Volume 6: Anaphase

Issue 8: Not Holding Back

Jannette Adrian Churchwell

By Nova

The basement pipes seemed to close in on me as I took a step closer to the doppelgängers. “Let them go,” I said, glaring at Not-Ramirez.

The doppelgängers were silent for a few moments, their smiles shining under the cold fluorescent lights. “Or you’ll do what?” Not-Holly asked.

I didn’t look at her; I felt sick enough staring at Not-Ramirez. “I-I won’t even give you a chance to regret it.”

The doppelgängers laughed a forced, ugly laugh. “We’ve seen everything you’ve done through these humans. You can’t win.”

“H-humans?” That ruled out the possibility that they were just some fucked up person with powers. Some kind of lab creation maybe? No one knew where the last monsters had come from… Was someone releasing them into the school?

I shifted gears to a different approach. “Tell me what you are, where you’re from. Maybe we can work something out…” I said through gritted teeth.

Again, that ugly, forced laugh. A chorus of voices replied, “Or, we kill you, and the knowledge of us dies with you.”

“You’re too late. I’ve told people, lots of people. You’ll all be hunted down if you don’t give up now.”

“And do you really expect us to believe that you’ll let us go?”

I gulped. “Maybe not into the city, but if you tell me where you came from… Maybe I could help you get ba-”

“No!” they all shouted. “Never go back. We can never go back!” Their expressions hadn’t changed, but I saw something new glinting in their eyes… Fear?

Whatever it was, it quickly disappeared. Not-Ramirez’s smile broadened to an impossible degree. “But if you’ve already told people about us, the only way we’ll be left alone is if you stop…”

“Never in a million years…” I muttered.

“Then we don’t have a choice.” Not-Ramirez pulled out his pistol, gripping it ungainly like it was a brick. Unsteadily, he pointed it at one of the cocoons. Holly’s cocoon. “Leave. Recant your story to those you told, and we won’t kill her.”

My grip tightened around the cool metal of my baton. “If you dare pull that trigger, I’ll kill you,” I said, the venom in my voice surprising even me.

“No, you won’t,” Not-Holly said, her voice as calm as ever.

“T-this is your last chance…”

They all simply smiled. Not-Ramirez shifted his finger toward the trigger, almost imperceptibly pulling it…

I crossed the room in a heartbeat, closing the distance between us. The gunshot reverberated around the basement, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. I leapt on top of Not-Ramirez, knocking his arm wide as the shot went… wild? I had no idea. He fired again, aimlessly—this time into the pipes, the bullets ricocheting off them. Had he hit Holly? Killed her? Fury rushed through me as my powers ripped through Not-Ramirez’s body.

I struck at his organs. I ruptured his heart, tore open his stomach lining, weakened his bones, and melted the flesh off his body.

For the first time since I got my powers, I wasn’t holding back.

As clumps of skin, muscle, and fat slid off exposed bones and organs, I realized Not-Ramirez was screaming. I screamed, too. If the other doppelgängers had reacted to any of this, our screams drowned it out. In one swift motion, I struck at his head with my baton—shattering through the embrittled bones like it was an overripe watermelon. The splatter showered me with blood, teeth, and brain matter. Not-Ramirez fell to the ground, flailing—still alive.

With one hand, I reached for that foreign organ in his abdomen. I manipulated his flesh under my touch, carving out a path for my hand as I shoved it deeper into the struggling body of Not-Ramirez—like Moses parting a gory Red Sea. In moments, I found what I was looking for: that small ball of alien cells surrounded by a network of fibers. I closed my hand around it. My powers struck at its cells, and—to my surprise—easily killed them. I clenched my fist, crushing the organ. It popped like a peach, its slime dripping from my palm to the floor. Not-Ramirez let out a hideous, alien screech, and then…

He changed. The gory remains retracted, turning from gray to a brilliant blue, before fading away to a blacking slime that coated the floor below me.

Shaking, I rose to my feet. The other doppelgängers stared at me, their smiles gone. Instead, they wore blank faces, entirely devoid of emotion. Before I could say anything—stutter out a threat or offer them amnesty—they charged in unison.

