Ravenkroft breathed in and out slowly, anticipating the moment of transcendence. Lying there on his stomach, naked and cold, he dared a glance around at the creature of that had offered him elevation to the next level of evolution’s ladder — and that was offering him the chance to destroy Weatherspark and gain access to the Tesseract Reactor. It was beautiful. Majestic. Almost perfection. Nature had crafted it on whatever planet it had ascended the ladder upon to the heights of its present state, and had delivered it as an almost-perfect being . . . a far more elegant machine than mankind’s current form. And what of the being he was about to become? Man made one with such a creature? What sort of invention of evolution would that union yield? Ah, the symmetry of it, the mechanics of it, to think of them . . . it was mesmerizing, tantalizing, satisfying. The absolute beauty of this moment, the transcendent wonder of it — the perfection he was about to become — two almost-perfect masterworks of evolution, embracing one another, to become one in a holy scientific union — to become the perfect being. This was, he saw now, his destiny. Fate had willed this moment. It was almost enough to make him believe in God. But that was foolish . . . For he would soon be God.

He watched in the mirrored surface of the table he lay upon as the Visitor to Earth — the Zarcturean — slipped out of its Tactical Battle Armor then — what an incredible invention! He only wished his own Evangeliojaeger could match its caliber of hardiness and mobility! — and revealed itself at last. And ye gods, what a brilliantly-evolved biology! Again, it almost brought thoughts of some intelligent designer at work in the universe, all thoughts of the Blind Watchmaker banished for a moment, as he gazed upon its cephalopod-like, tentacled body . . . its powder-blue skin . . . its teardrop-shaped, hammer-like head . . . its bulbous, rainbow-colored eyes . . . its seven-fingered hands and odd, human-like arms . . . Yes, a masterpiece of evolutionary progress on some distant world; and a far more elegant design than the apes of this planet. How he wished he could study it in more detail. How he wished —

Just then, above him, the robotic arms above the table activated. They swung downward; the syringes on their multifunction tips filled with red and blue liquids, and before he could react, they injected him in quick succession — one, two, three. The injections stung, and immediately, his head began to buzz and a grogginess overtook him. What was happening? What was — ?

He screamed as a bright red laser beam fired and cut into his flesh. It burned like hellfire unleashed on his skin, and he clenched his fists, his eyes wide and his mouth an “O” of agony as the laser fired again, and again, and again — this time the beam cutting down the length of his spine — he felt the warm wetness of blood gush from the wound and sluice down his back — and then they cut into his legs. Then the arms grabbed him by the wrists — roughly, and splayed him out on the table, and the lasers cut into his arms. He screamed again and again, howling with pain as the lasers did their work, feeling blood run and trembling with agony and trauma, hurting all the way to his bones.

In the mirror of the table, he could see the Zarcturean rearing up behind him. It activated some sort of device on the Tactical Battle Armor.

There was a flash of purple light and a whooshing noise — like air rushing into a vacuum — and the Zarcturean suddenly shrunk. It was now one third the size he had been. Impossible! Unless the Zarcturean had developed some sort of interdimensional matter-shifting technology that allowed them to shift mass into another dimensional membrane, thereby shrinking . . . objects . . . and re- . . . enlarging . . . Oh no. He saw what the Zarcturean intended to do.

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Then the Zarcturean climbed up on the table with him, looming over him, and embraced him from behind like a spooning lover, its head situated between his shoulder blades, its tentacles sprouting out from just over his buttocks, its arms wrapped around his midsection.

“God no,” said Ravenkroft, his voice trembling. No, he had decided! He did not want this after all! “Please God, no!”

— Yes, said the Zarcturean in his mind. Now, we Bio-Integrate.

A burning sensation unlike any he had ever felt suddenly filled his senses and he screamed a scream louder than any he had ever thought his throat capable of, as the Zarcturean’s skin and his skin bubbled and melted into one another, the muscle and sinew merging and blending, their internal organs replicating and superseding and rearranging; their nervous systems rewiring and reconfiguring; their intestinal tracts unhooking and rerouting and snaking into one another and stitching themselves together; their muscles linking via new tendons that grew, slowly, as new bones took hold and grew in place. The alien’s body grafted itself onto his in a boiling, acidic process, their two fleshes becoming one. Its cells bonded to his; its DNA rewrote his DNA; its muscles flexed and stitched themselves to his, its arms fusing to his chest where it had wrapped them around him; its tentacles now became his tentacles; his arms became its arms. Its brain spread out its nervous tendrils and they arced and wired themselves throughout Ravenkroft’s body like a thousand other, smaller feelers, all groping for his sentience. The Visitor’s mind opened to the vistas of Ravenkroft’s consciousness, and his to its; the two blended into a seamless whole. Ravenkroft felt the walls inside him crumble, felt the doors to his mind unlock, the wheels in them turning, and the wheels were made of a fire that burned brighter than the sun. He cried out again and again, wanting to tear the visions he was seeing out of his head, desperate to claw them out with his fingers, wanting to reach into his brain and rip the thoughts out with his fingernails . . . but he could not. The Merging had begun, and it could not be stopped. He heard his own bones crackle painfully as they grew, seeking and probing to their new destinations; ached and whimpered as his muscles strained as they sought out new connections with each other and the Visitor’s; he moaned as his sinews stretched and curled around the new joints that bubbled into existence, the new tendons that grew in the fluid that boiled into being, the new interfaces with each other that came to be now . . . and he ululated like a banshee through it all, his cries unheard by anyone in the outside world, his torturous bellowing unknown to any other human soul.

The process took over twelve grueling hours to complete, with Ravenkroft screaming, whimpering, crying, moaning, groaning, and yelling the whole time, until exhausted at the last, his breathing labored, he merely whimpered. Blood ran from his nostrils and his lacerations as the Visitor finished the process of unifying with him. He begged for the process to stop, plead for it to cease, and loudly prayed — any god who would listen — for it to be over. He vomited the contents of his last meal; he defecated — the ship’s tiny maintenance droids dutifully cleaned up both spills — and trembled, shaking and sweating and bleeding.

And eventually . . . his prayers were answered. For it did stop.

Finally, the process ended. The Bio-Integration, the Merging, was over. Ravenkroft and the Visitor had finally finished uniting and had become One at last. Neither existed anymore. Only the Hybrid remained.