.Parasite.

01 – It takes Acquired Minds…
September 4th, 2108. The ‘summer break’ was nearly over, and Ema couldn’t wait for the rest of her staff to get back and carry on all the work she’d had to do for them during their leave. Every summer, all but the most vital staff of Satellite 1-08 had a 2 month break, from the end of June to the beginning of September, in which they got to go down to Earth and spend time with their family. It was only fair, really, since they spent the other 10 months of every year on the station, working six days a week.
Not Ema, though. As the head of the research team, she had to stay aboard all year round and make sure everything was in order. Of course, it always was. Most of the research was astrophysics, and the maintenance involved directing androids around. It was the biological section that the higher-ups were actually worried about, making sure the subjects were alive, and above all, secure.
As much sense as that makes, it didn’t stop Ema silently complaining to herself about the boredom. The station’s time was synchronised with central US time, as was the lighting, so at 9:30 in the simulated evening, Ema was about ready to assign an over-watch ‘droid to monitor the labs and head off to her quarters. Everything was normal, all readings nominal, as always. Ema began to wonder if she could just tell one of the lab androids to watch it for her, and report anything unusual. Heh, that’d make the job a lot less boring…
It was at that point that she felt a slight jab in her neck, and suddenly felt a whole lot sleepier than before…
Ema awoke with a start. She checked her watch… 1:15 AM!? Just how long had she been…? Then she noticed the dart stuck in the back of her neck, a tranquiliser. Something was flashing and beeping. It was the control panel, a large red sign was pulsing, a loud alert playing through the speakers.
The sign displayed four words that made the scientist’s heart skip a beat - “Cyo Strain Containment Failure”. She checked the cameras, and sure enough, the polymer screen that held the Cyo Strain subject in it’s cage was broken. No sign of it inside.
Ema was about to radio to security, before realising a monumental screw up like this would doubtlessly get her fired. Instead, she played back the camera footage for the last 3 hours on fast-forward. At 9:25, she saw a man in a jumpsuit outside her office, obviously the one that had knocked her out. A few minutes later, the same man showed up in the containment room, crudely smashing the transparent wall with a spanner. The screen began to crack, and shattered. The mystery infiltrator took a shot at the Cyo, then at the camera. The video, naturally, cut out.
“There’s our infiltrator… but who the hell is he?” Ema mused, as she scanned the other lab cameras for where he went next...

02 – Escape?
The camera fizzled for a moment, then the red light went out, and it drooped on it’s mounting. Damion lowered his dart gun, and turned his attention back to the Cyo Strain parasite. It’d fetch a high price in the black market back home, and “Archduke Ruin” would be back in business. He paused, for a moment, considering if his super-villain alias was too over-the-top. “Nah, it’s awesome.” He muttered, and stepped into the parasite’s cage. Of course, the best laid plans of super-villains never go quite as planned, and as it happens, his target’s biology didn’t work quite the same as any being from the Earth. The regular tranquilisers he’d brought didn’t have any effect on the strange creature, except that the sharp dart pissed it off.
Before he knew what had happened, the thing had pounced at his face, administering knock-out venom of its own, and began to infest his brain…
A few minutes passed, and Damion got up. He pondered, for a moment, why he’d been on the floor, but dismissed the thought. His memory told him he’d secured the parasite, so he checked his map of the station briefly, then set off at a run towards the nearest elevator. “At this pace… I should be there in about 15 minutes.”
“Oh, really?” smirked a helmeted man, sitting behind the security desk at the Bridge. “What is it, Lieutenant?” asked the Captain, turning in her swivel chair to face him,
“Looks like we have an intruder, Cap’n,” the Lieutenant replied “lock down the lifts, I’ll sound the alarm.”
As the elevator slowed to a halt in the bowels of the station, a red light began to pulse on the ceiling, “Lockdown? Sharp, but too little too late!” Damion announced, before realising there was nobody else around to appreciate the theatricality. Regardless, he produced a crowbar from his pack, and began to lever the doors open, emerging into the vast expanse of the storage warehouse. At a time like this, the only person down here ought to be the head of engineering. Damion scanned the area quickly from behind a crateful of chocolate, and began to make his move towards his shuttle, which was camouflaged under a stack of barrels.
Halfway across the floor, however, misfortune struck the thief again, in the form of a sudden stab of pain inside his skull. Damion dropped to one knee, as if physically struck by the agony, inadvertently letting out a yelp of pain…

