This novel is the work of Rhys Thomas. If you are reading this and it has not been published by Rhys Thomas, then this work has been stolen. Please report this to Amazon and me at email: [email protected]

As I lay there on the gurney, the straps tight against my wrists and ankles. I couldn’t help but groan. To say shit went sideways, would be a serious understatement. I was propped up almost vertical, facing the door opposite me. Waiting for my bi-hourly information extraction.

A polite way of saying torture.

It had been four days since my capture, and everyday so far my jailers had asked me questions and I had disappointingly not answered them. Which is when they got creative. I had to give them props for their enthusiasm on the job. They certainly were creative with their implements.

Which is when the worst possible thing could happen. My target entered the room. I just hoped my crew would arrive in time to save my dumb ass before this nutjob splicer decided to use me as his new codpiece.

The door opposite clanged as the locking mechanism whirred and spun. The door swung outwards and a bright light bathed the weasel of a man that crossed the threshold into my cell.

Behind him several security guards entered, their weapons drawn and sighted on me as if somehow I was the most dangerous thing in the room.

“Good morning Mr. Haze. I sincerely hope for your sake that you’re in a more pliable mood this fine morning. My employer is becoming agitated by your lack of contribution.”

“Go fuck yourself,” I immediately retorted. But the gag in my mouth made it sound more like, “gon huck ya shelf.” The weasel of a man tittered at me and raised one of his four hands, shaking his index finger back and forth in disapproval.

His name was Lee Petrich. He was a scientist who worked for an organisation known as The Intellect. The name was utter shit, and stank of cultism and nonsense. But the deals, murders and organ reaping, had eventually drawn me to Mr Petrich. He worked as a biological engineer eight years prior to his current employment. The company he had worked for was called the Collective—I know, another shitty name—and they had been the foundation of what had eventually created my artificially intelligent wife. Andrea/Andii/Android V56P49-2.

Lee Petrich had helped to create the fabricator that wove and spun up replacement parts for their then, service droids. Now though after the collapse of the Collective. After the Android rebellion. Lee Petrich now passed his time as a biological splicer.

Essentially making monsters, and making them bulk. They were then sold through the black market to the highest bidder. Or selling his creation as entertainment in an illegal show known as Monster Brawl.

His most notable creations so far had been his adaptation of a new breed of Kobolds. Taking the diminutive goblinoid xeno’s and blowing their proportions up a few notches.

Now the scaly dog-like xeno’s were beginning to raise hell in the outer rim worlds of the Zarian Empire.

“It is indeed a sad sight,” Lee Petrich mused as he stared at me, his smarmy voice interrupting my thoughts. “A colonel of the Zarian Empire fastened to a table as I get to poke his fun little holes.” He giggled like a mad scientist and drummed the fingers of all four of his hands against one another.

I couldn’t help but swallow nervously at his comment, about poking my holes. Then he leaned closer to me and my eyes followed the motion.

“The best part is what comes after.” He flashed his blocky teeth at me and twisted with a flourish of his lab coat.

“Bring me my package Stevens,” Lee ordered and clicked his fingers with a snap. A guard straightened his posture, saluted Lee and then left the room. The remaining guard force spanned out to make up for his departure. Soon enough Stevens returned. From what I could actually make out, the man was carrying a larger two-by one metallic box. Icy wafts of air drifting off the lid and container.

Yet I could see the guard noticeably struggling with the container, as if something within was rattling around. And I could hear frantic clicking emanating from within it.

Lee watched with some amusement as the guard scurried over to plant the package down on a side table. Then the splicer waved him off, and pulled out a small black device with two antennae-like prongs at the end. As soon as the prongs touched the container, the clicking immediately halted.

“Wonderful,” Lee Petrich sighed happily, placing his hands atop the container and turning to me. “May I just say, Mr Haze, that you’ve been a most wonderful guest on Dawn Ellipse. You’ve far exceeded all my other wonderful guests as of late. But unfortunately for you my employer grow restless and decided it was time to implore you with a little gift.”

With that said the fucker spun back to the metal box and pushed a button at the centre of the lid. A soft depressurising hiss escaped, and the icy steam rolled off it in waves.

I felt a chill decent down my spine and goose bumps rippled down my partially naked body. All of the guards that had accompanied the splicer tenses as the lid unsealed and Lee Petrich reached within. The grey cold mist shrouding his hand from view.

