The ExMortis, Chapters 1-10

[Corsair]

CHAPTER FOUR - EPIDEMIC
The bridge was a hellhole of noise and smoke. A barricade had been erected as far away from the door as possible, and the eight officers bunkered behind it alternated firing shifts, before crouching to reload. They carried full-length beam rifles that fired three lasers clustered in a triangle. When they impacted the approaching crew the lasers burned holes through their bodies; only shots to the spine or brain dropped them for good. Corpses were piled the door and strewn across the ground.

Suddenly, the onslaught stopped. The rabid crewmen retreated from the bridge, dragging some of their dead along with them. The Order officers got a brief moment of rest to eject their rifle's batteries and place new ones into the chamber. They heard heavy footsteps approaching, and got back into position.

The crew began staggering back into the bridge, some heavily laden with the corpses of their fallen. They walked at the front of the line, absorbing two or three shots before falling. Before their bodies hit the ground, the person behind them caught them and carried them as a similar shield. Panic began to set in as the officers realized that their targets were not being pushed back, no matter how many they shot down. They crashed into the barricade and hurled bodies over it. The officers realized too late that some of these bodies were still moving. Their screams were cut off as their throats were bitten and torn.
Opal Donnafrey sprinted down the corridors, her clothes soaked with blood. She carried a close-combat knife that had obviously seen recent use. The escape pods were just a level lower. If she could get to an elevator..

The elevator was being guarded by two of her former co-workers. One spotted her and turned towards her but did not move. It was waiting for her to get closer. She didn't give it the chance to grab her as she reared back her arm and hurled the knife. It whistled through the air and buried itself up to the hilt in the creature's forehead. It fell back and crashed on the floor, never screaming or groaning. Its leg convulsed once and then lay still.
The other guard looked down at the corpse, and started to bend over to grab the knife. Opal took the chance to dash forward, leap up and kick down. The crewman lost its balance and toppled over. It tried to grab at her leg as she sailed past, but she was already inside the elevator and heading down.
Opal drew her last knife from its sheath on her belt. Her shoulder length hair had been pulled, cut, burned and chewed on today, but a pink hairtie still clasped several strands of the unfortunate do together on the right side of her head. The doors opened on the the level that contained the escape pods. Two more elevator guards turned towards her, but she dove forward, rolling under their hands and resuming her sprint down the halls.

She had been another security guard, but every time she found another group of people they were picked off. She eventually broke off to travel alone. Transmission from HQ and the bridge had ceased; the escape pods were her last hope. Another crewman stood in her way. By now she was getting to be tired, but had enough energy to slip in close and stab the man in its temple before dancing out of range of its thrashing arms. Opal turned to see a row of six doors on each side of the hallway. Each of those twelve rectangular rooms held twelve escape pods, each pod holding up for four people. She strode down the hall, frantically checking the display panels next to each door.

ROOM ONE POD STATUS:
Pod # 1: JETTISONED
Pod # 2: JETTISONED
Pod # 3: JETTISONED
Pod # 4: JETTISONED
Pod # 5: JETTISONED
Pod # 6: JETTISONED
Pod # 7: JETTISONED
Pod # 8: JETTISONED
Pod # 9: JETTISONED
Pod # 10: JETTISONED
Pod # 11: JETTISONED
Pod # 12: JETTISONED

She moved on to the next room: it was the same there. All pods jettisoned. Panic welled up inside of her as she moved down eleven doors. Finally, the twelfth room, she saw something that filled her with joy.

ROOM TWELVE POD STATUS:
Pod # 144: READY, EMPTY

She opened the door and stepped into the room. It was dark, lit only by emergency red lights. Pod 144 was in the far right corner. She palmed open the door and threw herself in. It was dark, and she fumbled around above her to grab the harness and pull it down over her shoulders. When it latched securely, she tried to slam the red button on the wall to jettison the pod. Her hand was grabbed halfway through its journey. She saw a pair of eyes glistening wetly in the gloom. Opal went for her knife with her free hand, but not before she felt a sharp pain in her arm, teeth sinking into her flesh until they struck bone. The person biting her then took their mouth off of Opal's arm and sat back to watch. Opal's arm began to numb, the sensation spreading out from the bite zone. As it reached her shoulder, her entire arm flopped down uselessly. The numbness slowed as it reach her chest, but spread in all directions at once. When it hit her heart, stabbing pains shot across her body. She gasped and strained at the harness but the pain was short-lived. Opal died, her body sagging to the floor.

