“What is that?” Janine asked, cringing at the rubbing of chitin plates against the skin.
Chak and Anissa decided not to postpone their reunion for later, and segmented coils almost fully submerged the armored Wolfkin. It took an inhuman exertion of will not to grab the bastard for whatever passed by his nape and not smash him into a broken smear for daring to come near her princess, much less do whatever the Abyss was going on. But everyone deserved their bit of happiness, no matter how unnatural or degenerate it might have been, and so she focused on the thing in front of her.
They were in the underground hangar bay of Ingo Augmetics. The wide hall felt wrong; emptiness stretched for dozens of meters in every direction and disconnected and half-torn wires lay forgotten and damaged; their assembly lines had long been taken away. Arenas used for testing and areas for engineering and shipping purposes stood abandoned. Half of the lights didn’t work, and even most of the mechanical arms disappeared from the ceiling. The scents of hundreds of people absent from their workstations didn’t seem right to her.
We’ll fix that. Janine promised herself, looking at the chains hanging from above. They held a harness containing a single object, shaped after a Wolfkin. Dull, red lenses reflected the light of her eyes; blunt vambraces seemed useless until she touched them with a finger and cut her skin. A wire, invisible to the naked eye, covered it, sharp enough to cut through her skin.
“Power armor,” Banshee said, running a finger over the gray surface. The woman still wore her usual white uniform, but added a green coat over it, fastening its collar with a choker. “Prototype of the future mass-produced MK7 combat suit. True to its name, we no longer need to slowly fit it to the user piece by piece. Instead…” She pressed a remote controller, and seams opened on the plates, creating an entrance large enough for Janine to fit in. “… you just hop in and operate the beauty. Sorry for the blandness; we didn’t have time for painting. But we added the emblem based on Marco’s sketches!” Banshee turned the suit in its harness, showing the image of crossed muscular arms on the backpack.
“That wire… Why use it and not sharp edges?” Janine inquired.
“Another test of Dad’s newest product,” Banshee said happily, and fired a pistol from her hip without taking it from its holster. A black dot appeared on the smooth floor near her leg, lengthening itself as the woman took out the pistol and dragged its barrel to the side. “An idea from our new student.”
“Slave.”
Janine tensed, unsure where the voice came from. The word followed Banshee’s sentence, correcting her, but she saw no one behind the woman.
“Hush! No one enslaved you. The wire is technically alive; we bred it from an organo-polymer compound, and it has to be kept in a liquid state to be successfully used in a ranged weapon.” Banshee squeezed the trigger a second time, and a line of dust retracted itself back in the barrel of her gun. “Unless you are an Ice Fang, you can’t even see it without special equipment. I bet the Investigation Bureau will have a field day using it for assassinations…” Janine coughed, and the pale New Breed nodded. “Yeah, right. Nerves. When exposed to open air, the wire’s lifespan reaches four hundred years, during which it never loses its sharpness. Pretty cool, huh?”
“Amazing,” Janine agreed and took the open helmet, looking in. “There are no sockets!” she exclaimed. “No connection cords either. How am I supposed to use it?” She tapped hard on the steel, expecting the alloy to yield and bend, but it resisted. Curious, the Wolfkin intensified the pressure, slowly growing amazed that the thinner plates had more durability than her lost gear.
“Please stop trying to ruin it, Warlord; you’ll just waste your time,” Chak said, wrapping himself around Anissa. They rubbed their foreheads, and the quartermaster continued. “Short of drilling it with diamonds over a course of a week or submerging it in a bath of inorganic acids at a temperature of two thousand degrees and proper catalysts, not much can damage it. It doesn’t mean that you’re invulnerable; the New Breeds will hack you just fine if you stand still, but since the development of the plates used by Alpha and First, the Reclamation Army has never produced such an advanced technological marvel. Feel honored.”
His tail moved, touching the sleeve and showing it to Janine.
