Hera the ninth planet in our solar system was the last to be discovered and found about a century ago by the Proto-Artesians. It had an unusual orbit that would randomly dip close to Neptune then veer off. The planet was found by accident and initially one of its moons Tiersias was the first planetary body to be discovered and it too had an unusual orbit that brought it several hundred thousand miles near Hera and at other times stretched over a hundred million miles away. This made the moon the perfect home for a secret military base.
There were no existing installations from before the end times and it was assume that either they never discovered Hera or for reasons unknown they chose not to colonize. The irony, although astronomers have theorized the existence of a ninth planet, none could prove it existed, but many had given it a name and one of them was fittingly Hera.
Before relocating to Tiersias, the Proto-Artesians conducted heinous experiments on Despina and used unwitting volunteers. Led by Dr. Maude Tilden, a rival of Dr. Hsiang when they both worked together on Despina, she performed unspeakable tests in attempting to create a viable human and brain worm hybrid. Her experiments involved implanting a brain worm symbiote into a human body. She succeeded, but at a terrible cost.
Most of the volunteers died soon after a symbiote was implanted and only through the sacrifice of her own daughter was she able to create a stable hybrid. A few others degenerated and began to feed on the hapless researchers and lab technicians, necessitating in calling in an elite unit of Proto-Artesian soldiers who lost half a division destroying the hybrids. The Proto-Artesian elite gloated at the death count confirming the destructive potential of the hybrids.
Dr. Tilden evacuated with her daughter, the only surviving hybrid and a few members of her research staff and relocated to Tiersias where she assumed command and worked to perfect the process. Sister marines proved the most viable candidates and a team of soldiers waited on Despina and were rewarded with the capture of Enya and the other sister marines.
Of the eleven captured, only four survived the gruesome experiments. They were inundated with the thoughts of billions of years of Alpha Centauri that had been feasted upon by the brain worms and some were reduced to a catatonic state. Enya was the only one who exhibited any capability to resist the brain worms and became a perfect hybrid.
Enya was trained by Dr. Tilden's daughter Madeline who instructed her on dream travel and together they began to raid and destroy several strongholds of the brain worms, including iG's homeworld. They were encouraging a detente and to strike a bargain with the brain worms and the Proto-Artesian elite. They almost succeeded, had Deacon and I not intervened.
I recognized almost immediately the silhouette in the recordings and it was Enya. I felt sick to my stomach realizing my poor sister had become a monster, as Deacon described what was done to the others including Dr. Tilden's own daughter. The brain worms were also aware and could not stop the hybrids who were able to hide their identities and move about freely. They were wrecking havoc on their dwindling food supplies and pushed them to threat of extinction from a projected billion years to only a few million years and at their pace, they could wipe out the brain worms.
They beseeched both of us help them and would agree to any terms. We pondered privately at the thought of allowing them to succeed as it would eliminate a serious threat, but we knew their real goal was to ensure only the Proto-Artesians had the power of a hybrid and would eventually turn around and unleash that destruction.
They would succeed in carving out an existence for only the Proto-Artesians and achieve a sort of transcendence even Zal could not have predicted. He quivered in his brain case whenever the hybrids were near and he had not felt such fear realizing the incredible potential of what he viewed as inferior and puny beings.
Maude gave a glance and a menacing smile when she chatted with Zal and pondered a loud if she could created a success chimera of all three. Zal decried it as an abomination and she conceded she could not anticipate the consequence of combining the three species. But the mere thought crossed her mind, terrified Zal who watched her many macabre experiments and her utter lack of remorse or care. She carved up live specimens without anesthesia as she felt it heightened her ability to make micro-adjustments when she could see them in pain.
The hybrids obeyed Maude without hesitation. Whenever they were not needed they remained in stasis, floating in a gel-like substance that sustained and rejuvenated their bodies. The hybrids could not survive for more than a few days outside of the gel vats as the brain worm symbiote progressively caused the human bodies to decay rapidly. It was a limitation of the transformation process and something Maude desperately wanted to correct to produce a truly terrifying new weapon.
They kept the stasis chambers a secret and limited the missions to no more than 24 hours at a time. Outside of a few senior researchers, few knew of this limitation and most were told the stasis gel was meant to sedate and numb the overwhelming urges of the brain worms to feed. This was only half-true.
Enya and Madeline did not sleep while in stasis and were awake and cognizant. Another side effect and they could only sleep when they dream travel. Eventually, their human brains will collapse into madness and Maude predicted it would be less than a year she would lose them both and raced to perfect her process. She learned of me from Enya and was dismayed when she was informed I was purportedly may have been killed while in Vega. Her interest then was drawn towards our half-sister Felicia and she made plans to send a team of Proto-Artesian soldiers to find her and bring her back to Tiersias.
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