I headed down towards one end of the manor, watching the rooftop in case that figure I’d seen before showed up again. Now that I was closer, I saw dark strands running from the rooftop up into the sky where the angular shapes hid inside the clouds.
It didn’t take long to catch up with the rest of the squad.
Capiz’s flying armour had returned to her body and she leaned heavily on Kay for support to walk.
The soldier with Host’s parasite was somehow still walking fine on his own, despite the brutal fight with Ark. The occasional convulsion would shudder through the red tendrils of the parasite on their back, traveling into his body where he would suppress it with clenched muscles. They caught me looking and held my gaze for a moment before I looked away. Something about his eyes made me uncomfortable, even when viewed through the tinted helmet visor.
The squad leader spoke into the radio, “Command, Beta Squad is approaching the forest. Please advise. Over.”
The trees pressed up against the corner of the property. We would have to pass through to reach the back of the manor. Peering into the deep darkness between the tall pines, I couldn’t make out any combatants, but I could hear them. Their screams bounced off of the trees and flashes of gunfire briefly illuminated patterns in the bark.
A strangely deep voice muttered something through the radio.
The squad leader frowned. “Command, can you repeat? Over.”
Seconds ticked by and no one responded.
Fir’s elks pawed the ground restlessly.
Capiz patted Kay’s shoulder and started to walk on her own.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, watching the forest.
Kay nodded jerkily and I saw how much she was trembling. Her butterflies usually took little investigatory trips away from her body even when she was doing nothing, but right now, they all clung to her like a ship in a storm. Still, her expression stayed strong.
“They really threw you off the deep end, huh,” I murmured to her.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
“So are you,” she retorted.
I looked down at my hands. Touché. The smell of Ark’s burning flesh still clung to the inside of my nose and throat. My heart wouldn’t settle down. I suspected that talking about it would either help or it might make me break down into a puddle of tears. Fifty-fifty. Maybe I could talk around it and still be put together enough to complete the mission.
“I haven’t told you about what happens when I eat people.”
“What happens?” she asked, unfazed by the statement.
“I get memories from them. And it isn’t like watching a movie of someone else’s life. It’s like I’m remembering something that happened to me. I remember places I’ve never been. I see people I’ve never met and there’s feelings attached. It’s scary. Like I might just slip into someone else’s life. Or maybe I forget which memories are mine and which ones are someone else’s, and then I slip into some strange middle ground where I’m not me but I’m not the other person either. A new stranger.”
“I guess the adage ‘you are what you eat’ has a whole new meaning for you.”
I stared at her.
Kay shrugged with her one arm. “Just trying to lighten the mood. That sounds like it sucks. But it’s also kinda cool? It fits you.”
“Huh?”
“You always try so hard to understand people. You got what you wanted, no?”
“These are people I’m hurting. Sometimes killing. I haven’t eaten a whole person though,” I clarified hurriedly, “only Aberrants.”
“It’s honorable in a sick kind of way. Remembering them after they go.”
Hearing someone else verbalize what I’d been telling myself for so long felt like she had just struck a drum in my chest.
Kay nodded. “It’s like that song lyric: The blade cuts me too. It carves a place in my heart for you.”
I started. “What?! You listen to Crowblood too?”
Kay snorted. “No. I’m more of an indie blues girl. My dad listens to it though.”
“Isn’t he a motivational speaker? Pretty grim music for a guy trying to inspire.”
“You should hear him try to sing along. I’d rank listening to your balding middle-aged rich father trying to growl edgy lyrics slightly below waterboarding.”
I looked down at my feet. “I could use some inspiration right about now. What do you think he’d say about this situation?”
Kay looked thoughtful, then pulled a face and said, “Oh fuck… shit fuck. Fuck me. Oh God what is that?! Fuck fuck… fuck. Repeat ad nauseum.”
“I’m not feeling very inspired.”
“Yeah, well, ‘believe in yourself’ rings a little hollow when you hear it a hundred times growing up.”
