Atoy Muzazi watched in stunned disbelief as the mini-Marie ravenously devoured what few supplies had been left in this residence's fridge.

It was truly a sight to behold. When he'd opened the door, this mini-Marie had been the size of a child, but as she continued to shovel food into her mouth her proportions were slowly growing to match the way she'd been the last time he'd seen her. It was like he was watching her grow up in super fast-forward. Marie pulled her ragged cloak tight around herself as she tore into a frozen steak with her newly sharp teeth, utterly eviscerating it.

Muzazi blinked, stupefied by the sheer speed and ferocity with which Marie was eating him out of house and home -- and the fact that she was here at all. He'd watched her die, after all. He'd spent hours next to what remained of her corpse, watching her body turn cold. He'd seen it. He'd seen it.

She looked up at him, a leaf of salad still sticking out of her mouth. "I need to recover the biomass," she said by way of explanation, slurping it up. She was truly displaying the greed of a beast.

Muzazi's dazzled mind latched onto the only anchor it could find. "Recover biomass..." he replied quietly. "That's your… Aether ability, then?"

Marie sighed, putting down the can of soup she'd been in the middle of opening. It landed on the table with a harsh clunk. "Atoy," she looked at him steadily. "I already told you what I am. Were you not listening?"

She had said something, back on the doorstep, but the words that had left her mouth had been so ludicrous that he'd instantly discarded them. Surely she couldn’t have been serious. Surely.

Marie rubbed the bridge of her nose, twirling a protein stick between her fingers. "Do you need me to say it again, Atoy?"

Like a lost child, he nodded.

Her gaze turned hard, and the words almost seemed reluctant to leave her mouth. "I'm a Gene Tyrant."

He took a hesitant step forward, hands gesturing vaguely. "But… when you say that, do you mean you're a -- a Gene Tyrant, or…"

"I mean what I say. I am a Gene Tyrant. A shapeshifter that can take on any form she likes. I can say it as many times as you want."

Muzazi collapsed into the chair behind him. It seemed that, in the last few minutes, his life had simply stopped making sense. He hunched over, his head in his hands. What was even happening anymore?

"I don't understand," he said, voice muffled. "How is that even possible? The Gene Tyrants are all dead."

Marie shrugged as if the question was inconsequential, leaning back in her seat. "I guess they must've missed one."

He looked up from his hands. "You don't know? How could you not know?"

Another sigh left Marie's lips, and she scratched at her hair -- which Muzazi couldn't help but notice was actively growing longer as she ate. He supposed that, to a Gene Tyrant, the hair was simply another part of the body to be sculpted to their liking. Just another piece of biomass.

To a Gene Tyrant. He should listen to himself -- he'd taken such an absurdity into his thought process so easily. He couldn't help but chuckle wryly.

"How much do you know about Gene Tyrants?" Marie asked, cocking her head.

Muzazi crossed his arms, somewhat regaining his composure as his mind was pointed in a specific direction. He took a deep breath, clearing away the confusion that remained.

"It's as you say," Muzazi began. "They were a group of humans that reached the limits of their form, and so set out to alter it with genetic engineering. By the end, they were immortal shapechangers that manipulated and ruled over all other life -- until they were overthrown in the Thousand Revolutions. Are you…" He hesitated. Even the notion itself seemed ridiculous, like some kind of fantasy story, but he could think of no other explanation. "...are you a survivor of that empire, then?"

Marie shook her head without even a moment's delay. "No," she said, sounding almost bored. "I wasn't around for any of that."

"Then," Muzazi furrowed his brow. "Are you a descendant of a survivor, then? Where is it you come from if not that time?"

Marie sat cross-legged on her chair, licking the remnants of her food off her fingers. She looked almost identical now to how she'd been before the explosion -- if just the tiniest bit shorter. For a moment, she seemed to be searching for the words she wanted, but eventually she began speaking.

"Do you know how it worked for the Gene Tyrants -- reproduction, I mean?" she asked, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

"I have no idea," Muzazi shook his head. History outside of that of the Supremacy had never interested him -- the Gene Tyrants had always seemed a vague, nebulous threat far off in the past.

Again, Marie shifted in her seat, leaning one elbow on the table as she looked away. "As I understand it," she said slowly. "They mainly managed it through binary fission -- one Gene Tyrant becoming two. They were shapeshifters, of course, so they could do in whatever other way they wanted if they felt like it, but that was number one. The thing is, though, that they didn't reproduce much at all. You know why?"

Muzazi shook his head. To him, that concept made no sense at all. What purpose did an empire exist for, if not to expand and spread its influence?

"They were the ultimate form of life," Marie wagged a finger. "So the only thing that scared them was others of their own kind. They didn't want there to be enough Gene Tyrants for factionalism to take place, so reproduction was strictly forbidden except for very specific cases."

"Even so…" Muzazi put his fist to his chin. "Wouldn't that lead to stagnation? The same immortal beings ruling forever?"

