CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIX - GUNPOWDER PRIESTS
She, to her credit, made it a few streets before she needed to stand very still and focus on not collapsing. Surrounded by ruins on all sides. The Rekidans above were like children, playing with destroyed mutants, passing around choice elements of the swarm, admiring the shimmering outlines of this piece of chitin, the razor-sharp tip of this particular claw, the unnatural deformities afflicting a molar. They were treating them... almost like Tanner had treated the ceremonial sweets that concluded a case. There was a sense of ritualised appreciation, not just crude post-battle banter. Mr. Horn would present a bone to Mr. Brewer, carefully picked of all meat by both the Rekidans and the mutants themselves - the bone was inky black and strangely flexible, and as Tanner watched, it shivered, the marrow within trying to escape, trying to form primitive legs, anything to survive. Indeed, the longer it was handled, the more tiny spurs of bone protruded, hungering for the contamination streaking the Rekidans, that hung heavy in the air. Mr. Brewer would turn the bone over, mumbling softly, his eyes flickering over each nodule and contortion, his fingers cleverly playing to draw out the most... interesting shapes from the hungering marrow. Then he'd return the bone, nodding repeatedly and gravely, before withdrawing an organ the colour of amber which Mr. Horn would admire in an identical fashion.
This was... they'd done this so often that they had rituals. They'd merged the normal and the abnormal together into a single stew. Just like soldiers taking skulls and ears, treating the enemy as animals, treating this entire affair as one long hunting trip. Turn a mutant-hunt into a tea party where everyone had to compliment the hostess on her fine porcelain and her choice in decor. Mr. Ape, the Rekidan she'd brutalised in the underground rivers, was running a bone comb through his long red hair, even as he occasionally had to stop to pluck a mutated insect out of the thick mane. He was delicate with his applications, the style emerging from the chaos strangely... appealing, and the sweat of combat served to give his hair a damp sheen, almost like it'd been oiled. For all she knew, his sweat was closer to hair oil, not like anything about the Rekidans was normal. Another Rekidan sat down opposite him, lounging casually on a fallen pillar, and began to brush his own hair, applying some... substance from a tiny ceramic urn, which smelled faintly of citrus and liquorice, flicking his strands into almost horn-like curls around the ears.
Gods. They were grooming themselves. She'd seen a man with a beak through his eye, she'd seen the snow turn into a red, seething swamp across the entire Breach, a border separating the alabaster city from the explosion-scarred beyond. Even when the walls fell, the boundaries restored themselves, in one form or another. She'd seen chaos, she'd seen men pissing themselves out of fear, seen fire, fire, so very much of it, her hearing was still plagued by ringing, by distant bells...
And they were grooming themselves as they conversed on the intricacies of bone and organ.
Was that strength?
Was that madness?
Should she imitate the power of it, should she... imitate the madness, lose herself in the thrumming of a great, boundless heart... this was when she stopped, when she had to resist the urge to collapse. Not that she was weak. Bruises would be spreading across her chest, she might have a few cuts, and her arms ached more than she wanted to admit, but... she would sit down and recover, everything would recover.
The fact that her body could heal was suddenly terrifying.
She would recover. She would endure. If she sat down, here and now, in a little while she'd be able to go on. To go back to the red swamp, to the carbonised landscape over which tiny particles seemed to glitter like grains of diamond...
Her eyes shifted around blankly, staring vaguely as the ringing in her ears continued.
In a single... in an hour and a half, the entire city had changed. The snow hadn't melted, but ash was falling from the sky, and layers of black snow were beginning to form in exotic stripes and inky pools Insects everywhere, burrowing into the contours of her clothes, whining around the edge of her filter, sometimes clambering over one of her lenses, just to remind her they were present. They were watching. There were not to be forgotten.. Smoke billowed from the scene of the massacre, thick, black, greasy smoke that clung to everything it touched. The stench of contamination was boundless. No way of really overemphasising it - the world had turned into a nightmare, pure and simple. She felt... a strange fear, brewing in her. Deeper than the immediate terror of combat, which for all its unpleasantness, was still... binary. There was a certainty to the choices she made - if she made mistakes, she wouldn't be worrying about them for very long. She felt a strange dread of time, a sudden awareness of her position. In the inner temple, she was part of an unbroken tradition, she was a single brick in a wall that extended away from her in all directions. If she failed, the wall still held. She was nothing without the bricks on either side, above and below, behind and in front. And she'd left the wall behind. Removed herself from the composite mass of organisation, tradition, expectation, surveillance...
