She stood there wide eyed with her hand outstretched, waiting for him to leap over and snatch it, “Let’s go!” She urges but Erich’s mind still reels at the sight of her in the sturdy fittings of the M.C.U tactical gear; baggy blue trousers littered with pockets, a bullet proof vest that seems oversized for her and a strapped pistol at her side. The only bit missing are the gloves and bowl helmet each of them firing at Tareh’s monster wore.

He glances back at Austin, his head bleeding onto the shattering concrete, “Austin’s right here, Neil sent you right? Or Vertigo? It doesn’t matter, help me lift this off of him and we’ll get out of here!”

Tareh’s abomination roars as a flashbang sears every open eye. It thrashes into the failing buildings structure, bringing down a huge slab of concrete— a pathway— down on the enforcer below. They scramble away in time as it stabs and shatters their trailer, ending all hope for an escape with that vehicle as it implodes, sending flaming shrapnel glancing through the unwitting enforcers.

Cynthia sneers, “Get over here now! I don’t think those idiots can hold off that thing for long and its only getting bigger.” She spares a glance down at the creature and true enough it’s a size larger than it was a moment ago, sprouting more curved and sickly bones out of its bleeding, puss spurting body.

“But Austin-!”

“I didn’t come for Austin! This-” she gestures at her get-up, “it isn’t a fucking disguise. Handlers are waiting for you outside, TV and his crew are routed or imprisoned…hopefully imprisoned.” She scoffs.

Erich stumbles at the news as gunfire continues to ring through deafeningly, he’s almost sure he didn’t hear her right but her lips pressed into a line and the growing frost at her eyes banishes any thought of this being some horrid dream.

“Is that where...no…how?”

She drops her hand and sighs, getting visibly upset and sick of his delays, “You’re a lot dumber than you look, Erich, then again you couldn’t fucking load a gun until some weeks ago. Did you really think the M.C.U would let you roam free? I hear your powers are a big deal, saved my ass so I can buy that.” She shrugs, eying the gap between them again as she crouches, summoning a chill to her hands, “Sorry your first taste of Vie was so…forceful, it’s not such a bad thing if you know the right dose to take.”

“You…how do you know all that?”

She spares Erich another exasperated look as the frost on her palms stretches throughout the rebar, freezing the space and air between into a long, albeit brittle looking crossing before standing up and shaking icicles off her hands.

“If it helps get you over here any faster I’ll say this; you don’t have to look out for him, he’s the one that held you down for a dose of Vie. You’re just scared, you don’t really care do you? Have you ever cared? Why start now when the M.C.U’s falling on Vertigo like a fucking meteor? There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, Erich, they’re locking him up and you can-”

Tumbling rubble cuts her words as Erich snaps his attention to Austin, thinking for a moment he’s manifested his metahuman abilities after decades of dormancy to lift the immense weight pressing down at his legs but no, instead a furry, muscled arm braces against the slabs of concrete bearing down, heaving with deep constrains as inch by inch the weight of the fallen lab desk and equipment are lifted. Erich gasps at the figures underneath, she glares back at him through gritted teeth, “Tareh!”

“What?!” Cynthia panics a breech away from the scene unfolding before his eyes.

The two figures from earlier stand behind Tareh as she heaves with single morphed animalistic arm, transforming her left arm into a slick bind of tentacles right before his eyes she grins as one of the figures reactivates their shield and takes the weight off of her momentarily.

“If that’s all true then I guess you won’t be missing him.” Tareh says, her voice coarse as she lashes out with her transformed tentacle’d arm, snatching Austin’s broken, bloodied leg and draws.

“No!” Erich leaps to stop them only for the figure on her right, masked in some plague doctor fit to whip out a blaster and— “Ach!”

The blast takes Erich’s shoulder, scalding straight through without a shred of armour to stop the bolt as it sears his skin, muscle and bone, whipping him hard about to the floor before he can even think to halt time. “Stop!” he manages to glance back as Cynthia makes the leap across, firing her blaster at them only for the damned stratified green shield to deflect each bolt, having some dissipate to nothing upon impact.

“Frost Bitch?” The plague mask intones.

“You!” Cynthia fires out another salvo without another word.

“Get us out of here!” Tareh screams, wrapping Austin wholly in a fold of inky tentacles. The plague mask flicks something and all four of them shimmer through a spectrum of colours before being warped out of existence, or better yet, out of the factory.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Fuck!” Cynthia flinches as the weight crashes back into the ground, shatter through the stairwell and splintering rumble in her face. Crouching beside Erich she hisses at his shoulder steaming off like fresh barbecue. Her hand frosts over and she places it over the wound without any warning, eliciting a terrible scream from Erich. “Sorry, but we’ve got to go.”

She glances over that the monster Tareh left behind, without her presence the abomination of seems to tame and its growth stalls, seeming to shrink even but none of that stops it from ploughing straight out the factory, smacking enforcers out of the way.

