I was walking down the streets of this little town that we’d found, doing my best to act like I was looking for a hideout when in reality, I was just keeping an eye out for when Chloe would stop trying to drill holes in our backs with her stares so I could double back to find Sarah and see how she was feeling. There was no way in hell that whatever had just happened between them could take a backseat in my mind to looking for a spot to hide so I turned a corner to break line of sight and move towards our abused chemist.

  As I walked, I took stock of the streets around me. This entire town seemed to be set up in a nearly perfect square grid, so visibility would have been nearly perfect in a straight line… If only there weren’t so many people roaming the street.

  Not gonna say I don’t miss him, but I am kinda glad Alex isn’t here, I’d be drowning in short jokes right about now.

  I walked vaguely in the direction that I’d seen Sarah walk off to, but it soon became clear that I had no idea what path she’d taken, and the street’s grid-like structure meant I only had a chance at spotting her if she happened to be walking down the same street as me. Asking the locals helped somewhat. They were all so friendly that it almost made me feel like someone was about to pop out of nowhere to try to sell me on some scam or another, but no, they were just friendly, cheerful, and happy to help, which was refreshing after the chaos that had been the day before.

  At one point, walking down a street looking for Sarah, I felt something strange, as if someone had violently forced my head to turn in another direction, only nobody was there to do that, and I wasn’t actually forced to look, but the overwhelming urge to do so was so strong there was nothing else I could think of comparing it to. It didn’t matter anyway, that feeling had come from where Chloe had sent us on our way and even if I didn’t have something much more important to do, I didn’t feel like going to see her at the moment, so I continued with my search.

  When I was beginning to think that I might have gotten lost, that feeling came again, only from a completely different direction.

  Okay, I hate that. I need to see what that was so I can get it to knock it off. Besides, if the rest also felt it and were as annoyed as me, they might also go to check it out. Decent place to meet up.

  So it was that I made my way through the busy streets, the pleasant simulated sunlight streaming down between the leaves of abundant trees to light up the people in the crowd as I moved by them, in hopes of finding whatever it was that was so insistent on disturbing this serene atmosphere.

  It didn’t take long for the signs of that serene atmosphere being disturbed to make themselves apparent, as I was now walking with a clear destination in mind rather than trying to find someone I’d lost track of. This came in the form of a bunch of people rushing away from what looked like a street like any other. They were coming around the corner and hurrying up to break line of sight with something, though I couldn’t see what it was since I’d have to turn that corner first.

  I’m probably gonna regret this, aren't I?

  I mentally prepared myself and moved to look past the street corner people were running away from like I was some sort of hero moving opposite the tide of panic, only to immediately freeze like a deer caught in headlights the second I saw the source of the commotion.

  It was those Guardians again.

  The source of all –or most of– our torment the last few days, were methodically walking down the street, looking for any stragglers that had been forced to hide after failing to run away from them.

  In hindsight, I should have expected that.

  There were five of them, and as my gaze scanned every member of their little pack, they eventually settled on the lead one, whose eyes met mine.

  Oh no…

  With an ear piercing screech, the leader alerted its group to my presence, and I thought they would all charge me like they’d shown themselves prone to do when they captured us, but instead, they opened fire.

  They shoot now?!

  I barely had time to process the many chitinous spikes that shot out of the tips of their tentacles and realize that they were coming straight for me, faster than I could ever do anything about.

  It took less than a second and an eternity for the first of those spikes to reach my hastily thrown up guard meant to at least cover my head and heart. I knew that it wouldn’t be enough. There were too many important bits of the human body that I could not hope to cover all at once.

  In that eternity between instants that I had, I made the decision to use whatever time I’d have left to run away in the opposite direction to where our little group had split, so they wouldn’t be caught without help like I’d been.

  The least I could do was do everything in my power to make sure they’d- OW!

  Ugh! That’s so annoying!

  I thought, as my spiraling thoughts were broken by what felt like pebbles impacting the mesh of my equipment and failing to penetrate, or even do much of anything. Opening my eyes, I saw that the hail of spikes they had thrown at me had mostly reached me… Only to bounce off and leave only a small bruise, if even that.

