by Pal, J
“Roger.”
I wasn’t trying to hide anything from Kitty. She’d likely heard everything I’d said through Winnie, but until I got around to making some equipment for her, she was the most vulnerable one of us three. Besides, I couldn’t be sure where we stood anymore. We had gotten together out of loneliness and convenience. It had grown into attraction—for me at least. However, due to recent events, we hadn’t gotten the opportunity to think, let alone talk about anything besides survival. After yesterday, we were probably nothing more than friends.
Either way, I didn’t want her to come up to the fourth floor. I wanted to focus on fighting—if it came to it—instead of protecting her. After all, we were two people short.
Thanks to the Pogo Heelies’ stabilizers, my footsteps were quiet. Winnie didn’t have any issues due to his padded feet. Going in deeper, we found scraps of black fabric littering the floors and hanging off the furniture. My scanner highlighted the shredded bits but failed to identify them. Curiosity got the best of me, and I picked one up.
“What the hell?” The words almost sounded like a gasp coming out of my mouth. The fabric felt velvety and as thin as paper but also had a leathery strength about it I hadn’t expected. I was giving it the good ol’ sniff test when Winnie growled. For a moment I was amazed, because he’d never used the Sonic Blast Generator for anything but his roaring attacks, then I heard an almost inaudible scraping behind me.
Following my instincts, I fell into a crouch and activated the Barrier Projector. A dark figured leapt through the space my head had been seconds ago. Two dark limbs scraped the barrier as it passed, shaving a sliver off its energy bar. I didn’t take the time to see what it was I’d be facing. It was too dark anyway, and the enemy looked like it was draped in the leathery velvet fabric we had found. Instead, I raised the Charge Launcher and extended the inbuilt dagger—we were much too close to use the explosive projectile—and slashed at the creature blindly as it came in for a lunge.
A satisfying hissed filled the air as it bounced off the barrier. I couldn’t tell whether it was the Charge Launcher working of its own accord or if I had triggered the effect using my technopathic abilities, but blue energy arced from my blade. When the edge made contact with the enemy, it didn’t just rip through the cape of strange fabric but also produced strands of electricity that danced off the barrier and my target’s skin. It fell to the ground, writhing, and I finally got a good look at the monster.
The fabric was its skin or perhaps some sort of membrane. It not only covered the torso but also extended from wrist to midriff and midriff to ankles. The mouth featured a hooked beak, but the eyes were oddly mammalian. I recognized what it was when I’d stabbed the head with my electrified blade—the four-winged bird Liam had spotted gliding high in the sky. Except it wasn’t really a bird.
Infant Hook-Billed Platyhawk
Infant platyhawks haven’t yet learned how to use their wings or read air currents. However, their soft padded paws and light bodies make them excellent stealth hunters. To train their younglings’ instincts, adult platyhawks drop off live prey in their dens for the infants to train on.
Due to their lack of control over their bodies and budding intelligence, infant platyhawks are exceptionally vicious.
Holy shit. If this was just an infant, where were its parents? Several chirps sounded all around me coming through the walls, and a deeper rumbling followed. Dang. The room shook, and a crack spread across the wall next to me. A familiar glow leaked out of it, adding a golden-blue hue to the shadowy room.
“Liam, forget what I said,” I whispered through the comms link, running for cover. “Get Kitty, Morpheus, and your drones. We’ve got a nest up here!”
“Get out of there!” Liam exclaimed. “Kitty and I are on our way up.”
“Keep her down there with M—”
“She’s riding Morpheus. I’m powering up the elevators.”
Then the chirps and fluttering got louder. I prepared the Sonic Shotgun as the sound filled the room. It was coming through the walls. A thud shook the floor, and I grabbed the nearby door frame for support—more out habit than necessity. Then I realized much too late where it was coming from. “Leave the elevators alone,” I hissed. “They’re in the shaft.”
“Too late,” Liam said, and I heard screeches and chirps down the communications channel as well. “Lots of little birdies down here. Will be a while before we get to you.”
