Warmth.
Comfort.
Enfolding slickness.
The steady, thrumming beat of the heart.
Thump. Thomp.
Thump. Thomp.
A voice - musical. Beautiful.
Arise. Arise, my General. My Armiger...my Cerebrate.
Awareness came then. The warmth became enfolding. The slickness became liquid, sloshing around your skin, sliding against you like a million slippery fingers. The beat of the heart thundered in your ears as your eyes opened, and beheld a grayscale confusion of biological shapes - the whirling, interlocking math of a nautilus shell with the texture of a bat's wing. You slowly reached up, and out - and your hand pressed to the grayness. Your knuckles had ridges. Your fingertips came to claws. You flexed and those claws punctured into the leathery surface. The ripping was intoxicatingly easy. The liquid around you sloshed around your fingers, flowing out. Your other hand reached out, puncturing more holes. Tears ripped through the leather and the liquid slipped past your mouth, around your shoulders.
You wanted to breathe, but then you noticed that something was deep in your throat, locked to your mouth. You reached up - grabbing. The manta-ray shape had claws, claws that pricked into your cheek, your jaw. You found eyes and your claws plunged into the eyes without a second thought. The manta-ray came free and then the esophageal tube down your throat slithered free. You were able, then to push forward...and the chrysalis came apart in a spray of gore and glistening yellow liquid. You fell to your knees and palms, coughing, and gasping.
There was a dull green-purple light, shifting between hues within the humid chamber. Your naked skin tingled with the warmth and moisture as the yellow fluid coating you dripped and beaded from your chin, your breasts, your shoulders. You gasped, slowly, and then shivered as you saw your hands.
In the light, they were the hands of a Zerg.
Gray and purple, green and brown, interlocking chiten and flesh making an almost glove-like shape, with black claws. You lifted your hands, trembling and turning them around, to see the soft, green pads of a human's palm, recolored, retextured. Reshaped. Infected. Infested. Twisted.
Perfected.
The rush wasn't like anything you expected. It was like a high - dizzying, buzzing, crackling power. You felt like you could do anything. Your claws were so sharp and your muscles looked like they could rend steel. You panted slowly - and then felt, after the high...the crash.
"A...Ah....aauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!" Your scream ripped out of you. Your hand went to your mouth, covering it up as you hunched forward, your forehead pressing to the warm, pulsating carpet of purple flesh that was the floor. "Ah...fuck!" You gasped out. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! FUCK! FUCK!" You slid your hands along your face, feeling the spines of sharpened chitin that served as your hair - feeling them slithering and poking against your hands. You grabbed them, then tore them out with a wrench. The pain was intense, but it was the only thing you could do. The twitching spines slowly stopped moving as they rested in your hands - and black blood dripped down into your eyes. You closed them, hissing.
And you felt the wounds close.
You felt the spines regrow. You felt them sliding back out of your head. Blood dripped onto your lips, and onto your tongue. You swore you could taste the complexities of the DNA, burning along your tongue's tip. You gasped and forced your hands against the ground, eyes closed. The urge to scream again warred with the urge to keep tearing.
Then...
A warm point of contact. A single finger, pressed on your chin. Your eyes opened and something flickered in your vision again and again and again - a semi-transparent membrane flicking over your eyes. You saw the blurry/clear, blurry/clear, blurry/clear form of...Sarah. Her body sang to your nerves in new ways. You could smell the power of her. That single touch made you want to whimper. Those blazing eyes met yours, sad and sorry and pitiless all at once. She was naked, as naked as you were, and her voice was soft.
"For what it's worth...it's not how I'd want this to have...proceeded," she said, quietly.
"...you..." you whispered. Your nose turned, pressing into her palm. Sniffing her. Breathing her. "You...stabbed me in the back." Your teeth nipped at her skin. Her hand slid up a bit, her fingers slipping between your head-spines. Her palm enveloped your eyes and your nose and god you were going insane. Your head swam and your hips twitched and you wanted her to...you wanted to...to...
