Kate felt Kaleb’s arms wrapping around her. His breath against her ear was a little too hot, but all too calming. Her trembling body relaxed, and she gulped, trying to banish the fear.
"She can’t hurt anyone anymore." Kaleb whispered to her, and Kate bit her tongue, admitting the weakness to herself. He too was trembling, albeit slightly less. They both needed each other right now.
They were in the same room where Blaguna took away their limbs. The walls were covered by dried up blood even now. Instead of several chairs at the far end of the room, a new steel frame now stood around the furthest wall. It looked like a cage that roughly resembled a human body in shape. Kate’s nostrils enlarged when she smelled Yuki’s smell coming from this thing.
"What is it?" Kate inquired, clattering her fangs in horror and hating herself for her fear .She felt like wetting her pants, expecting Blaguna to appear from around the corner and drag her... The warrior shook her head.
Leila stepped forward, looking at the device from various angles, dancing just outside of the forbidden distance. Kate asked the scout to accompany them, partly because she trusted the woman not to laugh at her and partly because it simply felt safer with her around here. One of the agents in the room scowled at the half-world, and the people warned the soldiers that if they broke anything or tampered with evidence in any way, they would be thrown in prison without hesitation. Standing on the tip of her claws and stretching her neck to get a better view, Leila was really pushing the boundaries.
"It’s a holding device," Leila finally announced, turning toward Kate, "The victim is placed inside this cage and then the torturer can extend parts of the cage, stretching the limbs of the poor victim to the point of breaking. The muscles will be torn and, judging by how you can manipulate this cage, you can even bend someone’s arms backwards. Sick fuck." Leila cursed, walking away from the cage and hugging both Kate and Kaleb.
"I can’t believe that she was here all this time," Kate said, remembering all the panic attacks that she had suffered, "All these weeks, with her… And he knew it and kept it secret from us." The warrior finished bitterly.
"Had he told us, the warlord would mount a rescue operation, and we'd all follow her," Kaleb said quietly, "Right into the guns of this fortress."
Kate bit her tongue, accepting the reasoning but unwilling to agree with it. The back wyrm’s strategy saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. Maybe even Janine’s life. But the knowledge that Yuki was alive, here in this hell all this time, while they laughed and partied elsewhere was… unbearable.
She looked at Leila. The half-wyrm appeared calm, and the sight of past cruelty all around her did not appear to bother her. Usually, the woman carried a small portable terminal with her, recording or typing in all the stories or strange events that happened, making photos of the surroundings and looking all around with eyes filled with curiosity. Right now, the half wyrm was without the terminal, and there was a genuine concern in her eyes.
"You win," Kate told her. Leila looked at her with confusion, "About our brawl. Fuck this idea, I am scared shitless. This behavior is unworthy of a scout."
"You still on about it?" Leila chuckled, letting go of her as they walked from the room.
The agents swarmed the place, taking pictures, sorting the evidence, and checking the place for hidden rooms. They found people entombed in the walls, some of them were still alive, at the edge of starvation, but most of them died years ago. The investigation bureau already found several rooms filled with corpses, some of which had teeth marks on their bodies. The sheer scope and number of people who died here caused Kate to become nauseous. Almost any petty criminal in the Regulators’ lands or anyone who voiced disagreement with Yasen’s or Blaguna’s rules was brought here, never to be released.
"I’ll share a secret with you. For free," The half wyrm laughed, "I am scared shitless too. Not of that," She pointed with her wings at the prison’s walls, "No. You know I'm going to turn into a wyrm, right?"
"Yes." Kate nodded.
"Well, you know how it happens? Da… the old demon barely told me anything about the process, but I conducted my own investigation, and by this, I mean that I phoned my homeland and asked a tourist guide. The future wyrm foresees this event weeks in advance and seeks refuge, gorging himself or herself on food like crazy. Then a cocoon of flesh forms around the wyrm. All organs, all muscles dissolve, leaving only the brain behind, while your body… reforms, getting bigger and bigger, until you eventually burst from the cocoon, reborn anew," Leila fell silent, "So you see. I am scared shitless of this moment. What if something goes wrong? What if it’s too painful?"
"Everything will be fine." Kate put her arm on her shoulder.
"Yeah, point is, you want to be a scout? The spot is yours, less work for m…" Leila coughed, when Kate hit her with an elbow, before starting to laugh. Kaleb joined her, and Kate soon followed, while they walked away from the prison, leaving the fear behind this time.
****
Till Ingo mused to himself, walking around his temporary workshop. Earlier this morning, he was visited by Sly and Aranea, both of whom begged him to help one of their kind. Any other day he would be quite happy to help, but this time he tried to blackmail Sly into abandoning the army. Till even offered to pay for the full recovery of Sly’s girlfriend, but the stubborn youth refused to accept his offer without consulting with Yuki first. Time was of the essence, and after Aranea offered herself to be his new test subject and Scorpio contacted him, paying for the augments, Till agreed to help, grumbling fakingly.
Till refunded the money, of course, rich as Scorpio was, he was just a peasant compared to him. No, Till will gladly help because he can and because it furthers his own plans.
The engineer glanced around at the magnificent parts arrayed on the table before him. Arms that could punch through a tank’s hull, legs that could allow the body to race for weeks to come without straining the body. Elegantly made arms that contained mono wire whips, sharp enough to bisect a full-grown adult in power armor. No, this would be of poor use in actual combat, not with allies all around her. Maybe legs capable of defying gravity thanks to two in-built gravity devices? No, the Wolf Tribe are naturally afraid of heights.
