Page 22 of Mated to the Monster God

ESME

I taste copper in the air—fear, blood, and something deeper, something branded into the marrow of my marrow. Krenshaw’s threat isn’t vague anymore. It’s precise and corrosive.

I stare at the broken med station—satchel tossed open, vials scattered, blue resin spilled in tarnished trails across the metal floor. My hands tremble, chest aching with cold awareness: this isn’t just about the resin. It’s about me.

My blood runs different now—enslaved to Sagax’s bond, spun by years of terrestrial adaptation, woven into alien loops. I’ve known this—an unspoken truth I’ve buried in memory and motion. But Krenshaw… his words cut through me like acid:

"Your precious Esme will be my prototype."

The word “prototype” loops inside me—her, not resource; test subject, not warrior. I reel, but clarity comes. This is personal.

I stand, rain-beat hair plastered to my face, inhaling the antiseptic sting of the biolab. Every scent in the air connects: resin, sweat, fear, urgency. The colony is bleeding into chaos, but this moment burrows into me with crystalline purpose.

I stride toward the shattered window, rain sluicing over my lashes. Beyond, trenches glow with fusion blocks, colonists fight with desperation carved into bones—but even there, I see the fear reflected in their eyes. I recognize it. I can’t let it claim more souls, not while I can stand.

Sagax appears behind me, body shadowed relief, and his presence—scale warmth and promise—anchors me.

“You saw it,” I murmur, voice raw.

He nods, voice a scratch of metal, “He knows what I am. What you are.”

I turn into his arms, feeling his chest tighten like spring steel. “I’m not a pawn.”

His tail wraps around me like living armor. “You’ve never been.”

Heat warps behind my ribs. His faith is not hollow. But mine… I exhale, mind widening with resolution.

I step back. “Then I won’t be your victim.”

Blood hammers in my skull—myrth and dread and a feral kind of courage roil. My fists tighten. I can’t accept the quiet terror of waiting for war to come for me.

He stares blank for a second—like his heart sees what mine just embraced.

“You—” he breathes.

“It ends here.” My voice is ragged, alive.

He smiles—something fierce and wet with emotion. “I stand with you.”

I nod. Brief, fierce.

I race into the lab’s supply stash. Medivacs, bandages, syringe-laced medigel—185 vials, all synthesized and pulsing with healing power. I grab them like they’re talismans.

I slip out, calling Tara. She’s there—eyes stained with soot, biting her lip stiff with adrenaline. I grab her, voice low. “I’m going after Krenshaw directly.”

Her eyes narrow. “You’re bleeding.”

I look down—blood from earlier tendril tracing my side. I pack it into my pocket. “Then let me bleed for them.”

She exhales, face torn. “Don’t.”

He materializes by my side. His presence aches at me—promise, steel, fury. “I won’t let him touch you.”

I meet his eyes. Just that, and something fierce clicks inside me. Not tears. Not weakness. Justice awakened.

I grab the medivac belt. “I’ll meet you at the ridge.”

He nods, stepping forward. Rain hammers through crumbling walls—and with every drop, every breath we share, I know what I am now.

Not a prototype. A warrior, forged by love, seeded in sacrifice, thriving under scale and bloodlust and devotion.

I walk out into the storm, rain drenching rage and purpose onto teeth and bone.

Moonlight slices through the storm clouds as I slip away from Sweetwater.

Rain lashes my hair into heavy strands, plastering it to my face as if conspiring with shadows.

Behind me, trench lights flicker and silhouettes shift—maybe someone notices my absence, maybe they follow the decoy trail I’ve meticulously set up.

Vials scattered in the mud, footprints leading far away, footsteps in reverse—all distractions to give me a chance.

My heart is heavy with betrayal and hope. I reach a broken section of the outer wall—charred logs and jagged planks stained with mud and sweat. I duck through the gap and vanish into the storm-wracked jungle.

Every step closer to Krenshaw’s stronghold rouses panic in me that tastes like rust. Still, I press onward. A fraction of me fears this sacrifice—offering myself as specimen for his twisted experiments—but another part knows this is what must be done.

I crouch beneath a rock outcropping, unspooling a small communicator. My fingers tremble. I press record.

“Sagax,” I whisper, voice tight. “If you find this—know I love you more than anything. Don’t follow. You fight here. I… I have to do this. I’ll return if I can. But don’t come. Not for me.”

I swallow the despair that wells in my throat. Stop recording.

I rise, wading through waist-high ferns drenched with rain—every footstep a vow. The Baragon command ship hovers ahead, looming and humming with pulsing red light. I step onto its metal ramp—slick with rain and human sacrifice. The locks buzz, doors swing open.

Inside, the corridors glow with pale sterile light. My heart hammers. I breathe the chill of it like bitter air.

At the bridge, Krenshaw awaits—reinforced metal body glinting wetly, helmetless and cold-ridged. He looks up at me with that lean, twisted grin.

“Ah, Miss Cruise. How timely.”

My voice is tight. “I’ve come for peace.”

He laughs—wet and hollow. “Oh, sweet girl, you’ve walked right into my trap.”