“The previous model improved your physical strength marginally. To give you an example you’re capable of understanding, a Normie wearing your old gear would never have beaten dear Ani in an arm-wrestling match, but this model can fold her into a ball.” The antennas on his tail caressed the suit’s arm and let it drop. “Its HUD is immune to most known types of EMP; its communication systems can establish links spanning over forty-two kilometers, ignoring jamming. Solid stone, steel, spatial distortions, and even anomalies resulting from reality warping hardly matter! The lenses can discern the heat sources of an individual organism even through the thickest sandstorm or firestorm. Night vision is present, sure, but now you have access to spatial anomaly detectors that will give our warlords precious milliseconds to evade the exotic attacks of scum like Phaser.”
“Good. Where are the cables? The plugs to connect my implants?” Janine asked exasperatedly, sticking her head into the armor.
Anissa freed herself from under the coils and joined in the examination. They frowned and exchanged glances.
“Mom’s right,” Anissa stated. “This thing is useless if it cannot work in sync with a fighter. It will end up being more of a hindrance in high-speed combat. You might as well offer her a foot soldier’s exosuit.”
“O ye of little faith,” Chak smugly chittered and pushed a crate closer to Janine. Inside was a skin-tight suit that resembled leather but was silky smooth to the touch. “It’s called the Underarmor MK. 2. Put it on and then gear up.”
Banshee and Anissa helped the warlord into the ridiculous garment that covered her from neck to ankles and wrists. It refused to rip, stretching so that she could move her limbs freely, unhindered. The fabric clung to her skin, compressing the fur. Anissa searched for zippers, but Banshee stopped her.
“It is fully comparable to the prototype recycling systems,” assured Banshee, misreading their intentions. “We tested it ourselves; feel free to piss and sweat; not a drop of moisture will be wasted.”
“We? Not to harp on your enthusiasm, Your Highness.” Anissa bowed, spreading the side of the non-existent cloak like an Ice Fang would. “But you are a tiny little bit smaller than the warlord. Unless you gained and burned through several hundred kilos while we were away.”
“Something like that, yeah!” Banshee giggled, and Janine heard a chuckle that almost went unnoticed amid the laughter. Now she was certain. The noise came from the woman’s back.
“Enough chatter!” Chak commanded. “Put on the armor. And no helping!”
“Where is Till Ingo?” Janine inquired, pushing her arms into the sleeves.
“Here,” the scientist’s voice boomed from a loudspeaker in the ceiling, and the screen of an observation room opened. Ingo’s silhouette sat behind an examination table. “Don’t worry, I observe, ideate, and search for flaws. You have brought me quite an intriguing gift, Warlord.”
“Gift?”
“Yes, this… Your name is Mehmed, is it not, young man?” A wordless groan filled the compartment, voicing a plea to end the misery. “Why are they always suicidal initially? Oh, no, my life is over,” Ingo mocked. “In a few years they cringe over it when you bring it up at the annual roasting,” he grumbled. “Frankly, I have never seen such extreme cyberization.”
“Really?” Janine leaned on the comfortable upholstery, feeling the artificial fibers in the padding expand, encompassing her sides and spine. “Haven’t you met Reaper or Lyudochka?”
“The ambassador treated me to tea, yes. The thing is, you can hardly call her a human at this point. She has no trouble learning, but her emotional maturity is stunted. Even in the Old World, a full upload was frowned upon, as the sensory circuits were not yet perfected. To do this to a child. I’m not sure I would have done the same to my… children.” Ingo grunted, filling the air with the hiss of a welding instrument. “And Reaper has over sixty percent of his body intact under that shell of his. Excuse my absence from the field test; I need to understand how to sustain and ensure the survival of the newest member of my research crew.”
“Kill me,” Mehmed begged. “End this suffering.”
“Hush, student! Don’t make me ask a therapist for help. Nobody dies in my care; etch this into your brain matter,” Ingo coldly reprimanded him. “Trace! Attend me. I need a professional opinion about restoration!”
Waves passed over Banshee’s coat, stretching it; the sleeves washed away from her arms, and the entire thing slumped with a wet slurp. The mass twisted, sprouting wet bones. Veins sprouted across the gleaming white; nerves followed, then muscles intertwined, reaching out to forming phalanges, and in the span of several breaths, a woman in a green coat stood up, checking the choker that moved from Banshee’s neck to hers.
“The fuck?” Anissa reacted ahead of everyone. “It’s that terrorist! Trace!”
