We’d been walking for some time now, Meltdown’s flames and VRisor flashlights lighting the way. We were all expecting alarms to blare or for the machines to come out to butcher us in full force, packed to the brim with terrible might and abominable technology. But, so far, the only thing they did was to pump null in its gaseous form out into the hallway—an old hat tactic we were all familiar with and ready for. Cyberscream’s sensors had detected it early on and we all put on some gas masks.
In a sense, that was even worse. They were letting us stew, giving us time to simmer in our fear. As we all know, humans fear the unknown. Just like with the dinosaur situation before, the expectation of things can often cause more damage to morale than the real thing.
From our interrogations, we knew that the tunnels were packed to the gills with traps, step on the wrong place, walk under the wrong camera and you’d regret your life choices. But, calculations had most likely been made by the cold, soulless AI they worshiped, perhaps even before we stepped foot in the place, perhaps even from the moment we stepped foot in the city, and they chose not to trigger them. A frugal, efficient decision. It knew we most likely had countermeasures and the cost of rebuilding the traps outweighed the potential gain.
When the first strike finally came it was fast, brutal, and overwhelming.
The moment we stepped into some kind of giant storage facility in between two tunnels, an army of cyborgs and machines were waiting for us, hundreds of them, many of them superpowered, hidden and ready to ambush us.
They caught us by surprise. They’d been hiding in the dark, in the rafters, in trapdoors on the ground, inside crates—everywhere. Just like my secret identity was revealed in the past, so too had the details of my power been exposed. The machines had a new trick made just for me: they turned off their brains, only reactivating them once we walked in range of their sensors, and so, by the time I detected their thoughts it was too late to react.
How long had they spent developing this new tech? Years? Since that moment so long ago when they had chosen to join my other nemeses in the plot that ruined my life?
Juliette was watching me with manic, obsessive scrutiny, like always, and perhaps that was what saved us all, since the very moment she detected the change in my facial expression, she shot out, disappearing.
A split second later, the three people standing next to her instantly became mind controlled and began attacking the rest of us. They had been aiming for Juliette, the ace up our sleeve. Luckily she was out of there before the power could connect with her mind.
I didn’t have time to see where she had sped off too, since a teleporter blinked right in front of me. This one, much like the others, was designed to be as intimidating and fear inducing as possible. Most of its body was metallic, armored, with what little flesh remained being an angry burnt red. Its head was skull-like with a single ominous red eye and yellow, decayed teeth.
With unnatural, enhanced speed, the thing aimed its palm at me. A cannon had been welded into it, protruding outwards.
But he wasn’t the only one that was enhanced here. I was the product of a macabre eugenics program, courtesy of my mother. I had been operated and experimented on since birth by some of the most prominent mad scientists in the world.
Even with hydraulics and metal on his side, my speed, strength, and reflexes were superior. I slapped his hand away, causing his radiation energy blast to hit the ground instead.
I flicked my hand downwards to draw one of my throwing knives from one of my suit’s holding compartments, but before I could strike, a tiny, high speed red light ball came sailing down from high above.
My power was strong enough that even in these few moments I had been able to scan all my enemies’ minds for basic critical info, like their power capabilities. I knew what this small, harmless looking sphere of light could do and covered my face with my armored forearms.
The moment it hit the ground, a big explosion occurred, crushing the internal organs of any who were too close. I was right next to it.
Thankfully, I was wearing the suit, so the damage I took from the shockwave was mitigated a great deal. It still sent me flying.
I crashed harshly against one of the columns supporting the roof and slumped downwards. My gasmask was cracked, and blood stemming from my nose and mouth dribbled down into the glass.
The teleporter didn’t even give me a chance to catch my breath. It appeared right in front of me, popped a thermal blade from its forearm and swung it down, aiming for my unprotected neck.
I twisted my head to the right just in time, the blade grazing my neck, adding another scar to my body and then biting deep into the column, melting the metal.
I stood up abruptly, fast, and stuck a knife into his throat smoothly, backing away after.
The knife had severed the jugular and one third of the cyborg’s neck, but that wasn’t enough to kill it. However, one second later, on a timer, the knife gave off an EMP discharge, frying the circuits responsible for keeping it running. It crumbled like a tin soldier, sprawling lifelessly on the floor.
I was going to take a moment to assess the battlefield, but I felt an air vibration from the back of my neck.