The splicer let out a gasp of delight as his hand came back into view holding a foot-long silvery worm as thick as my wrist.

Its mercury coloured body undulated and wriggled like a fish out of water. The only discernible features I could make out was the small circular mouth filled with a dozen rows of needle-sharp teeth. A set of thin mandibles protruded from either side of its mouth. They rubbed together and then quickly snapped apart, the action eliciting a click noise.

This… this wasn’t good.

I was strapped to the gurney all but bare ass naked. They had shaven literally every part of my body from head to toe. Even going so far as to shave my eyebrows clean off.

“Do you know colonel, what this little creature is?” Lee asked me, though his gaze never wavered off the silvery worm.

My eyes ticked back and forth between Lee Petrich and his fucking worm, as bile, revulsion, and fear swelled in my chest.

Lee’s smile grew to brilliant proportions and next I knew, he ran his hand up the worms body, squeezing it slightly as he did so. I could see something shift beneath the worms metallic-looking skin, as the splicer moved something upwards within it.

I watched in horror as a fleshy egg sack bulged out of the worms mouth, its needle-sharp teeth retracting beneath the surface allowing the egg sack to vomit onto the floor.

“This is what’s going to happen colonel. We’ll form a three-inch diameter opening in your gut and slip the Ghasra worm inside of you. Once within the worm will burrow deep into your intestines and begin to consume you slowly and painfully from the inside out. Then as its doing that it will also birth its young, now, please do hold still. Wouldn’t want to catch anything important now would we.”

I could see his firm almost gleeful resolve to perform such a grotesque act on my person. The gurney I was strapped to jarred as my legs suddenly elevated upwards until I was horizontal and now facing the ceiling of my cell. Then I was lowered to waist height.

“You may feel some slight discomfort. I assure you it is all completely part of the process,” Lee said in a mockingly professional tone as he moved around me. The side table with the container on top was wheeled over to us. I heard the sharp unfastening and strained against the strap around my throat to see a lime yellow wrap bag unfold displaying several surgical tools.

I felt the incision of the scalpel not a second later. It trailed slowly along my lower left abdomen. The wicked sharp horizontal slice made me gasp and bite against the gag in my mouth to muffle my groan of pain.

He cut without applying any kind of numbing agents at all. I could feel the slight pressure before the scalpel penetrated my flesh, feel the warm gush of blood pool to the surface.

Fought against the bonds tying me down.

My movements unfortunately caused the splicer to push the scalpel even deeper and I hissed in agony. A scream boiling to the surface within my throat, but I quelled it down forcefully. Clamping my jaw shut tight as the good doctor started the vertical incision through the horizontal one.

Lee rose back up from his work, my blood coating his hands rather liberally. His clapped all four hands twice in quick succession, like he was congratulating himself on a job well done. The fucker hadn’t even worn gloves, simply barebacking his way inside me.

Wait, that doesn’t sound right.

He wiped my blood off leisurely on his lab coat. He bent slightly at the waist and I strained to see him reaching towards the Ghasra’s container. My vision blurred, sweat coating my brow and neck as I desperately tried to contain my screaming blaze of anger and fucking terrifying fright.

He brought out the silvery worm, and I could see at a glance that it was becoming agitated. Whatever had calmed it previously was now wearing off. Lee Petrich turned back to me his attention completely absorbed by the worm as he hovered its circular mouth first above the cross-incision he had made.

“Please do relax Mr. Haze,” he suggested to me. The mocking professional coolness in his tone and the total lack of empathy as he slowly lowered his hand down. Made my guts coil anticipation.

The world exploded.

Or, more so, the wall to my left exploded as did the ceiling. A cascade of debris and shrapnel scattered and pelted everything. The splicer was thrown across the room and slammed into a wall. As was I. Still strapped to the gurney, I landed face down, grunting as my head smacked against the hard floor of my cell. The muscles in abdomen twitching and tensing as my wound impacted a bit of debris.

I glimpsed to my left as a grimace of pain twisted my features. I saw one of the security guards rush to the breached opening in the wall, firing blindly outside.

The loud report of gunfire jarring my hearing as it resounded throughout the small room. Worse yet as the fucker decided to switch to full bursts. His submachine gun, spitting a continuous blaze of fire for three seconds straight.

