"God damn it." Al'Jafar cursed.
He felt every time one of his men would die, but so far he was missing twenty and did not know where or if they were alive. It made him question his every move.
"These beasts will be the death of me. They move without a thought, but once you think you have them figured out they do something that make me question everything." He sat on a crate.
A light shined on his face. The visage of a stoic and proud man was no more. There sat a drained man. Of happiness, strength and determination. He wanted to surrender and get the entire thing over with. However, he was not alone, but in command of fifty people enacting his every command.
He took a deep breath, Al'Jafar spoke in a tired, drained voice "Did the doctor discover anything about them?"
"They recovered few bodies and sir..." The man paused, haunted look on his face.
"Son, speak please." Al'Jafar slowly spoke.
The man looked at the ground, his feet poking few stray materials that fell from the decaying station. Moments later he gave a look that Al'Jafar recognized from years of service, "Sir, its best if you ask himself. I - I - I do not think I can fully comprehend what he was talking about."
Al'Jafar stood up confused. In no time he was walking down the hall and into the laboratory. There were two other people inside the room, one of them was busy behind a device while the other, a redheaded woman, was scanning a body that was on the table.
"Doctor, I was told you had some information for me." Al'Jafar spoke.
The doctor turned, "Yes captain. We have discovered something very important. Very disturbing as well."
The doctor walked to where the woman stood, "Excuse me nurse Tori." The woman stood few feet behind the doctor, as he took a scalpel in his hand. Surgical gloves were already on his hands, and he had to only put a mask on his face. Offering another one for Al'Jafar he spoke, "You will need this." His look saying there was no negotiating.
Al'Jafar looked at the man confused, but the haunting look that he was giving him eventually persuaded him to put the mask on.
"Ok. Now these abominations were attacking us since we got onto the station. It is essential to tell me what led to us in this situation. What were the actions of us being here?" Doctor watched Al'Jafar.
"Of course." Al'Jafar said, "We received a distress signal from this place while we were returning from the Patch. That was approximately 100 hours ago. We came and started hailing the station on all frequencies that we knew. We got no answer. But the signal was still going strong. So I decided to mount an expedition. All of our shuttles were on the fritz and it was my call to dock with the station and board it that way. The rest you know."
"Right. The truth will set you free, Captain." Doctor said.
"This creature was very mysterious. I have my own theories on what led us here, but for now let us focus on the problem at hand." He pointed the scalpel at the body on the table.
"Take this for instance. For you it is a distorted monster bent on death and destruction. However, and this is the main point, it is NOT a monster, well not one from your worst dreams. Essentially it is created. A creation if you will." The doctor softly spoke.
"Created? What do you mean?" Al'Jafar asked.
"All of the bodies here are infected with a bio-engineered pathogen. It latches on to a healthy cell and piggybacks on it to access the rest of the body actively avoiding our immune system that would eventually find these little pests and eradicated them." He looked the captain very carefully, his piercing gaze unnerving Al'Jafar. "If it needed the subject to be alive that is,"
"What do you mean? We are fighting undead?" Al'Jafar asked.
"Yes and no. You see, this is essentially the pathogen itself." The doctor pointed the scalpel back at the body.
"The pathogen lingers in the air, in the rocks on the planet, in the crevices of the asteroid and traversers the space. It is incredibly resilient. And what is scary about this virus is that it keeps searching for a living organism. Another cell, a being, anything really." The doctor said, he took few moments to breathe and then continue, "A very important fact. This right here is still alive."
Al'Jafar quickly grabbed his gun. Just a few nano-seconds and he had it armed and ready to fire, "Easy captain." Doctor patted his hand to relax the stressed man. He had to give it to the old captain, the man had seen horrors and terrors that many only dreamt about.
The body on the table was rattled with bullets. His head almost blown off, hanging by a mere thread of flesh. The entire body was rancid. The flesh parts were decomposing and starting to smell horribly. The rest of the body was slowly being replaced by fungus of some kind. Clothes and shoes were still a part of it, though very dirty with blood and dirt. Bullets ripped holes through the fabric as it was shot from all sides at some point.
