Monster Salvage Crew [5]

Fire And Brimstone

Sara stood at the edge of a building holding Vincent in her arms. It was a twenty meter drop to the ground. It wouldn’t hurt her to jump down, but Vincent wouldn’t stand a chance. If he broke his neck when he hit the ground or if broke his neck in her arms when she hit the ground didn’t make much of a difference.

“I can walk,” said Vincent in a weak voice. She believed him, he wasn’t hurt very badly. The only thing that had really happened to him was that she had ripped his hand off. It was going to explode and ripping it off saved his life, but it was still painful to think about.

“I’m sure you could, but I don’t think you’re fast enough,” she didn’t mean to insult him, but she was Dosed up and he wasn’t. It made all the difference in the world and if they were going to survive they would need all the speed they could get.

Shrill laughter drew her attention to the other side of the building where someone was just climbing over the edge.

“Don’t let me interrupt you newlyweds,” the man exploded into laughter again. It was devoid of joy, closer to a scream than a laugh. He had two black spikes pointing down from his jaw. The man she had knocked off the roof before had a more severe form of this same mutation. There was no doubt in Sara’s mind, this man was using a Gamma type Dose. She was Dosing on Omikron, that meant he would be stronger, faster, he would heal better and have more endurance. Her only advantage was that he didn’t know any of that.

“Right, we were just leaving anyway,” she did her best to sound calm. She wasn’t leaving because she was afraid of him, she just wanted to get help for Vincent. She told herself this over and over in the hope that she would believe it.

“But then I wouldn’t get to kill you,” he sounded childish and petulant. Whoever this man had once been he was now lost to his mutations.

Sara tried to look at the man before her and find an escape route at the same time. One of the corners of the building was ruined. It had a hole large enough for her to get inside, but it was closer to the Laughing Man than her.

“What are you waiting for then? Come and get me.”

His eyes went wild. She made eye contact. He ran at her. She stood her ground. He leapt into the air. She maintained eye contact. His eyes flicked in one direction. She dodged the other way and he narrowly missed grabbing her. He barely managed to stop himself from falling off the side of the building.

Sara pumped her legs for all she was worth with Vincent tightly clinging to her. She was almost at the crack in the building when Laughing Man grabbed her ankle. She fell over and dropped Vincent down the hole. Turning around she kicked him in the face three times in quick succession. He wasn’t injured, but let go of her in disorientation. She scrambled forward and fell into the hole after Vincent. She fell on top of him and he grunted in pain. He looked dazed, but there was no time for him to recover. She grabbed him by an arm and hauled him onto her shoulders.

Sara was running again before she knew where she was going. She jumped over a desk, she was in some kind of office. She spotted an exit sign at the same time as the slam of boots on the ground came from behind her. She ran at the door beneath the sign and splintered it with a kick. There was a wall right behind the door and she ran face first into it. With blood streaming down her face she turned and ran down a stairwell. She took the steps three at a time, with every impact Vincent grunted from up on her shoulders. The sound of footsteps echoed off of the bare concrete walls around her. It was difficult to make out in the cacophony, but she thought Laughing Man was gaining on her. Her strides became larger and larger until she jumped down an entire flight of stairs. When she landed her head slammed into a wall and she felt one of Vincent’s ribs breaking. She stumbled to her knees and could hear footsteps behind her. It sounded like it could have been one story above her, but her head was still swimming and it was hard to tell. Gathering her strength she jumped down another flight of stairs. This time she slowed her forward momentum by landing with one foot placed against the wall at chest height. She could hear several pops as a few more of Vincent’s ribs broke, she didn’t think he would survive much more of this.

“Do you still think you could walk?” she asked. Her mind was racing, trying to figure out a way for both of them to make it out alive.

“I think so,” he replied uncertainly.

“Okay, get back to the others as fast as you can,” she said, placing him on the ground as gingerly as possible.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to buy you time. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be alright.” Her voice sounded strangely confident to her ears.

Vincent opened his mouth as if to say something, but she turned and ran back up the stairs. When she was halfway back up the flight she could see Laughing Man. Small sparks of blue lighting were coming off of the two black spikes sticking out from his jaw, he was charging a Burst ray. He opened his mouth and a dull glow emanated from the back of his throat. He wasn’t charging a Burst ray, he had already charged it. Sara jumped, placing one foot on the railing and the other on the wall opposite. The thin blue line of the Burst missed her by a few centimeters. She sailed through the air until she was over his head. He tried to grab her, but she kicked down at his head. He dodged and she hit his shoulder instead. He still fell to his knees. She glanced over her shoulder. The Burst hadn’t hit Vincent either, it had fizzled out against the wall. Laughing Man wasn’t as dazed as she thought and he grabbed her by the ankle while she was still in midair. The entire stairwell spun around her until she hit the steps and lost consciousness.

Awareness trickled back in far too slowly for her liking. The first thing she became aware of were a pair of hands that held her by the sides of her head. It almost could have been a loving embrace and for a moment she genuinely believed it might be Vincent holding her. However she knew people didn’t usually pass out for more than a few seconds and there was only one person who could have realistically gotten to her. The second thing she became aware of was shrill laughter that pierced her ears. The third thing she became aware of was the rapidly approaching stair railing, it was yellow.

