Assault or Attrition (25 page)

“You wanna talk
about it?” I said with a pat on the shoulder.

“Talk about
what.”

“About the
garden gnome you just kicked the shit out of,” I said with a smile.
“You
know
what.”

Brynja studied
me for a moment as if she were trying to solve a puzzle. “I don’t
know how you can be so goddamned optimistic,” she said flatly.

“I’m not,” I
replied, “Pessimism is like a religion to me, along with
procrastination. I was actually going to get that engraved on a
plaque so I could hang it in my office...I’ll get to it
eventually.”

Brynja’s arms
dangled loosely at her sides while she stared at me listlessly. At
least that’s how I read it at first glance; frustration, fatigue –
maybe she was just hungry. I couldn’t be sure. Along with my
failing short-term memory, the ability to discern what the opposite
sex was thinking had always been my kryptonite.

The only
logical reason for her behavior (at least the only one I could
think of at the moment) was that Brynja was keeping something else
from me – something that she’d been concealing since the castle
gates swung open. The high-tech lie detector test had forced her to
reveal that she was still in possession of her superpowers, though
I could tell there was more.

“You know, I’m
going to find out eventually,” I said matter-of-factly. “So you
might as well tell me now.”

“Truth always
comes out, doesn’t it.” She took a deep breath and placed her hands
on her hips, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. “I
just...I have to tell you something else. It’s about
Argentina.”

Was there a
single thought in my head that was private anymore? Having a
psychic around had its uses, but the considerable downside was
already starting to outweigh the benefits. I threw my arms apart
and shouted, much louder than I’d intended. “Brynja, what the
hell
? That wasn’t supposed to come out in the open,
and—”

“I know,” she
said, her voice shrinking with regret. “But people are
going
to find out you were there.”

“And it meant
nothing,” I fired back.

“What?” She
shouted. “How can you even say that?”

“Because it was
a meaningless trip. A trip devoid of meaning.”

She grunted in
frustration, balling her hands into tightly clenched fists. “Just
because you
say
something is meaningless doesn’t
automatically mean—”

“Automatically
mean what?” A voice called out from across the courtyard. Peyton
was leading the rest of our group through the garden; Mac was
assisting Chandler (who was beginning to put some more pressure on
his ankle, walking slightly more upright) and Ortega followed,
fidgeting with his bright yellow armor. McGarrity was nowhere to be
seen.

“Blue,” Mac
called out. A crooked grin stretched across his face. “Did you miss
me, sweetheart?”

Brynja narrowed
her eyes. Her hatred for Mac was palpable, likely in no small part
because she could read his thoughts. The things he said aloud were
offensive enough; I couldn’t imagine the level of unadulterated
filth she was exposed to when he was in close proximity.

“So,” Peyton
said curtly, “are you going to tell me what I walked in on, or am I
going to have to wait and hear about it on a simulcast?”

I searched my
memory for a plausible excuse, and was interrupted by Brynja, who
began rapidly tapping my shoulder.

Peyton glared
at her. “Could you please give us just
one
moment alone,”
she said, clipping off her words.

Brynja
persisted with her tapping, but she wasn’t making eye contact. She
stared past Mac and Chandler, with her gaze fixed squarely on
Ortega. “Have you guys noticed something strange about him,” she
whispered from the corner of her mouth.

“The chef?”
Peyton said, glancing back over her shoulder. “He’s wearing a
hundred pounds of red Lego, which is probably why he looks pissed.
He
always
looks pissed.”

Ortega seemed
uncomfortable, shifting awkwardly inside of his bulky armor suit,
but that was nothing out of the ordinary; he’d been doing that
since we entered The Spiral. The dour expression painted on his
face had been there since we’d encountered him on level one.

“Not that,”
Brynja replied softly, her lips barely moving. “It’s not what he’s
doing, it’s what he’s—”

The word that
Brynja never said – the word that became lodged in the back of her
throat when a stream of blood spattered the walkway at our feet –
was ‘thinking’. She read Ortega’s mind, and realized that he was no
longer who he appeared to be.