03 – Release
“Damnit!” yelled the Head of Security, “we were too late, he’s in the hangar!”
“Calm down, Kai, he’s not out yet. Call engineering, get the whole place locked down” responded the Captain. Lieutenant Kaibura shrugged, and opened a radio channel. “Brian, it’s Kaibura. You’ve got yourself an unidentified infiltrator in the hangar. Lock down all exits, including airlocks, and be on alert. He may be armed. Over.”
“Will do, Lieutenant. Over.”
“If necessary, feel free to return fire with the weaponry down there. Over and out.”
Brian got up from his chair, internally cursing the intruder… so much for a good night’s sleep. Going through his desk, the engineer grabbed a torch, a spanner and a 9mm handgun, then shut off the hangar lights, and locked down the doors from his terminal.
Damion, or what had once been him, slowly rose in the darkness of the vast area. His eyes tinted acid green for a moment, but quickly returned to their usual hue. “Lights out? They have no idea what they’re dealing with…” he thought, his eyes piercing the darkness far better than they ever had as a human.
Damion de Lioncourt was no human, not any more. The Cyo strain parasite was in control now, and the façade of humanity was just a disguise for it’s true form. A few more hours, and that form could evolve into one far too powerful for the few crew members of satellite 1-08 aboard to defeat.
A few hours, that’s all the parasite needed to prepare for its attack on the surface. A few hours, and his kind would own a planet of their own once again. Just a few hours.

Brian trod lightly, edging around massive storage containers in search of the mystery intruder, turning every corner gun and torch first, head and body second. No sign of his target.
Then he felt a warm breath on his shoulder. He span about, taking a step back and pointing his gun and torch at the source. Nothing. Then, an inhuman, mirthless cackle, and Damion stood before him, easily swatting the gun from his hands.
“Blinding yourself… not the best of plans, eh?” he sniggered, covering the torch with a hand.

“He turned off the lights? What the hell was he thinking!?” exclaimed the Captain, watching the screens over Kaibura’s shoulder.
“Calm down, Kay, he’s got a torch and he knows the area. Our thief certainly hasn’t lived down there for a good 5 years, and probably hasn’t got a way of seeing in the dark. It’s risky, but a worthwhile tactical choice on his part.”
“Good point. What’s our next course of action?”
“We wait for Brian’s report, if he doesn’t call in in half an hour, we investigate. I doubt sincerely the intruder will incapacitate him, and get himself a way out, in that time.”
“Then wait we shall.”

04 – Truth
Brian ran as far as possible in the opposite direction as the decidedly creepy individual, heading towards his office. His aim was to contact the bridge for assistance. Damion’s mission had gone pretty far off target so far, so why should he let this engineer have his way?
The unfortunate infiltrator set off at an abnormally fast run, until Brian was back in his sights. Grabbing the 9mm handgun from his belt, Damion loosed three shots at his target’s back. One struck his left forearm, the shock sending him sprawling to the floor. Brian crawled up to his knees, and launched himself into cover behind a steel crate. He could just about make out the label on the door; “Security Issue Body Armour”. If he were to die, at least he could die appreciating the irony of the circumstances.
Two more gunshots, one shearing through the thin outer metal and buzzing centimetres from his head, reminded the engineer to leave the irony appreciation for later, and worry more about his health. He shuffled across the floor, hoping to but the tougher crates of tough armour between himself and the gunfire, then, after a few deep breaths, leaned around the corner and searched the area for Damion’s position. A sixth bullet sent him right back around the crate to safety. “Clearly,” he thought “this guy isn’t gonna accept a white flag. Time to improvise…”
Brian reached for his gun, and prepared to leap around the corner and unload in Damion’s general direction… then he remembered that it was still lying on the floor where he’d had his first encounter. No such luck there, then.
Then he remembered the spanner he’d picked up too, in case he needed to knock the guy out. Tearing a strip of cloth from his sleeve, he tied it to his torch, and threw the slapdash distraction across the gap to the next container. With any luck, it would look like he’d made a run across to the other side himself. Not wasting a second, Brian began to run the opposite way around the crate and towards his dropped weapon. A seventh shot in the other direction told him his plan had worked…