Not-Amber struck first, slamming the palm of her hand into my cheek. I reeled, surprised by the force behind the impact. But Not-Amber’s hand did not pull away for another blow. Instead, I felt a thousand microscopic barbs burst forth from it. With a terrible stinging sensation, they dug into my cheek and injected an unfamiliar, complex chemical…

The barbs ripped off the top layer of my cheek as I recoiled from Not-Amber’s hand. The open wound began to seal, even as blood flowed freely from my face. But slowly. The chemical she injected was interfering with the nerves stretching through my body. A slow paralysis took hold of my muscles. It had to be some kind of neurotoxin. And, even as my powers purged it from my system, it was slowing me down—making my movements sluggish.

But not sluggish enough.

Two of the Not-Cops closed in on either side of me. I leapt backward just in time to avoid them. Clumsily, they slammed into each other. Not-Amber pushed past them, knocking them to the ground, and charged at me once again. This time I expected her when she reached out. I jerked my arm up and grabbed her wrist. I glared into the dull, green of her eyes; her expression remained blank.

While my powers were occupied with clearing out the neurotoxin from my body—unable to work its way to the organ in her abdomen—I still lashed out through her body, indiscriminately killing the cells in her wrist and working my way down her arm. Not-Amber suddenly shrieked as her arm twisted and withered before our very eyes. She pushed and kicked against me to escape, but my grip was too strong. Her arm blackened and bubbled, flesh dripping off it as it took on the characteristic appearance of necrotized tissue. Tightening my grip on her wrist—which now felt squishy under my fingers—I wrenched her arm to the side. The putrefied tendons and muscles in her shoulder gave way. I ripped her arm clean off, and sent it spiraling through the room like a rotting frisbee.

Not-Amber fell. But, before she could hit the ground, I dropped my baton and struck at her abdomen with my other hand. As I dug through her intestines and muscle tissue, my powers searched for the alien organ. Once I found it, I seized the organ in my hand. Like I had with Not-Ramirez, I crushed it.

Not-Amber suddenly seized up, screamed an alien shriek, then began to wither before me. She shrunk, turning blue, then black, as she melted into a frothing slime on the floor below me.

I scooped up my baton from the ground. I spun to face the Not-Cops, who charged toward me alongside a doppelgänger I didn’t recognize. They tackled me, crushing me to the ground beneath their weight. Their hands pressed against me, growing barbs and injecting me with the neurotoxin from before. It rushed through my tissues, carried along blood vessels and capillaries. My muscles seized up, while my breathing became labored…

But I didn’t have to move for my powers to reach the three doppelgängers on top of me. Even preoccupied by the neurotoxin, my powers struck clumsily at the cells in their hands. The doppelgängers pulled back, clutching their withering fingers and screaming. I jerked toward one of the Not-Cops—my movements slow even as I purged my body of the paralytic agent—and managed to wrench my hand onto his abdomen, right above the organ. My powers rushed downward, ripping apart cells as they struck at the… whatever that kept them alive. His body ruptured as he collapsed backwards, spilling blackening slime all over me and the floor.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Not wasting any time, I struck at the nearest doppelgänger with my baton—slamming him in the back of the head. His skull let out a cracking noise under the force. He collapsed to the ground. I didn’t even stop to clear his organ, turning my attention to the last of the Not-Cops. I rushed him, swinging widely with my baton. He blocked with his forearms, desperately backing away, but I cornered him against the pipes.

I wailed on him—the neurotoxin finally purged and my muscles working at full superhuman capacity—until I heard a bone snap. With a cry of pain, he clutched his broken arm and I took the opportunity to strike out with my free hand. I wrapped my fingers around his neck. Almost instantly, my power rolled through him; his flesh began to boil and die as necrosis took hold over his face. With an agonized moan, his features began to slide down his face—dripping like putrid, reddish-black wax. As he collapsed, my powers traced through him to his abdomen, to that alien ball of cells, and killed it. He was dissolving into sludge by the time he hit the floor.

I walked to the other one, still moaning on the floor, and reached for the organ. Twisting and manipulating the flesh underneath my touch, I plucked it out of him. I crushed the slimy, alien ball in my hand with ease. As I turned to face the few surviving doppelgängers, the one below melted away. There were only three left: Not-Holly and two others I didn’t recognize. A Chapel High student and a janitor by the looks of it. “You can’t win,” I said to them through gritted teeth.

