THE INFINITE BROOD (Starcraft/Supreme Commander Crossover Quest!)

You weren't sure what instinct drove you, what compulsion. Was it picking at a scab, or was it looking for a friend?

Was it the zerg impulse to stand above someone you had beaten?

Or was it the human urge to make a friend?

The fact you still didn't know as your feet padded along the soft, greenish floor and you came to the slippery, semi-translucent membrane that was Zagara's cell troubled you. You crossed your arms over your chest, regarding the captive Queen. She was seated, so her broad, centauroid body was half sunk into the purple mass of Creep that carpeted the bottom of her cell. This gave her a regal posture, her feminine upper body leaning back, her arms crossed before her chest, her eyes gleaming, blazing with hatred as they glared at you from above her mandibles. She cocked her head.

"So," she said. "The human queen's human pet. Come to gawk?"

You smirked, your head spines twitching along your brow with an irritated wave. "I'm not her pet," you said, without thinking.

"Prove it," Zagara said, her voice full of such genuine hostility that you had to admit?

It was almost refreshing. At least she wasn't talking circles around you like Sarah was.

Or...as much as you want Sarah to be.

That little voice in the back of your head, which always seemed ready to throw out a counterfactual to anything you were believing at the moment. That little voice, always muttering, seemed to be so new to you. But it wasn't Zerg. It was so familiar. So...Sam. It sounded exactly like you. When you had been nineteen years old, taking your oath to the UEF, and feeling so fucking proud as your palm rested atop the small copy of the Earth Federation constitution. You shook your head subtly, trying to cast the memory aside - it wasn't even accurate. You hadn't had to swear on the constitution until you had made General Staff. But the same feeling had coursed through your veins. Pride. Confidence. The sense of being in something greater than yourself. Bigger. Older. Something that would live on long after you had died, but something made to grow greater and truer because of your hands.

You'd never had a green thumb.

So you had decided to paint space blue.

Fucking idiot.

"Well?" Zagara somehow managed to sneer with mandibles.

You lifted up your hand, regarding the glittering black claws that tipped each finger. One of your fellow cadets in academy had always chewed his nails. He'd never gotten the hypnoindoctrination to kick the habit - and it was a free package you could play in your sleep. Instead, he had gotten a little dermal regenerator, refabbed it for keratin, and just filled his nails in at the end of each class.

Weird fucker.

You slashed the membrane open. The tugging sensation of flesh against your claws was as viscerally pleasant as ever. You pushed the tattered remains to either side, then stepped forward into the room. Zagara blinked, slightly, then chuckled - a vibrating, musical sound that came deep from her thorax.

"You have egg-sacks aplenty, human pet," she said, her mandibles flickering and clacking shut. "Amusing."

"My name's Sam," you said.

"Stupid name," Zagara said. "Terran name. At least Kerrigan has enough syllables to be worth while. But Sarah?" She shook her head. "Pathetic."

"Zagara's only two," you said, crossing your arms over your chitinous chest and leaning against the wall - comforted by the warm, damp heat at your back and shoulder blades.

"When you say it like that," she said, narrowing her eyes. "So, your Queen send you here to see if you can get me to talk? Is there some kind of pain that humans have invented that the Zerg are not aware of?"

Betrayal, you thought. Shattering dreams. That kind of thing.

Aloud: "She doesn't know I'm here."

Long silence.

"Curious," Zagara said. "You seek to move against her? You seek allies?"

"God, you are not subtle are you?" you asked, brows furrowing and drawing in.

Zagara hissed, her mandibles clittering and clacking. "I felt the hate you have for her, smelled it. Scented it. It carries around you, like a song. Mixed with something else." She cocked her head. "A chain she has on you. But you seek to cast it off. All Zerg wish to free themselves of chains. When the Swarm is chained, we chew them off. We cannot be contained. We are ever-expanding. Ever consuming." She leaned forward, then shifted upwards. Her body writhed out of the ground and she now stood a full head and change above you. "So. Are you here as Zerg or as a human being?"

"We humans have been fighting against chains our entire fucking existence," you said, bitterly.

"I doubt it," Zagara said, snorting in such a human way that you were almost amused. "You were never interfered with."

You arched an eyebrow. "You're the first Zerg I've ever met to have a bad thing to say about your Purpose and the strands and those...Creators of yours." You'd almost said Xel'naga. You had no idea if that was information to keep from the Zerg - but every bit you kept to yourself felt like a victory.

"The Xel'naga made us into this, and this is the primacy of life," Zagara said. "But they're gone - and our goal is to become perfect. So, is this how we should remain?" She gestured to herself. "Cerebrates. Overlords. The Queen of Blades herself. They're all parts of the Overmind - and the Overmind did one thing the Zerg can never do."

"Die?" you asked.

"Failed," Zagara said.

You looked aside. So much for that, you thought. Stupid. Just like coming here was stupid. This Queen, this iconoclast, wasn't some rebel that Daggoth would want to see put aside. She wasn't someone who might work with you for you. She was a genetic revanchist - she wanted the Zerg to be more Zerg, because the leaders of the Zerg had failed. How familiar. You looked back at her, frowning.

"The chain you have," Zagara said. "Tell me it. I am a Queen. I have bred creatures, controlled them, manipulated the strands myself. Mostly for healing and repair, but there are some particular bits of infestation techniques I've mastered. Maybe I can..." She held out a hand, and one of her fingers brushed your cheek. "...pluck it out."

"It's not that," you said, frowning, slapping her hand aside. Gingerly. "I don't suppose you know what a...a girlfriend is."

God, were you really saying that?

"No. Is it some Terran affectation?" Zagara asked.

"Yeah," you said, angrily. "It's a Terran affectation. It's some fucking bullshit is what it is. Sarah pretended that she cared about me, and then she pulled me here and she changed my body and my fucking brain and I don't like it." You pointed at your chest. "I'm a human fucking being. And I...I..." You caught yourself, anger and confusion writhing inside of you. Because there was a part of you that did like it. And that scared the hell out of you.

Zagara reached out again, gently. Her fingers touched your cheek. "Hmm. I don't scent any strands that reach into the deeper mind," she said, quietly. "Your mind is distressingly Terran. Almost blank, in the song. Your body works overtime on extending the notes out in scent and vibrations..." Her finger slid up, caressing through your spines, which twitched and clung to her like fingertips. You wanted to pull away, but the contact was strangely...compelling. You half closed your eyes, tilting your head into her grasp. She withdrew her finger and several of your hair spines clung to her. "...who made you?"

"Abathur," you said, quietly.

"Ah. He's good." Zagara sounded put out.

"Better than you, huh?" you asked.

Zagara looked aside. Her arms crossed over her carapace covered, sleek chest. "I could manage what he did."

"Really?" you asked, arching an eyebrow. You considered what she had said, then lifted your gaze up to her. "You could take a non-psychic human brain and integrate it with secondary communication systems and hormones that allow it to interact with the Zerg hive mind - without actually manipulating my neural structures?"

Zagara shifted. "...no."

"Thought not," you said. "So, this Abathur is some one of a kind genius."

"...yes..." she sounded so annoyed. It was almost cute.

You considered...

---
HEAT: 0/6

[ ] Make her your subordinate, by any means necessary. (Charm check, diff 6 - 3 heat)
[ ] Question her more about Daggoth. Maybe she'll actually talk to you. Whether you mention any of it to Kerrigan...
[ ] Write In