Part 731: ABOMINATIONS

Reldis-02. South-side Prison, Maximum Security Wing. Stardate 207.715 of the Ancient Volgrim Empire.

Unarin’s soul fell back into his body. The sense of enlightenment he had experienced inside the Cosmic Realm vanished, and he was once again back in the realm of mortals.

Unarin opened his eyes. He turned to his left, where he saw Vedric now standing up, his back flat against the wall as he looked at Unarin with a mixture of fear and shock.

"Y-you… you??" Vedric coughed.

Unarin blinked. He looked downward and saw that his body had changed. No longer was he a tall, gangly Changeling with skinny arms, slender legs, and a bit fat head. He was now extremely muscled, broad-shouldered, and had eight tendrils extending from the back of his skull down the front and real of his body.

They were his Haa’ti. The word came to his mind as easily as his own name. It was like he had been born with and lived his entire life with these strange tendrils. He knew them like the back of his hand.

Unarin slowly stood up. He smiled.

"Brother Vedric. I am still Unarin. You do not need to fear."

Vedric’s pupils trembled. He looked at Unarin as if he were seeing a strange alien xenomorph for the first time. Parts of Unarin still looked ‘Volgrim’, but he was incomprehensibly different from his previous appearance.

"Una…rin… it’s really… you?" Vedric whispered hesitantly. "You changed… instantly! There was a bright light, and…"

"I have become Ascended." Unarin said, his tone calm and collected. "I am a Changeling no more. I am a new species of Volgrim. I am the thing my progenitor sought. After all your troubles, I have finally eaten the fruits of your labor. You have my undying gratitude."

Vedric slowly pulled away from the wall. He stepped toward Unarin and relaxed. Even though Unarin’s voice was different, he spoke the same was as before. Vedric was not so closed-minded that he would remain in a state of fear and panic forever. He got over his confusion quickly, accepting this new reality with ease.

"Wonderful. Simply wonderful…" Vedric whispered. "Nurima… your life was not lost in vain. He has accomplished everything we hoped for. Now, I can die at peace."

Vedric lowered his eyes. He exhaled quietly, seeming more content than he ever had been at any point in the past.

But at that moment, Unarin reached out and gently clapped a hand on Vedric’s shoulder.

"Vedric. You were my progenitor’s brother. That makes you like an uncle to me. How could I let my uncle speak of dying when such a bright future stands before us now?"

Vedric looked up. He saw Unarin’s beaming smile.

"Of course I will not die immediately. But my youth is gone, and I have few cycles remaining. Do not speak idle words just to cheer me up. The future belongs to the young."

Unarin’s smile became gentler. "What if I told you there was a New Path you might be able to walk… if you had the courage to give it a try?"

"Courage?" Vedric repeated.

Unarin smiled but said nothing.

Vedric was enlightened. As he looked at Unarin’s new body, he came to realize what this ‘New Path’ might entail.

"Lad." Vedric said, a smoldering fire emerging in his eyes. "If I can obtain a body such as yours… I would go to any length to bring down a righteous fire upon our corrupted overlords. What must I do?"

Unarin lifted his hand off Vedric’s shoulder, then he extended his pointer finger toward Vedric’s forehead.

"BELIEVE."

……………………………………………

Inside the prison’s security office.

"It’s almost Free Roam time." One of the Technopath guards said, a muscled fellow with military-grade augmentations that made him a walking fortress. "Fifteen more time-units."

Commander Kordal was there too. His plain grey skin and heavily augmented body made him not stick out much among other Technopaths, but now he was wearing a bright yellow uniform with blue stripes. This signified to the other officers that a commander was inside the prison, and they needed to be on alert in case he walked by. Nobody wanted to be caught goofing off.

"Feeling antsy?" Kordal taunted. "Relax. With the Thumpers running scared, we’re not gonna bring in any fun ones for the new few rotations. The remaining gangs have lowered their heads and gotten all quiet. They’ll be hard to sniff out. Won’t leave us any openings."

