Chapter 66: The Red-Haired Monster (Patreon)

The Operator looked at the brain in her hand and let it drop. It hit the floor and rolled once before it stopped.

No one said a word. They had watched her take a seven-foot monster head apart piece by piece and pull the brain out of its skull with her hand, and now she stood in the middle of what was left of him, naked, her skin white, her hair red, the hand that had held his brain still red with it. The cultists had stopped praying, and the two scientists had pushed as far into the corner as the wall would let them, unable to take their eyes off her. Nobody looked at Nero’s body because they were all looking at her.

Well. Looks like I put on a hell of a show, and I’ve been doing the whole thing naked.

Time to fix that.

She looked at Napoleon and said it loud enough for the entire room.

“Napoleon, I’m getting dressed. First one to move toward me, whoever it is, kill them.”

“Understood, Operator.”

Napoleon drew both rear cannons out into the open this time, where the entire room could see them, and set his front legs into a striking stance. They had all just watched what the little machine could do, so not one of them moved.

She pulled on the clothes the Veil kids had given her.

Wonder how those little brats are doing.

The thought lasted a second before she remembered how they had turned on her, and she shut it down.

Mission first. Everything else later.

The leather settled against the new skin, and for the first time since the change, she had a second to feel her own body. Her skin didn’t feel like skin anymore, and she liked it. After everything that monster had thrown at her, after walking out of it without a scratch, something in her head had changed too. For the first time since she got here, she felt strong.

Maybe I was too hard on the System.

She thought it as a joke, half a smile pulling at her, and then the laugh came up out of her on its own, the leftover of whatever the nanobots had switched on to keep the pain out. It rolled out of her, low, in the middle of all those silent faces.

Stop. Stop laughing. They already think I’ve lost it.

She swallowed the laugh down, finished pulling on the clothes, and buckled the belt with the revolver at her hip. Then she looked at all of them.

“What am I going to do with all of you?”

Then a roar came up through the door she had entered by, far off and below, somewhere down in the lower levels.

“Napoleon, watch them,” she said, and crossed to the door, pulled it open, and leaned out over the edge.

It took her a second to understand what she was looking at. Far below where the drill had torn its way through the floors, a mass of things in human clothes was packed together, too far down to see clearly, and some of them had climbed up through the broken concrete and twisted metal. She pulled back inside.

“We made too much noise, Tera,” she said. “We need to get out of here.”

You did. A fight that loud was always going to draw them.

“What’s going on?” the man holding the little girl called out.

She looked at him and said nothing.

I don’t know any of these people. Can’t trust any one of them. Not the men, not the women, not the kid. The Veil already taught me that lesson.

She pulled the bag onto her back and tightened the straps, ready to move.

The girl let go of the two scientists’ hands and crossed the floor to the Operator, taking her hand. The grip was small, and she pulled, leading the Operator toward Lessa and Dan on the floor, where she stopped between the two of them and pointed at the stingers in their necks.

The Operator looked down at the girl.

I don’t have time for this. I don’t even know who any of you are.

She was already turning to go when Tera spoke.

Operator. Help those two.

Lessa and Dan were both fighting for air now, the breaths coming shorter, the poison already spread up the sides of their throats in green threads.

“I don’t have time to help anyone, Tera,” she said aloud. “I don’t know any of these people. For all I know, they’ll turn on me the second I trust them, even that kid. You remember how it went the last time I tried to help some kids.”

The cultists glanced at each other. None of them could see who she was talking to.

There's nothing visible yet. But given everything you've been through since you arrived, I need to watch what these changes do to you. The new strength, the body that doesn't feel like yours anymore, all of it leaves a mark on your head. You need to make sure you stay human.

“I’m fine, Tera, I’m still me, and this isn’t the change talking. This is just me deciding I’ve been screwed over enough.”

Reth wouldn’t have decided that.

The name landed.

Think about what he would have done.

Shit.

The Operator stood there a second longer, then looked down at the girl.

“Move, kid.”

The girl stepped aside.

She crouched over them, pulling the stingers from their necks one by one. When she looked at Lessa’s face, a single tear had traced down her cheek. Lessa couldn’t speak, but her eyes weren’t on the Operator; they were locked on Dan. That was when the Operator saw what she had missed until now. The two of them had their hands stretched out across the floor, fingers not quite reaching, both of them spending what they thought were their last seconds just trying to touch.

