Chapter 26:

(Episode VI) (Act 2)

siVisPride


Despite the enhanced senses, it still managed to skitter around them in the air.

Despite the enlightened minds, they still screamed, flinched, and tensed up as something they couldn’t catch whipped at them.

They had everything they sought after, what they needed… But it just wasn’t enough.

The pale shadow weaved about the girls, causing the current of air it was burrowing through repel them in multiple directions, shooting off with prejudice as it whipped at them with it’s own body to boot.

River was slammed into the ticket booth, and her feeble body completely folded onto it. She felt her now-siVis back, left shoulder and lower jaw jut out, forward, due to the impact.

It’s not exactly pain, the feeling of whenever this happens. More an acute sense that something is very, intensely wrong. Pain is a sharpness, aching, beating, an alert—literally that’s what it biologically is.

This was disruption. Loss. Emptiness. Being broken, put into this alien feeling. The body—River—losing something and everything that she still had—echoing, screaming back at each other to “figure” out who’s just left, building and building.

But the distressing thing, the thing she was sure everyone else was freaking about, was the fact that if they were still normal: they would’ve died or became crippled in that one move.

They tried to escape this, this harshness that would’ve instantly killed them. Now they have the double-edged tools that told them in untold detail how they would’ve died.

And if they continued this, how they would’ve died multiple, and differing times.

River tried to put herself together, this inward and invisible yet present grasp that pulled all the pieces together, slotting her back straight—jaw fastened—shoulder crooked yet snapped back.

There was no time for perfection, because the Nulgarrt was beaming towards a Maddie, laid out on the floor broken still.

Targeting the weak of the pack. A predator move.

In a surprising display; Aiko was the one that limped over and slid over to protect Maddie, not Jackie. This was enough for the thing to get second thoughts, darting away into the air again.

While predators are powerful beings, they know they thrive more in opportunity. And despite having what it takes to become the apex, it is in their DNA to worry. To second guess. To constantly feel that they’re going to die at any second.

But there was no time for existential dread.

The pale blur flailed in a frenzy within the air, even hitting—ripping up the ceiling it didn’t care that it was crashing into. The debris rained down, Aiko thinking faster than what River—everyone—especially Maddie gave her credit for, as she shielded her by getting over her.

“You—You don’t need to owe anything anymore…” is what was River gleamed from Aiko from afar, her backpack taking most of the brunt.

River tried to get up, to help both of them out… But the debris was beginning to float back up.

Her eyes darted up and a cluster of motion, debris, and wind was what she saw.

River’s head turned on instinct, towards Jackie who was hollering something at her, at everyone. The sound distortion from before was acting up, because of course it did.

Maybe find cover, something that can hold out against what’s coming next.

River looked again and Aiko was helping Maddie away, she looked again and saw Jackie ducking behind a pillar.

No Tracy. Where’s Tracy-?

As much as it somehow hurt more than the shoulder (River cursed her sad brain), she rolled over behind the ticket booth, and braced for whatever was coming…

It didn’t prepare her for Tracy huddled behind the ticket booth already, shaking and knees to her chest.

There was a sickening crackle, before an audible slam rocked through wall, rock and bone.

The force somehow rattled River, as if the torrent kept rocking her even after the fact. Her eardrums instantly flooded, head instantly aching.

River tugged on an ear lobe, clearing her drum, just in time to hear the reckless splashing.

She craned her head around, to see the pale blur dipping into the Stew everyone was covered in, trying to scavenging the parts of it’s progenitors. Fast.

The Nulgarrt during Wave 3 usually have the comfort in choosing the parts at random, really trying each option out until it turns out not to be compatible to them. This Nulgarrt feels that there’s a threat there, and the process is going to be somehow more chaotic than usual.

In other words, they have to lure or stall this creature on defense mode, that also can do whatever virtually whatever it wants.

River felt Tracy grab her shoulder and tug her back, almost being the representation of what was once logic.

“Don’t poke your head out!” she somehow managed to scream out while whispering. “It preys on the weak—that means us two! I-it’s better to let the rest go do the plan, we’re just in the way!”

River couldn’t even consider the thought.

The Nulgarrt was barreling toward them, from zigging from the lobby to the ticket booth.

