Broken Interface - Kernal: Post Apocalyptic Zombie LITrpg Progression Fantasy, page 64
“Both?” Luke asked.
He smiled at the man sitting next to his daughter. “Yep. Mr. Training Dummy, you’re out of a job.”
“At least till your next scheme.”
“Nah, it’s Dave’s turn next.” Dave glowered at him. “What? I don’t want you thinking I’m racist or speciesist or something,” Daniel told him, grinning. “Equal opportunity and all.”
“Dan.” Tamara’s voice was not approving.
“What, too far?” She looked at him, and he summed up the situation. It was not worth everyone being annoyed at him. “Sorry, Dave, just talking shit.” Tamara smiled at that, and he felt butterflies in his stomach. What on earth was happening? He was supposed to be with Ivey, and Tamara had a boyfriend. “Let’s go save people,” he said to distract himself from the running thoughts. He suspected his cheeks had just reddened alarmingly.
She has got a boyfriend. The thought echoed in his head as he led them up the stairs. But considering she spent her day fighting next to him with Jayden nowhere in sight, it was easy to forget.
“Anything dangerous left?”
“Nothing the standard parties can’t take care of.”
He took them through a quick tour of the new floor, pointing out people and monsters, and then sat down for the next bit. His magic was back at full. It was finally time to determine what stalked the floors above him.
Chapter 97
Animal Sense expanded.
His attention was first caught up below him. Although the floors had been nominally cleared, there were so many beings still alive. He was not sure if the hotel had been lax in its pet management policy and pest control, or whether the event summoned monsters everywhere; but for whatever reason, the abundance of life was extraordinary.
He catalogued what he was seeing. No mind worms, luckily; his core now actively scanned for them. But there was still a scattering of weasels, so Priscilla would continue to require a human escort. Rats, insects, spiders, mice, a cat in the roof crawlspace, and even a zombie near starvation that appeared to be trapped in a bathroom and missed in the rooms’ sweeps. One of the clearance teams had been slack.
Daniel threw that out of his mind to focus above him. The distinct lack of life.
His consciousness flicked over floors, looking for a monster. At the very edge of his range, he found the target. It was like a bucket of ice water being thrown over him. He recoiled. Whatever it was, was antithetical to his senses. He could pick it up, but not like normal. Instead, it felt like pure evil.
A headache formed, and Daniel was back in his body, gasping. The scattered information he had gained had sucked all the mana out of him. Malevolent, potent, immense, vile, a genuine threat, unlike the slugs.
Daniel massaged his brow while considering what he had learnt. A large part of him was tempted to forget the people above them and just abandon the top four floors. Throw his energy into locking the place down and hope that monster did not come down to them. Whatever it was had throbbed with power. If he reinforced the floor . . . then, maybe.
The touch of horror faded somewhat. Rational thought re-established itself. There were humans up there. Given that the creature had hunted and presumably eaten everything else, those people must have been fighting back.
The beast could be fought.
As terrible as his senses had registered the creature, it was not invulnerable, despite how alien it felt. It could be beaten, and if they were going to fight it, they had to do it now.
There were no more people to save below them, at least on the floors he could sense. Daniel’s army was not about to magically expand, and there was no reason to think something as mundane as a floor, even reinforced, could stop whatever it was. The creature had consumed all the life on multiple floors. Whether the beings had been in the crawl spaces or locked in apartments, the abomination had gotten everything, which meant the concrete floor might be an excellent barrier – until it got hungry, and then not so much.
It was a ticking time bomb.
It might go down the lifts. The thought went through him, and if they were lucky, that is what it would decide to do. The moths could fight his battle for him.
Daniel looked up at the roof. Even that might not work. He was not sure the moths would win, and if the monster could beat them . . . then when it got to their floors, it would be even more powerful. And then. . . . He rubbed his eyes helplessly. Then they would lose.
Another thought occurred to him. It had killed everything but had not opened the stairwells or lifts. That was significant. It knew about the moths. That was the only explanation, and either it was killing them, or its base instinct had let it avoid the fight. The problem would not solve itself. It was on him.
When it ate the people above, then it was coming.
