Chapter 1: A Past Unforseen

Hello, guys and gals. It's been a while since I came on to Starcraft since my debut fanfic. If you haven't checked out Timekeeper: Resolution, you should definitely do so as soon as possible. Right now however, I've decided to embark on a little project in mind. See, I have a character I introduced back in that aforementioned fanfic which I liked… Especially since the Heart of the Swarm expansion came out and I quickly spoiled the whole story for myself. It got me thinking… How would that whole storyline play out if we had that character tag along for most of the story in HotS. Yes, I get the acronym…

Anyway, this will be the first chapter in a story I hope will rank amongst the best I've seen so far, including izwan's Behind The Painted Walls, Blackhole1's Her Body's Plaything and Ragnarok666's Aftermath and Revelations. Fingers crossed everybody and hold on for a wild rollercoaster ride…

Three Weeks After Deinfestation, Umojan Space Station

November 26, 2504, Koprulu Sector

Maxwell Holmes Kerrigan

Maxwell Kerrigan was having another bad day, as has been the case for every day of his life since he was just barely four years. It was even worse for him the past couple of months, knowing that SHE was right in the facility, no doubt spending her days probing every mind she could touch with her psionic powers. Thankfully, whatever strange fate had thrust him into making this ill-advised decision thought it best to close his off from hers, at least for the time being. Perhaps he would fared even worse had he been facing the Queen of Blades again.

Of course, any story involving his sister would now include the legendary bloodshed wrought tales of the Zerg saga, a deep scar across her history and no doubt a brutal mental wound burrowed deep within whatever still remained of a heart. The billions killed throughout her four years of tyrannical reign. The complete and utter ruin of countless worlds, lost forever to the organic creep hiding in the filth that still clustered about the soil. Not to mention the brave souls who sacrificed themselves to halt the blight spreading across the sector. Somedays, he missed having a unified race. He always did wonder how their counterparts far home at Earth would handle this mess, this putrid mess he invariably contributed to.

Make no mistake, he had seen the carnage first-hand back on the soiled grounds of various cities in his travels. Raging fires brought upon by hideous acid bombers across the board. Buildings crumbling under the weight of the few remaining supports that had remained tethered throughout the conflicts. Gallons and gallons of blood lining the walls of each and every doorway, some the product of a brutal assault that left scared hearts forever etched in stone and others the desperate mannerisms of mankind backed against a corner. He had never seen so many crying people all at once, so many injured people crawling out of the rubble, vying to get out of the hellish nightmare. In fact, several had completely lost their sanity, running up to him and whispering sweet nothings about the messiah of their rebirth and incoming apocalypse, the joy of walking back home to see their families again and the sometimes irreverent few who sought to be one with their enemies. Maxwell still remembered several souls washed up in a refugee camp he volunteered in on Korhal before all this crazy… crap went down. Beds lined by the hundreds. Feet filling in straight lines like they were walking to their own execution. The incessant chatter of a nation gone to hell. Crying newborns thrust into a world at the end of its era. Sons and daughters begging passer-bys for their parents, their pitiful faces the only answer they needed to know the harsh truth.

How could so many have fallen to her? Louise was never so… violent in her childhood. Before she literally exploded their mother Elaine's brain into itty bitty pieces and fried her father's neural center right in front of him, she was nothing more than a sweet innocent little girl. Forever locked in a body that couldn't even hurt a fly. What had changed? What had made her so… vengeful?

Maxwell kept wondering to himself why he continually attempted to justify his sister's mistakes as his own. Certainly he didn't throw her into the jaws of death. He most definitely did not suggest a full-on scale war against all opposition for the heck of it. But somehow deep in his heart, his soul knew only guilt and anguish.

