A wire thin strand of tar stretched over the city high above the central spire. The tip bubbled, then opened. A bead glistening in the harsh sun formed. It searched, sensed, twisted, rolled, and turned as the hot slimy wire stretched ever longer. It coiled through the city toward the balcony of the central spire. There it found the writhing lump of mass and pierced it as it struggled to take form. Liquid hot goo pumped through the coil. The shifting mass congealed, then tightened as white film formed on the top before stretching into delicate arms. Arms bloomed a wrist like a bud that expanded into a palm before slender fingers with pale shimmering nails flowered. A slick of red formed thinner and thinner strands. Carbon, hydrogen, water, trace minerals, all the ingredients needed for a homunculus, in excess to compensate for energy consumption, pumped into the developing blob that had eaten through Jim’s body.
It thinned, gaining curvy hips, narrow waistline, and thighs with a sharp and somewhat boney curve. Her body was covered in a tight shimmering inky film. A leg pulled out from the muck pile, inky strands connecting the long heels to the blob broke as it kicked forward. One heel clicked against the balcony floor followed by the next.
The feminine creature stood with a hand on her hip and surveyed the landscape. Her face remained disfigured, misshapen, and half formed. Red glowing eyes blossomed in the center far too close to the toothy mouth. Teeth shifted and shaped into a proper place, canines sharpening as full red lips plumped to cover them. She licked them with a lengthening tongue. Long red hair fell about her shoulders as the eyes pushed upwards and a slender nose popped out of the center of her face. Pale white skin gained color until it became a healthy rosy complexion.
Inky fabric wrapping around her body served as a both corset and bodice as Nyx looked over the body with a slight smirk, “My thanks to you Mister Delant, this secondary body is not completely useless.”
The tar corset boiled slightly as she wrapped her fingers around the guard rail. She leaned to feel the hot winds pick up her hair and frowned. On the outer edges of the wall gigantic monsters laden with tar slung aggregate missiles at the windmills. Most of them failed to land. Time was short.
Whips pummeled the interior to break solar panels covering greenhouses. They continued to lash at the wall to create a series of minor earthquakes throughout the city. Constant electromagnetic pulse blasts from defensive cannons slowed the beasts. Current flowing over the wall caused tendrils to detach and recoil under threat of MER deactivation.
Nyx cracked her back while watching this battle. With her body full formed she entered Delant’s office. Not a living soul presented itself to confront her. Delant’s laptop remained booted on his desk, so Nyx helped herself. It wasn’t like she hadn’t acquired all his passwords in the conversation process. Shame he didn’t know by heart where everything was. The screen presented a map of the base. She typed: power distribution in the search bar. Power access was split between four separate systems for redundancy, disabling one system wouldn’t shut everything down. Unfortunately, more than enough power existed in storage for the base to fend off this attack.
She tapped her fingers on the desk impatiently. Turrets were already activated and would stay such. Tar flowed through some of the pipes but was highly susceptible to electromagnetic pulse charges. There was no power override from the central spire, nor did she have the ability to shut down the EMP defenses throughout the base. Nyx frowned; she’d have to walk across the base to each of the power distribution centers. Though converting two should get the job done, considering the situation.
But when ye come,
And all the flowers are dyin…
Zrrrrrrrrrp!
Nyx smashed the phonograph top down through the bottom with her left fist to put an end to that ridiculous noise. Shattered machinery and broken vinyl rained on the carpet as she dusted herself off.
Well, the nearest station was at the base of this tower. Apparently, some humans were attempting a siege. How quaint. A fist shattered the glass of the cabinet behind the desk. Dark lines of goo formed over the lacerations across her arm; they closed with a slight steaming as fingers wrapped the neck of a full bottle of brandy. The cork popped with a click of her thumb. Nyx brought the bottle to her lips and chugged it in its entirety. She proceeded to finish off the vodka, rum, and gin in the same fashion. The wine remained unharmed.
She flung her hair back with a huff before pulling Jim’s ID card out of her flesh. The card swiped the exit and she left the office to greet a few officers guarding the entrance proximity. They noticed that she obviously wasn’t Mr. Delant and raised their Clinker specials. She looked at them idly. They hesitated to fire until they saw the coil coming from the office, feeding her. The fire hit her directly in short bursts. Gunshots splattered hot tar against the clean walls as her head opened. The body collapsed with a slow leak of dirty oil that pooled underneath it.
“Request a purge of the central tower, full electro-magnetic pulse release. We have a silhouette incursion from the chairman’s office and it was a live one.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Nyx looked up from the floor. Her face cracked about the eye as a viscous inky fluid congealed around her wounds. The skull closed as hair reformed and set itself neatly down her back.
She stretched out her fingers, “Is a live one.”
Something entered the men. It felt like a needle, barely a pinprick in the thigh. Their blood boiled. Dark lines cracked and bled congealing black tar which stretched down their necks. Their shirts set alight as their fingertips sprayed a flaming oily substance. Mouths opened. The corpses bloated before exploding an inky mess of red and black mixed with bones and bodily organs. Tendrils from the mother coil grabbed the remains and drug them towards it for absorption. Nyx retracted her fingers, got on her knees, and then stood to brush herself off as the coil of asphalt welded to her back continued to feed her. All her wounds vanished.
