There was a small silence after the gunshot then, Jaal started screaming. His body started glowing and then bolts arced inside the room, short-circuiting the equipment. The sound of consoles exploding accompanied his howls.
Meanwhile, the others kept well away from him and conferred among themselves what to do now as Jaal raged.
"I don't know what to expect here but we may find something worse," Scott said to them calmly. "Jaal may not able to handle it. Should we leave him with the other team and somewhere safe while we go rescue the Moshae?"
Jaal heard that and stormed towards Scott. He flung Marcus away when he tried to block him and grabbed Scott by the throat, pinning him against the wall. The others started yelling for Jaal to drop him, Marcus butting his back with the point of his rifle but Jaal ignored them.
"How can you stand there and talk calmly when you know what they do to my people?" Jaal accused him, the grip on his throat through the armor weave tightening. "You have no feeling in you. You are like the Kett who does not care that my people suffer as long as you get what you want! Why? Why should I trust you when nothing you do is out of compassion but on what you can gain as if our lives are things for you to gamble on?"
Scott waved Cora and Marcus to stay back and wait, which they did reluctantly. Then he looked at Jaal, whose color showed he was seconds away from a thousand-volt experience. "I'm really sorry for your people," he gasped. "But we have to save the Moshae and stop this. We have to go on as clear as possible, even if we are grieving because that's the only way we can stop the Kett. They don't care for our anger or our grief, but we'll make them feel it. But only if we stick to our plan and not let our feelings overwhelm us!"
Jaal did not answer but kept staring at him with his hand on his neck. Scott stared back at him, wary of the color on his skin and alert for change of its brightness while trying to keep his breathing under control, preparing for the moment to spring his barrier if it came to worse. Soft beeps of alarm sounded in his helmet but he ignored that just as much as he ignored the movement of Cora and Marcus on the foreground, moving into position to take Jaal out if he decided not to trust him after all. He kept his eyes on Jaal, willing him silently to trust him.
The light from Jaal moved like light from underneath running water then it went out and Jaal unclasped his hand from his neck, dropping him.
The jolt from the impact to the floor made him gasp and cough. He saw Jaal's feet before him turn and walk away, followed by the soft whisk of his rofjnn's hem. He felt hands underneath his arms, pulling him up to a standing position with Cora and Marcus on both sides of him.
Scott coughed a few more times then looked up at Jaal, whose back was to him. "I'm sorry Jaal. I really am," he rasped.
Jaal sobbed then whipped around to face him. "We could have saved her! We could have taken her away from this place."
"Saving her is not the point," Scott said. "It was her choice. You knew what they did to her. What she suffered. You heard her say no even if we said that we'll find a way to cure her. Do you really want to ignore her will after all she'd been through? After the Kett ignored her will over their own? If we saved her despite her wish for our own sense of what we wish for her, then are we really any different from the Kett?"
"She was in pain. She couldn't have been thinking clearly."
"Yes, she was in pain. But there are some pain that cannot be lived with." He stepped closer slowly to Jaal. "I had only given her dignity back after so many years without it. In the last moment of her life, she lived as she was supposed to be. As a being of her own right. Her own choice."
Jaal looked conflicted at him. Still angry, part disbelief, part hope.
"We're going to stop this," Scott vowed. "We're going to make the Kett pay. And we're going to save the Moshae."
Jaal looked hard back at him for a long time.
"We have to do this. You have to do this. You have to stop this from happening to her. For the Moshae."
Jaal slowly dropped his eyes. "She's too old to bear children," he said shortly, but he squared his shoulders and said, "Let's go." He passed him by to go back to the passage where they had come from before.
SAM piped up with the coordinates, so Scott led them out and further into the base. They entered a room divided by pillars running up the ceiling, with each section hung clusters of pods like ant eggs on lines passing through holes in the walls. One of the lines moved and pods came in and out as if on a production line at a factory. They scanned each one but the Moshae wasn't there. Owwin called in and informed them that they won the battle at the chamber but the leader escaped. He told them to expect some people. Grimly, Jaal ignored the sight while they set a command at the console to return the pods back to the chamber.
SAM showed a path where it thought that the central chamber may be and where the Moshae may likely be found, is the most secure location. As they jogged through the passage, Scott could not forget the memory of the medical bay and the woman there. It was ghastly, but he had to focus on the right things. For instance, the missing babies. Where did they go? What had the Kett done to them?
Dread was pressing around him like the walls of the hallway.
At the next room, they emerged onto a walkway built up over the hall, nearly touching the ceiling. There was a wriggling mass of something below them, something foul and evil due to the stench that hung heavy in the air. Scott looked over the railing to look and nearly retched. The wriggling, whirling mass was a mess of bodies. Angaran bodies, penned in cages, naked and dirty and mired in their own decomposing shit. The captives turned their heads towards the sound, saw them and started screeching.
"Hello?" Scott called below. "Are you alright? Don't worry; we're friends, we're going to get you out of here."
