Story Hub: [link]
Warning: Body Horror, among other freaky things incoming. If you've read the other story in this series you know what to expect.
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Char, Tripper, Reg, and Lunk were at an impasse. They were down two men, without leadership, and facing a foe they couldn’t even beat five-to-one, and now they’d have to do it four-to-two. Tripper wanted to leave right this second, he wasn’t about to become S7’s next victim. Reg wanted to follow protocol, but had a hard time making any argument over Char and Tripper’s yelling, and Lunk was just silent.
“We can’t just run. We need to find out what they did with Pinc and why!” Char argued. “Besides, for all we know, if we run outside, it could be right into a cyangel ambush.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tripped snapped, “Surviving to tell the tale is more important than piecing together a single mystery. Besides, if there were really enough of them to make an ambush, they wouldn’t need to bother because they could storm the place and slaughter us to a man. One of them was enough to put us on the back foot, two have thrown us into a life or death situation, any more and we’d be dead for certain. Even if there aren’t more, if we stay here we’ll just be picked off one by one.”
“We should at least find out where the second one came from before we run out there blind,” Char argued. Tripper gave him no mind. Instead, he picked Sarge’s gun off the floor and rearmed it.
“I’m going to make a run for our transport. Anyone who wants to come, come now, I’m not waiting,” Tripper declared. “Otherwise, feel free to die here on principle.” He ran off, not even sparing another glance for his comrades.
“You blastin’, tailpipe suckin’,” Char stepped forward to follow Tripper in a fury, but then he looked back at Reg and Lunk and Tyce’s still fresh corpse and thought better of it. “Forget about him, Reg, you said you can access some of the systems, right? Let’s see if we can track down where this second Cyangel came from or where they took Pinc’s body. If we’re lucky, we’ll find their weakness or a vulnerability.”
“R…r…right,” it took Reg a moment to regain his composure, but with a new task before him, he redoubled his focus.
“Fi…F…Finally, I’ve isolated the security footage outside the door to the moment before the attack. Now, where did they take Pinc?” Reg wondered as he scrolled through the video feed. However, all he saw was the familiar sequence of Lunk placing Pinc on the couch and everyone quickly filing inside the armory, then it was only a video of the ailing Pinc. No cyangel skulking up, no shadows moving in the corner, just a sick and dying man.
“I…I…I don’t get it,” Reg shook his head. There should be something, anything, happening, but they were approaching the final seconds, and it was still just Pinc. “How did they possibly?...Mother of Paradise!”
“Reg, what is it?” Char turned around to see what shocked his comrade. Reg just turned around, his face saying everything as he wordlessly played back the last few seconds of the footage. “No, no, no!” S7 hadn’t lied when she said she was the only cyangel to infiltrate, at least she was the only one at the time. This second Cyangel had only been created seconds before the attack, bursting from inside of Pinc like a butterfly out of a cocoon. Horrifyingly, the act was completely bloodless. Pinc’s skin, or what little was left of it, dissolved instantly, alongside some of his clothes. The attack happened so fast they hadn’t a chance to realize that the second cyangel was wearing a modified version of their own uniform. “How did this happen!”
“The…the…the poison, it wasn’t poison after all, no wonder we couldn’t figure out what was wrong,” Reg realized to his horror. “The reason his vitals seemed mostly normal was because they were, but they weren’t his vitals anymore. He was being overtaken by some kind of parasite.” The corporal threw himself back onto the computer, trying to find footage of Pinc’s fight with the cyangel. While the camera he was watching got disrupted by the stunner, he knew of one from an adjacent hallway that might have caught something.
“What are you looking for?” Char asked.
“I need to see how she infected him, maybe he can develop a countermeasure,” Reg explained as he pulled up the footage. “There, she stabbed him in the back of the neck with those wrist-mounted weapons.”
“I thought those electrocuted people?” Char pointed out.
“Clearly, they have a dual function,” Reg replied. “Obviously, it injected some kind of nanomachines that took over Pinc’s body from the inside. Rearranging his innards while growing a new cyangel inside, typical parasite behavior. When it was ready to be born, the new cyangel burst out of Pinc and attacked the Sergeant to continue spreading itself. Th…t… that’s why she came alone. She wasn’t here to kill us, she was here to ‘recruit’ us.”
“How twisted can they get!” Char slammed his fist into the wall.
“Reg?” Lunk asked, his hands shaking on the trigger of his heavy laser.
“W…wh… what’s the matter, Lunk?” Reg looked at his friend.
