I come too while flying. Or, at least, that’s what I think is happening in the fraction of a second before I slam into the swivel chair’s legs.

  “Oof!” I’m wrapped half around the toppling struts before I’m awake enough to realise this isn’t a dream. Ribs screaming as the impact has me coughing up the lump of dislodged gum along with more of the watery blood already soaking my mask. The wet fabric making it hard to breathe until I pull it up over my nose and finally suck down a full breath. The burning pain in my lungs barely noticed as my hands then have to scrabble madly to stop the chair from tipping over onto the console that controls the monitors. Stig had been pretty clear about not touching the keyboard, or anything else, for fear of breaking what he’d been surprised had worked in the first place.

  “Forget the chair and help already! My Power doesn’t work on dead stuff!” Schiz’s scream helps my brain to finish rebooting just as I get the chair settled back onto its rollers and manage to stand up myself. The pain still settled deep behind my eyes doing the rest of the work in reminding me of just how I’d come to be ‘flying’ through the air.

  Eyes snapping open wide, I spin back around just in time to duck under the mass of sheets that was about to break another rib. Hissing in a mix of pain and annoyance as the covered tentacle instead slams into the chair and then the console that I’d been trying to protect. The little of the monitors I can see past the flapping fabrics switching to show only shifting static over black or frozen screens.

  Without thinking, and while egged on by a bubbling rage at this thing’s random interruption of a job that’s already hard enough, I shove my hand up into the bundle again. Intent on repeating the same process to stab the monster as worked before. Too late, I remember that I no longer have the sword nor anything else in my Pocket that can hurt it. The realisation coming just as I feel my hand being pressed up against the layer of slimy gel that covers the limb already descending onto me. My mind distracted and body working on instinct as I try to access my Pocket in a repeat of the exact same motion I first attempted and failed at.

  Except, this time, it works.

  My fingers burn from the ice-cold flash that reaches down to the marrow as the feeling of the gel disappears. The wave of cold outlining the fine bones of my wrist in painful detail before it diffuses into the flesh and muscle of my upper arm and chest. The numbness almost welcome as it takes away from the grating, and unfortunately now quite familiar, pain of a broken rib. Then the blood and slime-soaked sheets that had covered the tentacle fall onto my face.

  “Ah! Pheuw! Spu!” I spit and splutter as I struggle to free myself of the thoroughly stuck together mass. Not sure what the hell just happened and so still wriggling away from where I’d just been about to get crushed. Unsure over just what exactly I Pocketed or how and worried the monster might still be able to come after me with its wounded limb. Or just use another one. Mostly though, I’m just freaking out.

  It takes a terrifying few seconds of struggling before I’m able to peel the sheets away from my clothes and face. Meta-strength and gymnastic flexibility helping me to launch them over my head after a few false starts and partial successes where some part manages to stay stuck to me. I don’t have time to celebrate at being able to see again though, the sound and shake of another explosion pushing me to keep moving as I spin onto my front.

  Eyes narrowed and teeth grit as I try to spring back to my feet only to slip on the blood-soaked floor and slam my chin against the concrete. The impact knocking the wind from my lungs and making me retch up a mouthful of blood, the monster’s and mine, that mixes with the clear and lemony puddle now covering most of the floor.

  “Hey! You ok?”

  Still gasping for air, and not feeling like I can answer Schiz right now, I squeeze my pained eyes shut after a quick glance to make sure I am where I think I am. Staying on the floor as I pull my hair back to throw up any more of the monster’s blood that might still be stuck in my throat. Not like I’ve had much luck with standing in the last few minutes.

  A little of the tension from those stressful minute’s bleeding out of me, along with some more of my actual blood, now that I’m assured that there’s no more sign of the monster. Not that I really expected there to be. My hand having slipped into my Pocket through my jacket as I’d tried to stand and immediately pressed up against the side of something slick and slimy.

  The feel of the tentacle’s severed end, which is still trying to wildly spray more of that thin and citrus scented blood, letting me quickly put together what must have happened. Somehow, the monster had been seeing through its tentacle which is why I couldn’t access my Pocket when I first touched it. However, that sight had been cut off after I’d gotten a lucky hit with the sword and completely severed the majority of what was reaching up from out of the sewer hole.

  The thought of the hole, and worry over if another tentacle might be coming up from it, has me glancing over to where I expect it to be. My face twisting into a look of confusion then bemused surprise as all I find are the same sheets I’ve thrown off twice now. Both times, the bundle ending up covering the hole without my meaning to. Although, this time it’s more like the pile is stuck to the floor around it thanks to how completely soaked through the sheets have become.

