Chapter 2. No more war, no more suffering
Open and Shut Case, Johnson.
Coruscant was the heart of the galaxy. No faction worth its weight in credits or legitimacy had ever hoped to control the galaxy without controlling Coruscant. To that end, Emperor Palpetine and, by extension, the Empire had invested heavily in turning Coruscant into a veritable fortress. Golan Stations in Orbit bristled with the latest in blaster tech and missiles as a reminder of Imperial might. These mighty stations were backed by a myriad of smaller defense platforms and satellites. Some as big as an Imperial Star Destroyer and other's as small as a tie fighter. All of this was arrayed in almost an onion-like manner which at its heart sat the strongest planetary shield in the Core World. Underneath that, Garrissons of some millions of stormtroopers remained ready to defend; while the Coruscant Sector Fleet, some 2,500 ships, sat ready to repulse any invader before they even made it within weapons range of the outer most layer of defenses.
Indeed, Coruscant would pose a serious threat to any major faction attempting to invade it from the outside. That was how Imperial Planners wanted Coruscant to seem. Impenetrable and nigh unassailable. Imperial Planners would never expect an invasion to begin from the inside of the most secured world in the galaxy. And definitely not of the kind that was being prepared below the surface of the sprawling city-planet.
For Syala Pelian, pain was as a part of her new life as breathing was to her old. Her consciousness, while largely more whole than that of her now deceased husband, was constantly under assault while a….thing….controlled her body. Twice now, she'd watched as her former vessel carried out unspeakable acts. The first, the thing that had broken almost all forms of her resistance, was the murder of her own children. No person in their right mind would look to harm, much less murder, their own spawn; but this thing that had inhabited her body. The thing that had forced its way into her very being the night of that horrid explosion, had committed the unspeakable. She'd been forced to watch, as a prisoner in her own mind, while her own deformed and mutated, sickly, tentacled, body skulked with an abnormal amount of care into her children's room. Their lights were off.
Then the thing that had occupied her body had simply, almost mechanically, begun to swing. Some thing that had sprouted from her arm…. or was it her arm, now? Diseased yellow and running with her own blood, the thing that she had begun to suspect was her arm ended in a mass of tentacles, they appeared more bone and calcium than anything else, arced down onto her children's unaware and sleeping forms. The first to die was her beloved son, Antonov Pelian. He was a spitting image of his father and the screams that could only be heard within the confines of her trapped mind momentarily overpowered the infernal buzzing that came from the alien lodged in her chest. Oh, how she'd screamed and she wished. She wished that her second child, Antonov's twin sister Sasha, would wake up and run. That her sweet summer child wouldn't even bother to look over shoulder from where she lay and just run. But her second child was just as unaware as her first and began to turn over in her sleep. The tentacled arm, now dripping with fresh blood from her first child's cold, and mangled corpse moved gently to caress the cheek of her sleeping daughter.
Syala didn't know why but this caused her even more mental distress. What was this alien monster doing? Why was she not able to regain the use of her limbs? Was this a bad dream? "This has to be a nightmare!" Her still partially conscious mind began to scream. She wanted to scream. As the alien parasite monster stroked her daughter's head, Syala prepared everything she had, mentally, to try and do anything. She knew that she wouldn't be able to stop what was to come but maybe she could give her daughter a chance to run. With all of her mental might, Syala felt herself push against the control that alien parasite had against her. She fought for control of any part of her body. The first time trying to gain control of the thing that was her left arm.
There was no luck. She tried for her legs next. Hoping to run away and disappear. There was no luck there either. The parasite had too much control of her motor skills
Her sweet daughter awoke just as she was about to try and shout at her to run. Her eyes, gods, she remembered her eyes. Blue like her own had been. Little Sasha's eyes opened slowly and almost immediately she began a slow, deliberate stretch. She thought she'd just awoken from a dream. Syala wanted to scream again. The other being inside of her seemed to chuckle along with the infernal buzzing that propagated with its presence. It waited. It paused her whole body at the side of the bed where it had mercilessly murdered her son. Letting fresh blood from the deep gash on her son's small body spurt ineffectively against the tattered remains of her clothes and the bed spread. It waited for her daughter to open her eyes and become conscious before it even so much as twitched one of the red barbed tentacles that had sprouted from her body. The little girl in front of her, her little girl, perhaps too stimulated by the unknown textures and events that had transpired first crinkled her face in disgust. Syala didn't know it at the time, but she would when the flood integrated her children's minds into itself.
