Chapter 12: Hinged Flesh and Hidden Monsters

As time went by, our meetups became ever riskier. It reminded me of those teenage years, when we both snuck out of our windows and shared kisses beneath the moonlight. But love is intoxicating, and forbidden love doubly so. Perhaps the UE knew something we didn’t. Perhaps they separated us not out of cruelty, but out of wisdom.

We wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, not for anyone or anything. Or so I thought.

—

From atop his pyramid of corpses, Gabe’s hammerhead wove back and forth. But he didn’t come for me. Strong winds buffeted my hair, carrying the stench of rotting alien flesh. They swept the group of hovering Gosporians closer to me and the vibration of their wings was so strong that my teeth rattled in my skull.

I looked to Ariel again, and she was making the same weird gestures. Then, to my utter astonishment, she lifted a live Gosporian from behind the ridge. Its limbs were bound by vines, but the pair of wings that rose from its middle body segment were free and I could see them buzzing. It lifted into the air like a bug balloon on a string.

She pointed to the bug, then to her ears and eyes and I thought I understood what she was saying.

A couple of years ago, the UE introduced a new public security initiative. All around the city, these metal rod things popped up. They turned out to be sonar towers that gave real time positional data of everyone at all times.

That night, bats had fallen from the sky like hail.

I eyed the Gosporians overhead, could they really be jamming Gabe’s vision?

Ariel tied the Gosporian’s leash to her belt and stood. She mimed herself jumping down and moving to my position. My heart lurched in my chest. She would be so exposed, surely Gabe would add her skull to his pile. She slid down the far slope and I half rose, axe clenched tight as Gabe’s eyeless hammerhead turned to her.

His head waved like an antenna searching for a signal. Then he slid down the pyramid like a seal going down a damn waterslide. He slithered towards Ariel, a trail of blood painting his path. She froze, fists clenched at her side and screwed her eyes closed for a moment. Then she opened them and looked to me. I’d climbed over the ridge without realising it, and was only a step from the sheer drop that would take me into the valley.

Ariel cocked her head as though listening to something, then raised a hand at me, palm out in a ‘stop’ gesture. I froze. Gabe slithered in fitful bursts, then stopped, and retreated, shaking his head. The damn bugs above me were rattling the teeth in my skull. I could hardly imagine what they must be doing to his specialised sensory organs.

The kid began her trot across the valley floor once more. Gabe followed, dashing close then backing off with shrieks of annoyance. I couldn’t believe this shit was working, but I’d do practically anything to avoid a confrontation with the Tourist.

It all went wrong as Ariel reached the cliffs below me and started to climb. The mindless Gosporian tethered to her belt struck the cliff face, its wings stuttering and tangling as it pinged off sections of rock.

Gabe surged in, right to the base of the cliff. He fired a harpoon upwards, skewering the drone in one clean movement. He reeled the bug towards his flower mouth like a chameleons tongue. Ariel was pulled from the cliff, hitting the ground hard.

The Predator perk pushed me forward, its music screaming in my head, urging me to fight. I leapt from the cliff, but was it me who’d jumped to save Ariel, or this thing twisting my instincts? I hated how much I needed it, and I hated myself even more for loving the rush.

Ariel rolled with the fall and cut the vine with her improvised daggers, diving away as two harpoon tentacles impacted where she had been half a second before.

The wind whistled through my hair as I fell. My axe raised high above my head. Guitar screamed in my mind. I screamed too, a long, involuntary FUUUCK. Time slowed. I saw the thick base of a tentacle bunch, as it tensed to fire and I knew I was too late. The harpoon launched just as Ariel found her feet, rocketing at her centre of mass. I swung with all my strength, with my weight and the momentum of a ten yard fall behind me.

I sheared through the cluster of tentacles on its right hand side like they were raman-fucking-noodles.

I crash-landed onto the Tourist; it felt like when I’d been hit by a car. Gabe wailed like a damn banshee and I felt both of my ear drums pop. Blood poured down my neck, and suddenly everything—except the predator guitar—was muffled as though I was underwater. Gabe writhed and I was thrown free along with a spray of gasoline and ozone stinking blood. I staggered to my feet, axe ready.

Where was Ariel? She’d be injured, I had to protect her.

Nope. She was fine, and half way up the cliff already. Smart kid. She shouted something at me, like that would do any good. She pointed, and I turned back to Gabe who had retreated twenty yards. I froze, watching as he bit off one of his remaining tentacles and wrapped it around the stubs of the missing cluster like a tourniquet.

Yeah fuck that.

