Isolation-#Wattys2015

Excerpt 36- The Devil's Face

I'm not exactly sure what happened after that as I began to drift into an out of conscious. I could hear the tank crushing rocks above us, though I couldn't hear of the electric motors so I assumed they were still disabled. A few of the rocks were removed from the top of the pile, which allowed light to come in, which I assumed was from the tank. I heard the synthetic security guards talking and then the sound of claws clanking on the concrete floor. After a few seconds of quiet, a revoltingly bad smell hit my nose. I was tempted to think that it was one of the mutated lab creatures, but at the same time, whatever it was seemed to be intelligent because of a third voice that chimed in with the synthetics.

'Are the three of them alive?", it asked.

"Unfortunately sir", one of the synthetics said, "though they are hurt very badly, if we left them here they would die in the hour."

"No", the voice said, "it is good that they live. Retrieve them ."

More rocks were pulled away from the pile and I was hauled out before passing out again. The next time I woke up, I was on my back, staring up at a metal ceiling with no light bulb. I had been stripped of my equipment and was once again wearing a white lab suit. There were a few wires and hoses connected to an IV going into my arm. I sat up, pulled the Iv out of my arm and looked around. The room, or cell, which ever you prefer, was ten feet long, ten feet wide and ten feet up. There was a heavy door and a thick window blocking my way out, but allowing the light to come in. out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a tail flash by the window. I slowly stood up and went to the window. In the small room outside the wall, was Martin. He was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room with his legs crossed and his hands held in a pose as if he were a villain from a James Bond movie.

"Glad to see your still with us", Martin sneered, his face was now completely covered by the same material that made up my visor. His skin had been replaced by pitch black Chitin, his fingers were now tipped by razor sharp claws, he had down pipes growing out of his back and a tail tipped by a razor. That was when his term, 'genetic superiority" clicked.

'What the fuck am I looking at?", I asked myself. It apparently also came out because Martin responded.

"I'm glad you asked", he said standing, rising to a full 8 feet, "you see, I'm 45 years old. When I was 23, I was a Colonial Marine on LV-226, the home world of the Primal Xenomorph that you K-Classes hate so much. My team was supposed to recover 5 survivors of an outbreak and then leave behind a...present, for the Xeno's, but the mission went south when they got the jump on us. My entire team, expect for me, was maimed, mauled or killed. I however, was on the receiving end of a Royal Facehugger."

I crossed my arms, "your full of crap, no one survives being seeded by a Facehugger."

Martin snickered, "hear me out boy. When I was picked up, they rushed me into surgery and managed to extract it. Watching it grow over the few months it took me to recover was when I realized just how....inferior, humans are to Xenomorphs."

I stayed in quiet shock as Martin continued, "For 20 years I've been trying to crack the code that would allow me to write a virus that could rid the universe of humanity and make everyone utterly perfect, and now I have."

"Okay", I sighed, "I'll bite, what the hell is it?"

Martin turned and looked at me with his featureless face, "I trust you are familiar with Red Star by now?"

I felt my heart drop.

"I recently learned that Red Star has two directives", Martin said, "the natural one, claim a host and use it to reproduce, and the inactive one, brake up a hosts cell structure just enough to allow another mutagen to take over. With all of the Red Code I obtained from the creature in the cells, I was able to extract and breed all the Second Directive Red Star I needed to lay the foundation for what I call, Agent 41."