Lieutenant Trivald was also there. He had a large stun gun strapped to his back, one that could fire out a devastatingly powerful bolt of electricity capable of knocking out just about any Volgrim who wasn’t wearing a specialized anti-energy suit. It was especially effective against heavily-modded Technopaths, such as the street thugs they regularly crossed paths with.

"Commander, how many veds do you think we’ll get for retrieving the Exigent-13?" Trivald asked.

Kordal thought about it for a moment. "Always with the money questions. Well, we only recovered two doses. Split between the whole group, we might all get… 1,750 veds? 2,000 at most."

Trivald’s mouth-tendrils writhed in annoyance. "I told you we brought too many others with us."

"You did, but don’t forget, the other officers deserve a reward once in a while. We can’t just hog all the good stuff. It breeds disloyalty and backstabbers when you do that."

"That’s a good point." Trivald said. He started to change the topic, but a light started blinking on the security system, and at that moment, all the cameras went down inside the maximum security wing.

"What the-?" Trivald gasped. "Why’d the feed go down? Get it back up!"

The monitoring security guard frowned. His fingers rapidly typed on the keyboards.

"There was some sort of an EMP pulse. One of the doors on the bottom level triggered a damage alarm. I’ll pull up the last part of the feed."

He quickly rewound the camera, and everyone looked up at the security feed just in time to see a door suddenly blast outward and go flying off its hinges, slamming into the opposite wall, as if it had been struck by something with violent force. Then the cameras went down immediately after that.

Kordal’s eyes widened. "Red alert! We have a breakout attempt! All guards to maximum security! Full armaments, try to stun unless the subject presents a threat. Then shoot to kill!"

Kordal started to run out of the room, but the monitoring guard shouted something from behind him.

"Commander! The cell that sounded the alarm… it’s Old Vedric’s cell."

Kordal stumbled slightly, but he didn’t bother responding as he ran out of the room.

In the back of his head, a thought bubbled up.

Wasn’t that the one where we threw that yappy shitling?

Kordal and Trivald joined up with the initial reinforcements, and the two of them charged toward the lower levels as quickly as they could, hastily arming themselves and preparing to take down any prisoners who might have gotten a stupid idea in their heads.

When the first guards arrived inside the maximum security area, they were surprised to see that all of the lights had gone out. The pitch-black hallways yawned before them ominously, and the fervent shouting of inmates showed they had whipped themselves into a frenzy. All kinds of Technopath thugs, criminals, and general bastards were roaring and screaming like animals, grabbing and shaking their bars violently, all of which was a bit distracting for the guards.

Naturally, even if the lights were out, this wouldn’t hurt the visibility of the guards too much. They activated their iris implants and swiveled their guns around, waiting for orders from their Commander.

The maximum security was shaped like a square. The path from the entrance split to the left and right, looped around, and connected at the opposite end. There was only one way up and down, ensuring any escape attempts would always end up funneled into a kill-zone, if things came to that.

"Split up!" Kordal shouted.

Trivald nodded. The two of them went left and right, with Kordal taking the shortest route toward Vedric’s cell, which was down the left corridor, toward the end of the west wing. Trivald swung around the backside, aiming to pincer any escapees if they thought they could be slick and get out through the other direction.

Boots struck the ground heavily. Trivald fearlessly led his strongest squad down the western corridor, their weapons held up and primed to shoot. Only Trivald himself was equipped with a lethal Tri-Gun, a weapon that had three different firing modes for taking down different enemies. The rest of his squad were armed with stun guns similar to the one Trivald wielded, albeit a little lighter, since only the Lieutenant was an elite with body mods able to heft such a formidable weapon.

"Shut up!" Kordal shouted at the prisoners as he ran past. The loudmouths screamed at him, jeered him, and shouted obscenities, only shrinking back and quieting down for a moment when one of the guard shone their flashlights on the inmates, making them step back and wince from the bright light.

It didn’t take long. Kordal arrived at Vedric’s cell first. He spin-stepped to face inside, but obviously, nobody was there.

"Vedric…" Kordal grunted. "Sly bastard. How long have you been planning- huh?"

