CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT - FLESHLY BAPTISM

Alright. How to play this.

There was the sound of muffled breathing somewhere in the bone orchard. Assume she was being watched. If so, keep moving. Pull out her map, check it, pretend that she'd just been having a nice little stop to catch her breath and get her bearings. Still a fair distance away from the first entrance to the tunnels, and far enough from the theurgists. Doubted they'd be monitoring her, the number of precautions they'd taken with their base made her think they very, very rarely left, and if they did, they did so with bulky equipment, and rarely strayed too far. Theurgists were rare, they'd always work to preserve their own lives, and the lives of their colleagues. So, none of them would be watching her. None of them would see her die... and none of them could offer protection. She started to move forwards, but took more time than she usually would with the boundless obstacles, checking the map over and over to really hammer it home that she was just... well, just taking a bit longer. Tired, maybe. The rasping of the gas mask seemed to move with her, but she didn't hear the usual crashes and groans that her passage elicited from the bone orchard. So... how was this person moving so quietly?

Why was it that she could only...

She took a step, and hesitated very slightly before the foot came down...

And there it was.

A slight shuffle, quickly silenced.

The stalker was moving with her. Using her own blundering passage to clear their own. That being said, the stalker was damn quiet, moving with barely a few rustles over a living carpet of insects, through a landscape that seemed eager to entrap anyone moving through it. The mutant on her back was a blessing, for once - covering her, making her unnatural movements seem less so, hiding the tells which might suggest where she'd go next... and hiding when she drew her gun and held it steady underneath her coat. The stalker was out there, watching, waiting... wouldn't be a theurgist, they'd be out here in a hell of a lot more equipment, and likely wouldn't be out here at all if they were going alone. Could be a helper, some sort of hired thug or local or something, watching her from the shadows at the behest of their masters. But... no, no, the prospect seemed thoroughly unlikely. Just remember - the theurgists had a near-impregnable laboratory, she'd only gotten in by having a key, and she honestly doubted that the key was a guaranteed means of entry. Probably just a request that carried some identification with it. So...

So this might well be the murderer.

Gas mask, so had to be human. Interesting. That meant... right, the mutant was doing nothing, she didn't think anything of what was going on. Just humans and humans. Nothing that would want to devour her, and nothing she'd want to devour. Tanner could beat another human in a fight, she knew she could. Even without her gun. The question then becoming, was this person armed? Could she get to them in time, restrain them in time? Her breathing picked up, but her gas mask rattled away like usual. Kept walking. The insects were up to her shins, swallowing most of her boots whenever she placed her feet down. Each time, she worried that nothing would come back up, that they'd start to gnaw, chewing through it all in moments and leaving behind nothing besides a stump. Never did, but... still. Could see why the mutant wanted to stay up here, even if it was uncomfortable. Quick thought - if she poisoned herself correctly, she could use the mutant as a meat shield. Soak up a shot, then run for the stalker. Useless if the stalker had distance, though, and if they had a gun which could fire rapidly enough. Might give her a small chance, though.

Oh, gods, this felt unpleasantly good. All her thoughts had drained, all that remained was this, this specific moment, this stalker, this gun, this tunnel. Nothing else existed beyond it. No murders, no judgement, no law, nothing. The only expectation she had to satisfy was the simple expectation to keep going, the most basic biological impulse there was.

Shouldn't feel as clear as she did. Should be much more terrified.

Hm. Skull pile nearby, surprisingly large. Looked like... no, no, not a pile, just one skull, turned bizarrely cancerous. Growing versions of itself over and over and over, the eye sockets were full of long threads forming into yet more skulls, and the pile was meshed together with masses of teeth. Each and every one of the skulls being twisted and inhuman, something between a... horse in terms of shape, human in terms of teeth, spider in terms of eyes, and there were strange spurs that made her think of sea urchins or hedgehogs. Each one large enough to comfortably clamp down around her head and chew at the neck. Maybe even snap it free with a single crack. Very much didn't want to know how they would've looked like in life. At least these were dead. And the heap was large enough that she could navigate around it, and maybe block the line of sight with the stalker, get a bit of shelter, a bit of uncertainty...