Rip her throat out.
Fuck her brains out.
Scream at her. Ask her why. Why. Why. Why.
Sarah cocked her head. "Yes," she said. "I did." She bent her knees, coming down so that she was face to face with you. "I lied to you, betrayed you, changed your body without your permission." Her knuckles, gently, caressed the back of your cheek. "I'm a monster, Samantha..."
You wanted to shake your head.
"When I awoke, like you...in the Chrysalis, I wasn't finished. My creator hadn't quite figured out the way to fully bring me to term. I reached out in my panic - and drew James Raynor and General Duke to Char with my psychic powers. But before they arrived, my master...completed me." Her voice was soft, gentle. "The final step, though, wasn't...changing my body, or altering my biochemistry..." Her claws rasped against your cheek. The razor sharp edge of them threatened to break skin. The danger thrummed through your nerves like fire. You wanted to turn your head, to look away from those eyes, to take one of those fingers between your lips, to taste your own blood as your tongue was slit slowly...eagerly...
"It was the blocks, Sam." her eyes flickered. "Between every mission, the Confederates put in blocks. Memory blocks. It's so they can make you think you're doing good, even as you wade through blood. And the Overmind reached into my thoughts and he whispered in my ear...know thyself." Her hand dropped away from your cheek. "I thought I was a good person, Sam. I thought I was a hero, fighting against the Confederacy. I thought I had fought for the wrong side - but I had gotten out. I had changed sides. I had redeemed myself."
She stood.
"I was wrong," she said, looking down at you.
"No," you whispered. You didn't even know what you were saying no too. Your lips felt parched. "Sarah, how can you trust-"
"Because I knew," she said, her voice cold and cutting. "Because it...explained everything."
You licked your lips, slowly. "How."
"Do you know why Arcturus left me on Tarsonis? Why he let me...become this?" she asked, her eyes flashing. "It's simple, Sam. Your precious Sarah Kerrigan, without hesitating for a second...cut...his family...apart. With two other ghosts, we came into the Mengsk home and we butchered them. I killed his sister and his father and his mother. I decapitated Angus Mengsk with a fucking machete because he dared to speak out against the fucking Confederacy."
You remained on your knees, watching her.
"Come on," she said, jerking her head. "I have a gift for you."
She turned and walked from the room - hips rolling.
"Sarah," you said, your voice a croak.
She paused at a sphincter that dilated open, showing more glistening, bone and leather corridors. She smirked over her shoulder at you and you hated how fuckable she was.
"I am going to kill you," you said, glaring at her.
Sarah smirked. "Good," she said, her voice soft. "You're already getting it."
She turned and headed through the door. You stood and followed after her. This still felt as if it had to be a dream, some horrible nightmare. But every step it felt more real. Sarah waited at corners and cross junctions of the writhing hive, and every time she stopped, she was mouthwatering - a green goddess, wings folded behind her, eyes smoldering. Follow me. Follow me. You found yourself moving faster, prowling after her. SHe kept letting you get closer before turning and continuing on, drawing you in. Your nose flared, and you came, suddenly, into a circular room. There was a glowing crystal in the center, surrounded by bones, and a large open space looking out into the void of space. You froze, eyes widening.
"Nice view, huh?" Sarah asked, standing with her back to you, facing the blackness.
It startled a laugh out of you.
"My queen...who is this?"
The new voice jerked your attention to the wall - where a Zerg...lurked. They were...she was wormlike, merged into the wall, with a sleek, feminine figure and large, dark eyes. She looked as if she was fully a part of the biomass you were standing in, but she regarded you with a cold, almost clinical curiosity.
"Izsha, this is the Armiger of the Swarm," Sarah said, gesturing to you. "If I'm Queen of Blades, then she's..." Her smirk was predatory. "The Hilt."
"My name is Samantha Clarke," you said.
"Greetings," Izsha said, sounding affronted by your very existence. "Why is her will not shackled to the overlords?"
