Metroid Fan Fiction ❯ Stumbling Toward Elysia ❯ The Mark of the Beast ( Chapter 8 )

Chapter 8: The Mark of the Beast

 

 

 

As Samus stepped onto the lift that would take her out of the Pirate command station, a crackling whine buzzed in her earpieces, and a second later, a badly garbled voice emerged from the static.

 

"...ear my... ation maree... isoner... s olim..."

 

Irritably, she smacked at the side of her helmet, but the transmission disappeared in a wash of white noise. Could be I'm around too much metal, she thought. Wait till I'm out of this shaft.

 

As she stepped off the elevator into the lift hub, the radio whined again, and this time the signal was accompanied by a blinking red icon on her HUD's mapping system - the universal indicator of a distress call. "If anyone can hear my voice, please help. I'm a Federation Marine, and I was taken prisoner during the Space Pirate raid on the GFS Olympus. I've managed to escape and hide myself in the Pirates' research facility. Here are my location coordinates. Please hurry, I don't know how much longer I can hold out."

 

This kid's either suicidal or terminally stupid if he's broadcasting his location on a clear channel, Samus thought, but keyed her radio anyway. Regardless of the Marine's questionable level of combat intelligence, she couldn't simply leave him to die. "Help is on the way. ETA ten minutes."

 

Moving as quickly as she could, Samus ran through the landing site accessway and out to her ship, swinging herself through the ventral hatch and forward into the cockpit. Her navigation systems showed another landing site a few hundred meters from the Marine escapee's location, and an abandoned subway tunnel leading straight to it - she wouldn't even need to risk her ship's armor by flying out into the rain. With a smile, she plugged in the flight path as the Hunter III rumbled into the air.

 

The flight through Urtragia's underground took only a few minutes, and as before, she dropped through the hatch as soon as the ship touched down. This landing site led to a massive trash hoist, its controls nearly destroyed from years of abuse and neglect, and more than once she found herself nervously glancing at the cabling and tracks the hoist rode upon, looking for an emergency grapple point if the platform should drop out from underneath her. The exit at the top of the lift was blocked off by a malfunctioning gate, but a ventilation tunnel provided her the perfect morph ball pathway around it.

 

The reprocessing center she found on the other side rose a good thirty meters or so straight up, and the chains and cabling that would have provided perfect handholds for a Space Pirate to climb along offered her no purchase at all. Worse yet, between the lack of lighting, the generally non-radiopaque nature of the garbage piles, and the Phazon gas belching from the vents in the floor plating, she could hardly see at all. "Well, this ought to be fun," Samus muttered, grabbing a length of piping attached to the wall and shaking it to test its security before using it to hoist herself atop a scrap pile. The piled trash gave way as she leaped off it, though, sliding out from under her feet and depositing her in an ungraceful heap on the floor.

 

Samus grumbled a few curses under her breath as she crawled to her feet and dusted herself off, but luckily, the only thing she'd injured was her pride. Carefully leaping from heap to heap, she made her way to a dilapidated walkway about halfway up, and another handy ventilation tunnel allowed her to roll through the walls and up to the top of the room. As she attempted to hack the control panel to drop the access bridge and get herself out of the reprocessing center, though, a Pirate commando stepped through the door on the other side. It looked in her direction, walked away, and then looked again, growling to itself as though trying to decide whether to sound the alarm or not.

 

Samus flattened herself against the wall and froze, willing the Pirate not to notice her. C'mon, you didn't see anything, just a trick of the light...

 

BLATT! BLATT! BLATT! BLATT!

 

Oh, hell.

 

Ducking behind the control pedestal, Samus took careful aim and let loose a volley of missiles at the Pirate security squad, bottling three of them up in the doorway. Rolling across to the other side of her perch, she opened fire again, this time catching the commando off-guard and causing him to lose his balance. He stumbled, teetered and fell, his shriek of anger abruptly cut short by a wet-sounding crunch as he landed in one of the Phazon vents.

 

Better luck next time, Samus thought with a self-satisfied smile as she dropped the bridge, vaulted the gap and proceeded through the accessway, her travels taking her ever closer to the blinking red icon on her HUD.

 

The trail finally ended in a crane yard, and as she ducked and dodged through the grinding, clanking machinery, the sounds of gunfire drew her attention. Glancing toward the control chamber, she spotted a pair of Pirate militia exchanging fire with someone or something hidden behind a console. As the Pirates roared their anger, their quarry replied with a burst of gauss rifle fire.

