10:15 AM
Puffing hard, chicken legs pumping up and down, Daniel retraced his dusty trail to the chamber entrance. Walking to UE 000 hadn’t been a problem but asking his scrawny body to run all the way back full-tilt was ridiculous. Jumping over the pieces of concrete and rebar strewn about made things even worse. Daniel’s robe billowed against his bony arms like sails against their masts.
When he reached the metal door bolted shut he stumbled to a halt and gripped his bony thighs while gulping air. He felt worn-out—physically from the run and mentally from that weird bullet-blocking reflexive use of his power.
There were no guards on post, but he heard a muffled alarm beyond the gate. The security camera above with a little red light by the lens watched him pant. Nobody’s opening it for me… Daniel thought as he suppressed a rising headache and lifted his arm.
Recalling his possession by The Ruin, he focused on his fingers. His hands looked as big as the enormous door behind them. Projecting this thought with his power, he mimed a crushing motion as if squeezing the juice out of an orange—an occasional fantasy of his—and saw steel flex.
A massive handprint of rust accompanied by the screeching noise of warping steel bent the door around huge finger impressions. Though he clutched air, Daniel felt the metal resisting his grip. Guided by the new sensations, he dug in hard and pulled to rip the door from the wall. Concrete and streamers of rust confetti fell as Daniel tore apart the barricade. A renewing wave swept over him as he crossed the threshold, easing the strain on his mind… like when The Ruin fed on destroying UE 000’s barrier, but on a smaller scale.
Though he’d feared what that other being would do with this ability, it came now as a welcome relief. He caught his breath in a few seconds’ pause and felt much better. Then he cringed as a teeth-grinding alarm screamed through the halls. Daniel plugged his ears and tried to think.
He saw the colors in the walls marking the other six UEs. This second sight overlayed his normal vision, but his perception intensified with concentration. Visualizing the distance to each light in three dimensions, he realized the brightest wasn’t necessarily the closest—though he picked that out by shuffling left and right to see which source moved the most (parallax). There, high and to the right.
Daniel advanced through the corridor until his target was perpendicular to the wall. With a minor exertion of will, concrete disintegrated in a foot-square patch. He drew a spiral with his pointer finger until he had a hole large enough to climb through. Tunneling upward through concrete, rebar, wires, and ventilation, Daniel slowly drained his power. The ringing alarm diminished until he could hear himself breathe. He emerged into another hall and waited for his refreshment, but nothing happened.
Which makes perfect sense, he thought. Both previous times it came, he felt it only when he’d destroyed a defense or crossed a threshold. These walls were all connected as part of the larger building. He couldn’t get a recharge from this demolition until he ‘broke’ the whole Facility.
Daniel heard footsteps and two armed guards with fire extinguishers rounded the corner. They stopped, as startled to see him as he them. After a double-take, they dropped the extinguishers and went for their guns. Daniel threw himself at the wall with far too much power.
A cloud of dust exploded into the hall, forcing the guards into a coughing fit while Daniel hollowed out his path higher. He looked over his shoulder and collapsed the tunnel by tracing a line of disintegration with his eyes. Daniel emerged into the next hall through a spray of dust gasping for clean air as the opening crumbled behind him.
Sliding security doors slammed shut on his left and right, locking him in. That’s not a coincidence, he thought. Glancing about, he found a ceiling-mounted camera. Daniel shot an ounce of his power to take out the lens and a chunk of the ceiling by accident.
Getting tired, he approached a steel barrier in the opposite direction of his target. With a rush of power and thrust of his hand he blew open the metal door in a shower of rust.
Nothing.
He stepped through a doorframe empty except for dangling ribbons of torn steel.
Nothing.
Again, this made sense. He couldn’t expect any satisfaction from destroying something irrelevant to his goals. How did he know that?
Daniel turned to the door blocking his way to the first of the other humanoid UEs. The edges of his mind were fuzzy, and focus became difficult as his well of energy ran dry. He laid his hand on the security door and, with his last sliver of power, Daniel’s fingers slid into the steel like a hot knife through butter.
Then Daniel’s muscles took over—to his immense surprise. The scrawny, bony arms that couldn’t do a pull-up if his life depended on it suddenly filled with boundless strength. He bent the steel like toffee and heard its groans of protest as he twisted the doors out of shape. He sweated and grunted in his struggle, but his strength never abated until he created an opening to climb through.