The pain went through her skull, a hard spike of it behind the eyes, and the voices came with it before she could brace.

I’m going to get her out. I’ll kill every last one of them, I swear it.

A man’s voice, the same one she had heard when she hit level four, and it pulled at her the same way it had then. Then another piece, softer, buried further down.

I love you more than coffee.

And under it, faint, her own voice answering him.

I love those corny lines of yours.

For a second, she wasn’t in the room at all. Then it was gone, and she was back on the floor with two dying strangers in front of her.

Operator. Are you with me?

“I’m here,” she said, rougher than she meant to. “I’m fine.”

She turned Lessa’s head toward her so the woman could see her face.

“I have an idea. I’m not promising it works; I’ve never done it before. You okay with that?”

Lessa gave the smallest nod she could manage.

The Operator pushed herself up and crossed to Orof, who was too hurt to move and could barely push a word past the blood in his throat. She stopped a step short of him.

“Before I come any closer, let’s be clear. You try anything, and two things happen. You already saw the first one; nothing you do touches me. The second is that spider behind me taking off the rest of your head. We good?”

Orof gave a slow nod, and then she crouched beside him.

[Bio Reading activated]

The red threads slid out from her fingertips, the fine stingers running along their length, and she lowered them into the black blood leaking from his head and let them touch it.

“Tera. Tell me you’re getting something.”

A few seconds passed.

I’m getting it. Basic data from the blood. And the thing you actually came for. I have the Kanryx formula they used for his mutation.

“We'll pull that apart later. Can you get the poison out of it?”

His blood tells me what he is, but not what’s in the poison. You’ll have to read one of the stingers for that, since that’s where it actually lives. Get me that, and maybe I can work the cure out from there.

She moved the threads to one of the stingers she had pulled, the tip of it still beading green, and let them read it.

A few seconds.

There it is. I ran his mutation against the poison, and it points to a counter-agent, a Kanryx compound, and you barely need any. KX-7, 2 mL. KX-19, 0.5 mL. Heat it to 110°F until it turns black.

The screaming below had climbed closer. She could feel it now through the floor.

“Shit,” she said out loud. “This is gonna bite me in the ass.”

Don’t be. That’s the part I’m trying to keep alive in you.

She sat back on her heels and dug the KX-7 and KX-19 out of the pack, setting them where she could reach them.

[Living Forge activated]

The forge opened out of her right hand, and she drew both hands back so it hung in the air in front of her, free for her to work around.

The preacher could not hold it in. “What are you doing?”

“Shut up and let me work.”

He went quiet, his eyes never leaving her, the cultists beside him wearing the same face.

She measured both compounds out, doubled for two, and brought them up to temperature. The mix darkened as it climbed, going black just as Tera said. She eased it back off the heat and reversed the intake, and the forge started pushing air out instead of drawing it in; the stream running cool across the surface until what sat in her hand was warm enough to swallow and no more.

Crossing to Lessa first, she got a hand behind the woman’s head and tipped it back. Lessa’s breathing had gone to almost nothing, her chest barely lifting, the green threads dark up the side of her throat. The Operator poured half the liquid past her lips and held her jaw shut until she felt her swallow.

“Come on,” she said, low, more to herself than to Lessa. “Work.”

She moved to Dan and gave him the rest, his head heavier in her hand, his eyes already half gone. She held his jaw, felt the swallow, and let go.

Then she waited.

For a few seconds nothing changed, and she thought she had read it wrong, that she had wasted the compounds on two strangers and bought herself nothing but time she did not have. The screaming below kept climbing.

Then Lessa pulled in a breath, a real one, deep enough to lift her entire chest, and her back arched with it. Beside her, Dan did the same a moment later, coughing on it, the green threads on both their throats going pale and sinking back under the skin.

“That’s everything I can do.”

She shut the forge down; the rings settled back into her palm.

The preacher broke.

He came up off his knees and threw himself at her, one hand closing around her wrist. Napoleon dropped into a launch, but she raised her free hand to stop him, and the spider held.

