‘So how about the people who aren’t… associated with a Siren?’ Raynor grated, glowering at Kerrigan with his arms folded and his hands clenched into fists. ‘How do you keep the zone of compulsion going for them?’
‘Ah,’ said Kerrigan, crossing her legs and putting her finger to her mouth coquettishly. ‘In those cases, we generally have to rely on the background planet coverage, and the consensual telepathic belief system of the other humans. But there really aren’t that many of them – fewer than you’d think. Actually, I’d be interested to see how many you could name.’
‘Myself. Kazansky. Magellan.’ Raynor muttered, pacing up and down and kicking dust from the floor. ‘The strongest minds in the colony. And… oh no.
‘Lister.’
‘Yes. Lister,’ said Kerrigan quietly. ‘While her telepathic abilities and her crush made her accessible to my powers initially, that advantage rapidly faded. You – you’d got what you wanted. Kazansky and Magellan – they followed your lead out of respect, and your lead reinforced the background reality, because of course you believed it fully. But Lister…
‘She, of course, was going with another human. He was no threat. But she was a different matter. She was a powerful telepath, and she was skilled at techniques of coercion and deception. Had she had the same unavoidable distractions you had – for which I am sorry, by the way. Raynor, you’ve made too many enemies in this universe – the illusion would have become unreal for her too, and it would have been sooner rather than later. She had to be… dealt with.’
They stared at each other across the dust.
‘You killed her,’ said Raynor heavily.
‘No, no I didn’t,’ said Kerrigan offhandedly. ‘In fact, she’s perfectly safe.’
Something in Kerrigan’s tone signaled to Raynor that she wasn’t telling the whole truth.
‘I want to see her. Now.’
‘Are you sure?’ she quizzed quietly, in the manner of a game show host. Raynor’s temper frayed.
‘Now!’ he roared.
She shrugged. ‘Very well. I’ll take you. You would have come across her soon enough anyway.’
She turned and strode off into the wilderness. A heavy dread taking up residence within him, Raynor followed.
They walked along for about an hour without a word being spoken and before long, they came up to the wall of an impassable cliff. Kerrigan advanced straight upon it without pausing, and something nagged at the corner of Raynor’s mind. By now though, this was a familiar feeling, and he willed himself to see clearly. A section of the rock face faded into psionic smoke, revealing a cave.
An illusion. Of course. No one would ever have found her.
Kerrigan strode into the cave, and Raynor followed her.
He had half expected guards, but there were none. Kerrigan was evidently so sure of the zone of compulsion that she had not imagined that anyone would have found the place, or considered it significant. Naturally, she hadn’t known about Conor’s sister’s hunt for revenge either. Or did she…
Such thoughts faded from Raynor’s mind and were replaced by deep-seated nausea. The cavern was thick with creep, which sent off a stench and an unholy phosphorescent light. Their feet were beginning to sink inches deep into the fleshy material, and the tunnel reminded Raynor horribly of something gynecological. There was an aspect of his phantom life he wouldn’t want too soon to remember.
The tunnel twisted and turned, to ensure that the end was not visible from the mouth, and soon they came to the end. A thick dread added itself to the turmoil in Raynor’s soul. At the end of the tunnel, spouting from the creep and surrounded by spikes, was an upright chrysalis. It was the size and shape of a woman.
‘So now you know,’ said Kerrigan coldly, stood before it in rapture. Raynor stood heavily beside her. ‘Do nothing, or you will die. The chrysalis is about to hatch.’
Inside the fleshy casing, a dim light had begun to glow, and it gained strength rapidly. Within it the vague silhouette of a human figure could be seen beating at the walls, mouth opening and closing. The spikes surrounding the chrysalis suddenly drooped, fell, and dissolved back into the creep.
With a sharp pop and a spray of digestive-type juices, a set of claws pierced through the sac. Kerrigan stepped forward, mouth opened in ecstasy; Raynor jerked back, mouth twisted in disgust. There was a vague sound of a girl crying from within. The claws jerked in and out, sawing thickly through the case, and were joined by a second pair. Soon, the casing was rent asunder from within.
