My legs kicked, but they weren’t good legs for swimming. I kept kicking anyways. Something about the way they moved, they were designed so that the motions shifted my abdominal cavity, pumped it, forcing air in and out with the rhythmic activity.
I had to use my hands to paddle myself forward. Well… one hand and one other limb. The shape was still nebulous, the growth warring against the steady deterioration of the burning golden energy that still lingered here and there. It blackened and flaked off, and a little headway was made.
The digit extended, broadened, flattened.
It wasn’t fully formed, but it served as a paddle. I began inching myself closer to the platform. Easy enough to manage, considering the steady movement of the water. Things were flowing into some sort of narrow, tight whirlpool, where water was flowing into some hole in the ocean floor.
I shifted my arms in movements that were jerky, not quite muscular. The motions were strong, but hard to control, to moderate. It was fine. I didn’t need control or moderation here. I made my way towards one of the intact legs of the platform. A circle of concrete, cracked by strain, with rebar visible in the cracks.
I pulled myself up, but the attempt was spastic, spasmodic. I managed to haul myself up, moved a little too far, then fell.
Another attempt. This time I focused on holding on, bringing my legs up. One leg in one crevice, another leg into a crack, another set on a ledge where the concrete above wasn’t quite seated properly.
My right hand opened, and the motion was more like metal tearing than anything else, tissue parting violently and unwillingly, creating a gap that was as much wound as it was design.
The flesh joined together, forming ridges that faced one another.
I closed it, felt the ridges meet. The flesh was still tender. I left it alone.
My flight pack provided additional lift as I climbed. It was overly heavy, the antigrav weak, but it gave me lift. I found footholds, handholds for my one hand, and used the arms of my flight pack where I saw opportunities.
I found my stride, scaling the surface with increasing speed, until I was moving faster than I might have covered the same distance running. My swarm climbed over the surface and provided a map of the places I could find footholds.
I tested my right hand. The flesh wasn’t tender. It was hard. There were studs at regular intervals along either half, like teeth. Very like teeth.
A claw.
I raised my claw over my head, then drew it down violently, driving it into a crack.
I was able to climb faster. I reached the point where the concrete ended. A shaft of four steel beams reinforced by criss-crossing beams set at diagonals loomed above me.
It was an even faster climb than the concrete. My legs ended in points, and those same points slipped off of the metal beams, but I had seven limbs to work with. Even if half of my limbs were reaching out for holds, I still had three or four solid points of contact I could maintain at any given point in time.
Rage bubbled inside me, but it wasn’t mine. I’d experienced my own anger, I knew how it influenced my own body, how it was connected to my emotions. This was something else. Hormones kicking into overdrive, compelling my body to react. Other parts of my body being designed angry, designed so they were primed for fight or flight, driving me to act and refuse to let me sit still.
Lab Rat’s stuff was geared towards turning people into weapons, making them take whatever forms he keyed into the formula and then act. I knew it. My awareness of what was going on wasn’t stopping it. I was riding a tide of emotion, moving towards a fight where I couldn’t possibly do anything to stop Scion, putting myself in danger.
Had I chosen to, I could have turned away.
But I liked being emotional, liked coming out of my shell, acting.
Some of my finer moments had been when I was doing just that.
I reached the top of the pillar and paused. I wasn’t out of breath, and my limbs weren’t really built in such a way that they got tired. Still, I had a barrier overhead, now, and I didn’t trust my flight pack to hold my weight. I glanced down, and the individual waves were too difficult to distinguish. Here and there, there were flecks of white where they crested.
Water still trailed from gaps in the pack as I reached up, folded two tarsus -two ‘feet’- around a beam over my head, and then swung myself up, grabbing another beam with my claw. I experimented, testing the security of my grip. It looked like it could hold all of my weight. I wouldn’t make it do so, but it was a good option.
