The Deadliest Lifeform in the Universe Loves Me

Volume 5: Gamma-20, Chapter 5.37

The disguised Predazoan rolled her neck around, “I told you I wanted to be called the Crystal Queen.” She insisted, her voice sinister and alluring all at once.

Gamma-20 reached up for her face and pulled it away as though it had been a mask, revealing a rather skeletal head with pure white skin. Next, she pulled at her torso like she was removing a coat, ripping away Durgo’s bulky beetle body. She shook herself out to remove the rest of the dead flesh on her, standing fully upright in her new form.

She looked like some kind of cryptid from a Skinwalker legend, a couple feet taller than me with overly long limbs. Her skin was pure white, looking like it was somewhat scaly, and underneath I could see what appeared to be another layer of flesh that glowed subtly through an array of iridescent lights—like the khrona crystals. Her head was plain like a skull, with glowing yellow eyes and that wild lamprey maw with the giant curved mandibles. Her body was plain and humanoid, but somehow seemed segmented like a centipede. Her hands and feet were long claws with too many fingers and toes, with long black nails that looked like jagged daggers.

Gamma-20 stood up tall and proud, as though presenting herself to me—showing off her work, “You like this new form? I sampled your friends’ minds and saw the humanoid form Alpha-03 took and decided to copy it—although with my own style and flair.” She confirmed.

My heart was hammering in my chest, and it felt like every breath I took burned my lungs, “When did you take over Durgo?” I asked.

Gamma-20 shook her head slowly, “You really are stupid.” She waved her claws at me, “Obviously back in the storage tank; you were being quite the problematic little variable, so I decided to give you some space and let you continue your mission without fear, but I knew I’d need to keep an eye on you, so I assimilated one of your people to make sure everything stayed on track.”

I shook my head quickly, “But, no, we were fighting you the whole time, when could you have gotten around to assimilating Durgo?”

Gamma-20 looked at me flatly with those glowing yellow eyes, “For someone who spends so much time around a Predazoan, you drastically underestimate our abilities. Once I molted my first form when you burned me with that horrible acid, I split myself apart, hiding away my biomass core in the shadows while you concerned yourself with the extra flesh. From there it was a simple thing to find Durgo, all mangled and broken, and take him over and then assume his form with my perfect camouflage.”

I guess that was why after she got out of that weird weasel-centipede body, the form that came out of it just looked like a massive drone. It also made sense why none of Zyno’s scanners could detect her after that point; we weren’t dealing with drones or regular assimilated puppet soldiers, Gamma-20 took Durgo’s form with her perfect Predazoan camouflage, and like Zyno said time and again, there wasn’t a sensor in the Empire that could see through it.

And yet it was still almost impossible to believe.

“Hang on, you even talked to me about keeping the mission on track and not getting the Jessipie-90 crew to abandon the cargo—exactly like the real Durgo.” I tried to reason.

Gamma-20’s vile mouth grew wide in a horrible mockery of a smile, “Of course, I consumed his flesh, his brain—his mind. Once again, you vastly underestimate Predazoan abilities.”

I shook my head slowly, feeling like I was about to be sick, “But why? Why do all this? What the fuck have you been planning?”

Gamma-20’s sick smile remained bright, “Shall I tell you about my plan? I’m honestly quite proud of it.” She leaned against the doorway, looking far too casual for the monstrosity she was, “I infiltrated Jessipie-90 through the particulate filtration system, creating my nest in the storage tank you found me in. My goal was always to assimilate and absorb the khrona crystals, but as you know they aren’t organic, so the process is actually quite difficult. What I needed was a void singularity that would hyper-compress everything together, with me in the center, able to consume all that wonderful void energy.”“So, what, you caused all of this—everything, all the different warp gates that collapsed and even the singularity now?” I pressed.

Gamma-20 nodded, “Naturally. I caused the first warp gate to collapse that stranded Jessipie-90 in the Derrion System, but I must’ve miscalculated since it didn’t develop into a void singularity, so I figured I’d just need to wait around for a rescue vessel to come into the system and I would collapse their exit gate, and then thankfully you all came along. Of course, it was taking a little too long and I worried it might restabilize, that’s why I corrupted the warp reactor so it would fully destabilize the collapsed warp gate—why I wanted to keep the mission going as Durgo.”