Little Sasha's first thought was that her brother, Antonov, had wet the bed again. He'd been a consistent bed wetter and that would explain the wet sensation that had spread across their shared comforter. But why was there so much of it? And what was the hard, foul smelling, thing that was touching her cheek? Sasha felt herself becoming overwhelmed with feelings of fear and consternation. She didn't want to have her weekend ruined because Antonov couldn't hold his bladder and the twins would have to sit through another doctor's visit because "He was really too old to be wetting the bed. Sasha began to cry for her parents.
This only incensed the parasite that controlled her, well used to be, mother. The little girl's cries were like a torch in a light starved cave to it. It wanted more. It waited patiently and withdrew the tentacled appendage it had used to caress the small child's cheek to the side of its new host. The young human turned again and reached for something. A light on her side of the bed sprung to life moments later and the young human turned back over to shake her sibling awake. She instead was confronted with the site of his bloody corpse and a monster on his side of the bed. Extreme fear struck her mind and she sat frozen for crucial seconds.
Her fight or flight did not immediately kick in as her body immediately dropped into shock. And then, as if flipping a switch, she moved. Bolted was a more accurate description. Sasha didn't even allow her feet to fully touch the ground before she ran, more fear of the unknown thing on her side of the bed, she didn't stop to check if it was following, she just ran. Her little legs carried her out of her shared bedroom and into the hallway. Sasha didn't even think. She didn't break stride in the hallway and pivoted towards her parents' room. They would be able to help her. They could save Antonov.
Unfortunately, as Syala remembered it, Sasha never made it two steps down the hallway. The parasite that now controlled her pushed her body faster than she had ever moved. Her former body exploded into a sprint that would put the fastest Imperial storm trooper to shame and she, no it, effortlessly caught up to her fleeing daughter. In one fell swoop the creature swung the tentacled arm once again. Swooping it down in an almost horizontal arc. Hardened flood flesh met sensitive neck meat and Syala's consciousness was forced to watch as her daughter's head was propelled from her body. She watched her daughter's squat face, frozen in a look of abstract terror, rotated in midair and her body, seemingly acting on its last command, continued forward on unsteady legs. Sasha's body dropped two steps later as it finally registered a complete loss of central control.
Syala, broken now, was quiet inside the last vestiges of her own mind. The only thing she heard was that incessant buzzing and ever so quietly a small voice repeating "Mold, Unite, Hunger, Obey." What she saw, what the infection form allowed her to see, was her daughter's headless body. She was splayed out in the middle of the hallway. Precious blood spurted from a jagged wound where her neck used to connect her head to the rest of her body. Syala could also still see her daughter's head not far from her body. It had landed on the floor and bounced mere inches away from her body's final destination. Though she could only see the back of her daughter's head she could imagine the look of fear and confusion on her daughter's face and that brought her even closer to the brink than she was. She didn't think that was possible.
The thing that controlled her began a merciless assault on the last vestiges of her mind at that point. Shattering what little control of it she'd had as she simultaneously began to grieve the deaths of her children and the shock from participating, even if unwillingly. The parasite that even now was breaking the last of her mental strength seemed to stop. For what reason, the last vestiges of her mind would never be able to effectively surmise. It just felt like a monumental weight had lifted off her personage and, for that brief moment, it was a relief.
The incessant droning started again. This time closer to the center of what her mind had been. It perforated her brain. Louder, more distinctly, the droning brought with it a hard, monotone voice.
"Unity, Agony, Assimilation, Hunger." It repeated. It was almost if the small creature was a droid. A droid with a pre-programmed agenda. Syala observed. One that she would never be able to grasp. Suddenly, she was aware. Again. She was allowed to see her body….. her former body… as it traversed her former home. Something was different. She was aware of things that she should not have been. She could feel others. Creatures with the same evil feeling as the being that had taken residence in her body. They were everywhere on this level and all of them were working towards the same goal.