 

That's got to be him, Samus thought, charging a beam shot and unloading it into the Pirates. The creatures' insectile screams rapidly turned to silence under the onslaught of high-temperature plasma, and Samus glanced around the control chamber. "Soldier, if you're still alive, I'm a bounty hunter and I'm here to help you," she called out to whoever might have survived the attack.

 

A moment later, a human in Federation-issue armor cautiously peeked out from behind the console. His armor's upper arm bore the single chevron of a Marine PFC, and he wore a blissfully relieved expression behind his visor.

 

"Oh, Samus, thank the stars it's you!" the Marine said, lowering his rifle as the hunter approached. "I thought for sure I was a dead man. Listen, I saw those Pirates using an elevator that leads out of here. It should take us right back to the surface. It'll take two of us to activate it, though, so you'll have to help me."

 

"Very well," Samus replied. "Just tell me what to do."

 

A moment later, as they both pulled the activation levers, the elevator's control hologram winked and spun in the center of the platform. "This way out," the Marine said as they both stepped onto the elevator, which clanked into motion a second later.

 

"As I'm sure you know, the path to the Seed is exposed to acid rain. The Pirates use portable hazard shields to protect themselves from the elements," the Marine said as the elevator rumbled and screeched its way up the shaft. Grinning at her, he continued, "Lucky for you, I've seen where they make 'em."

 

The elevator shuddered to a stop, emerging into a large circular space. The remains of dozens of failed turrets, weapons, shielding systems and other military detritus lay scattered at the proving ground's edges. A dozen or so pieces of steel sheeting arced over most of the space, forming a haphazard roof over the elevator and leaving the edges of the area exposed to the constant downpour of acid. The only lighting came from a handful of low-power beacons, occasionally augmented by flashes of lightning, and Samus' eyes strained to see through the infernal gloom.

 

"After you."

 

Samus glanced at the Marine, who remained standing on the elevator platform, and the corruption percolated up within her, a sinister voice whispering to the depths of her most primal instincts.

 

kill him hes only a liability

 

Pushing the thought aside, she stepped off the elevator.

 

As she began walking toward the door, her helmet's audio pickups easily detected two sounds: no footsteps following her, and the click of the safety releasing on a gauss rifle. Acting on instinct alone, she launched her body to the left, rolling to her feet just as the hypersonic round sang past the right edge of her helmet.

 

With the sickening burn of betrayal in her chest, Samus raised her gaze to the Marine. "You," she whispered as Gandrayda appeared where he had once stood, laughing hysterically as the hunter tried to recover.

 

"You really shouldn't trust strangers, Sammy." The shapeshifter's eyes had turned the actinic blue of Phazon corruption, and she paced around Samus like a jungle cat stalking her prey. "This is going to be fun," she hissed, her words dripping malice as she activated her PED control unit.

 

"Gandrayda, you don't have to do this," Samus said quietly. "You can fight it. I did, I know you--"

 

Lightning rent the toxic clouds, and she saw her own face in the reflection of her visor. Phazon oozed from a gaping black scar that ran from her left eyebrow to her upper lip, and the pupils of her eyes had turned fluorescent green, radioactive blue light glowing from the irises.

 

kill her blow her to pieces you know you want to DO IT NOW

 

"You wish," she growled, chambering a missile into her cannon. "Bring it on."

 

"Gladly," Gandrayda shot back, transforming into a Berserker Lord before charging across the arena. Her first Phazon ground-wave caught Samus off guard, tripping her up as the second wave sizzled against her armor's energy shielding. "Not so tough now, are you?" she taunted, launching a trio of Phazon blobs Samus' way.

 

"Speak for yourself," the hunter replied, expertly shooting each bomb out of midair and reflecting them back to smash into the berserker's Phazite armor. The plating fell away with a crash, and Samus' armor glowed with Phazon energy as she unloaded a full tank of Hypermode shots into the beast's cranium.

 

"Ooh, that's going to give me a migraine." Gandrayda reverted to her own shape briefly before transforming again, this time into a Pirate Aerotrooper, which dove and wheeled to attack Samus from midair. "Hee, hee, hee, can't hit me!"

