Quickly grabbing the screaming amulet, the screaming stops the moment I touch it, although now it’s trembling constantly, and upon inspecting it, I notice that the red gem in the center has a black spot now, and it’s slowly growing. At the rate it’s going, I’ll have just about 20 minutes before it’s dyed entirely black, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but I think there might be something inside this particular Lab which is attempting a mental attack, and this amulet is trying to protect me, just like how the Rosarius protects from Physical attacks, this amulet protects from mental ones.

But in the end, that’s just a theory, and I have no proof of this either, just speculation, but it does give me an idea, one I’ll test out later, for the meantime, I’ll continue into this Lab, and see if I can figure out what’s doing this, and also, it would be nice to figure out why this Lab in particular has a lower gravity, if I had to guess it would be about 25%ish of Earths. Not to mention, this Lab is filled with a dark mist which I can’t see through, at least not very far, maybe a meter or so at most, it’s enough to navigate it, but I won’t be able to see what comes ahead.

After a minute or so of walking, I start to get suspicious, compared to the other Labs, this hallway is too long, not to mention how empty it is, and then I realize, the amulet, which has only trembled so far in the presence of teleportation, has been trembling nonstop ever since I entered, so perhaps I’m in some sort of looping hallway. To test this I quickly gash the wall, and start running down the hallway, and soon enough, I see the gash again, which means that this is indeed a looping hallway, but it also means that there’s something that’s worth protecting down here, to the point that they’d make both this hallway, and the automatic mental attack in order to ward off intruders.

Turning around it barely takes 10 seconds before I reach the entrance to the Anomalous Wing again, and considering I’ve been running down the opposite way for so long it doesn’t add up, unless somebody was teleporting me. Just to make sure, I teleport in a Ripper, planning on having it go down the hallway so I can figure out exactly where the teleportation is, but I had forgotten about the supposed mental attack that may or may not be happening, and the moment the Ripper entered the area, I could feel it trying to break my mind, it won’t be able to, but it might actually be able to do some damage if I leave it for long enough.

The amount of time it would take to do that though, is far longer than it would take to simply have the Ripper run until it gets teleported, so as I send the Ripper off, I stand at the edge of the mist and wait. I don’t have to wait very long, and a small portion of the mist starts to congregate as the Ripper gets closer to where I think the teleport location is, and a few moments later the mist dissipates quickly, and out comes the Ripper. With that little test done, I send the Ripper back over to the nest, and begin to think about different ways I might be able to bypass it, but thinking about it, a better question might be, where is this mist coming from, and can I turn it off?

As far as I remember, I didn’t see any vents within the hallway, so it’s possible that it may be coming from beyond the teleportation point, at which point there would have to be a way to bypass it. That reminds me actually, there was a creature I met just earlier that had this same ability, to teleport others, and looked remarkably like this mist, if just a more condensed form, perhaps this mist is actually the doing of that thing, if that’s true, then this mist might actually be a creature, and in that case, I can teleport it.

Now I have an idea, there happens to be a room with a void which seemingly destroys anything that enters it, and in front of me, I have a possibly teleportable mist. With a thought, I teleport two Warriors over, one to watch the entrance here, and another to go to the void, unfortunately, I can’t just use Rippers since they’ll extend out of my synaptic range, even more so since they’ll be teleported far away by going through the door.

I make sure to teleport the two of them outside the door, and in the anomalous Wing, just so that the mental defenses don’t try to attack them, I have one stand guard here, and the other start marching back towards the void. By this point the Amulet is over half black, although it is slowly returning to normal as long as I’m outside the other Lab, deciding that now is a good a time as any, I grasp the amulet firmly, and teleport one of the 17 divers souls that came with Sarah, right into my hands. Just like I thought, the amulet starts to consume it, and as for the gem in the center, it begins to change, the black disappears until it returns to the familiar red, until that too, gives way for a light blue, until the gem had changed completely, a light blue with specks of white, and as a test, I feed it another soul, and before long the gem is a pure white, and it releases the mostly consumed soul, which flows right back through me, where it returns to the Scorn.

