Nicole stared at Vicki. “How do you do it?”
“I never wanted to. It just happens, again, and again.”
“How do you just, watch Jack step out of that machine and seem okay knowing he never made it home?” Vicki sighed, relieved and realizing she wasn’t caught, and then realizing she had no answer to Nicole's real questions.
“Not knowing… helps. Just seeing him return and assuming it’s the same Jack every time, believing it is. Never asking him. It’s harder when you know for sure and have to wait for it. Longest hour of your life.” She said. “I think you’re handling it harder than us because you never signed up for this. I volunteered to get cloned to not die of cancer. I married a killer knowing that he’s died numerous times before, and we both signed up for this knowing we may not make it. Vinn volunteered to be cloned so he could be with you, Gizzy’s basically just data that refuses to die at this point and Dee swaps bodies like we swap shoes. You never asked for any of it. You just died, woke up a copy, married a man thinking you’d live together in space and we showed up and ruined everything. You watched him fight for you and risk his life and escape death and this is the first time you’ve had to actually sit and wait, knowing that at this moment, there’s no Vinn. But he’ll be back so soon, just a little longer. You’ve never lost him before but I promise you’ll feel better when he’s back and you’ll move past it. That’s why you’re taking this harder than I do.”
“Or maybe I’m taking this harder because my husband just died and the first one safely off the shuttle unharmed was the woman he died saving, who he fucked more recently than me. So the last woman he screwed was you, and he died for you, and now you’re here lecturing me on why I’m upset and why I should just get over it. So can you maybe let me have this one to myself at least? Can I have one Vinn you haven’t fucked all to myself.”
“You knew… but you knew because he wasn’t with you that night. And Jack wasn’t with me. So you knew I wasn’t with Jack. And you didn’t say anything because if you did, you just admitted what you did and accused me of the same thing."
“One time, under Demitri’s hypnosis. One time with Jack and neither of us remembered it. You kept going back. How many times did you “feed” off him “to survive” and actually just go for some verity of cock before going back to Jack and leaving me alone and worried? I don’t remember feeding off Jack for a month, or sleeping with him multiple times when there wasn’t any hypnotic vampire bullshit. So if we just cancel out one each, admit we’re both assholes, then you’re still the cheating bitch who turned on the crew, broke Jack’s heart, ruined his life, stole my husband, and after we for whatever reason saved your life and brought you back, you got Vinn killed. You broke Dee’s heart in more than one way, using her as a piece of meat, and then acting like she’s the weird one for not liking you, and then when Jack and her were finally happy, you stole him from her. You just get everything and all of us get whatever is left… but you don’t remember half of that. Nobody does, because The Captain has to fix everything and be the moral compass of this ship for the greater good and the mission, and if you think I’m just insane… ask Gizzy about the time… the multiple times you took chunks off her and how many times we’ve killed you for it. One of those times you may run out of advocates and everyone may just wanna leave you dead. I made that call last time, I kinda wish I would have sided with Gizzy now.” She said before getting up and storming off.
...
Gizzy paced the bridge looking angry and frustrated.
“I’m sorry, I just snapped.”
“Well, thanks to me and quick timing, she’s coned and ignorant again. Nicole, you can't just rant about the whole thing we tried to erase from existence!”
“I KNOW, I’M SORRY! Vinn just died, and I’m not okay. I fucked up but maybe we did bringing her back. Maybe she’s a damn curse.”
“Or maybe if she stayed dead, then Jack would be miserable, and I wouldn’t have Dee, and I’d go insane. Or maybe we’d all be dead if one tiny tweak of the wish fine print was slightly different. Nobody can say anything for sure, we’re messing with the universe and events we can’t control. Vinn will be okay, YOU will be okay, we heal, we adjust, and we survive. Vicki… I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. She keeps turning into something else. Now she’s got the mark of a death god on her back and impostor ink in her skin, you don’t think that bodes eerily close to the pitch nobody talks about? Why is Vicki a magnet for liquid hatred and unstoppable chaos gods? Should we just call this mission Every Devil Loves Vicki? What is she going to turn into next? Dee could have killed us all, and yet she turned out to be the best friend we have. You and Vinn saved us from the beginning and didn’t have to. I’ve saved our asses, you’ve saved us from my stupid bad decisions and kill-first mentality, Jack is everyone’s hero, and I even kinda understand Demitri. What the fuck is Vicki? You do realize that Vinn let her feed to save her life and keep her from turning and killing Jack. And her venom is addictive, apparently. Don’t hate Vinn for trying to help everyone and getting tricked. He’s a loveable dumbass, not a cheating bastard… What is Vicki and why does the one who left Delmar always end up our worst enemy?”
