Chapter Fourteen: In which Generic_Generica cannot get off the trauma train..
I should probably explain why the Blacksite was such a massive deal.
In XCOM 2 the ADVENT Blacksite was one of those story missions you had to complete in order to progress in the campaign. Of course you could always put it off until the very end, when you actually got decent gear, which is what I sort of did in most of my campaigns because it was a stinker of a mission.
I guess that's sort of what the Commander of this universe did. Good on him too because dear
gods the place was humongous.
Anyways: the ADVENT Blacksite was super important. Because that's where they got their human genetic material to create those terrifyingly powerful Avatars. How did they get their human genetic material?
They melted down psionically latent humans.
See, when ADVENT was first established they set up a bunch of gene-clinics dedicated to curing every disease known to man. Cancer, AIDs, Malaria, you name it, they cured it via bullshit alien techno-science. What the common man and woman didn't know was that these gene-clinics acted as fronts for ADVENT to identify individuals that had the potential to express psionics. Once they identified these individuals, well…
They kidnapped them and brought them to the Blacksite so they could be melted down into these
Blacksite Vials, which would then be shipped to an entirely different facility.
Yeah. The Blacksites? Horrible places designed solely for the refinement and production of concentrated genetic material. Each vial? Each one of those tiny green-hued tubes? The rendered remains of one million human beings.
One. Million. Human beings.
I mean- shit what am I even supposed to say? What
can I fucking say?
Little known bits of trivia: You can leave messages with psionics. You know those
Xel'Naga Shrines from Starcraft 2, those ones that Zeratul got the 'prophecy' from? Something like that. Little imprints of personality, short bursts of thoughts and emotions, things that're easy to pick up if you have strong enough psionic capabilities.
The minute one of my Zerglings hit the fucking perimeter of that fucking facility-
iT hURts.
- I was inundated with thoughts of-
wHy dOEs iT HuRt? iT hURtSHuRts-
Turningbleedingmeltingfightinggnawingcan'tescapecan'tescape-
No gods in the abyss. No gods in the abyss. No gods-
Help me. Help me please oh god I'm sorry please help me god please help me hELP ME HELP-
- Yeah.
As it turns out when you slowly melt down several million psionic individuals over one spot while those individuals are still alive? It sort of leaves an imprint.
There were- hell. Millions of voices because there wasn't just one of the fucking vials, no, there were dozens of them. Hundreds maybe. One of my Overlords could see a bunch of ADVENT flunkies loading those vials onto a transport. I categorically refused to let them run away. Because if I was powerful enough to hear th- the awful screaming, then the Ethereals were definitely powerful enough to he-
I want my mommy.
To hear the awful horrible- No. They knew about this shit and they went through with it anyways.
… Also they tried to kill me something like five times in the past week so they could go fuck themselves with a rusty pitchfork. In case that was unclear? I was pretty goddamn pissed. Like the last time they tried to kill me I was angry as hell. This though?
Kill me please just kill me already makeitstopmakeitstop-
This disgusted me on a primal level. Psionics. The Gift forces you to feel things, feel
everything. When the Protoss start spouting their "Connected in every thought and emotion through the Khala" doctrine they mean 'Connected in every thought and emotion.' You can block everything out of course but you'll know, and you'll know you know and you'll feel even worse when it's all over. Assuming you're not a burned out husk incapable of feeling anything afterwards.
Most of the psionically active races I'd met thus far were a bunch of amoral dirtbags because they just chose to block everyone out. Just- only interacting with individuals on their own psionic network. Must've been easy to just categorize other species as 'alien cattle.' Two choices when you're a psionic species. You can open up to other species or you can block them out. The problem is once you block one person out it becomes easier and easier to block out everyone not on your network, and from there it's only a small step to considering them less than the people on your net.
After that? That's where the Ethereals ended up. It's where the shackled first Overmind ended up; we'll never know what the Overmind would've been like if it wasn't shackled.
You could even see it in the Protoss. They held themselves above every other race in their galaxy up until Aiur was invaded by the Zerg which kind of caused Artanis to start kicking the rest of them into shape.
But I digress.
Point is:
Psionics. They sucked.
Oh my dear sweet and sour baby Jesus that Blacksite was just awful.
---
I didn't bother with any grand strategy. Didn't bother with any tactics, didn't care at all. I just wanted that fucking place torn down and plowed with salt and by any god that's listening I had a fucking swarm of murderous killbeasts that I was going to use.
I gave the command and the Swarm went to war. The Zerglings first, a thunderous horde of chitinous four-legged many-toothed monstrosities that shook the ground as they went. Turrets started spewing magnetically propelled projectiles, raining fire and death into the center of the horde. My Zerglings ended up running into a minefield as well, bodies being hurled everywhere by the mines.
