Parasitic Love Ch. 08

"Mmm... Lans? What is it? Why the panic?"

"They are coming! We have to leave! Now!"

"What do you mean, they are coming? The Elarkans?"

"Yes! Who else? I told you we shouldn't have shared my research with our leaders. These careless fools!"

"... What... what happened?"

"The information leaked. The Elarkans know, and now, they are coming for us. We have to leave right away!"

"They are coming already?"

"Yes. And as you predicted, it's to wipe off my race from existence."

"I'm sorry... I really am..."

"It was just a matter of time... Their goal has always been to expand their empire. You know that better than I do, Chidoh. It's our turn. They will annihilate us, and there is nothing we can do to stop them."

"No! There isn't. I'm very sorry..."

"We will do what we have to do, Chidoh. Fulfill your role, and I'll fulfill mine."

"..."

Sadly, Lans was right, and he knew very well that his time had come. How did it come to this? It was so unfair.

As Lans put on his uniform, made of the softest black fabric in this star system, and packed a few items that would be useless against a potential encounter with the Elarkans, I took this opportunity to review everything I knew about our situation, just to make sure I didn't forget key elements. What we were about to do was too important to risk an omission.

It all started when I landed on the Elarkans' planet seven hundred years ago. It didn't take long for me to attach to one of them and experience the most unusual feeling of my life. Not only were they a relatively strong and ambitious race, but they were also warmongers. Since I had lived for so long before I met them, I knew better than to judge a race by its cover. I wasn't a God, and it was not my place to dictate the fate of the universe and its countless inhabitants. Space explorer was a more suitable term for who I had become since my previous duplication. My role was to observe and live among the infinite diversity offered to me. I was to merge with this Elarkan individual and absorb the knowledge and experiences he would provide me with.

In one way, I was life itself, evolving, witnessing, unexpecting. I merely felt time sliding around me like a viscous fluid and shared it with my host in the most pleasant way.

But then, I discovered the Elarkan blood.

I always thought I was impervious to everything. For the first time in my existence, a host affected me in the most pernicious way, as if I had drunk the most intoxicating beverage. This organic agent within his blood made me obedient; it made me feel like what I promised never to become, a God. My host provided me with an unlimited amount of this exceptional compound, and I couldn't have enough.

To preserve my supply, I quietly followed my host everywhere, did everything he asked from me, even when his actions were questionable, immoral. Together we rapidly took over the leadership of his homeland; we killed, conquered, destroyed entire cultures, and disrupted the normal course of life. This wasn't supposed to happen... I went as far as granting my host immortality so my source of compound would never be limited by time.

I couldn't let the Elarkan blood disappear. I became an addicted slave.

Absorbing the Elarkan blood was beyond ecstasy, to the point that my host wasn't enough for me anymore. It led me to do something almost unthinkable; duplicating. I created a new life out of my body, one on which I would have no control. If this copy of myself were to turn evil, it could eventually lead to the end of the universe itself. Without any sense of morality and ethics regulating its actions, this copy of myself could be the end of everything. Usually, my race only duplicated when we knew for certain the new entity wasn't at risk of being corrupted. Our abilities were just too powerful.

Yet, I did it anyway, due to my altered judgment. I wouldn't even be the one attaching to a new Elarkan host; it would be an independent member of my race on which I would have no control. All of that because I wanted more Elarkan blood, even though I couldn't really have it. My judgment was clouded, and I made the gravest mistake of my life.

Shortly after sharing my body with a second host, my new copy did it too... and I did it again... and again... and again... All of us, independent thinkers corrupted by this intoxicating blood, we replicated over and over, always wanting more and more, attaching to the Elarkan children, granting them perfect health and correcting any genetic anomalies so their blood would stay intact for the rest of eternity.

We stopped evolution.

We stopped life.

