《Until Dead or Useful》


 Chapter 1: Dead Era

    Another day at the lab, the professor thought as he looked up from his cold metal work desk, the other two are late again. He was referring to his other ¡°research partners,¡± the colonel and the doctor, who stumbled in through the automatic sliding door. He said nothing as usual and pretended not to mind the stink of their breath that wafted through the air. Thousands of years of scientific advancement and we still can¡¯t seem to get over alcohol, he thought. Suddenly, a voice on the intercom registered the presence of the three and signaled the start of the work day. He continued his work as the other two slumped into their chairs.


    After the day had gone well on its way, a buzzing noise rang at one of the rectangular glass windows inside the lab across from the table where the professor was working. Looking through the window, the professor was reminded of the fact that on the other side of the glass was not towering skyscrapers like the outside with which he was familiar. Rather than that familiar skyline, there was a conveyor belt, in a blindingly white room, smoothly churning out something. Above the conveyor belt hung some painful looking tools whose purpose seemed to be to mold, carve and gouge an organic form. The professor was saddened that it was his job to know their purpose. ¡°I wonder what this one did,¡± said the colonel, with the same gleam in his eye that a sadistic child would get when burning an ant with glass. ¡°I do too,¡± the doctor agreed as he scoffed with a different kind of gleam in his eyes, ¡°but it doesn¡¯t really matter, everyone turns into money in the end.¡± The professor wondered what this one did as well but he was silent and resigned hoping that the result would not be as unsettling as he knew it was going to be.


    A human being was spat out of the plastic flaps, struggling and writhing in panic against the metal bonds that fastened him to the conveyor belt. He was registered on the screen as a criminal but his offence was unknown. Nearly anyone could be picked up on any charge, limited only by the governments creativity, provided the scientists needed a research subject. And they always needed a research subject. There was a clamp over the face of the restrained man and, attached and unseen from the outside, there was a smaller device attached onto his tongue preventing him from speaking. Without it, he would be screaming and calling from help. We learn from experience, the professor thought. The eyes on this man saw the sympathetic look on the professor¡¯s face and they swiveled towards him, pleading visually for help. There is nothing I can do. The lab is practically running itself, the professor thought mournfully and looked at the restrained man as if he was already looking at a corpse. The man strapped to the conveyor belt saw the professor¡¯s eyes and the man¡¯s own went dead and lost their shine of resistance. He stopped struggling against his restraints as if he really was dead. The professor knew, however, that the anti-sedatives in the man made it nearly impossible for the man to die from shock this soon.


    ¡°Tsk tsk. Giving up so soon? You might not wanna do that. You¡¯re gonna be here for awhile¡­. Oh well. Time to get to work,¡± said the colonel over the intercom, with a small, warped smile on his rugged, war-torn face. He always does this, the professor thought, He seems to enjoy it. ¡°You have a disgusting look on your face, colonel,¡± said the doctor, laughing. The colonel laughed as well and seemed to accept this, ¡°Well anyways, on to the patient: name: eh, who cares, sex: male, age: 28 years, height: 185 centimeters, weight: 68 kilograms, and now what I was most curious about¡­ Oh my. You got into this rather unfortunate mess because you were caught plagiarizing from someone else''s work. Uh oh, so sad, that¡¯s one of the most awful crimes you can commit!¡± The colonel sarcastically mourned for his latest victim. He knew that in the science driven society that they lived in, plagiarists can be capital offenders. ¡°Well¡­we¡¯ll take great care of you in your time here¡± The sadistic grin on the colonel¡¯s face spread as he laughed as if to cut his face in two with his lips. At these words the patient resumed struggling. ¡°That¡¯s more like it,¡± laughed the colonel, ¡°time to implant the brain chip, make you a bit more obedient.¡± A long thick needle detached from the ceiling and began moving towards the patient¡¯s eye.


    Several hours later, the colonel pressed a large button with a sticker of a white cartoon skull pasted on top of it. The limp body of the now dead patient, with a noticeable hole in his eye other than the pupil, was picked up by a large set of metal arms and removed through a door to an unseen location deeper into the lab. ¡°Great, just great. Another goddamn failure!¡± the colonel swore as he slammed his prosthetic arm against the dashboard. ¡°What does it take to get this fucking chip to work?¡± The doctor patted his back and consoled him, ¡°There, there. You and I both know that this is a very complex procedure that could take years to implement. I mean, you made it. What¡¯s a couple more criminals, right?¡±


    As time went on, each scientist went back to their inventions to try and make them ready for clinical and experimental use. The colonel was trying to make the currently failing brain chip more compatible with human cells. It was a highly complex microchip that melded with the brain to control not only the mind, but also each and every cell in the human body. It could move each to where it wants, make each produce any chemical one could think of. Every feature, every part of a human could be micromanaged, even after they had already been born. It even had a self- defense prioritising AI, top-of-the-line military grade of course.


    The doctor went to his bio-variable fluid. It was a complex chemical made entirely of compounds that the human body can easily produce. It looked like glass but it could change its state with a specific electrical impulse. It could become solid or liquid or gas at a moments notice and it could even change shape and structure too. He shocked the fluid in a small dish and watched as it spiked and twisted in complex shapes, as if it were alive. The doctor did not know how to use it or make it, so all he could do was sit and play with it. This was because it was not the invention of the doctor. It was, in fact, the professor''s invention. The professor could only report plagiarism to the colonel but with the friendship of his two coworkers, he doubted that it would go anywhere. He tolerated the injustice because he knew he could do nothing about it.


    The professor went to his only acknowledged invention: his secondary circulatory system. This was a large network of veins even greater and more extensive than the one in the regular human body. It included an optional replacement of organs as well. The organs could be used to produce medicine or to hold it while waiting to be distributed. The only problem with this was the incredible pain that the operation would induce and that the patient must be awake for the veins and organs to sync with his nerves. The blueprints showed two large fleshy openings near the shoulder blades and smaller ones all across the body so one could fill up the storage, expel large amounts of impurities or attach them to a larger machine almost as if to fill an automobile. The professor understood that the possibilities were endless with this invention. It could distribute medicine and nano-bots throughout the human body. It could store extra blood reserves. It could provide a separate easy-to-access point to look directly into the body, without using radiation or invasive surgery. But when his work was nearly completed, it was noticed by the other two.


    One day, his coworkers were on time. This was the first time since they had joined this laboratory. Neither of them were drunk either. This is odd, thought the professor. After he thought that, his coworkers looked briefly at each other and both tried to suppress a smirk. Something¡¯s wrong here, thought the professor as he tried to get up off of his chair. The other two men rushed over quickly and grabbed both of his arms. ¡°Hey!¡± yelled the professor, this was the first time he had spoken to either of them in quite a while, as he typically wished to interact as little as possible. ¡°What on earth are you doing?¡± He yelled again.


    ¡°You are wanted on crime of plagiarizing. Do not resist. Plagiarized work was entitled ¡®The Benefits and Implementation of a Secondary Circulatory System.¡¯ Taken from the two coworkers currently restraining you. The penalty is human experimentation until dead or useful. Further science with your remaining life.¡± A metallic voice rang out from past the door and two metal police drones armed with stun guns and restraints marched in, still speaking in unison.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    ¡°What about a hearing? I demand representation!¡± he screamed as a last resort. ¡°Denied. Denial came from command. Denied on the grounds that it was stolen from leading government officials,¡± the droids replied in unison. ¡°Hehe, I put in a good word or two with command for you but I guess it must not have worked,¡± said the colonel in a voice saturated with sarcasm. ¡°Goodbye~¡± said the doctor waving his hand with a drippingly cheery voice as the droids dragged the professor away.


    The professor woke up with a sharp pain in his neck and darkness enveloping him. He was lying horizontally with restraints on his limbs and mouth. He recognized his state of mind. Anti-sedatives, he thought and remembered that the police droids had sentenced him to experimentation. Until dead or useful, He thought, detached, still not completely realizing his situation.


    The ground he was clamped to began moving with a mechanical whir. He realized, to his dismay, that he knew exactly where it was moving. His situation really started to sink in after that. His eyes that were half closed and dazed sprung open. He began to struggle and he tried to scream but the restraint didn¡¯t allow even a muffled scream to come out. The professor could feel his own voice trying to escape the confines of his mouth. Suddenly, a bright light flashed on and he was exactly where he thought he was. He was on the other side of the glass.


    As he was struggling, he looked through the window from a side he had never looked and saw his former ¡°colleagues,¡± both with mocking faces looking down on him. The loudspeaker came on and the doctor¡¯s voice echoed throughout the experiment room. ¡°Well, well, well. What do we have here? An infamous plagiarist.¡± The doctor continued, ¡°don¡¯t worry, with your¡­ excuse me¡­ my research, I will finally be known to the world without being confined to a small lab. I will have my dreams fulfilled and if the price for that is you, well, so be it.¡±


    The doctor had a solemn look on his face as he looked into the distance while the colonel said to him, ¡°Now, now, doctor, it would be dishonest to claim the achievement as your own. It was a group effort. It should be claimed as our research.¡± The professor shook at their words both in anger and in fear of what would come next. The platform underneath him slowed to a stop. ¡°Back to business! We have a new and improved test for you today,¡± the colonel took over the one sided conversation mockingly, ¡°We decided that our inventions would be best utilized combined. Imagine, bio-variable fluid flowing through the circulatory system instead of the medicine you once envisioned. The fluid will be created and controlled using my AI chip and that chip will be controlled by ME! It will course throughout the veins and spear and twist through whatever gets in its way. You are no longer a professor. You are a subject, and thus I am your king!¡± His fist was level to his nose, shaking and clenched, his eyes burning with ambition, as the colonel¡¯s lips twisted into a smile. The subject understood what was needed for this experiment.


    First, he would have a microchip installed into his brain via his eye. Then, the chip will synchronize with his DNA and spread its metallic tendrils throughout his nervous system. Following this, he would have a leech-shaped flexible drill hollow him out like a mole digging out its den. It would make room for implants by taking away unnecessary organs. His own secondary circulatory system would then be installed. He would be pumped full of the bio-variable fluid and it would combine and mesh with his cells. These cells would then have the capability to produce the fluid as well, flooding his system. Provided the test was successful, he would become exactly the ideal of the colonel. He would become a machine trapped in his own body as the variable structure fluid was controlled by the chip inside him to shoot out and attack or defend him. A work of genius indeed. It seemed to him that in this case, he would be both useful and dead.


