[SIMILAR] part 16

There was a pause, a moment to reflect on what had just been done. My eyes never left the now dangling body at the end of my forearm. I… I had done it. I had killed her. I waited for the feelings of triumph, of relief, to wash over me like a pleasant ocean wave. But they didn't come. What did arrive was this bitter sweet feeling; I'm not really sure what it was, but it gave me the sense that I had lost a few opportunities for myself with this act. Her motionless face had still open eyes, looking heavenward as if searching out a star, a tear residing in the corner of one, stuck in place. I was half temped to close them respectively. My instincts, however, did not care for such emotions of what I guess was remorse, as tendrils made themselves known and readied themselves for the feast of flesh, curling up my arm, anticipating consumption.

Suddenly, something like a shadow darted along the wall just outside my vision. I turned my head away from my victim for a moment to investigate this specter, only to find nothing. Then I heard a low bubbling growl. I looked back at FET; upon this exact moment, I was frozen, as my gaze fell onto a now living creature. Her head was reared back up in a very unnatural posture, and her eyes were now wide open, changed back to those of a demon, only this time the bloodshot whites had become a deep soulless ebony black, making the yellow of the cat eyes stomach wrenchingly intense. An inhumane and possessed rage was all I could see in them in the two seconds I had to view, until her mouth opened, revealing a pair of vampiric teeth, and she let out a Banshee like scream.

There was a blinding flash of white-bluish light, and I was thrown back into the elevator by an unseen force. When my ears had finally stopped ringing and my vision cleared itself from the foggy haze, I caught sight of what I can only describe as a true monster.

FET was no longer the fragile glass flower that I had so easily crushed in the palm of my hand, but rather, a fiercely powerful and dangerous animal. She now stood at what was probably my height, maybe even higher, on lean four jointed legs that ended with three toed pawed feet enhanced with sharp black claws. Large bat-like wings colored jet-black and fleshy red drooped lazily on either side of her, showing well three glistening and glowing spikes poking out of her back like razors. Her ears had changed structure and position to become dark haired feline on the top of her head. Sharp pearly teeth shown light from a panting mouth, which was trying to take in air in sickening gasps, failing from a broken neck, but with a twist of her head, it snapped back into place. It was as if a mad scientist had taken parts of various fauna and formed it together to make this new monstrosity that still had maintained a rather misleading human face and minor form. The tendril that had curled around her gullet to choke her to death was still there, still trying, and she seemed to notice this at the same time I did. Her hands, which had grown slightly curves black claws tore at tendril bind restricting her passage of breath, ripping it off, allowing for almost a death rattle of air to escape from inside. She held it in between her fingers, gazing at it with a transfixed glare as it still moved with life. A really bad feeling emerged in the pit of my stomach, or what counted for it, as though I knew something deep down was going to take a drastic turn. The danger was apparent in the air like shadowy smoke, but I didn't dare move at the moment, fear she would turn her venomous attention to me. So I watched like a statue as her teeth became bared, wavering in a way that was making them chatter slightly, though not in a way to show lack of warmth. It was more of a threatening undertone. Letting out a low and primal growl, she tossed the writhing vine of dark red flesh, my flesh, to the ground. A black slick fur tail tipped white with additional fur and sickle spikes lashed back and forth. I watched then as FET took in a large gapping breath; for a moment I could have sworn I saw a small glowing light growing in her throat. And then she screamed.

Or at least it looked like she was screaming, cause when she formed her face to resemble an enraged yell, all sound faded away as if a very strong white noise had been turned on and canceled out all other noise but the frantic pulsing sound of my biomass in my ears. The tendril, which was wriggling like a salamander's decapitated tail, was caught in the strange radiation being projected from her mouth. Like the helicopter and infected before, it became unmoving, as though paused in all movement of time. An aqua like ripple shot through it at a snail's pace, and as soon as it had reached the opposite end of the object from which it began, it was as if a small bomb was at it's core, for it exploded into dust, leaving nothing but a bright and fading ghostly blue husk of what had been, like the residue light of a nuclear explosion, all too familiar.

Eventually, sound returned to my ears in welcome and cautious steadiness. FET must have ceased whatever abnormal, powerful, and deadly act she was just committing against the boundaries of known science, as I'm sure I have. Warily I turned my eyes away from the formless mass of disappearing blue light, to which I had been transfixed in an awe of child-like curiosity, to view the terror barely three decapitated body's length away from me. She was panting again, as if out of breath momentarily, those strange glassy though solid protrusions on her back and tail had lost their luster shine. Had she become weaken from the ability? Tired out? Perhaps now was my only chance to move and get out of there before I became a matter-less nothing, but before I could even sit up straighter, FET did the most peculiar thing. Upon staring a while at the blue glowing wisp, that had once been a piece of me, for a few minor seconds, she inhaled greatly, like over taken by a great yawn to gulp down air. In amazement I scrutinized as the mist turned from a sky blue to a sea-foam green, then was sucked into her open jaws as though vacuumed in a black hole like effect, and presumably swallowed. My amazement turned to horror as the spikes regained their glow, illuminated even brighter then before, as though she had taken great sustenance from the unearthly thing. It was then FET turned her head and looked at me.