And now she could feel bricks pressing in on her again. Newer. Stranger. The emergence of another order. The Rekidans nodded respectfully to her. Soldiers saluted. The mutants gathered all around. By her hand she remade the landscape and turned the earth into glass. By her will she bound the people of the colony into regulated bunkers. The bricks were coming, forming all around her. Her origins had slipped from sight, might never have occurred at all, she might've just hatched from the snow and walked here - the old wall was gone, the new wall was forming, and within it hung eternity. Her body was healing, slipping automatically back to a state of health. In time, she would recover. In time, the wall would grow higher. She had control over both, technically, and yet... at the same time, she had no control whatsoever. Unless she wounded herself, starved herself, actively worsened her situation, she would slip and slide back to being an intact giantess. She had devoured her yesterdays, and her tomorrows...
She felt terrified of the blood, the ash, the smoke, the insects.
She felt terrified of time.
Wondered if she'd... broken a key bone in her body. By devouring her past for fuel, leaving nothing behind, nothing to return to, she established a dangerous legal precedent. She could obliterate what she was in order to sustain what she might become.
Why not do it again? The air was full of ash from an explosion she'd caused, the smoke was from fires she'd started, the blood was from a war she'd chosen to lead. The Rekidans seemed absolute in their size, their deformity, their redness. The soldiers were shivering and muttering. By her hand the landscape changed, she created stars on the earth... fear crept out of the world, and all the crude matter that made it up. Her thoughts were becoming facts, her inclinations were becoming laws, her will was becoming real.
She ran a hand over her mask, clearing away a few more insects that squirmed erratically, intent on nothing more than bothering her. Caking every surface in sight, shimmering, glistening bodies, devouring one another to keep going, to grow a little larger... a spider the size of a small dog, pulsing with antler-like tumours, formed from the swarm, formed from the self-consumption, scuttled away and was crushed casually by a Rekidan, who promptly wiped his feet off on the ashy snow. Tanner stared at the stain. Shivered. Mutants... maybe this was part of the plan. Send in the swarm, let the swarm devour itself, spill its own blood, let a thousand insects join together to become one, rather larger insect. Maybe that was just how mutants travelled, during the Great War. Break the contamination up into smaller vessels, then reunify the contamination when necessary, develop more complex and powerful mutants if the situation called... then afterwards, devour this complex mutant and return the contamination to the masses. A perpetual flow from concentrated to diffuse. Presumably the titans had been the end of that process... or just the highest state they ever bothered to achieve.
The General hopped down from a rooftop, his lungs filling with poisoned air as he looked around in satisfaction. All-Name slipped out of the shadows, stumbling a little over the numerous pieces of rubble that littered the place. Tanner watched as both of them approached. All-Name translated in a flat, distant tone of voice, and his eyes behind his mask seemed to struggle to focus on anything. The General rumbled.
"...my General wishes to compliment you on your performance today. As skirmishes go... it was a good one."
Tanner blinked slowly, brushing more insects away from her lenses.
"Did you take any losses?"
"None."
"Anyone looking like they're going to..."
She gestured vaguely. Hard to say 'go insane as contamination ravages your sense of self and enslaves to whatever is directing these mutants'.
"None yet are succumbing. Some are... a little nervous, but we keep an eye on each other, no Rekidan goes alone. Just like in the Great War. Each and every one of us is prepared to kill our comrades if they succumb to madness."
Tanner hummed in uncomfortable acknowledgement. Glanced at the Rekidans picking insects from one another, combing their hair, lounging about contentedly on rubble like they were sprawled on divans...
"...so... is this like the Great War?"
"There are similarities. The numbers are a little smaller, thankfully. The swarm is familiar, as is the use of more ignorant, less sophisticated mutants. A wall of flesh to soak up the first flurry of defences, then more specialised insertions at key points."
"What kind of tactics can we expect from now on? Now you have a... better look at them. Numbers, complexity..."
The General scratched his chin thoughtfully, mulling things over...
"...the situation is different. When my General and his men were fighting them, back in the Great War, they were intent on extermination, yes, but also occupation, and it was just one front of a bigger conflict. They could take their time. Slow siege, slow bleeding. The swarm poisons wells and devours food, stops people working outdoors. As time went on, a hideous grey lichen spread across the city, and emanated spores that did much the same. Human-like mutants were used for primitive infiltrations, it wasn't... uncommon to have people vanish in the night, only to show up with vacant expressions. They'd stick a... needle into the back of the skull, contaminate the brain directly."
"Couldn't have been totally effective, right?"
"Quite. The entry wound was heavy contaminated, there were ways of checking, they never had complex conversations..."
"But they could converse."
The General grimaced.