She moved.

The gas mask nearby rasped suddenly, and she thought she heard something moving.

Shifted around the pile... and as quickly as possible, prepared a rag of contamination. The mutant's nostrils flared, something resembling alarm twitching across her face... no, just reading something into that expressionless expanse. But she was definitely reacting. The rag was prepared in seconds, the flask sealed immediately, and she tossed the rag end-over-end into the blackness... and like that, creaking from all directions, anything that could sense the rag trying its best to react, the carpet of insects seething weakly, spasmodically twitching... it seemed almost, almost as though she was moving. She turned on her heel...

And went back the way she came.

Her face was utterly flat as she came face to face with a shape moving rapidly to catch up with where it thought she was.

She stared into the featureless black lenses of a gas mask.

The gas mask stared right back.

And she began to raise her gun, the words 'stay still' already marching up her throat...

The figure ran.

Good gods it was fast. Scampered right away, leapt to the bone pile, scampered up the monstrous skulls without flinching, then dove across the top of the heap to reach a distant point, all in barely a handful of seconds. Tanner was still drawing her gun when it reached the top, and she immediately began to run back around, ignoring the insects that surged around her boots, while she kicked them up in great waves that sometimes tickled the underside of her mask. The figure wasn't being subtle now, but it was still painfully quiet compared to herself. The mutant on her back... dammit, Tanner didn't have time to throw her free, needed... maybe she could throw contamination at the figure, get the mutant to chase it, or... no, no, stupid, would just kill the figure, if it was fully human...

Speaking of which.

It was already down the other side of the heap, sprinting into the bone forest... Tanner knew where it was going.

Making for the tunnels.

And... it happened. Just as she knew it would. Despite herself, a strange, small smile crossed her face.

Lost half her body weight in a moment, everything rationalising down, unnecessary organs shrivelling to the size and weight of grapes, muscles standing out starkly against the surface of the skin, fat seeming to disintegrate in a faint yellow halo around her flesh. The ghost of a weaker, softer Tanner, drifting away, stolen by the dark. And all that remained was herself. Her skin drew tight around her skull, her heart burned, her throat drank air with greedy gulps, everything about her harmonised into the absolute most optimal pattern, perfect in every last detail. Her legs moved smoothly and unerringly, the insects couldn't stop them, the uneven ground couldn't stop them, nothing could. Even the mutant seemed a little surprised, based on how she clung tighter, wrapping her long, eerily flexible legs around Tanner's torso and locking her arms together into a sort of yoke around her chest. Hanging on with all the unnatural force she could muster. Tanner ploughed through bones, snapping them underfoot, her momentum brutalising everything out of her path. She was a bull, she was a charging elephant, she was a steam locomotive out of control, fuelled by a theurgic engine, she was an unfathomable freak of nature, and for once, that felt wonderful.

The figure scampered away, using its flexibility and dexterity to clamber over piles, forcing her to go around. Only thing it could do - it would buy itself a few seconds, glance around, and would run faster as it saw her bearing down. It wasn't escaping, it was just delaying the inevitable. Tanner felt a brutal satisfaction run through her. The tunnels weren't close enough. It would fail to reach them in time. It scampered up one of the spinal-column trees, vertebra by vertebra... even here, couldn't get a good sight of it, her lantern was swinging madly, her vision was always interrupted by the lenses of the gas mask, and the swiftness of the figure was such that she just couldn't get a bead on them. Scampered up faster and faster, taking it two, three rungs at a time. Tanner watched as it leapt across, finding another, moving further away, taking advantage of the vertical nature of the place. Wouldn't last long. Wouldn't last long. Her fists were aching...

And a cry escaped her throat

.

"Stop!"

No response. Felt a fool for trying. But now she'd given a request, she'd... no, no, try again, but this time...

"This is a Judge of the Golden Door, politely requesting you stop running!"