Kordal glanced at the opposite wall. The cell door was stuck halfway inside the duracrete, and it looked like a toothpick that had been stuck inside a piece of cake. These doors, and the walls, were built to house Class V felons. They weren’t indestructible, but Kordal knew there shouldn’t be a Technopath down here with body mods capable of bending the bars, let along causing such a visibly violent level of damage.

His eyes twitched. "What in the damnation happened down here?"

Suddenly, there was a bloodcurdling scream further up the hallway, around the bend where Trivald and his men would have looped around to pincer the escaping inmates. Obviously, they would have gone that way.

Bright blue flashes of light ignited the darkness as various stun guns started firing. Kordal’s eyes narrowed.

He took his squad and rushed forward to reinforce Trivald. When he rounded the corner, he swiveled his gun to face down where he thought Trivald should have been.

What he saw made his blood turn to ice. It was a horror show. A field of death. Volgrim ripped apart. Good Volgrim. Strong guards who had served in the prison for many orbits. They were well trained, modded to the moon and back, and trained to deal with any sort of escape situation.

But now, there were ten bodies ripped in half, torn apart, absolute eviscerated. Their blood and organs coated the walls.

Trivald was among them.

Kordal felt a flash of fear. He couldn’t remember the last time something had scared him. Certainly to this extent.

"Movement!" One of the guards behind Kordal shouted.

Kordal raised his eyes.

That was when he saw the monster for the first time.

For humans, the scariest thing in the universe was the unknown. The second scariest thing was something that looked human, but was not human. It might have the face of the human, or the general mannerisms, but if something about that thing was ‘off’, it could scare the shit out of even the most battle-hardened man alive.

The Volgrim were no different. What Kordal saw in the darkness ahead was something that should not exist.

It vaguely looked like a Volgrim. But the proportions were all wrong. It has a muscular body, like a Dolgrimite, but it had four-fingered hands, like a Changeling. Eight snake-like appendages fell from the back of its head and buzzed in the air behind it, seemingly levitating from left to right, in search of prey. The creature had beady, blood-red eyes, and deep crimson skin. It was almost completely naked, wearing only the tattered remains of a suit Kordal didn’t recognize, as if the creature had molted its skin to grow from a cocoon.

When the creature looked at Kordal, the Technopath knew in an instant.

This thing was a skinwalker.

It was an abomination.

……………………………………………

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhckRnNBeh0

"Open fire!!" Kordal shouted, his voice rising an octave higher than it ever had before.

Nobody had the time to judge the fear in his voice. In unison, every Technopath guard started shooting at the horrifying abomination. The creature leaped to the right and its feet collided with the wall. It used the surface as a springboard and pounced at the terrified guards, making all of them yelp in fright. Bullets tracked the creature’s movements with military precision, but the damn thing was slippery, and its eight head-tendrils stabbed into the ground and yanked it around, making its movements impossible for even their targeting irises to predict.

The creature jumped toward the right flank. Kordal barely caught the sight of something slender whipping around in the darkness. A guard’s guttural cry cut off mid-syllable as his body was sliced in half. It looked like a sword had bisected him from the waist before impaling his head.

Kzzat! Kzzat!

Electrical beams struck the creature and forced it backward a step or two. But then it recovered and charged again, shrugging off attacks that would have incapacitated any Technopath instantly.

Kordal was not standing idly like an idiot. He had jumped backward the moment he ID’d the creature’s speedy and erratic movements to put distance between himself and it. One of his hand-tentacles pressed a button on his weapon, switching it to plasma mode. He started firing powerful energized projectiles that melted the wall and floor with 5000-degree bolts of molten plasma. The somewhat slow-firing nature of this mode forced him to aim more carefully, but even with all his training, Kordal found that the creature was too damn slippery! Multiple times, Kordal fired at the creature’s after-image, missing it by millimeters. One time, he was sure he’d hit the monster square in the chest, but it threw the body of a fallen guard at Kordal, and he vaporized the dead Volgrim instead.