  I can’t help but laugh a little at the absurdity of it. Something I regret immediately when the movement causes my retching to finally become a full-on stream of the creature’s blood that I violently throw up onto the floor. Having to pull my hand out of my Pocket to help support myself and avoid adding another bruise to the one I can already feel growing on my chin.

  Once I’m no longer at immediate risk of drowning on monster blood, I grab onto the edge of the dented monitor console beside me and use it to climb into a half-kneeling position. Glancing back over my shoulder only once I feel like I have enough air in my lungs to risk using it for something other than breathing. The harsh reply I’ve spent the last few painful and disgusting moments loading up dying on my lips when I spot Schiz also struggling to pick herself up from the floor. A fountain of bright blood flowing out from her nose as she leans forward to spit up a coagulated wad that must have flowed back down her throat.

  “I got it with my Power after you stabbed it. Animals always see weird things but that was- Urugkh. Just- I managed to dodge the spasms but… I don’t think it’ll be coming back.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  I accept the explanation with a nod. Too tired now that the adrenaline is leaving me to ask why the sewer monster seeing something weird would affect her as well. Instead, with only a little reluctance at turning my back on the now re-covered hole, I look back at the monitor wall where I expect to see nothing but black or broken screens.

  And then I immediately feel very awake indeed.

  “Get to the door!”

  The noise of Schiz tripping over herself as she jumps to her feet and rushes over towards the hole is a noise I barely register. My attention taken up by watching Stig through the again somehow working monitors. The villain looks like he’s just walked out of a collapsing house from all the dust he’s covered in. His helmet and visor cracked down one side bad enough that I have to wonder how it’s not fallen into pieces already. A result that nearly comes about as he lands badly on the entrance platform that Ictus’ bunker rests on.

  His ankle rolls limply as he tries to turn his diagonal free fall into a sprint. The painful looking tumble becoming a saving grace however when he barely rolls out of the way of a suddenly grown hand that would have wrapped around his foot had he landed safely. Much like me, he also doesn’t try to climb back to his feet. Gravity shifting sideways again and propelling him forward directly at the bunker before its occupant has a chance to react.

  “Is he out?!”

  I hold off on answering Schiz, eyes pulled to the screen where Stig dodges a light rain of thrown arms with a mid-air and full-body flex before slamming hard into the bunker’s front. Slapping a handful of yellow putty shaped around a mass of wires onto the crystal viewport in the same moment that he lands. Pressing it tight over the crystal screen even as gravity flips again and he starts to fall in the opposite direction. My lips twitching up into a grin as I see the boy villain flip open the detonators trigger guard with the same lazy motion as before. The hand not helping me to cling to the console raised in readiness to signal Schiz when the hero’s hidey hole is blown open.

  Then Stig’s head cracks back as if he’s just been hit by an invisible truck. His helmet shattering into two clean pieces as his hands go limp and the detonator slips out of his grip. The momentum that had been about to let him escape the no-longer-coming explosion now sending his limp body off the platform’s edge and down into the water below.

  Gone in an instant.

  I don’t have time to feel horrified before Saurian’s roar shatters the false silence of the room and sweeps away all thoughts besides a deep and instinctual fear. The dinosaur shifter jumping onto the platform from somewhere out of sight, probably the front of a pillar, and landing just a second to slow to stop Stig’s fall. Her claws splashing at the murky current he fell into and which almost pulls her off the platform as well before she throws herself back and away from the edge.

  The leap saving her from the water and the grapple of those few stone arms that manage to find her by feel and luck. She shrugs off or shatters the ones that manage to get a good grip as she turns herself towards the bunker with her one useable arm. The other still there but so twisted and broken that I have to question if she might be better ripping it off and growing a new one rather than trying to heal what’s left. The mix of stone arms around her clawing blindly at anything nearby in hopes of finding her now that she’s moved. No new arms able to grow and replace those lost with the viewport covered and the hero’s sight obscured.

  A cold comfort given what it cost.

  “The fucks happening, Jacket?! Is he out or-?” I lower my hand and hear as Schiz cuts herself off to rush through the hole. Belatedly realising that with the hero’s viewport covered in plastic explosive there’s no longer any danger of him growing new arms to grab us. Not that he did earlier but-

  With another furious roar, Saurian launches herself forward at the bunker. Knocking me out of my rushing thoughts with another wave of fear. My mind flinching from its musing as Saurian launches herself bodily at the hunk of reinforced steel with the clear intent of carving it open herself. The detonator Stig dropped currently surrounded by stone arms that are pawing at the air for something to grab and crush.