Damion’s improved eyes saw through Brian’s ploy easily, and he guessed he would run back for his weapon. Weapon or not, this worked in Damion’s favour. He dropped the gun, and shifted into a kneeling position.
The parasite inside of Mr. de Lioncourt wasn’t merely controlling his mind, it was much more than that. His body was a useful disguise, of course, but it’s true purpose was as a safe haven for the alien’s growth. A Cyo strain parasite is unable to grow even to the equivalent of adolescence until it infests a warm-blooded species as a host, and matures within them. This maturing takes many hours to complete, but after just thirty minutes, it is mature enough to resurface in adolescent form, already far stronger and faster than a human. Damion’s parasite was at this stage, and it yearned to run and hunt in it’s own skin, now that it was able to.

Brian ran headlong into the third container in his short journey, silently cursing his decision to shut off the lights. Then he recognised the insignia on the side, and dropped quickly to the floor, feeling for his dropped weapon. Two whole minutes passed before he found it, and began to head back in Damion’s direction, hoping to take him by surprise with an attack from behind.
Damion, however, was not the one to be surprised. Quite the opposite. He leapt silently from crate to crate, stalking his prey from above, waiting for the right moment to strike, and deciding exactly how to do it…

05 – Intervention
Ten minutes passed, the bridge was silent but for the hum of machines, and the occasional beep from the pilot’s terminal. Everybody seemed to be holding their breath, then; “I’ve had enough of this uncertainty, I’m going down there.”
It was the Lieutenant, he sprung from his seat, and opened the bridge security locker, donning Kevlar armour and arming himself with a dangerous looking sub-machinegun. “I’ll be back before you guys know it, watch the screens for me, would you Autumn?”
He was referring to the station’s pilot, the other person who had been on the bridge, and had been staying fairly quiet until now.
“Sure thing, Kai”
“Thanks, wish me luck.”

By now, Brian was well and truly spooked. He had, by now, retrieved his torch and spanner, and was pretty sure he’d covered the entire storage hangar, and not found a trace of the infinitely creepy intruder. Then he heard a strange metallic clang above his head, like a sheet of metal pressed down in the middle, then released, almost like someone jumping off of a…
“Oh great…” he moaned, and dived to the side moments before Damion landed. Damion hissed angrily, and pounced onto Brian, jabbing at his chest with the sharp, bony growth that now covered his arm. The unlucky engineer howled in pain, and batted the creature about the face with the butt of his pistol. Damion fell back, clutching his face, and Brian raised his arm weakly, emptying the clip into the beast. Or at least, he hoped so. He’d lost a lot of blood already from the gaping wound in his chest, and had based his aim on sound, as his vision was already starting to blur. Without medical attention, he estimated that he had about 10 minutes left, and would be unconscious in five…