    The needle drew close to the subject¡¯s eye and he could only feel a blinding white pain that wished to escape from every orifice of his body. It would be a mercy to let him bite his own tongue or to scream out because it would take him away from this miserable hell with its pristine white walls and perfection. The subject felt cold metallic worms crawling and bulging beneath his skin. He could no longer see because of the crimson pouring out of his eyes. The worms and the needles eventually receded and what he last heard before he lost himself was ¡°Dammit! The idiot survived¡± but he could no longer tell exactly who had said it.


    The subject felt like he was drifting in a black ocean in his own head, not quite drowning but certainly not swimming either. He had long ago lost most his senses. In fact, saying he felt anything at all would be a hopeful statement save for a single strand of consciousness. He felt that on the edge of his consciousness he could feel burning fire and hear high pitched screams. He thought he could see fields swathed in crimson and smell burning rubber. Or perhaps the taste of ash. But he was never quite sure quite what he had felt because it did not seem like it was him that was feeling it. It felt like something was telling him that this was being felt and he just had to take its word. He saw wings, clear and sharp, cutting and drilling through obstacles. He saw spears and bullets formed from his own clear blood. He did not know how long he stayed like this because time seemed immaterial in the dark place. The only thing that kept him holding on to the last thin strand of his sanity was the thought that his former colleagues would win if he drowned.


    As if a flash of lightning, his senses suddenly returned to the face of the familiar colonel directly in front of his own. The colonel¡¯s face looked much older than it had but more hardened and scarred. His recognizable bloodthirsty eyes were still there even if he hid it with his actions. ¡°Hello,¡± He said, ¡°Have a nice sleep?¡± The subject¡¯s eyes glinted as he screamed ¡°I¡¯M STILL DROWNING!? HOW LONG WAS I IN THERE!? WHa¡­..¡± At this point, the colonel had pressed a button on his wrist causing a piercing headache to go through the subject¡¯s skull with so much pain he was unable to even speak. ¡°Easy now, I am your commanding officer after all,¡± said the colonel waving his hands in front of his torso, ¡°As for your question, you were in that state of mind for a few years, nothin¡¯ much. You helped out quite a bit. Those rebels and insurgents didn¡¯t know what hit ¡®em. Shame none of the other of your kind survived. I guess the original is always the best. We have unified the continent thanks to you and you aren¡¯t really needed for now.¡±


    The subject could not believe what he was hearing. He went through all of that to be simply discarded at the end of it all. ¡°I can see the worry on your face but it isn¡¯t needed,¡± said the colonel with a feeble attempt to comfort his subject, ¡°We might still need you in the future. You were a very useful tool. We¡¯ll simply stick you in cryo-freeze until the next war. Trust me, if I have anything to do with it, that won¡¯t be very long.¡± At his last words his eyes gleamed as if they were burning and he turned around and left, hunched and scarred, through the heavy metal door. It was then that the subject noticed that one of the colonel¡¯s legs was jerkily moving around and clanking and one of his hands had a metallic gleam. He seemed to be a bit pitiful as he walked but then, the subject remembered the burning eyes.


    After the colonel had left, the subject took in his immediate surroundings. He was in a metal tube restrained to the inside. It looked like a late model cryogenics chamber but some things were just not the same. More advanced. Just how much time is ¡°a few years¡± he asked himself. He wasn¡¯t quite sure of his own mental state. It was the first time he had one at all for however long he was gone.


    As he was taking it in, the door once again hissed open but this time it was the doctor. He looked more thin and greasy than he did when the subject last remembered him. The doctor pushed up his glasses on his thin pointy nose and chuckled. ¡°I thought you might have wanted to know how the experiments continued when you were, shall we say, gone. Well, long story short, according to what we were sure were your wishes, we tested many more of the criminals that we picked up off of the streets. I must say, you are one lucky subject. The same test that you were in had a success rate of 1/10,000. The national average of automated laboratory testing is much higher than that so I¡¯m sure that it is appropriate to be considered lucky.¡±


    ¡°Eventually, we had to change our methods,¡± the doctor said, ¡°we tested many more enhancements as you can see.¡± At this, the doctor gestured around him and the subject could see that he was placed in the middle of a large room, filled completely with rows of capsules very similar to his own. ¡°But you were by far the most powerful, that is why you get the best seat in the house,¡± the doctor patted the capsule, ¡°this one here is protected in the event of an emergency. I¡¯m sure that the colonel agrees that you should be well preserved.¡± The doctor seemed to have become more outspoken in the time that the subject had been gone. ¡°Goodbye, useful test subject,¡± the doctor smirked at the hunched over body of the subject and shut the door of the capsule he was in.


    The restraints released but there was no space to move in the capsule. The subject looked up at the receding figure of the doctor. The window of the capsule frosted over as the subject¡¯s view turned icy blue and the sweat froze to his face. He was blinded as his eyes froze completely. That was the last he ever saw of anyone.

 Chapter 2: Escape

    An alarm rang through empty off-white halls. A red light blinked with it, somewhat dulled with age. Grime covered the walls and plant life grew unchecked in cracks. No footprints could be found in the thick dust, save for those of small unseen animals. This ringing stirred nothing but insects, insects that had more legs than they had inches in length. The sound reverberated towards a dark room illuminated only by the red blinking alarm and a blueish light coming from rows and rows of human-sized capsules mounted on the walls.


    Each capsule seemed to have been intended to be identical, but age or other factors had destroyed many of them beyond recognition. Wires and tubes lay strewn about in what was once the walkway and some capsules had even broken open completely. In the brief flashes of red light that illuminated the room, humanoid silhouettes could be seen but the blue light coming from behind them obscured their features.


    One specific capsule remained more intact than others. It had been placed with specific care in the center of the room. Inside of that capsule was yet another humanoid figure just like all of the others. The blue light dimmed behind it, revealing a young man. This young man appeared to be in his mid to late twenties, but it was hard to tell in the dim lighting. Frost covered his face, obscuring his hair color and turning his skin a light blue. The frost began to fade with the dimming of the blue light and the rigidity holding the man seemed to get weaker and weaker until he slumped onto the bottom of the capsule. His knees bumped into the glass, and he slunk into fetal position. His eyelids slowly opened, showing a shockingly blue iris. The eye moved around in its socket, completely oblivious to its surroundings.


    The front of the capsule hissed open to reveal the man huddled and shivering. Without the door to support him, he fell to the tiles. Before his body hit the floor, he twisted his torso in an unnatural way and landed on his still wet hands. Water sloshed onto the floor and followed the design made in the grout of the tiles. A white breath escaped from his blue lips and made a fractal pattern upon the surface of the puddle he had suspended himself above. His feet slowly explored their way out of the capsule and slipped on the cold puddle. A dry patch formed the only foothold and the man began to stand on his hands and feet, completing the strange posture of an arched dripping man. He began to shiver like a scared cat with fur bristling on its spine. His eyelids blinked out of sync, very slowly and carefully but this did not seem to do anything to alleviate his blindness.


    The man wore nothing but a skintight pair of gray leggings. His upper body showcased a very prominent spine and ribcage but what stood out more than his emaciation were several unnatural sections of grafted skin that looked like the mouth of a sea anemone. They were made of scar tissue and exposed muscle and they marred the otherwise unblemished surface of his skin. The two biggest of these organic valves were on his back. They squished with a sort of slow twitching tremor as like the back of a throat when gagging. As they unsealed, they began to leak a viscous substance that shimmered in the red light overhead. The substance trembled with life as more and more began to gush out of the opening. The man¡¯s shoulder blades, directly above the valve, had each been thinly coated with this substance in two perfect circles but it never seemed to spread as if it were waiting for some kind of command.


    The liquid seemed to have received the unseen order for which it was waiting and shivered violently before swelling up and hardening above his back in an orderly, swirling manner. They extended and twitched with the body that they spewed from. Two pillars of clear crystalline substance, about the width of his wrist, pushed out of the openings near his shoulder blades. They seemed organic and bonelike except for the fact that they were almost completely transparent and looked like they were made of slightly foggy glass, or maybe even ice. The act of creating these two crystal bones seemed strenuous as the veins around the man¡¯s body trembled and bulged uncontrolled by his will. The man spat out some of the viscous substance and when it hit the water, it exploded into a shape similar to that of a sea urchin the size of a small rock.


    The two bonelike crystals that formed began to split off and created three thin protrusions each that looked very similar to a skeletal wing of some delicate flying animal. The bone protrusions explored the air with uncertainty. They fanned the air like a small bird with wet wings trying to remember how to fly.


    The man slapped the ground with his hands as if to make certain it was still there and began to shuffle around the room on his fingertips and the balls of his feet. He skittered uncertainly from one capsule to another, the large protrusions knocking on the walls and on anything they encountered. A gruesome scratching sound filled the room as they dragged on the metal walls. The man, while being able to hear this sound, ignored it completely. The ornate crystal destroyed everything in its path without any resistance other than that unearthly wail of metal being torn and glass being shattered. Whatever was inside was cut or broken. Crimson liquid flowed from each torn capsule, gashed by his unknowing and indiscriminate blade-like wings.


    Eventually, the man scrambled his way to the door. He leaned up against it with his knees pushed underneath him and his hands pressed against the door that only would seem warm to someone who has only felt cold for uncountable years. The man seemed to sense something wrong. Near the back wall of the room he was trying to escape, the blue light of the farthest capsules faded. More of the same familiar hissing sounded out. The man did not turn around as it would have made no difference to his senses. Frost receded from each window, revealing many lifeless forms, in some cases with rotting or missing faces. From the area around each individual capsule, he heard wet thuds or a clatter of bones but there was no further sounds of movement from any capsule. Only silence. The man reflected that luck brought him much farther than it had the corpses that slid and settled slowly to the floor as he had done minutes before.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    The alarms continued to sound, and the man finally deciphered what they were saying. ¡°Critical Reactor Failure. No Remaining Power Resources. Preparing to Deactivate Non-Essential Systems. Flooding Reactor Core and Surrounding Areas to Prevent Meltdown. Flooding Subject Containment Units¡­¡± He remembered what that meant. His hands started to scrape at what he believed to be the only obstacle to his freedom but even as his fingernails became bloody and threatened to fall off altogether, the door remained the unmoving obstruction for which it was designed.


    The dim red lights started to shut off from the back of the room. He could hear the click as the darkness that it left behind advanced towards his position like a dark wall of fog. A sloshing sound filled his ears and water slowly began to reach his feet. The water level increased quickly as the floor was completely covered.