  Unlike him, she doesn’t try to land on the bunker itself. Leap bringing her down just in front of it where she then stabs her claws into the concrete underneath. The stone pulled away in chunks as I realise what she’s about to do and how Schiz might not be needed after all. Not unless Ictus has a way to stop the whole bunker being thrown into the water.

  Something inside must have clued the hero into what’s happening though, or maybe he just realised being safe but blind isn’t worth it, as no sooner has Saurian dug her claws in a second time than the bunker’s front slides open. The entire wall facing her shooting to the side so quickly I barely see it as more than a blur as someone who looks nothing like the Concordat hero Saurian described rushes out.

  Something Saurian clearly agrees with as, instead of getting away as she’d told me to if Ictus somehow got within touch range, she lunges forward towards the unknown figure. The short Supe also breaking my expectations as he’s already leaping towards her before the door has fully opened. Tucking himself into a ball midair before he suddenly jerks up and over the charging villain. His flowing costume of plaster white gaining a splash of red as I watch his ankles burst from the force of whatever just shifted his trajectory with such sudden violence. Probably his Power.

  Certainly, it’s not Saurian. Her leaping swipe aborted the moment it’s clear that the hero, for what else could he be, will be able to dodge her tackle. She still tries to bite him, neck extending farther than I thought it could but finding nothing but air. Her ravaged arm flung down to stab into the concrete beneath her. Claws used as hooks to pivot her around before momentum can throw her past the hero and into the bunker he just left. A roar of enraged fury leaving her throat as the shifter’s one good arm comes around to grab onto his back and end the fight before it can truly start.

  Then something hits her in the side with the force of an invisible truck and she is thrown inside the bunker almost too fast for me to follow.

  The bunker door slides closed with the same speed that it opened with. Cutting off her roar with a silence I feel in my bones. Cold shock and delayed horror crashing into my mind like the aftermath of binge-eating a whole tub of ice cream as I force my eyes away from the monitor. Knees too weak with shock to stand, I look over my shoulder to see if Schiz has at least caught the hero with her Power. As long as she’s able to shut him down, the two of us should be enough to get Saurian free. Though I can’t think of anything to help Stig.

  “Schi-” Again, I feel my heart fall into my stomach as I look back towards the hole. My half-kneeling and off to one side position only giving me a partial view through the tunnel but still good enough to see that Schiz is not alone. Or conscious. Her limp and hooded form held up by the very man Saurian had described to me before this all began.

  Ictus stands with his back to the hole as he steps out onto the walkway past the tunnel’s end. His costume formed of many pairs of arms all wrapping around him in an endless embrace. Each one gripping another as they cover his body in a motley of olive tones. The occasional flash of a white and silver bodysuit visible under the limbs. The only other colours being on the nails which are a shining white or gold. Or black. The pattern only broken around his upper chest where the costume has been roughly and recently carved apart to give access to the skin beneath.

  A rebreather swings to the side as he spits it free while staggering out from behind the outer bulkhead’s door. Filthy water and what I hope is just dirt cascading from him as he almost loses his balance. Saved from falling by Schiz’s own hands that reach out to link with the crumbling stone arms around him. A set of three more arms, identical to her own, having burst through her suit to grow grotesquely from her back and legs. The new limbs either helping to balance the hero or better immobilise his prisoner. Not that it’s likely needed given the way her head is hanging beneath the black mesh hood he’s pulled tight over her face.

  Unphased, Ictus reaches up to the plain black and heavily armoured helmet he’s wearing. Shifting it to the side to let water and worse things flow out. The muck not getting far as it quickly becomes caught on his costume when he forgets to lean over to avoid it. He doesn’t seem to mind or even truly notice however, making no attempt to wipe it away as he pulls off the bottom half of the helmet and passes it to one of the hands on his costume that suddenly animates to hold onto it. Another near his neck reaching up to scratch at the rough stubble on his chin while the rest start shifting to let the dirt that’s gotten caught on them fall to the floor. His own, actual, hand slipping back under his helmet in the direction of his ear as he looks out across the water towards the bunker that we’d all thought he’d been in.

  “All villains accounted for. It’s over. Good job, Andronicus. Your father would be proud.”