You drew away from Sarah. You shook your head. You didn't trust yourself to say anything. So you just turned and you walked away. Sarah watched you go. You felt the glow of her eyes on your back as you came to the wall, then found the folds of organic flesh dilating open. You stepped through and it slipped shut behind you.
***
"...damn, she's got some fine
shoulders though," Dostya murmured, softly, her eye locked on where Samantha had left.
"Do you want me to try and find out how to override your pain blockers?" Sarah snapped, glaring at her.
Dostya's smirk was knowing. Her one good eye glittered. "If you could, she wouldn't be here. Or would she?"
Sarah hissed softly. "Just a tool for an end. Just my sword."
"You're contradicting yourself again, oh Queen." Sarah had heard that taunting, knowing tone before. It resonated as deep as her bones. She clenched her fist, and memories of fog and smoke drifting between her claws and fingers.
"Shut up," Sarah muttered under her breath, then left before Dostya could respond - as she always did...
Make me.
***
You found the exploration of the Levithan was not as terrifying as you might have expected. If Sarah wanted, you were sure she'd have cut off passages, closed doorways. Hell, you might not have even been aware of some of them, considering how...biological everything was. But instead, when you came to a doorway, it would slither open without waiting. If there were other zerg bioforms aboard, none of them bothered you. You followed steps of bone down into a cavernous space, and came to a large room of glistening green flesh, with dipping hollows. In each hollow was glittering green fluid, a bubbling broth of unknown complexity. You knew this room was...for...
Spawning.
The knowledge imprinted itself in your mind - but it came with every breath. You hesitantly opened your mouth, then let out your tongue. The motion was utterly alien...and utterly normal. The edges of your tongue tingled and when you drew it back into your mouth, the knowledge flowed more into your mind.
ABATHUR.
PRIVATE.
STAY OUT.
A...a scent based stay out sign. You stepped back, frowning. You didn't want to deal with Abathur right now. You continued your explorations. You walked past chambers full of glistening eggs, pulsing with life, each of them the size of a suit of Confederate power armor. You came to a room with a membrane so thin it was like a soap bubble, looking in on a complex set of organs, crystals and veins, flowing and hooking one into another with the same dizzying confusion as a quantum jump drive. You traveled on, your confusion and your fear melting bit by bit into mere wonder at every new strange sight and scent.
And, at last, you came to the chamber that took your breath away.
It was after a long climb along thick, nerve-like stalks that ran up from a buzzing room of shimmering crystal and bone. You emerged through a thick sphincter that left your skin slimed with lubrication, and blinked...
Stars. A million billion stars, the Milky Way sweeping up and out before you. A blazing sun hung in space before you and a planet orbited to the left. You craned your head around and saw that you were in a small soap-bubble of skin or...or something else, stretched above a sense-stalk that emerged from the immense, sloping curve of the Levithan. You tried to measure the scale of the thing, but it was almost impossible, what had to be kilometers of hardened chitin swept forward, narrowing towards a mantis-headed front and writhing tentacles the size of the E1 or bigger, stretching out to grasp space. You crossed your legs and looked at the stars - and marveled at their colors.
They looked different. Some had aural hazes around them you didn't remember ever seeing, while others glittered in hues you didn't even have names for. Your nictating membranes flicked open and shut and the alienness, the wrongness of your body crashed head up into how
good it felt. You should be...dysphoric, you should be hating this.
But Abathur had taken that from you. Your hand flexed as you looked down at it, trying to force yourself into feeling a joint pop or a muscle ache. Instead, every movement was a joy. Your tightened your hand and wanted to rip the membrane...and then remembered...
Zerg can breathe in space.
Right.
You sighed.
Then the sphincter parted. You scowled. "I said leave me-"
A snout poked through it. A decidedly non-Sarah Kerrigan shaped snout. You remained perfectly still, tension running up your spine as the snout became a head, then shoulders, then glittering wings and claws...and the zergling finished crawling into the pod. It was large enough that there was space for you both, but it still felt terrifyingly close for the murderous monster. You had shifted your feet under you, your spine tensed, your claws had come pricking out. You growled, softly.
The zergling chittered, then flashed its wings at you. He was...saying...
