Gizzy woke up to the sound of the ship rattling with a series of explosions and alarms. She grabbed her rifle, suddenly wishing she had given herself one soul bullet instead of giving Dee both of them.
“Jack I’m sorry, but she has to die. Forgive me or not, I’m erasing the bitch from existence again until it sticks.” She said climbing the ladder to the engine room and up into the main ship, now filled with smoke and alarms.
“Vicki, what the hell did you do?” she asked loudly. She rushed down the hallway checking doors and finding them all locked. She headed for the stairwell and froze with horror as she saw the remains of the clone machine, blown to shit.
“Vicki you piece of shit, you just doomed us all." She ran to the bridge, shooting her way through the door with a grenade round and climbing through the hole, to find the control panel open and the book gone, just a blank screen and loose wires. She tried to manually power the computer and it flickered to life.
“Medusa, report damage.”
“Engines disabled, weapons disabled, all ejection pods ejected. Storage containers 1-14 ejected.”
“Every one except the one I sleep in? The lab, bio-lab, the grow tanks, the fucking robot supply storage, all of it?”
“Correct.”
“Unlock the doors.”
“Doors locked under emergency protocol. Captain's override.”
“That makes no sense, Nicole wouldn’t do that, and how did Vicki get the damn access codes?”
“Unable to answer.”
“Life signs, vitals, is anyone dead or injured?”
“Unable to answer. Life support scanner damaged.”
“Security camera feeds.”
“Unable to comply. Security feeds corrupted and disabled, under Captain's override code.”
“Son of a bitch, how did she just take the whole damn ship while I was asleep? Is everyone held hostage? Did she not realize I was in crate 15? What can you tell me? Damnit, what do you know!?”
“Life support and oxygen operational, shuttles have not left the shuttle bay, oxygen leaks contained and sealed. Fire suppression 52 percent operational.”
“Fine, I’ll find her myself.” Gizzy said before rushing down the hallway and finding the elevator broken. She made her way through the long route, to the stairwell and up to the upper deck and to find the shuttles both inoperable and full of craters from grenades, The lights flickered as she passed the snail tank, seeing Candice cowering at the bottom. Gizzy didn’t see a single other person on her way through the ship.
“Where the hell is everyone? Did everyone escape in the pods and forget me?” she asked, feeling a deep sense of dread and loneliness at the idea that she might be alone on a dying ship, with no engines or shuttles to go pick up the ejected pods. She grabbed the cutting torch from the workshop and began searching rooms, cutting her way through doors and yelling for anyone, hoping for a reply. She got to the mess hall and cut the sliding door locks, opening it up and standing there staring at a freshly painted room, now floor to ceiling decorated with a new red and spattered motif, the tables broken and flipped, holes in some of them as if riddled with stray gunfire. She closed her eyes, feeling almost afraid to enter for some reason, gun down and in a state of shock and disbelief until she heard movement.
“Hello? Who’s there, are you hurt?” she asked as she dragged the table out of the way and saw Vicki sitting on the floor, painted red. Her hands dug to the scalp in her hair, head down and barely breathing, silent and oddly calm.
“What did you do?”
“It wasn’t just me.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t JUST you?” Gizzy asked, shouldering her gun.
“I don’t know. There’s something else on the ship. I don’t know what it is or where it is, so I just hid. All I did was come here and… everything else was something else. I haven’t left the room.”
“What did this? A clone of you, some enemy ship, or are you just trying to lie to me?”
“I swear, I don’t know what happened to the ship.” She sobbed, shaking and terrified. “I heard explosions, nobody came for me, I thought I was alone.”
“What happened in this room?”
“I can’t… You won’t believe me even if I tell you the truth.”
“I’ll get the truth out one way or another, so I highly advise you just save time and pain by trying it anyway.”
“Dee… lost her mind or something. She shot me first, I think she may have killed Jack.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Shooting you makes sense, but if she shot you, you’d be all kinds of dead. I gave her my gun, and 2 soul bullets, specifically for you, if you gave her no choice.”
“Well then you fucked up, because that wasn’t your gun.” She chuckled sadly. Gizzy picked her up by the neck and stood her to the wall, pinning her with the gun barrel and letting go of her throat just to let her speak.
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“I gave her my gun, I checked the bullets. What did you do?”
“I defended myself.”
“Not good enough.” She said, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her to the medlab and slamming her on the table. She stuck the gun to her chin and began digging through the drawers for something, taking out a syringe and strapping her down.
“Wait!” she warned.
“Too late for that.”
“You don’t understand, let me explain before you ask the wrong questions and kill me.” She begged.
“I’m sick of lies. So let’s try this a different way.” She said giving her the truth serum without hesitation as Vicki flopped her head back, giving up any hope of survival. “Okay, so you tell me what you wanna tell me, and I’ll listen now.”
“Something else set the explosives and attacked the ship. You need to…” she said choking up and struggling to talk. “See if Jack is alive.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know… I think he’s dead but I wasn’t there. Please just go find him and tell me he’s alive. Check our room. Please” she begged.
“He better be alive, because whoever set the bombs took out the cloning machine. Whoever is left is all that’s left.”
“No… No, you can fix it.”