By now the Warrior had reached the void, and as I walk back into the Lab to attempt to teleport the mist, I notice something, the newly recharged amulet is actually glowing, and repelling the mist, so it can’t form around me, and now it can’t teleport me back to the entrance, although now I can’t teleport it into the void. An unexpected outcome, but a much welcome one, and so, I teleport the two Warriors back to the nest, a bit of a waste of time, but what can you do, now that the amulet is repelling the mist, I can’t touch it in order to try and teleport it, so now I’ll just have to simply walk through normally.

Like I thought, because the mist can’t grab hold of me, and it tried, it can’t teleport me, so I walk right past the teleportation point, which now that I can see it better, albeit only a little, it’s actually a wall of the mist, concentrated at the teleport point, and continue into the lab. Like the entrance, the entire lab is filled with this mist, and it’s congregating around me, although not being able to reach me because of the amulet, hovering ~2 centimeters from my skin, being blocked by the glowing barrier the amulet is providing, and more or less completely blocking my vision, which is a pain to say the least.

Resorting to simply sticking near the wall, I glance at the amulet, it’s still trembling, although now it’s warm instead of cold, maybe a byproduct of consuming nearly two souls, who knows, for now though, I’m much more curious about this Lab, and the mist filling it. One thing of note, this Lab is structured like the others, but the inside, from the little I can see, is completely empty, the first room I went into, which was the special room, in the original it was the UMLR, in that other one it was the Undead Research, in this one, it’s completely empty, I had wandered around inside the room for a bit, but there were no tables, shelves, counters, nothing, as if everything inside had simply vanished.

As I’m wandering around inside the room, the Amulet goes from White to blue, and the barrier shrinks, becoming tighter around me, I quickly feed the amulet the rest of the soul from earlier, and it powers back up. At the same time, I’m alerted by a flash of light in front of me, the Rosarius’s conversion field was just struck, so there’s indeed something else in here, but since I’m basically blind, this makes it much more difficult, or it would be if I didn’t have a fairly large Psychic presence, which I can spread out around me, and sense my surroundings, and this creature.

Or I would, if this darned mist wasn’t so thick, and potent enough to block even that, the most I could do is momentarily push it back, but even then not very far, at most a single meter. Again, the conversion field is struck, and even though I attack back in the direction it came from, I miss, and a few moments later, it’s struck once more, the field waning under the force, this time I charge up a gauss blast in retaliation of when it strikes again, until finally, with one last strike, the field is shattered with a bright light, and my blast hits the attacker directly.

In that instant I manage to catch a glimpse of the attacker, a humanlike figure made of heavily condensed dark mist, with two barely visible white eyes, and a newly made gauss injury taking the place of its left arm, but before I can see more, it disappears off into the mist. Waiting with two charged gauss blasts, a minute goes by without any sign of it, I think I might have scared it off, and keeping them charged and my hands up, I slowly walk forwards deeper into the Lab, until I reach the main entrance, which is surprisingly, an airlock, although looking the status panel next to it, I understand why, “Moonbase Alpha 2”, I’m on the moon.

Which doesn’t bode well, but I do however, find several space suits, but what interests me the most, is an oxygen mask and a tank in case of emergencies, I can survive in low temp and low grav, even neither of each environment, but I still need to breathe, with this, I can solve that issue in an emergency, so I store it in the ring, just in case. Regardless, this isn’t what I’m looking for, so I turn back, slowly making my way down the hallway again, until I reach a room where the mist doesn’t reach, which wasn’t what I was looking for, but a welcome surprise. It appears to be the generator room, providing power for the base to still run after all this time, and looking about the room, and at various status panels and whatnot, I can figure out that this is a full scale fusion generator, and with the mode it’s in, and the fuel it has left, it could easily last another few hundred years, not terribly important right now though, what I want to know, is why this room is devoid of mist.

