The gunmetal grey bolt of a rifle struck the ground. Gizzy stared at it, looking up as the rest of the rifle flew aside. She smirked.
“Good. I was really hoping you’d choose to live longer. Rifle…lock on command, voice recognition and password safety only.” She said as her gun made a sound of gears locking. She placed her gun down.
“I’ll have that light beating now, but I don’t plan to just stand here and take it. You wanted the guns out of the picture, so let’s play.”
“I didn’t say what I’d do after the beating. I just said I wouldn’t shoot you.” Gizzy said drawing a knife from her back. “Jack’s mother is dead, it’s a shame nobody informed her till now.”
“Tell me then, since we’re fighting dirty and neither of us really plans to take a prisoner or let one go, did Jack inherit his father’s Roman tenacity or did he get any additional genetic surprises?” She said removing her mask and tossing it down. Her eyes turned from silver to red and her fangs lowered.
“Oh that’s a shame. A little vampire in his DNA would be handy as hell with the new wife. Looks like those bugs got around to more then a few worlds. That’s very fortunate for me.” Gizzy chuckled.
“Why is that?”
“I’ve been dying to do some research on Vicki but damned if the best scans require a dissection and you just can’t do that on the living. Be pretty neat to have a fresh sample of brain, heart and spinal tissue from a donor. They’re just so hard to find volunteers.”
“Well, you won’t be getting your wish, I’m afraid.” She said, drawing a pistol from her back, cocking the hammer and firing both barrels into Gizzy’s temple as she turned to dodge. Gizzy hit the ground and immediately stood back up, a patch of shiny blue metal where the meat and bone once was. The cloaked women looked impressed.
“Well it looks like we’re both full of surprises.” She said, tossing the cloak and revealing a black suit of body armor that began knitting itself to cover her face and she drew 2 daggers from her back. “Aren’t surprises fun?”
…
“SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER!” Vinn yelled, lobbing grenade rounds at the raging bull on the ground as it hunkered and whittled slowly into pieces. It roared up in defiance as the rounds finally hit something vital and dropped it with a hefty plop. Jack stepped out of the cave and headed towards the landing shuttle. He hopped inside and closed the doors. “Welcome to the Vinnwagon, I’ll be your remote uber for the evening. We do charge you per grenade so you officially owe us, basically all your money you could ever make.
“Go get Nicole, I have her last seen location.”
“Got it, you good?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Never better.”
…
Nicole stared down at a line of what she would call trees, but she wasn’t so sure now. However, the forest of dead, limbless, and sun cooked sticks seemed to endeavor to prove her otherwise. Every single “tree” was covered in Doberman-sized larvae, weaving silk cocoons like the ones on the creature’s antler. Down the other path was a muddy wasteland that stretched on for miles, shimmering with pools of liquid and dark spots.
She chose the path with obvious signs of moisture, and carefully made her way through the muddy landscape. About 300 meters in she noticed the mud getting deeper and stickier. She considered turning back but pressed on, spotting what looked like water pooling on top of a thick black tar. It gave off a toxic smell like some kind of industrial factory’s rejected pitch runoff. She was too thirsty and dehydrated to care, she waded knee deep into it and got her face down to drink, debating on weather this was going to extend or shorten her lifespan. She slumped forward, plopping belly first into the thin layer of water and into the rejected pitch. That’s when she noticed the pitch was moving, rising up behind her from the center of the puddle. She could feel it squeezing her feet and calves as she peeled her belly off the surface, strands of it trailing to her hands and snapping back like rubber bands as she broke loose. She marched for her life as the rising center seemed to take on a sort of upright form. She broke free and darted for solid ground as the bits left on her seemed to lose their tack and fall off, running back to the main blob.
She stopped and sighed, noticing it was holding the big gold key.
“How do I know you’re friendly?” She asked, lifting her gun. It made a deep, repetitive gulping sound, borderline akin to laughter as if it was trying to assure her that it wasn’t.
“Go-go Gizzy plot armor?” she winced, shouldering the gun and stepping up to it.
…
Gizzy drove her knife into the pitch armor, doing nothing to it, like hitting tire rubber that self healed. Mother dearest proceeded to deliver a few sucker punches that rang out like a bell against Gizzy’s face. She returned with a few kicks to the ribs and heard the wet thud of a knife to her back. Gizzy stepped back, pulling the knife out of her and flipping it with an eyebrow raise as if to say “now I have two knives” as they circled and looked for weaknesses.