And now, legally, she was allowed to do whatever it took to stop it. Now didn't she. Could pound the living daylights of it and be completely in the clear. The mutant on her back took up the cry, wailing 'stop' over and over, with exactly the same intonation, exactly the same variation in volume. Not remotely understanding what the word was meant to mean, or what it was meant to accomplish. Tanner's fist lashed out, crushing out one of the spinal trees, and with a heave, she tipped it. Remembered that spine which had adjusted to grasp another, using her motion just to get closer to its prey...

This one did much the same.

Wrapped around a nearby one, vertebrae closing inward like teeth, central column encircling the competitor like a constricting snake. Even without a brain, even without a body, a mutant still knew how to devour. The figure was thrown free, clattering to the bed of insects, rising in a moment... Tanner was already reaching, grasping at whatever came near...

Found a neck.

Locked around it.

Hauled the thing up...

And it promptly did something she hadn't expected.

It went suddenly very limp indeed, so that her arm just shot up, expecting resistance that never came. And as her grip destabilised for a moment... it swung backwards, wrapping around her arm like a wild ape, so that she had two figures riding her for a second. Only for a second. It reached for the flask at her waist, snatched it before she could react, and cracked it over her coat, slamming into her ribs with enough force to remove the cap.

Oh. Shit.

She felt nothing. But she saw how the flask erupted with contamination, spraying over her. The crackling stink of the stuff filled the air. The mutant on her back froze stiff.

And the garden began to wake up.

The spine she'd just pushed lashed backwards, quick as a whip, wrapping around her torso, vertebrae seeking any kind of purchase, fleshy marrow forming pseudopod tongues that lapped hungrily. The insects seethed upwards, devouring one another and fusing together into a living carpet, a shambling, shapeless amoeba of chitin and limbs, trying to envelop her completely. Other bones were creaking, a ribcage shuddered and popped, spraying liquid red marrow in her general direction, hungry for whatever it could possibly find. She was seeing mutants in their most primal form - the simple, primitive urge to consume more, no matter what it took, the purer the better. Two bodies riding her, a sudden impact, a spine acting like a snake, a carpet of insects, a whole world coming to life...

She staggered...

Didn't fall. But her hand moved, and the figure was gone, racing unmolested through the bone orchard, not a single sound escaping its gas-mask covered lips.

For a moment, Tanner felt absolute panic rising. The insects were up to her gas mask, they were covering the lenses, all she could see were malformed bodies gnawing at anything they could find, desperate to get their share of the spoils. The spine was wrapping more and more, the contamination allowing it to grow more complex, allowing it to reshape, to advance into a proper organism rather than just a brute instinct. More. Slugs of glistening marrow. Something which felt like a crab shambling to her leg, regurgitating a whole mass of black innards that started to slither upwards, even as the pincers dug deeper into the boot. Things coming from above, gliding things, thin as leaves and just as delicate, moving on the still air of the underground, latching to her helmet, gluing tightly, refusing to leave, suckling at the stained metal with mouths the size of their whole bodies, mouths without digestive systems. Convinced she could hear the mutalith groaning, the sleeping giants lunging for her, for this morsel, for anything...

Her lantern fell, smashed, darkness.

Darkness and writhing.

Panic rose. Panic spiked.

Swore she could feel tadpole-things slithering into the filters, easing up through the air hose, reaching for her mouth, filling her helmet with wriggling translucent bodies, hungry for anything, seeking it desperately. Each and every one of these creatures knew that this contamination could bring them an eternity of life and prosperity, Tanner was the gateway to millennia of life, and they attacked her with all the passion such a prize warranted.

Tanner felt the mutant slipping from her back.

And she began to rip at her body, pulling things off, crushing them, but the contamination from their broken bodies would dirp downwards and attract more. She was going to be buried. They were going to bury her in a tomb of bodies, they'd weigh her down until her helmet cracked, they'd gnaw until her coat gave way, they'd never stop until she was just like them... bodies, bodies, the sound of gnawing, the sound of slithering, the sound of liquid, oozing bodies undulating wherever they could go, cold and wet and infiltrating everything they touched, she saw nothing but bodies, saw nothing but the gleam as their wet mass caught some distant piece of light, felt her air hose constricting, felt the wheeze of her breath increasing until it was nothing but a shrill whine, felt-

Felt fury.