They were in the ducts, they were in the sterile water supply, they were beneath homes and, disturbingly, there was a great pool of disturbed, insidious, tortured energy coming from the warehouse district. "Maybe that's where they originated." She reasoned. Maybe, if someone could expel that energy, they could be stopped. This thought brought a brief glimmer of hope with it. Maybe she could regain control of her body and infiltrate that great mass of evil energy….
A new sensation from the thing controlling her brought her attention from the remnants of her mind and Syala was surprised to find out that she could see the outside world again. Apparently, she was to be tortured with these momentary bouts of freedom. No matter how limited. Syala could see that her body had left her former domicile and traveled well across the level. It had used her memories, she wasn't sure how she knew but she knew, to navigate to her place of work. A bright orange Neon sign advertised to the entire level "01-50 HOSPITAL". General Hospitals that had been established inside of the many independent levels were devoid of individual names or identifiers that would stand them out against one another.
Every Hospital received the same support for staffing, supplies, Human resources, Pay, and allocations for Specialized surgeons and doctors. To keep the people of Coruscant calm and placated, the Governing bodies had long ago devised a standard for the pacification of the trillios strong population. This was lost on the infection form that used Syala's body and it wasn't considered pertinent information to the Proto Grave mind. The Combat Form waited patiently while its hosts' shattered consciousness and the proto Grave mind took in the sight of the hospital.
Plans were transmitted between the Combat Form and Grave Mind and the Infection form made sure that each plan that was devised for the Infection of Syala's former place of work was first routed through the parts of her faculties that were still under her control. It took special pleasure in tormenting Syala like this. Her despair brought glee to the wider flood conscious as it anticipated not only the total breaking of Syala but the terror, anguish and destruction that it could cause with it's newly acquired knowledge of the hospital.
The Infection form made sure that Syala was aware of every move it made towards the hospital. It reveled in the fear that rolled off Syala's tormented conscious as it drew closer to the hospital. The first leap was the most satisfying. The Combat Form had started on the topmost floor of a 4 story building. High enough to be obscured from vision by unwitting passersby and low enough to not be noticed by speeder traffic. From here, it noted, it could plot out a more stealthy route to the hospital. While the natural jumping ability of a combat form could clear the distance between this rooftop and the hospital; it feared that being in the air for an extended period of time would draw undue attention. Plus, there was the matter of other assembling flood forms. Already, two more bipedal combat forms were tucked away on the roof of the hospital. Carefully obscured from air speeder sight lines by a formation of scaffolding and rusting metal that would have been the General Hospitals 36th floor. Joined with them was a clutch of infection forms that were even further tucked away into the stagnate darkness of the hospital roof. They were just waiting for the last piece of the assault force to arrive. Syala's mutated form gurgled in frustration.
Navigating the roof tops unseen was going to be more of a challenge than it initially assumed, and the strong pheromones being put out by the other forms yards away underscored an urgency that only the proto grave mind could emphasize. The form in Syala's chest wiggled its tentacle in abject frustration. Why could something so simple as traversing a roof be so hard? Why hadn't the premature mind allowed the infection to run rampart on this planet?
Stealth would not be needed if the Flood could act as its name's sake. Nevertheless, the infection form found itself obeying its unseen master's will. The mutated human form approached the ledge of the four-story building it had scaled. It took a quick gander at the distance it would have to jump to successfully link up with the gathered assault force. The jump would be no problem. It knew from imbedded memories that clearing the large distance between two buildings was no problem for combat forms.
Doing so unseen would be the major challenge. The Combat form, unseen by any possible observers, passed information about it's surroundings back to the Mind form waiting in the Mozan Warehouse. From there, the Mind form calculated a path that would best avoid detection. Not long after, Syala's former body set off. It leapt from the four-story building to a smaller three-story. Tensing leg muscles that were enhanced by Flood Super Cell propelled and arrested landings that should only have been possible for normal humanoids that had jet packs. The final jump to the hospital roof was done quietly. Just as the rest had been. There was not even a thud as it landed.
