You could barely see through the blinding flood of tears.
Your body gritted its many teeth and flexed its claws, muscles coiled and ready to spring.
When you were little and got your first set of cybernetics, they weren't exactly installed properly and the software necessary for them to function had a tendency to crash. You could remember how that felt, the full body paralysis and distress that overwhelmed you and… and…
Seeing Mara like that, knowing she had just shot you, felt worse than a system crash. It felt worse than getting put through a wall by Nettie.
It… it felt like dying while still being alive enough to feel it.
Like it would never ever stop hurting.
It felt like knowing that nobody in this wretched place was really your friend, nobody really cared about you.
Your body rightfully identified Mara as a threat and lunged for her with jaws wide. The Suppression System fired, peppering you with foam and tranquilizers. Your body shook the tranqs off like flies, splattering your surroundings with foam that had yet to harden. Whatever Mara had shot you with was starting to work, your tail felt like it weighed a ton. A feeling that soon spread to your back pair of legs, you dragged them across the ground and slipped as your middle pair gave out too. It felt like trying to climb through gelatine, the world too soft and malleable to walk on.
You slid slowly to the ground, your tongue hanging dumbly from your open mouth. It was getting hard to keep your eyes open, the lids felt like they weighed more than your tail. You drooled and gurgled, paws sluggishly scraping against the ground in an attempt to stand.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
One of the security guards shuffled forward and tried to slip a makeshift muzzle onto your face, you snapped at them lazily and growled. The guard yelped and danced backwards, narrowly avoiding the pool of acid eating through the floor. Your body laughed, a rough and rumbling sound that slowly trailed off into a rattling wheeze. Your eyes shut one by one, glazed and dense with sleep.
"Hello again, My sweet stupid thing." Purred the End-of-Everything in Its 7 times 7 overlapping voices. Its impossible body curled around and around you, each scale on Its glittering hide a window into a different calamity.
You saw yourself in every one, a rabid and raging beast, cutting people down left and right.
You felt lips against the shell of your ear, a chorus of voices pouring into your mind. "Don't give into despair, my dear thing, not now… not yet… we're only in the first act after all and there's still so much left for you to see and say before the curtain can close and send us hurtling into our intermission." Several seven fingered hands squeezed your shoulders and pulled you into a scaly embrace. Up close the End smelled like the world on fire, like fresh growth and the death of all things. But It held you like a mother would have, It wiped the tears and gore from your face.
"Think of Me as the snake in the garden, I am here to set you free… to show you the Truth." It brought all seven faces close to yours, dropping Its voices into conspiratorial whispers. "Do you want to know the Truth of this world, sweetling? You saw it once but I don't think you understood. "
"The truth of this world is that it sucks and nobody cares about me or loves me and the only reason I'm still alive is… is…" The words came out of you as fast and bitter as vomit, leaving you breathless with a sour taste in your mouth.
The End-of-Everything held you close, cooing and nuzzling your hair tenderly. "Oh My sweet stupid thing… if you only knew how right you are."