Stopped ripping away bodies.

Quietly, she reached for her bag.

Fumbled for the flask of flamethrower fuel.

Her memory-room was shivering, but she knew where the lantern had fallen.

Knew that the light had to come from somewhere. A flame endured. Had to. The bodies were gleaming, where did the light come from, not from the figure, not from the base, had to come from the enduring lantern.

The fuel departed her hands... she couldn't see if she was aiming properly, but...

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A flash of light.

And a scream echoed through the dead throat of the river.

The mutants fled from her immediately. They knew to devour. That instinct remained. And they knew to fear flame. To run from heat, back to the cloying cold of the underground, to the darkness where they could endure. Flee the light that took away their contamination, that violated the most basic instinct of their existence.

Tanner started to tear away again, starting with her eyes. But not brutally. She'd scoop them aside, and fling them towards the light.

Listen with unnatural enjoyment to the sound of them squirming in the flame. There was no screaming. Not really. Only the sound of uncounted bodies writhing in one direction all at once, inventing muscles where none existed, straining bones until they broke. A moaning wail that the river turned into something like a scream, a scream that the darkness devoured without giving back a single echo.

She felt hands...

Felt the mutant picking her kin free and flinging them into the fire, not even bothering to eat them. Too malformed, too cancerous. Worked for Tanner. Worked just fine. Her vision slowly returned, the spine retracted from her torso, clarity in general seemed to resume. But her heart was still racing, her breath still coming in desperate pants, grateful for every breath that wasn't full of squirming maggot-things. The mutant continued to pick them away... and a second later, Tanner realised why she was being so very generous.

A head pushed towards her hand.

Expectant eyes looked up, ruptured and gleaming.

And Tanner allowed the creature to lick at her hand with a black, rasping tongue, taking whatever she could. Aware that this was the end of the gravy train. Tanner almost expected her to run away at this point, hot-foot it back to some semblance of safety... but no. Lingered at her feet. Why? Did she think Tanner was going to provide more? Did she think Tanner... no, no, she thought Tanner was a source of safety. Tanner was large, Tanner would oppose other mutants for her, Tanner was a good meat shield. If they found a large mutant, Tanner would fight it too, most likely. And then this one could eat as much as she liked.

She wasn't loyal, no matter how she crawled around Tanner's legs, eyes flickering around in search of more foes.

Loyal in the same way a cuckoo chick was loyal to its 'parents'. Oh, it'd be a devoted child, it'd stay in the nest, it'd eat their food and enjoy their protection.

But once it was large enough...

Tanner looked for the figure, putting the thought out of her mind. Get on with her job, get on with... oh, who was she trying to fool. This wasn't for her job. Even if her job demanded she turn around and leave, she'd still be chasing this figure, so she could wring its neck. Her vision kept crawling with invisible insects, and her coat felt like... like it was still writhing with them. The place where the flask had been thrown into her seemed to burn, a brand that reminded her of what she had to do. Not because her job demanded it.

Because she demanded it.

And without further hesitation, she marched off, eyes dark with rage and fear.

* * *

The figure would be heading for the tunnel entrance. Had to be. If it didn't, there'd only be two ways to reliably go - forward or backward. Both lay through the bone orchard, and she was keenly aware that the flask it'd shattered... well, that particular snake bit both ways. The figure would be scented with contamination, now. Even if it wasn't tainted, it'd be delicately perfumed, and that alone would make passage harder. Good luck climbing the vertebrae-trees when they saw you as food, good luck running around when the insects kept rising in a carpet to consume you. Tanner knew this was the case, because they were still trying to do that to her. Every so often she had to kick her legs free of insects, or smack a tree aside. But for as slow as this made her, as fast as her heart raced whenever spinal teeth nibbled at her sleeve or protoplasmic flesh oozed towards her mask or countless pincers chewed hungrily at the straps holding her boots on... she was large. She could crush and break and hurt.

