Gryll's head throbbed. He struggled to open his eyes, being too fatigued to attempt more than twice. In all his years of life he had never once felt this much pain in his brain - not that he lived many years anyway. Vorcha society doesn't take kindly to outward expression of pain, clearly signifying distress, making easy targets for other Vorcha looking to annihilate their opponents. His mother always taught him that. You must be ruthless in order to even have a chance to get what you want.
"Do not forget, Gryll, never look weak. Vorcha not respect weak. Vorcha never respect weak. Enemy see Gryll's pain, enemy kill Gryll and family." His mother would tell him, in as calm a voice a Vorcha could feasibly muster.
Why he was remembering this now he did not know; the pain was too intense for him to keep a straight face anyway. He seethed through his teeth and squirmed as much as he could. He felt as though every cell in his body had used up its last remaining energy stores and he was running on external assistance.
Upon hearing indistinct wing buzzing noises, his body froze immediately. He ceased his breathing and his eyes shot open.
It took a few seconds to register a visual on the figures overlooking his laying body. After his red eyes adjusted to the light, he saw them. A couple more seconds pass for his rudimentary mind to remember his latest memories. The ship, the abduction and his subduing by large insectoid creatures.
If his memory serves right, he recalled to himself the night when he snuck onto the human ship that he figured would take him out of the hell that was Omega slums.
Ish is a salarian information broker who spends a great deal of time on Omega. He frequently transports cargo from the asteroid to other areas of the galaxy, with some questionable legality.
Gryll saw him while he was rummaging through trash near Kenn's Salvage, a stall owned by a Quarian called Kenn. It was a miserable looking market, with an awful smell undoubtedly caused by the hundreds of Vorcha who traffic through the area; Gryll was used to it. Large piles of crates full of unmarked goods were to the side. Behind the counter was a heap of mess Kenn would work on with his omni tool to salvage what he could. Gryll would routinely hear him complain, either about Omega, having to sterilise the area after the Vorcha came close and occasionally curse some thief who stole the money for his 'Pilgrimage'. He was the first and only Qurian that Gryll had seen.
The yellow vorcha wasn't too enthusiastic about Quarians, despite the limited contact he had. He prefered to not talk to someone behind the cover of a mask, viewing it as cowardly. Gryll wasn't sympathetic to the Quarian plight of a weakened immune system, being unable to comprehend living in a world without his people's rapid immune response.
Ish approached Kenn on a particularly slow day for business and discussed a potential partnership. Gryll wasn't too intrigued to eavesdrop intently. Hearing the words 'black market' and 'weapons' wasn't exactly the rarest thing in a place like Omega, and wasn't nearly enough to pique a Vorcha's interest. It was only when he overheard the Salarian mention a shipment that was due to be made to Illium in a couple days that he stopped his rat-like searching and turned around.
Ish was tall but normal for a Salarian. His tone was the usual high pitched Salarian that Gryll heard from the Eclipse mercenaries that roam around Omega. His clothes outlined his slender body well and his skin held a red tinge.
Gryll knew his type. The type that at most times would look down on him as they walked by him scavenging and at other times would look with disgust. It was no wonder he spoke aloud amidst the mischief of Vorcha, he barely registered their existence.
"The deal's on the table until tomorrow, Kenn. Make the right decision." Ish sterned told the Quarian before beginning to walk away.
"Wait, wait!" the Quarian pleaded. "I accept, whatever the money is, I accept." Gryll could sense the desperation through his mask.
After hearing the details, Gryll knew what ship and the departure time.
"Not staying. Done with Omega. Gryll finally leaves. Not like last time." he muttered under his breath as he prepared a method of boarding.
Sneaking on was child's play. Vorcha are strangely flexible, allowing him to hide in one of the shipment crates relatively simply. Inside were weapons upgrades - something Gryll saw that Kenn sold at his kiosk, perhaps making their way to Illium for the benefit of Eclipse mercenaries Gryll pondered, not that he cared to speculate their uses for very long. He had survived life on Omega for 4 years without getting directly involved with gangs and he wasn't going to start any time soon.
The ship took off at the scheduled time and Gryll was ecstatic. He burst out the box and jumped up and down, unable to contain his excitement. The Omega native felt this would be not like the other times, would be different - and he wasn't exactly wrong.