The other figure stepped out of the escape pod, a wide and gaping wound on the center of her chest. Her spinal column had been replaced with what looked like a metal pole, and the flesh around it was in the process of fixing itself. As the creature stepped into the well-lit hallway, she was recognizable as Maryn. Her eyes were bloodshot but aware, moving to and fro in a frenzied search for something else to spread herself to. She continued stalking the halls as a loud tearing noise came from the escape pod. Opal hurled the twisted remains of the harness out of the pod before staggering out into the hall, following a silent command to hunt for more hosts.

CHAPTER FIVE - OVERMIND

Maryn felt a burning in her body, a raging fire that coursed through her blood and sought to escape, to spread to others yet untouched by it. Her head felt heavy and tired but ghosts of thought still floated in her mind. They made sense of the random instincts that commanded her body.

'Take the body and mend the mind'
'Create order from the destruction'

And other such phrases. Maryn was slowly being able to understand them, to think clearly. But for now her body moved mostly of its own accord. It was taking her up, to where Daniel and Jackie had died. Her movements were heavy, each footstep slamming down onto the ground like a cinderblock. But her slow tread finally carried her to the corpses. Their brainmatter was blown all over the walls. She grabbed hold of a few crewmen who were milling about aimlessly, and gestured with her whole arm at the gorey mess. They worked together to haul the corpses and as much brainmatter as they could scoop into the central power core on the same level. Maryn's body warmed as they got closer to the large reactor.

She pulled some of the nearby chairs apart, getting as many straight poles of metal as possible before lifting the headless corpse of Daniel up and pushing it against the warm metal blast shield surrounding the reactor. She drove the metal spikes into the corpse's shoulders and waist, pinning it to the shield. Jackie's corpse was held upside down and then pushed to the wall above Daniel, so their their headless stumps touched before Maryn pinned her. She stepped back to admire her work. Both bodies were splayed spread-eagle on the blast shield, staked to the it with very temporary restraints. The combined brainmatter was packed into the cavity formed by their empty skulls. It slopped around and tried to escape its new container, but Maryn was eventually able to arrange it so that it all stayed within its container.

Maryn brought her hand to her mouth and bit down on the flesh of her palm, and then cupping her hand towards the ceiling to watch the blood pooling in it. When it was full, she splashed the blood over the brainmatter. She refilled her hand, then splashed again. She did this three more times before her hand stopped bleeding and the corpses were splattered in her blood. As a final measure, she drew a vial of Cardamine from her pouch and sprayed it into the brainmatter. She then stood back and watched.

The blood seeped its way into the open wounds on the corpses. Inside were millions of viruses, each connected to a nanobot. As the nanobots entered Daniel and Jackie's bodies, they began to disassemble their internal organs. Meanwhile, the viruses in the brain were reacting very differently. The abundance of Cardamine was devoured by the nanobots, who processed it and allowed the viruses to consume it in its raw form. Many viruses were overwhlemed by the complexity of the molecules and died out. But the ones that survived rapidly began to control the drug, using it to augment the virus' own DNA. The resulting leap in genetic complexity created a frenzy of rapid evolution, the virus consuming as much Cardamine as possible and the ones who survived were further strengthened.

In minutes, billions of the viruses had died off. Their corpses were cannibalized by the survivors, allowing even more injections of Cardamine. It was absolute biological chaos. The number of surviving viruses halved each second. It ultimately came down to two viruses, each now bloated and overfull with Cardamine and the corpses of their kin. They sent out chemical signals to locate each other and upon seeing the large amount of Cardamine the other possessed.. called a truce. The nanobots wove hormones at rapidfire speeds, communicating with each other on behalf of their controlling virus. Instead of fighting each other for the last scrap of Cardamine, the viruses drew close to one another and exchanged a sex pili. The small tubule bridged the two viruses and a gush of information followed. Too much for one receptacle. Dozens of such bridges opened a split second later, and genetic material flowed in both directions as the viruses stopped being separate and instead merged into one.

When the merger was complete, the virus no longer resembled its old self. It was a sphere, the size of a blood cell, and covered in nanobots. They swarmed over its surface delivering the shattered corpses of viruses and their nanobot hosts before departing to hunt down more. The single viral cluster was now hunting down its kin, bringing them back and recycling them. A factory embedded in its surface broke down the nanobots and re-built them with a virus pre-installed, completely integrated with the machine. Another factory took in tissue cells which the viral cluster 'impregnated' with millions of new viruses based off of its own code.

