Chapter 2

Once I got out of the steam rooms – the dark, red corridors and the humid heat nothing that I was about to miss - I found that Engineering was constructed remarkably similarly to Cryonics. I was aware of curving corridors to either side of the main corridor that led into the center. That meant, if my mental map of the station was right, it was another ring based around a central + shaped crossing. But unlike Cryonics, Engineering was big. The main corridor I was on was easily twice as wide as the main corridor in Cryonics, and it led into other rooms, each one labeled with stenciled lettering. It seemed I was going through part storage right now.

“So, Lucas,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?” I asked, after he didn’t respond. “Lucas?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Trying to crack into the data files on the corps- er, uh, the cryo-stored persons.” He chuckled nervously. I pursed my lips.

“Any luck?”

“Well, CyroCrypt 0451 was listed for one Beatrice Montenegro,” Lucas said. “A trillionaire heiress waiting for her shot at the family fortune. The listing here says you were to be on ice until your older brother kakked it. If you are Beatrice.”

I frowned.

It seemed like a somewhat trivial reason to put oneself into cryogenic storage and slumber away the decades. Letting the world tick by underneath you, allowing everyone you knew to get older and older. I tried to remember the kind of life someone named Beatrice Montenegro would live. I tried to picture it – and faint images seemed to haze around my mind. A sunny beach. A large, beautiful ship that cut through the waves of an emerald-blue ocean like a knife. A beautiful woman walking towards me, wearing a string bikini and suntan lotion. Her breasts bounced and swayed and I found my mouth growing moist at the thought. But the image blurred before she undid the top and lowered herself on me.

But...

I couldn’t think of a name. Hell, I couldn’t even think of a planet. Was that Earth?

“How many planets do people live on?” I asked, quietly.

“Excuse me, lassie?” Lucas asked.

I paused at another junction – making a note. So, another difference between Engineering and Cryonics: There were two “rings” that circled between the main corridors. I looked down the left corridor and saw the doors were more widely spaced, and they weren’t just slapped up with the same storage room labels as I had seen elsewhere. I frowned. This was actually where people got work done, if the first label I saw was true: WepTec Lab 39.

“I don’t remember anything,” I said, shaking my head. “But, no. I remember fragments. Pieces. How many planets do people live on? Am I remembering Earth or ... or...” A name floated to my mind. “Mars?”

“Three,” Lucas said. “Four, if ya count Luna, and the Loonies sure want us too.”

I nodded. “Mars. Earth. Luna. Venus.”

“Dusties, Shorties, Loonies and Gas Bags,” Lucas said, dryly.

I snorted, quietly. “So, Mars doesn’t have beaches?”

Lucas’ snort spoke volumes. So that memory had to be on Earth. Or a remarkably large resort on Luna – but this was all pointless. Virgil Station was the only place I should be worrying about, and the only thing I should be thinking about in Virgil Station was the damn station-keeping jets. But my mind kept skittering back to the image of that boat, to the idea of Beatrice Montenegro. Was that me? What was a trillion dollars even worth now a days? My finger went to the collar of my throat and...

“Wait,” I whispered. Thinking of money made me think of things. Thinking of things made me want to compulsively check my gear. I pulled my shotgun out of my backpack, cocked back the pump. Still a red glow. I pulled my pistol and checked the ammo. Still seven bullets. My brow furrowed.

“Lucas,” I said. “How many times did I shoot that Tesc in the steam rooms?”

“Pretty...”

The voice echoed from the corridor behind me.

“Not enough,” Lucas hissed. “We have an hour to get that station-keeping jet on. Get your bloody arse moving.”

I nodded. “Which store room was it again?” I asked.

“08.”

I started to jog down the corridor.

Storeroom 08 – placed neatly between two MatTec Labs (whatever that meant, I had no idea) - didn’t open. I tried the keypad, but my fingers couldn’t get to pry it open. I pulled out my wrench - but hesitated.

“Lucas,” I said. “If I smash the keypad open, then we get more of those fucking drones, don’t we?”

“Yup,” he said. “Listen, I’m checking who had authorization to that door. Dr. Thanton does - and he worked in MatTec. Not in these labs, but in lab 98. That’s on the other side of the ring from where you’re standing.”

I did some quick mental math. The clock was still ticking. But dying would mean I’d never get the fucking station-keeping jets online again. And so, I stepped back from the keypad and started jogging again. My nano-clad feet padded softly on the floor and I started to breathe lightly - not needing to gasp or pant. It seemed that Beatrice was in good shape, at least. I smirked at that thought. Running past lab after lab, I counted the numbers as I rushed by, ticking up until I reached the 90s. Then I slowed, my feet thumping on the ground as I stepped slower and slower, finally coming to MatTec 98. The door was shut, but when I tried it, it hissed open with a loud clunk. I leaned around the corner and peeked within.

