BLUE GENDER
"Children of the Blue"
21. Evolution
"I can…I can feel it changing me…" the Professor had a huge satisfied grin on his face as he held his arms aloft, flexing them. A subtle ripple began to flow across the surface of his skin.
The computer system warned: "WARNING…THE BLUE HAVE ENTERED THE COMPOUND…GUN TURRET FOUR REPORTS ORDINANCE DEPLETION…GUN TURRET SEVEN REPORTS CRITICAL FAILURE…INTERNAL PERIMETER BREACHED…EVACUATION RECOMMENDED."
"They're coming, Professor," Takashi teased.
The Professor ignored him and continued to gloat: "It matters not. By the time the Blue get here my transformation will be complete. I will have defeated evo—evo—" the Professor stuttered as pain shot through his frame. He crumpled to one knee. His skin continued to ripple.
He was changing.
Yuji sneered. The anger burst inside of him. He clenched his fists and shook one at Gorski as Yuji revealed the truth—the truth that even the Professor had not realized.
"You did nothing! You defeated nothing! When you meddled with the b-cells two decades ago you didn't defeat anything—you unleashed the Blue upon mankind! It was all your fault!"
Dr. Gamble held a gun. He pointed it at Yuji but his attention focused on Gorski's transformation. A transformation that was becoming painful.
"No," Gorski protested through clenched teeth. "I discovered the Earth's plan…I outsmarted nature…the Blue were coming anyway before my…arrghh…before my tests."
"No! No they weren't! The Blue weren't part of evolution's plan! The b-cells weren't designed to destroy man; they were designed to save mankind!
"If you hadn't interfered, if you hadn't snatched us Sleepers away from the population we would have had our children back then! You arrogant bastard—you're all arrogant bastards!—when will you realize that man is a part of nature! We were meant to share this planet with the rest of nature! We are critical to this planet's survival!"
Gamble interjected: "Even Seno Miyagi knew that the Blue were sent to punish us for our overpopulation and pollution. The Blue would've been born anyhow, even without the lab experi—"
"No! You fool! Man was overpopulating the Earth…we were polluting…so nature sent the cure! Nature sent the b-cells so that man could evolve beyond our dependence on technology and industry. You said it yourself, Ivan, Takashi has incredible regenerative powers! His mind and body are more in tune with the world. His generation will not need as much industry, as much technology, as many things because they will live as one with nature!"
Something tried to push through Gorski's shoulder. It wasn't quite ready. It wasn't quite ready to come out.
Yuji would not let up. He cursed the Professor and all his breed as he offered the final revelations.
"You ripped apart the genome and used your binding agent with lab animals and you created the first Blue. And what happened, Professor? Did you purposely let it out into the environment to see what would happen? Just as you left the Double Edge for me and left the Blue at the village—an experiment to see what would happen?!"
"I never thought…" Gorski admitted. "I never thought they would…uh…multiple so…arrr…fast."
"No! You don't think! Just like the scientists who tested the first A-bomb knew there was a small chance it could start a chain reaction that would destroy the world you didn't care! You needed to know! You fed your arrogance and played God.
"And what happened? Nature slapped you into place! It was a backlash, Professor. A backlash for trying to play God with the building blocks of life. A punishment for interrupting evolution.
"If you had let it be then none of this would have happened. The blood of billions of souls is ON YOUR HANDS!
"If you had not interfered the Sleepers would have had children who would be like Takashi. A whole generation of people living better and in harmony with the world. It would've been paradise! And you stole that from mankind!"
Takashi offered: "And now the Blue are coming for you, Professor."
"Yes," Yuji said. "The only remaining nest in all the world…after I stepped into the light it signaled nature that evolution could begin anew. But a nest remained here to destroy you."
Gorski's neck began to pulsate. His arms bloated…his stomach churned as something tried to reveal itself.
"No…" the Professor said. "I have…aaaahhh…I have finally…urr…won. I have…I have de—ah—defeated nature…outsmarted…urrrrrr…outsmarted it…"
"No," Takashi said calmly. "You have only produced a backlash again. My body is not meant for you, Professor. You should have listened to my daddy…he's smarter than you."
"Wh—what is happening…to me?!"
---
Marlene had never seen anything like it. A massive, living shrike based on the Blue but obviously enhanced by Professor Gorski's technology.