“We need to kill it,” he told himself, knowing that he had already made this decision the moment he had felt the creature. They needed to get stronger, because the stuff on the ground was even more deadly than that thing above them. But he was kidding himself. The primary driver was they could not afford to leave an enemy behind them. His back itched thinking about the zombie floors they had skipped to rescue the people on the upper floors. Once this last monster was dead, they would clear them and then reassess. If their only opposition was below, then they could take things slower and, by default, be safer.
Course committed, he got up to find Ivey. She was in a small team, clearing a room with another healer at her side.
Seeing him, she glanced at what everyone else was doing and came straight over.
“You look like you have something important to say.”
“Yep. We need to go up.”
Ivey looked doubtful, nodding towards the window, which was showing the red colour of a setting sun. “Do we have time?”
“One monster,” he told her.
“That makes me even less willing to say yes.”
“If we leave it, it’ll come down and kill us.”
“Maybe.” Ivey did not sound convinced.
“It can break through the floor. We’ll need to meet it on our own terms.”
“I don’t—”
“Trust me.”
“Okay.”
“What?”
Ivey smiled. “I said okay. I agree with you.”
He looked at her suspiciously, but she just grinned back at him, eyes challenging him. Something had gotten her to change her mind.
Dave emerged, saw them, and pulled out a couple of cores that he threw to Daniel.
“Yeeda tatag.”
“Speed cores,” Ivey translated in a bored tone.
“Thank you.”
Dave gave him a big claw up as Daniel swallowed the small objects without hesitation.
“How long do I have?” Ivey asked while retrieving a backpack from the floor.
Daniel glanced at the sun and his almost-depleted mana. “Twenty minutes,” he told her.
“Where?”
With a shrug, Daniel pointed at a nearby room before walking over to it.
“Wait,” Ivey called out. “I almost forgot; I have gifts, as well.” She pulled out five ziplocked bags. She handed him the first two bags. “These are from your kills. I did some trading on your behalf.” She handed him a third bag. “I gave up the termite cores for feral. Three Speed, three Earth, two Ice.”
“Ice?”
Ivey looked over towards where Dave was standing. “It was the only other type of zombie cores available.”
“Sure, Dave can have the Ice.”
“We figured,” Ivey said, holding the last two bags in her hand. “Forty termite cores, a mix of grunts, soldiers, and the king. I only traded away the worker cores.”
“Crafting,” Daniel said without hesitation. “Give the grunts to the general pool, and I will use the stronger ones to create living weapons.”
Ivey nodded before waving the last bag. “These are eggercough slug cores.”
“The things I squished.”
“Yep, but only two survived the process. I am uncertain how you will react, but hopefully they will improve your ability to heal.”
He hesitated for a moment.
“Theoretically, they are way less dangerous than those electricity cores and probably more useful.”
He grabbed the bags. Along with the other cores he had, Daniel was confident that he was going to have an awful night at some point.
“Anything else?” he asked. Ivey shook her head. “Okay, let’s do this.”
With that, Daniel went over to the room he had showed her, sat down, and started building a stairwell.
His heart was beating quickly, and all he could think about was that this was another make-or-break moment. If they won, they would emerge stronger, but if they lost . . . well, if they lost this battle when they engaged on their own terms, then they certainly would have perished when the monster came for them. Fighting now was the right choice.
Chapter 98
It was a crude staircase, which in practice was only slightly better than a rope ladder. There would not be any retreat, anyway. If this assault failed, there would be no running. Whatever was up there would come and get them. If they failed, then some—if not most of them—would be dead, and then the monster would have nothing that could stand in its way. With the stairwell completed, they were now committed. Eventually, it would find them.
He flashed off Animal Sense and nodded his head. It had only been for a fraction of an instant, but the beast was up on the penthouse floor, along with the people and some dogs.
He did not need to look out of the room where he had created the vine ladder to know that everyone who could fight was waiting in the corridor; they were being quiet, but so many whispered conversations coalesced into a lot of noise. The usual suspects were with him, standing guard: Ivey, Dave, Tamara, and Priscilla.
“Let’s go.”
“Game plan?” Ivey asked immediately even as he led them up the stairs.
“First, get entrenched; then, scout. Hopefully, find a large, open space to fight it.”
“We need to bounce; it’s getting dark,” Tamara told him, and she was not joking. The light coming through the window had dropped severely, and the sun was setting over the bay, its bottom edge already touching the horizon.
Priscilla? Daniel asked mentally. There is nothing dangerous but the baddy. One look. Be careful.