“But, fuck, why all the slow torture keeping everyone alive for so long, only assimilating a few people? Why not kill everyone and then just work the warp reactor yourself?” I asked.

Gamma-20 nodded along, “I considered that, but there were too many variables, and I worried there might be some hidden failsafe that would drop or destroy the cargo. It was simply the safest option to puppeteer everything from the shadows; multiple gentle hands can move more than a single violent gesture could.” She said, almost sounding reasonable.

I held my hands up, “Then why are you here now? Why not hide away in the shadows, waiting in the void singularity to claim your prize?”

Gamma-20 cocked her head to the side, “Are you serious?” She raised a hand to her face, “You burned my fucking face off, obviously this is a personal vendetta.” Her nasty smile grew wide and vicious, “Plus, if killing you will harm my sister in some way, all the better.”

I could tell then the time for talking was over, and violence was about to take its place. But Gamma-20 liked to torture her prey, that much was obvious for how she tormented us for so long.

She was waiting to see what I would do first.

Hoping beyond hope the crew was all still alive on the emergency shuttle, I flexed my speed organelle as hard as I could and rushed for the lever to deactivate Jessipie-90’s shielding.

But Gamma-20 was ready for it and snatched me easily with her weird arm that extended like she was Mister Fantastic or something. Her hand grabbed my wrist when it was only a couple inches away from the lever, then she whipped me back in the opposite direction, throwing me out of the command center and into the center ring hallway so I slammed into the far wall.

Gamma-20 laughed as she turned towards me, but I was already up and running in the opposite direction.

“Shall I keep you alive until the void singularity takes all of us? We still have some time left to play!” Gamma-20 called out in a horrible singsong voice.

I continued running as fast as I could, making my way to the cafeteria. There were two large entrances, and I could watch them both easily from the far wall.

I couldn’t calm down now, feeling the panic of a prey animal, wondering if there was any hope I could hide from Gamma-20 despite all her incredible Predazoan senses; she could probably feel my heartbeat, smell my fear, sense my thoughts even. I tried to guard my mind as best I could, hoping the anxiety itself would create enough static in my mind she wouldn’t be able to read it.

A few moments later, Gamma-20 came crashing in from the other entrance, and she reared back and then shrieked at me with that horrible, debilitating cry.

“You don’t even have that big gun that shoots acid now, do you? You’re nothing before me!” She mocked me.

Well, that gave me an idea.

I kicked off the wall and ran out of the cafeteria, avoiding lazy swipes from Gamma-20’s claws as she clearly wasn’t even taking me seriously now.

I ran around the ring until I found Lummy’s room and then rushed inside. In the corner exactly where I left it was the heavy carbine rifle; I decided to leave it behind to save room on the shuttle since there would be no use for it at that point, and boy I was glad I did.

Dumb human luck on my side again.

The moment I picked it up, the lights completely shut off then, and I could only see the yellow flashing warning lights in the hallway now.

“Come and hunt me down, show me what Alpha-03’s beacon to perfection can do.” Gamma-20 taunted, her voice sounding like it could be coming from anywhere.

I stepped into the dark hallway and saw all the lights had been disabled everywhere except the horrible flashing lights. Rather than illuminate my path, it was more distracting and disorienting than anything.

I continued forward slowly, trying to steady my breath so I would be able to hear if something was coming after me, but my heart was still pounding so hard I could hear it thundering in my ears.

I took a deep breath and let it out twice as slowly, trying to center myself.

I heard metal crashing behind me and turned and fired blindly after the noise, spraying a concentrated burst on a panel that fell from the wall.

I couldn’t help my teeth from chattering, and I tried to bite down to control it and show myself strong.

“Can’t believe a big bad Predazoan is so scared of my gun; I thought you wanted to fight me!” I called out loudly, hoping to bait her into an open confrontation rather than all this skulking around that had my nerves fried.

There was a hissing noise beside me, and I ducked quickly to avoid what I thought was an attack, only to find it was just a relief valve blowing off steam.

I heard chuckling off in the distance, a sinister sound, echoing around me so I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

I decided if she was going to play games like this I might as well see if I could get back to the command center and shut down the shielding. I marched forward with careful movements to try and mitigate any noise I was making, maybe even hide where I was going. Step by step, I wound my way back around to the command center and opened the door once again.