A massive outpouring of placental, glowing fluid flooded from the rent, and dispersed itself upon the floor. Raynor jerked back still further in disgust, but Kerrigan paid no mind as it swirled over her thighs. From the rent forced the body of a woman. It collapsed forward through the ruin of the chrysalis.
It was the naked body of Belinda Lister, covered in horrid goo. That much had been obvious, and expected. But what was horribly new were the bat-like wings now sprouting from her shoulders, covered in human skin, and the claws sprouting from the backs of her hands.
As she fell forward, shrieking in fear and coughing up fluid, Kerrigan stepped forward, and caught her in her arms.
‘Mommy…’ gasped the new mutant.
‘There, there,’ crooned Kerrigan, struggling to embrace her, wipe off the mess and hold her upright. ‘You’re safe now.’
Raynor turned upon his heel and stalked abruptly from the cavern.
Raynor and Kerrigan only met up again much later.
By that time, the sun was setting over Char. Raynor watched it quietly from a position high atop the cliff face, looking down over the human settlement as the rays filtered through the heavy, dusty atmosphere. His warp blade was fully activated in his hand, but it rested quiescent in front of him.
Kerrigan came up behind, quietly.
‘So here you are,’ she said, almost diffidently. ‘Are you coming home now?’
Raynor turned to face her, eyes wide.
‘Home?’ he snapped.
She shrugged, a trifle uneasily; a gesture incongruous with the awful blades sprouting from her back.
Raynor shook himself like a dog emerging from water, stood up, stretched, and turned to face her, the warp blade pointed at her from waist height.
‘So what is your purpose in keeping these humans here, Kerrigan?’ he asked.
Kerrigan was taken aback. ‘My purpose? Simply to have both the technology of both the Zerg and the Terrans at my command. United, our two armies would be unstoppable. And all it would take for your men to fight with their last breath for my cause is to build a suitable threat into the zone of compulsion. My power will be utterly unbreakable. And maybe, even, the humans and the Sirens will breed. Then, I’ll have a new super-species. Either way, I can’t lose.’
There was a brief silence.
‘You’ll never get away with it,’ said Raynor half-heartedly. Both knew there was no real threat or certainty to his words. It was just something one said under these circumstances.
Kerrigan shrugged.
‘Maybe I won’t. But all this is beside the point. Are you coming home?’ She extended an arm, almost uneasily.
Raynor stared at it. She dropped it to her side.
‘Don’t you see the problem here, Kerrigan?’ he asked. ‘You’re keeping my men here to form part of an unstoppable army to conquer the universe, you’ve taken one of my people and taken her birthright as a human from her, you let me live for ages as your husband still thinking you were a normal human rather than a hideous mutant, and now you want me to come back and play house with me like nothing ever happened. What’s wrong with this picture?
‘Forget it.’
Kerrigan looked back at him. She looked hurt. ‘But this is all we have, Raynor.’ she said.
‘So what?’ he responded brusquely. ‘What does that even mean?’
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but fell silent, a confused expression occupying her as though she was struggling to put into words something she couldn’t articulate. Raynor merely stared back.
‘If I don’t know better,’ he said presently, ‘I’d think that this illusion of domestic bliss is the whole reason you brought us here. All the conquering of the universe is just smoke and mirrors.’
She stared at him, eyes full. ‘How do you know better?’ she whispered.
They both stared at each other in silence.
‘Go away, Kerrigan,’ he said finally, and turned his back on her, wrapping himself in his robes.
‘But what will you do?’ she said, sounding concerned and even uneasy.
‘I’ll be all right,’ he said brusquely, and started walking away.
‘But what will I do?’ she said louder, sounding actually forlorn.
‘Go and conquer some planets,’ he threw back over his shoulder. ‘Isn’t that what you’re best at?’
Kerrigan was left standing, alone and staring at the ground.
