Thunder and Webs C137 [Gold]

Ripley paints it all black with blood.

Chapter 137: Paint It Black

January 27th, 2488 (10 Years Ago)

Ripley (13 years old)

I’d been so small then, but it didn’t fail my young eyes to know things were rough between my mom and my dad… ever since… I’d told him to be a hero. Boxes — what little we were allowed to take with us — were still unpacked as a rough movement from my mother kicked one open. “Dom! You can’t be serious?! You’re relying on a gang to support us?!”

“Isa… I know its difficult.” My dad steadied his hands on her shoulders, but she flinched back. “But Shaun… I knew him. He only ended up this way because of a similar situation.”

“He runs a fucking brothel!” My mom pushed my dad back.

“He…” My dad clenched his jaw, his hair catching between his fingers until a yell erupted from him. “I’m sorry, Isa! But what else can we do…!”

“How about…” Tears trailed down my mother’s face. “How can Rip grow in a place like this…”

“Isa…” A pained expression fell on my father’s face until he moved to hug her. “I’ll protect both of you, forever. I promise.”

February 28th, 2498 (Present)

The memories came flooding back with rage and grief and so many more putrid emotions of the torture this bastard instilled on my family for nearly a decade. Shaun’s bald head shedded under a crimson wave, his six-foot frame expanding and muscles bloating from all the blood he’d absorbed. Only remnants of humanity remained, but who was I kidding?

He was vile. Disgusting. A predator of the worst kind.

Pain and grief did haunt me from the lives I’d taken today. Hoaqin, Artie, countless innocents who’d been devoured by Shaun or were currently in pain to feed me with the Energy I’d use to kill this bastard.

I would never feel regret for taking his life. The Founders knew how long I’d wanted to.

“Hah! You finally look like what you are, Shaun! Some grotesque little thing sniveling underneath the earth. You’re no snake, just a fucking worm!” I roared, a black tentacle tearing off a chunk from the ceiling and tossing it towards him. He roared as his left arm contorted with vines of flesh until it resembled a hammer that pulverized the stone with ease.

“And you — fitting you’re a measly little spider. I should have squished you under my foot a long time ago!” He pressed some cybernetic implant installed in his temple and the three Cadavers around him began to morph, abandoning their human facades to reveal their true monstrous forms. Each of them resembled a snake in some form. Some blend of flesh interwoven with Skeleton’s Shardware and reoriented for a MAL’s physique.

And now, the monster was working with Skeleton. Both of them were dead men walking.

One of the Cadavers, a coiling mess of green and purple wires shaped into a snake, shot out towards me. I didn’t bother dodging.

Innocent Implants were drained as I charged my right Claw until its tips drowned in Gold, and I shot back. I couldn’t tell if the Cadaver’s original body was Sharded or a Mutant, but I didn’t care.

I dove my claws into the snake’s fangs.

It welcomed me with a sonic shriek. Our impacts collided as bits of my right arm went flying off while a whole chunk of the Cadaver’s ‘face’ no longer existed as it splashed into the crimson basin beneath. My Arachnodyne caught me on walls, not wanting to land in the pool of blood, but Shaun wasn’t so easy to deal with. Neither were the other two Cadavers.

One launched a spray of acid, the other’s tail shot a bolt of lightning — and Shaun’s arm stretched with fleshy ropes. His bodily manipulation was nowhere near as articulate as The Bladefather’s, being raw and grotesque.

That shot of lightning sparked across the Ruinsteel shell of my Arachnodyne, conducting and converting into golden force that launched me underneath the stream of scalding green and into Shaun’s twisting red pillars. I slammed into them, but refused to be caught, each of my arachnid limbs pinching and skittering me down that stretched arm with demented fury until I had my claws right over his all-white eyes.

He grinned with a mouthful of fangs as all four of my tendrils turned him into a pincushion.

He continued smiling as he roared. “Was that supposed to hurt?”

Flesh molted to capture my Arachnodyne. Even with everything I’d known about Shaun, I’d never seen his Mutations at their fullest, only the grotesque ways he’d get off with them. He could consume biomass and rapidly alter his body’s morphology — that much was known.

But then I felt the crimson-stained pool behind me surge as searing pain drilled through my back. Before I could react, a punch caved in my ribs and a something tried to drag me in by my innards.

Only the cohesion of Neolymph prevented my guts from being used as a leash before I choked on thickening redness. Next, something neither metallic nor fleshy wrapped around my body. The Cadaver I’d thrown in earlier. My attack had partially ruined its inhuman form, exposing bits of what it once was. A dark-skinned woman, her stomach and face stuffed with machinery, lay beneath that carefully designed ‘snake’ visage.

Lucille. The very first victim of the MALignant my Implant had come from.

She wrapped around me amidst the crimson drowning us, tail and claw digging into the black steel of my body as her fangs opened up to my neck. Shaun laughed from above as the red curled to his whim. “I’ll make you drown in your own blood and shit.”

———

2490

Ripley (16 years old)

I felt calm despite a foot having struck my jaw. The Personality Editor had worked.

Lucille chuckled, wiping the blood on her heel onto my shirt. “Don’t you fucking look at me again like that, you creep.”

“I wasn’t-”

Her foot struck again. This time the heel dug a cut through my eyebrow and red soaked my vision. “Listen here. It was you who barged into a fucking strip club demanding work. If that’s not a sign of a pervert, I don’t know what is.”

She laughed as she walked away, leaving me on the floor of a dingy old storage cupboard. Regardless, I had to do everything I could to keep my mother safe here. Working at a place like this was dangerous, as long as I was around… I could protect her.

It wasn’t like my father was going to do that anymore when he was nothing but ashes. So I collected myself and scrubbed the floors, picking up after the putrid debauchery that had occurred last night. Condoms, spilled drinks, puke and other bodily fluids were fine.

