Nicole sat in her favorite little nook in the Captain’s quarters. Her filthy red shirt and her gray skirt combo could only mean one thing. Her hair draped over her neck, bunched into a messy wad and scrunchied in place as she breathed in and closed her eyes. She held her arms out as the intro words “Throw that Bob Marley wanna-be motherfucker outta here” rolled through the speakers and the hum of the guitar built up.
“FFFAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEDE!” she yelled, air drumming violently with her paint brushes and getting in the headspace to work on her steampunk dock painting.
…
Gizzy sat in the lab, jarring awake as Vicki entered the room. She shut the door behind her and sat down.
“We need to talk.”
“Look…it wasn’t personal. You weren’t yourself, you were infected and even Nicole, the one who won’t even kill spiders, after experiencing that, said killing you was a mercy. I regret that it came to that but I did what I did for a reason.”
“It’s not about that.” Vicki admitted. “I got taken over because I was tempted to take the way out. I’m still tempted.”
“Which is why your tracker has a proximity alert if you go near the artifacts.”
“That doesn’t solve my problem. I’m… fucking cursed.” She sighed. “I have no options that don’t lead to more problems. If I feed on Dee, then every time I do I get desensitized to murdering my friends and my killing instinct gets stronger. If I feed on Vinn, I get between Nicole and him, and everyone looks at me like I’m a predator. It’s addictive, and toxic to them. The snail thing is not a solution either.”
“Why not? You go drink blood and get high?” Gizzy shrugged.
“Do you understand why I’m so scared of those things?” Vicki asked.
“Everyone has irrational fears, Jack used to be scared of spiders until I made him keep one as a pet. He saw it every day, talked to it, and eventually he got so used to it that he was holding it in his hand. Nicole used to be scared of the water and she’s fucking aquatic. Vin was scared of marriage and now look at them. If you’re creeped out by slimy critters, just do like Nicole suggested and hang out with Ricardo. He’s super chill. You have to get past that.”
“Gizzy…I’m not the same Vicki I was before the mutation. I was never scared of snails before. Nicole keeps saying they’re harmless, they’re vegetarian, and they don’t even attack humans. I’m not an actual vampire, I’m a human with bug cancer. Those snails are the natural predator of the bugs. What if they sense that on me? I’m part bug now. I may not look like it, but I’m venomous and predatory and I crave human flesh and blood, just like the bugs do. What if I’m food to them, like Jack is to me? I’d never hurt him, but when I get hungry, Gizzy, I can smell him from across the ship. I can smell Vinn too, but he’s big enough and resistant enough to my bites that if I did attack him he could just put me through the wall. I’m scared that I’ll lose control, and when I’m around those damn snails, I feel like they may be thinking the same thing. What if they get hungry? They don’t love me like I love Jack, and the feeding instinct is so strong.”
“Vicki I am trying. You know the universe is at stake here and I have spent hours in the lab instead of sleeping trying to cure your hunger. I’m not magical, I’m just smart. I rely on my technology that is currently lightyears away, and this takes time. What do you want me to do? Stop sleeping entirely and fuck up the mission? Put the universe on hold and let everyone die because I spent 2 weeks in a lab trying to cure you with this… bullshit pirate-ass science equipment? I can’t clone you a personal slave Vinn and hide him in the dungeon from Nicole, and I can’t keep Jack in armor 24/7. I can put you in cryo stasis for the rest of the mission, I can give you snail and blood cocktails to fight off the hunger, but you’ll keep having nightmares from it because you’re afraid of the snails. I can only do so much. We don’t have a… fucking…rapist farm you can run through and murder your way to fulfillment every day.”
“Is there no safe way to microdose the Pitch? Inject me with dead cells like a vaccine?” She asked.
