They Called Me Madder: The Mad Series Book 2

by Pal, J

  “What about the new parts? Think you can use them to make the specimens stronger?”

  “If we can work the bone-compression into the ankylopus, you’ll have something compelling. I don’t know how well it’ll work, but I’d like to request an experiment.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, surprised by Fin’s direct approach. “The platyhawks we’re birthing have plasma absorbers in them by default. If we can give them plasma chargers as well, you’ll have specimens that can use the energy they absorb. Imagine how powerful the ankylopus could become.”

  I gave him the requested part without question. The platyhawk king had given me a few, and I didn’t think we’d get much use out of it. But, even after giving him two, there was still one left in the goggles’ storage.

  “You won’t regret it,” Fin told me.

  “The Menagerie hasn’t disappointed me yet. But, with all of these new parts, how long until the remaining eggs hatch?”

  “If we want the new parts to take, it’s for the best if we give it a couple of days. Then, following that, give it half a week for the ideal incubation. Creating variant beasts isn’t an exact science.”

  “We’re working on turning the second floor into a Farm,” I said. “Reckon that’ll help up here at all?”

  “During incubation? No. But the waste from the Farm will add to biomass stores and help us make more nutrient-rich feed—as a result, the beasts will grow quicker and healthier.”

  More little ones were now playing with Jay. It wasn’t just the platyhawks but an ankylopus as well. The rest groggily watched them play. I hadn’t seen Jay in combat since he’d fought the rat king, but if he could do the same with platyhawks, the pylon would be as good as ours. I didn’t want to get my hopes up though. It was too early to run the idea by him. His powers limited him to domesticated animals for all I knew, but it didn’t hurt to dream.

  I was lost in my daydreams when my Technopathic senses alerted me of Morpheus’s presence. I had assumed this would happen, but now I could finally see results. Using McGuffins weren’t just growing my energy pool but was also improving the other abilities that accompanied the Technogogue power.

  “They’re back, Jay,” I said, calling the elevator. “Would you like to join me?”

  “Of course!” He exclaimed, and we headed down together. With my energy drained, taking the stairs down from the fifth floor to the third had been too damn tiring. I didn’t want to brave it all the way down to the ground floor.

  Morpheus was the first one I saw. Dirt covered his black body, and the trailer behind him was piled high with sacks and boxes. Miley stood next to him, spherical and spotless like always. Morpheus’s dome slid open, and Kitty climbed out. I smiled at her, and she returned the gesture halfheartedly. Then the others followed her in, and I understood why. Caitlin was covered in blood.

  “What happened?!” Jay exclaimed, rushing forward, and I followed.

  “It’s not my blood,” Caitlin said, fending him off as he checked her all over for cuts and bruises. “It’s David that got hurt.”

  “I fixed him up though,” Kitty told us.

  “What was it?” Blood covered David’s clothes, and pale lines marked his face and neck: signs of the Medi Gun fixing injuries.

  “Auranthers,” Kitty answered. “The basement in the hardware store had collapsed like in the deli.”

  “We need to be more careful about them.” I sighed, shaking my head. “Let’s make it a point to scout the buildings on the hill and make sure there are no exploding kittens around.”

  “That’s what got me,” David said. “We split up for a bit, and a kitten crawled out of the basement. I couldn’t just ditch it. When I got close, the thing exploded!”

  “You were lucky. When one of them got the jump on me, the shrapnel got through Morpheus.”

  “My artifact’s armor is pretty solid.” David grinned. “When the mantises took over the sector, I had no choice but to sink McGuffins into my defenses. It can put up with a fair bit.”

  “The mantises took over the sector?” I asked. Kitty and I exchanged wide-eyed looks.

  “It happened a couple of days after us our last meeting,” Jay said. “They came out of the ground through holes throughout the sector. Before then, we’d seen a handful of them traveling alone or in pairs. Then they came out of nowhere, eating everything they encountered. Thanks to Maya, the sneaky ones were easy to track and kill, but the big, armored freaks were a bit too much.”

  “It was the raiders,” I told them. “We fought a mantis boss the day after we met. She’d been busy increasing their numbers, and they’d been living in the caverns under the sector. I think the caves were linked to other nests, and they were feeding on rats and hedgehogs mostly. The raiders cut through the cave walls to get the jump on us. They let the bugs out.”

  “Bastards,” Caitlin uttered more colorful swear words, and her brother laughed, listening to them. “We saw them sneaking around preparing to stir things up with one of Metalsmith’s scouting parties when we left the sector. I should’ve set the assholes on fire.”

  I let her and Jay rant for a while before inspecting everything they had brought back. We finally had all the materials necessary for the Farm. But it wasn’t just that. They had brought back seeds and cuttings of fruit trees for the floor once it was ready. Once we were done talking, Kitty, David, and Caitlin washed up, and we all ate a meal together.

