Ratcatcher struggled in Hustler’s hold. The Oracle held her by the neck, and she reached out for his wrist, abandoning the thought of trying to kick him in the abdomen. She turned her eyes left and right in search of anything—anything at all—that could’ve helped her. The mancatcher!
“Can’t you feel it?” Hustler’s lips curled into a blissful smile. “His breath on your skin, his essence in the air, seeping down your throat and nostrils, taking root in your lungs, spreading and festering throughout your body. You are afraid, little one.” The green lenses swirled, focusing on the exposed part of her face. “Don’t be. Pain… Uncertainty… All will be gone. Accept him. Have you ever been bullied because of your appearance, child? Worry no longer. There is no prejudice in the ranks of His believers. All are equal. Equally beneath him. So let go of free will. He will give you purpose, his power will mold you in his image, and you will never be alone. Never be weak. Never be… helpless.”
“You’re mad,” Ratcatcher said, and the seam at the back of her armor came apart, letting out her tail. “Chosen Prince is dead and soon to be forgotten, like the bloodthirsty maniac he is.”
“My master will never be a mere memory! Heathen,” Hustler chuckled, and his tail screeched against the metal grating. “Your name will be forgotten. Your deeds will be for naught. He shall soon come back, for he is destined to be king! You, they, I, we may crumble and die, but he will live on. Bow and join the future order.”
“Could you perhaps tell me more of this order?” She asked and moved her tail behind her back, slithering it toward the weapon. “The way you are describing it is a bit vague. What are the terms…” She gritted her teeth at a slap across her face.
“Heretic whore,” the Oracle laughed. “You’re stalling. No matter. A corpse can serve his will just as good as a person. If you won’t join willingly, you will be willingly used. Die and be nothing!”
She gasped for air, feeling the stinger penetrating her body. Its tip pierced the armor under her right rib, slicing through the flesh with disgusting ease. Nausea and dizziness rushed through her mind, trying to make her hold on his wrist waver. But Ratcatcher held on, blinking away the tears as the tip of the sharp stinger was traversing through her insides, spilling out its poison.
Bow to the absolute order… Something whispered at the back of her head. She bit her tongue. Take your place among the hierarchy…
“Do you feel it?” Hustler inquired and tilted his head. “The wave spreading out of the wound. It is a warm sensation. And this warmth activates your pain receptors. Ah, I can see it in your eyes.” His voice broke into a childish giggle.
Ratcatcher furiously grinded down on her own tongue, trying not to scream; refusing to give the bastard any sense of satisfaction. Above, Elina had hacked into the arm holding Rowen, unleashing her strongest shockwave yet. It shattered the limb, and the girl got thrown away, almost falling off the monster, when Rowen caught her with his power. Together, the trainees landed at the ruins of the control center, backing away from the steel monster.
And Augustus fought too. Everyone fought. Jumail was hard-pressed, bleeding, and assaulted from all sides. She refused… She will not distract them with her pain. Ratcatcher toughened through the burning in her nerves, toughened against spasms threatening to open her hold at Hustler’s wrist, and blinked away something red.
And her tail moved closer to the mancatcher.
“I adore the moment of realization. The pain you experience is a mere herald of what is to come. Your muscles are getting tired, and your breaths are getting shorter. Your eyelids are getting wearier by the minute… And do you know why this is happening? Your red blood cells are breaking down. Necrosis will soon follow, but the hemorrhaging is already making you bleed like sacrificial cattle. I like your resistance. Savor this pain. Witness the power of His Excellency. No one, not a single human being, can resist it. Feel honored, stay conscious, and...” He stopped when she laughed in his face. “Have you gone mad already?”
“Back in my homeland, I was once got injected with something that made every nerve in my body scream. For an entire week!” She smiled through the pain. “Your piss doesn’t even compare, mister!” Her tail wrapped around the mancatcher’s haft.
Hustler’s lenses turned at once, looking at the hole in his wrist left by the armor-piercing dart fired by Ratcatcher’s bracelet. She took advantage of his distraction and grabbed the man by the shoulder, ignoring the excruciating pain of having the singer scratch against her liver. A mighty headbutt with the intact part of her armor sent Hustler’s head back, breaking one of his lenses. She let go of him, bringing her knees up, and bounced off the bastard, enduring the pain of the wound widening when the stinger was leaving her body in a torrent of blood. By sheer miracle, its curved tip had missed her liver.