“I don’t know.
“Perhaps the solution is a good old fashioned orgy.” Demitri said walking in on them. “Even the tension for everyone.”
“How much did you hear?”
“Oh, only all of it. I’ve been tiptoeing down the hall with my superb hearing the entire time I came to find you.”
“You can’t say anything you heard. In fact let me get something real quick, just hold still.
“Don’t even bother,” he said. “We have something to discuss. You surely are familiar with the gun Jacks grandfather put his heart and soul into building, quite literally in one case, that he carries often in case I am to be put down.”
“…No.” Nicole squinted.
“Understandable. I have no ill feelings of it. I was aware for some time, and Jack has finally stopped carrying it now that he knows me for what I am and why. Are you aware that Victoria has it now? Is Jack… aware of it?”
“Son of a bitch.” Gizzy said getting up. “She’s gonna kill someone. It’s definitely either Demitri or me and I’m not thrilled about either in very different severities.”
“You did wipe her memory, right?” Nicole asked.
“After you blurted everything, yes I did. It should have worked but if some tattoo demon shit screwed that up and she remembers everything, she’s probably not thrilled with me. Or anyone. Or Dee.”
“Or me.” Nicole said.
“Well I’m sure I am safe.” Demitri scoffed. “She cares so deeply for me and blaming me for her infidelity would surely not motivate her.” He said, sarcastically.
“Yeah… It’s for Demitri.” Nicole sighed. “I just don’t understand why Vicki is always the root of every problem. What changed? You said the Vicki back home was doing great and responded to treatment, hell, the implant to curb the feeding worked on Delmar and it doesn’t do shit here. It’s like the moment she went into space she became a different person.”
“Victoria is simply a perfect conduit for the chaos gods. There is an evil in her, and it takes so little to unlock it.”
“Well the one on Delmar seems locked pretty tightly.” Gizzy noted. “Ours seems defective. What on Delmar is keeping her contained, or what out here is unlocking her?” she asked. A sudden shutter of the ship got their attention. They quickly armed and moved towards the rear of the ship, Gizzy stopped and noticed the door to the lab was forced open and so was the artifact cooler. “And that, folks, is why we hide things.” Gizzy said before digging in a drawer and swapping her pistol magazine and barrel.
“What did she get?” Nicole asked.
“Tranquilizers and iron supplements, disguised as pitch. Vicki went for the bait I thought she might.”
“What’s in the gun?” she asked.
“A line up of exponentially stronger sedatives, and then one soul round in case those don’t work. Yeah, I have a Vicki clip just for this situation. I got one for all of you, just… without the last one being a soul killer. Come on, consider her history.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Gizzy rounded the corner of the mess hall and lasered Vicki, who turned in the dark, eyes glowing red and looking ravenous. Gizzy noticed her teeth, lengthened, all of them now just a row of upper and lower fangs an inch long, a pale greenish gold hue to her skin as she breathed heavily and stared her down.
“Vicki, don’t make me shoot you.” She said. Vicki let our a banshee scream and rushed, taking 3 timed hits to the chest and starting to wobble and stumble on the last one, Gizzy put another in her back to be sure and she flattened out, her limbs curling in a very bug-like manner. She began dragging her to the lab as Demitri and Nicole assisted.
“What the hell is happening to her? I thought the pitch was erased from existence, is the impostor blood doing this?” Nicole asked.
“I don’t know, that’s why we’re getting her strapped down to the scanner," Gizzy said while rolling Vicki into the machine. The machine hummed and the screens filled with data as Gizzy watched, the sound of Vicki breaking restraints in the process. She hit the gas, flooding the machine with sedative vapors and the thrashing began to die down. She racked her gun 4 times as bullets dropped on the metal tray and she checked the clip. One sedative round left and a soul bullet. She looked at the screen and her eyes went wide.