“Honey, you’re not building your immune system against a flu here, the pitch works because it feeds your nutritional needs from itself. I don’t know how but it provides you the fuel you need from the blood, it doesn’t satiate the cravings. You just can’t go on a feeding frenzy because you can’t control your body. You just crave and suffer and detox forever in there while it paralyzes you and controls you like a puppet. It’s not a cure, it’s a prison. We could do the same thing by chaining you up and pumping you full of fresh Vinn blood and drugs and let you struggle and suffer. The only difference is that the pitch feeds on YOU too. Your memory, your emotions. It becomes you, it replaces you. You’re not cured, you’re just in hell as your body silently smiles and fakes being cured. The Pitch is not a mutual symbiotic organism, it’s a slow-killer that takes your body and mind for its own needs until there’s nothing of you left except the worst parts of your trauma and your memory, piloted by an evil soul who would kill Jack and feel nothing.”
“So there’s no reverse engineering a cure then?” She asked, looking lost and hollow.
“Not as long as it’s alive. Maybe I can understand the mechanism that it uses to fuel you, but the cravings and bloodlust aren’t fixed, you’re just harder to kill.” Gizzy explained.
“What if you put my memory into someone else’s body? Clone my brain into someone who doesn’t need the blood to live, or can’t tear Jack apart if they did? Can you just stick my brain into someone else, something else? A robot, a human, one of your human Gizzy bodies, and just do some cosmetic surgery to make me have my own face? Or something close? We built Dee from scraps and 3d printed parts, and she’s uncanny. Sometimes I forget that she’s a robot.”
“That’s not Dee. It’s human skin on a sex doll with a damaged personality chip. She doesn’t have real emotions and she has no feelings. She can’t feel anything. She’s cold and numb hardware and software emulating life. You don’t want that. Nicole is a genetic mystery, so do you want a clone of Jack’s body? That won’t be confusing and traumatic for him to have a clone of himself with his wife’s mind. Or fucking a clone of me with his wife’s mind. It’s not a custom character generator for a video game, it’s ultra-complicated data of pre-set people, down to the cellular level. There’s no modification systems, no cloning lab. It’s one machine we salvaged from the fucked up ship. Hell, we don’t even know who sabotaged the ship. We’re lucky the cloning tank survived. It’s basically a copy machine, and we have files of us to feed into it. It doesn't even have unlimited uses. I have 16 orbs in a crate, and enough cloning substrate for maybe 25 clones, and we’ve used a few of them already. We can’t just wing it, printing out half-assed abominations and shooting them when they come out as inside-out screaming flesh golems that waste precious extra lives for the crew. I don’t have a Vicki blueprint of you before you became a hybrid, and if I did, you’d just step out of that machine less vampire bug and more Vicki, with cancer. What you’re asking for may be possible back home. Hell, the original you may be cured by now, but we don’t know. It’s a blackout mission and 8 months have passed. But back home, I have limitless resources and money, and plenty of time and people to put on the job. Out here, we got jack shit. I’m storing the most volatile substances I’ve ever encountered in fucking soil sample cans. You wanna just abduct a random person, surgically swap brains and hope Jack thinks she’s pretty? Does he like reptiles?”
“I have an idea. I’m not proud of it, though.”
“Interesting.” Gizzy said tilting her head.
“I have to feed, we can't stop me from doing that and repressing it makes it worse, and I can’t feed on Vinn anymore. It’s not right. I can’t simulate it, so... what if we… get another crew member I don’t mind attacking?” She said, looking ashamed.
“So, livestock.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t label it like that.”
“If they were humanoid, they’d die too easily. I could do a bone marrow modification so they produce Vinn’s blood and regenerate faster, but they may not survive that procedure. You do realize you are talking about abducting probably 2-4 people, forcibly keeping them on the ship to torture every day after I perform some life threatening medical experimenting. This is some pretty hardcore shit.”
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“That’s why they would have to be the worst people we could find. Not just bought slaves or volunteers we trick, or random people. Someone so truly horrible that they deserve it, without a doubt.”
...
Jack and Gizzy watched as the docking clamps fitted to the large structure. It was a roughly cube shaped set of smaller cubes clustered together like a modular space station, covered in blinking red and yellow lights.
They stepped through the doorway, entering an area where they were scanned and stripped of their weapons and anything weapon-like.