The figure had been shorter. Weaker. More reliant on manoeuvrability.

A talent it would've lost the moment it doused itself in contamination.

Her teeth were gritted.

Her eyes were wide, and she could almost feel them becoming bloodshot.

Yet her face remained completely still. And if someone saw her, they would see an expression of the most immaculate calm in the world.

Going to wring their neck.

Tried to examine her memories. Pick through the terror, as she kicked another rising wave of insects aside, scattering them over skulls that began to move hungrily, devouring them one crunch at a time, liquid spilling down their glistening teeth. Like looking at crabs - all bone on the outside, but inside, there was something raw and festering. Right, right... gas mask, that much she'd seen. In terms of the body, it was hard to pick out anything in the darkness and the motion, but... it didn't look especially advanced. Not like her own gear. Leather and oiled cloth, stretched over clothes. Made it nimble, but wouldn't be protective. If it came down here frequently, as seemed likely, it was odd that its gear should be so primitive. Implied a lack of resources, maybe. Possible... hm, possible that this thing lived underground and had limited access to anything else, had to rely on scavenging things rather than procuring them, implying severance from the cartel or the colony proper.

Maybe... hm, maybe a stowaway or a criminal, maybe even one of the exiles from the colony, just retreating deeper into the tunnels and living off whatever could be stolen. Hard to notice if something was being stolen by this thing when so much else was being stolen by actual organisations. And the tunnels of meat under the cold-houses could readily supply someone, if they were careful enough. Some sort of urchin, then. Living under everyone's feet.

She stalked after it, following the signs of disturbances. It was odd - all she had to do was follow the bending of the stalks. Not because the figure had left a trail. But because the stalks were trying to chase it down, to lap at the scent. When she came close, the stalks bent to her, instead. Down here, there were no winds - the only thing which could disturb the movements of the ossified forest were those who bore the most appetising scents. Seemed like the two of them were a hurricane passing through, bending everything in their wake, flattening the trees as they crouched to the ground, trying to develop legs and feelers to chase after them, spinal centipedes, charnel cockroaches, an ocean of living chitin that flowed after the two of them. Nothing like contamination in a field of near-dead mutants to feel like a celebrity, hm?

Oh, she was in a strange, strange mood.

Very strange indeed.

She wasn't... being a judge, was she? She wasn't being what her mother and lodge had intended of her, to say nothing of her tutors, her order, her gods, her employers. She was being... obsessive (cautioned against), emotional (warned against), and downright vengeful (forbidden as a cardinal sin). She didn't have a cape on. She didn't have her ribbons. And as much as she tried to imagine the governor sitting on her back, her gods, her expectations, everything, she just... there was a fraying. A slow, consistent fraying. The governor? He'd been a controlling oddball who'd done a dozen shady deals to stay in power and had then died, leaving behind a system incapable of running without him. Canima was much the same, but without the competency or friendliness. Her gods? Fidelizh's gods had never been her own, not really. And she'd always found it hard to believe, always more about the rites. About the acceptance that it brought, the feeling of acting like everyone else and being accepted as a consequence. Down in the dark, none of that mattered. The lodge? She...

She hated the lodge.

She loathed the lodge.

Could say it, down here, surrounded by horror. The lodge were... were over-secretive, over-controlling... ninnies. They'd made part of her childhood miserable, forced her to act in play after play after play, always as the monster, always as the damn monster, and then their candles hadn't even kept catastrophic bad luck away from her.

She spoke suddenly, her voice high and hysterical.

"Piss on the lodge."

The mutant murmured in her awful, awful voice, a perfect imitation of Tanner's own half-hysterical tones:

"Lodge."

"Exactly. Piss on it."

Hated the damn thing. Hated it! And for once, it didn't feel awful admitting that!

And... and had she ever wanted to be a judge? Or had she just been happy with the idea that her mother was proud of her, that she was doing as she was told?

When she thought about, what did she like about being a judge?!

