Vicki giggled, drawing a pair of SCAR heavy 308 rifled from her back.

“A zombie cyborg, formerly a god, and a girl with cancer, now a vampire god. Shame that you won't live to see the irony.” She said, unloading as Gizzy opened fire. The two of them sprayed lead while sparks painted the walls behind them in streaks of red and black. Vicki sighed, looking annoyed. “How are you still standing?”

“I got bitten by a regenerator. You know the only way to kill those tanky fuckers?” She snarled, eyes going milky white. “You have to shoot them in the head. The one part of me that’s armored with alien metal.” She said rushing and slamming Vicki into the wall. In slow motion, the drywall shattered as Gizzy bit into Vicki’s Nack and Vicky ripped her arms off with a boot to the chest. Gizzy reached out from the bloody stumps with a fresh set of bones and flesh already knitting around them.

"So neither of us can die, and you’re just stalling so I don’t go upstairs and kill your friends.” Vicki stated.

“Pretty much, but tell me you’re not enjoying this." Gizzy smirked before flipping a bloody finger and picking up on of the SCAR rifles and the shotgun.

“Oh, you know me so well.” Vicki smiled.

“You know, they used to be your friends first. The real Vicki would know that. Before they were my friends. You lived with Nicole for years, she helped you when you got sick, and you had fun together. You and Vinn bonded, and Jack was the love of your life. You don’t even care about any of them now, do you? It’s all about power. That's what you are… greed, hunger, selfishness. You’re just cancer with a Vicki face.”

“We’re gods, sins are whatever we decide. You taught me that.”

“You’re a shitty student then if that’s the lesson you got.” She said, emptying the guns in Vicki's face and chewing her head down to a stump. It grew back almost instantly. Vicki lifted the other SCAR and returned the favor, chewing the flesh off Gizzy’s face down to the metallic bone that didn’t have a scratch on it. “I think we’ve evolved beyond lead and gunpowder.” Gizzy said, taking out her knife and stabbing herself in the shin. Vicki watched curiously as Gizzy reached into her metal leg and pulled out the jade dagger, the blade extending to a longsword. Vicki held her arm out, sprouting a scythe from her flesh and giving it a spin. They rushed to the center of the room, locking blades and ducking around each others swipes. The concrete pillars shattered in the wake of their attacks. Neither of them feeling any resistance. Gizzy ducked and hacked an arm off, retracting the sword and extending it through Vicki's skull, tearing her head off. As the scythe clipped her own head, Gizzy felt a slight groove carved into the metal skull armor and watched the head grow back on Vicki’s severed spine.

“I can dance for days.” She sighed, coughing black tar and wiping her mouth.

“Lovely.” Gizzy snarled.

...

“Where are you love?” Vicki hollered through the ship. Dee held her breath, remembering she had no heartbeat to track. She suddenly was startled by Gizzy sitting beside her.

“When did you get here?”

“Shhh. I’m not. I’m a holographic program only you can see.”

“You’re a robot hallucination?” Dee asked.

“I’m an emergency program I installed while removing your power cube, sorry. I like to have backup plans for everything. It’s hard to explain so just follow me and do what I say.” She said before getting up and running. Dee followed her as hellish sounds echoed through the ship.

“I can’t fight her, she’s too strong.” Dee dry-sobbed.

“I know, dumbshit, that’s why you need to wake me up. Get to the maintenance ladder and go to the engine room, and save your ammo.” Ghost Gizzy said.

“Oh, I hate this so much.” Dee said running to the tiny hatch and dropping down to the bottom. She followed Gizzy to a strange hidden series of crates tucked behind the coolant tanks.

“Uncover them.” She said. Dee uncovered the mini cryo-tubes and stood, looking horrified and baffled.

“You… cloned everyone and hid them in the basement?”

“Backup everything, twice if possible. Press the code Overlord 33456 on mine. I’ll back you up.” She ordered. Dee sighed and pressed it, the tube opening and Gizzy sat up, an exact copy of herself down to the mechanical leg sat up and grabbed the gun off her.

