Page 68 of Mated to the Monster God
Inside, the corridors glow with pale sterile light. My heart hammers. I breathe the chill of it like bitter air.
At the bridge, Krenshaw awaits—reinforced metal body glinting wetly, helmetless and cold-ridged. He looks up at me with that lean, twisted grin.
“Ah, Miss Cruise. How timely.”
My voice is tight. “I’ve come for peace.”
He laughs—wet and hollow. “Oh, sweet girl, you’ve walked right into my trap.”
I steel myself. “Here I am. Take me.”
The hallway hum roars. My boots are slick. The resin satchel feels like stone inside my bag—still sacred. But I won’t back down.
He strides forward. Red lights shimmer across his servo-plated skull.
“You offer yourself willingly,” he says, voice smooth as oil. “Better than chasing.”
My pulse thunders. “Do your worst.”
He inclines his head. “Excellent. Your sacrifice will yield breakthroughs.”
He grips my arm—metal and flesh interfacing. I do not flinch.
He releases me. Lights dim.
He turns. “Welcome aboard, prototype.”
I stand shivering, chest aching with dread and purpose, knowing I haven’t escaped—but walked into the heart of his plan.
War just got terrifyingly personal.
The command ship’s corridors taste of old antiseptic and biotox—but they hide horrors that rip the air from my lungs. The hum of machinery flickers as it catches the brunt of horrified realization. I follow the stained footprints of captives past, shoulders rigid, lungs seared with shock.
They hold vats. Big, translucent tanks brimming with glowing fluid—the color of blood tinted malachite. Inside each husk a Baragon body floats, massive and horned, limbs poised in grotesque stillness. But the faces… human. Mine, tentatively. Jimmy’s. Tara’s. Test subjects twisted into inverted caricature by science gone blind with ambition.
I slide closer, nose grazing the cool glass. My heart pounds so loudly I can’t breathe. My reflection wavers in the haze of the fluid.
I see real humans slumped in cages. A man’s shirt is stained with blood; a woman’s hand hangs limp, fingers coated in medigel residue I recognize. Colonel phantoms of our colony’s souls. Their eyes flick open with tremors of recognition and despair. I clench my jaw.
I press a hand to the glass—not for entry, for connection. “We are coming,” I whisper.
A label catches my eye. Faint but carved into the steel above a sealed hatch: “Conversion Chamber.” The label feels like a threat branded into my bloodline.
I stare into the haze—I see what they intend for me: assimilation, modification, conversion. The scent of resin in my satchel burns in my palms. The thing they want isn’t the resin—it’s me.
I stagger back as Krenshaw’s voice, silky acidic, loops through concealed speakers.
“My, my, my,” he croons. I tear my focus from the glass to see him stepping into the room, every inch mechanized calm. “You’re perfect. The culmination of protean evolution and human adaptation. Exactly what I envisioned when I commissioned the colony.”
My heart clenches. “You monster,” I hiss.
He grins and steps closer, scent of antiseptic and arrogance blazing between us. “Not a monster. A visionary. You? You’re my prototype.”
I swallow down bile, but my resolve steels. “I’m not afraid.”
“Of course you are,” he says gently, mockingly. “They all are. Right before the conversion. But then…” He gestures to the vats. “Then the fear goes away. The pain. The hunger. The indecision. The humanity.”
I flinch. Just slightly.