If the anti-virus tumor that had been implanted and attached to my back all that time ago had been given a pair of eyes, it would have given me the same untamed look FET was giving me now. Where once had been control and calmness, all that remained of that had fled and was replaced only with animalistic hunger and instinctual berserk fury. Her glare stung to the bone marrow, and made my biomass squirm unpleasantly on the inside. Could I have sweated, I would have been soaking with salt droplets. Things were not looking good, not at all. Only one thing remained in the center of my mind now and that was to get the hell out of there quickly. But I couldn't, I was trapped in this metal cage, and the door was open for the beast to get in and maul. Wait a minute, the door! My eyes darted frantically to the button panel traditionally to the right of the inside of the elevator. It was still lit up, which meant it could still work the contraption, hopefully. The odds of it still being functional after whatever hotwiring FET had down to it to keep the door from closing were not in my favor, but I had no other options at this point. If I were to attack her, there was no guarantee that she would be hurt by what I could do, and even then I would be disintegrated easily. No, this was the only way to escape unharmed.

I had but broken eye contact with her for no more then a second, yet it was enough to agitate the already unstable monster. She showed her teeth, her upper lip curling inward to show her pink gums, giving her a very gruesome look. She let out a very low and gravely hiss, and took a step forward, the three black claws on her feet clicked against the commonly paneled floor.

Press a button! Press one now! NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!

I don't know if that was from my mind or the Hive Mind, but I obeyed suit. As fast as I could I made a quick and almost dramatic movement to push one of the small circles, didn't matter which one, so long as it closed. However, it did not seem fast enough to go unnoticed by the demon's eyes, 'cause as soon as I made a slight activation twitch to start the momentum of my escape, FET let out a high pitched screech, and began to move very quickly in raptor-like steps toward me. I pushed the button multiple times, but the doors couldn't close at a rate that I would have liked, so I dug my fingers into the metal of the closing doors to force them shut quicker, just as FET's clawed hands gripped the frames and fought me to do the opposite of what had to be accomplished. A tug-o-war-like battle ensued for a while, FET and I, we seemed to be equally matched. When it would seem I had just about closed it and crushed her digits, she seemed to find strength to pull open the entryway just a little bit more, and visa versa. The elevator groaned in protest to the stress it was experiencing on it's exterior and machinery, all the while it's metallic rumblings were accompanied by the sounds of the creature snarling, growling, screaming, and screeching rabid. There was also a lower sound, something I couldn't really identify, but I took it as nothing. The fight wasn't really going anywhere, and I imagined being stuck in eternity like this, the immortal struggle of good verses evil, doomed to conflict until the end of time. I could not wait that long.

In quick thought, I generated my MuscleMass for the third time that day, if I'm correct in my counting, and exerted more leverage to the struggle. And as FET's snarls of anger began to turn into whines of strain, indicating my victory to come, I theorized of my further future, vacating from this accursed building. Once outside, I would need to race to Dana and Ragland to see if they were all right, and then from there I'll put the pieces together. But now was not the time to count the chickens before hatching, as some would say; only an inch of space was left to see through to the other side, all darkness except for one cold unfeeling yellow eye of malicious intent. I glared back at the optical in a way to suggest a mental laugh of taunting, knowing that I was to be the victor of this scuffle, and looked to see if she had yet accepted this fact a well. But what I saw in that one optical made my Biomass churn up my spine. The look of strain and frailty was suddenly glossed over by the dark glimmer of an unknown idea brewing, and I could tell FET was smiling with the accompaniment of an unnatural crackling sound. Before I was able to use up the last bit of energy I had in my limbs to be shut away from this occurrence of foreboding mystery, soon and momentarily to be brought to light, a pair of bleach white boney fingers curled slowly around the two frames.

With one single jerk of unimaginable integrity, the mechanical slabs that served as a door were forced open, giving me now light to look fully at the face of the enraged female just a breath away from me. Eye to eye, one showed surprise, the other showed anger, reversed from what should have been the natural order of things. She let out a hissing spat in my face. Not inclining that she literally spit in my face, but the electric air that was propelled at me was just as forceful an insulting gesture. I was then pushed back with such a great a force that if I had not un-seized the door, my arms could have been ripped right out of their sockets. This brutality had not been generated from her normal frail fleshy arms, oh no, but from the extra skeletal appendages that had sprouted under them. These muscle-less arms were strangely and blasphemy impossibly strong, something that just didn't make sense, as the brute force of a single push from those implements knocked the wind out of me, threw me against the wall, and crippled me in a stunned state.

