Assault or Attrition

by Blake Northcott

  “I have missed the shit out of you, kitty!” Brynja giggled as the creature’s tongue lapped her cheek, leaving a thick stream of saliva behind.

  A lion with dragon wings and the tail of a scorpion was an unnerving sight, even when it was a more reasonable size; the blue manticore, last I saw it, was no larger than a pit bull. Now, pinning Brynja to the ground with its paws, it was roughly the size of a compact car.

  During Arena Mode, Kenneth Livitski had used his ability to manifest objects out of pure blue energy to create this: a living replica of the feared mythical creature. Even after Kenneth had been stabbed and sent into a coma, his creation persisted. ‘Melvin’ (the unfortunate name that Brynja had stuck him with) helped us survive the games, and when we neared the end he’d raced into an alley in pursuit of an attacker, never to be seen again.

  For the months following Arena Mode, holo-forums were ablaze with speculation about Melvin. Was the manticore being controlled by Kenneth all along, even after he’d been eliminated from the tournament? Or had the creature somehow become sentient, able to act independently and make its own decisions? That ‘sentient being’ hypothesis was a popular one, but didn’t seem feasible; all of The Living Eye’s creations had been merely puppets, controlled by his intentions.

  Brynja had recently regained her telepathic abilities, which meant she was still a superhuman; she could have manifested the creature herself without knowing it. It wasn’t unprecedented for superhumans with existing powers to spontaneously gain new ones, although occurrences were extremely rare.

  “Well this is a nice surprise,” Brynja said, getting back to her feet. She ran her hands along Melvin’s white mane, eliciting a low rumbling purr. She glanced over her shoulder and cracked a smile, noting that I’d taken several steps backward. “Still not a cat person, huh?”

  ***

  We searched the expansive courtyard while Melvin curled into a ball under a cherry blossom tree, closing his eyes for a midday nap.

  Unlike the relatively barren landscape of the Japanese-themed level, the interior of the castle was recreated with painstaking detail. The courtyard was immense. Intricate stone paths wove through gardens, lined with sculpted hedges and multicolored flowers. Arched wooden walkways bridged the gap over running water, where brilliant copper fish circled beneath. And time-worn staircases (or at least they were designed to look time-worn, since this castle had been built fairly recently) twisted in every direction, leading to even more gardens, trees and sculptures. It was endless. If the pathway to the next level was hidden somewhere within this labyrinth it could be virtually anywhere, and by the time we found it we’d no doubt have the Red Army – or a superhuman assassin – knocking on the front door.

  An hour drifted by as our search persisted.

  Then another.

  And then I heard the sound of crashing rocks behind a wall of hedges. Melvin, who was napping nearby, curiously lifted his head. His fuzzy blue ears perked up, rotating towards the direction of the disturbance.

  I followed a pathway around the garden to find Brynja kicking a short statue, which had toppled over and broken into several pieces when it hit a tile. She cursed and stomped her feet, as she was prone to doing when she was frustrated.

  “You wanna talk about it?” I said with a pat on the shoulder.

  “Talk about what.”

  “About the garden gnome you just kicked the shit out of,” I said with a smile. “You know what.”

  Brynja studied me for a moment as if she were trying to solve a puzzle. “I don’t know how you can be so goddamned optimistic,” she said flatly.

  “I’m not,” I replied, “Pessimism is like a religion to me, along with procrastination. I was actually going to get that engraved on a plaque so I could hang it in my office...I’ll get to it eventually.”

  Brynja’s arms dangled loosely at her sides while she stared at me listlessly. At least that’s how I read it at first glance; frustration, fatigue – maybe she was just hungry. I couldn’t be sure. Along with my failing short-term memory, the ability to discern what the opposite sex was thinking had always been my kryptonite.

  The only logical reason for her behavior (at least the only one I could think of at the moment) was that Brynja was keeping something else from me – something that she’d been concealing since the castle gates swung open. The high-tech lie detector test had forced her to reveal that she was still in possession of her superpowers, though I could tell there was more.

