Marrow

by Preston Norton

  I was only a second behind him.

  I mentally tapped into my bone structure and immediately felt myself become lighter.

  Have you ever wondered how small animals and insects can move so fast for their size? How a squirrel can be so balanced jumping from tree to tree without a second thought? How a bird can swoop from the sky and snatch a fish out of the water?

  I’m like the human version of those creatures.

  I leapt into the air, practically flying. Time seemed to fall into slow motion as I soared. As I came down on the front line of racing spiders, I channeled as much density into my fist as possible. I hit the floor like a meteor. The metal and concrete of the sewer floor shattered, sending up waves of spiders in the explosion.

  Smoke billowed up as debris rained down. Spiders staggered through the rubble, disoriented.

  I wasn’t about to wait for them to regain their bearings.

  I darted to the nearest spider—slightly smaller than the others—and snatched it by its rear leg. I shuddered slightly at the bristly texture beneath my fingers but didn’t let that slow me down. Adding just enough density to my arm for added strength, I swung the spider up like a hairy ball and chain. Another spider had already reared back and lunged at me. I smacked it with its cousin, sending it sailing.

  I’ve never been above a good game of whack-a-mole, and that certainly showed here. Lifting my spider bludgeon, I beat and smashed away at the force of arachnids scuttling towards me. Spinning a full three hundred and sixty degrees, I managed to gracefully bash away half a dozen spiders at once.

  The bodies—some still twitching—were beginning to stack up around me. I forced myself to step up on their bulbous corpses for a better swinging range.

  Then, rather abruptly, the spider I was using as my weapon detached from its leg. It took a little longer than it should have for me to realize I only had a hairy appendage as a weapon now. Yellow mucus spurted out the end.

  One particularly fat spider took advantage of my sudden disarming, lunging at me with pincers flailing.

  I shoved the dismembered limb into the back of its throat. Stunned and convulsing, the spider toppled down the hill of corpses.

  Nero, meanwhile, hovered past me, a spider levitating in his telekinetic grasp. He squeezed his raised fist, and the spider contorted and crumpled in mid-air. And then he tossed it aside, like a kid bored with a toy.

  Mildly distracted, I barely noticed the new spider dropping from the ceiling, suspended by a thick slimy cord. It screeched as eight dangling legs reached down for my head.

  I responded with a left uppercut. With only the bare minimum bone density to slow my arm, it shot up like a missile. It wasn’t until momentum was already on my side that I tapped specifically into the bone density of my hand, channeling as much weight as I could into the blow. The spider might as well have been a piñata. My fist launched with the force of a cannonball, blasting right through the spider in a slimy yellow explosion.

  Making my fist light once more, I ripped my gooey arm free. I then grabbed the spider at the base of its pincers. Distributing just enough weight in my arms, I ripped the pincers out and apart like a wishbone. The spider dropped with a thud. I repositioned my grip on these new weapons, grabbing them by their hairy husks. The bladed pincers gleamed in the overhead light like twin daggers.

  I leapt down from the mound of yellow-stained corpses as more spiders ascended. I added to my gravity as I magnified my entire bone density tenfold. I dropped like an anchor. Two unfortunate spiders happened to be beneath me as I plummeted. I crushed them into the floor.

  Retracting my bone density on impact, I refastened my grip on the pincers and plunged into an onslaught of oncoming spiders. I practically glided across the floor. I slashed and sliced and stabbed, weaving through the throng of hairy bodies and appendages like a ghost. Limbs dropped. Wounds oozed. Bodies fell.

  And then the ground rumbled beneath me. I redirected my gaze as the biggest spider yet lumbered out of the shadows like a gangly eight-legged bear. Lifeless bodies were shoved aside as it plowed through, roaring rather than screeching. I flipped the pincers in my hands, grabbing them by their bladed tips. Pulling both of my arms back, I flung them like throwing knives. With my enhanced speed and reflexes, they whizzed like bullets.

  One pincer sunk deep into the massive spider’s face, between several sets of eyes. The other shot through the back of its snarling throat. Yellow blood spurted out the back of its head. With a resounding thud, it collapsed heavily amid its fallen kind.

