Judas Breed

The Judas Breed are a species in Mimic.

History

The Judas Breed were a genetically engineered species of insects that were created by humanity. In the late 1990s, New York City faced a devastating epidemic of Strickler’s Disease, a virulent respiratory illness spread by common cockroaches that primarily targeted and killed hundreds of children. To combat this crisis, Dr. Peter Mann of the CDC recruited renowned entomologist Dr. Susan Tyler, who genetically engineered a new species of predatory insect known as the Judas Breed. This chimerical species was created by splicing DNA from termites and praying mantises, designed specifically to infiltrate cockroach nests and release a lethal enzyme. This enzyme accelerated the cockroaches' metabolism so drastically that they burned calories faster than they could consume them, effectively starving the entire population to death and halting the plague. To ensure the Judas Breed did not become a threat themselves, Dr. Tyler engineered them to be entirely female with a limited lifespan of approximately six months and a 'suicide gene' intended to trigger cellular disintegration. The experiment was initially hailed as a massive success, and the public believed the species had died out as planned. However, the insects' own accelerated metabolism triggered an evolutionary boom, allowing them to undergo tens of thousands of generations of mutations within just three years. During this time, they retreated into the darkness of the New York subway system and sewers, where they overcame their sterile design, developed lungs to reach human-sized proportions, and evolved a terrifying ability to mimic their only remaining predator namely mankind.

Overview

In appearance, the Judas Breed was a nightmare of biological adaptation, standing over six feet tall with a multi-layered exoskeleton that mimicked the silhouettes of the humans they hunted. Their primary defense and hunting mechanism relied on their massive, hinged wing cases, which folded tightly against their bodies to resemble the heavy wool texture of a dark trench coat. Their specialized facial plates were capable of shifting together to form a crude, pale approximation of a human face, complete with structural ridges that looked like a nose and brow when viewed from a distance or in the flickering light of the subways. To complete this mimicry, they stood upright on their powerful hind legs, while their middle appendages remained tucked against their torsos to hide their insectoid nature. Up close, however, their true anatomy was terrifying; they possessed jagged, scythe-like claws capable of bisecting prey and a complex mandible system hidden behind their faux-human "mask." Their chitinous skin was a slick, oily black or deep mahogany, and they emitted a rhythmic, clicking sound that they eventually learned to modulate into a mimicry of human speech patterns or mechanical subway noises. Despite their size, they moved with a jerky, haunting fluidity, and their large, milky compound eyes were often concealed behind their head plates to avoid detection by those they stalked in the shadows.

They were insidious because they had grown to human-sized insectoid creatures that had evolved the ability to mimic their prey to better kill them. Having mutated far beyond their original forms, the creatures began to hunt humans and evolved a complex yet cunning disguise that allowed them to walk on the surface without being detected by making partial human faces. They would gradually evolve with the ability of using dead human faces as part of their disguises, which they did by peeling the face off of dead prey. Later evolutions would form a 'plastic'-like outer coating that allowed them to almost perfectly masquerade as humans but were incapable of communicating in human speech. Rather, they communicated with clicking of their mandibles.

They were six legged creatures with powerful pincers that allowed them to rip a human being apart for feeding. Wings allowed them movement across their territory, which made them particularly dangerous in the open. They were capable of wrapping their wings around their body and showing their 'human' disguise, which made them appear as humans wearing large jackets. A majority of the species were female with a single male in the colony who would breed the species. Larvae would then slowly grow and eat decomposing food to sustain themselves until they reached maturity. The creatures were capable of detecting traces of blood and such traces would send them into a feeding frenzy, however, they could not detect prey that were coated with their 'smell', seeing such food as their own kind.

Notes

• The Judas Breed were created by Matthew Robbins and Guillermo del Toro where they featured in the setting of the Mimic universe.

Appearances

• Mimic:

This article is a stub. You can help Multiversal Omnipedia by expanding it.