Gamma-20 dropped down from the ceiling in front of me, “Boo!”

I couldn’t help but flinch away from the monster and lost my footing, falling onto my ass. Gamma-20 just laughed then, clicking her huge mandibles together as though she was applauding.

“Oh my, I’ve never seen someone fail so hard at playing the hero. Tell me, did living beside Predazoan greatness give you an abnormally inflated ego? Surely you know Alpha-03 is just toying with you; you’re a pet—a plaything.” She gestured to herself grandly, “We Predazoans only love ourselves and only strive to perfect ourselves; do you really think she cares about a pathetic mortal like you?” She taunted me in a horrifyingly sweet voice.I leveled the carbine rifle and fired at Gamma-20, only for her to knock the gun aside with her hand, then she stepped forward to kick me with those weirdly long legs.

I flew up, hit the ceiling, then slammed back down before I could even blink. The wind had been knocked out of me, but I still tried to scramble after my gun.

Gamma-20 stepped on my legs, then hooked her claws into my flesh to plant me in place. I screamed, and she just laughed.

“Seriously, what do you think you could ever do against my might?” She pressed.

I grabbed at my proton blade and activated it and slashed it forward all in one motion, cutting deep into Gamma-20’s leg. She pulled away then and hissed at me viciously, but I continued moving and picked up the carbine rifle once more and fired after her.

Gamma-20 dodged the bullets as though I’d been moving in slow motion, weaving through the lanes like she was Neo in the Matrix. I enhanced my perception to slow everything down and perfect my aim, and still she avoided everything I threw at her.

Suddenly, she lunged forward and grabbed me with her mandibles on my shoulder, then bit down so hard I heard something snap and blood splashed everywhere, and I couldn’t escape as it felt like I was caught in a vice.

My left arm seemed useless then, but I took the window while Gamma-20 laughed at my pain and used one arm to raise the heavy carbine rifle—taking her by surprise I hadn’t been disabled. I fired directly into her chest then, point-blank, and she went flying away as she started screeching, trying to claw at the acid as it burned her.

I stood up then, limping on my good leg and fired after her again with my one good arm. I shot her in the arm, the head, spraying her with as many bullets as I could so that her white skin had all burned away to black.

She was so damaged then, writhing on the ground, I could see her black and red biomass core pulsing in her chest. I stepped forward and pressed the barrel of the carbine rifle against her core and pulled the trigger.

Click.

It was empty.

I quickly threw the gun away, then pulled out my proton blade again and moved to strike, but Gamma-20 realized how close she’d come to death and kicked me square in the chest, sending me flying down the hallway. I crashed into the wall and crumbled to the floor, and once again I was pretty sure I had some broken ribs.

If this was going to be a new pattern ending all these missions as a broken mess, I did not sign up for that.

Gamma-20 stood and faced me, and I could see the acid was still burning away parts of her, and yet she wrapped her body with new flesh as though to protect herself, hiding away all the damage I’d done while her skin looked white with the inner-iridescent glow once more.

Gamma-20’s face showed pure fury now, her eyes burning with hate. She clicked her mandibles at me as a very obvious threat.

“I’ll admit, boy, you’ve come closer than any person in existence to killing a Predazoan. Even the researchers who cloned and created us couldn’t destroy our kind; any they deemed as failures and wanted to dispose, they pitted them against each other—had one Predazoan kill and consume the other.” She stopped a foot before me, then leaned down so her mandibles were just inches from my face, “And yet in the end you still failed.”

I waved my proton blade at her weakly, “Can’t you just get on with it? Kill me and be done—you win.”

“Warning! Warning! One hour until imminent collision with gravitational anomaly. Warning! Warning!” The robotic alarm rang out.

Gamma-20’s smile grew wide and sinister, as though she just heard the best news possible, “Why rush it? We still have plenty of time to—”

Gamma-20’s words cut-off midsentence, and then a moment later a hard black spear seemed to pierce through her, impaling her biomass core. The spear retracted and pulled the core away, and I looked around to see fucking Eve standing behind Gamma-20.

“Get away from him you bitch!” Eve snarled, her bloodied hand holding the biomass core, pure fury burning in her brilliant yellow eyes.