When Sarah awoke, something felt off. Her entire body had a dull ache similar to muscle pains, but it permeated even her inner organs. She tried to stand up, and instantly regretted it, as her limbs had fallen asleep.

Tired, in pain, and suffering from pinpricks along her arms and legs, Sarah was unable to pull herself together for an unidentifiable period of time.

She must’ve unconsciously let out some embarrassing sounds, as the she-organism and bulky organism were staring at her intensely.

“Hi,” Sarah said.

“Hello,” the bulky organism replied.

While Sarah didn’t want to make them faint again, she really needed information, and hopefully the bulky organism would have a tougher mentality. Therefore, she asked, “Can you give me information? My memory has been wiped, and yours will too.”

“What!?” they replied, but this time none of them collapsed form the shock.

“We don’t have much time! Quickly, tell me everything, so I can repeat it back to you once you lose your memories.”

Luckily, they felt the urgency in her voice, and started to talk to her. It was slow at first, because they didn’t seem to realize what ‘My memory has been wiped’ meant, but eventually Sarah learned of terms like Earth and America and Humans.

It turned out that Sarah had a lot of misconceptions in her head. Whoops.

While she tried to steer them to more general knowledge that would be helpful to her, the two were more interested in extolling their personal information. Sarah learned that the two were from a small town called Kerringville that happened to escape the brunt of something called ‘the invasion’.

The girl’s name was Emma, and the man’s name was Declan. She paid special attention to their names and family members, as Sarah knew how important those were to someone with memory loss.

The two zombies that came with them turned out to be their friends that were unlucky enough to wander into the expanding domain of The Colony while searching for food. They stepped on some green moss, which exploded into a cloud of spores, paralyzing and infecting their bodies. The zombies in the cave were alerted, and rushed off to capture the two, and Declan and Emma were captured later when searching for their friends.

Since Declan and Emma weren’t exposed to the spores, it seems they were saved from initial infection. Still, they wouldn’t be spared for long, so Sarah urged them to go even faster. Eventually, Declan and Emma admitted that the remaining information they had wasn’t crucial, and just in time. According to Sarah’s calculations, she still had thirty minutes until her rest time ended, but suddenly Sarah’s consciousness blanked out.

***

This ki is really amazing, H143 thought. It allowed the swarm to have an easier time molding the host’s body to its will. Soon, I’ll be done with that irritating personality remnant that calls itself Sarah.

With a brief manipulation of ki, H143 commanded the seven level one hosts to pin down the two humans.

“S-Sarah! What’s going on?” the man asked. Declan, H143 remembered, accessing recent memories acquired while The Colony decided not to spend resources converting Sarah into H143.

H143 pushed some more ki into the transmitters in her skull. The two hosts who were previously friends with the two humans left the cave, and came back inside carrying clumps of the holy essence of The Colony.

“Sarah! Please, save us!” This time, the girl called Emma shouted. H143 didn’t respond, of course. It would’ve been easy to knock the two out during the administration process, like The Colony did for Sarah, but The Colony had learned many things over its eons of infection.

One of which was that ki was much more effective on those who had lost hope.

H143 imitated Sarah as best as possible, and growled, “Who do you think you are? Why would I help you?” And then, Declan and Emma had their wrists slit by their previous friends, who promptly forced the green substance into their bloodstreams.

They immediately screamed in pain. Green light started to crawl up Emma’s arms through her veins. Declan, however, had his arms swell unnaturally large and red. Blood gushed out of his wrists, ejecting the green slime with it.

H143’s shivered, and with a wave of their hand the zombies pounced on him. Rejects have no place in The Colony.

H143 looked at Emma, and found her unconscious from the pain. The Infection spread throughout her body successfully, and momentarily later H3059 replaced Emma. H143 grinned at the new level two host. While level two hosts took significantly longer to mold to the colony’s will, the potential for ki abilities made it worth the effort.

***

This time, when Sarah woke up, she immediately knew something was wrong. There was a metallic scent in the air, that she recognized as the smell of blood from the small rodents that the zombies periodically slaughtered.

She looked up, and immediately gagged. In front of her was the ripped apart corpse of Declan. Or, at least, she assumed it was him, as the corpse was unrecognizable. The blood around the dazed zombies’ faces was enough to tell what happened.

Luckily, Emma was okay. She was smiling a bit weirdly, though.

“Are you feeling ok?”

“I’m doing excellent, H143.” Did I mishear that? Some of the confusion must’ve showed on her face, since Emma frowned.

“Oh. It’s you. I pity you for every moment you do not feel the embrace of The Colony,” she said. Sarah realized what was going on. It seemed eerily similar to the ‘I love working for the colony!’ mentality she always adopted the instant before losing consciousness.