Searching around the room, at first, I don’t find anything, just the fusion generator, which is situated in the center of the room, and looks like a large steel pillar, and every 2 meters/ 6ish feet or so, it gets 50 cm/ 20 in smaller, before eventually reaching the roof 10 meters/ 2 feet up, and has 6 white glowing power lines coming down the generators sides, everywhere inside the room you can hear the powerful thrumming of the generator, actually, curiously enough, you can’t hear the generator outside the room, although that’s not magic or super science, it’s simply at just the right volume to end up like that.

That might actually be it, the sound, as weird as it seems, that’s the only thing that proliferates the room, and differentiates it from the rest of the building, so with that in mind, I exit back into the mist, going over to the airlock, before putting on the oxygen mask and kicking it open, the moment I have a visual of the outside I teleport out, a good distance away, and watch as the Lab explosively depressurizes, I’m not worried about it somehow affecting the Anomalous Wing, there seems to be some barrier in place which stops the mist, so it should hold atmo inside.

The Pressure on the moon is roughly half that of the planets, which is impressive for a moon, and the Atmosphere isn’t pure Hydrogen, it’s about a 60/30 ratio with Co2, the other ten is a mixture of Nitrogen, Argon, and very little oxygen, a 6/3/1 respectively, honestly, if all the hydrogen suddenly disappeared, it would be a perfectly normal moon, the hydrogen is the weird part. That aside, it looks like my plan worked, somewhat, and the mist is now outside, and presumably so is the creature, or it’s dying inside somehow, but now it’s time for stage two.

Stage two consists of teleporting Nacht over here, oh, and fun fact, Nacht has a separate airtight atmosphere which can be enabled in an emergency, it’s made for toxic gasses, but it should work fine in an oxygenless, low atmo environment, anyway, I quickly board Nacht, placing the Lensers in the helmets and taking control, I make sure to turn on the airtight environment, and checking the sensors, it works, and I store the oxygen mask again, looking out I can see the mist quickly coming towards the mech now, and it’ll surround it in moments, but now it’s time for the actual reason I did this.

Going into the settings of the energy core, I initiate overdrive, which will use several times the fuel, and produce several times the power, it’s also the only way to use the inbuilt small area Hyperspectral Imaging Ladar Array, or HILA for short, which will build a fully accurate map of the surrounding mile of sight range, down to the millimeter, as you might guess, this is incredibly power intensive, but in exchange, I have a near perfect map of everything within a mile radius of me, including everything within the mist, the mist itself, and more importantly, the exact location of the creature, normally, this would cause an overheating problem within minutes, but I have a neat little ability to take care of that, so for now, I can do whatever I want.

As a side effect of overclocking the core, it also generates a lot of noise, and I can quite literally see the sound waves push the mist away; the HILA suite on this thing is incredible, anyway, I have a 50. Cal anti material autocannon, and a very clear view of my target, you know what that means? Time to open fire.

Aiming the autocannon, I start firing, and with a loud booming, bullets start flying towards the creature, and to my disappointment, it starts to teleport around inside the mist, dodging my shots, that does not however, mean I’m going to stop, eventually, one of these are going to hit, and I’m not stopping till then.

As the creature gets closer to me, teleporting only via short distances, which I think is its limit, I teleport Nacht further away, and force it to follow as I unload dozens of rounds, yet somehow, it manages to teleport away before they can hit each and every time, which is only slightly annoying. As we share this teleportation dance, 20 minutes go by, and so do 4800 rounds, and 2% of the core fuel, and yet, this entire time, not a single round has hit it, I wonder if doing this is even worth it, by this point, we’re well over 40 miles from where we started, and that’s when something catches my eye on the HILA, and makes me seriously consider just teleporting back to the planet below, Harkhethes, slowly marching towards us.

