Cold tremors of pain shook my arms, threatening to make my arms give out against the crushing pressure of the Aberrant’s embrace. The spikes on its chest that were thin and transparent like fish bones had pierced straight through my hands. I panted, straining against the monster’s frightening strength, pushing against my skewered hands to keep the rest of me from being impaled with them.
Something moved in my periphery and I saw the blood-stained flower that adorned their face. It was Chase.
Someone else spoke from outside of my vision, “You know him?”
Chase leaned closer.
I couldn’t waste a second glancing at him or I would lose the battle.
“An old friend,” Chase replied. “We had a week of fun together before I had to kill him. I wasn’t finished in the area and didn’t want him ratting me out to the authorities.
Warm blood trickled down the backs of my hands, gathering at my wrists to drip onto the carpet.
“He doesn’t look dead to me,” the other person remarked. “Yet.”
“Should have killed him, by all rights,” Chase amended. “But I have him to thank for opening my eyes a bit further that night. He’s important for the plan. He’ll fulfill my promise to you, if we play our cards right.”
My arms were shaking badly. The Aberrant was too strong. It was designed for this, its body Shaped for this purpose alone. It breathed through a toothy mouth crowded by engorged flesh. Its eyes were pinpricks in its swollen mass of a head. The tattered remains of a sweat-stained shirt still hung off its shoulders.
“If he’s so important, shouldn’t we free him?”
“Nah,” Chase patted me on the shoulder, causing me to flinch as the pain from my hands shot up my arm to the point of contact. “He isn’t going to die to this thing, are you, Nick?” He leaned in to whisper. “I’ll go slow. That’ll give you a chance to catch up. Think of it as a favour from a former friend. Let’s make sure this is fair and fun.”
He left and the room grew quiet. My ragged breathing sounded far away. What were my options? Assimilate? I was scared that a sudden memory would make me lose focus.
Flowers burst forth from the Aberrant’s eyes, shedding petals which stuck to the blood on my arms. Nell was trying to help, but the thing didn’t even flinch. I lurched a little closer. My feet skidded on the carpet, losing me precious inches.
Something heavy banged into the doorframe behind the Aberrant. My eyes slid over its shoulder. Someone was there, in the doorway. Human shaped, but it wasn’t human. The head was swollen to twice the normal size and was weighing down on the neck, causing the head to rest against the nearby wall. A second Aberrant.
I tried to be quiet. There was only so much I could do when I couldn’t cover my mouth.
It took an unsteady step forward. This Aberrant didn’t have anything resembling a face. Instead, the sphere of gray flesh had one feature, a thick conical spike protruding a short distance out of the center. Gristle clung to the tip. The support for such a heavy weapon was a neck that looked like it was from a three hundred year old human, folds of wrinkled skin pressing down on itself until it created a new surface like corrugated cardboard.
It pawed blindly, searching for the sounds that had brought it here.
I jammed a foot into the Hugger Aberrant’s crotch area, more in an attempt to brace myself than attack it. The movement only made me lose more ground. Shadows seemed to creep closer, as if the room itself was imitating the same claustrophobic hug and I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or if it was my vision darkening from trying to limit my breathing to small, quiet breaths.
The Hammerhead finally found the Hugger and rested a hand on its shoulder.
My heartbeat sounded like someone was pounding on the door to the condo, trying to be let in.
The pain was making my breath hitch. Agony crawled across my spasming muscles and a gasp escaped my lips.
The Hammerhead slowly turned to face its spike at me. Its hand moved, touching my arms, then my shoulder, then finally it laid across my face. A fingernail with a fissure running all the way from tip to nailbed sat less than an inch from my eyeball.
The head drew backwards, the Aberrant bending nearly ninety degrees, somehow not toppling backwards despite the weight.
A horrible sound, like a hundred tendons popping and snapping, and the Hammerhead struck.
A hand shot out from the darkness, deflecting the blow away from me. The Hugger’s grip slackened as the Hammerhead’s spike embedded deep into the side of its head. I pulled myself free, gasping as the act sent shockwaves of pain rattling up my arms.
Daria hoisted me upright.
“Take care, Nick. The fisherman is still around.”
The two Aberrants clawed at each other, trying to separate. Somehow, the Hugger hadn’t died from having a spike lodged deep into its cranium.
I nursed my bleeding hands. “Aberrants don’t fight other Aberrants, huh.”
The Hammerhead pulled itself free with a sickening sucking noise.
A voice spoke on the comms, “Wolves, be advised, we’ve calculated you to be close to the epicenter of the fog. If there is a source, it should be nearby.”
Daria leapt back as the Hammerhead stepped in, neck snapping forward, the head smashing into a wooden table, splintering it. She landed a powerful kick but the Hammerhead was more steady than what was logical for such a lopsided creature, it barely moved. Instead, it tried again, this time burying its head into the wall next to Daria’s head.
The Hugger, blinded by Nell’s flowers, stumbled towards the sounds, reaching out for Daria. She ducked under its searching hands and took hold of one of the spikes on its chest. With a yank and a sharp twist, the spike snapped off into Daria’s hand.
I let my armour grow out and the cracking sounds made both creatures turn their blind heads towards me. Daria took the opportunity to get behind the Hammerhead and wrap her arms around its wrinkled neck.