"My General informs me that... the system for detecting infiltrators is simple. If you confront someone, ask them about their past, drill them on details. If you don't know anything about their past, watch their body language. They're not... really human, so they just... imitate other humans. Later on, they do voices, and it's easy to pick them out of a crowd. Until then, body language. Also, check where their knives are, anything that's dependent on them being right or left handed, then ask them to draw their gun. Mutants are always ambidextrous."
Right. Understood. She nodded along with the advice, eyes flickering around... wondering how many were already compromised. Solution seemed to just be for everyone to buddy up, which they were already doing for general safety. No soldier was ever meant to be alone, not until the crisis passed.
"Anything else I need to worry about?"
All-Name shivered.
"There's a possibility of them trying to sow mutated diseases, but that will require time - mutant diseases die out after a few infections. More likely, they'll just try and spread normal diseases, those tend to be good at... well, being diseases. Again, though - time, time which they lack."
"Still. Could be dangerous."
"Indeed. The gas masks, the coats, the filters... these things will keep out most diseases, it's mostly a concern if they get inside the bunkers."
"Noted. Anything else?"
"Assassinations and terror. When they retreated today, it's because they'd understood our basic defences. Now they're just... specialising. Mutants don't need to sleep, so they can attack at any time, and can attack constantly. Getting used to that fact, changing their bodies to suit that purpose. The General has already outlined lines of defence around the bunkers once the Breach falls."
Once. It was a certainty, then. The Breach would fall, and they'd be clustered around the bunkers in layers of barricades in the streets, sorties being limited in scale and scope. The mutants couldn't be driven off - dividing up and opening multiple fronts meant they could be surrounded by more mutants, they could burn more of them, inflict more immediate damage. Ironically, while this would be a terrible idea with humans, it had a certain wisdom for mutants. Extinction or survival, no middle-ground. The more damage they did at once, the harder it was to repair and scavenge. The normal tactic of funnelling bodies against a single front just meant the mutants could wear them down via attrition. General and Bayai agreed - multiple fronts, with streets optimised into choke-points. When you fought a flood, you didn't just build a dam, you built canals, drainage tunnels, you split the fury of the water so it could be dealt with by smaller, cheaper, more expendable barriers. She knew about these plans, just... liked to be reminded that some things were still under control.
"If it helps, this siege will be more rapid than the last one. The last one was a war of attrition. They had... so many bodies, their swarm blocked out the sun. They had everything. All we had was what we'd gone into hiding with. Here... you have fewer mouths to feed, and the mutants are smaller in number. Doubt they've got as many reinforcements as last time."
"That's good, I assume."
"...it means they either win or they die. Last time, they could live with a stalemate, wouldn't take unnecessary risks. Now..."
Now they had no reason to hold back. Behind the mutants was the coming of spring, the thawing of snow, the reawakening of the world. And the world that opened its eyes in a few months would be... green, fresh, eager to talk to the colony, and eager to wipe out the mutants surrounding it. In front of them was information sterilisation, was... something.
She twitched.
"Why are they even here? You said yourself, there weren't... many reasons, there's no more contamination than anywhere else, and with the amount they'll waste getting inside..."
"During the Great War, mutants could behave erratically, usually when serving a greater purpose. Turn up their noses at perfectly good contamination, hunt normal humans, develop strange priorities... some of their behaviours were never explained, given that the war ended before, presumably, they could... complete everything."
"But... attacking a city like this, without the numbers they had before, against people who know them and are equipped to fight them, to... get a little extra contamination from a well that's mostly drained?"
The General's smile was gone. He looked troubled - she'd picked away at a scab of confidence, and the underlying doubt was exposed to the red light of the sun. All-Name looked up at him, eyes wide, nervousness radiating from his every feature. One of the sharper-eared Rekidans looked up, narrowing his eyes and waiting eagerly for some clarification. Insects whirred, scraping the edge of her hearing with their endless, endless whining. And the General slowly, deliberately, began to speak.
"...my General says that... the Great War was, in itself, inexplicable. Some kind of intelligence lurks in the mutants who fought in that war. That intelligence withdrew when the war ended. There were always... speculators, who talked about... maybe some sort of invisible force, or a master-mutant that could control others, or even the will of the underground rivers themselves. Some said this controller would live inside the underground rivers, swimming beneath our feet and... guiding the progress of the horde."
"...but none of this was confirmed."
"Never. Maybe the intelligence lies far from here, maybe it's just outside the walls, maybe it lurks inside each one of the mutants, a tiny piece, anyway. We can't say why this group reawakened. We can't say why they chose to come here. We just don't know. But... if a mutant appears before us, we'll cut it down. That's as far as the General is willing to speculate."
