Chapter 10: Mutation
There's beer in the fridge, I take one and thumb the lid off like it's a cardoplast cap.
Nothing in my human life ever compared to what just happened. The rage, the recklessness, animalistic and primal. I never lived anything of the sort, but I read of it in flowery prose. Blood boiling, reckless abandon, seething hate. Emotions you make epics out of, not ones you suddenly feel whilst riding public transportation…
But that assumes I am still a typical person, but I, and everyone who survived that bus, know it's not the case, so why do I cling to this façade of humanity?
Frak! My head pounds, my blood rushes, there is a thin veil of sanity connecting the cells of this body to the conscious will of Jan Rey and that veil is fraying.
The alcohol helps a bit, sitting down on the partially ruined couch does as well. I should get going, but the room is spinning and my head is just ringing with pain, so I sip my drink, take deep breaths and wait for the voices to quiet down.
It is not pain in the strictest sense, but discomfort, like being tickled, but across the entire nervous system. Aching. Fields of Terra, it is delight I feel. Not sexual gratification, but a thousand times amplified feeling of purposeful satisfaction, like fitting the last piece of a puzzle, or cracking your neck and relieving an old ache.
I glimpsed something, grazed it, and it damn near burned away my sanity, and now something in my blood compels me to do so again.
Was this Dana's doing? Did she know? Am I just a pawn in a turf war between two breeds of parasites?
That thing wore skin in a grotesque fashion, growing it over its true form like a fungus, comparing it to my kind of mimicry makes me sick, like comparing a brothel to a church…
I remember the appearance of everyone I've consumed, down to the last strand of hairs and unfastened shirt button, but this thing is a mess of claws, pus, chitin and fat. Gills in every limbs, rather than lungs, flesh torn off with every breath, then resealed, excrements vaporised in each exhalation, spreading diseases to lesser life forms…
Radio chatter, memories, thoughts and this invasive presence all merge into a whisper of incoherent wisdom;
"If you cannot incumb the expenditures of battle, it is preferred to take the meat of your foes through cowardly tactics before you engage in their extermination. Play by no man's rules, this silly notion of honour cripples you, fight as beast, embrace the unconventional nature of evil free of morality. As an entity free of the quatuor of anarchy, feel not the synthesised emotions of the prey, you live to conquer without fighting, to break your foes without resistance."
Disreguarding the very real possibility that I've gone insane and have been murdering random stranger for days, I push back the voice and blink myself back into the here and now. I've already emptied my beer and the room has stopped spinning. PDF has to be on its way now, I should leave.
The couch groans, as do the floor boards as I shamble towards the hole we dug in the wall. I sit on its edge, three stories above the sidewalk, swallow and push myself off.
I appear to be more top heavy than anticipated and tumble into the street upon landing. There is Vox chatter buzzing inside my skull, but it's all garbled. PDF is getting closer and I'm not in any condition to fight. Maybe I should surrender, ask to speak with Major Olenk…
No, the enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily my friend. The Imperium is set on killing me, odds are, Olenk's boss wants to cut me open and then kill me…
The people of Baria have already started filling the streets again, some are massing around the bus. I join them, taking on a composite disguise of multiple prey, so as to blend in.
All this meat around me, all these disguises, years of knowledge and contacts I could call upon, homes I could use as safehouses… The voices want me to do it, clamour for us all to be one, for me to consume.
This connection may only go one way, I may well be alone with my thoughts, though Dana may have a way of keeping tabs on them, or perhaps this entity has some window on my soul still, and they are what is pushing me towards these violent tendencies...
Whichever the case may be, hear this, whoever is spying on my sentience; whatever this body is, its soul is human and walks in the Emperor's light. You have done well in finding what I can now see was one of His most self-centred servants, I will extinguish the life within this body before I relinquish control, and as long as I am the captain of this vessel, it shall serve His will, as I interpret it.
Baria PDF Headquarters
Whirring and buzzing woke Olenk, not from their loudness, but their frightening proximity, right under her right ear. She leapt off the ground, clawing at her left hip, seeking the grip of her sidearm, without success.
She was still in Milandra's lab, right where she'd passed out. The ampty alcohol bottle remained on the ground right next to… A severed human arm.