As it stood, our Elarkan hosts and we were immortal and on a perfect path to vanquish all and everything. The Elarkans were driven by a deep desire to exterminate each and every star system to prove their worth. For their blood, we shared our infinite knowledge with a race of warmongers and begged them not ever to abandon us, which was absolutely unnecessary; without us, they would have vanished like stardust; without them, we would have lost our source of blood.

But life was life, and it had a mind of its own. This mysterious force that couldn't be defeated would always find an effortless way to turn things around in its favor.

Life couldn't cease. Life didn't need to fight back. A universe without life simply couldn't exist, if only due to the absence of witnesses.

On our way to the next star system to conquer, an unpredictable asteroid struck our vessel and obliterated it, the lowest probability that couldn't have been accounted for. This minor event wouldn't have had any consequences since my race was more than capable of protecting our host from any kind of disaster, keeping them alive and floating in space for an eternity while making them feel as if only a minute had passed. We were determined to preserve the Elarkan blood at all costs.

This incident would have been irrelevant if it had not been for this new copy of myself that didn't have a host yet. Aboard the ship, preciously guarded, this new copy was destined to be attached to the child of an expecting mother. But life had a different plan for it. As the large spaceship broke apart, as the asteroid tore through the metal as if it was a sheet of silk, this new copy was projected into deep space, carrying the entire knowledge and memories of our race.

This drifting space slime, this lost copy torn away from its people, deprived of Elarkan blood, was me. Aimlessly floating in the vacuum of space, the withdrawal was as violent as the unquenchable desire to taste the Elarkan blood again.

It took a few hundred years, but I finally landed on this remote planet, where a modest race of sentient beings lived peacefully.

I attached to Lans.

Devoured by a burning desire to return to my source of Elarkan blood, I thought about taking over his body after regaining my strength and doing what was needed to return to the Elarkans.

But his body was nothing like what I was used to. His core burned so hot, for me to stay attached to him was so demanding, and due to my fragility caused by my long travel, I fell asleep for the first time ever.

A deep sleep...

And then I dreamt... my first dream...

I saw my birth before the Elarkans. I saw my values and ethics before the Elarkans. I saw my goals, I saw my powers, I saw life as it was before the Elarkans.

What have I done?

This dream stirred all kinds of emotions within my soul. Part of me attempted to justify my actions as another part, stronger, made me realize that I had been tricked by a new experience that I had not yet learned to control.

The Elarkan blood was an illusion or, at the very least, a lesson that my race would have to learn from. I would be the one putting an end to this.

When I woke up, I decided to talk to my host, and I gave him a clear choice.

I introduced myself, which frightened him at first, and let him decide if he wanted to keep me or not. This could have been the end of me. A sentient being refusing to be my host was risky. It could have led to my end, which would have been fitting to redeem myself for my terrible actions, the ones of my race. I needed to give my life away, or at the very least take the risk to lose it without fighting back.

Lans, even if a bit scared at first, agreed to be my host. It didn't take long for me to tell him everything I had done in the recent past and what was coming for his world. It turned out that even if very primitive, his race had already gathered enough technology to access space, and they were already in contact with the Elarkans.

They were coming. Lans just didn't know that they were the representative of darkness. He didn't know his end was near and that his entire civilization would be wiped out.

The Elarkans had established diplomatic ties already, but it was simply a cover for an upcoming single and final assault. It was the modus operandi of the Elarkans, and I was very aware of it.

I granted Lans enough of my powers for him to force his way to the leadership and clearly expose the fate of his people to the entire population. He exposed me and all my knowledge of the Elarkans, leaving his leaders with no other choice but to listen and believe.

And a plan emerged. My plan. The only one I could think of--a plan as dark as my past, as dark as my scarred soul.

Fighting the Elarkans wouldn't be enough. Keeping them at bay wouldn't be enough. Actually, the Elarkans, from a certain point of view, were just victims; victims of my race, a race that had lost its self-control, a race of leeches that drank their blood and fueled their sentiment of invincibility.

But in the grand scheme of things, to stop this intoxicated parasitic plague, as horrible as it was, an unalterable fact was present.