It had reached this point in the span of eight hours. Maryn had been patiently watching and waiting during this time and was beginning to see a visual change in the corpses pinned to the wall. A spongy red mass had begun to form on the brainmatter. It was small now, but was growing at an impressive rate. This mass was the reach of the viral cluster, as wherever its hunter nanoviruses went, they left behind a residue that allowed them to travel faster while snaring bacteria and viruses that might wander in.

The viral cluster spread its influence across the entire brainmatter heap it was living on. The red biomatter had begun to reach Daniel and Jackie's shoulders, and black tendrils were beginning to spread out from the center as the cluster established its own nervous system across its hosts.

The cluster had almost entirely used its cache' of Cardamine. It recognized that it needed more to continue to develop, so it sent a pheromone into the air which Maryn smelled and understood. Since she already had Cardamine in her system when she had been infected, the viruses in her had evolved to a more advanced state than her drooling kin. She turned and stomped away towards the ship's store of Cardamine. The drug was stored in large quantities both for testing and mandatory consumption as some of the crew had been Outcasts.

The supply room was open. Nobody on the Jelkanar ever worried about thefts because thieves would have no motivation or escape. It was a simple task to grab as many canisters of Cardamine as she could carry and leave. There were massive boxes filled with processed and raw Cardamine grass. But for now, she carried a bounty of the drug back to the viral cluster. When she returned, the red biomatter covered half of Daniel and Jackie's body. The black tendrils reached out and branched, sending smaller veins across its surface. It reacted to Maryn's presence by contracting and sending out another pheromone. Obeying its command, the woman drew out a canister of Cardamine and sprayed it on to the viral cluster's core.

The fresh influx of Cardamine was absorbed by the biomatter and pumped through crude cardiovascular systems to the cluster core. The Core had been pulling apart and studying the humans pinned to the wall, and had almost learned how to fully utilize its nervous and cardiovascular system. But then its Cardamine stores ran out and its evolution slowed to 'normal' speed. But with its supplies now filled, the Core resumed deconstruction of Daniel and Jackie, commanding the nanoviruses to build more efficient veins, arteries and pumps as well as nervous tissue to control the flow of fluid. Swarms of metal-clad virus detached form the Core to perform their tasks.
Days passed. The biomatter completely consumed the human wall ornaments and replicated parts of their internal structure. Every day, Maryn gave the Core a fresh injection of Cardamine. By now the red biomatter had spread across the wall, the black tendrils now buried beneath layers of dermal tissue. The brains of Jackie and Daniel had been carefully deconstructed and stored, and the Core was rearranging its own construction to mimic it. Finally, it clicked. Full sentience rushed into the Core, full connection to its nervous system. It came to life.

Currently it followed what could only be described as intelligent instinct. It knew what it was working for in an abstract sense. It wanted to be 'better'. It had tasted the complex life that was humanity, and wanted something similar. It was like a hunger that was slowly being filled with each passing hour. Seven hearts beat within its red mass, pushing fluids and nanoviruses throughout its expanse. It was close, but it needed something more. It recalled the creature that gave it Cardamine injections. That was a complex fleshcreature. It was the best chance the Core had to achieving completion.

Excreting a hormone, the Core beckoned Maryn closer. The woman obeyed, shuffling closer and eventually pressing her face against the red, spongy material that coated the wall. It was moist and gripped her skin, pulling her in deeper. Half of her face sank into the biomatter. She felt the rest of her body be pulled in. Her already naked body was by now caked in blood and grime, all of which was stripped away as she was dragged within its expanse.

Fully engulfed, Maryn could feel the nanoviruses invading her body through every opening in her body. Eyes, mouth, nose, ears, skin pores.. Her body was purged of everything but the Core's own brand of nanovirus. When they reached Maryn's brain and latched on, it was like a beam of light banished all shadows from her mind. Her thoughts were clear and free. As the old viruses that flowed through her body were replaced with modern ones, the specialized viruses attached to her brain recorded everything she thought and felt.

At first, she was astounded by the rush of sentience. Then she was curious about what was happening to her, as she was held immobile and studied. Finally, she accepted that whatever was happening to her was for the best. They had already given her thought and new life, and she would serve whatever power had done it. Satisfied, the nanoviruses detached from her brain and traveled back to the Core. Maryn was pushed out of the biomass and deposited on the floor. She stared at the Core, visible as a bulbous pink ball laced with red and black veins. She grabbed two vials of Cardamine with complete and unfettered dexterity. She sprayed the Core with the first vial and the second she took herself, draining it all in one long breath. She hadn't needed to breathe to this point, and her lungs felt old and groggy.

The rush of Cardamine in her system did much the same thing as it did to the Core. She doubled over, racked with a sudden burst of evolutionary potential. Her body exploded with hormones that the Core sensed and replied to, giving precise instructions for what it needed. It had read the data from Maryn's brain and was now completely aware. Sentient. Alive.