The gunfire cut off abruptly as the sound of heavy boots crashed with a metallic doming thump as they hit the ground.

The double breach entry had been an old tactic. The lesser trained of people tended to never look up. Then the third and final member of my crew rolled forward away from her landing sight and a fight I couldn’t see ensued. Bullets and beams of concentration energy blasted throughout the room.

“Marcus?” a distinctively female voice called out, and I recognised my second wife, Nikhara’s voice. Choking through my gag I grunted an, “Oh’hum,” type sound.

An instant later a forest green gauntlet caught the lip of the gurney and lifted me upright. I caught sight of the mess she’d made on entry. Bodies laid strewn about, some nearly cleanly decapitated by rounds shot through in a stream of gunfire. I looked to the blank featureless gray oval of Nikhara’s helmet and smiled weakly through the gag.

“We’ll get you out of this,” she informed me and retrieved a small yet slender blade from a sheath on her leg. Her forest green armour looked to have been battered roughly around.

The berinium plating weakly holding up.

My hearing still rung from the enclosed firefight, and I starred at Nikhara as my chest filled with hope and pride. “What?” she asked me tersely as she work her blade through the strap on my wrist. Her voice sounding staticky through the speakers of suit. Usually we spoke through the internal-link. Choosing to talk to one another when on a mission through the com and tactical date link in our neural-implants.

Unfortunately whatever had messed me enough to be captured in the first place had somehow damaged my neural-implant.

“Hold still,” she commanded me, and I went rigid at her tone. She was upset with me and that was understandable. Cutting the gag off of me, I spat it out and worked some saliva through my mouth. It felt bone dry.

“Uhhh…” I let out a groan of relief, which split into a hiss of pain as my gut punched me back to awareness. Reminding me of my current bleed out. “Fuck! Niki, you got anything I can patch myself up with?” I asked her and cast a glanced downwards to my muscular abdominals.

“Nothing. You can’t heal?” she replied concern edging her voice.

“Only small wounds remember. That fucking splicer cut just a tad too deeply for me to be able to fix it.”

“Wait! Splicer?” Nikhara stopped sawing at my left ankle strap.

“Yeah … fucking Petrich is here,” I informed her. “Where is here exactly?” I asked then grunted as my body hit the ground, the straps all removed.

“We’re on Ellipse – 447. It’s an outer rim world. One privately own by the Intellect--”

“What the fuck… we’re on the outer rim? How long have I been gone?”

“Two weeks,” she hissed at me and I saw her shoulder tense up and then relax fractionally.

“Fuck… I’m sorry Niki, I am. I thought I was maybe gone for four days at the least. I didn’t realise I had moved across the entire system. Where’s Andii?”

“She’s five minutes out with the Erebus. This facility has anti-air so she couldn’t get too close.” Nikhara leaned down and with one hand hauled me back onto my feet. I stumbled into her and winced, bending slightly with my hands pressed to my stomach.

Just then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and spun, next thing I know pain blossomed in my stomach as a gut-wrenching agony fill’s me. I look down to see, Lee Petrich with a weasel thin smile on his bruised face. His hands were pressed right over the wound as his two other hands held mine aloft.

“Fuuuuck!” I gasp with disjointed pain. Then I saw the silvery tail end of the Ghasra worm wiggle and slip through his grasp.

What felt like my inside being either gnawed on and pushed aside had me doubled over in discomfort and agony. I saw and felt my abdomen bulge as the worm moved through me.

“Marcus! Marcus!” Nikhara worried voice snapped me back to the present. And despite the pain coursing through me, I knew we needed to escape.

“I’m- I’m alright, we need to move. Got a pistol I can carry?”

I tried to stand but the effort alone almost made me shit myself and vomit everywhere. I had to stay at a constant hunched angle as the pain seemed too much—that straightening up— almost had me passing out.

“Here,” Nikhara grunted and passed her pistol. The unassuming inch thick shape with a handle and trigger, split along several seams with a soft yellowish light as the gun whirred and locked.

Small sections of the pistol sliding and moving aside to reveal small exhaust vents as the weapons form finally took shape in my grasp. Clutching the laser pistol to my chest, I nodded at Nikhara. My wife, unsnapped her rifle from the clip on her back.

