Chapter Text
Ranma sat up cautiously, trying to recall how he'd gotten to this sterile lab room with Kodachi, and found stumbling blocks in his memory.
He knew at least several days had passed since his last clear memory near the end of the school year. Between then and now he had flashes of awareness and memory, but he couldn't quite bring them to clarity.
However, he did remember one thing that drove him to check the back of Kodachi's neck. There was a bar code tattooed there and he frowned, reaching back with his hand to try feel if there was one on his neck. He couldn't feel it, but knew it was there. He could remember getting the tattoo.
He checked his ki over, meditating, and found himself...different...but healthy and in one piece. Looking over Kodachi's aura he figured she was the same...different, but healthy and balanced.
This was somehow strange...some flash told him Kodachi should have been dead...and himself as well...
But where the hell were they and what had been done to them...
The station was set on a barely habitable planet far past the far edge of human controlled space. There were, perhaps twelve people that knew about it outside those that lived there.
"Welcome to the Repository gentlemen," Dr. Damon Carthy said as the corporate representatives strode off the docking bridge into the far-flung facility. "This is where we research all of your favorite genetic toys."
"I am aware of what this is," Jared Garrison said amiably. "If you could please just give me an overview of current projects, then perhaps we can get this over with as quickly as possible and we can both get back to our regular tasks."
"Right," the researcher said nervously. "Excuse me, I just get a little jumpy with these things."
"It's just a routine inspection, Carthy," Garrison said, looking about as they walked through the facility. "Believe me when I say that Weyland-Umbrella has no interest in shutting down what has proven to be a very profitable operation. Now take me through the projects, if you will."
"All right," Carthy said. "This way please."
The scraggly professor led the way down into the project centers of the Repository. Garrison paused a moment at the progression.
"Shouldn't we be getting a vaccination at least, Doctor?" the man asked in a not so amiable tone.
"No worry, sir," the doctor said, laughing a bit. "There's no chance of T Virus contamination in this facility. All the samples are kept in the test room, which is miles seperately from here and only unsealed to put in and remove test subjects. Now sir, if you please, I'll show you the first project, the one you're most familiar with."
He directed Garrison's attention to the holding pen and its display monitors showing a small pack of black-shelled warrior drones milling about and snapping at each other.
"I thought you didn't have a queen," Garrison said. "Where did you get all of these?"
"We have access to the DNA of two infected individuals from an incident in Tokyo, Japan in the late 20th century," Carthy said. "A rogue hunter sect decided that humans were too dangerous to their race and attempted to use the aliens to destroy us. The situation was contained and hushed up as a terrorist plot. Most of those involved in containing situation died, but DNA samples of two victims were collected and held in storage until we found the files. We use the DNA to clone the individuals regularly and surgically remove the alien."
"I see," Garrison said nodding. "And is that also how you introduce genetic mutations into these drones?"
"Yes," Carthy said. "We keep the ratio used for the eighth clone in the military experiments that failed a few years ago. We're hoping the extra human DNA will make the drones more malleable and controllable, but it's been an uphill battle. Every so often we get a hold of new DNA sources and we try to cross them into the host DNA in hopes that traits will be passed on to the aliens."
"And what do you do with the hosts?" Garrison asked pointedly.
"We dispose of them," Carthy said. "We're not making the same mistakes as the military. We keep the hosts around for a few days to mark the effects of the DNA on them, we keep them under sedation the whole time and then we incinerate them. The alien DNA allows the clones to recall the memories of the original individuals. If we let them free, they start to 'remember' things and then we have trouble."
"So I understand," Garrison said. "We're still attempting to track down Ripley for study. Or at least a DNA sample."
"It would have to be from the original Ripley," Carthy said. "Now, let me show you another project."
He led them down a further corridor and stopped at a smaller holding pen, inside of which sat a morose seeming young woman. Carthy pointed toward her as she looked up from her knees toward the cameras she knew were there.
"This is the product of another abandoned project we found in 20th century American files," Carthy said. "Project SIL, I believe. It is a sort of biological weapon."
"This girl," Garrison said, indicating the harmless seeming woman on the screen.
"She has shape-changing capabilities, sir," Carthy said. "The creature's task is to breed and breed and breed and breed, eventually overwhelming anything else that lives on the planet it is sent to. We have the instructions for combining it with human DNA, that was sent as a trap to the scientists in the 1990s. What we are doing now is looking for ways to bond the SIL DNA with the DNA of other hostile species to accomplish the same purpose."
"Which hostile species in specific?" Garrison asked.
"A number," Carthy said. "But the hunter DNA certainly. We have a captive one here somewhere. How does go the war effort?"
"Intermittant," Garrison said. "There was a bit of fluctuation when the hunters realized we were fighting back and geared up for war rather than hunting, but it returned to a stand off rather quickly."
"Well, we're looking to change that," Carthy said. "Now, we only have two more major projects before we get to the incidentals like vaccines and such."
"Good, take me to them," Garrison said, unnerved by the way the sitting girl seemed to be watching him through the cameras.
Another long set of hallways led to a second holding pen.
"We have to keep this one locked almost as heavily as the warrior pen," Carthy said. "The subject possesses some sort of psychokinetic and pyrokinetic abilities."
"Who is that?" Garrison asked.
"Mr. Garrison," Carthy said. "Allow me to introduce you to Eve."
The creature inside was grotesque, a mockery of a human being, and it looked through the walls with a hideous anger and urge to conquer.
"She's a symbiotic organism," Carthy explained. "The host in this case was human. A lab technician that was unlucky. We barely contained her before the symbiote took control."
"What are you doing with her?" Garrison asked.
"Studying her," Carthy said. "Learning how to shield against her powers."
"How do you plan to do that?" Garrison asked.
Carthy raised a finger pointed to a display monitor behind him.
"We're keeping them in the test room I mentioned until we know more of their limits," Carthy said, calling up the image. "Sil and Eve had a brief meeting once, which is the probably the only reason that one or the other didn't kill us all. Sil seemed to be immune to the direct affects of Eve's powers and it gave us a bit of an idea."
"We've reproduced the two warrior hosts again," Carthy said. "With splices of Sil and Eve DNA added to their make up. We hope that they'll be resistant to Eve's psychokinetic abilities and mutation abilities, but, quite frankly, we've been hesitant about introducing the two to Eve. Three of the most hostile and aggressive species all mixed into those two drones, we have no idea what they're capable of."
"Four," Garrison said.
"Excuse me, sir?" Carthy said.
"Four of the most hostile and aggressive species," Garrison explained. To Carthy's uncomprehending glance, the man continued. "They're part human, too. Have you already incinerated the hosts you cloned?"
"Actually," Carthy said. "We plan on introducing them to Eve first. Better to start with the less dangerous set."
"Sir!" a technician said, running up to Carthy with an alarmed expression. "The hosts have woken up."
"Th-that's impossible!" Carthy said. "We keep them constantly under sedation!"
Ranma tried to reach for just how he'd gotten here with Kodachi, but all his memories were muddled. He had barely recalled Kodachi's name. Other words were still coming slowly and with difficulty.
Part of the problem was distraction. Kodachi's smell was intoxicating, merely being in the same room with her made it difficult for Ranma to focus.
That problem, however, was fading as the haze cleared, and he felt the Threats. The entire room was dangerous, somehow, it just smelled of death.
Smelled of his death.
Smelled of Her death.
A low growl elicited from his throat, despite the evidence that Kodachi was alive and couldn't have died. It smelled like she had.
But that was far from everything that was wrong.
Shadowy presences on his mind spoke of things like them, but not like them. Things not possessed of mercy or reason. Things that could feel him and Kodachi and wanted both of them dead.
They had to get out of this place and get back to...
He couldn't remember where they had to get back to.
Almost as soon as he had the thought to wake up Kodachi, finally, the girl snapped awake, and Ranma could feel her consciousness flare awake in his mind. Her emotions passed through the same succession that his had.
She felt different. She felt confused. She desired him. Felt angry at the smell of death in the room. And, finally, she felt the threats about them.
"Door?" Ranma said harshly, the word coming to mind after a bit of thought. The empathic thought desiring exit was much easier to understand.
Kodachi nodded and slipped down to join Ranma in searching the confines of their prison. It took them very little time to zone in on the scent of humans coming in and out, and, from that, easily recognize the door, but that wasn't the best place to go.
"What are they doing?" Garrison asked as Kodachi and Ranma searched about the room.
"Technicians recognized the Japanese word for door being used," Carthy said. "They're looking for a way...damnit!"
In quick succession the monitors watching the hybrids all turned to blank screens, those that left last showed the results of several small explosions before joining the other cameras.
"Security to clone disposal!" Carthy ordered into the commlink. "Quickly! Bring flame units!"
The room was awash with the sound of radios communicating the security patrol's actions culminating in there breaching of the doors.
"This is security team gamma," the officer in charge said. "The hosts have entered the ventilation system."
"The ventilation system!" Carthy said in surprise. "How did they do that?"
"The air ducts here were not designed for SIL's shapechanging abilities," the officer said. "I'm assuming they changed shape to fit in the ducts."
"Go to protocol 6-A," Carthy said. He grimaced and turned to look at Garrison. "Let's head for the main control center, these breakouts can turn desperate fast."
The woman behind Garrison didn't pay too much attention to the description of the hosts' escape. Her eyes were rather focused on another screen.
Eve.
How long had the creature been manifested?
How much longer before its host was killed by the strain?
How desperate was it getting?
What fools had been experimenting with neo-mitochondria again?
She sighed and looked around her, shaking her head as she visually took in her answer.
"Lab technician that got unlucky," the man had said, and that was bull. She had discovered this little collection of neo-mitochondria long enough ago to forge an identity to get herself taken as a bodyguard for an inspection. Obviously, this wasn't the first Eve host.
The woman had been wondering how it was going to be possible to actually destroy Eve and the neo-mitochondria samples without getting caught at it, and soon made into an experiment herself. Now she had something of an answer. With the havoc this break out would cause, she could easily slip in and destroy Eve's manifestation and the samples, and arrange for the blame to fall on those creatures unleashed in the base.
All she had to do was get out and into the halls.
"If you don't mind," Garrison said. "I'd like one of my bodyguards to go with your security staff to gauge their performance."
"As long as they don't get in the way," Carthy said.
The woman withheld a smile as Garrison turned around to face his bodyguards.
"Aya," he said, predictably. "See what is happening."
"Yes, sir," she said crisply before turning to leave on her assignment.
The other bodyguard frowned as she left and folded his arms over his chest, as Garrison nodded at him. Garrison turned about and fingered the star-shaped cufflinks of his suit.
Ranma and Kodachi had woken up looking mostly human, but that was already changing as they crawled through the air-ducts, lengthened and compressed, like human serpents driving themselves through the ducts to find a safe place to leave.
Kodachi paused a moment in the dark, metallic tunnels as a brief image came to her. A...memory...of being dragged, sharp claws in her shoulder and she had called for Ranma-sama...but...
She shook her head out and pressed on, feeling that Ranma had found what might have been a good exit further on. She joined him quickly and jumped down out of the duct.
She felt...odd as she dropped and her body reformed nearly completely into the humanoid form she had started with. Her skin was dark and grey like the wall in the shadows behind her, and she couldn't see them, but her eyes were opaque and somewhat luminescent.
"I remembered..." Kodachi said to Ranma.
"Shh," Ranma said, peeking out of their corner to look up and down the corridor.
Kodachi nodded and focused on trying to dig through her memories again, but a host of conflicting images came down on her.
She was something...weak and soft, but, at the same time cunning, adaptive and vicious. She was travelling through the hive, slick black shell rendering her unseen in the mottled tunnels. She was something scaly and primal, making love endlessly, endlessly.
The images conflicted each other, and more sure pushed the more confused and stressed she became. Her hands, fingernails black like the skin that she bore in another time, reached shakily up to her head.
"How dare they...defend...baby...intruders...I'm...dead...protect...martial..mar..." something clamped down on her progressive degeneration into madness. She felt herself calmly as the conflict eased and she let go of pushing at her memories.
At first she thought it was Ranma, acting in her head, but his presence was still a worried and insistent emotion coming, weakly at the moment, from the outside. She saw him holding her and heard halting words of comfort that she slowly remembered the meaning of.
"I must defend my mate," she whispered to herself finally, looking to Ranma calmly. "I must survive."
The conflicting memories and imperatives were still there, but for the moment they were muted, and a common ground had been paved in at least one small place.
"We'll get out," Ranma told Kodachi confidentally. An assurance that was belied by the nervousness Kodachi felt pouring off of him.
"Of course we will," Kodachi agreed firmly, though her hope of that was no more firm than Ranma's, and she was certain that he could feel it.
The security patrol crept quietly through the halls, covering each other's flanks and watching for any sign of movement.
The halls were built to minimize the corners and places of shadow, the majority of places were well lit and easy to search, and the ceilings were too low to make a surprise attack from above easy to accomplish it.
