Enough blah blah blah from me. Here is the extract:
The Commissioner had gone silent. He'd sensed the power
play between these two. He'd watched Vanessa turn Simpson inside out with
frustration many a time. He'd tried following all her moves but to no avail.
Right now Simpson was barking more orders at her and all that seemed to get him
was frustration.
The Other laughed again. Simpson felt the rush of blood
that preceded his irritation. She was getting to him again. She would keep
stubbornly quiet at moments he expected a rebuttal, and snipe him with a smart
comment when he thought he'd closed the subject. The only time he seemed to
have any of his desired effect was during a fight. She seemed to take great
pleasure from his violence. "What
have we here?" Said the Other,
"You can't seriously believe you can attach her projection and
win..." That exactly what he did. He shot his projection into her
mind. Searching for a thought, a memory he could sink an anchor in. He wanted
her mind. It was the only way she'd be his. She retaliated. He'd expected that.
Prepared himself, but he was not prepared to witness some her true power. His
mind reeled at the strength of it. "You
are in trouble now." The Other sniggered. "You want some of my power? That'll be twice in a week that I've
helped you." Simpson scoffed and stood up. Allowing his projection to
recede from Vanessa an on to something else.
"I haven't dismissed you." The commissioner said.
But Simpson wasn't trying to leave. There was a peculiar look to him. A focus
the commissioner had never seen. It was confusing. Simpson smiled.
"Well, seems we won't have to go looking for the halflings
tonight. They are coming to us." There was an explosion in one of the
lower buildings of the keep. "I wonder what called them here."
Simpson mused as he gathered himself while heading out the door.
Vanessa was already running before she realized exactly
what she was running toward - amidst the chaos and confusion, almost hidden
beneath the heavy waves of panic and fear rolling over her, there was...
something. She darted through the stampeding crowd, barely seeing, keeping the
flickering awareness locked in her mind. It felt discordant, like a wrong note
at a symphony; jarring despite its slightness. It felt almost like...
satisfaction.
She vaulted over a handrail, stopping at the entrance to a
corridor she'd never been down. It was here. He was here.
Ross.
He turned at the sound of her footsteps, his eyes widening.
"Stay out of my head, witch!" he shrieked, flinging a glass bottle at
her and scrabbling away. But his anger did nothing to keep her out, and
fragments of thought spooled through her mind: Ross kissing Harvey for the
first time, nervousness making his hands shake. The night she'd moved in with
him. The engagement ring he'd bought
her. The sound of her voice when she woke up in the morning, when she was mad
at him, when he made her come. And Simpson, transformed, ripping her body to
pieces.
Vanessa glanced at the bottle he'd flung her way. She
recognized the smell: bait.
'What were you hoping to achieve?' she asked, her voice
incredulous.
But she could follow the logic of his thoughts even as she
asked: 'Simpson must pay. I am not strong
enough to kill him. I must make him suffer.'
Ross laughed, the sound harsh and grating. "They'll
tear him to pieces!" He was shouting now. "They will put him down
like the filthy animal he is!" He waved something at her, and she realized
he was watching the massacre on a portable screen.
'Coward,' she thought. 'Even loss can't make you fight your own
battles. Despicable.'
Out loud she said, "So why are you hiding here? Did
you really think we won't find you?"
He grinned at her.
"This place is a security blind spot," he
whispered. "No cameras. Nobody will know. Nobody will find me, and Simpson
will die like a dog." He laughed again, wilder than before. "If those
things don't kill him first, he'll go apeshit and kill everyone again, where
all the top brass can see. Do you know what the Covenant does to freaks like
that?"
Vanessa's hands clenched into fists. "They'll lock him
up, strap him down, and run *tests*," he said, pronouncing the word with
glee in his voice. "You know the tests our doctors run. They'll take him
apart to see how he works. They'll cut him up just to see how much pain he can
take! They'll make him beg for death!"
Vanessa shut her eyes. Images of Simpson running rampant
flickered behind her closed eyelids. She gathered up her anger, feeling it flow
together like molten, white hot metal, and lashed out in a spike of energy that
surged with her rage. She opened her eyes and regarded the disfigured lump that
had been Ross. Her lip curled. "Pathetic, spineless piece of
nothing." He wouldn't die from that attack, but it was enough to keep him
out of the way till they got the situation under control. Maybe longer. She
gritted her teeth. Simpson had been better be holding on to what’s left of his gods-damned sanity...
There were too many of them. He couldn't kill enough of
them. The halflings swarmed like waves of angry blades ripping into everything
in their path. The first respondents were wiped out in mere moments. The second
group buckled under the sheer numbers like a bad knee under too much stress. By
the time Simpson realized he'd have to transform almost the entire 6th squad
had been killed.
The halflings moved too cohesively. There was a queen mind
somewhere. He had to find it before he could start exterminating the vermin.
Only, every time he gathered his projection a wave of halflings fell on him. "Not doing very well, are we?"
