Twenty six sets of eyes watched as Noah ate the symbiote. Many of us here were Eaters and the mere sight of seeing him swallow the thing made our hunger spike, our mouths filling with saliva. I was no exception. 

 

In fact, I probably had the worst reaction. I'd been doing most of the eating around here and that meant that my symbiote was more developed than the others'. 

 

Much like adding RAM to a computer, adding mass to a symbiote meant it would get better at complex tasks and thus result in an increase in your power. The problem was that, at a certain point, the thing became intelligent enough to begin manipulating your body and mind so that you’d feed it more biomass. Left unchecked they'd grow to the point where the symbiote was calling the shots and the host was nothing more than a glorified puppet.

 

Things were different for non-Eater superhumans. They'd just have a mild increase in hunger. But, us, the poor Eaters, often got painful and intense cravings. That was why many went mad on the road to power, becoming mindless monsters. That was why several of my dogs here went around eating raw flesh or whatever the hell was at hand whenever the hunger pangs struck them.

 

It didn’t take long for the symbiote to begin merging with Noah’s body. 

 

Noah fell out of his wheelchair, writhing in pain like a fish out of water. He tried to beg someone, anyone, to make it stop, but all that came out were choked, nonsensical noises. 

 

Soon, he began spewing fluids out of every orifice: tears from his eyes, drool from his mouth, blood from the nose, and his trousers had a sizable piss stain.

 

This continued for a few more moments, but not too long. Mergure was a relatively fast process.

 

Once it was finally finished, Noah laid motionless on the ground, gasping for breath.

 

“Help him up.” I ordered.

 

Meltdown grabbed him from the left side and Vorepal from his right, and they both raised him up and onto the wheelchair.

 

I approached Noah and touched him with one armored finger. Then I touched that same finger to the exposed skin in my neck. Traveler’s power worked through physical contact, but after some testing we figured that one live cell being in contact with another was enough.

 

Julliete was next. She also touched him on a different spot. Others who were part of the six back when Traveler was alive and knew what was happening followed after her. The greenhorns just followed their lead. One by one, everyone touched Noah.

 

All of this, the unexplained physical contact, startled Noah, “What’s going on? What are you doing?” he ground out, between pants.

 

I humored him, “We are all getting ready for you to use your power. You are a super now—just like I promised.”

 

Despite the pain and the misery, hope was starting to arise from his husk of a body, “What’s my power?” he asked, excited, “What does it do?” His mind was racing with possibilities. Maybe he had been given something really good, he thought. Maybe he got something really badass like Paragon or Myth or-

 

“Essentially, for all intents and purposes, you move people.”

 

“What?” he asked, refusing reality. That couldn’t be his power!, he thought, It was shit!

 

“Your symbiote is an Effector type. You can move yourself and everyone you make contact with to a different, random time period.”

 

“That’s it?!” He didn’t want this! He wanted something that’d help him regrow his limbs! Something that’d put the fear of god on his enemies.

 

“That’s it,” I said, “But if you don’t like it, I can always kill you and give it to someone else.” Some people were so ungrateful.

 

“Ah! No, I, uh, thank you! Thank you very much! I really like it! No need to, uh, to take it back!”

 

“That’s what I thought,” I smiled, “Now activate your power. You should instinctively know how to.”

 

He did, and, in a blink of an eye, without any epic flashing lights or ceremony, we were teleported into a jungle.

 

The problem? Well we had been in a skyscraper before and, as you might well know, there were no skyscrapers in jungles. So, that meant we were now free falling due to the altitude difference.

 

I wasn’t worried though, because just as predicted, a moment after we started falling, Deadalos activated his power and granted flight abilities to several members in our group.

 

I was one of the few he used his power on, and massive psychic wings appeared on the back of my armor. They could be controlled by thought and I tucked them in, preparing to dive down fast.

 

Deadalos wasn’t strong enough to grant wings to all twenty seven of us, so each of us that could fly went down to grab those that couldn’t.

 

I grabbed those closest to me, namely Juliette and Barker, one on each hand. Then, once they were securely in my grip, I spread the wings wide to slow my descent.