The Oracle shock lasted less than a second; his tail had already started closing at Ratcatcher’s back, and she met it with the mancatcher in her tail, blocking the poisoned blade and firing two darts. Hustler leaned away from the firing arc, leaving darts to pierce the wall behind him. His stinger flew at Ratcatcher’s face once more, and she grabbed the mancatcher. The trainee swung the crescent blades twice, once to slash aside the blade and the second time to cleave skin at his exposed jawline all the way to the bone.
“How?” He jumped back and touched the bruise and fresh wound on his face. His blood was red, a stark contrast to the pus-ridden filth coursing through the shamblers’ veins. “How are you still standing?”
“Cause every sickness has a cure.” Ratcatcher coughed out saliva and a black knot of blood. The weariness still tried to arrest her movements, but the injections of medicaments cleared the mist out of her eyes and ended the dizziness. “Iterna has synthesized a cure for your dead master’s…”
“His Excellency isn’t dead.” Hustler waved a finger. “I can hear him. And so do you.”
“Against your dead master’s power,” Ratcatcher mocked, biding her time as the armor tried to patch the gaping wound. Nano machines flowed into the wound, cleaning its edges out of the poison and forming a protective layer with a tingling feeling. A cheeky grin appeared on her lips. “You blurted out something about how no man can stand up to Chosen Prince? Ha!
“Doctor Ieshua and a group of scientists from the Reclaimers had created both the cure and the vaccine against the filth spread by him. Guess what? They are humans! But wait, there is more! My homeland has found a way to make this cure cheap and easy to mass-produce! Double ha, asshole! And thanks to them, I get to whoop your ass so hard you’ll regret challenging us. And that voice you hear is nothing more than a figment of Chosen Prince’s conscience imprinted upon his sicknesses; it isn’t real, dumbass! It’s a dud, and when the vaccine is distributed, he’ll be gone for good! When humanity works together, no tyrant can stand against us. Armor, please set a reminder to write a ‘thank you’ letter, please. No, not a gift basket; it is way out of my monetary capabilities! Though they deserve it and more.” Ratcatcher pouted and looked at the price the ready-to-serve computer had given her. She sighed. “Eh… We only live once. A gift basket for each of them it is…”
A moan stopped her from pushing Hustler’s buttons even further. She had planned to act as an idiot, stalling for time until help arrived. And she accidentally tricked herself into spending money during it. But the sound of these desperate moans and the faintest pleas for water coming from underneath the platform made her blood boil. The war was won! These people should’ve been in a hospital, treated and cared for, and surrounded by their families and loved ones! And he… This Hustler. He hurt them.
“Bold of you to make plans for the future, considering you will never see the light of day…” Hustler started talking.
“SHUT UP!” she yelled, embracing the pump-up of adrenaline that cleared her vision and filled her muscles with newfound strength. “Shut up! Don’t say even a single word, you sick bastard! First, I lost my buddy, then you broke my rifle, then you slammed me headfirst into the damned platform, and to top it all up, your stupid toy is trying to kill my friends.” She pointed at the people below the platform. “Those poor people suffering down there, little Lucia, the holy man... And you don’t care about any of that; I can see this much in your smirk. I was tired and frightened before, Hustler. Scared of the possibility of hurting or killing another human being! But you… You are pissing me off. I am about to snap. And I think I would rather snap you!”
“My, so feisty all of a sudden.” Hustler spread his arms; his wounded arm trembled slightly, oozing blood mixed with oil. His long tail danced behind the Oracle’s back. “Your anger is sweet to His Excellency. Come. The mission is complete, and I still have time to spare. I will enlighten you about the reality of our world. Don’t feel bad about your ignorance, child, for I too once roared my defiance at His Excellency before the sweet disease brought me to the fold. In turn, I too…”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“I warned you to keep quiet! Raaargh!” Ratcatcher dashed at him, leaving indentations on the metal.
Hustler met her with his own charge. They clashed against each other in the middle of the platform, turning into a violent sphere of blurred swings, cuts, and slashes that appeared all around them. Hustler’s claws drew sparks out of the mancatcher’s haft, and the fired darts tore pieces of metal off his armor. His tail slammed overhead, leaving a deep bulge in the platform, missing Ratcatcher by the hair, and she made thrusts with the blades of her mancatcher, trying to bypass through the oracle’s parries.
She was smaller than her opponent. Her armor was not in pristine condition, and the wound hurt like hell. All the while, a faint voice whispered to her to submit. Hustler was a war veteran, a person who harvested hundreds of lives and oversaw the fall of Birchshell. Ratcatcher didn’t care one bit, not anymore. The odds are against her? She’ll turn them around, toughen through any hardships, and beat the bastard to a pulp! Maybe if she broke him hard enough, he’d understand that it was forbidden to hurt other people.