“You think that gun is gonna kill Vicki?” she asked.

“One of them.” Gizzy said walking up to the Clone of Vicki in the tube, and firing 2 shots into her head and one in the heart in a robotically cold manner.

“What have you done?” she asked.

“Nothing you’ll remember. The moment you leave the cone area, you’ll have no idea these are down here.” She said grabbing her by the arm and leading her out of the secret nook as it closed behind her.

“Wait… what are we doing in the engine room?” Dee asked in confusion.

“Here, take this gun, go to the cloning tank and shoot the glowing blue panel at the top.” Gizzy ordered.

“I don’t understand.”

“Then just follow orders.” She said. "If Vicki has a cloning machine, she has all of us, her own personal playthings she can kill and modify and try again until she’s satisfied playing god.

“But without that if we die… we just die forever.”

“With that, we live forever, in her personal demented hell. You kill the machine, I’ll kill the demon.”

“She’s powerful.”

“For now… give it time. She only thinks she’s won.” Gizzy smirked.

...

“Where is the stupid cannon?” Nicole barked while checking all the military crates on the rooftop. Jack rained precision one-shot kills from above as Vinn rained down automatic fire in a pointless attempt to thin the crowd. Nicole reached into her pocket for the map and pulled out something Gizzy slipped her before she left. She placed the goggles on and looked around for anything different, spotting the green glow from a crate near the rooftop gargoyle. She ran to it and pried the crate open, pulling out a black leather book with green marble stripes and an inlay medallion of a brass cannon on the front.

“Oh I get it… book cannon. That’s just weird.” She sighed. She stepped back, opening it and noticing the pages were just blank. The sound of a helicopter drew her attention as it lowered towards them, a pair of belt fed miniguns pointed their way. “Fuck, we’re too late.” She sighed. She ran to Vinn and hugged him.

“Vinn, I love you.” She yelled over the noise. He turned aroundhoping to use himself as a meat shield to protect her.

“I’m not letting go.” He promised.

“You guys wanna get in the chopper?” yelled a voice from the chopper. They turned and squinted into the sunwashed sky as the smile of the gun store owner gleamed gold.

“What the hell?” she asked.

“I also sell attack vehicles, if you have the cash, heheheh” he chuckled. They piled in and took off.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“What about Gizzy?” she asked.

“The helicopter fits 3 passengers, looks like you didn’t get the good ending, but you made it to the end regardless.

“Because someone always has to sacrifice themselves while the others escape in these games, and someone you least expect shows up in the cut scene.” She said with tears in her eyes. “But we can’t leave her.” Nicole nodded, with assurance. “Captain’s orders.

...

Vicki stalked the ship, following the movement and stopping with an impressed look as Gizzy stood in full armor, holding the grenade launcher, sending her across the shuttle bay with a double tap.

“You’re like a virus, aren’t you?” Vicki chuckled. “I get to kill you twice at the same time, on my ship and on that planet. Tell me Gizzy, can you feel your counterpart dying? The zombie infection trying to keep you alive as I tear you apart?” she said as another grenade double tap held her down.

“You talk more then Vicki did. I liked you better as a human girl who was shy and quiet.” Gizzy snipped as the slash of a claw extended out and sliced the gun in half.

“Well, you know, you bottle things up and they tend to flow out when you get the chance to vent them.”

“Counted on it.” She said holding her phone up with a video feed of Dee firing 6 rounds into the cloning machine. Vicki’s eyes went dark with hatred.

“You’re easy to keep busy you know.

“What have you done you stupid BITCH!” Vicki roared. “Now Jack will never be happy. I can’t fix him if I can’t clone him. You’ve killed everyone but me.” She said, shedding tears of blood. “Now I have to go get the only Jack left… back on Delmar. Where your family is.”

