The driver Medusahead had mentioned was a plucky thirty-odd dude with a shaved head. He had gnarly scars on his forearms and a bright laugh. He liked talking about cars, apparently, so I pretended to listen while secretly counting the dents in his skull.
“And this here is Big Bess,” he said, slapping the giant rectangular car on the side of its door.
“That’s a Hummer,” I noted. “Medusahead promised me a Humvee. This is a civilian variant.”
“Yeah, well, after the slime incident we had some trouble getting our hands on US military surplus vehicles that wouldn’t make it obvious we were some sort of spec-op unit, so we got this one. And isn’t she a beaut’? Did some work on her myself — bulletproof windows, reinforced suspension, three hundred thousand miles run and still works fabulously. Only problem is that she guzzles fuel like, like… er, Kazinksy, simile.”
“Like a choir of college-campus kids butt-chugging Everclear,” came a woman’s voice from inside.
She was sitting in the back seat with a heavily tattooed arm hanging out the side. I couldn’t pin down her age, mostly because her face was filled with cybernetics I’m pretty sure I only ever saw in sci-fi shows. Her AR headpiece was just as unusual, covering her entire head in a reflective, non-see-through dome. Her hair which stuck out from behind it in spikes was punk, long vibrant reds and blues popping out and falling around her headpiece like leaves from a potted plant. She had a tablet too, and some whacky-ass gloves she was probably using to better interface with her… interface.
She was Idly flicking the air, or checking her nails, either or. The general tone was casual enough that I didn’t feel bad about staying quiet while awkwardly sipping at my instant coffee.
“Rosy.” The driver smiled, turning to me. “I’m Paul, but you can call me... Paul, ma’am. I’m your dedicated driver come rain or hellfire. And that poetically inclined cyborg over there is Kazinsky, our dedicated drone operator and hacker.”
Kazinsky scoffed. “Don’t call me a hacker, you make it sound like I’ve got anything even remotely in common with the kind of script kiddies AI-vibe-coding in their mother’s basement all day.”
“My apologies, miss XxHackzorxX.”
She flicked a booger at him.
Well. This certainly was a colorful duo. They seemed so relaxed, so confident in their excellence. It was enough to calm me down, putting me in a better mindset to charge some spells. Was their behavior on purpose? They must do this routine on the regular, given that they had experience working together with a Custodian.
I gave them a wave while secretly charging off of their good vibes. “Hi, I’m Samantha. Call me Sam.”
“What level are you?” Kazinsky asked.
“28.”
“We’re all going to die,” she said.
I nearly choked on my coffee.
“Kazinksy, what the hell?”
“What? You had to sign the waver too. We’re guaranteed a place in Elysium if we do bite the dust. Couple that with how many soulcoins the boss’s paying us for this one, and any idiot could connect the dots. And I’m not an idiot.”
“Sheesh. I mean, true, but be a little bit less crass about it in front of the newbie.”
Newbie? Was there some poor intern I’d overlooked?
I looked left. I looked right.
Wait, they’re talking about me.
“Sorry. It’s a pleasure,” the woman said, looking up briefly from her tablet. “I’m here to take care of any and all drone-related needs.”
Some people milling about in the distance made way as all of a sudden ten identical cars came rolling down the curb, all missing a driver. “There we go. I present to you: A fleet of self-driving cars.”
“Those are your drones?” I asked.
“No, we’ve got multiple rotor drones in a launch pad on the roof. This is just something I… requisitioned.”
That sounds a lot like she meant to say stolen.
Paul leaned in to whisper into my ear. “Mimics used to be scared of the sound of driving cars, so we had to switch to electric, and change our tactics to be more sneaky-like. When they’re trying to hide, you can herd them with these. When they’re trying to attack, they’re like free distractions.”
And if we found any human survivors, well, they’d serve as transports too. Smart.
“I see.” The two of them seemed quite competent. “I’m going to be gearing up in the backseat, but if there’s anything I can buy you, just say the word.”
“Oh, we could never,” Paul said.
“Kruk 231 Octocopter, B-model.”
“Kazinsky!”
“What? You don’t outrank me, bub. Let the magical spider girl spend her money, if she so desires.”
I checked the shop, and wouldn’t you know it, it was right there. Top of the line spy drone, comes with telescopic lens, night vision, infrared, laser markers, the whole shebang. The command module was sold separately. It cost a grand total of twenty-five soulcoins, which was expensive, but not overly so. With this kind of thing whirring a few hundred feet above our heads we ought to be safe of any large-scale ambush.