    He scraped faster and harder as if it would change anything, but the steel was unyielding. Sensing his panic, the liquid fell again from the openings in his body as his wings twitched once more in distress. The liquid crawled up his arms without dripping a single drop and coated them in their entirety to form a semi-transparent liquid glove. When the liquid reached the fingertips of the man¡¯s hands, it continued forward to form claws on the ends. The man continued to scrape at the door, seemingly unaware of his new blades. With every slash, the shape of the blades were deformed but immediately formed again. They coiled around his fingertips again and again, mixing with flesh and exposed fingernails.


    He still clawed. Starting from the organic valve that it originated from, the liquid began to harden, giving function to the crystalline gauntlets that coated the subject¡¯s arms. The self-inflicted cuts scabbed over with the crystal and began to heal at a rate visible to the naked eye. The man felt that his pain had disappeared and stopped scratching long enough for the liquid claws to harden and extend beyond his fingertips. The man smiled thinly in relief and brought back one of his arms as wide as he could behind him. His eyelids narrowed around his eyes and his muscles clenched all at once to swing it at the door.


    The claws shimmered like a rainbow in the flashing light and sliced right through the thick door with little resistance, making his past struggles seem meaningless. He tore enough of a hole into the door to stick both of his hands out of. He peeled the door to accommodate his body like some young insect sticking its many appendages out of its egg when it is born. The voice of a long dead announcer rang through the halls with a crackle that is exclusive to something that had gone through the trials of age long past its owner.


    The man was now on the other side of the door. The alarms blared louder but with a different message. ¡°Neutralize Escapee,¡± the loudspeakers blared, repeating this command to vacant halls and missing guards. The man paused with his hand on the wall taking in what he had just heard. His eyes widened in comprehension and he began to sprint. Or at least he attempted to. His bare feet stumbled and slipped on the grimy ivory colored floor that was slowly being covered with water from the adjacent room and his head met the ground. He did not feel anything but simply stayed stunned on the cold floor.


    Iron shutters slammed down on all sides as the man lay on the floor. Even the door he had torn apart was covered by an extra layer of metal which cut off a tendril of fog that had slipped in unnoticed. He had cut through the thick door and didn¡¯t doubt that he could slash through the thin shutter but as soon as he thought this, he heard a distressing sound. He had an ominous premonition when he heard the gentle hiss of air through the ceiling vents. He tried to stand up and strike his confinement with his crystal claws but found that he could barely move. His claws lightly scratched the metal and then fell limp with the rest of his body.


    He weakened so much that he appeared to have sunk through the floor and lost consciousness. As soon as the man fell unconscious, all of the crystal, including his wings, liquefied and began to leak once more from his body at a rapid pace. The man became skinnier at a rate noticeable to the naked eye as gallons of the fluid covered the ground. The fluid seemed to have a clear goal as all of it flowed towards one wall, the wall the man had just etched a small line. When it reached the metal shutter, it pooled in a shimmering puddle for a moment before it shot up without warning, abruptly forming a long spike that passed through the shutter completely. The spike was like a projectile, though it remained anchored to its host and to the puddle that it came from. The liquid siphoned out of the small hole, expanding the hole into a gap that the rest could follow even faster.


    The trickling streamlet slowly made its way down the halls, leaving its host in the stainless enclosure. Watching this viscous stream, a small rodent scampered its way down the hallway, hoping that what had seeped in front of it was something it could use to sustain itself. It was an odd creature with no visible fur except for a collection of whiskers that were longer than its entire body, including its tail. It had no eyes or even eye sockets on its face and its teeth were thin and numerous like that of a leech. Not a cute thing by any stretch of any imagination. It dipped its face into the crystal fluid and began to slurp up the fluid with an unnaturally long purple tongue. After a while, it paused, twitched and burst in a silent explosion as thin transparent needles erupted throughout its body. The spikes returned to liquid and disassembled the carcass of the rodent with medical precision, sorting each bit of organ, muscle, and skin into neat little piles. It collected all of the blood and viscera of the rodent very carefully and began to pump them back to the metal cage.


    The viscera reached the man and with the assistance of the fluid, began to funnel into his body. Many assorted pieces of flesh soon made their way to the body, seemingly half-digested already. A small bit of the fluid was produced in equal quantities with each piece of meat and blood that was digested. The man grew warmer and unconsciously curled up into a ball once again as a transparent cocoon slowly hardened across his body, preparing to reconstruct his marred form. All that remained to evidence what had just occurred was a small, well organized pile of neatly picked bones and a viscous shimmering river slowly advancing out into the open, appearing as liquid fire in the flashes of red light from the alarm. Even the small, irremovable stains of blood would be unseen amidst the grime and dust that age brought to this facility.


    A crash rang out as the fluid forced back its only obstacle to freedom. It shimmered in the orange light of the sun as opposed to the ominous red alarm. It knew what its host needed. The host needs food. Nutrients. Sustenance. No matter where it came from. It would remodel its host to get these by the host''s own power, but first, the host would need some coddling while he was still helpless. A thin trickle of shimmering liquid trailed through the forest.

 Chapter 3: Following the Stream

    Swish Swish. Tall fronds of the undergrowth ripped and bent under the unforgiving blades that were pushed in front of a lithe figure. The figure briskly jogged, arms by their side, while longer and thinner arms rushed with the blades of archaic flying machines from an old backpack. A knee-length, dull-brown overcoat and thick boots hid their figure, while a full-face mask and shawl hid their face and head. Every article they wore seemed so heavily used that dirt became their dye. As they were jogging, a fallen tree was revealed amid the plant life. The whirling blades immediately stopped, folded into a claw, and pushed the ground in front of the tree to assist in a jump.


    The figure grunted and with the pitch of the voice the androgynous figure was immediately revealed to be female. She grumbled, ¡°Damn, what a pain¡± under her breath as she continued to run. As she ran, she kept her eye on a trickling streamlet that seeped through the dirt and rocks, careful not to step in or near it. It was not water; it was too viscous for that and too clear. No dirt or mud could be seen in or around it except that which it flowed over. It was an eerie liquid. It shimmered and wove about like something with a mind. She followed it upstream for a while, ignoring her hunter¡¯s instinct.


    Suddenly, an animal bounded through the bushes on the other side of the stream. A quick flash of immaculate, white and curly fur stopped and revealed a cylinder of fluff. The bottom of the fluffy tube showcased four stubby hooves, but the woman knew that its legs stretched longer and bonier than hers concealed inside that fluff. Its black horns shone in the light that leaked from the canopy, however its eyes and button nose could only barely be seen poking up from the mass of fluff that concealed the rest of the face. Adorable! A tube-pup! the woman thought, pressing her palms on her cheeks in a brief and rare moment of weakness. Her thoughts were quite in contrast to her emotionless face under the mask, although her thought could perhaps be gleaned by a slight red blush if her mask was removed. She forgot the reason she was here due to her brief delirium but before she could yelp to alert the tube-pup, it tilted its entire body, due to its lack of a neck, in order to drink from the stream.


    The creature soon found the reason that the woman had not strayed close to the stream. The ¡°water¡± splashed, without any prior indication, into the face of the fluffy animal. The droplets hardened in midair and formed into hooks with barbs. They gripped and twisted tightly in its thick fur, tugging it slowly closer to the bank, despite its fervent resistance. The pup frantically extended its long and bony legs from the recesses of its fluffy body but to no avail. The woman yelped as two more spines shot out, their points reflected directly in the center of the tube-pup¡¯s eyes.


    The pup could no longer resist as it bleated in pain. It fell over as the spikes grew bigger and bigger inside of its eyes. Small chunks of flesh and organs continually siphoned out into the stream and rocketed away to the source as the animal lie unresisting save for a few spasms when a particularly large chunk was pumped out. Hopefully for the tube-pup, these spasms indicated death, but the woman knew that this was unlikely. The woman lay motionless on the other side of the stream, watching in disgust and fascinated horror at the crimson operation before her. She had heard of this phenomenon, that was, after all, why she was here, but it was so much worse in person. Gore and blood were not strangers to her life, they have been companions to her and her occupation since her early days, but this was something else entirely.


    There was something very industrial about the liquid. It was precise and clean, emotionless as a machine. It looked as though it had some amount of consciousness as it swished around organically but its consciousness was cold. She had seen death but never so unfeeling. Usually death is accompanied by greed, hunger, sadness, insanity or justice. But this had only the cold precision of a dissection table. She knew that her horror may have been biased by her secret obsession with fuzzy, cute animals but she doubted that even the most hardened hunter would be unfazed by this vivid display.


    It reminded her of the operations, no the Blessings, that took place in the ancient temple ruins that dotted the landscape, some kept clean and well managed in cities but many in hidden valleys and forests yet to be discovered. Here, however, the operation was one not of addition but rather of subtraction. She began to wonder if she really wanted to find this temple as her guess of her destination was confirmed by the surreal sight before her. Envy or anger at the ancient powers, the Blessings or other gleaming riches that others had acquired in similar temples no longer maintained her full attention.


    After about fifteen minutes, the woman shakily stood up, eyes darting around like a cautious animal. They focused on the husk of the creature. All that was left was a pile of dripping red fur and a pile of bones as white as the fur had been in the past. The skull had eye sockets wider than a natural specimen as if they were expressing the surprise and fear that its eyes had a short while ago. Although the sockets looked neat and free of flesh, she remembered that these creatures typically had eye sockets only half of this one¡¯s size. The long leg bones wildly stretched in different directions. The woman shuddered at the memory of what splayed them. She glanced once more at the stream, distanced herself by another body length and began her journey anew. She thought she had resolved herself for whatever may come ahead.


    As she continued to move, the blades that had folded themselves into her backpack due to her inattention swished back out and began to cut once more. The somber faced lady ran even faster amid even more piles of bones similar to those she just had seen. Her thick boots crushed skulls and spines that she could not avoid with a sickening crunch. As she ran towards the source of the stream, the bones looked older and messier. May were of the same animal as before although unfamiliar skeletons were present as well. Unlike the efficient work on the immaculate skeleton that she had previously observed, each skeleton here had clear imperfections like large holes dotting the outside of a skull or a ribcage forced open. Before now, all of the bones had been from complete skeletons, but here, all she saw were piles of bloody bones, now brown or black as opposed to scarlet. Each pile had only one type of bone like a pile of skulls or of ribs and it gave an eerie sense of completion to see a slaughter so organized.


    She could imagine that it would have taken some time for this grand sorting to occur. It seems like it is getting better at managing its time, getting more efficient, she thought. She was sure that she would prefer to be sorted into piles that showed attention or even a sick affection than to be deserted with nothing left to rot like the animal whose demise she had seen. She shuddered at the thought of having a preference. Her proximity to the ruin was indicated by the decrease in the quality of the bones and the increase in quantity. She wondered how many corpses it had consumed into its swirling mass.