She thought about it, considered chips, and agreed before asking for a bribe. Apparently, she understood how serious this situation was.
Abruptly, she zipped away and went straight up the very open stairs that linked the levels. These top five floors were more extravagant than the ones below. Despite the aging, the quality was superior. Even the design was more opulent: light wells near the lifts; wooden stairwells linking the floors. It was where they wanted to fight, as it would let them bring their numbers to bear.
“Why are you just standing there?”
He startled slightly before looking at Ivey, who had asked the question. “I was encouraging Priscilla to scout.”
“Glad to see the mouse being useful.”
His first instinct was to defend Priscilla. After all, a lot of their success to date had been because of the intelligence around the enemy that she brought. In fact, their one failure had been the set of floors that Priscilla could not inspect. He bit down on the snide remark before it came out. There was no need to get bogged down in this argument. They owed the mouse their lives, even if Ivey did not realise that; but frankly, given how she reacted to the very presence of the mouse, Ivey would never be impartial.
He walked to the front and stood, club-hand waiting. The other melee fighters moved up beside him.
“So, is this the boss fight?” Luke asked.
Daniel shook his head. “Nope, all the bosses are outside. This”—he waved at the group behind him— “is what sensible people do. You know, bring multiple automatic shotguns to a knife fight.”
Luke laughed.
“God, I would love a shotgun about now,” Daniel told him. “I have some beauties on the farm.”
“Permits?”
“Easy enough to get for pest control. I tell you, they would make killing zombies so much easier.”
Luke looked sideways at him. “You know shotguns don’t work.”
Daniel hoped he hid his shock. That was bad news. How the hell were normal humans going to fight back without weapons? It would be a bloodbath. Sure, he and Alisha had gotten this group both armed and armoured, but not all groups would have people with appropriate classes, and he already knew he was a freak.
“Not at all?” he asked finally.
“You’re not much of a reader, are you?”
It was not meant as an attack, but with the way Ivey had looked down at him for his profession, the words cut.
“I have sort of been busy.”
“That you have,” Luke agreed easily. “And you’ve done an amazing job. According to the main blurb, guns and other modern technology are kaput. Gone!”
“Why?”
Luke’s eyes went unfocused, and not for the first time, Daniel wished he had a working interface. Everyone else seemed to have so much useful knowledge on tap while he wandered around permanently blind and looked like a dumb-arse.
“The physics have changed,” Luke said finally. “Apparently, the endothermic reactions don’t occur like they used to. Oh, and no more nukes, either.”
“I don’t know if that last one is good or bad. Bad boom versus dead monsters.”
Luke laughed uproariously, and Dave joined in his own funny manner. He had not realised Dave had been listening in as well. “I wish I had a couple of fuckin’ nukes,” Luke said darkly under his breath.
“At least we have our clubs,” Daniel said with a theatrical sigh. “They are totally equivalent.”
Dave doubled over with his laugh, in which he wheezed like he was dying.
Images flashed from Priscilla. Broken doors, holes in the floors, dividing walls torn down. Whatever the monster was, it clearly had no issues making its own path to get to where it wanted to go. It had gone through floors when there were stairs available, just because. Daniel knew how difficult it was to blast through them. Small cuts were easy enough, even expanding them into man-sized gaps, but once he pushed it beyond that, Daniel ran into problems. The reinforced metal got in the way. The fact this creature had created so many gaps of such size was terrifying. Its Strength must have been astronomical.
However, this observation proved one point. Coming up to fight it now was the right choice. Once it got hungry, it would have come for them. Win or lose, being here, fighting now instead of later, was the only option.
Priscilla was creeping.
He pumped out Animal Sense. Priscilla linked into it, riding the wave of information.
The monster was still two levels above Priscilla, but she looked up through one of the many holes right to where it was going to be. There was another damaged section on the floor above that, as she had worked out, would give her a glimpse with as much material between her and the danger as possible. She might be smart, but she was still a mouse and assumed everything was dangerous till proven otherwise. Then, once she knew her opponents, she got zombies to hit each other. He smiled.
The monster was coming.
Priscilla went into that intense stillness that he knew was her preparing to run. His pulse quickened.
The beast shifted into the gap, and Daniel got his first view. A giant octopus was the thought that went through his head, massive but sick. Not sick, dangerous. It had fluorescent bands of orange and green set into a body that shone like slime-algae green. It reminded him of a poisonous frog.