Movement up ahead snapped her back into the present. Away from her... whatever was happening to her. She increased her pace. The figure ahead was small. Weak. Had less endurance, less ability to shove aside the forest of bones. Tanner was large. Her muscles were burning with exertion, yet not a hint of weariness overcame her. And the bones? She crushed them. She drove them out of her path. She never stopped, she never hesitated, she bulldozed every last stinking piece of mutant meat out of her way.

She was a damn war machine.

She was immaculate.

She... was going a bit too far. But she increased her speed nonetheless, going from a determined walk into a low jog, then faster, faster, moving with all the speed she could muster, the kind of speed she' d had... had when she chased Tyer, when she didn't know waht she was capable of and put everything into it. Not even the tunnels had elicited that, that'd been a terrified shamble, an endurance contest.

This was the sprint of a creature with blood in her nose, the scent of her prey on her tongue.

She ran.

Oh, gods, how she ran...

No thoughts but running. No thoughts but exertion. No thoughts but the simple dichotomies of success and failure, between which there was nothing, no alternative, no medium, no average. Only one or the other. She ran. The figure fled ahead of her, but it was slower than before. Could see how short it was. How weak. How... easy to catch. Her eyes boiled at the sight of it, and the mutant loped along beside her with easy, animal grace, focusing on the figure simply because she was. There was a minute of frenzied racing, both giving their all, Tanner charging through great thickets, the figure spending longer and longer to navigate through the landscape that increasingly hungered for it, clutching around clothes, around everything it could possibly clutch. The wheezing of the gas mask grew louder and louder - it was panicked, it was panicked, and Tanner was the cause. For once in her life, she couldn't even bring herself to care about that fact. Good. So what if she was panicking the little toad. She wanted to.

They reached the side of the river. The black wall stretched up high above, them, a momentary break in the cover of the bones... silence, but for the pounding of feet on stone, nothing to inhibit...

Tanner was almost close enough, almost...

The figure shrieked something. Language she didn't understand. Dashing onwards, shrieking over and over and over. And-

And something moved.

Something ahead of them. Tanner growled deep in her throat, barely noticing the mutant at her side backing up, caution evident in her expression... Tanner stared into the dark, hands fumbling for anything she could use, her gun, her truncheon, the solid weight of her bag, even the lantern, though it was her last one...

Something moved again. More purpose. More conviction.

And this time, it emerged into the light.

Tanner blinked.

It was... almost human. She'd say that much. Two arms. Two legs. But the eyes were ruptured. The skin was mottled with scales and patches of mangy fur. The arms were long enough to touch the feet without any amount of bending. Ape-like and savage. The spine was uncannily fluid. And the creature stood almost a full head taller than her, looming down with terrible intent in its malformed features. Everything twisted. Everything exaggerated. Humanity in caricature.

And red hair coursed down its back. Chemical red. Rekidan red. A noble, a slave, a survivor, a mutant. Nothing beyond remained beyond this category, a category that devoured all others. Tanner didn't even think about anything but the necessaries. The general shape, the size of the fists, the presence of any other weapon. She saw nothing. So what else mattered?

Tanner looked at it.

It looked back.

And without thinking, she drew her gun and fired.

Loathed the heat of it, the sound, the shock, everything. Hated the feeling of an engine doing all the work for it, like it was taking responsibility away and giving it to something soulless, mindless, heartless. Outsourcing the act of violence, delegating it and severing oneself from the equation.

The creature moved, ducking low, moving with unnatural competence and swiftness, no hit, no damn hit... Tanner moved faster. The gun became useless the moment the distance was closed, she had to do something else, and thank the gods for that. She allowed it to drop, and drew her truncheon, lashing out with all the speed she could muster...

The creature moved first. Long arms locked around her shoulders, and ruptured eyes glared into the depths of her own. Saw nothing human in them. A haul, and the arms shifted - she felt fists pounding into the compact muscle of her back, and she felt... felt nothing, only impacts, only slight impacts, and only in an academic sense. At no stage did she feel pain. At no stage did she feel anything but determination.

She ought to be more panicked. Ought to think more. To fear more.