When he fell out the other side and collapsed on the floor, triumph came surging like a deluge of ice water. Haze and pain rolled off his scalp the way a cold shower rinsed sweat on a hot day. Daniel stood to examine the security door he’d broken through. He put his hand on the steel and pushed—to no effect. So, I have conditional super strength.
His attention returned to the nearest UE’s aura. So close, but the door was nowhere in sight; this hallway must run tangential to the containment unit without intersecting. Daniel could break through the unmarked wall without harming the occupant.
He dug his fingers into the concrete like soft bread. He ripped and tore apart chunks, piling dust and rebar behind him. Then the wall crumbled out into the corridor.
As he stepped inside to reap the recharge of success, green slime squished between his toes and sluggishly boiled at his touch. The stuff coated the walls, dripped from the ceiling, and pooled on the floor inches deep. A mound of foam set like meringue took the place of a bed in the corner. The UE stood in the room’s center, arms up, palms out, and knees bent in a defensive fighting stance.
A simple, sleeveless black top exposed her midriff. Over her heart on the shirt was a stylized emblem in gold: a minimalist tadpole centered inside the outline of a frog with feet splayed to show each toe. She wore a pair of skintight athletic shorts and no shoes.
She was about his age… and she was the strangest person he’d ever seen.
Her skin glistened as if oiled, displaying three striking tones in a curious pattern. They met in her face: a bright red band from scalp to eyebrows that swept down her broad nose, blackish brown on her upper lip spread across her eyes and cheeks, and cream flowed from her lower lip to her throat, chest, and hips. The deep brown extended symmetrically down her sides while her arms and legs marbled light and dark. The tips of her fingers and toes were flat and padded, connected by thin webbing. Short brown hair sprang from her head.
While he shouldered deeper into the depths of his large robe, self-conscious, this strange girl seemed comfortable in her colorful skin and revealing outfit.
She seemed undisturbed by his violent entry and took him in at a glance, though her large almond eyes lingered on his. The black wells of her froglike pupils were surrounded by a mosaic of green and gold, no whites. Unlike the humans who feared his gaze, she didn’t seem surprised or unnerved.
Then the girl’s gaze darted to the side as if hearing something. “Daniel’s fine,” she told someone who wasn’t there, though her eyes wandered across the wall instead of fixating on an imaginary person.
“You know me?” he said, startled but excited. Daniel examined her closer to unearth a memory. She had a round face and wide lips, though her features were girlish and pretty instead of the animalistic half-amphibian hybrid he’d expected from her room’s décor. But he didn’t know her.
She ignored him to stare at the wall and say, “Maybe he never had one. Still has the ring, though.” Rather than a raspy croak, she spoke in a smooth contralto.
Beginning to worry the girl might not be all there, he asked a simple question, “Who are you?”
The girl dropped her conversation with the unknown party and studied him until she concluded, “You don’t remember me.”
Finally, she got it, “Would I have asked if I did?”
Something clicked in her head, “You don’t remember anything from that day.”
He had a bad feeling he knew exactly what she meant but remembered nothing beyond an ache in his chest, “The first thing I remember is waking up in the forest.”
“Rana,” she gestured to herself. Her body wasn’t fragile, like his, with muscle definition on her arms and legs. He was taller, though she weighed more by a large margin—all in agile, whipcord strength. “I think I know why you lost your memory, but now’s not the time. We’ll talk when this is over—okay?”
She reached for a shake but retracted it, averting her eyes as if she’d done something incredibly rude. Her stoic expression refused to acknowledge the misstep. Rana must have known about his ‘problem,’ settling for a little bow and a sweep of her hand.
Daniel returned the bow after an awkward second of bewildered hesitation. “Agreed,” he said, “But escape might be difficult with all these security cameras.” Indeed, he’d spotted four wall-mounted lenses in the corners of her room, which she’d left un-slimed. “I wish we could take out their surveillance,” he thought aloud. Daniel imagined security watching the two of them talk and planning against them even if the full termination order hadn’t gone out.
The girl’s attention reverted to whatever was going on in her head, “Hold on, Daniel can’t hear you—give me a second to extend the influence.” Daniel shot down the cameras while she spoke, taking a chunk of the wall with each.
Rana held a hand to her mouth, gagged, and spat a metal trinket on a chain into her palm. She wiped it off, tapped it, put it around her neck, and tucked it into her shirt. Then Daniel heard a bell. Not in his ears but chiming inside his head. Voices followed.
:Hello, Daniel, can you hear us?: the first was a male voice, quiet and careful.
:Of course he can, Rana doesn’t waste time the way you do, Paul,: the second, high pitched and female, chastised the first.