Tanner stared.
Hummed.
The insects whirred all around. A solid black-brown cloud of stingers and wings and glittering eyes. A wasp with a glistening purple body landed right on top of the lens, wings clicking like typewriter keys, inch-long stinger prodding at the glass, leaving little smears of venom with each attempt. Tink-tink-tink-tink-tink. Flew off before she could crush it, and she was left with a few arcane, abstract swirls of venom that writhed with smaller organisms. A little dish of infant mutants that were already feasting on one another, competing to see who could become thimble-sized first, no hesitation, no doubt. Moving in a way that...
Buffalo weren't controlled by a single mind. Yet they moved flawlessly in harmony with one another. Same with birds. Same with, well, insects. Maybe some creatures just... needed a collective to become smarter. Maybe every mutant she'd met before today was a swarm-yet-to-come, containing the germ of the Great War. But this group had allowed that germ to fester and grow, to spread and infect others. Maybe mutants just did this, sometimes. And they were uniquely unlucky.
...no, couldn't believe that. The Great War had been remarkable for a reason. If this was a normal behaviour that randomly emerged...
Honestly, she doubted humanity would've made it this far.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"Thanks."
And with that, she was gone. Had to talk to some other people. The insects whirled, and the Rekidans vanished into the chitin-storm. Their sounds were cut off by the whirring of countless wings. Her attention flickered constantly from lattice to lattice, the interlocking networks of insects that consumed one another and combined... before being torn apart again by some other lattice. Sometimes a viable mutant seemed to almost develop - a spider that grew larger and larger before her very eyes, a centipede of disparate insects that somehow had a functional muscular system, could move itself without shambling... but these, too, were torn apart. Maybe because she was close, the viables would be crushed immediately. Or they were being dismantled for their functional parts, which could be integrated into others, keeping the chaotic mass somewhat useful. They were born to be martyrs, these functional mutants. Born to just... be farms for organs. The mutants died without thought or emotion, they died with absolute calm, and no fear whatsoever of their fate.
Again.
She felt a dim fear of what was coming. If the intelligence lurked in all of them... would wiping each and every one out be the only solution? Would this just become a feature of Rekidan life? Colonies had failed under better conditions.
They had... had so many advantages. The Rekidan nobility. The theurgists. Advanced warnings. Bunkers and dedicated weaponry. Time, they only had to wait for a few months, then the thaw would bring the outside world back. They'd been ready, the enemy weren't here in apocalyptic numbers, and...
And yet, as she saw a spider form just to be torn apart by a squirming cluster of malformed insects that required better parts...
The heart of a mutant had a boundless capacity for struggle. There was no morale, no madness, no stress, no breaking, no mutinies. They were living weapons, a red tide... one didn't conquer a red tide, one survived it. She saw in front of her all the tools of mutant victory, and they were flawless. While her own clothes were stained in gore, her hands were weary, her axe was thuggish and brutal, and the smell of greasy smoke lingered everywhere. It was like... having a gun pointed at her head. And even if that gun wasn't fired, even if she moved in time, the gun was still functional. The version of Tanner which lived and the version of Tanner which died both stared down the same barrel at the same machine.
Anyway.
The theurgists were in a bunker, as was everyone else, but theirs was... more refined. Smaller, of course. Mostly using it as an armoury, it'd never really been designed for civilians. The theurgists lurked in the dark rooms of this squat brick structure, and Tanner was allowed inside by weary guards, who saluted sharply at the sight of her. Stared hopefully up at her towering form, couldn't stop looking at her gleaming axe...
Didn't see her. Just saw what she represented to them.
And the loyalty in their gazes...
Theurgists inside. Iron masks. Red robes. Hiding behind layers of protection. Tanner was exposed to an improvised decontamination system, same as in the underground river. High-pressure jets of water routed from the normal plumbing network, scouring blood and rot from her, along with the squirming bodies of a few stubborn insects that'd decided to use her as a steed. Mr. Mask was waiting for her, and...
...and he had a cigarillo poking out of one of the holes in his mask.
A lit cigarillo.
Well. Everyone had to find some way of relaxing. He glared at her from beneath the black lenses, and the other theurgists bowed their heads obediently. Gods, that was eerie. Oh, she was sure they intended to ruin her after the colony was back on its feet and contact was re-established, but for now... they understood the pecking order. She nodded to him, not removing her gas mask.
"The detonation worked."
"Of course it did, we felt it from here. Four pulses. And?"
"Wiped out the first wave. More simplistic mutants. We're getting the advanced ones now, I think you... really cut into their numbers, removed a lot of contamination from play."
