Jonah picked himself off the ground and extricated himself from the spore cloud with waves of his anti-life finger. He shot out a few other energies from other fingers at the same time.
Leanne picked herself up off the wall. On the side of her skull was a mushroom head, stuck to it. And pulsing
She ripped and screamed as a chunk of skin tore itself away along with the mushroom. Tule darted over in an instant and swiped a thin layer of Medjel over the raw flesh.
Leanne was staring at him in horror, “What is happening with your arms?”
Tule looked down at his arms. There was a black mold pulsing and spreading over his forearms. He sighed and gripped his hands into fists and turned them outwards making an audible “ch!” The skin of his forearms clacked onto the ground.
Both Jonah and Leanne stared at him.
Jonah cut off the Sentinel’s question, “Let’s get out of here, who knows how far Jack is.”
He paused as the AI disk flashed hot in his pocket for a split second. Odd.
“I would also prefer to not run into that… thing, again.” Tule followed.
Jonah surrounded by spores, Tule… detaching the skin from his forearms. Jack… well, she didn’t feel the need to elaborate much further there. She considered abandoning them all and finding her own way out. Jack was an absolute scattered mess, especially right now, but she knew the Clan Head would be disappointed in her if she let him die.
She sighed and settled her mind. Eyes open, weapons ready. Find Jack, bring him to the Clan Head. Ideally, alive.
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Jonah used the Disk to open the other door at the end of the hall. Two doors, the one on the right and the one the left were both closing.
Leanne whispered, “I saw him on the one on the left.”
“I saw him enter the right.” Tule sounded sure. But so was Leanne.
“I’m telling you I saw him.”
“I understand what you are saying but I definitively saw him enter the right door.”
It was a standstill, they looked to Jonah. His head was buried in his portable.
“Huh? Why are you looking at me?…” He met their flat stares for a moment then pulled down his goggles and clicked through settings, his vision split between the two doors.
“Fascinating.” Jonah stepped forward into the room. He walked up to the door on the right and, with the AI disk, stepped through.
Tule and Leanne looked at one another, it had looked like Jonah had stepped through both doors at the same time.
He stepped back out. “Optical illusion. Some sort of specialized spore.”
“Shit.” Tule’s eyebrow was raised, the Sentinel didn’t curse much, “Well, who has a plan? Ideas, anything.”
Jonah looked down the right corridor again, then made his way to the left. “Exactly the same. Filled with mushrooms, nothing else.”
Tule stepped through the right corridor, he trusted his gut, wrenched into a knot as it was. Worse than that was the latent Psy effect he was picking up. He felt it depositing information into his brain. He daren’t say anything to the others. He didn’t because he felt another sense, more primal, that was connecting with the information flowing towards him. His heart faltered when he looked inwards. He didn’t know why but it scared him. Tule was unfamiliar with that feeling.
Jonah paused a split second then followed through. Leanne moved to step behind them but the mycelial web closed in front of her face, a large mushroom cap hitting her in the face and knocking her back. She scrambled back. Tearing the flesh off her skull was still fresh in her mind.
“Jonah! Tule!”
Nothing. She readied her knife to start cutting into it before capped tendrils shot out and drove her back. She looked to her left as the other door cracked and slid open. Behind her, the black, rancid, liquid-gas wave was slowly seeping through the shut door.
She stood in front of the open doorframe. “Of course.” She took the left path.
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“Piece of junk!” Jonah had resorted to a timeless technological solution, banging his hand on the side of his portable and cursing at it. No luck. He peeked at the side, a seal on one of the internal ports had come loose. Just starting to poke out from the open port was a small white mushroom.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Spitting in disgust he swiped a small wave of antilife finger over his portable. The energy dissipated against the surface of the portable and went no further. He pulled the mushroom out and shoved his aquamarine glowing finger into the port. Once he was done blasting anti-life through his portable he sighed, “This will take forever to clean.” He walked through the door that Tule had carved through.
Tule was looking at him.
“What?”
“Where is Leanne?”
Jonah whirled around, forearm thick stalks lined and covered the room, oozing toxic looking clouds of black.
“Tule stop! The chance that you make it through is unlikely. We need to find Jack and then leave. Hopefully the Sentinel as well.”
Tule paused a moment, then nodded and turned back, “Keep your head out of your portable or you might be the next one.”
Jonah sighed and pretended to put it away before Tule turned around around.
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She crept down the corridor, weapons raised. The air was thick and moist. Still, it wasn’t stagnant like the air around the village of Water. Another door lay open. She stepped through. This room was some sort of circular shape but it was difficult to tell. The dispersed spores hung heavy in the humidity of the room. All around were groupings of massive stalks, interfering and blocking her sightlines.
