She jerked up, too late. The giant shape landed on her, thick, sinuous muscle crushing her arms to her chest. Pain exploded in her trigger finger as it snapped sideways in the guard. Hot runnels of fluid streamed to the floor as serrated barbs sank deep into her flesh. She stomped with the strength of a dozen men, driving her heel down onto the foot below.
Pointy only squeezed harder. Her ribs, fused as part of augmentation, cracked. Slamming her head back, she hit thick muscle instead of teeth or nose. She gasped in a breath, but her lungs wouldn’t inflate. Held in the air, she found no purchase. The grip tightened, and the fire in her chest strangled hope. Bones shifted, her infrared vision blurred.
Her fingers walked along the black leather of her belt to the loop holding the grenades. She fumbled for the pin, the spoon, any part of it, something she could drop and kick behind them, shred the monster from the back.
She groaned out the last of her air.
Her finger touched metal.
Blood and organs vomited from her mouth as her ribcage collapsed, the hot, meaty taste her last sensation before the world went black.
Conor spun right as the wall next to him disappeared in a puff of concrete dust, Scratchy’s claws reducing the brick facade to chunks and powder. He slashed downward, and the sword’s psychic scream pumped energy into his exhausted muscles. It drank deep, pulling blood and life from the bonk’s thigh, cutting through muscle and bone with an ease that technology couldn’t account for.
What ICAP didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
He danced away in a hot arterial spray, Scratchy’s muscles already knitting in ropy, purple masses. One mass formed a lump-like, writhing tentacle. Conor smiled. First Generation Regenerates had their own set of problems, so he decided to have some fun.
She charged, a limping rhinoceros’s trundling attack, brute force and sharp steel at forty miles an hour.
Eschewing the sword, he drew his 9mm pistol and fired, emptying the fifteen-round magazine into her face and arms in a series of little red holes and streaks of shredded tissue. Small caliber rounds wouldn’t do anything but annoy a bonk of her size, but it would tax her system just enough for his next–
— she slammed into him, carrying him to the ground in a gridiron tackle that blasted the air from his lungs, but he kept his blade pointed out and maintained his grip. She bit down on his shoulder. The armor absorbed the brunt of her iron hard teeth. The increase in pressure didn’t restrict his movements any more than her arms already had.
Fabric tore. The pressure increased.
He let her squeeze, and worked the katana back and forth across her exposed wrist. Even without leverage the razor-sharp blade sliced through the meat without effort. His teeth clenched against the growing pain in his shoulder; Conor worked the katana up and down in a rough sawing motion, the best he could manage with his arms pinned to his side.
She grabbed his thigh with her claws and squeezed. The bone gave way with a burning rush of endorphins and heat, and Conor fought to remain conscious through the unbearable, itching agony. He slid the blade up, and then down.
Up. Down.
Muscle parted. Metal scraped against bone. Scratchy dragged her teeth free then slammed her head into Flynn’s helmet, again and again, stars exploding across his vision. Something cracked, and cracked further, then white supernovas streaked through his skull. Still he sawed.
Her grip slackened against the blade, just enough to free his arm. Conor pulled a combat knife from his belt and jammed it between metal plates, through carbon fiber and meat into the junction between her leg and groin. He propped the pommel against the metal plate on his abdomen and used her leverage to shove it farther in. Hot, sticky fluid gushed over his hand.
Her squeeze became a squirming, frantic push, but he straightened his good leg to lift against her weight, jamming the blade deeper until it met bone, and then a little further. As the knife sank between the ball and socket he twisted with every ounce of his augmented strength. The joint popped free.
Roaring, she let go and rolled off of him.
He stood.
Tearing off his helmet and letting it drop to the ground, he whirled, blade slicing through the air and her mid-spine without slowing. Her claws tore into the asphalt, desperately scrabbling across the pavement, limp legs trailing behind.
Conor hobbled after her, unable to put much weight on his left leg. The sword bit down, slicing armor and meat once, twice, three times, tracing deep gashes across her shoulders and upper arms. Purple masses writhed across the wounds as she dragged herself away from him, legs twitching as her spine began to knit.
She rose to all fours.
He cut across the back of her knee, severing tendons and ligaments, the wound welling black under the sodium-vapor sky. As she fell he drove the blade into one kidney, leaning in to punch it through to her armor on the other side. He pulled it out and did the other.
She swung, an ineffectual batting with her claws that he hopped way from. He took several of her fingers. They fell to the ground in a gush, and as she reared to her knees he took her right ear. The contrast highlighted the difference between first and second-generation regenerates: his thigh itched as muscle and bone knitted under his armor, but it still wouldn’t take his weight. She healed much faster, but the unstable flesh molded and twisted her body into something less than human.
He stabbed her again, avoiding her heart to target her right lung. Once. Twice. Then her stomach, just to the left of her spine.
No reason to keep you down too long, darling.
She fell back to her hands and knees. He took the time to slice the side of her neck, just enough to prick the artery. Blood gushed in erratic spurts across the decaying asphalt, and she collapsed to her face, shaking, as the wound slithered and squirmed.
Her whole body shuddered, and a mad, keening growl erupted from her throat.
“There it is.”
The whispers slithered through his mind, calling to their sister, entwining her, embracing her in an unending maelstrom of madness and carnage. She thrashed on the ground, a half-ton child in a temper-tantrum, denied her favorite toys.
He glanced up long enough to see Washington and Karle advancing toward the mall without taking fire, then looked back down at Scratchy’s transformation. First-generation bonks made for the best bonk-outs. Tee-hee.
Tentacles oozed from her shoulder, and a mouth gnashed with serrated teeth from the wound in her neck. He limped back with too much theater for the benefit of the Dragonflies and took shelter in the shadows by the wall, his smirk hidden in the shadows.
Scratchy erupted in a mountain of writhing flesh, suckered tentacles and ropy masses of muscle almost obscuring her humanoid form. Her scream couldn’t come from human lungs, an animalistic rage purer and more potent than the worst that men could devise.
And better than most, Conor Flynn knew what men could devise.
Karle and Washington turned and opened fire as the bonked-out mountain of flesh charged them. His voice admirably calm, Karle called for air support and then addressed Conor. “Flynn, you alive?”
He coughed for effect. “Barely. Be a minute.”
“Well, step on it. We’ve got company.”
“Aye, sir.” From the shadows, Flynn smiled, and watched.
Washington drew a pair of combat knives and took the charge head-on. He disappeared in an avalanche of psychotic, ravening meat. Blood fountained up from the hideous abomination, though from his squad-mate or the monster Conor couldn’t tell.
He tried his leg. An electric jolt shot up his spine, but it held his weight and didn’t get any worse. Satisfied, he limped right, around the side of the building. Karle bellowed in the distance, and staccato gunfire echoed across the parking lot. Conor found a manhole, popped it up with his foot, and cocked his head.