He quickly composed himself and quietened down.
A few hours went by without much problem; no one seemed to check the dangerous weapons cache aboard their ship but Gryll wasn't complaining about the smugglers' complacency.
It was only when he heard screaming that Gryll had sensed a problem. Prior to that, he had heard running and loud talking from the human voices on the other side of the door. They seemed fixated on something approaching them but the vorcha couldn't get a good hearing on the matter. Another few seconds went by before the human voices turned to panic and then yelling.
Collectors had embarked on the ship as soon as the Cruiser had gotten into range and were dispatching the human's defences with ease. Hundreds of small brown seeker swarmers flooded out of the docking port door and stung all humans in sight, paralysing them almost instantaneously. They didn't have a chance to defend themselves. 300 human bodies were now in the Collector's possession. But they were expecting a Vorcha or two to be aboard and ransacked the ship. After hacking through the Cargo door, they saw the yellow vermin cowering in the corner.
Gryll froze without them even needing to subdue him. He stared at the completely alien creatures that burst through the door. In the darkness of the room he managed to make out their bipedal insectoid silhouette and four eyes that seemed to glow. Vorcha are known for their aggressiveness and stubbornness, but in the face of overwhelming odds, Vorcha were just as terrified as every other race, sometimes putting on a front of loud mouthed violent tendencies in order to scare away those physically stronger. But deep down they still feared like how everyone else feared. Gryll bruxed his teeth as he continued to gawk.
A swarm of bugs launched themselves at Gryll. The first sting snapped him out of this trance and he slammed his hand into his arm like a man slapping a feeding mosquito. The seeker exploded into a mist of green blood. Gryll's body worked at once to stop the venom from paralysing him.
The second sting brought him to his knees and one in his neck had fully incapacitated him.
Two weeks prior, Ish had received a message from an unknown source asking for his help on a 'project' in return for valuable information on Aria T'loak. He needed to lure a ship full of humans to the source; it seemed fairly simple, and Ish didn't question why as long as he got his side of the deal. In order to assist, Ish was ordered to find a way for the ship to broadcast its location and allow the source to easily navigate to the humans. Once again, Ish did not question it. Information on Aria was rare and was needed for the kind of profession Ish worked in. He then went to Kenn where he asked if the tech-skilled Quarian could make such a thing. Kenn didn't take much convincing and didn't question what purpose it would be for, being as desperate as he is to get enough credits to leave Omega.
That's the way things are in Omega, everyone out for themselves.
He froze just like he did before, staring into one of the four glowing white eyes of one the four Collectors that stood over Gryll. They paused, awaiting to see Gryll's next move.
Waking him up was a risky gamble that they had to take. It had been 3 months since the project began and they needed to see if the Vorcha creation could pass the next stages before being used for their endeavours. Cerberus and Commander Shepard were getting closer on their tail and they needed a successful project to hold them off. All they wanted was to see if Gryll exhibited successful physical development that could aid them in combat. If he did, they would test out incorporating Reaper technology to control him - another success in this would've led them to mass produce the altered Vorcha.
But for now all they were interested in was seeing how he'd fare with his current enhancements.
Gryll scanned the area. His heartbeat skyrocketed and his body ignored the pain for now. Apart from the four Collectors watching him intently, he saw the area behind them was heavily wired and pipes flowed neatly overhead. To his left was a silver control panel in a language he couldn't understand. He looked down to see his body hooked up to the panel through wires embedded deep into his yellow skin, running into his arms, torso, legs and spine. Directly above he saw a minor reflection of his face through the translucent cover of the pod he was inside. On his right were three red and grey pods, similar to his, but a bit further down he spotted a pile of dead rotting corpses. On the bottom of the pile were skeletons of races his primitive mind couldn't quite figure out which they belonged to. Asari? They were thin bones however. Salarian? There was no way of him knowing. But he saw clearly what was on top.
In the early stages of decomposition were people just like him, Vorcha.
His body now regained its lost strength. Every fibre of his being was telling him he had to escape or he'd end up as one of them. Every organism tries to fulfil the most basic of its DNA's instructions: survive.
