Dr Krill dropped his hands standing over where the prodigum lay sprawled on the floor twitching and writhing like the maggot it was. Ktill was very much done. He had been panicking and searching for the commander and Sunny for more than a week. More than a week of worrying and assuming that the worst might have happened. Luckily for everyone involved he had actually been close by when Sunny sent out her distress signal.

He had managed to follow them as far as the correct system with Conn's mind reading abilities.

But now he was done, he may not have intended it, but he had been captaining a human ship for a week. He tried not to think about how he had partially taken over form the lieutenant, but that was all in the past now.

He could be done with commanding and field work. Krill hated field work, he hated action, and he most certainly hated how much the commander dragged him into this mess.

He turned around watching as the rest of the room was subdued.

"Get a GA cleanup team out her I have a feeling this cleanup is going to be bigger than we intended." The little doctor announced." Cannon raised his brightly colored head and went to work as krill had commanded hauling prone bodies from the floor and passing them off to the marines who escorted them over to the far wall.

The massive prodigum stirred, but Krill was having none of that and pressed his button again.

The large ugly mound twitched and writhed.

Overhead he heard cheering, and turned to see the commander's hands sticking through the bars of his cage, "Straight savage dr. Great work! Now can you get me down? Can you get us down."

Krill turned his head surprised to find other humans peering out from their cages with expressions of great relief. They looked sickly,emaciated, and certainly undernourished. With that in mind, he gave the go ahead to one of the others to start lowering the cages. The captain came first while the others followed.

Dr. Katie turned to her other two patients while krill walked over to the captain's cage. He glowered at him.

"You gonna get me out of here or what?"
"Or what." Krill snarled, crossing his arms, "Do you know I have been keeping a tally of all the times you have been captured kidnapped or otherwise used against your will."

The commander went to open his mouth but Krill shushed him, "There was that time in a rundi prison, there was that fiasco with general cosma, there was that time in the Turma Prison, there was that time with the starborn, there was that tie with the Kong, there was that time you were almost court martialed, quarantined on the Gromm homeworld. Honestly commander, I am sick-of-your-shit!"

The man still looked bemused, "Got out of all of those, didn't I."

"And one of these days you might not." Krill snarled as the door was open and the commander stepped out. He looked fine all things be told though his cheeks were slightly sunken and there were signs of some serious dehydration. Off to the side of the room, Dr. Katie was busy working on the other patients.

"Get me some water and IVs for the two over there. Get tem a little something to eat too but not too much I dont want any sort of re-feeding issue." He turned back to look at the commander staring him in the eye while he continued to give orders, "Someone bring me my medical bag."

Maverick made her way from the other side of the room to hand him his kit and he thanked her, waving her off to go do other things as he had the commander sit down. Looking him over he appeared fine though he had a healing head wound and some greenish yellow bruising on his face.

Other than being a little hungry he didn't have any complaints to make.

THe conditions of the cage were not particularly sanitary, so kirill was pretty worried about that. The reddish contact rash on his legs and upper back proved that his body tended to agree with krill. He was honestly very glad he didn't have any sort of sense of smell.

"Lift up your shirt."

The man seemed a bit confused but did as told.

Krill reached into his bag and came out with a medium sized silver device with a trigger and spring attached to a long metal cylinder. He opened up the cartridge at the back and loaded his pre made cylinder. The captain watched him with some interest, "This some kind of tetanus shot or something?"

"No." Krill said bringing the device up and pressing it against the man's side just over the rib-cage.

"Than what-"

He depressed the trigger.

The man flinched violently yelped and staggered backwards as a sharp snap filled the room.

"Mother fuck! What the hell!"
The human turned to look at Krill who was already waiting with a bandage.

"Krill what the hell." He growled through gritted teeth leaning over and holding his side, "That hurt like a son of a bitch, what even was that?"

"It is a tracking device." krill announced with no shame what so ever.

"You just lowjacked me!"

Commander Vir looked incredulous for someone who knew krill well enough to totally be able to guess that this was going to happen.

"Of course I did! Every other day you are getting kidnapped by someone new, and now." He smiled to himself, "I have just fitted you with the universe's best tracking module. It is impossible to get rid of, unless someone wants to remove your rib cage that is."

"You seriously just lowjacked me!"

"Why does this surprise you?"

