Gamma Protocol (108)

[108]

Fully removing the mask after a whole day’s worth of wearing it around was borderline orgasmic. I practically chucked it at the corner but gingerly dropped it on the table instead. "This thing’s three-parts cement dust by weight alone." I’d tried to get as much of the stuff off of it, but the desiccated bone white color was now a pneumonia gray. If Quinn’s design hadn’t included a cloth-mask into the mask itself, I would’ve been worried about cement-lungs.

"We’ll likely make a better one soon anyway," Quinn said from across the table, they were wearing the climate-control suit. Indoors. Their appearance was entirely hidden behind the opaque visor, and the lanky body proportions hidden within the padding. "If the scales are half as good as I think they are, a mask made out of them will make you that much more of a hard-head."

"I don’t think I’ll have many concerns about monsters trying to get to my face compared to my fleshy bits." I answered.

"We’re not very worried about monsters." Vesper entered the mostly empty mess hall looking like she’d just gotten off of bed. "The drones that have been tailing you all day are too suspicious. My gut’s telling me someone’s trying to see if they can take you out of the picture and kill our legitimacy."

"Don’t you have a monopoly on food and medicine supply?" I asked. "Everything needs to go through you."

Vesper rolled her eyes. "And if you die, that position becomes managerial to whatever meguca shows up next." She gave me a serious look. "Unless a meguca joins our ranks, the Sewer Saints will effectively die with you."

"She’s also happy you’re not interested in taking over the gang, because no one would stop you," Quinn added with an amused tone that got a glare from Vesper.

Ah. Yes, that did make sense. With gang legitimacy being centered around a meguca, since I was the closest equivalent, I could theoretically make a move for leadership. "Why would I want to do that?" I asked instead. "I like killing monsters, and frankly, I lack the knowledge and experience to lead the Sewer Saints, let alone at the level Vesper already has." Waving the question off, I took several long gulps of water, fighting off the dryness that’d been harassing me all day. "Besides, you’ve said so yourself. My mindset is too much like someone who’s in a corporation. If I started calling the shots, it would ruin a lot of things I’m not even aware of."

Vesper hesitated, blinking twice at me. It was a bit unnerving about someone wearing violently pink colors looking at me as if uncertain whether to praise me or punch me. "That’s… not a very corpo of you," she said carefully, expression carefully neutral.

"I’ll take that as a compliment." I answered. "So, you think someone will try to kill me?"

"Maybe, maybe not, we’ll take extra precautions either way." Vesper shook her head. "If this is a wannabe gang, I’m not sure what their end-goal is. Even if they take you out, Bear would just take over out of protectiveness." Her face twisted as if she’d tasted something foul. "Whatever the case may be, better alive than dead."

Nods were shared, and I avoided meeting Vesper’s gaze as she kept looking at me intently. She wanted to talk. I didn’t. Not that I could realistically avoid this. And yet I had a potential bomb I could drop on them. "By the way, I have powers other than just enhanced strength and durability. Though I’d prefer if this is kept on the down-low." I waited for a heartbeat, saw her eyes widening, staring at Quinn, then back at me, the question of whether I wanted to say this out loud painted clearly on her face. "I can temporarily enhance other people. It’s something I recently discovered."

The silence was pregnant, Quinn twitched as if they’d been jolted by a cable, while Vesper’s eyes widened until her brows had nearly climbed into her hair. "Wait…" Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again. "You can’t… wait… are you serious?"

"As a stock value obliteration." I replied with a growing smile. "I can only use it three times a day or so, more if I kill monsters. The enhancement lasts two hours." I twiddled my thumbs a few times, keeping the grin. "I’ve only used it once on a meguca, and it was effective enough. It should theoretically work on humans just as well, but I haven’t tested it out yet."

Quinn had not moved an inch from their spot, body so rigid it might as well have been a mannequin. Meanwhile, Vesper’s expression turned from shocked to serious. "Is the enhancement somehow capable of granting more power than you yourself can put out?"

"No."

"Then I suggest using it on our prisoner," she said without hesitation. "We’ll monitor everything. See how he takes. And if it doesn’t show any weird reactions, then we’ll consider what to do with it."

Quinn twitched again from their seat, and Vesper’s eye twitched, clearly a conversation was going on and, as usual, I was not in on it. I wouldn’t normally mind, if it weren’t so obvious. I chose to just pretend I wasn’t noticing, drumming my fingers on the table in amusement, content on the subject of conversation being entirely not on the shush-monster.

"Wait, prisoner?" I perked up.

"The merc you caught, remember?"

