I got out of the cave with new energies. Hunger was a great motivation.

I went through the old areas and checked for hidden animals or vegetation we hadn't picked up yet. I discovered a bunch of trilobites in a cave and easily lured them out, making a loud sound.

In less than 10 minutes, I had killed the pack of 6, and then I summon the collectors to process the corpses while I got to the intersection again. The web nest didn't seem to have increased since yesterday, but I could see some spiders roaming on the ceiling.

I moved out of their sight, trying not to make much noise and went to the left instead. After a few meters, I found some more experiment rooms, most of them had plants and even some flowers growing in.

I got into the room and started eating everything in sight. "This is going to take forever. I don't want to waste biomass, but I need energy asap."

Despite it hurting me deeply, I activated the adrenal glands and burned some biomass to gain energy, I then used that to summon a complete pack of mites that started to devour this garden area.

Some birds were flying over the trees, too little to annoy us; but I wouldn't spare them either, I had already paid an enormous price with the first corrupted specimen I met.

The plants and vegetation, all the green and verdant colors, started to vanish as the hours passed by. The biomass was getting carried through my brood to feed this body and our dreams… Well, at least my dream of freedom. Norn just wanted food, so she was already having her share of dreams fulfilled.

When then reached the biggest tree in the garden, a fruit tree that had some beautiful apple-like fruits hanging from its branches. I’d love to eat a few of those fruits and leave, sparing the birds and the whole garden. Let them live their lives without such devastation.

But it was not what I had in mind.

I got closer to the large tree, and then, one of the apples feel and crumpled into darkness, the whole tree changing from a vibrant green to an ash-like color.

“What the hell is that… It was okay just a minute ago!”

You seem not to realise the taint that your soul carries. If you just followed Queen Norn's advice and kept eating and growing, you would stop to see these effects.

“What? What do you mean by that, Darwin?”

Your soul smells different. It is tainted. Not by Chaos, like the one present in this universe. That is already a pain to fight against; the whole daemons, warp, and mutations. You are carrying with your soul some mark from outside of this universe.

“How can that even be possible?”

Wait, that AI told me something about being possessed and having caused a hell of a situation on old earth. It said they had been trying to find a cure to eradicate that corruption from my body. For god's sake, I had even been transferred into a Tyranid's body!

"What else has to be done?! I want my life back!"

My eyes start to burn in violet light, while rage invaded my mind. I roared, and the area around me began to tremble.

Everything began to change.

As my aura expanded, both plants and animals fell to the ground. Their bodies melted and died shortly after.

"Kai?! Kai, stop!!"

I woke up from this moment of pure hate and became horrified about this whole change in the scenery. What was beautiful and lively a couple of minutes, was now bloated, corrupted, and dying.

"I, I did that?" I say that as I turn to the garden and look left and right, panicked by the death surrounding me.

"Calm down, you are still too unstable, Kai. Keep hunting. Grow strong, and we will help you control that."

“Pushing me is not helping right now, Norn. I know you want to help, but it’s just that I don't know how to process all of this.”

"Host, we can find answers either further into this lab or in some imperial registers. It will be difficult, but Queen Norn is working hard, and so am I. We don't have any other answer for you right now."

“That’s true, thank you both. I was, I felt sad, frustrated, and hopeless… then rage invaded me, it was all I could feel for a few seconds. I still don’t get what triggering me, but it certainly has to do with my past.”

As I talk and open about how I feel, we kept moving, leaving behind this devastated area, where death and corruption were all that remained.

“Darwin, could you explain to me something more about the whole Chaos you said before? For what I learned, some evil energies are working in this universe to affect its inhabitants, right?”

Indeed, 4 great entities have been fighting for millennia to gather more power than their brothers. The Ruinous Powers. Tyranids don’t like them, as we get nearly nothing from a demon. When they are destroyed, usually nothing remains behind, so we tend to avoid them.

“Huh, so your motto is something like, 'No food, no fight.' It kind of makes sense if I think in Norn."

"No, it's not!!"

"It’s true, c’mon you woke me up asking to… bah, I will just go get more food.”

I commanded the collector mites to move back and retreat from that infested place of decay.

Some of them even got affected by it, having a few extra limbs, eyes, or even tentacles.

“How is that even possible? Where did you guys get the DNA to do this?”

"They got corrupted! It's dangerous to eat that biomass directly! We need to process the biomass slowly; otherwise, our body might get affected and altered."