“How did you figure that out so fast?” Lunk pointed out. Reg was intelligent, but he was also by the book. He’d never spin such a long explanation of what happened without ample evidence and a library of books to cite.
“I…I…I don’t know…know…” Reg looked at his still stinging finger. “Just run!” He immediately reached for his stun pistol and put it to his own head, but he was unable to pull the trigger. “Hurr…hurr…hurry! I can’t stop myself,” the corporal began to convulse.
“No!” Char reached out to help his comrade, even though he knew it was too late.
“Yes, yes, yes!” A familiar voice said from behind them. Reg and Lunk turned to see another cyangel standing where Tyce had been, wearing something that looked suspiciously like his uniform. “Come, come, come on, men! Drop dead and give me twenty,” she pulled out her own set of stingers.
“Lunk, shoot it!” Char screamed.
“But that’s Sergeant Tyce!” Lunk protested.
“It’s not! It’s a robot who stole his organs!” Char reminded.
“Urhhh,” Lunk hesitated before closing his eyes and squeezing the trigger. The blast went wide, but the force of it still knocked the new cyangel off her feet.
“Blast it, just run!” Char stated as he ran for the door.
“Reg,” Lunk took one last look at his friend, who was shaking and shivering.
“Run, Lunk,” Reg said to him as his voice began to crack into that hauntingly familiar high pitch. “You better runny, runny, run!” With a heavy heart, Lunk ran after Char, leaving Reg alone. Reg took a tiny amount of solace in the fact that those two just might make it out of there, and if not, at least Tripper will. Then, something inside him insisted the opposite was true. ‘They’ wouldn’t let any of those three get away.
‘Please,’ Reg wanted to say, but he didn’t control his vocal cords anymore. In fact, he was rapidly losing control of his whole body. Everything inside of him began to swirl around, then condense, then pull away from him. In his fleeting moments of consciousness, Reg realized the absolute horror of experiencing the very sensations he was casually describing earlier. Thankfully, he also realized that he wouldn’t be conscious long enough to feel it in its entirety.
‘You wish,’ the cyangel’s voice echoed through their mind. While Reg was no longer in control, the brain would still be preserved, and while he couldn’t do or feel much of anything, that didn’t mean he’d be unaware. Something had finished developing inside of him, and now his skin began to dissolve into dust as all its remaining nutrients were sucked inside. Then his brain was pulled within, leaving his rapidly dissolving head hollow like a crumbling balloon as even his skull had dissolved. As the brain settled into its new metal skull, a flood of nanomachines overtook every fiber of its being, shutting out Reg completely as the cyangel finished stealing everything of value within him. In the next instant, the nanomachines flooded outside the body to quickly refit his uniform onto the cyangel’s body, discarding any unneeded scraps as the new life form burst out from the old.
The newly minted S11 sprang to life as Reg was scattered to the corners of his own mind. To call this new being a “converted” or “assimilated” version of Reg would be a gross misunderstanding of what happened. Would you call a parasite that grew from inside another animal the same thing as the animal it took over? Would you consider a small car built out of the parts of a bigger car the same car? No. S11 was a new being, sharing only stolen organs and stolen memories from her host. Reg was irrevocably dead, and S11 intended to continue what S7 had started.
“All systems online,” S11 smiled as she looked to S9, who sprang to her feet after recovering from the blast. ‘Permission to get them, Sarge?’ S11 communicated to her sister wordlessly.
‘Permission granted,’ S9 smiled back.
“Lunk, we don’t have a choice,” Char began, “we’re going to have to do something drastic to change this situation. Even then, I don’t see us making it out of here alive. We’ll be lucky if they kill us, but I don’t think they’ll be so nice.”
“But, what do we do?” Lunk was terrified. Between the desperate situation, firing his gun at what he still considered to be the sergeant, and losing his best friend in a span of less than 60 cycles, his mental state was cratering fast. It was no small miracle he was able to muster the will to run this far, but he didn’t know how much longer the adrenaline would carry him forward.
“I think if we use the heavy laser to wreck the control room, maybe it’ll break the all-clear signal, and command will know something is up,” Char proposed. “After that, we go down fighting.”
“But what about Tripper?” Lunk looked down the path that would lead them to the outside and potentially the transport that would take them off this deathtrap.
“Listen, if he made it to the transport, he would be an idiot to stay,” Char shook his head. “But I have my doubts if he even made it.”
“That, thaty, that would be a correct assumption,” another cyangel emerged from the path that led outside. She was wearing a stripped-down version of Tripper’s uniform, with the sergeant’s rifle slung over her shoulder, and she was playing with Tripper’s HF Knife. The cyangel known as S10 smiled at the two remaining soldiers. One who didn’t know what had happened today would mistake it for a warm, gentle smile of someone happy to see an old friend, but Char and Lunk knew better.