“Sure. I’ll buy two. They’re only twenty-five soulcoins.”
At that, Kazinsky paused. “Only? You hear that, Paul, she’s no newbie. She’s practically rich.”
“Kazinsky,” Paul hissed. “Don’t take advantage of her. She’s just a girl, like, half your age.”
“Just a girl, yes, hm. That girl has the firepower of an entire squad packed into one person. She is a portable logistics hub that can get you the exact type of ordinance you need for any problem at the snap of a finger. Do you remember that big monkey in the north ward that knocked one of bossma’am’s drones out of the air? She killed that thing almost singlehandedly. I’m pretty sure she could beat everyone besides Big Deckard at arm wrestling even though she isn’t built for strength.”
Paul shrugged. “I mean, she does have more arms than us.”
They both looked at me and I had to say I felt sheepishly embarrassed.
“Sorry about your drone.”
“Apology accepted. I sure hope Medusahead isn’t about to keep a grudge against someone who can do that, especially since you delivered some lovely footage. I do hope for your sake that you’re not planning another stunt like that in the near future.”
I laughed nervously, which was when suddenly two hands closed around my eyes from behind.
“Goddammit Samantha, how are you this hard to pin down?” a familiar voice hissed at my neck.
“Clem?” I asked and turned around. “I can still see, y’know; you’re only covering two of my eyes — wait, no, why are you still here!? ”
She was roughly eye-height with me, which was purely due to the fact that Aki had picked her up and was holding her up to me. He put her down again before offering me a fistbump, which I took.
“You’re the talk of town, big girl,” he said.
“You’re all I hear about when I’m texting Clem,” I shot back.
“Oh?” He leaned down to nibble on her ear. “I hope it’s only compliments and stuff worth bragging about.”
Clem squirmed in his grip. “I said that you’re vain, and that you need better deodorant.”
He paused, then looked up at me with a serious face. “Apologies miss Samantha, it seems I must find a pool of ice cold water to dunk my girlfriend in.”
“Very cute,” I said with a nervous chuckle. “Now tell me why you’re still in Creektin and not faraway before I have a nervous breakdown.”
“N-not a chance. I… Aki, will you stop tickling me — Aki!” Clem looked flustered when he finally put her down. She righted her hair, scrunched her nose, then looked at me with all the bearings of a professional lovepotion maker. “We’re coming with you.”
“What?” I asked, but she shushed me before I could tell her what I thought of the idea.
“Consider this: My parents are out of town, I have to leave behind my ancestral family home and the business they and our forefathers have built up over a hundred years, and now my bestie is going out on yet another ill-advised mission to save the world, or at least some part of it, and I’m just supposed to stay behind? No. Nuh-uh.”
“Clem…”
“Don’t you Clem me. Just because you’ve recently joined the ‘can toss Clem farther than she can spit’ club doesn’t mean you get to look down on me. I’m a witch, I have credentials, and what’s more…” She brandished a stick, nearly poking my eye out.
“A wand?” I blinked.
“Indeed, a wand. A third limb for magic-ery.” She twirled the smooth, ivory-white stick in her hand. “It materialized when I manifested my first innate spell.”
Is that how it works for witches?
“Congratulations? No, sorry, that sounds so lame. It’s magic after all! Magic!” I cried.
“It is!” she said, mimicking my excitement. Her face was the very definition of composed smugness. “So, will you let me on your little adventure here, or do I have to bribe you first?”
“I get it, I get it,” I held up my hands defensively.
I turned to the two military-looking professionals.
“I’m not so sure,” Paul said.
“I’m open to bribes.” All eyes went to Kazinsky. “What, if she’s offering? And she knows magic. Who knows, maybe she’ll blow the mimics to kingdom come with a single whispered word of fell power?”
“Don’t be silly, I’m a witch, not a living artillery gun.” Clem rolled her eyes, as she often did, opened her cute black cat handbag before pulling out an entire box of wildly colored potions. “This is all I have in my bug-out bag. They’re all labeled, so make sure to read them before you take what you need.”
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Kazinsky and Paul approached timidly at first, grabbing a few bottles with the words ‘stamina’, ‘eyesight’, and ‘cognitive speed’ written on them.
I just looked at the potions. So many colors, so much power.
“These are the ones for everyone here,” Clem said, portioning off over half the clustered containers. “These ones here only work on my boo. And these are the ones that won’t cause Sam to die a horrible death.”