:He freed Rana first?: the third, male, came harsher in tone, :Couldn’t it have been someone with a little more muscle?:
:Quiet everyone, please,: said the fourth voice, female, in a mezzo-soprano between Rana’s low and the second voice’s high, more like singing than either. :If he released Rana, then Daniel is doing exactly as he should. Meanwhile, Rana, I believe disabling their eyes would be the second-highest priority.:
The frog girl didn’t seem to like the implication, “The last three times I broke out I couldn’t get anything done. What makes this different?”
:Because this time you have a mission.: It was the fourth again, :We are depending on you. Rana, I know you can do this.:
“Fine,” she told the fourth voice, then looked to Daniel, “Let’s get this over with.”
“What was that?” Daniel asked, at last able to articulate his confusion, “I mean, it was obviously some kind of telepathy, but—What was that?”
The second suddenly announced, :Soldiers from the east!:
Daniel had been afraid of this. He heard men running down the hall towards them. Suddenly, he realized Rana didn’t look particularly bulletproof. If he dug an escape, they might not have time to get away before the soldiers arrived and started shooting. Daniel ran out into the hallway to stop them or buy time for Rana’s escape.
Turning the corner, he faced five men in dark uniforms advancing with bulletproof vests and automatic rifles. He had an instant to act but Mary’s words echoed as he raised his hand, “Never use your power for murder.” Even if he targeted their guns, he couldn’t avoid taking their arms or more by accident.
If he used his power, he would kill them.
Daniel froze, and they fired first. A spray of bullets rained on him, exploding into dust on contact and each yanking energy from his body. He was being pummeled by a boxer, blunt pain repeatedly smashing into him. He would tire in seconds and die.
Though he might justify it as self-defense, if he committed to killing, he knew next time would be easier and easier until he was shooting first. No—Daniel didn’t want to hurt these people no matter the pain they caused him. Yet, he wanted to live.
As his internal struggle between fear and morality neared the breaking point, he saw something dart by. Rana somersaulted into the hall, pumping her arms as she rolled. Her hands shot five globs of sticky green slime to hit each man’s weapon, clogging their gun barrels. She came up on her knees and, with a wave of her hand, the slime from her room rushed forward in a wave that washed past their feet. The soldiers slipped on the lubricant, forcing the grown men to flop on the floor. The ground became so slick they couldn’t rise to their hands and knees.
Understanding dawned on Daniel. Rana could have slimed their faces and suffocated the men but, through clever use of her abilities, she disabled them instead. He could learn better control and manage his ability like her.
He turned to see blood splattered on the floor and dripping from her arm.
Rana didn’t wince or seem to care she’d been shot. Her flesh expelled the bullet and knit itself closed. She cleaned off the blood by spraying herself with fresh, clean slime. Bloodstains and slime miraculously didn’t stick to her clothes.
She stood and walked west without stopping to acknowledge she’d probably saved his life at some risk to hers. Gaping at her back, he saw the red band of her forehead ran through her scalp and down her spine. He wanted to stop her, to thank her, to tell her what she’d made him realize, “Rana!” The frog girl turned her head. He choked. “Can you really do whatever you want with that stuff?”
Rana shrugged, “Well the slime works decent enough, but never does as much as you’d want it to,” her eyes drifted up to remember a fact, “You know, there are Gymnomorphs that can shoot acid that eats through Chelonii shell.” She said it like Daniel would rattle off how hummingbirds beat their wings eighty times a second—to someone who’d never seen a hummingbird.
Gymnomorphs? Chelonii? That sounds like binomial nomenclature. His mind worked to form a coherent question and nearly missed his chance, “Wait,” he said, “They’ll see you coming and block your path. Don’t you need help getting to the Security Room?”
Rana gave a condescending smirk, the first emotion he’d seen on her. Multicolored skin turned pale to match the concrete, fading to a dull and uniform white. Then her skin texture changed as well, taking on the roughness of the walls. Rana changed her clothes and hair to match so her eyes floated in midair. Then they too faded.
The glow of her aura vanished from his second sight as well. Staring directly at the girl, he could see her outline and shadow, but then he blinked. The second he lost eye-contact he couldn’t find her again. He didn’t hear her leave. Daniel doubted anybody saw her coming.
Hold on a second, who was he thinking about? Whatever, if he’d forgotten, it couldn’t have been important.
J.G.Petrichor
The character in this chapter has skin tones reminiscent of the Fungoid Frog.
Visit my Website!