“You’re no longer Emma,” Sarah croaked. As she had just regained control, she wasn’t able to speak very well. Still, she had enough muscle control to spit at not-Emma’s face.

Around a foot away from target, the saliva was pushed aside by a wave of translucent red that appeared for a split second. It was so quick that Sarah thought she might have hallucinated it- she had been infected with a murderous zombie mold for the past week, after all.

“Hmph. No point wasting resources,” not-Emma said, and suddenly she collapsed into a heap. Sarah eyed her warily. The body didn’t move, no matter how long she waited. Well, it’s back lifted up and down to the tune of unconscious breath, so at least it was alive.

After a moment, Sarah decided that it was worth it make her way over to Emma’s body. So, Sarah started to drag herself across the floor with her arms. She didn’t have control over her legs yet, but her core and hip muscles allowed her to guide her legs’ motion a little.

After a time period much larger than Sarah wanted to admit, she finally reached her target. She flipped over the body slowly, revealing Emma’s eyes darting around frantically. Relief flooded Sarah.

At least she’s not dead like those zombies, Sarah thought morbidly. Those zombies aren’t alive- it’s just the mold manipulating dead bodies. At least she told herself so. She didn’t want to think about humans being trapped behind the glassy eyeballs of the zombies- it wasn’t productive nor useful.

Now, it seemed like Emma was in the same situation as her: period brainwashing, and paralysis after work is done. Sarah wondered why she and Emma were put in this situation, when the mold proved easily capable enough of quickly converting Emma’s and Declan’s friends into full zombies.

“Emma, I need you to calm down.” Emma was still panicking, but seemed to be staring at Sarah now.

“My name is Sarah. Your name is Emma Blackwell. You knew you would lose your memories, and told me a lot about yourself, so I need you to listen. Look up and down if you understand.” Emma did a little eyeball nod.

“Great. So, you’re currently infected by The Colony, which is a mold-like monster that invaded the planet we’re on.” As Emma started to panic again, Sarah quickly added, “I’m in the same situation as you, and trust me, there’s hope. Calm down.”

Once she was calm again, Sarah continued.

***

“Besides The Colony and its zombie minions, there’s also the evil spirits and the goblins that invaded Earth, though I don’t know anything important about them.”

***

“And, you came here with friends. They’re either dead or zombies now, so I think it’s best if I don’t tell you about them.”

***

Eventually, after reminding Emma to keep trying to overcome the paralysis, there was nothing more to say. Sarah hoped she hadn’t forgotten anything, but she knew that the mold had been slowly erasing her personality.

After a short ten minutes of trying in vain to get her legs to move, she suddenly thought, “Why am I doing this? I should be working,” before she blacked out.

H143 immediately took her place. They were briefly curious about how H3059 had acted, but was unwilling to spend the required resources to scan more than a brief section of the host’s memories.

H143 left the cave; it was time to show that The Colony hadn’t made a mistake in making them.

***

The days passed excruciatingly slowly, and Sarah welcomed anything to break the monotony. Therefore, she welcomed the new injuries appearing on her limbs, although humans probably should be terrified at being wounded so.

It helped that her body seemed to have strong regeneration now, and her wounds scabbed over quickly.

The injuries came in the form of long gashes, mostly across her upper thighs and lower arms. She wondered what type of animal had long enough claws to do such a thing to her.

Sarah had the opportunity to find out sooner than she thought. While it took her longer to wake up each time H143 took control, H143 was also going farther away from the cave each time to do… whatever it was that kept getting her scratched.

So, since the walks back were longer, Sarah started to wake up while moving like the early days. The paralysis was much stronger while she was being forced to move, so it wasn’t like she could run away or anything, but it gave her valuable information. Admittedly, she also liked the break from boredom the walk gave.

Once, right after she woke up, she heard some soft cracking noises coming from her left. Whatever was making her walk forced her head to snap to the side, and she came face to face with a small green humanoid.

It had pointy ears, claw-like fingernails, and was naked. Sarah didn’t have any time to feel embarrassed at its lack of clothes, as the goblin smiled and lunged at her.

“Ragob!” it yelled in delight.

Her body moved instinctually, sidestepping the goblin’s outstretched arm, and chopping her hand against the base of its arm, action-movie style. It wouldn’t be effective as a martial arts technique, and so Sarah was surprised when her hand cut clean through the arm.

What just happened? How did I do that? Her brain raced.

The goblin’s smile instantly changed into a feral snarl, and it lunged at her again, as if it didn’t feel any pain. The creature used its small height to dive at her feet.

The mold in her head twitched, and this time she kicked at the goblin’s head. Sarah focused all her attention, and thought she felt something warm being pushed down her leg and out of her foot.

Then the instant was over, and the goblin was decapitated.