Her leg twitched. Shit it was starting to give her trouble again. What was that?
It was just a blur in the corner of her vision. She heard a sigh and whirled in the other direction. A mushroom cap was depressing itself and releasing its spores into the air.
She chided herself and picked a direction to move. Her steps were the epitome of a cautious advance. Each step measured. She was off her game. Probably from inhaling all of the spores in the air. At this she backed up to the least unfriendly looking wall and ripped off a piece of her uniform. She drenched it with some water from her sack and tied it over her mouth. Harder to breath but it should filter some of the crap in the air.
She heard a giggle and saw a green-brown mushroom grinning at her. She hated when they did that, the creep factor of it was the worst. The teeth were pearly white, an amazing, if one were the type to appreciate those sorts of things, facsimile of a perfect Human smile. Time crawled as she made her way through the room. The smiling mushroom opened and she tensed. A hoarse laugh boomed from it before completely disappearing over her next blink.
Other smiles popped up around the room, laughing one by one. The one closest to her opened its mouth but instead of smiling it blew a cloud of spores at her. She slashed at it and jumped back. Her injured leg gave out as she dropped to a knee. She was thankful for her mask at least. Maybe she should have let Jack operate when they were on the crab. Maybe she should have just left that stupid Monitor on the top of the crab and made it off herself. ‘Last to leave’ doesn’t mean much when you’re injured in a mushroom forest that had overtaken a secret prison.
Slowly she traced the wall around the room. Did she make a full lap? She ran her hand over where she swore she had entered the room. Underneath the mat of small mushrooms there was nothing but smooth metal.
Leanne looked to the middle of the room. Where the stalks were at their densest. Nope.
She trailed her knife over the wall as she made another lap of the room. Trained eyes alternating between the metal she was revealing with her dagger and her surroundings. The sound of her dagger trailing on the wall echoed through the room.
It finally caught. Her attention was now fully fixed. A seam! It meant a door. In a rush, she started to clear the wall. It was a door!
It happened so slowly that when it came upon her everything was moving in an instant.
She heard a rustle and then a clatter of teeth. She looked down and saw that she had stepped into a mushroom’s open mouth. The teeth closed down and severed her toes. Shit! She flipped her pain block and stomped down on the mushroom. It burst and her toes flew around the room. She turned to see the reflected phosphorescent smiles as something rocked her head, slamming the back into the cleared metal wall. She slumped against the wall and dropped to the ground.
Another smile, this one picked her up and slung her over its shoulder. Her sight finished its journey towards a pinprick as it turned dark.
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The Clan Head, his Clan, and Yumata’s group were pacing a quick jog up the massive North Run, towards the Bridge. The remains of their previous fight upwards remained. The occasional crab or three had used the opportunity to scavenge what corpses remained.
The Clan Head didn’t become the Clan Head by missing positive qualities in others. In fact, it was one of his strengths. Not ‘using’ others, he liked to think of it as ‘appreciating their strengths’. He gave orders to the 3 remaining Sentries.
He felt a twinge at this, he missed the competency of Leanne. He knew she felt “insufficient for the task,” but that was another quality he appreciated about her. It made her work harder than anyone else.
He saw positive qualities in Yumata too. She had good eyes, good aim, and some particular abilities with electricity, like Jack. Did they come from the same place? Why did she seem to know so much more than Jack did?
“I’m not a resource for you to use.”
A Psy ability? The Clan Head blinked as his head moved fractionally backwards. Yuma picked that up.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” Yuma’s eyebrow and grin let the Clan Head know that it wasn’t a Psy ability.
He squinted. Her EQ must be high. What a strange ‘build’ she had.
“Yes.” He smiled, “I must be growing too transparent in my old age.”
“Not likely.”
Maybe it was a Psy ability. He couldn’t be completely sure at this point but he was pretty sure it was not.
He saw a destroyed robot with 6-arms. Surprisingly there were no bodies surrounding it. He grimaced, that one had given them trouble on the South Run.
“Clan Head, we are approaching the end of the Run.”
“How much further to the end of the Labs?”
“It should be visible relatively soon.”
The Clan Head sighed internally. Leanne would never give such an imprecise answer. Or if she was forced to, she would at least hate giving it more than he hated hearing it. Knowledge was power. He felt lacking in both.
They paused before a door. A Monitor from the Clan stepped forward and plugged in a portable. Yuma checked on her companions as the Clan Head reorganized his members.
“Are you-”
“Ready.” Yuma replied.
The door cracked.