I used to hate staying behind while everyone else went out to take samples of the colossal war-mechs to see how fast the alien bacteriophage was consuming and adapting them. We didn't know what they were being altered to become, we still don't.
All I knew was that staying behind to catalogue samples and enter them one-by-one into the system was the absolute bane of my existence and all my existence amounted to at that point. I mean, I knew how dangerous it was to go outside and how easily you could become contaminated and overwhelmed by the phage but at least you died doing something.
That soon changed when someone didn't secure their samples properly and set it free on us all. It tore through the field agents like a hot knife through butter while those of us who'd been exposed to its weakened, microscopic form were pretty much vaccinated against it.
Shame we didn't realise sooner but how could we have known when the phage is a literal alien creation? By the time we were fully aware of our immunity, the others were little less than those tall calcified spires, still weeping pus from their bodies failed attempts to fight back.
And we moved on, forgoing the clunky suits and barely-operational breathing kits in favour of mobile labs and miniature analysers. Our colleagues were the last formerly-human samples we collected before we stopped looking out and started looking in.
After three months of study we concluded that we weren't human either.
All I knew was that staying behind to catalogue samples and enter them one-by-one into the system was the absolute bane of my existence and all my existence amounted to at that point. I mean, I knew how dangerous it was to go outside and how easily you could become contaminated and overwhelmed by the phage but at least you died doing something.
That soon changed when someone didn't secure their samples properly and set it free on us all. It tore through the field agents like a hot knife through butter while those of us who'd been exposed to its weakened, microscopic form were pretty much vaccinated against it.
Shame we didn't realise sooner but how could we have known when the phage is a literal alien creation? By the time we were fully aware of our immunity, the others were little less than those tall calcified spires, still weeping pus from their bodies failed attempts to fight back.
And we moved on, forgoing the clunky suits and barely-operational breathing kits in favour of mobile labs and miniature analysers. Our colleagues were the last formerly-human samples we collected before we stopped looking out and started looking in.
After three months of study we concluded that we weren't human either.
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