“Accelerated chemotaxis?
“Naturally. The laser sculptor slices at a molecular level.”
“I assume you used fusogens, from stem cells. But how did you promote mitogenesis and angiogenesis when his codons contain the blueprint for a mouth?”
“How do you think it works, Mr. McKendrick?”
“I provided the smallest of nudges.”
“Is it reversible?”
“Yes. If you know what you are doing.”
“You control it with the patch on your wrist.”
“It is called an exocrine gland.”
“That’s also how you communicate with your people.”
“Correct.”
The Watcher glanced at the wall to his right, at a blobby protrusion. “Something like that.”
“Can the device be used medically?”
“In more ways than you can imagine. For example, I can alter your autism spectrum disorder. Make you neurotypical.”
“Why would I want that? I like who I am.”
Jake pulled his eyes away from Fabler and focused back on the Watcher, noting his nostril slits, bulbous head, tiny mouth, long fingers…
“You have arachnodactyly.”
“You are speaking of my fingers.”
Jake nodded. “Homo sapiens. Throughout our evolution, our fingers have been getting longer. Skulls larger. Jaws smaller. You’re the future of humanity.”
The Watcher smiled, revealing grey, nubby teeth. “Technically, I am a new species. Homo provectus.”
“Advanced man. Natural selection? Evolutionary mutation? Selective breeding? Transhumanism?”
The Watcher glanced at the blob on the wall again. “A bit of everything.”
“How far advanced are you? A galactic year?”
“An exceptional guess.”
“So this is earth, two hundred and fifty million years in the future.”
“A few million years sooner than that. I am curious how you figured it out.”
“We have a Dyson sphere around the sun. But you are correct, it takes decades to charge the batteries. How did you guess a cosmic year has passed?”
“The earth, and the solar system, has done a full orbit around the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. If time travel allows that the shortest distance between two points is still a straight line, the earth now is almost on top of the earth two hundred and fifty million years ago. Like a floor directly above on a spiral staircase. Four-dimensionally, of course.”
“A close guess. A closer approximation is that time actually conforms to superposition.”
“Time obeys supersymmetry? The mathematical equation must be fantastic.”
“I must admit, it is amusing speaking to a primitive such as yourself and witnessing your limited comprehension. I imagine it would be comparable to you speaking to a chimpanzee in your time, and the chimp speaking back.”
“This planet has changed a great deal.”
“I understand that, Watcher. Mammals didn’t even exist three hundred million years before my time. But this isn’t evolution. Things don’t de-evolve to previous states. I saw extinct animals. And animals out of fairy tales and legends. Was that your people and your laser scalpels?”
“Not exactly.”
“The creatures are attacking you. Killing your guards. Your species is intelligent enough to traverse spacetime, but you created your own predators? That seems foolish. And why are you spending all of this considerable energy abducting redheads from the past?”
“The novelty of this conversation is wearing off, Mr. McKendrick. You shall be placed in the gene extraction program. Follow orders, your life will be euphoric. Disobey, and you will suffer.”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to see her.”
“You are in no position to ask me anything. Maybe, if you behave for a few months, I will arrange to put you in the cell next to her.”
“Are you going to give Fabler his mouth back?”
“No. I am going to graft the head of Mr. Fabler onto the ass of a friend of his named Mr. Kadir. First, you can watch me swap his tongue and his testicles.”
“But his mouth is closed.”
“Not a problem. I’m going to make a tunnel in his body cavity.”
Even though Fabler had no mouth, Jake heard something muffled that sounded a lot like a scream.
PRESLEY ○ 2:34+pm
Presley struggled to breathe, struggled to get away, leaving a long smear of coughed-up blood on the plastiform floor as she dragged herself away from the walking anglerfish, which still blindly pursued her. Its lower jaw, crammed full of translucent, steak-knife teeth, dug up her blood trail like a backhoe, less than a meter behind her.
With ninety-five percent of her being focused on survival, the leftover five percent thought about Grim.
