Chapter 50

Loyd looked at the captain for a moment after having noticed the picture of him and a young girl placed on the desk. "That your granddaughter?"

The captain turned to the picture and grimaced. "Yes, she was… the foolhardy council sent her with the last wave of armored soldiers to die fighting the swarm."

"I saw the remains of a group of soldiers. You blew them apart with your fifth shell," Loyd mentioned, still staring at the picture.

"Then we did them a favor keeping the swarm from using them. Our shells are filled with a form of napalm."

"The swarm is using seawater to produce thousands more of themselves every day. What makes you think they won't eventually find your underwater city?"

The captain turned to the young man before him. His hair was a dazzling white and his eyes were almost luminescent red in the dim lighting of the captain's quarters. "What makes you think they haven't been looking?"

Loyd smiled and turned away from the picture. "Then I think you're better defended than the Fort Knox of Mars."

The captain roared with laughter. "Surely, you're mistaken, boy!"

"You're talking to the person who broke into it and killed the secret council of Mars. If anyone should know about its defenses, it'd be me."

The captain stopped his laughter remembering that the thing in front of him was no longer human if it ever had been. He felt strange as this didn't frighten him.

"How do you keep the swarm from finding you though? Surely they can follow the smell of your sewage or the sound of your air system?"

"We move the city throughout the ice, never staying in one spot for more than a day. We also never expose ourselves to the sky or seafloor making sure to leave anything the swarm could follow in our tunnels."

Loyd thought about the thought of a massive ice boring city.

"Whenever we do get discovered, the ice ships split and head in separate directions. Making sure the swarm can't follow all of us. They never take the wreckages of those they kill with them so we just piece that ship back together."

"You're a hive city."

The captain laughed. "Maybe that's what you people from Mars would call it but Earthers call it home!"

The ship rocked hard to one side sending the captain to the ground. Loyd stood from his seat on the bed and ran towards the deck.

"Open that hatch too early and you'll kill us all!" the captain shouted after him.

"You are of little concern to me. I have abominations to kill," Loyd shouted back.

The airlock was torn open by a massive claw that was nearly as long as the battleship. An eye opened beyond the new hole and stared threateningly down the corridor to the now motionless Loyd.

A metal hand burst through the walls of the ship and grabbed Loyd, pulling him into the daylight. Beast had been nearly ripped in two and was barely able to stand on the deck of the ship.

"You're going to have to fight this thing on your own Beast. We don't have time to meld properly."

Beast set Loyd on the deck next to him as the massive leviathan released its grip on the ship and watched them curiously.

*You are the new Sentients?!* the creature bellowed through Loyd's head, as it raised a tentacle into the air.

*And you're calamari!* Beast shouted, jumping from the deck and biting into the tentacle surprising the leviathan.

"All port side batteries open fire! Release the torpedoes! Drop the depth charges! If its explosive, use it!" the captain shouted into his radio.

Loyd didn't bother turning to look at him. He already knew his time was limited. His eyes were trying to rupture and his nose was bleeding from the thin atmosphere. His lungs were being scorched by the nearly acidic carbon dioxide the swarmlings around the world were producing.

"Maybe you shouldn't do that. Don't you feel the static in the air?" Loyd asked.

"Wha… LIGHTNING!" the captain shrieked into his radio before diving back into the ship.

Loyd followed after him diving behind a metal panel before he went both blind and deaf for a moment. His eyes adjusted rather quickly but his ears were ringing. The world seemed to be far hotter than it had been a second ago and the smell of ozone was rather prominent. Then another smell made him retch as the ship tried to capsize.

Loyd stood up and looked outside of the hole in the now glowing ship. The leviathan was sinking; its flesh had been burnt beyond recognition and likely fried its brain. Beast landed back on the deck its wounds healing at an extraordinary rate especially after having been lightning fried.

The captain climbed out of a hole further down the hallway, his whole body trembling.

Loyd's ears were still ringing but the captain still tried saying something.

"How are you both still alive?!" he repeated.