When I looked up weakly, she was towering over me in a looming way, growling low in her throat. All her claws, on hands and paws, gripped the entranceway, as if preparing for a major recoil. My mind screamed to fight, to stop her, but it felt like that I was being held in place by an unseen force, as though this Gorgon had turned me to stone in her wide-eyed gaze. She began breathing heavily, eyes glowing, then wings flared, spikes arched, and she took in a breath.

It was at that moment, or perhaps a minute before then, that I knew I was going to die. It felt odd accepting that fact, especially with how high a god-like pillar I had managed to climb and reside on for so long. They say the higher you are, the harder you fall, and even though I can pick myself up from a leap from the tallest building, hit the ground running, but such a metaphorical height I was I could not survive. A small part of me was screaming to get up and run or fight back, but really, what would have been the point? With a turn of her head, she could be through with me either way. There was no use avoiding it, my time had come, and I didn't really care. So I closed my eyes and waited for the end to come. Perhaps, at this point, I would finally see the life of Alex Mercer flash before my eyes in his perspective instead of someone else's, a privilege I never got, a life I never saw, as death would take hold of me… if he even would, as I imagine when death sees me, he looks the other way, perhaps because of the great service I have given him. It must have been death that had finally come to collect, death was holding me down in invisible chains, for I knew that this time there would be nothing left to regenerate from, everything I am would be gone, reduced to a smoke of soul that she would probably intake greedily. I think my life, the entire few months of it, began to play its role in a going away movie slideshow, making me think of Dana, whom I would protect above all else, of Ragland, kind Ragland, who had helped me and my sister unconditionally like an old friend of family, and even Karen and Cross, for whatever short of time, I could trust them. I was given a small feeling of the emotion of regret for leaving such things behind in my selfish end, but I knew that all would be better off without me. My palms lay open beside me, welcoming the last sound I would ever hear.

But the song of oblivion never played. All I heard was nothing, not even breathing from another. Confused, half thinking I was already dead, I reopened my eyes. FET stood as she had before, only she was holding her lower face with her normal hands, regarding a state of shock, her eyes now wide in the same confusion as mine, her sclera having lost their evil shadow black and had now returned to the milky color holding feline yellow. She was staring at the space above me, a look of absolute horror etched on her face, as well as the look that she had barely missed doing something terribly wrong, like someone who had been playing chicken with a train on a dare and realized how stupid it was just in time to get out of the way of the steaming locomotive.

Personally, I wasn't entirely sure what to make of this, much less what to do. I had the feeling that if I made a move escape now, she'd probably become uncontrolled again at the sight of me running, as most animals do, or was that what she was waiting for? To chase me like a dog, giving me some hope before snuffing it like a cigarette butt on the ground, to play with her prey? I would give her no such pleasure of the chase, which I knew was quite a fantastic feeling. So we just stilled there like models of a peculiar art piece.

Eventually, the deathly awkward silence got the better of me after a minute, and I did the only thing I could think of at the moment that didn't involve moving.

"FET?" I addressed her with a simple little utterance of her name; a name that still felt odd coming from my mouth rather then the one Blackwatch had given her, spoken just barley above a whisper. The ears that had been flattened down on her head perked back up, and she looked down at me. Her slit pupils were like thin black vertical lines, currently containing a soul where a few seconds before had been vacated of all human reason. They widened to show a mirror of myself in their reflection.

FET's jaw trembled, "…I-I-I…" was all she managed to say, and in a blur of wings, claws, bones, and blue glowing spikes, she retreated very quickly into the obscurity of the world beyond this small metal box, with her hands over her face as if about to weep, leaving behind four long scratches courtesy of her right skeletal fingers. I hastily got up to pursue her, no wait, bad idea, I got up to flee, I was still deciding on what action to take, but was held back by a sudden numbness growing in my chest. Looking down, I saw three crystal darts, the sickles that had originated from the end of the slinky tail she had, embedded there. My head began to feel very funny in a morphine-like way, and when I tried to take them out my hands shook drastically and didn't respond to the simplest of neural instructions. Had I been poisoned?

A few steps foreword was all I could manage before my knees buckled and I landed hard on my chest, unable to catch myself, the venomous spikes pushed in further to the epicenter of my Biomass intake. I tried to block out the strange humanizing weakness, spreading through me like a wild fire, making my limbs useless. As the dark veil of began to creep up through the corners of my vision, a small part of my mind wanted to call FET back and demand she finish me off in a more dignifying way then having me slowly rot like this, a very cowardly tactic. I pushed this part far out of my mind, banishing it, for I feared this small part of my subconscious. The last thing I recall seeing was the gloom of the hallway, and at the far end, two glowing lights hovering side by side, motionlessly staring, before everything faded away.

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