In the tight, slimy cockpit was General Deeves.
Marlene and Pistol Jones opened fire. They were the only two shrikes still standing. The remaining Elysians began crawling along the walls as if to flank Marlene and Pistol.
The heavy rounds hit the Bio-Shrike but they absorbed into its skin. The explosions muffled and suppressed by flesh. The armor seemingly swallowed the rounds.
"What is this friggin' thing!?" Pistol screamed and fired more and more shots.
The Bio-Shrike raised one of hits massive appendages and a slick stream of acid fired across the room. Marlene turned her ride just in time—the liquid missed and burned into a wall behind her.
Pistol Jones moved in to engage at close range. He killed one of the Elysians—the one that looked like a feathered Praying Mantis—with a heavy blow from his modified Grapple's arms.
"I'll grab this godforsaken thing Marlene…you blast it…"
"No! Pistol! No!"
Deeves turned the beast on Jones. Before the Grapple was able to grab him, Deeves latched onto Jones' ride. The General's laughter echoed through the chamber.
The Bio-Shrike's massive biceps crunched the Grapple. The hydraulics of the man made machine screamed as the Grapple's arms bent in. Then the frame began to crush under the massive power.
Marlene fired round after round. She aimed for the cockpit but Deeves was so snug inside that she could not hit him. Her bullets were useless.
"AAAAHHHHH…" came Jones' scream as the frame of his mech was warped and collapsed around him. He was nearly crushed to death.
The Bio-Shrike threw the shattered mecha to the ground. Two of the monstrous Elysian mutants dug their claws and snouts into the Grapple's bent and broken cockpit, ripping away whatever was left of Pistol Jones' life.
Deeves swung his beast around toward Marlene.
"And now you."
Marlene didn't know what else to do. She opened fire and retreated from the lumbering Bio-Shrike and the Elysians.
Deeves' machine fired out a barrage of smaller tendrils. They grasped at Marlene's Bullseye and stopped it from running. It bore down on her.
"No…damn it…no!" She cried out.
The creatures were all around her machine. Her death was just seconds away.
The General's Bio Shrike pulled her close.
"I think I'll have my pet eat you alive…how's that?"
A gaping mouth opened in the surface of the beastly weapon. Pulsating, sick, filled with saliva and bloody gums. It aimed to suck her from the cockpit.
A voice came over Marlene's tactical headset.
"N'uff of this bull shit!"
It was Captain William Junker.
He was holding a Blue Call: one of the silver canisters that Raul (Estes' Blue expert) had made to lure Blue. The device that tended to drive the Blue into a crazed frenzy.
The Captain, bloodied and hurt but far from beaten, had crawled out from the wreckage of his destroyed shrike. He held the device aloft and turned it on to full power.
He tossed it at the evil mouth of General Deeves' Hell-spawned mecha.
The device drove the half-blue mutations and the Bio-Shrike insane. They went into convulsions. Screams—inhuman shrieks-echoed through the Community Dome.
The Bio-Shrike staggered backward and dropped Marlene Angel's machine.
"What is this? WHAT IS THIS!?" Deeves was confused and afraid. His beast was going crazy.
And he was stuck inside of it.
The thing began to consume its human pilot in its fit of insanity. The cockpit itself became like a mouth, chewing and crushing Deeves. The General died a fittingly painful and horrid death.
The remaining Elysians lost all control. They staggered about clutching their heads as if they could block out the torturous signal.
Then the main entranceway bashed open.
The Blue flooded in.
"INTERNAL SECURITY PERIMETER BREACHED IN COMMUNITY DOME…ALL CITIZENS ARE ENCOURAGED TO EVACUATE…"
The Blue poured in like water filling a container. Nature's fury rushed toward the Elysians as Marlene and Captain Junker bid a hasty retreat to the Great Hall.
---
Professor Gorski's body exploded out and up—he gained tremendous amounts of mass as his final transformation completed.
Was he Blue? Was he something new? Yuji and Dr. Gamble did not know. Perhaps Takashi did—he seemed to know more than his father could have ever guessed. He seemed in tune with what was going on.
In any case, Gorski became a giant bloody ball of eyes and sharp tendrils and mandibles. A head--if you could call it that—sat on top almost like a gory flower: wretched flesh and pulsing veins surrounding a massive orifice full of razor-teeth.