“I know that look, but I don’t know medical shit.” Nicole said “Please provide something here.”
“The bone density scan made her worse. Look at her last scan before the mission, look at the post mission scans, and the one we just did. She was clean when she went down to that planet, and when she got back her cells were changing, they went through the roof when we did the bone density scan. It’s the damn radiation. It makes perfect sense now.”
“Okay cool, so for those of us with computer degrees and not medical degrees, bone radiation mean… what exactly? Let’s pretend I’m real dumb about this.” Nicole snipped.
“I would have worded it more gently, but I also have less than expert experience regarding alien biology.” Demitri noted.
“Vicki is a hybrid. She’s not born a vampire, unlike Demitri who is the direct source and myself who is the result of a cloned DNA strain isolated from it, Vicki is a random amalgamation. She’s a human born with the cells marked to produce cancer, and I gave her a medicine that lets her body mutate to adapt to the cancer, she got bitten by a bug, one of Demitri’s lineage containing the vampire gene. Her body mutated to not only the vampiric cells but the bug cells. They feed off radiation. These bugs breed by tapping into the power lines and draining the energy. Vicki is slowly becoming more bug as she gets exposed to Cosmic radiation. We’re basically giving her reverse chemo to make her bug cancer worse just by being in deep space, and we just put her on a planet flooded with radiation. You know what else produces the same radiation? The cloning machine. Harmless doses to us, but every time we clone her, we’re doing a bone density scan and blasting her with delayed bug fuel. I bet you that if we check every mission where she went mental and lost her shit, it was a mission where she was exposed to high cosmic rays. She wouldn’t get that on Earth, and she wouldn’t get that naturally on Delmar, where all cities under a mile or more of solid blackstone. Vicki is radiation triggered and every time we clone her we start the clock over. Demitri, step into that tube over there."
“Is that an order?”
“Yeah, I wanna check something.” She said. He reluctantly did and the lights came on, bringing up data on the screen.
“And there we have it, folks. The artifacts emit trace amounts of cosmic radiation. I’m guessing the chaos gods are just high level sources of them, and anything they empower retains a little. She’s feeding on you, Demitri.”
“Well, I can’t say I haven’t considered the same in return but at least I was polite enough to offer and await consent.” He joked.
“Vicki’s not evil, or cursed… she’s just a sick girl with radiation fed cancer that activates the bug cells, and we’re out in deep space in high radiation, bombarding her with more high sources of radiation. That’s why she keeps going for the artifacts. The bug in her is subconsciously seeking the radiation and of course when she got the pitch it went absolutely nuclear level feedback loop. The chaos gods love her because she is genetically perfect for adapting to radioactive parasites. She just smells like food to these things out here and we’re taking her and dropping her into the feeding tanks every other mission and then wondering why she is a magnet for evil. The further out into primordial space we go, the worse she’s gonna get.”
“Can’t you just… clone her without the bug stuff?” Nicole asked.
“Yeah, and she’ll just develop cancer. I specifically engineered this shit to be a mutagen that binds with cancer… to kill cancer. That’s why patients on this can't eat or drink anything that isn’t sealed in approved medical bags and they have to stay quarantined for a week. ANY contaminant will bind permanently to the medication and alter her base DNA. And she didn’t just get a germ or contaminant; she got bitten by a venomous spacebug that feeds off radiation. So we’re kinda stuck without a full research lab and millions in equipment back home spending years to develop medication. We either clone her as a human with terminal cancer and she dies, or we clone her with the mutagen and she feeds off the radiation we’re just surrounded by and turns into some kind of monster.”
“You can’t make some… anti radiation drugs? I thought we all had radiation shots to handle space radiation!” Nicole hollered.
“Yeah, which works fine on the humans and Delmarians that they were made for. It just repairs damaged cells by supercharging your body’s normal regeneration so you repair the exposure damage faster than it accumulates. Her body’s natural regeneration response is to evolve into an apex predator that seeks more radiation to grow.”