The assembled assault force sprung into action as soon as it had landed. A combat form sprinted towards one of the hospital's HVAC units. This one had been chosen specifically because of the information that had been pilfered from Syala's mind post infection. This hospital had been plagued with poor maintenance due to an "allocation" of funds that had started somewhere at the topmost layer of Coruscanti society. Too bad. The combat form ripped off a vent covering on the unit motioned for a flock of infection forms and their duct rat cousins to enter. Half of the 130 cm creatures split and entered the HVAC unit while the other half waited in the safety of roof top shadows. They would enter with the combat forms and overwhelm any food that hadn't been initially infected by their vent force.
While the vent force assembled at pre-determined locations in the hospital's vast duct works, the infection form that occupied Syala's body tucked itself and its host away.
…
While infection forms normally did not worry themselves with trivial things such as names. This one found itself worrying of its identity. It did not want to be like the other pods from its spawning. This Infector form yearned for its own identity. To this end, it had started to refer to itself as 'Charles'. And Charles had bigger ambitions than being a run of the mill infected. Charles had schemed and begged the proto form to allow it to be the first of its kin to assault the life in this hospital. It wanted a body of its own to prove its ambitions. Charles, through a Flood snafu, had developed a fit of individuality associated with the key-mind forms of old. His form, while admittedly average for an infection form, was adorned with an extra tentacle. This was not to be mistaken for a defect in the otherwise perfect evolution of life under flood control but as a promising mutation for future intelligence forms or something else entirely.
Charles and his group of Pod Infectors rounded the bend of air duct that pumped sterilized oxygen into the shabby interior of Hospital 50. The squat forms found it hard to maneuver in the air ducts only made to allow the odd service droid through for routine maintenance and so did not make optimal progress to target wards and break rooms. This was of no worry to Charles nor the centralized intelligence as a whole. All would join the eternal chorus with time.
The first target that the veritable swarm of infectors encroached upon was the hospital's sole Burn Unit. This ward was chosen due to the lack of continuous watch it received. Most patients here were submerged in bacta tanks to promote skin cell regeneration. A handful of pod infectors were detached from the end of the swarm to await a signal to begin infection. The second target was a minute's scuttle from the Burn ward. A Nurses aid station overlooked a kilometer long ICU ward that was mostly empty these days. Two hand fulls of infection forms were detached from the swarm to stand ready here. Further down, inside of the Nurse Recovery Room, which was a three-meter scuttle for the rest of the flood swarm, Charles directed the group's sole varmint pack to stay behind. The Proto form had given strict instructions to leave some of the hospital's staff to appear as uninfected as possible until the conclusion of his master plan.
For that, Charles had made sure that any generalist staff was to be infected via bite or scratch. The rats were perfect for this. The more specialized staff, the group's last stop, would be assimilated via infection forms. Their knowledge was too much to be used as undercover agents. The specialized staff office was not far from the Nurse Recovery Room. If one were to walk the hospital's halls normally it would have taken them two minutes flat to leave the Nurse Recovery Room and then arrive at the Specialized Staff Office, referred to as the NRR and SSO while in this text, with time enough to stop by the water fountain located outside of the inconspicuous office doors. Using the air ducts, our small friends led by Charles were able to make the distance in less than 15 seconds.
For that, Charles was momentarily relieved and as he directed his lesser brethren around the rusted screen of a vent cover; he felt no joy at the time saved due to his choice of travel. In all, seven forms, including Charles, crowded around the ledge of the air duct that provided air to SSO beneath them. None of them particularly knew how much force it would take to break open the vent cover but they all knew that it shouldn't take much group effort from them to break itS open. It was decided, from Charle's and with the proto form's approval, that six of his kin would drop onto the vent cover in an attempt to break it open. If that did not work, six more would drop down on top of them and so on until the vent either burst downward or they tore the duct out of the ceiling. Charles eagerly directed the first six into action. Twitching expectantly as six random forms scurried backwards, held position, and then scurried forward at maximum speed into the drop off point of the duct.
…
12:15 P.M.
Specialized Staff Office.
