Chapter 11: The Zero Nightmare
The tension coursing through her body was palpable, much like the sudden increase in gravity she was experiencing deep within an unexplored portion of the Cryosphere on the way to Sector Zero. She'd gone from being able to move freely throughout the sector, to barely being able to move at all; her body felt excessively weighed down, and it took every ounce of strength she possessed to run even a few steps. As she strained to make her way through the gravity-filled rooms, things only seemed to get worse for the hunter after Dessgeegas and Sidehoppers hoped to impede her progress even further. Normally, they would be little more than child's play to her, but thanks to the intense gravity, even simple things such as evading their leaping attacks had proven to be a difficult task in itself. About the only thing keeping her alive, however, was the fact that they, too, struggled with the increase in gravity, resulting in sluggish movement that Samus used to her advantage.
Samus trudged down a long organic hallway and dodged the Shriekbats that dive bombed her. Eventually the mercenary made it to a cylindrical-shaped room featuring several tiers accessible by chasm or grapple technology. The room, which appeared to be slightly frozen over, contained a large, pronged mechanism of some sort connected to several large cables. The machine hummed gently within the silence of the room. Taking a deep breath, Samus began to wall jump up the nearby shaft; the process was strenuous even for someone of her superior athletic ability, and once at the top of the room, she couldn't help but hunch over in exhaustion as her lungs burned and muscles quivered. As Samus recuperated, however, she noticed something strange hanging from the ceiling. It looked like a mechanized tail of sorts and was covered by thick metal plates. A large device was attached to the end of it. Now fully erect, Samus looked up at the ceiling and noticed the tail and module attached to it were receiving power from large cables suspended from the ceiling.
Suddenly, the cables surged with dangerous electrical currents and the tail began to move! Soon, the cables snapped from the ceiling in a blistering flash of light, and a large, bio-mechanical creature descended from above. As the unidentified creature floated in the middle of the room, Samus promptly scanned it and discovered the mechanical beast was code-named "Nightmare" by Federation scientists. Scans indicated that that the Federation had crafted the beast to be apart of its bio-weapon project. It possessed extraordinary power and the ability to manipulate gravity thanks to the Gravity Manipulator Module attached to its tail. Immediately, the Nightmare opened fire on Aran by way of shooting several white-hot laser beams from the small cannons attached to its arms, one of which burnt clean through the armor plating on her leg as she dodged. Samus followed the evade with a missile blast to the eerie-looking metal "face" of the Nightmare and witnessed the tough facade develop a slight crack.
Furious, the Nightmare hovered just above the circular platform Samus was standing on and spun its body around the room, firing lasers at the hunter as it did so. Samus merely engaged her Screw Attack and effortlessly jumped over the creature's attack. Once more, she followed with another missile blast to the creature's metal facade. Some weapon this is... Samus mused to herself, the competitor within her growing bored. Almost as if the creature had read her thought, it suddenly activated the Gravity Manipulator Module on its tail, and the room suddenly became blurry as the gravity increased ten fold, leaving Samus feeling as though she would break underneath the tremendous strain.
With Samus straining to keep erect under the intense gravity, Nightmare summoned large purple orbs of energy seemingly from out of nowhere and hurled them in Samus's direction, a couple of which managed to connect and take a big chunk out of her energy tanks, dazzing her for a few seconds. The cunning mechanical beast knew it had Samus backed into a corner thanks to its Gravity Manipulator Module, and promptly followed the attack with another slew of laser beams. The Screw Attack was next to useless, thanks to the heavy gravity, and had actually served in putting the hunter in more harm than anything. It was a mistake she quickly learned from, having almost come into contact with the Nightmare's laser attacks. It was during this moment of awareness that she remembered the gravity feature installed within her suit, and quickly activated it while the Nightmare simply hovered about the room; in an instant, the orange portions of her suit turned a brilliant shade of purple, and the lighted green accents within her round shoulder paldrons turned to a subtle blue. With the Gravity Suit now active, Samus felt as light and agile as if the heavy gravity had never existed.
