Cannibal, Cannibal

[Ada Wong]

It was disconcerting to stare at the monster frozen on the screen for too long, Stefanie thought. The mindless terror beginning to take root inside her mind felt unreal, like speeding down an aerial speedway while blindfolded. The blonde-haired intern had to force herself to look away, squeezing her eyes shut as the memory of protruding, sharp incisors and bloody, shriveled, mummified skin writhed behind her eyelids. We may be small, but we are legion!

After a moment of quiet, one of the seated individuals in Stormtrooper armor spoke up. “A virus? Well, that should be easy to eradicate. All we need is to eliminate patient zero and any other infected, and then manufacture a vaccine to prevent future outbreaks. Right?”

Dr. Myers suffered a furrow to his brow, while Dr. T’Jung appeared to ignore the soldier’s words entirely. Stefanie, for her part, took advantage of her relatively unimportant presence at the meeting and scrutinized the soldier who had spoken more closely. The woman had gingery hair shaved close to her scalp for the benefit of the helmet in her lap, but it still managed to tangle itself into tightly-wound curls. These curls flicked about and caught the light as she talked, looking like tiny electric sparks going off around her ears, and her eyes were bright and unwavering. She seemed like a fresh-faced recruit, painfully assured of the Empire’s strength to her very core, and while the solution she had produced was complete, it was a little basic. Perfect video game or horror movie logic, an easy answer to a complicated problem. Unfortunately, it was all a bit more complicated than that.

T’Jung shook her head. Her dark eyes were intent upon her research, months of effort and careful testing that would inevitably die. All of it gone to waste, all over a simple mishap that wasn't even her own; there was something immensely upsetting in knowing that it had been someone else's mistake that killed her life's work and not herself. The words and images glared back at her from the screen, stinging about as acutely as an accusatory finger pointed in her face.

“No, this is not just a simple viral disease. It is a mutation, one that attempts to expand the primary body’s lifespan by absorbing further hosts,” She did something with her hand in midair, fingers twisting and doing a cursory wave over the screen presented before them. More images of the unfortunate rat specimens appeared in blurs of bluish light, each one more misshapen and malformed than the last. “Flesh, muscle, bone… all of it is collected from other organisms the mutant slaughters and assimilates. The new biomaterial becomes a protective layer surrounding the mutant’s core… a zone which is home to the central nervous system, cardiac muscle, and gastrointestinal organs, among others. These layers are then shed in a necessary manner to preserve the internal core as damage is dealt by outside provocations. It is not too dissimilar to a snake detaching from an old layer of skin, if such a comparison will assist in your understanding.”

“Ugh,” another of the officers at the table grunted, leaning back in his seat with a disgruntled creak. “That’s just gruesome. Sounds like some kind of godawful matryoshka doll.”

The Vulcan woman regarded him briefly. “Quite.”

Captains Werrman and Yung appeared to have a kind of hushed conference full of urgent murmuring and sharp gestures toward the screen. Finally, Yung looked up and fixed T’Jung with a hard look. “What was the purpose of this experiment, doctor? If Empire Research and Development has really created something so monstrous and outstandingly dangerous, then I assume that there was some benefit you hoped to derive from it?”

“Indeed,” T’Jung confirmed immediately, and Stefanie was continuously awed by her superior’s apparent immunity to the kind of stern glaring that would make any ordinary person quake in their boots. She didn’t even fidget once, not even to adjust her yellow robes, only staring placidly back at the captain. “Our objective was to replicate the healing factor exhibited by the myriad of undead beasts commonly found within the Pale Moors. The potential for bio-enhancements was clear, but seemed far more promising than the comparatively simple machine-driven augmentations of the past. Case in point, while the introduction of biomechanics has, at times, coincided with a reduction in the loss of life in Coruscant’s streets to crime—”

“Anyway! My colleague’s point is, we always intended to share our findings with the Empire at large,” Myers interjected, smiling fretfully, his finger-tousled hair and constant fidgeting making him appear a tad deranged.

T’Jung silenced him with a glance, but was otherwise unruffled by his interruption.

“Of course,” she said smoothly, and if she were human she might have taken one golden opportunity to sniff haughtily. “There was never any doubt.”

“Good,” Captain Werrman stated simply, leaning on the edge of the table with her arms crossed, eyes the color of storm clouds searing into the trio of scientists. “Now tell us how to kill it, if you would.”

This appeared to drag a reaction out of Dr. T’Jung. Her head snapped up, lips parting slightly as if to speak quickly and without thinking. She then seemed to take a moment to school her body language into some semblance of her earlier serenity, but Intern Stefanie couldn’t help but notice that the lines of her body appeared especially severe all at once, her pointed ears and dark, glossy hair serving as a striking contrast to the purely human characteristics of all else gathered.

Dr. T’Jung tilted her face downward as if about to acquiesce, but shifted her eyes at the last moment to Captain Werrman’s face. “It would be more advantageous to the Empire if the subject were to be recovered alive.”

The woman scoffed, a sneering veneer overtaking her words. “Really, doctor? Because as far as I’m concerned, if R&D can’t keep its toys to itself, we have every right to break them.”

It was the most subtly insulting way to say ‘Stay in your own fucking lane' that Stefanie had ever heard. Yowzah.

“Now wait just a minute, the good doctor might be onto something here,” said Captain Yung, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Think of the things we could do with a weapon like this! The things we could do if we trained and mastered it! I’m sure the rebel scum would never see... Well, that coming.”

Suddenly, the previously stern captain looked like a kid on Christmas day, his eyes taking on a distantly dreamy gleam as he grinned a shark-like grin. He was already thinking of the violent possibilities, apparently. Taking in Yung’s almost playful expression, Stefanie couldn’t help but shudder. She sure would hate to be a rebel if something like whatever the man was dreaming up ever came to pass.

Werrman appeared to actually be considering such a thing, but Drs. T’Jung and Myers were outright alarmed.

“Bio Organic Weapons, huh? Could be something to think about.” Werrman mused.

“Our experimentation never extended beyond— admittedly lengthy— observation periods, captain,” T’Jung warned, “These mutated creatures are mindless as far as I am currently aware, I would recommend extreme caution when considering an idea so ambitious. Possibly even disregarding it entirely.”

“Yeah, disregard it. Disregard the shit out of it,” Myers said.

The two captains glanced at one another, communicating something to one another that Stefanie couldn’t interpret. A communicator abruptly crackled with incomprehensible radio static from Captain Werrman’s hip, but she ignored it in favor of whipping out a new data pad, a grim look on her face as she examined the glowing screen. “Viola Burns of Tier 3, lives with her girlfriend Lindsey, apartment number…” Her voice faded as she strode from the room, the company of Stormtroopers quickly rising to follow her out.

As the sound of boots tromping along faded, Captain Yung refocused on T’Jung and Myers, all stone-cold professionalism once more. “Fine, we’ll recapture your monster for you, though no guarantees on its… still being put together, if you get my meaning. There are a few new Primes snooping around that need to be put to good use. We'll send them in.”