"Good. Astounding. And, of course, completely predictable."
"...I need to talk about more weapons."
"Oh, good gravy... never stops with your lot. Oh, watch out for the theurgists, no-one look at the theurgists with anything but suspicion, now please theurgists, please, give us all the weapons we need to survive. Feh."
"You'll be surviving too."
"I never said I was refusing. Only making my thoughts apparent."
A pause. One of the other theurgists was glancing between the two of them like... a child watching their parents argue. Didn't like that comparison. Not one little bit. She sighed, and remained standing - sitting down seemed risky, no idea if that chair was functional, or if it was a chair-shaped device that melted skin from whatever it touched.
"What else do you have that you can deploy?"
"Not much. We were rather busy creating four stars out of food preservation engines with minimal resources and limited time. That being said..."
He stood, grumpily, and stalked over to a nearby table, littered with loose pieces of equipment. Up here, their standards of secrecy had slipped, just a little - she could see a bewildering array of geometric shapes, particularly dodecahedrons, formed from metal she didn't quite recognise. Being a theurgist seemed... nonsensical, she failed to see a purpose in any of their gear, even their tools were just... scrapers, drills, an odd array of rings and bracelets, a few random odds and ends...
"This is something we're... developing. Though it's primitive."
Tanner stared.
Metal tube. About the length of her forearm. Widening to a broad mouth that reminded her, faintly, of a trumpet.
"We're still putting it together. Once it's done, of course, we'll hand it over. Highly unstable, lifespan measured in days, if not hours if it's being used heavily. In effect... it concentrates air, then allows it to erupt. It's a delayed explosion, nothing more."
Tanner blinked.
"...for what purpose? Is it a gun?"
"In a sense. It projects sound - at its most intense, oh, we've seen devices like this flay skin and muscle directly from the bone. It's... more or less a weaponised malfunction. I've seen people with their bones turned to liquid by the sudden and unexpected release of pressure."
Tanner resisted the urge to step back.
"I see. I'll... come back later for it."
Mount it, presumably... don't use it anywhere they cared about, that was for sure. Not going to make use of a deeply unstable theurgic weapon near civilians, or the bunkers, or... come to think of it, maybe she should get Tom-Tom to use it. No, that was a vile thought - even if Tom-Tom might welcome the chance for a martyrdom, for fond remembrance by others. Come to think of it, she thought... the theurgic weapons she'd seen thus far were just... accidents, really. The food-preservation cores wound up to a fever pitch, then allowed to metamorphose into a catastrophe. And this thing was explicitly based around a known malfunction with theurgic engines, a lesson about proper pressure dispersal.
Maybe this was just because they were operating on limited time and resources, but Tanner legitimately thought that it was an act of secrecy. If Tanner stole this weapon, she'd just have something that broke down in a productive fashion - it served no purpose but to break. She had no idea what weapons the theurgists could actually build, when they used their talents to the fullest. Then again...
The titan with a hole bored through it.
Presumably that was what happened when the theurgists abandoned secrecy for effectiveness.
"One more thing."
She licked her lips. Never... nice, asking when she knew she'd either get no answer, or would get an answer she'd dislike. One thing to get stabbed with an ice pick, another thing to voluntarily place it against her eye and push.
"The... intelligence which is motivating the mutants. The General is unsure of what it is, and he's unsure of what they're looking for. But he was hiding down in the underground river just to... shelter from the surface, he wasn't studying it. You were. Do you have..."
"There's nothing."
"Nothing?"
"It's drained. What remains is so hopelessly corroded it's not worth anything. Give it a few generations, we might see the river filling back up. But there's nothing that would warrant an invasion."
He sounded infuriatingly calm about that fact.
"And what about... the intelligence? What is it?"
A pause. Mr. Mask studied her, took a long drag from his cigarillo, then released the smoke, which emerged from each and every one of the holes around his mouth, and the pale wisps kissed the black lenses of his mask.
"If I knew, you can be sure it would be a secret of the theurgists' guild. If I said I knew, but couldn't tell you, you'd force the information out of me. If I said I didn't know, you might suspect that I did and was lying, and would try to force the information out of me. And, of course, I might actually not know."
Tanner sighed.
"I might not force information out of you. I have no reason."
"But if you were in a situation where you were very certain I knew but was holding back, you might consider it. Sorry - not taking the chance. It doesn't matter whether I know or not, because if I did, I wouldn't be allowed to tell you, and if I didn't, I'd have nothing to offer in the first place."
He sounded terribly smug about this.
