First draft
Mild sexual content
Dia woke startled, feeling a sharp pain in the back of her head. She groaned, sitting on the bed with her hands in her hair. She started rubbing her temples, and only when her headache had abated a little, she risked opening her eyes. Her vision was blurred, her surroundings hazy like the room was covered in a layer of fog, but one thing was certain...
This is not my bed.
It was at least three times wider than her bunk, and the sheets weren't coarse but smooth as silk. Besides, the smell lingering in the room was strangely familiar. Tobacco and...old books? Reyes' quarters?
She tried to remember what had happened last night, but her memories were fragmented.
After I left the sickbay, I went back to my room, swallowed a bunch of sleeping pills and then...then...
Nothing. She couldn't remember anything else. She was still trying to make sense of the situation when she heard the sound of footsteps.
"You woke up." Someone said.
Dia squinted her eyes. It sounded like Reyes, but the shape of the man before her was vague, "Reyes? Why am I here?" Maybe it was because of the pills, but her voice sounded high-pitched, oddly immature.
"Where else should you be?" He teased her, putting his palms on the bed as he inched forward.
"What are you..." She started saying something but froze.
The man before her wasn't the handsome pirate, the Umbra second in command, but pretty Reyes, the man who worked as an instructor at the imperial academy. Her first love. He looked angelic, his face a work of art, but the glint in his eyes was anything but harmless. Dia was still distracted, looking at him with her mouth wide open when Reyes slipped his hand under her shirt.
"What are you doing?! Stop!" She ordered.
Reyes threw his head back to look at her, "Playing hard to get, Squirrel? Why?" He looked nonplussed, "This is what you were waiting for."
A tinge of red passed over her face, her shame fueling her rage, "Stop speaking nonsense and answer my question. What am I doing here?" She demanded.
Apparently, however, Reyes was following his own script and completely ignored her question.
"Admit it, you want this." He said as he wrapped his arms around her waist, "Every single night when you were alone in your room, you wished me to..."
"I'm not that girl anymore!" She hissed, struggling to get free but Reyes didn't even budge. She felt weak, her whole body going limp as her desire flickered to life.
"No?" He grinned, nibbling on her earlobe, "Who are you then?"
"Someone who will kick your ass!" She tried putting all her strength in her arms, but she only managed to push him back a little.
Why am I so weak?
"That's cold." Reyes said, but he was smirking, "You forget what I have done for you?"
She pressed her lips together, "I don't remember anymore."
Reyes stilled, his smile fading a little, "Oh, but I do. I remember how I killed them that night, and I remember what we did after that." He leaned down, brushing his mouth against the hollow of her temple.
Dia grabbed his arm when he touched her calves, but she was still panting, her strength drained by her earlier effort.
"My hands were still stained with that boy's blood when you gave yourself to me." He said, his lips tracing the curve of her cheekbone, "You didn't care. You would have done anything for me, the hero who saved you."
"You're no hero." She protested, but her voice was growing weaker. She sounded young, powerless and pathetic — the girl she was when she'd first met him.
"No, I am not. I never was." He sounded unusually serious, but his hands didn't stop moving, his fingers working their way up past her knee to her tights, "Does it matter?"
Apparently not, according to her body. She arched her back, her lips parting when he neared the border of her panties. Reyes seized the opportunity to claim her lips, invading her mouth as if it was rightfully his. The kiss didn't last long, but it was intense, and when it was over, they were both panting.
He grinned at her, "God, I love your tongue piercing."
"The piercing...or the tracker the Umbra put in it?" She sarcastically remarked, but she was out of breath, heat staining her cheeks.
"Both." He answered without an ounce of shame, "I just like to keep track of you."
"Controlling basta..." She was trying to say when Reyes caught her mouth again.
Dia stifled a moan, her hands gripping the sheets when he pushed her down. She was about to close her eyes, let herself go, when she was someone standing in the dark.
She paled, "O-Omen?"
Dia attempted to push Reyes away and succeeded this time. No, he clearly let her go, but Dia was too busy to notice it at the moment.
"W-what..." She swallowed, "What are you doing here?" She asked, but Omen just stood there, his arms crossed as he stared at them.
Reyes chuckled, "It seems pretty obvious to me. He is watching the show."
A flush crept up her face, "It's not like you think...I..." Her voice faltered when Reyes started kissing her neck. He was behind her now, "Reyes...stop! I'm trying to talk..."
"I don't think he is in a talking mood." Reyes grinned, dragging her into his lap, "But what do you expect? No one likes to be called a monster, especially from the girl you like."
Dia tensed, "Wait...how do you know that?"
Sarah turned off the cameras. I'm sure of it. So how did he...
"You know, Squirrel" Reyes whispered in her ear, "Now's not the time to get distracted."
That's when she heard a tearing sound. Dia turned her head and saw that Omen was standing before her, which was impossible considering he was on the other side of the room seconds ago. He ripped her shirt open while "his good buddy" Reyes, finished the job and unlooked her bra.
