Endosymbiosis

47. Burial

I walked silently through the dark corridors towards the parking lot with Judin following me closely, when I came across the bright beam of a fageine's flashlight on the floor. I hid behind the rocks at a corner and pulled Judin into the darkness, before they saw him.

Beyond the rocks there was an unconscious body, swallowed up to the neck by the gelatinous surface of the fageine, while the creature's weapon also laid abandoned on the floor.

A smell hit my nostrils... Blood... Human blood.

Kadi.

The fageine then engulfed his head, penetrating the skin with those toxic enzymes that woke him up in pure agony. Kadi's lungs heaved for air, but only the acid entered his body, as the blood leaked from his abdomen and painted the inside of the fageine red. Kadi was dying.

There was no explanation for the urge to save him that exploded in me, but the self-destructive human nature didn't need to be explained in the attempt to make it stop.

When my feet were about to take me to him, Judin muttered behind me:

"If you go, you won't come back." I stared at him. "And if I'm not dead yet, it must be because you guys need me alive... Then get me out of here NOW!"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Remind me why should I save you."

"Because I am... Useful."

Yes... He was.

So I yelled at the top of my lungs at the fageine, getting his attention. The creature sped forward towards me and I evaded his attack, while Judin didn't.

The fageine slammed with colossal force against the rock I'd been hiding in, and the stones crashed down on the remaining human, burying him like a fly that shouldn't be in the way... And killing him.

Because of me.

I covered my mouth to muffle my gasping breath, not able to believe what I'd done, while my other hand gripped the rocks of the wall just as I still held on to the hopes that I wasn't what I was struggling so hard not to be. I gulped in the dark, staring at where the shadows turned to monsters... And there I saw only my own.

But now that Kadi was dying, there was no time for remorse.

With the distraction I could reach the fageine's weapon left behind on the ground and I immediatly took it. I fired at the enemy, grazing him. The creature roared and flinched as my second shot hit him closer to the eye, but before I could fire a third, the creature's body grew as more fageines merged with him and became a mega-fageine.

The enemy reached over me and threw projections around, cornering my body.

I squeezed the trigger once more, but the gun choked in my hands, unloaded. I tried to dodge through the creature's projections, his acidic body almost touching my face, but I couldn't escape his embrace and my body was trapped between the enemy and the cold stones of the wall. I could see the enzymes behind the barrier of his skin rushing to dissolve me, while Kadi's scream was frozen in the depths of that fageine ocean. In front of me was that eye, the darkness of the enemy's pupil engulfing me... My target.

I felt the courage burst inside me to the point that, with a battle cry, I plunged my right arm into the acidic body of the mega-fageine, letting the corrosive liquid inside him envelop me up to the elbow.

I roared in pain, feeling the enzymes seeping through my pores like snakes digging tunnels of venom into my body. I was being torn apart and remade in a way that shouldn't exist in this universe, my body from the fingertips to the elbow turning into a crime against the laws of nature. I simply wanted to bite it off, but contained myself with all my strength.