The Hugger bore down on me. I backed up towards the window while rooting my armour to the ground. It was a trick I had used a few times before, stepping out of the husk of my armour like a spider shedding its carapace. The Hugger leaned into it and blindly crushed the decoy to bits against its spiked chest. The lack of resistance made it stagger forward. I jumped onto the windowsill and then sprung onto its shoulders, using its own momentum and weight to drive it to the ground.
The Hugger’s spikes embedded into the carpeted floor. It struggled to rise. I’d seen how it failed to separate from the Hammerhead. It wasn’t good at pushing things away, only drawing them closer.
Daria had dispatched the Hammerhead. She’d assimilated its neck tissue, leaving it unable to lift its own massive head. The body squirmed, unable to lift the weight off of the floor. I eyed the two Aberrants uncomfortably.
“I get it. Too close to still being human,” Daria said.
“No… I mean, yeah, there’s that. I also just hate unexpected hugs.”
I leaned over the Hugger and touched its exposed leg through a hole in its ripped jeans. Skin began to slide into me. I could see blue veins shifting beneath the surface.
It’s okay. Shh. Shh. The murmuring voice came from my own chest. A mewling, wriggling thing clung to me, its skin somehow too wet and too dry at once.
I yanked my hand away from the Aberrant like I’d touched a hot stove. Nausea welled in my throat, threatening to make me spill my stomach’s contents. Looking down at the sticky blood congealing on my arms made me feel a hollow in my chest. What is this? Loss?
“You okay?” Daria asked.
I stepped away from the Aberrants. “Um, yeah. Something’s wrong with my assimilation. Can you…?”
“Nevermind them for a second, I think I found the source on my way here. Come.”
Daria led me out of the condo and down the hall. When she stopped and opened a door, a swarm of flying fish rushed out, snapping at us and each other. We moved quickly, trying to avoid getting bitten too much. When the fish cleared out, I saw that we were in a recreation room.
Something sat between a pool table and a couch. A Shaped tower, irregular and tall like a termite nest. As I watched it, a concentrated cloud of the smog belched forth from it. With fog came sickly silver-gray fish which were quickly devoured by larger ones already in the room.
“Ugh,” I said, still fighting the urge to vomit. “It’s creating its own ecosystem.”
“We found the source of the fog,” Daria spoke into her headset. “Moving to eliminate it.”
“Stop,” a voice spoke from the darkness.
We crouched, scanning for whoever was in the room with us.
“I did not expect you to escape from those disgusting things,” the voice said.
“Says the guy making gross sky piranhas,” Daria retorted.
“You were speaking to Chase before,” I said, cluing in.
“Yes,” they admitted.
“I hope you realize that he’s a monster. And I’m not talking about the Aberrants.”
“Yes,” was their weary response.
“Take it from someone who thought he was a friend, he has no qualms slitting the throats of his so-called allies.”
“Only if you stand in his way. I happen to want what he wants.”
“And what’s that?”
The voice kept changing locations, yet we hadn’t heard any footsteps. Fish guts and moving shadows floated around the expansive room.
“I want out. I wanted out when I left my home. Fleeing the hateful people who wanted me and my family dead for no other reason than our origin. We fled to Canada. I thought it was better here. It took a tragedy to shatter that delusion. How I wish I would have seen the signs before the so-called protectors of citizens beat my son to death. I realized then that the rot was everywhere. It’s in our souls. Millions of years of human evolution and it’s just layer after layer of fresh paint brushed over a cracked foundation.”
“I’m sorry about your son,” I said honestly. “But Chase is as evil as they come.”
“I know,” they said emphatically. “But I see no other path. Humanity must be corrected. Organ got me closer but only Chase is willing to do everything possible to reach that goal.”
“Organ is here?”
“Organ is everywhere. But let me ask you this: do you have an answer for me? One that would dissuade me from siding with a murderer?”
There. In the corner of my eye I spotted a shadow, gliding along the ceiling. I kept my gaze forward to not betray my focus.
“Surely you shouldn’t need to be convinced to not work with a murderer?” Daria asked.
Their voice grew angry, “And that is the reason I will stay my course. You don’t have an answer. I want a reset. A chance to rewrite the rules. If I have to kill you and a hundred more to accomplish that… I am very willing. I owe it to my family. I owe it to every policeman who sees a problem instead of a person. I owe it to those who see what I see, an unbearable truth, that humanity will never turn from drinking at the well of hate unless we force it to.”
I released the tension in my Locust Legs that I’d been quietly building up. The moment I moved, their shadow darted down and away towards an open window. A stream of black fog released into the space between us like a startled octopus.
I briefly scraped the ceiling before landing in a roll, spinning to track the Fisherman.
Daria threw a pool cue like a fishing spear. Thwack. I heard it strike home. They tumbled to the ground and I pounced on them. They didn’t even struggle.
“Call off your fucking fish!” Daria shouted, being harried by some of the larger fish in the room.
“I don’t control them. I’m part of the same system, I don’t stand above it.”
The man had jetblack hair shaved close to his head and he gestured to the holes in his own limbs that allowed him to fly like the fish.
“Look at my body. I’m not strong enough to fight back.”
“Then why did you even try?” I asked.
“Stalling.” He looked behind me at Daria. “See what is at the root when we strip away all the artifices of a human.”
I turned and saw something looming behind her.
“Daria!” I shouted.
She reacted too late. Arms clamped down on her in a bear hug. Her mouth gaped wide in shock. The Hugger jerked her into its embrace. Clothing tore as fishbone spikes erupted from her chest and stomach. The Hugger smiled with flowers in its eyes.