    The bones were much easier to avoid now that they were in these organized piles. She cautiously slinked through the piles, eyes darting above them, making sure that she did not step in or otherwise alert the stream. The ¡°water¡± was much deeper now and the river it was contained in was much wider. She could tell she was close now. Moss, vines and a great mound of dirt obscured an open hatch leading down into the depths. This was clearly the final objective of her mission, but the problem was once more in the stream. The hatch had not been opened by human hands, rather it had clearly been bent and pried open by the liquid.


    Although her only entrance to the ruin was blocked, she was determined to find the origin of this dangerous liquid. It had destroyed the ecosystem around her home and many residents were forced to evacuate the immediate area of livestock and even humans as well. Several children were caught unawares playing and splashing in their newfound play area on the outskirts of town. She didn¡¯t witness the scene herself, but it was from their parents that her impression of the liquid came. All they could say was that the water dragged their children far away. They didn¡¯t say that it only took the insides. Their voice suggested even then that they didn¡¯t believe it, with their identically glossy eyes and abrasively monotone chuckle. Nobody looked inside the coffins so she just assumed they looked the same as other drowned corpses or that the bodies could not be found at all. No one told her that they were picked clean.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Seeing an absurd amount flesh chunks being pushed and pulled down into the cave, she had a terrible idea. She began to back away into the forest before turning around and running. She wished that she was running away for good. Rather than running on the ground as she was before, she used the metal arms to grasp and leap off of the sides of trees. She was proficient in controlling these arms and was thus as silent as she could possibly be. She ceased paying attention to where she was going, and her eyes honed on a large shape slowly nearing the tree she was clasped to. A different, uglier creature lumbered through the tall trees underneath her.


    This one was not nearly as cute as the fluffy creature had been before, so she felt some small consolation for what she was going to do. It was a hulking mass of muscle without any fur. Its wrinkled skin sagged all around the body that was five times the size of the woman. It was surprising that the trees and the forest could accommodate a creature of this size. A fat belly, presumably for storing nutrients, wobbled as it stomped around. Many massive horns that were studded all throughout its body stood rigidly in stark contrast to its fat.


    It continued to wobble its way through the woods, the ground shaking slightly with every step. It raised its oversized nose and sniffed the air. Its head looked vaguely canine but without jowls or lips to obscure its sharp and yellowed teeth. Only skin seemed to cover the canine skull. Its lazy eyes widened suddenly as its nostrils flared. It was right beneath her feet. Shit, the woman thought as the mechanical arms retracted and she leapt down from her perch. As she fell, she grabbed one of the many bone protrusions that studded the creature. Using that, she jumped up to the back of the creature¡¯s neck. Its lipless mouth snapped at her, but she grabbed both sides of its face and forced it forward with a grunt of exertion. As she struggled with its face and mouth, the grotesquely muscled arms rushed upwards as its skin squirmed. Like it was killing a fly, both arms swatted towards the figure on its neck.


    Just before creating a bloody pulp, the arms stopped with a shudder. The woman¡¯s mechanical arms had once again extended to protect her. The woman looked at them from the corner of her eyes, but her eyes flashed with dismay when she realized that the mechanical arms were shuddering, almost to their breaking point. In a moment of desperation, she entrusted her weight to her arms, both organic and mechanical, and lifted up her feet. Hanging in midair, she tapped her heels together twice and thin blades shot out of the inside arch of each boot. With a quick kick, her feet slashed on either side of the monster¡¯s neck.


    Blood spurted everywhere and her boots were covered with red. As the creature¡¯s thick arms fell once again to its side and its huge body came closer to the earth, the metal arms broke as they sprang back from their position of compression. The woman fell directly on her spine with a thud. She jumped up from her position and quickly looked around while holding her hand to her back, even though she knew it would do nothing to change the pain. She had been through many worse injuries and learned to cope.


    She now faced a different problem, she had to find a way to transport a 4000-kilogram carcass through the whole forest back to the ruin. Her back was already in pain and she could only imagine what was in store for her. She took her backpack off and began to rummage through it. She saw the sparking remains of the metal arms that had helped her throughout the journey. ¡°Sigh¡± she said. Others would have wondered why she said the word rather than actually sighing. The portable arm apparatus clanked behind her as she threw it away.


    She continued to search through her bag until she found a thin sharp knife and a few other devices, putting them into the many pockets that lined the inside of her thick overcoat. She stood up and threw away her backpack and some of the remaining objects within it fell from its opening. With her hands on her hips, she looked at the looming body, lamenting the daunting task ahead of her once again. Motors whirred underneath her jacket as she grabbed one of its arms, beginning to drag it in the direction from which she came.


    ¡°Sigh,¡± she said again as she overlooked the metal hatch from her high vantage point, ¡°I think the motors are shot.¡± She glared at her sleeves as a small amount of smoke seeped out of the end. It had taken hours to lug that disgusting creature here. It had leaked blood onto the forest floor the entire time. It was a miracle that it hadn¡¯t attracted any scavengers. She placed her hand on her arm, made a twisting motion until something clicked and then shook her sleeve above the ground. There was a clunk and smoking pieces of machinery fell from both of her sleeves when she had made the same motion on both of her arms. She wished she had measured the width of the hatch beforehand because she knew that she probably didn¡¯t even need half of the giant creature.


    She began to carve the creature with the knife she had retrieved. First, she cut off its arms and legs. Wading in the blood from her previous action, she proceeded to saw off its head and make a cross shaped cut on its large stomach. She grabbed a limp arm and tossed it down the slope into the hole. She carefully counted the time it took to be disassembled as it fell deeper and deeper into the circular pit. She could no longer see it, but it seemed slow enough to attempt her idea. I must be insane, she thought to herself. She knew she wanted power and that she wanted riches and of course, most importantly revenge. The pleading eyes of the desperate in the village she lived in still lurked in her memory. But she also knew that she generally enjoyed not being violently torn apart. Her greed and her sympathy won her over in the end and she walked towards the headless and limbless creature and studied it with a glare.


    Yellowed fat oozed out of the gap in the obese stomach of the creature that she had just recently cut. She propped up the creature, held her nose, closed her eyes and jumped into it, displacing many organs and other pieces of flesh. When she entered the chest cavity of creature, she felt glad for her thick jacket and shawl as they slowly absorbed the fluid around her, rather than seeping over her actual skin. She grabbed one of the many devices that she had taken from her bag with one hand and with the other, she pulled the large gap closed. Darkness once again filled the stomach except for a reddish glow of skin penetrated by light. She needed this makeshift vessel to be practically watertight. A small light appeared in the woman''s hand and she slid it across the bloody cut she herself had made and miraculously, her cut reversed like a zipper being pulled back together. There was a sizzling of burnt meat and a smell wafted through the already pungent corpse where darkness slid unhindered.


    The woman closed her eyes under her mask, although it would have made no inhibition to her ability to see within the creature. She curled up with her arms around her knees and began to rock. Slowly at first but then as fast as she could, she rocked back and forth and from the outside, the upright carcass wobbled with her. It began to tilt slowly downwards and veer off of the side of the hill over the open bulkhead.


    The corpse rolled down the hill with the same elegance and grace one would expect from a water balloon filled with mud and rocks. It picked up speed and the vibrations alerted the liquid at the opening. It quivered in anticipation for another prey to gather close once more.


    Splash! The corpse with the woman inside sunk into the vertical tunnel and the liquid welcomed it with quills and prongs. They dug through the neck, hoping to find valuable brain matter but there was no head to be found. The tendrils dug deeper, into the fat that it so relished. The crystalline roots dug and picked at the copious amounts of fat to deliver it back to the source like the rest.


    The woman shivered without making a noise as countless tendrils shot past her head. They prodded the organs around her and dissected them to bring back. She had been counting the entire time, eagerly awaiting the time at which she would allow herself to escape. The flesh around her decomposed at a visible rate as patches of skin began to fall away, revealing the outside. She was floating on a shallow river through old decrepit halls to an unknown destination. She realized just how insane her idea had been as only dumb luck had carried her this far. While being mindful of the veins of the liquid still squirming inside the corpse, she jumped from it to the ceiling. Her wrists shot small metal spikes hidden within her sleeves and she stuck them above her into the ceiling to hang.

 Chapter 4: Rex

    The woman swung from hand to hand, mindful of the river flowing beneath her feet. It trickled upstream, denying the gravity forcing it downwards. The lights, though present, did not work at all, this darkness creating only a minor inconvenience as the power consumption for her ocular enhancement increased by 10%. Using her small flashlight was also slightly troublesome as she also had to use both hands to move. It took a long time to get to any noticeable landmark, and even that one landmark took a long time to be noticed with the limited visibility. The liquid pooled around a metal box that imposed upon the hallway. Drips fell from the ceiling with a distinct synthetic rhythm. It sounded like a quick tapping of soft feet. Still attached to the ceiling, she shivered at that thought.


    She watched as the last pieces of what she could only assume was the fat beast entered the box. She waited. A shimmering explosion shredded the metal cube with a symmetrical blast. The thick metal sheeting was pried open like the egg of a newborn chick, if a newborn chick possessed hundreds of crystalline feathers. The inside of the ¡°egg¡± was filled completely with the liquid and it held its form, for only a moment as a particularly viscous yolk, before spilling out of the metallic remnants of its shell. Within the shredded and cracked metal debris, a man was suspended, hanging by his shoulders from a massive canopy of shimmering, feather-like, crystals. They were layered, each upon another, making the appearance of luscious wings.


    An angel, she thought but blushed internally at the brief flight of fancy. Her face remained hardened and invisible under her mask. The man was angelic, however fanciful the term may seem. That was not to say that he was perfect. He gave the impression of someone that was of a different species, a foreign creature that was distant from the world in front of him. That perhaps looked down on it from the clouds. It certainly helped his image that he radiated light under the shine of the woman¡¯s small flashlight. No doubt this was due to a very long time without sunlight or rather any light at all. His shimmering, shoulder-length hair was made from the same substance as his ¡°wings¡± and fluttered about him even in the absence of wind. The man was, however, not unmarred. Multiple muscled apertures symmetrically gouged his skin and leaked a small amount of liquid. There were scars around each aperture and the woman judged, with the eyes of a hunter, that they were made from nails or claws. And, judging from their context, probably human ones.


    Medals of his forced removal from humanity, she thought, I can almost forgive him for what he has done to my people. She readied a blade in one hand as she hung, hoping that she would not have to fight. As a vapor shimmered around the newly excavated semi-human, his eyes shot open, revealing dull blue eyes, clouded icy diamonds that could not observe their surroundings. He inhaled deeply and coughed out clear liquid with a sputter. The substance dribbled down his chin, over his wincing visage. *Crack* A wispy thread ran along the wings behind the man¡¯s back. He had lost control. The wings liquidized, feather by feather, before splashing to the pool on the ground, the man falling with it.


