Unity

by Carl Stubblefield

  She turned and rushed to meet the threat. As she began to run, nearby plants pushed nourishment into her feet, and she grew with each step. Run, forest, run! she thought as she passed a tree that had fallen, revealing a ball of upturned gnarled roots. She grabbed the trunk, wielding it like a cudgel as she caught the first glimpse of the gorillemur.

  It had grown in size as more creatures had joined the conglomeration, and was now easily thirty feet tall and getting larger. Yuki yanked the tree free, shook off the dirt clumped in its roots, and swung the trunk, hitting the beast solidly in the side of its torso.

  Lemurs exploded away, flung like LEGOs in all different directions. Yuki had left herself over-extended with the swing and a powerful backhand hit her and bent her over. Instead of flying away, her feet intertwined with the underlying root system. Rolling with the blow, she leaned back and was able to rebound to her upright posture in a way that would have made gymnasts and limbo-aficionados gasp.

  Dropping the tree, she began to punch the creature, pushing more thorns out along her abnormally large fists and forearms as they broke off and embedded in the individual creatures. She found she could secrete all sorts of nasty poisons along their length, the variety overwhelming. Without time to choose, she just made a cocktail of the worst and kept attacking. Each hole she punched into the creature was quickly sealed with other animals who crawled to fill the gap underneath.

  In frustration, the gorillemur bellowed again, calling to more lemurs who leapt down from the treetops, adding to the mass. With each punch, Yuki started activating Compost to break down the dead bodies of lemurs. They crumbled to a nasty paste. As the spatter began to hit the ground, she felt a surge of energy as the forest metabolized the nutrients and gave them back to her. With this assistance, she was able to grow in proportion with the monster, but she was still dwarfed by its size.

  Unable to land any attacks, the gorillemur pulled itself up a nearby tree to regroup. Its bulk began to undulate and swell. Soon it would be large enough to overpower her if she did nothing. As Yuki pursued, she felt a massive drop in her power as her feet left the nourishing comfort of the soft soil. The fact that her growth had stopped as she lost her connection to the ground was not lost on the animals who began a taunting yipping noise as it jumped from tree to tree, retreating upward.

  With a thought, she sent some vines to grab the creature to secure it. Briefly the monster was bound, but abandoning those lemurs, it melted out of the vine’s grasp and was off to another limb. The further from the forest floor, the more difficult it was to manipulate the vines as they all needed to be rooted and they became ungainly the higher up they had to extend.

  Seizing upon some of the gifted knowledge, she expelled a cloud of thorns like shotgun scatter, but the gorillemur was too agile. It easily dodged and twisted out of the few shots she managed.

  She pulled herself after the creature, hearing the other plants cheer her efforts. They were excited, finally having an agent to actively defend them. Not wanting to let them down, Yuki pushed forward, looking down as she perched atop another thick branch. She wasn’t afraid of falling from this height, but felt something probably best described as homesickness as she distanced herself from the comforting and nourishing safety of the ground.

  More mocking yips baited her to follow, and she reluctantly began climbing again. Its ascent brought it in the direct path of more of the infernal creatures and they replenished those that were lost and then began building up, forming new layers upon layers. It’s arms also grew, and its enhanced reach allowed it to climb even faster.

  The gap between Yuki and it began to grow. As it moved from tree to tree, finding larger ones to climb as it fled, Yuki had to get creative and lash out with vines, swinging like Tarzan to keep up with the creature. It was not as easy as the holovids made it look, and she got hung up on branches as there were no clear paths as she scrambled to stay close to the beast.

  There was a large crack and the gorillemur shifted to stay in the trees. Looking at the large treetop that had splintered in its paw, it threw it at Yuki. The monster was so heavy now that the trees couldn’t support its weight anymore. Its demeanor changed from one of flight to fight as it began breaking off branches and limbs, throwing them recklessly in her direction without any real aim. A couple times, she almost lost her footing as the limb collided with the tree she was holding onto and the jolt of impact almost made her lose her grasp. She mentally grew her fingers longer, gaining a better grip.

  Another branch distracted her and an inhumanly long arm flicked like a whip, snatching her while she was distracted. Claws dug into her bark skin and pressed in like ticks. She was slowly pried free from her perch and pulled across the clearing created by the broken trees. The gorillemur clenched tightly, but it did not have the strength of a creature that size actually would have.

  Still, it was strong enough that she couldn’t wiggle free, and her arms were tightly pressed to her sides. The lemurs had positioned themselves so that most of her thorns were hitting their hard claws and could not poke their soft, furry bodies. Occasionally, one would get poked and fall away but another would quickly take its place.

  It brought her towards its gaping maw; the coordination of the flexing claws and tiny teeth deeper inside the creature’s mouth was almost hypnotic in its pattern. She was going to be in the wood-chipper soon if she didn’t think of something.

  Always able to think on her feet, Yuki prepared her last gambit. She would probably need to be close for maximum effect but timing was everything. She hyperventilated, taking multiple small breaths, accelerating her breath. The creature mistook this for panic and was excited by her apparent fear, its anticipation escalating.