His head
came off first, then his arms.
A severed artery pumped a
fountain of blood into the air that shot across the garden,
painting the tiles at our feet. His legs quickly followed,
reddening the koi pond when they splashed into the shallow
inlet.

It happened in
a heartbeat: a tentacle coiled around Mac’s torso, while several
others, tipped with vicious barbs, swiped at his extremities. The
slashes came so suddenly that he never had a chance to scream, and
the rest of us, looking on in horror, never had a chance to
react.

Ortega was
gone. Whatever replaced him had transformed his body into a
faceless, shapeless creature; a vile pulsing mass that was the
color of a festering wound. A single oily eye gazed at us while a
dozen fresh tentacles reached out from its core. The darting limbs
seemed to be infinitely elastic, extending long enough to reach us
from thirty feet away.

The
blood-drenched tentacle that had dismembered Mac coiled around
Chandler’s ankle, yanking him from the bench before tossing him
across the courtyard, beyond the maple trees and out of view.
Another swipe caught Peyton across the shoulder, the razor-sharp
talon slamming into her protective armor. The strike didn’t pierce
the suit, but the force sent her toppling into the rock garden
behind us.

The creature
was relentless, but it wasn’t a mindless killing machine. It was
making very precise movements, thoughtfully calculating its every
decision. It could have lashed out at me first, but it clearly
didn’t want me dead: it wanted to eliminate my friends so it could
return me to Valeriya in one piece, as it had no doubt been
instructed.

I was aware of
my momentary reprieve, which afforded me a small window of
opportunity – it would be brief, and likely the only one I’d
receive. I ripped the machine gun from the magnetic strip on my
back and took aim at its unblinking eye, squeezing the trigger
until a splash of putrid black gel burst from its socket.

As it flailed
blindly I was able to duck under a thrashing tentacle. The barb on
the end boomeranged over my head and sheared the top off of several
hedges, hacking down a tree in the process. I repositioned my
weapon and fired until my clip emptied into its globular core. The
mass seemed to consume the bullets. There was never an entry wound
where they penetrated; the projectiles disappeared into the
creature, and its skin closed around the slugs as if it was
swallowing them.

Brynja had
detached her machine gun and was emptying the last of her bullets
into the monster, allowing me the chance to retrieve one of the
shells from my waist. The three explosive rounds represented the
last of our ammunition. I didn’t have time to load one into the
grenade launcher; the few additional seconds I required weren’t
seconds I could afford.

“
Hold your
fire,”
I shouted out in my mind.
“Save one last
bullet.”

Brynja must
have heard my call. She immediately relented, easing up on her
trigger. She held fast, fearlessly staring down the barrel of her
weapon as the tentacles regrouped and surrounded her, allowing her
no room for escape.

I hurled the
shell. The explosive round disappeared into the creature’s
gelatinous skin with a wet plop, just as the bullets had. Brynja
seized the moment and opened fire with her remaining bullets. When
her rounds connected with the shell it detonated, and the
shape-shifter exploded from the inside out; the gooey mass burst
like an overfilled water balloon, splashing waves of dark slime in
every direction. Though somehow, in mid-explosion, the spattered
mess began moving in reverse, like a video rewinding itself. Sinewy
tendrils remained intact at its core, and the creature began to
regenerate. Oozing chunks slithered back into place until, just a
few moments later, the gyrating mass had rebuilt itself. And from
the center of the mass, the oily black eye bubbled back to the
surface.

As the tendrils
came firing back towards Brynja she stood fast, locking her feet in
place. A tentacle coiled around my waist, stopping me from rushing
to her aid; two more snatched away our guns, snapping them in
half.

Brynja never
blinked.

The words
“Don’t panic”
rushed through my mind, loud and assertive.
They were hers.

“
Wait for
it,”
she insisted with icy calmness.

A roar bellowed
from the hedges in the distance, followed by a burst of flame that
engulfed the creature, consuming it with a single blast. It writhed
and quivered, the gelatinous core charring black as it cooked in
the unimaginable heat. The continuous stream of fire flowed from
Melvin’s jaws until the tendrils stiffened and snapped off,
releasing their grips on our waists. With Brynja and I as bait, our
manticore was able to circle behind the creature undetected,
silently stalking his prey until he was close enough to burn it to
a crisp.