“Aww, you were thinking of me; how sweet,” I said. On second look, they weren’t the best potions. Enhanced smell, greater lactic acid removal, blindness. Not blindsight, not blind-immunity. Literally drink this and become blind. “I am mildly underwhelmed. Why are mine so sucky?”
“Because you already drank all the good ones, remember? Potion cooldown timers are to be respected or else, well… splat.”
“Splat!?” At least she was concerned for my safety. “Why does Aki get so many?”
“I’m her assistant-slash-bodyguard,” he said, pocketing a Tireless Tonic of the Nemean Lion with a brimming smile. “Also, I’m still hard as fuck, man.”
“Phrasing,” Kazinksy coughed.
Clem rolled her eyes. “What he means is that I gave him too much of the solidifying solution, and that he’s now quite hard, metaphysically speaking. I tried cutting him with a kitchen knife, a saw, and a scalpel — not a scratch.”
“Not a single one!” Akira said, happily showing me his unblemished forearms.
“Until the magic runs out,” Clem added.
“Yeah, but until then I’m freaking chunky. I should rename myself to the boulder or the mountain.”
“Clem, why are you using your boyfriend as a guinea pig?” I asked before turning to him. “And how are you so chill with this!?”
“I dunno,” Akira said. “Magic is just really cool.”
I groaned into my hands, then again but louder. “Cleeem, this is a terrible idea. The road ahead is dangerous. I’ve got an extra life to spend, and the other two are professionals. I—”
Clem shushed me with a wand poking my lips. She closed her eyes, and I could feel the warmth in its ivory rising. Then there was a sudden snap-and-pop, and suddenly I was very aware of what Clem was feeling.
Scared, alone, afraid of being useless and left behind, guilty at not being a piece of living artillery, worried about me, about Aki, about Rebecca.
“Woah,” I said. “You turned your lover's potion into a spell.”
“That’s right,” she said without moving her mouth. “It’s short range but high signal strength. It can pop through most barriers with zero latency.”
“I see,” I thought right back at her. “Now we can gossip entirely in secret.”
“Oh you devious spooder you.”
“They’ve just been staring at each other, are they alright?” Paul whispered to Akira.
“It’s their natural girl-to-girl communication at work,” Akira whispered back. “They won’t admit it, but all girls are telepathic. The fact that they’re being this open about it right in front of us means they trust us.”
Paul nodded wisely. “Let’s back off into the hummer, slowly, quietly. Best not to startle them.”
“I’m not some feral animal,” I said, almost laughing at the idiocy of the idea.
Sam, wild spiderwoman. Feed with coffee and caution.
Gosh, I was grinning. I don’t know how they did it, but between Clem and Akira’s shenanigans, I was feeling a lot better about our prospects. They were the best.
[Spell charged. 99% Joy, 1% Fear.]
Then Paul opened the door and there was a tanuki napping on the driver seat. Somehow, Addy managed to escape Medusahead’s grip.
“Yours?” he asked.
“I am tempted to say no.” This goddamn obsessive, workaholic tanuki. I groaned into my hands. “Screw it! Let’s hit the road, come heaven or hell or Elysium. And let’s hope that the road doesn’t hit back because it’s like, a mimic, or some nonsense like that.”
+++
The road was not a mimic. That would’ve been silly. Also, terrifying. The cars on the road however…
“Left, on your left!” yelled Clem. “Turn, turn! The other left! Nooo!”
“Stop backseat driving!” Paul shot back, whipping the hummer around a car wreck that had been peeling open like a tin can.
“We’re all gonna die.” Kazinsky intoned in a monotone voice.
An eldritch warble reverberated through the back. I kicked open the trunk, secured myself with two extra hands against the headrests, and aimed my Spab-4 right at the slobbering mimic running us down while we were going forty.
Boom! Boom!
The car-shaped huntsman, now with only two working legs, collapsed. There’d been a whole slew of minor attacks and ambushes so far, but the drone caught most of them early. Then we started being chased, and that meant we had to go faster than the drone could keep up with.
At the lack of any followup, some of the tension bled from my body. “There. That’s the last of them I think.”
Kazinsky tsked. “They got two of my self-driving cars.”
“It was worth the distraction,” Clem said. “Did you see them all bunch up right before the cars exploded?”
“Explosions.” Akira nodded like a wise man. “Very metal.”
“And they were pink!”
“Very… moe?” he asked and Clem snorted.
“I can’t believe you're calling Sam-Sam’s explosions cute.”
I’d gotten a single pink-colored high explosive shot for my bazooka as part of having bought my 25th round. Something about a loyalty program.
