They hadn’t really intended on the sudden detour, not at all. But something greater seemed to be pulling them along, now; something deep inside that told them that something around here was something they needed to see, made them state poking around like a particularly nosy, disobedient thing, putting themselves where others would see they didn’t belong.
This lab had obviously already been swept through, evidence of all things that had transpired here since it was last in use; the initial fallout, of course, but then that of reckless reclaimers and an Angler attack strewn about, unblemished corpses silhouetted by emergency lights and dotted with shards of glass and tattered papers. Yet W.M.’s only focus seemed to draw them into a side room, otherwise completely unremarkable, into which they slunk like a savage predator, body tense with unease. It was as if less of their human side — whatever it was, now — were in control, and more of whatever used to live in this husk, hewn from so many different seeds, before it had been hollowed out to fit them.
The room was dark, lit only by the light coming from the lab — not that that mattered much at this point, granted the vision their Searchlight weaving had so graciously granted them. Clicking arose in their throat, investigatory, as they spotted the cylindrical pod in the center of the room, like a malefic centerpiece, the rest of the room dotted with desks and strange equipment that hummed with reserve power in harmonious, malignant drone. And of course, as their massive form loomed over the chamber, their blood ran cold, body draining of emotion in what amounted to a mental bloodletting.
There, surrounded by shards of broken glass, themselves stemming from — a perfect, clean hole expertly placed once through its slumbering forehead — laid the fresh corpse that alive, W.M. had once called their home. The wound was new, the body itself not even cold. This was a recent happening, a fresh kill. All this time they’d kept this body alive, doing who knows what with it, promising them it would be returned to them in the end in some form, if they just laid down and behaved — but they never meant that, did they? Not the way they said it, anyway. And this, an act so cruel — an act done just to prove a point? For sake of spite? Or fun? Why did they ever think they would mean that; would mean anything they ever said? Especially after what W.M. did? Naïve, foolish, steeped in some sort of sick main character syndrome, was as best they could put it; going down without a fight, like always. Giving in with little resistance, giving themselves up to the same company who’d already brought them in once, who they’d proceeded to try and go against, each time sinking deeper in the belief that it couldn’t get much worse. That somehow, they’d be different, that their act of self-sacrifice would absolve them of issue, that agreeing to play by the rules again as penance would be the key to a kinder outcome. They’d seen what they’d done, what they’d done to Sebastian and what they’d done to 317, what they’d done to innocent things and what they’d done to everyone else, and at least the half of what they were to be made for, made into, stuck into — and still deigned to consider themselves any different? At all unique? Special?!
Foolish. Always foolish. Always running on luck, on laying down and taking it, scraping by and never once considering their kismet might be wearing thin until the very moment that it did. Of course, after this long, after this much time estranged from the body in which they were born, the body they were raised in, the body that nursed, and cried, and grew as them, that had been them, the most deep-seated logical part of their brain told them they really expected no different. But they were always emotional, always running on feeling, and anyway it was the principle of the thing; their humanity, or what remained of it, had survived this long, their empathy for humanity, their love for it, had outlasted everything in this damned building, had whined and nagged and protested at every sick action taken in the name of survival, only to meet its absolute end this way? To be lost this way?!
Well, if they wanted their monster, they’d gotten it, and hell, they’d get it still.
A guttural, feral roar tore up from their chest and through their throat, rumbling through their body like an earthquake and steeped in pure rage, dripping with a baleful outrage. The last tether of their humanity, at least as most might define it, fell away like a snipped umbilical cord, finally birthing a new breed of monster into an angry world in which it should never have existed — and which was not ready for it. Which could never be ready for it.
…There was no use letting good meat go to waste, not anymore, not in this place — and better them than the demons out there, whatever any of them might do. Eat. Besides, it was nothing they hadn’t done before, was it? This mingling, this melding with their carnivore, predator-self? Was it truly any different?
In a flash, War Machine was upon their own corpse, or what used to be — would have been, sharp beak tearing at the supple and tender fresh-kill flesh, blood as sweet as it was stale, pooling inside; sucking the fluid away as if from a font, drawing all into powerful and angry jaws filled with unduly human-looking dentition — far more powerful than it looked — that macerated bone to fine dust, sinewy muscles pulled away and consumed, flashing retractable teeth slick with red pouring from their mouth like rivers of violence. The urges of an animal. No play for sentimentality, for what passed as human morality, if such a thing even existed in a place like this, among hordes of devils.
The moment felt all infinite, all vacuous, and very much a fatal detour — but in reality, it was over in a matter of minutes, if even that long; and as the great death pulled back its massive head from its meal, face drenched in hot crimson viscera, it looked down upon the body — its body, once — hollow, cold now, a gaping, gory cavity where a heart once rested. And then, in one swift, calculated, and predatory motion, cold rage burning like a white-hot flame in the belly of a brazen bull — turned from the scene, breathing steady, and leapt away, a new and ardent frenzy taking hold. A possession. A rebirth.