Damion, finally getting some luck, saw the man raising his gun, and pressed himself to the floor, hoping that Brian would aim for the head and chest. One bullet clipped his shoulder as the agonised human’s arm dropped mid salvo, but it was a superficial wound. It was easy to see that he had little time left, so Damion scurried away, leaving his victim to his fate.
Fate, it seemed, was on the other team’s side. The elevator door hissed open, and the Head of Security entered the room, weapon raised, with torch and laser sight on. He quickly made his way to the engineering office, and switched the lights on and the elevators off. This was not to be a battle, but a pest hunt. Kaibura scanned the immediate area and the tops of the containers. No sign of the intruder, or his way out, but no matter, it was merely a matter of time until he caught his quarry.
“H-hello?” said a voice, weak, and distant. The Lieutenant decided that his hunt would have to wait a few minutes, and set off in search of the casualty…

06 – Infection
Having administered what first aid he could in the holds, Kaibura quickly hoisted Brian onto his shoulder, and carried him up to the Medical Bay on the Station’s central ring. The design of Satellite 1-08 was a simple one; three self contained rings, equipped with their own oxygen and life support machinery. The highest contained the bridge, officers’ quarters and observation deck, the central housed all of the research facilities and labs, and in the lowest were the dock, engineering office and cargo holds. The three structures were connected by a 5 tube-like constructions, each bearing two elevators to take the crew up and down, and all three were supplied and equipped to last up to 3 months without the other rings or intervention from Earth. Just in case. Once inside, the Head of Security set the other man down on a bed, and set about finding the station’s resident doctor.
Damion de Lioncourt, or at least, the façade thereof, grinned widely. It was a smile that stretched out a long way, straight across his deteriorating human face and onto his Cyo Parasite one. That was the drawback to evolution; it took a few minutes, and couldn’t be done whilst maintaining a disguise. But having absorbed biomass from his first prey, and grown substantially in his host’s body, the parasite’s own body told it that it was about time. There are 4 evolutionary paths set out that a lucky Cyo strain parasite can follow, should they survive to do so. They are the aptly named Strength, Defence, Speed and Mind, simple labels given by humans, for simple changes. The parasite infesting Damion was predestined for the path of Strength, and as such, his insectoid muscle-mass began to expand and strengthen, whilst the rest of his body curled up into a very short hibernation-like sleep, hidden well in the back of a crate full of toilet paper.
Whilst the Lieutenant reported back to the bridge, the station’s resident medic, Dr. Gesteldrake, was left by himself to deal with the ridiculous wounds sustained by the station’s head engineer. He sighed aloud, wondering why it was worth the trouble. The puncture in Brian’s chest went almost straight through; at least 8 ribs were completely shattered, and his blood was slowly draining into his lungs. All in all, it looked grim, even by the standards of the advanced medicine of the 22nd century. But orders were orders, and the unfortunate medic pulled on a pair of latex gloves and reached for the anaesthetic.
“So, the intruder got away?” was all Captain Kay could say in response to her Lieutenant’s retelling of the events. Looking ever so slightly sheepish, Kaibura nodded, “I’m afraid so. I deemed the life of a fellow crewman more important than capturing the suspect, in the immediate circumstances, Ma’am.” Kay had no objections to the man’s justification, and simply nodded. At least the hangar had been locked down, so their mystery infiltrator would have a hard time leaving the station with just a crowbar to attack the metre-thick bulkheads with. “For now, we wait. I’ll activate the prototype to help you out when you head back, but until then, head back to the central ring and watch the elevators, I’ll watch the cameras and keep in touch.” Pausing only to acknowledge his orders with a quick “Understood.”, Kaibura headed straight back to the elevator he’d come up by.