  I whipped around, fully prepared to punch the next spider’s head clean off.

  However, the only spiders in sight were dead and dismembered with occasional parts still twitching. My head kept jerking from side to side as I continued to turn.

  “They’re dead,” said Nero in a flat tone. I glanced over to find him standing in the corpses rather than levitating. “We got all of them.”

  Despite the good news, he hardly looked pleased.

  As I stopped to catch my breath, I normalized my bone density. Even though there was no external change, it was amazing how fat I always felt after returning to normal.

  “You took out forty-two of them,” Nero grumbled.

  “Forty-two?” I said. I was caught off guard by the randomness of the comment. Though Nero was only Telekinetic, hardly a Telepath, he still had a gift for keeping track of such things without even trying. “How many did you get?”

  Nero snorted and redirected his attention elsewhere.

  Ah. So that explained the sour look. I took down more spiders than him. Nero was the sorest loser of them all.

  “Arachnis,” said Nero.

  “Huh?”

  “Arachnis,” he repeated. “She’s the Defeated we’re facing in this Challenge.”

  Arachnis. I knew that name. “She was one of the traitors that Fantom killed, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Nero, nodding. “She was one of the first. A real nasty one from what I’ve heard.”

  “Good,” I said. “Let’s beat the tar out of her. Can you sense her?”

  Nero paused a moment, his gaze wandering, and his lips pursed. There was something in his eyes that I couldn’t put my finger on.

  Apprehension?

  “I think she’s that way,” said Nero, pointing down a particularly dank tunnel. “East.”

  Only Nero would know which way was east in an underground sewer hideout. We both started in that direction. Trudging through the inch-deep water, I was immediately glad that our bodysuits were waterproof. Even if it was just to keep our feet dry. And poop-free.

  I couldn’t believe Nero was actually being this cooperative. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted that his eyes were still lowered, and his mouth was pulled into a straight line.

  “What’s up?” I asked, trying not to sound concerned. Which I wasn’t. Honestly, the only thing I was concerned about was finishing the Challenge.

  Nero looked over at me, silent. As if mulling over whether he would actually respond or not. I was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain eye-contact.

  “Back in 1995 . . . a hero named Cortex fought Arachnis,” Nero said finally. “Before Fantom killed Arachnis. He was an Omnipotent.”

  I blinked. An Omnipotent? I’d never heard Nero mention Omnipotents before. Omnipotents were Supers with both telekinetic and telepathic power. Though Omnipotents were termed to be practically invincible, they were also, ironically, extinct.

  “So . . . I’m assuming Arachnis beat him?” I asked.

  “She killed him,” said Nero.

  “Oh,” I said. I had no clue what else to say.

  “There’s a chance that Arachnis might have a defense against mind powers,” said Nero. “If that’s the case . . . just be ready.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was Nero seriously admitting that he might be useless in this fight? As much as the prospect boosted my ego, I didn’t like the idea of fighting a freaky spider lady on my own. />
  “It’s just a virtual recreation of Arachnis,” I said, attempting to sound like I didn’t care. “A dumbed down version. Besides, if Arachnis had any sort of defense against an Omnipotent, it would probably be a block against telepathic power, not telekinesis. Cortex probably walked in cocky, thinking he could read Arachnis’s mind, and he couldn’t.”

  Whether or not I actually believed my words, they sounded convincing enough coming out of my mouth.

  “Yeah,” said Nero, forcing an uncertain smirk. “You’re probably right.”

  The tunnel grew murkier as we progressed, our shadows blending against dark walls. The hope of light glimmered distantly ahead like a single star in a black sky. Despite the sloshing water beneath our feet, a new sound permeated the atmosphere. Soft and shrill, echoing indiscernibly.

  “Do you hear that?” asked Nero.

  I didn’t respond right away, still straining to discern what it was. Suddenly, random high pitched sounds began to correlate with each other. It was then that I noticed the melodious nature of the sound. It was a female voice . . .

  Singing.

  Whether we were drawing nearer or the voice was growing louder, the words became clear.

