Believe it or not—Selene's never killed anyone besides Zykra. Not even during her teenage years on Endelon. Though she had plenty of reason to.
So what she was about to do was incredibly difficult for her.
If what Dr. Bryant said was true—her full form should be practically invincible. Unlike the infested on Lamda she was supposed to be a queen. Her abilities were far greater than theirs were.
She felt her body change. Everything changed. Her senses expanded. But her emotional faculties seemed to become far away. Her fear lessened and her rage heightened. Which worried her, the worry she could still feel in any case.
A orange chitinous exoskeleton covered her from head to toe. Dark purple flesh beneath that. The mostly featureless spherical 'helmet' had two slits in it for the eyes and two antenna had grow up out of it. Long enough to touch her shoulders if they weren't standing partially up.
Her gauntleted hands became pointed claws that dripped vibrant green acid. A tail grew out of her back about a meter and a half long. It was like a fleshy suit of enforcer armor. Alien.
Which was especially weird considering that alien was wearing a hoodie and a pair of skinny jeans that were being stretched past their limit. The shoes just outright exploded revealing carapace covered bird-like talons that held her up slightly as if she was on her tippy-toes or wearing high heels. Though she had another talon that grew out of her heel to support her.
Selene touched the thin flimsy door with a few fingers and it began to melt around her hand. The metal bubbled and sizzled.
"Here we go..." she breathed. She stepped out.
"W-what the fuck?" someones voice sounded.
She turned to see a portly man half way down the ladder in the center of the hall.
Before he could react any further she slashed out with her tail catching him on the back of the knees.
The movement was natural to her. Fluid. Just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
Liquid crimson spattered across the wall and floor.
"Aahh!" he fell down the ladder. "Fuuuck!" he clutched his legs as they bled out. Selene took a few unsure steps towards him.
He put his hands up- "No! Please! I have kids! I don't do this because I want to, I have to!"
She hesitated. But then thought. How many people did he lead to their deaths or perpetual enslavement? Stuffed into that small room like cattle. What about their children? Their families?
Her throat made an clicking sound like the Predator alien from those old movies.
"AAH!" he screamed in terror before rolling over and crawling towards the door at the far end of the hall.
She reached down and gripped his throat and pulled it out. She felt something hard and rectangular between her hands.
The blood dripped off it. She crushed it. Some kind of electronic implant.
The door opened in front of her and the black woman from before was pointing her pistol.
She had a confused look, but she didn't hesitate before shooting.
The bullets ricocheted Selene's armored exoskeleton. Sending sparks flying. The impacts made her flinch a bit, but only very slightly.
"Stop."
She ordered. This time her voice sounded as if it were layered with many copies of itself.
A rectangle beneath the skin on the womans neck began to glow a warm orange.
"FUCK!" she screamed before putting a hand over it, she ducked out of the door and closed it.
Selene went to follow but stopped. She felt a strange instinct to do something else first. She looked down at the corpse of the fat man... Then held out a hand above it.
There was a squelching sound as a centipede like creature emerged from her palm. Just like the one they found at her home on Endelon. It crawled around her hand and seemed to 'look' at her. It's feelers emitted psionic signature. It asked what it's designation was.
"Scantid." she said.
It dangled from her wrist then fell onto the body. It burrowed into the mans neck wound, disappearing.
She kicked the door and it dented inwards. She kicked it again and the side of it pulled itself out of the doorway. Selene leaned sideways and stepped through.
"Boulder! That telepath turned into some bug-bitch!"
The black woman was hiding behind some crates blind firing around the corner at Selene, which she ignored as she searched around the cargo hold.
Boulder entered the on-ramp.
"What?"
Selene tilted her head sideways at him inquisitively. 'That's a lot of biomass...'' she thought. "Weird." she said aloud immediately after—catching her strange intrusive thoughts.
She pointed an arm at Boulder.
'shunk!'
A keratin spike flew out between her middle fingers and lodged itself in the middle of his chest. Accurate. Lightweight. She could appreciate a weapon like that.
Boulders eyes widened in surprise as a red stain spread out on his shirt.
"You bitch!" she grabbed something from the crate she had been working with. It was a chrome cylinder about the thickness of a her wrist and about the length of her hand. She twisted the top and it pulled out revealing a black rectangle with many flickering lights and buttons.
A whirring high pitched emitted from it.
The headache from her telepath symptoms came back, but only slightly.
"What's that?" she asked. Her voice layered.
"Why, don't like it?" the black woman stepped forward. It got slightly worse.
"It's not the best thing." Selene slashed out with her tail but it was back behind her swaying idly back and forth before a second finished.
A thin red line appeared on their neck as their eyes widened in shock. Blood burst forward and they fell on their knees, clutching it. Gurgling painfully.