Not that she'd know of course. After years of being tormented by the Confederacy and having her memories purged more than once in the line of duty, it was a miracle she even remembered James Raynor at all, let alone the crimes she had committed. Maxwell stepped up from his bed at this and shambled over to a nearby shelf where a picture of James Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan laid on the mantelpiece, framed in a simple wooden frame. James had given him that photo after his…. confession soon after his arrival on the Hyperion. Somehow, he lived past the expected lifecycle he placed upon himself and survived to see another day. Clutching the picture tightly in his hand, he almost came to tears. At least somewhere in the universe, fate found it kind enough to give her someone to love her, someone to be her shoulder in the days to come. From what James told him of her before the… transformation, she had been a nice, loyal and overall amicable person to be around. Afterwards however was where the darker tales started to emerge and of course the point where Maxwell raised his hand in contempt and told him to stop babbling any longer about the monster that was his sibling. He had heard enough that day… Enough to last him ten lifetimes…

What stung most of all came not from the mind, but from the body. Getting ready for his shift, he placed a shaky palm on the side of his chest and winced in barely concealed pain, his fingers brushing over the scars that engraved his body. One, two, three…. Each point felt like he was poking an enraged bear and he was getting a mouthful of claws every single time. Every nerve in every fiber his being surged like fire and hot coals combined. It was a constant reminder of that fateful day… The day he finally saw the beast within her…

The Day Of The Char Siege

November 5, 2054, Koprulu Sector, Char

Maxwell Holmes Kerrigan

He could hear them now in his mind. The ravenous hunger that lurked within them. The cold yellow eyes that signified their presence. All around him, bulbous thick eyelids stared creepily at his limp body as he was dragged on his heels by two Roaches, flanking him on either side of his shoulders. Somehow, the do-not-kill order from Kerrigan seemed to have irritated her minions. Their rope-like tongues seemed far too eager to feast, to dine on his salacious flesh like he was their dinner. His cold green eyes merely glared defiantly at his captors, nay his soon-to-be killers for as long as he could before another bump in the organic nest would shake him back to the forefront. Having the same psionic powers as his sister yet unable to wield them as extensively as she does was proving to be a crux in his little escape plan. But he saw it now as a curse, doomed to listen to the growling bellies of the gluttonous monsters that would consume him soon afterwards.

Soon enough, he was finally in the bowels of the tunnel kingdom that housed the Swarm, a vast congealment of organic flesh and talons rearing its ugly hides to bear. To compare it would be like comparing the first time he ever did show and tell in front of his class. Nothing else came to mind but that. Suddenly, the hive of creatures snarled into the cavern night in unison, like a massive symphony singing a feral song.

And just like that, in stepped the woman of the show, the girl of the hour, everyone's favorite Sarah Louise Kerrigan showed up from the darkness, propping herself down on a pile of half-eaten bones and creep like a throne room. The roaches that guarded him shoved him forward and he grunted in pain.

"Watch it, you little beasts. If my hands weren't tied, I'd slam my blade down your throat." Maxwell snarled at the Roach to his right, struggling against its grip. Kerrigan seemed utterly amused by this show of defiance, taking it in like a drink of pure spring water. Her eyes seemed to roll in her sockets, those yellow eyeballs seemingly enthralled by the enigma of the man standing before her.

"My, my… It appears we have a winner this time around." Sarah remarked dryly in an alien voice, staring deeply into Maxwell's own piercing green irises. Maxwell felt his chin rise up as her scaled purple fingers pulled his face up to hers and looked aghast at her. How could he not? Her sister was standing right before him, decked out and turned into something wholly unrecognizable. Her body was completely coated in a purple organic carapace armor bristling with sharp ends on both sides of her chest. Her signature wing-like talon blades were as sharp as ever, one of those segmented messes softly caressing his cheek like he was her precious toy. He tried to pull away from her venomous touch as best he could, even if her wings pulled him closer.

"You!" He yells in utter horror, unintentionally revealing his hand. But if she noticed it, she didn't show it in her emotions. In fact, her behavior was spot-on the money as before, cold and calculating in demeanor and body language.

"Respect, weakling. Lest you find yourself at the end of my talons…" Sarah warned her uncooperative prisoner of his manners. Maxwell felt absolutely like crap now. His sister was treating him like a plaything that she could throw away at a moment's notice. He never wanted to believe the stories he heard, choosing instead to trust his instincts. Being wrong was a kick in the nads, in more ways than one…

"Yeah, well go on then! If you have the bloody stones to do so!" he taunted and tried to enrage her into attacking him. Kerrigan took his gesture as a welcome change from her usual feast, rather than the threat it was meant to be.

"A feisty one too. Oh, how I will enjoy you so much. Leave us for now. We have much to discuss." Sarah whooped with glee, releasing Maxwell from her grip and letting him fall back to the ground in a crouched position, his hands still tied behind his back. The Zerg creep felt eerily cold underneath his legs and it only helped heighten the tension in the room.