    The liquid swirled around the man; a large spiral that left him completely untouched in the center. It gathered the liquid from beyond the bunker and condensed it into an even more viscous fluid. The woman waited for hours, her arms getting more and more tired, but she did not dare move for fear of the growing hurricane-like swirl beneath her feet. Surprisingly, the floor began to dry up, as the river that flowed outside was presumably condensed within the coil that was only the breadth of a body or so. The woman, in an attempt to get closer to this anomaly, finally jumped silently from the ceiling to the recently dried tiles.


    She paused, worried that the liquid would detect her, or perhaps worse, the man. Better to assume the worst and be wrong than to be hopeful and dead. There was no longer any liquid on the floor, and she wondered how an entire river¡¯s worth of liquid could fit in the scrawny body of a young man. She stepped forward and heard a crunch.


    Flinching, she looked under her leather boot and saw the partially-powdered bone pile from some ancient rodent that had yellowed with age. It was picked clean like all of the others but was much closer to the source of its demise. As her eyes trailed upwards and her head moved towards a forward position, she saw a wall of thin needles pointed directly towards her face and head. She imagined a porcupine turned inside out. When she had stood up completely, the needles repositioned around her neck in a perfect circle, like an inverted necklace. She shuddered and the twitching led to small cuts all around her neck that slowly trickled blood.


    She waved her eyes about the room to the man and the floor he rested upon. The floor once more glistened with liquid that poured from the man''s back. He lay on his hands and knees before the liquid from his back hardened to form long spindly legs. The woman had seen similar legs on transparent arachnids that scuttled in the deepest of caves. He¡¯s blind too, from the look of his eyes. The protrusions behind his back raised him in the air, though he remained limp and weak. He hung there, hair hanging over his face like a curtain as the spikes began to lift and push, stumbling, towards the woman.


    As the spikes pushed, the man¡¯s arms and legs swayed to the motion like a pendulum. The motion of the insectoid legs was reminiscent of a deer from an old-world cartoon, if that deer had legs that, instead of splaying or sliding, seemed to soften or crack, even at some points melting. The movement was jittery and could be considered frightening to any normal human. In shock, the woman released her grip on the dagger she had forgotten she was holding. With the clatter of metal on tile, the needles receded about an inch and the woman gasped for breath.


    ¡°Wh¡­.re...ou? Who¡­¡­you? Who are you?!¡± A weak voice leaked out of the man suspended above her head before getting stronger to a yell. ¡°I cannot see¡­ WHY CAN¡¯T I SEE! I can¡¯t remember¡­darkness¡­water...red....¡± The man shivered and that twitch traveled through his many arachnoid appendages in waves, as though it was not a solid. The woman took pride in her name and found no issue in vocalizing it, even to this unknown creature that could kill her with a sudden wayward thought. ¡°I am Seeker. And I have found you,¡± she said, with a prideful puff of her chest. The gesture was lost on the man, as he could detect only a faint silhouette of a person through some form of feedback from the fluid.


    ¡°Hmm...That is a title, not a name. I may as well call myself Scientist, Professor, Subject, Lost...Found.¡± The man continued to ramble, ignoring the aura of irritation that emanated from the woman now known as Seeker. ¡°I am Seeker. That is the name bestowed upon me for my occupation by the Church, even if I might not agree with their teachings,¡± she was clearly irritated enough to disregard the looming threat above her. ¡°Even with the appearance of an angel, you have no place to disrespect my name, others have been called Smith or Hunter, why must Seeker be so unfathomable!¡± She huffed in indignation at the apparent disregard of her rant by the only other living being present.


    ¡°An angel you say?¡± The man laughed, thoroughly ignoring the important parts of Seeker¡¯s little speech. Seeker pursed her lips beneath her mask, knowing that he could not see. Why does he focus on the embarrassing bit, she thought, as the tense situation somewhat dispersed. ¡°Well then, oh great angel, might this humble one inquires upon your mighty name with which you use to insult me?¡± Seeker would have bowed to accentuate her point if the man proved ignorant of the nuances of sarcasm, but the needles barred her path.


    ¡°You know what? I like you,¡± he said as the needles melted to the floor, ¡°I hope the threat to your life is not what makes you so funny!¡± His sense of humor did not seem to have survived his rebirth, if it was present to begin with. She relaxed her shoulders only partially because she did not yet trust him not to skewer her. ¡°I have no name that I remember,¡± he said, ¡°I remember my past life as only snippets of information, no emotions. I see images and family, but I feel nothing. My brain might be severely damaged!¡± He laughed once more, as if his brain was not the most important part of his entire body. Maybe that is the reason he laughs so much, Seeker thought. The man muttered something that Seeker could not understand about lobes and the amygdala. Seeker had already cemented certainty of his brain damage theory.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°I have decided that I should be named something monarchical. King, Emperor, Monarch, K?nig, Roi, Rex, anything that rules. I was subjected to tests in my previous life and thus I shall be a ruler in this one.¡± He paused to think about his choices based on his rather limited knowledge of ancient or even extinct languages. He was glad that the language Seeker used had not evolved so far as to make his completely obsolete, although he had detected an odd accent on some of her speech. ¡°Rex, I think, will be my name, from a language that should by all rights have been dead and lost to the passage of time, even when I was a kid. Quite fitting for one such as I.¡± Seeker shrugged. She had heard nothing of this name, but she deduced that this was the point.


    As Seeker was lost in thought, she heard a scuttling sound. When she looked up, Rex was inches from her face with an odd grin. She could only see his curtain of hair and his oddly jolly smile. He was quite a bit closer than she would have liked but she assumed that a long time in a dark cave would lead to little ability to remember how to interact with beings that didn¡¯t scuttle or slither. This had little to do with it as Rex was conscious for almost none of this time, but this erroneous assumption helped to ease her discomfort. He seemed to have felt her attention, so he patted the side of her mask and motioned with his hand to move forward. She moved forward with a shudder as Rex¡¯s arachnid appendages stomped on the bones of the prey in his way with a snap or a crack. He seemed to notice the sound but paid it no mind and continued on his way. The bones had been picked so clean that there was not even a scent for him to pick up on. He probably just thought they were pieces of broken tiles or other inorganic substances. Seeker wondered if he would have cared if he knew what he was stepping on. She tried to gather enough resolve to stop shivering or shuddering at almost everything that was happening to her. She failed.


    As each crystal arm clacked against the tile floor and cracked against bones, the duo made their way closer to the exit. Sometimes, Rex would get a little too close to the sides of the straight tunnel and the legs would scrape on the sides of the walls, clearly not used to having to travel blind or with appendages that could only loosely be called his own. Each time the glass legs dragged against the walls, Rex would cover his ears with his actual hands and shiver as the sound waves echoed down the long hallway. He looks so harmless, like a baby animal, Seeker thought, although she knew it would take him no time at all to gut her. How could he do such horrible things to my town and to the ecosystem.


    ¡°I smell the grass,¡± Rex muttered under his breath, ¡°It has been a long, long time.¡± He looked up due to reflex but sighed when he still saw nothing. With the hatch now empty of all the liquid, Seeker noticed a ladder and the light from above rather than the endless dripping waterfall that accompanied her entrance into this underground. In fact, the whole entrance was completely dry, almost as if the liquid was never there in the first place.


    The extra limbs lowered Rex down to the ground that was directly shone upon by the outside light and he slumped gently into a pile with his back facing outward. The diamond legs shot from their stationary position and rocketed to the distant opening, completely disregarding the ladder that was adjacent. Seeker saw Rex¡¯s body twitch briefly upwards and the legs began to act like a pulley system, jerkily yanking the limp body up in brief bouts. It looked similar to a group hoisting a corpse out of a cave after a wayward spelunking expedition. Seeker looked at the sight with dead eyes and simply took the ladder.


    When Rex pooled over the top of the hatch, he retracted his additional legs back into himself and shivered in a manner similar to a dog with wet fur. He grasped moist dirt in his real palms and raised it to his nose to take a deep breath.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how I even survived down there, without sun or food or anything,¡± he addressed Seeker who had just recently climbed manually from the hatch. ¡°I suppose I should thank you, for getting me out of there, rocky first meeting aside. I must not have been in there very long though, for me to be able to survive out of my capsule.¡± He was in the recently dried streambed, surrounded on all sides by towers of bones that, if he was able to see, would have answered his query, while also raising quite a few more.


    Rex sighed in relief and rolled his shoulders with a cracking noise. I wasn¡¯t fully conscious before, but what on earth is coming out of my back. He would have looked at his back by reflex. A fountain of viscous liquid spit out and hardened into a spine.


    It grew five little spines and waved at him. I guess I can control it with more than just instinct. Rex could clearly feel each finger undulating as if it were his own. It was his own.


    It looked, to an outside viewer, as though it was a separate entity, but he could control it just as well as he could his other limbs. Better, in fact, as his false limbs did not atrophy, and they were much more dexterous than any human could ever hope to be. And this was without any practice other than his frantic escape from his capsule. Who knows how powerful it might get with a little more time? Instinct carried it far farther than he could have guessed.


    ¡°I guess this was what the doc¡­ no wait, what I was working on before I¡­¡± Rex muttered to himself as he pondered how far his colleagues had taken his mind.


    Seeker did not like how he looked, vaguely human shaped arms coming from his back, a handful of dirt up to his face, on his knees amidst piles of bones. He looked innocent to the destruction he had caused. She wasn¡¯t sure how he would react when he found out. She hoped that he would react.


    Seeker hoped that someone else, preferably someone who she didn¡¯t like very much, broke the news to him and that she had enough time to run far away. Just in case. She also wanted to make sure that he stayed far away from any cute animals or children. She put her hands on her hips and figured that this was very similar to training a young puppy of some kind. What a hassle.


    As Seeker was contemplating the comparisons of a canine and this particular human, a bird, that looked like a misshapen sphere with comically undersized wings and beak, flew a bit too low and made a cheep. Rex shielded his head with his arms and turned his face to the side. His other ¡°hands¡± did quite the opposite.


    With a silent swish, his newly created hands elongated to the point where the bird was just in between them. The palms snapped shut.


    The bird was now only a pinkish mixture of blood, gore and the liquid with the bones and fine feathers now indistinguishable. That pinkish soup quickly made its way down each arm with the bones and feathers remaining in the transparent palms up above.