River tugged at Tracy in turn, using the vitality of what the flood granted and her siVis enchaned strength, she quickly and was able to drag her out of the way.

Leaving her wide open for the Nulgarrt to tackle her head-on, on her side.

She tried to push back, grappling onto its head to do anything, anything. She started to skid away as the Nulgarrt frantically thrashed, the soundtrack to this AMV worthy moment was Tracy’s panicked screams.

And looking face to side at it, River finally saw the creature.

A flat, arrow like head with two horn-like flaps sprouting out of its head. The body, long and serpentine, had various feelers on it jutting out, flexing all at once yet at different paces as the tube of a body was painstakingly pulsing for air.

The Nulgarrt can be various things, become various things. But the one, unifying thing other than their feeble fetal form, is the fact there’s left over flesh from their sprouting from it, their previous face—eyeless holes and permanently screaming mouths— hanging off their new bodies. This one had theirs still on its face, stretched out.

But what this means, as River realized, that it doesn’t have a maw—nothing to bite or maul her or the rest with. All that they needed to worry about is it’s ability to create air distortions and the fact that it can pick up a jaw or mandibles if there’s some laying around.

…But how is it eating the air?

And River wondered why she was feeling light-headed.

She looked down back at the Nulgarrt, with a brief but poignant lapse in her vision.

The thing is a mass of writhing worms.

Where she gripped her hands on it, the not-so microbe life latched onto her hands, the skinny, featureless worms didn’t draw blood (despite her not able to anyways), but maybe to suck the literal oxygen out of her. Is. She didn’t know, her brain was getting fuzzy.

Whatever she knew it or not, she found herself being tackled again.

Being ripped from the worms didn’t instantly cure her parasite-based suffocation, but it helped. She laid on her side, trying to breath, and there wasn’t relief when whatever was left of the air flooded into her lungs.

It just highlighted how tired she was.

Jackie filled her vision, as the haze from the edges started to disappear. Of course it was her…

“C’mon, stay with me!” she managed to pick up and hoist River up, an Olympic feat.

“What happened… To the thing…?” River slurred out.

“Don’t worry about that,” Jackie tried to assure but kinda can’t since it was the only thing that can save them. “Just say with me. In fact, we’ll go do it together—the creep doesn’t like it when we pair up…”

River shook her head, still tired yet the light-headed-ness gone. The Nulgarrt retreated to the ceiling again, peering down this time with it’s non-eyes.

Jackie grabbed River’s hand, and started to run with her towards the flooded steps. “AIKO, MADDIE, TRACY—HIDE AND STAY CLOSE!”

They made it to the stairs, trekking it up being a labor of bitterness due to the current working against them. “The Stew had to… Originate up here…” Jackie forced herself to say.

Without realizing it, River as well as Jackie used siVis on their legs to conquer the stairs… Which made River sigh, because she would’ve suggested doing that and this means even with siVis, this would’ve been a grind.

“It’s in my backpack, the generator…” Jackie pointed to the top of the stairs, the pack open wide with the generator sticking out yet snug, the handle of the pack hanging off the railing’s start. “Had to improvise… Had to save you…”

But as the Nulgarrt swooped down, racing towards them, there wasn’t anyone to save them for what happened next.

“GOD DAMN IT, YOU FUCKING--!” Jackie roared, much less screamed.

But it didn’t aim to tackle them.

Before it made contact, it went upward just enough for them to see its underbelly.

It’s underbelly of swelling pockets of air. And as they became engorged, they proceeded to pop.

Popping concentrated air onto the girls.

Where it was either siVis enlightenment, their basic instincts or their attempt to being proactive—Jackie and River used their siVis enhanced legs to spring off the stairs in speeds they never thought they could achieve, trying to evade.

But the effect still happened—echoing and hitting them despite getting away—the blast forcing them onto the ground below hard, splashing onto the goop.

River struggled to rise from it, noticing that her glasses cracked again—but only on the right side where she was hit with the air blast. At least she can still make out the death of her and everyone.

She was too slow to respond to the Nulgarrt advancing back down to her and Jackie, trying to finally pick them off.

It screeched as fallen ceiling and wall, and whatever else started to sail in the air and hit it.

It wasn’t even a screech of anger, rage. Just sheer desperation.