“What?” Xander balked, again searching the darkness. “What are you talking about?”
“I think my predecessors did a bad thing. We let you go. Out there, in countless orphanages, you didn’t get the training that you needed to harness the Black Womb. You didn’t know what was happening inside of your body every minute of every day. But alas, this can be remedied. You can be rid of it.”
“Not sure I follow.”
“If you willingly give up the Black Womb and someone else, at the same time, willingly takes it, I can surgically remove it from you. I can relieve you of your curse.”
“How?”
“In the years since that lowly security guard Abner Jacobs was injured, I have become a man of science. With the help of Engen scientists, I mastered the darkness. Even found a way to purify it and all other diseases from unborn children, thus producing my genetic Adam and Eve.”
“Genblade and Spider.” Xander’s eyes widened as he looked over at the two assassins as they kissed.
“But they were incomplete, missing organs. It created artificial ones for their use, but they were still inferior.”
“So you strip mined your victims... and mine... to put their organs into these two?” He had to strain the word ‘mine’ out of his lips.
“Yes. My goal is to have them reproduce. To create a new, perfect society, under a new god. Me.”
“You’re sick.”
He laughed. “You don’t know the half of it,” he coughed. It was sick, like he was throwing up a lung.
“Something wrong?”
Electricity jolted through the shackles. “Quiet. Anyway, I finally got the last thing I needed for my children. Or, more appropriately, for their children. Ovaries.”
“Sara.”
Spider smiled at him. “Mmm. I can feel how much she wanted you to touch them, Xander. To taste them.”
Xander lowered his head, forcing his eyes not to well up with tears.
“Yes. You should be proud. Your friend will live on in Spider’s children.”
He processed this. “But, I don’t understand. There were way more organs than you needed. And what do you need Black Womb for?”
“Will you give the creature up?”
Xander thought about it. Hadn’t he done enough harm? Like the guy said, he couldn’t control this thing. He couldn’t even restrain it. This guy, whoever he was, he had already melded it into life. “Okay.”
Genblade walked over and cut Xander across the stomach.
Xander’s back arched and he screamed in pain. Blood flowed from the wound which had already been opened too many times this night. The blood ran down his legs, mixing with the red film the Black Womb had left behind.
Then, finally, the man came out of the darkness.
He was in pieces, no part of his form whole. His head was only half there, a line having been ripped down his nose and dug out as if somebody had taken a shovel to the left side of his head. His mouth didn’t end, it just melted into the mauled flesh that was his face. There were gaping holes of ripped flesh covering his bald head, giving way to his skull. Blood poured freely from those holes. There was a hunch on his back so huge it rose slightly above his hairline. It had stretched the flesh to the near breaking point and was covered in hideous warts and boils. His ridiculously muscular arms were covered in places where skin just melted away, showing his actual muscles as they rippled. His stomach and rib cage were missing, revealing the convulsing organs within. His heart pumped so fast that there was hardly a space between beats. His legs were much the same as his arms. They were covered in torn laboratory pants, the tears revealing exposed tendons and blisters. He looked like a cross between an Ogre and a corpse.
“Christ. What are you?” Xander asked, astonished.
“Call me Alpha. You see, I needed all those extra organs for myself,” he said as he inserted the Womb organ into his lower chest, easy considering it wasn’t covered. “You see, I was a guard on duty the day your bitch of a mother saw fit to leave us. She also left us a parting gift. She blew our power generator, killing all of your brothers and sisters that were in stasis. She prevented Engen from ever creating a soldier capable of bringing you back. She truly loved you.”
For the first time, Alpha’s words felt good. He had always assumed that his mother had abandoned her child out of hatred and bitterness, not circumstance.
“But I was on duty in that sector. She literally blew half of me away. The preservatives in the goop that kept your siblings in stasis kept me alive long enough for Engen scientists to find me and rebuild me. One took me under his wing and taught me everything he knew. He became like a father to me as I became a son to him. By the time my condition was stable, I knew everything I needed to do to rise to the top of the company and get my vengeance on your mother... by killing you.”
“I still don’t get what you need Black Womb for.”
“I’m falling apart,” he said, gesturing toward himself. “The Womb’s healing capabilities, which I saw fit to test in your battles with Genblade and Spider (hence the crucifixion), will heal me. It will meld all of my stolen body parts into one ... my own.”
Even as he spoke, Alpha’s face began to flow like liquid, reforming itself into a normal one. A thin covering of skin formed over his exposed stomach, then getting thicker and thicker. His muscles covered over with flesh as blood flowed from his mouth and