However, there was still the issue of having to find a way to deactivate the Nightmare's gravity module - it seemed to pull both beam shots and missiles into the vacuum it created, rendering the bounty hunter nearly defenseless. But the crafty veteran soon hatched a plan. With the help of her newly activated Gravity Suit, she used the circular shape of the room to her advantage and dropped to the base of the room; Samus moved into a run around the room until the boost backpack of her suit activated and sent her into supersonic speed. With her Speed Booster activated, Samus briefly crouched to maintain the charge and then moved into the center of the room - or as close as she could get to it - and shot herself as if out of a cannon up into the air towards the Nightmare and its gravity module. Like a human battering ram, Samus corkscrewed into the gravity module and shattered it into pieces, causing the gravity within the room to return to normal.
With the Nightmare now unable to manipulate gravity, it now relied on its standard laser cannon fire and energy spheres, but included a new attack into its somewhat limited repertoire, a crude, but effective ramming attack. None of this, however, phased the female bounty hunter, who was more or less a one-woman-army at this point in her mission. This behemoth was just like the others she had laid to waste. Dangerous, but simple-minded. And it, too, would soon fall before her might. It was almost poetic in a way, what with the Federation believing they were creating the ultimate special forces unit only to have them fall before the might of the woman they had betrayed. It was irony in its truest form.
And after a lengthy, and mostly one-sided, battle, Samus watched as the Nightmare, in its dying breaths, malfunctioned and crashed to the bottom of the room, its slimy green face horribly mutated and twisted beyond recognition. But there was no time for the exhausted warrior to rest, for the real battle was only a little further ahead, within the hellish cyber underworld that was Sector Zero.
She stopped at the Navigation Booth to refill her energy tanks and weapon systems, then continued on until she came upon a wide, darkened hall. The lights within the hall activated as she moved, revealing the cold steel interior before her and the door to her destiny at the end of the room. In the next corridor, the lights activated once more, bathing the room in a soft blue glow that reflected off of more steel walls. This corridor seemed to go on for miles and felt nearly limitless to Samus. And the small, climbable barriers she traversed on her way down suggested that the sector was set to break off into pieces should some catastrophe occur. Finally, as her lungs burned and expanded rapidly, Samus felt her heartbeat increase, knowing full well what was on the other side of the door. A sickly feeling of dread filled her.
As she began to move, however, the floor suddenly jolted. "What the...?" Samus remarked as she looked around. Was the ship moving?
The dimly-lit metal cathedral was adorned with upside-down U-shaped archways whose pillars emitted a dark blue glow. On the far end of the room was the imposing entrance to Sector Zero, adorned with five large, horizontal tubes on either side attached to the walls at an angle. The tubes suggested the presence of a tightly secured airlock. As the bounty hunter continued down the long hall towards the entrance to Sector Zero, she soon found herself face-to-face with another infant Metroid, and memories of the one who had hatched, and died, before her very eyes. The tiny predator floated around her, its cries echoing through the long hall.
"A Hatchling..." Samus gasped.
The baby Metroid continued to float around her. Conflict soon reared itself within Samus' fragile psyche - she was still trying to get over the loss of her first "child" and her fateful confrontation with Ridley - it was just a baby, regardless of how dangerous it had the potential to become. And ice cold bounty hunter or not, Samus had made it a personal rule of hers to never harm an infant of any species no matter how dangerous it was. As she watched the creature float around her, its cries began to pull at her heartstrings once more. And no amount of repression could stop her maternal instincts from surfacing; she slowly raised her hand so that it was parallel to her chest and outstretched it. The Metroid larva began to float in a tight circle around her hand, its cries beginning to cease.
"You're safe now, little one..." Samus whispered.
As soon as the words left her mouth, however, the infant Metroid, true to its hard-wired behavior as an apex predator, suddenly turned on Samus and attempted to latch itself to her body in order to begin the energy siphoning process.
Before she had time to react, Samus quickly found her focus shattered as something arctic struck her from behind, instantly severing her link to her Gravity Suit and turning her vision dark and tunneled. As she fumbled, dazed, towards the floating parasite, Samus witnessed the creature suddenly turn into a block of ice and fall to the steel floor, where it exploded into pieces, before she drifted aimlessly into unconsciousness...