  “Huh.” I said, picking up one of those discarded forearm length spikes. The leader made another ear-piercing shriek, but still none of them charged and they even stopped firing their spikes at me.

  This group was a far cry from the monsters that had overpowered and taken us prisoner just yesterday. Although, thinking about it, it made some sense. This was supposed to be a Class-7 world. One of those low gravity gardenworlds where the locals are physically weaker to match. What was strange was that they had some monsters that could give us so much trouble instead of failing to do so. That had been the whole reason why the GF had wanted to send a group made up entirely of humans to this planet, to get some ‘crazy strong deathworlders’ to investigate where others had failed.

  So if the ones that got us were abnormal elites, that would make you lot… The rank and file.

  With the galaxy finally making some sense again, I rushed forwards, and with an open palm, pushed the lead creature, who collapsed on contact and I fell on it, feeling a sickening crack as I miscalculated my speed and ended up placing most of my body weight on the hand that had accidentally pinned the thing to the ground. It squirmed for a second, and then it stopped moving.

  “Huh.” I said once again, the events that had just occurred catching up to me. I felt sick, having done something like that with my bare hands- wait, no.

  These were the same things that had very nearly done the same to all of us just a day ago. They were the reason we were in this fucked up situation, with half of our group missing entirely and the other half having to keep an eye over our shoulders for a leader gone mad.

  With a clearer head, I brandished the spike I had picked up and threw it like a javelin, catching another of those repulsive abominations squarely in the chest.

  “Bring it motherfuckers, I’m not scared of you!” I called out, getting no small amount of satisfaction at the way the tables had turned from our last encounter.

  They did not, in fact, bring it, those motherfuckers, and instead started running away. Vicious when they have the upper hand but cowards at the first sign of resistance. I chased them.

  They run as fast as their legs, accustomed to life in low gravity, could carry them. I was faster. One by one, I caught them, and as though they were made of wet cardboard, they died almost immediately.

  I chased them down to some disgusting nest of horrors, where the last remaining member of the formerly five strong group was pounding on a literal green sphincter protruding out of the wall of some random street shop. As the pounding on the taut membrane reached its peak, the thing opened –or I guess unclenched would be a better descriptor– and the monster made to rush inside it, but not before I reached it and smashed it against the side of the hole it had been trying to crawl into.

  I’d thought that would be it, but apparently there was still one more on them inside of this whatever nest. More than any of the others, I hoped this one would try to charge me so I wouldn’t have to chase it inside that damp, dark and disgusting place, but it was not to be, so as it ran further inside, I went after it.

  Catching the last survivor hadn’t been any harder than the others, but I only ended up managing it after having run deep into the tube-like passage that lay beyond the weird sphincter. Thinking about it, I began to wonder if I was not inside some weird alien’s rectum, but as I looked around, reality proved itself much worse. This place was vile. Alive in all the ways that nothing should ever be. Everywhere I looked, there was some part of the surroundings reaching out for me and trying to push me away. It was so offensively wrong that I simply could not find a way to describe it.

  I tried to retrace my steps to get out of there as soon as possible but I could literally see my surroundings rearranging themselves before my eyes, passages opening and collapsing in a macabre fountain of gore that were all as disgusting as they were unique.

  Well, if that’s how it’s gonna be… No way in hell I’m staying here for a second longer than I need to.

  So, thoroughly grossed out but with that feeling gradually being overpowered by a building rage at whatever this was trying to keep me here, I began looking for my way out. Or failing that, trying to make one. All while doing as much damage as possible to whatever this cursed thing I was inside of was.

  I punched, kicked, tore and clawed at the walls that seemed insistent on trying to box me in until I saw light peeking through a spot on a wall, a membrane that was thinner than the rest.

  Faster than I could even form a coherent thought, I rushed towards that and came out to the street I had been in before diving into that realm of nightmares. I took a second to catch my breath, but only that long, as three more of the fuckers had somehow showed up.

  For fuck’s sake, where do they even keep coming from?!