CHAPTER SIX - SYNTHESIS

Maryn received her instructions and immediately began to follow them. Her body writhed as the nanoviruses grabbed hold of a Cardamine molecule, processed it and then began to morph its genetic code to fulfil a specific task. This happened all across her body and it began to physically show. Two nubs grew below her shoulder blades, and her fingers elongated themselves. She was forced to crawl forward to another one of her kin who had been standing around, transfixed by the hormones coming from the Core. She grasped his legs and pulled him to the ground. He offered no resistance as she began tearing into him, eating him. She didn't bother chewing, simply swallowing mouthfuls of flesh and bone. She ate his guts, his limbs, his skull, and left only his brain uneaten. The brain she left on the floor.

She was only able to eat so much because as soon as food went down her esophagus it was pulled apart by nanoviruses and whisked away throughout the body to fuel the transformations that were happening all over her. The nubs on her back elongated and stretched, forming straight skin- covered poles. Her hands and fingers elongated and narrowed until the bones broke through her skin and formed wicked claws. The poles on her back began to bow over her shoulders, eventually bending like skinny handless arms resting on her breasts. Her transformation stalled again and she had to consume another one of her kin, one again cracking open and eating the skull but leaving the brain untouched.

Her body finished its grotesque conversion. The growths on her back finished bulking up, and cruel blades sprouted at the ends. Her legs lengthened, as did her torso. Her hair fell out, and her mouth became filled with razor-sharp teeth. She stood up to fully examine herself.

She now stood nine feet tall. Her legs bent backwards and then came forward again at the knee, ending in a broad hoof. Her arms hung down to her knees, each hand devoid of skin, curved into an evil claw. A second pair of arm-blades sprouted from her back and reached over her shoulders. Her face was gaunt and her mouth was perpetually hung open due to her large teeth. Her skin was leathery and tough, studded with bony spines and plates.

The entire transformation took the better part of a week. Maryn finished looking at herself and approached the Core. She now had to look down at the fleshy mass.

"Purpose?" she rasped.

The Core released a series of pheromones, the first calling for a massive dose of Cardamine and the second for the addition of the uneaten brains. Maryn picked up two vials of Cardamine in each clawed hand and pierced them, spraying the Core with a geyser of the Orange Dream. She then stooped over and gently scooped up the brains, pressing them into the Core's biomatter. They sank into its mass much like she had earlier.

New instructions were being emitted by the Core.

"Carry you.. to crew," she repeated, and used her knife-like fingers to cut off a section of the Core. It shuddered and convulsed as pain wracked it and nerves were severed. Maryn quickly grabbed the piece of biomass and moved into the hallway. Her backwards-oriented legs made each step into a spring-loaded jump. Even an easy trot could be considered a hurdle-jumping move by human standards. Each time she encountered a crewman, she took the piece of the Core's body and swabbed it over their neck. Nanoviruses traveled into their body and completely took it over. It was like upgrading an archaic piece of software to the latest version. Mere minutes after being touched by the Core, the crew ceased their slouching and move much more efficiently. They moved to the quarters they occupied while alive to await further instructions.

It would have taken days for Maryn to re-convert the crew on her own. Instead, she tracked down the other 'Patient Zeroes' who, like her, had been advanced enough due to initial Cardamine exposure to follow basic directions; with the four of them working together, the crew was converted much faster. It took only a day and a half to get all eighteen hundred surviving crew.

Returning to the Core, Maryn was given another command: bring back the 'blue brain'. The minds that the Core had absorbed so far had been so full of information, the Core couldn't process it all. But all shared a common fear: the Blue. Scraps of information regarding the Blue were more plentiful than others, and seemed to suggest that there were several specimens of the Blue on board. The Core wished to examine them. Once again, Maryn jump-walked out into the hallways.

The lighting system that operated the hallways seemed to work better for Maryn's current body than her previous one. She wondered if it was due to the Core's influence and augments. But now they seemed to fill her with a calm, a peace that radiated through her body. Vestiges of her old self remained, but they were not as important as her new identity: She was a loyal servant of the Core, the one given a Voice. She was the Speaker.

Descending the elevator, Maryn traveled to storage once again. She picked up a few more vials of Cardamine and stored them on her body. There was a door on the far side of the storage compartment that read 'HIGH RISK BIOLOGICAL SPECIMENS'. Mist hung around the door as the cold metal met the warm air of the storage room. Maryn approached, but the door did not open, instead a warning message was displayed on the panel next to it: "Unknown biological format detected. Access denied."

