“That was the problem. Anything capable of destroying the host would merely free the now intelligent, hyper-evolved alp. Though certainly no longer as powerful, freed from a physical anchor, it would be able to roam the world doing harm. The range of the nightmare effect was limited to within a few hundred meters of the host’s body. The unexpected physical changes caused by the bonding had rendered the host unaging, theoretically immortal, with many of the mutations that we see in advanced types of undead. Unmolested, there was no reason to believe that he wouldn’t live forever. So we did the next best thing we could. We rendered the host catatonic.”

“You couldn’t risk killing him, so you made him a vegetable, and buried him in a chemical weapons dump…” Holly whistled. “But now he’s back, and he’s pissed.”

“The idea was to leave him in stasis until we could find a cure,” Dr. Blish said, but then he looked away evasively. “You must understand, after Decision Week, almost all of the supernatural projects were scrapped, and the evidence was placed in storage. We were not allowed to look for a cure. The survivors of the research team had no choice but to move on with our lives. The decision was out of our hands.”

“I’m sure it was…” Holly muttered.

“I petitioned to reopen the study, but was denied. I am not the guilty party here.”

Mosh didn’t think they had time to debate the moral implications of mad science. “If we’re not supposed to kill him, what can we do?”

“Our safest solution is to convince him to go back to sleep, but good luck with that,” The doctor answered. “The behaviors being exhibited this time are different than before. It would seem that its physical form is capable of moving between planes now, Earth and the nightmare realm. Which is why the host body has seemingly been able to move so rapidly about in this world. I would assume that is where your casino has gone as well. It seems that the evolution of the symbiote has continued during their long stasis. There is no telling what their capabilities are now.”

“You keep talking about this host.” Holly picked up another one of the rifles and chamber-checked it. The door-kicking was making her nervous. “What’s his deal?”

“One of the other research teams had hypothesized the existence of this kind of rare individual…The mystics and occultists referred to them as children of special destiny, individuals who had been chosen by some higher power and given special gifts. At the time I thought that was nonsense, only now I must admit there really is something to it. We know there are other worlds, other realities, that infringe upon our own. These are the source of some of the creatures that end up here. Sometimes there is a rare individual inexorably connected to one of these other realms. It is as if they are chosen to accomplish something, sometimes good, sometimes evil, or even completely incomprehensible. They exhibit strange abilities, even connections to tap into these other unknown realms. Intrusions by other worlds seem to create these specimens. Sometimes the abilities are passed down genetically, though they rarely manifest, but when they do, remarkable things happen.”