Day 1
Jaco, supervisor nine-four-one-six, let out a gurgle as he died, his grey matter carefully carved apart by a hooked tendril sprouted from the Proto-Gravemind that made up the central intelligence of the Flood.
In other words… him.
He wasn't sure what had happened to him. He'd gone to sleep one night and then… he didn't know. He'd somehow been transferred into a Flood Spore? Or was he transferred into the Flood itself and not just a single spore?
On top of that, he'd apparently been transferred into the universe of Warhammer 40k, rather than Halo. And to go even further…
Wow, he'd just killed a lot of people. Ninety-six in total.
That… probably should have affected him more than it was. No, it definitely should have him bawling and crying. That is, if he had any forms capable of such acts. Which he didn't, currently. Nor did he really feel the need to do so.
Was this what shock was? He didn't think so. He felt very calm, despite having just killed nearly a hundred people and being in one of the most omnicidal entities to exist in a galaxy that probably deserved to get omnicided. He was alert, but otherwise… normal.
What was going on?
He hadn't been in control of his actions before the Proto-Gravemind had formed. He – the Flood had been feral, moving on instinct, according to ancient directives.
Precursor directives. The ancient beings even older than the Forerunners who had perished to create the Flood. He had their memories? No, not quite… He had a little bit, a fragment of a fragment, one he felt he wouldn't be able to access without more mental capacity. Without more biomass.
He wanted to shake his head. Well, actually, he had forty-seven from the combat forms, the remaining forty-nine having merged together to form the Proto or used to create infector pods. So, he shook those heads.
Nope, that was disturbing.
Too much was happening at once, he should have been freaking out, but he felt like he could process so much information without difficulty. Of course he could, he had nearly forty brains-worth of processing power!
Alright, focus.
One: He was now in control of, or a part of, or something, something the Flood, a very deadly parasitic hive mind organism, capable of basically taking over anything with a nervous system, plus a whole lot more.
Two: He was in 40k (and that very much did send shivers of fear down his… well, he didn't really have-, no, never mind) on a hive world called Monstrum, which was almost certainly the work of a ROB with a twisted sense of humor.
Three: He was probably going to die.
Four: He was going to try and not do that.
Alright, planning complete.
He'd… well, he'd robbed Jaco, supervisor nine-four-one-six, of the bulk of his memories, along with anything useful from the ninety-five others, giving him a fairly complete mental layout of this part of the hive city named… Malum.
He was going to kill his ROB.
His Proto form began to shift and change, with a dozen of his combat forms coming over to meld with him to provide extra biomass for the change. He felt an instant spike in processing power, though his speed stayed the same. It seemed the inherent limits of thought stayed the same.
Hundreds of small, stub-like tendrils emerged from beneath his mass, which moved around and elongated, bones and organs breaking apart and shifting around to his new form.
Once completed, he looked like one of those blue slugs the clones rode on Felucia, the gelagrubs he thought they were called. Although he was mostly green and far, far bigger.
It wasn't a very speedy or elegant form, but it let his Proto move around without diminishing its intelligence and, possibly, losing his control over the Flood again. It also would just barely let him fit through the large doors that led out of the factory.
He couldn't exactly stay in the factory. The next shift was due in six hours from what Jaco knew. The possibility of someone discovering him sooner than that was also very real.
The area outside of the factory should have been empty at this time. Most people would be hard at work in other buildings, but he wasn't going to crawl at a snail's pace along any place with people.
He sent out a single pod as a scout, checking to ensure the area was indeed empty. He was essentially in a massive tunnel network, one lined with buildings. There was an industrial elevator not far from the factory, a few blocks away. It was the only one that could carry the bulk of his proto-form as well as reach the lower levels, including one which had been sealed off for safety reasons due to lack of maintenance. A perfect hiding place, barring those same safety reasons.
Moving fast, his pod darted from shadow to shadow, using cover where it could, confirming the route. The path was indeed empty of any watchers and while the elevator was on another floor, it was not in use and could be called down with the proper authorization code. Codes that Jaco had been given access to and were now in his possession.
Slowly, his massive frame shuffled out of the factory, moving oddly quietly on its small legs, like a grotesque centipede. His combat forms and pods surrounded him, on the lookout for any would-be attackers. He left a single pod behind in the factory, hiding in one of the ventilation ducts, if only to see how people reacted to the disappearance of the workers. He doubted anyone had heard their screams over the loud clanging of machinery and the constant thrum of power.
He reached the elevator without issue, reaching out with the un-mutated hands of one of his combat forms to activate and bring it down. However, just as the hand was about to touch the access pad, the alert sounded as the elevator began to lower itself down to his level, a warning to make way. Something his combat forms could do easily… but not his much heftier Proto form.