“Come with us,” the preacher said, the words tripping over each other. “The Father has to meet you; he has to. Please. Please, my goddess, come with us.”

She pulled her wrist out of his grip with something close to disgust and stepped past him to Nero’s body.

[Bio Reading activated]

She set the red threads into the blood of what was left of Nero’s head.

“Are you getting it?”

I have the giant’s formula.

Behind her, a sound. She turned. Lessa was pushing herself up off the floor, shaking, and Dan had a hand under himself, getting his knees beneath him. Both of them were slow, unsteady, the color still off in their faces, but they were moving.

“You two,” the Operator said. “How do you feel?”

“Better.” Dan’s voice came out thin. He swallowed and tried again. “A lot better. You saved our lives.”

“This place is about to be full of those things. Out that door, fast.” She pointed to the door the cultists had come through.

“That’s where we came from. There’s no way back up from down there, and we’ll run into more like them, more of these scientists who’ve gone out of their heads.”

“The way I came in is gone. Stairs are torn out,” the Operator said. “Go. I’ve got one thing left to do here.”

She turned to the two scientists in the corner and pointed at them.

“You two. Out. Take the kid, whatever she is to you, and go. Now.”

They came off the wall and broke for the girl, and in that second two stingers cut through the air and buried themselves in the scientists’ necks, one in each, the same way Lessa and Dan had been hit.

It came from Orof.

The scientists folded to the floor, already losing the use of their bodies. The Operator turned to the girl, ready for whatever the kid did at the sight of it. The girl did nothing. She watched the two of them go down, and her face did not change at all.

Orof spoke from the floor, slowly, each word costing him.

“Don’t trust anyone who worked as a scientist in this place. Or in administration.”

“Why the advice?”

“I have my reasons.” He pulled in a breath that rattled. “And with what’s climbing those stairs, you don’t have time to save those two, anyway. So I did you a favor. Neither of them deserves it. No scientist in this place does.” His ruined mouth moved into something that might have been a smile. “Myself included.”

She held his gaze for a second, then looked at Lessa and Dan.

“Those two on the floor. They the kid’s parents?”

“No idea.” Dan was still catching his breath. “We ran into all of them trying to get out, same as us. Never had time to work out if they were family or not.”

“Then grab the kid and run.”

Dan and Lessa got their rifles up off the floor, took the girl’s hand between them, and went out the door. The Operator looked at the preacher and the rest of the cultists still kneeling, still watching her like the answer to a prayer.

I can’t have these people following me down there.

Orof’s words sat in her head, along with the faint smile he had worn as he watched her. Don’t trust any scientist.

[Living Forge activated]

The preacher saw the flames climb, and his voice cracked. “How can you do that? Please. Let us follow you. We swear it, we won’t lay a hand on you. We only want to be like you.”

She brought the flames up full, and the forge began pulling the air in, dragging it from every part of the room into the fire. The cultists felt it first, one of them swaying and going down, then another. The preacher sank slower than the rest, fighting it the whole way, his eyes on her until they closed, while behind the door Lessa and Dan watched through the window.

“Don’t leave me,” the preacher said, the words barely making it out as he went under.

When the last of them lay still on the floor, she shut the forge down. Napoleon climbed onto her shoulder, and she went out the door.

Below them the horde was louder, almost upon them now.

“Back up,” she told Dan and Lessa.

She pulled the torch tool off her belt, fired it, and ran it down the seam of the door, the metal going soft and then molten under the line of it, welding the door into its frame. Set into the door at eye level was a window with a sliding metal shutter, and she dragged it across the glass and ran the torch along that too, until there was no gap left anywhere.

That should hold them for a while.

Something heavy slammed into the door from the other side, then more of them piled against it, and somewhere below a different door gave way, torn off its frame all at once. The rest of it came through the sealed metal in pieces, the sound of feeding, teeth tearing through meat, the crack of something pulled apart, and under all of it a growl that no single creature could have made, the entire horde giving voice at once.

“I need you to take me down to level fifteen,” she said.

Lessa and Dan exchanged a look. “Yeah,” Lessa said. “Of course. Stay behind us.”

The Operator turned her back on the door and started down the stairs, and the others went with her.