She crashed into the slender woman, all two tons of her heavy armor and body. The claws dug into Trace’s forehead, and the skin gobbled them up, blanketing the paw to the wrist. The terrorist leaned backward a little; her spine rearranged itself, and she shoved a tendril of her arm into Anissa’s mouth.
“Away from my daughter!” Janine roared, and the suit closed around her, adjusting itself. The start-up of the reactor echoed her fury, and the warlord lunged at the bitch.
A dark train of segmented chitin joined her. Chak and Janine attacked simultaneously; punch and toxicognaths landing on the swaying woman. Her flesh, hot and soft as plasticine, swallowed both, coating around the warlord’s fist and spewing venom pumped in by Chak through the opened sores in the billowing coat.
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Janine didn’t care. The fear that Anissa might suffer the fate she had allowed to happen to Marco drove her to action better than any stimulant. She unclenched the fist within the woman’s face, grasping the dissolving bones, and tried to tear it free, stabbing with her clawed paw. Chak’s spiky legs closed around the hordewoman along with his coils, and his body moved circularly, planning to shred her into pieces.
It didn’t work. Her claws and the legs’ tips scratched pointlessly against the very air that solidified around Trace.
“Enough!” Banshee yelled, her lower jaw reaching down to her belly. She fixed her mouth with a snap and grabbed Janine’s arm. “She is not the enemy! Trace, let Anissa go.”
“I am not harming her.” Trace’s face no longer existed. Janine’s paw and Anissa’s forearm were still in it. She spoke through grown lips on her belly. Her right arm was a thin appendage, lodged deep into Anissa’s mouth, and she pinned the wolf hag down using the elephantine limb of her left arm.
“Bullshit you are not!” Janine reached for the Taleteller, but the limbs moved away from Anissa. “Wolf Hag? How are you?”
“It was as if… as if I had bitten a mass that kept on growing inside my maw.” Anissa pressed a paw to her snout and retreated. “Mom, I could feel it. The harder I tried to bite, the more my fangs bogged down in that swamp. The threads connecting me to her, I should not have been able to breathe, yet I could and…”
“Bad tooth.” Trace regained her humanoid form and tossed a yellowed fang to Janine. She checked her daughter’s mouth and was greeted with a perfect white gleam of other fangs and a fresh replacement in place of the lost one.
“Never dare pull a dentist on me without my permission ever again! Got it, witch?!” Anissa barked.
“As long as you refrain from the offensive craniotomy, sure.” Trace smiled thinly, shortening and lengthening her own nose until she was satisfied. “Your eye. Want me to replace it…”
“Stay away from me, abomination!” Anissa hid behind Janine. “Why is she here, anyway?”
“Dad isolated and removed the genome responsible for Trace’s slavish obedience to every decision of her former masters,” Banshee explained.
“That’s fucking horrifying!” Anissa stammered, hugging Chak. “So she is unbound and can do whatever? Why? Why would you ever do that?”
“Not free.” Trace scowled. “They tampered with my genetic structure, adding a sentient virus. Should I overstep my boundaries or become aggressive…”
“You mean you weren’t?”
“…I’ll die. Nothing has changed; I’m still a slave.”
“That’s not true,” Banshee argued. “You have free will to disobey an order. I mean, I would rather you didn’t and served your sentence in Dad’s employ and be free, but you have a choice about what to do now.”
“Sure.” Trace shook her head. “Sure. Anyway, Banshee is what interests me now.”
“Still too young!” the pale woman screamed.
“Not in that sense.” Trace stepped closer to Banshee and walked around her. “I don’t mind being outdone or inferior. All I care about is learning what the end result of this will be and how to share it with humanity.”
“Not into orgies either!”
“Trace, if you are finished fooling around, I expect your assistance!” Ingo called. “I need your opinion about extracting the implants and restoration.”
“Restoration?” Mehmed’s voice trailed off, distorted between horror and hope.
“Yes-yes, a complete vat-grown body,” Till Ingo said, and Janine heard the clanking of metal. “Don’t expect anything fancy. We haven’t learned how to make a New Breed from scratch yet, but you’ll get a Normie body for your participation in broadening my knowledge of augmentation. Shame about your frame… Warlord. How is the suit? Maneuverable enough?”