I stored my axe and speed-climbed up that cliff like I was Spiderman. Ariel was already at the top, and jabbered something at me. I pointed at the blood pouring from my ear holes and shouted. “My ears are fucked!”

Her eyes flashed as she pulled something from her inventory. Then the kid stepped in close, raised her hand to her mouth and blew a fistful of white powder all over my face.

There was a whoosh inside my skull and the Deaf! icon in my HUD disappeared. Sound returned. Gabe screamed down in the valley, Gosporians buzzed above.

“Better?” Ariel asked. “We’ve got to go!”

She didn’t wait for a response, and set off running down the hill. What the hell had the kid done to heal me?

The white powder caking my face tingled and made my eyes water. I must look like one of those coke-addict caricatures from the propaganda cartoons the UE made us watch at school.

I set off to follow her, then paused. Gabe was still in the valley, squawking up a storm and performing some sort of first aid. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe he’d give up on us. If anything he’d want revenge.

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I pulled out a length of real rope I’d nabbed from the golden cache so many days before, then stuck one of those sticky fruits to one end. The Gosporians were only a few yards above me. I swung the rope in one hand and flung it at the cluster of drones, missing badly.

Gabe had gone silent. That couldn’t be good.

I tried to pull the sticky-fruit ended rope back, but it was stuck fast to a boulder so I cut the end free and stuck a new fruit on.

This was taking too long. The music of my predator perk was doing this weird thing, like it was mimicking my heartbeat. It was horrifying. I was wound so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up my arse I’d squeeze it to diamond.

I flung the rope again, and by some miracle the fruit gummed onto a Gosporian’s drooping hind leg. I turned and ran, pulling it behind me like an ugly balloon just as Gabe crested the rise.

Rain fell like a curtain. It turned the bloody path of gore that lead from Gabe’s valley to the forest into a slip-n-slide. My arms wheeled as I struggled to maintain my footing, but eventually I gave up and slid down the hillside.

Ariel waited at the treeline, muttering to herself. She was crouched low with her hands pressed into the muddy ground. Her hair clung to her face, soaked from the sudden downpour. As I skidded to a stop next to her, she hissed, "Stay low!" And grabbed the Gosporian’s rope from my hand, yanking the bug closer. She pulled some vines from her inventory and wrapped them deftly around the struggling creature’s limbs and wings; the buzzing of the drones wings doubled in volume and was shrill like a dental drill.

“What the hell are you doing?” I whispered, glancing back toward the ridge where Gabe loomed, silhouetted against the stormy sky. His hammerhead was waving back and forth as though confused by the drones a few yards above. His remaining tentacles suddenly shot out to impale the drones.

“Trust me,” Ariel shouted over her shoulder as she ran into the jungle, “And don’t let these touch you!” She dropped long stretches of glowing vines over the forest floor. “These will slow him down.”

I cursed as my Gosporian balloon got tangled in the trees above. I wound it in, holding it close. “How the hell do you know that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “What kind of kid knows how to do this?”

The brat didn’t answer, just pulled a glowing blue vine from her inventory and secured it to a tree trunk. She snatched the drone from me and stuck the other end to its carapace. The drone lifted into the air, just barely able to lift the glowing vine. “You want to die out here, or do you want to help me set the traps?”

I gritted my teeth and looked back, still no sign of Gabe. She had a point. “Fine. What do you need me to do?”

“Take this.” She handed me a bundle of sharp, spike-like objects wrapped in a ragged strip of fabric. “Plant them along that path,” she said, pointing to a narrow clearing that sloped down toward a clearing. “Come back when you’re done.”

“Right.” I muttered, already moving; I’d never been able to refuse Elena.

I took the spikes and darted toward the clearing. I’d seen Gabe wade through hits from Uzbeki, what the hell would these things do? The rain made the blood soaked ground boggy and treacherous, and I felt like I was one wrong move away from eating mud. Behind me, I could hear Ariel speaking in French as she worked, almost as though she were having a conversation. Had she sent me away on purpose?

I shook my head, ramming the spikes in at uneven intervals along the path. Whatever she was up to, at least she had a plan. That was more than I could say.

When I finished, I darted back to Ariel. She was crouched behind a fallen tree, securing a vine to a makeshift pulley system she’d constructed from roots, stones and what looked like pieces of broken alien machinery. Behind her, the Gosporian she’d tethered earlier was buzzing in circles and glowing. The light cast eerie shadows across her face.

“Done.” I said, dropping next to her. “Now tell me what this is all about. What’s with the vines, the bugs, the—”

“Shh!” She pressed a finger to her lips and pointed. Gabe was moving through the trees, his massive body navigating the undergrowth with unnerving grace. He paused, his hammerhead tilting as if sniffing for something. Then he surged forward, heading straight for the drone, and the traps.