Anesthesiology Doctor Sunik Philo
Doctor Sunik Philo really regretted signing up for the student loan debt forgiveness option at his local university on his home planet of Shili. As a part of an initiative to rid the galaxy of what the Emperor called an "Crisis on debt" the Imperial Secretary of Treasure had proposed a 10 year debt forgiveness program for eligible degrees awarded at Colleges or Universities that met certain criteria. One, the most obvious, being that they were an accredited school on the impressive list of educational institutions tracked in the Department of Education that occupied an entire sector of Coruscant. These programs offered a way for denizens under Imperial rule to earn a way away from the astronomical cost of education these days and garunteed that the Empire would have specialized staffing for whatever usage they needed. "Fat load of luck it's doing you against the rebellion, you kriffs." Sunik snorted to himself quietly.
Even though he was one of the few people whose jobs were considered "important" it still did nothing to protect him from being scrutinized by the Imperial Security Bureau. That bunch was always on the lookout for "Rebellion" or "Discontent." among the affluent population of Coruscant's interior. The last thing they needed was for a rebellion to start under their own heels. This thought brought a wry smile to his face. One that many would have thought was due to a seeming mental disorder that was common among the more intelligent beings of the galaxy.
A dull drone from a timer near him brought him out of his own musings. It looked like his break was over. He stood from his desk, a false wood replica of a desk that could be imported from the forest moons of Endor, and began to stretch. First, extending his arms over his head until he felt a familiar pop from his back and then bringing his arms down to his sides and twising his torso slightly. "Man, these breaks are really getting short!" He thought. His lekku twitched.
Rather in agreement or agitation he couldn't tell. Doctor Philo just knew that the break times in the hospital were shorter and that was influencing his health. Doctor Philo stepped from behind his desk; fully intending on leaving his office but was stopped. A loud clang from above him caused him to flinch and cover his head. It almost sounded like someone had dropped a mortar on the building. After a few seconds, Dr. Philo uncovered his hands from his head and sensitive lekku and hazarded a look at the ceiling above him. "What made that noise?" He wondered to no one in particular. A second, deeper, clang sounded again and this time, Dr. Philo only flinched. It was obvious that whatever was causing this was not coming from his office. Timidly, the male Togruta crept closer to the door frame of his office. There was a third clang and Dr. Philo slowly leaned out of the door frame of his office to take a sneaky peak up the single hallway of SSO. There was nothing. Nothing to indicate what that sound was or could have been.
A fourth clang and the sound of something falling momentarily caused Dr. Philo to duck back into his office. While he was still not sure what caused that noise, he was not about to risk injury to find out. He waited, for maybe a few minutes, in the doorway of his office. Sensitive ears waited to hear if there would be anymore noises to come. Nothing else made a sound. Dr. Philo chalked it up to faulty maintenance and the sound of falling to an appliance that could have been on the fritz. He left the safety of his office, closed the door behind him and turned to lock his door with his personal ident code.
While not necessary because most of his colleagues had worked together for years. He still had a habit of locking doors. This habit would prove to be his undoing. Before he could fully register what was happening. Dr. Philo felt something heavy tackle him from behind. It pinned him against the automatic door that he'd just locked and for a moment his mind panicked. What was on him? What had grabbed him? These thoughts and more ran through his mind as he felt searing pain from his neck. It felt like someone had taken a vibro knife through his neck and then there was nothing for Dr. Philo.
He was now a part of the flood conscious, and he didn't even get a chance to scream. The infection form that had nabbed Dr. Philo's body was not as sadistic as the one that had taken Syala Pelian and once it had successfully burrowed into the Doctor's body had killed all traces of him completely. Only his memories served as an effective contribution to the greater Flood Conscious.
….
Up next.
The rest of the hospital is subsumed into the Proto Forms greater plan.
We'll see what's happened with the other Infection Forms that were dispatched onto other areas of level 50.
The proto form is frustrated by the lack of biomass it's own approach is providing and has to ponder if a mass outbreak would benefit it's over all plan to consume the galaxy or doom the Flood to this planet.
Also, missing packages? Something wrong with your order? Please contact your nearest Mozan warehouse representative. The Flood becomes extraplanetary.
All of this and more on the next chapter of "Do not be afraid".