The radio finally buzzed again. A new voice spoke through it, cool and collected, Squad Beta. There has been a change in operators. Code E18. Confirmation phrase: ‘Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here’.”
The squad leader paused, then responded, “Understood. I repeat, Beta Squad is approaching the forest, please advise. Over.”
When he released the talk button, the hum of static seemed louder than before. Little snippets of voices were layered underneath it, too quiet to be deciphered.
“Why are we not just breaking a window to get inside?” Isipho asked.
Conrad frowned at him. “Did you not read the briefing? The entire building is reinforced, that includes bullet-proof windows. Explosives are a last resort, we don’t know where Organ is keeping the weapon or whatever other horrors they have locked up in there.”
The radio’s buzzing just kept getting louder. The squad leader smacked it a few times and then borrowed a soldier’s radio to try again to hail command.
The voices in the static were getting louder. I could make them out now.
“Traitors.”
“Find me,” another voice said in the whine of static.
“Don’t trust- Just a feeling-”
“Hurts- Wrong- Nick-”
It hit me with a jolt as I recognized that last voice. It was Tom’s.
“Sir,” a soldier spoke up. “Do we think it’s the Wire Witch? The indicators line up.”
The squad leader nodded, then addressed the group, “Fine. We expected this might happen. The Wire Witch was still at large after Sillwood. We’re getting jammed so we’re on our own for a bit. Let’s stick to the plan and keep pushing forward. Every second wasted is a moment our enemy has to prepare countermeasures.”
The team moved into the trees.
“-the garden. Remember the garden.”
It was Tom’s voice again. Was it a trick? What was going on at the command center?
I realized with a start that the noises of conflict emanating from deep within the woods had stopped. It was quiet enough to hear the soft crunch of the forest floor each time someone took a step.
Then shadows began to emerge from the darkness. Human-shaped silhouettes, gliding silently towards us.
For a moment, I believed my hallucinations were rearing their head again, until-
“Contact!” the squad leader shouted.
Capiz immediately released her second skin, the whirling pearl plates surrounding our group in a matter of seconds. Kay, Isipho, and Conrad were inside with us.
Soldiers began to draw machetes and batons to meet the approaching enemies. At first I only saw maybe ten of the shadowy figures, but more kept appearing from behind tree trunks.
A few of the soldiers managed to fire their guns despite their Shaped fingers, using equipment straps threaded over the trigger.
The visual chaos of Capiz’s barrier and the gunfire casting distorted shadows across the trees made it impossible to tell if our adversaries were getting hit. They were still getting closer, their outlines somehow not getting more defined despite their approach, as if they were made of smoke.
A soldier near the front cried out and began to claw at his helmet. Another dropped her weapon and cradled her arm.
The figures grew closer and even within the beams of our flashlights they did not manifest into people. Instead it became apparent that the shape of our opponent was an illusion. The whine of insect wings grew audible over the malfunctioning radios. A thousand insects buzzed as they flew in perfect formation, emulating people, gliding along towards us. Shiny green and black carapaces caught the light as bullets passed harmlessly through the swarms.
Capiz gave a terrified shout as they got closer.
The soldier that had been clawing at his helmet managed to remove it and insects poured out from within, a cloud of shimmering winged bugs.
A sharp pain pricked my arm. Raising it to my face, I saw a boil beginning to swell on my arm. I’d been bitten.
The swarm washed into our front line.
Fir cried out as one of her elks was covered in tiny black creatures, biting and stinging. The elk thrashed about with no real recourse, slamming into a tree trunk as it tried to shake them.
“Absorb! Absorb!” I shouted at her.
She whistled and the elk began assimilating the insects that crawled across its hide. I noticed boils starting to form on Fir’s skin. Another was swelling on Isipho’s neck. He scratched at it and it burst, an insect flying free.
“Fall back!”
It was too late. We’d all gotten turned around and now with the insects whirring all around us in a dark cloud there was no way to tell where we’d come from.