To be honest, he didn't even really care how absurd this whole matter was anymore. He was sitting here discussing the fine points of Gene Tyrant reproductive policy with a dead woman who claimed to be a Gene Tyrant. Perhaps he'd fallen asleep on the couch and this was some kind of dream?

All the same...

The slightest smile rose to his face. Even if that was the case, and none of this was real, it was a good dream.

"Exactly," Marie snapped her fingers and pointed to Muzazi. She, too, seemed to be getting into it. "So what they did instead was something called rebooting. A Gene Tyrant's consciousness is distributed throughout their entire body, right?"

She paused for a moment, closing her eyes -- and when she opened them again, her gaze was dark.

"So," she concluded. "If a Gene Tyrant was absolutely sure they wanted to make another Gene Tyrant… what they'd do is concentrate that consciousness into a single point in their body and wipe it clean. Kill themselves, essentially, and let a new consciousness grow in their place."

It wasn't difficult to put the pieces together. "And that's how you came about, then?"

Marie nodded. "From what I've managed to gather, a survivor of the Gene Tyrants stuck around for a good while -- and around a hundred years or so ago, rebooted themselves into me." She clicked her tongue. "They were a real asshole about it, too. Didn't leave behind any information or resources for me or anything. Everything I'm telling you now is stuff I've managed to scrounge together over the last century."

The last century. To be honest, Muzazi had always assumed that he was slightly older than Marie. This was something of a rude awakening.

"You're a hundred years old, then?" he asked quietly.

"My mind is, at least."

Muzazi put a hand to his temple, leaning forward in his chair. "And the Commission is fine with this? The founders of the Supremacy were among those who brought down the Gene Tyrants, and now they're employing you?"

Marie crossed her arms, her gaze cold. "It's not exactly willing on my part. They've got all sorts of countermeasures in my body ready to take me out if I try and go rogue."

"But who else knows about this?"

She seemed to genuinely think about it for a second, putting her finger to her lips. "Commissioner Caesar definitely knows, but I'm not one-hundred percent on who else she's let in the loop. Probably some other higher-ups."

With a final scoop of ice cream, Marie returned to her original size, wincing as she received the inevitable brain freeze. She tossed the spoon back into the bucket and threw her hands up into the air.

"Well, there you have it," she declared, the matter-of-fact confidence she'd exhibited draining away. "There's the, um, the whole story. I'm a Gene Tyrant and, uh, and stuff. I guess."

It only made sense that Marie felt uncomfortable, Muzazi supposed. This wasn't the sort of secret that one spoke about frequently. Apart from the higher-ups, would there have ever been another occasion where Marie divulged this of her own free will?

She'd trusted him with that. That, if nothing else, brought warmth to Muzazi's heart.

It took him a while to speak again, and even when he did his voice was extremely quiet: "I'm… glad you're alright."

Marie scratched her cheek in mock-embarrassment. "Aw, you're gonna make me blush, Atoy." She smiled -- and, strangely enough, Muzazi found himself smiling too.

But this wasn't a time to sit around grinning at each other like fools. The fact remained that someone had attempted to kill them with that bomb -- that they had failed was immaterial. Muzazi cleared his throat, sitting up straight in his chair.

"I have to admit," he said solemnly. "I've behaved disgracefully in your absence. I have no idea who is behind this, nor who tried to kill us. I apologize."

Marie smiled. "Oh, that's no problem."

"How so?"

"Well," she leaned back. "I'm willing to bet I'm with them right now."

Death wasn't a difficult thing to imitate at all.

Heartbeat slowed to its utmost, skin cooled to ice. Eyes blinded into props, limbs stiffened into stone. Subtly, invisibly, the body was modified to take in air through unseen means. Ragged skin became a sensory network, pumping in the stimulus of the outside world in place of the traditional organs.

This body still had two Needles in it, so she couldn't move freely. All she could do was wait for the right moment.

Marie Hazzard could taste cold metal below her. As she'd expected, she'd been moved. It wouldn't be her other half -- they'd already have recombined into one being if that was the case. It seemed her gambit had worked, then.

The person behind this wanted to prove to Darkstar that they were worthy to join their ranks. They intended to do that by crippling Nocturnus' role as a transport hub, but it was a good bet they'd be willing to take any other accolades that made themselves available. The murder of a Special Officer, for example -- and for that, they'd need the proof of a body.

Clumsy hands moved her body from it's container, tossing her onto the cold metal floor. In an instant, the sensory organs she'd developed across her skin memorized the person's scent, taste and texture. There was rumbling movement beneath her -- they were aboard a vehicle.

As subtle as possible, Marie formed ear structures along the side of her body pressed against the floor -- what she could hear using them would be muffled, but if this was going to be worth it she had to listen in.

"There? See?" said a male voice, familiar, nervous. "That's a Special Officer right there. Marie Hazzard. She's in the database -- I checked."

A hand touched her face -- an unfamiliar hand, covered in some kind of cloth like bandages. It tilted her head back and forth, clearly inspecting her features.