“Oh, that’s a horrifying threat, and now I no longer feel bad about what I did to you. You asked me what it feels like to be the walking dead, ask yourself. That Pitch you drank, did it feel the way you expected or did it have a little kick to it? I knew someone would break you out and I thought you might go for that temptation, so I swapped the vials. I have to admit, I thought it would be Jack, not Zhoren, but I was right about that part. That vampire side of you can’t resist the cure, the power. And you chose to drink the Pitch again, betraying everyone. Makes me feel a lot better knowing what I put in there. Honestly, I felt like a terrible person for even considering it but here I am… glad I did.”

“What did you infect it with?”

“The one thing your body can’t seem to fight off… yourself. Your own cancer. Magnified and accelerated about a thousand times, but the moment you gave in and betrayed us all, you killed yourself. I just needed to keep you busy for a while. It’s over.” She said as Vicki coughed, tar dripping from her mouth.

“You… took everything from me.”

“I gave you your life back, you ungrateful whore. I gave you a home, protection, and by now the original Vicki is probably cured of her vampirism. I did that. You’re not her. You lost. Go ahead and kill me, the cloning tank is broken, Jack is down there in the hell you send for him, and he’ll know what you did. The team can go on without me or you. So bitch, kill me or sit there." Vicki stood up and staggered to Gizzy. She stabbed Gizzy in the heart and stepped back. She staggered sluggishly to the cargo bay doors.

“Then we die together, in the dark, alone, in silence.” She said, pulling the lever as the shuttle bay vented into space. Gizzy stared at the void of space, her brain going dark and her body freezing up.

...

Vicki stood in the damaged building, blood pouring from her eyes and mouth as her body began to shiver and freeze.

“So we killed each other.” She wheezed. “Twice in one day.”

“No… you killed us once. I killed you 3 times.” Zombie Gizzy sighed as Vicki crumbled to frozen ash. Gizzy took a running leap, smashing through the glass and grabbing the helicopter by the landing rails. Vicki’s life flickered out, and the building shuttered. Behind the fleeing helicopter, the building collapsed, rising up in plume of fire and smoke that consumed most of the city.

...

The shuttle landed in the shuttle bay and Jack rushed out, almost running into Dee as she stopped him, looking mortified and broken.

“Where’s Vicki… MY Vicki. We have to let her out of the cryo cell. She’s not under her control. The thing is dead.” He insisted.

“Jack…” Gizzy said looking deader than earlier. “She was corrupted too. They all were.”

“No, we can help her now.” Jack insisted. Dee hugged him tightly.

“Jack. Zhoren turned on us and tried to take her. He let her out and she killed him, tried to take over the ship. They were all corrupted and linked. She vented herself to try and kill me and shot the cloning tank. Jack, Vicki has been gone for a long time, you just didn’t understand it.”

“No, we can fix the cloning tank, clone her back like she was before all of this. We can save her somehow.” He said, pacing and pulling at his hair.

“Jack… this is highly advanced Osirian technology.” Gizzy said. “I can barely fix a cloning tank back home with my lab. It’s destroyed. Even if we could fix it, the data is gone, we would have to get in one at a time and be rescanned entirely and there’s no Vicki left to scan. She died when she drank that pitch, everything after that was you chasing a ghost.”

“NO!” he yelled, shoving over the tool bench. “We have something on file, her DNA, a hair sample, something of her we can use.”

“Jack.” Nicole sighed. “Even I know without a memory file of who she is, you’d be cloning a dead body with nobody in there. She’d be a newborn mind, a clean slate with no idea who you or she is. Jack, she’s gone.” Nicole said before trying to hug him. He pushed her back and stormed off.

“Let him go. He needs to process this for a moment.”

“Gizzy, it’s Jack. He can’t function without Vicki.”

“There’s one way he can.” Gizzy said, sniffing back her tears.

...

“Feels like a triple funeral.” Nicole said, wiping a tear from her eye. "We lost Vicki. Zhoren, it feels like we’re saying goodbye to you too.” She said to Jack as he lay back on the operating table, a still half-zombified Gizzy gloved up and standing by.