I choked a little.

"You forgot about him." It wasn’t a question.

"... yes…"

"His name is Reyes."

To be fair, a whole lot of things had happened since that. The man whose AV and squad had been vaporized by the most over-the-top "delete all evidence" of bombs in the market. I’d kinda had a lot on my plate to be able to even remember him, let alone that I’d left him in the Saint’s "care". Last I’d seen him, he’d been exposed to the blue-stuff that tasted good and got all swollen.

"Did he say anything? Any weird symptoms?"

Vesper sighed. "Doc says, he’s as healthy as someone can be when they have cybernetics but no neuralink. Whatever the blue stuff was, it washed out." She gestured for me to come along. "Still, the choom’s half-crippled and unwilling to plug in or fess out."

Both, unfortunately, made sense. If whoever had employed him was willing to vaporize an AV, then connecting to the web would be practically suicide. They could’ve just as easily installed something in his gear. And there wouldn’t be any way to tell without dismantling everything piece by piece and going over each with a fine-tooth comb.

"Quinn should come too, they’ve got the tools to measure the weird crap," she added.

"Sure."

---

As it turned out, the bunker had a small prison, which should not have been much of a surprise considering the original purpose of the building. What I had not expected was that it had been in use as a cleaning room up until very recently.

We walked in silence through the narrow corridors, my boots echoing against concrete while Vesper and Quinn moved with that almost absent quality that meant they were talking without me, Quinn's helmet would tilt slightly toward Vesper every few steps. Vesper's eyes would unfocus for half a second before she nodded at nothing. Just another neuralink conversation, the kind that made it very clear I was not part of it.

I tried not to let it bother me.

My eyebrow twitched.

The prison section smelled like industrial cleaner fighting a losing battle against mold and something worse underneath. Every cleaning product had been taken out of the cell and organized outside of it in neat rows. Bleach bottles, mop buckets, boxes of scouring powder. Someone had written "PROPERTY OF SEWER SAINTS" on the wall in marker, then tried to scrub it off. The ghost of the words was still visible.

Inside the cell was Reyes, and he looked a lot worse than I remembered.

Half his face had melted.

That was the only way to describe it, like his flesh had been wax and someone had held a torch too close for too long. The skin drooped and twisted, pulling his mouth downwards into a permanent scowl on one side. His eye on that side was milky and unfocused. The other eye, the working one, tracked us as we approached.

I stopped a few feet from the bars, trying not to stare at the ruined face.

"I thought you said he was healthy," I hissed quietly.

"As healthy as someone whose cybernetics are mostly shut off," Reyes growled, the words slurring through his twisted mouth. He was sitting on a cot, shoulders hunched. "I'm even more useless than your lump of scrapskin over there."

He jerked the insult toward Quinn with his chin.

CLANG

My palm hit the bars before I could think about it.

The anger had surged fast and hot, bubbling up violently. I stared at the bent metal with barely restrained shock. Where had that come from?

I spared a glance over my shoulder at Quinn, then Vesper, and then back at Reyes. It was as if I’d been… protective? The feeling wasn’t quite right, the anger definitely not something I’d expected. Was this related to those feelings of territoriality somehow?

Now wasn’t the time to dwell on that.

When the ringing had stopped, I levelled my gaze with Reyes’.

"My name is Axel," I said, keeping my voice even. "These are Vesper and Quinn." I showed him all my teeth in something that was not quite a smile. "Now, my goal of visiting is to first confirm whether you have anything new you would like to say about who you worked for."

Reyes stared at the bent bars, his working eye wide, the pupil dilated. When he spoke, his voice had lost most of its edge. "I can't tell you what I don't know. I've done hundreds of gigs like the one back then. Client drops half the cash, gear, and instructions, second half upon mission completion. This time there was a bomb I hadn’t been told about."

He cleared his throat with a wet cough.

The sound made my stomach turn.

"Just checking." I nodded, trying to ignore the way my pulse was still racing. Trying to ignore the bent bar and what it meant about… whatever it was that I was going through. "Since you can’t really help in anything since you’re too much of a liability, and keeping you locked up as potential future bait is not productive, I have a little experiment I’d like to try out." My smile widened slightly. "I have an ability that lets me buff others, but I've never used it on a human before, only on megucas."

Well. One meguca. But he did not need to know that.

"It's temporary, just two hours." I explained. "If you volunteer, I'll ask for someone to bring you better food. Or whatever you want, within reason."