Tanner was almost interested in extracting information from him just to wipe the smirk that she was certain lurked under that mask. One of the other theurgists, the blonde who'd offered her coffee, seemed to be smiling apologetically. Hard to tell, of course.
"...all I need to know, then, is something tactical. Not the broader picture, just... is there a feasible chance of knocking out control of the horde, disrupting whatever is... doing this."
Mr. Mask wriggled happily in his chair, clearly enjoying this position of superiority... and the blonde spoke, suddenly.
"It's been known to happen, ma'am. But never by finding some... specific creature that orders them around and assassinating it. They're not ants, they don't need a queen who produces all the young, if they had any kind of leader it'd be... very similar to the rest, at least, theoretically. When control is disrupted, usually it was because of distance. Towards the end of the war, you couldn't get these horizon-spanning hordes, they fragmented and went wild if they pivoted too far. Sometimes, the reports say, they fought tooth and nail for seemingly pointless territory, but... truth was, they were just at the edge of some sort of range, and had to stay inside if they wanted to live. Well. If they wanted to not kill each other, really. Sorry, sir."
Mr. Mask glared sullenly, but said nothing.
"...but they could have horizon-spanning hordes early on?"
"Oh, dear, they attacked almost the whole Tulavanta at once. Well. Almost. But... the books talk about them blocking out the sun."
Tanner was putting together an idea. Not like she was going to revolutionise the field of mutant study, but... maybe there was something that controlled all mutants, some centre from which this range could emanate. Maybe it generated spontaneously when enough of them were together, and once their numbers declined the range naturally shifted. Maybe it had no specific host, but... anyway. No more time for research. The siege was still ongoing, not like she could go and read. Still. The idea that bloomed was just one of... simple brutality. It was a spark of hope. That if she killed enough mutants, broke the back of the great beast, the swarm would leave, the remnants would leave, things would get better. They weren't going to live with this for years and years.
It was vague. But it was something.
She left the theurgists with a few muttered goodbyes. Her mind was already elsewhere. The next attack would be soon, she was sure of it. Stumped out of the building, hefting her axe once more... and paused. Right. Back into the swarm, back into the clouds of self-devouring bodies... visibility was damn poor out here, and... right, she should send something to her own bunker, tell everyone she was alright. Head back to the barricade at the Breach, send a telegram from there. When she found herself aimless, she found another errand, another priority, another embryonic plan to mull over. If she stopped for too long, she'd just fall over and sleep.
Still bizarre to think that she'd been... spending the last few years studying law, thinking about her next meal, enjoying refining her schedules to the point of being precise down to the second...
All of it seemed small, now.
Knew there was no going back.
She walked blindly through the ruined streets, and...
And froze.
Something was wrong.
The swarm was loud, yes, but... it was somehow louder, occluded her visibility more effectively. Were they just mutating further, had more arrived, or... why would they be here, there was nothing here, it was just a handful of streets, the bunkers were a little way away, the military installations were further still, she couldn't even see any Rekidans patrolling the rooftops... come to think of it, why was she here? This wasn't the most efficient route. Why on earth had she chosen to come this way? Her head felt odd, felt... itchy, somehow. Just stressed. Stressed and erratic. Nothing more. She was allowed to occasionally wander from the beaten path.
And she realised something else.
For the first time all day, she was truly alone. No Rekidans. No soldiers. No mutant at her side, no Yan-Lam at her heels.
Nothing.
...a chill of unease ran up her spine.
She shouldn't be alone. She'd said, she committed, to not having a member of the defence alone at any time. The risk of...
A sudden pulse of fear, paranoia spiking into panic.
She grabbed her axe and whirled it around her in a near-perfect circle, the flat of the blade facing into the swarm... bodies were smacked aside, the wind drove back more, and she rushed through the cloud, ignoring the bodies which gnawed at her coat and clustered around...
Around her ears. Like barnacles made of bodies. The whirring of their wings was inconceivably loud, made her hair stand on end, woke up deep-seated evolutionary responses that said you should not be hearing this sound.
They were trying to stop her hearing something.
But... was it the bird? She lowered her head a little, used one arm to shelter her eyes... maybe it was something that would inject through the back of her neck, turn her into an agent of their will, or... she moved quickly, pressing her back against a wall, crushing a few struggling bodies beneath her weight, wincing at the crackle from the detector on her waist. What else could get over the wall? Bird-mutants were rare, everyone knew that. And they were... her mind flashed through possibilities, they were more effective in the heat of battle, not out here, where they had no backup, no assistance, and were sitting ducks if anyone chose to fire. The tunnels were blocked, nothing had gotten past the Breach, and...
...something might've climbed over the wall. Different location. Circled around. Not viable for the whole army, but...
