StarCraft: Hybrid


 * ''This article is concerned with a short story; for other uses of the term see Hybrid and Infested Terran.

StarCraft: Hybrid is a short story set in the StarCraft universe. It was published in Amazing Stories magazine, issue 601.

The protagonist, Amanda Haley, is a nurse and psychic. She and her crew served onboard a Terran orbital platform, similar to the one she was on now. She is sitting in a dimly-lit cell, concentrating mentally on its lock. She has been there for the past week.

The door to her cell - and of the other cells - don't open the way one would expect. They phase open with a crackling, electrical sound. The creatures who have taken her captive - the Zerg - won't disengage their locks with a finger the way a Terran would.

Despite repeated attempts, Haley could not disengage the lock with her mind. The Zerg were somehow interfering with her psionic powers.

During the past week, Haley had noticed people had been removed, screaming and crying, from nearby cells. This wasn't a random process... the cells being opened were getting closer to her own cell.

Genetic Engineering
Infested Kerrigan walked through a desolate corridor to the light at the end of the tunnel. It led to a catwalk in another part of the facility. The orbital platform still had electricity and artificial gravity, the latter something the Zerg had little use for.

She and a Zerg Cerebrate were conferring telepathically about the contents of a cocoon suspended from the ceiling and attached to three walls by pulsing organic cords. The cords were wrapped around a human host, who was being fed the Zerg hyperevolutionary virus through his mouth and nostrils.

To her left, a number of monitors hung from the ceiling. Through it, Kerrigan could see Amanda Haley, concentrating on something. Somehow, this prompted memories from earlier times.

First Memories
Sarah Kerrigan sat at a desk as Lieutenant Rumm shouted at her. He told her that remorse and compunction are forbidden, and that it was his job to break her. The Terran Confederacy wanted to influence the way she would use her powers. To do so, he needed to overcome her ability to distinguish between right and wrong (from her original point of view).

Sarah Kerrigan had scored highly on all phases of the psi-evals, although she was eight years old. She had displayed her power once, however, on TarKossis, which had killed her mother and damaged her father's brain. Now she sat in this facility with the number "24" stamped on her arm.

She refused to use her power again. Now Rumm was trying another way to prompt her to use her power. He presented her with a kitten that Sarah had been allowed to play with for three weeks. Now it was suffering from a large tumor, and it was clearly weak and suffering.

Rumm told Sarah that only she could end its suffering, and trying to hide her psychic abilities was senseless. He was interrupted by a scream from somewhere out of the room, which was suddenly cut off.

Sarah refused the order, so Rumm drew his standard-issue repeating pistol and pointed it at the cat's head. He told her to end the animal's life now, or he would do it for her.

Sarah remained defiant, and Rumm wondered if he had felt an odd tremor in his pistol. He told her they were through for the day, and allowed her to leave the room.

A tech asked if they should recommend a neuro-adjuster. Rumm said no - the science was not exact, and the scientists' methods were questionable. It might even kill the girl.

In his room, Rumm ritually checked his uniform and pistol. The triggering mechanicsm had been melted to a lump.

Genetic Engineering Part II
The metamorphosis of the new Infested Terran took only two days, much less time than Infested Kerrigan's own metamorphosis. It was a failure, however. More adjustments to the infestation formula had to be made. While collecting test subjects was easy for Kerrigan, it still took time.

The creature had not duplicated the results of Infested Kerrigan's own change. Kerrigan knew she couldn't recreate a creature as powerful as herself, but the Zerg coveted the human psychic potential. Each time she had tried the process on another human, they would awaken nearly brain-dead and almost invalid.

The Cerebrate informed Kerrigan: ''Incompatibility with subjects possessing subordinate gene pattern. Ramifications of gene pattern/formula codependence are currently being assessed.'' Kerrigan believed they were making progress.

She turned to observe Haley again, and decided the time to transform Haley was now. She sent a formerly human worker to retrieve her.

Second Memory
Sarah Kerrigan was again confronted with the kitten, whose tumor was now three times larger than when she last saw it.

Lt. Rumm threw the ruined pistol parts onto the desk. He told her that it didn't convince his superiors that she really was psychic - while the chances of that being caused by radiation or something else was very low, it could have another explanation.

Rumm wanted to know why Sarah didn't use her power on the tumor. Was it because of what happened to her mother? Rumm theorized that Sarah was angry at her mother that day, and used her ability to try to make her stop. It was far too successful, causing massive cerebral hemmorrhaging. Her father had seen the whole thing, and could tell Rumm only one thing, repeatedly: "I saw her head come apart."

Sarah screamed that she would never use it on anyone again, and he couldn't make her.

Two men dressed in sealed armor entered the room and dragged her away. Meanwhile, the kitten fell still. It was dead.

Resistance
Amanda Haley had not used her powers in several days. She wanted to save energy.

The door to her cell phased, and she was confronted by a strange creature. However, it was no match for her powers. Marshalling her inner strength, Haley caused its head to explode. It fell to the floor and did not move.

Kerrigan was stunned. That was the same power she had used when she discovered her own psychic abilities.

Haley fled towards the station's hangar bay. However, Kerrigan had removed all vehicles from the bay, which would make Haley's flight useless. Kerrigan summoned a Zerg warrior to meet her there, then made it to the bay. Haley made it there shortly thereafter.

Kerrigan and Haley had a verbal sparring match, when the warrior arrived. It wrapped a snakelike cord around Haley's throat with one appendage and restrained her arms with another. It then pricked Haley's wrist and informed Kerrigan that Haley was not genetically compatible.

The Queen of Blades knew the infestation would rob the woman of her humanity and result in a failure, and so she hesitated.

Third Memory
Sarah Kerrigan was in a new room, bound to a chair. In front of her stood Lt. Rumm, who paced in front of a blank wall.

Rumm told her that she forced him to do this.

With an electric hissing sound, the wall phased into transparency. There sat Patrick Kerrigan, her father, in a similar room in similar restraints. As he had suffered brain damage, he seemed barely aware of what was going on around him, and Sarah had only seen him once since the incident.

A tech stood next to him, holding a syringe against his exposed arm. Rumm said it was the same substance that caused the kitten to develop a tumor. It would be a long and probably painful death, and he would be injected if she didn't cooperate fully.

Sarah screamed that she would use her powers to kill him and then herself. A device in the chair pricked her wrist and injected her with a powerful sedative. She fell unconscious very quickly.

Rumm had followed orders of the Terran Confederacy since childhood. He would employ a neuro-adjuster, and the girl would never be the same.

Genetic Engineering, Part Three
Kerrigan once again stood in front of the cocoon, waiting for it to open.

Kerrigan had not wanted to put Haley in there, which she felt was a sign of weakness. She had infested Haley because of her psychic potential.

Haley was spilled onto the floor - a slobbering, malformed Infested Terran. The creature struggled to rise.

The Cerebrate pointed out that the formula was incompatible. Looking down at her arm, the woman who had once been known as Sarah Kerrigan could still see a scar - it read "24". Kerrigan said "so be it" and walked into the long, desolate corridor.