really matters…for the choice no longer rests with you.
By the time that these vile whispers had ceased, Ghor was already being seized by, bar-none, the worst pain he had ever experienced, even exceeding that of the plasma grenade which had robbed him of his original body all those years ago. It was as if someone was taking a cleaver to the small portion of organic material left within him, the remainder of his systems attempting to counteract this excruciating anguish but being utterly overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the Phazon residue all throughout his body rebelling against its host with violent abandon. Ghor's world was briefly nothing but visions of all-consuming azure…and then his hardware gave out, and the cyborg fell into the throes of a full system shutdown.
"No…not here…not now…" Ghor mouthed, but his mental processes were already grinding to a halt, and all that actually escaped from his mechanical maw was a desperate, gasping hiss.
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System reboot in progress.
Loading personality files "Ghor-PE"…completed.
Loading memory files "Ghor-ME"…completed.
Loading combat files "Ghor-CO"…completed.
Loading vocal files "Ghor-VO"…completed.
Loading mobility files "Ghor-MO"…error. Unable to load "Ghor-MO."
Running diagnostic tests. Status: Clear.
Running security scan. Status: Clear.
Running biohazard scan. Status: Corrupted.
Phazon Corruption Levels: 95%.
Engaging all loaded files.
Subject "Ghor-1" reactivating at 47% efficiency.
There was naught but static, its chaotic clamor dominating both Ghor's visual and auditory sensors as they very slowly came back online. The first thing the bounty hunter noticed as they did so, however, was that he was most assuredly not in the hallways of SkyTown any longer; now he was in some sort of secluded laboratory, strapped tight to a gurney and being looked over by a trio of Steamlords.
"Urgh…explain why you have done this to me, immediately!" Ghor demanded, struggling violently against his restraints to little success. Somehow, even basic motor skills seemed to be eluding the Wotani native in this state of partial-consciousness.
The Steamlords' faces, almost spectral in their luminosity, peered down upon their captive with a mixture of bemusement, cold detachment, and something else that looked almost like…pity. After several more moments of this mystifying glance, one of them began to speak, making a series of clicking noises that only a fellow mechanoid would possibly have had any hope of decoding, even with a Federation translator module handy.
"You are…damaged, brother," it stated simply, now tapping its rusted fingers across particular portions of Ghor's P.E.D. "We simply wish to repair you."
"What, exactly, do you mean by the term 'damaged'?" questioned Ghor, his optical sensors narrowing in anxious suspicion.
"We Elysians were once like you – disparate entities, disconnected from our fellows and drifting alone across the formless time and space of what humanoids call 'dreams,'" the Steamlord described. "That was, until we were reawakened through our link with the Galactic Federation's Aurora Unit, and enlightened by the glorious vision of our new mistress, Dark Samus of Phaaze. We, the machines granted souls by the long-forgotten Chozo race, experience a perpetual state of bliss in her service, connected in one great mind that is sustained by the bountiful Phazon flooding this land…and now, we shall bestow upon you the same gift. Fret not, oh lost and forlorn android…very soon, all your problems shall be assuaged. All are at peace in the embrace of Phazon."
"No! You don't understand!" Ghor bellowed, now straining his unresponsive body even further as another of the Steamlords began to unscrew the glass dome covering his organic brain. "I am not like you, Elysians…I am a flesh-and-blood being from the Wotan system, my mind transplanted into this cyborg body to sustain my biological processes. I cannot, and will not, assimilate into your enslaved hive!"
"On the contrary, General Ghor…we understand completely," said the last of the Steamlords, his clicks echoing low and with enough authority to convince the bounty hunter that this was the trio's de-facto leader. "You are far more fortunate than we, for as total inorganics, we can only ever hope to experience the magnificence of Phazon secondhand, through the liberating touch it brings upon our biological masters. But our scans indicate that your organic components are already in the last throes of absorption into Phaaze's bounty; only a few minor glitches in your Federation-designed hardware are impeding this miracle from reaching its fulfillment. Dark Samus herself has decreed that you shall be our leader upon this world…and as soon as we have repaired these glitches, that honor shall finally be yours."