"Ahh! Die, die you monster!" Kordal roared. By this point, five of the eight guards who came with him were already dead. It hadn’t been twenty seconds since the fight began. The abomination had made short work of them.

With each guard that died, the pressure on the monster decreased. It was able to kill the rest faster and faster. Kordal finally managed to get a lucky hit during a brief instant, when the creature was already flinching from an electrical pulse that struck it.

BLAM!

Kordal fired a plasma shot that struck the creature’s arm and sent it tumbling against the wall. The monster grunted a little, then quickly got back up.

Kordal’s brain was enhanced by several different biomods. Naturally, he was able to perceive things much more quickly than most Technopaths. That was why he was shocked out of his wits when he realized the creature’s arm didn’t look injured at all!

The skin wasn’t even lightly burned.

No! How is that possible?! Kordal thought, his pupils narrowing to pinpricks.

With a flip of the switch, Kordal switched to a Hardened Taser mode. This one was different from the mode his subordinates used. It fired pellets that exploded on contact and turned into web-like strands of exo-steel that would wrap around a target, bind them, and electrocute them.

It wasn’t that Kordal wanted to capture the monster alive, but against such a terrifying foe, he hoped this might buy him a minute, even just a few more seconds for reinforcements to arrive.

He was running out of time. In fact, his time was nearly up!

Krrrrt! Krrrrt!

Kordal squeezed the trigger and sent a stream of pellets rapidly firing. Most of them missed the target and struck the opposite wall, or even flew into the cells and exploded on the inmates inside, making them shriek in pain as webs of steel exploded around their bodies and violently electrocuted them.

Finally, one pellet made contact. It struck the monster and exploded, wrapping around it and forcing it to take a step backward as it fought to break free of its constraints.

Frighteningly, the electrocution didn’t seem to even give it the jitters. It was as if the electrical energy in the taser couldn’t hurt the creature at all.

But Kordal couldn’t care about that. With the creature momentarily immobilized, he started pelting it with bullet after bullet, causing more and more webs to explode and wrap around the creature, each web reinforcing the one after it.

"Keep shooting it!!" Kordal shouted. "Don’t stop until it’s-"

Kordal stopped mid-sentence. He suddenly realized all his men were dead. He was the last one standing.

His eyes flicked left and right, but he didn’t stop shooting.

Where are the others?! Kordal thought. They should have arrived by now! Something’s wrong!

The creature grunted. It kept trying to stand, but the webs of metal engulfing it bit into its skin and squeezed more and more for every layer that enveloped it. The cumulative effect of all of them was far beyond what a single pellet could accomplish.

But Kordal was frightened out of his wits. He had successfully pinned the creature down, but something was wrong. No reinforcements were showing up. They shouldn’t have been more than ten seconds behind him, let alone a minute or more! Where was everybody?!

The creature struggled to move. It fought desperately to break free of its restraints, but its movements were slowing.

"Kordal to Top Level, where’s my backup?!" Kordal shouted. "Top Level, respond! Top-"

Kordal’s heart jumped. He flicked his eyes to the left and saw something that scared him more than anything else so far… and that was saying a lot.

There was another abomination rounding the corner at the end of the hall. This one had bright, neon-yellow skin. It looked even meaner than the one he had pinned down, and the moment it rounded the corner, it spotted Kordal and started sprinting at him.

"Shit, shitshitshit!!" Kordal screamed. He turned his gun to fire at the new creature, but it leaped to the left and the right. It dodged and weaved, causing the tazer-nets to explode harmlessly on the ground or against the cells behind it.

Seven seconds. That was how much time passed between Kordal spotting the golden abomination and it arriving within arm’s reach of him.

Kordal felt a strange sensation as one of his arms stopped following his commands. Then the other one as well. He glanced down to see his right arm falling away from his body, but he didn’t have time to look for the left one before a powerful hand grabbed him by the throat and violently slammed him against the wall.

The abomination grinned at Kordal and licked its lips.

"Hehehe… you didn’t expect me to ever escape, did you, Commander? Don’t worry. I’m not cruel like you. I won’t torture you or drag this out. I just wanted you to know that I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time."

