Gord Zajac - Major Karnage

“It’s all right, Captain.” The last of Karnage’s vision washed away. He had to force his lips to form the words: “Promise me one thing. Cookie. Velasquez. Heckler. Koch. Stumpy. Find ’em. Save ’em. Stop the squidbugs.”

Sydney’s voice came from far away. “You won’t need me to do that, Major. You’ll be able to do that yourself.”

He tried to answer but his mouth wouldn’t form the words.

Karnage strained his ears as Sydney’s voice faded away. “Don’t give up on me yet, Major. I think I know someone who can…”

He passed out.

Karnage dreamed of squiggly beasts and black-clad men with pistols for hands. The beasts lashed out with tentacles that sucked him down and wrapped him in their grip. The man in black stood behind the fray, at one moment wearing a chauffeur’s outfit, the next a charcoal grey medal-laden Uncle Stanley uniform. Always smiling, always the teeth flashing, telling him it’s his lucky day. Gloved fingers pointed at him, the end of the fingers open and hollow like a gun barrel. White hot muzzle flashes burst from the leatherclad digits. Squiggles shot out from the fingers, stabbing into his shoulder, poking and prodding, searching and burrowing, leaving a fiery trail of absolute agony in their wake.

The pain became more focused in his shoulder, and the squiggles finally pulled away, leaving him alone in the darkness.

Karnage opened his eyes. A silvery sphere floated above him. A giant lens sprouted from the ball, pointing down at his shoulder, as long metal tendrils quivered below the lens, poking at bandages. Karnage tried to scramble away, but he couldn’t move anything below his neck.

“Get the fuck away from me, you squiggly bastard!”

The lens swivelled up and looked at Karnage. Its inner aperture quickly irised shut and open again, as if it were blinking. A mechanical voice crackled over a speaker. “Sydney, it seems your comrade is awake.”

The sphere pulled up and away, and Sydney moved into Karnage’s field of vision.

“Hello, Major,” she said.

“Captain, what the fuck is going on here?! What the hell was that thing?! Where are we? Why the hell can’t I move?!”

“You were shot,” Sydney said. “You were in danger of bleeding to death. So I brought you here.”

“Where the hell is here?!”

The sphere floated down again, and blinked its lens at Karnage. “Here is home.”

Karnage craned his neck. He was lying in a rescue basket, a thin sheet draped over him, the basket suspended from a complex grid of scaffolding running across the arched ceiling. Floodlights dotted the scaffolding. Just visible beyond the lights were more hoverballs fixed with lenses and tentacles. They stared down at Karnage, the lenses zooming in and out, changing focus as the spheres hovered closer or farther away.

A pair of oval bay windows projected out from the wall, filtering sunlight through the grime-streaked glass. Various bits of medical equipment were pushed up against the walls.

“Home? Whose home? It sure as hell ain’t mine! And you still haven’t told me why the hell I can’t move!”

“You can’t move because you’re a very uncooperative patient,” Sydney replied. “I don’t need you pulling your stitches out. Not after all of Uncle’s hard work. As for whose home this is, it belongs to Uncle.”

One of the spheres dropped down from above. It placed a tentacle on Sydney’s shoulder. “Don’t be so modest, dear. You know this home is just as much yours as it is mine. If only you would visit more often. And in less brutish company.”

Karnage’s eyes goggled. “That thing is your uncle?!”

The sphere blinked its lens at Karnage. “Of course not. What a preposterous supposition. What you are looking at is simply a drone. One of many, in case you haven’t noticed. They are my eyes and ears in the compound. I am sequestered elsewhere.”

“Why?”

“I have my… reasons.”

“He’s a close family friend,” Sydney said. “And he is doing everything in his power to save your life.”

Karnage looked down at his bandaged shoulder. “Why? What’s wrong with my shoulder?”

The drone bobbed up and down. “Very little, actually. The bullet passed right through the shoulder, missing the scalpula and brachial plexus completely. You should be laid up for a few days at the most. No, your shoulder isn’t the problem.”

A second pair of drones floated down and pulled back the sheet covering Karnage’s leg. A shining metal band wrapped around the middle of its shin.

“What the hell is that?” Karnage said.

The nearest drone flashed its lens at Karnage. His tentacles quivered with excitement. “That is all that stands between you and the unknown frontiers of science!”

“What the hell’s he talking about? What the fuck is wrong with my leg?”

“Technically, nothing,” the drone said. “Which is the source of your trouble.”

“What do you mean? What the hell are you talking about!” Karnage barked.

“It’s your ankle,” Sydney said. “You twisted it in the arena. You could barely walk on it. Remember? And then on the ship, hours later—”

“It was fine.” Karnage looked down at his foot. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “What did those squidbugs do to me?”

Sydney turned to a drone hovering by her shoulder. “Show him.”

The drone beside Karnage swivelled its lens at Sydney. It squealed: “Delighted!”

Three drones descended from the ceiling. Their lenses zoomed out, and projected light, each one projecting a different primary colour. The beams intersected, creating a holographic projection of a DNA double helix.

“Human DNA,” the drone beside Karnage said. “The building blocks of all life on earth.”

The double helix shifted to the right, and three strings of vibrating noodles affixed with shifting coloured beads squiggled in beside it. They tangled and untangled themselves randomly, twitching in agitation whenever they made contact. The coloured beads jumped from one strand to another when the strands touched.

The drone beside Sydney hovered closer to the projection. “Extraterrestrial DNA,” it said. “The building blocks of the alien infestation. Unstable. Volatile. Infectious.”

The twitching strands lashed out and grabbed the double helix, tearing it apart, wrapping itself into the debris. The beads flew loose from the strands and rocketed about the morass like a hurricane. It looked like a violent feeding frenzy.

“What happened? What is that? Is that what’s happenin’ inside o’ me?!”

“As near as Uncle can tell,” Sydney said, “the squidbugs fixed your ankle with an injection of their own genetic material. But it’s doing something more than just repairing the damage. It’s… rewriting your genetic code.”

“Rewriting it into what?!”

“And that is where we stumble into the unknown!” The drone beside Karnage squealed. “It is rewriting your genetic structure, taking the best genes from your DNA and combining it with select genes from itself, synthesizing a new hybrid creature.”

“What do you mean a hybrid creature? What the hell is it turnin’ me into?!”

The drone clapped a set of tentacles together. “It’s unpredictable! The infestation takes so many shapes. The possibilities are endless!”

“I wish you wouldn’t sound so pleased about this, Uncle,” Sydney said.

The drone beside her placed a tentacle on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, my dear. I just get so excited about new discoveries. Please. Forgive my enthusiasm, Major.”

Karnage didn’t care. He was staring at his foot. It didn’t feel different. And yet, somewhere, deep inside of him, the squidbug DNA was attacking, changing him into something he didn’t want. Suddenly the invasion had become personal. So much more personal than Karnage could ever have imagined. Rage boiled up inside him. He wouldn’t let them get away with it. He wouldn’t let them win. Not like this. Not now.