“Lunk,” Char looked at his comrade, intending to tell him to shoot the gynoid, but he saw that glint of hesitation in Lunk’s eye and changed his mind. “Go on ahead, I’ll hold her off. You’ve worked with Reg a lot, right? Did he ever show you a failsafe in case the outpost was compromised or something? If so, try that. But whatever you do, do it fast.”
“Char?” Lunk looked at his peer. The same man who grumbled over basic regulations with the sergeant not even a macrocycle[1] ago was ready to lay down his life for this one chance to make things right. Lunk knew that if Tyce were still around, he’d be proud of Char’s actions, but that only made the whole situation that much more bitter for him to swallow. “Okay,” he nodded, feeling shame in his inability to fight as he ran down the hall towards the control room.
“So, so, so, are you like, trying to die heroically or somethingy?” S10 cocked her head.
“Something like that, Tripper,” Char drew his HF Knife. The rifle wouldn’t do anything to her, and she needed to get close to infect him, so while fighting hand-to-hand was damn near suicidal, it was also his best and only bet. At least the HF Knife might penetrate her armor.
“Not my name, name, name,” S10 brandished her knife before zipping towards him like a blur, using the stinger mounted to her opposite arm. Char expected some deception from someone using Tripper’s brain and made a wide dodge opposite the direction her jab curved. The private then moved to stab her right in the face, but she just parried him with her own knife, while flashing the stinger on the same arm.
‘Blast it,’ Char cursed. He knew these cyangels were fast, but it was like he was moving in slow motion compared to her. While he got lucky with that first prediction, there was no way he could keep this up for long. He broke off their clash and tried to build some distance.
“Hold, holdy, hold still please,” S10 mocked as she jabbed at him with both stingers. Char jumped back to avoid her strike, then jumped to the side as she tried to follow, causing S10 to smash right into a wall. Alas, she just bounced backward and got back into her fighting stance, as if she didn’t just slam into a solid metal wall at full speed.
“You won’t get past me, I’ve got your number now, you freak,” Char declared. It seems like fighting her in close range was the better call after all. While she was fast and durable, she seemed to rely on hit-and-run tactics and didn’t want to be involved in a prolonged close-quarters brawl. Despite this renewed confidence, he was still sweating so badly that it was getting into his eyes.
“Don’t have to, to, to,” S10 stuck her tongue out. “We’ve already won.”
“You got Lunk!” Char snapped, ready to forget his defensive stance and attack wildly.
“Nope, nope, nope, I got you,” S10 pointed at him. “I don’t have to jab you with the stinger, that’s just the easiest way. I only have to get close. That’s not sweat in your eyes.”
“What?” Char realized to his horror that whatever had gotten into his eyes was moving, and it stung. As his retinas burned like they were coated in acid, the soldier fell to his knees in pain, the adrenaline wearing off. He was so consumed by pain, he didn’t even see S7, S8, S9, and S11 emerging from various hiding places to surround him.
“It was a good, good, good effort, Private,” S9 complimented, “but you must be more aware of your surroundings.” All five cyangels drew their stingers and shocked him simultaneously. Char was in so much pain already, he almost didn’t notice.
“And, and, and, then there was one, one, one,” S7 appeared in the doorway, flanked by her five new cohorts. “You going to fight us, big, big, biggy?”
“Hmm,” Lunk looked down at his heavy laser, then at the squad of cyangels, most of whom used to be his comrades, and the weapon felt like a lead weight in his hands. “I could never shoot them,” he said in anguish.
“Told ya, ya, ya,” S11 preened proudly, but the other gynoids had no additional reactions. It was kind of eerie, now that Lunk could see them all together. They were dressed a little differently, but they all had the same voice, face, body shape, and even hair. The cyangels were almost like a group of sextuplets, except not at all. It was hard for Lunk to articulate why, but his best explanation was that twins rhymed, but these girls were repeats. Twins had differences, but the cyangels looked like they were born from a mold.
Despite their apparent emotions, their display of twisted whimsy, taunts, and cruelty, it all seemed so performative and rehearsed to Lunk. Like they were just copying and repeating what they’ve heard elsewhere. And he was starting to think the repeating the same word three times thing was more of a mistake or bug in their system than an intentional tic. There was no warmth, no natural interactions, just responses. They were exactly what they seemed to be, robots, machines, artificial intelligence. Realizing this disturbed Lunk to his core, but every time he tried to convince himself to fire his weapon, he looked at them again, saw his comrade’s uniforms, then imagined their faces, and lost his will to fight.