The claws and stinger had been tearing her armor piece after piece, charting bloody veins across her body, but Ratcatcher didn’t care. She attacked at Hustler, using the mancatcher’s blades, elbows, kicks, and darts. She refused to even conceive the thought of defeat; all she cared about was the man in front of her, and Hustler was going down. Hustler’s arms became two blades to her; she had used the mancatcher to gauge their distance. They pounded against her blades like heavy raindrops in a tropical rain.
The sheer ferocity of his assault was insane. His ulna was broken in two by the armor-piercing dart, and all it did was cause his hand to shake a little, with blood seeping from both wounds. The Oracle wanted to overwhelm Ratcatcher with a blurry of blows, and she denied him this, using the mancatcher as a proper spear and fighting against the larger man at range. It forced him to be the one to close the distance to her and allowed her to pay attention to his swinging tail, which moved with almost unnatural agility for something this long.
Hustler made a circle with his good arm in the air, and a barrage of merciless thrusts came upon Ratcatcher, forcing the girl to concentrate only on staying alive. A glancing thrust passed her defense, tearing a whole slice of metal off her helmet and almost making her turn her head. In the heat of battle, she missed the moment when Hustler stepped forward and the plague oracle struck with his wounded hand, breaking through the blur of his thrusts. The surprise caught her off guard, and the force of his blow sent a loud ringing sound echoing off the tower’s walls.
Ratcatcher noticed the missing tail and leapt back, dodging a killing blow as the tail swept from her right, coming outside of her field of vision. Undaunted, Hustler stepped on his tail, following and refusing to let her gain the distance and catch a break. One of his blows came through the interwoven series of Ratcatcher’s blows, shattering the rest of her visor and exposing her full face to the world. She snarled and almost lunged at him when a stone block, cast either by the trainees or the monster above, came between the fighters.
The tail wrapped around it and tossed it aside. She could’ve used this moment to try to wound Hustler. But her eyes saw the stone’s trajectory. Ratcatcher saw that the Oracle was planning to throw it off the platform. Onto the people below. And she lunged after it, swatting the stone aside with the mancatcher and groaning in pain when the claws pierced the side of her armor, driving the girl toward the platform’s edge.
“The hell are you doing, picking on people?” She rammed the bottom of her mancatcher into the floor to keep her balance. Gain time. Keep him talking. Let the armor treat your wounds. “Do you even know them? What did they ever do to you?”
“It was just a test to see how you would react. You don’t know these people either, morsel. And yet you made a mistake for their sake.” Hustler answered, licking her blood off his claws. “Why such a rush to die for them? Do you want to be a hero like Birchshell’s seedlings?”
“Die?” The question genuinely surprised her. And Hustler’s response too. He would hurt people just to get to her? There were no words to describe how vile this son of a bitch was. “No. I am in no hurry to either die, nor am I a hero.” Her grip tightened around the handle. “My blood boils when I see the weak trampled by the strong. Yet my eyes are always on a mission. I am an explorator from Iterna! The survival of these people is my mission. And if you stand between me and the objective…” She stood up, taking her weapons in both hands again. “…I will make you rue the day you chose to mess with me. Hustler, try to harm them again, and I’ll kill you.”
As she expected, the Oracle laughed. But his laughter bought her precious seconds; the armor had already finished patching up the bleeding, warning Ratcatcher about an urgent need to visit a medic soon. That will have to wait. Her body will hold; she knew her limits. And Hustler now knew how to throw her off-balance; his tail could assault the iron grating on the floor at a first opportunity, forcing Ratcatcher to choose between defense and saving lives. The fight can’t go on like this.
What can she do? She can’t wither him down; she can’t block all of his limbs. Hustler was far more experienced than her and fast enough to dodge the darts. Ratcatcher calmed the fear threatening to wrestle control over her mind and made herself think. She remembered a talk from several years ago.
****
“How did you beat Mom, Dad?” Ratcatcher finally dared to ask the question that has plagued her for years. Seeker arched an eyebrow, sipping his morning tea, and she continued. “I mean, Mom has muscles the size of my fist! Her hand could fit two of yours! And she has a talon!”
Bloodsworn smiled, removed a pancake from the frying pan, and started making another. She helped herself with her long tail, using the sharp talon to cut the bread into slices before putting meat and vegetables on top of them. Ratcatcher herself was sitting with her dad at the dinner table, doing her best to keep young Liam from sneaking away and feeding him from a bottle. Something had happened to Mom’s own milk after the medics had healed her after the scuffle with Eugenia, and the doctors had prepared the next best thing to help the little boy grow.