"Reyes, don't..." Dia tried covering herself, but Reyes locked her arms behind her back before shutting her up with a kiss.
"I did tell you, corporal." Omen cupped her breasts, his hot breath sliding over her bare skin, "You can't trust him."
Warm spread through her when he leaned down and caught one of her nipples in his teeth. She was sandwiched between their bodies, completely lost in pleasure, when she felt a sharp pain at the base of her neck. Her body moved on its own, her elbow connecting with Reyes' chin as she tried to get away, falling on the floor in the process.
"What the fuck, Reyes!" She touched her neck and gasped, "Did you just...bite me?"
When neither of them answered, Dia glanced up. Then she stiffened, fear replacing her irritation. Their faces were twisted beyond recognition, disfigured copies lacking any semblance of humanity.
"No...no..." She shook her head repeatedly when she saw Reyes licking the blood off his lips. Her blood.
She dragged herself backward, but Reyes and Omen stalked her, moving at the same time, coordinated as a feral pack. Her survival instinct kicked in when she saw that they were trying to encircle her. She jumped to her feet and started backing toward the door. She was just a few meters away when Omen suddenly shrieked, drawing her attention. Dia's head jerked toward him, and Reyes took advantage of the distraction to pounce on her. That was their plan anyway, but Dia was ready. Reyes was about to bite her when she kicked him in the chest, pushing him back. Then she broke into a run. Omen chased after her, but she was faster and reached the door before him.
"Help me!" She screamed, darting through the ship's hallway.
When the doors opened, one after the other, Dia slowed down, relief suffusing her features, but then she saw what was coming out of those rooms, pouring into the hallway like a screaming horde, and her relief turned to dread.
Mitchell, Willis, Rodriguez, even Reyes' men---everyone had been turned. Dia's heart was thumping as she raced across the hallway, slaloming between bloodthirsty junkies as she nudged, kicked and even headbutted them. She left the hallway and was halfway across the bridge when one of them finally managed to catch hold of her arm. It was a girl, and not just any girl but Selene, her facsimile. Dia watched in horror as the expressionless maid turned into a snarling beast. There was nothing more disturbing than seeing someone that looked exactly like her, biting her arm. The shock muddled her thoughts for a moment, but the pain brought her back to reality. She executed a knife hand strike on the maid's temple and winced when Selene staggered backward, taking a chunk out of her arm, but she didn't stop.
Selene is on the planet! She can't be here!
She was out of place almost as much as the gloomy figure towering over the rest of the crowd.
"This is your fault." The Umbra pointed a mechanical finger at her, while the rest of the horde rushed inside the bridge and went past him as if he was an island in the middle of the ocean, "You had one job to do, and you failed."
Dia kept retreating when the junkies stormed toward her, but there was just the wall behind her. She had nowhere to go.
"This is just a dream. Just a dream..." She kept repeating herself, but when one of them charged at her, his claws grazing her shoulder, the pain felt real.
They were about to overwhelm her when the Umbra said, "There is always a solution...if you possess the necessary resolve."
He pointed a gun at her, which for some reason was the same cannon Gibson had used before, and opened fire. Dia closed her eyes while she waited, maybe even hoped for this to end, but she only felt a huge amount of heat brushing against her skin before going past her. She heard a boom when the energy blast hit the window behind her, and everyone, her included, was sucked out into space.
"Remember this lesson, miss Zephyr. Sacrifices must be made." The Umbra's scathing voice was so loud that even when the Nostromus became just a small dot, Dia could still hear him, "Every victory is built upon piles of bones."
When his voice faded, the pain hit her without warning. Her body inflated and she started freezing, but the cold was nothing compared to what was happening to her lungs. She was about to lose consciousness when the pain disappeared. She didn't know what happened afterward. When she opened her eyes again, she wasn't drifting in space anymore, but lying...somewhere. The place was weird; it could have seemed like a glacier, maybe an underground cave, but to her, it looked like a crystal cage. She was a prisoner here, unable to move, but at the same time, she felt oddly comfortable as the ice encompassed her in its cold embrace. She could lie back, let everything go and sleep. A pleasant numbness was spreading through her body when she felt something: a sting like a small puncture. It was painful but still bearable. Then, however, she felt another and another. It was like hundreds, maybe thousands of bees were attacking her, draining her blood bit by bit like leeches. The pain soon became too much for her to bear. She wanted it to stop, to end that endless torment, even at the cost of her own life. She was about to go insane when she heard a scream.
"Freeeee...meeeee"
The sound was distorted, but it sounded a lot like the monster she'd met in that mine, the Shinigami. The voice held the same anger, the same arrogance, and desperation. It was similar but not quite the same as if it belonged to a different individual of the same species. It was only when that bestial shriek became more clear that Dia understood how wrong she was. That wasn't the Shinigami's voice, but her own.