The children screamed at the sight of it, pulling frantically at the chains binding them to the altar.
Despite the atrophied ruin of the figure’s form, it was clearly a man, and Alivia’s flesh crawled at the sight of the writhing womb-sac extending from his abdomen. A translucent flesh-pouch that squirmed with some unborn abomination. It detached itself from its skeletal host and landed in the centre of the altar to horrified screams from the children.
Alivia tightened her grip on her gun and rebar club.
Severian’s fingers flexed on the hilt of his empowered gladius as he picked up on her fear. He turned to look her straight in the eye.
‘Don’t say it,’ she said. ‘Don’t you dare say it.’
‘If this is what you think it is,’ he said, making no apology for lifting the thought from her. ‘We can’t let it happen.’
‘I know,’ said Alivia with a strangled sob. ‘But…’
‘But nothing. If we can’t save her, we kill her. We do it, not them.’
Alivia met Severian’s gaze and the ice in his eyes was the mirror of her own.
‘We’re going down there to rescue those children,’ said Alivia. ‘And if you so much as harm one hair on my daughter’s head, I’ll kill you.’
‘She’s not your child,’ said Severian. ‘She never was.’
‘Yes she is,’ said Alivia. ‘They all are. Don’t you understand? They’re all my children.’
Vivyen’s anger had kept the worst of her fear at bay, but the sight of the monster above destroyed the last shreds of her bravery. The skin-bag had dropped, squirmed and heaved at the centre of the stacked crates, a squalling animal in a dripping caul.
Ivalee shrieked and pulled at her chain, bloodying her neck against the chain’s rough edges. Oskar knelt over Uriah, his hands clasped before him and repeating the same phrase over and over: ‘The Emperor protects! The Emperor protects!’
Lalique lay curled in a weeping ball. Vesper simply stared at the heaving, screeching thing with a look of resignation.
It twitched and jumped and spasmed, eager to rip its way into the world. The hanging corpse of flesh looked down at them with dead white eyes and a leering, purple-smeared mouth.
A pair of needle-like fangs pierced the caul, tearing down.
‘Please, mama!’ cried Vivyen. ‘Please help us!’
Finally the sac split open as the thing inside cut its way out. And in a gush of bloody amniotic fluids its squirming contents disgorged into their midst.
Severian’s first shots blasted the head from one of the Thallaxii. Two shells, right through the joint of neck and head. A three-round burst through the hip joint of another and put a second on the ground.
Alivia hadn’t trust enough in her skill with the serpenta to risk wasting a bullet from this range. She vaulted over the railings and dropped into the suddenly panicked crowd of onlookers.
She landed hard and rolled, hitting legs and bringing bodies down on top of her. She kicked and elbowed her way to her feet, hammering the metalled length of her serpent-etched pistol into unprotected faces and the rebar into the soft bone above the ear.
Alivia heard the thundering, flat bangs of Severian’s bolt pistol. The impact of mass-reactives on armour. Screeching binaric voices and the whipcrack flashes of lightning guns.
She had no attention to spare for Severian.
Robed lunatics came at her, but she didn’t waste her bullets on them. She swung the length of rebar she’d taken from the stairwell, pulping skulls and splintering arms and legs with every swing.
She left a trail of howling bodies behind her. With her gun extended in front of her and the rebar held high at her shoulder, people fought to get out of her way instead of trying to stop her.
She saw the altar and the bloody, new-birthed mess upon it.
‘Throne, no…’ she said.
Severian had no qualms about using human shields. These people had forfeited their right to live by being part of this, so whether they died by his hands or the forking blasts of lighting from the Thallaxii was utterly irrelevant.
He waded through the crowd, slaughtering anyone stupid enough not to get out of his way. Some men attacked him, as if they believed they could actually hurt him. He was doing the universe a favour by killing them before their stupidity got anyone else killed.
Proximo Tarchon’s glitter-sheened gladius had an edge like a photonic weapon, keener than that honed by any living armourer he’d met.
Too bad he’d have to give it back.
Severian’s claim that the hundreds of people were no threat to him wasn’t a boast. Encased in powered battleplate and wrought by the Emperor’s gene-wrights to be an apex killer, it was simply a fact.
Blood slicked him to the waist.
He lost count of how many he’d killed. Dozens. Scores probably. Not enough.
He scooped up three men and hurled them at the nearest Thallax. They broke against its sheet-steel armour, but he’d expected nothing else. A crack of lightning scorched their bodies to ash and flame.
Severian dropped and skidded low, slamming into the cybernetic. An armoured transhuman was more than enough to put it on its back. The machine-flesh hybrid crashed to the ground, but a Thallax wasn’t a robot, or a sluggish series of commands and doctrina wafers. It had a living mind at its heart, living reflexes bound to its fibre-bundle muscles.
It rolled swiftly onto one knee, bringing its weapon to bear. Severian hacked the gladius through the crackling breech and jammed his pistol between the interlocked rings of its gorget.
Three shots exploded within its armoured carapace in quick succession. The scrap of life within died a moment later. He swung himself around its body as a blitzing storm of jade light exploded where he’d been standing.
The Thallax toppled onto its side and Severian instantly saw the three remaining cybernetics.
Closing in. Too far apart to engage together.
‘You are smarter than you look,’ said Severian.
The Thallaxii bludgeoned through the panicked crowd, and those too slow to get out of their way were crushed underfoot.
‘But not smart enough.’
The three grenades he’d planted in his wake exploded.
Vivyen screamed as the coiled, slippery mess erupted in their midst. Red with blood and sticky mucus, it hissed and thrashed with the pain of its birth. A rugose snake with iridescent scales and an elongated skull that was a vile blend of vulpine and reptilian anatomy.
Its head split wide in four wedged segments, each filled with long, crooked fangs that glistened with venom. Its eyes were weeping sores, veined with red and yellow.
Vivyen and the others scrambled away from it as far as their fetters would allow. They screamed and pulled at their chains, scraping their palms raw on the metal. The serpent’s head flashed down and fastened on Uriah’s wounded shoulder. Leathery glands at its neck swelled and the half-dead boy convulsed as venoms pumped into his flesh. Purple stains spread like ink in water across his skin, and frothed matter erupted from his mouth in a torrent of stinking bile. Whipping around, the serpent’s fangs snapped shut on Oskar’s leg and the child howled in agony as its bite poisoned him.
A series of deafening bangs sounded and people screamed.
The serpent ignored the commotion and released Oskar, turning its quartered skull towards Vesper. It lunged forwards and bit down twice, once on her arm and once on her neck.