Movement across the underside of the platform was swift enough. It only required a different kind of thinking, an abstract sort of grasp of how I moved my legs, found leverage with only one opposable thumb.
A beam came loose as I tried to hang my weight off it, and I nearly fell. I found leverage on one beam with my third leg, reached out with my hand to grab elsewhere. Neither hold was secure, but I still managed to swing myself over and seize another beam, securing myself.
I reached the edge of the platform, looked up and over, to see the fighting underway.
Less fighting than systematic elimination. The only ones who were truly holding their own were Legend, Glaistig Uaine, Pretender and Eidolon. Even then, they were more focused on avoiding Scion’s attacks than dealing damage. Here and there, Eidolon or Glaistig Uaine would try something.
The remains of the platform had stabilized. Only a few remained on top. Weld’s people, the Irregulars, made up the bulk of the group.
Sanguine was tending to two injured. Not Irregulars, but not capes I recognized either. The boy had hair and skin with a texture and color like clotted blood. The injured had blood piled and crusted over their wounds, scabs bigger than my hand. Or my claw.
Weld looked at me, and his eyebrows raised.
I opened my mouth to speak, and found I couldn’t. My tongue was thinner, layered in something hard, and the sides of my mouth were odd.
I communicated through my swarm, instead. What little of it remained, anyways. Drones and buzzes and chirps. “Lab Rat. The boxes he gave us, they’re designed to trigger when we’re hurt, force a transformation.“
“Might get a few more recruits,” Sanguine said, not looking up from the wounded. He had hands extended to two different wounds on one individual, and was drawing blood into one hand and letting it snake out of the other, flowing into the wound. Was he cleaning it?
“His transformations are temporary. Buying time. He cut me in half, and I’m not sure I’m going to be in one piece when this stops working.“
“But it worked?“ Weld asked.
I nodded. The motion was jerky.
I reached up with my good hand, the movements twitchy, and felt my neck and shoulders.
The little muscle I had was gone, and the skin was taut over cords, like tendons, of varying sizes. The muscle had been cannibalized to build flesh elsewhere, I gathered.
Weld frowned, then reached into the pouch at his belt. He held another device.
After a pause, he pressed it against one of the wounded.
It beeped, then a light went on in the corner.
The cape convulsed, his back arching.
A moment later, transformations began, veins standing out along his arms and legs.
“Another one,” Weld said. “Get me a spare.”
Sanguine handed him another. Weld applied it. Scales were manifesting around the most prominent veins on the first one by the time the second patient started reacting.
“Gully,” one of the other Irregulars said. “If we can get to her-”
“We can’t,” Weld said, looking down towards the water, “But she’s wearing one. I trust her to hold her own.”
Their discussion of how their teammate was doing made me think of others. Grue. He’d come back through the portal, and he’d been close to the edge of the platform, but that was no guarantee.
It was a hell of a drop to the water, and he didn’t have a flight pack. Not quite something that Masamune
had managed to mass produce.
Above us, Glaistig Uaine had created a spirit that was spreading across the sky like circuits on a circuitboard, extending itself across a plane. Scion was blasting it, but it had reached the point where it was spreading as fast as he destroyed it. Her other two spirits were working in concert, one duplicating the other, so it could create and lob projectiles that exploded in the air. The detonations left patches of a strange, nebulous darkness in their wake. They couldn’t move more than a short distance from their master, which limited their number, but they added up to twenty or thirty in all.
“It’s working,” Sanguine said.
It wasn’t. I looked at him, confused.
His eyes were on the patients. He’s talking about Lab Rat’s matchboxes. I looked, and I saw how the scales were spreading. They were breathing easier.
“Good,” Weld said. “We need everyone we can get.”
“It’s a temporary measure,” I spoke through my bugs, my mouth firmly closed. “Moment this wears off, they might need emergency assistance. Me too.“
“Situation’s bad,” Weld said. “Not sure we’re going to get any help, emergency or otherwise.”