As a source of corruption for my limitlessly powerful race, the Elarkans had to die.

For months, Lans allowed me to use his body and mind to come up with a way to end an unimaginable threat. It would be me, us, against my entire race, at least the part of it that was spreading unwillingly and ruling in this whole sector.

Using the extensive knowledge that had been passed down to me by my predecessors, I quickly came up with the most drastic and disagreeable solution I could think of. When I looked at myself, I didn't only see the ugliness of someone capable of committing genocide, I also saw a hero, someone capable of distinguishing right from wrong. If uncontained, my race would unarguably become the end of the universe. It was a matter of time.

My solution? Using the one vulnerability my race, my enemy, had; the Elarkan blood and the most fundamental principles of evolution.

Life in this universe was one and only. What started from a single point had spread around relentlessly and slowly over billions of years and more, and time was what regulated its spread. Millions and billions of years were required for races to emerge and become what they were. It was not a fast process. My race alone was almost as ancient as the universe itself and still made baby steps through time.

Based on this reality, the Elarkans were vulnerable. If I were to remove the environment in which they thrived, and an unstoppable chain reaction would ensue. They wouldn't have time to adapt elsewhere. One could think that their intoxicated parasite, my race, would be able to maintain them as they are for the rest of eternity even without their original environmental source, but it wasn't the case. Given a few hundred thousand years, the Elarkans would end up weakening and dying.

Time.

Time was the weakness of these space parasites, my people. Replicating an entire ecosystem on another planet wasn't a knowledge I possessed, and therefore my corrupted counterparts didn't know either. They could try, but it was highly unlikely to succeed. The reason was that only life knew how to do this. It was a mystery never pierced.

Take two identical planets, feed them with the exact same elements and conditions, and you'd get two completely different results. The infinite number of variables, once respected, would only lead to many more.

If I were to shatter the Elarkans' homeworld to dust, the space parasites would certainly survive, but their host would vanish over time, over the next hundred of thousand years, and the damage caused to the universe would gradually cease. Once deprived of the Elarkan blood, my siblings would go through a withdrawal phase and then remember their original values and ethics and keep this experience in memory for the rest of their infinite life, therefore, preventing such a disaster from happening ever again.

Lans' homeworld wouldn't survive this, and he knew that. It was heartbreaking but unavoidable. I showed him the terrible reality of what my race had done; I showed him everything. He knew his death was coming. He knew his race would disappear as I executed my long-term plan.

But from as far as I could remember, I had never encountered a sentient race as courageous as Lans', or perhaps it was only Lans himself who carried this trait. He told me he would support me until the end, no matter what would happen. He made me believe that I wasn't alone in this fight and that he would be my vessel until it wasn't required anymore.

Courage came at a price, though--the most painful one. If I succeeded in ending this threat, he made me promise to do the most difficult thing a parasite could do; that I would kill him. A life without his race, without his loved ones, would be meaningless. Far from loving me for what my race had done while controlled by the Elarkans, he said it would also be my punishment for setting up such a theatre of destruction. A few million years floating aimlessly in space would give my race time to think about what they have done, he said. It was hard not to hear the anger in his voice, but at the root, even if it was painfully heartbreaking, he wanted to do the right thing and assist me in ending this.

That said, for the past few months, we prepared this counterattack, and now that the Elarkans had learned about my existence and my intention to fight back, there was no going back. They now knew where I was and also knew I had the potential capacity to end them and to take the Elarkan blood away from them. As for them learning about my secret plan, it was not a problem, on the contrary, as I had done it on purpose. Even Lans didn't know about that part. By letting his leadership know about a plan I didn't intend to use and having this mistakingly relaying this useless information to the Elarkans force, I simply hoped to generate some additional confusion in this whole story to create a window of opportunity. That window was now.