They only screeched in answer to him. Scott drew back, perplexed, as the cacophony mounted when those from the other pens joined. He looked to the others and they stared back at him just as confused. Haltingly, he opened his omnitool and scanned the Angara and the tanks.
"Pathfinder. Based on cursory observation, the Angara below you seem to be adults," SAM said. "Upon further analysis, I conclude that they are only a few years old. I detect recent injection sites on their skin and their size may be due to accelerated muscle growth. I also add that there is also a presence of growth hormones in the tanks which is full of enriched feed."
"Growth hormones?" Cora repeated then gasped in horror. "They-they were farming people?" she grimaced and turned away from the sight. "Ugh, I'm going to be sick."
By now, the hall rang with their shrieks. They banged on their pens and shook them as they screamed, which made Scott realize that the noise would alert the Kett to their location. He quickly signaled for them to move and pushed Jaal ahead.
"Jaal! Don't look! Just go, go! We'll think about them later," Scott said, urgently ushering the Angara forward to the exit. The room felt endless as they ran and as he ran he thought repeatedly to himself to go to the door, go to the door as the screeching intensified and their eyes followed them, screeching at them to look at them, screeching at them give them food, screeching and screeching and-oh, god, it does not stop. His eyes did not waver at the door as he pushed Jaal forward until they reached the door. They closed it immediately and did not speak, refusing to give thought to what they have seen, and instead watch Jaal warily as the Angara's breaths became labored, struggling to stamp down his rage. Scott opened his omnitool and contacted Commander Heckt. "Commander! have you seen this?" he said and sent a small picture of the pens. The line crackled and they heard gunshots and sounds of exploding electrical equipment.
"Yes!" the commander shouted among the howls permeating the line. "We've seen the-the breeding chamber," she spat. "Oh my brothers and sisters. Stars! The skutting Kett-"
An explosion drowned out her words, sizzling and angry then they heard the yells of the Angara as they found their kin. The line crackled with the cacophony of rage for a few minutes before the commander returned. "I have to go! I have to calm my people and remind them what they were here for! Alien, we can't reach the Moshae in time! You'll have to go on without us!"
With that, she cut the line and they were left standing in silence.
"C'mon! You heard her," Scott rallied his team. "We're the only ones now who can save the Moshae". They nodded. Jaal too, though not without great effort and so continued on through the base.
As they jogged from room to room, Scott thought that everything became stranger and stranger as it became more horrifying. Why do they need to grow them? he asked silently, resisting the urge to gag as he remembered the pens. As he thought, he became more and more apprehensive at what lies beyond the doors, expecting some fresh new horror the Kett had devised.
They reached another decontamination chamber and peeked in the dark room next door.
Light poured in from above illuminating the circular chamber, dark as a wasp's nest dipped in tar. At the center, two naked Angara were standing with their back to them before a Kett wearing deep green robes, holding a vial of goo as dark as poison. It examined the face of the Angara before it reached its hand out to the Angara's face and turned his head from side to side.
"SAM, how's the door?" Scott asked as they hid while watching the scene beyond them.
"Hacking in progress. Please standby," the AI answered.
"Well, hurry up!"
"Noted, Pathfinder."
They turned their attention back to the room. The Kett seemed satisfied with its examination and then plunged the syringe in the Angara.
The Angara screamed and started seizing. Black veins appeared on his skin, causing it to turn black in its wake, like a poison river running on the delta after the first storm. Then something erupted on the surface, growing hard, white and bony like-
Like the Kett.
He was turning into a Kett.
They looked in horror as they saw the familiar face of their enemy from where their ally once stood.
"No!" Jaal shouted and started smashing the window. But the glass was impervious even to his Angaran strength. The Kett turned around at the sound and saw him trying to smash his way through. It barked orders to surround them then plunged another syringe in the other Angara.
At this time, SAM finished hacking the door. Marcus threw a grenade at the advancing Kett. As the Kett ducked to cover, they moved into the room, guns blazing as they found their own cover.
Meanwhile, the leader barked orders to drag the neophytes away from the room, keeping itself immobile long enough for Scott to put a bullet between its eyes. With their leader dead, the Kett scattered in all directions, paying no attention to the transforming Angara. Cora kept them occupied with her charges and shotgun and Marcus' grenades made them duck from cover to cover, which made it easy for Scott and Jaal to pick them off one by one.
When the room was cleared, they rushed to the center of the room where the two Angara lay sprawled. Unfortunately, the first one had completely transformed. They looked at it, hesitating, unsure if his condition can be reversed but the Kett snarled and tried to pick up a weapon form its fallen brethren. They had to put it down. Meanwhile, the other one was still fighting the transformation, rolling on the floor and screaming.
They went over to keep him still while Cora hang back and looked over her medical program for possible treatments.
"Pathfinder, I'm detecting a rapid and aggressive genetic editing happening within him," SAM informed them.
"Rapid what?" Scott asked sharply as they hold on to the Angara's limbs. Genetic editing is commonplace to them but even they don't do it directly on a patient, or do it as fast as this. The Angara jerked and he shook his head. "Nevermind. Is there any way we can stop that?"