Presley dared a glance behind her at the snuffling, garbling fish, a pale tongue mopping up her blood.
Her eyes teared up. Not for herself.
Presley thought about how Grim would feel, finding her dead.
Her, and their child.
She crawled on.
GRIM ○ 2:34+pm
Hanging upside-down, bracing himself in the mouth of a Titanoboa by doing a handstand on its fangs so he didn’t fall out face-first like a bungee jumper without a bungee, Grim had an epiphany.
The first truly selfless thought he’d ever had.
Grim didn’t fear losing his own life. His overriding concern centered on the woman he loved.
But Grim didn’t see any escape options. His lower body, slick with boa blood and spit, slowly slid out of the snake’s mouth, inch-by-precious-inch. The stench didn’t make things any easier; it stank like day-old roadkill in the hot Wichita sun.
If the thirty-foot fall didn’t kill him, the dragon would notice and burn and/or eat him. Conversely, if Grim stayed in the snake, he’d risk getting slurped up by the dragon like a giant piece of spaghetti.
Stomach flip-flopping holding in his vomit, Grim helplessly watched as the fire-breathing red dragon lifted the snake, and him, higher, above the jungle canopy, over the top of a large tree, less than six feet below him.
Grim couldn’t see the boughs below the leaves, but he assumed the boughs existed.
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Grim didn’t hesitate. He released his hands and let himself slurp out of the snake’s
mouth, spreading out his arms as he fell through the air.
Leaves and twigs whipped at his face as he plummeted into the tree, the bright overhead light going dark in the shade, Grim’s palms slapping sticks and then connecting solidly with a thick bough—
—which pulled from his grasp.
Now falling sideways, Grim’s ribs smacked against a bough and he heard a loud CRACK!
He twisted around, now facing up, watching the branches rush past, grasping for them but always a moment too late, knowing the ground couldn’t be very far away.
And then, miraculously, a hand caught a branch and held it, refusing to let go, and Grim swung and smacked into the trunk, his legs wrapping around it.
He stared upward, his two hands empty—
—Presley’s hand clinging to the bough.
Smiling like an idiot, ignoring the pain coming from too many sources to pinpoint, Grim found a foothold and descended the last ten feet, dropping to the ground, thinking his luck couldn’t get any better when he stepped on something.
The grey’s severed arm. With the gland still on the wrist.
It made Grim laugh out loud.
The ground shook, half of the dead Titanoboa landing at Grim’s feet, spraying dirt and pebbles and leaves and blood.
Then the sky lit up with flames, and the tree Grim had just been on burned with biblical intensity.
Grim grabbed the arm and ran, unsure where the compound was, covering his head as burning debris rained down on him.
He adjusted his direction to jog around the snake
Another mini-earthquake, enough to knock Grim off balance and onto his ass. He glanced frantically around, seeing the dragon staring down at him, seeing beyond the dragon, at the—
Forty meters high and just as wide. A shambling, squirming mountain of countless black tentacles and hooked teeth and red eyes, shrouded in a foul, swirling black mist.
A giant, demon god.
It dwarfed the dragon, which didn’t seem threatened.
Rather than waiting for the dragon and Cthulhu to ro sham bo for which monster got to devour him, Grim got off his rear and scrambled to the compound, smacking the arm gland against the organoplastic wall, hoping it had enough exocrine juice left to open up a door or window.
Nothing opened.
He glanced back at the kaiju, seeing them staring back, as if waiting.
Grim turned his attention back to the wall, smearing the gland up and down.
No change.
Without thinking about it too hard, Grim brought the severed arm to his face, licking the gland.
He gagged, but kept at it, getting the gland wet and slimy.
Grim slapped it against the wall—
—and a large hole opened up.
Grim laughed, so excited to have a way back into the compound that he didn’t pull the gland away, and the opening expanded to a nine foot diameter.
Hurrying inside, Grim raised the arm to close the door, watching as the dragon and the octopus god began shuffling toward the compound
“Sinatra! Move!”