Now isn’t that a surprise, I teleported him onto the moon, and somehow managed to teleport him in just the right place to nearly run into him again, that’s just great. Now I have to deal with this teleporting thing, and him, unless I can somehow convince him that this thing hijacked my teleportation, and dumped us on different parts of this moon, that might just work.

He’s still a mile out, but that’s nothing in the face of instantaneous transmission, also known as teleportation, otherwise known as I am now next to a, likely upset, Lychguard, in a large mech, “Harkhethes, I’m glad you’re alright, this creature I’m fighting seems to be able to interfere with teleportation, and hijacked my teleport, dumping us on different sides of this moon.”

The sudden sound of my voice transmitted over the speakers clearly startles him, as he jumps back a good distance, no doubt helped by the low gravity of the moon, “Tyraniquor, is that you inside the machine? What creature might you be referring to?”

Turning back towards the approaching mist cloud, I begin opening fire again, “The mist cloud, it’s actually an extension of some sort of entity which can teleport freely within it, and apparently has the ability to hijack teleportation, I’ve been fighting it for the past while, but its nature, combined with its mist, makes it near impossible to see with the naked eye, as well as being able to teleport anything that comes in contact with the mist, so I was forced to use this machine and it’s sensor suite and protective field to fight it, instead of my normal weaponry.”

Turning back towards the rapidly approaching mist cloud, Harkhethes stares at it momentarily, “I see, and this creature has the natural ability to teleport?”

“From what I can tell, a lot of things within this universe operate quite strangely, from mysterious powers indistinguishable from magic, to monsters that are created from thin air, the laws of this reality differ vastly from ours.”

Walking over near my mech, Harkhethes stands right under it, “Allow me to assist you, as long as I'm within this ‘protective field’ of your machine, I shouldn’t be teleported, no? In which case I should be able to assist you with killing this creature.”

Thankfully, this guy is incredibly gullible, next time I’ll get rid of him properly, but that’s for later, “Your assistance would be much appreciated, get ready, it will arrive momentarily.”

He responds with a simple nod, and gets into his traditional fighting stance, prepared to take the creature head on, and he doesn’t have to wait very long, as the mist quickly surrounds us, the only thing visible being the sphere of dark mist we’re within, and only hearing the thrum of Nacht’s core, at least to Hark, I can see the creature perfectly fine, “Harkhethes, it’s circling around to attack you from behind!”

Instead of receiving a response, Hark simply turns, and upon seeing the one armed creature launching towards him, he effortlessly dodges the strike and pierces his hand through its chest, killing it, as it dissolves into mist, and the mist around us starts to dissipate. Well, that was remarkably easy once I got help, now I just need to take care of Hark. Turning off overclocking, the HILA suite turns off, and I check the ammo counter, an even 9000/14000, neato.

Stepping back, I turn to face Hark, “Well, apologies for last time, but-”

Before I can finish, or even start really, Hark interrupts me, “That’s enough, you… you’re no Necron, I might be dense, or slow, but even so, I’m not stupid, I thought it was strange that you had flesh, I might have believed it was synthetic flesh momentarily, but I’ve had plenty of time to think it through, even if it was truly synthetic flesh, no Necron is built as you are, and no Necron would build themselves as you either, so I ask, what are you.”

Oh, well, guess that play is over now, but I have a back up, teleporting a ripper into the cockpit, just so I can teleport back in, I equip the oxygen mask and teleport outside, coming face to face with Hark, “I guess the jig is up, yeah you’re right, I’m not a Necron, I’m a hybrid, a chimera of sorts, a mixture of several different races and creatures, from several different bases, a Necron skeleton, Tyranid flesh, a Human mind, and an artificial soul, and most of all, the ability to steal souls, and to grant them to others.” That’s partially a lie, however, there’s something I want to test.

At that, his eyes widen, well, as much as they can, “An artificial soul? Along with the ability to grant ones to others you say?”

