I blinked. "You seem to be a very direct and straightforward guy," I told Baldie, "so how about you go ahead and tell me if you've got a convenient way to get the three of us out of here? Run first, talk later, and maybe I'll consider joining your secret club, okay?"

  Baldie and the other Anathema—wait, didn't Baldie call him 'Mook' or something? Baldie and one of Mook's bodies looked at each other. Then Mook pointed at something out of sight behind both of them. For a moment, we all just stood there, but then Baldie nodded and hurried over to whatever it was Mook was pointing at. I wanted to see what it was, so I started walking over as well. Several of the Mooks parted to let me through. How considerate.

  There was some kind of industrial equipment set up in the middle of the roof. I wasn't sure what I was looking at—there was a folding stand with some electronics on it, as well as a regular laptop. There was also a small, portable generator, a pallet with a big tarp over it, and some kind of big, plastic tank. Plastic tubing snaked out from under the tarp to the tank, as well as several wires. The generator was powering both the laptop and other electronics as well as whatever else was under the tarp. Not at all suspicious.

  This was honestly some kind of total spy movie shit. After poking around on the laptop for a few seconds, Baldie made a 'gimme' motion at the assembled Mooks, one of which stepped forward to give him the radio phone thing. After pushing a few buttons, he waited. A few seconds after that, he started speaking, and I'd be a liar if I said I didn't do my best to eavesdrop. "Okay, change of plans. We're doing it now—no, I don't care. Start the incursion, max capacity. Then—no, no, that doesn't matter. We do it now, minimal cleanup, and retreat. We're done here."

  The fuck? I still couldn't make out any part of the other half of the conversation, but I didn't really need to. It was mostly just Baldie talking over the other person anyway. Back up just a bit, though—what's this about starting an incursion? These were obviously the same people involved in my latest kidnapping, and I'd been assuming they triggered the incursion just by collecting a bunch of captive Anathema together and setting them loose on random people.

  My gaze flicked over to the assorted equipment—especially the bulky tarp covering something on that pallet. What kind of mad science shit did I stumble onto?

  Flicking the radio back off, Baldie went back to messing with the laptop. Several of the Mooks also went over to the tank and the various cables and tubes leading from it. Checking the connections and stuff, I guess? Rearing up on my hind legs and using one of the AC ventilation stacks for support, I craned my long neck to see if I could spot any Guardians or soldiers arriving. Lo and behold—there was a whole string of flashing vehicle lights headed straight towards our location. Twisting myself in other directions, I realized that multiple detachments of something were all converging on our location.

  Shit. Releasing my grip on the AC stack and dropping back to the ground, I decided to speak up. "Just so we're all aware, it looked like there's a bunch of bad shit headed straight for us. We probably have like a minute at most, and that's assuming no one teleports up here or shoots a missile at us or something." I wanted to bite my tongue as soon as I finished. Way to go, Alex. Way to tempt fate.

  "Minute's more than we need," Baldie grunted, and one of the nearby Mooks gave me a thumbs-up. "We're just about ready now." Walking over to the pallet next to the big plastic tank, he ripped the tarp off.

  I eagerly padded over to see what in the world might be under it. The answer turned out to be a somewhat chaotic jumble of electronics, metal tanks and canisters, gauges, and tubing. I was a little disappointed though, because just like the other components of their whole setup, all of it looked basically like something that wouldn't seem out of place in a construction lot or welding shop. It had a bit of a mad scientist flair, sure, but it was overall just way too normal for that.

  In my mind, it hit this weird middle ground between what you'd associate with either an oil-covered, anarchistic, junkyard inventor or a sinister and refined, black glove wearing evil genius. Relative to the former, it looked way too neat, professional, and reasonable—basically, it looked like something that was put together by normal people who knew what they were doing, and like it should actually work according to the laws of physics. Compared to the latter, though, it was way too crude, piecewise, and boring looking. No sleek, space-age chassis, no tubes of colorful mystery liquid pumping in and out, and no lightning crackling across the surface.

  Basically, it made me skeptical that this was a device capable of creating a breach or anything equally as dramatic and crazy. There's definitely some kind of irony there, I mused. The more realistic your doomsday tech looks, the less believable it is that it's actually capable of doing anything outrageous.

  Realizing that I'd started to quite literally poke my nose into the various bits of the contraption, Baldie tried to slap me away on the nose, as if we were trying to keep a dog away from the peanut butter jar. I barely even felt it, though, and he ended up nursing his finger. I guess the way I move might make people subconsciously forget that I'm a giant hunk of solid metal.

  "Just—just don't touch anything, okay?"

  Wasn't going to, I wanted to say. Instead, I just retreated a bit to keep watching from over his shoulder. "Sure, I can manage that."