07 – Emergence
With his human disguise back on, as he didn’t want to prepare the humans for his true nature just yet, Damion headed back to the elevator he’d come down on. Naturally, escape was no longer his aim, not yet. The original Mr. De Lioncourt would have been searching for a way out by now, but not anymore. His mind belonged to the Cyo, and it’s new owner was intent on a little more business on the station before departing. With much enhanced agility, even whilst disguise, the infiltrator climbed the cables of the powered-down lift all the way – about a kilometre – to the central ring. The distance between the rings was a safety measure; if something went so catastrophically wrong on one that it exploded, damage to the others would be minimal, as the hull was designed to withstand debris impact.
Things are rarely convenient, though, and as Damion reached the middle level, he saw the other elevator – for each shaft accommodated two – coming to rest, obviously, the limited security intended on blocking his passage at a bottleneck. “No matter,” he thought, almost aloud, as part of his human personality was still capable of surfacing at times, “I’ll take the long way.” He climbed through the ceiling into the elevator Kaibura had come down in, and with a maniacal laugh to mock the man, closed the doors with the press of a button. “Now,” he mused inwardly “I wait.”
“Captain, the intruder is in the lift, central shaft. It hasn’t moved, but he’s shut himself in. Course of action?”
“Fill it with lead. He may have gotten in, but getting out in a split second’s gotta be beyond him.”
“Affirmative, ma’am.”
Kaibura raised his gun, and with a slight grin at how easy this seemed to be turning out, unloaded a 50 round clip into the doors. Enhanced senses, however, gave Damion more than a split second. The moment he heard ‘fill it with lead’, he leapt back into the elevator shaft, and began to pry the doors on the opposite side open. He assumed he had just enough time to make good his escape whilst his pursuers wondered how he’d survived.
True enough, as the metal slid clear of his path, he heard the Lieutenant curse as the other doors opened to reveal an empty chamber. Resisting the urge to make a mocking remark, Damion set off at a sprint towards the medical bay; he may have been loose, but he certainly wasn’t safe just yet.
Benjamin Gesteldrake M.D., or Ben to his friends and acquaintances, was surprised at his patient’s recovery; not only was he actually healing up at all, he was doing so remarkably fast, and looked as though he may actually survive. Naïvely, Ben put it down to a will to live, and silently congratulated himself on a job well done. A job well done, as Brian would certainly have had no chance of survival without medical attention, despite his unnatural recovery rate – or so the doctor believed. Then the infirmary’s doors slid open with a low pneumatic hiss, and before he had a chance to raise his head and identify the newcomer, Ben felt a sharp pain in his neck, and was unconscious before he hit the floor. Damion pulled back the stock of his dart gun, reloading it, and slid it back into his thigh-holster. From his backpack, he then produced a semi-automatic handgun, shoved Brian off of the bed and to the floor, and took cover behind the bed furthest from the door – just in time for Lieutenant Kaibura, who had been in hot pursuit with the advantage of security footage, to burst into the room himself. He levelled his weapon’s sights at his target’s hiding place, and called “Give it up, you’re cornered, and I’ve got the advantage.” His command was met with a spread of three bullets, one clipped his armoured shoulder, and the other two went over his head as he ducked behind another of the room’s beds. From the distance, an indirect hit like that was easily nullified by the Kevlar, and its wearer responded with the haughty “Nice try, but you’ll have to try harder than that to hit me.”
(yes, I realise I've posted this damn quickly after 06; don't expect that all the time, I just happened to know exactly what I was doing with this part of the story.)

