“It controls everything… knows everything.” Cookie gave a weak smile. “At least, it thinks it does… I been jammin’ the signal when I can. It’s not easy, but… I been tryin’ to do my part. Not always well, but… I tried. I really tried.” Cookie’s face fell. “I’m sorry, Major.”
“You got nothin’ to apologize for, soldier. You done good.” Karnage placed a reassuring hand on Cookie’s shoulder. “How do I kill this thing, Cookie? Tell me how to destroy it.”
“You can’t,” Cookie said. “You can’t destroy… energy, but you can disperse it… convert it to other forms…”
“Disperse it?” Karnage said. “You mean like with an explosion?”
“An explosion might do it,” Cookie said. “If it’s big enough.”
“How big?”
“Spragmos LV75 rocket… should do it,” Cookie said.
“You wouldn’t happen to have one of those lying around, would you?”
Cookie smiled. “Vel?”
Velasquez jerked a thumb to a darkened alcove. “Got everything you’ll need over here.”
Karnage looked down at Cookie. “You been plannin’ this a while, haven’t you?”
“I’m tryin’, Major… tryin’ to do everything I can. It’s so hard. It’s so…” Cookie closed his eyes. He opened them again in a few minutes. “You need to go, Major… need to hurry. The Intelligence… it’s dormant right now… lying in hibernation… inside the Nucleus… until a host can be prepared.”
“If it’s lyin’ dormant, then what’s runnin’ the invasion?”
“The Intelligence,” Cookie said. “It’s so smart it can do it in its sleep… doesn’t take any effort… like breathing. When it wakes… that’s why you have to hurry, Major… have to stop it before it finds a host…”
“What’s the host you keep talkin’ about?”
“It takes a new body whenever it arrives at a new world… always something local… easier to adjust… more adapted to our atmosphere…”
Another oscillation of green stabbed down into Cookie’s head. Cookie’s mouth opened in a silent scream. Karnage shouted up at the tube. “Quit fryin’ his brain, you squiggly bastards!”
The green dissipated, and Cookie lay silently frowning, his pupils fluttering back and forth beneath his shut eyelids. Finally, his eyes creaked open, and he licked his chapped lips. “…it adapts everything… takes bits and pieces of it all… creates something new… something that’ll accept both lifeforms… a middle ground…”
“A merger,” Karnage said with a scowl.
Cookie smiled. “Yeah… the squidbugs… they can’t survive outside for long… that’s why they smoke… acts like a filter… keeps our clean air out… for now… until they change… until they merge it all… until they merge us… until they merge themselves…”
“Why change themselves? Why not just change us to match them?”
“The Intelligence doesn’t care… does what it needs to do to keep going… to survive… the squidbugs… everything… they all change from world to world… Intelligence adjusts their forms… to make them ideal… incorporates whatever it finds… fits it all in… like me… like you… it wanted you, Major, for its host… it picked you… most suitable… right genetics… that’s why they wanted you for so long… why they hunted you… they were gonna change you… give you to the squidbugs… make you suitable for the Intelligence… but I stopped ’em, Major… I played a little… shell game… I made ’em think you weren’t right… weren’t suitable… I gave ’em someone else….” Cookie’s face fell. “I’m sorry, Major… I’m so sorry… if I had known, I wouldn’t have… how could I know?”
“What Cookie? What didn’t you know?”
“You’d been captured… they were going to… I had to misdirect them… there was no time… I made a choice… I didn’t know who she was, Major… if I’d known that you… that she… I didn’t know who she was…”
Karnage’s heart jumped. “Sydney. It’s Sydney, isn’t it?”
“I’m so sorry, Major… I didn’t know….”
“Where is she, Cookie? Where is she?!”
“They’re preparing her,” Cookie said, “for the Intelligence… you have to destroy it, Major… before it takes its new host….”
Cookie shut his eyes, wincing as a powerful blast of white shot up from his head and into the pipe. It careened through the walls, and collected around a sealed hatch. The hatch spiralled open, and the light flowed into it. The light flew down the tunnel, illuminating it with a dull grey as it went.
“That will take you to the Intelligence… but you have to go, Major… you have to go now… it knows I’m here. It’s trying to… stop me. I’ll hold it off long as I can… no one can go with you, Major… not Vel… not anyone… the Intelligence can jump from host to host… that’s why you have to kill it now… before it wakes… it knows you’re coming… it will try to stop you… be prepared, Major… it knows everything about you… about us… it will try to… you have to go, Major… you have to…”
Cookie shut his eyes. He didn’t speak again.
CHAPTER FOUR
Karnage stood over Cookie’s limp form, hoping for more. It never came.
Karnage felt Cookie’s neck. He still had a heartbeat. Karnage rounded on Stumpy, pointing at Cookie. “Help him. Figure out what’s wrong with him. How to stop him from bein’… how to stop that green energy from hurtin’ him.”
“Me?” Stumpy stared down at Cookie’s empty skull. “I’m no medic, Major. I don’t know the first thing about this. It’s way beyond anything—”
Karnage grabbed Stumpy and shook him. “You have to try, Stumpy. You have to try!”
“Major.” Velasquez pushed herself between Karnage and Stumpy, forcing Karnage to let him go. “There’s nothing you can do.”
Karnage returned Velasquez’s gaze. “There has to be something. I came so far, and Cookie was there for me, every step of the way. Without him, we wouldn’t be here. Without him, we’d all be— goddammit, Vel, there has to be something we can do!”
“There is,” Velasquez said. “You can do what he asked you to do.”
“I can’t leave him like this,” Karnage said. “Not now.”
“You have to. Or we’re all done for. Including Sydney.”
Karnage looked down at Cookie. His fingers tightened into balled fists. He felt like he was being torn apart. “He stuck by me. Trusted me to help him. It’s my fault. My fault he’s here. If I hadn’t opened my goddamn mouth. If I hadn’t lost my head….”
“You’re doing like you always do, Major—the best you can. Just like Cookie. He knew that. He gave me something to give to you, just in case. Said I’d knew the time would be right, and I think that time is now.” Velasquez put something cold and metallic in Karnage’s hand.
It was a dog tag. Karnage read the inscription.
Cpl. Charles “Cookie” Blunderbuss
C&E – CPN FORCES
Karnage clenched his fist tight. He could feel the metal digging into his hands. “He may have given up on himself, but I ain’t givin’ up on him. Not yet.” He handed the tag back to Velasquez. “Here. He’ll be needin’ that.” He turned to Stumpy. “You do what you can. You’re not a miracle worker, but you’re pretty damn close, Corporal. Try and figure how this contraption works. Just do your best. That’s all I ask.”
Stumpy saluted. “I’ll give it my all, sir.”
Velasquez shook her head. “You never give up.”
“Not on my troops,” Karnage said. “Not ever. Show me this gear you got for me, Captain.”
Velasquez led Karnage over to the alcove. She handed him a rocket launcher. “Spragmos Industries RPG-OX9.”