  In the same way as before, I charged what looked like the leader of the creatures, a big, fat, ugly thing that was an affront on the senses just by existing. When I was close enough, I jumped and O????o???????f?????.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  [DATA CORRUPTED]

  Coming to, I found myself pinned under the thing’s foot, the pressure from its overly huge body weight almost as much as the pressure of my eye trying to jump right out of its socket.

  “Ow, what the hell did that thing even do to me?” I was no stranger to getting punched in the face but this was extreme. Reaching towards it, I found something disgustingly soft, flimsy and crunchy where my cheekbone should be, and I had no doubt that I would be feeling that when the adrenalin wore off.

  If I can stay alive long enough…

  There was very little I could do from my position lying flat on my back against something that could hit that hard, so I settled for looking around to see if I could use something to distract that giant creature. To my surprise, I wasn’t disappointed.

  “That’s them, officer, please help!” I saw some old lady talking to a police officer, who saw my struggle and was quick to call for backup.

  Huh. I might just make it after al- Ow! FUCK!

  Just as hope was beginning to build in my heart, that big piece of shit kicked me in the face and ran away. Luckily I had my head turned, so I took the kick on the other side of the head that that thing had hit just earlier, but it was still painful.

  As I lay there, it didn’t take long for me to begin to hear the wailing of sirens, both police and ambulances, creating a cacophony that seemed to shake the very streets. The same police officer who the old lady had been talking to came to look over me, practically a boy no older than twenty.

  “Hey! Stay with me! You’re going to be fine!” He said, only somewhat helpfully.

  “Ow. I KNOW!” I said, more aggressively than I’d intended to, sending a lance of pain through the remains of my cheek. As far as I knew, the worst damage I’d taken were the hits to my face, which, while concerning, the fact that I was conscious at all was a good sign that I’d live through it if I didn’t do anything stupid like yelling at a poor young man just trying to do his job.

  Eventually some doctors came to look at me and the boy went away to do his job somewhere else. They covered my eyes and placed something on my face. The sensation was indescribable. It was something like a damp cloth, cold, but comforting. Caring. It somehow even felt alive and the realisation only made it appear that much more tender.

  Within minutes I was up and about.

  “That should be enough for now, don’t get in more trouble than usual and you should be fine.” Said the doctor, apparently done with my treatment.

  “Wait, that's it? What even was that?” I asked, completely stupefied. There must have been some sort of medical breakthrough that I’d missed, because as far as I knew there was no sapient being that had a method to treat these kinds of injuries with such speeds. Bringing a hesitant hand towards the wreck of my cheekbone, I was not met with a painful soup of displaced flesh and broken bone, but with some small cuts and mild irritation over a practically intact bone structure.

  “Well, we take great pride in our ability to heal here at-” I was halfway through getting my answer when something else came to the forefront of my mind.

  “Wait! That thing was not normal! Did you see where it went?!” I asked. The doctor pointed off in the distance and I was gone.

  The thing that hit me was completely different from all the others. Most of them were almost a typical gardenworlder but that one was insanely strong, and now it had who knows how many police officers throwing themselves at it without knowing what they were up against, I needed to warn them at the very least!

  I followed the trail of screams, moving as fast as I possibly could before finally catching up to where the chaos had moved. Dozens of officers were practically throwing themselves at the beast in an attempt to at least slow it down so it could be restrained but it in turn responded with a hail of spikes that did far more damage than the ones I’d been pelted with.

  I took a second to gather my thoughts and assess the situati- I???t???'???s??? ???g???e???t???t???i???n???g??? ???a???w???a???y???!???

  I charged at it as fast as I could, paying as little attention as possible to the spikes it shot and dug into my skin, covering my face and chest with my arms in a mad dash to-

  [SUBJECT COMPROMISED. MEMORY RECORDING STOPPED]

  “Please, you need to calm down! We’re all here for you!” Sarah was still pleading with her boyfriend as he devolved into ever more insane spasming before our eyes. Eventually, as I noticed him pass a hand over his face, leaving behind four straight gashes leaking greenish brown ichor, I knew I had to do something drastic to grab his attention.