Kordal’s eyes widened.

"N-nuh… no… can’t be… Ved…ric?"

The creature cocked its head. Its smile became sinister.

Crack.

With a flip of its thumb, it snapped Kordal’s neck, and the light started to leave his eyes.

How… could it be… him?

That was the last thought that passed through Kordal’s mind before his eyes lost their light. He died tragically, not even knowing what had happened down here. His grievance would be unresolved for the rest of Eternity…

Vedric casually dropped the guard he hated the most to the ground, then turned to look at Unarin.

"Hehehe… caught in a snag? Need help?"

Unarin grunted. He slowly stood up, causing some of the cords binding him to snap, but the majority held tight.

After a few moments, Unarin sighed. "Yes, help me, please."

Vedric chuckled. At once, his Haa’ti lashed out, turning as thin as threads. They sliced through the restraints with the speed of a hurricane, and instantly released Unarin from his predicament.

Unarin cracked his neck. "The others?"

"Taken care of. Why do you think nobody came to bother you down here?" Vedric asked. "But we do have a problem. They sent an SOS off-world. You and I might be strong, but once a real fighting force arrives…"

Unarin smirked. "I’ve gotten a good feel for this body. It won’t be a problem. We’ll just need… more."

The two Ascended walked through the lake of gore around them. As they headed toward the exit, Unarin gestured toward the other cells.

"And these people?"

"Leave them." Vedric said coldly. "They’re trash. The guards might be bastards, but the people down in this wing belong here."

"Like you and I did?" Unarin questioned.

Vedric chuckled. "Exceptions merely prove a rule, brother Unarin. Before we leave, I can show you the files of everyone here. But we’re better off ‘recruiting’ from medium and low security."

Unarin nodded. "Acceptable."

As the two of them left the maximum security wing, the halls became eerily quiet. The inmates shook with fear after hearing the horrifying sounds and seeing the two monsters that had just ripped apart an entire force of heavily armed guards.

Nobody wanted to attract attention anymore. They all simply prayed they could become invisible to the abominations roaming their halls.

……………………………………………

"This is Reldis Command. We’ve received a Class V SOS from our southern prison. We are mobilizing all units, but we’ve lost contact with all guards. We believe this to be a Meltdown Incident. I repeat, a Meltdown Incident. Please contact the Psions and request backup."

The Technopath in charged of Reldis’s offworld coordination platform urgently transmitted a plea for help. Based on the fact that more than a hundred heart sensors had gone offline in less than fifteen time-units, that indicated a possible coordinated force attacking the prison to kill the guards. This was beyond what their world’s security forces could handle. They were a rimworld after all, existing on the fringes of Technopath space.

A long several minutes passed. Eventually, the response came back.

"Reldis Command, this is General Slifer from the ship Imperial’s Might I. We are changing course to assist you, but be advised we are still multiple rotations away from you. I have spoken to the Psions, and they informed me that there was a Cosmic Psion currently located in the vicinity of Reldis. Command, do you copy?"

"A Cosmic Psion?" Command’s Technopath coordinator exclaimed. "That will help us greatly. Who is he?"

"Not he, ‘she’. She’s a 6th Level named Protector Dosena. I don’t know if she’s off-world or within spitting distance, but if you can contact her, she should be capable of helping you."

"Much appreciated, General. I will relay this news." The Technopath replied. "Reldis Command, out."

It didn’t take long for several orders to get relayed around. Eventually, those orders made their way to the only Psion currently present on Reldis-02.

Levitating in the skies above the capital city, Dosena frowned.

[A prison break? It must be a serious matter. My mission was to investigate the Technopaths here to try and uncover the production location for Exigent-13, yet now my superiors want me to deal with such a minor matter.]

Dosena tapped her chin.

[I suppose there’s no helping it. Technopaths are so useless that they can’t even handle a conflict of this level. What sad excuses for Volgrim.]

Dosena turned her attention toward the southern prison. Then, she launched her body toward it.