The Knights Illuminati 7

Next

Previous

I didn’t turn around and immediately lead some villainous expedition into another world for the sake of getting rich on tech so commonplace, they gave it to science projects. They gave a lot of interesting stuff to science projects, and I had to gather up the scientists, including Dr. Creeper, Mix N’Max, Dr. Quincy, and myself, to try and figure out what had been done to these people to better understand what we were facing. Quincy didn’t appreciate me dumping the tentacle on him, not least of which because I literally dropped it in his lap while he was eating calamari. He didn’t finish his lunch for some reason.

He tried to argue with me. “I specialize in plants. Does this look like a plant to you?” he said, waving the tentacle at me.

I shrugged. “That’s what we’re hoping to find out.”

“I do not have a response to that. Fine. I hope they didn’t wreck the entire lab.”

They didn’t, in fact, wreck the whole lab. It came pre-wrecked, but it was intact enough for us to bring in the gear we needed to perform a bunch of autopsies and figure out what we were facing. The ones assigned to the metallurgy of the guns and ammunition I figured found something valuable, as they soon claimed it was all mysteriously destroyed while testing the strength of the metal, ammo included. And some shiny new watches fell off the back of a truck onto their wrists.

They soon left me alone to escape the Institute and leave me to punching dead bodies. I was boxing against one of them hanging on a hook like Rocky in the meat freezer as just part of my testing. I had to get a good idea how much punishment the bodies could take.

I took a break though, intending to go fetch Qiang. It’d be good practice for her. I stopped into Max’s work area first, to see what he was up to. “Knock knock,” I said.

He didn’t look up from where he mixed some liquids in beakers, then poured them on a leg of one of the mercs. “Hey Gex. Bored?” I noted that the liquid fizzled a bit and started to eat through the skin.

“Thought I’d bring Qiang on over, give her some experience with weird dead bodies. Father-daughter stuff. Looks like you’re figuring out clean-up.” I leaned against the doorway.

Max turned to me, perpetual Cheshire grin on his face. “You really love her, don’t you?”

I shrugged and, in the process of figuring out what to do with my extra arms, traced the fangs on my helmet. “There are some questions you don’t ask a guy.”

“Fine, guy,” he put extra emphasis on the second word there to remind me of my current sex. “I remember you hating children.”

“Yeah, I do. Hyperactive, loud, spoiled, stupid little sons of bitches. And they so rarely grow up to try and avenge their parents, despite what all the movies and TV shows tell you.”

“So she’s special to you,” Max said, winking.

I checked around to make sure we were the only ones able to hear. “Orphan taken in by a government determined to train her and use her for their own gain. They gave her to me.” I don’t know if he fully understood what that meant as far as the sort of person they expected me to be.

“Now she’s your daughter.” Max set the beakers down and turned full to me, putting his hands out cautiously, palms toward me. “Are you trying to make her like you?”

I caught myself with my fists raised and before I got close enough to actually land a punch. I’d instinctively tried to beat his ass for that question. I lowered my fists and moved to lean back against the wall. “No, ya Goth bastard. I want her to have an infinitely better life than mine. Why do you fucking ask?”

“Because since I’ve been here, you’ve taught your daughter martial arts and how to butcher an animal. You wanted to bring her to have fun cutting up dead people. You’re a doting father… mother… but are you teaching her the same things you learned?”

I pondered the question. “Well, yes, but not all the things, and not at all like I learned. No gun to her head, no threats of execution, no competition to see who has to fight to the death as the lowest scorers in the group. And like I said, I’m not going around teaching her the best way to sexually violate the human body. I mean, maybe once she’s old enough I can provide some sex education, but she’s too young for that.”

“I don’t mean to tell you how to raise your kid-”

“Then don’t,” I said, cutting him off. He kept going anyway.

“But I don’t think a kid you want to live a better, healthier life needs to poke around dead corpses all the time as part of her education. Unless she wants to be a doctor, of course. I’d be happy to tutor her.” He smiled brightly again, trying to redirect the conversation to something more upbeat.

There are more than 7 billion people on this planet I would murder for a suggestion like that. The one about what I should and shouldn’t teach my own kid. Max is a friend, though. And he might have a point about laying off on the number of corpses I show to Qiang. I know I’m contrarian by nature, probably because someone once told me not to be, but I figured I could at least think it over. I mean, it’s not like I’ll ever really be short of dead bodies to show her if I need to.

That became less important of a point though when Max turned around. “Look what we have here.”