"Because then she would be useless to me, Izsha," Sarah said, looking out into space. "Give her the memories...of Comrade-Commander Ivana Dostya."
Izsha pursed her lips, then focused. A tentacle emerged from the wall. A needle tipped spine came from the center of it and it...reached out to you. "What is this?" you asked.
"A memory," Sarah said, still looking at the glittering stars beyond. "It will inject the memory into your bloodstream, carried to your brain and inwoven in short term structures, structures that will then...fall apart over time. So it won't last, but by then, your own native memory will have taken over." She smirked over her shoulder. "Then you'll have a memory of a memory."
You glared at the tentacle as it drifted closer. "That's a Cybran rank designation," you said, quietly.
Sarah nodded, looking back out at space.
"How do you have a Cybran ACU commander's memories on hand?" you asked.
"They were scouting near the Koprulu Sector. They managed to breach the barrier, just as your UEF did, though a lot more subtly. And Comrade-Commander Ivana Dostya found her way to Char. She was overwhelmed and made a part of us." She hissed, softly. "You'll see."
You looked at the needle. You weighed the options - what the Queen wanted, what-
The needle-tentacle writhed, slipped from where it stood and plunged into your arm. You gasped.
"Izsha," Sarah growled - but the worm-woman sniffed.
"Delay is illogical," Izsha said as your knees trembled and you fell to your knees and-
Memories. Unfolding. Growing. Time spans you couldn't imagine, crackling through your brains. The facts hammered into you, with core deep truth. You wanted to scream but it was too fast, too much of it FACT the cold wire holding into thoughts no thoughts nothing but Earth serve Earth serve Earth FACT stretching on into time into the past into the past into the future into the future, spreading spread FACT millions screaming slaves, silent, trapped in iron bands, their faces smiling, smiling, smiling they're all smiling, they're ALL-
You gasped as the needle slid from your arm.
Then you threw up over the ground.
Sarah knelt beside you. You trembled and let out a keening noise. Deep in your throat. Your eyes screwed shut and you couldn't stop yourself. You wanted to cry. But you couldn't. Sarah gently slid your head onto her lap, her fingers teasing through your hair-spines. Her voice was soft. "Zerg don't have tear ducts," she whispered, softly. "We have...nictitating membranes."
You tried to speak.
And it came out a growl. "He...lied to me."
Her finger stroked around and around one of your hair spines. She let you speak.
"I'm...going to rip his head off with my bare FUCKING HANDS!" You shoved yourself up, glaring at Sarah, trembling. "A thousand fucking years of slavery. A slavery...y-you can't escape, a slavery you can't express, a slavery no one even fucking notices! For...for...for...s-s...si...sixty...three million...fucking people!" Your eyes screwed shut and you pressed your face against Sarah's shoulder. She slid her arms around you. God she was warm.
"You were always the boot," her voice was soft. "I was always a monster." Her finger slid along your chin, lifting your head. Your nictitating membranes refused to part - she was a blurry green heart, with flaring eyes. "And the universe was always unfair. And cruel. And it will kill us if we don't work together." Her hand stroked your hair.
You felt hollowed and full at the same time - a screaming rage, at her, at Riley, at every bland fuck at the Polit...
"Did Tosh know?" you whispered.
She nodded.
Your eyes closed and you bunched up your hands. Your forehead pressed to her shoulder. "Are you lying?" you breathed.
"I will lie to you whenever I need to," Sarah said, quietly. Her hand cradled the back of your head. "But I don't need to lie. He walked around a psychic with a closet full of skeletons. He shouldn't be shocked some fell out."
You nodded.
It was all a lie. The UEF. Sarah. You.
Except...
Sarah was here. Wasn't she. And warm. And god, the universe felt so cold right now...
---
HEAT: 0/6
[ ] Kiss her
[ ] Kill her (well, try at least.)
[ ] "Take me to the Cybran. Now."
[ ] Write In
