Daria’s eyes widened in shock. Her mouth moved but no sound came out.
My vision wavered, strengthening and blurring at intervals. Tears were forming in my eyes. The Fisherman wriggled out from under me. I let him go.
“Fuck. I…” It died in my throat. I should have noticed.
“What? What happened? Nell, why are you looking like somebody-” Neve’s voice cut out on the comms.
The Hugger was content to hold Daria there, impaled to itself, its swollen face leering over her shoulder. I reached out to do something. What? Rip her off? She’ll bleed out. I clutched at her clothes, unable to look up. You made a new friend, just to lose them.
“I-”
Daria seized my wrist. She somehow mustered the strength to drag it upwards, forcing me to raise my head. Her expression was intense, gone was the shocked look.
She mouthed slowly, deliberately, “I’m fine.”
“How?”
She shook her head slowly, then butted the Hugger in the head. It didn’t do much, she was moving gingerly, but the intent was clear.
I breathed out, trying to maintain a level head. All was not lost.
The fleshy bulb of a head felt as gross to touch as I thought it would. Inner heat lapped at my shaking fingertips. The mass of tissue responded, sliding into them, being subsumed. I braced for what inevitably would come. The rush of memories that had nearly made me vomit.
A mother, holding her child close. The warmth, a physical manifestation of love, was circular, given and received as a closed universe, shielded away from the worries and woes outside. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. We did it. It’s over. Shh. Shh.” All the pain, all the feeling of my own body turning against me, forgotten when I looked upon their face.
Oh.
The Hugger’s body diminished, its misshapen face receding until the woman’s features were more visible, although at times it was only muscle, her cheek bone poking through at one spot. The top of her skull was entirely gone, as was she. Gone, no light in the eyes, arms dangling at her sides.
Daria was ghostly pale as she held onto the spikes and ever so slowly pulled away. I supported her as she slipped the final spike out, the corpse falling to the floor. As I let Daria sink slowly to her knees, I got a good look at her wounds. There was next to no blood around the holes and inside the holes; strange spiraling muscles that cinched away the rest of the internals from the open wounds. I watched as these muscles unwound, bringing skin back into place at the surface of her body. The holes closed quite rapidly and Daria sucked in a breath, like she had been underwater for a long time.
I sat down, quietly absorbing the memories that still lingered, hugging myself. There was a lot to process. It was getting easier and easier to get lost in what I took. A second of assimilation and suddenly I seeing a different world, with different eyes. I wanted to honour the people that turned into Aberrants, but it was getting to be too much and it felt like I wasn’t in control of the power anymore.
Daria took a minute to get some colour back in her cheeks and I held back my questions, letting her recover.
Eventually she held a hand to her chest, muscles moving beneath the surface before something emerged and was deposited into her palm. She showed it to me. It was a spike of bone that she had snapped off the Hugger from our first fight with them.
“Exclusions,” she spoke raggedly. “I got lucky, hanging on to this. I have a special organ that I can put stuff inside. Then my body avoids it, a Shape that excludes certain materials from entering my body. Granted it works better when the exclusions don’t stay inside the empty spaces that my body makes.”
I let out a relieved sigh.
Daria snapped the spike in half and tossed it away. “I’m just about done being the chaser, yeah? Let’s get ahead of the Fisherman and Chase. We’ll find Seth first.”
“The rooftop then. Let’s go,” I said.
Before leaving, we assimilated the strange belching pillar that was the source of the fog and the fish. The Fisherman was nowhere to be seen to protect it. With Daria’s help we quickly absorbed the whole thing and no new memories emerged in my head.
The murky air didn’t instantly dissipate, but I expected that without a new source the fog would slowly fade away, depriving the fish of their habitat.
“We’ve dealt with the source of the fog. Now we’re heading to the third site,” I said into the headset. “Chase is headed there as well. We’ve confirmed he’s looking for Seth.”
Mac responded, “Acknowledged. We’ll head there as well. Our secondary team will stay and continue to clear out the survivors. Nell!”
I could feel Nell pulse annoyance and then satisfaction.
Before I could ponder much about it, we reached the rooftop. Pushing open the door, I took one look around and realized our mistake. The helipad was still shrouded in fog.
“Ah.”
“Shit!” Daria exclaimed. “I forgot it was covering the roof. Remember which way the third site was?”
“Do you? I was a little preoccupied back there.”
“South… south-east? No, wait… West. Yeah, I’m sure it was that way,” she said, pointing. “We’re upping the difficulty on your jumping trick.”
“I’ll do you one better,” Nell said, huffing.
I turned to see her reach the top of the stairs.
“I really wanted to beat you guys up here,” she said. “Would have been the ultimate payoff for all my endurance training.”
“Huh,” Daria said. “Could have sworn it was Neve’s footsteps I heard. Oh!”
“Daria!” Neve’s voice bounded up the stairs. She emerged fuming and marched up to Daria. “You unbelievable asshole!”
“There’s my girl!” Daria said, a grin spreading across her face.
“I nearly had a heart attack. Nell froze and wouldn’t look at me. I thought… I mean, I know what I felt, but I-” Neve gently hit Daria in the shoulder with a curled fist, lowering her head.
