Chapter 4: Biosphere Discoveries (The Hive)
After making the trek through the desolate Main Sector, Samus was finally able to successfully restore power to the Bottle Ship from within the System Management Room. The two Reo-infested Fly Pods tried to stop her, but Samus's weaponry made the fight decidedly one-sided. Elsewhere within the Bottle Ship, Maurice Favreau had also managed to restore the unit's communication systems, thereby allowing Commander Malkovich to issue new mission objectives to the team as he saw fit. And almost immediately, Samus soon received her next mission objective as she began for the Main Sector: "Samus, head for Sector One; Sgt. Smithsonian went ahead to secure a route to a facility of interest there."
Samus attempted to bite her tongue, but impulse soon got the better of her. "And this involves me how, Adam? When I agreed to this mission, I did so with the understanding that I wouldn't be holding any hands."
Adam replied with a calm rebuke. "No one is asking you to hold anyone's hand, Samus. I simply want you to further investigate the sector."
Adam's comm link was met with brief silence as Samus ran a quick weapons check. It soon came to life with calm acknowledgment, "…All right. I'm on my way. Samus, out."
Elsewhere within the Biosphere, Lyle Smithsonian was investigating a rather expansive room modeled after the Galactic Federation's training grounds on Earth and home to a rather large control tower known as the Biosphere Test Area, when a high pitched scream suddenly filled both the room and the soldier's heart with unease. Lyle promptly drew his rifle and kept his finger up against the trigger as he looked about the room for the source of the blood-curdling noise, ready to open fire if anything so much as moved.
"Who's there?" he called, rifle still trained directly in front of him as he came upon an empty ATV and noticed both the blood and the dead body sitting in the driver's seat, the victim's throat having been torn wide open, it's jugular vein and muscles bitten clean to the bone. Judging by the victim's white lab coat, Lyle assumed yet another researcher had been claimed. Out of respect, Lyle reached into the vehicle and lowered the eyelids of the young scientist before continuing his search for the source of the noise he'd heard only moments before. As he made his way towards the control tower, Lyle suddenly felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, feeling as if he were being stalked by an unknown presence; when he turned to look behind himself, however, Lyle found nobody. Just the large, green pasture and soaring cliffs. He kept his rifle poised in front of him while opening a communication channel with Commander Malkovich. "Commander, I've reached the Biosphere Test Area..." he began, making sure to keep his voice low. "I've discovered another casualty...and, something else. I feel like I'm bei-"
Back in the Main Sector, Samus headed for the Transport Hall and entered the elevator that would take her to Sector One. As the elevator descended, a mindless voice spoke overhead from within the lift."This elevator is bound for Sector One. A Level Three security alert has been issued for Sector One. It is advised that persons remain armed and alert to their surroundings at all times..."
As the elevator came to a stop some moments after the ominous announcement, Samus readied her Power Beam and departed the elevator.
Sector One, code-named the Biosphere, was a lush, tropical environment home to a wide array of dangerous creatures and exotic plant life. Many of its corridors had become overgrown with tree roots and moss. All the creatures she encountered here, however, showed a penchant for aggression, even the ones she had encountered before in Brinstar, on Zebes. The Reos, Kihunters, and Wavers were more violent and aggressive than she'd remembered. Other creatures were less familiar. While in battle with one purple, iguana-like animal who had the ability to cloak itself, she managed to scan it. The system called it a Ghalmanian. As Samus fought her way deeper into the sector, at one point she found herself in battle with a towering, six-legged behemoth resembling a cross between an enormous spider and a tree. Catching her breath, Samus scanned the dried up corpse of the beast. Groganch. "I hope that was the only one. I'd rather not do that again." She muttered, climbing over the husk and continuing still deeper into the sector.
She soon found herself within a large, organic jungle room that split into two different directions; the door to her right was situated on top of a large dirt hill, while the other was straight ahead. Her instincts told her to head up the hill. But her instincts also told her she was also being watched, as an eerie presence soon descended upon the room... She thought she heard the brief sound of bushes rattling behind her.
She quickly spun around on her heel, her Arm Cannon pointed in the direction of the bushes. Nothing was there.
She almost turned back, cursing her paranoia, when a large piece of fruit suddenly appeared from within the overgrowth, followed by a small and fluffy white creature Samus had never encountered before. It humorously began to play with the large piece of fruit, at one point even attempting to balance on it like a ball. Samus lowered her Arm Cannon and watched as the creature amused itself. After a few moments, the creature quickly darted off into the bushes again, leaving Samus to continue on her way.