Selene turned around and headed back deeper into the ship. A larvae crawled down her leg and headed towards the spasming body she left.
From Dr. Bryants and Raymond perspective...
"We have to help her!" Raymond said. He'd went to move towards the ship but Dr. Bryant grabbed his wrist. "And what do you suppose we do? They must have some way to shield against her psionic abilities."
Raymond looked at him in disbelief.
"We can't do nothing!"
"Selene is more than capable looking after herself. We'd only be a burden. Best we remain out here and... Wait."
"Wait for what!?"
Dr. Bryant gave him the disingenuous sympathetic look Raymond was becoming used to seeing.
Then a gun shot sounded. And another. Drawing their attention. Then a distant scream. "Boulder! That telepath turned into some bug-bitch!"
People around the hangar began looking over to the ship. Including it's other guards. They slowly made their way around it as a big dude in a tank top ran up the ramp.
"There is something we could do...." Dr. Bryant said then.
"What?"
He followed Dr. Bryant's gaze. To a section of fuel tanks.
"We have to contain this. Selene can't be discovered for what she is. Not yet. Not while she's still developing."
Selene stood in the middle of a room caked with gore.
Should she feel more sad about that? Probably. But the longer this went on the less she cared. It was all numbers going up to her.
Another larvae dropped from her.
"W-what are you?" Blondie said, clutching his shoulder that was impaled with a keratin spike. He was leaned against a table. A smoking sawn-off shotgun in his hand.
"I'm not sure."
'Boom!'
And explosion sounded from outside the ship. Selene only barely glanced over her shoulder at it. Blondie took off jumping down the ladders porthole.
'Shit.' Selene thought and dove after him. She swung from the edge of the hole and landed behind him as he was clambering through the broken door to the cargo-hold.
"Nothing personal." she kicked him as he was half way through the small opening and his body was bisected by the broken doors edge.
She heard heavy dripping as his lower half slumped to the floor.
Selene turned and jumped back up through the porthole and headed towards the pilots cabin. The door was thicker than normal. Her acid claws wouldn't be able to get through it. She went up and pressed the intercom button next to it.
"Hey, can we talk for a second? Face to face?" she asked. An insectoid chittering lingered at the end of her sentence. Like a slightly higher pitched crocodiles rumbling.
"Fuck no you crazy monster bitch!" a voice answered back.
She would sigh but breathing itself didn't seem necessary at the moment. It would take awhile for the scantids to grow, and it would take her about as long to break through this door with her bare hands.
How annoying.
Were they waiting for the colonists to do something? Idiots. She'd probably go after them next.
A feeling came through her then. Intense worry. A human amount.
She looked to a shiny piece of chrome—some kind of panel off to the side and saw herself.
The helmet on her face peeled back and receded like a hood revealing her face. Eyes glowing purple, veins at the edges of her face as well as scales all of a similar color as her eyes.
"W-what am I becoming?" her voice said, still layered.
A tear slid down the side of her face. She sniffed and wiped it. Then the helmet came back up.
It didn't matter. Not yet. She'd just set a strict rule. No killing innocents. An obvious rule, but it was something to keep her from slipping in the abyss she just realized existed. Something to remind her that her goal was to be better than the Zykra.
She kicked the pilots door. The edges of it groaned but didn't budge.
She reached out with her mind.
'Dr. Bryant. Get in here.'
She kicked it a few more times.
It was about three minutes until he was there. And that's mostly because he had to carefully step past the rapidly growing eggs and bodies. Then up a ladder slick with blood.
"I need to get in there." she said, not turning away from the door.
"Ms Carrington..." he said sympathetically.
"Don't worry. It's nothing. The last of them are held up inside. How's the outside?" she asked.
"I—I and Raymond that is- we uh.. We have detonated a fuel tank. Which should keep the authorities preoccupied long enough for us to escape."
Selene scoffed; "Classic fuel tank distraction... Gotta love those things. Any other bright ideas?" she said.
He stepped around her and began examining the door.
"Quite exceptional." he said.
"I know. I kicked it like 12 times. Nothing."
"I was referring to you. Your form... It's beautiful if you don't mind me saying."
He would think so, ever the Zykra fanatic. If her helmet wasn't up he'd seen her roll her eyes. Though it was reassuring in some odd way.
"It's not really my expertise, but I believe we could disable the life support to the room by severing this here." he said referencing to a pipe that hugged the top corner of the wall.
"But don't we need that?" she asked.
"We could leave the door open. It's not really necessary for it to be closed." he said. He put his hands in his lab coat pockets and opened is mouth for a second to say something but stopped himself and reconsidered.
"I.. Will wait in the cargo hold."
Her tail slashed the pipe and air began to hiss out.
"Where's Raymond?" she asked.
"He's uh... He'll come around."
Dr. Bryant started to climb back down the ladder.