On the bright side, whatever Liam did drew a good deal of the chirping away. I hoped the upgraded gun drone and Morpheus wouldn’t let them down. The sound of thumping and rattling metal sounded from the elevator shaft, and I pushed all other concerns out of my mind. The accompanying growling sounded like something big and nasty was stuck on my floor and trying its hardest to find a way down.
The fact that my little scuffle with the infant hadn’t gotten any attention came as a surprise. Did these monsters not have the best hearing? I crept down the corridor, trying to find the large beasty. If I could pop a couple of Charge Launcher shots off and hit critical spots, perhaps we could get through this without too many injuries.
When another infant dropped down on us through a crack in the ceiling, Winnie went to town on it with his spikes. His slashes ripped through the skin, and then he stabbed the head over and over again. Watching a waist-high plush toy express such aggression was disturbing to say the least. Eventually, I had to push him off the mass of pulped flesh. Neither it nor the last specimen could be disassembled, so we moved on.
Liam’s comms cut in and out. It was much too loud to figure out what was going on. Meanwhile, the thumping and growling on my floor were getting louder too. Then the cracks on the wall got wider and the nest core’s glow filled the room, illuminating the target in front of me.
Elite Hook-billed Platyhawk: Queen In The Making
The elite Platyhawk has absorbed a McGuffin and is in the process of establishing a nest and upgrading to a boss-class monster.
While her mate travels far and wide hunting food for the younglings, the soon-to-be queen will protect them and her nest to the death.
The creature is in a transitional stage, and its qualities may differ from other members of the species.
So, she was an elite transitioning to a boss-class monster. The creature didn’t look any different from the younglings except for her size and the long spindly arms which ended in long, curving talons. I couldn’t see the head, as it was in the elevator shaft while the shoulders were trying to force themselves through. The talons raked and scratched at the walls on either side of the entrance, leaving deep gouges in them. Letting this creature get in close would be a bad idea.
Winnie tried to charge forward, but I grabbed his furry shoulder and pulled him back. The golem behaved no different from a child. A child built to kill anyone who dared oppose its guardian or her friends, but a child none the less. Kitty was likely too busy downstairs to control Winnie, so it would be up to me to direct him.
Since it was just the two of us, we’d have to put the creature down as quickly as possible, followed by any other little ones on the floor above. If not for Kitty and Liam opening the elevator shaft, we’d probably have them raining down on our heads from above. For a moment I considered heading back downstairs, killing the younglings, and then coming back with my friends. Then the elite took a couple of steps back and charged the entrance into the elevator shaft, shaking the walls and creating more cracks.
“Damn it!” I swore under my breath. It sounded like there were dozens of the tiny buggers downstairs. Dealing with the mother and the swarming younglings together in an open space like the lobby would put us at a disadvantage. I’d have to keep her busy here and hope to last long enough for my friends to finish up and join me. “Get ready, Winnie.”
I fell into a crouch to help steady my aim and waited for the crosshairs to line up. With the head and neck in the elevator shaft, there was no way for me to reach either. So I aimed my shot to hit where th
e two sets of wings met around the midriff and fired. The projectile flew true and hit my mark, exploding and showering my target in the arcing bolts of electricity. The elite screeched, recoiling from the hole. Jagged bony protrusions had ripped through the skin around the top of her head, flaring backwards into an almost crown-like shape. Fresh blood tinted them red, and I guessed it was a part of her transformation into a boss. Didn’t matter—I wasn’t going to let her get there.
The platyhawk’s skin absorbed most of the energy from the Charge Launcher’s projectile, but the arcing energy managed to burn holes in her wings. When she turned and flapped them, the undamaged side lifted her off the ground, but the other failed, making her tilt awkwardly and swerve into the neighboring wall. I didn’t waste the opportunity and fired the next shot at her head. Much to my disappointment, it did no damage at all. The creature slowed for a second, but the energy traveled through her body and dissipated, only inflicting damage to the wings. The bastard was electricity proof.