"Excuse me, I should have finished what I was speaking. The body is dead. However, the pathogen or virus inside it is still alive and well." Doctor ended.
He turned and grabbed an instrument, with a scalpel in one hand and a strange clamps in his other he moved forward. Al'Jafar twitched, "Easy captain, it really is alright." He explained.
"Now this right here was one of our men." The doctor said.
Al'Jafar looked horrified. He had a hard time believing what the man in front of him was saying, "Doctor I find it hard to believe, actually impossible that one of my boys out there is this - this thing." He pointed the barrel of his gun towards it.
"Nothing that we see here can tell us who the man is. If not for his DNA scan that is. I would not even recognize him. However, we got lucky here. The virus was essentially consuming his own DNA and replacing it with his own makeup. Even now it's looking for a strand of DNA that it can latch on to and plant its commands." Doctor explained.
Pointing his scalpel on the subject he added, "I recon by the size of the subject and the strength of the virus the subject was infected approximately 59 hours ago. Only few more hours and we would not even know what the species the entity was.'
"What - How do you know?" Al'Jafar asked.
The doctor looked at his captain, then moved indicating the old man should follow him, "This right here is Private Briggs." He pointed his scalpel at yet another abomination.
Al'Jafar just stood, mouth agape, disbelieving the doctors words, as the creature in front of him looked nothing like tall, lanky private he was so accustomed to.
"I know this of course, because the man was in my infirmary just 20 hours ago. His flesh was partially infected. Thinking I could help him I injected him a bunch of medications that would combat the inflammation. What I thought was an infection, turned out to be far from it. The reaction to the treatment was explosive and the virus just bloomed, for the lack of a better word." The doctor sighed.
Now it was the doctor's turn to look haunted, "The twisting of flesh, the wails of a man that cried as his own bones were being liquefied and turned to fungi is something I will never forget. A man does not stop feeling when he goes into shock. He just forgets he felt the pain. Usually during those times the brain would induce a coma, or we would induce one, but the virus prevented any treatment that meant loss of brain function. The man felt and was aware of everything. I killed that man"
"How?" Al'Jafar wanted to know just one thing.
After 100 hours they still did not have a sure method for eliminating hordes of abominations bent on eating their flesh.
"Desperation Captain. I just wanted to screams to stop. Even fully turned, the man would not stop. I just shot him in his head. It stopped." Doctor silently said.
"Then I took few vials of his blood and tested them. Just to be sure that my theory is correct. And it was. Right there on the wall I could see his DNA about to be devoured. Don't ask me why I did it. Just a hunch."
"Wait? We have been shooting them in the head for the past 5 days it never worked." Al'Jafar said.
"Fully turned maybe, he here was in the process, maybe 2 hours more and I would have a hard time doing anything to stop it. Or him." Doctor explained.
The old man swallowed, "So they need us to, what? Molt?" Al'Jafar asked.
"Not necessarily. I mean the end goal of every Sentient is survival. But this is a virus. And it was specially created to hunt live cells. What that means is as long as there is life this little thing will thrive. And the scary part is, the god damn thing is constantly improving. Its cells are constantly evolving." The doctor looked troubled.
"You have something on your mind Doc. Tell me what it is." Al'Jafar asked.
"Few times I assaulted some of the cells with different agents, bio neural cells and micro gel plombs. I had 5 test subjects if you will, in these small vials," he pointed at the table where 5 vials ominously sat, "every vial had a virus evolved to some point to resist the attack that I implemented not even a minute before. Testing further the resistance did not stop to just resisting the modern bio attacks and medical treatments, what I found is that this pathogen develops a slow resistance to elemental and environmental attacks and damage."
"The pathogen is ever evolving. And that is its biggest strength." Doc softly ended.
"Captain they are approaching again." A man came rushing in and calling for his leader.
"Doc, you work on it, burn the bodies." Al'Jafar ordered running past the doors and into the jungle.