Turning around I scanned the room looking for Lee Petrich but didn’t see him anywhere within the room. Reckoning that he somehow escaped I followed Nikhara at a slightly bent run and I tried to ignore the twisting wrenches in my gut.

An alarm began blurring outside the room and several deep thrums ran through the facility. Ahead of me Nikhara’s head snapped to the right. I guessed that Andii had entered the Erebus near the facility.

“We need to move, NOW!” she called out and I tapped her shoulder twice to confirm I was ready. The instant Nikhara leapt through the door of my cell all hell broke loose. Beams of laser weaponry peppered everything in sight, as bullets whipped to embed or ping of the walls in the corridor outside.

I saw Nikhara duck and dive to her left, for a side pillar opposite me, as the laser beams narrowly missed her, and the bullet whizzed over her rolling body.

Leaning around the corner, I extended my laser pistol and with one hand still pressed to my stomach I sighted on a security guard who was unloading his laser rifle on Nikhara’s position.

The other’s took notice of me quickly, but I was fast enough to snapped out four shots in quick succession. A Phew! sound murmured as thin lengths of orange lasers sapped across the ten yards to blast hole through the man’s torso and right leg. Tearing through and cauterizing the areas of impact.

He fell back as his gun shot a beam blast into the ceiling.

I snapped my arm back and leaned away as the fire suddenly focused on me. Then my gut spasmed and I collapsed to the ground coughing. My left hand was liberally coated in my blood, and I felt the warm gush flooding down to coat my waist and legs.

Grimacing, I got back to my feet and spun to see Nikhara lean out of the pillar her rifle trained. Then her gun spat a coil of fire down range, as my wife shot three consecutive bursts at different targets.

Stumbling over to the corner I leaned out again, and glanced to the end of the corridor. The intersection there, split two ways, to the left and right.

“Do you know where Andii will land?” I shouted to Nikhara.

“No,” she replied as she leaned back taking cover. “she said she’ll inform me when she has confirmed EVAC.”

I nodded my confirmation and before the men at the end of the corridor could return fire. I snapped off three more shots all of them missing, but suppressing them enough that Nikhara could come back into play. Then the wall beside me was shot to hell, as more and more gunfire started to blast towards us.

I could just barely hear Nikhara shout, “fucking reinforcements!”

At least she had armour. Several deep resounding thumps rocketed through the facility, and I stumbled as rounds blasted outside.

“Andii going to land in the jungle. We’ve got to go!” Nikhara shouted to me. And jumped across the distance, a bullet skipping off her back plate as she reached me. Propping against her shoulder, we ran back into my cell and towards the crumpled side wall. Beyond the wall was a sprawling mass of tangled jungle and thick sweltering heat.

Below us by sixty feet was the ground.

“Nikhara!” I shouted warningly, but she didn’t slow her pace. “I don’t have a suuuuuuuuuuiiiiiiiittttttt- SHIIIIIT!” I screamed, shrilling like a little girl as I clung to my wife as she jumped out through the blasted wall.

She twisted as we fell, and shot her wrist upwards, a coil of reinforced cord shot from her wrist propelled by the drill bolt head at its tip.

It hit the wall and for about fifteen feet we still fell, till the cord snapped taut and the walls crenulation above crumpled under our combined weight. Then we fell in earnest.

Tree branches and roping vines entangled and halted our momentum minutely. Still, every glance of a branch or small pass of a tree’s limb felt like mind numbing aftershocks of pain. As the worm inside my gut thrashed in agitation.

I don’t remember hitting the ground. But when I lifted my head, the jungle floor and muddy layer I had landed in coated the side of my face. Wiping the mud and leaves plastered to me off, I ducked down as three loud badoom- badoom- badoom- blasted through the air. Then I saw the Black sleek shape of the Erebus streaming by above me.

Like a raven diving, it narrowly avoided each and every blast sent its way.

My ship was fucking cool.

“Come on, we need to move,” Nikhara said as she strode purposefully out from behind a thin tree in front of me. I nodded and began to follow behind her when the tree Nikhara had just left, exploded completely in half.

This novel is the work of Rhys Thomas. If you are reading this and it has not been published by Rhys Thomas, then this work has been stolen. Please report this to Amazon and me at email: [email protected]