There were various security devices, as well, that sent their data to the central command and, from there, on to the security patrols.
They had dealt with breakouts before and they would again.
They turned a corner to find an air duct smashed out, and started to scan about the area as their commander contacted the central station.
"We've found their point of exit," the officer said. "Any clue on where they'll go from here? Will they behave like Sil and Eve, and try to escape, or will they act like the aliens and start hunting us?"
"Unknown at this time," Carthy said. "They were just waste material."
"Roger that," the officer said, signing off. "Should have burned them as soon as they took the drones out. Like always." He sighed and looked to his men. "Watch the corners, you know how these things like to play."
"Yes, sir," a soldier said.
"Where's the lady you sent to observe, Garr-?" Carthy's question was cut off as he turned about and saw Garrison and his bodyguards holding guns on the HQ command.
"Somewhere out of our way, I hope," Garrison said.
"What are you doing?" Carthy demanded.
"Destroying this place and all the things you made within it," Garrison said.
"What?" Carthy said questioningly.
"Umbrella has been around for more than four hundred years," Garrison said. "And in that time, you've killed more humans than the aliens and the hunters combined and you ask that question? Farren, can you manipulate the test room from here?"
One of the bodyguards was sitting down at the computer and cycling through computer commands with obvious skill.
"Yes sir," Farren said quickly. "And the reactor core. Thankfully they logged in past most of the security protocols."
"We have a clear path to the ship?" Garrison asked.
"We do," Farren said.
"I don't think security has enough to do yet," Garrison said. "Open the test room and leak the virus into the air."
"The...the virus?!" Carthy gasped. "But, with the things already here?!"
"We're vaccinated against it," Garrison said. "Making a guess about your staff, I'd say most of them aren't. And we won't be staying around long enough to encounter any of the escapees."
Aya paused as she felt a sense of unease. After so many centuries, she recognized it farely easily. Eve was about to try something dangerous. That meant it would be burning out its host soon.
Eve found what she was looking for on the edge of her senses, an active camera. There was electrical power there, power that connected to the power core. She hadn't generated much bio-electricity yet, hoping to conserve her powers until she could escape and, hopefully, find another host that she could subtly build until it was fit to hold her.
If she did this, however, she would have more or less three days to live, assuming she didn't continue to burn energy, which she'd have to do in order to escape. That meant finding a host here and insuring they escaped.
In any case, she had little choice left, soon she wouldn't have near the energy she needed to both escape and catch a new host.
The hybrid drones rose up their heads and turned toward the sound of the door opening on the long tunnel, even as the whispering sound of a released aerial virus passed them, unconcerned.
At the end of that tunnel there were intruders to the hive, and they would have to be dealt with.
Kodachi and Ranma frowned as they found themselves facing a dead end and turned to look back towards the sound of stomping feet heading their way. Soon, half a dozen armed personel turned the corner and had them cornered.
Under the best of circumstances, this was hardly a good thing for the security.
"The test room is opened, the virus is unleashed," Farren said. "I'm starting to work on the core melt..."
The radio crackled to life.
"Central," one of them said. "We have the hosts..."
And that's when hell broke loose.
Garrison and the majority of his men took cover as the electrical boards exploded outward. Only Farren was unlucky enough to be caught as the monitor glass nearly decapitated him, leaving behind a ghastly corpse.
Aya frowned and prepared herself for battle, that had to have been Eve's move.
In the flash of exploding cameras and lights, the six security officers were quickly and easily defeated by Ranma and Kodachi.
Ranma stood over the last of his foes, staring hungrily and hesitating to pass on and follow Kodachi. Ranma's lips peeled back to reveal the sharp canines beneath and a hand, with growing claws, reached outward to claw the face off of the senseless guard.
"Ranma-sama," Kodachi snapped insistently, and the momentary impulse to kill passed away as Ranma dashed forward to catch up to his mate.
All across the repository, magnetic locks were released.
The hunter looked up as the lights went out in the cage he had been placed in. All over the base he heard machinery shutting down, and then, the distinctive sound of the electro-magnet on his door failing and the door clicking open.
It had finally happened, the humans had lost control of the monsters they were keeping imprisoned here. He had to give them credit, they actually new very well how to contain the standard xenomorphs. However, they'd been experimenting and twisting things as well as bringing in new monsters.
New situations brought new dangers, and the humans' tampering moved faster than their caution. And now everything was free.
He grimaced and approached the door cautiously, well aware that the humans would have guards outside his cell. However, the light they used to see by just vanished. He heard them shuffling about nervously past his door as he slipped out of the door and quickly snapped the guards' necks.
He took a brief moment to examine the weapons they used, but they weren't sized well enough for him to use. Neither the projectile weapons, nor the knives. He growled irritably and said some choice words before slipping cautiously into the corridors to seek his weapons and gear. Assuming they hadn't shipped them out somewhere else already. He knew enough of human speech to know that this facility studied genetics pretty much exclusively.
Further away, Sil had much more success in scavenging the remains of her guards. Not that she needed the weapons or clothes so much for immediate survival. However, what she needed was a ride out of here, and she was likely to get that a lot easier if they thought she was one of them.
She still needed to find the living quarters and way to change her appearance further however.
And perhaps clothes that weren't covered in blood as well.
Kodachi and Ranma slowly made their way down the corridor, keeping alert for any threats. Ranma kept his now slightly pointed ears, which were adapted for extra sensitivity, keen and ready to provide early warning of any threats to his life or that of his mate.
Ranma's ear twitched ever so slightly, and his eyes narrowed. There was a slight change in low-pitched hum of the bases electrical systems.
"Ranma, what is it?" Kodachi inquired.
"The hum, can't you hear it?"
Kodachi pause blinked her silvered eyes. "What hum?"
"I think it's the electricity. It sounds like its changing... WATCH OUT!"
The lights died and Ranma pulled her backward as the door through which she was stepping sealed with a solid thunk.
Kodachi cried a lively "Eep!" in surprise and turned to glare at Ranma through the darkness using her improved night vision, and rubbed her manhandled alien like tale.
"Thank you, Ranma-sama." Kodachi said softly. "You've saved me once again." She did not remember him doing it, but she somehow knew he had. "But did you have to pull my tale?"
Ranma blinked, trying to adapt his eyes to the total darkness. "Since when have you had a tail?"
Kodachi blinked. "I..." she looked down at the chitinous, spike tipped, vertebrae-like prehensile tail that whipped around through the air behind her. "I don't know..."
Ranma sniffed and gritted his teeth. In this proximity without airflow, Kodachi's scent was becoming intoxicating. "We have to get out of here..." he growled. "But I can't even see my hands in front of my face!"
"I can see," Kodachi replied.
"How?" Ranma growled in frustration. "It's pitch black in here."
"I don't know. How did you know the door was closing?"
"I heard it start to hiss. It was not very loud but you should have heard it..."
"I heard nothing..."
Kodachi paused and looked intently at Ranma. Even her superior vision was dulled in this much darkness, but with focus she was able to make him out in detail, and gaped in shock.
Ranma was not as she remembered him prior to the single-minded blur of their escape. His body had undergone several drastic changes. She could see the faint outline of subdermal chitinous armor plates, armored spurs on his knees and elbows, and his fingers and toes ended in retractable claws. With a side glances she saw that his member was semi erect, a fact that fueled the fire in her groin.
Kodachi turned around and shook her head, trying to clear the burning desire, the overwhelming urge to procreate, was slowly eating away at her self-control. She took a deep breath to steady herself, but the air was already saturated with Ranma's musk, and thus was of no help.
"Ranma-sama," she said whispered, "You've changed too..."
Ranma blinked. "I have?"
She nodded. "You have... claws and armor..."
"I do?" Ranma ran a hand down his front and legs, checking for himself.
"I... I do."
"What's happening to us?" Ranma wondered.
"We're changing, my love," Kodachi replied.
Ranma looked in the general direction of her voice with an indignant scoff. "I know that, but WHY?"
"I do not know, but we will find out..."
Ranma paused, and once again shook his head in a futile attempt to clear the growing urge to breed. He paused for a moment and a thin smile came to his face. Slowly he approached her and placed an arm on her shoulder.
"We're changing differently... maybe... maybe we're just adapting differently to what happens... but it makes it hard to work together..."
Kodachi smiled and absently rubbed her face against his hand. What are you planning, my love?"
"I... I'm sure these changes are in our blood... and I'm also sure that if we could copy them some how..."
"How so my Ranma-sama?" Kodachi purred.
"I... I don't know." Ranma admitted, "I thought you'd have an idea..."
Kodachi smiled and pressed herself up against him. "I think know how... maybe if we taste each others blood we could copy them..."
"And how.... Do we do that?"
Kodachi smiled and touched her nose to Ranma's. "A kiss, my love.... A kiss."
The two grabbed onto each other in a passionate frenzy. Their lips locked and their tongues intertwined, and they gave the others a nip with their sharpened teeth allowing them to taste the highly acidic ting of the others blood, and more importantly, the DNA inside which held the secret to the other current adaptations. Quickly the two began to change form, while locked in their passionate embrace. Ranma's eyes slowly began to become the color of quicksilver, while his backbone changed shape and elongated, covering his spine with thick matt black armor while tapering out into a long tail tipped with a razor sharp blade.
Between moans of pleasure and need, Kodachi changed as well. Her ears quickly shifted into points, and while her flesh remained soft and warm to the touch, plates of flexible chitin armor began to grow between her muscles and her skin, giving her a strong sub-dermal carapace. Her fingers opened and closed of their own volition as razor sharp claws pressed out from under shifting flesh, and then retracted back under her dark black finger nails; she stretched her legs and moved her arms as bone and chitin shields shaped over her knee and elbow joints, each capped with short spine like projections that pressed through her skin, making them formidable defensive weapons.
Their bodies also underwent many less obvious changes as they two adopted tricks and methods the other has adapted to increase their strength, speed, agility, or even to simply improve the efficiency of basic biological functions.
It took less then a minute for adopt the others improvements, but they did not stop. They were lost in their own instinct. Ranma moved his hand to her breast and began to knee, while moving his has to her groin, to prepare her opening for his shaft.
Kodachi moaned and lifted her leg, to give him easy access, so that they could begin to breed, and to procreate. Stifling a moan filled with pleasure, not just physical but in understand that she was about to fulfill one of her two most basic and primal biological imperatives, she bit into his shoulder. While her teeth did not penetrate deep into his armored flesh, it ripped a large gash into this skin, drawing a steady stream of blood.
As Ranma lined up to spear her and make her truly his mate, the Emergency light kicked in with a vengeance.
Kodachi and Ranma pulled away from each other, shielding their supersensitive eyes from the sudden burst of light.
"GAH! Bright!" Ranma exclaimed.
Kodachi blinked a couple of times and nodded. "Give it a second..." she paused and rubbed her ears. "What is that buzz."
"The power," he replied. "Its back on... but reduced."
"Could it be coming from a secondary generator?" she asked, not sure where that idea had originated.
"Damned if I know..." Ranma took in his first clear look at his mate's new form. The grey cast given to her milky skin by their black blood, the cute points of her ears, her silvered eyes that sparkled in the pale light, the soft flow of her apparently unchanged hair, and the slow swish of her deadly tail gave her an exotic beauty in his eyes. He felt that there was once a time he would have found her new form freakish, even frightening, but now he could not imagine desiring her more.
Ranma closed his eyes and turned away. "They'll probably start looking for us again."
Kodachi nodded. "We must escape."
Their urges quickly began to diminish as the most important of their instincts, the only one that was stronger then the need to procreate came to a head. They had to survive.
They spared a glance at on another, and made a silent agreement. They had to escape to safety, but once they did, once they knew they were safe, they would fuck until they collapsed for exhaustion.
"The doors are not opening..." Kodachi muttered to herself.
Ranma walked to the door and attempted to force it, but to no effect. Kodachi quickly added her own significant amount of inhuman strength to the attempt, but it still refused to budge.
Ranma absently rubbed his healed, but still blood covered shoulder.
"KUSO!" he exclaimed, as he pounded the door. His blow did not make a mark, but the scent of burning metal quickly filled their noses.
Ranma pulled back his hand the two and looked on in some surprise as they saw a small mark burnt into the metal where Ranma's hand had been.
Ranma looked at his blood covered palm and pressed it against the door. His highly acidic blood quickly burnt his palm print into the thick, solid steel door.
Ranma grinned at his female. "I have an idea..."
Ranma looked at the side of the door and ripped off the wall paneling. Underneath he saw the hydraulic pistons that were holding it open. Extending his claws, he tore open his palms and grasped them, his blood quickly dissolving the metal.
"Try it now," he stated, as he watched his palms reseal themselves without a mark.
Kodachi walked to the door and gave it a mighty push. It slid open with relatively little resistance.
"I think now would be a good time for us to depart, Ranma-sama..."
"So how much longer is the contract up for?" Jenkins asked, just making polite conversation.