 

Swearing, Samus tried frantically to dodge the faux Pirate's attacks, but only managed to step into a bracket of fire as the Pirate's missiles slammed into her armor, draining away her energy with each blow. Howling with laughter, Gandrayda transformed into a dive-bombing cloud of Swarmbats before assuming another form, that of a Phyrigisian warrior.

 

"Aren't you happy to see me again?" Rundas' voice rumbled from the shapeshifter's body as a blow from his ice mace catapulted Samus across the arena. A moment later, Ghor replaced him, adding, "Since you enjoyed killing us so much the last time, we thought you might like a little rematch!"

 

Still stunned from Rundas' blow, Samus looked up to see the giant combat mecha accelerating toward her, firing missiles and plasma jets at top speed, far too fast for her to dodge. Reflexively, she activated the morph ball and ducked between the mecha's legs, allowing it to pass harmlessly over her head. The ball's speed boost made short work of the cooling mechanism suspended beneath Ghor's machine, and she ripped the mecha's back plate off with a grapple before firing a pair of missiles into its actuator relays. "Don't do this, Gandrayda," Samus pleaded, badly unnerved to see the colleagues she'd only too recently been forced to destroy. "Damn it, I didn't want to fight any of you! You were all my peers - my friends!"

 

"I was never anything but your whore," Gandrayda screamed, leaping across the arena to cling catlike to the front of Samus' armor. "Or maybe you were mine," she continued, smashing away at the sensitive electronics built into her helmet, even as her hips undulated against the hunter's lower torso in a perverted simulation of sex. "You couldn't get enough that night. Begging me for it. More, harder--"

 

yes make her scream you know she wants it

 

"Screw you," Samus snarled, hurling the shapeshifter to the floor before backhanding her viciously across the face. She leaped into the air, somersaulting toward the stunned Gandrayda, as brilliant orange energy began sparking from her armor.

 

Frozen in place, Gandrayda could only scream as the supercharged energy disc tore through her defenses, while Samus landed unharmed on the other side of the arena.

 

That had to hurt, Samus thought, even as the tactical overlay in her HUD flashed crimson, its enemy monitor indicating that Gandrayda's energies had dropped below a third of their initial level. Once she's down to a quarter, I'll finish her in Hypermode. I just can't take too many more hits, or I'll risk not having enough reserves.

 

"You know what I say," Gandrayda cackled, back-flipping across the arena and throwing a volley of energy rings at the hunter. "If you can't beat them, join them!" And with that, she shifted forms again, as a perfect clone of Samus began firing charged beam shots at the original.

 

"That just makes you a cheap knockoff artist," Samus yelled back, loosing a salvo of missiles at her double. One connected, and as Gandrayda flinched from the explosion, the second and third projectiles' homing heads acquired their target and detonated.

 

The HUD's tactical readout ticked from 28 to 23%, and she reached for the Hypermode actuator on her PED panel, the familiar narcotic rush of Phazon pouring into her energy supply. Rage bubbled in her blood, and the dark voice in her head had become a shriek now, hammering at her subconscious with its song of abomination.

 

RIP HER APART WATCH HER BLOOD FLOW HEAR HER SCREAMS

 

Not unless I say so, she thought, leaping to avoid another of Gandrayda's flying attacks. You don't control me. Not yet.

 

Gandrayda's form glowed brilliant teal through the swirling gray fog of her Phazon-altered vision, and she locked on and blasted shot after shot at the corrupted menace. She roared with triumph as the final few rounds struck home, exhausting her Phazon tank at the same time as Gandrayda's last reserves of energy.

 

Gandrayda swayed on her feet for a few agonizing seconds, and then she staggered and fell, her overtaxed body writhing and contorting as she morphed through all the shapes she'd taken in her final battle. A Berserker Lord howled and died. Clouds of Swarmbats exploded into purplish-blue mist. Rundas hung impaled amid shards of ice. Ghor screamed as his own machine ripped him apart. Samus lay sprawled on the arena floor, fear and agony written across that other face so like her own.

 

Unable to watch, she turned away, her fist clenching hard enough to dent the armor over her left palm.

 

"Please."

 

The racking whisper, delivered in Gandrayda's own voice, brought Samus' attention back to the scene. She had reverted to her true form, and a mix of Phazon and blood spurted from her injuries, in a noticeably slowing rhythm. Her eyes, though, were clear, finally rid of the corruption that had driven her to madness and beyond. "Please, help me..."