  In the end, he only spent about ten to twenty seconds doing a final check of everything. It seemed like everything was in place, because he got back to his feet, walked over to the laptop, and set a counter. 30 seconds—huh, he literally has a giant ticking bomb countdown. I assumed that was the time until the whole setup activated and created a breach, or whatever it was that it was supposed to do. "So, is this the part where we run away and don't look back at the explosion?"

  "Yes, actually."

  Ha! Fantastic. A bunch of Mook's bodies started streaming into the roof access stairway. Personally, I was just going to jump back down to the ground, since it sounded way easier than trying to squeeze my full chamelium self down four flights of stairs alongside several dozen more regularly shaped bodies.

  "Hey! Hey, can I ride you?"

  Freezing, I turned my head backwards to look at Baldie, who was following after me instead of the majority of the Mooks. What the fuck kind of question is that? I shook my head. "No one is ever going to ride me."

  "Oh come on, it'll be the fastest and safest way for me to get out of here." He pointed back at the incursion device. The timer was down to fifteen seconds, I realized. "I'm triggering an entire incursion for your benefit, you know."

  Can't argue with either part of that. Well, I could, but whatever. The point was that I would acquiesce to the stupid and somewhat humiliating request to 'ride me' in this one instance. "Fine. But hurry up, and don't be weird about it." I flattened myself down a little so that he'd have an easier time getting on, and then I took off over the edge of the building.

  I obviously couldn't just leap straight to the ground like I'd originally planned. That would have a high chance of outright killing the guy—really, it would be no better than if he ran and jumped off the edge himself. Annoyingly, that meant I had to scurry back down the side of the building, a feat which was surprisingly more difficult than going up. Why is that? It seems so backwards. Whatever the reason, I'd only managed to make it halfway down the building when a sudden difference in pressure ripped through reality itself.

  It happened so quickly that I could only analyze it in retrospect, but it felt like an outward blast, followed immediately by a sudden low pressure and a rush back inwards. The whole thing then finished with a sharp shock wave. Of course, I didn't know how accurate the term 'pressure' even was for the phenomenon, since it wasn't anything obviously physical. It was very much a wishy-washy, Anathema sense thing—related to my new sense of taste, but not exactly the same.

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  I guess that's what it feels like to be next to a breach when it first forms? True enough, a brilliant, violet flash lit the night sky. Similarly colored streaks of frozen, slowly shifting lightning stretched above, and the very shadows lengthened. God fucking damn it. I really wanted to see what the whole process had looked like. That included the general formation of the breach itself as well as whatever their machinery did to cause it.

  To be completely honest with myself, I was definitely going to join their cult, perhaps temporarily, if for no other reason than to learn what it was they'd figured out that let them create a breach with what looked like completely normal, mundane, human technology. None of it even looked super expensive or restricted. Sure, some of that equipment was probably tens of thousands of dollars, and it seemed like it was all for one-time use.

  For literally punching a hole through reality, though, that was stupidly cheap. A typical hospital, military depot, or chemical plant would probably have a dozen rooms full of equally expensive crap. Like seriously, what the fuck?

  Over the next few seconds, I also came to realize that I hadn't just lucked into stumbling upon the one specific rooftop in the campus where these guys had chosen to set up shop. All around the horizon, similar blasts of violet went off one by one. It wasn't that many—probably only four or five in total—but that was still way more than one. Damn. Are they trying to cover the whole campus? It sure seemed like it, and it also seemed like this was a higher tier incursion than the previous one. I could hear it.

  That same atonal buzzing was back, and it was a lot louder than I remembered. Almost all of it was coming from nearly straight above me, which made sense—I was right underneath the closest breach. Tier 2 or 3, I guess? I was pretty sure it was a tier higher than the previous one, and that was at minimum. Damn. They really did pull out all the stops for me. Actually, wait. Why were they doing all of this in the first place?

  Anathema cultists weren't some kind of fictional trope or urban legend. They were very much a real thing that could cause serious problems. These guys seemed weirdly indifferent, though. Like, sure, Mook was literally another Anathema that could act rationally—but Baldie certainly wasn't, and he seemed way too—what? Irreverent? Nah, that's too intense. Grounded, maybe? The way he'd decided to just call it a cult instead of whatever he wanted to call it was really funny, and honestly, everything about him was incongruent with how I imagined a guy who worshiped Anathema or some shit.

  Guess I'll find out what their deal is soon enough. At Baldie's direction, I darted away from the engineering complex. Twisting my neck to look back, I saw that Anathema were already starting to stream from the breach webbing its way through the whole building. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of them were grabbers of varying sizes. Most of them were the usual masses of featureless black arms, but I got a glimpse of a few that looked more unique. Interesting. Mutants? Higher tier versions?