“Fits like a second skin,” Janine thanked him, understanding that she moved with the same ease as if she hadn’t been wearing anything at all, adapting to the new model without a hint of difficulty. She picked up the Taleteller and wove a web of slashes and stabs, testing and enjoying the limits of her protection. The HUD was wider than she was used to, and she changed the gold lettering to a more familiar silver color. “No complaints, sir! Pure perfection. Wait!” she yelled into Trace’s back.
A grown fang. Janine swallowed and approached the woman, wary of whatever she might be. An artificial creature, was it? Eh, no different from us, then.
“I…” She licked her lips. “Trace, my son is hurt. Badly. Could you do to him what you did to Anissa? Only on a larger scale?”
“And you would trust me?” Trace tilted her head. “An abomination? Inhuman?”
“With my life.” Janine pressed a paw to her chest. “Name your price.”
“And if my price is your body? I collected organs, you know.”
“Then take mine after the battle,” Janine said without hesitation, her heart pounding and her imagination painting a picture of claws and pincers slicing through her arms and legs, pulling at nerves like ropes as the pincers carved their way through her body, searching for quivering organs. “If I’m still alive, use my body as you wish; just give Marco back his eyes and legs…”
“Eyes and legs?” Trace laughed, clearly and easily. “That’s not extensive damage at all! I thought there might be brain damage or an invasive poison coursing through his veins. That? Phh. I ain’t taking payment for community service. Survive and find me, and we’ll see what can be done. I never recreated a Wolfkin’s body part, but it can’t be that difficult.” She waved and headed for the elevator.
“Thank you so much, Trace!” Anissa yelled, hugging Janine. She lurked in Chak’s shadow when the vat-born turned. “But stay away from me! Don’t ever invert me to heal me or otherwise!”
“I would be able to feel again?” asked Mehmed.
“Eventually. Now, Warlord, to test your…”
The Wolfkins missed the rest of his words. Their hearts almost jumped from their heads; the unexpected, energizing sensations brought them both to their knees and blood pulsed in their temples to the surprise of everyone present. Janine’s lips parted in a grin, showing her fangs, and Anissa mimicked it. The Spirits themselves gazed upon them, their attention directed by their very daughter. It didn’t matter that the two were underground; Janine could hear the call even here. War! Slaughter! Hunt! Hope and unrelenting rage against the intruders drove them to their feet, and together they charged, almost mindlessly, to their positions.
“Hunt!” Janine cried, and her daughter echoed her as they tore through the elevator’s ceiling and climbed into the shaft, hurrying into the city.
Their prayers had been answered.
****
Alpha entered the medical bay, sniffing her way to the destination. Lamps dimmed, the limpid panels turned gray, hardening as the mobile fortress prepared to reassemble and extract modules containing vital patients for the army to transport them while the unburdened Order waged war. The exhausted snoring of a sleeping Brood Lord’s whelp raised her brow, and the warlord coiled the fear around herself to let him dream in peace a little longer and walked past him, softly and quietly like a cat.
She carefully curated her image of a hulking brute, purposely provoking bouts and stomping loudly. Surprises saved lives on the battlefield, and she hoarded the true extent of her agility, capable of outwitting even scouts of her own pack at stealth.
The medics wheeled a patient past her, a young male injured during the retreat from Quatindor. His wounds had long since healed, no longer threatening his health, and an artificial lung soundly worked, secured in the built-in case that replaced half of his ribcage. But a sizeable bulge on his skull, the result of a rifle butt trying to bash his brains out, judging by the shape of the bulge, kept the soldier in a deep coma.
Terror gripped his mind, and the Wolfkin gasped, catapulted back into reality. Crimson overtook one of his noble amber eyes and kept its pupil collapsed into a dot. An inconvenience, but nothing the kiddo could not handle in the future. Alpha compressed the terror needle and let the medics explain the situation to the confused male.
The smell led to the exact room she needed. She faced the closed door, the bane of her existence, and cursed her claws. It would be cub’s play to cut her way in, but that was hardly the way to treat allies, Ice Fangs or not. Calling for help felt humiliating. She wasn’t a cripple. Alpha knelt and used her nose to press the combination, letting herself in and standing too fast for anyone to notice her kneeling.