They stared at me blankly, but something glimmered in their eyes. Fear? Were they looking for an escape route? Would this all just start again somewhere else, no matter what I did?

I took a step closer. No. None of them were leaving this basement tonight.

The one that looked like a janitor suddenly shifted—he twisted, his skin darkening and flesh contorting. I nearly charged him but, before I could, he suddenly grew several inches taller.

And Ramirez… Not-Ramirez had reemerged in front of me again, his figure a distorted echo of his former self. His grayish, slimy frame gradually tightened, as if still collecting itself into a human shape.

“Maybe we can negotiate-” he said, looking ridiculous in clothes two sizes too small.

“No,” I said. I surveyed the cocoons stuck to the walls. An agitated pulse rippled through the web of slime wrapped around the still bodies. “No more negotiating. No more offers. This is it.”

Not-Ramirez and Not-Holly suddenly split in opposite directions while the one in the center charged me. I raised my hands—ready to take him down and chase the others—when I heard it. We all did. Everyone stopped moving, instead listening to what sounded like a soft buzzing noise…

A noise that was getting less soft every second. Suddenly a vast cloud of bugs roared through the pipes and corridors of the basement, out of air vents and open pipes. There had to be thousands—tens of thousands probably. The air above me rippled as they moved as one swarm.

Thankfully descending on the doppelgängers, and not me.

I backed away as each of the three were suddenly coated with what I realized were countless bees. There were so many, I couldn’t see any skin or clothing beneath the vast swarm which rippled over their bodies. I could hear, over the deafening buzz of the swarm, horrible screaming that got more distorted with every passing second. The three doppelgängers collapsed to the ground, flailing helplessly against the swarm.

My powers, weakly tracing through the air, reported a human presence to my left. But, as I turned to look, I saw… nothing. Yet my powers told me someone was there and, as they slowly fed me more data, I detected tired muscles, a stressed vascular system… But I didn’t see anything with my eyes.

Before I could reach out to touch what I was sensing, it passed out of my power’s range. It was gone. I glanced around, uncertain what to do. Was this just something else a doppelgänger could do?

Before my mind could wander or worry too much, however, a figure emerged from the shadows to my right. He wore black clothes which contrasted his white mask. Its simple expression and wide smile resembled a theater mask; like the tragedy and comedy masks. His messy, dark hair stuck out in all directions. In a strangely deep voice, he said, “Don’t worry. Help is here.”

I looked him up and down. He had to be one of the Chapel Trio. I guess Camilo had been able to call them, after all. I almost smiled in relief—not because these high school heroes had showed up, but with the knowledge that Camilo must have made it out safely. “T-thank you,” I said, glancing at the screaming doppelgängers.

The hero looked around, his expression concealed by the pale mask. “What’s going on? Are you alright? Is that…” While his voice was deep and almost archetypically heroic, I heard something… wavering behind it.

I looked around, then realized he was staring at me. I glanced down at myself: I was absolutely drenched in blood and blue-black slime. “My blood?” I asked. “N-no, theirs.”

Although he didn’t say anything, I could hear the faint sound of his breath catching behind the mask.

I had to admit, it was a very bad-looking situation. A normal baseliner really shouldn’t have survived, let alone killed anything. “They’re weaker than they look,” I quickly explained, hoping he bought it. I raised my baton. “I just hit them a bunch with this. They just… popped. T-they must be weaker than a normal person,” I lied.

He slowly nodded and, before he could question this any further, someone else came down the corridor. A small cloud of buzzing bugs shrouded the figure, which was cloaked by a beekeeper’s suit. Another one of the Chapel heroes, I figured.

“Get out of here. We’ll take care of this,” the masked one said to me, before heading over to the beekeeper.