“I suppose I can’t drag you through the whole place. We’ll get scrambled. Latch to the building and disable any nearby pulse emitters. We’re going to pressure them from the top, their weak point. But first, why don’t you give me six buddies?”
She reached back and pulled the coil out of her. It dripped a pool of oil onto the floor as she latched it to the wall and gave it a gentle pet. The pulsing vein of sludge shuddered as it expanded. A spurt of gooey hot aggregate formed a lump on the floor. Further spurts fed it until a six-foot-tall silhouette towered over Nyx. She ran her fingers along the vein to encourage it to produce more. The floor became coated in a sticky stone infused tar from which five more silhouettes arose. The hall resembled a melting asphalt cave with all the metal covered.
With her force assembled and no hint of an EMP burst, she decided to proceed to the stairs. She allowed the vein to lengthen along the ground, following her. So long as it remained unsevered, it would continue to feed her and her silhouettes. The men guarding the elevator and the stairs fell before her, their substance melded with the aggregate.
The elevator would be faster. The vein could navigate the steps, slide down the banister and attach itself to the walls to turn the stairs into a realm hostile to human life. Meanwhile, Nyx and her six foreboding silhouettes could take a short ride straight to the interior sublevel 10, right into power distribution center 1. They took the elevator.
It jammed on floor 8 of the tower. Delant’s card wouldn’t reactivate it.
“Seems like the manager was busy making friends. Not a problem, barely an inconvenience. The tendril should reach them about...”
She heard gunfire and screaming from outside the elevator.
“Now. Let’s perform a little manual override.”
Nyx pressed her body against the door as her fingers pushed against the elevator panel. The cooler metal felt refreshing as a deep blue light glowed from the buttons After a few minutes, the elevator detached from the main system and operated on her command. They reached interior sublevel 10 in short order. The doors opened to a wide hall with concrete walls. A flickering mix of florescent and LED tubes lit the way.
Not a single human stood in her way. The crew of silhouettes followed her unopposed to the distribution center. Rusted and peeled warning signs littered the walls. The black lightning bolt surrounded by orange paint warned of dangerous currents inside.
Nyx’s body shuddered. Much of the raw AC current pulse generated by the wild power generation of the windmills became converted into a strong EMP wave sent through the hall, which was clear of asphalt gunk for a reason. The control room, housed in a Faraday cage, would be key.
Her team of silhouettes flailed about as their composition deteriorated and solidified. Drops of blue sweat formed across Nyx’s forehead. She stretched her sharp nails to pierce the rubber seal of the hatch. Then with all her might she struggled until the metal bent and popped from the frame. Two of the silhouettes hugged her back to absorb into her. With strength alone, she broke the mechanism of the hatch and pushed the two sides apart enough for her to slide in.
The interior held the distribution system collecting power from various sources and converting it for usage. Large and loud generators belched smoke into pipes as the base’s limited supply of fossil fuels burned to provide emergency energy needed to combat the silhouette invasion. There were even wires that drained power from the asphalt itself, where it still clung to the bowl.
Nyx found herself out of breath. Her forehead melted over her eyes slightly and her hair dripped glowing blue liquid from the constant hostile conversion of AC pulses that were far more obnoxious than their DC variants, even if they presented her small breaks for recovery. The six silhouettes dove against the fossil fuel generators, gummed their engines, pierced the tanks, and drank the fuel to energize, stabilize, liquify and heat.
That accounted for the emergency generation of this station. It didn’t weaken the constant defensive pulses. There was a duplicity in the system that made it difficult to destroy without eliminating herself in a pulse explosion. But if the wavelengths could be converted and made to harmonize. Then she won.
Nyx smiled, eyes glowing, “Time to feed girls.”
The silhouette worm reached the floor as it wound downwards from the stairs and the elevator shaft. The AC pulse strengthened. Nyx’s red hair crackled as she doubled over. Pale sharp fingernails clutched into her stomach while coughing black blood which ran over her lips.
“Somebody is a smart boy. Is that you Gregoire? Don’t worry, I’m here for the other half of my snack.”
Her arm stretched; hand turned into a glob as it pressed the next door of the substation control room, a small metal door with a lock panel. Fingers reformed out of the glob to pierce the casing. The strongest current yet went through her body. Her form destabilized further. The asphalt worm pressed forward and shot a line into her back, feeding its mistress through the MER killing pulses.
The door to the substation cracked and Nyx turned her finger and pulled the entire thing off its hinges with multiple snaps. The metal flung backwards with a loud bang. The panels that controlled the conversion and distribution of power were within her grasp. It felt so much better to be protected from the EMP as a tar film formed over the doorway. Nyx took a deep breath even though she didn’t need to. Oxygen burned nicely.
Tar gloved hands slapped the controls as she leaned her melting body over them. The goo dripped inside the panel to coat the wires. Strands of MER infused tar connected Nyx to the power conversion system.
Nyx smiled a brilliant toothy smile at her reflection on the blank screens.
“Let’s make these gross currents delicious, shall we? Gregoire, Helen, Io, Lavinia, ready or not, here I come!”