08 – Pyrrhic
Ema hadn’t lived on the satellite for as long as she had without picking up a few tricks along the way. She’d been observing the fiasco over the security network from the comfort of her desk, until things started to go horribly wrong. A crewman grievously wounded, a clearly dangerous criminal at large, and a missing biohazard, not the best list of things to happen in your work day. When she saw the engineer being admitted to the medical bay, she left her swivel chair so fast it span for quite some time after she’d sped out of the door, headed straight there to warn the Doctor.
She burst through the doors as fast as they’d let her, only to find herself staring down the barrel of Damion’s handgun. In one quick motion, he leapt from cover, circled around Ema, and placed said gun to her temple, grinning maniacally. “Thank whatever’s up there, some providence coming my way at last!” he exclaimed, twisting the weapon painfully against his new hostage’s flesh. “Now, put the gun down, we wouldn’t want to miss, and hit the pretty young Miss, now would we?” he added, miming pulling the trigger of his own gun. For Ema herself, the mock action alone was terrifying, as it simply demonstrated how easily he could kill her, even by accident.
Kaibura stood, hands high to show that he wasn’t aiming at anything, and replied “Chivalrous to the end, naturally.”, his voice drenched with disdain. “What do you want?” he continued as he lay his weapon down on the bed, effortlessly switching from the role of advantaged soldier to disadvantaged negotiator. “I want you to stay there looking gormless, while I leave with the girl, and my friend here leaves with your Doctor. We’ll be back to deal with you another time.”
Before he had a chance to so much as raise an eyebrow at ‘and my friend here’, the Lieutenant indeed looked gormless as the unconscious Brian suddenly rose from the floor, slung Ben over his shoulder, and moved across to stand with Damion. “What the hell is this, Mutiny?” Kaibura demanded of his erstwhile co-worker. There was no reply from him, but Damion literally threw his head back and laughed aloud; “Mutiny? Hah, you haven’t the faintest idea what you’re dealing with here, have you?” Or rather, he would have. Ever the tactician, the security head saw the dramatic gesture as an easy opening, and quickly, simultaneously raised his wrist and pressed a button on his sleeve, activating a small concealed blade. The razor shot out, aided by a miniature gauss mechanism, and straight into the shoulder of the laughing man before he could reach the word ‘dealing’. Sparing but a moment to smirk at finally getting to use his trademark sleeveblade, he quickly yelled “Run!” at Ema, whilst grabbing the sub-machinegun at an almost impossible speed to point it in the general direction of the doorway and open fire. He estimated that any possible hits to the doctor would be superficial, and, at the very least, the hail of bullets would force the infiltrator and the traitor the retreat from out of the room whilst at least one of their captives was able to escape.
The odds were indeed on Kaibura’s side; Ema dived straight for cover the moment Damion’s shoulder and Kaibura’s sleeveblade met, just in time to evade the gunfire that peppered the walls above and behind her. Cursing loudly, the two ducked out through the doorway, and with no reasonable way to recover the situation at that point, fled to find a more secluded location to lay low. As soon as he was sure the enemy had left, the Lieutenant took a seat on the bed by Ema, and with no hint of anything but purpose, said “We need to talk. I assume you came to give an explanation.”

09 – Understanding
“I'd love to tell you it's complicated..” Ema began, constantly avoiding the man's gaze. She felt uncomfortable in his presence, explaining herself, letting him know that a lot of the fiasco was arguably her fault.”But it really isn't. The intruder got in somehow, shot me with a dart gun or something, then stole the Cyo-strain sample.”
She pauses for a moment, hoping to be interrupted. She isn't. “Except, it's starting to look like it stole him.”
“What?”, hardly the most eloquent of answers, but quite understandable.
“Well, uh.. it's an experimental parasite, military commission. I don't know a lot about it, I'm a physicist, not a biologist, but I do know most of the facts about the current stage.”
“Well, enlighten me, then. We can't understand what we don't know.”
“Controlling it is the major problem. It was supposed to infest enemy forces, turning them into hybrids on our side.. but the 'on our side' part never worked in practice, the parasite was always independent and invariably hostile to regular humans.”
“So, a dangerous and hostile parasite was released onto the station, it's infested two of the crew already, and you didn't think to tell us what had happened as soon as you came to?”
Ema was spared the burden of explaining herself further, saved by the bell, quite literally. An alarm had sounded in her earpiece, ordering all crew to the bridge – well, not all of them, Brian and Ben had been understandably cut off from communications – and clearly Kaibura too found that more important than embarrassing the scientist any further. Grabbing her by the forearm and lifting her to her feet, he asked only “Will you be alright to walk?”, quite familiar with the effects of having a gun put to your head.
“Yeah, should be..” was the uneasy response, cut off by a further tug, leading the way to the nearest non-shot up elevator.