So much for a grab and run mission. Selene couldn't be that mad at Dr. Bryant though, after all—how could he of predicted they had some weird psionic-deflecting technology?
Selene waited there patiently. Just listening to the air hiss out.
The door began to open.
As it was halfway open a tiny cylinder rolled under it and began emitting that same weird sound that messed with her telepath powers.
But it didn't seem nearly as effective as they believed it was. But Selene jumped up and clung to the ceiling anyways. Her tail curled up close.
"She-she's not out there." a scared voice said from within.
"Maybe the psionic-disrupter scared her off?" a woman's voice said.
"Maybe."
A rifle poked out of the room. High caliber. She wouldn't want to get hit with that. Just a few more steps...
"Don't go out there!" the woman called. "With the door open we're siphoning life support from the hall, we can just hold up here!"
'Awe... Don't be smart now! Do what people do in the horror movies and split up or something!' Selene thought to herself.
The rifle started to pull back into the room.
No time.
Selene swung from the roof and launched herself inside while swinging her tail around her without taking the time to look.
She trained a few months to fight with her nano-fiber muscles but whatever she was doing now came naturally to her.
She felt her tail hit stuff but wasn't sure was it is until she landed on some kind of holographic table that displayed the star system. She had flipped around mid air like a cat and clutched it.
Little floating blue depictions of planets and stars were floating around her. A bit distracting.
There were grunts of pain and screaming all around her though. Dying gasps.
The sound of a shotgun racking drew her gaze. The old woman from before was standing to Selene's left aiming right at her.
She pulled the trigger and Selene's world turned into pain as the slug punched her in the side. It shattered her armor and carved a chunk of flesh from her body. She flew off the table and landed on the other side of it on the ground, groaning in pain like everyone else she'd just slashed with her tail.
The old woman cackled madly.
"HAHAHAAA! Ah, it's like they say. If you want something done... We've been in this business a loooong time girlie. But I have to say I ain't never seen a telepath like you. I can feel it too—you know. Something special 'bout you. That's my ability. Find'n telepaths. Kind of handy for the business. Shame it ain't something you can pass down. God knows... I tried."
She racked the shotgun again. Selene heard the shell casing hit the ground and then her soft old person footsteps as she made her way around the table.
"Oh stop crying son, when did raise ya to be such a pussy? She only got your fingers!"
The shuffling came to a stop in front of Selene.
"Shame I can't sell ya' alive. Ain't got the man power to contain you, especially now. But who knows? Maybe somebody will pay for the parts."
Selene rolled over and started chuckling painfully. Coughing.
"What's so fucking funny?" the old woman asked aiming the shotgun at her face.
"Kill her."
A scantid jumped onto her back. That act alone killed her instantly as it's claws cleaved through her like butter. It fell through her in a splash of crimson and landed on the other side of her in front of Selene.
It's antenna twitched in confusion as it checked to see if she was really dead.
Selene put a hand on the table and pulled herself up as the flesh on her stomach began to knit itself back together, forming abominable muscles. Her eyes flicked around the room once more.
A woman was cowering behind a console at one end of the room. A blonde who wore fancy designer clothing and was bawling her eyes out.
Another blonde man was bleeding fingerless near the door. A rifle cut in two at his feet. There was a dead man slumped over the console on the opposite side of the room and two others on the ground.
"You're a telepath?" Selene asked the bleeding man.
He nodded. Still whimpering, clutching his hands in his armpits.
"And you helped your 'mom' do this? To others like you?"
The scantid sensing Selene's anger began to look away from the corpse it was eating and approached the bleeding man. It's jaws chittered together loudly.
"I had no choice! What was I supposed to do? She was my mother!"
"There's always a choice. You could've left. You could've turned her into puck... Don't eat the fingers scantid."
The scantid looked back at her for a second. Then resumed it's threatening gaze.
"Do you think puck cares? Half her buyers were from the Protectorate!"
Selene looked to the other surviving woman. She somehow managed to get by without so much as a scratch.
"Who are you?"
"Please don't kill me!" she raised her hands. It was like she was too scared to speak until spoken to. "I'm his sister!" she said pointing to the other man.
Probably another telepath then.
Crazy day.
Dr. Bryant came into the room with Raymond following close behind. But Raymond stopped at the door frame and leaned on it before putting his hands on his face.
"Sorry Selene, I know I said I'd wait in the cargo hold but they're putting the fires out. We have to go-" he stopped as he entered. Noticing the two survivors. The scantid.
"I'll come back in a few moments." he said and begun turning around.
"No." Selene said. "I'm not killing them."
They both looked to her in a mix of surprise and relief. But they wouldn't be relieved when they found out what she had planned for them.
"Ah... Are you sure?" he said as he walked the long way around the table to avoid stepping near the scantid. He arrived at the center console and connected his tablet.
