Odyssey: Chapter 4 Submission

Odyssey ll prompt chapter 4

Maya's fingers lingered on the blade, braced on her hip, evaluating the strength of its

constitution, the fortitude of its resolve. Her resolve. Whatever her motives, her

convictions were subject to sentience- to weakness. The mass coagulating within its

host, writhing, squirming, feeding, was relentless in its pursuit. It was nothing but a

cellular abomination, a thief, a parasite. But there was something within her, some

goddamn thing that stayed her hand from emulsifying that grisly flesh and

penetrating, over and over, into its bloody remains. It wasn't empathy,

really, her relation to the beast hijacking the faculties of the human before her, a

scourge driven only by its baser compulsions, was minimal. She'd slaughtered the

putrid little creatures before—scores of them—depleting their numbers by dozens.

Guilt was a closer approximation, but not accurate, by definition. Harboring guilt

implied some great expression of kindness, of love, that contrasted with some

betrayal of some mutual trust. She snorted. Whatever her relationship with her

sister, it was not founded on any of these notions. But this organism was the

first she'd seen in months, and provided this assault only infected one host she

assumed it would be the last. Concocting progeny, especially at the magnitude she

had, would take its toll on her sister, rendering her incapable of sustaining

herself…the colorful mass draining Paul was the final testament, the concluding

attempt of her sister's legacy. It was dishonorable to rob her of that, regardless of

how little she afforded to acknowledge Lysanna. But their species' reproductive

method was appalling, even the Council had deemed it so after a great deal of

deliberation. They had evolved and established their societies, striving for progress

and, in recent years, collaborated with the human race for mutual benefit. Infecting

allies with murderous embryos was not only highly frowned upon, it was forbidden.

They'd found other methods, with the help of the humans: test tubes and regulated

laboratory development that ensured the continuity of their kind, far less barbaric

than their natural means. They were creatures of honor, and failure to adhere to the

principals of their creed was punishable by death.

Maya looked upon the face of Paul, contorted with pain and sweat beading within

the contractions of his face. Treatment was euphemistic- alleviation of symptoms

and accompanying pain was best case. At worst, the host would collapse in

convulsions, spasmodic and powerless against the violent throes of their bodies,

watching as alien limbs erupted from their flesh, and seized in death by their own

horror. Not every host, though, was susceptible to the leeching. Carriers were

asymptomatic, save for the tiny fits that would possess them when transmitting the

embryo,  and the human incubator, the host, would not be chosen until at least one

of these transmissions was complete. When it did choose its victim, operating on

some unknown contingencey, it changed the body it occupied. Even if the parasites

could be removed, the host's physical morphology had been mutated, augmented,

for its sole purpose of bearing the foreign organism; the excruciating, dismal

survival of the host was dependent upon the creature killing it. She knew what she

read there, on the bulge gyrating beneath Paul's blistering skin. It was death,

inevitable and excruciating death.