“I do hate to bring up such unfortunate reminders, but she has the tattoo we need to unlock the door to a chaos god, and without that, we cannot kill it.” Demitri sighed. “And the longer we delay, the more the imposter ink will fade and absorb, which may only make her stronger and less able to unlock the door. By sending her back down there, into an irradiated wasteland and opening the door to another chaos god, that surely will give her a significant boost of unfortunate exposure. Fate has lead us to one of the remaining and alarmingly rare entities plaguing this universe with the bullets to kill it, are we to simply turn and leave, call it a failed mission and go home?” Demitri asked.
“Fuck.” Gizzy sighed, rubbing her face. "We bring her down there to open that door she could go full impostor mode, she could sprint in there and leech onto a 400 foot tall chaos demon, or just turn into one from the exposure, or make it stronger somehow. I don’t know what happens, but it’s not anything good for Vicki or us. Hell, I could clone her, avoid the bone density scan and make a healthy new Vicki but according to Demitri regarding fucking impostor blood magic, either we make a second Vicki with no tattoo that cant open the door and would turn into the same thing if we went down there anyway, OR if we cloned her fresh, killed the corrupted one, the damn tattoo would come back, flooding her with impostor radiation and we’re back to evil Vicki. What do we do here? Chain her up with god-tier restraints, use her as a key just quickly enough to open the door and then soul bullet her in the head before she evolves? And THEN go fight a chaos god, clone her back still primed and ready to gradually turn evil again at the slightest exposure to anything, including Demitri or the artifacts we have to collect?”
“Not to sound heartless and frigid, but…” Demitri paused. “That sounds like a temporary solution to one problem and a permanent fix to the one chained up behind that door. Fate gave us the tools to complete the task, are we not inclined to use them, and morality be damned and at the cost of whatever must be sacrificed?”
“No.” Nicole objected. “I’m not using Vicki as a tool. She’s a magnet for evil not evil herself. Both of you should understand THAT perspective first hand. Mister walking curse, little miss weapon of mass destruction. We can’t just use her as a key and kill her. Those bullets work in weird ways, we don’t know if it would kill the chaos god in her or kill Vicki and every clone of her in the universe. The last one wiped the pitch from existence, what if this one wipes Vicki from existence, here, on Delmar, in the cloning machine data. We could be erasing her soul, or erasing her universe code, or just one corrupted clone of her, or the imposters. You should have use the one bullet we already had to kill the damn collector and wipe out the impostors instead of torturing him for ammunition.
“Oh sure.” Gizzy nodded. “That’s way better, at the cost Jack’s grandfather’s soul, we could have zero chaos god killing bullets and no map or key to the one we know about, so the mission is just over and Vicki is slightly less corrupted. I mean, THAT or we could hunt down some innocent victims for souls instead of using the most sadistic person in the quadrant who tortures, imprisons, and skins women alive for his art. Gods forbid we do something horrible like take HIS soul, when we could take someone else’s we just have lined up and volunteering, or leave a chaos god alive. Clearly I’m the asshole here for harvesting a Neonazi rapist sadist murdering flesh collector with evil literally written all over his body, for something as trivial as the literal mission itself to end the chaos gods. The same guy, by the way, who abducted and tattooed Vicki with that damned ink, to sacrifice her to the big demon thing I would kinda like to kill with the bullets. The bullets that require either HIS soul, or Jack’s grampa. But fuck him, right? He was annoying and kind of a prick. Chauvinistic old fart with a bad attitude beats a literal half evil god and half evil Nazi human fillet artist with a room full of young women’s skin.”
“Okay, fine, I’m wrong. You were right to torture someone to death on my ship for bullets over my orders as Captain. I’m just trying to save my friend, there has to be a way to do this without people losing their souls and killing our friends, potentially on Delmar with Jack, who obviously can’t live without her.” Nicole said, throwing a bal book across the room.
“I deeply regret already, just the mention that I have an idea.” Demitri sighed dramatically. “Because I dread the result.” He added.
“Explain.” Nicole ordered.
“I could, theoretically, open the door without her.” He said. “And with the god dead that has her marked, the ink would cease to remain.”
“Why didn’t you speak up sooner? Let’s do that.” Nicole barked.
“Because no matter what, this demands a sacrifice, and it does not cure Victoria of her root problem. It merely tempers the problem, eliminated one chaos god at the cost of a life… Mine.” He smiled sadly.