“The Triumvirate came.“
“From miles away,” one of the other Irregulars said. She had a head that was many times the size, a body that was disproportionately frail, to the point that I wondered how she could hold herself upright. “They can’t open any gates here until Scion’s gone.”
“We need to drive him away, then,” I said. “Or hurt him. Kill him.“
The last two words slipped out, so to speak. Fueled by my anger, my outrage.
No, not quite my own. A programmed bloodlust, one that came with this body.
“That’s… not really doable,” Weld said. “Pretty sure the scientist who knocked him through the stratosphere died. Nobody else has really been able to knock him for a loop.”
The tendril-girl spoke, her voice harboring a soft Russian accent. “We should go, Weld. Run. There’s nothing more we can do here.”
“There’s nowhere to run,” Weld said. “Even if we swim-”
“We’re stronger than we think,” the tendril-girl answered, her voice soft. “Isn’t that what you always say? There’s a strength inside us and we just need to dig for it. We came to help the wounded, with Sanguine and Matryoshka. Let’s take the wounded and go.”
Weld hesitated. I suspected I could understand why.
“I want to help too,” I said. I twitched, as if my body was taking that sentence as permission to go. “Murder that fucker. But there’s only so much we can do. Go.“
He gave me a funny look.
“I was put in charge of ordering people in the field. Take it as an order from me.”
“I’m not your subordinate,” Weld said. “And I’m not sure you’re in your right mind. You keep talking in a strange voice.”
“Everything she says is in a strange voice,” Sanguine murmured.
“A stranger voice,” Weld clarified.
“Not in my right mind,” I said. I stretched.
Not in my right body.
I shook my head a little. “But this is the smart thing. Retreat for now. This was never supposed to be a prolonged fight.”
“No,” Weld said. “I’ll stay. I can help others. I’m tough enough to walk away with most of my body gone. I’ll search for others who need help.”
There was the mask again. Even the case fifty-threes had them. The emotional defenses, the guise. He was hiding something, lying without speaking falsehoods.
“Go,” I said. There was an emotion in the sound there really shouldn’t have been. Anger. Irritation. Insofar as I could even express that with a voice generated by my bugs.
He hesitated.
Scion erupted with golden light. It wasn’t the sort of attack one dodged. Instantaneous, hitting everything in every direction.
My skin began to blister, the golden light searing through it, appearing in the ridges between spots where flesh was simply being eaten away.
I scrambled for cover, moving back towards the underside of the platform. As I leaped over the railing, I grabbed one of Sanguine’s patients with my claw. My movement was reckless, too quick, unpracticed, and I nearly threw the cape I was holding over the edge.
I waited, hanging by my three legs, two flight-pack arms, and one hand, the cape dangling below me, gripped in my claw.
The light faded. I checked, then climbed back over the edge.
Weld and his people had taken cover. Sanguine was covering injuries with scabs, but the damage was bad. The tendril girl’s tentacles were worn so thin they were barely there.
The cloud cover had been largely dissolved, bringing more light down onto the battlefield. More to the point, Scion’s likely target had been affected as well. The cape that had spread across the sky was falling apart.
Scion turned his attention towards Glaistig Uaine.
Eidolon appeared beside her, taking her in his arms, and then the pair of them disappeared just as quickly. Legend opened fire with a series of lasers, while Alexandria ducked around to get behind the bastard.
The cape I was holding climbed over the railing. I made my way under it, then sort of staggered in Weld’s direction, the tarsus segments of my legs sliding on the slanted, gritty surface. The light had eaten through metal, eroded everything in sight.
Below us, the water had been affected, boiling. Clouds of steam rose from the water’s surface.
My thoughts turned to the capes below us. My friends, past allies.
Murderous instinct flared, and I restrained it.
“We need to go,” the tendril girl said. “We’re no use to anyone dead.”