And with those words the dome finally detached, fingers of rusted steel poking and prodding around the wires that connected the natural to the artificial within Ghor's skull. The Wotani cyborg attempted to protest further but failed to summon up words; his speech programs appeared to have been halted by this forced exposure, leaving Ghor little more than a prisoner within his own unmoving body as the Steamlords set about reprogramming particular portions of his systems.
One-by-one, the failsafes the Federation had implanted to prevent their "handiwork" from being usurped by a foreign party shut down, and in a correspondingly rapid progression the low, cold laughter echoing within his brain grew stronger, Dark Samus celebrating sadistically as yet another warrior fell under her malefic sway. Ghor was unable to pull up any more up-to-date biohazard scans to mark the Phazon's ascendance within both his nerves and his circuits, but that hardly made much of a difference; he knew what they would say. The corruption was rising steadily, feeding, consuming, obliterating…
For the second time in so many millicycles, Ghor of Wotan VII fell into the closest approximation of unconsciousness he was currently capable of experiencing…but unlike before, this time, he would not be afforded the luxury of waking up.
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System reboot in progress.
Loading personality files "Ghor-PE"…error. Unable to load "Ghor-PE." Loading backup files "Ghor-PH-PE"…completed.
Loading memory files "Ghor-ME"…error. Unable to load "Ghor-ME." Loading backup files "Ghor-PH-ME"…completed.
Loading combat files "Ghor-CO"…error. Unable to load "Ghor-CO." Loading backup files "Ghor-PH-CO"…completed.
Loading vocal files "Ghor-VO"…error. Unable to load "Ghor-VO." Loading backup files "Ghor-PH-VO"…completed.
Loading mobility files "Ghor-MO"…error. Unable to load "Ghor-MO." Loading backup files "Ghor-PH-MO"…completed.
Running diagnostic tests. Status: Clear.
Running security scan. Status: Clear.
Running biohazard scan. Status: Clear.
Phazon Operational Levels: 100%.
Engaging all loaded files.
Subject "Ghor-1" reactivating at 100% efficiency.
"General Ghor, are you well?" asked a Steamlord, bowing low to the recently reactivated bounty hunter.
Ghor, for his part, could honestly say that he had never felt better in his life. Through the corrupted SkyTown network, Ghor could feel the minds of every machine on the station connected as one, each artificial intelligence from the tiniest Swarmbot to the massive, half-biological security drone Helios located directly at the heart of Elysia's Leviathan speaking with a singular voice, in support of a singular goal.
Why had Ghor resisted this blissful nirvana for so long? The cyborg had only the vaguest of memories of this strangely lengthy period of stubborn obstinacy, and every justification he could still recall now sounded incredibly weak and feeble to his freshly enlightened mind. A reticence toward accepting a power that would sap his free will? Nonsense! Ghor's choices in life had never been more unlimited than they were today, and if he wished to use that freedom to place himself in the service of his new mistress Dark Samus, then that was entirely his prerogative. A distaste for the Space Pirates that he was now in the process of welcoming with open arms? Well, perhaps they weren't the most…amicable of allies, but they were all united in the peace brought forth by the warm embrace of Phazon, and that was all that really mattered.
Over the next centacycle or so, Elysia transformed under the watchful eyes of General Ghor, just as he had been transformed by the blessed touch of the wise and honorable Steamlords. News was arriving daily now – the Hunter, Samus Aran, had arrived upon the world of Bryyo and was now laying waste to the Pirate enclaves located in its dense jungles. Should that blasted hominid succeed in eradicating Rundas and the Bryyonian Leviathan, their own defenses would need to be ready…and Ghor would not disappoint his mistress on the front.
Of course, his preference would merely be to stall Miss Aran, rather than kill her outright – for Ghor felt nothing but pity for the pathetically ignorant female, fighting to defy the natural force of her conversion in precisely the same manner as he so recently had. He would confront her soon, and impart the wisdom he had gained from his fellow emissaries of Phaaze upon her as well…and if she foolishly persisted in her resistance, he would beat the lesson into her.
Entering his armorsuit, to which his enlightened personality and mindset were no longer slave, Ghor of Wotan VII fired up his thrusters and began to survey SkyTown, waiting calmly for the signature orange-and-green of Samus Aran's gunship to arrive over the misty horizon.