“Yeah, as well as the ability to steal the soul of those that die nearby, and as for granting them, it’s more like putting a soul back, as long as something dies nearby me, I can take their soul, then do with it as I please, whatever that may be, but as far as I know, if something does not have a soul, I cannot simply grant it one, but I haven’t tried it before.” Thinking about it, I did just take that soul from the creature, I might be able to put it to use.

“I see, so it’s the manipulation of souls, not truly granting them.” Hark looks away, staring off into the distance, towards where I had come from.

“Maybe so, but I might have a way around that.” Teleporting on top of Nacht, I look into the Scorn mentally, and pick out the soul of the creature I had just killed with Hark’s help, from there, I pull it into the manipulation area, and proceed to remove its memories, then prepare its emotions, before creating new memories, then I implant a deep loyalty to me, and finally give it a single command to follow once it wakes up, editing a soul like this within the Scorn is a lot like editing a program, as long as you can read it, and know what does what, and how to change it, you can do whatever you like with it.

Hark watches as I take out the newly remade soul, he obviously can’t see the soul, but he can tell I'm doing something. With the soul in hand, I gently push it into Nacht, guiding it with my psychic power until it reaches the AI core, and watch with glee as it performs the command I engraved into it, and latches on. A moment later I teleport off of Nacht, next to Hark, mentally shutting it down and restarting it, then as it wakes up, I feel something new enter the Hivemind network as it turns to me, and speaks in a young sounding feminine voice, “Mother-Creator, I have awoken!”

“Nacht, good to see that actually worked! You have the memories of the time I’ve spent with you, right?” Hark looks over in shock as I bounce on my heels, I just modified a soul, completely creating a new one, and granting a machine a soul.

Nacht does the mech equivalent of a nod, “Yes Mother-Creator, I remember everything, from the moment you saved me from the rampant virus, until the moment you granted me life.”

This is incredible, with this, I can actually put the souls to use, and possibly actually grant one to Hark, I suppose now I don’t need the Lensors inside, and using the Ripper I left in there, I teleport all three of them back to the nest, with the Lensors going into the Reclamation pool, and the Ripper going back into standby.

Hark stares at Nacht, before turning to me, “You… you just granted a soulless machine a soul, you’ve done what we’ve been trying to undo for millions of years, in a matter of moments, just how did you do it?”

Thinking for a moment, I can only say one thing, “I guess I’m just built different.”

For a moment, I can see Hark drop his overbearing facade, “Eh?”

“Of course, it’s Mother-Creator, she can do anything she puts her mind to!” Ah wait, I’ve just realized, but since Nacht is calling me Mother-Creator, that means she’s technically Carol’s younger sister, that’ll be fun to explain.

Sighing, I begin to explain, “Let me rephrase, as an organic being, one which has the ability to steal and store souls in an inactive state, I can reprogram them like a computer, which allows me to give it commands, modify memories, etc. Theoretically, I should be able to do the same to you if you’d like.”

Hark takes a little bit to respond, but does so hesitantly, “So, what you’re saying is, you could give me back my soul.”

“No, I can’t give you your soul, I can give you a soul, which will remodel itself automatically using your memories, and become your soul, it might hurt, it might kill you, you might go mad, I don’t know, but using Nacht as an example, you should be fine, but I won’t force you, it’s up to you.”

Quickly going into the Scorn, I pick out one of the souls, wipe it of memories, make sure to edit the morals a bit so he comes over to my side, and do the same reprogramming I did to Nacht, before taking it into my hand, and holding it out. “If you want a soul, just take my hand, it’s as simple as that.”

The evening light reflecting off of the dirty red ground paints everything in a red glow, “Come on, take my hand, you won’t regret it, the goals of your entire race, undoing the transference, gaining a soul again, you can have it all, you can go back, all you have to do, is take. My. Hand.”

Hark looks at me, I can see the doubt and fear in his eyes, he looks over at Nacht, before doing the Necron equivalent of a nervous swallow, and grabs my hand. I can see the soul crawling through him, before reaching his memory banks, and it attaches to him, then suddenly, he collapses, from what I can tell, he’s simply not used to having the “weight” of a soul again, and should wake up soon, the same thing happened to Nacht, I just did it for her.

