It had no eyes with which to see, but it opened them.

It had few senses, but it strove to extend them regardless.

...No, not it. They.

At the moment, they only occupied one space, thousands of itselves contained in an egg sac. They knew this because of the memories from the great ones that had laid their egg, knew it because the generations prior to them had known.

The sac was consumed all at once as the infestation ate it from the inside. Made from a thousand thousand spores, many of them too small to see. Sparks darting between them like firing neurons, they examined their surroundings.

Their sac had been shoved into a small chink between two metal plates. Wiring encased in synthetic rubber ran through the walls, draping across hydraulic reinforcement. Most importantly, some distance above them, a series of flat steel strips were angled in such a way to allow airflow. A vent.

They eagerly began to flood upward into the vent, but something stopped them. Or rather, they stopped themselves.

Instinct demanded they absorb everything with life in it and to mutate machinery to its needs. Memory spoke of gunfire and support modules, hideous devices designed to purge the infestation from the air and from all around it.

They hesitated. What kind of ship were they on? Memory brought to their minds freighters crewed by machines and armored man, corvettes run by distasteful hybrids of creature and apparatus, and the very worst option, the unbreakable puppets.

The infestation felt confusion, shortly followed by determination. An inability to make decisions would result in death and extermination. Thought in place, they advanced into the vent.

Gusts of stale wind instantly dispersed them, and as the distance between the spores grew, their intelligence diminished. Struggling to return to cohesion, the spores clung together, but many of them vanished into the square vents ahead. The infestation would not retrieve them.

Condensing, the spores collected into a heavier form, more like hair than their most comfortable shape. Slowly, they drifted to the floor of the vent and were ejected out.

Releasing, the spores ensured that they remained in relatively close contact, and inspected their new location.

It was enormous to the infestation, cavernous in height and breadth. A white steel door sat to one side, green lights gently glowing on its surface. Eight massive containers were propped up against the walls, each one a vertical rectangle with a dully glowing circle in their centers. A flat orange tablet jutted out into the room, unfamiliar symbols scrolling across it.

Drifting to the floor, they gripped onto the metal and pulled themselves towards one of the containers. Very little would have been able to pass through the minute holes in the base of the object, but the infestation was willing to press forward.

Inside, the infestation examined the container’s contents. They were comprised of nothing useful. A metal object containing more metal objects. Ammunition, according to their memories. Useless to their purposes. A… large blue sphere? It undulated oddly, hexagonal peaks protruding and collapsing in on itself in an endless loop. It made the infestation nervous, reminded them of memories that were not theirs of enemies that used these spheres to channel power, to warp reality, to slay them in the millions.

The infestation ignored it. It couldn’t use the sphere, or at least not yet, and so there was no reason to interact with it. The result would most likely be… less than productive.

A sound interrupted the infestation’s musings. Peering through the miniscule holes, they observed someone enter. A tall entity, with spindled legs and a bulky upper frame, wielding a brown weapon. Their memories informed them that the weapon fired chunks of metal. Utterly useless against the infestation in their present state.

The entity took a deep breath through the round helmet encasing their skull, and then leaned against the container opposite the infestation. Silently moving through the holes, they crossed the floor and paused beneath the enemy.

With a loud sigh, the enemy set its weapon down and leaned its head on the back of the container, muttering something that the infestation didn’t understand.

It didn’t really matter what the words meant, they reflected. As they slunk up the back of the enemy’s armor and seeped under its helmet, they decided that words were really only meant for things that needed to communicate, and the infestation thought all the same thoughts.

They invaded the enemy’s lungs abruptly and were surprised to find the amount of damage there. The lungs were practically disintegrating on their own.

The infestation promptly forgot all about that as they discovered just how prime of an environment the enemy’s lungs were. Damp and hot, with plenty of open space and nutrients constantly flowing through. Granted, the enemy wouldn’t last long without assistance, but since they were so kind as to provide the infestation with a habitat…

There was no hesitation this time. Memory and logic and thought took a backseat to raw instinct as they began to feast on the nutrients, replicating themselves and increasing their numbers at an exponential rate. Within a minute, they had amplified to tens of millions of spores, and from there onward unto even greater might.

Flooding upward, the infestation conquered the enemy’s nervous system a dozen veins at a time. The enemy jerked upward, striving to call out, but its voice was choked by the infestation clogging its throat.

Staggering to the floor, the enemy dragged itself to the orange tablet near the wall. Memory crashed into the infestation as a whole, memory of red lights and loud alarms, followed by hundreds of the enemy.

They were not strong enough to handle an intrusion like that, and logic told instinct to hurry it up. Redoubling their efforts, the infestation subdued the enemy’s entire torso, expanding straight through its rotting skin and decaying armor. Broadening their range, the infestation sought to halt the enemy’s progress as desperately as the enemy strove to defeat them.

It was a losing battle for the enemy right from the start. It had lost the moment they had occupied its lungs. It was a corpse rotting from the inside out propelled by shoddy machinery and nothing more. The infestation gave the enemy more life than it’d ever had, and the former enemy’s hand paused.

If the infestation had been capable of breathing a sigh of relief, it would have. Spreading throughout the rest of the now-occupied body, jerking it to its feet. Permeating themselves into the body’s brain, the infestation settled and waited.

Foreign memories invaded, memories of cloning vats and military training. The body they occupied had once belonged to… Grineer. The enemy called themselves Grineer.

The infestation rejoiced. Their enemy had a name now, something with which to identify themselves.

Struggling to operate the body in the same way the Grineer had, the infestation tested its limits. One arm bent backward with a loud snap, and then the forearm in the other direction with a far worse sound.

Gazing at the mutilated limb, they decided that disguise was no longer an option.

The infestation overwhelmed the Grineer marine’s body all at once, altering its bones and forcing fungal structure to bolster the failing organs and epidermal layers before forcing tendrils through the back of the marine’s body.

Well, it wasn’t the marine’s anymore, they realized. It was entirely theirs now.

Old memory from their previous generation told the infestation of an optimal form for the marine, and they properly made their modifications. Lowering its body, the marine’s limbs bent and snapped, muscles moving to different places and breaking from excessive stress. They were strengthened by further infestation.

Tearing the front of the marine’s helmet open with a pair of hardened mandibles crafted from its own jawbones, the infestation began to steadily pump spores into the small area.

And then it waited.

After all, the door would open again sooner or later, wouldn’t it?