But her mind was too burned out. All that remained was instinct. Clear as diamond.

And twice as sharp.

Instincts that demanded one thing, and one thing alone:

Retaliation.

The creature was taller than her, stronger than her... and she hurled her truncheon into its side with a rabid snarl building in her mouth. She'd been through enough. This was just more violence. And unlike against humans, she had no reason to hold back. Felt flesh shivering underneath, twisting in that way mutant-meat did, adapting to the damage almost faster than she could make it. Another smack, and she felt bones shudder. More fists pounding, and now the creature was trying to snap at her with its grotesquely oversized jaws, row upon row of teeth trying to scrape on her mask...

She shoved the truncheon deep into that raw, red gullet. A choking sound erupted from it, a we t convulsion of muscle, a spray of spit washed out and struck her, warm and cloying. Eyes bulged. A cheap thrill of victory ran through her, the sight of her enemy without dignity. Oh, gods, the enemy without dignity, she wished she could see Vyuli or Canima or Mr. Mask undignified, shambling around choking on something, flailing and weak and deprived of all authority, everything had authority until it was choking. Watched as the creature reached up to try and remove the obstruction, clawing at a face turning an alarming shade of purple...

Then struck it in the side with her fist. Right where the bones had shuddered. Now... now she felt them break beneath her knuckles, felt the skin of her fists starting to thin and bruise, felt her blood pulsing. The creature moved back, trying to remove the blockage from its throat so it could keep going. Tanner didn't let up. Another fist. Another. Until she could feel the sharp edges of the ribcage starting to scrape long, pale lines against her gauntlets, ready to slice through the leather and towards her skin. A snarl emerged from her. She was glorious. She was panicked. She was so fucking scared. No part of her didn't thrill with fear and adrenaline and sweat and rot and everything, nothing mattered but now.

The creature was ape-like in its movement, but utterly silent, not a single groan or grunt emerged from that blocked throat. She pounded again - blood was oozing from sores, the skin tearing against the ribs like they were internal blades, compress anything tight enough and it became its worst enemy. Her breath was deafening in her ears, the rasping of her gas mask filters made her feel less like a person, more like an animal, donning the mask of one, adopting the grunts, the snarls, the squeals, the hoots, and becoming it, losing all normal instincts, come on, hurt it more. Just a damn mutant. The blood was brownish, emerging in long trickles down the pale flesh, and it was flailing now, flailing at nothing, spasmodically jerking its arms around to smash into Tanner again and again, but it was weaker, it was looser, it was used to fighting things smaller and weaker than itself, it knew nothing about how to fight a giantess. The thing was moaning around the blockage, incomprehensible, animal. Her fists were teeth, her fists were external molars, she was eating it alive, she was whirring through it, gristle, muscle, bone, everything, the fists were just ways of pre-digesting food, the lesson was taught by parents when they mashed up food for infants, from infancy the lesson was taught - pound your food until it was soft enough to gouge apart with your teeth, everything was just teeth, swords, knives, clubs, fists, everything was just an aide for digestion, the thing which separated humans from animals was how far they elaborated the digestive process, how extensively they refined it, softening the meat, removing the indigestible, she was eating this damn thing alive with every punch.

A strange warmth bloomed in her, a warmth she... didn't want to think about it, but in the adrenaline-crazed haze she couldn't help but let it flow through her. Punching was chewing, tenderising the meat before it could be consumed. Another act of tenderising was breeding. Animals being bred over and over until they became more compliant, their skeletons reshaped, their minds dulled, their loyalties drifted. Their meat became easier to cook and chew, their milk became more abundant and reliable, their fur became thick and luxurious. Each punch was part of the same lineage of behaviours that reshaped horses into tame pack animals, and dogs into loyal companions. She attacked the creature, and by doing so she became human, she exerted dominance, every single strike seemed to be accompanied by the shrieks and squeals of mating animals, the glistening of blood-slicked skin the sweat-drenched hide of a rutting pig, each punch was an orgasm, each punch was a grinding tooth, each punch was a thousand years of selective breeding, each punch was the dulling of intelligence and the refinement of livestock, each punch made her human.

