by Zack Archer
Charges of smoky light buzzed past me as the cops opened fire.
Kree grabbed the edges of her suit in order to withdraw the protective wings she’d used to shield me earlier, but I waved her off.
“I’ve got it this time! Get behind me!”
She did, crouching in my shadow as I willed a ball of energy into the palm of my hand and flung it like a bowling ball.
The energy ball hit the ground, bounced, then burst mid-air, scattering the Snouts.
Kree squeezed the back of my arm. “I’m impressed.”
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” I whispered.
I whipped my hands from left to right, casting waves of smoky energy balls at our attackers. One of the spheres struck a synthetic Snout, setting off some explosive device he was carrying in a huge backpack. The attendant blast birthed a wall of surreal light that blinded me.
Kree pulled on my arm and I wheeled around. We bounded forward, exiting the walkway, running across a concourse and then over a raised pathway.
Kree sprinted out ahead of me and I tried to use my MEM boots for propulsion, but they weren’t working. I assumed they’d been damaged during the day’s events. Regardless, my arms and legs began churning more powerfully than they ever had before in my life. Kree was in the lead as we surged forward, quickly outdistancing the pursuing Snouts.
Running with wild abandon, we swung left, slashing across another street, praying that nobody was waiting to shoot us down.
We took cover behind another warehouse-sized structure, and Kree pointed to a door that she pulled open to reveal the ground floor of what looked like an office building.
I followed her across a foyer, passing by a dormant fountain toward a staircase when I heard shouts and shuffles coming from behind and then—
The air filled with energized rounds fired by the pursuing Snouts.
The explosive rounds whizzed over our heads, slamming into several huge structural columns that rose from the floor to the ceiling.
We leap-frogged up the staircase as the Snouts shouted and cursed. They squeezed off more shots as we dove onto a landing attached to a mezzanine and belly-crawled under a row of decorative metal railings.
“Got any good ideas?” I whispered.
“I thought you might,” Kree replied. “You are the superhero after all, aren’t you?”
I forced a smile and we pushed ourselves up into a run, juking down another walkway ending at a glass-like wall that looked out over a sunken space. It appeared to be the roof of a sunroom that was located directly below the mezzanine.
A figure appeared out of the semi-darkness ahead. It was a Snout holding an oversized assault rifle.
“Look out!” Kree screamed.
The Snout fired a shot and I came up in a wide spin, raising my hands with a thumbs out gesture to create a cone of energy that deflected the energized round.
Kree couldn’t believe her eyes as I half-crouched and she did likewise.
The Snout continued to fire, a storm of rounds ricocheting off the energy cone which I feared might give way at any second.
And then it happened.
The Snout’s gun fell silent, and I brought my hands down.
Kree started running.
Blitzing forward, launching herself until it looked like she was swimming in the air.
She smacked into the Snout and knocked him back. I followed, lowering my shoulder, powering into the figure.
Or, more appropriately, through him.
The force of the impact sent the three of us flying through the wall of glass.
We hung in the air for an instant and then began falling, our bodies intertwined like lovers.
We fell fifteen feet through the air, riding a waterfall of translucent shards and other debris down onto the floor below us.
The body of the Snout cushioned our landing.
We landed atop him, the man’s body slamming to the ground, the impact knocking the law enforcement official out cold.
I sat in stunned silence. “You okay?” I eventually asked.
Kree plucked a shard of glass from behind her ear and nodded. “I’ve been through worse.”
I stood and helped her out. “Up there,” she said, pointing back up. “You…you saved me.”
“Isn’t that what superheroes are supposed to do?”
“Not the ones I’m familiar with.”
I flashed a smile. “Well, then you just need to hang around people like me more.”
We heard the sound of shouts overhead. Kree struck off down a semi-lit corridor, and I turned my attention back to the unconscious Snout and quickly patted him down, finding several objects stuffed in pockets and strapped to his tactical belt: a few packets of food, a gizmo the size of a remote control, a small gun that resembled a minute cordless drill (that was cold to the touch), and an egg-shaped device, silver in color, that resembled a grenade.
I pocketed the gun and gizmo, strapped the grenade onto my belt and took off after Kree who was standing at the top of a stairwell, waiting for me. I showed her what I’d grabbed from the Snout and she took the small gun from me as I retained the other objects. We then descended the stairwell.
57
We moved down through several levels of the underground city and eventually exited to cut through a hexagonal tunnel which glowed with an eerie red light. Kree showed a preternatural ability to navigate, but soon even she was lost, and we took to shuffling through what looked like yet another underground red light district.
There were recessed spaces on either side of the tunnel where traders and hawkers were busy selling foods, goods, and all manner of powders and liquids that people were snorting, swallowing, and injecting with large-gauge needles. We passed saloons, eateries, and hotels, the space thrumming with the exotic pulse of an Oriental street market as Kree reached over and snatched two lengths of cloth from one of the traders. She used one of the lengths to cover her face and handed the other me and suggested I do the same. I glanced up and realized why.
