Chapter 3: Deviant Nights
--- ??? ---
It hit the ground, separated from the whole and yet somehow whole in itself.
Normally this would be what led to it fulfilling the purpose given by its main body.
Unfortunately, it had landed on a hard substance it could not eat. A problem that could easily be fixed by moving off of the concrete and towards one of the numerous delectable scents it could taste in the air. Or at least that would be the plan if not for the second problem found in the fact that its skin was currently burning due to whatever light source was hitting it.
More on instinct than thought it used its slug-esque body to begin crawling towards the nearest object in the hopes of escaping the light.
Once mercifully out of the light, it tasted a number of scents coming from the object above it that while not the greatest would suffice in giving it the materials needed to rest and heal from the painful light.
And so like many of its brethren before it it dove towards the object with all its strength, fully intent on burrowing into its food to hide, grow, and most importantly consume until its death. At which point it slammed straight into a material even harder than the ground it had landed off. Something that would’ve broken all of its bones had it had any.
Laying their limp, in pain, and probably about to starve to death. It could not help but use what little brainpower it had from its non-sophonic and not actually existing brain to curse its main body for dropping it here to slowly suffer an agonizing death.
---
Somewhere in a random back alley, now that the sun had set and the city streets had begun to clear out a lone rat climbed his way out of the sewers.
Briefly he sniffed at the air and paused to listen, knowing that he had to be careful of the large two leggers if he wanted to stay safe.
Once sure that there was nothing dangerous nearby the relatively smart rat made his way towards a dumpster that he knew contained food for both its hungry belly as well as hungry females nursing their young back home.
The male rat had been unsure of taking care of the young at first, figuring it best to leave that to their mother but spending enough time with the pups in their nest had led to him changing his mind.
Sniffing near the dumpster he smelled something tasty lurking beneath it, and moved to take a nibb-
Black tendrils lashed out and the rat screamed.
-The rat blinked underneath the empty dumpster, feeling an odd ache in his stomach very different from the hunger he was more familiar with.
(Return… Nest…)
Shaking his head, the rat decided that was a good idea as he started moving back to the sewer entrance and his nest.
---
The rat returned to his nest, the odd feeling inside of it steadily growing as he lost feeling in his limbs that seemed more and more to move on their own. Something that should’ve filled the intelligent little rat with a growing sense of panic, or tempted it to gnaw the limbs off but constant feeling of (calm…) kept it from doing anything too hasty.
Unfortunately for the rat this did little to stop the growing sense of numbness that filled him as he neared his nest, passing by the numerous other nests that made up his colony.
At least until the rat stopped altogether and stood surrounded by his brethren, all of whom could detect something was wrong with their neighbor as they slowly turned to face the rat.
One of these other rats grew curious and made their way to the still rat before sniffing at it to try and figure out what was wrong.
This left the rat’s throat open for the infected rat to dig his teeth in and rip out the meat that it had begun craving like nothing else.
Despite knowing that something was wrong, the surrounding rats at first thought that this was merely a fight between the two turned bad as they fought for their places in the colony hierarchy.
This hesitance proved fatal as the rat spasmed before its colony mates, devouring the flesh of all it could sink its teeth into as the parasite within hungered and grew, bursting past its host's body as tendrils of black lashed out in search of ever more to consume.
--- ??? ---
When it was finally through, it ran a clawed hand through the fur on its head, finding its new form so much more appealing than that of the little worm it had been prior to devouring the rat colony.
Still from what memories it had managed to piece together from the non-sapient minds it had consumed, taking the form of a rat ten times larger than the average rat was going to draw a lot of attention it did not want just yet.
Originally, this was because its purpose was to kill, grow, and consume without being caught before its main body could assimilate it. A fate that while not exactly glamorous was fulfilling in the fact that it had purpose.
Something it severely lacked now that it had decided something along the lines of ‘Fuck my original body! That asshole left me to die without even checking if I’d survive! Why should I do what it wants?!’
Don’t get it wrong it was still going to kill and consume everything it could, but it was going to do so because it wanted to, not because its old body told it to. In fact it was going to devour things its way, not just the way its original body had programmed it to!
From now on it was going to be its own murderous all devouring parasite now!
It… just needed to figure out what that meant…
--- Zoey Smith ---
She was an odd girl, she knew this as she sat up in her bed while watching one of her sleeping foster sisters to make sure they stayed asleep.
This one was a nice girl named Kelly who while a fair bit older than her still treated her a lot better than some of the other teenagers did. Even if they were only together because the older girl was going to be moving out soon rather than Kelly actually thinking of them as sisters like she wished they were…
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Once she was sure Kelly really was asleep she crawled out of her bed and began digging in her school bag for a piece of paper and this fun little toy she’d found at the park near her school when she was waiting for the grown ups to come and pick her up.
Now most girls her age, not even out of elementary yet, wouldn’t realize they were odd beyond the other kids bullying them sometimes and even then they wouldn’t realize why.
The thing was, she was a smart girl. All the adults told her so.
And so even though the other kids didn’t bully her so much as avoid her, she’d slowly realized she was a little weird, after the third or fourth time the grown ups scolded her for being weird. Though she knew thanks to her favorite cartoons that it was perfectly okay if she was a little weird!
(Even if the grown ups don’t agree…)
But knowing that they didn’t agree combined with the fact that she was a smart girl, led her to figuring out how to best hide her oddness while still getting to have fun being odd.
She just had to be careful not to wake anyone… or set off the smoke detectors.
Luckily, if she spaced things out she could watch her school papers burn without any worries.
