I stepped into the hangar, taking the time to close the hatch behind me. The clanking of metal on metal resonated between the concrete walls as the screeching of ungreased hinges drowned out the buzzing of the fluorescent lights. The mostly empty chamber was long and high-roofed. If anything, it reminded me of my old middle school basketball court — if you ignored the rows of weapons and the Apollo 8 module someone had shoved into a corner.

“Tiller,” I yelled, “You here?”

Only the shadows and the booming echoes of my footsteps answered. I walked further into the room, grabbing a training staff from a rack and spinning through a few practice forms. I found the movements completely useless in battle, but the flowing motions were great exercise and the constant motion was meditative.

I spun 180°, ending with my staff held out at chest level while keeping my body still. The pause was barely perceptible before I plunged the far end of the staff into the ground and used the weapon as a lever to fling my body into a flying kick that ended in a series of flowing staff attacks. I spun again as I mimed deflecting bladed attacks while simultaneously striking with foot and elbow.

I could feel myself growing winded, though the effects of the system never let me get completely out of breath. I’d learned that if I avoided skills that used [Stamina] heavily, then I no longer needed to fear growing fatigued in battle. Despite this, I’d found training to be the best way to grow my strength and endurance. With my level capped, and my higher-level skills barely growing, training had become the best outlet for my frustration.

Gains from exercise came faster than they should, likely due to no longer needing long recovery times. It also might have had something to do with the adaptive qualities of my [Chaotic Mutability] class feature. Whatever the reason, I’d put on at least fifteen pounds of muscle in the past weeks and had real definition in my chest and abs for the first time in my life.

I ended a lunge with the staff held parallel to the ground and my back leg bent. I slowly lowered myself on one leg as I stretched the other leg straight up, allowing the muscles in my back to fully extend. Just I was beginning to raise myself back up, slowly turning on one heel, when I felt a chill run down my spine and the hairs on the back of my arm bristled.

I launched myself forward, landing in a tight roll that ended with me facing the hatch I had entered through. Two knives were buried to the hilt in the concrete where I had been standing not even a second earlier. I couldn’t tell where they had come from. The hatch I had used was still closed, as where the other two entrances.

“Who’s there?” I yelled. “Catayla? Tiller?”

Another knife flew at me from the shadows, but this time I easily deflected it. As I leaped upwards, towards the source of the attack, I batted aside several more of the short, nearly hiltless blades. The attacks seemed slow and uncoordinated, though perfectly aimed. If someone with the skill to make that first attack had been trying to kill me, they would’ve grouped their attacks in tighter formations. Instead, the throws came at nearly perfect quarter-second intervals.

I reached out and grabbed a rafter, swinging around it to get a better view of my assailant but I was met only with a shadowy blur and something heavy colliding with my chest. The momentum of the kick slammed me, back first, into the cold, concrete floor but my eyes were able to follow the movement of the shadow as it sped towards the edge of the room.

“That was good,” I yelled. Only my own echoes answered. “But you won’t catch me off guard again.”

I’d never seen Catayla fight like this — and Tiller would have just blasted me from a distance with his revolver. If one of the Yorktown crew or hunters had grown this powerful, I would be impressed. That, however, seemed unlikely. This was something else. I smiled as I scanned the hangar for signs of movement.

The flickering fluorescent lights bathed everything in white, but the rafters and piled junk cast shifting shadows that clung to the edges of the room. The darkness could hide little from my System enhanced [Perception] but my eyes found nothing except piled boxes, tarps, and WWII memorabilia stacked around the edges of the room. I wasn’t sure where my attacker was hidden — or even what it was. I knew only that it was fast and immune to [Eldritch Sight], and that it wasn’t invisible or truly made of shadow.

I had seen it — and my chest still ached from its kick.

If it could hurt me … then it had to have a physical form. I took control of the twisting lines of eldritch energy that ran through the room, flattening them and pressing them into the edges of the room. It was a crude sort of sight, but I could sense where the energy moved freely and where it found resistance. It moved more slowly through inanimate objects and, though it was slow, I had trained myself to notice the barely perceptible drain of energy caused by anyone touched by the system. All system skills and feats were powered by a filtered version of the chaotic energy, though the process of this purification was invisible to me. Even the archmage claimed she was unaware of the mechanism the system used to turn eldritch energy into [Mana], [Stamina] and other forms of energy.

I turned as a hatch began to squeak open behind me. My attention was drawn only for a second, but it was enough to distract me from the knife aimed at my heart and the knee aimed at my face. I deflected the knife on reflex alone, and partially blocked the kick with my forearm, but it was not enough to stop a grazing hit from bloodying my nose. My eyes watered, but I was able to get a clear look at the attacker as she stood over me.

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It lasted only a moment, but I doubt I’ll ever forget what I saw. She was black. Not brown, like Tiller, or even dark skinned in the normal sense. She was like a hole cut into reality — a silhouette of a tall and slender woman with long hair trailing behind her as if it were floating in water. Only her eyes had color, a deep purple filled with hatred.

She screamed with a voice full of rage and sadness before once again turning into a blur and charging towards the opened hatch. I heard a surprised yell as she pushed aside our interrupter. I had a quick glimpse of a green mohawk and chain-decorated denim before I heard the sickening crunch of a skull cracking against metal.