Daria pulled her closer by the waist. “Hey. Look at me, I’m fine. Believe what you felt. What did I tell you? That feeling is all that matters.”
Nell said nothing for a moment, before murmuring, “I’m still mad at you.”
I averted my eyes to afford them some small measure of privacy. “You were saying, Nell?”
“I know which way the third site is. I’ve gotten a grasp on what the fish feel like.”
Daria perked up. “Well? Nick and I have to get ahead of those losers.”
Nell shook her head. “We have to get ahead of those losers. All four of us.”
Daria hesitated. “Neve-”
She was silenced by a fiery glare. “No. I’m coming with.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“But how?” I asked. “I can’t jump with that many people hanging onto me.”
“We don’t have to jump,” Nell said smugly. Then she gestured above us with a flourish. Four shapes descended out of the fog. “Didn’t you wonder why you didn’t see any more big fish? I handled them.”
The shapes were sharks. They were wrapped in green vines that gripped them tightly, winding through the strange holes that let the fish have buoyancy in the mist.
Neve explained, “We got the idea after witnessing Daria’s rodeo skills. It’s a joint effort. I’ve gotten a decent grip on just affecting the fish with my power, so I’m dulling their senses. Nell steers them and I control their speed. It’s not a perfect system, but they do swim faster when they’re hungry, slower when they feel sated.”
“I love it,” Daria said, reaching out to rub the shark on the nose. It reacted, lurching forward through the air and Nell steered it in a circle.
I eyed the vines that tightened in sections, controlling how the fish could angle its body. “Fine. But me and Daria go first.”
“I go first,” Daria said. “There’s no way I’m not at the front of this rollercoaster.” She jumped onto one of the sharks, causing it to thrash about. She hooked into the holes, the vines accommodating her, giving her footholds, wrapping around her legs to hold her steady.
Neve and Nell chanted in unison, “One, two, three!”
The shark shot forward, Daria giving an excited whoop. It picked up considerable speed, exiting the fog at an upwards angle. Daria continued to holler on the comms.
“What was- Never mind, I don’t want to know,” Mac said tiredly. “We’re gathering at sea level. Please get down here.”
“No need!” Daria laughed. “I made it across!”
Then it was my turn. The sudden acceleration of the shark was frightening. I could feel Nell’s amusement. I suppose it was deserved. She seemed to say, Not so keen when you aren’t the one controlling the flight, huh?
The shark broke free from the fog and gravity took hold, dragging us towards the churning waters below. I got a view of the towering structures, wind whipping against my face. Another black orb of fog hovered directly ahead. Sure enough with our initial speed we managed to breach the edge of the black sphere. I jerked forward in my seat as the shark steered sharply.
I caught brief glimpses of Daria’s figure riding her shark through the fog as we circled the building. Soon, two more sharks joined us.
Nell maneuvered our rides through a wide broken window, into a room filled with knocked over filing cabinets.
We hopped off. Nell landed lightly and turned to say something to me, but stopped as Daria held a hand over her mouth. Soon, I could hear what she could as my senses sharpened.
A voice spoke somewhere below us. Only the deeper tones of their speech could be heard clearly, “…others won’t… exposing themselves to H.E.S.P… unfortunate timing.”
Another voice responded, “…our options? If we just leave…”
A third voice, authoritative, “No. Have courage. We knew… opposition. Just because it isn’t what we expected… We will succeed. Organ will have their weapon.”
Nell and I exchanged a look.
“I’m going to check it out,” I whispered. “We need to know who that is.”
Nell nodded and moved a shark to my side. I climbed on and it swam out of the room. The shark silently circled the building and I peered in through the windows. There. I spotted motion from inside. Flashlights bobbing up and down in the dark.
As the lights flashed past the window, I caught a glimpse of something in the reflection of the glass.
My armour erupted outwards as I turned to see the Fisherman hurtling towards me. He crashed into the side of my shark and began ripping off the vines. The shark lurched, banging into the window, eliciting a sharp crack from the glass. I unhooked my foot and tried to kick at the Fisherman. With the agility of a water-born being, he glided in a tight loop before planting a foot on my chest, kicking me off of the shark.
I crashed through the glass, rolling on the floor as flashlights lit up my position like spotlights.
“Hold fire!” a voice shouted. “It’s not a fish.”
I lifted a hand to shield my eyes as someone walked towards me. The sound of their shoes was crisp on the tile flooring.
“And what in the hell are you?”
“Not your enemy,” I said, staying very still, aware of the guns trained on me.
“You don’t even know who I am,” the man said.
His polished leather Oxfords came into view. Not the kind of shoes to wear in an emergency.
I wet my lips. “Seth Grance?”
He leaned forward. The light from the flashlights caught the strange lump on his shoulder. It shone metallic, a black orb that rested on his shoulder like a pet bird. The red iris at its center swiveled, focusing in on me.
The man was in his mid-twenties, wearing a three piece suit with the top buttons undone. It was hard to believe that someone so young was in control of so much wealth and influence.
His reluctance to answer told me enough. I was right and this billionaire was working for Organ.