"You just saughtered a tracking device to my rib-cage!"

"I am known to be over dramatic, and over excessive, your point is."

The door at the far end of the room slid open, and Sunny and Ramirez came running into the room.

The commander was about to greet them when they pulled to a stop both panting, wide eyed and wild.

"Sir, sir you have to come see this. I... it's urgent."

Looking a little confused, both the commander and the Vrul followed, unwilling to let the human alone just yet.

Commander Vir motioned Cannon and a few others to follow with a finger, and the group of them moved out into the hall.

"We had a team doing a search of the premises." Ramriez began

"And we found something." Sunny finished

"Well don't leave me suspended in curiosity. What did you find!"

"Just down here, sir."

They turned the corner just then and stepped down onto a set of stairs leading down into the darkness. The stairs were wide but strangely short, probably for the use of the prodigum. Everything around was oddly dark though he could hear the sound of pulsing and throbbing generators.

They stepped down another group of stairs to where a crew member was waiting for them. His face was pallid and drawn, his eyes wide with the realization of what he had just seen.

Krill was worried.

He didn't like it when humans looked like that.

It generally meant that something was wrong.

The doors before them opened as the Commander stepped up, and they stepped inside.

What they found was an absolutely massive warehouse. At first–because it was the prodigum– he assumed they were going to find racks and racks of bodies decomposing for the prodigum to feed upon, but what they found.... Well it was much much worse.

This warehouse was at least a human football field in size, and down it's length there were ten rows of massive glass tubes one after the other. Wires dangled from equipment and piping protruded from the ceiling. Blue green fluid glowed in each tank which bubbled and churned.

Lights blinked from control panels.

A group of aliens were being held against one wall on their knees hands up inside their protective gear.

"Mo-ther-fuck!' The Commander said quietly

Krill dropped his medical bag to the floor.

Together they ventured forward coming up to the closest glass tube where the thing squirmed and curled inside.

"What the hell is that?"

Krill had no idea, and he was a doctor. At first he might have assumed that this was one of the prodigum's offspring with all its floppy folds and its too long arms, but the more he looked the more he saw and the more he didn't like. It had hair where the prodigum usually had tentacles, and fingers where it had had spikes.

When it whirled and turned Krill stepped back in horror as one distinctly human eye rolled back and forth in a lumpy socket.

The commander had a hand over his mouth, "the horror in his eyes was unparalleled by anything krill had ever seen.

"What the hell!"

They turned together on the spot staring down the row of glass tubes.

Just next to them, the pulsing embryos twitched and churned.

At the doorway someone gasped. Another turned from the room hands over their mouths.

Commander Vir turned his head in a slow circle eyes coming to rest on the far wall where a tarp had been thrown hastily over another line either of tubes or something else.

He slowly approached and krill went with him.

Sunny was at their backs.

Ramirez was looking away

They could hear sounds now, tortured gurgling noises. The Commander's face was screwed up in disgust as he reached out a hand and tugged on the tarp.

It fell away with a flourish.

Maverick cursed violently.

Ramirez turned all the way away hands covering his mouth

Sunny froze in her spot.

Krill was speechless

And inside the commander's head he was sure he had seen an error 404 before his entire body rebelled.

The thing began to squall and cry, its tortured gasping filling the air with gurgels, similar to human but warped by the prodigum breathing tubes on the side of its flabby neck. They opened and closed with a sort of wet squelching as the thing screamed. A pile of flesh, just folds and folds with the occasional hair sprouting from unknown locations.

It was monstrous

Hideous

An absolute abomination.

And the only thing that kept it alive was the machine strapped to it.

Kril watched the Commander's face go red, and then green and then white. He looked as if he was going to throw up as the thing screamed even louder.

When it was too much for any of them the commander reached through the bars with a shaking hand and ripped the machine's plug from the wall.

What the commander did was a mercy.

He would later feel guilty about what he did, but what he couldn't have known is the pain that poor wretched monster had been in, how its mind could not think only consumed by pain it could not stop and thirst it could not quench.

It died gasping and gurgling.

But at least now it was at peace.

The commander staggered away from the wall gasping. His eyes welled with tears as he stared at his hands. But no one questioned his actions.

"What the hell> 'Someone whispered

"Hybrids." Krill muttered

They are making

Hybrids.