Each shuddering impact led her to humanity. Clawing her way there, one bloody knuckle at a time.

The black walls slammed against its back. She ought to feel more hurt - the fists were strong, they were capable of truly damaging her, could feel purple bruises spreading over her back like she'd been lashed, and... a nail caught the leather of her coat, could tear it, she wrenched it away. A great pale skull leered down from the mutalith, something the size of a house, something with jaws fit to crunch through anything, opened wide to devour them both.

Tanner slammed the mutant's head into it, her face flat, her voice non-existent. Gone beyond snarling.

It was Canima, useless and idling away his days. It was Vyuli, mad and old and sadistic. It was Lyur, who ruined things for no reason but some internal defect. It was Tom-Tom, incompetent and perpetually striving to do things, and only doing more damage in the process. It was the governor, who'd thought he was so in control, when he hadn't even known all the things he lacked control over, ignorant and incompetent. It was Mr. Mask, the leader of the theurgists, smug, supercilious, arrogant, and divorced from any kind of accountability she could offer. It was the Lord of Appeal who'd sent her here for a cockamamie reason. It was... it was so many, it was damn Pocket, Mr. Pocket, from eight years ago, making her crawl out of her skin on a ferry, it was everyone and everything, and she watched the bruises spreading across it with a strange fascination, and-

And it spat.

The truncheon emerged with a gurgle of displaced matter. Slobber dripped down the lips like a caricature of an ape. Eyes bulged, ruptured and bloodshot. Tanner hissed through her teeth, feeling blood coming through them, something internal damaged by the fight that she, even now, could barely remember. She saw flesh pale to the point of blueness, she saw eyes contracting and twisting in some imitation of pain, dull with horror, everything reduced to nightmare. The sound from that maw was animal-like and guttural, retching and strange...

And then it was understandable.

"Stop! Stop!"

Tanner froze.

Lie. Lie. Imitation. The mutant girl had done the same, she always did. It was lying. Her fists clenched again, and she could feel where the skin had split...

"Stop! Surrender!"

That was...

Her voice emerged hesitantly, strained and strange.

"Don't repeat this."

"Repeat... what? Repeat what? Surrender, stop, stop!"

The voice emerged from a broken mouth. She'd snapped some teeth - not sure when she did that.

At no stage had she really yelled. Only snarled... then silence. Only the rasping of her gas mask to fill the air as she took this thing to pieces. It stared with ruptured pupils. It leered with a broken mouth. It gasped through a bruised throat. It sagged under the weight of bruises and snapped bones. It wasn't a creature, it was a mess of injuries and contusions, she'd single-handedly turned the skin tone from pale to purple with her fists, like changing chicken from pink to white, like changing steak from red to brown. Cooked the creature one punch at a time.

She stared.

"What are.... what…"

Thoughts weren't coming, could barely hear anything over the flow of blood in her ears.

She stopped.

The creature looked at her.

And... and she saw intelligence.

She saw the eyes of Lantha. The same mixture of humanity and mutant.

She saw something which wasn't totally gone yet.

Oh... gods...

She'd taken apart something intelligent.

She'd seen an intelligent... creature, and tried to dismantle it.

Oh gods...

And already the mutant girl was circling around. Black tongue extended.

Licking at the ground. Licking at the remains of the battle. Rasping over the mutalith, filled with the remains of countless, countless mutants.

An expression of utter contentment on her flat, unemotive face. The smug satisfaction of a creature that'd predicted something, and had been rewarded by this prediction. Cat with a saucer of milk gained by wailing like a baby and eliciting enough sympathy.

She'd known. That sooner or later, Tanner would do this. It was irrational, it was stupid, but Tanner was convinced that the girl had known.

Known that she'd lose her restraints and do this without thinking. Just had to follow along and wait for the bloodbath.

Tanner stared. And the air was filled with nothing but the low, low rasp of a black tongue over black stone...

And the creaking of the bone orchard as it leaned to taste the air.

And the gasping of the two combatants.