"Five months," Nanami said. "Technically."
"That's not so ba..." Jenkins stopped. "What do you mean technically?"
"What I mean is that my contract has had five months left on it for the past three months," Nanami said.
"That sounds like some sort of computer bug," Jenkins said. "Or are you re-upping in small numbers."
"No," Nanami said. "I don't think we're allowed to leave."
"You're getting paranoid," Jenkins said. "It's all the bugs, that's got to be it."
"Yeah, that's it," Nanami said. "Look, we came here to help out with researching the xenomorphs and a couple of other bio-weapons to figure out better ways to shield against them, right?"
"That's right," Jenkins said, gruffly.
Nanami hesitated, feeling nervous at continuing, but at this point she'd already said too much to stop, whatever her instincts told her.
"Well, look," Nanami said. "We're refining the T-Virus and we're breeding monsters. And I don't know anybody that's left this compound."
"You're forgetting Erickson," Jenkins said. "She left only three weeks ago."
"But she didn't pack anything," Nanami said. "And that new...thing...Eve, doesn't it sort of look like she did, just a little?"
"Nanami, I think you need a break, some relaxation," Jenkins said concernedly, but the feelings running through Nanami's spine implied everything except that he was friendly.
"No," Nanami said. "That's all right, I'll just go and see about getting my contract straightened out."
She started to take a few steps toward the door and the travel sled beyond that would take her to the main compound in moments. The sound of a safety being flipped off and a gun loaded made her freeze.
"We can straighten your contract out here," Jenkins said coldly
Nanami turned around and looked down the barrel of the gun to the face of her co-worker and, now, her killer.
"Are you going to kill me now?" Nanami asked weakly.
"Of course not," Jenkins said with a cruel smile. "That sixth sense of yours is valuable property, even if you don't listen to it well. We're going to add you to the projects."
The bio-hazard warning flashed on moments later and Jenkins turned away from her. She kicked out and pushed the gun away, her mind barely registering the warnings that the T-Virus had been released.
She'd been vaccinated a few days ago, and with the boosters in the room, she'd be fine against even the refined virus. Assuming she got to them quickly enough. At the moment she was more concerned with the man pointing the gun at her.
The pistol fired off three times as the man lost his balance fell to the ground, hard, the sound of glass shattering combining with his pained grunt. Before either could do much else a second warning flashed through the test compound, one that was much more immediately dangerous.
Nanami hadn't needed the second alarm to know that They were coming. She could feel their aggression practically burning across her mind. She was already running for the exit as Jenkins rubbed at his head and tried to shake off the dizziness. The lab tech only paused a moment to head for the vaccines held in the locker near that door.
Unfortunately, she found the locker and its contents shattered by Jenkins' random firing. Remembering Jenkins she looked back and saw that he was already looking for the gun. She saw it behind him, close to her and rushed out to grab it.
Jenkins heard the clattering and turned around to give chase. The screams behind distracted him enough that he tripped over a stool in trying to reach her, and then she was out the door and landing on the travel sled. The sound of rending metal and terrified screams catching up quickly to her.
She jumped on the travel sled and triggered it, holding tight as the conveyance rocketed down the connecting tunnels. Behind her, she could see two lethal forms, growing smaller, chasing after her.
It was fortunate that the test room and facilities, including the sled, had independent power. Otherwise, Nanami would never have gotten away from the xenomorphs that had just been unleashed.
But had she gotten away from the T-Virus?
After three minutes of travel, the sled began to grind to a stop. The second it had made contact with the main deck she leapt off the sled in a full run. She knew that he little timely escape had bought her at most two, maybe three minutes. Xenomorphs were fast and it was estimated that they could cross the distance of the sled track in as little as five minutes at a full run.
She had to get through the main door at to safety. This area, designed for aliens and the T-Virus was separated from the main base by a yard thick pressure door. The door was made out of armor grade carbon steel reinforced with a complex monofilament weave, and then sandwiched in between thick layers of ceramic polylaminate armor specially designed to resist acid. The end result was a door that was virtually indestructible and could shed off an alien's acid blood like water off a duck's back.
Nanami cursed loudly as she approached. It was closed! There must have been a power failure in the central complex. When main power failed, every door in the place has its power cut off and automatically locks.
"Damn, damn, DAMN!"
She had a "key", a small portable power cell that would open the door, but it took forever to open and time is what she DID NOT have!
She skid to a halt, and all but threw the cover off the door's "keyhole". From around her neck she pulled her emergency power key and plugged it in. Immediately the motors that lifted the 25 ton door began to grind.
Nanami began to tamp her foot nervously. "Who the hell designs a security door that takes a minute to open. Why the FUCK were these people thinking?" she exclaimed.
Nanami's blood froze as she heard the sound of something impact metal.
She glanced at the door. It was not fully open but she could duck underneath. Good enough.
She yanked her power key and rolled under the gap in the door.
It was saying open.
"Goddamn it!" she cursed, again. She'd forgotten the door stayed open an additional 30 seconds to ensure that the person who used the key made it across safely.
She peered under the door and a chill went up her spine at the two approaching black forms.
She stood up and looked the panel next to the door.
She had never felt as much relief in life as she did that moment. Two beautiful, wonderful words that echoed in her soul like the song of angels.
Emergency Door Release.
She pulled open the panel, and pulled down the handle inside, with just enough time to spare. The massive armored door slammed shut with a thunderous crash, and what felt like a less than a second later, she heard two distinct but faint thuds.
She was safe.
She was wrong.
Nanami sighed, and began to walk forward, but she had to catch herself as a wave of vertigo overcame her senses.
She was forced to her knees and almost fell forward, catching herself with her hands, and vomited.
After what felt like a good ten minutes, she had emptied the entire contents of her stomach onto the floor and the painful dry heaves had subsided.
"Okay..." she muttered to herself, "Could just be a natural reaction to all that stress. People have been known to puke after running, or after a life or death situation... this is both..."
She paused and forced herself to her feet. The vertigo was gone, but she felt light headed.
"Who the hell am I kidding," she grumbled. "Okay... I was exposed to the T-Virus. The vaccine has Flu-like symptoms as a sign that it's working... of course some strains of the virus have flu like symptoms to show that they're working..."
Nanami pulled out her key and looked at the next door down. "I need to get to medical, they'll have the vaccine.... Yeah. That's the plan... get the Vaccine, burn this outfit to make sure its not contaminated, get to an escape pod, and get the hell out of this mad house!"
Nanami smiled and stood up triumphantly. She had her plan, and she knew what she would do. She'd save herself! Not just from the T-virus but from this entire asylum... then she'd come back with the colonial marines and kick their asses!
But first, more dry heaves...
Neither Ranma nor Kodachi understood much English. Whatever ability the originals had had was lost in the garbled memories and would only slowly resurface with outside help. As it was, they didn't understand the words being shouted ahead of them.
The pained scream, however, did penetrate their memories.
Memories of huge creatures came to mind. Some had helped them and some had fought them. How long ago was that...?
The flash of a shock baton firing off snapped them out of their revery and the two hybrids slipped forward, holding to the sides of the wall and watching for the enemy to appear around the corner
Guards in armor were shouting across to each other, some professional and some emotional. They were trying to contain a tall and strong looking creature that was valiantly trying to fight back and not succeeding very well.
All the attention of the guards was on this single predator. None of them saw the patches of grey creeping alongside the walls, moving into position around them.
The predator saw them, two fuzzy thermal images moving in his field of vision with a familiar tail trailing behind, and he paused in his efforts to resist as he prepared to face death like a warrior. He didn't know what sort of monster these were, but he recognized the Hard Shell's touch on them.
The guards started to snicker at the predator's sudden change in manner, until someone noted which direction his attention was turned. The guard in question turned nervously away from his fellow guards and saw the hybrids there, staring at him with opaque eyes turned darker to shield the little light of the tunnels.
Two tails streamed by, spiking into armor and using it to slam opponents into walls. Shortly thereafter fists and feet flew and the tails swished around for another strike. It was over in instants, and not a single one of the humans had been killed.
The predator readied himself for battle as the hybrids watched him in a seemingly distant manner, emotion hard to read in those eyes. Then they simply turned away from him, bending over two of the guards and stripping their clothes and armor.
They were chattering at each other in low voices, using human words, but not the same words as the lab techs here used. They were also keeping a close eye on him, though they weren't making any move against him.
The predator growled and bent down to collect a stun baton, and he regarded the two...creatures for a moment and decided against trying to kill the guards. He couldn't fight these at the moment, and they had just saved his life. He gave them a brief nod and then left.
"I don't see much hope for him," Kodachi said faintly as she pulled on the clothes she had just scavenged. Hopefully, the clothes in these dim lights would give them an extra couple of seconds of confusion from their enemy.
"Let's worry about ourselves," Ranma said. Kodachi smiled grimly, it had been Ranma's idea to rescue the predator anyway.
"Do any of them have a map?" she asked, and returned to scavenging for useful items.
The door to the medical lab slid open with a hiss, and through the walk way stepped STARS operative, Jane Doe. She paused and looked around for a moment.
Her mission was to destroy the T-virus antidote. The plan was simple. Without the antidote, this little Umbrella/ Wayland-Yutani freak show would have a hell of a time retaking their labs.
She grinned. That was if the virus hasn't gotten out, then they were all fucked.
She read over the cabinets carefully and smiled when she came to the right one. She turned around and looked about the room for a moment. She had though she had heard something.
Oh well.
She pulled a shock baton from her side and smashed it into the cabinet. After several strikes she was sure that the virus antidote was destroyed, and tapped her comm link.
"This is Doe. I've destroyed their little cure."
Garrison replied. "Good, now get to the shuttle. We're leaving ASAP."
"No problem"
She turned around, and came face to face with a attractive blond woman, who reached on, grabbed her neck, and snapped it with a quick jerk.
Jane Doe fell to the ground with a thud, as Sil admired her handwork.
She had her way out.
"Jane Doe" entered the launch bay with an unusually sensual swish to her hips.
"You're late," Garrison stated.
"Jane" nodded to her commander. "I'm sorry, sir. I had a delay." She smirked. "It was a killer..."
Nanami sighed in relief as she opened the door to medical. She'd almost taken a wrong turn earlier. If she hadn't heard the slamming and screaming on the other side of the door, she'd have opened the door onto what she assumed were the drones.
"How'd they get in here anyway?" Nanami had asked no one in particular. "They should still be tearing apart the tunnel and the test center trying to get out of there. It couldn't be...the hive..." That last thought sent a shiver through her spine as she considered that all the xenomorphs might now be free.
But, finally, she was in medical. The boosters were in her reach, all she had to do was find them.
There was something immediately wrong with the infirmary as she found it. No one was there, no one on duty to handle any incoming wounded. She didn't immediately worry herself with that, however, she could administer the shot herself. And this way, there was no way for her to infect anybody else...or end up with security again.
She stumbled through the darkened infirmary and found the locker with the T-Virus vaccines, or at least she found what was left of it.
"DAMN IT!!!" Nanami shouted, slamming the butt of her stolen gun against the locker next to the counter.
The metal door swung open and corpse of a woman stripped to her underwear poured out of it. Nanami shrieked as the woman, her face literally ripped off, fell over her. She stumbled away and fell back onto the examination table, waiting for the corpse to start to rise up and try to have her lunch.
After a few seconds in which the body remained on the ground she allowed herself to relax and leaned backward for a moment to rest. She glanced upward and found the infirmary staff, lying dead atop of the light fixtures.
She screamed again and fell backwards to the floor painfully, rising up clumsily, eyes fixed on the bodies up there, backing slowly away, swiveling her eyes and the gun wildly in every direction.
Then the spiked tail whipped out around her and tore the pistol from her hand.
In the extreme of terror, Nanami felt an incredible calm washing over her as she turned around to see the drone that was about to carry her off or kill her.
The calm was shattered when she saw a black-haired humanoid dressed in stolen security gear calmly retrieving the pistol from her tail. Nanami swallowed and backed away from her until bumping into another form behind her.
Another tail whipped out and she was pressed against the wall.
"Why didn't I feel them coming?" Nanami thought to herself. "I should have felt the hostility..."
It didn't take long for her to realize after that, there was no hostility toward her. Caution yes, but not hostility, and, curiously enough, a little concern.
Then it hit her, the cloned hosts, but why had they mutated so much?
"She's ill," the woman said in Japanese. "The body's fighting but it won't last long."
"Smell's wrong," the man agreed.
"I...I have vaccine," Nanami said, reaching clumsily for the Japanese she'd studied as part of connecting with her roots. She would have pantomimed an injection, but the man's tail still had her pressed against the wall.
"You speak Japanese?" the woman said in surprise. "Where are we? What is this place?" She looked at her self and stroked her tail. Nanami felt the anger rising slightly. "What did you do to us?"
The man pushed harder against her to emphasize the point.