  While we were eating, a small sliver of my energy bar recovered. Finally, the Recon Drone was complete. Together, they helped push the fatigue out of my muscles, and then we got to work.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Right to Mecha Arms

  Morpheus pulled his material-laden trailer into the elevator, and we took it down to the basement. While taking the materials down, I modified the elevator’s settings, granting the Hub’s newest residents access to it. I chose to limit which floors they could access, though. Liam liked his privacy, and I didn’t want anyone messing with the Hub’s Core, so I restricted their access to the two floors. Of course, we could invite them to either if we wanted to, but that was it.

  David and Jay helped me unload the trailer. We piled everything up next to the generator. They both took a couple of minutes to admire the machine that fueled our home. It had changed over the last couple of days. It was no longer a hunk of metal and plastic. I had expected there to be fleshy bits and drops of blood, but the moss and mushrooms around it took me by surprise. A rich earthy smell filled the air in the basement. It smelled like life.

  Jay’s eyes lit up as he sniffed at the air. With my permission, he approached the core and instructed it. The rest maintained a healthy distance. The more time I spent with him, the more I wanted to trust him implicitly. By extension, his friends had my trust too. However, the last thing I wanted to do was rush into things and get burned. I reasoned it had to do with Rajesh’s death and Pallav leaving us. Their absence had left a hole in my life that I wanted to fill. Jay came across as a perfect candidate to fill that emptiness.

  I didn’t know Caitlin and David particularly well, but the latter was loveable. The former’s gesture of contributing three McGuffins to the betterment of our home was the perfect gesture of goodwill. Yet, a little voice in my head told me to hold back and take it slow. So that’s what I did.

  The Hub Core’s interface had a message waiting for me when I accessed it.

  Materials available for C-rank Farm. Would you like to start the build?

  The core’s pulsing fleshy bits lit up as soon as I said yes. The yellow light coming from within made it look more like bioluminescent vegetation than meat. I still couldn’t decide whether the generator was beautiful or horrifying in appearance.

  Combination Upgrade detected.

  Since the Farm and Menagerie are both within the Nurturing Field Generator’s effect, the two levels may be linked.

  As a result, they’ll both enjoy natural growth, their own eco-systems, and scaling spatial upgrades.


  Besides producing food at the same rate as a B-rank Farm, the floor will also enhance the recycling of waste material, including water. Due to the enhanced oxygen production, the Hub will enjoy its own life-support system.

  I froze. Was this the “bigger on the inside” kind of upgrades I wanted? The prospect of becoming Doctor Who and the Hub my Tardis appealed to me very much. A green pulse traveled through every surrounding surface, over our bodies, and disappeared into the ceiling above. The materials we had piled up sank into the floor before bright blue flowers blossomed on the core.

  I reread the latter half of the message. With future upgrades, I could make the Hub self-sufficient to the point that we wouldn’t need external sources of water or food. Over time, perhaps it could grow into a city! This was the best investment I had ever made.

  “Thank you,” I said, approaching Caitlin. “The C-rank Farm is going to do more for the Hub than I imagined. I’m going to put you and Kitty in charge of it.”

  Kitty smiled, placing an arm around me. “My parents own—owned a farm. If the floor has drones like the Menagerie, we won’t have to do much hands-on work, but it’s good to have the know-how.”

  “I’d love to help!” Caitlin explained. “Give me some time to find my feet, and then I’ll be up there non-stop.”

  “It won’t be our only responsibility though.” I raised my voice, addressing everyone. Liam hadn’t come down to join us, but I knew he would agree with me. “Our first priority is getting the local monster population under control. By that, I don’t mean wiping them out. We’ll need to keep a few nests around to keep the McGuffins coming. They’re our lifeblood. This hill needs to be our territory. Once the platyhawks and ankylopus are grown, I’ll send them out to run patrols on the hill. Meanwhile, we’ll go down to ground level and only wipe out the nests on our perimeter.”

  “As well as the main platyhawk nest which is spawning the other ones,” Kitty added.

  “That’s a given,” I said. “I’d rather leave a few of the smaller nests up for our McGuffin farming. We can regularly cull the numbers and kill the bosses but leave the nest’s cores alive. With time they’ll replace the bosses—” My energy bar refilled to the forty percent mark, and a refreshing wave of warmth ran through my body. “Let’s continue this later.”

  “Is everything okay?” Kitty asked, her voice full of concern.

  “My prosthetic is ready!”

  Everyone followed me into the lift, and we took it up to the top floor. Liam stood by the elevator doors waiting for us. He looked sleeker than before—smoother curves and streamlined design. A grinning emoticon appeared on his darkened dome as he scuttled towards where my new arm lay.

  “I think you might want to give it a light paint job,” Liam said.

  He wasn’t wrong. Having grown up with me, Liam knew I wouldn’t say I liked overtly shiny things. He liked to call my preferred aesthetic the “Matt-effect” jokingly. The forearm sat on the floor where I had started the Creation. Its biometal surface had a chrome effect and reflected the ambient lights much as the frame and chassis had.