Gizzy stepped forward, rolling under a slash and popping up, grabbing her head to drop down and break her neck, meeting too much resistance as Mother uno-reversed her move and threw her over her shoulder, sending Gizzy flopping and rolling.
“I’m stronger than you are. And this pitch is a gift and a curse. Once it bonds with you, it doesn’t let go, but damned if it doesn’t keep you alive in the process. I haven’t had a drop of blood in ages, and though this sustains me, I miss the salty taste.” She said, the face opening up so she could have a bite.
“So that shit feeds you and traps you at the same time. Sounds like a bad marriage. You were better off with the Roman.”
…
“Why aren’t we moving, Vinn?” Jack asked.
“We’re stuck in some kind of tar shit.”
“Vinn it’s moving UP the shuttle, the shuttle’s not sinking, and it’s climbing it. Hit the thrusters.”
“It doesn’t seem to be flammable, Jack.”
“Try venting the coolant lines.” He suggested. Vinn remotely vented the engine coolant and as the nitrogen hit the tar, it let out a primal hiss and froze up, breaking and letting go. The frozen pieces turned white and flaked off, remaining separate from the blob as it reached for the shuttle and narrowly missed it.
“The fuck was that?” Vinn asked. He turned to see Vicki’s reaction, removing his goggles and noticing she was gone.
“Vicki… oh where the hell are you off to now?” he asked. “You better be starving and sucking on the robot. I can’t keep track of everyone.”
…
Vicki sprinted up the hill, sniffing the air and detecting something bloody and familiar. She checked her gun and headed towards the scent, unable to understand what she was craving as her eyes turned red.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
…
Nicole’s hand landed flat, the gun still firing full auto as it was engulfed by the pitch, bubbling and percolating as the rounds did nothing. She struggled, down on all fours, feet and hands deep in the pitch as it waved the key to taunt her.
“Let me go you bucket of bullshit.” She screamed as it creped up her arms and legs, entombing her inch by inch she felt the cold metal of the key slide into her hand and confusion washed over her. She gripped it tightly as the sticky warm pitch wrapped around her back and pulled her flat. Her face slapped the surface as it pried her mouth open and her scream was muffled by the pitch covering it. She sunk entirely into the puddle, rising up as a humanoid shape of slick black rubber
…
Gizzy circled back, bloody and exhausted as her opponent seemed unfazed and ready for more.
“Are you really still fighting for your life with those wounds?” Mother dearest said shaking her head.
“Jack deserves some kind of motherly figure that will actually fight for him, and not just walk away like a cowardly bitch. You didn’t leave a lot of options, ya know. Plus you’re right, the way I’m bleeding and broken up, I’m not making it back to anywhere. You have better armor, superior strength and I may be essentially a zombie with a bad attitude, but I know when I’m beat. And you’re getting there but not yet. I like to make people work for it.” Gizzy huffed.
“And here you are, dying for a human you barely even claim, about to meet your end on some god forsaken world far from home.”
“That was the mission anyway. What you don’t seem to realize is that you got one life to defend, I just get cloned back over and over, so kill me. I’ll fly back down here and fire up round two with better armor. You can’t outlast an army of me, so have fun taking apart the one. I’m taking you apart right back eventually.” She chuckled. “Who the fuck did you think designed the cloning tech that kept Roman alive all these years, just coming back over and over despite being just a human, and having no powers? Bitch I invented that move and I perfected it. You’re not winning, you’re just too stupid to know you’re losing slowly. And just like the best sniper on Amenthis, you locked onto your target with all of you focus, so you missed the little gal standing behind you with a grenade launcher.” She smiled as a sudden impact flattened her. She struggled back up, her back broken and the armor doing all the lifting as she clenched through the pain.
“I thought I smelled my own blood.” Vicki sighed, firing another round and laying her out again. “Who’s the new bloodsucker…did Vinn order a replacement online or are we just lucky like that?”
“Those grenades are gonna run out before she’s turned to enough of a pulp to stop regenerating. That black pitch is feeding her like Delmarian blood on steroid blood.
“Aren’t Delmarians on steroids already?” She asked, putting another grenade into her.
“That’s not the point, Vicki. I was not stalling for you to rescue me, I was stalling so you could take this.” Gizzy said tossing her something. A bloody data card.
“Give that to my clone on the ship, and run. Oh before you do, grab that mask. We need it. I know you don’t understand, but I have this battle won anyway, I just needed someone to take those back.”