As she began up the dirt pathway, however, she sensed a sudden strong and malevolent presence. Samus turned around again.
The fluffy white creature. It was just staring at her, completely still. Staring at her with the blackest, most spiteful eyes she'd ever seen in her life. It stared at her as if it remembered her from a past life, and hated her for it. Samus couldn't recall ever seeing the strange creature before. And yet, it looked at her as if it knew her down to her very last detail. Its calculating stare was beginning to make her feel uneasy.
Agitated, Samus fired a few shots of her Power Beam in its direction. And though she wasn't necessarily aiming to kill it, she was relieved to see that she'd succeeded in scaring it off.
"Creepy little shit," she muttered under her breath before continuing up the dirt path to the nearby door.
Inside the next tight corridor, Samus ran down the hall to the end of the room and into the only active door in this area. The map scan inside her visor's HUD noted it as The Breeding Room. Samus felt her heart quicken as she entered the rather small, claustrophobic room. What exactly are they breeding in here?, she thought as her eyes looked around the room. The main room featured a simple holo-screen and some computer terminals. The second room, a cage-like booth of some kind, looked as if something had been raised in it. With everything she'd encountered up to this point, experience quickly told the hunter that it had been something hostile. This fact was made even more clear by the discovery of a human limb jutting out from the bushes in the corner of the booth.
Brushing the fauna aside, Samus discovered the body of yet another scientist. But she immediately noticed a difference in this one in compared to the one encountered earlier. That body had looked like it had been shot to death. This one looked as though something had killed it, then attempted to feast on it; the body's entrails still fresh, pooled out on the stone floor.
"Adam, do you read me? It's Samus."
His voice was calm. "I read you." he said before noting the corpse of the scientist in the bushes. "Another one?"
Samus continued to examine the body up close, her voice sounding unusually distant. "It...looks that way. Ripped apart by something. Whatever happened here, happened recently..."
From his position inside the control booth, Adam kept his eyes on the many small screens in front of him, but paid special attention to the one monitoring the Breeding Room. He'd immediately noticed the way Samus had suddenly froze upon seeing the corpse, having acted in a similar fashion right before the fight with the Brug Mass, and became concerned about the integrity of her mental well-being. "Stay alert, Samus. Let me know if you find anything else, including Sgt. Smithsonian."
Samus paused and her heart skipped. "He hasn't reported back to you yet?" Her eyes scanned the room and landed once more on the pile of slick, bloody entrails.
Adam was still surprisingly calm. But then again, he always was. "Negative. I lost contact with him during his investigation of the Biosphere Test Area. The others are already en route to his last known location. You'd better get going - rendezvous with my men at the Biosphere Test Area."
There was no trace of concern in Adam's voice, but Samus knew deep down he was concerned about Lyle's whereabouts.
Samus nodded. "Roger that. Samus, out."
As she examined the containment booth one last time, a chill seeped into her Power Suit that seemed to go right to the bone. She could sense the presence of a dark and powerful intelligence. Something calculating had killed this worker, and it wouldn't do for Samus to get caught off her guard...
She kept going until she found herself inside a room her map HUD called the Biological Experiment Floor, a large, organic room with a spiral pathway in the center that seemed to extend forever upwards. Judging by the amount of webbing and vine-like growth, this area of the Biosphere had been abandoned for quite some time. Dangerous Whipvines had begun to nest within the large, decomposing tree affixed to the spiral pathway. As she began her ascent, Samus made quick work of numerous armadillo-like Griptians and numerous Whipvines, and after a long run to the top, Samus found herself confronted with a large hole, limitless in its descent into darkness.
She looked around, but that was the only way forward. Going back was no good, and Adam would think less of her if she failed in her objective. No obstacle would be a valid enough excuse for her former Commanding Officer. Not even a drop into darkness. Taking a deep breath, Samus leapt fearlessly into the abyss.
The descent seemed almost limitless as she felt her stomach drop and breath catch in her throat. Her only thought, her only hope, was that some failed experiment wasn't waiting to swallow her in its maw.
She landed hard on her feet. Though her Power Suit was able to protect her from serious injury in the event of a long fall, Samus still felt the need to take a moment to regain her composure. Her suit's vitals indicated her heart to be beating at 180 BPM, the rhythm thunderous in her chest. Samus closed her eyes and began to breathe deep and slow. After a few minutes, vitals indicated her heartbeat to be back to normal. Afterwards, she began scanning the area. One quick glance showed her that she was in a segment of the Biosphere meant to imitate a subterranean environment, complete with rocks, dirt and stalagmites that stabbed into the cavern air.