“Fir!” I called out, but she was too distracted by the suffering of her animals to care.
Kay cried out as an insect popped free of her skin.
I could feel them growing on me as well, even through my armour. I grabbed Capiz’s shoulder.
“Drop the shield! It isn’t helping!”
Capiz shook her head in fear.
“Now! Or we all die!”
She complied, pulling the white shards back into her skin.
I dashed over to Fir where she was desperately trying to swat insects off of her elk.
“Stop their assimilation, we need to carry people out of here!”
Fir glared at me through teary eyes. But she whistled and the elks knelt down. Capiz helped Kay and another injured soldier onto one of them. Fir rode the other, sprinting away through the woods. Capiz barely got on the final elk herself before it took off after Fir.
One of our allies nearby was curled into a fetal position, hands over his head, skin riddled with bug bites. His tall frame made it clear it was Conrad. I ran over to him and took his arm. He tried pulling away, swiping at me and shouting something I couldn’t understand over the gunfire and the screams.
I overpowered him and picked him up while forming Locust Legs. Without assimilation to protect me, my face immediately started to swell up from the constant bug bites. I needed to get out, now.
So I leapt for the roof.
Cool air rushed past us and the relief was almost immediate. No new bugs burst free from my skin. We were outside the range of whatever was inside of those woods.
I landed, staggering to regain my footing under the uneven weight of Conrad. He was muttering to himself.
“Convenient timing. Much too convenient…”
There was a more pressing matter at hand than calming him down.
A man watched us from the other side of the rooftop. Red threads were attached to his wrists that trailed up into the sky, as if he was a marionette. He viewed us with shock for a moment, before his eyes narrowed. One of his fingers curled and the threads quivered.
A whistling sound grew louder overhead. Then something hit me from the side, throwing me onto my back. I struggled to rise while still holding onto the flailing Conrad.
Daria’s red hair whipped around in the wind as she grinned at me. “Sorry, Nick. I’m a little too preoccupied to be entertaining you and your friend.”
The whistling sound grew louder again and something moved so fast I could only perceive it as a blur as it sliced straight through Daria, passing through her like she too was made of insects.
A ribbon of cut fabric from her shirt fell away and she wagged her finger at the man. “Exclusion, dear. Now come here and show me that pretty face.”
The man’s eyes shifted back to me and he silently moved his fingers and wrist as he maneuvered his Shape.
Daria sighed as she tracked the Shape’s approach through the sky. “Nick, as much as I’d love to sweep you up in my arms to add to the chain, I need you and your friend to get lost.”
She leaned over and shoved me, just as the Shape struck, cutting deep into the stone. The rooftop disappeared from view as I toppled over the side.
I turned midair and spotted the ground, trying to soften the landing as much as possible for Conrad. Daria had kicked me off the north side, just at the point where the forest treeline met the manor’s north face.
The moment we had landed, Conrad pushed himself away from me and I let him go.
“Fucking idiots. All of them. A break in communication right as we are being ambushed? You think you’re being clever? This is total betrayal.”
I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or himself, but I responded anyway, “We don’t know that yet. That was definitely a Witch in those woods. They could probably tell where we were the moment we stepped into their range.”
The radio chatter filtered back into my consciousness as it picked up in volume.
“Infiltration- deep enough to-”
“-don’t have much time before they find where I’m broadcasting from.” Tom’s voice was urgent and low. “The garden, Nick. Find a way in.”
Conrad gripped me, forcing me to turn and look.
Fir and one of her elks walked towards us. Capiz and Kay weren’t with her.
There was a spatter of blood drops across her face, forcing her to keep one eye closed. The remaining one was bloodshot and wide. She scratched at the welts left behind by the insects. I couldn’t read her expression, but it wasn’t one of relief to be out of the forest.
My eyes were slowly drawn up to the antlers of the elk. A H.E.S.P. soldier was skewered there, blood dripping down and soaking into the fur on the elk’s face. Her helmet had fallen free and I recognized her. She was one of our squad mates.