“I can’t fix this, it’s not an Osirian machine I know how to repair, and it’s alien tech borderline magic that runs off a missing book someone ripped from the broken console. I wouldn’t know how to repair it if I had a working ship and full crew and a wish left. It’s gone. Whoever is dead is dead, and whoever escaped in the pods is just out there helpless… I’m going to the room. If Jack is alive, and he better be, we’ll deal with you, and whatever you did in here. She better be alive, too.” Gizzy growled rushing down the hall and lighting the torch. She cut the hinges and kicked in the door, taking a few steps in and stopping, turning around and closing her eyes. She stepped into the hall and leaned on the opposing stone wall, pressing her head to the cold masonry and sniffing beck the urge to lose her mind. She calmed her thoughts heading back down to the lab as she barged in, grabbing another syringe to be sure and dosing Vicki.
“Where is Jack?” she asked Gizzy.
“Is Dee alive… answer me.”
“No… is Jack alive?” she sobbed.
“How do you not know the answer to that? How do you not know if he’s alive or not.”
“I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t know if he’s dead, please just tell me he’s alive, PLEASE!” she screamed.
“Jack is dead. You should know that pretty confidently since his body is ten feet from his head.” She said as Vicki slammed her head back and went silent. Her entire will to function shut down.
“You can’t fix the machine, and Jack is dead.”
“Correct.”
“Just kill me.” She asked softly. “You’re gonna kill me anyway and Jack is gone, so what’s the point in even struggling? I don’t even want to defend myself. I killed Dee. I killed her and it wasn’t an accident. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the ship and the crew, and it doesn’t matter because Jack is dead and I killed Dee.”
“Why?” Gizzy asked
“Because I was hungry. I blacked out, I don’t know where I was, and I needed to feed and Vinn is gone, so it was either kill Nicole, kill Jack, or feed on Dee and maybe she would survive. I didn’t have any choice. I tried to tell her, she started stating things that made no sense, saying something about Jack and asking if I killed him. And I just rushed her. She shot me, I killed her. Then the doors closed and locked down, things started exploding and I was too scared to check the phone. That’s all I know. Something hit us hard, and the ship is damaged and you’re going to kill me, because even if you believe that all of this was something else and not me… I still killed Dee and I don’t know if I regret that because of what you’re going to do, or if I regret that in general. So just kill me for her and go find whatever else is on this ship and hopefully Nicole, alive… but I seriously doubt it if it did that to Jack and knew to take out the cloning machine.”
“You know my theory?” she asked.
“I don’t want to.” She admitted.
“I think you’re just evil somewhere down in the core. I think you crave the power and that’s why you took the vials. You can’t control yourself, you need it, like an addict. And you can’t stop because powerless little Vicki got a taste of evil and power when she got bitten, and the radiation just made you worse.
“What vials?” she asked.
“You don’t even know what you’ve done. The blackouts are no excuse. You took the samples from the lab weather you know it or not. You drank them, and I can test that…” she said taking a blood sample and turning on the scanner, tapping it to get it to work. “Confirmed. Imposter blood, raven DNA, and pitch in your system.” Gizzy said as Vicki went limp and cold.
“Then you have to kill me anyway. If I don’t know I’m stealing it then I can’t stop myself and I’m dangerous.”
“You took the vials, you blacked out, and you killed Jack.”
“No… I can’t, Why would I do that?”
“You killed Jack, you killed Dee, you rigged the ship and you probably killed Nicole too. Maybe you killed her when she wouldn’t authorize the book codes. Maybe you killed her randomly but I highly doubt we find her alive and I’m just curious… why the hell did you leave me alive? You’re smarter than that. Why didn’t you kill me first, take out the machine, and then take out the crew? Why did you leave me alive, and eject the storage containers except the one I was asleep in. That is the obvious first move, why didn’t you kill me?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to kill Jack, or Nicole. I didn’t even want to kill Dee, I just needed to feed and I lost control and couldn’t stop myself till it was over. You’re right. If I killed everyone, I would have killed you first.”
“Unless the part of you that you can’t consciously control wanted me to suffer, or wanted me to kill you too.”
“Kill itself. Right, that makes sense.”
“Unless you made copies. And that’s why the escape pods were launched. You made more Vickis and sent then out to spread, and you didn’t matter anymore because whatever is controlling you doesn’t care about one Vicki. It burrowed way down where I can’t get to it and left you to die.”
“Then shoot me with one of the fancy bullets. Kill me and the others at the same time. It’s what’s right. You know it.”
“I do… but I’m going to look for Nicole. You’re gonna stay here sedated until I find her, and you really better hope she’s alive because if she’s alive, and she sees what you did, she is going to give the order to put a soul bullet in your head.”
“Oh good. So why does it matter?”
“Because you don’t understand what that thing in you understands. If Nicole is alive, then I’m not alone when I kill you. And I can't add more horrors to her already horrible list of them by torturing you with her on the ship with me. You'll die quickly. You see, I’m not fearless, It just takes a lot to scare me. The two things I’m scared of are losing my family, which you have already done, especially if Nicole is dead too. And being alone in the void of space on a broken ship with no escape pods, cry pods or cloning machine.” She said leaning closer. “So you see, you have a problem. I won’t let you win by hitting me in both of my worst fears. I won’t be alone. I refuse to be alone. I would rather be a villain with a job to do than be alone for eternity in space because I did the thing I should have done, by killing you. So either Nicole is alive and we’re stuck together after I kill you, or nobody is alive and I have no family or reason to care about anything, and you’re stuck with me, and honey… you better pray for there’s a Nicole to order me to kill you. Otherwise I have nobody else but you, and nothing to do for a very long time, and you may think you’ve seen horrors and won this game, but you have no idea what evil is yet. We’re about to become very close friends. So pray. Pick a god and pray to them that I find Nicole and find her alive. Take your time. I have a big ship to search and you’re not leaving. Pray for yourself… or you’ll become prey for me.”