Issue 20, Page 5
Right, sorry to get you riled up but I AM bleeding to death here, so…
Transcript
1: Xijo tries to sit up, holding his stomach, still wet with blood.
Vidali (off-panel): Doctor Xijo, stay down!
Xijo: You have seen that… things in action… it does not eat, it…
[Untranslated Martian]
…absorbs. It grows bigger with each body.
2: Vidali clutches a pack of bandages to her chest, eyes shut as she shudders and tears up.
3: Xijo, holding his side, looks over his shoulder at Vidali: she is leaning against the counter, hugging the bandages close.
Vidali: That thing is Sedjet. He’s my friend, our friend.
Xijo: He is a monster now.
What did you find in the genetic codes? What patterns?
4: Vidali slides down to the ground, tears in her eyes as she looks away.
Vidali: There’s… we…
Sentient Earth animals, like us… we have certain unique genetic markers, and… the Black Mass has them too.
Nothing else has those patterns.
5: She starts to cry, slumped entirely down to the ground.
Vidali: Sedjet was infected, once, but he’s been clean a long time… Julia was never infected at all. We have enough samples from previous incidents to know the difference.
For Sedjet to have changed, it… had to come from inside his own body.
6: Xijo silently watches her.
Vidali (off-panel): It’s like he was that stuff all along. If he is, then… then we all are.
Me… my wife, my parents… if any of us walked into that chamber, we’d turn into… that.
Yeah, no, do not care, she should still be calling Security, reporting the containment breach, also somebody fucking fire the Security Chief, because there should have been guards at least on post or patrol in that section for something so fucking dangerous!!!
It’s fine, also, I’m freaking out over the sanity of the scientist right now, she has to live everyday knowing that herself, friends, family, enemies, and strangers have that song horrible idol inside them, but I hope that their is a way to reverse the process of converting to the black idol but something tells me that that is extremely high hopes at this point
Oh it’s not INSIDE THEM, it IS them. The furry form is the fake form. It’s all the NOISE of Earth’s background radiation that’s keep them from hearing themselves. Sedjet is perhaps the most sane being on the planet now. He’s no longer trapped in the dementia. And he and Julia both now know they’ve been living their lives in a straightjacket already. Sedjet just finally freed himself.
I really, really want to hug all involved right now.
… okay, not Sedjet. Julia might not yet be beyond saving, since Melissa’s still there as a steadying influence.
Aw, but Sedjet is the one who wants a hug the most 😉
Though I wonder if he CAN merge with anyone, or even shapeshift, outside of the chamber.
During the breach where Sedjet had been taken over, the EA-055 segment had had bullets pass through it with little effect. Julia had *bled* from her converted mass from headbutting a window. And while both of the “awoken in silence” can move their converted body parts in normal Earth conditions, neither has yet changed them.
Now, Sedj attempting to merge with anyone is baaad news for them, either way… . Yeah, don’t hug him.
NYARLATHOTEP WANT HUGS.