As usual,
Melvin cut things a little close. Although as I patted myself down,
taking stock of my working appendages, I was hardly in a position
to complain. Battling someone (or some
thing
) in Arena Mode
is not unlike being on a flight – any one you can walk away from is
considered a good one. Our friends weren’t so fortunate.

Satisfied that
its prey was no longer a threat, Melvin bit off the last of the
flames. He belched out a cloud of black soot before padding across
the stone pathway, dropping and rolling at Brynja’s feet.

“Brynja, how
did you...?” were the only words I could produce.

“The shape
shifter,” she said. “He saw you throw the explosive, and he knew it
couldn’t hurt him.”

I stared down
at the winged lion, who was purring like a house cat. “And when did
Melvin start breathing fire?”

Brynja knelt
and raked her fingers along the manticore’s fuzzy blue jawbone. “I
don’t know, but it seemed like the only way to kill that thing was
to dry it out and burn it. Guess we got lucky.”

“I’m fine,”
Peyton said weakly. Her knees trembled as she stumbled to her feet.
After toppling into the rock garden she’d been knocked unconscious
when the base of her skull collided with a small statue. “Really,
don’t help me up.”

I turned to see
her patting at the back of her head. Rushing to her aid, I held her
shoulders and gently pivoted her around to see where she’d been
injured; Peyton’s cotton-candy pink locks were streaked with
crimson.

“It’s nothing,”
she grumbled at the sight of my shocked expression. She looked down
at her gauntlet, noticing her fingertips were dripping with
blood.

“It’s
not
nothing,” I said, escorting her to the nearby bench.

Still dazed,
Peyton sat and scanned the garden with glassy eyes, her lids
fluttering, seemingly unable to focus on anything for more than a
moment. “What happened, just then...and where’s your pilot,
Mac?”

Brynja lifted
her boot, crinkling her nose at the sticky gobs of blood-soaked
ooze that dripped from the sole. “Kind of everywhere, I think.”

“Oh shit...”
Peyton clapped her hands over her mouth and leaned forward as if
she was going to vomit. I patted her back and swept her hair aside;
the standard operating procedure when she’d consumed one too many
rum and Cokes. She dry-heaved but didn’t produce anything.

The stench of
the charred shape-shifter, seeing the blood-soaked collage of
random body parts, knowing the lives that’d been lost; it was
making the bile rise in my throat as well. I couldn’t say I’d seen
worse, but I’d seen something comparable. I was saddened, but not
horrified...and the fact that I
wasn’t
completely horrified
by what had just transpired made me realize that the previous Arena
Mode had changed me, possibly in ways I’d yet to fully realize. The
sights and sounds that haunted me were so similar that I felt like
I’d already lived this moment a hundred times over.

Brynja strolled
over to the bench where Peyton was still doubled over. “We need to
get moving and find the pods.”

Peyton sat
upright and glared at her, eyes widened with disgust. “A person
just
died
, you ghoul.”

“So it seems,”
Brynja said casually. “And we’ll be next if we sit here and pout
about it.” She waved for us to stand. “Let’s go, princess. You too,
Peyton.”

“Aw, sick –
what happened here?” McGarrity appeared from between the hedges,
meandering down the winding stone path with no real sense of
urgency. “It looks like someone cooked a giant octopus. Smells like
it too. And what’s with the giant lion thing?”

Brynja stomped
down the walkway and jammed her palm into McGarrity’s chest.
“That’s some convenient timing, Braveheart.”

“Convenient?”
He replied, visibly confused.

“Showing up
once the battle ends.” Brynja motioned around at the carnage that
surrounded us.

A broad grin
stretched across McGarrity’s face as he strolled past Brynja,
dismissing her accusation. He approached Peyton and I, carefully
avoiding the pools of blood and the globs of burning slime. “I
just
got here. Relax.” He stopped short of the bench and
dropped his hands into his pockets. “I was searching the caskets
that you guys missed out in the hills. I can’t do
everything
myself, guys. Sorry I missed your barbecue, but don’t be pissed
with me just because you guys couldn’t save everyone.”