My hand darted out, quick as a viper, and caught something. It was utterly invisible, completely undetectable. Felt like a blade or a leg, sharp and long.
One of its other leg blades swiped at me, cutting my ear.
I swung with all my force and threw whatever this thing was away from me. I couldn’t read its mind and it was invisible, fighting it would be the height of idiocy.
I heard its heavy metallic body crash to the ground a few meters from me, saw the six holes its legs bore on the ground when it got up.
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I looked around and saw that Meltdown wasn’t so far away from me. He was blasting and melting enemies left and right.
He would do.
I sprinted towards him, the mechanical creature hot on my tail.
“There’s too many of them!” he told me once he noticed my approach, shouting over the explosions and screams of the battlefield. “We can’t-”
I grabbed him without preamble and threw him in the path of the creature pursuing me.
Better him than me.
Meltdown screamed and cursed as he got ripped into by the spider cyborg, as its many legs cut into his body. But, just as predicted, he began firing at it, melting it, trying to get it off him.
I began drawing another of my knives, a normal one this time.
The fight between Meltdown and the cyborg was short and brutal, a hideous carnal display. He won, just like I thought he would. Few things could stand his power for long. The problem was that despite a set of hideous, lethal injuries, he was still alive.
His mind singing with fury and betrayal. He was already searching for me, ready to blast me to hell for what I did to him.
I threw the knife at him. It sailed through the air and caught him in the eye.
“Ahhhhh!” he screamed, voice shrill with the pain, firing his power in my general direction, “You fucking bitch! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking-”
The second knife caught him in the jugular, finishing off for good.
That done, I rejoined most of the others and used my power to scan the battlefield.
Juliette was running around killing the biggest threats, but she would eventually run out of energy. That was the reason I didn’t have her dig a hole straight down to the server room. Vorepal, Barker, and a few others were following her lead and taking the fight to the enemy, scattered around the battlefield. The rest, myself included, were huddled around back to back and dealing with wave after wave of the machines.
Hundreds of individual powers were active here, explosions and blasts everywhere. Fearsome, otherworldly creatures were being spawned by Summoners, the very environment was beginning to change thanks to Effectors.
And speaking of Effectors, my power informed me that Noah was close to making a run for it. The situation had him spooked and rightly so: several of us had perished already. We had started 27 strong, but now we had been whittled down to 19, and the party was just getting started too.
I grabbed Noah by the shoulder and turned him to face me, my physical touch startling him and almost making him use his power as a knee-jerk reaction. Thankfully he didn’t, because odds were we’d all be teleported right into the earth and die miserably.
“Don’t even think about using your power.” I told him, giving him a cold glare. “Skin cells can live up to several hours, so we’d all come right with you and believe me, I’ll do worse things to you than these tin men.” I paused, letting it sink in, and then I dangled the carrot, “You are a critical part of this endeavor, our escape, so I won’t let you die. Just stick with me and you’ll come out of this okay.” That seemed to soothe his nerves some, or at least enough so that he wouldn’t panic and trigger his powers.
Noah, or Traveller II as many were calling him now, nodded his head and began following me, keeping a healthy distance.
I continued assessing the fight. We had one tenth of their total number, and one fourth their number of superhumans. And yet, we were slowly winning. Such was the power of Eaters. Our symbiotes were better developed, our powers stronger. The reason the machines didn’t have Eaters was that, mathematically speaking, it was better to have a hundred supers than one Eater. They were also waging a war on many fronts, not simply against us but also the heroes, villains, and even other cults.
To the left of me, Cyberscream had been unloading a continuous barrage of missiles on our enemies, but soon he ran out of ammunition. He withdrew the missile launchers back into his robotic body and reactivated his chainsaws and buzz saws, leaping back into the fray. Throughout it all, he was grim and silent, as always.
To the right, Leveller was shouting and laughing like a maniac, having fun, “You are all mobs! Trash! Where’s the dungeon boss, huh?! Where’s the boss?! Come out and give me your loot!” He had placed most of his “level up points” on strength, agility, and endurance and was taking on several machines and supers at once.
Slimeforce was in front of me and at the center of our formation. She was protecting our group with a spherical, giant gelatinous barrier. People could pass through it after being slowed down for a moment, but ranged attacks would bounce back.
