The Boss

The Boss was a massive Necromorph of an unknown type that infested the Titan Shard reactor core during the Necromorph outbreak on Titan Station, the colossal space station better known as the Sprawl. It was responsible for the overheating of the reactor and was confronted there by the saboteur Vandal during her run through the station.

Form#

The Boss was a large Necromorph that retained little if any of the human form, ranking alongside the Ubermorph among the most heavily mutated of the strain. Its body was long and larva-like, swollen at the lower section, with two tentacles it used to hook onto the walls on either side of the reactor shaft. The creature had four jaws lined with razor sharp teeth around a central mouth from which it launched a long, spiked tongue, and a massive rib cage on its back that concealed a large sack of yellow tissue. Across its body were ten yellow weak spots, on its chest, limbs, tentacles, back, and head, the points where its mutated tissue lay exposed.

The origin of the Boss was never established. It may have evolved from the Corruption and from other Necromorphs that fused together after venturing into the reactor core, a process that would account for its size and its lack of any single recognizable host.

The Titan Shard reactor#

The Boss made its home in the Titan Shard reactor core and was the cause of its overheating, a failure that threatened the station around it. When the saboteur Vandal reached the core, the creature attacked, lashing out with its tongue and firing spiked projectiles from its tentacles much as a Lurker did. Throughout the confrontation it called other Necromorphs to its defense, summoning Slashers, Exploders, and Lurkers to harry its attacker, behavior that marked it as a creature with a commanding role over the horde.

Vandal destroyed the weak points across the Boss's body, and a drilling mechanism in the reactor chamber struck the creature and exposed the final weak spot on its head. With that destroyed, the Boss fell into the reactor shaft it had been obstructing. As it dropped it attempted to take Vandal with it, but she climbed back onto the platform overlooking the reactor and survived. Whether it died from the fall or from its wounds, any remaining part of the Boss was destroyed when Isaac Clarke brought down the Site 12 Marker and the whole of Titan Station with it.

A possible Nexus#

Several traits suggested the Boss was an immature Nexus organism, the strain otherwise known as the Hive Mind. It could direct other Necromorphs to attack, in the manner of a creature that sat above the lesser forms in the chain of command. It bore the yellow tissue sacks around its mouth and the rib cage protecting a large yellow heart that were common to the Nexus forms, and it made the same roars and sounds that had accompanied the Hive Mind during the outbreak on Aegis VII. If the identification was correct, the Boss was a Nexus caught in an early and incomplete stage of its growth.