Chapter 5: What Have I Become?

  They say it’s all random, but I’m not so sure.

  Who’s hand really holds the scale that weighs one man’s life against another?

  Why does my meal prescription designate a lifetime of lab-grown meat, while the guy living on the waterfront, with his fancy suits and 3 child allotment gets the real deal?

  They allotted me no children, and that still hurts.

  The least you could do is give me a real fucking steak!

  —

  I stared through the trees at the oncoming silhouette of the Drone. It was still a few hundred feet away, but damn did it close the distance fast.

  It must have heard my screaming.

  Could I run? Hide?

  Fuck.

  I looked about desperately, causing the dead drone that remained clasped to my shoulder to swing like the world's saddest pi?ata.

  Sure, I might be able to run, but how far?

  Maybe I could hide, but who knew what kind of senses these flying bastards had.

  And what then?

  I glanced at the icons on my HUD. Bleeding, Crippled.

  And as I watched, my HP bar ticked a point lower. I was woozy and weak.

  Music still screamed. I wasn’t sure I’d survive deactivating my Predator perk but I'd have to try if I wanted to heal using a Red Ball.

  The memory of pain, the stink of my burning flesh assaulted me. Could I face that again?

  I eyed the onrushing drone. What if I killed it, and in doing so I earned another level up? I’d be healed.

  My toes curled as tingles of remembered pleasure traveled through my body.

  I knew how fucked up that was, but I still wanted it terribly.

  An idea popped into my head. A fucked-up, stupid idea. Sure. But something was better than nothing, right?

  The music screamed on, a guitar solo soaring to new heights. It seemed… excited. I wondered if somehow they knew what I was about to do.

  My HP bar was down below 10%, so I’d only have one shot at this.

  If the drone struck me even once I’d be worse than dead.

  I’d be food.

  I still had several drone corpses in my inventory, so I brought up my interface and retrieved one. It looked pitiful. I tried not to feel bad for it. It had deserved what it got, hadn’t it?

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  Dropping the body to the dirt I knelt and pinned the torso beneath my knee, then I grabbed its serrated forelimb with my remaining hand, and with a surge I ripped it free.

  As soon as I did a popup appeared in my HUD.

  Achievement Unlocked: Improvised Weaponry.

  The announcer lady started yapping, but I tuned her out.

  Text boxes popped up showing titles, but I hammered them shut.

  I didn’t have time for her nerd bullshit.

  The limb I had torn free looked remarkably like a crude dagger, but trailed connective tissue and dripped with slippery yellow slime. I flicked a glance at the oncoming drone and scrubbed some of the gore off the handle onto my trousers, then gripped it tightly.

  The drone was close, perhaps only a hundred feet away now. Flying in a straight line.

  I stepped behind the nearest tree, angling myself so that my body was hidden, but the corpse dangling from my shoulder would still be visible.

  These bugs, the Gosporian Drones weren’t thinking right. Maybe that was because they were just dumbasses, maybe it was because they didn’t have a queen to order them about.

  I didn’t give a damn.

  They were running on instinct.

  Mantids from my world weren’t picky about what they ate.

  I hoped these Gosporians were similarly omnivorous.

  I’d be fucked otherwise.

  It burst through the trees, the uneven whirr of its wings audible even above the music. I watched, staring directly through the tree trunk with my infra-vision, waiting for my moment.

  I jiggled the dead drone attached to my shoulder.

  The attacking drone spotted the corpse and, without hesitation, launched itself, limbs outstretched and grasping. It slammed into the drone, tearing the thing free from my shoulder with a jet of blood as I howled in triumph.

  The drone bore the corpse to the ground, already eating its face.

  I grinned, took a step, raised my improvised dagger high to strike, then staggered as blood-loss made my head spin.

  My vision swam, full of dark sections and pops of light.

  My heart lurched like an engine running on empty.

  I grit my teeth and swung the improvised weapon down with all my strength, but my aim was off and it deflected off the smooth carapace of the body segment and stuck into the dirt.

  I dropped to a knee, head spinning and gasping for breath.

  Blinking the spots away I expected to see the drone discarding its meal to end my miserable existence, but on it ate, utterly fucking oblivious.

  I was fading fast, had to end this now.

  Reaching out with the serrated forelimb, I rested it against the things narrow neck.

  Then I took a deep breath and sawed the things head off like I was cutting a loaf of bread.

  It twitched a few times during the process, but never stopped chewing.

  I was spent, muscles like water I rolled to my back.

  Looking up into the rotten fungal canopy and too green sky I tried to get enough air in.

  My hearing was fading, but even I could hear that this time the cheers really did drown out the music.

  I hated it.

  Reminded me that those bastards were watching.

  Please, please, fireworks, please.

  My vision was tunnelling to black.

  Let the fireworks light up the darkness.

  But they didn’t come.

  And I lay there bleeding the last of my lifeblood into the dirt of a hateful, rotten hamburger smelling world.

  I was going to die.

  Still, not bad for a zoo animal. At least I took some of the bastards with me.

  No regrets.

  Except one.

  The one they could never make me forget.

  Elena, I’m sorry… I never got to tell you how sorry I am.

  I should have been afraid.

  Clung to life, to hope.

  These few hours had been some of the most real, most intense and most horrific of my short life.

  I’d felt so present and alive, like back when I was a child with those big emotions.

  The predator perk was still active, guitar screaming, drums thundering, though I could barely hear them.

  It was in that moment that I finally realised how it was affecting my mind.

  I wasn’t afraid of dying, and that wasn’t right.

  Wasn't natural.

  The perk had made me something I was never meant to be.

  I had exchanged one implant for another.

  My whole life spent being controlled by others.

  Told what to do, what to feel, how to live.

  Obscene.

  It was fucking obscene.

  They should all die.

  The aliens that did this to us, the humans that had done the same even before this all happened.

  I should kill them all.

  Should.

  But won’t.

  Can’t.

  Nah, it was curtains for me.

  I had fallen to my side now, and it felt like I was suspended, floating weightless in a sea of shadow.

  Except for just one tiny sliver of vision left to me.

  And it was all I could see.

  The symbol glowing a hateful red in my HUD.

  Hatchling Predator.

  I didn’t want to die. Not like this.

  Not as a slave.

  My eyes rolled slowly, the sliver of vision scrolling across my HUD until I found the inventory icon.

  I clicked it. The window appeared.

  What did I have to lose at this point?

  What was pain compared to death?

  I slammed down to deactivate Hatchling Predator and then activated Red Ball just a fraction of a moment later.

  And I burned.