Kindle
10:15 AM
Puffing hard, chicken legs pumping up and down, Daniel retraced his dusty trail to the chamber entrance. Walking to UE 000 hadn’t been a problem but asking his scrawny body to run all the way back full-tilt was ridiculous. Jumping over the pieces of concrete and rebar strewn about made things even worse. Daniel’s robe billowed against his bony arms like sails against their masts.
When he reached the metal door bolted shut he stumbled to a halt and gripped his bony thighs while gulping air. He felt worn-out—physically from the run and mentally from that weird bullet-blocking reflexive use of his power.
There were no guards on post, but he heard a muffled alarm beyond the gate. The security camera above with a little red light by the lens watched him pant. Nobody’s opening it for me… Daniel thought as he suppressed a rising headache and lifted his arm.
Recalling his possession by The Ruin, he focused on his fingers. His hands looked as big as the enormous door behind them. Projecting this thought with his power, he mimed a crushing motion as if squeezing the juice out of an orange—an occasional fantasy of his—and saw steel flex.
A massive handprint of rust accompanied by the screeching noise of warping steel bent the door around huge finger impressions. Though he clutched air, Daniel felt the metal resisting his grip. Guided by the new sensations, he dug in hard and pulled to rip the door from the wall. Concrete and streamers of rust confetti fell as Daniel tore apart the barricade. A renewing wave swept over him as he crossed the threshold, easing the strain on his mind… like when The Ruin fed on destroying UE 000’s barrier, but on a smaller scale.
Though he’d feared what that other being would do with this ability, it came now as a welcome relief. He caught his breath in a few seconds’ pause and felt much better. Then he cringed as a teeth-grinding alarm screamed through the halls. Daniel plugged his ears and tried to think.
He saw the colors in the walls marking the other six UEs. This second sight overlayed his normal vision, but his perception intensified with concentration. Visualizing the distance to each light in three dimensions, he realized the brightest wasn’t necessarily the closest—though he picked that out by shuffling left and right to see which source moved the most (parallax). There, high and to the right.
Daniel advanced through the corridor until his target was perpendicular to the wall. With a minor exertion of will, concrete disintegrated in a foot-square patch. He drew a spiral with his pointer finger until he had a hole large enough to climb through. Tunneling upward through concrete, rebar, wires, and ventilation, Daniel slowly drained his power. The ringing alarm diminished until he could hear himself breathe. He emerged into another hall and waited for his refreshment, but nothing happened.
Which makes perfect sense, he thought. Both previous times it came, he felt it only when he’d destroyed a defense or crossed a threshold. These walls were all connected as part of the larger building. He couldn’t get a recharge from this demolition until he ‘broke’ the whole Facility.
Daniel heard footsteps and two armed guards with fire extinguishers rounded the corner. They stopped, as startled to see him as he them. After a double-take, they dropped the extinguishers and went for their guns. Daniel threw himself at the wall with far too much power.
A cloud of dust exploded into the hall, forcing the guards into a coughing fit while Daniel hollowed out his path higher. He looked over his shoulder and collapsed the tunnel by tracing a line of disintegration with his eyes. Daniel emerged into the next hall through a spray of dust gasping for clean air as the opening crumbled behind him.
Sliding security doors slammed shut on his left and right, locking him in. That’s not a coincidence, he thought. Glancing about, he found a ceiling-mounted camera. Daniel shot an ounce of his power to take out the lens and a chunk of the ceiling by accident.
Getting tired, he approached a steel barrier in the opposite direction of his target. With a rush of power and thrust of his hand he blew open the metal door in a shower of rust.
Nothing.
He stepped through a doorframe empty except for dangling ribbons of torn steel.
Nothing.
Again, this made sense. He couldn’t expect any satisfaction from destroying something irrelevant to his goals. How did he know that?
Daniel turned to the door blocking his way to the first of the other humanoid UEs. The edges of his mind were fuzzy, and focus became difficult as his well of energy ran dry. He laid his hand on the security door and, with his last sliver of power, Daniel’s fingers slid into the steel like a hot knife through butter.
Then Daniel’s muscles took over—to his immense surprise. The scrawny, bony arms that couldn’t do a pull-up if his life depended on it suddenly filled with boundless strength. He bent the steel like toffee and heard its groans of protest as he twisted the doors out of shape. He sweated and grunted in his struggle, but his strength never abated until he created an opening to climb through.