“I bet I could make them cuter,” I opined. “With confetti and pink smoke that explodes in a heart-shape.”
“Wow, like a real magical girl, huh? Kids’ll love that.”
I paused. On second thought, yeah, let's not make guns child friendly.
The mimics on the road were slowing us down. Props to Paul though, for finding the sweet spot between not going slow enough that the mimics could catch us, but also not fast enough that a random huntsman could take us out by becoming strategically placed roadkill.
They were still big critters after all. Lots of mass. Very bad prospects for any of us if we ever hit one head-on.
I leaned back, sighed, and tried to get back to the preparations I was being forced to rush more and more. An hour wasn’t much when assembling the crew to arrive at the steelmill would almost cost us half an hour. Hey, at least I got some extra soulcoins out of this. Together with them I was sitting at a comfortable…
[Soulcoins: 711]
Holy. Ok, I definitely needed to make some purchases. Nothing too big that would require me to learn and adapt to it, no new weapon full of uncertainties and possibly exploding batteries.
Definitely buying a HUD upgrade that lets me track my spider mines. Maybe some variable ammo for the Spab-4. Something with less powder charge would be nice. And wow, they’ve got all kinds of magical ammo.
[Mooseshot - Ice: Enchanted bullets. Shots on target cause buildup of surface- and core-depth ice crystals, aggravating wounds and reducing joint mobility. Reduced effective range. 1 Magazine: 30 Soulcoins]
[Solid slug - Fire: Enchanted bullets. Shots on target bore inside before releasing a burst of heat, damaging nearby tissue. Armor-piercing. Very effective on heart- and head-shots. Not vampire-slayer approved. 1 Magazine: 35 Soulcoins]
The prices were horrifying considering there were only six shots in every magazine. That meant that if I was shooting at anything smaller than a leaper, I’d be making mad losses, and that was assuming one-hundred percent accuracy. Which, y’know, was unrealistic in the extreme.
I bought two mags of each.
Am I being cheap?
I bought another two. Better safe than, well, y’know. Dead.
My chest armor was pretty banged up, having been stabbed, cut, bashed, burnt, and ablated to the point of near total destruction. Pretty sure the spores were empty, or needed a recharge too. When the anteater slapped me around the sporecloud it released was much, much smaller than before. A clear sign that there was mush-room for improvement.
I will not apologize for that one.
A new piece of chest-armor was necessary. The option I settled on was an understated brown chestpiece. It was mottled white and green, like lichen growing on tree bark. It limited my mobility a little bit, but it fit immaculately.
[Personal-Space Vest: Armored vest capable of protecting the user from small calibre rounds up to 7.62mm. Includes noise-dampening enchantment, charged with fear. Covered in enchanted wooden slabs. Upon detecting a sufficient impact, activates enchantment on one or multiple slabs to retaliate against the attacker. Slabs can be restocked and re-affixed. Price: 250 Soulcoins]
Brown Recluse Samantha, rolling out!
The rest of my money was going into spider mines. Because nothing said ‘hostage mission’ like a bunch of semi-autonomous walking mines.
Alright. I have guns, Clem’s potions, and a cool new interface. This is going to be… doable.
“Sam.” Clem poked me in the back.
I perked up. “Huh?”
“We’re here.”
Already?
I got up, leapt out of the car while my heart stepped up its beat. There we were, in front of the old steel mill. A rusty chainlink fence was all that stood between me and the main compound. We’d be entering through the annealing lines. I pulled up the floorplan on my minimap and overlayed it with satellite imagery. From the outside, it just looked like the average abandoned industrial compound.
God, this place looks old as heck. If the mimics don’t get me, tetanus will.
Also, slight correction: I was entering through the annealing lines, alone. Paul was staying in the car, in case everything went sideways. Akira and Clem were keeping an eye on the ground and another on Addy, who was anything but combat ready. I wasn’t letting them participate in this any more than I had to. It was up to Kazinsky to give aerial reconnaissance, and me to get some boots on the floor.
I was nervous. Scratch that, I was terrified, practically vibrating in my boots. They were new boots too, the hard-soled military kind that made me feel like I could kick a door in instead of just breaking my shin on the handle.
Hoping that the enhanced smell potion would allow me to smell threats earlier, I drank it. The first thing that hit me was that I smelled horrible, like acrid mimic blood mixed with gunpowder and hot metal.
Addy woke up only to dry-heave out of the back window.