The Other intoned in his mind. Simpson ignored him and began to transform. His
senses started to sharpen as his body took on its more natural form. When he
snarled as he killed yet another halfling, his fangs bared and some of the
Covenant’s men that saw him almost ran
at the sight. His muscles felt loose and ready. It felt good to release. To let
the shroud envelope him like thick dark fog. It was then that the swarm hit him
the hardest. It was then that he realized they had been holding back for this
very moment.
They were on him before he could take a step in his natural
form. He was their target. They had baited him. Confusion settled on him almost
as heavy as the pain from the thousand cuts and bites of the halflings. He soon
realized that they wanted to make a mockery of him. Reduce him to nothing. This
drove him mad. Anger set fire to his muscles and he launched himself from the
floor in a frenzy of blood and body parts. They would have their wish. He would
show them who he was. He hacked and clawed at anything in front of him. Pushing
forward while barking at his men to fall back. He would do this by himself.
They wanted him. They would have him.
His projection pushed past the pain of every new cut. Past
the pain of every piece of flesh he lost. And found the dominant mind. It was
far from the battle in relative safety where the cameras could not see it. It
was familiar. It wanted him dead. And he could feel Vanessa near it. Her
projection brushes against his for a second. One word: "Focus."
The halflings pinned him again. Bringing him down to all
fours. "We must not die,
Simpson." The Other said. "We
cannot leave Mother alone." Simpson felt control slip from his
consciousness. Felt his body hit the floor like a discarded carcass. He had
lost blood and flesh. The halflings would soon pick at him till nothing but
bone remained. The Other was scrambling through his mind. Taking control of the
body. That really pissed him off. Who the fuck did he think he was?!
Simpson's body burst into flame. Yet it wasn't alight. His
shroud was so powerful it danced around his body in shimmering heat. Only it
wasn't Simpson. He was just a passenger in the body that he prefers to call
his. He could feel the Blood Boil the Other accessed. He reach out to it,
searching its depth and he found himself searching a well whose bottom he could
never reach. Still the Blood Boil didn't feel complete. There were gaps in that
overwhelming power. For the first time, Simpson understood the power difference
between him and the Other. It filled him with even more rage.
The halflings leapt back from the shroud around his body.
Through his projection he could feel the confusion ripple through them as the
dominant mind vanished. His body moved. First leaping from the floor and
tearing through several halfling bodies in the process. Then in a twist that
sent sparks of energy cutting through another hafl dozen halflings. The Other
drew from the blood again and flattened more halflings with energy spikes. The
halflings came out of their confusion all at once. With no queen mind
controlling them they reverted to their baser intelligence. Chaos broke loose.
Some ran, while others attacked at random. Simpson ceased being the focus point
of all their attacks and they now attacked everyone in sight or fled the battle
field in terror. Simpson's body towered center stage of the blood bath.
She reached out, looking for Simpson’s mind. It didn’t take long - he was
incandescent with fury strong enough to cause her physical pain. She disengaged
hurriedly, hissing from the sting of it. Taking a deep breath, she projected
soothing energy at him, praying for him to calm himself. But she couldn’t focus - her own rage coloured her projection, no matter
how hard she tried to set it aside. She let the energy drop away.
There was no way she could rush to his aid, she knew. She’d been so wound up about keeping Simpson’s little episode secret, she’d
rushed straight to the commissioner’s office that day, instead of
stopping off at the lab like usual. She hadn’t
had her usual dose of serum. If she ran out there now, she would be doing it as
her normal human self, armed with nothing more than her regulation sidearm - no
enhanced strength, no accelerated healing, no super stamina. She wouldn’t last a second. If she used her abilities to protect
herself and fight... well. How had Ross put it? ‘Do
you know what the Covenant does to freaks like that?’ His sneer lingered in her mind.
She wished she could reanimate Ross so she could tear him
to pieces again. How dare he bring this on them? The man had been a worthless
streak of piss. How dare he think he had the right to choose such a fate for
anyone? He had no idea what the Covenant’s experimentation program was
capable of. He’d said they would push Simpson’s pain threshold to the limits - if that was really the
worst he thought the Covenant could do, the man was even simpler than she’d thought.
She dug her fingernails into her palms. This line of
thinking was just making her angrier. She needed to focus! There had to be a
solution. If Simpson, or whatever it was that lived in his head, showed them
what he could really do, they would-
No. She wasn’t going to think about that.
Ross’s portable screen flickered
and she glanced down at it. There were just too many of the things - soldier
after soldier fell as she watched, and she had to look away. She could have
saved them, she knew, if she wasn’t so afraid of being seen.
Truly seen.
What if she didn’t have to be seen? The thought
came to her gently, quietly, but suddenly it was like she could see the entire
solution laid out in front of. Ross had said this was a no camera zone - she’d been counting on that when she’d used her abilities on him like that. What if there was something she could do from
here? She glanced where his body lay. His signs of life had begun to fade. Charred
remains of his uniform had fused with his body and his breathing shallow and
sharp. Without the proper attention wouldn’t be long before he died.
I do hope you enjoyed that little bit. Fire of some feedback. Would love to hear what you have to say. Till next time. Nic. Out.