In nature, bright usually meant bad. This brightly coloured monstrosity had depopulated four floors and was working on a fifth. It was terrifying.
Priscilla went to work with her identification magic.
It took a second, and Daniel wondered what the core would give him.
Unexpected fear jolted through Priscilla –not the “This is creature is powerful” kind, but instead it was a visceral, “My life is in imminent danger” type of fear. She turned and bolted away.
From four floors below, he heard splinters.
What?
Daniel’s heart jumped.
Priscilla!
Blood roared in his ears.
No! Daniel was standing, taking a step towards the monster, then stopped himself.
She was fine. Then he realised he could still feel her rushing down the stairs. She was still alive.
Animal Sense.
The monster was not pursuing.
The wild panic coming through the bond faded. It is okay, he thought. We’re here to kill it, and if we fail, don’t wait. Just run. Get out of the building as fast as possible.
Lots of agreement came his way at that.
Heart still beating rapidly, he focused on extracting the information that had made Priscilla run. It had Telekinesis that made the Professor look weak. Daniel calmed down. That skill, the fear of being trapped in a cage where she was helpless, was Priscilla’s phobia. No wonder she had fled that with . . . oh god. The monster had a Life Sense ability. Priscilla had gotten lucky. Even his tiny mouse would have been visible to it. There was a reason for everything, including the tiny, usually invisible insects on the floor being dead. The abomination could sense life and then use its power to pluck it and bring it to its mouth.
Priscilla, for all her vaunted Speed, would have been helpless.
She had escaped; Daniel reminded himself of that.
He continued examining the information his precious girl had risked her life to get. The creature was a true monster with an insatiable appetite, self-regeneration, fast healing, and it had a body that was flexible and could contort into different shapes. The only good news was a weakness to ice. Not just a vulnerability—it was almost allergic to it. That fact probably explained how the humans had stayed alive. If a couple of them were ice mages, they could really hurt it and hold it at bay.
Breathe, he told himself. Priscilla ran up and hugged into his neck. She was violently shivering. He patted the mouse absently while thinking the fight through. They had two choices: Attack now, and hope the people trapped above would join in; or wait and organise something formal, with Morse code relayed via other buildings.
He smiled at the man sitting next to his daughter. “Yep. Mr. Training Dummy, you’re out of a job.”
“At least till your next scheme.”
“Nah, it’s Dave’s turn next.” Dave glowered at him. “What? I don’t want you thinking I’m racist or speciesist or something,” Daniel told him, grinning. “Equal opportunity and all.”
“Dan.” Tamara’s voice was not approving.
“What, too far?” She looked at him, and he summed up the situation. It was not worth everyone being annoyed at him. “Sorry, Dave, just talking shit.” Tamara smiled at that, and he felt butterflies in his stomach. What on earth was happening? He was supposed to be with Ivey, and Tamara had a boyfriend. “Let’s go save people,” he said to distract himself from the running thoughts. He suspected his cheeks had just reddened alarmingly.
She has got a boyfriend. The thought echoed in his head as he led them up the stairs. But considering she spent her day fighting next to him with Jayden nowhere in sight, it was easy to forget.
“Anything dangerous left?”
“Nothing the standard parties can’t take care of.”
He took them through a quick tour of the new floor, pointing out people and monsters, and then sat down for the next bit. His magic was back at full. It was finally time to determine what stalked the floors above him.
Chapter 97
Animal Sense expanded.
His attention was first caught up below him. Although the floors had been nominally cleared, there were so many beings still alive. He was not sure if the hotel had been lax in its pet management policy and pest control, or whether the event summoned monsters everywhere; but for whatever reason, the abundance of life was extraordinary.
He catalogued what he was seeing. No mind worms, luckily; his core now actively scanned for them. But there was still a scattering of weasels, so Priscilla would continue to require a human escort. Rats, insects, spiders, mice, a cat in the roof crawlspace, and even a zombie near starvation that appeared to be trapped in a bathroom and missed in the rooms’ sweeps. One of the clearance teams had been slack.
Daniel threw that out of his mind to focus above him. The distinct lack of life.
His consciousness flicked over floors, looking for a monster. At the very edge of his range, he found the target. It was like a bucket of ice water being thrown over him. He recoiled. Whatever it was, was antithetical to his senses. He could pick it up, but not like normal. Instead, it felt like pure evil.