The lab rat began thrashing around, making all the wires connecting him to the monitor to loosen. The Collectors observing him stepped back slightly, not surprised at his reaction. They allowed him to continue a few more seconds
"ARGHH!" Gryll shrieked as his muscles contorted.
After he spotted figures in the back who's assault rifles were pointed directly at his cranium, his limbs spasmed more. He needed to get out, he felt suffocating in the small enclosure and started gasping for air, even though it was in plentiful supply. Gryll's flailing led to him colliding his head on the cover of the pod and red blood trickled out of the shallow forehead wound. A small crack appeared in the glass cover. The Collectors had seen enough and one of them moved over to the control panel. A couple clicks later and smoke started to billow into the pod. The fearful yet volatile specimen clearly showed enhanced physical attributes, being able to crack the container despite his muscles not moving for months. They felt no need for the display to continue. If he escaped, they might have needed to resort to putting him down; if he continued injuring himself, he'd be in a position where his still dormant immune system would have to fend off a possible infection. The gas that he was now panic breathing led to the squirming slowly grinding to a halt. Gryll was rendered unconscious.
The Collectors took his body and relocated it to a stasis pod. This pod was more secure, with thicker walls resistant to extreme blunt force, heat, radiation and more. It fit neatly into a slot in the wall. Gryll was to be left here for his body to keep healing and replenishing itself until the Collectors continue the next stage - indoctrination.
Thankfully for Gryll, that stage never came to fruition.
Once again, Gryll awoke, groaning to the sound of thudding near his feet. The pain in his body diminished and was tolerable. He lethargically raised his hand to his forehead and felt the small wound. The red blood had dried and stained his face. The thudding was growing and growing, as though something was trying to claw his container out of the wall.
Gryll mustered up his courage, "OPEN NOW! LET ME OUT!" the banging continued still.
He still didn't understand his circumstances, and certainly didn't want to see those terrifying creatures again. Adjusting his position to be more comfortable, he noticed that he was in a different chamber, slightly more spacious but still not enough to sit up in. The dim light showed clear white walls and clear glass above that looked thicker than before. Gryll figured he still had to force his way out. Just as Gryll was about to pound on the glass again, the thumping ceased.
Howling emerged from the silence as a wave of energy caused the stasis pod to tremble back and forth. This trembling grew into violent shaking as the vorcha inside was tossed around.
Half a minute later the trembling subsided, as did the howling. Calm and silence fell upon the area. Gryll was dumbfounded. He truly had no idea what was happening.
"Is this death? Luck ran out?" he uttered, weepingly, "No. Must live. Need to go home. Miss Omega." a profound sadness overtook him. His body was still weary, having yet to recover from the experiments as well as the surges of adrenaline of both times he's awoken.
He spent the next hour attempting to devise a way to escape, he checked and felt every inch of whatever he was in. The search led to a great deal of confusion in his mind, however. Half of the time was spent relearning how to control his own arms, noticing they felt and looked peculier, much bigger than what he remembered. In the end he realised it was futile to escape and lay awaiting rescue - he never lost hope that he would get out of this mess.
"Clear!" came a shout that startled Gryll and snapped him out of trace. It had been a long time since he last heard a noise outside, days perhaps? Maybe hours that felt like days? He wasn't sure. Gryll raised his hand to his forehead and felt the now healed wound.
"What is this place, a lab?"
"Some dirty grimey lab, full of dead bodies sure." The voices outside continued their conversation.
"A control panel? Looks like it's to open these pods. Should I mess around with it, sir?"
"No. Don't touch anything, soldier. We haven't even cleaned this place out yet and you start messing around with the tech of these filthy aliens." Came the response from an authoritative voice.
Gryll couldn't make out a single word. His cheap omni tool had been removed from his arm and with it his universal translator. For all he knew, this could've been a hallucination.
Desperate and unwilling to wait any longer, he banged his feet on the edge of the pod, trying to elicit a response.
The voices stopped.
"What was that?"
"I don't know but keep your weapons up,"
"There could be things in these pods still alive, should we open 'em?" They awaited a response from their senior.
"Try the control panel." The soldier closest to the console obeyed the centaurian's commands. She fiddled with the device, not comprehending its language too well. A couple minutes of agonising wait and steam started coming out of the wall where they heard the noise. Slowly being ejected was the pod containing the Collectors last experiment, a Vorcha 'super soldier'.