“I can’t swim, Sveta, understand?” Weld’s voice was quiet. “It’s not- I’ll stay behind. We’ve got the case for you to hide inside. Sanguine can carry you. You should go.”
“We need you, Weld,” Sveta said.
Weld looked away.
“Another form,” Sanguine said. “Something that floats.”
“I’m metal.”
“Metal boats float,” Sanguine said.
Weld frowned.
“What is it?” Sveta asked.
“I’m not sure it’ll work.”
“If it doesn’t,” Sanguine said, “walk.”
“On the ocean floor?” Sveta asked.
“He doesn’t breathe.”
“It’s not that simple,” Weld said. “I’m going to stay. I have old teammates to look after. You guys should leave.”
“Not without you,” Sveta said, her voice angry.
A golden light speared past us. Striking the water. Scion was cutting up the capes who’d fallen in and survived.
Glaistig Uaine appeared behind him. Three spirits surrounded her.
One to levitate, grant the ability to float. A telekinetic or power granter.
Another to duplicate capes. Duplicating the telekinetic, in part. But more focused on duplicating the third spirit Glaistig Uaine had made.
Gray Boys.
She’d gone through a phase, hunting down some of the scariest capes around, defeating them, claiming them.
This was one.
Scion was trapped in a time well, turning monochrome.
Without any apparent effort, he broke free of the effect, shattering it.
Only to be frozen again.
My swarm was agitated.
Agitated but futile.
Scion started moving in the direction of Glaistig Uaine and her creations, gliding through the air. The effects went up as easily as they were torn down.
I wanted to help. To stop him. I was powerless. A cockroach.
Glaistig Uaine wasn’t stopping him, but it seemed to have his attention. He wasn’t using his power, either. Was it because he couldn’t, or something else entirely?
Eidolon, Legend and Alexandria flew down to the water. They rose with no less than twelve capes between them, Eidolon levitating several, and then
disappeared towards the horizon.
Weld seemed to come to a decision. “Okay. If it’s what it takes to make you guys leave, I’ll go. Make our way down.”
I shut my eyes, exhaled slowly. The air moved in a funny way across my mouth-parts.
“Here,” I said.
I reached for my belt. It dangled, held in place by the silk cords that wound under and beneath my costume. Some of it had been obliterated by the blast. I used my bugs to start connecting the silk cords together.
Too thin, too short.
I reached behind my back, instead, past the small tube of pepper spray. More silk there. Some beneath the armor panel on my hand, others beneath my shoulders.
I plaited them together into a rope.
“Others go down first,” Weld said. “Order of weight. Let’s get you packaged up, Garotte. If you aren’t climbing down, stay still.”
Stay still?
He began undoing the little clasps of metal that bound Garotte against his body. She unfurled, reached out to railings, to edges of metal.
Where the tendrils surrounded the railing, a barrier that might have stopped a speeding car, the metal bent, crushed tight.
The tendrils continued to find their way to things to grip. There were more of them than I’d thought.
One tendril seized my claw, faster than I could react. Just as fast, it pulled back, found somethign else to hold.
She and Weld both stopped.
I watched as she closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and then exhaled.
Weld released her organs, hidden in a space in his broad back, and she was free of him. She collected herself around the railing, her eyes closed, drawing in deep breaths and then exhaling slowly. Slowly, the tendrils released, and she stretched out to her full length.
She looked like a fish underwater, a lionfish or jellyfish with dramatic, crazy fins or fronds. Where they weren’t bound to her surroundings, the fronds fell in line with one another, moved with their own rhythm, a mind of their own, that searched the surroundings.
“Tight, Garotte,” Weld said, an order. His eyes weren’t on her, but on Scion and Glaistig Uaine.
Garotte wound herself around the railing, weaving her tendrils into gaps of the platform itself, to seize infrastructure. It was beautiful in a very different way, sinuous like a snake was, a face with everything condensed behind it, a mobile, flexible body.
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