"So, why don't you begin by telling me who you are?" Kerrigan did a 180 all of a sudden, spinning around and cooing at Maxwell in a menacing tone.

"Do you really need to know? After I know for a fact that I'm going to die here?!" Maxwell mocked her attempts at interaction. 'God, is she bad at this stuff!' he consciously conceded in his head as he watched Sarah with mere disgust quite pronounced in his irises.

"But of course… Nameless victims is all well and good but I much prefer to… be well acquainted with my prey." She chuckled in a high-pitched tone with an almost sadistic pleasure in the act of slaughter.

"I feel so lucky already." He grimaced in sarcastic overtones.

"Hmmm… So enthusiastic… Not like my last few visitors." Kerrigan laughed, pointing a sharp-tipped finger to the ceiling right above and drawing Maxwell's attention to the exhibits up high in the sky. Unpleasant would put the scene quite mildly to be honest. Scores upon scores of corpses, both Terran and Protoss strung up in the rafters by purplish webs of goo like flies in a vast, open-ended spider web. Limbs dangled ominously like paper fans in the breeze, the flesh on the bones having long decayed by now. Even the skin started to peel off, indicated when one unlucky little patch of rotting cells landed face first on Maxwell. Talk about perverted and revolting at the same goddamn time…

"Don't make me laugh. You're nothing but a pest that needs to be stomped out." Maxwell balked, reprimanding her scare tactics.

"Perhaps… Perhaps…" Kerrigan pondered questionably, putting a layered finger to her lips and pursing them in deep concentration. Her lithe body swaggered back and forth as she ambled around her captive, trying really hard to decipher his motives. What really irked her was his latent psionic powers which put to bed any notions of reading his intentions across the mind wavelength. As she did so, a look of deep concern furrowed between her eyebrows as a cry to arms rose from her flyers patrolling the outer reaches of Char, no doubt spotting the Hyperion tagging along with half the Dominion fleet coming her way. The snarl that echoed between her teeth was a clear giveaway for Maxwell not to notice.

"They're here, aren't they?" Maxwell smugly spoke to her as she pressed against her forehead and telepathically spelled out orders to her scattered broods.

"Perceptive, aren't we?" Kerrigan retorted in a hoarse tone.

"They will succeed. Soon enough, this will all be over and your reign of terror will end." Maxwell spelled out and emphasized each and every word to her bitter hide, relishing every second of it. He may not live through the day to see her sister set free again but he was willing to sacrifice his life to buy Raynor and his Raiders just a little more time to get her out of her state and back home where she'll be safe. 'Safe… She'll be safe…'

"They will fall. I am the Swarm. They bow to my will and they follow my decree. Let them come." Kerrigan monologue about her Swarm's almighty power and the forces she could call forth at just one telepathic message from her exuberant mind.

"You don't know… You don't know how powerful they are. They will defeat you." Maxwell felt fear rise in his throat as he watched Sarah creep ever closer to his prone form, still ever defiant in the face of adversity.

"Pity…." Kerrigan intoned in mock sadness, right before her frown turned upside down into a wicked, delirious grin of sadistic levels. Her signature blades rose upwards into the sky and in the basking sunlight peeking through the slits in the ceiling above came crashing down on Maxwell's chest. He gasped out at the physical exertion his body undertook to compensate for the bladed, fiery pain that was shooting through his spinal cord. No scream for the heavens would follow for his mouth was gagged by Kerrigan's scaly fingers wrapped around it. "Too bad you will not be here to see it…" she cooed silently into his earlobes, digging the blades ever so deeper into him. For two minutes, they remained ramrod-stiff, not budging one inch within the caverns of the Zerg Queen's throne. But the fun had to die away, starting of course with a loud bang erupting right above as siege tanks rattled the cage she locked herself in and her minions scattered for the high ground. The blades came out with extreme force, Maxwell piercing the air with a shrill scream of damaging agony and blood.

"Argghhh…." He moaned as he grasped his wounds tightly and applied pressure to the unstable wound. Kerrigan looked upon with joy singing within her heart, standing upright and flapping her bony wings forward.

"I just have to ask. Did Jim send you here to kill me? Or did you come of your own volition?" Kerrigan questioned him with desire, her eyes flaring in a mix between love and hatred at the mere thought of Raynor stuck in her head going into the final siege.