"A Vorcha?!" one exclaimed, his M-25 Hornet submachine gun firmly at the body of Gryll.
"What the fuck's a Vorcha doing here?!" another one said, looking around to his subordinates for reassurance. They didn't move their eyes off the body. It looked lifeless, eyes rolled back, limbs stiff. A soldier creeped up and banged the butt of his submachine gun on the glass, both testing the glass and waking him up. The glass didn't break, neither did he 'wake up'. The armed group eased up.
"Does anyone else think it looks big... Bigger than normal?" a younger voice called out.
"Yeah, never seen one this size. Wonder what the Collectors did to it."
"Good thing Shepard didn't blow this place up and chose to blast it full of radiation, otherwise we never woulda found this stuff."
"But how did it survive the radiation? The pod protected it? Maybe it's immune?"
"Who knows"
"Cut the gossip!" the commanding figure called out, "we're here to make sure this place ain't got any stragglers left behind from the radiation blast. After that then we can speculate on what this stuff is. If that thing is alive then it means that those pods can withstand high energy ionising radiation, if that's that case then there's no doubt in my mind that some Collectors could've hid inside them to try to survive the blast. Remember: you're working to advance humanity and nothing else, that means protecting the technology found on this station with your life, understood?" They nodded. "So until then, quit acting like amateurs and get ready to move out."
They all collectively turned and faced the path down the corridor, into the unknown. However, they only managed to take a couple steps before turning around. Loud clunking noises could be heard from the interior of the pod, it was beginning to open.
"What did you do, trooper?" the Centurion asked.
"I must've accidentally initiated an unlocking sequence in the controls." said a voice behind a mask. She turned to the console and noticed a red annulus. It was slowly ticking blue, indicating the time left until completion.
"Team Foxtrot, move to engage enemy combatants deeper into the base, near the central chamber. Follow the corridor and watch for stragglers." beamed a voice from the radio of the Centurion.
"Move out!" He called, signalling them to leave the Vorcha and advance. The group darted toward the interior of the Collector base.
All the while, Gryll breathed a sigh of relief. Utilising one of the oldest tricks in the book, he played dead like a true rat to lower the alertness of those outside. But now as he adjusted his eyes to the blinding light of the outside, he could only wait as the remaining seconds ticked away from the capsule and his freedom became almost guaranteed.
As soon as the glass split apart, he peered at the backs of those that were conversing around him not less than a minute ago. From the short glimpse he caught before they disappeared, he saw five tall figures in black and white plated armour and helmets of black. Yellow stripes ran down their backs. One of them had a different set of armour, leading in front. Gryll waited until he couldn't hear their footsteps before leaping out.
The time spent lying down had not atrophied the muscles in his body - the cause being unknown to him (not that he even understood what atrophy is). Gryll stopped in his tracks, right beside the hell of a cramped 'home' he'd been forced to make for himself. Something seemed... off.
The view he had was unlike anything he'd ever seen, it was... higher than it should be. The confused alien looked down and examined himself, feeling every inch of his naked body.
"Legs longer, arms stronger." he hissed excitedly. "skin thicker, chest bigger, brain..." he paused, being unable to find a suitable word. Clearly his brain wasn't altered. Gryll's heart beat stronger, not only because of his enhancements but mostly due to his realisation of the circumstances. The giddy feeling he obtained while rediscovering his own body had gone as quickly as it came. Choking fear overcame him. A test subject in the complete unknown, naked.
He surveyed the area and saw nothing of note that could be used to help him get out - priority number one.
Backtracking the opposite end of the hallway from where the soldiers went seemed logical, maybe none of the creatures that captured him were down that path, until he realised that it meant that he could run into more of those heavily armed troops.
Impulsively choosing to tail the soldiers, Gryll cursed himself for getting in this situation. All this was happening because he wanted to get off the wretched rock where he and countless generations of his kind have had to endure destitution, where the only way out was death or selling your body to Krogan Battlemasters to abuse into pets of war on almost equal footing with varren.
He continued along the way, hearing spark noises from the sea of pipes tens of metres above. He hoped he hadn't lost the group.
