Chapter 88: The Monster Club (Patreon)

Hey guys,

Just want to say thanks. For real. I don't say it enough but your support is the reason I get to keep doing this, and it means a lot.

Quick update on where we're at. The last few chapters have been me getting everyone ready, geared up, pieces on the board, all of that. We're heading into the big fight that closes out this arc, and yeah, Book 2 is almost done. It's getting good.

Also, heads up. Later tonight or sometime tomorrow I'm gonna drop an announcement just for you guys. Not putting this one on Royal Road, only here for my Patrons. It's something extra I've been putting together just for the people who've had my back. So keep an eye out.

Anyway. Thank you. Means the world.

“I can’t help the roar, or the way I look when the stingers come out.” Catherine kept her gaze down. “Please forgive me for that. I’ve practiced a lot, so it won’t hurt you. I promise.”

Lessa froze for a moment, merely observing the girl. When she finally spoke, her voice was gentle. “So that’s what you sound like.”

It was the first time Catherine had spoken to either of them. The girl’s stingers were still out, her eyes still yellow, but she was watching Lessa as someone watches a door they’re afraid to open.

Lessa looked at Dan. Something passed between them, and both of them smiled at her at once. “We’re ready,” Lessa said.

“Shit, Catherine, don’t do anything. Give me a second.” The Operator was already moving, cutting across the cavern toward the medical container.

She called back over her shoulder, the racket of her digging through the supplies carrying out into the open. “Get your clothes all the way off. And do yourselves a favor, once the mutation starts, don’t look at each other. What you’re about to go through isn’t something you want to watch on someone you love.”

Dan and Lessa turned their backs to each other and stripped down to their underwear. It took the Operator another minute, and then her footsteps returned across the stone, a bag of syringes and vials swinging from one hand.

“Alright. Let me walk you through it before the surgery.”

Dan looked up and asked, “Surgery? What kind of surgery?”

“Figure of speech. Ignore me.” She crouched and set the bag down. “Here’s the thing. What happened to me the day you met me is about to happen to you. The skin, all of it. You already watched it once, so I’m not going to stand here and describe it.”

“But it didn’t hurt you.” Lessa stepped back a little. “You were laughing the whole time. Is that what this is?”

“No.” The Operator stopped. She looked at Catherine, her face asking the question she couldn’t voice, and Catherine looked back at her with nothing to offer. “Okay. Cat’s compounds are cleaner than the ones I put in myself. Yours is going to hit right away. She’s giving you two formulas at once, not one. And it’s going to hurt. A lot.”

Lessa’s voice lowered. “But it didn’t hurt you.”

“It didn’t harm me for reasons I won’t explain now,” she said, crouching by the bag and grabbing vials. “I’ve brought nearly a pharmacy’s worth of supplies, and a doctor in my mind has guided me on dosing. You won’t experience the worst part. That’s a promise.” She looked up. “Any questions? That’s the briefest way I can put it.”

Neither of them answered. They simply looked at the Operator, then at Catherine, likely in shock, recalling how her skin had peeled away from her body and everything that changed in her.

“I’ll take the silence as a yes.”

She filled two large syringes with the medication, held one up to the light to remove air, while Dan and Lessa remained silent. “Okay. Each of you, show me a butt cheek. And don’t worry, neither of you attracts me physically. I’m only doing this for your own good.”

That drew an almost-laugh from Dan. She approached each of them, inserted the needle, and after a minute, she saw it take effect. The fear drained from their expressions, shoulders relaxing, and the intense terror of the moment gradually mellowed into a slow, heavy calm.

“Cat. Whenever you’re ready.”

Catherine’s stingers reemerged. She roared again, but it lacked the same effect because they were too deep to flinch. She first targeted Lessa; each strike was quick, in and out, and with the stinger’s tip changing color to match the injected compound. After finishing with Lessa, Catherine moved to Dan, repeating the careful, precise process as if handling something fragile.

Operator, their scars.

The Operator crouched and turned Lessa’s forearm over. The scar was already filling, the color rising inside it from the elbow toward the wrist. Probably over eighty percent. “It’s one thing to go through it myself. Watching it happen to someone else is something else entirely.”

She stood, picked up Catherine’s shirt from the floor, and held it out to her. The girl took it, her stingers folding back.

“Come on. Let’s sit down while it works.” The Operator began to lower herself against the container wall, and that was when she caught it. Dan and Lessa, loose and heavy from the drugs, had turned toward each other, staring with the glazed, sleepy look of two people too out of it to remember the warning she had given them before.

The scars on their arms were nearly complete.

“Shit.” She was up and moving before she finished the word. She reached Dan first, grabbed him by the shoulders, and turned him around. “If these two watch each other go through this, that’s the end of the love story. Cat, help me. Get Lessa turned around.”

The final sheets of shed skin curled on the floor. Dan leaned against the container, his head resting against the metal, blinking slowly at nothing. Lessa sat nearby in a similar state, her eyes half-open, one hand fidgeting over her forearm as if verifying it was still hers.