  I grabbed her shoulder and forcefully shoved her behind me, causing her to stumble and fall on her ass. “Oi! Eyes on me!” I yelled, unsure if he could even understand me.

  The reaction I got was instantaneous.

  Immediately, his panic attack seemed to be entirely forgotten, along with all reason as he reared up with a roar that shook the very walls of our cave and charged me with murder in his now otherwise empty eyes.

  I got the strangest sense of déjà vu as I watched someone much larger than myself running for me thinking he could get me just like that. It called back to that last sparring match I’d had with Alex before leaving the dirtball of a world we’d been stationed in, and despite the fact that Curt had watched the whole thing, I saw no recognition in his gaze, so I decided to handle the situation the same way. This time, however, I could not afford to be so gentle.

  Moving forward with measured steps to intercept his charge at just the right moment, I brandished the spike I still held in my right hand and used it to smash his right knee the moment the corresponding foot made contact with the ground, causing it to bend in entirely the wrong direction and the big lug to come stumbling down. Now it was simply a matter of using his crippled mobility to come up behind him and- Is that an eyeball?

  SHIT!

  I only had time to curse inwardly before the arm I’d been about to use to wrap around his neck and subdue him was grabbed by one of the tentacles poking out of his back, easily lifting my whole body weight in the reduced gravity and tossing me through the walls of the cave, which gave way as it turned out they were barely a curtain of some green flesh-like material hiding another chamber.

  I quickly hid from his view to gather my thoughts in the time I had since he seemed to have lost track of me after blindly tossing me through a wall.

  Two things I wish I didn’t have to know: One, this place is bigger than I thought. Two, he has eyes on the back of his head.

  If I’d thought I’d already seen enough disgusting things since getting on this space tree, apparently the universe disagreed, as just as I’d swung behind him I saw an eyeball, poking unnaturally out of the back of his head slightly up and to the side, swivel in its undersized socket to meet mine. It was the same brown iris on a black sclera as his regular eyes had become, but that sclera was especially noticeable as the eye protruded from his head like a large pilar cyst caught between his skull and what had been the skin of his scalp. Given its position slightly to the side of his skull rather than directly behind, I had to assume he’d have another one keeping watch on the other side.

  Three, the knee I smashed is already doing better.

  As I snuck a glance past the wreck of what had been the wall of the cave, I noticed his gait was already almost back to normal, only barely favoring his intact left leg over his smashed right. He had wrapped his tentacles around the injured knee to act as some sort of a brace. Hopefully that would mean I wouldn’t have to deal with them covering his back next time.

  Four, I thought, grumbling internally at there being too many unknowns in this fight that required my full attention, he definitely knocked something loose just now.

  Reaching a hand up, I groped around the inside of my suit where something was poking at my neck. Not painfully, but definitely annoyingly, plus it was important that I figure out what it was, so I didn’t later find out it was part of something vital that had been rendered unusable. That would have to wait, though, as I had a friend to knock some sense into.

  Taking a chance on another look into the main section of the cave where everyone was still waiting, I noticed Curt had turned his back on me in his blind search. I almost took that opportunity to pounce on him then and there, but stopped myself at the memory of the unnatural eye that had caught me last time.

  It was clear that I wouldn’t be able to sneak up on him without trying something arguably stupid given his near 360 degree field of vision, so, armed with two spikes, I threw one of them to stick itself into the floor in front of him. As I’d hoped, he turned his head downwards onto the spike that had suddenly materialized before him, leaving his additional eyes to point straight up and, much like Alex before him, his own large frame worked against him as it covered my approach until it was already too late.

  With a leap assisted by the low artificial gravity of this place, I reached around his face to place my remaining spike against his throat and pulled with all my might. I had no hope of trying to place him in a headlock and come out unscathed with his additional limbs so instead I bent the polymer stick around his neck until it constricted the passage of air to his lungs and jumped off. And not a moment too soon, as he immediately forgot about the damage to his knee and tried to reach me with all of the limbs at his disposal.