The inside of MatTech 98 looked as if the people within had simply left during a busy work day. There were several machines clearly designed to hold and test chunks of metal - I could tell, because several chunks of metal were suspended in metallic claws that themselves were surrounded by pale blue panes of glass that looked designed to contain and withstand a lot of energy. The chunks of metal all looked similar - gray and flat. But as I walked into the room and my view shifted, strange, rainbow like patterns started to appear and vanish as my perspective slipped around. I bobbed my head left and right, then up and down. The patterns never repeated - the melange of red, blue, purple, yellow and other hues was endlessly different. It was nearly hypnotic.

I tore my eyes from the metal panes and looked at the rest of the lab. There were several desks that were studded with control consoles. There were lots of toggles and touch pads, a curious combination of what felt like cutting edge and ancient technology. I noticed that the toggles were all labeled not by stenciled lettering but rather by pieces of white tape that had been scribbled on by someone’s black pen.

R. Modulator 98.

L. Field.

Induction.

“What the hell did this lab do?” I asked, frowning as I stepped past the desk and looked deeper into the room. Here, I saw another one of those corpses. It looked like another woman - her clothes shredded, her body splayed out over a chair, her hips thrust into the air. She had started to turn stiff, but there was no sign of rot. White Tesc seed dripped from her pussy. I walked slowly around and saw that her mouth was wide open, and a tentacle was still thrust into her throat. It was similar to how I had ... almost...

I shuddered.

“Dunno,” Lucas said, quietly.

“You don’t know?” I asked.

“Listen, lady,” Lucas said as I knelt down, checking the tattered remains of the woman’s clothes. I found a keycard in a scrap of a pocket. I tugged it out and saw the woman’s face on it. It wasn’t just a keycard, it was an ID card. I looked at her face, then at the twisted mask of pleasure that it had become in death. I shuddered and stood as Lucas continued to speak. “My only job on this bloody station was to keep the chicken soup dispensers operating properly. I don’t know a single thing about any of the research other than bloody rumors.”

“Like what?” I asked, stepping towards the door. I heard a faint sloughing noise behind me - something slick and faintly erotic, like a member sliding from a well fucked pussy. I spun around and saw that the dead woman had gone limp - slumping onto her chair with a boneless finality. The back of the chair had pushed her gaping mouth shut. Her throat no longer bulged.

I pulled my shotgun from the backpack I wore and cocked it once. I put it to my shoulder. There was only one place where ... the ... thing could have hidden: Behind the desk the woman had been splayed at. I stepped forward, giving the desk a wide berth. I heard a faint rattling noise. My belly filled with ice and my heart thudded in my ears. My whole body seemed attuned to the world around me. Then Lucas spoke and caused me to jerk with surprise.

“Well, like the fact that I hear they were dragging Tesc into-”

The tentacle dropped onto my head from the ceiling. It carried itself down on a filament of wire spooling from the tongue-like tip (or maybe it was the fucker’s ass) while the rest of the mass wrapped around my neck and squeezed. I grabbed it and gritted my teeth as it started to strangle me. I couldn’t get the shotgun against it without risking blowing my own head off. I surged backwards, falling against the main control console. My palm slapped down and several toggles flipped. The metal in the testing chambers started to rotate as searing white light shot from the wall - lasers or something. I hefted the shotgun one handed and shot out one of the chunks of glass. The spread of shotgun pellets blew out the glass with a spray and a crackling sound - and then the metal gave way and the laser beam seared across the room.

My vision was starting to turn black around the edges. The tentacle squeezed tighter and then yanked against me and I saw that the filament in the ceiling was spooling back into its fucking ass. I swung myself forward and brought the tentacle against the laser. The air filled with the hideous smell of burning plastic mixed with the acrid scent of crisped flesh and scorched hair. I yanked myself the other way and fell on my back as the tentacle hit the ground in two halves. I panted.

“Ow,” I rasped.

“You okay, lassie?” Lucas asked, sounding concerned.

“No,” I whispered. “I am most definitely not.”

The woman’s corpse was ... writhing. Her hands twitched spasmodically and then closed like claws around the back of the chair. Her eyes opened and they were shot through with milky white cateracts. They bulged slightly and her forehead rippled - and then I saw her lift her rump in the air. It was like she was ... presenting. My stomach twisted and despite myself, I found my pussy lips growing moist as the undead woman (for there was no better term for it) spread her thighs, reached down with her free hand, spread her sex...

And then, peeking from within her sex, came something pale silver and smooth.

A moan crossed with an unearthly groan came from the undead woman’s lips. Her eyes closed and she focused, shuddering. The shape pushed further out, revealing that the bulbous head led to a segmented, bony spine. It slapped onto the ground with a wet sound - like meat. But then arms emerged from the bony head and the long spine, pushing itself up like a humanoid creature. It opened a segmented jaw and swung its eyeless, hideous face around.

The woman cooed, looking at it, her white eyes filled with a maternal love.

My stomach twisted.