“…s’done?” Dan said.

“It’s done.” The Operator crouched in front of them. “How are you feeling?”

Lessa slowly looked toward the sound, slightly delayed. “Everything’s… distant.” Her hand continued moving along her arm. “As if I’m watching from the back of the room.”

“That’s the drugs. It wears off.” The Operator glanced at both of them, observing their renewed skin color and how they hadn’t injured themselves during the process. “You did well, both of you. Better than I did, honestly. I just spent my first time laughing like an idiot.”

Catherine stepped out of the medical container with a stack of blankets bunched against her chest. She crossed to Lessa first, settling one over her shoulders, then went to Dan and did the same, pulling it up around him and tucking the edge in without a word. Dan caught her wrist, a loose, barely a grip. “…thanks, kid.”

Catherine’s body tensed for a moment, then she nodded once, took a step back, and a hint of relief appeared on her face, easing from the tension since she met them again.

The Operator pushed herself and crossed to the far corner. When she came back, she carried a bag over her shoulder, made of pale, lightweight spider silk, the shape of what was inside pressing against the fine fabric. She placed it in front of them and crouched down again, working on the knot at the top.

“The drugs are still in your system, so this won’t hit quite right. That’s okay. You’ll understand it later.” She untied the knot and opened the bag. “I made you something. I had plenty of time.”

She reached in and retrieved the first one out. A sword, its blade sliding smoothly out of the silk, long and simple with no marks anywhere. She placed it across her knees and then pulled out the second. “I made one for each of you. It took me months. The forge I have isn’t big enough.”

Dan looked at the blade, then at her. “You’re giving us swords?”

“For what you are now, it’s the best thing you can carry.” She turned her hand over and flexed it. “You’re strong now, stronger than you know. But your bones didn’t change with the rest of you. Throw a real punch, and you’ll break your own hand before you break anything. There’s a fix, but not here, not today.”

“So instead of…” Dan started, slowly.

“So instead, that.” She set the sword’s grip in his hand and closed his fingers around it. “A blade doesn’t care what your hand can take. It only cares how hard you swing it. And you can swing harder than anything you’re going to meet up there. Put that kind of strength behind an edge, and it goes through. That’s the whole point.”

Dan held the sword as if he wasn’t sure it belonged to him. Nobody said a word.

The Operator stood up. “Alright, enough sitting around.” She glanced at both of them, then at Catherine, who was leaning against the wall. “Get dressed. Whatever still fits.”

It took a while. The drugs still left Dan and Lessa slow, fingers missing buttons, a hand reaching for a sleeve and sliding past it. The Operator didn’t push them.

When they were up, swaying but still up, she nodded toward the blades. “Take them. You carry your own from here.”

Dan picked his up. Lessa did the same. The weight seemed to give them something to stand on, and both of them steadied.

The Operator crossed to the corner and pulled her pack off the floor, the old one, worn pale at the seams. She swung it onto her back, then dragged the chest strap tight and looked up into the dark overhead. “Napoleon. We’re leaving.”

He arrived quickly. She heard him first, then felt his weight on her shoulder, pressed against her neck. His head was down, turned away, silent. “Hey,” she whispered softly, only for him. “It’s done. You can stop now.”

He didn’t move.

She raised her hand and rested it on him. “You know why I did it, so don’t be sad.” Her thumb brushed the edge of his chassis. “There will be more opportunities to help me, a hundred of them. There wouldn’t be any if I lost you today.”

He held his position a moment longer. Then his head came down against her jaw.

“Yeah,” she exhaled. “There you go.”

She gave him another second, then turned to the three of them and nodded toward the control room. “Stay close. Don’t fall behind.” She started walking. “We’re not coming back here.”

Catherine stopped walking. Her head came up, a low sound forming in her throat and building into a roar, her eyes glowing yellow.

Lessa paused suddenly. “What’s going on with her?”

“Nothing bad. Give her a second.” The Operator watched the girl, the way her head turned slowly, searching. “The Kanryx are all tied together. One mind, many bodies, each still its own. She’s part of that. If any of them are close, she can reach them.”

Catherine’s roar climbed, then broke apart. Her head kept turning, slower now, and the yellow in her eyes flickered. She tried again, the sound thinner this time, reaching for something that didn’t reach back. Her shoulders relaxed, the yellow faded from her eyes, and she stood there, gazing into the dark ahead as if it had fallen silent for her.

“Hey.” The Operator rested a hand on the back of the girl’s neck. “It’s fine. It just means they’re not nearby. We keep looking.”

The Operator held her there for a moment, then turned toward the pod container.

“Give me a minute.”

She crossed to it and started working. She pushed the pods aside, pulled the compound lines loose, and worked the connections free one by one until the generator came clear. It took a while. She backed away, clutching it to her chest, with cables draped over one arm.

“With this and the elevator,” she said, “we get the hell out of here.”