  I watched him flailing wildly from my landing spot, at the same time trying to reach me and get rid of the thing stealing his breath, yet failing at both. The former because it had become significantly easier to avoid him now that he had something draining both his energy and his attention, and the latter because, try as he might, he could not get his hands between his throat and the unforgiving loop of polymer and in his panic, he hadn’t noticed the loose ends of it that protruded near the back of his head.

  It didn’t take long for him to collapse in exhaustion.

  I walked up to him, still wary of an errant swipe but also ready to jump in to remove the thing choking him before it could do any permanent damage.

  “So, can we use our words like adults now?” I asked the prone man, but didn’t get an answer before someone else broke into what I’d hoped would be a conversation before it could even begin.

  “Captain, what the hell was that?!” Came Sarah’s irate yell. Alice was trying to gently hold her back but she was having none of it. “You didn’t need to go that far!”

  “Now, wait a second. I know what this looks like,” I started in an attempt to calm her down but had to stop myself to stifle a wince at my unfortunate phrasing, as I was reminded that I did not, actually, know what it looked like to her with how their view of the world was warped to be only barely recognizable. “But I have it under control. I’m not gonna let him really get hurt, I just need him relaxed.” I finished.

  “How can you even say that after-... Wait, you’re serious? NOW?!” Sarah said, but that last wasn’t actually aimed at me but at the prone figure beside me. “Fuck me, I don’t even know anymore.” She grumbled before walking away. In my confusion, I turned to Alice to find out what had just happened, who was quick to clarify with one of her tiny smiles. “He believes you’re you now”

  Heh. There was something refreshingly simple about dealing with our group’s two muscle heads –Curt and Alex–. It had gotten to the point where any of us could identify the others by the way their fist impacted our faces, and I knew I could count on him to recognize my particular brand of ass-kicking.

  For all the three’s perception of the world had been warped, it was the familiar things that were best suited to ground them in reality. The real reality, as opposed to what they saw. In Sarah's case, it had been a reminder of past events, traumatic as they were. For Alice, it had been the same, plus a reminder of the people who cared about her. For Curt it was showing him something he’d recognize no matter how twisted the world around him became.

  I quickly walked up to him and grabbed the entangled tips of the polymer stick stealing away his breath and by bracing my foot against one of them, pulled as hard as I could to remove it before he’d really pass out.

  “There you are, all better now. Good thing you came to your senses when you did, your brain already doesn’t get enough oxygen as it is.” I said, walking away as I struggled to bend my spike back mostly straight, unsubtly exposing my back to him but subtly keeping my eye on Alice’s reactions in case he tried something. Her soft giggles led me to believe my fears were unfounded.

  “She called you dumb.” She said, and with a grunt I heard Curt, who had just finished standing back up, turn his head to look down at me, the knee I’d smashed apparently no longer bothering him.

  “What did he say?” I asked her.

  “No, you.” She answered, still giggling.

  “Right, I could’ve guessed that.” I grumbled goodnaturedly before turning into a more unpleasant topic. “So, we really need to do the thing…” I said, pointing at the back of my neck, “...Like, as soon as possible. Think you can convince him to play along?”

  Alice quickly turned serious and, unfortunately, silent. Whatever conversation was going on, it was clear I wouldn’t be privy to, but after a short while and an exasperated grunt, the massive beast that Curt had become kneeled down beside me, exposing the nape of his neck for me to mercilessly smash.

  Which I did. To no reaction.

  This worried me more than anything I’d seen today, as the other two times I’d hit the thing that was infecting their perception, the consequences had been grossly spectacular. But this time, nothing. He didn’t even flinch. Concerned, I hit him again, this time with the blunt spine of my slightly twisted spike, which still did nothing, and then one last time, causing the abused stick to bend with the strike around his neck but still not getting the gross reaction I wanted. I was beginning to despair, when Curt signaled for me to stop with an open hand, before driving his own spiked tentacle into the back of his head. I stood stunned at this gruesome sight, but the man that had just stabbed himself spat out a tiny glob of unrecognizable gunk before turning his inhuman face to me and flashing me a thumbs up.

  Yeah, I have no idea how to respond to this.

  Chapter 12: Life is a game of telephone