    Seekers facial muscles tensed without making any noticeable change to her expression. She made her own approximation of a grimace when the apertures on Rex¡¯s back twitched open and then shut to accommodate the nutrient shake. Rex simply tilted his head at the foreign sensation of sucking something through one¡¯s back. Seeker almost vomited.


    The bones and feathers clattered on some rocks at Rex¡¯s feet. Slowly, fluttering down, a single red feather slid gently across Rex¡¯s face, painting a grim streak behind it. It lay at rest, like a little waving flag, upright amidst some mud at Rex¡¯s feet.


    Rex dragged his finger on the wet side of his face before rubbing it against his thumb. He sniffed. ¡°Iron? No. Blo- ¡°


    ¡°No! We are going! Let¡¯s go! Follow!¡± Seeker sharply cut Rex off, favoring one disregard of safety for another. The forest froze. A droplet of sweat meandered down Seeker¡¯s cheek. Rex whipped his body around to face her. His emaciated skeletal frame shook as he let out sharp breaths.


    Seeker blinked.


    A noise of swift air displacement tickled her ears. A claw stroked her neck. Her eyes that were closed gently, no, fearfully eased open to reveal the figure looming in front of her. Rather than the ¡°cheerful¡± threats that had occurred from what she assumed to be brief delirium underground, the aura that dripped from Rex was a cold gleaming knife.


    He stood, hands tipped with crystal claws, hanging above her. His head was positioned so that his frigid sapphire eyes, one highlighted with a brushstroke of red, looked down from beneath his hair and pierced Seeker¡¯s own. One hand was pointed at the middle of her neck, ready to skewer at any slight provocation more.


    ¡°Why?... WHY did you command me? I am NOT your GOD-DAMN FUCKING SLAVE!¡± Rex voice was an avalanche; loud, strong and bold but with a chilled and deadly current, as each word and each enunciation was carefully deliberated, even as they flew from his mouth.


    Huuh. Huuuh. The forest was silent except for the long exhales from the half-naked, muddy-kneed figure, hanging loosely from a wiry, crystalline frame.


    Seeker could hold her breath no longer and fell to the ground to her knees, inhaling deeply. I should not have gone so far. I apologize. Rex thought to himself. He turned around, from the shivering heap of Seeker, and said nothing.


    After he had skittered on four spindly legs for a few steps, he dropped to the ground, thinking that his atrophied musculature might need the exercise. He waved to Seeker, still on the ground, and commanded, ¡°Take me to your leader!¡± He giggled at that.


    Seeker pushed herself up in several halted movements. She was wrong about comparing Rex to a cute puppy to be trained. He was more akin to a feral, rabid wolf, with torn, matted fur and sharp, dripping fangs. And she was going to have to take him to a town filled with sheep.

 Chapter 5: Research

    As the party meandered through the forest, one member stumbled into trees and tripped over rocks while the other could be seen a few meters to the front looking back and flinching at every crash and bump.


    Rex, now lightly bruised in many places, grew angry and got ready to explode, both literally and figuratively. His back muscles twitched in anticipation of a shower of deadly shards to destroy any conceivable obstacles within the general area.


    It just so happened that Seeker looked back just before he showered the landscape. Brilliant shimmering wings rose from behind the half-bowed figure, catching light and glittering. Each feather glinted to accentuate their razor edge.


    Seeker started. ¡°Rex¡­ Um¡­ Could you please, um, put those away, please?¡± She carefully danced around the imperative, in the hopes that this would save her from his anger and save her a place away from his list of obstacles. She had guessed his purpose from the deadly shards poised for launch. Although her worry was palpable, her face was stoic.


    Rex turned his head to face Seeker in a show of politeness. ¡°Why.¡± This did not sound like a question but was instead perfectly deadpan with a hint of anger. He was generally angry from walking repeatedly into the obstructions of nature.


    Seeker fumbled about for an answer. ¡°It, um, makes me nervous¡­scared. And, um, the townsfolk, they uh, they might¡­ feel the same way.¡± She spoke in monotone jolts that still managed to convey fear. This was not just an excuse, as the townsfolk might collapse completely if they saw the living liquid that took their neighbors, and their children, away in the night.


    She understood now that Rex did not completely control the liquid to do the things it did, as he snatched up a bird without even meaning to, being scared of the small animal even. With that said, there was no way the townsfolk would be able to see Rex as anything better than a child-eating monster. She wasn¡¯t sure if he was better than that, but she chose to believe in his moral compass. She hoped this was not a mistake.


    Rex sighed and shook his wings. They collapsed to the ground silently and sloshed back into the holes on his upper torso. She has a point, he thought. He was a little scared himself of what these things could do. What they did do. He knew something bad had happened when he was controlled. He just didn¡¯t know what had happened when he had escaped.


    Seeker closed the distance between the two. Rex guarded himself with his arms. This time, however, the creature he was guarding against did not die. In fact, all Seeker did was hold out her hand.


    She had a bit of an internal struggle before doing so. He needed someone he could trust. She shook, made up her mind and tentatively continued to stretch out her hand.


    She waited for a moment before sighing and grabbing on of Rex¡¯s hands and hoisting him up. He flinched. He¡¯s not completely evil. He is just scared. Fear with great power is a bad combination. She softened her gaze imperceptibly.


    Seeker offered her shoulder to Rex. She would guide him and show him the new culture that he could not see. Her hometown was just the first step. Sure, she felt bad leaving the townsfolk without revenge or closure and with broken households, but really, what else was she supposed to do? Let this dangerous death trap stumble blindly about until he gets angry enough to decimate something or someone that someone else cares about. Over her dead body. Rex was coming with her.


    She also had the benefit, if she could get him to recognize her as trustworthy, that a powerhouse that could destroy an entire town would be following, relying, on her. She wouldn¡¯t have to settle debts or deal with thieves or pestering scammers. Once she got over the massive hurdle of trust, she would have him at her beck and call. She would follow his commands and be his friend. Then, maybe a ruin or two and she¡¯ll have enough money to live in comfort, no, opulence for the rest of her life.


    I¡¯ll be running a thin wire, she thought, but I¡¯ve run on thinner¡­I think. She was adept at convincing herself, a trait well suited to jobs with a chance of horrible death. It eliminated middle ground, so every move was a gamble. The corpse rolling was a fair example of this. The insidious fear of those luscious wings and that weak body would be harder to remove, so her plans remained only plans for now.


    Seeker made up her mind to be a friend. She always thought in terms of gains and losses, for better or for worse. It helped her climb emotional obstacles others would have deemed insurmountable, such as interacting with a potentially murderous man as a potential friend.


    She slung one of his arms around her still-bloody shoulder. Rex was muddy enough not to care. The soft dirt squeezed through his toes as he trusted his navigation to her. He shivered. I guess I should probably get something to wear other than this muddy pair of leggings.


    The liquid, while indescribably useful in almost all other areas, was still clear. Although he couldn¡¯t physically tell the difference between see-through clothes and normal ones, he figured that he should retain at least some sense of decency for the sake of those around him. An odd case of thoughtfulness in his otherwise void ability to empathize.


    He brought up his concern to Seeker, who had completely forgotten that he was only half-clothed. She agreed that both should find an unbloodied, clean set of clothes. She laughed uncertainty. Her clothes being dirty was part of her job. She wasn¡¯t even sure that she had clean clothes at all. Maybe if she rooted around in her parent¡¯s old stuff.


    Rex was feeling rather jovial. He had escaped his prison, felt strangely refreshed, full and had a navigation system to show him how the world had developed in his absence. Only the sound of wind rustling above drifted to his ears. He didn¡¯t mind the dirt and grime that was getting all over. He¡¯d get that off pretty soon when they got to the town.


    Jovial though he was, a beautiful forest is pleasing only to the eye and without that stimulus, he was bored. He was without games or other amusements to occupy his attention and he would have distained them even if he had them.


    I am a scientist! Well, I was¡­ But what scientist would amuse himself with pre-made games. Research shall be my game. Rex began to get himself excited at exploring his new abilities. He was intending to figure it out before he was¡­preoccupied with¡­voicing opinions¡­Yeah.


    ¡°Hey Seeker, let¡¯s play a game!¡± The liquid spun around Rex¡¯s free arm, following the path that his muscles wrapped. The liquid coalesced in his palm into a ball about the size of an infant¡¯s head.


    Seeker did not shudder. He would ask why if she did and she was not sure how he would react to being directly feared. Sure, she could lie but she was not great at lying.


    Rex quickly followed up his unapproved proposal with a clarification. ¡°Name something, first thing that pops into your head.¡± She responded quickly, ¡°blood, feathers¡­uh¡­¡± She looked around. ¡°a tree?¡±


    Rex had ignored the first two subconsciously and immediately grinned. ¡°A tree. Excellent.¡± The blob nestled in his hand shook like gelatin before rising to form a rod-like mass. As the small sapling grew branches, veins popped on Rex¡¯s face and body. It was clear that the many simultaneous tendrils were taxing when using only his own mind to command them.


    Why is it so easy when I lose control? Or when I don¡¯t try to concentrate? He hadn¡¯t been thinking about the wings or the legs as he used them but even this simple exercise was taxing.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    It was like walking down stairs, hopping right down is easy until looking and noticing one¡¯s feet. Then, all dexterity seems to flood away and then the bottom of the stairs await quicker than is anticipated.


    Rex knew this pretty well; he had stumbled down several staircases while thinking too hard about this very phenomenon. But training should help, Rex thought to himself. Any muscle, synthetic or otherwise, was able to gain strength from continued stress. This muscle was there. It was strong already. It just needed control. Control enough not to give in to his more primitive emotions. He was not off to a great start.


    Rex tried to add leaves to the unstable crystal plant but instead he started shaking, no leaves on the tree. He looked like he was crying, a clear substance leaking from his eyes and nose as he shook. The liquid leaked down his face in erratic paths.


    He licked around his mouth. ¡°Not blood?¡± He furrowed his brows. He wasn¡¯t crying. He knew at least that much about his emotional state. He had figured that he was bleeding from brain overexertion or something to that effect but the liquid on the tip of his tongue was tasteless.


    ¡°Oi Seeker! Don¡¯t be alarmed,¡± Rex said, unslinging himself from her shoulder. She was immediately concerned. She watched as he summoned a crystal blade around his fingers with his hand in a chopping pose. She was beginning to understand what he was going to do as he held the other arm perpendicular to his chest. He raised his bladed hand above his head and swung down.