  “You know, I’m going to find out eventually,” I said matter-of-factly. “So you might as well tell me now.”

  “Truth always comes out, doesn’t it.” She took a deep breath and placed her hands on her hips, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. “I just...I have to tell you something else. It’s about Argentina.”

  Was there a single thought in my head that was private anymore? Having a psychic around had its uses, but the considerable downside was already starting to outweigh the benefits. I threw my arms apart and shouted, much louder than I’d intended. “Brynja, what the hell? That wasn’t supposed to come out in the open, and—”

  “I know,” she said, her voice shrinking with regret. “But people are going to find out you were there.”

  “And it meant nothing,” I fired back.

  “What?” She shouted. “How can you even say that?”

  “Because it was a meaningless trip. A trip devoid of meaning.”

  She grunted in frustration, balling her hands into tightly clenched fists. “Just because you say something is meaningless doesn’t automatically mean—”

  “Automatically mean what?” A voice called out from across the courtyard. Peyton was leading the rest of our group through the garden; Mac was assisting Chandler (who was beginning to put some more pressure on his ankle, walking slightly more upright) and Ortega followed, fidgeting with his bright yellow armor. McGarrity was nowhere to be seen.

  “Blue,” Mac called out. A crooked grin stretched across his face. “Did you miss me, sweetheart?”

  Brynja narrowed her eyes. Her hatred for Mac was palpable, likely in no small part because she could read his thoughts. The things he said aloud were offensive enough; I couldn’t imagine the level of unadulterated filth she was exposed to when he was in close proximity.

  “So,” Peyton said curtly, “are you going to tell me what I walked in on, or am I going to have to wait and hear about it on a simulcast?”

  I searched my memory for a plausible excuse, and was interrupted by Brynja, who began rapidly tapping my shoulder.

  Peyton glared at her. “Could you please give us just one moment alone,” she said, clipping off her words.

  Brynja persisted with her tapping, but she wasn’t making eye contact. She stared past Mac and Chandler, with her gaze fixed squarely on Ortega. “Have you guys noticed something strange about him,” she whispered from the corner of her mouth.

  “The chef?” Peyton said, glancing back over her shoulder. “He’s wearing a hundred pounds of red Lego, which is probably why he looks pissed. He always looks pissed.”

  Ortega seemed uncomfortable, shifting awkwardly inside of his bulky armor suit, but that was nothing out of the ordinary; he’d been doing that since we entered The Spiral. The dour expression painted on his face had been there since we’d encountered him on level one.

  “Not that,” Brynja replied softly, her lips barely moving. “It’s not what he’s doing, it’s what he’s—”

  The word that Brynja never said – the word that became lodged in the back of her throat when a stream of blood spattered the walkway at our feet – was ‘thinking’. She read Ortega’s mind, and realized that he was no longer who he appeared to be.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  His head came off first, then his arms. A severed artery pumped a fountain of blood into the air that shot across the garden, painting the tiles at our feet. His legs quickly followed, reddening the koi pond when they splashed into the shallow inlet.

&nbs
p; It happened in a heartbeat: a tentacle coiled around Mac’s torso, while several others, tipped with vicious barbs, swiped at his extremities. The slashes came so suddenly that he never had a chance to scream, and the rest of us, looking on in horror, never had a chance to react.

  Ortega was gone. Whatever replaced him had transformed his body into a faceless, shapeless creature; a vile pulsing mass that was the color of a festering wound. A single oily eye gazed at us while a dozen fresh tentacles reached out from its core. The darting limbs seemed to be infinitely elastic, extending long enough to reach us from thirty feet away.

  The blood-drenched tentacle that had dismembered Mac coiled around Chandler’s ankle, yanking him from the bench before tossing him across the courtyard, beyond the maple trees and out of view. Another swipe caught Peyton across the shoulder, the razor-sharp talon slamming into her protective armor. The strike didn’t pierce the suit, but the force sent her toppling into the rock garden behind us.