“What now?” The Troll turned, rapidly tapping at the rail of the patient’s bed. “I already told them we need more time to safely prepare Marco for the evacuation.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“Impossible,” the doctor positioned himself between the warlord and the boy. Her claws twitched, and his hand touched the scalpel. “I have heard of what your kind does to your wounded. Crippled—is that what you call them? If you so much as try to harm the patient…”
“I will not,” Alpha said. “I swear. He is in no danger. P-please,” she forced out the unfamiliar voice, amused at how soft she had become of late.
“This discussion is futile. He is unconscious.” The doctor’s posture relaxed.
Alpha no longer paid him any attention. The fear whipped from her mind, not touching the Troll out of respect, and penetrated Marco’s brain. It wasn’t a gentle touch like in the corridor; she used more force, turning his dreams into nightmares as punishment for disobeying an elder. Marco whimpered, reminiscent of a cub begging for milk, and thrashed, spreading the disgusting stench of emptied bowels.
“Mommy! Dad!” Marco whisper-shouted, trying to break free from restraints and touch his face. His eyelids blinked, closing and opening the empty holes. “Dark! It’s dark! I can’t see!” The doctor was at his side, patting the paw, calmly explaining the boy’s situation, assuring him that everything would be all right, and giving him water to drink.
Alpha waited two minutes for this orientation and scraped her claws together.
“Marco,” she said mercilessly, “your stupidity distracts Janine. She obsesses over healing you, the worry over your condition anguishing her, distracting from what is important. It almost got her killed in Opul.”
“I am sorry.” His tiny fingers clutched the blanket. “I… I am ready to pay the price.”
“No, you are not,” the Troll interjected.
“Fool.” Alpha growled, sniffing over him, tearing away the smallest dried molecules of blood, absorbing his memories. His dreams, hopes and fears were laid bare for her. “Never surrender. Cling to survival! Janine was right. You don’t belong in the regular packs. Nothing but death waits for you there. You would’ve been happier in the exile.”
“I can serve!” He shouted, crying red tears.
“And serve you will if such is your desire.” The Troll tried to push her away, but the warlord ignored it. “Marco, I offer you two choices. You can continue to be a burden to your family, not letting them focus on their duties. It’s not a bother. Fed up with her inaction, one of the pack would soon wrestle the leadership from that softie in charge. Or…” She leaned closer, breathing at him. “You can disappear. Janine will grieve, but she’ll move on eventually, and you’ll serve the Tribe, but always in shadows. I am creating a new pack, a unit molded for entirely different purposes. Houstad had taught me of our inability to protect ourselves from the treachery within, and of the perils of relying on the Ice Fangs to navigate us through civilization. You have managed to befriend the Ice Fangs, are unafraid of our females, and are willing to learn. Exactly the qualities I seek to foster. Where brute force is not enough, my special pack will pave the way, compromising, negotiating, infiltrating, trading, sabotaging, doing everything we are not used to.
“It isn’t honor,” Alpha admitted. “Your name will be stricken from the records, and any lineage you sire will not know your heritage. Songs won’t be sung of your prowess, martial or otherwise. What I promise is service to the Tribe, the means to do so, and equality. In that pack, you and the others will be brothers and sisters, never knowing dominations. You will be a glimpse of our future, aiding the Tribe better than you could ever otherwise. Silence!” She raised a claw, stopping Marco from speaking. “Know that your mother is willing to do anything to heal you back to your prime. You are not abandoned or hated. Janine, Ignacy, Marco, and Yennifer kept visiting you. They love you. I do not hate you.”
“Where… where will I be of more use?” Marco whispered.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Alpha said, allowing the sadness in her tone. “It is up to you alone. If you refuse me, you’ll lose nothing and regain everything, I swear. Choose. And choose freely, kin. What is your wish? To be in the family or to become a person capable of protecting them?”
A surge of adrenaline hit them both, and the two growled, confused and without aggression. The doctor experienced it, too, through the hand contact and let go of her, grasping the rail to help himself stand. For all her bravery, a shiver ran down her spine. But it wasn’t a cold and clammy touch of fear, but a warm pat of an answered anticipation and the joy of relief.
Zero had completed her mission. Their chances of survival had just shot through the roof.