Reyes was quiet for a moment, his good eye studying me. Then he laughed, a short bitter sound. "A radio would be nice. Haven't heard any music in a while. Well, not anything other than the crap that gets blasted through the vents every few days." His ruined face twisted into something that might have been a grimace. "If I can at least get that, I'll try whatever."

"Just like that?"

"It’s either that or nothing." He shrugged, the movement making his prison jumpsuit bunch awkwardly. "And I've had more questionable things done to my body for less."

The way he said it, flat and matter of fact, made something uncomfortable settle in my chest. I noticed how Vesper’s face shifted as she watched Reyes with an expression I could not quite read. At the same time Quinn's helmet was angled toward him, perfectly still.

Another conversation I was not privy to.

I turned back to Reyes. "This might itch," I warned, reaching through the bars and offering my hand.

He looked at my hand for a long moment. Something passed across his face, too quick to identify. Then his shoulders slumped and he reached out to grasp it.

The system responded instantly.

Inheritance Protocols: Obsidian.
-15 AP

Reyes jerked his hand away as if burned, his skin was already darkening, the change spreading from where we had touched. "Fuck," he said, staring at his hands. Black scales were bubbling up through his skin like oil rising through water. Glossy and dark, each one pushing through with a wet sound that made my teeth ache. "FUCK!"

He stumbled backward, slapping at his arms and face as the scales spread faster, they climbed up his neck, across his jaw, covering the melted flesh with dark glass. He was breathing hard, panicked, scratching at the scales as if he could scrape them off.

"It's temporary," I said, keeping my voice soft. "It will go away in two hours."

I probably should have felt bad about finding his panic slightly amusing.

Reyes was still breathing hard, staring down at his scaled arms. His good eye was wide, the white showing all around. "Two hours," he repeated, more to himself than to us. "I can deal with this. Two hours. I can deal with this."

Behind me, I heard the soft sound of Quinn's suit shifting. When I glanced back, Vesper and Quinn were looking at each other. Vesper's eyebrow raised slightly, Quinn's helmet tilted.

My jaw tightened.

"If you can't deal with it, feel free to tell us and Axel will apply it again," Vesper said, her attention snapping back to Reyes. There was something in her voice I couldn’t recognize. "Maybe it'll shake up some memory or two. We'll leave you to your whatever it is you do. Quinn, get him that radio, or maybe something with a screen if he behaves, just no two-way internet. And a check up from the doc in an hour, see if anything's weird."

"Aside from the scales?" Quinn asked.

"Aside from the scales, yes."

Reyes was still staring at his hands, turning them over slowly. The scales caught the dim light, reflecting it in strange patterns. He flexed his fingers experimentally, watching as the scales moved with his skin, articulated and smooth.

"Isia's going to freak out when she hears about this," Quinn said.

Vesper's lips curled. "And that's why we won't tell her anything just yet." She gestured toward the door. "Come on. Let him adjust."

I followed them out, glancing back once to see Reyes still examining his hands with something that looked almost like wonder under the fear.

The heavy door closed behind us with a solid thunk.

The change in Vesper was immediate. Her smile dropped. Her shoulders straightened, brow furrowed. When she turned to look at me, her expression was serious in a way that made my stomach tighten. "What?" I asked, though I had a feeling I knew where this was going.

"He's a labrat."

I blinked at her. "A what?"

"A labrat," Vesper repeated. She was watching me carefully now, the same way she had been watching Reyes. "The way he reacted to this whole thing was too casual. It couldn't be his first time getting himself poked at."

"But corps are very particular about their labrats," Quinn added, their helmet turned toward me. "They don't like it if someone else pokes them. We might be able to figure out who sent him, even if he himself doesn’t."

I frowned, trying to follow the logic. "Is there some way to know who has poked him?"

"It's not a guarantee, but it's a potential lead. I'll ask around," Quinn said.

They both went quiet. Vesper's eyes lost focus for a fraction of a second, and Quinn shifted a bit. I stood there in the corridor, watching and holding back the growl.

They were talking about me. I knew they were. What I wasn’t expecting was that it would feel this blatant. Did they think they were being subtle? Or was I just paying more attention than usual? Whatever they were saying through their neuralinks, it was about me and my power and what they wanted to do with it.

And I was just standing here like an idiot, waiting for them to include me.

"I think I'll call it a day here," I said, cutting into their exchange before they could conclude it, startling them both. "I'd really be interested in figuring out how else I could help the gang with this power, so I’ll be open to suggestions. But I think it's been a long enough day. I'll be going on ahead."

I started walking before either of them could respond, picking up speed as I headed for the corridor junction.

"W-" Vesper started.