"As I told you before, the hybrids have transcended humanity. We're more alike than you would like, Captain," Loyd said, turned to Beast as the sea around the ship began to churn violently. "Now I've got a Kraken to kill so stay out of my way."

Beast smiled down at Loyd before opening the cavity in his chest. The two were one once more. The link between machine and pilot was strong but the link between hybrids was stronger. The boiling waves slowed down as beast dove into them. A set of smaller aquatic swarmlings raced towards them.

Beast simply spun out of the way of the first and second, grabbed the third by the gills, and planted a foot squarely in the fourth's eye. The third swarmling started to thrash, ripping its gills apart as Beast tightened his grip. The swarmling with Beasts foot implanted in its skull was dead, and the two that he had dodged were turning around.

"All the way this time," Loyd muttered, his body still dissolving away as his nerves continued connecting to Beast's.

The first swarmling sped ahead of the second, intending to distract Beast and block his vision. Beast pulled his foot up and used the already deceased swarmling as a shield. The charging swarmling tore through the shield and found itself a little lighter. Its head sailed forward as Beast threw what he had held onto at the final swarmling. The crash was less violent than the first but still allowed Beast to reach around the obstruction and behead the swarmling before tearing into it like some starving beast.

A sudden movement from below caught his attention as the Kraken's severed tentacle rose past. The Kraken itself was falling apart after having been fried by the lightning and likely had extensive brain damage, if not worse. Beast swam down after it; the smell in the water grew even more unbearable as he got closer.

The hunger he started to feel from the smell had grown far faster than his dislike of the smell and soon he found himself devouring the massive cephalopod like the animal he despised the most. The sound reached his ears in the dark waters as his teeth ripped flesh from bone and passed down his throat. The sweet charred flavor filled his mouth with euphoria as his hunger intensified. The smell of blood and smoke in the water helped trigger his transformation into a true Beast. No longer would it be so easy for him to go back to being human. He had tasted the proverbial apple and found it good.

The kraken served to sate his hunger and allowed him to finish healing from the bolt. The monster that returned to the ship above was no longer a mere reconstruction of human and swarm cells but a perfect unification of the two. The issue the crew would have for the rest of their voyage was that this new born demon was far less patient than what had come before it, even though it had maintained its killer's instinct and genius intelligence.

xX elsewhere Xx

"How did that thing's reactor stabilize?! The bolt should've overloaded any form of energy buffer that thing is capable of containing!"

"General, you need to calm down. This is Loyd we are talking about here. For all we know he could've made an organic battery that can withstand that amount of energy," Doctor Borya noted. "For now, this is what I wanted to show you."

A second video feed popped onto the screen with a human brain from several angles.

"We've managed to obtain a snapshot of his brain about a week ago and grew a copy of that snapshot. The increase in neural activity is incredible! He can use his brain to solve problems that would be like rocket science for a toddler and his brain finds them trivial! With it, we could better understand genetics, metallurgy, physics. We might even figure out how to make faster than light ships!"

"Destroy it, doctor. Humans have no right to trifle with gods. His genetics are no longer just human and swarm or even part Crystalid. He's got one of those ghosts in him! The riots after the drone disaster should've told you that! Even if it is just a copy of his neurons, what makes you think we can control it any better this time?"

"Doctor Borya! We have an issue in the containment vessel!"

The brain in the video feed began to bubble and rupture before forming back into limbs and a body that shattered the container and fled into the depths of the facility.

"Get a team after it we can't let it grow anymore! The use of lethal force is an order! Kill that bastard!"

The sound of a gunshot rang throughout the facility. "I'm afraid I can't let you do that general. The scientific discoveries that child will give us are worth any risk. Even if it means I have to give up my own soul in the process!" Borya bellowed.

The general slumped against his console blood trickling from his wound down the side of his nose.

"I don't trade in souls, doctor," the creature from the video declared. "And you've just royally pissed me off."

Borya's throat sprayed blood like a fountain as he fell back with an expression of horror permanently frozen to his face.

"Clear everyone out and activate the onsite nuke… it's what the general would've wanted."