Nanami panicked for a moment, but the idea that she was dying anyway came to her, and she calmed down. Death was going to be release, actually, if they killed her, she would be spared a lot of pain. Even if they didn't prevent her becoming a zombie, she'd already be gone by then.
"I tell you what I know," she said. "But you help me."
"How's that?" the man asked.
Nanami sighed and swallowed, gearing herself to ask what she needed of them.
"Tear my head off," she said tightly.
"Excuse me," Ranma said.
"I'm infected with the T-Virus," she said. "One hour, I'll be untreatable. When I die I'll become...something else. A mindless zombie...destroy my head and I'll just be dead."
"You're treatable now?" the woman asked.
"Kodachi, what are you thinking?" the man asked. "She's not like us."
"Perhaps that could change," Kodachi suggested.
"You saw what our blood does now," Ranma said. "That'll melt her face off if we try that."
"I'm thinking of another way, love," Kodachi said.
Kodachi's tail swished in front of the woman and Nanami supposed that it was just her mind playing tricks on her, but it seemed to be changing shape slightly. A sac of some type was growing near the tip which was now leaking something out the tip.
"What are you..?" Nanami's question was cut off as the tail launched forward and struck into her shoulder. She felt something push into her and gasped. Then the tail slipped out of the wound and she felt herself falling as the sounds of the man snapping at Kodachi in confusion faded into the darkness.
She hit the ground with a solid thud, and Kodachi bent down to her as Ranma demanded to know what was going on, mentally and verbally. Kodachi smiled as she showed Ranma the fingernails turning black and took in a deep breath of the woman's smell, and felt her presence enter the private channel she had with Ranma.
"Her body is winning now," she said simply.
Nanami groaned to herself as the veil of unconsciousness slowly lifted. Her EVERYTHING hurt. He body was aching all over, but her head was by far the worst. Last time she's had a head ach like this was back in med school, when she had been stupid enough to drink half a bottle of JD.
"Oh my head…"
She rubbed her eyes and took a breath though her nose, and immediately was sent into a gasping fit. The SMELL of everything was just so mind numbingly strong. She could smell the sterile scent of the medical equipment, the faint smell of death off the bodies, the pungent odor of the T-virus vaccine, and the pheromones of the two hybrids.
She opened her eyes and rubbed her head. The pair were standing before her, waiting patiently. She reluctantly sat up and absently rubbed her shoulder, the one that had been stabbed. To her amazement, there was no wound only pale, healthy skin.
She did a experimental stretch and took in another breath. The pain in her body was quickly fading as she moved, but her head still ached. She felt good. No, she felt better than good, she felt great. She felt strong, and healthy, more so then she had ever before.
And that was what scared her.
She stretched out her hands and looked at them. The appeared normal except for that fact that her fingernails were jet black.
Slowly, she turned to Kodachi, and through gritted teeth she growled. "What the HELL did you do to me?!"
"I saved your life," Kodachi replied.
"What?" Nanami exclaimed. "What the hell are you talking about."
"I made it so your body could defeat the virus."
Nanami growled. It was a deep, feral, inhuman growl. One that frightened her. "I can tell that but WHAT did you do?!"
"I made you one of us."
"So," Nanami hissed, "You turned me into some freakish half alien mutant?!"
Kodachi blinked. "Would you have rather died?"
Nanami blinked, "Not a chance! I didn't really want to die, but…"
"But what? You're alive, we cured you."
"You should have asked me!" She exclaimed, bringing her fist down onto a metal table, denting it.
Ranma stepped forward but Kodachi's tail pressed against his chest.
Nanami glared at her. "What the hell gave you the right to do this to me without my permission!?" she demanded "I would have said yes, but it should have been MY choice, not YOURS!"
"What gave you the right to do it to US?" Ranma demanded.
"That's different!" Nanami screamed.
Kodachi scowled. "How so?"
Nanami sighed and leaned back. "You were dead."
"What?!"
She sighed and looked at them. "You've been dead for over four hundred years. You're clones… listen, what these sons of bitches have been doing to you and to so many other innocent people is wrong, and I'll tell you all about it… once were out of here."
Ranma nodded. "Alright, but you'll tell us everything."
Nanami nodded, "Everything... How long was I out?"
Kodachi looked at the clock. "About a half hour."
"Why did you wait?" she asked. She would have tried using her 6th sense but her headache seemed to have it on the fritz. She felt strange… like there was some other presence connected to her mind. She'd sort that out later.
"We didn't want anything to happen to you," Ranma stated.
"Besides," Kodachi added, "Chances are you know the way to get out of here."
Nanami nodded. "Only way out is the escape shuttles in the landing bay…"
"Do you know the way?"
"Yes."
"Go on, then."
The facility was well staffed with security, considering what they guarded, it had to be. Much of those security personnel were still roving through the halls and trying to get a hold of some kind of leadership.
They had the means to open and close the gates, and they had the weapons necessary to deal with the drones, should they encounter any. With some of the other creatures, they weren't so confident, but they had to give it a shot. They were professionals, after all.
None of them, however, was sufficiently defended against the worst threat now within the station. Only people that regularly worked with the T-Virus were kept vaccinated, and without the vaccination ahead of time, it had it's normal swift conclusion.
So, when one of the security personnel slipped in a small puddle of vomit and cut himself in the fall, everything started to go down hill.
By the time Nanami was leading the hybrids away, that first infected team had fallen to the floor, unable to move further. A few minutes later, they were walking again, but without the weapons.
Outside the compound, in the hazardous atmosphere, two large figures crawled out of the ripped and torn hole they had gouged out of the side of the tunnel connecting the main compound and the test facility.
Soon, they were crawling across the roof tops, seeking a way in and they found it when the STARs team left, neglecting to close the docking bay. The drones slipped in behind the ship and strode into the halls until they reached their first pressure door.
Clawing and smashing at the pressure door was making slow progress, until, that is, one of the pair gripped the power-key housing and instinctively channelled a burst of bio-energy to answer the slight static they felt.
The doors rolled open and the drones poured through, now aware of how to deal with the doors.
Aya was on the right track, She could tell by the bodies she was finding along the path of her hunt. Eve never bothered to clean up after herself.
Soon, she would be right on top of Eve, and the parasite wouldn't realize it until it was too late.
The three genetic hybrids quickly split up once they reached the crew quarters. Nanami had told them it was standard procedure for the quarters and other parts of the residential section to receive little security attention during an emergency. They were far from the labs, and separated by a half a kilometer and many heavy security doors. Besides, on their own they could loot the place faster.
While Kodachi had been reluctant to fleece the place, Ranma had quickly seen the wisdom. This way they would not have just the clothes on their back. It could help them be more prepared, and if they made it back to civilization they could blend in better if they had something to sell. Besides, it gave Nanami a chance to retrieve her beloved laptop and to screw over the people who ran this place.
As such, Nanami giggled to herself like a school girl as she ransacked Carthy's room. Sure the door had been locked, but these interior doors were turning out to be exceptionally… fragile.
She'd already stolen his personal laptop, who knew what incriminating evidence was on, it, and she'd already filched his class ring and a 15,000 dollar watch, likely a gift from The Company for being the lowest live form available for rent in a place like this.
She was quickly sorting through his dresser for anything of values before she moved on. First drawer, socks and underpants; second drawer, Shirts; third, pants; and the fourth, locked....
She smirked and gave the last drawer a mighty yank, tearing it out of the chest of drawers like it was nothing. Inside the drawer was a pile of computer discs, an M41c pulse carbine, a small black box, and a T-Virus vaccination.
"You're got to be kidding me…" she muttered as she picked up the anti-T-virus booster shot. Looking at the plastic encased antidote shook her head. "Well, I could have used YOU twenty minutes ago. Not that it matters now…"
This really sucked. Just like God, Kamisama, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, Cthulhu or whatever deity that runs this sick universe to pull this kind of joke.
With a sigh, she pocketed it. A companies like Weyland-Yutani-Umbrella did not let little gems like this go into the public sector. It was bad for profits. It would be a pleasure to donate this little honey and hopefully render the T-virus worthless to their bio-weapons department.
She also pocketed the discs. Knowing that prick Carthy, they were likely corporate blackmail, the kind of shit the authorities would just eat up like candy. Vindication was SOOOOOO sweet.
Nanami quickly grabbed the rifle, and the magazines. She knew enough about firearms to identify it as the carbine version of the M41a pulse rifle, the a standing favorite of the United Systems Colonial Marine Corps. More effective against bugs than a can of raid! She'd just need a few minutes to figure it out… where the safety and selector switch were, how to eject the magazine, and she'd be ready to rock.
In curiosity she reached down and opened the box. It was full of jewelry. Lockets, rings, watches, and all other personal items. She inquisitively reached down and removed one of the rings. It was too small for a man, feminine even. It seemed familiar.
She looked over the ring, and saw something that looked like writing on the inside.
"Donald and Jenna Forever," she read.
The blood in her veins began to boil, as if it had become some highly virulent concentrated acid.
Oh wait, it already was.
Regardless, Nanami was pretty pissed off. She knew where she recognized the ring from. It was Erickson's wedding ring… every item in this box belong to someone who had been part of the base staff and murdered in order to keep this place's existence a secret. It was a box of stolen lives.
Nanami placed the ring back into the box and then into her bag. She'd try and send these back to the loved ones of the fallen with an explanation of what happened them. Or she could sell them. She wanted to do the right thing, but one does have to survive.
She zipped up her duffle and turned to the door. Time to leave.
Nanami walked to the door, just as a T-virus zombie rounded the corner
"Ah shit…"
Nanami gasped and stepped backwards in horror. The T-Virus was loose in the compound, and there was a zombie blocking the door. Looks like the Virus was going to her one way or another.
She leveled the rifle and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. Worth a try though
"Who'd leave a rifle loaded and off safe anyway…" she muttered. "Real bright Jinnai, oh REALLY bright…"
The Zombie began to stagger towards her, and she stepped back. There was no way she was getting past this thing. While the T-virus turned it victims into mindless zombies, it also made them stronger than most humans. Only the best fighters could take one out in hand to hand combat, and with her painfully rudimentary course in hand to hand combat, she was no match…
Nanami paused. Maybe the old Nanami wasn't a match. but she wasn't human anymore, was she? A standard Xenomorphic hybrid was at least twice and strong and as fast as a human, while in testing Sil was able to readily dismember a drone.
A gin came to her face. That stronger than a human bit didn't apply to her. She wasn't human, she was inhuman.
Nanami took a defensive stance and hefted her rifle. If she couldn't get the damn thing to work, she'd brain the bastard with the butt.
"Come on ugly, Nanami's got a present for you!"
The Zombie moaned and continued to shuffle toward her. Nanami waited until the undead creature was almost upon her and with an excited battle cry, gave the weapon a mighty swing.
The butt of the rifle struck the zombie's head with a wet snap, its head being jerked to an unnatural angle and its right temple all but imploded by the force of the strike. The creature was not stopped though, and grappled the red headed girl.
With a grunt she grabbed the things arms and pull them off of her. It was no small effort but as she suspected, she far exceeded the zombie's strength.
"Now STAY DEAD!" She cried as she bent the two limbs with all her strength, shattering them both.
She kicked the zombie away. It flew out of the door way, and slammed against the wall. It struggled to right its self with its broken limbs, but it was unable to do so. Nanami glanced around the room for a moment. This rifle was nice, but not suited as a club.
She glanced around for a moment, looking for a more suited blunt object, and grinned as she spotted a baseball bat sticking out from under the bed. She grabbed the aluminum club and gave it a test swing.
Nice…
With a vindictive smile on her face, she walked to the flailing undead guard and smacked the zombie's head clear off. The decapitated head flew a good 30 feet through the air until it slammed into a door with a loud and bloody splat.
"Ah ha! Nanami Jinnai, one. Undead, ZERO!" she cried, "And the crowd goes WILD!"
She laughed for a moment and calmed down. "Okay," she said to herself. "Now that's down time to get the hell out of here!"
Kodachi sniffed about curiously, wondering why this part of this facility was so empty. It was fairly evident that most of the people had left at some point, but where to? And while there was some death, the scents of blood and destruction were few and far between in this area so far.
She noted it for later concern. For now, it seemed that most everybody had left this place, and that left her free to pick through the odds and ends for items that might later be useful.
"Ooo, this is a lovely shade of green," she said cheerfully, half-pretending that she was shopping in some department store, and not poking around the possessions of a woman that was likely lying dead somewhere.
And trying to ignore what their new pack member had said. Kodachi Kuno, that was the name, was long dead, and she was just a clone.
Imprisonment, mutation and battle was much easier to deal with, in some ways. Not being herself, the person she vaguely and partially remembered. That was much harder. And so she set herself out a suitcase and began to pack dresses and jewelry within.
Once, she came across a suit of tight-fitting leather that sort of made her twitch, though she couldn't remember why. In any case, she left the majority of the outfit alone, disliking it, but the whip that went along with it, that went into her pack. It likely wouldn't be much use compared to her natural weapons, but a sense of nostalgia drove her to grab it.