Of course they didn't care.
What few ADVENT MECs and troopers were left manned the walls. They opened fire as well, firing indiscriminately into the oncoming horde.
Of course, the Zerglings didn't care. They fought and died and that was their lot in life.
And then they were on the walls, claws scrabbling against the smooth metallic surface, piling up at the base of the walls even as all of those troopers and turrets and MECs continued to fire directly down at the swarm.
That's about the time when I sent in the Overlords. I'm not going to say 'I sent in a goddamn endless horde of Overlords capable of blotting out the sun'
but I sent in a goddamn endless horde of Overlords capable of blotting out the sun.
Like there was actually a fucking shadow beneath all of those Overlords because they were actually blotting out the sun. Those Overlords were escorted by my aerial units of course. More Mutalisks, more Broodlords and Corruptors, more everything.
Because I'd had something like a day of preptime, of course I'd be pumping out more units. It's what the Zerg
do.
Imagine the battle of… That one Starship troopers movie. The ambush at Whiskey Outpost.
Something like that'd describe how the battle was going.
Oh they were almost certainly running. I could 'see' transports taking off, I could see a bunch of grunts frantically loading up train cars. Under normal circumstances I'd probably have let them run.
Except these fools had tried to kill me multiple times already.
Except these fools had been doing this- this this-ness here. I could feel fading lifesigns in each of those pods, those people were still alive-
I watched as a bunch of grunts started putting mag rounds into those pods. Just one shot to the head and then they were moving on. Intellectually I could understand why they were doing it. To deny me resources or something along those lines. Intellectually I could maybe rationalize it as the 'cold calculus of war.'
Emotionally that was the final fucking straw.
"Hey assholes. Banelings."
The Overlords were overhead now, just a massive fuck-off cloud of gasbags blotting out the sun.
Another interesting tidbit: Overlords can carry units.
And with my signal they unleashed a green tide of Banelings, raining the living bombs down from the heavens.
… And that was that, as they say. I mean I could talk about the squadron of Roaches I had tunneling underneath the walls but that'd be extraneous.
Because, well, I ended up destroying most of the Blacksite regardless so yeah... I guess I went overboard. Just a bi- Ah who am I kidding I didn't go overboard.
---
Afterwards, while my Zerglings were busy poking around I had a bit of a chat with Moriarty.
"No experimenting on living organisms." I ordered.
"… Inefficient. Speaks of emotional attachment."
"I don't care. We're not doing that shit. Ever." I paused. Ordered a group of Drones to stay the
hell away from that leaking plasma cell- why were they even going near the thing? Because it was warm? Because they liked the tickling of the radiation or something?
Bah.
"Also… Is it possible to evolve a strain of flammable Banelings?"
"Possibly. However, flame inefficient. Utility limited against armored targets."
"
Don't care, get it done. I want to burn this place to the fucking ground."
"… Unclear."
"Neat."
Well conversations with Moriarty were to the point.
Kind of boring but, I was kind of pressed for choices.
The Overmind part of me was sort of screaming at me about the waste and inefficiency and obvious emotional attachment and all that rot. I'd only glanced at those memories I'd gleaned from the Ethereals but they would've highly disapproved of my actions.
I didn't give a toss though. This place was awful and I was going to burn it down to the ground even if I had to get my Drones to start grinding gunpowder and shit with their bare claws. By some miracle I
wasn't the Overmind and I was going to keep it that way.
Meanwhile I surveyed the wreckage. Lots of dead bodies. Lots of MEC wreckage. I'd ended up dissolving half of that one train… And most of the tracks at that. All of those transports were grounded and on fire.
Mission fucking accomplished, except it wasn't. Because those assholes had gotten their own pound of flesh out of the people who came here. Pods. Pods and pods filled with dead people. Dead humans.
I felt
nothing from those pods. ADVENT was very thorough. Ruthlessly efficient.
I'd respect that if I weren't so disgusted. What a fucking waste.
Not a single one of their victims was still alive. Not a one. All shot, some through the heart, others through the head. Some bled out in their pods, others choked to death on their own fluids. It didn't matter, they were all dead-
Wait.
"Uh- Holy shit we've got a live one."
One pod out of- I don't know, thousands? One of them still had a live subject. Struggling to hold onto life but it was good enough for me.
"Uh, Moriarty? You know medicine? She's- holy shit how is she still alive?
And why does she look familiar?"
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I know I've said this already but here. Have a double update.
Also I'm giving you all carte blanche to write omakes to get rid of the angsty depressiveness of this chapter. Because this is really fucking depressing.