  The prosthetic almost had the same dimensions as my left arm. The hands were pretty much identical, but everything wrist downwards was a tad wider. It wasn’t unexpected, since it had to house the Charge Launcher, Sonic Shotgun, Sonic Barrier Projector, dagger, the new weapon system, and the biometal gland that fueled it.

  It was significantly heavier than the Charge Launcher, but Liam assured me that it wouldn’t feel the same when I wore it. After all, a part of the weight would be my new arm. My breathing quickened as I studied the device’s rear end. I had designed it and knew what to expect, but that didn’t mean the expected pain didn’t make me nervous. The end opposite the hand had several needle-like attachments growing out of it. At my touch, they rotated and squirmed, looking like little tentacles.

  “What are those for?” Kitty asked, but I decided to show her instead of explaining.

  I held the prosthetic up to my stump and grunted when the needles dove into my skin. It grew into a soft scream as I felt them digging through my muscles and ripping open skin. My vision got blurry as tears threatened to break free. It hurt almost as much as losing my arm. Then everything started burning from my neck to the end of the pointed stump, and it was worse than anything I had felt before.

  “I’m getting Morpheus!” Kitty’s words made little sense as I fell to my knees.

  “Don’t,” Liam told her. “It’ll be over in a second. The socket is connecting the controls to his nervous system. If Matt wants to regain any normalcy, this is necessary. The healing serum might react poorly to the melding process.”

  I heard Caitlin usher David back into the elevator. In hindsight, I should’ve done this in a private room away from everyone’s eyes. Jay followed them out, but Kitty stayed by my side. She knelt next to me and stroked my back. I barely felt her touch over the pain, but knowing she was by my side made everything better.

  The prosthetic clicked into place and settled on top of my arm. The pain ceased, but the burning remained. It was my nerves screaming from the shock of melding with the machine.

  “You can go get Morpheus now,” I told Kitty. “I’m going to need a syringe or two before I can get back on my feet.”

  “You’re an idiot for not warning me about this,” she said, hovering over me for a moment. Then she disappeared down the stairs and Liam burst into laughter.

  I collapsed on my back, trying to get my breathing under control. Ideally, I should’ve waited an hour before testing my new arm, but I couldn’t help myself. I raised it up towards the ceiling, studying the smooth metal and different segments. A clear ring sat not far above the stump where the prosthetic connected to the socket. That’s right. Someday in the future, I’d craft more weapons and more arms. The option of detaching the Charge Launcher would make life a whole lot easier.

  Liam brought over a bottle of sports drink.

  “You know I hate that shit, right?”

  “It’s not for you to drink, genius,” he said. “Try picking it up.”

  Even though it felt like parts of me were on fire, I sat up. Neither of us could wait to test out my newest creation. I almost jumped onto my feet when the wrist shook. It took several seconds of psyching myself up before I tried opening my hand. It obeyed! I excitedly looked up at Liam but got nothing from his blank dome. His spider leg pointed at the bottle of blue sports drink.

  I nervously reached for it and put my fingers around the bottle. Unfortunately, when I tried to pick it up, my fingers closed too hard and fast. The force crushed the bottle, and the resulting pressure knocked off the easy-drink nozzle, spraying the ceiling with the blue fluid.

  “It’s probably for the best if you take it off in bed,” Liam said, looking up at Kitty. Focused on the given task, I hadn’t heard the elevator door open. “At least until you’ve mastered its use.”

  “Are you mad?” Kitty laughed, and Morpheus shot me with two syringes. “I don’t care how good he gets at using that thing. Nothing kills the mood like cold metal. He’s not touching me with that thing any time soon.”

  Chapter Nineteen

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  I woke up late the following morning. Much to my surprise, Kitty was still in bed with me. She was awake but had her arms wrapped around me. Some things needed doing, but I struggled to tear myself away from the warmth and comfort. It wasn’t just that; her smell had something comfortin
g about it. I breathed it in deeply and then let the air out of my lungs slowly.

  “You slept like a log,” she said, kissing my neck. Things were changing between us. It no longer felt casual, like we were together out of convenience. “How do you feel?”

  “Good,” I answered, taking her right hand in my left. “Why are you still in bed?”

  “It looked like you needed the sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you by moving around.”

  “Isn’t that sweet?” I laughed, turning around to face her.

  “Seriously, though. How do you feel?”

  “Better now. It’s like the technopath part of me is comforting my brain as it bonds with the prosthetic.” Noting the puzzled look on Kitty’s face, I continued. “I imagine it’s similar to how Liam adapted to his new body as quickly as he did. He’s in tune with it. I’m not saying I’m there yet, but I feel better than I did yesterday. Right now we can’t ask for more than that, can we? I have you to thank for a good deal of that too.”

  “You’re amazing. Do you know that?” Kitty kissed me, and I wiggled my left arm in under her waist to pull her in closer. Following her request, I had detached my prosthetic before getting into bed. The metal socket had fused with the stump—thanks to the Medi Gun. When I shuffled, the flat biometal ring grazed Kitty’s skin, and she squealed. For a laugh, I poked her with it, and she smacked my chest in retort. “That’s cold!”