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry… I should have done… right… by you. I'm… so… very sorry…" Maxwell apologetically responded over and over again in a mantra-like chant as best he could, even as his life ebbed away.

"What? What are you babbling about, human?" Sarah pondered as she heard the human's dying breaths flutter in her eardrums.

"Forgive me… Please forgive me…" he reached out with all the strength he could muster, his eyes locked dead on arrival for the one soul he had wronged all these years. His heart steadily began to beat at a slow hull-drum pace, finally fading into no more than a whimper inaudible to even Kerrigan's telepathy.

"Delusional fool." Kerrigan muttered under her bated breath, spinning away and leaving the believed-to-be deceased Maxwell to his shallow grave. One dead prisoner and his ill-chosen final words was the least of her concerns. The Swarm was her number one priority now and nothing was going to change that.

"Come, my pets. Defend your queen from those who wish us harm. Arise, my brethren and take back our planet from the Terrans!" Kerrigan commanded her army to rise. From the depths from which they were spawned, armies rose to defend their almighty rulers. Overlords, Zerglings, Bannelings, Roaches, Hydralisks, Brood Hosts and infested Terrans alike rose to the challenge, stepping out like a vast horde out from the cavern's briny dark depths and into the enveloping red sunlight of the Char's skylines. Kerrigan swished her segmented stalk-like hair back and forth with pride in her swaggering steps.

"I am the Swarm." She echoed her quote within her mind, intentionally broadcasting her decree to all of the Zerg armies. This time… Her hands raised upwards and her wings swept outwards, depicting herself as a messiah of the sector. This time she would succeed yet again… Her second victory on Char… The one to end it all…

Three Weeks After Deinfestation

November 26, 2054, Koprulu Sector

Maxwell Holmes Kerrigan

"Just breathe, Maxwell. You can do this. You can do this." He repeated again and again in the heat of the moment, pulling up the armor up to his neck and feeling rather encased in the whole metallic suit.

"It can't be that hard, right? It's just guard duty… Nothing abnormal about it at all. Just guard duty…" Maxwell tried reassuring himself with explanations, all of which faded into the background as soon as he was reminded of the more pressing matter. 'Yeah, it's guard duty, kid. Except the fact that you're guarding your own bloody sister.' His brain pondered aimlessly. Banging on the door and hearing it whizz open, he walked outside, his boots clanking against the steel floor underneath him.

"Everything will work out in the end… Everything will be just… peachy." His mutterings persisted, right up until a big mass of meat came from the right and nearly slammed pell-mell into him.

"Morning, kid." James Raynor intoned in his usual gruff overtones, a lit cigar still poking out from between his teeth. Maxwell recoiled back, more out of shock and surprise rather than genuine terror. The rifle tightly clutched in his palms slipped tenderly from them and clattered harmlessly on the floor.

"Ahhhh! Jeez, you scared the crap out of me!" he reprimanded him as he scrambled to regain his weapon. Raynor smirked at the young man. 'Ah, the joys of youth so young…' he pondered in a rare case of Shakespearean moments.

"Sorry about that, kid. Wasn't my intention… Hahaha…" Raynor apologized with a low chuckle at the end.

"Very funny… Where are you off to in such a hurry?" Maxwell shot back glaringly, to which Raynor merely raised his hands in mock surrender.

"I assume doing the same thing you're going to be doing. Seeing Sarah." James winked at Maxwell at the mention of the one woman both men had a vested interest in.

"Yeah, good luck with that…" Maxwell intoned morosely, his head slumping into another of his depressions. James seemed to take pity on the fact and turned around before he walked off in the opposite direction.

"Mind if I walk with you?" he asked him nicely. Maxwell was not expecting such a request, so much so that he was taken aback for a split second.

"Uh…. Sure. Whatever floats your boat, man." Maxwell eventually conceded with a quick nod off his head. Just like that, Raynor was accompanying him en route to his new job at the Umoja Research Lab. The two men walked hand in hand across vast lengths of corridors and hallways, their appearance exceptionally different from one another. While one had a full-on graying beard, wore ragtag clothes like he had pulled them out of a dumpster and was smoking a finely-twirled cigar in his teeth, the other was geared solely for combat purposes. His suit was heavy as hell, his weapon was clearly meant to be compensating for something less constructive and his face was utterly obscured by the helmet he forced himself to wear on this job. Two different men sharing one common factor… Some might call it a tryst, a threesome… But it was completely false statements uttered from their lips. The truth was known only to a few…. And even then those same few find it hard to believe or are understandably skeptical of the newcomer.