Her brother was strong! And curious and enjoyed playing to no end. Liam had already managed to tire her out during their chases, but he was one of the people she would never, ever trade for another. Everything about him was cute… She frowned, jerking her hand free from his sharp teeth and pushing his nose back. Milk bottles fit Normie babies. And in his hunger, Liam had tried to swallow them whole. Often along with her hand. Liam released his adorable claws and squeezed the bottle, trying to make the milk go down faster. The boy closed his eyes from pleasure and wound his tail around his sister’s leg.
“And normally you’d be right, wide eye!” Dad pointed a finger at the lamp above. “See, in films, a single person can often beat up a hundred dudes before even starting tiring up against a final boss,” he let out a chuckle.
“Yeah!” Her eyes flashed at the memory of yesterday’s movie. “Like Master Dao! His elegant redirection technique…”
“Would be utterly crushed by Sweetheart’s single blow. Trust my experience; she rearranged half of my teeth in our love quarrel.” He touched his cheek, and Mom’s ears pricked up, along with the widening of her grin. “What happens in the movies isn’t real, Lizzie. A large enough gap in physical might always let an opponent beat up the technique. So I fought smarter. I lured the dearest into a tunnel and noticed a sparkling chord above. This is when I thrust my tail upward. You see, the whole time we were fighting, I was taking blows on my forearms, and let me tell you, at that moment in the fight, they were thicker than sausages. Couldn’t really hit with them, so I had to use my tail, my fangs and my legs to try to win. And Joanna expected me to stick to the same strategy till the end.
“Oh, you should’ve seen her face at this failure of situational awareness.” Without turning to his wife, Seeker quickly moved a hand behind his back and caught a thrown pancake. “Thanks, honey! Fighting often has a rhythm to it, especially when an opponent is sticking to a style. And this often catches the opposite party off guard when you switch the routine. Our dearest dodged the blow, thinking I aimed it for her jaw. But in doing so, she lost track of the tip of my tail, which damaged the energy chord above her, showering my love with electricity and sparks. Now, don’t tell Mom I ever told you this.” Dad leaned closer and started whispering. “But she’s a real scaredy-cat. Always so modest and shy and freaking out at the slightest oddity…”
“I’ll open you up with a spoon and serve your guts for dinner!” A shout came from the gas stove.
“Case and point, my children, and this is why I love her so much.” Dad began folding the pancake with two fingers. “While she was distracted, four quick elbows to the neck had her gasping for air. A sweep and a strong rope did the rest. Confusion and situation awareness: never forget about the use of these things in battle like my dearest protector did.”
“Eat with a fork, hunter,” Mom said, her fangs grinding. She took a fork, scaring Ratcatcher for a second, but then simply came to the table, putting a large plate of pancakes and the fork on it. “And I will never fall for your cheap tricks again.”
“Want to bet?” A playful fire flashed in Dad’s eyes. “I heard Eliza’s Academy has a nice arena. Maybe they’ll let two curious Abnormals curl together a little…”
“You leave it for the night! And I’d rather not humiliate you before Eliza’s mates and your coworkers,” Bloodsworn started putting pancakes on her daughter’s plate. “It would be a poor sight if you’d shown up, all beaten up.”
“Chicken,” Dad said, biting the pancake Mom had thrown at him before. His small, white eyes went round; shadows of pupils appeared in them as they looked at the other end of the pancake, and a leak of hot sauce mixed with spicy mustard stained his plate. Dad’s mouth opened, sucking in air, and Seeker jumped from his chair, whipping his tail everywhere as he fled to the bathroom, where he began hungrily drinking cold water.
“So much for situational awareness!” Mom yelled to his back, sitting down.
“Mom, wait!” Ratcatcher noticed Dad had pushed her chair aside with his tail during his ungraceful retreat.
Her warning came too late, and Bloodsworn landed on her butt and slammed her fist against her leg in frustration, while Dad coughed and laughed from the bathroom in between desperate swallows. Mom took a deep breath and joined in the laughter, and soon Ratcatcher was giggling too, happy that they had a place to stay and that everything was okay for once. Liam opened his eyes and cried, squeezing the empty milk bottle, and Ratcatcher hastily grabbed another, waving to Mom that everything was okay. She shook it, made sure the milk was warm, and then fed her brother, picking up pancakes from the plate with a fork held by her tail.
****
Shift from a mundane routine to a sudden one, eh, dad? It’s time to return the favor. Thank you, Dad, Mom, Instructor Augustus, and everyone. Your lessons and sparring sessions have kept me alive. Ratcatcher smiled, no longer afraid, and her plan was ready. She made a step forward and ran at Hustler.