When he fell out the other side and collapsed on the floor, triumph came surging like a deluge of ice water. Haze and pain rolled off his scalp the way a cold shower rinsed sweat on a hot day. Daniel stood to examine the security door he’d broken through. He put his hand on the steel and pushed—to no effect. So, I have conditional super strength.
His attention returned to the nearest UE’s aura. So close, but the door was nowhere in sight; this hallway must run tangential to the containment unit without intersecting. Daniel could break through the unmarked wall without harming the occupant.
He dug his fingers into the concrete like soft bread. He ripped and tore apart chunks, piling dust and rebar behind him. Then the wall crumbled out into the corridor.
As he stepped inside to reap the recharge of success, green slime squished between his toes and sluggishly boiled at his touch. The stuff coated the walls, dripped from the ceiling, and pooled on the floor inches deep. A mound of foam set like meringue took the place of a bed in the corner. The UE stood in the room’s center, arms up, palms out, and knees bent in a defensive fighting stance.
A simple, sleeveless black top exposed her midriff. Over her heart on the shirt was a stylized emblem in gold: a minimalist tadpole centered inside the outline of a frog with feet splayed to show each toe. She wore a pair of skintight athletic shorts and no shoes.
She was about his age… and she was the strangest person he’d ever seen.
Her skin glistened as if oiled, displaying three striking tones in a curious pattern. They met in her face: a bright red band from scalp to eyebrows that swept down her broad nose, blackish brown on her upper lip spread across her eyes and cheeks, and cream flowed from her lower lip to her throat, chest, and hips. The deep brown extended symmetrically down her sides while her arms and legs marbled light and dark. The tips of her fingers and toes were flat and padded, connected by thin webbing. Short brown hair sprang from her head.
While he shouldered deeper into the depths of his large robe, self-conscious, this strange girl seemed comfortable in her colorful skin and revealing outfit.
She seemed undisturbed by his violent entry and took him in at a glance, though her large almond eyes lingered on his. The black wells of her froglike pupils were surrounded by a mosaic of green and gold, no whites. Unlike the humans who feared his gaze, she didn’t seem surprised or unnerved.
Then the girl’s gaze darted to the side as if hearing something. “Daniel’s fine,” she told someone who wasn’t there, though her eyes wandered across the wall instead of fixating on an imaginary person.
“You know me?” he said, startled but excited. Daniel examined her closer to unearth a memory. She had a round face and wide lips, though her features were girlish and pretty instead of the animalistic half-amphibian hybrid he’d expected from her room’s décor. But he didn’t know her.
She ignored him to stare at the wall and say, “Maybe he never had one. Still has the ring, though.” Rather than a raspy croak, she spoke in a smooth contralto.
Beginning to worry the girl might not be all there, he asked a simple question, “Who are you?”
The girl dropped her conversation with the unknown party and studied him until she concluded, “You don’t remember me.”
Finally, she got it, “Would I have asked if I did?”
Something clicked in her head, “You don’t remember anything from that day.”
He had a bad feeling he knew exactly what she meant but remembered nothing beyond an ache in his chest, “The first thing I remember is waking up in the forest.”
“Rana,” she gestured to herself. Her body wasn’t fragile, like his, with muscle definition on her arms and legs. He was taller, though she weighed more by a large margin—all in agile, whipcord strength. “I think I know why you lost your memory, but now’s not the time. We’ll talk when this is over—okay?”
She reached for a shake but retracted it, averting her eyes as if she’d done something incredibly rude. Her stoic expression refused to acknowledge the misstep. Rana must have known about his ‘problem,’ settling for a little bow and a sweep of her hand.
Daniel returned the bow after an awkward second of bewildered hesitation. “Agreed,” he said, “But escape might be difficult with all these security cameras.” Indeed, he’d spotted four wall-mounted lenses in the corners of her room, which she’d left un-slimed. “I wish we could take out their surveillance,” he thought aloud. Daniel imagined security watching the two of them talk and planning against them even if the full termination order hadn’t gone out.
The girl’s attention reverted to whatever was going on in her head, “Hold on, Daniel can’t hear you—give me a second to extend the influence.” Daniel shot down the cameras while she spoke, taking a chunk of the wall with each.
Rana held a hand to her mouth, gagged, and spat a metal trinket on a chain into her palm. She wiped it off, tapped it, put it around her neck, and tucked it into her shirt. Then Daniel heard a bell. Not in his ears but chiming inside his head. Voices followed.
:Hello, Daniel, can you hear us?: the first was a male voice, quiet and careful.
:Of course he can, Rana doesn’t waste time the way you do, Paul,: the second, high pitched and female, chastised the first.
