Terror World, page 24
part #5 of Zombicide Series
Better him than anyone else.
Grayson sighed and threw the claw away, then settled with his back to the scarred, patchwork metal wall of the furnace and stared at the dropout of the chute. Bits and pieces of exoskeleton preceded Mason’s arrival, pushed out of the way by the massive bulk of his body, almost too big for him to fit it through the relatively narrow entrance. When he did emerge, it was face-first, his blank human bits straining through, followed by his new, unsettling eyes. Grayson steadied himself in his position, one hand on the vial of Xenium in his pocket, the other on the torch. As soon as Mason was close enough, he’d light a fire that would burn them both out of existence.
But now that he wasn’t running away, Mason seemed happy to draw things out without actively cutting into him. “Ha,” Grayson grunted. “You what, wanted to punish me for trying to run from you? Little brat. Where was I gonna go, huh?” He gestured to his legs. “Never been able to move fast on these, no need for you to cut into me.”
“Nnnnnn…”
What? Mason was… speaking? How, how could he be speaking? His body didn’t have functioning vocal cords anymore!
“Nnnot. Run.”
“Oh my god,” Grayson whispered, dropping both the vial and the torch. He held a hand out toward his brother. “You’re talkin’ to me. How are you talkin’?”
Had the mold literally regrown his voice? Grayson couldn’t remember what his brother had sounded like all those years before, but it had been nothing like the deep, guttural bass that was coming out of him now.
“Nnot rrun,” the voice – someone’s voice – said through Mason’s open mouth. “Nnot let another ttake you.” He crawled closer, and lifted his foremost claws up to frame Grayson’s head. Ever so gently, he pressed his sharpened thumbs right into the divots at the top of Grayson’s eye sockets.
Grayson wanted to blink, to rear back, but he couldn’t. He was captivated by the sound of his brother’s voice, and those big, luminescent eyes staring down at him from above.
“You’rre minnne firrrst.” Mason began to press, and Grayson screamed as he felt the tip of the claws pierce his eyeballs. One sharp rip later and he was blind and shrieking, the pain overwhelming his brief period of hapless mesmerization.
The last thing he heard was the sound of crunching, like grapes popping against molars, before his throat went hot and slick and then everything, even that, faded away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dizzie Drexler
It was hard not to reach out and pull Grayson back as he marched off to his death. Dizzie knew they couldn’t do it, knew that Grayson was making his own choice and that nothing they said would deter him, but… It didn’t seem right. It felt too much like Corinus all over again, someone sacrificing themselves so that the rest of them – Dizzie specifically – could live. Why were they the worthy one, though? Why weren’t they doing the sacrificing? The guilt of living did battle with the visceral fear of dying until they fought each other to a laborious standstill in Dizzie’s mind, leaving them exhausted by their own emotions.
Dizzie almost envied Six’s cool, unemotional response to the whole thing. They might have raged at him over it, demanded answers, demanded that he teach them how to put up such a perfect distance, but there was no time for that. All they had time to do was hide in the farthest corner of the room as the revenant that had been Mason went storming past, chasing his brother down with claws akimbo.
Holy shit, Mason was fast. Dizzie and Six were going to be lucky if they made it out of this hallway before Grayson was caught and killed, never mind them getting all the way to the pod. Maybe the best thing to do would be to stay right here and wait for Corinus to come and find them – or better yet, to go to him! He was waiting, after all; he’d been waiting patiently for Dizzie for hours now, so it really was time to come together again and move on to the next stage in their personal evolution as a tea–
What the hell? Dizzie gasped, clutching their head as they forcibly wrenched their thoughts back to reality. What the hell was that? There was no way Dizzie or Six were going to Corinus! And he shouldn’t care about them, either – now that he was free, he should be going to join the rest of the revenants, not skulking around here.
Except… Corinus was different from other revenants. Different from other Xenos entirely – after all, how many of those infected with the mold had maintained their ability to speak? How many, if any of them, had been psychic?