"Zhoren stabbed us in the back just like that monster pretending to be Vicki did. Fuck them both. Vicki died weeks ago to me.” Dee said solemnly.

“We’re not losing Jack, we’re fixing Jack.” Gizzy assured “Jack can’t go on without her unless he never lost her. This software just removes her from his memory and fills in the gaps with his own logical way of thinking. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we have. Do you understand?” Gizzy asked. Jack nodded.

“I understand, and I want to do this.” He said looking dead inside.

“When you wake up, you will not remember Vicki. You came alone, and to explain the gaps and any dreams you may have, the explanation everyone will stick to is that following the explosion that took out the ship originally, you sustained brain damage to your memory and we patched it, got it? Vicki never joined the crew. You never met her. I have constructed a fictional crew member, made her very unlikeable, and patched her in as Jack’s tactical partner. So I want everyone to remember the name Samantha, she was the female tactical second who died recently. That’s why everyone is so broken up. Despite being a bitch, Samantha was part of the team and we’ll miss her. Now… I have a bit of a surprised that I hope will make everyone feel a little better.”

“I highly doubt it.” Jack said softly, staring blankly into the abyss.

“You’d be shocked.” She said bringing up the screen and displaying a blurry image that struggled to focus and fight the static like an old TV.

“What’s this?” asked Dee.

“It’s a bootleg stolen video clip I hacked off Delmar security cams. The video will be destroyed after this, for security reasons. We can’t communicate with them, and any ties to us endangers everyone, but I have pirated an upload of security cams and my own personal logs in case I needed this, for very different reasons than today. Jack, that is you and Vicki, the original you and Vicki. She’s responding well to medication, and though not technically cured, apparently the original me has cured the craving and the psychosis, so she never needs to feed again. She is living happily with you, and working for me, completely free of her bloodlust, and on a daily supplement to satisfy her needs. I want you to know you and Vicki are not doomed to repeat what happened out here. This is just a case of having bad luck and very few resources. With access to Osirian medical technology, she is doing great. All of you are doing great. Vinn and Nicole are happy, raising an adopted daughter, and doing great, Jack and Vicki are doing great, Dee is doing… uh, my son. I’m not overly thrilled about that but they seem okay. I don’t think it’s gonna last but whatever. The point is to remind you all that we may be people, but we are part of another group of people too and they are all alive and well because of what we do, and that’s why we do it. Vicki fought for us, she just ended up falling victim to the nature of the job. Space is not your friend, and it doesn’t go easy on you. So in a strange way, though we lost a friend, she’s not only alive in our hearts, but she is alive back home, where she belongs. The Vicki we all knew and loved, Nicole’s best friend for so many years, the woman Jack loves, she exists, alive and well, and what we lost in the time since is just a small part of what she represents. We all left people behind, but trust me, it’s possible to go on knowing they don’t know you’re gone or miss you, and that they’re doing fine with the other you. I struggle with that myself, missing my wife and kids every day. The little green goober too, and in a weird way, sorta even Dee.”

“Aww.” Dee smiled.

“Don’t. Just don’t. So Jack, this is pretty sketchy brain surgery, side effects are always possible and you will have some recovery time where you have dreams that don’t feel right. But we have pills for that, and you have friends.”

“You’ve done this before, right?” asked Dee.

“Yeah… once. With a lot better equipment, on a world with other doctors and my highly advanced alien body instead of a one legged human suit with a cannonball in my brain. But it’s all we got."

“Oh, that’s comforting.” Dee sneered.

“Trust me, you’re new to this shit but we’re all way too familiar. The real Dee would probably make a joke about donating the brains to the zombie planet or something."

“God, I really am not her, huh?”

“Welcome to the club." Nicole sighed. “None of us are who we were. Some of us are just more different than others.” She said leaning in so Vinn could give her a hug.