“I understand perfectly. Have fun.” Vicki said taking the mask and the card and walking back towards the ship.
“You stupid bitch.” Chuckled Mommy dearest. “You could have gotten away with the time those grenades would have bought you. I’ll be regenerated in minutes. You won’t. So you just accomplished nothing.” She huffed in pain, broken bones and tendons mending inside the pitch.
“Yeah well…shit happens.” Gizzy shrugged as the tar reinforced hand grabbed her throat and began to squeeze. Gizzy’s eyes lit up white as she forced out one last phrase. “I cheat.” She wheezed. Vicki felt the ground shutter and almost fell as she turned to see the glowing blue mushroom cloud rising in the distance. She rushed to the ship.
…
Nicole stomped slowly towards the shuttle as it circled around her. The door opened and Jack unleashed hell with a tank of liquid nitrogen, the pitch screaming in pain as part of it turned frosty white and broke off. It turned back with one eye scrunched in defiant rage and one eye missing, Nicole’s black eye under it, a tear streaming down it, as Jack gave her another blast and the pitch became brittle. She coughed and gasped as the part covering her mouth broke away and fell. She pried herself loose, her skin red and sore, and her hair slick with grease, staggering and felling into Jack’s arms as she broke down into a frantic screaming sob. He drug her into the shuttle and they began to lift off.
“Jack, I didn’t think I was going to come out.” She sobbed.
“We never leave a man behind.”
“You could have just killed me and cloned another.”
“Nicoles never clone the same. We would love you like the original, but we prefer you the way you are.”
…
Gizzy stood in a bath robe, purely to make everyone else feel better as Vicki and Nicole sat around the table at the bridge. They key and the mask, sitting on the table. Gizzy leaned forward as Vicki made the cut on her scalp and swapped the cards.
“Oh that’s better. We can’t be losing vital information. We never know what might be crucial to something. And I needed to remember that confrontation. You did what I asked?” She asked Vicki as RoboDee stitched her scalp back together.
“I did, I got samples of her blood and brain tissue, confirmed she was dead and the pitch was destroyed. Should I ask why we’re keeping this from Jack?”
“He gains nothing but a lot of pain by knowing who she was. I needed the samples so that we can find out what the pitch is and how is sustains your kind without needing blood. That may save your life one day. Nicole got the key and I got the mask. Mission successful, despite the traumatic shit.”
“What’s the mask for?” Asked Nicole. “You never even mentioned a mask.”
“I just wanted it. It’s a really badass mask. Took a beating without a scratch, why waste the free armor when I can look like…” she said having a sudden flashback to a dream she had, wearing the mask…or something similar to it.
“Well I’m sure you can 3d print a liner so it fits you perfectly. You seem to be good at that.” Nicole said, getting up and heading to bed to get some rest.
“No…” Gizzy said holding the mask up. “It already fits me perfectly. Vicki. Change of plans. Take the mask and lock it up. Don’t tell anyone where but hide it somewhere on the ship. Don’t even tell me.”
“All that work for the mask and you just…don’t want it?”
“I want it…that’s what scares me. I may never take it off.” She sighed cryptically.
“That’s all I need to know with this weird shit happening lately. What if you decided you need it again?”
“Oh I’ll probably end up finding it. Or it will end up finding me. Oh Vicki. Lock it in one of the cold storage cases, as cold as they go.”
…
Gizzy stood alone in the dark, staring at the fridge in the medlab. In front of her, behind the glass was the Imposter blood in a tube, Mother dearest’s blood, a sample of frozen pitch, and a data cube she still didn’t trust to be free of viruses and hidden sinister intent. She breathed on the glass and fogged it, noticing for a moment her reflection changed and one eye took on a red hue. The silver mask on her face and a pair of wings behind her. It faded to nothing as fast as she only thought she saw it. She removed the glasses of truth and breathed again, seeing nothing but her blurry reflection.
“Who are you?” She asked the darkness. “What are you?”
“Only time will tell.” She replied to herself, smiling sinisterly in the reflection, as her face remained solemn. She wiped the fog with her hand and locked the fridge, grabbing a bottle of tequila and a shot of snail goop and chasing one with the other.
“Welcome home Gizzy.” She said to herself, as she strolled out, killing the bottle to the last drop and throwing the glass against the wall, stomping out, the doors closing behind her leaving just a ring of white glow from the emergency lighting.
“Welcome home.”