Damn, but Dizzie wished they had more data on the shapeshifting Empusa who was rumored to be part of the original expedition to PK-L7. It would at least give them a baseline for comparison and… and…
And Dizzie loved comparison. Loved it so much that the best thing to do right now would be to infect themself with mold and then compare their changes to those of the other people in their crew. It would be fascinating, and give them a firsthand experience of how the mold could literally reshape an entire body. They couldn’t wait to discover the rush of that initial infection, and the characterization of the pain scale alone would be–
“No!” Dizzie hit the side of their head with one fist, ignoring Six’s murmurs of concern from the other side of the room. “Stop it! I don’t want that!”
But Corinus did. And he had finally learned how to make his telepathy work with the mold, rather than having to work around it. The serum Dizzie had been dosing him with had long since worn off, and now… now he was free. Now he was apex, the cleverest mind in the collective. He was prime, center, master, and would be even more once he had everything he wanted. And what he wanted was…
Dizzie pushed to their feet, stumbling clumsily toward the door at the end of the mess hall. They turned once, just once, managing to gain enough control of their own body to look back at Six. They knew there was desperation written on their face, clear in their eyes even if they couldn’t voice it on their own.
Help me! Save me!
But Six simply stood up and watched Dizzie stagger out into the hall, his antennae waving wildly but the rest of him remaining completely immobile.
Dizzie walked on unstable legs down the hall to the laboratory, so briefly a place of hope and excitement before descending into despair. The wall beside the door was a mess, completely destroyed thanks to Mason. The force field itself was turned off now, and just within the door of the lab was Corinus. He was barely recognizable now – his eyes were as big as the rest of his head, and he had two extra legs growing from his torso and supporting him in an upright position. When he saw Dizzie, he smiled.
“There you are. I knew you would come to me if I asked nicely.”
The confirmation was bitter. Dizzie gritted their teeth and managed to get out, “You’re… in… my… head.”
“Yes. My telepathy isn’t back to its full strength yet, but that won’t take long. Come inside.” He stepped back and made room for Dizzie to enter the lab. They tried to make their feet drag, tried to slow down the seemingly inexorable advance into death that they were making, but it was impossible. All Corinus had to do was think, “Come,” and Dizzie came.
“Good.” He tilted his head slightly, big eyes twitching on their stalks. “Hmm. Even with the mold’s help, I still can’t penetrate the Caridian’s mind. No matter, of course. I’ll do so in person soon enough. But it’s frustrating to be denied something I want.”
“So… sorry… for… you,” Dizzie gritted out between their teeth.
“I know you’re not, but that’s all right. I want you far more than I want him, after all.” Corinus gestured to the testing chamber in the back of the lab. “You and I were both scientists not so long ago. This mind retains its scientific training and curiosity. There is much I would like to learn about the mold, and how best to ensure its successful spread across the galaxy. Just as you restrained me within this chamber for your tests, now I shall run tests on you.”
“But why?” The pain of fighting Corinus’s control was enough to make their head throb, but Dizzie was determined to know the truth before they lost all self-control. “Why bother? You’re so smart – why do you need me?”
“Because I want to know what it’s like to be you,” Corinus said, the fascination clear in his voice. “You are more than merely something to be consumed; you are precious data. Data is what we need. We are more than we appear to be, too, and with your mind on our side and whatever I find from my experiments, we shall all become more and more.” He tilted his head. “I think I will run growth-rate experiments on each of your body parts. How long different concentrations of mold take to fully consume different pieces of your flesh. I will save your head for last, so you can watch the procedure and appreciate what I am doing.”
“I won’t… appreciate… my own torture,” Dizzie snapped. They fought the power of Corinus’s telepathic control with everything they had, but he was too strong – their legs took them into the testing chamber with barely a pause. The walls and floor were coated with mold, and Dizzie went from fighting back to holding very still, so they didn’t fall into it.