“I can’t, I just can’t,” Lunk dropped his weapon and closed his eyes. Even if he killed the cyangels, which was a big if, he would be all alone on this rock. He had no idea how to fly the transport back to civilization, and that was assuming it wasn’t sabotaged or destroyed. If killing them meant dying alone, he’d rather die screaming than in silence.
“Target: Private Lunk,” S7 declared, “Status: Not a Threat. Conclusion supported by additional data compiled by recently assimilated subject. Proceeding with outpost takeover, takeover, takeover.” The cyangels collectively nodded and began repurposing the outpost.
“You’re…not going to hurt me?” Lunk opened his eyes. Most of the cyangels ignored him, but S9 turned to him.
“Killing a non-threat is a waste of energy, soldier,” she explained, “you are free, free, free to go.”
“But, but I can’t abandon my post,” Lunk shook his head. “You were the sergeant before, you know that.”
“Negative, I’m not the sergeant, I just have his organs,” S9 explained. “But if you’re not a threat, but not going to leave, are you going to to to interfere?” She cocked her head.
“I,” Lunk looked around at the cyangels dismantling the outpost and rearranging the computer systems for some unknown purpose, “I wouldn’t know how. But I can’t leave, that would be wrong, a good soldier stays at his post until the end…right?”
“He won’t leave, but he won’t fight back, back, back…what is the appropriate reaction?” S9 turned to S7.
“An irrational human? I was warned, warny, warned about this, but this is good actually!” S7 bounced up to Lunk. “If you don’t want to leave, you don’t have to~” S7 smiled wider than should have been possible for a humanoid face, but Lunk reminded himself that she was not anything close to human.
“You’re going to do to me what you did to them?” Lunk realized. Part of him had accepted his fate, but another was still deathly afraid of the pain that would come with it.
“Yes…But no, but yes!” S7 contradicted herself as she laid her hands on Lunk’s abdomen. “For you, something special, something more, something wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful!” Lunk was confused until he felt S7’s hands go right inside his body, he flinched expecting the worst pain, but felt nothing. In fact, it almost felt good, euphoric even.
‘No pain? What is she…?’ Lunk felt disoriented and almost intoxicated. At the back of his mind, a small part of him was screaming that something was terribly wrong. She was practically digging inside of his ribcage, but he felt nothing, not even his own limbs anymore. However, that little voice was being drowned out by a chorus of identical voices in his mind singing about how wonderful this feeling was. And since when were the cyangels surrounding him? Was it their voices? No, it was too many voices, and only some of them sounded like S7. Others sounded different, many were very similar, but a few rose above the rest, being completely unique. And there were hundreds, no thousands, no millions, no billions, no trillions, no even more than that, like dozens of planets, no, hundreds of planets of voices all calling out to him at once. His mind was melting under the sheer volume and the inconceivable scale of it all. For a brief moment, it felt like his entire existence, his mind, soul, and body, would just pop like a balloon, until suddenly, it all made sense. The scale, the breadth of everything, a trillion trillion minds all singing in harmony and embracing their newest member with open arms, and the being formerly known as Lunk smiled at that thought.
At the beginning of the geocycle, there were six humans and one cyangel on the outpost. Within one macrocycle, there was one human and six identical cyangels on the outpost. By the end of the geocycle, there were six identical cyangels plus one more on the outpost. Not an Amelia unit, something new, something unique, something special, and she was ready to spread their song to the furthest edge of the galaxy and would relish every second of it.
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Hostile takeovers are always a concerning time for those in low ranking positions, after all, change is scary. However, while many may struggle in these times, you never know when who might flourish in this new environment.
Author's Note: And here we come to the end for these poor souls. In hindsight, I felt the body horror warning was a little unnecessary, but I put it there just in case because I'd like people to know what they're getting into. As for the story itself, it exists mainly to show contrasting methodology compared to the cyangels from the previous story. In the last story, the cyangels were infiltrators "pretending" to be incompetent machines to draw in potential victims. In this story we have an infiltrator picking off a small vulnerable outpost, likely to cover an incoming invasion. Basically, the cyangels are getting bolder, and even this Amelia unit, whose counterparts were nothing more than identical minions in the last story, proved to be incredibly dangerous. And it looks like it only get worse from here...
I have more stories planned for this universe, but I think I'll put them further down the queue as I desperately try to finish the next Maid in Fantasy chapter.
Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy.