The small creature sprang up onto her back. Its clawed hands reached around - cupping and squeezing those gray breasts. Its small fingertips pinched her nipples, causing her to moan as it hissed and pushed its still slick body along her back, smearing her shoulder blades with her own juices. Her pussy started to spread - but that was impossible. Her belly was flat as a board. But as I watched, it started to swell and swell, and swell. By the time the second hideous creature had emerged, the first had swung its tail up and over its head, curling itself into a shape that resembled a tightly coiled 6. The tail tip pressed to the undead girl’s mouth, then plunged home and she sucked, her tongue swirling around each bony ridge of the tail-cock.

She had given birth to it. And now she was sucking it off as earnestly and eagerly as a lover.

And the second one crawled onto her, squeezing and caressing her thigh, while a third started to peek from her pussy again. Her belly squirmed with them. There were so many. But they hadn’t been there.

The third landed.

It was bigger than the others. Rather than merely having a spine with four legs emerging from it, it actually had a torso that grew larger and more defined as it stood on its hind legs and stretched its spindly arms outwards. Those spindly arms became less so as it flexed and twisted. Flesh seemed to come from nowhere, ballooning with its chitinous flesh, pushing the plates outwards, filling teh gaps within with muscle and gray skin. By the time it was done, it was a eyeless humanoid with the body of an athletic killer and a flat, nearly featureless cock that hung between its bony thighs like a weapon. Its tail whipped from side to side as the smaller ones continued to caress and stroke the undead woman.

The eyeless humanoid looked at me.

And its cock was hard.

“Lassie...” Lucas whispered, his voice low. “Lassie, you better do something.”

My hands shook as I grabbed my shotgun. That tentacle ... holy shit, that Tesc infested woman, Maria Festios, she had wanted to turn me into that. Into a Broodmother. And her Brood was already walking towards me. It had no eyes, no face really save for those dripping, segmented jaws. But somehow, it still managed to exude a palpable aura of dominant masculinity. Its clawed hand reached down, fondling its sleek cock. My hands were frozen, my eyes locked on that member. It was so clear. Just lean back and let it rape me.

It’d feel...

So ... good.

I clenched my jaw. “Sorry, buddy,” I hissed. “But you gotta take me out to dinner first.”

The words were stupid. Pathetic, even. Shouting into the wind, screaming into the void. But the quip - no matter how weak it was - caused my hands to move. I swung the shotgun around and aimed it right at the Brood’s chest. I pulled back on the trigger and the buckshot caught it right in its spindly chest. Chiten and gray blood went flying and the Brood fell in two pieces, flecking its mother with its blood. Her face twisted and a combination of horror, sorrow and rage played across her undead features. She howled wordlessly and pointed at me. The smaller Brood - the Broodlings? - scrambled off their mother, ceasing their duty of caressing her breasts and tonguing her ass and every other perverse thing they were doing and started scrambling towards me.

My hands were more certain now. I cocked and fired, catching one Broodling in the face, the other one skimmed by several of the shotgun pellets. It staggered as its sibling turned into so much paste. I cocked the shotgun again, pushing my feet along the ground, my back pressing against the wall as I desperately tried to gain more distance. The Broodling screeched and leaped at me. I fired again and the gray blood splashed me this time. But now, the Broodmother was on her feet. She moved with jerky, spasming motions, as if she was controlled by a series of rods and wires rather than flesh and bone. She twitched towards me. I grabbed onto the control console and toggled on the laser.

The Broodmother walked through it. Her torso hit the ground. Her legs kept walking - and under the char, I could see glowing growths more in common with deep sea life forms than anything inside a human being. Her torso kept crawling forward, howling at me.

“My babies! My babies!” She screeched.

I stepped backwards, out the door, then slammed my palm down on the lock button. I turned and ran and ran and ran and ran.

Storage Room 08’s door opened onto my panting, shuddering form. I turned, slammed the lock button down, then saw that the room was filled with crates and other storage units. I dragged the biggest crate I could – my arms straining, my muscles knotting with the effort - and pushed the crate between me and the door. With that done, I sat down and ducked my head forward. I panted, my shotgun clattering as I dropped it onto the ground beside me.

“F-Fuck,” I hissed.

My babies.

Moans of pleasure at the feeling of a Brood passing out of my cunt.

I shivered. My hand dipped before I could think about it. My fingers pushed against the nanite sheath covering me – and the nanites were so obliging. It felt as if the suit had wanted me to do this since I put it on. It grew tighter around my nipples, firmer around my breasts, clinging to me as I plunged two fingers into my cunt. I bit down on my lip hard enough to taste blood. It wasn’t to keep quiet. I didn’t care about quiet. I moaned loudly as my tongue darted out, tasting the blood. I shivered and panted as my thumb rubbed my clit, my fingers crooking inside of myself. The nanites slipped out of the way letting myself touch my own center of pleasure.

In my mind, the Brood had me pinned down. His hips were rough and metallic, his hands squeezing hard enough to make my hands and fingertips go numb. His breath was moist and tasted of iron and gunpowder as he plunged into me again and again, that cold dick filling me as he raped me.