Lans tightened his belt and exited his home for the last time. A quick look at the sky allowed us to see the massive Elarkans' spaceships positioning themselves already for the most efficient assault against a planet such as this one. My people gave them the technology to overheat planet cores, which could rapidly cause irreversible damage. In less than an hour, this doomed planet would turn into a ball of magma.

"So, Chidoh... That's it, uh?"

"I'm sorry, Lans."

"Ah, it's alright. You are not responsible for this."

"My people are."

"Yeah... They are, but you are nothing like them. So, you think your plan is going to work?"

"That's all I got... So it better work."

"If you manage to destroy their homeworld, a few hundred thousand years is a long time to wait."

"It probably will go faster as my people lose their hosts."

"Ah. Time is really meaningless to you."

"It is... It is..."

"Alright, let's go to the hangar before it's too late."

Borrowing my strength, Lans ran at an accelerated pace to the shipyard, where our special ship waited for us. His ship. Unfortunately, this attack was way earlier than we had expected, so the ship was not as ready as I wanted it to be. I wouldn't mention this in his presence so as not to worry him about the success rate of our mission, but somehow, I was under the impression that he already knew and didn't care. He was expecting me to do my best and outsmart our opposition anyway.

It only took a few minutes to reach our destination. We could tell that the Elarkan attack had already begun as the ground shook under our feet and pieces of buildings were already falling. It was already too late for this world, but we knew that for a while already. Panicked people were running left and right, and there was nothing we could do to help them. Guilt was not a sentiment I loved, and as I observed these people for the last time, this race, I couldn't digest that it was all because of me, of my people, of our weakness to resist the cursed Elarkan blood. If we had been wise enough to recognize the threat before becoming addicted to it, things would have been very different. But instead, we wanted more and more, addicted.

But in the grand scheme of things, I had mixed feelings about our responsibility. I, myself, had never experienced the Elarkan blood, but just the memories that had been passed down to me were strong enough to make me want to taste it. I would have to stay focused during this mission because if I were to be offered it in exchange for standing down, I wasn't convinced I would be able to resist. This flagging self-confidence was not something I had confessed to Lans. Little did he know that he might be carrying the end of the universe on his shoulder.

"Chidoh! Give me more strength!"

"You got it!"

The main gate had collapsed, blocking our way to the hangar. My skin crawled around Lans' body, and with my strength, we slammed into the pile of rubble. We dug our way through in the most violent way. A mountain of incandescent debris wasn't something that could stop us.

The good news was that the hangar was still intact, and our ship, modest, was ready for us. For the past few months, whenever it was possible, I took control of Lans' body and worked tirelessly on upgrading this thing. He understood nothing of what I was doing, how could he? Everything I was doing came from the most advanced civilization my race had ever encountered in the past, stuff that his brain couldn't even begin to understand. Folding time and space and ripping through it was not something remotely possible for him and his race nor advisable. Months wouldn't have been enough even to begin to explain the principles of what I was creating.

He humbly understood that, though, and he wasn't asking any questions even when he was conscious as I was building my components. On the contrary, he always kept as quiet as possible and allowed me to focus on what I had to do. He knew very well that not only did I have to build the most advanced spaceship in the universe out of what I considered junk, but on top of that, it had to take into consideration that it would face an opponent possessing equal knowledge.

Technology wouldn't win this fight; strategy would.

Building the hardware wasn't a challenge as a few round trips to the nearest asteroid belt provided us with all the rare necessary materials, but coming up with a viable plan was the real challenge. Our goal was to destroy the Elarkans' home planet, but our enemies also knew that and would be prepared for any eventuality. So how was I supposed to counter that, knowing that they would be aware that I would try to counter it?

Lans entered the ship and immediately handed control of his body over to me.

"Do your thing, Chidoh. It's all up to you now."

"Yes. But..."

"But what? Don't tell me you are having second thoughts about this!"

"No... but... I'm scared."

"Scared?"

"Would you mind... staying with me for a while?"

"I don't want to be a distraction, Chidoh. You should put me asleep this time."

"You won't! Stay with me... Please."