  The creature was relentless, but it wasn’t a mindless killing machine. It was making very precise movements, thoughtfully calculating its every decision. It could have lashed out at me first, but it clearly didn’t want me dead: it wanted to eliminate my friends so it could return me to Valeriya in one piece, as it had no doubt been instructed.

  I was aware of my momentary reprieve, which afforded me a small window of opportunity – it would be brief, and likely the only one I’d receive. I ripped the machine gun from the magnetic strip on my back and took aim at its unblinking eye, squeezing the trigger until a splash of putrid black gel burst from its socket.

  As it flailed blindly I was able to duck under a thrashing tentacle. The barb on the end boomeranged over my head and sheared the top off of several hedges, hacking down a tree in the process. I repositioned my weapon and fired until my clip emptied into its globular core. The mass seemed to consume the bullets. There was never an entry wound where they penetrated; the projectiles disappeared into the creature, and its skin closed around the slugs as if it was swallowing them.

  Brynja had detached her machine gun and was emptying the last of her bullets into the monster, allowing me the chance to retrieve one of the shells from my waist. The three explosive rounds represented the last of our ammunition. I didn’t have time to load one into the grenade launcher; the few additional seconds I required weren’t seconds I could afford.

  “Hold your fire,” I shouted out in my mind. “Save one last bullet.”

  Brynja must have heard my call. She immediately relented, easing up on her trigger. She held fast, fearlessly staring down the barrel of her weapon as the tentacles regrouped and surrounded her, allowing her no room for escape.

  I hurled the shell. The explosive round disappeared into the creature’s gelatinous skin with a wet plop, just as the bullets had. Brynja seized the moment and opened fire with her remaining bullets. When her rounds connected with the shell it detonated, and the shape-shifter exploded from the inside out; the gooey mass burst like an overfilled water balloon, splashing waves of dark slime in every direction. Though somehow, in mid-explosion, the spattered mess began moving in reverse, like a video rewinding itself. Sinewy tendrils remained intact at its core, and the creature began to regenerate. Oozing chunks slithered back into place until, just a few moments later, the gyrating mass had rebuilt itself. And from the center of the mass, the oily black eye bubbled back to the surface.

  As the tendrils came firing back towards Brynja she stood fast, locking her feet in place. A tentacle coiled around my waist, stopping me from rushing to her aid; two more snatched away our guns, snapping them in half.

  Brynja never blinked.

  The words “Don’t panic” rushed through my mind, loud and assertive. They were hers.

  “Wait for it,” she insisted with icy calmness.

  A roar bellowed from the hedges in the distance, followed by a burst of flame that engulfed the creature, consuming it with a single blast. It writhed and quivered, the gelatinous core charring black as it cooked in the unimaginable heat. The continuous stream of fire flowed from Melvin’s jaws until the tendrils stiffened and snapped off, releasing their grips on our waists. With Brynja and I as bait, our manticore was able to circle behind the creature undetected, silently stalking his prey until he was close enough to burn it to a crisp.

  As usual, Melvin cut things a little close. Although as I patted myself down, taking stock of my working appendages, I was hardly in a position to complain. Battling someone (or something) in Arena Mode is not unlike being on a flight – any one you can walk away from is considered a good one. Our friends weren’t so fortunate.

  Satisfied that its prey was no longer a threat, Melvin bit off the last of the flames. He belched out a cloud of black soot before padding across the stone pathway, dropping and rolling at Brynja’s feet.

  “Brynja, how did you...?” were the only words I could produce.

  “The shape shifter,” she said. “He saw you throw the explosive, and he knew it couldn’t hurt him.”

  I stared down at the winged lion, who was purring like a house cat. “And when did Melvin start breathing fire?”

  Brynja knelt and raked her fingers along the manticore’s fuzzy blue jawbone. “I don’t know, but it seemed like the only way to kill that thing was to dry it out and burn it. Guess we got lucky.”

  “I’m fine,” Peyton said weakly. Her knees trembled as she stumbled to her feet. After toppling into the rock garden she’d been knocked unconscious when the base of her skull collided with a small statue. “Really, don’t help me up.”