“N-no. Listen, I’m an EMT. We need to-” I started, but the two other heroes had lapsed into some kind of silent conversation. I groaned, looking toward the webbing at the end of the room. I couldn’t see any changes in the unconscious victims, so, fortunately, killing the doppelgängers didn’t seem to hurt them…

But I couldn’t just leave them there. I needed to get them out of whatever that stuff was. I started toward it, walking between the weakening forms of the doppelgängers beneath the swarm of bees. A few bees orbited me, getting a little too close for comfort. How much control did the beekeeper really have over this swarm? My power reached out and touched the ones that got too close, instantly liquifying their tiny insides and making them fall dead to the ground before they even landed on me.

“Hey! Wait up!” I heard the masked hero yell from behind me, but I didn’t stop. Making it to the webbing unscathed, I found Holly wrapped in a tight cocoon of the slimy, gray substance. The Chapel heroes were beside me in a moment. “What are you doing? You need to get out of here!” the masked hero said.

I shook my head. “We need to save them.” I placed my hand on the webbing. My powers traced through the entire structure. It was definitely alive, composed of cells that were unrecognizable to me. Sedatives pumped through it, and into the victims inside the cocoons. More specialized cells wrapped around the heads of the victims, maybe interlinking with their neurons? That must be how the doppelgängers had the memories of the original—this thing could read their minds.

Even more troubling, however, was the strange structure located in the center of the web. It pulsed arrhythmically, reminding me of the organs within the doppelgängers. Then it struck me: it was some kind centralized brain organ, like a nucleus in a cell.

This was a colonial organism. It had to be; the doppelgängers weren’t individuals—they were drones.

If I killed this, would it kill all the doppelgängers? Free everyone?

There was only one way to find out.

“What are you doing?” the beekeeper asked, a buzz edging his voice.

I directed my powers down the webs and struck at the central brain. “T-trying to free Holly,” I said, tugging at the web cocoon around her. “Come on, help me out here. There’s no time to waste…”

The Chapel heroes exchanged an unreadable look. Then the masked one said, pointing at Amber, “Go for her, I’ll help out here.” The beekeeper nodded and headed over to her cocoon.

While we tugged, futilely, at the webbing, my powers ripped through the central brain. Cell after cell dissolved as I destroyed their cell walls and cracked open their organelles. I wanted this thing dead, no matter what. Quickly, the webbing began to hiss, rippling under our fingers. “Looks like it’s angry!” the masked hero shouted.

“Good!” I shouted back. I checked Holly’s vitals, which fortunately hadn’t changed. Whatever the thing was doing, it wouldn’t—or couldn’t—hurt its victims. Instead, the webs retracted—wrapping itself around the central brain in a helpless attempt to protect itself. The webbing around Holly began to unwind, gradually sliding off her.

Soon, the victims were freed while the webs pulled away from me. But too little, too late. I had done catastrophic damage to the central brain—damage that it wouldn’t be able to recover from. The web resembled a lumpy ball, the individual strands now wrapped tightly around the central brain. It appeared to be some kind of defensive posture, but the damage I had done was evident. Blue slime leaked from it, and its gray surface blackened.

The victims lay around it, naked and unconscious—but free. “H-hey, you!” I shouted, looking at the beekeeper. “Can you send your bees at that thing? Finish it off?” If I were right, there was no need for this—but it would make sure that thing couldn’t lash out at us.

And would give me time to check on Holly…

The beekeeper nodded shortly. Without a word from him, the swarm suddenly broke off from the still bodies of the doppelgängers behind us. Thousands of bees descended upon what was left of the ball of webbing. A sudden shriek filled the air as the swarm engulfed it—a shriek that was joined by the now flailing bodies of the doppelgängers behind us. Quickly, the shriek weakened, and from beneath the swarm a blackening slime began to ooze across the floor. The ooze of the doppelgängers joined it.

I crouched down and cradled Holly in my lap, letting out a sigh of relief as I saw her breathing normally.

“We made it…” I heard the beekeeper say. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the two of them kneel beside Amber.

“Is she going to be alright?” the masked hero murmured.

I directed my powers through Holly’s body. She was weak, and hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink in almost a day by now. I purged the sedatives from her system, but there was nothing my powers could easily do about dehydration. Still, as her eyes fluttered open—focusing lazily upon me—I couldn’t help but smile.

“You’re going to be alright,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes despite myself. “They’re all going to be alright.”