    Seeker averted her eyes from the messy scene. Drip-drip-drip. Drip. Drip.  She tentatively turned her head around to see a clear puddle on the ground and Rex¡¯s inquisitive face staring at a quickly closing wound on his arm. Small needles shot out of the cut and grabbed both sides of the wound to close them and sew them shut.


    ¡°Fascinating.¡± Rex rubbed his fingers over the former cut with a curious face. ¡°Rather painful, I guess. But nevertheless fascinating.¡± Seeker peered at the cut, her eye enhancement allowing her to zoom in beyond a normal amount. It was almost the same as the surrounding area but with thin treads tightly tying together the recently separated skin.


    ¡°I don¡¯t bleed. My wounds seal shut in an instant. What a wonderful liquid! An ichor! The blood of an unearthly being!¡± Seeker was concerned about his ego. Sure, she had called him an angel, but it was in shock and she regretted the bloating of his self-image. He was either a feral beast or a self-proclaimed ¡°unearthly being.¡± It was disarming and she could not be caught off guard.


    It certainly explained how his skin was so pale. How could he have a blush when his blood was not red. Now that Seeker looked, she could see no blood vessels in his eyes or in other areas that they were normally.


    Rex had done a little experimenting on his own invention before it was stolen from him by his coworkers. His ichor had meshed with the rest of the lab¡¯s ¡°creativity¡± in a way that they may not have expected. They certainly took advantage of this discrepancy.


    The chip in his brain was able to regulate the small electrical impulses that controlled the liquid and was able to get his cells to produce it as a product. It seemed he must still have at least one organ.


    This mystery organ must have developed over time, as he had been thoroughly hollowed out. That operation was never supposed to be a success. But between his time controlled and his time asleep, the chip had plenty of time to become acclimated to its host.


    The chip was a danger. It controlled the most dangerous part of Rex¡¯s body and most of that body. The ichor did the work of every organ and a glitch or a small problem could be the end of him. A full body shutdown. He needed it to become fully a part of him.


    He needed a way to get the synthetic into the organic, essentially creating an entirely new brain within himself. A quest fit for a scientist. His dependency on an inherently foreign object, placed within him by his enemies, almost led him to carve out the chip himself. He knew that, not only would this kill him, the AI within the chip would have surely have a failsafe for that event anyway. That thought made him even angrier.


    He pushed off his previous instances of wrath as a product of this system. Completely out of my control. It made him feel massively better, even though he still relied on the chip as a scapegoat. He knew he did not act like that before he was betrayed, so it must be the chip, it had to be the chip.


    But now he had a goal. Find some way to get the chip out of his head, while retaining life functions. He¡¯d be able to lead his life again, become a scientist again. He could live a life that he wanted. He plead with himself in his mind that life would go back to how it was. He had to have a reason to live in a world that was an era apart from his own.


    He resumed rubbing the cut. He started scratching at it. Clear liquid once again slid down the side of his arm. His fingernails brushed faster. The cut widened until it stretched beyond the length it was cut. He needed to think about something else.


    A sweet hum entered Seekers ears. Rex was humming an unknown tune as his fingers dug into his skin. The needles shot out of the cut in a futile effort to repair as they were broken by a rhythmic slash from a neat fingernail. Seeker watched. If she grabbed his hand or asked him to stop, she knew he would react. He was not in the state of mind to fear what he was doing.


    She turned her head and waited. Seeker listened to the humming with a light percussion of scratches. Eventually, whatever internal struggle that had prompted that event was over. She held out her hand in his general direction. He grabbed it. His hand was wet.


    He did not speak as she once again settled his hand on one shoulder. He just made a little tree in his free hand. It was just a trunk and three branches bare of leaves. Why had he made it of liquid before? He had neglected a significant portion of his powers.


    Sure, liquid is flexible and can move in complex ways, but it is not solid, obviously. He had to spend a large amount of mental power just to prevent it from collapsing. A complete oversight.


    The trunk gradually hardened, starting from the base, into a bark with a liquid center. When the miniature tree was fully barked, small leaves popped up on the sides. The liquid core was used to create this lush bloom, as the solid could no longer move. ¡°HA! First step!¡± Rex yelled and threw the sculpture into the air. It fell and shattered onto a rock.


    Rex didn¡¯t care in the slightest. He grinned manically. ¡°Heehee! I did that with my own brain! Not someone else¡¯s!¡± As he skipped in place, he pointed in the direction he had heard the sound of glass breaking.


    Seeker was unsure if they would make it to the town before dark with all of these interruptions. She would not mention this problematic fact to him. She was sure that he would protect himself and her, if only because she was his guide. She hoped it would not come to that as the night held many dangers.


    Not one to waste, Rex willed the fragments of his sculpture to him. They remained stationary. He tilted his head to the side. He held out his hand and gestured. They were still shattered and no closer than before.


    ¡°Seeker, guide me to where my sculpture broke.¡± She complied. He crouched on his knees above the pieces and placed his palm among the pieces. Only the ones he touched were absorbed back within himself.


    How curious. However, it did made sense. Electricity did not travel as easily in air and Rex did not possess the power or control to connect him to the pieces remotely. His power was confined to his own body.


    It was a weakness he hoped never to have to deal with. Rex did not believe that Seeker understood that this was a weakness that he displayed and even if she did, he doubted she would be able or willing to take advantage of it.


    Although his newfound weakness was alarming, he remained upbeat about his accomplishment. He had already been doing this subconsciously with the help of the chip, but it brought such greater satisfaction when it was his own findings that prompted it.


    It made him further relieved to find nothing magical about his surroundings. Electricity worked like it should without telepathy or telekinesis, even if it meant having a weakness. He didn¡¯t have to wave around a magic wand either. He was glad that the fundamental laws that he believed in were unshaken.


    Resolve steadfast and universal laws still unbroken, the pair marched on. Seeker, of course, noticed it first. Rex, a little while later, felt smooth packed dirt beneath his feet with patches of gravel. A road. A sign of human civilization that was not destroyed.


    ¡°We are close,¡± Seeker said.


    She looked to the top of the walls that loomed above, at least a mile ahead. Seeker often thought about how large the walls were for a small frontier town. They were cold metal and spoke of a more prosperous time.


    It lay unfinished, with metal scaffolding welded to the structure itself. From above, the wall was a crescent moon shape with the thickest and most finished part of the wall facing the forest where Rex and Seeker observed it. There were a few small openings to allow water in or out but they were grated and covered by thick bars.


    The components had come from an ancient underground factory that the citizens had been barely able to operate. It was found in a ruin by another of Seeker¡¯s profession and was used until it broke.


    It was still light outside and the villagers were not keen on outsiders, as evidenced by the lack of an easily accessible gate. She assumed that they would be even less keen on a blind, half-naked stranger that unnerved or uncomfortably awed onlookers. Especially when they came from the dried riverbed that had, until recently, taken so much.


    They would have to wait until the night.

 Chapter 6: Moonlit Arrival

    A crescent moon rose above a crescent town. The town¡¯s lights faded one after the other, leaving only blinking construction lights that studded the wall. An open field separated the thickest part of the wall from the wall of the forest.


    A shadow flickered at the edge of the forest. Closely behind it another figure stumbled.


    ¡°The glow above the town has stopped,¡± Seeker whispered, ¡°We must move. Silently. Please.¡± She began to move through the grass. The gravel path was still beneath it but, unlike the forest, the grass had grown through it.


    ¡°Very well. I will exercise caution.¡± Rex answered, much less quietly. Now was not the time to exercise his legs.


    He leapt into the air and landed with two more limbs than he had jumped with. The four arachnid legs only lightly disturbed the grass. The liquid had quite a bit of practice being silent, even if Rex lacked this same experience.


    His actual feet hung just over the grass so that they would not make any noise.


    ¡°Lead the way,¡± Rex said, gesturing in front of him.


    Seeker lightly nodded and sidled through the grass without even a swish to mark her path.


    Rex was left with the problem of how to follow her. His hand, fingers still pointing in front of him, dripped with a shimmer in the moonlight.


    A thin line weakly wobbled towards the advancing figure of Seeker. She had not gone so far that he could not guess where she was. It searched for the figure it knew was there.


    The liquid dropped onto her shoulder as a light hand would tap. She looked behind her and saw Rex still a good distance away.


    He urged her on again, with the string stuck tight to her.


    She felt cold drips down her shoulder. Each drop grabbed softly but firmly. She could not see anything at all but knew that no other could cause this.


    A puppet on a short string. Every twitch and movement observed under scrutiny by the blind senses behind her. She knew that this was a move without malice and was for direction, but humans like to be the puppet master.


    It was very hard to concentrate on silent movement with what was essentially a leash clasping one shoulder.


    The wall cast its shadow in the darkness with the light from the moon. Seeker naturally reached the manmade cliff first and placed her hands on the cold metal wall.


    The leash detached from her back and retracted to the looming figure. Rex could feel the cold air radiate from the wall in front of him.


    The tower¡¯s mass loomed in presence, even without its height being visible. It was a different presence from the trees or the tall grass, even if those were also large. It gleamed.


    Even without the ability to see. Rex could feel the chill and the presence.


    Despite this, he disregarded this triumph of human engineering over nature.


    Seeker stood facing the wall with her hands on her hips. She typically grappled up and rappelled down the other side, but her equipment was either broken or thrown in her pack that she had left behind. Throwing away that pack had been a mistake, even if she was otherwise occupied.


    ¡°Sigh,¡± she said.


    Rex cocked an eyebrow but remained otherwise unfazed at the vocalized onomatopoeia.


    ¡°I don¡¯t really want to hike around the whole wall,¡± she grumbled, ¡°not after the exhaustion to get here.¡± She, being rather physically fit, meant predominantly the mental exhaustion.


    ¡°Okay¡± Rex replied with a serious nod, oblivious to this.


    Seeker made a grunt of confusion before feeling a tug on the back of her cloak. Suddenly, she felt quite a bit higher than she should be.


    On the smooth metal face, Seeker looked like a kitten hung from its mother¡¯s mouth.


    Rex dangled as well, with the extra baggage in his right hand angling him slightly to the left.


    He hung more securely than she, however, as his tendrils rooted deep into the metal structure and solidified.


    To a gigantic observer, perhaps they would look like a spider scaling a face with surprising ease. To the observer, perhaps the wall would look impossibly smooth and they would marvel at the feat of smaller creatures.


    In fact, the wall was impossible to scale in most circumstances. That was why it had been built. The citizens almost never left and built no opening to ensure this.


    Rex did not muse on these hypothetical giants, even if he may have appreciated it in the past. He had enjoyed introspection but if had examined within himself, he instinctively knew that he wouldn¡¯t like what he saw.