Ranma had his own pack, but he didn't pay much attention to the clothes, he grabbed credsticks, having been shown what they looked like by Nanami. He grabbed food stuffs that would last a long time. He grabbed utensils and tools.
Anything that would be useful while travelling, he slipped into the pack.
There was only one exception he made to practicallity over sentiment. It seemed to be a good sword, though why it was in this place he couldn't phantom a guess. He couldn't even guess why it was he wanted to take it.
The sword would be ruined the first time he struck a drone with acid blood like his. His own natural weapons were just as deadly, if not deadlier. Still, he swung the katana around behind his back and began to seek out the others.
Which was about when both felt the emotions surrounding Nanami's encounter.
The habitation did not have the same security precautions that the rest of the compound did. No security doors isolated portions of it from other portions. Instead, it was isolated from the rest of the compound as a whole. Perhaps the isolation was not so severe as the isolation the test facility had from the holding facility, but it was still isolated.
It was easy for Ranma and Kodachi to know which direction Nanami was in, and they swiftly dropped their morbid acquisitions to head for her. Not only was she their way out of this hell hole, but she was one of them now, and instinct demanded they protect each other.
As they neared her, and each other, they began to smell what the threat was. They smelled them long before they saw one. For a moment, the sight of a dead body lumbering towards them made them hesitate. Fragments of ghost tales and brushes with the supernatural made them shiver as the bio-chemical zombies stalked toward them, moaning dumbly.
There were not many, however, they remembered what Nanami's instructions had been. Also, the other two of their species were through these creatures, and they had to get past.
Once it was determined they had to go through, none of the hybrids had much trouble with the shambling undead, and they were soon re-united.
"This is what you were mentioning before," Kodachi noted grimly as they met Nanami again, soon after a zombie had lost its head to her tail.
"Did you make this stuff?" Ranma asked Nanami.
"They created it around four hundred years ago," Nanami said. "When I was hired on to this place, they implied they were working on a cure for it. We actually made a few." She took a sample out of her pocket and smiled. "And when this gets to the public, that's all she wrote for the T-Virus, hopefully."
"Let us just leave here, now," Kodachi insisted. "These are not the only creatures we shall have to face if we remain long."
"It's this way," Nanami said, getting them to follow her.
Nanami glanced to Kodachi and Ranma as she checked over the M41c. "Hold on."
She pulled one of the magazines out of her bag and placed it inside the weapon. She pulled the knob on the top weapon labeled "charge" back, and there was the faint sound of the mechanism as the round was chambered.
She glanced at the side of the gun. Seemed to be rudimentary. There was a little button next to the magazine with a little tag that said release, and a switch that said "Safe", "Single", "Burst", and "Auto".
"Nanami," Ranma asked coolly, "Where did you get that weapon?"
"Found it stashed in a room, why?"
Ranma just did not like guns for some reason. They rubbed him the wrong way. He like the idea of hand to hand combat. Standing at range while you just blew your enemy away… it felt wrong somehow.
All three turned as a groaning zombie turned the corner and headed toward them. As the other positioned to attack, Nanami lifted her weapon and fired off a burst. The three explosive tipped rounds exploded in its abdomen, sending it to the ground in a bloody heap. Except for some twitching, it did not move.
Ranma glanced at the weapon… bad feelings or no, it was a bloody effective little toy.
"Do you have any idea where you can get more of those?" Ranma asked.
Nanami thought for a moment. "Actually, yes. There's an emergency weapons locker down the hall. You grab the stuff you gathered and meet me there."
They nodded and walked off.
"Ranma-sama," Kodachi stated coolly. "Are you sure about this?"
He shook his head. "No, but I have a feeling they might come in handy."
Kodachi nodded. "I think you're right."
"Lets do this quick. I do not trust her on her own."
Kodachi blinked. "You don't trust her?"
Ranma shook his head. "She is not a fighter. I don't trust her not to go get herself killed."
Nanami grinned as she arrived in front of the weapons cabinet. Calling it a cabinet was a bit of a misnomer. It was more in the line of a wall safe. Only the security personnel and some of the head researchers had the keys, but she did receive a little training in firearms… while she didn't get it in anything fancy like the Pulse Rifle she had, she did get rudimentary training in weapons like pistols, shotguns, and even flamers. Just the kind of stuff that would be the locker.
She looked at it for a moment. She doubted that even with her enhanced strength she should just rip it out of the wall, and shooting it or using her blood might set off the ammo…
"How to open it… Hmmm… Aha!"
She paused for a moment and grinned. She walked to one of the security zombies, took his wallet, and ran his keycard through the lock. The lock requested a retinal scan, easily provided by lifting the bodies decapitated head. With a loud beep the locker opened.
Inside was a small treasure trove of weapons. She pulled out a duffle bag and quickly put everything inside. She only paused to take a look at the instructional placard on the inside of the door.
"Hmmm… might be worth taking…" she muttered.
She tried to pry it off, but it was riveted to the inside of the door at its for edges.
Nanami grinned and bit her finger hard enough to draw blood. She pressed it against the for rivets and the placard fell to the ground, its four edges melted but the instructions intact.
She sucked on her finger, and reflected. She had though blood had tasted bad before, with that icky irony taste but now it still had that irony taste but tasted like bad vinegar too.
Nanami pulled her finger from her mouth and looked at it. Not even a mark.
With a shrug, she picked up the instructions and read over them. Gun safety regulations… instructions on how to load and fire the various weapons… good to know.
She crammed it into her bag and smiled as she saw Ranma and Kodachi coming back with their own hauls.
"Okay!" she exclaimed in a perky voice. "Lets get the HELL out of here!"
Ranma nodded. "Finally… where is this launch bay anyway?"
Nanami pointed down a very long hall way. "Oh, just down there… about half a kilometer or so, past three heavy security doors, take a left at the end, and past the security check point which really shouldn't be much of a problem considering… easy as Pie…"
"Famous last words," Kodachi deadpanned.
"Don't jinx it!" Nanami exclaimed as they started toward their way out...
None of the three were professionals. Ranma, despite his assertion that he didn't trust Nanami to not get herself killed, was really no better than her, save that he could protect himself better, and would probably take more enemies with him.
The original Ranma had been unprofessional as well, which was why he'd ended up dying on a hospital bed as a chestburster tore out of him. He'd been talented, but he hadn't been professional. Nor were the assorted martial artists that went into the hell with him.
Of the lot, only Kodachi and Ranma had returned alive, Ranma dragging Kodachi with him, but they'd died soon afterward. Leaving only their bodies and DNA behind to research. As for the others, there had been a massive explosion of some kind of green light that had torn the hive from inside out, but nothing else was ever seen of them.
Their next of kin, children, siblings and spouses, were given a speech about heroism and such, fed some story about terrorists and then they were shuffled off to be forgotten.
And, as the drone appeared, those were the memories that suddenly locked into clarity around Kodachi and Ranma. Fighting in the hive, being swarmed by things that did not have the same vital points as a human being, being dragged off one by one. Escaping, and finally dying as another of the things birthed to life out of their chest.
They gasped, hands reaching for a phantom pain there as the drone leaped forward.
And Nanami, her eyes just as glazed over as she contemplated a death like her brother's, when the fool had decided to try and make a bundle on xenomorph biology, was the one that acted. It wasn't necessarily the most well-thought out action considering how close the drone was by the time she did act, but it did end the situation quickly.
The carbine in her hand fired in a full spray, HEAP rounds pumping into the mutated drone and exploding with a shower of caustic acid that washed over Nanami. Her scream of pain, both mental and physical, snapped Ranma and Kodachi out of their torpor and they moved.
Kodachi grabbed the acid-soaked bag of ordinance from Nanami's back and tossed it around the corner they had just previously taken while Ranma pulled Nanami herself away from the rain of acid blood, grabbing a bottle of water to pour over Nanami's face.
If Nanami were still human she would have been dead in instants after the acid hit. As it was, the neo-mitochondria in her body reacted, activating some of the xenomorph DNA in her body. The pain was still intense, but the deadliness of the acid was defeated as Nanami's skin changed, became more slick, thicker.
The acid easily poured off Nanami's new flesh as the water pushed at it, but it still burned like hell itself. She scratched at her face until Ranma grabbed her hands and held them away from her.
The sound of several explosions in the hallway behind them announced the fact that the acid had reached the ammunition she'd been carrying. Kodachi winced and shielded her eyes from the sudden light but quickly glanced past the corner after the explosions died down to see that the path remained unblocked, the structure having held, though there were scores and blast marks everywhere.
She turned back to where Ranma was holding the writhing Nanami and trying to keep her from further injuring herself. She gestured with her tail, head and hand back to the passageway, somewhat imperially.
"There was a bathroom with a shower several turns ago," Kodachi said.
Ranma nodded and soon they were carrying Nanami away.
It was several minutes under the shower before Nanami's new development and her regenerative abilities had driven the majority of the pain away and she sat in the shower under the water staring at her newly slick skin and the longer claws, not nails any more, that she had nearly clawed her face off with.
"I...I..."
She was like them now, the xenomorphs.
Nanami shivered for a moment, and Ranma and Kodachi hesitated to drag her away from the realization.
Kodachi frowned as she looked at Nanami. She could feel the other girls' distress, it echoed through their link.
Hesitantly, she took a step toward the redhead. "Nanami?"
Nanami turned to the hybrid and sneered at her. "Get away from me!"
Kodachi stepped back. "What… what's wrong."
"I was wrong before!" Nanami sneered. "I would have rather DIED. At least then I would have ended my life as a HUMAN BEING and not some… some… ALIEN FREAK!"
Kodachi shook her head. "You wouldn't have wanted to die…"
Nanami glared at her. "Don't pretend you know what I'd want."
"I know what its like to die," Kodachi said in a soft, sad voice. "You… wouldn't have wanted that."
Nanami blinked. "What?!"
Kodachi closed her eyes. "I… I remembered my death… it was so frightening… monsters and the chaos… the pain… of the pain… then it was cold, dark… empty…"
"Wha…?"
Kodachi slowly began to change from. The armor plates visible under her skin softened and faded, her ears rounded, her tail slowly withdrew, and her clawed digits softened into normal fingernails. Kodachi opened her now human eyes and looked into Nanami's.
"I wonder… would dying of the T-virus be any different? Do you really even die, or is your mind trapped inside the zombie, a passenger doomed to slowly go mad?"
Nanami sighed. "Kodachi?"
"Yes?"
"How did you turn back?"
Kodachi blinked and looked at her hands. "I'm… not sure. I just thought back to how I was before and I changed."
She closed her eyes and morphed back into her hybrid form.
Nanami bit her lip and began to concentrate. "Human… human… human…"
Nothing happened.
"Great! All I wanted to do was go back to being human and it doesn't even work. What the hell… am I broken or something. See yourself as human you say… that's full of…"
Nanami's skin and hands shifted back to normal.
She blinked. "Okay, maybe I was wrong about that… Where's Ranma anyways?"
Kodachi pointed her tail at the door.
"Standing guard."
Nanami nodded. "I see… where are my things?"
"Well," Kodachi began, "The weapons you took exploded, but that rifle was apparently acid proof. I put it under the sink while you were rinsing off and only the pain was melted."
"How many bullets?"
"The number on the side says 23…"
She sighed. "Oh boy… my coat?"
Kodachi looked toward a pile of while cloth at the side.
Nanami stood up and went over to fish through the pockets.
"Well, my keys melted, but the other magazine is still intact and T-Virus vaccine was in glass do it just needs to be washed off… my other bags?"
"Your body shielded them."
Nanami scoffed. "Lucky me."
She walked over to the sink to retrieve her weapon and blinked as she saw herself in the mirrior.
He skin was still red and enflamed and her eyes were puffy, but what really caught her attention was her top. It her shirt was dripping wet and had been heavily splattered with acid. Between the massive holes in the top, her wrecked bra, and the fact that it was make out of thin white fabric it did absolutely nothing to preserve her modesty.
"Say, Kodachi, did you bring my bag in?"
"Yes?"
"Grab me a new shirt, will you?"
Carthy turned the corner to his room, hearing the moan of zombies running through the coorridors about him. He'd already found some abandoned weapons to use, but what he really wanted was the vial of T-Virus antidote in his personal stash.
The zombies probably meant that the virus had shifted away from an aerosol vector, so the air was probably safe. But he didn't want to escape only to die later simply because he'd gotten scratched by a zombie that got too close.
The first thing he saw, leading to his room, was the corpse with the shattered head. He hesitated, noticing the symptoms of the T-virus in what remained of the corpse. However, if someone had killed it, then that meant that they'd been in his room.
Carthy's eyes widened and he quickly ducked into his room and found it a complete mess. It was quickly obvious that whoever had been here had taken everything, including his emergency package.
He grimaced and slammed the pistol in his hand against the wall.