Maryn slowly dragged her claws down the metal door, tilting her head slightly. Her claws were made of a hybridization of bone and the starship hull that had been recycled by nanobots during her transformation. She drew back her arm and swung at the door. Her claws pierced through the metal door, and she hissed as she dragged her arm down, slicing swaths through it. She pulled her hand back for a moment then grabbed on to these tears, bending the door open from the inside.

Maryn stepped through the door and was struck by how cold it was. Her already tight-fitting skin clenched tighter. She saw a row of cylinders with identification signs above them. Closest to her said,

"Small specimen remains"

While the rest of the containers said,

"Medium specimen remains"

At the far end of the room was another door. Maryn approached this next portal and saw immediately that she would not be able to rip this door apart. It was a much heavier duty metal. The sign above this door read 'Large specimen'. Maryn decided this was the sample the Core needed. She left the cold storage and wandered the halls until she found equipment storage. It was easy to flay the locker containing the plasma torches and retrieve one, carefully carrying the fuel tank across her elbows, not using her claws.

Back at the reinforced door, Maryn could not find a way to operate the torch without destroying it. She then thought of the Cardamine she carried. She pulled a vial out of her stash and placed it in her mouth. She bit down, chewed and swallowed the entire thing. She gently wrapped her hand around the torch, and closed her eyes, focusing on the tool. The nanoviruses in her body traveled to the bones of her palm and began to burrow through, dragging the torch into her body and then sealing the bone around it. While she had the Cardamine in her body, the torch was fully integrated into her arm. Its nozzle jutted out of the center of her palm. Satisfied with the result, Maryn placed her hand on the door and activated the torch. Plasma spilled forth and began slicing through the metal. The heat from it, combined with the Cardamine still coursing through Maryn's body, tempered the bone-metal hybrid in her arms, further hardening and sharpening them.

The torch was doing its job. Maryn slowly dragged her hand across the door frame, cutting a hole for her to crawl through. Her ghastly face and bristling rows of teeth gleamed blue and white in the blaze. A dark film covered her eyes, protecting them from the harsh light. When her job was complete, she deactivated the torch. Its hose was still connected to the fuel tank, and lacking any other options, Maryn began to consume the torch and tank. The torch in her hand was disassembled first, and Maryn cut the hose with her free hand, placing its end in her mouth as she drank the liquid fuel.

Eventually the pressure in the tank dropped low enough to stop the flow of liquid. Maryn licked her lips as she stood, belly sloshing with flammable liquid fuel. She would have to be very careful to avoid exploding; however, body was still riding the Cardamine high and was already constructing a sac within her body to hold the liquid, providing another pipe leading from it to her mouth. As soon as it attached, Maryn felt a rush of material coming up from her gut. She turned to the wall and belched. A gout of fire exploded from her mouth, singing the wall and creating a rush of steam. She blinked in surprise.

The sac in her belly seemed to be containing the fuel, preventing it from sloshing as she moved through the freshly-sliced door and stared at a glass container. It was filled with a clear gel and at the center of the gel was a blue and black mass. She felt a tingling in the air as she approached the container and cut it open. The gel spilled through the cracks and covered her hands as she reached down and carefully enclosed the Blue in her spider-like hands. She pulled it out from its cage and turned it over gently in her grasp. It was heavy, even with her enhanced strength. It must have weighed close to half a ton. This was what the Core sought, all right.

She carried her package with great care as she departed the storage bay and returned to the elevator. On the way up, she wondered what would happen when the Core consumed the Blue. Something great, she hoped. The doors opened.

The Core's red mass had began to cover the walls of the hallway too, having completely covered the walls and floor of the room it resided in. Maryn brought the Blue towards the Core, and upon reading its pheromones, gingerly offered it. It sank into the Core with a squelching noise. Maryn stood back to wait.

The Core was silent for many days as it picked at the Blue Brain. Maryn occasionally caught whiffs of pheromones as it 'talked' to itself. She spent her time giving the Core regular Cardamine doses and patrolling the halls. The red mass spread to cover the entire floor in time, and had begun to work itself into the ventilation and maintenance shafts. The more space it covered, the further it could distribute pheromones. It had begun to command the other crew on this level, having them perform tasks like opening clogged hatches to allow the biomatter to spread further, or fetch Cardamine doses. But as Maryn was walking a massive spike of pain was driven into her mind. Before she fell to the ground, unconscious, she saw the other workers around her suffering from the same pain, sinking to the floor. Blackness swallowed her vision and thoughts.

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