Now, we wait…

In the meantime, Nacht teleports back to the nest on her own, since she’s part of the network, she can also use my abilities, speaking of, there’s something I need to do. Taking the rest of the souls I perform the exact same procedure on all of them, wipe the memories, prepare the emotions, insert loyalty, and then finally, I insert a soul inside each of the Tyranids, and soon hear them respond. “Mother-Creator” 

Now, each of the Tyranids under my control, except the Scorn, have full agency, awareness, and control, I no longer need to perform each of their actions, but I still could, while we are all our own creatures now, our souls are linked, and allow us to move between bodies at will, and even if we die, our souls will retreat to the Scorn, and be ready for use again.

As a side effect of this, there are now 9 more psychic minds within the network, and every Tyranid is a synapse creature now, since they now all have proper souls, and with the psychic mind skill, are all psychic capable, truly a marvel.

Grabbing Hark, I teleport us to the nest, and drop him off in the middle of it, and a few minutes later, he begins to stir.

“Hark, I’m glad to see you’re up, how are you feeling?”

Hark doesn’t respond at first, taking in his surroundings, before looking at me, oh no, please for the love of the Overmind do NOT call me Mother-Creator. “Madam, I see what you are now, what we are, it’s beautiful isn’t it?”

Moments later, I feel him too, connect to the network, and become a Necron with a Tyranid soul, he’s still Hark, he has Harks memories, it’s just that his morals and his values now align a bit more with ours, and he has a connection to the hivemind. “I suppose, so, what will you do now? I won’t stop you from leaving, nor will I ask you to stay, and if you still wish to return to the Necrons, I’ll remove the little additions to your soul I added, and I’ll set you free, so I ask once more, what now?”

He looks around, staring at the Tyranids in the room, before finally landing his eyes on Nacht, “I think I’ll stay, it’s… comfortable, being in here.”

Smiling, I close my eyes and nod, “Alright, I think that can be arranged.”

Moments later, not even being able to savor the moment, I suddenly notice Carol teleport into the room, and run over to me, grabbing my shoulders and shouting, “MOM, WHAT’S THIS ABOUT ME HAVING A SISTER?!?”

I look at Carol, who seems both excited, and incredibly confused, and I point over at Nacht, who is attempting to hide, but can’t because she’s a mech.

Letting go of me, she walks over to Nacht, “So you were the one who suddenly called me big sister. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting you to be a mech, but I guess that’s okay, I did always want a sister growing up.” she looks at Nacht, slowly nodding to herself.

Bursting out laughing, I look over at Carol, “Wait till you hear about your 9 other siblings.”

“My what?!” Looking around the room, Hark nervously waves, and points at the group of Tyranids standing in the corner, by the reclamation pool and entrance into the room with the Scorn.

“They… They’re so cute!” Ah, I should have expected that, oh well, running over she picks up a Ripper, who actually squeals in delight, although the squeal is more like a blood curdling growl, we can tell the difference.

“What a handful, oh, by the way, that’s Hark, think of him like a butler or something, maybe a royal guard or a special ops might be more appropriate.” she waves off Hark, and continues to play with the Tyranids, normally they’d just ignore her, but since they now have souls, they’re actually interacting with her, and talking with her.

Before I do something else though, I have one final thing to do, and I walk over to Nacht, walking around her, I quickly find a maintenance panel, and take it off, exposing the insides of the mech, which I proceed to vomit neural tissue into. Now, I have a reason for doing this, and 10 biomass later, Nacht is completely integrated into the network, not just through her soul, but through the neurological tissue that’s now within the mech as well, and that means she can actually leave the Mech.

Alright, mission complete, Hark is captured, willingly, Carol is a big sister to ten, and my Tyranids are now a big happy, organic murder machine family, it couldn’t get better.