It towered above the humans.
Marlene road into the Great Hall in her armored shrike.
Captain Junker limped in behind her carrying an assault rifle. He went immediately to the door controls and began sealing the bulkhead—sealing the link between the Great Hall and the Community Dome where the swarm of Blue was eating the Elysians and Deeves' crazed Bio-Shrike.
Junker let loose a burst of rounds stopping a Chopper as it tried to follow him. The bulkhead closed but almost immediately the Blue began pounding on it.
They were going to get through. It was only a matter of time.
Gamble stared at his mentor's new form and cried out: "You are marvelous, Master! Now give me the rest of the formula!"
The new Professor Gorski reached down with his massive round head and chomped Dr. Gamble in two.
Takashi said: "It's not the Professor anymore. It's nothing at all."
Yuji told his son, "C'mon, Takashi, run for it!"
But the beast would not allow the escape.
Marlene moved as fast as she could across the Great Hall, but she wasn't fast enough. She saw it all happen.
The creature shot one of its thin but long tendrils at Yuji. It speared her lover straight through the gut and poked out on the other side.
"NO! YUJI! NO!"
She fired rounds at the creature as she closed in fast. Takashi ran away to the side, temporarily out of the thing's reach.
Yuji stood there for a moment, standing still in disbelief.
The monster withdrew its horrid appendage. Yuji staggered then slumped to the floor on his back. A massive amount of blood began to spill from the hole in his body.
The monster turned to greet Marlene's shrike. Her shots had no effect so she was left with one option.
She rammed it, even though it was much larger than her vehicle.
Her momentum pushed the creature backwards were it slammed against the wall and the closed door that led to the laboratories and dormitory sections of the compound.
She kept the throttle at full power even though there was no where left to go.
Captain Junker moved fast enough to get a hold of Takashi and pull him as far away from the battle as possible. They both moved toward Yuji—yet Captain Junker knew from what he had seen…he knew…
Smaller tentacles of the abomination began to slide along her shrike trying to pull it free. It's hideous circular jaws snapped toward the cockpit, gripping metal safety bars and wrenching them away.
Marlene acted quickly. She punched up the self-destruct sequence on the armor unit. Two cards popped out on either side of the cockpit. She pressed the buttons in the right sequence, opened the rear exit of the vehicle, and fell out.
Marlene Angel ran away from her doomed Bullseye.
"Get down! Get DOWN!"
The Captain pushed Takashi to the floor and shielded the boy with his own body. Marlene dove under one of the stone benches.
The monster that had been Gorski was just about to free itself…
The shrike exploded. As it shattered into a thousand pieces so did the monstrosity. Blood, gore, metal and worse flew across the dome.
Marlene stood and saw a smoking, ruined pile of metal and flesh where her vehicle and the Professor's final creation had been.
She staggered across the floor. First she noted that Takashi was safe. Then she heard the Blue slamming against the bulkhead.
Then she looked at Yuji, motionless on the floor in front of the head table.
As she closed toward her husband she walked slower, wanting to delay…
"Yu—Yuji?"
Marlene kneeled next to him, then took his head in her arms and cuddled him on her lap.
"Mar—Marlene…" Yuji gasped. The hole in his body was large; his internal organs had to have been pulverized…so much blood.
"I'm here, honey. I'm here," she sniffled but tried to be brave.
"Takashi? Is he…safe?"
"Yes," she answered.
"Marlene…I never…I never told you…" he coughed blood. "Do you know when…when I first fell in…in love with you?"
"Yuji…"
"…It was…the first time…the first time I saw you…when you saved me in the sleeper f—facility…I didn't realize it then…but I know it now…from the beginning…"
She softly kissed his forehead.
"Not now…not after all this," she pleaded.
"It's okay…Marlene…no regrets. I lost twenty years when I slept…but it was worth it…"
He cringed in pain. She could feel his body growing cold and numb.
Yuji finished: "I love you, Marlene…for everything you are…and everything you hope to be."
In Marlene Angel's arms, Yuji Kaido died.
FINAL FACTOR:
22. Nuovo Inizio
Marlene: "The room is filling with Blue…there's no escape route left…it all ends here…Takashi, don't watch--look away."