“So…" A grey bearded man with red skin walked out, cigarette in mouth. “You got yourself a wanted prisoner.” He smirked, smoking trailing out of his cigarette. "Strange that you would come to us rather than a bounty collection outpost.”
“We can’t handle her anymore. You were conveniently located nearby, and we’re short on supplies. So, if you take her off our hands, we would gladly take some food and materials instead of the normal reward. We’re not about to go another 10 lightyears with her dietary needs on low power. They don’t give you a bounty for a dead prisoner you starved so that you could eat, ya know?” Gizzy said.
“So what you have here is a video and a news article, and your promise that she’s on your ship.”
“You can scan her, facial recognition will confirm the video, this is her massacring 5 people in a bar, and this is footage we took of a battle afterwards that cost 47 lives. You would get a nice bounty claim from her, worth more then some supplies and food crates. Now… we’re not feeding her anymore. So if you reject the offer, we’re venting her and you get nothing, and we limp to the nearest planet to resupply. OR you can do things our way.” She said holding up a data drive. “All the proof you need is on this. Check it out for yourself.” She insisted. He tossed the drive to one of the guards and he plugged it in, reviewing the carnage.
“We’re in. Trojan virus implanted.” Nicole said over the coms. “Downloading the prison’s database. 613 prisoners, 8 guards, 1 warden. Weapons log, defenses, power systems."
“And you just want me to give you supplies and food with your word she’s on your ship and this isn’t a video from some bounty collection cell you stole for leverage?”
“Actually no.” Gizzy smiled. “She’s right here.” She said pointing towards Vicki, being lead by Vinn at gunpoint.
“All be damned. Facial recognition shows it’s the same girl, we’ll need blood tests to confirm.” The Warden said. Suddenly the power went out, Vicki drawing guns and Vinn pointing his at the guards. Vinn handed Gizzy and Jack’s guns back as they got out cuffs and collars. “How dare you.” The Warden growled. “You know, this is a prison. We don't have money or any guns worth stealing, So which prisoner do you fuckers think you’re about to set free?”
“Oh none of them.” Gizzy smiled. “We’re just taking over the prison for a while for some lab work. I got a sick crewman and medical testing on random people would just be cruel. It’s for science.” She assured.
“I got 40 armed guards all over this prison ready to swarm you and gun you to pieces.”
“No ya don’t. You got 8 guards, armed with stun batons and spray, the weapons lockers are all remotely locked down, and we just hacked your system. Pumkin, we now own your space station. Communications, distress calls, prisoner logs, crew manifest, everything. So you’re gonna all follow my lead like good boys, or people are gonna get real dead real fast. I’m gonna turn on the com system now and you’re gonna say very calmly that there has been an air leak in the far section of the ship, and for all guards to immediately report to… and then follow that by whatever your nearest break room is from here. If you so much as blink suspiciously, I’m blowing off your leg at the knee and we try this again but on the ground.”
...
Jack paced the break room, all 8 guards and the warden cuffed by the ankles and chained to the pipe running down the wall, wrists cuffed and shock control collars on all of them.
“Well that looks like it. Bio scans of the facility add up to the number of prisoners and guards accounted for, they’re not going anywhere." Dee sat down at the table with a redbull can full of water, pretending it was real redbull.
“Hello, I’ll be your nanny for the next few days or so. If anyone needs to use the bathroom, tough titties, and feeding time is at 5. Spoilers, it’s protein goop. It’s always gonna be protein goop.” Dee said with a pep in her step.
“Are you gonna kill us?” Asked one of the scared young guards as Gizzy strutted up to him, the big gun on her back.
“No. At least, not unless one of you somehow magically gets free and causes trouble, then we just kill that asshole and everyone still chained up is fine. We’re just borrowing your prison for a while, then we’ll be on our way and you’ll never be the wiser.”
“I remember faces.” The Warden smirked. “We’ll find you and you’ll pay for this.”
“Well, you SAY that, but if you noticed the aluminum cones fitted above your heads, well, you won’t even remember us being here. You’re just gonna have some weird unexplained shit to explain to someone and probably just bury the evidence to keep your jobs… or not. I don’t care. So if none of you try and escape, this will be a few pretty uncomfortable days you won’t remember, and you’ll be a few prisoners shy when you get unchained.”
