“It’s a miracle-”
“Real superhuman abil-”
“A pyrokinetic and osteokine-”
Channel after channel whizzed by on the screen in the meeting room, the large elliptical table taking up most of the room was occupied by a group of people in suits, all watching the screen or quietly muttering to each other. The large flat screen at the front clicked off as the dark lights started to brighten. A single man stood up abruptly and walked to the front of the room, his face lit harshly by the fluorescent lights above .
His voice was equally harsh when he spoke, “How on GODS GREEN EARTH did we miss the before it escalated to this point! These aren’t a product of ours are they? Hilnock these aren’t yours?”
A mousy thin man flinched lightly but managed to get a response out without stuttering. “No sir! We haven’t even attempted to create any kind of pyrokinetic let alone one with some variation of osteokinetic, even our most advanced muscular treatments have only managed to increase the muscle density by 37 percent; Not nearly enough to produce those kinds of force or speed!”
“If these aren’t the results of the guys over in the experimental weapons and augmentation departments, where did they come from?” came the sound of a burly man from the back of the table.
“Well ain’t that the million dollar question Captain Obvious! Is it possible they’re Russian or Chinese in origin?”
A taller willowy man stands up now, “No sir, we are almost certain they aren’t. There is a couple of reasons, most obviously, why would they fight each other in broad daylight, there's no reason for it, beyond that all three were speaking nearly unaccented English. No we’re almost certain they’re citizens, we could unfortunately not recover any usable blood or tissue samples. All of them were completely denatured by the passive temperature put out by the pyrokinetic.”
The severe man sighed as he slumped into the chair before recovering his composure. “Simon, please tell me we know something, anything.”
The willowy man from before also sat heavily into his chair, “less than we could have hoped for, but more than we feared. The only one we have prior record of is the pyrokinetic, for simplicity I’ll call him 001, we have one or two confirmed sightings, and three unconfirmed, their may be more starting at the two confirmed sightings, there was a fight on Billsbury street, Blightmay, California. We suspect 001 had a conflict with another superhuman, we don’t know what this one's ability was, but we will call him 002. 002 was confirmed to be defeated via video footage, and the fight totaled two cars and obliterated a family of three’s west wall.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Besides that we have the widely televised fight, and three more incidents where we only suspect involvement, including an incident that started a mild wildfire and destroyed a helicopter killing all six inside, and another incident that nearly leveled a warehouse on the southside of the city.”
The older man was beginning to look peeved. “Please tell me there is some good news.”
There was a furious tapping of keys as Simon, the thin one, nodded, “We actually have a superhuman in custody, a police officer with, get this, FUTURE SIGHT.”
And that- that changed things
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The room was beginning to fill up with mushrooms, before there had just been a lot of them, they had been in pots and planters, now though- now they were growing out of the walls and floor, mycelium roots slowly yet inevitably pushing through concrete, concrete and flesh, blood red fungal tissue was pulsing on the surface of a man's skin, his body slowly draining of blood to feed the parasitic thallus growing intermittently from his flesh.
A short giggle escaped the petite woman sitting on a massive toadstool next the surgical bed holding the man. “Not such a weak little girl am I Joann?”
Joann, the man on the surgical bed just let out a pained groan, “Is that right Joann? Oh? You want to know what these are? This is a fun little strain of a mushroom called Hebeloma Aminophilum! Now normally these only eat dead bodies and not living ones, buuuut I found a nifty trick! I can encourage these little guys to change! It wasn’t too hard to get them to like blood so much, they already grew in corpses after all. A right nast way to go this is, their mycelium roots will follow your blood flow, soon enough the roots will reach your heart! And well from there its kinda obvious isn’t it.”
Seacate O’nelly only laughed to herself as Joann let out a final moment of pain before blacking out, or dying, it was hard to tell at this point. She just skipped out of the room, a cloud of spores ballooning out behind as she went. The entire complex was covered in the things and Seacate, or just Cate, ripped a pink variety off the wall and began to chew, humming appreciatively as she went.
People dove out of her way as she walked absentmindedly, thinking about a video she had seen recently, fire, and heat in general were not good for mushrooms, she needed to stay away from the man with fire, and yet… She didn’t want to, she wanted to meet him, fungus was the first thing that regrew after a wildfire, maybe she could do something there, plant roots in fertile soil where he destroyed and burned.
The short woman's thought process was interrupted by a tap on her shoulder
“Madam? Your shipment of oafy-cords-decps is here.”
“IT IS?! Finally! Only took forever!” and so Seacate ran to the delivery depot, where a biohazardous canister filled with Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis lie in wait.