  “The itsssy bitsssy ssspider walked up the water ssspout . . . Down came the rain and washed the ssspider out . . .”

  I shuddered at the eerie, hissing voice. From what I could gather, she seemed to be singing the same song over and over. It was Arachnis, no doubt. If she was trying to scare us . . . well . . . she wasn’t doing a bad job.

  The narrow expanse of the tunnel finally expanded into a vast chamber. The sheer size of it was obscured by veils of draped webbing. These were all connected amid an infrastructure of thick strands intertwining the floor, walls, and ceiling. The end result was a sticky white labyrinth.

  A nest.

  As I stepped out into the open, the floor crunched beneath my feet. I glanced down. The floor was blanketed in small skeletons—rats, fish, and several other animals that I did not care to identify. Pulling my gaze up, Nero and I cautiously proceeded into the labyrinth.

  Through the transparent sheets of webbing, a hulking silhouette was finally visible—even bigger than the last spider I had taken down, although strangely human in shape. Whatever the nature of Arachnis’s power, it had obviously come with physical side effects.

  Arachnis finally ceased her singing, only to be replaced with the rhythmic chant of another nursery rhyme.

  “Little Missss Muffet sssat on a tuffet, eat her curdsss and whey . . . Along came a ssspider, who sssat down bessside her . . . and had a Little-Missss-Muffet-filet.”

  Even with layers of web between us, Arachnis turned a very human head our direction. The details of her face were obscured, but it was obvious she was looking directly at us. Nero and I both froze.

  “Hello, my delectable little guests,” she said in a voice as melodious as her singing. She gestured with a thin, elongated arm. “Come. Come so that I may see you clearly.”

  Nero and I exchanged anxious glances. The element of surprise was clearly out of the question.

  “We should communicate to each other with Morse code or something,” Nero whispered.

  “Morse code?” I repeated. “Seriously? Are you a Boy Scout?”

  Nero flushed red.

  “Havoc,” I breathed, looking away. “If one of us says ‘Havoc’, we both attack.”

  Nero simply nodded, avoiding eye contact as well. Without another word, we followed the last sheet of webbing as it curved inward. At last, we stepped into the open core of the nest.

  Arachnis appeared both beautiful and horrifying. She seemed human from the waist up, but even that was pushing the definition of human. She was covered by a black, gown-like top with a swooping neckline. Two pairs of abnormally long arms met with twenty spindly fingers interlocked. Her face was statuesque, a flawless complexion complemented by full lips and lush eyelashes. Her eyes, however, were big and black . . . accompanied by several smaller pairs of eyes clustered together. Sharp black hair sliced down to her bare shoulders. Four gargantuan legs jutted out like angled tree trunks. Her most notable feature, however, was an abdomen the size of a hot air balloon, pulsing gently behind her. Though not as hairy as her spider minions, her legs and abdomen were dominated by a splotchy but very distinct brown and black striped pattern.

  It was almost impossible to believe that this thing was artificial.

  “You killed my babies,” said Arachnis in a surprisingly calm tone.

  I blinked myself back to the reality of the situation. Even if she wasn’t real, the Challenge certainly was. We had one goal: Kill her.

  “Your babies tried eating us,” I said with a casual shrug.

  “They are ever so hungry,” said Arachnis, sighing.

  She scraped a long gangly arm across the floor, brushing the small animal skeletons. My stomach churned.

  “Then again, so am I,” said Arachnis, glancing back at her enormous pulsating abdomen. “Eating for two hundred makes you especially hungry.”

  Nero eyed her with obvious disgust but held his ground.

  As she turned back to us, her gaze suddenly became fierce. “Have you come to kill me too?”

  “We came to tell you something,” I said. I allowed a long pause, hoping that Nero would know where I was going with this.

  “Oh? And what would that be?” asked Arachnis.

  Mentally tapping into my skeletal structure, I minimized my bone density. Just standing there, I felt like I could fly at any second.

  “Havoc,” I said.

  Arachnis raised a confused eyebrow. “Wh—?”