A few minutes of walking he noticed a body up ahead. It was dark brown and humanoid. Walking closer he saw a hard looking exoskeleton and wings. The lab rat recognised it as the aliens that kidnapped him and stared him down when he awoke. But as he crept closer he noticed a deformity. Growing out of its torso and right leg were large, red, bulging tumours that seemed to swallow the limb whole. Its exposed skin that wasn't covered by the exoskeleton was burned, some areas with black charred spots. The smell was unpleasant to say the least.
"HORRID, HORRID SMELL!" Gryll coughed.
He distanced himself from the corpse and continued onwards. The circumstances certainly weren't improved after sighting that horror.
Stopping upon hearing gunfire, Gryll hid behind a pipe that protruded out the wall. His back felt the vibrations from the wall due to the submachine guns and powerful rifles being used.
Some time later, all noise ceased and the vorcha was alone with his thoughts. His rationale was that no noise meant no survivors, surely he can use that to get away somehow. But another part of him was adamant on staying where he is, unable to conjure up a reality where going in any direction yields a good result. However, the adrenaline got the better of him. Vorcha don't usually make intelligent decisions, and running towards the location of a recent firefight definitely wasn't the best idea.
It didn't take long for Gryll to reach the site. All five of the soldiers that saw him were now laying, presumably, dead on the cold metallic floor, blood spattered everywhere. Further ahead Gryll saw maybe 9 or 10 dead aliens? He wasn't sure and didn't bother counting. He quickly ran to the nearest soldier. The soldier wasn't dead, but there was nothing that Gryll could do to help his condition - if he even wanted to help.
"Team Foxtrot, do you copy?" the voice on a radio called out, receiving no response.
If there was anything Gryll was proficient at, it was scavenging. However, rapidly searching three bodies in quick succession led to nothing that he was looking for. All he wanted was a way out, anything else was secondary. As he was approaching the body of the soldier with different armour, his mind had come up with an idea.
"OMNI TOOLS. Steal from bodies. Not useful to them anymore." He removed the gauntlet and felt up and down his forearm. Then he found a small ridge near the wrist and dug his fingers into the human's soft skin, prying out a chip the size of a human finger nail. The almost deceased body winced and moved his other arm to stop Gryll, but Gryll had already gotten up and was walking away.
Gryll, still naked, put the chip in his mouth for safe keeping, when he continued down the path, stepping over the bodies, to hopefully a safe enough place to self-implant the chip into his own arm and figure out what was happening - but more importantly, how to get out.
Upon taking a few more steps he noticed that forwards was leading him to a grand open space. Gryll edged closer and closer, slowly seeing the hundreds if not thousands of visible pods that littered the ceiling above. He noticed these were the same pods that he was kept in when he first woke up, before being moved to the stasis chamber. Falling from the thousands of fleshy pods was black sludge that made the whole grand hall smell similar to the cancerous body he found before, but amplified. Gryll could've held the same fate if he wasn't moved into a more secure holding, not that he realised this in the moment, instead in disgusted awe.
Seeing a couple of flying insectoid creatures emerge from the 'horizon' snapped Gryll out of it. He turned around, knowing this clearly isn't the way he needed to go. Even his primitive mind could tell that the soldiers were clearing it out, and so were walking further toward the danger. The logical choice was to run to where they came from.
Sprinting through the hallways he just emerged from, Gryll's mind raced. This was it, now or never.
Past the small scale battlefield, around the putrid corpse, through the lab he was 'reborn' in and into salvation.
Blinded by the light of the black hole, Gryll's eyes squinted as he tried to make out the shapes in front of him.
There were at least two frigate class ships, a multitude of Kodaks and perhaps three hundred soldiers. But they were all in disarray, responding to distress calls from others deep in the Collector compound.
Gryll would have to perform his most common trick - sneaking onto a ship.
He groaned, and then tried to calm himself down - not an easy feat for a Vorcha.
The chaos had been a blessing for Gryll. He sighed out of relief, making a disturbing gurgling noise from the back of his purple throat as he unceremoniously spat out the Omni Tool chip. He gathered his thoughts as he crawled into the corner.
He noticed that he was now back to where he always found himself: in the dark, cold corner of the cargo room of a ship, hoping to be taken out of what he considered hell.
I hope you enjoyed reading! Please review and tell me your thoughts!