Winne shot a spike at the platyhawk, but the projectile bounced off the creature’s head. She caught the second spike he fired with her beak and bit clean through the metal. The elite charged at us chuffing like a tiger. Winnie extended an arm, grabbing a nearby pillar, and slingshotted himself away. Meanwhile, I launched myself to the side using the Pogo Heelies. A blast of wind followed the platyhawk as it leapt past us. It interrupted the stabilizers as I tried to right myself and ended up slamming into a blocky computer console. It crunched and cracked as I rolled off it onto the ground.
The wall crumbled when the platyhawk pulled back. Her skull and beak were unharmed, while the wall had caved and cracked like an eggshell. However, bits of rubble had fallen on her back and left scratches on her hide. I guessed the bone plating was her boss-class upgrade and it hadn’t spread all over her body yet. We needed to take advantage of that weakness. The monster shook her head, probably dazed by the collision.
“Winnie, get on her back and scratch the hell out of it.” The stuffed bear nodded and ran off to the side. The golem was getting smarter by the day. He understood the importance of flanking instead of attacking head-on.
From what I could tell, the creature wasn’t accustomed to fighting in small spaces. I needed to use that to my advantage. So before it could mount another charge, I ran straight at its face, Charge Launcher raised. The weapon changed form as I got in close. The barrel slid back in, and the split shield halves tilted upwards at an angle, exposing the Sonic Shotgun. When the almost-queen lunged, snapping her beak at me, I activated the lab coat’s repulsors and shot sideways, firing my weapon at the same time.
The blast only chipped the beak, but I wasn’t disappointed. I didn’t expect the blast to damage the bone-plating. The creature’s mouth opened in a wordless shriek as it swayed and stumbled. The shockwave appeared to inflict internal damage too, rattling the eardrums and the brain. Winnie took the opportunity to jump on her back and dig in with the spikes. The high-frequency vibration generator and neural disruptors would hopefully layer on the damage and slow it down further. The creature somewhat recovered and tried shaking Winnie off, bending her head backwards to reach him.
I ran in from the side, held my weapon up to her face, and fired again. This time she staggered sideways and into the cracked wall leaking the nest core’s light. It collapsed on top of her, covering her and Winnie. Much to my surprise, instead of the usual cube, I found a McGuffin floating in the air with wisps of blue light swirling around it. Great! The nest hadn’t formed yet! Most curious of all was the giant clutch of eggs that lay underneath it. We had arrived in time to save the area from a swarm of new, winged bastards.
When I advanced towards the core, the platyhawk chuffed and weakly reached towards me. Was I really going to slaughter her unborn young? No. That wasn’t me. I hoped without her to incubate the eggs, they wouldn’t hatch. Or we could chuck them in the fridge and hope someone with a beast-tamer-like power showed up. However, we were claiming the building as our home, and I wouldn’t allow a nest to form here.
“Sorry, girl,” I said, extending my blade and electrifying it, “it’s the way of the world now, and I can’t trust you not to attack us. You need to die.” I side-stepped her final desperate attempt at snapping at my legs while blood trickled from her beaked mouth. Then I stabbed my blade into the platyhawk’s eye, angling it towards the brain. Life left her within seconds of me scrambling her insides.
I stood for a moment, catching my breath and marveling at the power of my new weapon. The platyhawk had proven almost resistant to electricity, but my Sonic Shotgun had scrambled her insides. I not only had long-ranged prowess but close-ranged too. Perhaps eventually upgrading my Pogo Heelies for supercharged kicks wouldn’t be too bad an idea.
“How are things downstairs?” I asked through the comms link.
“Almost under control,” Liam answered. “Hold on for a bit longer. We’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
“Won’t be necessary.” I moved the rubble off the platyhawk, helping Winnie out of the mess before walking up to the nest core and giving it a strong poke. The McGuffin fell out of the air into my hand, and all the lights disappeared. “We got here just in time. These things were creating a new nest. On my way down now. I’ll help with clean up.”
“Roger.”