  I wasn't sure. Also interesting that it's mostly grabbers—the first one was more skinners than anything else. I already knew that different incursions would have their own particular Anathema populations, but I had to wonder if there was any particular pattern. Can probably just look that one up on the internet.

  Baldie continued giving directions, and before long, we were in a totally different part of campus. Now that I was in full chamelium mode, I could move fast. There were multiple compounding reasons for that—first, I could tell that I was a lot stronger than I was 'normally.' I was already stupidly strong ever since 'hatching,' which meant my current strength was truly ridiculous. Every time I wasn't on dirt and grass, I ended up ripping chunks straight out of the concrete with my talons. I even smashed through a couple of curbs, and honestly, it just felt like kicking through a pile of sand.

  The immense strength coupled nicely with my new stride length and my altered biomechanical structure in general. Overall, I didn't think the speed was biologically implausible—cheetahs were pretty damn fast—but it was both fully superhuman and well above the speed I'd ever consider driving around here. That all meant it was probably a pretty bumpy ride for my one passenger, and I had to keep checking that he was still managing to hang on. He was, but barely.

  Also, the whole campus had descended into chaos. Despite not being anywhere near any of the original breaches anymore, I was starting to see other, 'wild' Anathema around almost every corner. Alarms were going off in every building, people were awake and all trying to rush to the nearest bunker, and I'd even spotted two different Guardian teams. Only one of those looked like they'd noticed me, though, and they decided to focus on escorting a mob of their fellow students to safety. Good on them. And good for me, too.

  In all, it took about three minutes for us to get to our destination. That was entirely based on feel—it could have been a good bit longer or shorter, for all I actually knew. Also, it wasn't anything special. It was just one of those crosses between a parking lot and an alleyway between adjacent uni buildings that you'd cut through every once in a while as a shortcut. There was no one around, only a few parked utility vehicles and a single scuttler coming towards us.

  Probably trying to come eat Baldie, I realized. While I wasn't the only Anathema to turn 'cannibalistic,' my understanding was that they usually only started eating each other when they were severely injured, there was a total lack of humans or other large animals nearby, or there were just way too many of them crammed together. With that in mind, I doubted a shitty Tier 1 was trying to come take a bite out of a powerful Tier 3.

  I was committed to protecting my human passenger for now, though, so I went and pounced on it the moment I finished setting him down. It was decently tasty, actually, and I munched it down happily. The allegedly 'durable' shell was about as stiff as an ice cream cone—a fitting comparison, since both also came with a soft and melty paste inside.

  As I wolfed down the last bits of scuttler, I also watched as a manhole cover popped up a few yards away from us. Getting closer to me again, now that the scuttler was gone, Baldie gestured at the now-open hole in the concrete. "Krok is one of our other Anathema. He'll escort us to a drop off point, and from there, another one of my associates will take over."

  Okay, hold on. Just a few things I think I should note here. One, it sounded like they wanted me to wade through the sewers, which, just—no. Second, my plan had been to go along with these cultist people, but I was starting to get a little spooked. Like, what exactly am I getting myself into, here? How far was I willing to go—both metaphorically, and also literally? How far would they want to take me after this 'drop off point?'

  And, maybe most importantly—please tell me he didn't say this other guy's name is—oh, come on.

  A mutant, quasi-human head poked out of the hole. Pale, taut skin stretched over a knobby, far too angular skull—this new Anathema reminded me of a skinner. They said Mook was a grabber—no idea how that works with the whole hive mind thing—and chameliums might be rare, but they're still a known, classified Anathema type. I'm going to go ahead and guess this guy really is a skinner. Tasting the air, I figured he was about Tier 4. Ouch. That Mook guy was around the same tier as well, but I wasn't as worried about him as I was this Krok guy.

  Basically, Mook tasted about as strong as that Matthias guy who was supposed to be our Guardian mentor, but at the same time, he didn't taste anywhere near as immediately threatening. There was a certain logic to that, I supposed, since it seemed like he was literally way more spread out. Also, Katherine literally killed a bunch of his bodies and he seemed like he was doing fine, which was definitely an enviable ability.

  This Krok person though—yeah... I might win, but I also might not. Better not chance it. As he poked more of himself out of the sewers, I got a better look. Damn. He really does look like someone tried to make a human out of skinner materials. Also, he does kind of look like a crocodile.

  Something about that observation massively pissed me off, and I knew exactly what it was. Are you seriously telling me that the mutant alligators rumor is real—and that it's because another 'intelligent' Anathema has been running around LA for half a decade? It pissed me off. I didn't know how to articulate why it pissed me off, but it definitely did.

  Now, I had to make a big decision. I could either go along with this group of weirdo Anathema and at least one human helper they had—or I could seize this as the perfect moment to make myself scarce. I was no longer being pursued by a team of Guardians, so slinking away was definitely doable.

  But—which choice would actually be better?

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