AMANDA LAY curled in a fetal position in the corner of her cell. She had stopped concentrating on the lock three nights ago, but not because she had given up. She had simply come to the conclusion that if she could save her strength, somehow ferret away a reserve of her energies, the perhaps—just perhaps—she would have enough in store for one small, final attempt at freedom. But the timing would have to be just right.
Last night she heard the sound she had dreaded would come—the crackling, electrical sound of the access door in the room next to hers phasing open. She heard muffled cries, pleading, and a brief struggle. Oh, my God, Henderson, they’re taking Henderson, she had thought to herself. Just a few hours ago, the lights in her cell had dimmed and flickered ominously once again.
You’re next, said the voice within her. She told the voice to shut up. It was the voice of weakness, and she refused to listen. Not while she still drew breath. She had seen her share of hard times, of turmoil and tribulation, but she had persevered through the worst of it. She would find a way out of this, or die trying.
Amanda hugged her arms close and lay in the darkness of the cell, waiting.
THE QUEEN was disappointed.
The slobbering, insensate monstrosity before her was a useless failure. How long would this take? Soon they would run out of subjects, although it would be a small matter to procure more. Still, the lack of progress, the lack of activity, annoyed her. She would much rather be engaged in some desperate battle on foreign soil than babysitting lab rats on this derelict platform.
She reminded herself of the possibilities, of the potential that lay in the experiments.
The metamorphosis had taken only two days in the latest of the experiments—far shorter than the Queen’s own gestation period had been. But, thus far, they had been unable to duplicate the result of her change. The Queen’s situation had been unique, resulting in a being who retained the mental faculties and psychic abilities particular to specific humans, while at the same time inheriting Zerg traits of regeneration and near invulnerability—in short, a perfect creation.
The Queen knew it would be impossible to reconstruct such a magnificent being as she. But if they could just come close….The Zerg had long been fascinated by the human psychic potential, and coveted it; coveted it in the way a land-bound organism might look to a winged creature and covet flight.
So far, all attempts had ended in failure. The human subjects, after the transformation, would awaken brain-dead and invalid—horribly malformed anomalies like the one before her now. Each time, however, adjustments in the formula were made; each time she felt they were getting closer.
The voice of the Cerebrate coursed once more through her mind: Refinements complete. Incompatibility with subjects possessing subordinate gene pattern. Ramifications of gene pattern/formula codependence are currently being assessed.
Interesting, thought the Queen. Perhaps some progress was being made after all.
She scanned the monitor bank, her eyes falling on the monitor displaying the cell of the next candidate. It was the young woman. The girl had hardly moved in the past three days. Perhaps she had given up after all; perhaps she wasn’t as strong as the Queen had thought.
She had telepathically called one of the workers from below. The aberrant creature stepped forth out of the shadows. It was a mutated, almost reptilian being that at one time may have been a human. The worker did not meet the Queen’s penetrating gaze.
“Bring out the young female subject,” she said. “Her time has come.”
THE TUMOR on the kitten’s neck had now grown to three times its original size. The rise and fall of the animal’s rib cage as it breathed was almost indiscernible.
Sarah sat staring at the kitten through bleary eyes. Lieutenant Rumm smiled. Somewhere outside the room, a patient shrieked unintelligibly.
Lieutenant Rumm reached into his pocket, withdrawing a fused clump of metal. He threw the mass onto the table, where it landed with a heavy thud.
“Do you know what this is?”
No answer.
“It used to be a trigger assembly. The trigger assembly to my weapon, to be exact. The possibility of this happening without outside interference—such as a plutonium leak, let’s say—is about a thousand to one. I brought this matter before my superiors, but the trigger mechanism itself wasn’t enough to convince them. They require incontrovertible evidence. And so our game continues.”
The lieutenant began pacing. Sarah thought it was a wonder that he had not yet worn a permanent rut in the floor.
“I am convinced beyond a doubt that ability was the cause of this. You used it to neutralize my weapon, yet refuse to use it on the tumor. Why?”
Silence.
“I have my own theories, of course. I believe you refuse to channel your ability into any thing organic because of what you did to your mother.”
At this Sarah looked up, her eyes suddenly very wide.
“What did she do, child, send you to bed without supper? Chastise you? Yell at you?”
Number 24 looked down slightly.
“Ah, she yelled at you. And so you used your ability to try and make her stop. And what happened next, hmm?”
Tears began to run down the girl’s cheeks.
“Massive cerebral hemorrhaging, as I remember. I spoke to your father, who saw the whole thing happen. He would say only one thing, over and over. Do you know what that one thing was?”
Sarah closed her eyes.
“He said, ‘I saw her head come apart’”
The girl bolted to a standing position, her hands balled into white, tiny fists at her sides, her voice breaking as she screamed: “I’ll never use it on anyone ever again, and you can’t make me! You can’t make me!”
A door on the side of the room opened, and two men dressed in sealed flak armor emerged. They grabbed the girl by her arms and feet and dragged her through the main doorway and down the hall.
Lieutenant Rumm stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his head lowered in thoughtful consideration.
On the table not far away, the little kitten exhaled one final, quavering breath and was still. The lieutenant did not notice.
AMANDA COULD feel the moment drawing near. She told herself not to look when the creature stepped through the doorway. The distraction would be too much. She could not afford to have her focus interrupted. She prayed that whatever dampening field these monstrosities held over her was not wholly unyielding.
A noise, intermittent and barely audible, came from the hallway outside. It was a sound she didn’t immediately recognize. Then, with dawning horror, she identified what the sound was—it was slithering.
The noise drew undeniably closer. Amanda shut her eyes tight and forced all nonessential thoughts from her mind. Time’s up, said a tormenting, childish voice inside her. End of the line.
Amanda took a deep breath, felling her heart pounding in her chest. She hoped against the hope that the voice inside her was wrong. No more thoughts. Clean the slate, Amanda, and steel yourself….
As the lights began to flicker, Amanda heard the crackling sound of the door across from her phasing open.
THE QUEEN glanced over at the monitor bank as the cocoon underwent preparation. Hey eyes, growing wider, were fixed on the monitor displaying the young woman’s cell as the lights inside began returning to half power. She could not believe what she was seeing.
The worker had stopped in the doorway, tentaclelike appendages clutching at either side of its cranium. As she continued to watch, captivated, the worker crumpled to the floor, its head expanding.
Unwelcome memories rushed back to the Queen in a flood: the image of her mother clutching at her temples and screaming; her father observing with eyes full of horrific revulsion at first, the only blankness; the sound of her mother’s skull splitting open….
The Queen shut her blazing eyes tight, reopened them, fixated once again on the current crisis.
The young woman inside the cell was gone. The worker was now lying still, its lifeblood oozing from a rupture in its skull and spreading across the metallic tiles.
The Queen took the catwalk in the opposite direction of the monitors, toward the cargo ay access lift. Once there, she stepped in and pressed the button marked HANGARS 1-12.
How could this have happened? She asked herself, even as she answered the question.