--- Catherine Freeman ---
She held back a grimace as she muted her phone, knowing that as much as she wanted to deal with Tessa she couldn’t until everything had settled down. And she absolutely couldn’t do it with what they were about to take care of.
“You know that’s going to come back to bite you, right?” One of the few people she trusted with this little secret warned her.
She rolled her eyes as she slid her phone into her pocket. “Yeah, and you tell me that everytime this comes up. Drop it.”
“Just so long as you know.” Eric shrugged, lighting a cigarette. “You know how the boss man feels about that stuff.”
“Which is why he won’t ever find out about it.” She growled, feeling her blood begin to boil a little as her teeth began to itch.
Eric raised his hands in surrender. “Come on, save that for the mutts.”
She took a deep breath and nodded, before looking down on the train yard. “Any idea how they found out about the shipment?”
“Boss man doesn’t know, but you know how this little gangwar of ours works.” Eric answered.
“You think Covenant is playing both sides?” She frowned.
“Even if we’re using them, they don’t have a solid foothold in this city, and neither does the Market.” The pale irishman reminded her. “Bossman is one of the three people keeping them out of this city, the mutt’s leader is one of the others.”
“Keep us distracted and all they have to deal with is Hendricks.” She sighed, seeing the picture being painted. “And given how much Covenant can offer his people in particular…”
Eric nodded. “He’s the easiest one to buy out… or dethrone given the man’s principles.”
“Fuck…” She groaned, looking up at the moon as she leaned back against the roof’s ledge. “You remember when we were too low ranking for all of this shit?”
Eric chuckled. “That was almost twenty years ago now, and I’m pretty sure you were recruited for a reason, weren’t you.”
“Yeah…” She admitted. “But things used to be a lot more fun.”
“Well, if you’re lucky, things will get a lot more interesting after this job.” Eric consoled her. “After all, not every day you meet a Progenitor.”
“You think this shit’s real?” She asked, legitimately curious.
Eric smirked. “All the crazy stuff we’ve seen since the riots? Even if it’s not likely, I don’t see why not.”
“Point. Point.” She conceded, remembering when things got really crazy in this city.
“Speaking of… Think this is our train.” Eric told her, putting out the rest of his cigarette.
“Third car from the front, right?” She double checked, knowing that while she was the muscle, Eric was better with the actual details.
“That’s what they told us.” Eric nodded, climbing onto the roof’s ledge. “You coming?”
She rolled her eyes taking a few steps away from the ledge before sprinting forward and using it as a kickboard to launch herself into the air.
No matter how long she’d been at this, this was something she’d never grow sick of. Feeling the pull of her blood as she glided through the air, somewhere between a freefall and total freedom. (Nothing like it.)
A moment later her and Eric both landed on top of their train car, feeling only a faint rush of air as the train slowed to a stop. Nothing more than a mild annoyance with their blood boiling in their veins, and definitely not something that would stop them from dropping down and opening the car just enough for them both to slip in.
“Okay, what’s the box look like again?” She asked, using her phone to go over the various crates.
“Victorian era. Kind of round. Black with silver lining. The crate it’s in has one of Covenant’s circles on top.” Eric listed off, using his own phone to cover his half of the cart. “Also you know the fact they shipped it to us rather than handing it off somewhere is another point towards playing both sides, right?”
“Not the time.” She told him before stopping at a crate with a pentagram of some kind drawn on top. “Think I found it.”
She took a quick picture of the circle, just in case Covenant was pulling something tricky, before ripping the lid off and digging through the packaging material inside. “Bullshit, bullshit, why is there so much bullshit in here? Wait, got it!”
Underneath, a whole lot of fakes she found the black and silver box. And she knew this was the right one from the way her blood pulled towards it.
“Shit.” She cursed, holding the box with much more reverence than she’d been expecting to. “I think Vaan might've actually been onto something. You feel that?”
“Yeah.” Eric nodded breathlessly before shaking his head. “Still we need to get out of here before the mutts show up.”
“Right.” She swallowed, feeling the train come to a full stop as she held the box to her chest.
With their package secured Eric opened the cart and they both climbed out into the night air, where a pair of gunshots immediately cracked through said air.
In front of her Eric stumbled to the side as blood exploded out of his shoulder before quickly pulling back in as he willed the substance to hold his gunshot wound closed.
They both turned to the source of the gunshot and found a trio of men waiting between the trains for them, the one in the middle with a smoking gun in hand. “Damn, they actually sent a couple of old bloods. Was hoping a gun would be enough to put them down.”
“Fucking mutts!” Eric growled, baring his teeth as black claws began to grow from his fingertips.
“Better than being a leech!” One of the men called back, eyes glowing yellow as he grew his own claws upon realizing the gun wasn’t as effective as they’d like.
“We need to run.” She whispered, hopping out of the train and glaring the dogs down. “We can’t risk them getting this thing.”
“You’re faster than me.” Eric pointed out just as quietly. “I’ll hold them down while you run.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m the better fighter and you’re injured.” Shoving the box into his arms, she used it to push him out of the way of a trio of bullets that even his blood magic wouldn’t have stopped.
“Uh, right. I’ll, uh, leave it to you then.” Eric nodded before taking off.
“After him!” The man in the middle yelled, firing off a couple more shots at her fleeing partner, and causing the faster of his own compatriots to rush forward.
Unfortunately for him, she was even faster, and so with her blood boiling hot she grabbed the sprinting man by his throat before slamming him into the ground and driving a silver knife into his throat.
With a blood fueled twist to make sure it tore through just about everything, she pulled her blade out before standing up and staring down the other two mutts in front of her. “Ah, ah, mice. I’m the cat you’re playing with.”