She got her arms in front of her face right before impact, so instead of hitting the metal bar her head hit her arms instead. The cracking of her skull was still unbelievably loud, perhaps it had already been broken. She pushed cartilage into the cracks of her skull as best she could before Laughing Man slammed her head into another surface. She tried to pry his hands off of her, but it was no use— he was simply using a stronger Dose than her. Another impact, she couldn’t heal the injury faster than it was being inflicted. She kicked him in the face, but his grip remained vicelike. With the next hit she tried to Transfer the momentum away by instinct, but it was useless. When she tried to access the secondary characteristic of her usual Dose it felt like grasping at straws. It should have felt like grasping at nothing, but there was something there. Another hit, her vision split— she thought her eyes might not be in their usual location anymore. Again she tried to access her secondary characteristic. Normally it felt like pure energy filled with vertigo, instead she only found a burning coal. She didn’t care. She grasped the pit of heat and exploded into fire.

Sara stood up, she was dazed and almost certainly concussed. Laughing Man had backed away after she caught on fire and she had fallen to the ground. She was on fire. The thought pierced through the daze like an arrow. It was the secondary characteristic of Omikron, Self Immolation, the dumbest form of Pyromancy. She laid her eyes on him and he flinched. She grabbed his head with hands made of flame. He tried to stop her, but couldn’t hold on to her form. Her fingers dug into his face. He screamed while his skin blackened and bubbled. She felt liquid dripping down from her eye sockets, the slang term for Omikron was Fire Eyes for a reason.

“Burn!” she screamed in a voice she did not recognise at all.

A gout of flame three meters tall rose from the head of Laughing Man and he stopped screaming. The Fire was everywhere. She was The Fire and The Fire was her. Joined in a conflagration that bordered on the sacred. A part of her wanted to return to normal, but the overwhelming majority of her said that this was the new normal. Simply the idea of stopping The Fire seemed sacrosanct. Perhaps it would be suicide, she was The Fire after all. This was better than her old life, none of her old worries seemed to matter anymore. No longer would she have to be afraid of her mutation. Afraid of what it might do to her and terrified of what she might do to the people around her. The little part of her said that burning was a lonely experience, but she knew better. Her old life had no friends, but her new life had The Fire.

“I know it was cold and dark and lonely,” the little part of her said with a trembling voice. “But it doesn’t have to be, you can make it better. I promise you can, there is still light and beauty in the world and if you look for it, you will find it.”

The rest of her briefly considered this, but rejected it.

“Look at what already happened after we tried,” the little part of her pleaded. “We came out here and we made friends, kind of, and we almost kissed a boy!”

“I don’t care about kissing boys,” the rest of her said, “and neither, I think, do you.”

“That’s not the point!”

“I don’t care about anything you say.”

“Please!” the little part of her screamed desperately, but the rest didn’t listen. In the cold depths of despair the little part of her made a realization, “you are not the one who gets to make decisions, I get to choose.”

“Extinguish!” Sara screamed at the top of her lungs.

The Fire briefly flared, but it gradually died out. When it was gone it left her in total darkness. Her hands were completely numb, she wasn’t sure if she still had hands or if they had simply burned up. The rest of her body was in agony. She could still hear her ragged breathing, but other than that there was only silence. She was kneeling and couldn’t force herself to stand back up. The power of her Dose was slowly leaking out of her body— it wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Vincent, are you still there?”

“Yeah,” he replied in a grunt.

“Can you come here, I need your help with something.”

Vincent audibly gasped when, presumably, he saw her.

“Listen, I know I probably look very bad, but don’t worry about it, I’m going to be alright.” She almost believed herself. “I have an emergency Delta type Dose in my back pocket and I need you to inject that into my heart.”

She felt faint and only barely registered when he reached her. He gently pushed her onto her back and said something she couldn’t make out. She was about to tell him that he still needed to get the injector out of her pocket when a sharp sting pierced her sternum. The Delta raced through her veins and everywhere that it encountered the remnants of Omikron in her body the two Doses waged war. A thousand rusty nails ripped her open from the inside and she writhed on the ground. She had no control over her body and none over the Doses either. After what felt like hours she opened her eyes and gasped. The stairwell around her was soot stained except for where it was covered in blood.

She realised with a start that she could see again. Her left arm now ended in a warped claw with four fingers. It was covered in scales and had metallic carapace along the knuckles, but that hadn’t been entirely unexpected. Her right hand was charred black and skeletal, but she could miraculously still move her thumb a little. It was a mess, but didn’t show any signs of mutation. On her left arm the mutation had not reached her shoulder which meant that she really was going to be alright. It would be a pain in the ass to cut off her left arm and regrow it, but at least she didn’t have to cut off her right hand as well.

“Why are you smiling?” asked Vincent.

“I just realised I didn’t exacerbate my mutation too badly and I didn’t develop any new ones either, that would have been a worst case scenario.”

The expression on his face froze and ice ran through her body as fear gripped her heart.

“Your eyes,” he whispered.

Sara frantically looked at her reflection on her phone screen. Her pupils were asymmetrical and roughly star shaped while her brow was covered in rust coloured scales. She sank to the floor. It was impossible to get rid of a mutation like that.

Previous: Part One, Part Four

Next: To Be Released

Fun times all around, tune in next week for Part Six!