In the center of the large, subterranean chamber sat an enormous, purple structure of some kind. Scattered around it were small, larval insects. Zeros. Samus gently stepped throughout the nest she'd stumbled upon, hoping her soft movements wouldn't rouse the creatures - and their nest - into a blood-thirsty frenzy. As she lightly stepped backward toward her only exit, Arm Cannon fixed on the large nest, a sudden blood-curdling screech bellowed from above, instantaneously sending the nest into the very state Samus had tried so hard to avoid.
"Fuck," the Hunter cursed under her breath as the nest began to move from within.
Kihunters, large, airborne insects with the ability to spit large globules of deadly venom at potential prey, surrounded Samus. She'd faced Kihunters before while on Zebes, but not in numbers quite like this. She fired off a couple shots at the nearest insects, scattering some of the throng away from her. But they began to come back in droves, and she knew she'd need a different tactic. She maneuvered a switch inside her Arm Cannon, activating the Diffusion feature of her Power Beam.
This added a spread effect to charged beam shots that made the beam spread out on contact. Using this, Samus was able to destroy the orange wings of many of the Kihunters with a single charged shot, rendering them unable to fly. This took away their major advantage. And after more charged Diffusion shots and an assortment of Chozo-derived close-quarters attacks, Samus was able to eliminate the Kihunter swarm and plan her next method of attack. Drawing a few much-needed breaths, she knew the respite wouldn't last long and would have to act fast if she intended to get out of here alive.
Adam's voice suddenly filled her helmet. "Use of the Diffuse Beam is not authorized, Aran. What do you think you're doing?"
Samus kept her eyes on the large structure in front of her as she strafed about the room with caution. "Oh, you mean besides trying to stay alive, Commander?" she replied with sarcasm.
She never had been very good at following orders. "Fine. I'll allow it. But consider this your only warning." Adam replied. But even he knew there were plenty more warnings where that one had come from. "Stay alert."
The Kihunter propagator had to be within the large nest, and so she readied her missile launcher. But such an attack appeared to be futile, as the nest hadn't received so much as a dent.
Again, Samus cursed under her breath, both at the impenetrable nest and the fact that the Queen Kihunter within had sent in reinforcements. And now dangerous Whipvines had joined in the attack, using their vines and energy blasts to make things all the more difficult. But where were they coming from? Samus quickly glanced up and noticed that the large nest was being supported by four large roots growing from the ceiling, and were being protected by an equal number of Whipvines. "There!" she confirmed aloud before readying her missile launcher once more.
Firing at the roots and the waving Whipvines caused the Kihunters to swarm her, but Samus knew changing her focus momentarily would be worth it. First one root broke free. Then the second and then the third, and all the while, when she could spare the time, Samus was laying the ramming, spitting, insects to waste. With three of the four roots gone, the Kihunter nest was now teetering precariously in the air.
It was a cycle of reinforcements and killing, and more reinforcements, but Samus persisted and destroyed the last root and Whipvine. The Kihunter nest crashed to the dirt floor, where it fell into pieces and exposed the massive Queen Kihunter. The queen was rooted to the nest itself, suggesting the "nest" had merely been a large cocoon. The queen writhed about her domicile, screeching for protection. She could do nothing to defend herself, and neither could her helpless soldiers who fell one by one from Samus's unforgiving, unstopping cannon fire. Arming her missile launcher for what she hoped was the last time, Samus locked the queen in the crosshairs of her Combat Visor and shot at the defenseless insect in rapid succession.
The first missile ruptured its abdomen; the second tore through its tough thoracic cavity; and the third had blown the Queen Kihunter's head clean off. The remaining Kihunters, their queen no more, quickly dispersed their underground hive, leaving Samus amongst a mass of blood, entrails and smoldering remnants of the nest.
After checking her Arm Cannon's system, Samus found the same creature she'd encountered earlier, lapping hungrily at a chunk of Kihunter nest covered in what looked like honey. She knew that some creatures, mostly weaker ones, used the power of bigger, stronger bio-forms to capture prey. But as she watched this small creature devouring the remains of both the queen and her nest, Samus couldn't help but feel as if it had fed off of her power as well. As she began for the exit and left the creature alone, a sudden thought disturbed her:
Could this creature have been the source of the savage howl I heard earlier?