What? What could've climbed? What would have the sheer strength necessary to haul themselves up the side with such ease, and...
Something that didn't need to be strong to climb. Something quiet. Something accustomed to being flexible and patient.
She swung wildly, clearing the swarm a little. And...
And her face flattened as pain lanced through her shoulder.
Something had struck her.
A flicker. Nothing more.
But... she saw a leg.
A long, brown, thin leg, bristling with wiry hairs.
She remembered this one. She remembered the creature which had come over the hill first after the devastation of the cold-houses.
The spider loomed above her, deceptively thin despite its size... and with chelicerae that descended in a long, thin, pseudo-beak, like something a pelican ought to have. Chelicerae filled with what looked like human hands, pale and filled with strange ichor, grasping senselessly at the air. Black eyes stared down - no rupturing. No way of telling if they'd ruptured, anyway. Black. Mindless, yet intelligent. It moved quickly, never breaking eye contact. Scuttled from the roof to the street, legs moving in a hypnotic rhythm, soundless on the stone. The insects clustered around her eyes, trying to fill up the lenses with their bodies. Tanner scraped them aside...
Oh, gods...
They popped.
They popped on the slightest contact, spraying thick, brown liquid over the glass, which resisted being clawed off.
She was blind.
The buzzing in her ears was endless.
She was blind, deaf, and...
She dove forwards, heading for the ground.
The spider didn't make a single sound as it lashed for her, a pair of brown legs closing over her head. They moved unnaturally fast, even as everything else remained perfectly, perfectly still, at least, from what she could see. She swatted wildly with the axe, hitting nothing but air. Her voice rose to a yell - begging anyone to come and help, anyone. The Rekidans? The... she spoke, and her voice was muffled.
Webbing over the filter.
Webbing muffling the sound of her voice.
She was in darkness. Stumbled for what she... right, the memory-room. Remember the street, remember the details. Hazy around the edges, but... run, avoid the lip of the pavement by jumping, stay away from the grate, that looked unstable, head for the door she... oh, gods, please, please, let there be a door, let there...
She crashed through dry, brittle wood, entering the dusty interior of a noble's house. Could smell something in the air - dried sweat, accumulated over generations. She was in the slave's quarters, then. There'd be bunks everywhere, and a few steps confirmed... yes, yes, there were plenty. She heard something whispering...
The spider was coming inside.
It could compress itself down enough to fit through the door. And she heard the very lightest tap of legs latching into the ceiling. Spreading above her on all eight legs, black eyes shining like opals. The silence was what struck her. The simple silence of something so... perversely large. She swung the axe wildly at the ceiling, hoping...
A pair of legs clamped around her waist.
And if she hadn't shoved the axe in front of her, a pair of chelicerae would've bisected her.
As it was, she could feel the wood straining. Could feel it almost being wrenched out of her hands, and she clung on for dear life, locking the pincers open, stopping them from slicing inwards. The spider was stronger than her. All she had was leverage - a position where she could attack a single muscle, rather than the collective.
If she'd missed...
If she'd missed, she'd be dead.
All she knew was pressure.
Legs clamped at her side. Sharp points digging into her coat, something she could feel even through all the layers. She felt a primal terror wake up in her as her bones strained. And her arms... her arms felt like they were about to get ripped out of their sockets, the axe was being dragged by uncountable human humans, she... she could feel hands on her, pawing at her mask, easing around her neck, touching her shoulders, her chest, her back, she... she felt like there was a whole crowd around her. And through the gaps in the ooze over her lenses, she could see nothing but a constellation of black, black eyes, the eyes of a whole mass of people. The spider was crushing her like a vice, the air was hissing between her teeth as she strained to keep it all in, she could feel herself emptying...
This thing would squeeze her to death. It would web her up, and leave her here, never to be found.
And then it would find someone else.
Strong enough to pick her up with two out of eight legs.
And...
And it slowly clambered down from the ceiling, never breaking the grip. As smooth and delicate as silk, making no sound, uttering no screech, politely squeezing her without malice or fury. And two more legs added themselves. Then two more. Then two more.
The creature was wrapping her up completely. Her vision was full of brown, wiry hairs, she was being crushed to death, it was going to... to suffocate her, rather than cut her apart, turn her into an infiltrator, turn her into something like it. A whimper escaped her lips... the last sound she'd ever make, she didn't have the air left for anything else. Her heart was pounding in her ears. The blood was rushing to her head. The solid mass of the spider's abdomen pressed against her face, forcing her head to one side, forcing it until it seemed close to breaking... it was on its back, she was being held by it like it was embracing her, ready to roll around as she snapped.