Just who was Maxwell? And how did he factor into the picture?

"Do you really need to wear that thing?" James asked all of a sudden as they passed yet another empty stretch of hallway. Maxwell glared at him from under his helmet.

"Do you really need to be so snarky?" he retorted angrily.

"If you're worried she'll recognize you, don't worry. The only memories concerning her are the past four years." James tried to reassure him. Maxwell however seemed more dead-set on being a depressed little kid instead of busting out of his funk.

"You don't know that." Maxwell replied without a single thought. James took offense to that answer, but kept up with his labored pace with ease.

"Look, kid. I made a promise to you. And that promise was to keep you a secret from her. I can't do that if you're not willing to cooperate with me." James tugged at his shoulderplate to grab his attention, to make him see reason. Maxwell merely shrugged it off immediately, setting down the path with reckless abandon.

"You're not accounting for every avenue possible." He spluttered to an advancing Raynor.

"That's overthinking. Stuff like that is liable to get you an early grave." Raynor implied in his deep, gravelly voice.

"Like the one she dug for me?" he ironically dug up the painful memory of being literally backstabbed by his sister. James sighed dejectedly, shaking his head at Maxwell in disappointment.

"You still sore about that?" he finally asked, motioning for the both of them to continue their walk.

"Let's see… My sister tried to kill me and left me to rot on the infested floor like garbage. How do you move on past that?" Maxwell responded heatedly, despondent about his behavior and subsequent failures.

"She wasn't herself back then. You know that." James defended her actions, even as he struggled to come to terms with them at all. Talk about double standards…

"I… just… Gah! I don't… I don't know what I want anymore!" Maxwell tossed his bulky hands up into the air in annoyance.

"We both want her to be safe. You have your ways. I have mine." Raynor answered his initial question with a soothing yet commanding voice that Maxwell could not help but entrust himself in.

"You're…You're right. I need to keep my head above water." Maxwell mumbled incoherently at first, opting to take heed of his words and finally move on… At least for the moment…

"That's the spirit, kid." James patted him on the shoulder and took the helm, setting a course for Sarah's containment cell.

Reaching there was the easy part. After all, it was just another walk into a research lab doing shady things. Sounded like an average day for all parties involved. And yet it was not… Here they were, keeping a prophetic figurehead sealed up in isolation for nearly a week now and running tests on her to determine her remaining connections to the Swarm. Everything they did to her was merely an extension of her dark past, her dotted history. Machines whirred to life, cameras shot footage and all hands were on deck to make sure every move she made was kept for the record books. Heck, if she had cut her toenails, it'd probably get a page all by its lonesome.

Maxwell merely stood watch outside the cell, his rifle at the ready and his nerves calmed down enough to warrant an acceptable salute to whatever big-shot decided to come down here. 'Why am I doing this? What is wrong with me?' he asked himself the same question over and over again in his head like a looping tape. He could hear Raynor above bang on the shielding like a cat hungry for its milk, begging Sarah not to give up hope on them or her chance at redemption. 'If I know my sister, she'll be as stubborn as a mule and just as ruthless to get what she wants. Nothing will stop her, not even an idiot waiting right in front of her door.' He pondered, seeing now the folly of protecting her from any outside threats when really he should be worrying about defending her from herself. A slip-up perhaps? Or short-sightedness?

He would never find out soon enough when the seal behind him wheezed open with a hiss of pressurized air blasted out of both ends and slowly opened a medium-sized alloy glass window. And in the middle of the room in the midst of her meditations was his sister, affixing her new captor with her emerald green eyes. He was completely unsure if it was a sign of recognition… or a sign of fury…

What had he gotten himself into?

I do realize it is short and also a little buggy but I'm trying it out just to see how much creative input I can manage. But I hope any viewers and fans of Starcraft will love this story as much as they possibly could. As always, leave reviews, like and fav this video and hopefully… I might see you next time… Stay strong, have fun and be CO-OPERATIVE!