If they killed Slime, then we’d be easy pickings, and they knew that. Like me, she was at the top of the hit list.
Only my power allowed me to grab her and pull her out of the way before a beefed up giant mole Mutator erupted from the ground beneath Slimeforce. The robotically enhanced mole man roared and began charging us, running with four limbs.
Tremor Trevor saw it and used his power to bind its arms and legs with concrete. “I got him stuck, someone finish it off!” he shouted.
Black Blight heard him and enveloped the creature with her noxious gas.
For the next three seconds or so all that could be heard were the screeches of the mole man and the sounds of its flesh popping and boiling, of its metal cyberware corroding. By the time the gas cleared, all that was left was a giant skeleton and inside it, intact and laying on the ground: the symbiote.
After the mole had been dealt with, more enemies came, a seemingly endless attack.
We fought for a long time, but once we finally cleared the area, we all took a moment to catch our breath.
The first thing we did was to tally up the symbiotes of the fallen, ours and theirs. In total there were 147 symbiotes. Juliette and I claimed one third of them for ourselves, making sure to take all the symbiotes from our dead members since they were Eater symbiotes and more nourishing than regular ones. Such were the privileges of leadership.
It took a while, but we ate them all. It was an experience more blissful than any drug, inhumanly strong pleasure that no one, not even us, could withstand. I could literally physically feel the symbiote in my body breaking them down in real time, becoming stronger and more complex.
As for the other two thirds, we gave them to the rest of the survivors. They fought over them like the pack of hungry dogs they were.
After we’d all had our meal, I gave the order to continue onwards. We still had a ways to go till we reached the end.
However, five of the newer members were of a different mind.
“Look, me an’a boyz been finkin’,” Eyeless told me, in his thick british accent, spit spewing from his rat-like face with every other word, glaring at me with his one beady eye, “An’ we’s decideed we’s gonna fuck ou’a ‘ere. This ‘s mad! Bloody suicide! We ain’ dyin’ ‘ere!”
The four people with him shouted their approval. Even some of the veterans looked tempted at the idea, on the verge of going traitor.
I gave him a knowing, wry expression, “By all means, go. Don’t let me stop you.”
It caught him by surprise. He expected resistance. “What do you mean? Why?” he asked, hesitating, unsure.
I gave a long suffering sigh, drawing it out for a long time for theatrical effect. “You really are a fucking stupid piece of shit dog, aren’t you? If you go up that tunnel-” I pointed at the way we had come through, dark and ominous under the light of our flashlights “-I won’t even have to kill you. The machines will do it for me. And if you somehow, by some miracle, get past them, then what do you think the heroes and all the families of your victims will do to you once they hear you aren’t part of The Genocide 6 anymore?”
He opened his mouth to say something. I raised my voice and spoke over him. “But, don’t look so hopeless. I’ll give you one more chance, since I’m such a good person.” I extended my foot forwards “Now get on your knees, kiss my foot, and beg me to take you back. Make sure you beg real nice and hard. After all, I am not doing this for myself, but for the family. You really hurt their feelings, abandoning us like that.”
After thinking it over for a second, Eyeless reluctantly got on his knees and came crawling towards me.
“Please forgive me.” he said, bowing down to place a kiss on the black armor of my suited foot.
Not good enough.
I pulled my foot backwards and gave him a terrible kick right on his mouth, shattering his teeth into a million pieces. I could feel something crunch, blood sprayed all over the floor. “Are you so fucking useless you don’t know how to apologize to someone?! Beg harder! Beg like you actually mean it!”
He began crying, his hands covering the ruin that was now his mouth. “Pleashe! Fogivhe meee evyone! Pleashhhe! Ahm shorryyyy! Won uu ivh againvh” He pleaded, looking at me with teary, puppy dog eyes.
I couldn’t help but laugh at his pathetic display, a full bellied laugh that brought tears to my eyes. The lunatics around me jeered and chortled at him too, making the humiliation worse. Eyeless would be at the bottom of the social totem pole now, a place no one wanted to be in this group.
“Much better,” I told him once my laughter had fizzled out. “And, since you asked so nicely, I’ll allow you to rejoin our family.”
The next four to beg did so with fervent enthusiasm, so they got off without a kick. And when the whole thing was over, we finally began moving out.
Unfortunately, the rest of the way to the server room had as much if not more resistance waiting for us.