  When she was as close as she dared, she activated Spore and breathed out a noxious orange cloud. She had put everything she could muster into it; pollen, spores, toxins and poisons. It belched out in a plume, directly hitting the mass of creatures full in the mouth, and enveloped its entire head. And it just kept coming, like her Uncle Tommy’s post-Thanksgiving burps or a high-note held by an opera star, the ochre colored particles shot out with projectile-vomit force. The closest lemurs were most affected, trembling and losing cohesion with their brothers, falling down to the forest floor below.

  The plume guttered out and ended, and Yuki could tell that the effort had cost her some of her mass; she had shrunk as the large claw compressed her now more-hollow insides to a smaller diameter. The head was entirely gone, a large section eroded away like a melted snow-cone. More lemurs began rebuilding the head from below.

  While they did so, she was held still, as if without its faux head, it couldn’t plan its attack. The chin and mouth formed again and the creature began to gain some of its thought capacity because it pushed Yuki away from itself, placing her in the center of the clearing where she couldn’t gas it again. And if she attacked the arm holding her, there would be a long fall if she couldn’t catch herself.

  Angry eyebrows formed at last, and an eerie rictus spread across the gorillemur’s face as the last of its head began to form, completing the monstrosity.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  I Want to Break Free

  Yuki began to panic as options seemed to be dwindling away. The claustrophobic grip of the large hand wasn’t helping her anxiety either. In desperation, she pushed out thorns and poisons, but the ones gripping her had dug in their claws and shriveled in on themselves into the fetal position. Other lemurs gripped tightly to them and her spines and oozing poison did not affect them.

  She even tried forcing a couple large, two-foot spikes. That speared a couple but she found that she could only force out the longer spikes from eight areas, and the animals quickly learned to stay out of the path of the spikes. It had learned its lesson, and kept her at arm’s length in the center of the clearing, which for this creature was a good hundred and fifty feet at this point.

  More lemurs began crawling down the extended arm, forming a large ball around her, j
ust far enough to be out of reach. Their musky, wet scent was unpleasant but she didn’t feel the typical nausea in her current form.

  As they built up around her, more and more light was blocked from her and, as it grew darker, the effect was soporific. Like the nappy feeling after a carb crash, she just wanted to rest. Part of her mind screamed for her to do something. She had to fight her nature that just wanted to hibernate in the darkness. She could feel herself pulling inward despite her efforts to struggle.

  No! She couldn’t let this happen. The fear of the certain backlash feedback made her panic even more, but her avatar was acting on instinct. Curling up into a ball, her essence pulled inward against her wishes. Ever hardening layers as she retreated to a small condensed core. A tiny green core in a woody jawbreaker.

  As she shrunk, her awareness also blurred at the edges. She could perceive less and less of the world around her, and after a dozen layers, the dead woody bark gave no feedback to the sharp claws of the lemurs. Her anxiety skyrocketed as she was encased with more and more layers. The helplessness of being buried alive was worse than she had ever imagined. Trapped. She wiggled as she tried to resist. She had felt this feeling too many times in her real life. Confined and bound. No!

  She couldn’t log off either, the option grayed out on her display due to being in active combat. Right when the feelings of panic had reached a crescendo, she was kicked from the system. There was the briefest moment of relief as she was finally free as everything burst into a blinding light. Then a grenade of molten pain exploded in her brain.

  Darik covered his head as dirt began to fall. Darkness engulfed him as the exit collapsed inward. The only option was to go down. He made as small of a portal as he dared and blindly dove to the bottom of the tunnel. Searing pain burned his foot as he got the angle wrong. He rolled out onto the ground and clutched his leg. A thin wisp of smoke emanated from the severed boot. A quick peek showed the bones of his smallest two toes visible through the neat slice.

  He lifted his head just in time to see Razor’s interlaced fists catch him under the jaw. He was crouched low, like he was bumping a volleyball. Darik flew atop the small mound of dirt he had expelled, seeing Razor leaning back for some reason.

  Which became clear when a huge hammer crashed into Darik’s chest, slamming him down into the pile of loose dirt. A sickening tearing sound, accompanied with a pop and sharp pain when he gasped. Breathing became a struggle, and he saw lumps along his chest where his ribs had separated.

  Gasping there like a fish out of water, Razor came and stood at his feet, hands on his hips. A wide grin spread on his face as he watched Darik suffer. As time seemed to slow, he noticed how bad his teeth were. His gums had receded and the teeth were already moving into a grotesque arrangement.

  He cracked his knuckles and rubbed his hands in front of him, eager as a child eating his Halloween loot. Darik had always had a high pain tolerance, but the inability to breathe normally was making it hard to concentrate. He had to fight the urge to hyperventilate and pull in slow pained breaths. The others stood around his prone form, some with arms folded smugly in front of them others leaning forward, hands on their knees. Razor raised one leg up high, ready to stomp Darik right in the chest.

  This is going to hurt…

  Gus was floating above his naked body lying on the metal table. The pain was gone. At long last, he felt… nothing. He had heard of stories like this before people passed on.