"Yeah. They're telepaths. And who knows? Maybe they'll make a good addition to our little crew. I'm pretty good at reading people, and compared to everyone else on this ship they seem the least psychopathic."
Dr. Bryant looked away from the console as the ship lurched into motion.
"If you ask me the best additions would be Zykra, but I suppose you've handled that a bit as well." he said, gesturing to the scantid.
"It's pretty small..."
It was about half regular scantid size. It probably spawned early once it detected she was injured. That and a single corpse wasn't sufficient biomass.
"Still. It's a start."
Raymond finally made his way into the room proper. His face unusually pale.
"Dr. Bryant, could you deal with this guys hands? I sort of.. Chopped his fingers off. Maybe you could reattach them?"
He nodded. "Of course. It's not my specialty but I've dabbled in the medical sciences. What's your name sir?"
"I-I'm Danny..." he held out one of his hands shakily to the 'doctor' who was now examining them.
"And you?" he asked the woman without looking.
"Z-Zephyr."
Name one of your kids freaking Danny and the other Zephyr? That crazy hag was terrible with names.
"If either of you betray me, it won't end well for you. Just know that." Selene said. She hated being cold like this.
This wasn't her at all. But it had to be said. Had to be done. But, it's almost over. For now. She just had to make sure they understood before she reverted to her old self.
"I-I promise!" Zephyr said. "I always hated her, Mom was terrible to us!" she said looking to her brother.
He nodded.
"It's better than dying. But... Is Craig... Is he?"
'Ah. The other blonde douche.'
"Yeah... Sorry bout that."
The ship was leaving the atmosphere now.
Nothing attempted to stop them so the colonists probably didn't realize what the true emergency in the hangar was yet.
Danny sniffled.
"He was her favorite—set to take over after she died..." Danny said.
"Should we start cleaning up?" Raymond said suddenly, looking at Selene with a strangers eyes. As if they were meeting for the first time.
"No. The Zykra will handle it."
'bleh'
The tiny scantid hacked up a clump of a congealed brown substance onto the corner of the holograph table. It started to travel up the side of it and harden.
"No scantid! No hive building!" Selene chastised it.
It scrunched up smaller—away from her finger and shook. Having vibes of 'But want hive! Hive want!'.
She sighed.
"They'll need to deposit the biomass somewhere Selene." Bryant said absently as he tended to Danny.
"But I don't want to live in a drippy hive. It's ugly. And smells."
"Given your position I'd suggest you get used to it. At least at times. Maybe we could dedicate one of the ships rooms to it? It's only temporary until we find a more permanent location."
She let out an exasperated sigh. "I gueeess..." she looked to Zephyr. "Where are the bedrooms?" she asked her.
"I'll show you..." Zephyr hugged herself with her arms and high-stepped out of the room.
They made their way past all the egg sacks and the corpses they were absorbing throughout the ship. Shadows of larvae growing large and swimming within were visible at certain angles and if the light shined just right.
"What are those..?" Zephyr asked.
"Zykra. Don't worry, they won't hurt you so long as I'm here. This the room?"
They had stopped outside one.
"Yes. This was moms... Guess it's yours now. Uhm..." she fidgeted around uneasily.
"That'll be all for now." Selene said and then entered the room before shutting the door behind her.
There wasn't much space in the ship for bedrooms but this one was likely the largest. About a four whole meters in diameter. A small canopy bed, dresser, wardrobe, a fluffy chair. Couple monitors.
"No hive building. No killing humans. Behave yourselves." she called out with her power. To each of the Zykra she felt growing.
Selene's body started to make crinkling and popping sounds as her body shrank down. Her clothes became baggier again, if baggier than before after excessive stretching. She'd need to replace her hoodie again.
Just as she finished changing back she fell to her knees and began sobbing. She saw her pitiful face in the wardrobes mirror. Her hazel eyes bloodshot. It was reassuring she could always come back—but somethings couldn't be undone.
All the human parts of her that her Zykra form had suppressed surged forward. The emotions flooded her as she expected them to.
The horror. Madness. The sadness. The guilt most of all.
She killed. A lot of people... At least a dozen. And now her Zykra were using them as food.
Tears flowed so heavily it collected on her chin before falling down in heavy drops. She cried so hard that she barely made a sound except to occasionally gasp hoarsely.
'I'm so sorry.' she thought on repeat. And imagined the fearful faces as they saw her coming.
'God, I'm sorry. Mom and dad, Camden what I've done—You'll never know. I won't let you.'
They were horrible people. But maybe they could've been redeemed somehow, maybe there was some other way.
She mourned like this for about thirty minutes before she resumed her Zykra form.
To ensure that they behaved themselves with so many live humans on board the ship... And to put a cap back on those emotions.
Then headed back to speak with everyone and organize the Zykra into their temporary 'Hive room'.