"One moment," SAM answered as it searched on the facility's databanks. "Currently, I cannot detect any equipment nor any information in the facility's databanks to reverse the process nor stop his transformation. However, stopping all metabolic processes may halt its progress and give us time to find a solution."
Scott tutted irritably after he looked around the room. "We don't have a cryo-pod here and I don't remember passing one!"
"There must be one we did not pass by," Marcus suggested, holding onto the feet. "SAM, search the base again and find if there's any cryo-facility around."
"Acknowledged."
"Wait," Jaal said across from Scott. "An intense electrical shock may temporarily stop it. Get back," he ordered.
Scott looked confused at him. "How does shocking him stop it if-"
"I'll explain Angaran physiology later but you have to get back, now!"
Scott let go of the arm and quickly drew back as Jaal put his hand on the squirming Angara and delivered a shock. He did it a few more times before the Angara relaxed.
Jaal stopped and the Angara before him sobbed.
"Are you alright?" they asked him. The Angara was holding his head tightly between his hands so Jaal moved closer to comfort him when his hand suddenly reached out and drew his pistol.
"Woah. Put that down!" Scott ordered, drawing his rifle. The Angara had already scrambled up and was now backing away as they pointed their guns at him. He looked at them with fear and pointed his weapon wildly at them then at Jaal, who was standing between them with his arms out as he slowly stood up.
"Get out of my head!" he yelled.
"We're not hallucinations! We're real!" Scott told him.
"Scott," Cora warned, her biotics flicked up over her body while she kept her gun trained at the Angara. Scott was about to signal her to do it, to make a barrier between them when Jaal spoke. "Wait." He walked forward slowly to the Angara while talking gently. "Do you know me?" he asked, ignoring Scott's irritated snort that they could talk to him as much as he likes after they secure him behind a barrier.
The man blinked at him. "Brother," he said in relief then his face twisted in hate and he dropped to his knees. "No! He is unenlightened! he is not-ARGH!" he screamed in agony. "I AM THE CHOSEN. I AM CHOSEN TO FULFILL OUR DESTINY. I AM NO BROTHER TO YOU," he screamed, then keened. "There are voices in my head, telling me that I am someone I'm-hgh-not. They tell me that you're committing a sacrilege in infiltrating this holy place and that you should die. They're telling me to-hgh- to kill you! You're my brother not-hggh." He looked at Jaal in pain. "I don't want to kill you."
"Yes, I'm your brother. They are the Kett's illusions. Do not heed them."
The man caught the sight of the dark veins running up from his chest to his arms and all the way down to his body. He held his arm aloft, where it was quickly transforming into the bone and hide of the enemy they hated. Then he looked hopelessly at them. "I don't want to forget who I am," he pleaded.
"Then fight it! Do not give in to them! Do not let them win," Jaal encouraged. "Remember who you are. You are my brother. You are Angara."
The hand fell and the man stared at the floor, a hopeless look in his eyes. "Yes. I am Zafral Sorae. I was born on Suuricco of the Hundred Halos. I am a son of many mothers, brother to few and father to many. And I. Am. Angara." He put the gun inside his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Scott closed his eyes and bowed his head as the body started to fall and Jaal screamed. He caught him before he reached the floor and held him close as he cried.
Then the door opened and more Kett poured out. Scott yelled to take cover, but as soon as Jaal saw them, he glowed. He released his anger and started blasting the Kett with electricity. He no longer cared to fire his gun; he preferred to beat them to death with it or stab them with his knife. The Kett were beaten back momentarily with the surprise onslaught but they recovered and started surrounding him. As Jaal caught their attention, the others picked them off like leaves off a tree. All the Kett were dead, and the room went silent once more, the only sound a wet squelching of flesh as Jaal beat the head of the leader to a bloody pulp.
"Jaal!" Scott yelled but the Angara did not stop. Scott stomped forward and planted himself in front of Jaal, knowing his danger. "Jaal, stop! It's over. They're dead."
Jaal gave a final kick at the body before he completely stopped. He panted heavily as he looked at his handiwork. Scott laid a firm hand on his shoulder to make him turn to him. "Jaal, look at me." The Angara raised his eyes to him. "It's over now. Let's get you patched up." Jaal looked down at his body and saw it was full of bullet holes, some of it passing through his armor. He was so angry he forgot about the pain but now, it was coming back, dull drumming at first then became heavy and burning deep in the muscles. Wordlessly, he let Marcus treat him.
"The Moshae needs you," Scott reminded him gently. "She needs you to be calm. She needs you to think clearly."
"Yes," Jaal sobbed. Then he wiped the blood off his rifle and faced him with a determined look. "Stay strong, and clear," he said, reminding himself of the Angaran motto.
Scott nodded and released him. He looked at Marcus and Cora, who told him silently that they were ready then at Jaal. The Angara looked back at him as if he was his only hope and Scott promised him that he will not fail him.