"The face matches," said a woman's voice, low and husky. "But that can be falsified. How did you execute?"

"A bomb," the man said. "They never even suspected. I could have gotten two, but the timing wasn't perfect -- I apologize for that. I can probably get another one still, though, so --"

The woman interrupted. "Regan?"

It was a good thing Marie had disabled her automatic responses, otherwise the stiffening of her body would surely have given her away. Marie had never had much faith in authority figures, but being betrayed by the no-name governor of a place like this was truly a new low. If that bomb had actually killed her rather than splitting her in half, it would have been the ultimate humiliation.

Somehow, even more nervousness entered Regan's voice. "Miss McCoy?" he asked.

McCoy. So now she had a name for Regan's contact, too. From the sounds of it, this woman worked for Darkstar directly. That made her dangerous in the extreme.

The bandaged hand pulled back a lock of Marie's burnt hair -- and when McCoy spoke, there was a distinct sense of delight in her quiet tones.

"This isn't a corpse," she said.

Marie didn't waste a moment. Her body leapt up in a second, new eyes forming on her forehead, new legs sprouting from the stump of her torso, claws and spikes growing across her body. She had to move quickly to achieve victory here.

There were two people here in the truck apart from her. Regan, who was jumping back in surprise -- and this McCoy woman from Darkstar. Her garb was eccentric in the extreme: she wore a tan trenchcoat and fedora, but every inch of skin was covered by jet-black bandages. Not even her eyes were visible.

The truck was probably automatic. In that case, she'd take these two down right now and change the destination.

Regan was closer. Still quadrupedal, she lunged at the Governor as he stumbled away -- tearing at his wrist with a maw of razor-sharp teeth. His scream of pain echoed throughout the confined space. Warm blood flowed into her throat.

As Marie pulled her head back, the scraps of Regan's hand came with her -- and the Governor fell backwards, screaming as he crawled away. That was fine. She could leave him to bleed out; the real threat was this McCoy.

Marie whirled around, leaving deep claw-marks in the metal floor below. She was truly ready to pounce on McCoy, to rip her to shreds, but what she saw in that moment gave her pause.

Ten rotting corpses, male and female, were gathered around McCoy, limbs splayed out as they floated unbound by gravity.

"Corpse Construct," McCoy said calmly. "Return Gate."

To any other organism, what happened next would have been a simple flash of movement. Only the enhanced vision and reflexes Marie possessed allowed her to actually perceive it. That didn't make it any more pleasant.

Immediately, tine of the corpses collapsed in on themselves with the sickening crack of bone, compressed into strands of organic matter as thin as spaghetti. As one, the strands flowed into the open mouth of the one remaining corpse -- and as they did, the skull of that corpse inflated, breaking through the rotted skin and muscle until the cranium filled nearly half the container.

The open jaw of the skull was as large as a door frame -- and fittingly enough, McCoy stepped backwards into it.

"It seems you've failed, Regan," she said calmly, in the moment before the jaw snapped shut around her. "We won't meet again."

A moment later, the skull dissipated into rotting tan Aether, and the room was empty.

Wait. The room was empty? Marie turned again, just in time to hear the thunk as Regan locked the door between the front cabin and the container of the truck. Clearly, he'd retreated further up to hide and treat his injuries.

That wasn't an issue.

Marie adjusted her configuration once again, returning to a bipedal form as she approached the cabin door. She didn't yet have the biomass to assume her normal human shape, so the legs she'd created were thin and pointed, like those of an insect. She scuttled forward, holding her hand out.

New organs within her body produced flammable gasses, which were then ignited and expelled through an orifice on her palm. The metal door burned red as the stream of flame buffeted against it -- perseverance would win out against durability in this case.

However.

There were four echoing clicks -- the sound of the cabin uncoupling from the container -- and a second later the room shook as it's movement ceased and it fell down onto the snow. The thin legs Marie had constructed collapsed beneath her, and she was sent sprawling to the floor.

A bestial hiss escaped her throat as she picked herself up with her hands, her body already changing back into a smaller and more stable quadruped form.

She'd lost Regan, but she still had two tasks before her. First was to join back up with her other half to regain her lost biomass. Second was to pass on the information she'd learned about Regan and Darkstar. Both of those would require her to return to Landfall-01.

Marie lashed out with two hooked tendrils that sprouted from the back of her throat, seizing hold of the glowing metal door and tearing it off its weakened hinges. Immediately, she was assaulted by the wind and snow that was constantly rampaging outside. Apart from that, however, there was nothing but the darkness.

As she stepped outside, fur growing over her form to provide some protection from the cold, Marie squinted and looked around. Even with her enhanced vision, there was clearly nothing to be seen for miles around.

She clicked her tongue as she lay down in the cold. They'd been driving some time before that confrontation. Even with her physical advantages, there was no way Marie would be able to make it back to Landfall-01 without freezing to death.

Only one option, then. She'd have to get creative about things.