Sinatra’s blue eyes went wide, and the giant ground sloth’s face—usually plastered with a pleasant smile—became a grim countenance of panic.
Grim moved to press the arm against the wall—
—and hesitated.
“Come on, Sinatra! Get in here before you’re squashed!”
Sinatra didn’t move, even as the earth trembled as the duo approached.
“Sinatra! Move your sloth ass!”
A few more steps and the dragon would be on him. Grim watched, horrified, as the lizard’s neck began to stretch out, becoming longer and thinner.
The black tentacle demon also began to morph into a smaller, thinner version of itself.
“SINATRA, DAMMIT, RUN!”
The dark mist poured over the sloth, and Grim saw its big blue eyes disappear into the black.
Grim pressed the gland to the wall, and the opening began to close, just as a streak of grey hightailed it out of the Cthulhu fog.
Grim held the door open as Sinatra raced for him, the dragon’s head less than a meter behind and catching up fast.
Two seconds later, Sinatra sprinted through the window.
Half a second after that, the red dragon poked its snout inside and eyed Grim.
Grim reached up with the severed arm, heard a crackling sound and saw flames beginning to spurt from the dragon’s nostrils, and Sinatra scooped Grim up like a baby doll and tore ass down the corridor moments before it filled with fire.
Over the dragon roar and the WHOOSH of the conflagration, Grim heard Sinatra scream; the first time the sloth had made any sound other than YEAAAAAHH. He smelled burning fur, and Sinatra turned the corner and dropped Grim and began to roll on the floor, dousing the flames.
Grim moved in to help, then felt pain on his head and began to slap at his scalp with all three hands to put out the blaze.
From the hall, smoke. And not dragon smoke. The ucky, rotten eggs Cthulhu smoke.
Grim hurried to the juncture and pressed the gland to the wall just as a black tentacle snaked its way in. Up close, even more horrifying than at a distance. The slimy appendage had sharp yellow barbs
The hallway sealed shut, slicing off the tentacle, which flopped to the floor and continued to undulate and stink and pretty much freak Grim out.
Sinatra lumbered over, then made hash out of the thing with his two claws, chopping faster than a Japanese teppanyaki chef.
“I don’t think those things can get through the walls.”
Grim gave his full attention to Sinatra. He seemed to be okay, his injuries mostly cosmetic, giving the sloth some bald patches.
“Some Rogaine, you’ll be good as new, buddy.”
“YEAAAAAHHHH.”
“You want to hear my updated plan?”
Sinatra didn’t answer. Grim told him anyway.
“We find a weapon. I think I can use it if I keep the gland wet. Then we find the others. Then we grab one of those grey bastards and make him tell us how we can get out of here. You with me?”
Sinatra began to lick himself between the legs.
Grim couldn’t tell if Sinatra was a boy or a girl, and wasn’t even sure where exactly to look.
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“Okay, I’m going this way.” Grim pointed. “You’re more than welcome to come along. Once you’re done licking whatever you’re licking.”
Sinatra kept licking.
“I get it. If I could lick myself, I would do it all the time. But I’ve got to find one of those guns. So… I’m going. Now. Right now.”
Sinatra kept licking.
Sad to leave the sloth behind, Grim followed the green light.
THE WATCHER ○ 2:34+pm
Emotions are a liability. Especially as a leader.
Decision-making involves cold equations. Logic. Facts. Science. Math.
Guilt, worry, regret, love and hate, fear and sorrow; emotional responses that inhibit making the right call. The best call.
“Every time you swallow, Mr. Fabler, it will feel like being kicked in the gonads. And I shall make sure your tongue is attached backwards, so as it dangles between your legs, all you taste is your own anus.”
Mr. Fabler writhes on the table, eyes wide, unable to open his sealed mouth but clearly grunting through his nose, trying to scream.
The Watcher raises the sculptor.
“OMEGA 3 AND OMEGA 11 HAVE BREACHED THE COMPOUND.”
The Watcher rubs his gland and shares the message. “ALL TEAMS, CLOSE THE BREACH!”
What Happened to Lori Page 57