“If this is a jailbreak, whatever they’re paying you, we’ll double it.” The Warden spat.
“We’re not freeing anyone, and we work for ourselves. We don’t want the money, we just wanna torture a few of your worst pieces of shit for medical reasons, and this is a 3x Max security. Do you really care about these heathens?”
“That’s it? You want test subjects for medical research? Why this prison?” He asked.
“Because nobody wants to volunteer for this testing. It’s gonna hurt like hell, some are going to die, and there is no reward. You were just the closest prison cube small enough we could handle. And thanks to our new advanced computer hacking artifact, it was kind of easy.” She said, exiting the room and activating the power again via phone, engaging the shipwide com systems.
"Ladies and gentledicks, can I have your attention. I’m Charlotte, and I’ll be your Warden for the next few days. With your shortly arriving automated meal tray is a nice little medical kit containing a syringe and some sample cups. There is also a Thermion Flu vaccine, to administer in your thigh muscle yourself. It is mandatory, and people who refrain will be shot. You’ll notice there’s no food this round, and if you refuse to provide all samples, there just won’t ever be any. So provide us with the required samples and your next tray will arrive with double proportions. For those of you selected for the program, there will also be additional fun treats. Otherwise, you’ll be getting empty trays and at some point I may just shoot you to save time. I have a zero tolerance policy and if you doubt my severity, I’d like to inform you that we just took over this prison by force and killed all the guards. So sit back and relax, new management will return to normal next week, and in the meantime, we play a game of reward or starvation for medical surveys. For a handful of you who qualify for further testing, one lucky bastard gets to leave here and hopefully never come back. Now the odds are never in your favor, but to some people, that sweet-sweet freedom has to sound nice. Welcome to SquidGames.” She said turning off the coms. “And now we wait.”
...
“Hey.” The guard whispered to Dee. “Aren’t you that one pornstar?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m so flattered you know me, but no I’m not her. I’m so much more than that. I mean less, I’m so much less than that.” She smiled, sipping her water. “Anyone wanna play a game to pass the time? Who has the biggest cock?” she asked. “Winner get’s one of these candy bars from the vending machine, loser gets laughed at. Any volunteers? No? Come on…I’m bored and I got like 20 of these candy bars.” She said opening one up and eating it.
...
Gizzy watched the screens as multiple prisoners threw up and rolled around, looking sick.
“Yeah, the bone marrow compatibility for Delmarian blood is not looking great. If they’re throwing up with that tiny dose, the infusion would kill them.” Gizzy sighed, drinking an actual redbull.
“Is anyone not getting sick?” Vicki asked.
“Oh sure, we got 20 prisoners looking just fine. Once we give them the bigger dose, we’ll know if they’re good to go. We can do the infusions and see who lives, and then from there you can just pick your meal. Process of elimination. Like a menu."
“Can I interview them?” Vicki asked.
“Whatever floats your goat, unless you like dead goats, and in that case, whatever sinks your goat.” She sipped.
...
“You okay with this, Nicole?” Vinn asked as she sat in the view window, looking unsettled.
“Not really, but after seeing Vicki the way she was, we don’t have much choice. We’re just waiting it out while they do their thing.” She sighed. “I might cone this out when we’re done, I dunno.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’ve gone through this list of crimes you have to commit to get into this place. There’s not one halfway descent person here. It’s just list after list of horrendous shit you wouldn’t believe. Everyone here is a life sentence, and half of them are scheduled for evaluations next year to see if they just get executed.”
“Why does everything have to be death and suffering. Is the universe really like Gizzy said, just blood and teeth and tentacles killing to live?”
“Don’t think about it like that. Just finish your artwork.”
“Not in an artsy mood right now with 200 living beings being tested for your blood compatibility, getting sick and waiting for the healthiest one to torture.”
“Maybe just have some snail shots and we can watch some TV shows till you fall asleep.” He said while giving her a big fuzzy hug. She smiled and tried to distract herself.