Chapter Four
House-warming
Materials stored for creation and upgrades:
waterproof elite platyhawk hide
plasma absorber
hardened bone crest
queen platyhawk beak
hawk-eye optics
elite platyhawk skeleton
elite platyhawk talons
McGuffin
The nest core gave me a McGuffin too. I headed back downstairs, leaving the decision regarding the eggs for later. When I got there, most of the creatures were already down. The gun drone was struggling to pin down the last few as they fluttered along the ceilings trying to get away.
Winnie made short work of them. The golem’s control over his stretchable limbs was getting better by the day. He climbed up to the high corner the creatures had retreated to and took them down within seconds. Liam cursed his still budding marksmanship skills and went about double-tapping any platyhawks still stirring.
We needed to find a way to dispose of all these bodies efficiently. We still didn’t know whether the system had removed the corpses in the last sector or if the monsters were feasting on the bodies, and now wasn’t the time to find out. Kitty happily gave her golems the job of gathering all the bodies together. I scanned a few of them, and the “Disassemble” button didn’t light up. I guessed the mantises were a one-time thing. We were back to only elites and boss-class monsters giving us usable materials.
For the time being, we piled them up in a corner before forcing the elevator shaft’s entrance closed and barricading it. The elevator’s roof had been ripped to shreds. It looked like the monsters had been using the cables and surfaces to sharpen their beaks and test their strength. It was pretty much useless now, and if Kitty wanted to take Morpheus upstairs, she’d have to struggle with the stairwell. It turned out the issue wasn’t going up the stairs as much as fitting between the wall and the railing. The two bulky arms would make it fairly difficult.
“That was stupid, Matt,” Kitty said when we stopped to take a break. “Why would you even consider taking on a boss monster solo? You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”
“It wasn’t a boss yet,” I answered. “The creature was in the process of upgrading while the top two floors turned into a nest. If I didn’t stop it, the bastard would’ve flown down the elevator shaft and made life hell down here. Believe me, you didn’t want to fight her and her babies at the same time.”
“What were they?” Liam asked. “Looks like a strange bird—bad hybrid.”
“The system has labeled them platyhawks.”
“Like a duck-billed platypus?”
I nodded. “Managed to get some dec
ent materials off the creature too. A couple of McGuffins as well. Do you want anything made, Kitty?”
She shook her head. “I’m good for now. Focus on Liam.” Kitty continued to keep her distance from me. I didn’t give it much thought. We weren’t pursuing anything romantic anyway.
“I have another idea,” Liam said. “Is there any way you can use the McGuffins to upgrade the generator or reinforce the building? I’d rather we invest the McGuffins in something that can help us fortify this place. I’ll try rigging something to control the metal plates, and that’s two sides of the building armored. Then it’s just a matter of creating a defense for the other two.”
“Are both of you sure about this? I like this place too, but I imagine building a base is going to be a significant investment. If things go wrong and we have to cut and run, it’ll cost us.” Liam’s transparent dome displayed two square-shaped eyes. His emoticon face didn’t give a lot away. “Things aren’t particularly stable right now. What if the crushers find their way up here? The raiders could track us down—”
“Pessimism isn’t a good color on you, Matt,” Kitty said, taking my hand. “We can’t keep running. Our objective is here. We need to take the pylon down and then ensure the Alvans don’t plant a new one. There is no home base better than this one.”
“I don’t disagree,” I told her, my shoulders relaxing now that I knew my friends were all for it. “I just wanted to make sure you understand that we’re taking a massive risk and chances are our investment isn’t going to pay off. If things go wrong, we might have to leave everything behind. McGuffins we could’ve used to empower ourselves will go to waste.”
“That just means we’ll have to figure out the right balance.” Kitty leaned in and planted a soft kiss on my lips, and it was all the reassurance I needed. “We know what’s at risk. Don’t we, Liam?” A pixelated thumbs-up appeared on his dome. “This is a risk we’ll have to take if we want to help people. The sooner people know the truth, the better. Perhaps people won’t attack one another but will team up so we can stand up against the assholes in the sky.”