A headache formed, and Daniel was back in his body, gasping. The scattered information he had gained had sucked all the mana out of him. Malevolent, potent, immense, vile, a genuine threat, unlike the slugs.
Daniel massaged his brow while considering what he had learnt. A large part of him was tempted to forget the people above them and just abandon the top four floors. Throw his energy into locking the place down and hope that monster did not come down to them. Whatever it was had throbbed with power. If he reinforced the floor . . . then, maybe.
The touch of horror faded somewhat. Rational thought re-established itself. There were humans up there. Given that the creature had hunted and presumably eaten everything else, those people must have been fighting back.
The beast could be fought.
As terrible as his senses had registered the creature, it was not invulnerable, despite how alien it felt. It could be beaten, and if they were going to fight it, they had to do it now.
There were no more people to save below them, at least on the floors he could sense. Daniel’s army was not about to magically expand, and there was no reason to think something as mundane as a floor, even reinforced, could stop whatever it was. The creature had consumed all the life on multiple floors. Whether the beings had been in the crawl spaces or locked in apartments, the abomination had gotten everything, which meant the concrete floor might be an excellent barrier – until it got hungry, and then not so much.
It was a ticking time bomb.
It might go down the lifts. The thought went through him, and if they were lucky, that is what it would decide to do. The moths could fight his battle for him.
Daniel looked up at the roof. Even that might not work. He was not sure the moths would win, and if the monster could beat them . . . then when it got to their floors, it would be even more powerful. And then. . . . He rubbed his eyes helplessly. Then they would lose.
Another thought occurred to him. It had killed everything but had not opened the stairwells or lifts. That was significant. It knew about the moths. That was the only explanation, and either it was killing them, or its base instinct had let it avoid the fight. The problem would not solve itself. It was on him.
When it ate the people above, then it was coming.
“We need to kill it,” he told himself, knowing that he had already made this decision the moment he had felt the creature. They needed to get stronger, because the stuff on the ground was even more deadly than that thing above them. But he was kidding himself. The primary driver was they could not afford to leave an enemy behind them. His back itched thinking about the zombie floors they had skipped to rescue the people on the upper floors. Once this last monster was dead, they would clear them and then reassess. If their only opposition was below, then they could take things slower and, by default, be safer.
Course committed, he got up to find Ivey. She was in a small team, clearing a room with another healer at her side.
Seeing him, she glanced at what everyone else was doing and came straight over.
“You look like you have something important to say.”
“Yep. We need to go up.”
Ivey looked doubtful, nodding towards the window, which was showing the red colour of a setting sun. “Do we have time?”
“One monster,” he told her.
“That makes me even less willing to say yes.”
“If we leave it, it’ll come down and kill us.”
“Maybe.” Ivey did not sound convinced.
“It can break through the floor. We’ll need to meet it on our own terms.”
“I don’t—”
“Trust me.”
“Okay.”
“What?”
Ivey smiled. “I said okay. I agree with you.”
He looked at her suspiciously, but she just grinned back at him, eyes challenging him. Something had gotten her to change her mind.
Dave emerged, saw them, and pulled out a couple of cores that he threw to Daniel.
“Yeeda tatag.”
“Speed cores,” Ivey translated in a bored tone.
“Thank you.”
Dave gave him a big claw up as Daniel swallowed the small objects without hesitation.
“How long do I have?” Ivey asked while retrieving a backpack from the floor.
Daniel glanced at the sun and his almost-depleted mana. “Twenty minutes,” he told her.
“Where?”
With a shrug, Daniel pointed at a nearby room before walking over to it.
“Wait,” Ivey called out. “I almost forgot; I have gifts, as well.” She pulled out five ziplocked bags. She handed him the first two bags. “These are from your kills. I did some trading on your behalf.” She handed him a third bag. “I gave up the termite cores for feral. Three Speed, three Earth, two Ice.”
“Ice?”
Ivey looked over towards where Dave was standing. “It was the only other type of zombie cores available.”
“Sure, Dave can have the Ice.”
“We figured,” Ivey said, holding the last two bags in her hand. “Forty termite cores, a mix of grunts, soldiers, and the king. I only traded away the worker cores.”
“Crafting,” Daniel said without hesitation. “Give the grunts to the general pool, and I will use the stronger ones to create living weapons.”