I followed the shadow but slowed my pursuit to examine Worthy, his head at an unnatural angle. I screamed as I turned away from him to finish my pursuit — but the mysterious woman was already gone. The passageway split ahead, and I had no way to track her. I turned back to Worthy’s form, and screamed again, before bending to check his pulse. I wasn’t sure if he had saved my life or prevented me from stopping the creature; either way, I was consumed with rage at my loss.

My prey had escaped.

I felt a weak pulse under my fingers, pulling me out of my haze. My scowl softened, though my face still ached, as I turned my attention back to Worthy. There was a large gash across his chest and his head was — the best way to describe it is “dented.” Just above his left temple was golf ball sized crater covered in blood.

I knew I wasn’t supposed to move someone with a head injury, and I was considering leaving him to find help when a large air siren announced the beginning of our nightly raids.

“Fuck,” I yelled. “Perfect timing.”

I slung Worthy over my shoulder, ignoring my urge to leave him and hunt the shadowy attacker. She had done this. If Worthy died … well, what? It wouldn’t change what I did with her.

***

I wasn’t surprised by the frantic energy of the infirmary, but I was amazed by how full it was. Of the twenty beds, over half of them were in use. The raid had only just begun, and it seemed unlikely that these many people could have been injured and transported here already. I noticed a few nurses and doctors wearing scrubs, but the vast majority wore a mishmash of modern clothing mixed with the furs and leather that had become the latest trend. The treatments were just as unfamiliar. Arcane spells were used next to beeping machines and dripping IVs in a chaotic merging of two seemingly incompatible worlds.

I raised my voice above the din of conversation and machines, and a short nurse with long bangs ran towards me. As she approached, she waved over a pair of men to join her. The two orderlies carefully took Worthy from my shoulder and set him on a nearby bed.

“He’s …”

The woman ignored me, holding up a hand to shush me as she placed her other palm on Worthy’s forehead. A green glow had already appeared between her fingers before the two men had finished placing their patient on the bed.

The glow of the nurse’s hand intensified, and I noticed a faraway look on her face that I recognized from seeing countless people examine their stats and skills while walking through the decks of the Yorktown. Phones no longer worked, but we had found other screens to stare into as we avoided eye contact and idle conversation with strangers.

The woman continued to concentrate, and I saw the redness and swelling on Worthy’s face slowly retreat, though the crater persisted. The orderlies stood and looked towards me, so I took that as my cue to leave. Just as I turned towards the door, however, I came face-to-face with Bridgette. Her eyes had gone wide, and even though her mouth was held open in a scream she made no sound.

“Bridgette,” I said. I wanted to reach out to her, but I didn’t know if I should. 

She saved me the trouble of deciding by slipping past me and going straight to Worthy. Her silence was unbroken until the two orderlies had to physically hold her back. Bridgette began to wail. It was a raw, primal pain, like the cry of a wounded animal. Few eyes turned to us; all too focused on closer tasks.

I took a step towards her, but when she looked up, I saw nothing but judgment and anguish. Her jaw quivered and her nostrils flared as she stared through me. I noticed her fists clench, and I instinctively took a step back.

“Bridgette …”

“Who did this? Who!”

She lunged, hitting me in my still sore chest before grabbing my collar and lifting me from my feet. The best way to describe Bridgette was “Amazonian” and such strength wouldn’t have seemed unusual on her, even pre-system. Now, full of rage and power, she was a force of nature.

“Who?”

“I don’t know, Bridgette.”

She looked up at me, shock covering her face. Tears filled her face once again, as she dropped me. She reached out to me again, and I flinched as she pulled me into a tight hug.

“I’ll find her Bridgette, I promise.”

“Her?”

Brigette pushed me away to arm’s length, and I held her gaze for the first time. Her face seemed calm, but the rage still burned behind her eyes.

“I don’t know what it was,” I said, “but I fought it and I think I can beat it. Worthy … was drawn into the fight without ever knowing what hit him.”

Bridgette’s face spiraled between grief and rage as I described what happened. As I talked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was familiar about the shadow woman. The shape of her face had seemed … but I couldn’t hold onto the thought. Just trying to hold onto the thought was painful, like burning coal placed in the center of my forehead.

As I struggled to force the memory, the room around me was thrown into chaos. Machines fell from the floor and crashed into a tilting floor as the roar of twisting metal reverberated between the walls.

I looked around to find smashed glass and small instruments scattered across the room, but the floor was no longer down, and everything had been pulled to the far side of the room. Nurses, doctors, and orderlies were struggling to hold patients and hospital beds upright and a woman in green scrubs was screaming as she cradled a twisted arm.

“Is everyone all right?”

Multiple people called out to each other in shock and concern, but I was locked in confusion, my ears ringing like a siren reminding me I needed to act — but I seemed to have forgotten how. I had instinctively steadied myself by growing a pair of tentacles to brace against opposite walls, leaving me hanging off the ground in the center of the room.

But then, everything came back into focus. I grew another five pairs of sinuous limbs, using them to hold down hospital beds as I waited for another impact. Whatever had shaken us had only happened once, but the ship was still listing at least fifteen degrees to one side and there was no telling if it would worsen. I wasn’t even sure if we could remain airborne like this.

“Bridgette,” I yelled. She looked up to me, but her arms remained wrapped around Worthy’s torso. “I need to get to the main deck. Can you take charge here?”

She nodded, glancing down at Worthy before standing and giving orders to stow debris and tie down everything that could be secured. I climbed upward through a hatch I had walked through only a few minutes prior.