  Nero and I simultaneously sprang into action before a word could escape her mouth. Nero summoned several large, sharp rib bones from the floor causing them to hover at his side like missiles. Meanwhile, I leapt into the air, careful not to hit the sticky, white canopy above me.

  I started channeling as much density into my fist as possible, but before gravity could bring me down I was slapped against the sticky surface of the ceiling. Arachnis’s lanky arms had shot out, grazing the webbed walls with her fingers. As a result, the ceiling had caved slightly. I was left there, dangling, my heavy fist weighing me down. I was like a fly on flypaper.

  From that perspective, I was left to watch as Nero’s bone projectiles shot forward but then halted in midair. Not only that, but they wavered, as if they had struck some rubbery invisible force.

  No. It was another web. She had somehow pulled it in front of her as a shield.

  Arachnis’s lips twisted into a sick smile. As she raised both pairs of hands, I noticed something glistening from each of her fingertips: strands of webbing. Like strings.

  The realization hit me like a fist. Everything was connected. She had this entire nest on strings. Arachnis was controlling the entire web like a puppeteer.

  And we had walked right into her trap.

  “Nero!” I screamed. “Stay away from the walls! She’s controlling—!”

  It was too late. Arachnis twisted a hand with her index finger curled in. A practically invisible strand gleamed as it was triggered. A section of webbing dropped like a net.

  Nero sensed it coming. His hands flew up—a natural reflex when he was channeling his telekinesis. The sticky net halted mid-air, levitating only inches from his head. His usual cockiness was lost in wide-eyed shock.

  That was all the distraction Arachnis needed. With an impressive heave of strength, she twisted the enormous tail-end of her abdomen. The bulbous blob pulsed and then launched a powerful string of web at Nero. Already preoccupied, it hit him directly in the face. Nero toppled backward and the net fell over him. His face was swallowed in thick, suffocating webbing. As he squirmed and fought, the sticky net bound him tighter.

  “You’ll find that it’s rather difficult to concentrate on your telekinesis when you can’t breathe,” said Arachnis, sneering. “And now . . . it’s lunchtime.”

  I watched in horror as Arachnis craw
led toward Nero. And here I was, a helpless observer.

  Of course, Havoc and his team of onlookers wouldn’t let this artificial Defeated suck Nero dry. But the moment she reached him, it would be game over. Nero and I would both be eliminated from the Sidekick Internship Program.

  Over my dead body.

  CHAPTER 3

  I glanced from Arachnis, dragging her massive abdomen across the skeleton-laden floor, to my heavy fist, still hanging lower than the rest of my body. I had yet to normalize my bone density after my failed super punch. And then the most obvious idea came to me.

  I tapped into my skeletal structure, building as much density as possible into every last bone in my body. The sticky webbed canopy drooped with my sudden explosion in weight. I could feel the sticky fibers straining to hold me.

  Arachnis was only a yard away from being directly below me. My body dipped lower as the web tore slightly. She took another long dragging step.

  Bull’s-eye.

  The web snapped. I dropped like a bomb.

  I missed her head. What I hit instead was her bulbous spider-abdomen, and that exploded on impact. Literally. Exploded.

  I was momentarily blinded, submerged in bug guts. Fake bug guts, I had to remind myself. Arachnis wasn’t real. Nevertheless, she screamed in an inhuman screech.

  The smell was awful, like road kill and vomit and Brussels sprouts, blended together into a smoothie. When I finally managed to open my eyes, the entire nest was sprayed in yellow.

  “You!” said Arachnis, howling. Though she staggered around with a slight limp, she appeared much more agile without having to drag her big, fat spider-butt around. Her four arms were tense, all twenty long fingers curled into fists. As she turned, however, I couldn’t help but notice the slight gleam of a metal frame where Arachnis’s abdomen had been.

  She’s just an artificial recreation, I reminded myself, straining to calm my nerves. A robot. She’s not real.

  Arachnis brought a massive leg up over me and then thrust it down, fully intending to crush me.

  Sucking the density from my leg, I kicked out with inhuman speed. I didn’t pump the weight back in until the very last second.