"Damn it," he cursed. "I wonder if this is one of Garrison's little surprises, too."
The moaning grew louder and then, and Carthy had no time to stay before the zombies found him.
He snarled as he grabbed a couple of clips from the bedside table and then started running. There were some escape shuttles in the launch bay - if he could get there fast enough, he could use the antidote cache hidden there (he took a moment to bless the almost paranoid level of emergency planning), and he'd be fine. He'd evacuate, then figure out what he'd say in his report... they wouldn't be pleased, to say the least.
Still, the clear betrayal of Garrison could hardly be blamed on him, so he'd do just fine. Better than fine, in fact...
He stopped at an unmarked panel, hit a hidden switch, then grabbed the small fiberglass bag inside, along with a cube from a socket on the wall of the compartment. With the information on these cubes, and the recording of the security cameras, he'd have all the information he'd need to stay on top of the game.
Carthy then took off running again, following the signs to the launch bay. After a while he was coughing and almost staggering, and he slowed down to a walk. He'd catch his breath, then speed up again. He gained some time on the zombies, and hopefully the hybrids would - wait!
He stopped and listened. Voices! From the side passage he could hear a voice - male, young - maybe one of the guards?
"... are ... okay... there?"
He couldn't quite make out what they were saying, but a guard meant - protection! On the other hand, if it was one of Garrison's thugs, he'd be in real trouble...
Garrison's ship was gone, and his group of raiders with it. He'd seen the launch through a monitor connected to one of the outside cameras. The only things capable of speaking Japanese, or any other human language, in this deathtrap, as it now was, were, of course, human, almost certainly long term members of the company team on site. That meant safety.
He turned a corner, sighing in relief, then he looked to see who was talking.
It wasn't human.
Partially human, yes, but not totally. The tail that curled behind him was more than enough testament to that, even without the otherworldly look to the man's face and body. Or those opaque eyes that were now turning towards him.
"Hey, it's another survivor," the man said. "He smells clean."
And then Carthy realized what he was talking to, one of the clones. It had remembered most of its speech, apparently and was probably addressing the female. He was more right than he knew until a couple of moments later, when Nanami walked out behind the female clone, also mutated somewhat.
Carthy eyed the human with the two hybrids and immediately recognized her from her dossier.
Doctor Nanami Jinnai. Genetics researcher. Xenobiology specialist. Brother killed ten years ago in a xenomorph incident. Seeking vengeance on the xenomorphs. Known Contacts: past romantic relationship with Makoto Mizuhara, industrial terrorist responsible for the theft of prototype combat-class synthetic. Notes: Possesses untapped psionic capabilities currently manifesting as a sort of sixth sense. Instructions: Close watch. No outside contact. Subject should not realize she is imprisoned if at all possible. Upon discovery, incarcerate as experimental material.
And she was carrying his M41a carbine. Obviously she'd been the one that ransacked his room.
"Carthy," Nanami said.
"Well, Jinnai," Carthy said. "Did you and your spying boyfriend plan this little event with Garrison? If so, I'm happy to say that your STARS allies have already left you high and dry."
"Spying..." Nanami snapped. "What are you talking about? I came here to study and find a way to destroy these fucking parasites. I didn't come to be a lab rat."
The hybrids looked to each other in caution, not understanding the English but recognizing the hostility waving off Nanami. Ranma moved to try and calm down Nanami, but she felt the intention even as his hand reached out and turned to face him.
"He's the head of operations around here," Nanami said. "He's the one that's had you recreated and eliminated I don't know how many times. He's responsible for everything, and you can bet that he wouldn't let us take that antivirus sample to the public."
"The..." Carthy's eyes snapped wide as he remembered the booster shot from his room, but surely Nanami would have used it. Unless, of course, she'd used a booster from one of the other labs.
"Let's handle this later," Ranma said. "We gotta get..."
Carthy growled as he tossed out the hand with the pistol and pressed the trigger, repeatedly sending bullet after bullet into Nanami. The first bullet hit with a burst of red blood, as did the second. The third was sent off course as he lost control of the kick, it bounced off her skull and sent her ringing backwards, head swirling, even as several more bullets struck her chest, but failed to break the skin.
Carthy got a brief sense of satisfaction from the shocked expression on Nanami's face as she was sent reeling to the floor, but then he saw the smoke raising up from where Nanami's blood had dropped to the ground. He had just enough time to see her slowly rising, the flow of blood from her wounds lessening as they closed, before Ranma's tail had disarmed him and slammed him against the wall.
A deep, feral growl resonated from Nanami’s throat as she turned to Carthy.
Nanami looked down at herself and sneered. While her wounds had already closed, the acid from her blood had eaten through the fabric he shirt leaving large spaces of uncovered skin leaving her modesty in a precarious state at best.
“Damn it,” she growled, “This was my favorite shirt.”
“What are you?!” Carthy exclaimed.
Nanami’s eyes narrowed, and she pressed her finger into the blood that covered her skin.
She slowly walked toward Carthy, a nasty smile on her face, and a suggestive swing to he hips.
Carthy tried to turn away but Ranma threw him back against the wall.
Nanami smirked and looked him in the eyes.
“What am I, good doctor?”
She wiped her blood covered finger across his face. Carthy screamed in agony as her blood burnt into the flesh of his cheek.
She sneered and lifted him by the neck with her other hand.
“You should know what I am!” she roared. “You and your projects made me like this.”
“How did this happen… what turned you into a hybrid!?”
Nanami laughed. “I see, ever the freak show major domo… fine, I’ll tell you. I escaped the labs, but was infected with the T-virus. The boosters were all destroyed and I was dying, but these two came across me, and rather than let me die, they transformed me into one of them.”
“How… how is that possible.”
“I do not know,” Nanami stated, “But once we’re gone and you're long dead, I’ll make sure to poke at myself a bit and see how I tick.”
“You sold your humanity to survive and now you're going to kill me!” Carthy sneered, “You’re no less a monster now than the creatures that killed your brother.”
Nanami’s eyes narrowed. “That may but I am still far more human than you ever could aspire. I have more contempt for you than I do any freak on this base… and besides, I feel great.”
Carthy blinked. “What?”
“I have never felt so healthy in my life. I’m far stronger, far faster, and considering the nature of these modification I am likely biologically immortal. I consider it amusing that while the Company has invested billions in finding a secret to eternal youth, something your rich clients would pay out the ass for, it just zips by you in a pitiful attempt to create the better bug. Just think how rich you could have been if you were only not such an incompetent close minded piece of subhuman garbage.”
“Nanami...,” Kodachi growled.
“Don’t worry,” Nanami cut in. “I’m just giving this subhuman something to lament about in the short span of time between now and his painful death.”
Kodachi smiled. “Can I kill him?”
Nanami shook her head. “No.”
“No one is killing nobody!” Ranma added.
Nanami smiled at the male of her species. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill him.”
Nanami let Carthy go, who visibly relaxed.
The man sighed. “Thank god…”
A Savage smiled came to her face, and she struck at him. She kicked his legs out from under him, sending the researcher to his knees, and struck him in the lower back with a wet snap.
“ARGH! I can’t feel my legs!”
“Nanami!” Ranma exclaimed.
“Oh, I’m just going to leave him for his pets.”
“Please… no….” he muttered.
Nanami began to rummage through his pockets and glanced at him. “I found your book of stolen lives. I want you to remember the faces of all the people you killed who bagged you just that before you die. You earned this.”
She paused, and stood up after looking through his pockets. She walked over to the discarded pistol, and lifted it up. Carefully she removed the magazine and took every bullet, leaving only the one round in the chamber. She smiled and handed it to him.
“I’m going to have some level of mercy, and leave you with a way out. One bullet, all you need to end your own life, but waste it and you’re at the tender mercy at your own creations. I wonder, will you die of terminal chest pain, become one of the walking dead, or maybe Eve will run across you…”
“You bitch. You monstrous bitch.”
“Such harsh language,” Nanami chuckled. “If I were you I’d shut up and take it like a man before I take your cowards way out.”
Nanami turned to the others. “Lets go.”
Ranma and Kodachi looked at on another and than began to leave.
As they walked away, Carthy could only look at the gun in his hand and weep.
"Why did you do that, Nanami?" Ranma asked. "Whatever he did to you..."
Nanami interrupted him by pulling out the wedding ring she'd pocketed.
"See this," Nanami said. "The person who owned this ring was infected with some sort psychotic sentient parasite. It killed her soul and used the body to accomplish its ends. Carthy caused that. And this isn't the only thing he had. There's a whole box of these things in his quarters."
Nanami sighed and put the ring back in her pocket.
"My brother was the same," she said. "They steal lives, not just kill people. He deserves more than I could ever do to him. If we let him go, then we would only be ensuring the destruction of others."
"Then you should have killed him simply and swiftly," Kodachi said. "What you did is torture."
"I don't know," Nanami said, frowning in confused thought. "I...I really don't know why I did that. It's just..."
"Let's just get out of here," Ranma said. "This place ain't good for our heads."
Nanami and the two hybrids(no, make that THREE hybrids, Nanami amended) had been making their way along one of the service corridors in the general direction of the hangar bays, deciding their next immediate move when the already demanding alert sirens changed their tone to an even more agonized electric shriek. Even more ominously, the blinking biohazard flashers went solid red.
“We’ve run out of time, I take it.” Kodachi observed, nonchalantly. Impending disaster seemed a way of their new life, it seemed.
“Not good.” Ranma affirmed.
“Oh, that tears it! We have to get OUT of here!” Nanami bit out. THAT particular alarm meant imminent disaster of the highest order, as if loose T-Viruses and mutant xenomorphs weren't bad enough. “No more shopping, folks, we gotta get to the shuttles NOW!”
“Where to?”
“From here, we have to take the next right, the---WHOWWW!!”
The two hybrid-hosts had just picked up Nanami, bags and all, between them and began running with increasing speed down the hall in the indicated direction.
Nanami didn’t know how long the ride lasted; of recent she’d been having entirely too many headlong flights of stark-raving terror and telescoped time to be happy with the experience. What she would later recall would be a marathon run through hell. She barely had time to recognize features in the halls streaming by and begin to shout directions before her two companions made the necessary turns, stopping where they had to to allow Nanami to slide her purloined passcode through the security doors, and get them through. The whole business had been in flickering lighting and the lurid red of the emergency backups; neither the lack of light nor the change in spectrum seemed to bother the hybrids, however, Nanami included, as she found her eyes instantly adjusting.
And the all the whole she could feel the chittering evil gathering around them, responding to their movements.
Not that they weren’t alone in their dash. No, a run through hell had to encounter some of the denizens. They’d run, leaped, and skittered over bodies in the halls, slumped where the virus or worse had claimed them. Those that did move did so in ways that instantly announced their presence as the newly unliving. Nanami supposed some of them were coworkers, colleagues, perhaps even a few innocents like herself duped into working here, but she couldn’t be bothered to shed a tear at this time; survival had its own priorities.
In any event, the three had simply smashed, slashed, and bludgeoned their way through the shambling dead, or Ranma and Kodachi had simply leapt over and past them (Nanami had the terrifying impression of flipping and bouncing off the walls and ceiling). They’d paused only long enough to grab a weapon or two from the floor where they could; the three had quickly found replacements for the acid-exploded weapons Nanami had been forced to abandon back at Carthy’s apartment.
Oh, and there at been at least one drone, leaping hissing and clawing from some side corridor.
There had been no hesitation this time; the three had simply slashed and blasted the bugs, careful to get clear of the splashing acid blood this time.
That was the other frightening part of their journey. What had started out as an awkward three-legged race of a run, Nanami being borne between the two clone-hosts, had, by the time they reached the doors to the hangar gallery, become a well-oiled machine, each member-part reacting to the others near instantaneously. Nanami supposed it MIGHT be bonding under pressure, but she suspected it might be more.
“Okay, folks, let’s hope we still have a ride out of here!” She reached for the door inside-
Only to have to fight it as suction tried to pull the hatch closed. The Repository world had a lower atmospheric pressure than terrestrial normal; that meant there had to be an environmental breach.
Well, no avoiding that; they still had to get at what was inside the bay, if only to find out if they had a chance of getting out of here. The three forced the door open and were practically pulled inside by the air pressure.
Curiously enough, Nanami didn’t hear her ears pop. Another benefit of her new mutation, the scientist in her still clinically observed; after all, the bugs had shown a nasty ability to survive lower atmospheric pressures and even vacuum.
She shouldn’t have worried; the bay still had a half-dozen small craft clustered inside it. If anybody had left already, there were no signs of it.
“Which one?” Ranma shouted in the thinning air inside the bay.
“Uhm...THAT one!” Nanami pointed at the closest craft, a big-engined job that might be a courier; Nanami knew biologics better than she did hardware, but the thing looked fast and more importantly it looked fueled and ready, parked nearest both the way they’d come in and to the open hangar doors. “Let’s GO!”