Ivey nodded before waving the last bag. “These are eggercough slug cores.”
“The things I squished.”
“Yep, but only two survived the process. I am uncertain how you will react, but hopefully they will improve your ability to heal.”
He hesitated for a moment.
“Theoretically, they are way less dangerous than those electricity cores and probably more useful.”
He grabbed the bags. Along with the other cores he had, Daniel was confident that he was going to have an awful night at some point.
“Anything else?” he asked. Ivey shook her head. “Okay, let’s do this.”
With that, Daniel went over to the room he had showed her, sat down, and started building a stairwell.
His heart was beating quickly, and all he could think about was that this was another make-or-break moment. If they won, they would emerge stronger, but if they lost . . . well, if they lost this battle when they engaged on their own terms, then they certainly would have perished when the monster came for them. Fighting now was the right choice.
Chapter 98
It was a crude staircase, which in practice was only slightly better than a rope ladder. There would not be any retreat, anyway. If this assault failed, there would be no running. Whatever was up there would come and get them. If they failed, then some—if not most of them—would be dead, and then the monster would have nothing that could stand in its way. With the stairwell completed, they were now committed. Eventually, it would find them.
He flashed off Animal Sense and nodded his head. It had only been for a fraction of an instant, but the beast was up on the penthouse floor, along with the people and some dogs.
He did not need to look out of the room where he had created the vine ladder to know that everyone who could fight was waiting in the corridor; they were being quiet, but so many whispered conversations coalesced into a lot of noise. The usual suspects were with him, standing guard: Ivey, Dave, Tamara, and Priscilla.
“Let’s go.”
“Game plan?” Ivey asked immediately even as he led them up the stairs.
“First, get entrenched; then, scout. Hopefully, find a large, open space to fight it.”
“We need to bounce; it’s getting dark,” Tamara told him, and she was not joking. The light coming through the window had dropped severely, and the sun was setting over the bay, its bottom edge already touching the horizon.
Priscilla? Daniel asked mentally. There is nothing dangerous but the baddy. One look. Be careful.
She thought about it, considered chips, and agreed before asking for a bribe. Apparently, she understood how serious this situation was.
Abruptly, she zipped away and went straight up the very open stairs that linked the levels. These top five floors were more extravagant than the ones below. Despite the aging, the quality was superior. Even the design was more opulent: light wells near the lifts; wooden stairwells linking the floors. It was where they wanted to fight, as it would let them bring their numbers to bear.
“Why are you just standing there?”
He startled slightly before looking at Ivey, who had asked the question. “I was encouraging Priscilla to scout.”
“Glad to see the mouse being useful.”
His first instinct was to defend Priscilla. After all, a lot of their success to date had been because of the intelligence around the enemy that she brought. In fact, their one failure had been the set of floors that Priscilla could not inspect. He bit down on the snide remark before it came out. There was no need to get bogged down in this argument. They owed the mouse their lives, even if Ivey did not realise that; but frankly, given how she reacted to the very presence of the mouse, Ivey would never be impartial.
He walked to the front and stood, club-hand waiting. The other melee fighters moved up beside him.
“So, is this the boss fight?” Luke asked.
Daniel shook his head. “Nope, all the bosses are outside. This”—he waved at the group behind him— “is what sensible people do. You know, bring multiple automatic shotguns to a knife fight.”
Luke laughed.
“God, I would love a shotgun about now,” Daniel told him. “I have some beauties on the farm.”
“Permits?”
“Easy enough to get for pest control. I tell you, they would make killing zombies so much easier.”
Luke looked sideways at him. “You know shotguns don’t work.”
Daniel hoped he hid his shock. That was bad news. How the hell were normal humans going to fight back without weapons? It would be a bloodbath. Sure, he and Alisha had gotten this group both armed and armoured, but not all groups would have people with appropriate classes, and he already knew he was a freak.
“Not at all?” he asked finally.
“You’re not much of a reader, are you?”
It was not meant as an attack, but with the way Ivey had looked down at him for his profession, the words cut.
“I have sort of been busy.”
“That you have,” Luke agreed easily. “And you’ve done an amazing job. According to the main blurb, guns and other modern technology are kaput. Gone!”
“Why?”