Ariel grabbed my arm and pulled me deeper into the forest. “We’re out of time. We need to lead him into the clearing,” she said, her voice low. “Stay close to me and don’t stop running, no matter what.”

“And if this brilliant plan of yours doesn’t work?” I asked, gripping my axe tightly. I’d hurt him once, I could do it again.

“It’ll work,” she said, her familiar blue eyes blazing with determination. “It has to.”

We moved quickly, darting between trees as Gabe’s massive form crashed through the jungle behind us. The traps Ariel had laid seemed to do equal parts nothing, and sweet fuck all. He tore through them with raw, animalistic fury, his screeches echoing through the forest.

“They aren’t working!” I shouted, glancing back as Gabe barrelled through another vine trap like it was paper.

But, I was wrong, I realised a moment later. The glowing vines were sticking all over his body and as he charged on, he gathered more, until he dragged massive clumps of the jungle with him.

“Just a little farther,” Ariel called. We burst into a small clearing. The kid turned, her hands raised as if she were readying some final gambit.

But before she could act, the sky above us erupted with motion.

The Gosporians.

The drones that had hovered above the valley for days now glowed like fireflies in the thunderstorm. They flew overhead and through the trees, massing together in a swarm.

Gabe had slowed to a crawl and now he froze, his hammerhead whipping upward. For the first time, I saw hesitation in his movements.

“What the hell’s happening?” I shouted, my voice barely audible over the cacophony.

“I don’t know!” Ariel shouted back, ducking as a wave of drones zoomed overhead. They weren’t attacking us; they hardly seemed to even see us. As the swarm grew, it began to rotate, creating a tornado of light and sound.

Gabe tentacles lashed out at drones that darted past. He was coming for us again, but now moved slower than a walk, as he dragged a huge mat of jungle junk behind. He fired his few remaining harpoon tentacles into the mass as though trying to break it free, but the appendages penetrated the mat and got stuck in the tangle of sticky, glowing vines. He strained, but couldn’t pull them free.

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Ariel muttered, staring at the sky, her voice tight with fear.

“What bloody plan!?” I shouted. “What do we do now?”

She didn’t answer. Standing frozen. Staring at the tornado swarm.

The kid had totally locked up. I grabbed her shoulder and shook her, but she wouldn’t move. “We’ve gotta run, kid. Whatever’s happening, we don’t want to be here.”

Gabe let out a high shriek of frustration. He was stuck in place, tentacles all missing or stuck. Helpless. Vulnerable. I could kill him. The guitar rose to in a crescendo as I took one step towards him, axe in hand.

I watched in horror as his hammerhead popped free of his neck like a grotesque popcorn kernel. It pinged away into the darkness.

“What the fuck?” I breathed.

His chest cracked open, right down the midline from neck to navel. The sound of tearing flesh made me shudder.

“C'est quoi ce délire?” Whispered Ariel.

The top half of his body hinged open like a grotesque clamshell, flesh tearing and glistening as a waft of ozone and gasoline stench poured out.

A four armed monkey thing leaped free of the cavity, tubes and electrodes popping free from shaved patches. It looked at us with black, hate filled eyes and roared. A glowing dagger shimmered into each of its four hands and it scurried off into the jungle.

This fucking place.

I pulled Ariel along, the kid was still frozen. The ground beneath us shook, and she stumbled, nearly falling face-first into the mud. I caught her, dragging her along a few paces as I helped her back to her feet. “Come on!”

Her breaths were coming in gasps, terror and exhaustion obvious. I’d grown used to the almost limitless stamina that my predator perk supplied. She was a skinny kid and had no such assistance.

As we crested a small hill, I glanced back one last time. The monkey thing that had been inside Gabe was nowhere to be seen, but about a mile away was a storm of light and motion.

The Gosporians.

Thousands—no, tens of thousands—whirled together in a glowing tornado of wings and light.

And through the chaos, I glimpsed something that made my blood run cold.

It wasn’t mindless. It wasn’t chaos.

They were coming together with purpose.

Building something.

A massive, glowing amalgam reached skyward, with limbs as thick as skyscrapers.

Ariel saw it too, her eyes wide and face pale. “What is this?” She whispered.

I didn’t have an answer, but I didn’t think she was speaking to me.

But the showrunner, apparently, did.

“Oh boy! Oh boy! OH BOY! Survivors of the Valley biome; Do you remember what I said about a certain civilisation really overachieving?”

Her honey-sweet voice dropped into a guttural, pack-a-day smoker’s rasp that raised the hairs on my neck.

“You’re looking at them!”