:He freed Rana first?: the third, male, came harsher in tone, :Couldn’t it have been someone with a little more muscle?:
:Quiet everyone, please,: said the fourth voice, female, in a mezzo-soprano between Rana’s low and the second voice’s high, more like singing than either. :If he released Rana, then Daniel is doing exactly as he should. Meanwhile, Rana, I believe disabling their eyes would be the second-highest priority.:
The frog girl didn’t seem to like the implication, “The last three times I broke out I couldn’t get anything done. What makes this different?”
:Because this time you have a mission.: It was the fourth again, :We are depending on you. Rana, I know you can do this.:
“Fine,” she told the fourth voice, then looked to Daniel, “Let’s get this over with.”
“What was that?” Daniel asked, at last able to articulate his confusion, “I mean, it was obviously some kind of telepathy, but—What was that?”
The second suddenly announced, :Soldiers from the east!:
Daniel had been afraid of this. He heard men running down the hall towards them. Suddenly, he realized Rana didn’t look particularly bulletproof. If he dug an escape, they might not have time to get away before the soldiers arrived and started shooting. Daniel ran out into the hallway to stop them or buy time for Rana’s escape.
Turning the corner, he faced five men in dark uniforms advancing with bulletproof vests and automatic rifles. He had an instant to act but Mary’s words echoed as he raised his hand, “Never use your power for murder.” Even if he targeted their guns, he couldn’t avoid taking their arms or more by accident.
If he used his power, he would kill them.
Daniel froze, and they fired first. A spray of bullets rained on him, exploding into dust on contact and each yanking energy from his body. He was being pummeled by a boxer, blunt pain repeatedly smashing into him. He would tire in seconds and die.
Though he might justify it as self-defense, if he committed to killing, he knew next time would be easier and easier until he was shooting first. No—Daniel didn’t want to hurt these people no matter the pain they caused him. Yet, he wanted to live.
As his internal struggle between fear and morality neared the breaking point, he saw something dart by. Rana somersaulted into the hall, pumping her arms as she rolled. Her hands shot five globs of sticky green slime to hit each man’s weapon, clogging their gun barrels. She came up on her knees and, with a wave of her hand, the slime from her room rushed forward in a wave that washed past their feet. The soldiers slipped on the lubricant, forcing the grown men to flop on the floor. The ground became so slick they couldn’t rise to their hands and knees.
Understanding dawned on Daniel. Rana could have slimed their faces and suffocated the men but, through clever use of her abilities, she disabled them instead. He could learn better control and manage his ability like her.
He turned to see blood splattered on the floor and dripping from her arm.
Rana didn’t wince or seem to care she’d been shot. Her flesh expelled the bullet and knit itself closed. She cleaned off the blood by spraying herself with fresh, clean slime. Bloodstains and slime miraculously didn’t stick to her clothes.
She stood and walked west without stopping to acknowledge she’d probably saved his life at some risk to hers. Gaping at her back, he saw the red band of her forehead ran through her scalp and down her spine. He wanted to stop her, to thank her, to tell her what she’d made him realize, “Rana!” The frog girl turned her head. He choked. “Can you really do whatever you want with that stuff?”
Rana shrugged, “Well the slime works decent enough, but never does as much as you’d want it to,” her eyes drifted up to remember a fact, “You know, there are Gymnomorphs that can shoot acid that eats through Chelonii shell.” She said it like Daniel would rattle off how hummingbirds beat their wings eighty times a second—to someone who’d never seen a hummingbird.
Gymnomorphs? Chelonii? That sounds like binomial nomenclature. His mind worked to form a coherent question and nearly missed his chance, “Wait,” he said, “They’ll see you coming and block your path. Don’t you need help getting to the Security Room?”
Rana gave a condescending smirk, the first emotion he’d seen on her. Multicolored skin turned pale to match the concrete, fading to a dull and uniform white. Then her skin texture changed as well, taking on the roughness of the walls. Rana changed her clothes and hair to match so her eyes floated in midair. Then they too faded.
The glow of her aura vanished from his second sight as well. Staring directly at the girl, he could see her outline and shadow, but then he blinked. The second he lost eye-contact he couldn’t find her again. He didn’t hear her leave. Daniel doubted anybody saw her coming.
Hold on a second, who was he thinking about? Whatever, if he’d forgotten, it couldn’t have been important.
J.G.Petrichor
The character in this chapter has skin tones reminiscent of the Fungoid Frog.
Visit my Website!
Kindle