...hello?
Your brow furrowed. How did you know that?
The zergling laid flat on his belly and let out a noise that was halfway between a man clearing his throat and a roar. You scowled at him. "What do you mean we met?" you asked. Then your head spines flattened. "No. You're a zergling. Zerglings don't ask questions." You looked around yourself, as if...trying to find some source of a prank. To your surprise, one of the many stars surrounding you had grown quite a bit larger. It grew and grew and grew - and you found your observation-pustule flanked by one of those vast, blimp-like organisms that Dr. Hanson had called Overlords. Her theory was that they served as a kind of switch-board for the hive mind, sending communications to and from the bioforms for organization.
Something vast and slow and warm caressed your mind. It was like touching a warm summer day.
CONTEXT.
"Context?" You asked.
CONTEXT.
Your eyes swung around to the zergling. You frowned slowly. "This is too weird."
"Would you like more this?" the zergling asked, in a perfect replica of...Yancy. He even got the sarcastic tone right. His muzzle even moved in time with the words.
You sprang to your feet, leaping back and pressing into the curved wall of the room. "What the
fuck!?"
The zergling cocked his head, then trilled softly, before saying: "Trying to make you comfortable..." He said, and the Yancy imitation remained perfect - save that Yancy had never once in his life sounded that apologetic about
anything. Because he had...
"Yancy's dead!" you growled. "He fucking bought it on the Spinward Front. You aren't him."
"Of course I'm not," the zergling said. "I don't know what you're hearing. You speak. I speak. Ov provides context. Your mind seeks a way towards context. This voice...this...Yancy...is context."
You shook your head. Because something very, very, very bad was starting to come into your thoughts. Something so huge and terrible you didn't even want to begin to process it. The zergling shuffled slightly and you wished you had something to throw at him. Instead, you pointed your finger at him. "This is some fucking mind game that Kerrigan is playing."
"Kerrigan..." the zergling's wings went flush. "Queen." His head tilted to the side. "No. No!"
And to your shock, the zergling turned, and started to wriggle his head and shoulders back into the sphincter. Just as badly as you had wanted him gone, seconds before, you wanted him back right now. You grabbed onto his haunches, pulling him back. You both fell to the biomorphic floor as the zergling shook his head and, still in Yancy's voice, cried out: "No, sorry, no!"
"What the fuck are you talking about?" you asked, getting the dog-sized creature onto his back, glaring down at him.
"Queen orders - leave the Hilt alone, give her time!" the zergling squeaked - sounding so exactly like Yancy just before finals, when you caught him in the professor's wife's bedrooms that you almost laughed. Of course, it was almost hysteria. "Didn't know! New smell, you had smell of the Enemy home, where much broodmates - fight! Reach purity!" He cocked his head. "You help the Swarm. Much help."
You released the Zergling, jerking your hands back, your heart hammering in your chest.
"What is...reach purity?" You asked.
"End of flesh..." the zergling wriggled around, then got his legs under him. "Reborn." His nose turned, pointing at the Overlord. "Return. Each time...stronger. Faster. Better." He gnashed his teeth. "The Makers put it into the Strands. They sing to us...Purity of Form...it is the Way. Yes."
You were getting religious instruction from an alien dog with blades for arms and teeth that could tear through plasteel.
And you had thought today had reached its limit for weirdness.
"...I didn't kill any of you, though," you said, slowly. "Not. Permanently?"
"N-No...you are not Dark One, no," the zergling said, shaking his head. "You do not...your context...lacks words." His paws scrabbled at his face and head, so like a confused dog that you...no. You would not find it cute. You refused. "There is...word. Not right word. New context..." His head cocked. Then his voice shifted. Dr. Hanson's voice replaced Yancy. It was strange as hell to hear that feminine tone coming from a beast you knew to your core was male and used he and him for pronouns. "The quantum waveform state of the Protoss variation known as the Nerazim, also seen within Uraji pattern crystals and the Zerg hivemind is capable of disassociating similar structures permanently, despite redundancy attempts. It seems that, as Fenix said, the Dark Templar are the root solution to the regenerative nature of Zerg communication systems."