 

"What do you want?" Samus asked quietly, although she knew the other woman's wounds were beyond any hope of remedy. After all, she'd inflicted every one of them.

 

"Finish it." Gandrayda coughed, producing a welter of aubergine-colored liquid. "Before she does."

 

"Gandrayda, I..."

 

"No, listen. If I'm going to die, I want you to do it. I want to go out... on my own terms."

 

Denial hovered on the tip of Samus' tongue - she wasn't going to die, they could get out of here, find help - but the truth was written in blood on the arena floor. No surgery could repair that amount of trauma, and no medicine would cure the underlying Phazon toxicity. Even if they did make it back to Federation hands in time, all Gandrayda could hope for was a lingering death rather than a quick one. If their positions had been reversed, if Samus had been the one lying vanquished, she would have asked for the same final mercy.

 

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she nodded assent.

 

"Help me up?"

 

Carefully, Samus knelt next to the dying shapeshifter, pulling her into a seated position with the hunter's arm around her shoulders. "Better?" she asked, and Gandrayda nodded once, smiling faintly as she rested her head against the metal of her shoulder guard.

 

"You didn't do anything wrong," Gandrayda said softly, and Samus stiffened in surprise at the other woman's intuition of her feelings. "Each of us chose our own corruption... we all had a hook, something we wanted... more than anything. That's what she promised us. Rundas, his whole deal was pride... that whole best hunter in the galaxy thing... so she offered him unlimited power. Ghor wanted peace. So she said she would... make everyone united. No more wars, no more dead innocents, no more orphans."

 

"And what about you?" Samus queried.

 

"She promised me someone I'd lost... that I'd been trying to find ever since." The shapeshifter coughed and wheezed, and her voice had taken on a gurgling quality. "I should have known. She could promise all she wanted... but she could never be you."

 

Dumbstruck, Samus could only gape in reply.

 

"Too bad, you and me. We could have been good together."

 

"I'm sorry," she finally whispered. "I was young and stupid and I treated you terribly. And in the end, it was only my own fear I was running from. In a way, I think I've been running ever since."

 

"S'okay. I know why you did it. It was my own fault... as much as anything. You'd think I would know better... than to stalk someone into having it off."

 

"Well, that didn't help any either," Samus agreed. After a moment, she finished, "Even back then, though, I could never really blame you for that. I just wish things had turned out differently."

 

"Piece of advice?" Off Samus' nod, Gandrayda smiled as she tapped her knuckles on the hunter's chest plate. "Don't... don't stay locked up in there. You always did... need to get out more."

 

"And here I thought you said never to trust strangers," Samus pointed out with a half-hearted chuckle.

 

"Temporary insanity," the shapeshifter replied, which made both of them smile. "Seriously... you shouldn't be alone."

 

"I'll try. I can't guarantee anything... but I'll try."

 

Gandrayda nodded, and then her body spasmed with pain, as the gurgle in her breathing became a harsh rattle. "She's coming. I can feel her. Can you?"

 

Indeed, the room had begun to fill with a black mist, and cyan flashes of Phazon danced and winked in the miasma. Their time had run out.

 

"Do promise..." The shapeshifter began to cough and struggle, convulsing against the metal arms that held her, and for a terrifying moment, Samus thought she might die right then. "Promise me you'll survive. Take the bitch down. You have to. You're the only one who can."

 

"I will. I swear." The helmet's speech synthesizer, as good as it was, couldn't hide the tears in her voice. "I'm so sorry. I never..."

 

"Don't cry." Gandrayda raised a shaking hand to her helmet, caressing the metal as though it were her own cheek. "Never could stand... seeing a pretty girl cry." She closed her eyes, her breathing becoming shallow. "I'm ready."

 

Slowly, Samus laid the shapeshifter's body on the arena floor and stood upright, going through the motions of arming her beam cannon with shaking hands. The aiming reticle settled itself right over the PED's control shield, and the heart which lay beneath. She paused and blinked a few times, but her vision refused to clear.

 

"Sammy... thank you. For everything."

 

Closing her eyes, she pulled the trigger.

 

 

Author's Note: Sadly, that scene couldn't have ended any other way, but I tried to give Gandrayda a better send-off than the game did.

 

One more chapter to come. Thanks again for reading!