I did as she asks and let the collectors process the food and turn into biomass. I ate them afterward, and it was weird. Very random. It tastes cold for the most part. Yet, there was something like marshmallow flavor too, and something burned, wrong. It stank like charred flesh too.

As the last one arrived, I saw it carrying a small yet healthy apple fruit.

I smiled and thanked it just before the small mite turned itself into a ball and turns grey. "Sigh...I have to stop thinking so human-like, or I will just keep bottling up negative emotions."

We walked back, and I was just going towards the cave when I felt something weird near the intersection. It was an odd sound, very annoying.

“Did you notice that?”

"I don’t see any food!"

“No, it’s not food-related, Norn. It feels like a weird static sound, like an old radio.” I summoned a couple of fighters to help me find the source.

"There is something, but it’s nearly beyond the biomorphs sensors range, how did you hear that? It’s an impressive use of your resources."

“I just hate that sound so much. It reminds me of something… Agh! I forgot about it. But I don't like that sound.”

Again with the lost memories. Could it have to do with the whole corruption thing? Does it tamper with people's minds? I think about it, and it makes itself evident when I think about the beasts we fought.

I went near the wall and heard it better; there was a weird electrical sound coming from a crack. We checked it better and found what looked like a hidden door. "C’mon my mites, push with me!"

The hidden rock door opened slowly, showing a dark room full of old monitors and panels covered with dust.

There were a few dried corpses on the ground. We barely noticed them for the shape of the dust and whatever remained of their clothes.

"This was a monitoring station. Interesting."

I checked some of the cages and containment chambers on the corridors, most of them were broken. Two of them picked my attention. The newly corrupted garden area and the spiders' terrarium.

I spent a few minutes investigating the whole biome and the cameras, searching for something useful. Then, through one of the screens at the end of the room, I saw something unusual. "Ohh, what is that?"

I saw a dock. But not a regular one, it looks like the ones I watched in films when I was…

"Wait, that’s weird, how can I remember what that structure is?"

Were some old memories or new ones? Were those even my memories?

"Fuck." I then had a terrible headache that rendered me useless for a few seconds as more and more flashes appeared on my mind as small explosions. An old house, a room full of papers, a grass field at night, a sky with stars, a little girl... the last one was like a short sequence.

There was an energy portal, filled with light. Something was carrying me towards it as a woman shouted. I saw shadows and darkness.

Too many things, too fast to make a clear thought. "AGHH!! Ahhh, ahh..."

"Kai? Are you okay?"

Some screens began to vibrate as the purple light on my eyes switched on and off multiple times. As the last memory faded, my eyes dimmed too.

"These memory waves sure are painful. Some triggers activate them, but it didn't end as badly as one back at the tree." There is nothing melted here, and the dead ones were already in that state before.

A few screens then turned red and showed something that looked like darkness with a few bright spots. "Is that an image of the space?"

I could not see it clearly as some bright lights shone at the screen, an explosion in the darkness of space. Something fell towards the screen, I saw that it was a piece of a spaceship. It destroyed the camera, and we could see nothing else.

I prepared for something too. A couple of seconds later, there was no reaction. "Maybe that was some sort of old footage, stored and-"

* brrrmmm…

I felt it clearly with both my body and senses. A faint, but distinct vibration. “Oh, fuck! Hell no!! I HAD THREE MONTHS!”

“You slept a lot! Quick! Go hunt!”

“What do you mean? I slept a lot?!! How long did the evolution take!!”

“We have stayed in this area for less than 10 days, it can’t be the ship that was mentioned by the AI. It should arrive in 65 to 70 days. Unless…”

“Uhhh, okay. Norn!! You scared the shit out of me!” I paid no attention to Darwin, too busy to mess with Norn.

"Shadup! You deserved a joke because you’re lazy!"

She was trying to get me scared or something, I don’t like her jokes.

"What?! Why?"

“It’s true! You have no humor nor taste!”

"I do have!"

“Okey, I dare you to tell a joke!”

"Knock, knock!"

“Who’s there?”

"Fuck you."

“What?! Where did you fucking learned those words?!”

"…"

“Oh, right, I’m the one teaching them to you.”

* Brooommm…..

"Fuck, I mean, fudge! Whatever is happening, it’s huge enough to cause vibrations and seems to be getting closer to the lab."

"We just need to go to the dock and get a ship."

"Okay, that plan has many leaks, we will work on it as we get there."

--------------

“Norn, I want wings! … I know I can't fly in space, you dummy! … Nononono, sorry, don’t make them so expensive! C’mon, don’t you wanna fly someday too? Truce?”