Looking down, she found that, indeed, her right arm was gone, replaced by a matte black mass of interlocking segments, gliding and locking into various positions like an insect's carapace, roughly emulating the looks of a human arm.
"Finally!" Spoke the Magos, practically leaping out of a ravaged walk-in closet, "I have completed the Aetherealis Vestigium ritual, but none of your colleagues will even read my report!"
The "report" was a leather backed brick of glossy paper, marked "Neuropastum Barialis"
While the magos, wide eyed and hopeful, held out a copy of the report, Olenk only brought the mechanical hand to eye level and wiggled its thin fingers. "How did that happen?"
Milandra paused, slowly lowering the offered book until it hung at her side. She displayed no emotion, but her general demeanour was that of a naughty child about to be punished.
"You… Broke your arm." She spoke, softly, "In the fight…"
"Yes, I am aware, why is it on the floor now?" Olenk tried to keep her cool, but she had the hangover of a lifetime and her dominant hand was now battery powered.
Milandra glanced towards the discarded limb on the ground, then up to the mechanical replacement, "I had my servitors replace it. When a part breaks, you must get a replacement…"
The major sucked in a lungful of stale air and exhaled pure frustration. "You know, bones mend. I would have been fine in a few months."
The magos shook her head, "With you injured and out of the fight, I don't expect this planet would last that long."
"You…" Olenk felt a mix of rage and understanding waltz through her chest, "You did this knowing I would object?"
"I understand you are upset, major, but we really need to talk about Jan Rey. Can you hate me after we have done so?"
"I can do that." Olenk hissed, reluctantly, "Tell me what you found."
With a thin smile, the Magos once again brandished her book, but Olenk brushed it aside, shaking her head, "I'm not reading that, Provost, you tell me what I need to know."
"But, there is crucial background information you will need to understand any of my findings…"
"If you can't explain it to me in a few sentences, I can't use it in combat and it's not relevant."
The Magos was obviously frustrated with that statement, but begrudgingly agreed to provide the quick tutorial.
"Well, as you probably know, water is one of the most common resources in the galaxy…"
"That sounds irrelevant…"
"It's not, shut up and listen." Magos Provost sat at her work table and, as Olenk approached to glance over her shoulder, leafed through the report until she found a photonegative of what appeared to be gravel. "This is the sample when you brought it in. Human blood, Praetorian cells are numerous, indicating a fairly severe medical condition. Helion cells are normal, but their concentration levels are also abnormal. Athletes will sometimes inject themselves with blood to increase their muscles' oxygen supply."
"How does that help?"
"Well, if my tests are accurate, Jan Rey is, down to the genetic level, a perfectly normal human being."
Olenk went to object, but Milandra flipped the page, revealing a second image. The gravel had receded, replaced by tubes and what appeared to be clusters of eyeballs. "For more safety, I ran another test on the sample. Beyond a high level of oxidized iron, what we are looking at here is, for all intents and purposes, tap water."
"Unless I had a very odd encounter with a fire hydrant, I assume these results are not accurate?"
"I thought it may have been due to contamination. I decided to put the sample in the freezer and inspect all of my equipment. This took me a bit over three hours, but I found nothing conclusive and, thus, decided to take another look at the sample." She had to flip a dozen pages before finding another image. This one depicted a giant snowflake orbited by spiked spheres and ridden by a creature that could only be described as a shaved, bloated bear.
"What in the fields of terra is that thing?"
"We call them Moss Piglets, or Taligrada, they are a very common for of life, found just about everywhere. If you showed me only this picture, I would surmise it was an ice sample from the poles of Terra."
"So, what? Rey bleeds water?" Olenk scratched her jaw, under the ear where she had once been punched by an instructor. This morning felt identical to that one, only a tad bit more painful.
"No, but his blood cells have the ability to rewrite their genetic makeup to suit the environment, to survive. From the reports I've read, he can also increase and decrease his weight without sacrificing mass…" She breathed in deeply, then asked, "How much do you know about the visual spectrum? Infrareds, ultraviolets…"
"Not much." The major admitted with a shrug.
"Well," Provost spoke, moving back a whole chapter, "The two we need to talk about in this case are Redlight and Blacklight, Infra and Ultra. Do you know anything about tight-beam communications? I did not think so. When the Machine Cult wants to transmit massive amounts of data in a short, secure transmission…"