I stepped up behind him. “The good news is, you found a compound to get rid of all those nasty wrinkles and blemishes.” He’d dissolved dermal layers alone, giving us a much clearer view of some of the modifications made to the human. Underneath the skin was a layer of hardened scales. Reminiscent in color to those of the Deep Ones, they were nonetheless tougher than the fish monsters. It’s just that without the skin to cover it up, the resemblance was pretty strong as far as the shape of the thing with the scales. The claws matched up, but Deep Ones were weaker there, too. And these guys didn’t have the fins the Deep Ones had. “I’m going to go round a few people up and send for someone to nab some DNA from a Deep One. This is worth a little bit of looking into.”

It took me a half hour to get a Deep One over from the Drone Division. I brought him, I think him, in to the same lab where Mix N’Max and the rest of the Superhuman Science Crew were gathered. The Deep One gave a croak at seeing all of us there and a dead body with scales on the table. “My Empress, what do you ask of me?”

“Did that thing say Empress?” asked someone in the crowd.

“Shush, that’s not important right now,” I waved off the question, then addressed my soldier. “Just a tiny bit of DNA testing. We were attacked by beings from another world who we’ve just realized bear some resemblance to your people. We just wanted to confirm a few things.”

It doesn’t take much to test DNA, so he lived. He even got a good look at the thing on the table courtesy of Dr. Creeper. Seeing as I’d discarded the same handy-dandy quick tester I’d used to confirm the identity of Spinetingler’s daughter, it took slightly longer for us analyze the DNA and get a good look at its makeup. It was Dr. Quincy, he of the plant biology, who took the lead on this one. “We have samples from standard humans, a Deep One, and one of these creatures to compare to. We would need more samples to gain a fuller understanding of Deep Ones, but utilizing what we have here and the map of the human genome, it appears humanity and the Deep Ones share a common ancestor.”

The Deep One himself scratched at its chin before speaking in a croaking voice, “My people have mated with humans many times in our history.”

“Yeah, there are a stories to that extent,” I said. “That raises the question on whether the Deep Ones are so closely related to us because of all the crossbreeding, or if it was allowed beforehand.”

Quincy shook his head. “The crossbreeding could only have occurred because of how closely we’re related. It’s similar to how neanderthals interbred with early humans. That brings us back to this guy,” Quincy pointed with the tablet he held to the corpse on the table. “As strange as it seems, this thing that used to be human within its own lifetime now shares less DNA with homo sapiens than Deep Ones do. This thing might be so distantly related it may not be able to interbreed with us. If it were alive, I would add.”

It was a valid point to bring up. Technically, it’s hard to breed with a corpse. That’s why it’s important for horny teens to remember that you can’t get pregnant with a dead body. Joking aside, this whole DNA thing was making me glad they didn’t take me for a sample. I mean, homo machina are an offshoot of humanity and there doesn’t appear to be a problem with having someone be half homo sapiens, half homo machina, but I don’t know if it can occur naturally in the bedroom. And then there’s the idea that I might be more closely related to a human than a Deep One is.

“Empress,” the Deep One said, once again calling stares onto me. He walked right over, so it’s not like anyone was confused enough to think there were any other female heads of empires around. “There are elder truthsayers who carry ancient stories. They speak of beings from another world who made many things, such as great pyramids. They are even said to be our creators and gods for a time. May I bring one to you so that you may hear his wisdom?” He knelt before me.

On the one hand, stories about things from another world building the pyramids never struck me as particularly truthful before, but context is important. I patted him on the head. “Sure, go bring me one of those elder things.”

And so he did, leading in a being that proved you can be both scaled and wrinkled at the same time. It’s not a pretty sight, and I’m not entirely sure this guy could see anymore, but he came in to try and regale us with a long-winded tale of the creation of the Deep Ones. I actually fell asleep, but my armor kept recording so I was able to get the jist of it, which is basically just what the one guy said. Broad strokes, the Deep Ones have a creation myth going back to gods from another world creating their god and themselves before nonbelievers from the island of Mu refused to bow down. They were being beaten in battle by the gods, until a small group, aided by traitors among the Deep Ones, were able to sneak into the holy temple and destroy the path between the two worlds.

They thought they had failed, because they disrupted the rituals at the sight of the path, or more likely portal, but it didn’t fade away. In desperation, one of them stole a sacred relic from the gods and fled. The portal began to shrink then, and the gods warned that unless the relic was returned, they would fade away. This was when they retaliated by creating the monstrous Cthulhu, who was sent to sink Mu in retaliation. Or, more likely, he was insurance. Like “return the glowing crystal or your island gets it!”

So this glowing thing we got is probably that thing. And I bet those weird ruins on the west side of the island are the ones that hid this thing until someone, probably the Claw, dug it up and started studying it.

Which means… I’d better bring extra explosives for the enemy. And extra underwear for my allies. As the head of the ACLU once said in the future, don’t mess with Earth. And kill Zoidberg.

Next

Previous

Advertisement