Slowly...
Slowly... Tanner moved the axe...
It was still pinned between the pincers. But if she...just levered it a little...
She couldn't breathe. Dark spots in her vision. Heart in her ears. Her mouth kept opening and closing, but nothing could get inside, her lungs were burning...
She couldn't breathe.
The axe was slowly levered, and she felt the dulled blade... make contact with seeking, curious hands...
It was a mutant. Mutants didn't feel pain. They didn't feel terror.
She twisted... felt flesh give way, even at this subtle motion. The spider didn't react.
It was willing to die if it meant she died too. That was likely the entire reason it had come here.
Blind. Deaf. Mute. Trapped. Immobile. No air. No air.
Mother! Eygi!
She ripped, feeling the muscles in her shoulder strain, come close to breaking. Felt her entire body moving improperly. And she ripped half of the hands out of the spider's chelicerae, tore them loose...
The spider dropped her.
She rolled to the side, scrambling desperately for the bunks.
Why?
Why would it drop her?
Did it feel...
It was eating itself.
Eating its own hands. Legs stuffing them into the chelicerae, grinding them into a... a kind of foaming white mess, which dripped in long strands down to the floor. The wound was bad, she'd made it weaker around the mouth, she'd even cut into part of the skull. Why? Why would it be so concerned with...
She was just a number.
She was just in this street at this time. Were she anyone else, it would've still attacked.
It had a long-term plan to worry about. It had webs to spin. Couldn't lose so much to a single target.
She had a moment. Bruises everywhere, her vision mostly obscured, the stink of copper in her nose. Her axe-arm felt like it was about to break under the weight of her. The spider paused... and rushed. Taken less than two seconds to eat what it wanted. Now it finished the job.
Tanner paused...
And rushed towards it.
Closed the tiny distance in less than a second.
And her axe swung, with strength she didn't know still lived in her body.
Swung in silence. Her mouth glued shut with tension.
The creature was hideous. The face had been damaged by her axe, she could see... see the matter that perhaps passed for a brain, could... maybe that was it. Damaged some crucial part, healing over a moment later. Something that gave it the intelligence it needed to ignore the usual priorities.
She'd gotten lucky.
One more inch off, and she'd have died. That was it. A single slip of the axe stood between her and death.
Oh gods...
She charged, and her mind seemed to go blank. All she remembered were legs. Pincers. Thick, glittering ichor. Her axe seeming to grow heavier and heavier. She remembered no specifics, only that... it tried to get around her, several times. Tried to wrap her up in long, powerful legs, but she knew the trick now, she just... snarled and kept striking it, used the axe to create wedges she could lever open. There were no memories. Only feelings, and scraps of vision through the pulped remains of insects. The whirring in her ears. The pain in her shoulder. The thump of her axe as she struck at arachnid flesh, too thick and rubbery, too riddled with human-like blood vessels. Eyes, eyes, black as obsidian mirrors. She felt mad. She felt nothing but combat. She felt the bright calm settle, masking her terror, barely. All around her was a living storm. In front of her was an enemy. Nothing could touch her, nothing could affect her, all that remained was a singular core of existence, where past, present, future merged together. Thought ceased.
Her mouth was full of blood. Her skin was tight around her muscles, tight around iron cords. White heat blazed in her. Yet her face remained flat. There was a dull iron quality to her soul, a dull quality which denied even anger. She just... was. She moved, and she felt nothing. Desire flowed out of her, because desire couldn't express the will to survive, desire was just... just so much pettiness. This was the only thing she was meant to do, this was her entire purpose, her heart beat so she could do this. It didn't beat to save the colony, nor to execute the law, nor to make friends, nor to fit in. It beat so it could beat again. Some sort of transcendence woke up in her, in this violent blindness. She felt like a star - generating heat, generating force, then exerting it blindly on the surrounding world.
She didn't even feel the spider as she tore it apart.
She was terrified.
She was calm.
And when her vision cleared, when she mustered the willpower to tear the rest of the matter from her eyes...
She was surrounded by carnage. The spider had been taken to pieces. Methodically. Wildly.
And even now, it twitched. Flesh trying to reform, to become something more cohesive. To keep trying to kill her. Insects swarmed everywhere. The whining was perpetual. They were devouring their comrade, and their comrade fed himself to them willingly. The buzzing, the buzzing, the buzzing...
She stared at the garden of limbs.
Sweat poured down her face.
Her breath felt like it was superheated, like it was scalding her nose and throat, her sinuses were red-hot...
And quietly, politely, silently...
She left.
Leaning on her axe to remain upright.