You remembered that briefing. Right after Aiur, when the Protoss had disclosed some of their intelligence to Dr. Hanson and she had just...dug into them with abandon. Your head spines shifted and you slowly sat back on your haunches.
"Okay," you said, slowly. "Are all...zerglings like you?"
The zergling looked confused. "No?" Yancy again.
"You're all individuals?"
"Yes!" The zergling perked up. "We play. We fight. We eat! We become Purity. We find Form. Hehe..." He clawed at the ground. "We rip, tear, we feast! Fun!"
"It's not fun you're fucking murdering people!" you shouted.
The zergling jerked his head back, and you had never imagined you would see a look of hurt confusion on a face so angular and deadly. "I never fought Terrans. Only Daggoth brood used against Terrans. They..." He hissed. "They cruel. Enjoy it."
"...but you have killed Protoss?" you asked.
"Helped them reach purity," the zergling said, cheerfully.
"Yeah, and I bet they fucking loved that," you growled quietly. Though, Fenix had been rather cavalier about his life, and he had mentioned the Khala, and...fuck. Your hands rubbed against your face again. You wanted to be alone to think, but this critter was just tossing more logs onto the bonfire in your brain. "So, Abathur...genetically engineered you to
like running directly into machine guns and being set on fire?"
"Huh?" the zergling asked.
"You said the Makers put that...fucking Purity of Form shit into your strands. Strands are DNA. Purity of form is...some...social Darwinist ideal, I'm betting, and the Maker has to be Abathur, he fucking did THIS to me!" you gestured to yourself.
The zergling shook his head. "No," he said.
"No?" you asked.
The zergling chirruped. "The Makers are the Makers. They make Protoss. They make Zerg. They did not make...Terrans..." He sniffed. "That is all I know. I am not a memory keeper. Not Izsha, not Queen, not Nakerath. Not Thachkata. Not-"
You held up your hand. You...you didn't want to meet any more Zerg today.
Then, quietly. "What's your name?" you asked, softly.
"Cr!" he chirruped. It sounded a bit like
Sir.
You made a face. "At least I can remember it," you said, quietly, drawing your knees against your chest. "Fuck."
"What is fuck?" Cr asked. "Context?"
"Oh god," you moaned, pressing your face against your knees.
"Queen does Fuck!" Cr said.
You lifted your head, frowning. "Yeah. I know."
"Queen does fuck with Hilt!" Cr sounded very pleased that he had gotten the
context. "If Queen does Fuck with Hilt, if Hilt Zerg, why does Hilt..." He pawed at the ground, seeking for context. "Keening for today and yesterday and all that will be?"
You put your forehead against your knees. "I don't suppose you know what being stabbed in the fucking back is like."
"Yes," Cr said. "You do to become Pure. Win. Fight. There no rules to fight. There only win or die."
"Great," you muttered.
Cr moved over, slowly. Hesitantly. His head bumped against your side, then he slithered up and curled next to you. It was a quiet moment of contact, and you didn't stop him, despite everything. Your hand slowly slid down, pressing to his scaled snout. Quietly, you asked. "Why did you come up here, anyway?"
"Cr like stars," he said, and then went very, very still - his eyes widened as far as they could. You supposed, with how his eyes were placed, he was getting a damn fine panorama, save for the section of the sky blocked out by your butch ass. You sighed, quietly, then continued to pet his head. He didn't move - but he did let out a quiet chirr.
A slow, humming charge began to build under your feet and along your skin. A strange sense of calmness impressed itself on your mind - but you recognized it, not as a feeling you felt, but...a communication. The Overlord was 'speaking' to you once more, and as you let the calmness settle, it formed into...knowledge. The warp jump was coming. Cr remained still and you watched as crackling buzzing lightning crawled along the Levithan's body, sparking and popping and reaching out tongues of purple energy into space. The quantum jump slammed home and the blazing, brilliance of it forced your nictating membranes shut and open again.
You were hanging above the smoldering world of Char once more, partially occluded by a large moon.
---
HEAT: 0/6
[ ] Wait and see what happens next
[ ] Ask Cr and the Overlord more questions
[ ] Write in
[ ] Go and find Sarah. You came to Char for a reason, and you want to hear it.