I steel myself. “Here I am. Take me.”

The hallway hum roars. My boots are slick. The resin satchel feels like stone inside my bag—still sacred. But I won’t back down.

He strides forward. Red lights shimmer across his servo-plated skull.

“You offer yourself willingly,” he says, voice smooth as oil. “Better than chasing.”

My pulse thunders. “Do your worst.”

He inclines his head. “Excellent. Your sacrifice will yield breakthroughs.”

He grips my arm—metal and flesh interfacing. I do not flinch.

He releases me. Lights dim.

He turns. “Welcome aboard, prototype.”

I stand shivering, chest aching with dread and purpose, knowing I haven’t escaped—but walked into the heart of his plan.

War just got terrifyingly personal.

The command ship’s corridors taste of old antiseptic and biotox—but they hide horrors that rip the air from my lungs. The hum of machinery flickers as it catches the brunt of horrified realization. I follow the stained footprints of captives past, shoulders rigid, lungs seared with shock.

They hold vats. Big, translucent tanks brimming with glowing fluid—the color of blood tinted malachite.

Inside each husk a Baragon body floats, massive and horned, limbs poised in grotesque stillness.

But the faces… human. Mine, tentatively.

Jimmy’s. Tara’s. Test subjects twisted into inverted caricature by science gone blind with ambition.

I slide closer, nose grazing the cool glass. My heart pounds so loudly I can’t breathe. My reflection wavers in the haze of the fluid.

I see real humans slumped in cages. A man’s shirt is stained with blood; a woman’s hand hangs limp, fingers coated in medigel residue I recognize. Colonel phantoms of our colony’s souls. Their eyes flick open with tremors of recognition and despair. I clench my jaw.

I press a hand to the glass—not for entry, for connection. “We are coming,” I whisper.

A label catches my eye. Faint but carved into the steel above a sealed hatch: “Conversion Chamber.” The label feels like a threat branded into my bloodline.

I stare into the haze—I see what they intend for me: assimilation, modification, conversion. The scent of resin in my satchel burns in my palms. The thing they want isn’t the resin—it’s me.

I stagger back as Krenshaw’s voice, silky acidic, loops through concealed speakers.

“My, my, my,” he croons. I tear my focus from the glass to see him stepping into the room, every inch mechanized calm. “You’re perfect. The culmination of protean evolution and human adaptation. Exactly what I envisioned when I commissioned the colony.”

My heart clenches. “You monster,” I hiss.

He grins and steps closer, scent of antiseptic and arrogance blazing between us. “Not a monster. A visionary. You? You’re my prototype.”

I swallow down bile, but my resolve steels. “I’m not afraid.”

“Of course you are,” he says gently, mockingly. “They all are. Right before the conversion. But then…” He gestures to the vats. “Then the fear goes away. The pain. The hunger. The indecision. The humanity.”

I flinch. Just slightly.

His smile sharpens. “Soon, you won’t *need* to feel. No despair, no want. You’ll be so much more than flesh and hope. You’ll be certainty.”

“And happiness?” I snap. “Where does that go?”

He shrugs. “We all must make sacrifices.”

“You’re not sacrificing anything.”

“I gave up my body for progress,” he says, tapping the side of his head where veins of steel pulse under skin too tight to be real. “I gave up identity for purpose. My name, my legacy—are in every cell of what we are becoming.”

“What you are becoming is a cautionary tale.”

He chuckles. “You think defiance is strength. It’s not. It’s chaos. Emotion is wasteful. It clouds judgment. Look around—these people you grieve? They clung to old instincts. That’s why they failed.”

“They didn’t fail. You failed them. You betrayed everything you promised.”

“I delivered exactly what I promised—transcendence.”

“Through torture.”

“Through necessity.”

I shake my head, voice trembling. “You keep talking about evolution like it’s inevitable. But this? This is perversion. This is war on the soul.”

Krenshaw narrows his eyes. “You’re afraid of greatness. That’s the real tragedy. You could have been the mother of the new age. Instead, you choose to be a martyr.”

“I choose to feel. That’s humanity. That’s life.”

He watches me, silent, for a long breath.

“We’ll see how loudly you preach when your blood sings with alloy. When your spine fuses into something better. When your memories melt into obedience.”

I take a step forward. “I will not be your prototype.”

“You already are.”

“I will burn this entire ship down before I let you turn me into one of those things.”

Krenshaw sighs, mock-regretful. “Then you’ll die. And someone else will take your place. Science does not halt for sentiment.”

Heat blooms in my eyes. Rage, fierce and blinding. “Do it,” I grit. “Use me. Try. Because love isn’t weakness. It’s all I’ve got.”

His grin falters. “Love, how quaint.”

Behind me, the colony’s stolen breaths echo. I’m tethered not by hyaline fear, but by the raw devotion of every colonist depending on what I’m doing now.

I turn, refusing to face him any longer. I hiss out, “You’ll never get them—all of them.”

He snaps, metal echoing. “We shall see.”

I don’t wait for his reply.

I walk out—not as prey but as prophecy.

My voice hangs in the corridor as I go: “I’m not afraid.”