Shit.
Trellis felt the industrial lift slowly grinding to a halt and he let out a long yawn, shutting his eyes, stretching his back, feeling it pop and loosen. Too much work, too many hours, not enough pay. Still, he'd at least be eating tonight. The delivery he'd just made, a couple of crates of shirt buttons to be sent off to the upper-levels, would see him through for another week.
Personally, Trellis didn't see the use of buttons on a shirt. Maybe they were meant to be used to repair clothes? Patches of cloth did that just fine, though. The upper-levels were strange.
The lift stopped, the doors rumbling open just as Trellis' eyes opened, though his vision was blurry. Throne, he was exhausted.
"Mm?" He could just make out people through his vision, along with something larger, probably a pile of crates, though it was a weird color. He rubbed his eyes, clearing them, in case it was Arbites or something.
It wasn't Arbites.
It took less than a second for a pod to leap onto the man's face, muffling his screams, burrowing into his flesh. It was a few more seconds before the man's body stilled. He wasn't dead, or even fully infected, all that had happened was his brain being chemically blocked from the rest of the body. The worker wouldn't be able to move or scream but was otherwise fine.
Well, not fine. Probably terrified, not to mention the fact that life in a hive wasn't healthy in the best of cases from what he could tell.
Even as his forms slowly shuffled into the industrial elevator, he considered what to do with the man. Killing him was the first option that sprang to mind, but… Well, he didn't want to.
Would it be bad if he just… left him? Wait, he was the Flood, memory manipulation was right up his alley!
His pod burrowed deeper and deeper, melting itself as the Flood cells merged with the man's. He dampened the man's pain, though it wasn't like he would be remembering any of this anyway. For good measure, he turned the man's brain off for a few minutes, sending him into a sleep that he wouldn't be getting up from if it wasn't desired.
Idly, almost instinctually, he flicked through the man's memories like looking through a photo album. It was horrifically easy to find the most recent memories and just… remove them. Gone, forever.
This man, Trellis was his name, didn't really know much about anything. Not more than any of the near-hundred others whose memories now existed within the Flood. His mental map became slightly clearer, but otherwise there was nothing.
As the elevator left, grinding downwards, he chose not to kill the Flood cells within Trellis, who was left behind. He wouldn't take control, just… exist in him, hidden from outside observers. As he spread his influence throughout the man, careful to not compromise his health or leave any external markings, he found quite a number of… less than healthy traits. Some were simple, a bone that had been broken and regrown less than ideally, others were diseases in places that… he really didn't want to think about but had no choice to do otherwise due to his nature. Plenty were simply due to a deficiency of certain nutrients or proper hydration.
He fixed these things, partly as an apology for what had happened, partly out of a simple curiosity to see if he could. It was almost as easy as the memory manipulation had been. Altering some excess weight into more needed nutrients, subtly reshaping the bone. He couldn't fix the lack of hydration, not without some atomic restructuring he didn't have the ability to do yet, but the man was left a lot healthier, and stronger, than anyone else in this part of the hive.
And, what of it if he happened to have access to all of the man's physical senses and a complete understanding of his thoughts? He was just… being diligent. 40k was dangerous and some early warning systems would be nice in case of anything… unexpected.
With that, he let Trellis wake up, new memories of having fainted in place of the old ones.
The elevator ground to a halt, opening up to reveal a new tunnel network. The noise was still plentiful from the upper levels, but this area was abandoned.
He soon found out why. The moment the elevator opened, his combat forms moved out, only for the first rank to stop, blocked by an invisible wall.
No, not a wall. Strands of silk. Spider silk, strong enough to keep his forces from simply tearing them off with their superhuman strength, yet still thin enough that it was only on close inspection that he saw them.
With their struggling sending vibrations along its web, the predator stalked out from the darkness. A massive, mutated spider, four meters tall even with its crouched legs, scuttled forward, its many eyes taking note of the various new additions.
Neither he nor the spider moved, though his combat forms struggled harder and harder. He thought he might have seen some kind of malevolent glee in the creature's eyes as one of its legs hooked a claw around an invisible strand, tugging it with far greater strength than the thin appendage should have possessed.
One of his combat forms was ripped forward, landing in front of the spider, who eagerly skewered the former human with another leg. It seemed content to enjoy its meal in front of its future food sources, massive mandibles leaning in to rip and tear into the flesh, eagerly devouring it.
His Proto form had been busy, growing lungs and a massive mouth, for a single purpose. As the spider ate, it paused as his central body began to rumble with laughter. That was the moment before the Flood cells the spider had just eaten began to eat away at the beast's insides.
"Flood," His Proto-Gravemind said. "Not Food."