MEHR Chapter 55 Snippet 1 (Patreon)

Elsa wondered if this was what death was supposed to have been like all

along: time simply stops, and you're trapped in the very moment of your

death, your killer grinning at you as he lunges forward, ready to tear

you apart with his bare hands. She then wondered about all those

unfortunate souls who had died horribly – casualties of war, victims of

horrible murders... were they still frozen in time, too, forever stuck

in agony?

And then it occurred to her that she wasn't really dead, and that time,

for whatever reason, had decided to slow itself down to a crawl.

She could feel the weight of her shotgun in her hands, moving slowly as

she brought it to bear on her attacker's face. A minute. 60 seconds.

That's the eternity it took before Elsa could aim it at the monster's

mouth and pull the trigger.

A shower of sparks announced the proper flow of time once again, and the

metal skeleton flew back with a roar of frustration. A follow up point

blank shot to the chest sent it slamming against the far wall.

“Crève! Crève! CRÈVE, putain de monstre!” Elsa yelled, a cloak of fury

hiding her terror. She fired three more shots aimed at a glowing power

core in the creature's chest. None of the pellets found their way into

the heart of the machine, but large chips of black steel flew off every

time.

The creature roared, and a particle gun emerged from its mouth. Time

slowed once again, and an eruption of fire bloomed from the hidden

weapon.

Move! Elsa commanded inwardly, her body heavy like a stone.

Gradually, it began to move at an accelerated pace, and she leapt off to

the side as a stream of plasma streaked by and melted a hole in the

wall. The steel skeleton tried to keep the stream steady and on target,

but Elsa constantly evaded him, pushing her exo-frame to its limits. She

was inches from him, now, and leveled her shotgun at his chest.

Click. Beep. Hiss.  "Shotgun Overheated."

Elsa tossed her red-hot shotgun away, and dove into the machine. When time

once again resumed its normal flow, she quickly discovered how fast she

had been running when the impact sent both her and machine through the

wall, and into a pit three stories deep... with a red glow waiting for

them at the bottom.

The Snatcher had not softened the landing. If anything, it had made it

worse, and only the bracing of the light hardsuit and exo-frame kept

Elsa's bones from shattering.

“Oh good, we're here,”

said the Snatcher evilly as he grabbed

Elsa by the neck and hoisted her up. She drew her pistol and

triple-tapped the Snatcher's power core, but barely dented it –

apparently, hammerhead rounds didn't work so well against synthetics.

“You don't give up, do you?”

The Snatcher slapped the gun out of her hand, and brought Elsa to the

center of the pit, where an infernal machine was slowly pulsing and

humming.

The machine in question was a mess of long tendrils of black steel,

wrapped wrapped around an orange egg. The core's glow waxed and waned

slowly, and irregularly, and past the shell of frosted glass Elsa could

make out... something, like a serpent, slowly stirring. The tendrils

were connected to beds that arrayed the walls of the pit, biomechanical

monstrosities born in the nightmares of Giger...

“Hush, Diana...”

the Snatcher whispered softly. “I brought you

dinner...” At this, the tendrils warped themselves into the shape of a

pedestal, with the core floating above. The steel Snatcher slammed

Elsa's head against it, pinning her down with an unbrekable grip. Elsa

struggled, shoved, and cursed, but it was no use.

“I know,”

continued the mechanical monster.

“Jensen took something from you, a precious piece of you, but I'll get it back.

Our 'masters have him, and once they're done with him, that piece will

be returned to you, I promise... but first, you need to EAT.”

The Snatcher grabbed Elsa's helmet by the faceplate and squeezed, twisting

the transparent titanium visor and shattering the ceramic plating around

it, before tearing the entire thing off.

The egg sensed this sudden nakedness, and brightened, and cracked, and

from the little gaps a dozen strands of flame emerged that slowly began

to caress Elsa skull. There was no sensation, at first, but then the

immaterial tendrils began to reach in, deeper and deeper into the very

core of Elsa's being, and began to pull...

“Oh god, what's happening...” she thought, but the words began to twist

in her mind, and her body began to feel light in places, while heavy in

others. She tried to punch her attacker, but her fist — a sculpture of

animated blue light — passed through him. She reached out for the

tendrils, pulled at them, and watched in horror as they infected her

luminous flesh with veins of red fire. Reality began to twist around her

as she could feel herself leave her body, the horror of the experience

made all the worse with the sudden realization that she had been through

this before, not that long ago, while Johnathan Scholar watched.

And then, a beam of blue light pierced the core.

“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

screamed the Snatcher as he watched all that

remained of Diana Nielsen die. He looked up above to the hole that he

and the would-be Spectre made when she slammed into him at high-speed,

and beheld the killer.

It was a man in dark armour.

[h+]

The Shadow 108 fired another shot from its Dragon Carbine – finely tuned

to destroy inter-dimensional plasma entities known as reapers — into

the wrist of the Gen-3 Infiltrator endoskeletal robot that kept

Lieutenant Devereaux pinned against the Anima Extractor. The Gen-3 leapt

away from the following three-shot burst, and once 108 was certain that

Devereaux was no longer in immediate danger, it moved in to engage the

Snatcher in hand to hand combat.

Caim  followed the 108 closely, not to be outdone by some machine.

What Diablerie is this?! wondered the dishonoured Templar aloud as he fell down the pit and landed on his two feet. No matter, there's an Abomination to kill!