(Remaster) The Abyss Calls Out

Darkening Tides

OG story PTSD incoming, you've been warned.
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"Commander."

"Yes...?" Kiana held her head in her hand, staring up at the intruder to her office during her lunch break. Enterprise was carrying with her a folder with quite the number of documents in it, which already whispered incoming headaches for Kiana to deal with.

She set the folder down on the table, clearing her throat before she opened it. "I'm sorry to intrude during your lunch, but this is important."

"It better be, you know more than most I hate when I can't eat."

"...Right." She didn't like being reminded of that day. She had startled Kiana and made her drop her meal, and the verbal lashing she received was comparable to when Yorktown was angry.

Kiana put her meal down and wheeled over to the desk, cleaning her hands with a napkin before she began reviewing the documents. Her eyes roamed over the first one, any oncoming headaches swiftly vanishing as the topic was not of work, but of research.

She looked up to Enterprise, who had the ghost of a smile on her face. "Doctor Akiji has been hard at work to figure out how to deal with the Abyssals. He's come up with many ways to give us a better fighting chance, but nothing would work without concrete evidence and research done into Abyssals themselves."

She pointed to the next paper, one that Kiana revealed and showed a picture of an Abyssal on a table, one of the transformed Humans at that. "So far, we've managed to capture a few of the infected Humans, which the Doctor opted to call "Fiends" thanks to being a...well, in his words, Science Fiction nut."

"Yeah, that sounds like the Doc." She put that paper aside and found a roughly drawn diagram of the Fiend in question, the body split open down the middle in a dissection.

She looked over the different parts of the Fiend's body, noting that while they may have been altered by the Abyss, there was a great many similarities between them and unmodified humans. Though, that doesn't mean there weren't differences in them either.

Most of the Fiends she's seen had long claws, pale skin and hair, bony armor around their body, and a prehensile tail. Different Fiends had slightly different characteristics, but this was the general body plan of these things.

Then she flipped to the next page...

"Oh what the fuck?!" She nearly dropped the paper cause of the picture taken, and when Enterprise looked herself, she also recoiled.

The next page had yet another photo, one of the face of the Fiend and with its mouth opened. Turns out, their mouths have a freaky alteration besides the sharpened teeth, and it's that their tongue was...well, tongues.

Four needle like tongues replaced the standard flattened human one, each flexible and stretchy as per Akiji's description. There was even a hole in the top of each one, and based off the victims of these Fiends, it's easy to deduce that this is how they feed.

"Oh God...they suck the blood out of people with their tongues?" Enterprise shivered at the thought, even with the knowledge that she should be more or less immune to such a disgusting event.

Kiana continued reading, shivering as she did. "It gets worse..."

She grunted in disgust before turning the paper around for Enterprise. As it turns out, they can infect other Humans and turn them into Abyssals as well, and just like with Kansen, it appears the only known victims are female.

All human males found are drained of blood and killed, but some of the females are converted into more Fiends. The process is as of now unknown.

The two sat back as they processed everything, trying to piece together how these things even come to be if not directly made by Iowa. It wasn't long to think though, as Kiana's phone rang for a news update on the Abyssals.