  Am I dead?

  He moved around but felt a tension as he tried to move too far from his body. A series of seven tethers attached to his spine at various levels connected to his body, invisible until he began to pull on them. The harder he tried to pull away, the tighter and thicker they became. Relaxing, he observed himself lying there and focused on the anchor points.

  As he relaxed more, he began to see tiny channels extending away from each of the crossroads. Occasionally, there was a slight movement, but nothing was moving. It reminded Gus of a traffic jam. The biggest congestion was around the top three centers, especially the top node. No movement was visible here, where the tiny conduits were completely clogged.

  There was an intermittent surge as whatever was inside the conduits tried to bypass the blockage. Gus recognized the flare was perfectly synced with the familiar pulse rhythm of his headaches. While he could not feel them, their echoes were still all too clear, like a canyon carved into being by a persistent river over a millennium.

  Gus looked at the lowest node, for lack of a better term. It was the least clogged in comparison and even though he was ‘detached,’ he could still create a pressure by flexing. It squished like Jell-O in a balloon. As the material in the lower channel started to move, Gus began to see individual particles, like small globules of oil, begin to roll through the pathways. There was sluggish movement as his pressure caused the gelatinous mass to move.

  Four pathways that extended from the node, two per leg, and they fanned out like petals from a flower. It became a struggle to move the thick, sludge-like material. Gus squeezed like he was trying to eke out the last bit of toothpaste in a tube. He coaxed it along the path, finding that it only moved in one direction. Attempts to squish in the opposite direction caused it to bulge and ball up. Fearing the tube would burst, he massaged the material along the path. It appeared a dark black, but began to lighten as it quivered and started to move.

  He could only exert the pressure for a little while before he exhausted himself and had to rest. The sensation reminded Gus of taking a large gasp after holding your breath for a long time, except that he was incorporeal and didn’t have to breathe at all. When he felt relaxed again, he exerted more tension and the sludge began to flow again.

  He went through multiple cycles of this. Push, rest. Push again. With time, he began to gain a little momentum and as the material began to move, it transitioned from a thick, doughy consistency to something closer to syrup. The color faded as it began to separate, making it more apparent that the channels themselves were a red color and the contents must be blue since they gave a deep purple color as the little blobs rolled through the channels like tiny bits of wax in a lava lamp.

  Once the obstructions were removed, the material clarified further, and each loop became lighter and lighter until it glowed a radiant red color. It began to burn with the radiant hue of an illuminated ruby and it was hard to pull his eyes away. Faster and faster the liquid moved along the pathway, flowing like a river.

  As it picked up momentum, the tiny blobs within the channel began to melt and disappear. As it became totally liquid, it moved even quicker, occasionally sparking crimson pops as it flowed through the channels. It reminded Gus of a Van de Graaff generator he had seen in school, the motion generating some kind of a charge.

  The carmine color was captivating, and it was hard to pull his attention off of it. The mesmerizing motion through the channels and the pattern it moved in tickled at the back of his memory. Something he had seen before, like a rune or magic symbol of some sort. But where? A video game, or piece of art from a tabletop RPG campaign?

  He was unsure how long he stared there. Time in this ghostly existence seemed fuzzy. Suddenly, Mengele was there, standing over him. He couldn’t make out the words, they sounded warbled like he was speaking underwater. He was obviously flustered as he scanned Gus from top to bottom. Was he frustrated that he had lost his prey, letting Gus die?

  Mengele placed an ebony hand over Gus’ chest and, with a snap, he was yanked back into his body.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Red Rain

  Words began to resolve from an incoherent mumble to sharp focus. Mengele was muttering to himself.

  “Was this a trick all along? There’s no way he could have reached this level that quickly. Two years to activate my base and this upstart manages it in one day? The master must be testing me…”

  Gus’ eyes flew open as he snapped back to himself and he took in a large gasp. His throat felt coated and dusty like
the inside of a heating duct. A coughing spasm overtook him, and he had to spit out a tarry, thick sputum. Secured as he was, it fell back against his chin and slid like a slug down the side of his neck.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the glint of a scalpel. Tensing, he braced himself, feeling a flicker of red and a surge of power. There were a couple of snaps as red arcs crackled along his back and the metal table. Instead of the split-second delay where he felt nothing before the scalpel dug deep and pain burned, all Gus heard was a tiny *tink*.

  Mengele growled and grabbed something else from the table by him. By the way it rasped against his skin, he knew it to be the bone saw. Instead of taking a bite into his tissue, it skidded and bounced along the top of his arm. A thrum that Gus hadn’t noticed was there in the background, revved up like an engine shifting gears. His back began to tingle a bit as the intensity of the sparks along his back and legs intensified. A ghostly mist formed at the edges of his field of vision, fading in and out of perception.

  Mengele lunged for the IV and crushed a small white contraption on the tube that kept fluid falling into a small reservoir in measured drops. Milky liquid raced to his arm. Instead of the feeling of angry fire ants crawling through his veins, there was… nothing. Except the shifting of gears again as the thrum resonated at an even higher pitch.