There were so many wonderful choices, it pained Till’s heart that he could not actually use any of them. A gentler approach is needed. He reached out for the safe, pressing the combination. The engineer half expected to use the "substance" within the safe on a warlord or maybe even on a wyrm. Even a shaman would do. But alas, this was the first time the Wolf Tribe actually asked him for help.
Needles came from the panel above the safe, piercing his skin and taking in some of his blood. Following this, he pressed his eye to the scanner, still typing the password made of two hundred and eight symbols. At the right time, a round hole appeared next to the panel and he breathed into it, allowing the systems to confirm it was him via scanning molecules of his drool. Had he made even a single mistake, the plasma charge installed in this safe would have evaporated him and the safe, leaving not even ashes behind.
The safe’s door opened, and he reached in with his hand, noticing a presence in the warehouse.
"Is something amiss, Olesya?" He asked.
"If you hurt her, I’ll kill you." The woman said calmly, prompting him to smile, genuinely happy about her progress. Olesya was no longer afraid of him, often bickering with him from time to time and being genuinely more open during her therapy sessions.
"Olesya, you know that I only have the best interests of others in mind." Till chastised her.
"You turned me into a monster."
"Olesya, Olesya, Olesya…" Till shook his head, standing up and looking at the gray substance behind a small glass container in his hands. To the untrained eye, it may appear to be gray sand, but it was much more, "You are not a monster. Just a person with extensive augmentation."
"Half of my tongue is made of metal," He could not see her expression behind the visor, but Till imagined that Olesya was enraged, "I can feel how my flesh grows over the metal, slithering around the edges like a slug."
"Ah, this merely shows that you are growing faster than expected," Till turned to her, showing her the canister, "We will make adjustments to you later, no worries. As for poor Yuki, I am afraid she is less lucky than you."
Olesya moved, crossing the distance between them in a blink of an eye. Flame burst out from the fingers of her left paw, the flaming claws that made Ingo’s blood run faster, both from fear and sheer joy at the sight of his creation. With a command, the terminal in his mind turned off the sense of fear in his body, leaving him standing, smiling in the face of the towering future proto-warlord.
"If I could have just a moment of your time," Ingo asked, keeping the container away from the flames, "Olesya, be reasonable. Think, what reason do I have to grant Yuki augmentation of your level? Especially now, when the Wolf Tribe came to me at their own volution, when her direct superior offered me her own body for the experimentation…"
"What?" Olesya asked, and the flaming claws moved closer to his neck, "If you dare to…"
"I will not touch Aranea! Not even with a single finger!The test must be fair, otherwise what is the point? No, the conclusion to which I am clumsily trying to lead you is the fact that the Wolf Tribe must be happy with the results. Beyond happy, I’d say. The nanomachines inside this," Ingo said, raising the canister, "Are one of my earlier experiments to create a warlord. A failed experiment, I'll readily admit, but they will be able to help Yuki. Her ability to run, walk, even have children will be restored, for a healthy family is a perfect example that there is nothing scary about augmentations," Olesya’s head turned slightly, attracting his attention, "In short, she will be whole again and none the worse for wear. Well, she may have a few changes to her body…"
"What changes?" Olesya demanded to know.
"Follow me and you will see for yourself. Sly should have prepared the room by now," Till responded, turning his every emotion back on. He patted Olesya on the shoulder and said, "Olesya, trust me, it is a bit too early to give up on your dreams. Your current condition is not the end, right now you are merely the shape of what is to come one day."
****
King stood, his arms behind his back, the robes on his metal suit flapping each time the shockwave reached him.
The explosion rose in the air before him, the ground cracked, splitting out stones and dirt, sending truck-sized chunks of stone high into the air, only for them to land with the force of a rocket. His bodyguards asked him to take cover, but King merely stood before the former excavation site, looking at how Tlaltzin and his people were busy hollowing out the former storage facility, making a round crater that will run for dozens of meters underground, all the way to the underground assembly facility. The Bento tribe evacuated whatever objects of importance they could, saving tons upon tons of various mechs, schematics, and materials. But the thing within was simply too big for them to take out in any other way.
It was a prototype for a doomsday device. In time, it was meant to become a Deadman switch, something that should have wrought devastation and death on any nation that would annihilate the local lands, something akin to the systems that released all the countless nukes that were unleashed when the Old World was dying. But its creators never had the time to fully perfect it, engraving the commands over countless circuits that filled the insides of this wonderous machine. Commands to kill and destroy. When activated, it may be just as dangerous to the Resistance as well.
Or rather, it could be just as dangerous for the Resistance, if not for Tlaltzin and his power.
Stop. He said it in their mind. Please stop. They are our friends, you have no right…
Shut it. King shut him down, asserting his will over this body. If the fool wasn’t so weak to begin with, King would never have been born. No, now that he is here, he will take care of everything with his own two hands.
"So, the reclaimers are asking for an armistice, huh?" King turned to look at his attendants.
"Yes, sir," One of them replied, bowing down, "They plan to use this time to solidify their grasp on the captured lands. We should reject…"
"We will accept their offer," King smiled beneath his helmet, feeling another explosion hit the ground, followed by the sound of countless lifting cranes at work. The sound of extending steel wires filled the air for a moment, while engineers of bento worked hard to place hooks around the smooth surface of the gigantic vehicle, "Tell them that I will personally meet with Wyrm Lord in a month to announce my surrender. And when the fool arrives, he will see the power of our combined wrath."
