Moe's Questionnaire

In a remote corner of Cylinder 4, something stirs.

Soft footsteps can be heard, by those who stop to listen. The young Enforcer who was sent to scout the area doesn’t. He’s too busy desperately trying to make his comms device come back to life after a bad fall. He’s inexperienced, not stupid; he knows this is the last place you want to find yourself in while unable to communicate.

”Sh*t. Sh*t sh*t sh*t-“ the Enforcer curses under his breath as he hits the device again. “-Come on, you f*cking useless…” his words, even though barely muttered, are like great shouts to the stalkers’ ears. But the smell is what truly draws him near. Smell of adrenaline, sweat… fear.

Smell of prey.

While he hits the device, the enforcer asks himself repeatedly where did it all go wrong. At the training academy, where his mediocre score performances pushed him to try outperforming his peers by sheer determination and daring? Was he too quick to accept being part of the extremely dangerous, borderline suicidal voluntary task force which was created to investigate rumors of an accident in an illicit lab in some godforsaken area in Cylinder 4? Yes, obviously. What was even the point of asking such an obvious question? This was going nowhere-

The device crackles to life.

A shift in the wind; distraction - an opportunity. A moment’s tension, and a pounce.

A cry of surprise, well trained instincts reach for the weapon; too late. A bite, deep into the unarmored jugular; the prey screams.

Muscular limbs restrain the thrashing enforcer, while razor sharp teeth ravage the meek creature’s throat.

…

The hunt was a great success. Armored clothes, and a fine weapon as trophies. But most importantly… fresh meat for dinner.

A Forgotten peddler sits on a corner on the side of the street. He doesn’t approach the passers by; enough people search for his wares that they can damn well approach him.

Now this is a job, the peddler thinks smugly, as he closes his eyes and stretches back satisfied. Whereas in other parts of the ship his trade would be looked down upon, in these streets he was king. No one would dare rob him, as the goods wouldn’t last forever and without the good graces of the supplier the average rotter would have no way of getting more. This put the peddler at a very high place in the Forgotten’s food chain; a predator, he chuckles to himself, his eyes still closed.

The peddler hears a growl near him, and immediately bolts upright. Food chain or no food chain, a Forgotten doesn’t ever ignore a potential threat if he wants to survive more than two hours.

”The f*ck you want?”, the peddler hurls aggressively toward the hunched stranger. His face is shadowed by a makeshift cowl, making it difficult to distinguish his features; not uncommon among the Forgotten.

”Ammo rifle.” the hunchback replies with a grunt.

“What?”

”Ammo. Rifle.” he growls impatiently. At a second glance, the peddler can see he’s not hunched, it’s just that his body is misshapen and uneven, giving him a hunchbacked impression.

Great, the peddler sighs internally, a mutt. “That’s 800 Credits, pal. Don’t think you-“

The mutt reaches into his bag, and throws a small pouch at him. The peddler ducks out of the way.

”Hey!”

”Give Ammo.” the creature growls.

The peddler is no stranger to negotiating with… less than brilliant beings, especially around these parts, but even he’s astounded by this one’s idiocy. The shock doesn’t last long, though.

”Listen ‘ere, freak show imbecile. Y’need to show me the cash, y’unnerstand? And if y’don’t pick y’sh*t up and show some f*cking manners y’can sho-egh”

”Moe get ammo.” the thing hisses while strangulating the peddler with one hand, holding him close so their faces are just centimeters apart. His breath smells of blood. “Or Moe kill.”

”…b…ag…” the peddler sputters, gagging from the asphyxiation and from the horrid smell simultaneously. As quickly as he picked him up, the beast lets go. While the peddler’s gasping for breath on the floor, “Moe” reaches for the leather bag and tears it in half effortlessly, spilling all of its contents on the floor and smashing a few vials of priceless drugs in the process. He finds what he seeks, and leaves the rest on the floor.

”Moe hunt more, bring back prize”, the monster announces simply. “Then give ammo, or Moe kill.” He leaves the wriggling peddler behind and stomps away.

Two scientists stand in a white room, looking with great interest through a one-way window into a grey one. The white room is plainly furnished: a computer upon a mahogany desk, two comfortable-looking chairs, a clock on a wall. The grey room isn’t furnished at all, the only thing of note in it being the heavy steel fortified door. Well, that and Subject N-011, of course.

Not five months had passed since Subject-N-011 had been first brought into the lab and it was already evident he would be the lab’s best shot at completing Project Apex yet. Already in the early stages of mutative development he had shown great potential, scoring excellent marks on the initial pain and starvation tolerance tests. Over the next months he had reached important milestones such as near-stellar reflexology and reaction time, self-adaptive autoimmune systems and advanced stages of cognitive deconstruction and switch to instinct-reliant neurology - all in record times.

”Usually, this is the time where he’s the most agitated. Should we be concerned?” The male scientist asked the female one, turning to look at her. She kept her eyes fixated on the misshapen mutant within, watching his complete stillness with something close to fascination.

”He’s conserving energy”, she replied quietly.

”What?”

”He knows the fighting tests start soon. He’s conserving energy in order to more easily defeat the wolves.”

A smile slowly creeps upon her lips.

”He’s no longer preoccupied with escaping, or expressing anger. Only… survival. Write that down, Kelsey. Yet another milestone reached.”

Moe sits hunched in the corner of his room. Always smart to sit in the corner: less directions to attack you from, harder to notice you. And Moe is smart. In fact, Moe is so smart he figured the last creature’s weakness all on his own! It’s always the eyes. Of course, the white men came and took the meat before he could even get a taste. If only he could kill them, slaughter them all… but they have ways of hurting Moe he does not fully understand. He remembers dimly he did sometime before, when he was something other… but then again, reminiscing doesn’t help Moe survive. That means it’s useless.

A siren starts blaring, and Moe jumps into an instinctive fighting stance. This hasn’t happened before; Moe doesn’t like new things.

The lights go off, everything goes pitch black. A darkness fight? Moe sniffs the air suspiciously, though he doesn’t catch an enemy’s scent. He walks quietly along the walls, trying to sense his unseen adversary. What kind of creature doesn’t have a smell? And that siren: surely it’s meant to confuse his senses. Moe tries to filter the awful sound out and hear whatever else is going on…

At last he hears it: a soft beep, near the door! His opponent must be there. Moe wastes no time: there’s no telling when the next indication of the enemy will come, or if it even will before it finds him. He rushes towards the door with minimal sound, not to alert the opponent before it’s too late… then he pounces, throwing his entire weight forward with grace of a panther.

Too slow! Moe thinks in alarm as his outstretched arms meet only air; this enemy was nimble and perceptive, and had moved out of the way! Now Moe was at a severe disadvantage, and he’d have to make up for it quickly if he wanted to survive. In mere split seconds, he twists his body as to be ready for a counterattack-

BLAM

The impossible happens. When Moe slams his heavy body against the door, it… yields. The heavy steel door slams open, as though it was never locked in the first place. Moe tumbles outside, and in a confused panic jolts back up again.

He looks around, nervous. The grating sound continues still, but now there are other sounds: shouts, running footsteps. Only now there are smells, as well… smells of sweat, adrenaline… even whiffs of blood?

Moe suddenly notices his mouth is starting to water. There’s no enemy; he’s certain of this now. There’s something better, though. Prey. Meat. Little scared white men.

Moe gets on all fours and a primal, guttural gargle is emitted from his throat. Now is time to hunt.