A Snout foot patrol was visible up ahead, three Synths and a human law enforcement officer milling around, keeping the peace. Beyond them was another Snout strapped inside a mechanized fighting suit, a mech.
The mech was seven feet tall but little more than a seat in a metal-skinned frame which fitted around the Snout’s torso and head. Two absurdly thin legs that looked like javelins supported it, and it had two stubby arms upon which had a pair of small Gatling-gun-style cannons bolted to them. With its spindly legs and the way that it ticked and clicked while moving forward, the machine resembled an oversized praying mantis.
Realizing that I was still in my Snout garb, Kree grabbed my arm and pulled me into one of the spaces, an oversized niche which was dimly lit and veiled by a layer of smoke from the numerous pipes that were being smoked by humans and aliens alike. We wanted to get as far away from the other Snouts as possible, so we moved briskly past tables filled with men, women, and all manner of aliens who were eating, laughing, and playing games of chance. Somebody struck a tune on a strange kind of flute. Soon we were moving through a doorway at the back of the space.
Darkness upon darkness greeted us, then a match was struck and we followed a man who was sucking on a pipe down a long twisting hallway that spooled to a cavernous space.
I saw a bar and a stage. Upon the stage were a group of beautiful creatures that looked like something you’d find in a woodland or a child’s fairy-tale book.
There was a woman with soot-black hair who looked like a swan, one who resembled a boar (complete with short, gleaming, tattooed tusks), another one who resembled an olive-hued snake, and finally, a beautiful muscled lizard-woman with a bright yellow stripe running down her cheeks like a skink.
“A harem of monster women,” Kree said.
“They’re beautiful,” I remarked.
“They’ll suck the life from you if you let them.”
“You’ve seen them before?”
She gnawed her lowe
r lip. “I’ve seen things like those before. Back on Halja, there was a group of them that were brought to the planet periodically to pleasure the men…and some of the women.”
The monster women began dancing and cavorting onstage while an audience of men, most humanoid but also a smattering of large-boned aliens, tossed coins and paper money.
I stopped and looked sideways to see men making out with alien women on plush couches and benches. Beyond them were private rooms shrouded by thin sheets of fabric. Shadows were visible on the other side, the unmistakable forms of humanoids and alien creatures fucking.
We moved through the crush of people and one of the monster women, a serpent-woman whose green hair was cut in a short bob, shimmied past me.
Her long tongue flicked against my ear and her hand somehow found a way inside my suit, diving down to my groin. She gave my dick a quick squeeze and regarded me with large yellow eyes.
Kree grabbed my hand and we moved under what sounded like a fan powering to life in the ceiling. The room was soon doused with golden incense that made my head swim. Sex seemed to be percolating everywhere, and I realized we were in a kind of burlesque house slash bordello.
Kree flanked me and we shared a long look as the incense swirled. For a moment, the scent of the incense jumpstarted memories of what had happened with the wolf witch down in the underground swamp. I hoped I wasn’t being drugged again.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“They’ve scattered memory motes,” Kree whispered. “A substance that is used on many planets. A sacrament to some, a way to transcend consciousness to others. The elders called it the ‘Cosmic Serpent.’”
“What does it do?”
“It disorders the mind and allows one to see and experience the memories of another.”
I breathed deeply and became light-headed and then time and sound seemed to slow. A twist of warmth worked its way through my innards. Kree and the others around us wavered in and out of focus and then I began to experience the sensation of being on the outside of my body looking in and then—
BOOM!
Everything fell away and I was greeted by the darkness of deep space.
I was in the grip of a strange kind of ecstasy, an overload of my nervous system and then something stirred.
A figure in the murk.
I was not alone.
A scream ripped the blackness and then the world went white.
Panic reflexes took over and I lunged toward the strobe of light and collapsed on the ground, rolling over and looking back to find that the scenery in my mind had changed.
I’d been transported out of the bar.
In front of me was what looked like a shipping container tethered to a kind of parachute that lay on the dusty ground.
Men, women, and children that looked just like Kree were emerging from inside the container, rubbing their eyes, looking shell-shocked.
They looked to me and clucked their tongues, and I was shocked to find that I understood what they were saying. Raising up a hand, I noticed that the flesh was covered in a fine layer of golden fur.
With a creeping sense of disbelief, I realized I was reliving Kree’s memories.
I’d ingested the drug, the Cosmic Serpent, and somehow I’d gone back in time and was marooned on the place she feared most, the accursed planet called Halja.
The planet was a moonscape of what looked like colossal baobab trees sprouting up out of a desert that lay in a valley wreathed by a forest of razor-sharp, vertical rocks. The area looked isolated and inhospitable.
I turned at a sound echoing in the distance.
What sounded like a horn.
“Hurry!” I said to the others, the words coming out in Kree’s native tongue.
The air suddenly filled with grit and I looked up to see a sandstorm approaching, what looked like a curtain being drawn across the land.
More horns sounded, followed by the shriek of men and animals.
Whatever was coming, was approaching in the dust.
“RUN!” I screamed.
I charged down a footpath as the dust enveloped everything, visibility dropping to a few feet.