Luke’s eyes went unfocused, and not for the first time, Daniel wished he had a working interface. Everyone else seemed to have so much useful knowledge on tap while he wandered around permanently blind and looked like a dumb-arse.
“The physics have changed,” Luke said finally. “Apparently, the endothermic reactions don’t occur like they used to. Oh, and no more nukes, either.”
“I don’t know if that last one is good or bad. Bad boom versus dead monsters.”
Luke laughed uproariously, and Dave joined in his own funny manner. He had not realised Dave had been listening in as well. “I wish I had a couple of fuckin’ nukes,” Luke said darkly under his breath.
“At least we have our clubs,” Daniel said with a theatrical sigh. “They are totally equivalent.”
Dave doubled over with his laugh, in which he wheezed like he was dying.
Images flashed from Priscilla. Broken doors, holes in the floors, dividing walls torn down. Whatever the monster was, it clearly had no issues making its own path to get to where it wanted to go. It had gone through floors when there were stairs available, just because. Daniel knew how difficult it was to blast through them. Small cuts were easy enough, even expanding them into man-sized gaps, but once he pushed it beyond that, Daniel ran into problems. The reinforced metal got in the way. The fact this creature had created so many gaps of such size was terrifying. Its Strength must have been astronomical.
However, this observation proved one point. Coming up to fight it now was the right choice. Once it got hungry, it would have come for them. Win or lose, being here, fighting now instead of later, was the only option.
Priscilla was creeping.
He pumped out Animal Sense. Priscilla linked into it, riding the wave of information.
The monster was still two levels above Priscilla, but she looked up through one of the many holes right to where it was going to be. There was another damaged section on the floor above that, as she had worked out, would give her a glimpse with as much material between her and the danger as possible. She might be smart, but she was still a mouse and assumed everything was dangerous till proven otherwise. Then, once she knew her opponents, she got zombies to hit each other. He smiled.
The monster was coming.
Priscilla went into that intense stillness that he knew was her preparing to run. His pulse quickened.
The beast shifted into the gap, and Daniel got his first view. A giant octopus was the thought that went through his head, massive but sick. Not sick, dangerous. It had fluorescent bands of orange and green set into a body that shone like slime-algae green. It reminded him of a poisonous frog.
In nature, bright usually meant bad. This brightly coloured monstrosity had depopulated four floors and was working on a fifth. It was terrifying.
Priscilla went to work with her identification magic.
It took a second, and Daniel wondered what the core would give him.
Unexpected fear jolted through Priscilla –not the “This is creature is powerful” kind, but instead it was a visceral, “My life is in imminent danger” type of fear. She turned and bolted away.
From four floors below, he heard splinters.
What?
Daniel’s heart jumped.
Priscilla!
Blood roared in his ears.
No! Daniel was standing, taking a step towards the monster, then stopped himself.
She was fine. Then he realised he could still feel her rushing down the stairs. She was still alive.
Animal Sense.
The monster was not pursuing.
The wild panic coming through the bond faded. It is okay, he thought. We’re here to kill it, and if we fail, don’t wait. Just run. Get out of the building as fast as possible.
Lots of agreement came his way at that.
Heart still beating rapidly, he focused on extracting the information that had made Priscilla run. It had Telekinesis that made the Professor look weak. Daniel calmed down. That skill, the fear of being trapped in a cage where she was helpless, was Priscilla’s phobia. No wonder she had fled that with . . . oh god. The monster had a Life Sense ability. Priscilla had gotten lucky. Even his tiny mouse would have been visible to it. There was a reason for everything, including the tiny, usually invisible insects on the floor being dead. The abomination could sense life and then use its power to pluck it and bring it to its mouth.
Priscilla, for all her vaunted Speed, would have been helpless.
She had escaped; Daniel reminded himself of that.
He continued examining the information his precious girl had risked her life to get. The creature was a true monster with an insatiable appetite, self-regeneration, fast healing, and it had a body that was flexible and could contort into different shapes. The only good news was a weakness to ice. Not just a vulnerability—it was almost allergic to it. That fact probably explained how the humans had stayed alive. If a couple of them were ice mages, they could really hurt it and hold it at bay.
Breathe, he told himself. Priscilla ran up and hugged into his neck. She was violently shivering. He patted the mouse absently while thinking the fight through. They had two choices: Attack now, and hope the people trapped above would join in; or wait and organise something formal, with Morse code relayed via other buildings.