A screech of static comes from the slick band wrapped around her wrist, shimmering an audio wave as a familiar voice orders, “Frost Bitch, I’m not sure if you’re seeing this but a mutation just burst out of the site. If you haven’t found Alpha One yet this is the new priority— contain it.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to do that?” She hisses as she turns her attention to the cut on Erich’s leg, pressing her frosting hands over that as well as Erich bites down on another scream. “That should do it, come on, you should have enough Vie pumping through you to last a bit, I’ll need your help to not die against that thing.”

Sure enough Erich senses the Vie reactivated with the new injury and burst of adrenaline beating his heart. His eyes go hazy for a moment as Cynthia pulls him up by his elbow, the ringing from before returns as she draws him along with her. Down the reopened, destroyed stairwell and past the massacre of M.C.U enforcers, corpses of Tareh’s mutations and the burning trailer.

His mind reels at what just happened. Tareh was there all along. Listening to me plead and try to lift the damn thing. Was she waiting for me to give up? Waiting for the enforcers to leave?

A glimpse of the stairwell on the other side breaks his thoughts into a new set. Neil and his group were there before the M.C.U came in. Where did they go? Did they just leave?

Cynthia hadn’t mentioned anything about Neil but she did say TV and his group were routed. This entire thing was doomed from the start it seems, doomed by him. Gritting through the pounding agony of his wounds and loss, Erich turns his attention face forward as Cynthia squeezes his hand. Ahead of them another crew of endless M.C.U enforcers prattle bullets and blasters at the howling mutation tossing cars and swinging streetlights into men.

It’s cornered, the enforcers waiting outside box it in with a tighter formation than their predecessors within could afford. With teams of snipers and riflemen firing down alongside sets of enforcers circling and dodging its wilding attacks, Tareh’s last stand of a creature has nowhere to run to.

But that doesn’t mean it’s going out without a fight. Erich notes as it roars out at the snowing sky.

“Are you ready?” Cynthia suddenly asks, letting go of his hand she presses a gun into it instead. He looks down at it as though just waking up and recognizes it in a flash— the very same BoltPistol he used to more or less execute that Lynx goon.

“Ready for what?” He gulps down yet another weighty emotion the world is too chaotic to let him deal with.

“They told me you could freeze things, like me, except faster.” She says, pushing her hair back against her ear as the cold wind carries it and the mutations roar. “Can you do it?”

Erich looks out at the tussling beast, a cross between an ape and a rhino. Its face and chest bear the look of an ape and sprouts out two broad horns as it knuckle-walks and pounds the ground in with arms complete with fingers and hind legs as heavy as you’d expect from a rhino. All across its body are bones splitting out from its tough, furless hide as it rages, screaming in agony as much as frustration from all the searing patches of blaster bolts and bullet wounds.

“I…I…”

“We can’t let it out into Xoxia any more than this!” Cynthia yells over its howls, she squints at him as she readies her blaster and sets one hand to frost over just in case, “Are you ready!”

“Fuck…yes, let’s try, let’s do it!” the Vie and adrenaline yells through the waterfall of terror and pain, dulling everything so he glares at the creature and starts off running, leaving Cynthia behind.

Erich’s plan is simple enough. His powers would let him pause anything within the appropriate range— whatever that is, he never bothered figuring it out because the stress of skipping days of work due to sudden unconsciousness was never worth it. But now he thought better of it, he’d have to understand the true scope of his abilities someday and learn how to break his limits. For now, they will be more than enough.

The enforcers made way as Cynthia fired bolt after bolt at the mutation, drawing its attention as she leans down to skid her frosting fingers across the snowy ground. In a snap the snow threw itself into the beast’s side as large shards of ice, daring to pierce through its thick hide one after the other as she forms a cage of stabbing ice around it.

It roars shatters the shards with ease, suffering the multiple stab wounds without a care it charges Cynthia and her eyes go with. She abandons her blaster and slaps the snow, a second later three walls of ice erupt, each thinner than the other.

“Pause!”

It smashes through one more wall but halts before last, arm raised to punch through it as Cynthia flees for her life. Erich calls out on the other side, finding it a miracle he can even talk much less shout with time seized in his grasp, “Cynthia! Someone do something, I can’t hold it for long!” Blood drips down his nostrils, staining snow as his head pounds and throbs. Still he manages a grin at the scene, at himself; it might be all thanks to the Vie he was force fed but this stands as the first time he’s halted time twice in the same day.

Here’s hoping I wake up tomorrow.

Cynthia and the enforcers gape at the creature halted in air for a precious two seconds before the Frost Bitch sets herself to action. She tosses her boots and merges her feet and hands with the snow, breathing vapour as she commands ice around the creature. Slowly but surely it creeps along its stumpy rhinoceros’ feet, coating every inch in a block of thickening ice.

The enforcers gather themselves at the sight yelling into radio for equipment and through what begins to feel like an eternity for Erich the air above their heads is taken over by a chopping helicopter. It’s light shone down at the beast as enforcers atop it lower and straddle a cage fitted with electrical conduits.

They planned this…everything. They’re suspiciously ready for this scenario. Erich thinks through the ringing in his ears, he reaches up to one and finds blood sliding out of it. Well, that’s new.

The creature is about half way frozen in ice when he stumbles, eyes glazing over as he falls, blinded by light and deafened by its succeeding roar.