They sensed the encroaching presences before they saw their movement.
“Oh *shit*. Don’t you guys EVER give up?” Nanami groaned as a small pack of snarling, toothsome black shapes emerged from the shadows, encircling the three. The small hive had converged on the aberrations, and had come to exterminate the competition. ”I really REALLY hate bugs!”
“We’ll take care of these! You get the ship ready to go!” Ranma’s actions might be considered rather trusting, but he also knew he no idea of how to fly one of those spaceships. He DID know combat, however.
He and Kodachi leapt at the oncoming drones, their past fear of them forgotten in the moment.
Not wasting a moment, Nanami practically flew up the gantry way and went for the ship’s hatch, reaching for the opening mechanism. Lift, turn, and in.
At least in theory.
“What the HELL?! LOCKED?!” Of all the indignities; come all this way only to find their escape blocked by a stupid door loc-
Wait. Nanami glanced at the door insignia. EXEC DIRECTOR: D. CARTHY---AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY.
Oh, it figured. Who ELSE would have the best parking spot in the whole facility? Nanami grabbed for the passcard that was quickly becoming their Key to Heaven, and punched it in the hatch reader, hoping that Carthy wasn’t so paranoid that he would require a password or retinal scan. She could hear the snarling battle and sense the approaching appetites converging on her.
Nanami spun around just in time and fired off a burst with her carbine, spraying bug shell and guts across the gantry way, then turned back to the door.
Carthy hadn’t required a password or anything elaborate. Overconfident and stupid, fortunately. The hatch slid open, light pouring out from inside the awaiting ship.
“OKAY, PEOPLE! WE’RE SAILING -NOW-!” Nanami screamed into the bay. She backed into the hatch, periodically firing bursts at anything that that didn’t look or feel friendly.
Just as she got inside, a ball of limbs, chitin, and tails threw itself inside. Nanami almost put a burst into it before she recognized her new companions.
“BEHIND US!” The shout was both physical and mental. Nanami didn’t need a second one before she let off a sustained burst and a grenade for good measure out the open door. A scream of alien pain and death accompanied the subsequent explosion.
Nanami hit the emergency door release, slamming it closed.
She turned to find the two clones on the deck, a little the worse for wear, their scavenged guard uniforms torn and ripped, their ‘morphed armored skin looking cracked, scuffed, and in places bitten through, but healing before her eyes. They were panting heavily, but otherwise looked okay.
Then there came the sound of something hitting the door behind her and scratching at it. Persistent damn things.
“That will hold them, but not for long!” Nanami yelled as she hauled for the cockpit on the ship.
It wasn’t a big ship, and she found the cockpit readily enough. It was empty; looked like nobody else had thought to steal the director’s ride. The biochemist threw herself into a seat in front of the heavily instrumented console, reaching for the seat belts, then paused.
She’d had some basic instruction in shuttle piloting from her ex-boyfriend back in the day, but she knew biochemistry more than she knew hardware. Unfortunately, she lacked her ex’s particular talent for bonding with machinery, this looked more like the setup for a small STARSHIP. How the hell was she going to make sense of all this in time?
As if to punctuate that thought, Nanami heard scrambling at the windows in front of her. Sure enough, she could see a black shape on the other side of the heavy thermo-armor glass cockpit glazing. Great, those things never seemed to give up, and they had a nasty habit of getting in where they shouldn’t.
HELLO, DIRECTOR. WELCOME ABOARD.
Nanami whirled at the mechanical female voice in the cockpit.
I AM FULLY READY FOR LAUNCH. I DETECT A DECLARED LEVEL-ONE EMERGENCY IN HANGAR BAY ONE. WILL YOU BE AWAITING FURTHER PASSENGERS OR EVACUATING IMMEDIATELY?
Nanami stared at the lit console, before seeing the flashing plasma screen and its icon. CYBERDYNE SHIPBOARD AI ENGAGED.
Oh, bless Carthy’s paranoia and stupidity, but not the man himself! Of COURSE the slime wouldn’t trust his safety to a pilot who might be late or turn out to be unreliable! Of COURSE he’d pump some of his blood money sunk in his personal yacht, because this was surely what the ship was, into a state-of-the-art autopilot Artificial Intelligence. And God bless that it was dumb enough not to recognize that Carthy WASN’T aboard!
“Evacuating immediately!” Nanami practically shouted at the machine, hoping that it had a vocal interface, and NOT a voice recognition system.
COMMAND ACCEPTED. AWAIT EVACUATION ORDER, TAXI CLEAR OF HANGAR BEFORE ENGAGING EMERGENCY LIFT, OR EMERGENCY TAKEOFF?
“EMERGENCY TAKEOFF!”
DAMAGE MAY BE INCURRED TO HANGAR FACIL-
The scratching at the cockpit glass was getting louder. “DAMN THE HANGAR! GET US THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
COMPLYING. ENGAGING EMERGENCY TAKEOFF PROTOCOLS IN 5, 4, 3,
”People, you might want to brace yourse-”
SHHHHHHHHHRRROOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
The ship’s engines lit to life with a roar like the Devil getting a rectal exam and a kick like God kicking a field goal up aforementioned Devil’s posterior.
Which is almost exactly what happened. The ship lifted and threw itself across the bay, ploughing aside what flimsy gantry works still remained attached. Nanami had a brief impression of claws sliding off the glass, malign presences falling behind, and flames shooting past the edges of her view as the ship threaded through the open hangar bay doors into the wane daylight of the outside. Then a second kick as the ship clawed for the sky ceiling, boosting upward to clear whatever emergency the computers had detected. The horizon dropped with a speed that made even Nanami’s hybridized guts rebel.
Nanami Jinnai didn’t care. It all felt like away to her, like the sensation of being carried off on angel’s wings. She was OUT of that place.
She sat up in the seat and let the automatics take over as the ship arced into the upper atmosphere. A moment later she felt, as much as heard, her two companions crowd into the cockpit behind her, heard their murmurs of interest as they looked at the unfamiliar(and rapidly darkening) sky as the spacecraft soared for orbit.
The late Farren had done his work well. More than a meltdown, the powerplant’s catastrophic failure truly was more on the order of an explosion, as the miniature sun of nuclear fusion finally slipped its manmade bonds. Magnetic containment barriers dropped away, their physical elements the first victims of the expanding plasma as magnetic conduits melted into vapor. Insulation and heat-exchanger walls were next, peeled away and incinerated. Radiation shielding offered no more protection as the plasma storm hit its stride. In less than a second, the reactor core has been laid bare, the light of an uncontrolled fusion reaction shining in all its awful glory upon the complex proper. A bright light that is the last any living being still able to see and comprehend in the necropolis will ever perceive.
Within moments the radiation wave slices through the complex, followed hotly by the shock wave. Organic tissues scorch and evaporate under the impact of the first, more durable structures shatter and vaporize under the arrival of the second. Acres of research complex, hundreds of life forms and un-lifeforms become light. The hell that is unleashed is in its way cleaner than the sterile Abbadon of the laboratories that it destroys; a cleansing final fire that scours away Umbrella Corp's manmade abomination.
A fireball of white incandescence heaves up from the surface of the planet, casting its fearsome light across the desolate landscape. It is an announcement that the planet now truly is dead.
Ranma and Kodachi watched out the viewport, momentarily entranced by the lightshow that was destroying what had to been to them both the birthplace and the abattoir of hundreds of prior incarnations of themselves. A fitting pyre to those who had gone before.
Nanami spared a moment to watch as she oversaw the flight of the escape ship away from her former employment place. She’d already discerned enough to know the ship was functioning without any problems, and had already figured that the ship was fitted with a late-model Weyland-Rockwell tachyon shunt. She had no doubt Carthy had the ship’s AI programmed to handle hyperspace jumps on command, too, so getting out of the system and not just out of the atmosphere wasn’t a problem.
That matter out of the way, she allowed herself to relax and watch the fireball rising into the stratosphere. Fireworks to end a day like today just seemed so appropriate.
“Good riddance.” she allowed as she watched the Repository burn away in nuclear fire. She hoped and wanted that EVERY facility of her former employer should go out like that.
She fished in her pockets and the bag she had managed to still have with her, looking at the collection of discs, cubes, and sample cases inside. With THAT evidence, she just might have the opportunity.
Silently ghosting above a (now) lifeless world, the commandeered ship orbited. Nanami Jinnai had instructed the ship’s autopilot to take a course that could make a few slow, ever-widening, orbits, spiraling out-system. That gave her the opportunity to watch as they made several repeat passes over the Repository’s site, just to make sure it was well and thoroughly gone.
The nuclear mushroom cloud had slowly dissipated, but not before apparently igniting the layer of thin subsurface methane and oxygen permafrost that the complex had cracked for their own environmental needs. Now the former site of Umbrella Corps’ frankenfactory was the center of an expanding ring of spreading fire, shrouding an increasing portion of the planet in ashy smog.
Nanami wondered how far around the planet the conflagration would spread before it suffocated itself.
Nanami sighed and slumped into the back parts of the ship. The computer could handle things well enough on its own; right now she had other things to attend to. Fresh clothes(she wanted to replace the second shirt she’d lost today to acid), a shower(god, but she wanted to try to get CLEAN!), quality sack time(preferably without nightmares)-
She opened the hatch to the rear rooms to reveal, as her new senses were telling her, her new companions starting to twine around each other.
Sex. Her hindbrain reminded her of another priority.
Ranma and Kodachi started at the interruption, even though surely their own connection and told them of Nanami’s approach. Reluctantly they broke their embrace(though their hands still remained clasped and their tails remained wrapped around each other), and looked at her.
Ah, young hybrids in love. Nanami thought, feeling the waves of desire wafting off the two.
“What now?” Kodachi asked the question, her features softening and becoming more human from the armored dark-skinned form she and Ranma had previously been battling in. Nanami couldn’t tell if it was a deliberate act or an instinctual powering-down.
Well, we have hot victory sex, Nanami thought, her hands starting to reach to tear off what remained of her bullet- and acid-ruined shirt, before shaking her head. Damn it, she was a biologist! She knew all about pheromones! Strength of character, strength of character! Get your mind back on target!
“Thanks,” She replied to the two others’ chemical invitation, “ but I’ll settle for a cold -Hold on.” Yes! There it was! That unmistakable scent! Enhanced senses, don’t mislead me!
With newly acquired predatory instincts, Nanami stalked her prey and homed in on it. Picking up on what she was after, Ranma and Kodachi trailed after the hunter, following her lead. Once she was certain she had it cornered, she pounced!
“Ah-ha! KNEW it had to be here!” Nanami’s hand streaked out and grabbed the refrigerator door, yanking it open, and basking in the heavenly light beaming from within. “Executive transport. Figured the bigwigs HAD to have some good eats tucked away on it somewhere! Wow! Bottled beer! Not canned! Auslander Golden Brau!” Nanami flourished her kill in triumph for all to see.
Savoring the moment and the brand, but not caring about the niceties of civilized drinking, Nanami eschewed searching for a bottle opener and simply bit the cap off, trusting in her mutant teeth to get the job done.
(CHOMP*Pfstumpfr!*ptui!) “Cheers.” She toasted.
Ah! Alcoholic bliss!
Ranma’s stomach gave a gurgling roar as he breathed in the aromas wafting from the food locker, and stared into it like a pilgrim gazing on the Promised Land. Kodachi caught it too and licked her lips. Sex could wait; mutant metabolism hadn’t been fed in nearly a whole day, perhaps longer. The spike of hunger through their shared network was intense, to say the least.
“Be my guests.” Nanami graciously allowed and stepped aside as the rest of her pack moved in and started to thoroughly ransack the late Damon Carthy’s icebox. Ranma was quickly happily devouring a whole rack of ribs, either not noticing or not caring that he had also eaten the bones in it as well. Kodachi, rather more cultured, demolished an entire wheel of Brie, before moving on to assault a selection of cold cuts. Nanami risked losing a hand and rescued a shank of meat from the feeding frenzy, alternating her drinking and eating.
Once the sounds of stone age slobbering and gobbling had died down somewhat inside the galley of the starship, the three took a breather, their hunger(for food at least) satisfied, their bellies full, and some of the excitement of the day bled away. Nanami looked down at her visibly distended stomach, and gave a ladylike belch.
Maybe we should worry about rationing if this is a typical feed for metabolisms like ours. Check in on that later. She made a note to herself.
“Before we get on to other things, or whatever you were planning on doing, we gotta decide what to do next.”
“You promised you’d tell us what was done to us.” Ranma reminded. “We got the time now. Start talking.”
“Well, seeing as we aren’t in mortal fear for our lives right now, I could. Where to begin?”
“From the start.” Kodachi interjected.
“Wow girl...that could take a while.”
“We aren’t going anywhere.”