“That’s all right,” Corinus said, his eyes moving side to side as he reached one foreclaw toward the control panel on the left of the testing chamber. “I will appreciate it enough for both of us.” He touched the panel, and the force field snapped into place between them. His control over Dizzie’s mind eased, but it didn’t even matter now that they were trapped inside this awful place with no way out. He fully faced Dizzie, looking pleased.
They hoped that Six had made it, at least – he must have taken his chance and run for the pod, and Dizzie couldn’t blame him. This was going to be terrible in ways they’d never imagined before, but if one of the expedition, just one of them, made it out, then at least it wouldn’t all be for nothing. Six would be able to warn others about Sik-Tar, he could try to prevent people from coming back and disturbing this deadly planet any further, he could–
“I believe I will start with a paralytic,” Corinus said, backing up toward one of the tables but not taking his eyes off Dizzie. “It is simple enough to manufacture and can be turned into a gas and pumped into the chamber. I’m looking forward to you experiencing the same thing I did every time you took my telepathy away. Then, I will – hkk.” His brief, tense exhalation was immediately followed by the brutal SNAPSNAP of another force field turning on…
Only this one was held in place by Six, and its components framed each side of Corinus’s neck.
Corinus’s mutated head slid off his shoulders like hot grease off a spatula, landing with a lugubrious splat less than half a meter from the edge of the new force field. His body collapsed to the ground far more slowly, the mold inside it working to keep it going even though the host’s central processor had been removed. Undoubtedly some kind of head would regenerate soon enough, but for now–
For now, Dizzie looked at Six, who stepped out of the shadows behind the table holding the force field he’d probably cannibalized from the end of the hall. He’d hooked it up to a battery with a series of messy connective cables, the sort of thing that should have been impossible to hide, and yet neither Dizzie nor Corinus had noticed him arriving until he’d sliced Corinus’s head off. “You have the most amazing timing,” they told him, awestruck. “I didn’t even hear you coming. Are all Caridians this sneaky?”
“I wish I could have been here sooner,” Six said with polite avoidance, setting their awkward weapon down on the nearest table, then stepping daintily over Corinus’s body to release the force field. “It was surprisingly challenging to create access to a power source large enough to provide the – oof!”
Dizzie cut him off as they stepped out of the testing chamber and went straight into a hug. Six startled as they gripped him, then relaxed enough to give Dizzie a tentative pat pat on the shoulder before stepping back.
“We should go. Our location is severely compromised, and Dr Lifhe will be regenerating soon.”
“Have you seen any sign of Grayson?” Dizzie asked, knowing to expect the worst and yet hoping against hope that perhaps, somehow, he had…
“I’m afraid I have not. I think that it would be… unwise to linger,” Six said, and Dizzie didn’t have to read between the lines to know that Six figured Grayson was already dead, or worse – assimilated.
“Right.” Dizzie looked around the lab quickly, triaging what they had and what they could carry, before grabbing a few instruments off the tables. “Do you have the bag with our–”
“It is in the hallway. We should go,” Six repeated as a sudden piercing scream echoed through the hangar. Oh god, that’s Grayson. “Now.”
Dizzie nodded numbly. “Yes. We – yes.” They followed Six out into the hall, but not without a backward glance at Corinus’s body. Jutting up from his severed head, one of his eyeballs twitched, turning toward Dizzie and Six and following their movements before they finally moved out of sight. “We need to go right now.”
They picked up the pace, Six leading at a steady jog down the hallway and out into the hangar. There were no revenants to be seen – Lefty had done his job well – but there were plenty of sounds coming from one of the refineries. Dizzie followed the trail of bright red blood and felt their stomach curdle. Grayson must have run in there, tried to take refuge, and Mason had found him.
Was still finding and dealing with him right now, apparently. Ugh.
They wished for the ten thousandth time since they’d started this cursed trip that they’d thought to bring a gun of their own, something that they could have used to defend themselves more deliberately than a scientific multitool, a jury-rigged pair of force field generators, or an unstable, highly flammable chemical compound worth a ridiculous amount of credits. But regrets were useless right now. Grayson had given his life for them to escape.