I took the turn at the end of the hallway before she could finish the word, my footsteps echoing as I quickly put distance between us.

My shoulders were tense, waiting for her to follow and start asking the questions about the shush monster. But none came, and I reached the door at the end of the hallway before anything else came through.

Freedom.

---

Moreau picked her way through the devastation zone, her boots crunching over debris that had once been a street, bits of moss littering corners here and there where the locals had yet to pick it clean to sell off elsewhere. The sound echoed in the empty silence, punctuated only by the faint whir of drones overhead. Her gray ponytail was pulled tight enough to make her scalp ache, not that she cared. The left side of her face caught the light wrong, the way it always did. Her cybernetic eye, a flat disc of polished metal, reflected scrolling data readouts. Scars radiated from the socket in angry pale lines, cutting through weathered skin that had been pristine just a few months back. The wrinkles at the corners of her mouth deepened as she frowned at something in her neuralink feed.

Her left hand flexed unconsciously. The synthskin covering it was two tones too dark compared to the rest of her pale body, yet it moved smoothly enough, the artificial muscles responding to neural impulses, but it felt wrong. Like wearing someone else's hand even though it’d been perfect just last week.

Bob stood behind her, unaffected by the unnatural aging that was ravaging her slowly but surely. His gut strained against the blue overalls with every step, but his movements were practiced and efficient. Bob swept his augmented eyes across the perimeter in regular intervals, the assault rifle held low and ready. His breathing was steady despite the weight he carried.

At this late hour there was little activity. No one dared step outside after dark, not when monsters might still be roaming. The Fourth District had learned that lesson the hard way.

Dozens of fist-sized drones zipped overhead in synchronized patterns, their scanners sweeping for traces of what she was looking for. Every inch of concrete, every fragment of asphalt, every twisted piece of rebar was being examined from multiple angles simultaneously. The automatic systems fed directly into her neuralink, highlighting anything that did not match baseline readings.

Negative.

Negative.

Negative.

The data scrolled past faster than normal human perception could track. Moreau processed it all without conscious thought, her attention split between the physical terrain and the digital overlay only she could see.

She paused at a crater the size of a small vehicle. The street had been pulverized down to the substrate layer, leaving exposed rebar jutting from shattered concrete like broken bones. Scorch marks radiated outward in a starburst pattern.

The elder had hit hard and indiscriminately, as was her usual style.

"Bob," she said without turning around.

One of the drones descended, manipulator arms extending to retrieve a singular shard of black glass embedded in the crater's edge. Bob grunted acknowledgment and opened his backpack. The shard joined the others in their collection, clinking softly against its siblings.

An alert pinged in her neuralink, sharp and insistent.

Moreau's attention snapped to drone #37. Its sensors had flagged something inside one of the factories ahead, the building with the partially collapsed roof. She redirected three more units to converge on the location while she started walking, her pace quickening slightly though with a slight limp. Bob followed without needing instruction, his rifle coming up a fraction.

The factory loomed against the dark sky, its silhouette jagged and broken. The main entrance had been torn open, the metal door hanging from one hinge. Inside, twisted support beams jutted downward like broken ribs, casting strange shadows in the drone lights. The roof had come down in the center, leaving a pile of rubble beneath the hole where moonlight streamed through.

Concrete chunks, rebar, insulation, electrical conduit. All compressed into a rough mound under tons of collapsed ceiling.

And there, growing from the rubble like it belonged there, stood a flower.

Moreau stopped mid-step.

The flower rose perhaps fifteen centimeters tall, its stem impossibly straight and rigid. It looked more like worked metal than any organic thing. But the petals drew her attention and held it. They were not petals at all, not really. Each one appeared formed from black obsidian, volcanic glass folded into impossibly delicate layers that caught the drone lights and swallowed them. The edges looked sharp enough to slice skin, each petal perfectly geometric and arranged in a spiral pattern that seemed almost mathematical in its precision.

It should not exist. Could not exist. And yet there it was, growing from rubble and ruin.

Doctor Moreau crouched beside it, her knees protesting the movement. Her ponytail still did not shift, held in place by enough product to survive a hurricane while her biological eye narrowed as she studied the flower from multiple angles. Her cybernetic eye cycled through spectrum analysis without her conscious command, feeding her data about wavelengths and material composition that should only exist in monster materials.

Behind her, Bob had moved to position himself between her and the entrance. His augmented eyes swept the darkness in regular patterns, the rifle tracking with his gaze. He did not look at the flower, that was not his job.

"Well well well," Moreau murmured, her wrinkled lips curling into a smile that showed too many teeth. "What do we have here?"