Dozens of Kree’s people were following, some of them darting forward, others running in a zigzagging pattern out to my left and right.
There was a large-boned male out to my right who was shouting, urging us on when—
WHUNK!
He was viciously ripped away in a whirl of whipping appendages by something huge and shadowy.
My heart bottomed out when I saw the outlines of the nightmarish creatures who were springing an ambush on us. Some of them flew through the air, while others scuttled on two or six or eight legs.
Before I could warn the others, men, women, even children were being speared or plucked up by jaws and jagged pincers, taken away into the murk.
I ran ahead, tripped, and fell forward in a gut-twisting spin, only to come face to face with a biomechanical fiend, a beast that was ten feet tall with the upper body of a man encased in some kind of metal armor, and the body of a spider.
The creature’s deep pulmonary breathing was audible. The thing bellowed and then whippet-thin appendages that resembled silk ropes with sharpened ends shot out of its belly, slicing through the air.
I ducked and dodged the appendages, scrambling into a forest of stone trees, vertical pieces of jagged limestone that rose twenty feet into the air from the desert floor.
The spider-beast pursued, but I was smaller and nimbler. I squeezed through gaps in the limestone and broke off a chunk of stone that was shaped like a javelin.
The monster followed, traversing the tops of the stone.
I waited for the right moment to strike, and then thrust my javelin up into its soft belly.
Hot gore showered me as the spider-beast flapped and wailed. I jammed the rock into its belly again and again, and then I retraced my steps and staggered back out into the desert.
The dust storm had ended and the sky was full of all manner of men, women, and unnamable creatures.
Heroes, villains, and monsters.
All of the things that had been sent to the planet.
They were firing at each other with weapons and bolts of energy, setting the air and land ablaze, and doing great violence to anything that moved.
The ground before me was carpeted with bodies and most of them were Kree’s people, the Honoria. Those that were left, a dozen men and women and as many children, crowded around me, looking for protection.
The sight of the dead and dying caused anger to well up inside of me and I loosed a gutwrenching shriek just as something wrapped around my leg—
My body jolted and I looked up to see that I was back.
Back inside the bar.
Kree was staring at me, recognition in her eyes.
She pointed down at a thick, snake-like tail coiling around my thigh. I followed the tail up to a gorgeous reptilian woman with teal skin who was flashing a high-wattage smile in my direction.
The woman’s tail slipped away from my leg, but before I could speak to her, a hand reached out and grabbed the length of cloth away from Kree’s face. The hand belonged to a bulked up city dweller in a skintight tank top. The man was in dire need of a shave and whistled upon seeing Kree.
“How ‘bout you get up on that stage, little lady,” the man said, gesturing back to the stage with the harem of monster women.
Kree stared at the man’s hand, which was still on her shoulder. “I’ll give you three seconds to remove your hand.”
“Don’t – don’t do it, Kree,” I said.
The man grinned. Kree counted. “One, two—”
WHAM!
Kree didn’t wait until three. She punched the man hard in the jaw, sending him back on his ass. One of the man’s friends sprang to his defense and then two more, and I was forced to engineer a protective shield which I used to brush them back.
The women on the stage screamed. I screamed for Kree to run and s
he did.
We shot through the crowd, shoving people aside as a siren echoed from somewhere behind. Dashing out through a side door, we found ourselves on a side catwalk and looked in both directions. I was horrified to see the mech plodding down from the other direction.
“STOP WHERE YOU ARE!” the man operating the mech shouted over a bullhorn.
We didn’t stop for anything.
Blasting down the catwalk, we ran with wild abandon.
We shot down a stairwell, Kree leading the way.
The stairwell ended at a ramp which led into low-ceilinged, wide corridor. A withering sweep of fire rang out from behind, the mech opening fire with its cannons. Bullets zinged off the walls, zipping past our heads.
We took cover and looked back. The mech was visible swinging wildly toward us, its cannons spinning so furiously they looked like they might catch fire.
My hand came up and I threw a plasma ball that caromed off the sloped wall and blasted apart in the middle of the hallway. The shockwave hit the mech and knocked it back. The cannons were silenced for a moment which gave me an opportunity to rise, but the mech had already heaved itself at me.
The sound of the machine’s gears and pistons humming and popping reverberated in the tight space. The mech rampaged forward, and I ran to greet it.
Without thinking, I slid between the machine’s legs and hooked a hand on a hydraulic cable that snaked up to the thing’s belly. I could hear the operator cursing and screaming as I grabbed onto the cable and pulled myself around the side of the machine.
The operator tried to rotate the machine’s cannons around, but I was too fast for it. I made myself small and shaped a ball of pure energy that I slapped against the back of the mech’s power source.
The operator squeezed off a burst from the cannons as I dropped from the machine and rolled away.
The mech pivoted as the ball of energy began to glow and—
BOOM!
The energy detonated, killing the operator instantly. A shudder coursed through the driverless machine and it began sputtering, staggering forward like a drunken man, headed toward a faraway wall.
The mech jackhammered into the wall, its legs still pumping. The sound of metal grinding against metal followed and then the machine broke apart.