Corinus had also given his life so that Dizzie could escape. Whatever he’d become, the person he actually was had cared for them enough to make the ultimate sacrifice to save them. That needed to be honored.
“Let’s go,” Dizzie said, and resolutely tuned out the slorping, crunching sounds coming from the refinery as they worked their way through the messy hangar, past the storage containers still full of precious, deadly Xenium, to the one pod that might be their ticket off this dark, hopeless world.
The repairs that had been made earlier were perfunctory, but probably enough to get them into orbit. Dizzie let Six worry about filling the fuel tank – he was stronger, and the last thing they needed was another spill right now – while they sat down at the controls and tried to figure out how to start the thing up.
It was actually… oh, gosh. If Dizzie hadn’t been sure this was an alien ship, they might have assumed that a human had designed parts of it. It was so understandable. Right hand here, managing the throttle, while the left hand worked the control wheel. Even the computer interface was exactly the right size for a human hand. There were additional controls that looked perfect for Caridian claws, but these pieces… they were just…
Power suddenly flooded the pod with a gentle sighing sound, and the door, which had been hanging open up until now, slid closed. Soft yellow light filled the tiny cabin, and a second later the control panel in front of them lit up bright blue. A series of Caridian numerals scrawled across the screen, followed by–
“What the–” Dizzie knew they were gaping, but they couldn’t help it. They turned toward Six. “Why are there commands available here in English?”
Six looked over Dizzie’s shoulder at the panel. “Oh, there are? That simplifies things quite a bit. I was almost sure before, but I’m pleased to have my suspicions verified.”
“What suspicions? Verifying what?”
“That is a question to be answered once we’re off Sik-Tar,” Six replied. “It is asking for a–”
“Password, I know, but you’re the expert when it comes to Caridian passwords,” Dizzie replied. They moved to get up from the seat, but Six shook his head.
“There is no need to displace yourself. Let me try this.” He tapped a series of symbols on the panel. The screen flashed black. “Hmm. That one worked when we restarted power to the rest of the larger ship.”
“Well, it’s definitely not working now, and – aaaah!” Dizzie couldn’t stop the scream that bubbled out of their chest as a sudden impact hit the door of the pod. It was…
Holy shit, it was Mason, only…
Dizzie stared. They couldn’t help it. The picture he made was horrific, stomach-churning, yet at the same time it was impossible to tear their eyes away. He had become an abomination, the sort of hybrid mess that had been outlawed by the Coalition generations ago – a crawling, chimera-like cyborg with two heads sprouting from its metal shoulders. One was Mason’s original head, complete with big Caridian eyes, and the second…
That was Grayson. Just his head, but it was him, he was in there, somehow… and he was screaming. Whatever had happened to lead to his decapitated head being fused to his brother’s neck like a parasite, it was clear that the mold was the only thing keeping it alive. But it hadn’t yet managed to overcome Grayson’s control over his own thoughts. He had no eyes, but he seemed to know what he was looking at anyway, and his voice sent chills down Dizzie’s spine.
“…o! Go already! Get off this goddamn rock, you idiots! Fly the hell outta here!”
“Oh my god.” Dizzie’s hand clenched spasmodically on the throttle before they forced their attention back to Six. “We need a password to activate this thing, now. Before he–” The sound of claws scrabbling at their door, so recently closed, was almost loud enough to overwhelm their voice. “Password!” they shouted.
“Try one of yours,” Six suggested, far too calmly.
“Why the hell would one of my passwords work?”
“Take it on faith, Dr Drexler,” Six said. “What have we got to lose?”
Well, put it that way… everything about this pod was weird. Maybe this would be just weird enough, too. Dizzie tried their standard tab password, the most common anagram of Doctor Vivian Rigby they used for devices – Byronic gator vivid. No good. They tried the anagram they’d used on their old lab – cordy orbiting viva. Still nothing. What else, what else… Finally, they tried the version of her name they used specifically on their Xenium-related research: arv dicing ivy robot.