  I turned to see her patting at the back of her head. Rushing to her aid, I held her shoulders and gently pivoted her around to see where she’d been injured; Peyton’s cotton-candy pink locks were streaked with crimson.

  “It’s nothing,” she grumbled at the sight of my shocked expression. She looked down at her gauntlet, noticing her fingertips were dripping with blood.

  “It’s not nothing,” I said, escorting her to the nearby bench.

  Still dazed, Peyton sat and scanned the garden with glassy eyes, her lids fluttering, seemingly unable to focus on anything for more than a moment. “What happened, just then...and where’s your pilot, Mac?”

  Brynja lifted her boot, crinkling her nose at the sticky gobs of blood-soaked ooze that dripped from the sole. “Kind of everywhere, I think.”

  “Oh shit...” Peyton clapped her hands over her mouth and leaned forward as if she was going to vomit. I patted her back and swept her hair aside; the standard operating procedure when she’d consumed one too many rum and Cokes. She dry-heaved but didn’t produce anything.

  The stench of the charred shape-shifter, seeing the blood-soaked collage of random body parts, knowing the lives that’d been lost; it was making the bile rise in my throat as well. I couldn’t say I’d seen worse, but I’d seen something comparable. I was saddened, but not horrified...and the fact that I wasn’t completely horrified by what had just transpired made me realize that the previous Arena Mode had changed me, possibly in ways I’d yet to fully realize. The sights and sounds that haunted me were so similar that I felt like I’d already lived this moment a hundred times over.

  Brynja strolled over to the bench where Peyton was still doubled over. “We need to get moving and find the pods.”

  Peyton sat upright and glared at her, eyes widened with disgust. “A person just died, you ghoul.”

  “So it seems,” Brynja said casually. “And we’ll be next if we sit here and pout about it.” She waved for us to stand. “Let’s go, princess. You too, Peyton.”

  “Aw, sick – what happened here?” McGarrity appeared from between the hedges, meandering down the winding stone path with no real sense of urgency. “It looks like someone cooked a giant octopus. Smells like it too. And what’s with the giant lion thing?”

  Brynja stomped down the walkway and jammed her palm into McGarrity’s chest. “That’s some convenient timing, Braveheart.”

  “Conven
ient?” He replied, visibly confused.

  “Showing up once the battle ends.” Brynja motioned around at the carnage that surrounded us.

  A broad grin stretched across McGarrity’s face as he strolled past Brynja, dismissing her accusation. He approached Peyton and I, carefully avoiding the pools of blood and the globs of burning slime. “I just got here. Relax.” He stopped short of the bench and dropped his hands into his pockets. “I was searching the caskets that you guys missed out in the hills. I can’t do everything myself, guys. Sorry I missed your barbecue, but don’t be pissed with me just because you guys couldn’t save everyone.”

  My right hand flew on impulse. My fist caught McGarrity flush on the cheekbone, rocking his head back. He reeled and massaged his jaw, spitting a wad of blood and saliva onto the tile at his feet.

  Without warning he lunged forward and buried his shoulder into my gut, tackling me into a hedge behind the bench. Using what little mixed-martial arts training I recalled from last summer, I pushed him off my chest and kicked away, allowing me enough space to stand and regain my footing.

  We squared off for a moment – teeth grinding, fists clenched – when Brynja stood in between us and shouted, “Enough!”

  “What was that?” Peyton said sharply, glancing towards McGarrity, and then back at me. “Valeriya is picking us off. We can’t afford to start killing each other and making her job even easier.”

  Peyton placed her hands on McGarrity’s face, tilting it towards the light to inspect the damage I’d caused. It was in her nature to immediately run towards whoever was in pain – she’d done it her whole life, and it was at least in part why she’d become a veterinary student. And in a crisis (like most people) she felt most comfortable returning to what she knew. Whether she was acting on instinct or not, it still pissed me off.

  I exhaled loudly and marched away. If I had to look at his pasty white face for one more second I was going to plant my boot into it.