Oh. Great. Apparently it just enhanced how I smell, not how well I CAN smell. Sorry Addy, I guess I’m a stinkbug now.
“Good luck out there,” Clem said, holding her nose. Some of the elan had left her voice. She was nervous, worried. “I don’t have any other potions with me. I wish I could help more. Sorry.”
I shot her a smile. “I’ll be back soon.”
Akira was holding her hand. “Blow some mimics up for us.”
“Will do, big man.”
I looked up at the fence. It was quite tall at about ten-plus feet, and with nasty-looking spikes at the top. A bit overkill for a steel mill, but hey, maybe they just took security that seriously.
Taking a run-up, I shot forward, elastic muscle fibers and sinews propelling me at speed. One step and I was on the hummer’s roof, then the next I was flying high and higher.
I crested the fence, hit the concrete feet-first, turned that into a roll and finally came to an uncertain stand. I flapped my arms. Balance achieved. A ten point landing. That… hurt way less than I expected.
I turned around to wave at a slack-jawed Clem and a smiling Akira.
“How, you… you couldn’t do that a week ago,” she said.
“I think you left a dent in the roof,” he noted.
Paul looked back in shock. “Oh come on, really? There’s an open gate like a hundred feet to our left.”
Woops.
Not one to get stopped by collateral damage, I focused back on the task at hand. One of Kazinsky’s drones was entering the main compound, the camera feed playing in the corner of my HUD right next to the minimap. The insides were showing signs of the same pink growths I’d seen in the mall. There was definitely a mimic nest here.
The second drone was hovering above me, covering approaches from all sides.
<
“Copy, roger-dodger, over and out!”
Eee, I feel like a professional magical girl already! Now all I need is a cool transformation.
I moved my eyes from back to front and stalked forward. Some of the cameras on the drone had caught a faint trail of mimic blood mixed with discarded, charred bits of skin.
Ur-mimic.
My resolve grew tight as I followed the trail, an illusory double walking a few steps ahead, the quiet clatter of spider mines muting the sound of my own footsteps. I was a ghost, moving unseen, unheard, unnoticed. I crept, like a hunter. All my spider instincts were loving this.
The compound was still large, unreasonably so, with entire buildings dedicated to specific parts of the metal-making process. Ladle furnaces, RH degassers, skin pass mills, annealing and galvanizing line, pickling… pickling lines?
The heck is a pickling line?
My system, helpfully, gave a brief overview of the metalworking process. Apparently the metal sheet is unrolled and submerged into a bath of strong acids — hydrochloric, sulphuric, the works — to remove any remaining impurities. Huh. The more you know.
I entered the first building, watching the spent acid tanks with nervous trepidation. Pink coral polyps growing in branch-like or bulbous configurations covered them head to toe.
Better blow those up last. The last thing I need is to choke on old-as-heck acidic fumes.
The more I moved into the steel mill, the more it became clear that the mimics had taken over this place a while ago. They must’ve been growing in the basement while the odd contractor plodded around aboveground, determining how best to demolish this rusting behemoth. Nobody had reason to come here otherwise, not when the company running it abandoned the thing in the nineties. Now it was so rotten and hole-ridden that removing it safely and cheaply seemed impossible. The mayor’s office had kicked the ball further down the road again and again. Ergo, no progress, ergo no people, ergo a perfect place to make a nest.
I climbed over a fallen girder, Spab-4 facing forwards, Toothpicks at the ready to pick off any would-be flankers.
It was dead quiet.
I kicked a metal sheet with the tip of my boots. It splatted against the wall, warbled angrily, and grew claws. I shot it twice with a Toothpick and gained a handful of coins as a reward.
“Ha-hah! I’m wise to your ways, mimics. Gone are the days when a measly 1.5 kilo headcrab posed a threat to me. You’re not dealing with the average girl-spider anymore.”
Silence.
Okay, kinda creepy. Keep your eyes open, Sam. There’s still an Ur-mimic around, and a—
I stopped.
<
Gnashing. Slurping.
Cold sweat beaded on my forehead.
<
The crack of bones.
“You can’t see that?” I whispered with a shaky voice.
<
Well, that explained how they’d gone unnoticed at least. The Glamour had kept most members of The Society hidden. Gnomes could apparently hide just as well without it. Evidence that not everyone needed invisibility in equal measure to go unnoticed. Some things were simply impossible to see through the electronic lens of a camera.
Vampires had no reflection in mirrors or in water, or so legend goes. And what was a camera recording but a reflection of reality turned to bits and bites?