 

Once we landed I released them and took a moment to look around as I waited for the ones who were still making their descent. 

 

The jungle was huge and now that we were down in the ground, I could appreciate that fully. Everything was massive: the grass, the trees, the vines. The few animals I caught a glimpse of were shockingly big too. It was one thing to read about it but another to witness in person.

 

Once everyone had landfalled, we began moving, following a map application that the mentals in our team had developed some time ago. After all, we couldn’t use guugle maps since the powers that be had their fingers in that pie. If we didn’t use our own, independent program, everyone would know our locations.

 

We had plugged in the coordinates to the main base of the Machine God’s cult into the program, and now all we had to do was make our way through the jungle to those coordinates before reactivating Noah’s powers.

 

As we trekked through the thick jungle, several of the more skittery members of our group jumped at sporadic noises in the jungle, like cracked branches or animal calls. Unbidden images of carnivorous dinosaurs flashed through their minds, scenes from the Triassic Park re-remake.

 

Most of them almost shat their breeches when their fears manifested themselves. A pack of five dinos. They weren’t that big, only two or three heads taller than us, but they did look rather menacing, what with their neck cobra-like flaps extended and their teeth in full display. They growled and made strange sounds similar to birds, circling around us.

 

They didn’t even stand a chance. 

 

Meltdown lit one on fire, watching the blue flames with childish fascination. Cyberscream produced some saws and chainsaws from its nightmarish robot body and began cutting into another with soulless detachment. Tremor Trevor crushed another between two plates of earth, a sickening earth and meat sandwich. Deluxion made the last two fight each other with a basic illusion.

 

Seeing how easily the beasts were dealt with, everyone became full of confidence, their fear forgotten.

 

We continued onwards to our destination. We had to deal with a couple similar encounters since our small size made us juicy prey to the carnivores, but for a group of 27 superhumans, this was child’s play. 

 

When we finally reached our destination, I called Noah to my side. The boy had been mingling with the others, trying to make friends so that he’d have some protection. 

 

Noah excused himself from his new buddies and started making his way towards me, using his one good hand to move the wheelchair. Seeing the pathetic cripple struggle made a cold, amused smile adorn my face, made a fraction of the pain and hatred I carried inside lighter.

 

“Um, what’s up…Boss? I mean, uh, is that okay? Should I call you Boss or- or what should I call you?” He was still scared of me, and he gazed downwards subserviently, avoiding eye contact. Kid was a fast learner: he’d fit right in The Six.

 

“Boss?” my smile washed away. “Do I look like some b-lister villain to you, hmmm? Like some fat mafia honcho smoking a cigar? Tell me, am I a fucking joke to you?”

 

“No!” he said, panicking, frantic. “I- ah, please! I’m sorry! I didn’t know, didn’t mean!- I-”

 

I smiled once more and gave him a friendly slap on the stump that was now his left arm, “Relax, I was just messing with you. I’ll let you off the hook this time, but make sure to call me Overgod from now on.”

 

“Thank you. I won’t make that mistake again. Thank-”

 

“Anyhow,” I interrupted his groveling, “We have reached our destination, so I’d like you to use your power again.”

 

He nodded and a blink of an eye later we were all inside a dark underground tunnel. It was massive and industrial. It wasn’t like a primitive mining tunnel, no, this one was painted and covered in smooth cement walls, almost like a hallway.

 

We began walking downwards, deeper into the earth. After a little torture and creative use of my powers, I had managed to assemble a rough 3d map of the compound. I pulled it up on my VRisor.

 

All in blue, holographic, the layout was displayed. At the top the megachurch that acted as a front, then spreading downwards, the tunnels. They were long, spreading down into the earth and branching out like an infection. The machines had been busy. There were hundreds of them, perhaps more. It almost looked as if given a little more time they’d spread through the whole planet all the way to the other end, a shocking thing to see.

 

I did not know where exactly The Prophet was, but I knew that they kept their servers down at the bottom. If I made my way there to perform so old property damage, the good prophet would have to come out and face me at some point or another. I was ninety percent sure they would rather die than risk me stopping the resurrection of their Machine God. 

 

So, that was that, I called for my dogs, and we began our descent.