For the next hour or so, punctuated by the replacement of a fresh bottle of beer(Nanami discovered that the downside of a mutant metabolism was a quickly killed alcoholic buzz) or stop to murder another Dagwood snack, Nanami filled Ranma and Kodachi in on the highlights of what had transpired, roughly, in the last four hundred years or so since they’d originally died.
Human advancement, overcrowded Earth, expansion into space, the invention of star drives, the resulting diaspora, the rise and fall of corporate states and their colonial empires, the reciprocal fall and rise of nationalist movements, discovery of alien life, the discovery that it never was friendly, border wars, brush wars, corporate wars, xeno wars.
The Bugs; xenomorphs, Aliens; the fatal infatuation that Humanity seemed to have with the organic killing machines, the theories that they were either an naturally evolved ‘super predator’ or deliberately engineered destroyers of life.
“’Cockroaches of space’, I call ‘em! Every time we think we’ve killed them for good, some blockhead figures he can make a profit off them, by taming them or trying to get something out of them, finds a way to bring them back, and then loses control of them! Oh, the authorities come in and burn them out, but not before a lot of people get killed in the process, not that anybody learns from the incident; some damn fool thinks he can do a better job of containing the Bugs and it all starts all over again! Of course, it doesn’t help that the Hunters keep spreading the damn things!”
“The Hunters?” Ranma asked, already having suspicions.
“The Yautja. We also call them Predators.” Nanami emphasized the ‘P’ in her pronunciation, “They’re big into proving themselves top of their evolution by hunting anything anything else. They seem to like stocking worlds with the Bugs for the challenge.”
“Ah.” Ranma and Kodachi remembered the solitary being they’d encountered in the halls of the Repository. They also recalled, with a chill, their first encounter with the ‘Bugs’.
Nanami caught the shiver. “Yeah, they were on Earth, doing their thing, before we began expanding out into space. That’s where yo- your original selves- likely got infected with the Bugs. The original yous died in the encounter, the government at the time hushed up the incident and buried the evidence, but kept the records, and cell samples. Century or so later, we encounter the Bugs when they ate a freighter crew and a colony of ours, we run into the Hunters, and some corporate slimebag remembers hearing rumors about encounters with monsters way back when, starts digging, and finds the old files.”
Ranma and Kodachi grew noticeably tense; the history was hitting close to home now.
Nanami continued on, “The Bugs do more than just incubate in their hosts; there’s an exchange of genetic material- the Bugs get DNA to help them adapt to their new surroundings and prey, but the host also gets changed. Not that it does them any good, though, because the Bugs invariably kill their hosts hatching out. From what I heard, Carthy and his scumbags would take your genes out of storage, tamper with them to get some desired change, clone you up, remove the incubating drones formed from the DNA passed to you in the original infection, see what the result of the changes to both the new drones and the cloned you was, then dispose of the clones.” Nanami shuddered. She’d been kept away from the cloning end of things and had been sequestered away to work on pure Bug biology, being told only that the Bugs were obtained from ‘cloned Human tissue cultures’, but she’d heard stories through what passed for an in-shop grapevine.
“So, we’re part...them.” Kodachi said distastefully.
“And so am I. Ironic, no? I went into science to study ways to kill the Bugs, and now I’m part Bug myself. But you and I are also part a lot of other things too; the Company was testing a lot of other things as well and they thought they’d mix them up a bit to see what happened. Whatever part of Bug is in us, it’s a small part in among a lot of other things, including very human consciousness, that has to count for SOMETHING.” Nanami emphasized they were all in the same boat.
“All I know is that I feel human, I know who I am, and I know who Kodachi is, and what she is to me.” Ranma declared, earning a look of affection from the hybrid girl. “And you’re human too.” He finished, looking at Nanami.
“Well, thanks.” Nanami saluted him with her beer bottle before taking another swig.
Kodachi still looked uncomfortable. “Do you suppose any others of those Bugs may have survived? I-I felt them before, but I am uncertain about some of the things I’ve been feeling since, since we ‘awoke’.”
Ranma nodded. “You seem to know more about them than we do, and maybe sense them. I can tell.”
“I don’t feel anything now, aside from you two. Then again, I couldn’t sense you before, but that was before I got my genetic makeover, and the other parts they grafted into you must have been masking you from my Talent. Then afterwards I could sense the Bugs a whole lot clearer. No, the ones outside the ship I could feel falling off, and then I felt them die in the backblast from the engines.” Lord, but frying Bug feels glorious!
“Nanami-sama, do you think anybody else made it out alive?”
“I don’t know if there are any other survivors. There was more than just the shuttles down there; there were escape pods as well. It’s also possible that the facility had an emergency beacon, some way to let the Corporation know something had happened to their little shop of horrors. They might send somebody out to investigate; if so, we don’t wanna run into them, or we’ll be back to square one.
We could run straight to the authorities, but which ones? The corpostates might not have the power they used to, but they’re still pretty damn influential. We turn to the wrong authorities, we could find ourselves stonewalled, turned over to the corporates anyways, and set up for vivisection.”
“No thanks.” Ranma flatly refused.
“Amen to that. Likewise, I don’t want to give up our little secret just yet and reveal the three of us ain’t exactly human anymo--”
“Please, Nanami-san, I feel human and I will not be regarded as a ‘freak’.” Kodachi reminded her.
“BIOLOGICALLY human,” Nanami corrected, forging on; “People just won’t understand. It’s a hostile universe after all, and people can get pretty xenophobic. That could easily be turned against us if it came down to a matter of credibility.”
“So, we don’t go to the cops directly.” Ranma nodded. He had enough memories of evading the local authorities while training with his father, and of the absence of the law in Nerima to have no great loyalty to the idea of trusting the police or government. “What other options?” “I suspect, Nanami-sama, it would be suicidal to take on the company you worked for directly. So, what other options?”
“Damn straight it would be suicide. As for other courses? We can head for a colony where we can blend in, and where I can try to find a way to leak the information we got to somebody I can trust.”
“You know of such people who can be trusted?”
“I have a few ideas. At least one, though he may be a little difficult to get ahold of. He’s in a rather similar situation to ourselves.”
“He’s an alien hybrid clone?”
“Ha-ha! No, he’s on the run.”
“Why can’t we head for Earth?”
“Thinking of getting back to the old ancestral homestead? No, Ranma, that’s not a good idea. I doubt you’d recognize your old stomping grounds. Also, since some clusterscrew almost infected Earth with the Bugs a few years back, the authorities have been VERY intense about about any incoming traffic. The corporates are still pretty thick around Old Earth, and they tend to get antsy about their own security. No, until we’re sure we’re not going to get wasted by Traffic Control or a corporate ambush, running for Earth is not an option---Damn, I’m starting to sound like Makato! I mean, I just used to WORK for a corporation, and now I’m talking like one of his radicals! That’s it, I need sleep!”
“So, we going someplace, or just drifting around more?” Ranma prompted.
“We set course for a colony world. Someplace we can tap into the public news nets and get some idea of whether there’s any fallout from today. I’ve been out of touch with the rest of the human universe too long in that place getting the mushroom treatment I don’t know for certain what’s going on. Once we do, I’ll have a better idea how we should proceed. I really want to get what evidence we have, and the T-Virus vaccine, to somebody who can use them to do some serious hurt to Umbrella and anybody else they were working with.”
“Great. Well, it’s better than nothing, and I could do with some peace and quiet for now. So this ship just flies itself and we wait?” Ranma sighed as he leaned back. Nanami noted that at some point his skin had reverted to a softer, more human tone and color, his tail had retracted, and his eyes had shifted from black to a startling blue. Again, she wondered if it was deliberate for her benefit or an instinctual shifting from a heightened alert state.
“ You can wait, entertain yourselves, or study what passes for a library on this ship, and try to learn more about this screwed-up world you’re both stuck in. I suspect, though, Carthy’s tastes in reading material probably run to blackmail-drama and snuff-porn. Me? I’m going to find the shower on this thing and try to scrape what’s left of that hellhole off me, then I’m going to find out what sort of beds corporates sleep on between the stars.”
A command is given, an option selected, and an action executed. Sensors check and cross-check recorded charts and points of reference. Processing algorithms are brought up, data fed in, additional factors as relative motion, stellar drift, and available power are fed in. Millions of digital calculations culminate in a conclusion. The solution is checked and rechecked, and no significant deviations detected. The computer equivalent of satisfaction with the results is registered, and power is allowed to flow to the appropriate systems. A virtual mass field springs into existence, expands, reaches supercritical levels nearing infinity, and normal material mass transits into a tachyonic mirror-state. Unable to travel SLOWER than the speed of light in this state, the generating mass, a starship, vanishes from the realm of the merely material.
Nanami feels the tingle of tachyon transition as she stands under the shower in the living quarters, luxuriating in the feel of hot water and the sloughing off of the last particles of her former workplace from her skin. No big deal for her, this hyperspace travel; she’s done it dozens of times before, whether awake or in hibersleep.
Others aboard the ship feel the tingle in their skin and bones and wonder at the novel feeling. Ranma and Kodachi turn to each other in wonder, see each other limned in the ghost light filtering in from the outside windows, see the gleam in each others’ eyes. As one they move towards each other.
Nanami feels it first under the heat of the hot water cascading over her head and shoulders as a warmth coming up from her LOWER body.
Their lips meet, hands clasp, bodies touch. Each breathes in the scent of the other, breathes deep of the desire there, and obligingly respond to their partner’s growing need.
Nanami’s thighs begin rubbing together, her hands finding a sudden fascination with unexpectedly sensitive skin, touching here, playing there, teasing that.
Clothes closures are rapidly torn open, clothing pulled off, as the two sink to the floor, their tongues dancing in a lovers’ kiss.
Nanami suddenly becomes aware of what’s going on as she feels the flush of pleasure fill her entire being. A different sense of danger tingles in her brain as she realizes the source of her arousal. “Ah, people?!”
Legs wrap around each other, rubbing, pushing, positioning. Hands move along exposed flesh, touching, massaging, stimulating. Sensations rise, shared in their mutual bond, feeding back and amplifying as the two give and receive pleasure to each other, and incidentally feed their shared feelings through the third link in their mental network.
“---eep---!”
Kodachi breaks their kiss long enough to glance down and smile wide-eyed in approval at Ranma’s growing arousal. The ‘Wild Horse’ is well-named indeed.
“---Please stop!” The call is weak, strained, quavering, and ignored.
Ranma looks at Kodachi, her bright eyes and her pouting lips framed by her wild black hair, truly a Black Rose in full blush. Her open invitation is all he needs.
“pleasepleasepleasedon’tdothistome.” Hands scrabble at the walls of the shower stall, find no purchase, slip, and fall.
Two bodies move together in concert, an ancient rhythm of life taking hold.
“Oooolllllllhhhhhhhh!”
Two lovers lay wrapped around each other under the flickering ghost-light of tachyon-space, basking in their shared contentment.
It matters not whether it is alien reproductive urges, post-stress hyperstimulation, or centuries-repressed teenage hormones at work, centuries and billions of miles away from Nerima, a chase has ended, a connection made, and a union consummated.
“Now I know I am dead, for I am clearly in Heaven.” Kodachi murmurs as she looks into Ranma’s eyes.
“Oh, I dunno. I’m feeling VERY alive right now, and glad of it!” Ranma smiles as he settles his arm around Kodachi’s shoulders and draws her closer.
In the shower a thoroughly demolished Nanami sprawls on her back on the floor of the stall, water still pouring over her, as she pants in the afterglow.
“-We are -definitely- having a talk about this sort of thing later.” She mutters weakly, before passing out.
“Sir.” There was no need for exchanged pleasantries; the operative knew why they’d been summoned. Only the specifics needed to be explained.
The operative’s summoner therefore got to the point.
“Five days ago one of our outworld facilities had an as yet unknown incident that tripped its watch-bouy, causing it to send a notification signal to our offices. Subsequent attempts to contact the facility through secure channels have failed to elicit a response.
At about the same time, the watch-buoy detected a tachyon-shunt activation. The drive was transponder-keyed to a ship registered to the facility’s director, Doctor Damon Carthy. He was not authorized to travel anywhere at this time, nor has he since reported to the required location and Company officers to explain the circumstances could have caused the watch-buoy’s activation. In fact, he would appear to have disappeared.
This disturbs the Board. Doctor Carthy’s work is of an important nature, dealing in matters sensitive to Company interests. His sudden departure from the facility and his breach of established protocol are matters of great concern.
Therefore, you are to travel to the site, investigate the reasons for its uncommunicative status, ascertain Doctor Carthy’s whereabouts, and the reasons for his deviation from policy.
You are then authorized to terminate Doctor Carthy, any other personnel at the facility, and any other parties you deem necessary to protect Company interests.”
“I understand perfectly, sir.”
“Good. The details have already been downloaded to your personal access file, as have requisition codes for what assets will be at your disposal for this task.”
There is no need for a dismissal; the operative did not need one. What was necessary to be said, had been said. The operative did not question, only followed orders, and accomplished them. That was all that was required.