    He simply continued upwards, leaving exact holes every meter as a marker.


    Seeker held her collar to prevent it from constricting her.


    ¡°Could you hold me another way?¡± She asked, somewhat hopeful of not being strangled.


    He thought about this. He did not have enough arm strength to grasp her coat in any comfortable way so he could only let her hang. Unless¡­


    ¡°Sure,¡± he responded and held her.


    She stiffened. She had not expected this.


    Sure, she had wanted him to hold her in a way that would not strangle her, and this was physically more comfortable. She just hadn¡¯t thought of how he might actually hold her.


    Physically comfortable I suppose. But mentally? She looked down at her body.


    If a cocoon was clear enough to see its interior, she imagined this would be the general image. She would, however, stay the same upon her emergence from the cocoon, if not worse for wear.


    The liquid was wrapped close around her body and gave a softness greater than any bed she had slept in. But in the corner of her brain, a very loud voice shouted that any small thought from her carrier could turn her into something that dripped and pooled rather than moved.


    She still hung and swayed by two small threads connected directly to the climbing figures back. The threads did not look as though they would even hold a regular sized cocoon, but nevertheless, he climbed, and she was pulled up behind him.


    He seemed to be dragging her to his lair at the center of a web as he continued upwards on eight limbs. The four outer limbs made a *shiik-shiik* as they moved while the other four dangled.


    It was her house, her lair in the city, but she could not brush her thoughts aside.


    A few meters from the top of the wall, the top two limbs stretched out to the top and twisted and bent into a shape that resembled fishhooks. The two remaining thickened to bear the imbalance.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    They dug into the thick metal plating at the top of the wall and pulled with an invisible exertion.


    ¡°Dead weight,¡± grumbled Rex under his breath. The weight was, fortunately, still alive.


    Seeker, who was previously resigned to being tugged up the entire wall, felt herself swing from front to back in a deliberate, purposeful movement. She hadn¡¯t quite thought about what Rex would do with a hanging weight below him when he got to the top.


    She looked upwards with blank eyes. ¡°Uh,¡± she stated.


    The cocoon whipped upwards, tracing an arc leading directly to the top of the wall.


    The air whistled around Seekers exposed head. She had still not quite grasped what was happening, except that the top of the wall was coming very close.


    Her mind raced. She was stuck on a deadly path and she didn¡¯t even know what it was that set him off.


    There was a sharp thud and then a dull silence.


    She opened her eyes to see cold metal only a few centimeters from her mask.


    She exhaled in short, uneven bursts, almost a chuckle or laugh if it was taken several levels higher in the measurement of emotional expression.


    Many small columns of liquid stuck to the ground and held her suspended.


    The liquid must have absorbed the shock, she thought after seeing the liquid attached to the forehead and chin portion of her mask. At least one form of it, she thought as she shivered.


    Although the cocoon that was previously restraining her had melted away, she was powerless to move without a solid connection of her own to the ground. She sagged, entrusting her weight to be suspended by the columns, and waited.


    She did not wait for long as Rex sprung upwards in a theatrical fashion. He landed on his own feet as the legs sucked back into himself.


    Rex felt like an ancient intelligencer or some other agent from the films before even his time.


    The wind that waved his wispy hair and the feel of cold metal on his skin made him suck in a breath. It felt much different from the natural air of the forest


    Rex was familiar with metal, grass and trees were much farther from his realm of expertise. He wasn¡¯t even that familiar with humans even with that being his realm of expertise.


    He worked behind a desk with anatomical models and robot arms. Hardly a social occupation.


    Typically, however he had nothing to do with the humans themselves. He was no psychologist. He believed that it was what was on the actual inside that counted.


    He sensed the area that Seeker occupied using the ichor he had placed around her.


    She hadn¡¯t moved.


    ¡°What are you doing lying around up here? Let¡¯s get you up.¡±


    Rather than hoisting her up with an outstretched hand like any other good meaning bystander, Rex commanded the columns to force her to the feet.


    Seeker fell in reverse.


    Her body rose backwards, staying perfectly straight, to a standing pose.


    She stumbled as the supports detached and slithered back to their host.


    While it was true that she had some time to gather herself from her brief wait lying just above the ground, she was still shaken.


    The many lamprey-like tendrils that had supported her had occupied her attention.


    She did not seem to move as she stood stoically but she knew that her heart was racing, and her knees were shaking.


    This was in comparison to a normal human, however, as her knees barely moved.


    The only thing abnormal about her heart rate was that it should be much faster after having been flung about and stopped so suddenly.


    She regained her calm and peered over the wall. She saw a trail of holes punctured deep and a bit of a trail cut through the tall grass to the forest.


    Even with my warning, he left such an obvious trail.


    The trail was insignificant to any other eyes, especially from the top of this massive wall.


    Hardly any person was ever up here and even if they were, they would not pay any attention to the sides but nevertheless, Seeker worried.


    She wanted to introduce him to the townsfolk slowly, not have him appear as a shadowy monster that climbed unclimbable walls and took people in the night.


    Even if he did those things, it was important that others learned that he was most likely capable of feeling regret and he didn¡¯t seem to realize the awful things the liquid had brought.


    She walked over to the other side of the wall and saw darkness.


    No lights lit the town except the few that adorned the wall. Even those that had come with the wall seemed to have little purpose other than to add some texture to the blackness of the night.


    She could see each house in the gloom of the night, and she could even see pedestrians moving by moonlight. The darkness here made no difference to Seeker and the citizens had that same gift.


    Why waste precious resources on unneeded light when residents could work, day or night. Those who chose to work were few, however, compared to the number of houses.


    The darkness was especially eerie to a people that were afraid of being taken unseen by a supernatural power.


    Daylight, while it made hardly any difference to them visually, carried with it a comforting warmth that the night lacked.


    Each house, while looking individually different, shared the same building materials.


    It was an odd contrast to the wall as there was not a speck of metal on any house.


    There was concrete, brick, stone, wood, but no metal.


    One would expect that with the amount of metal poured into the wall, they would be able to afford some small implements of metal for railings or decorative elements but there were none of these.


    The wall was truly the most striking aspect of the town, but it was not completely solid through.


    Every hundred meters, the top of the wall had a hatch, setting up a picture of gigantic rivets.


    The closest one to the pair creaked as it began to open.


    ¡°Shh. Something is coming,¡± Rex put his finger to his mouth.


    Seeker gazed at the hatch that had unclasped. A shiny head poked upwards.


    ¡°Hide yourself!¡± Seeker whispered to Rex before adding an even quieter ¡°Please?¡±


    Rex scuttled to the side of the wall and jumped downwards.


    He clasped himself to the wall like a starfish and poked crystal hooks into the wall to hold him.


    He heard the awful sound of metal scraping on metal before a series of ringing thuds.


    Couldn¡¯t be the hatch. That was already open.


    The thuds, what he now assumed to be footsteps, continued.


    Seeker watched the body shamble towards her. That shining head was followed by a shiny body. It was vaguely humanoid in shape but was clearly wrought of metal.


    It stumbled over its clunking metal legs and held a bundle of metal plates and beams in one arm.


    This right arm was similar to that of a human but with only three fingers on the hand. It looked like it might have once been streamlined but pockets and dents were scattered all over.


    The left arm was much different. It was bulky with only a thin pipe on the end instead of a hand. Rubber tubes extended from where the wrist would be and receded into the back of the robot.


    Its lack of visual balance made it seem almost comical.


    It stomped roughly to where Seeker stood.


    One singular eye studded the bald head. It looked like an old diving helmet backlit by blue.


    It creaked downwards to look at Seeker. The eye¡¯s light increased in intensity until it dimmed to the level it was before it had lightened.


    It stared for a few seconds longer and then creaked back to its forward-facing position.


    The footsteps clunked to where Rex and Seeker had clambered onto the wall. The three-fingered hand set down its metal bundle and carefully selected several pieces of small sheet metal.


    As it clasped the pieces in its hand, two hooks flicked out of its chest. Simultaneously, the metal feet tilted backwards at the ankle and the heavy body started to fall down the wall.


    As it fell, the two prongs hooked onto the wall with a click.


    Attached to the hooks, a metal wire extended to lower the robot to the nearest hole left by Rex.


    The massive left arm began its work as the right arm pressed the metal piece to the hole. A thin copper-like wire extended from the tube with a whirring noise.


    There was a high-pitched *Zizz* and a bright flash of light and before long, the robot was working on the next hole.


    Seeker sat down on the top of the wall.


    ¡°Please stay hidden. We do not know if more will come.¡±


    ¡°What was that thing?¡± Rex inquired.


    He guessed that it was a robot but with only the audio to work with it was hard to determine the exact purpose of its creation.


    ¡°A guard of sorts, I would assume,¡± he continued.


    ¡°No. It is what created this wall. It and its many brethren,¡± she corrected. ¡°It took the parts of metal from a ruin and the surrounding area and, by some command that we did not entirely intend, built this massive wall.¡±


    ¡°From the footsteps, I would imagine it would be quite an accomplished guard if the scenario happened to present itself.¡±


    ¡°It will scan those in its path for recognition and will typically issue a loud warning sound but otherwise, not as such.¡± It was a shame, she thought, that these hulking metal men served only as constructors near that very dangerous forest.


    ¡°They are actually very inconvenient,¡± said Seeker, with a slight humph. ¡°They will take nearly any scrap of metal not attached to them for the wall.¡± As a non-professional engineer, it was difficult to hide her inventions from the ¡°resource patrols¡± of the autonomous creations.


    There was a faint whirring sound from the side of the wall. It got closer and closer until the construction droid had pushed itself back up the wall.


    It picked up the bundle of metal and made its way in the opposite direction it had come.


    Rex clambered up and looked in the approximate location of the retreating silhouette.


    ¡°Where is it off to now?¡±


    ¡°The unfinished section. Every day, these constructors travel to find any metal they can to process and stick on each end of the wall.¡±


    Seeker was sure that someday the wall would be complete, and, on that day, she was not sure what the people inside would do. There was no gate and hardly any way up for anyone without a grappling hook.


    Seeker only hoped that they were not so stubborn to isolate themselves to that point of no return.


    There were farms inside the wall and some wells or water supplies, but without a way to get out, any failure could be fatal.


    Seeker looked down to the city. It was still as dark and unmetallic as the last she looked.


    Rex looked once again towards the robot. He looked at his chest and formed two prongs.


    ¡°I have an idea that will not damage the wall.¡±


    And then he jumped.


    ¡°But what about¡­¡±


    She would have finished but two thin lines once again grabbed her shoulders and yanked.


    ¡°Sigh,¡± she said as she fell.