Like I mentioned earlier, their big conspiracy theory was that Mark Starr Syndrome was engineered by humans. That it was making us lose our fur when it killed us because they wanted to take away the one thing that made us different from them. The corollary to that was that they made fun of humans for wearing clothes. Saying that it was them coping for not having fur - proof that they were inferior. Which is asinine because we all wear clothes too, but that was the symbol they fixated on. So all the fucked up stuff that they did to those humans was based around their clothing.

Rema was using a light armor staple gun to staple a man's clothes to his body until he died from internal hemorrhaging. Pitt undressed a dude and did all this gross tongue stuff to him while gagging him with his own underwear and using his pants as a noose. Stubbs doused someone's clothes in walker fuelgel and let them run away before igniting them with a flare gun. Lance skinned someone alive and wore them like a jacket.

This was how they ended a day of torturing these humans for fun. They were defenseless, they were stranded, when the Tartarus crew rolled up they surrendered. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to just take them prisoner. If this was really about the war then they would have been way more useful to us alive as a source of information or a bargaining chip or propaganda. There was no conceivable justification for this.

And there were the other scientists. helping them. People I work with, people who have to call me into the room to squash a roach for them, are taking turns kicking someone who stopped moving. They're trying to shoot a blindfolded man and laughing as they keep missing because their hands are shaking so bad. Our computer janitor hacked the crashed human ship so it was acting like a giant speaker and he's DJing with a laser light show in the background while all this is going down. And because the camera is on top of Lance's walker I can see everything.

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I already felt like my mind was unraveling watching this. Then during a quiet bit at the end Lance turns right to the camera and goes "Hey Buster! Wish you were here!" while waving at me, the human flesh draped over his arm wiggling from the movement.

He really did plan all of this. He was going to show this to me the whole time. That's why he gave me a copy and bullied me into watching it when I wouldn't do it on my own.

"All the humans are dead now, so there's only two types of people left on this awful little rock: the people out here, and the people inside. The people living life, and the cowards hiding from it. I hope you're happy with the side you chose, because I can tell you: out here, we're having a blast. And if you're not, it's never too late to change that."

And then he reached down and pulled the pistol he had offered me out of its holster, hooting and hollering as he fired up into the air until it clicked empty.

That was the exact moment that I knew that none of this was worth saving. None of this is worth protecting. If winning this war means that people like Lance get to do things like this with the full backing of a government that let millions die, then we deserve to lose.

We are the bad guys.

And Lance was right, it's never too late to change.

I don't have to be a bad guy, and I don't have to be a coward.

I helped this evil empire conquer the galaxy, the least I can do now is help destroy it.