But yesterday, Shaun had thrown one of his parties.

My mother had tried to stop me. She tried her hardest to keep me away from the club for the last two years.

But I needed to be here for her. So I walked into his office and thanked the Founders that my mind was numb as I began cleaning up after blood and guts while Shaun had his dick buried in a woman missing half her face. He smiled at me with fangs still having bits of flesh tangled on their jagged edges. “Keep up the good work, and your mother doesn’t end up like this.”

That was supposed to be a friendly joke.

“How’s the progress on the Editor going?” He got to business quick.

“Good.” I lied, keeping my eyes down. I already had it completed. “But you promise that once… once its done, you’ll help us?”

“Of course,” he grunted as he threw the corpse he held down. “You and your mother are smart. I got plenty of ways to help the two of you get out of this life.”

———

The Present

Red soaked my vision as fangs opened to drag out my trachea.

But Lucille didn’t get that far.

Once again, I stuck my hand into a mouth and kept her from chomping, even as her tail and claws attempted to constrict and crush me. Added on was the weight of the congealing blood around me and the slow drain of oxygen from my blood. I stuck my hand deeper into her jaw and felt flesh tear and part as I delved through organs that had already been destroyed once. She was only MALware and didn’t regenerate any organic parts, and soon I felt her Core.

I injected Neolymph into that core, commanding Soul-Graft to fuse with it as Bronze Energy flooded my mind. Connecting to a MAL was like dipping your consciousness into a sea of lava. It burnt and flooded my thoughts with nothing but slaughter, hunger, and a need to adapt.

But I did what Diana was best at. I absorbed.

She went limp as I crushed her Core and her body began to dissolve. Just as quickly, the other two Cadavers dove and swarm and tangled upon me. One dug acidic claws into my leg — dissolving away Neurowiring and preventing me from kicking for air. Another bit into my clavicle, and spewed lightning to burn down into my lungs.

Bubbles choked out into drowning crimson. My limbs thrashed, what could, as black tendrils ripped and tore into the Cadavers. I brutalized their shells, unveiling them to be women with bits of flesh already chewed out.

Rage x Shaun x Blood

Neolymph spilled into the surrounding sea of red as they dragged me deeper down, preventing me from getting breath. I resorted to blindly keeping both manic Cadavers from slashing into my vitals as I pried into them, but they kept coming. They weren’t human to retreat from a little pain and neither would they die unless you knew where to attack.

But the Neolymph reached the surface, and the blood cells began to draw in oxygen from the air. Then, through any open wounds, that oxygenated Neolymph would flood back in and keep me fighting. The pool splashed red, slowly being painted black, as tendrils lashed out and monstrous bits of the Cadavers were torn to pieces. They were only Bronze and Tier II, yet stronger than the average MAL with their articulate design.

And to think, these people weren’t even combatants when they were alive. Just tools for Shaun’s pleasure.

Once they were reduced in size by half, I found purchase to swarm my Neolymph into them and seize their Cores. Only then did I emerge from the pool, riddled in holes and soaked in blood, and with two corpses finally laid to proper rest thrown at where Shaun had once been.

Except he had run away — just like before.

“Get your ass back here, you coward! I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth if I have to!”

The nearest door burst of its hinges as I threw it like a frisbee into another door, following the faint stain of red that Shaun’s transformed body had left. He may be strong, but I was fast.

In seconds, my tendrils slammed through multiple rooms of debauchery and corpses left by The Bloodmuncher until I found him trying to work an elevator.

“Not this fucking time!” I yelled as I pounced onto the back of his now eight-foot frame. My claws dug into his temples and he twisted the ropy muscles he’d become into slamming me against a wall. He was bulbous, huge and made of pure strength — entirely red with the exception of two white orbs in his skull.

“Let me fucking guess?!” I picked myself up, laughing maniacally as he roared and thrust his arm forward. As thick as a tree-trunk, it extended and pulverized the concrete wall where I’d been, but I pounced to the floor. “Got some boost from Skeleton harvesting The Revenant?”

He offered no response as he slammed his trunk-like whip down. But I’d disappeared in a flash of light that twisted my appearance as I skittered around the next dozen thrashings. “Still fucking crawling like an insect, I see?!”

I’d absorbed enough force to pierce into that limb and snap it, grappling across the ceiling to twist and lunge as four tendrils speared through his body once more. This time, I didn’t give him the opportunity to trap them inside his body, I yanked them all in different directions until I saw half a rib-cage thrown into a nearby wall. That made him snarl in pain.

All that flesh. It was ultimately just some sort of suit for him to wear. He still had vital organs inside him that would create fatal damage that was costly to regenerate from.

My voice was cold. “I’m still fucking climbing… while you’re here once again running away like a rat!”

“I’m not running!” He roared as each fingertip turned into a scarlet spear, one slashed into my leg and gouged electronics out, leading me to stumble as he charged shoulder-first into me.

I tried to twist momentum to throw him over me, but his body was sticky, and instead we rolled as he used his mountainous frame to smash my head into the concrete floor. “Last time — at the Toxin club — I was trying to get some blood! Before Tusk made the damn roof fall on me!”

He smashed my body into the floor again. This time it gave way and crumpled as we both fell into the smelly catacombs beneath our city.

The sewers.

The resounding force gave me enough golden charge to dive my Ruinforge arm through his stomach, unleashing a sonic expulsion that sent parts of his spine bursting out. He stumbled back as I caught my breath; I had a lot of holes in me and a serious concussion. By the time my vision cleared, I truly understood where we were now.

The sewers, yes. But also his blood-bank. There were more than a dozen individuals here, all of them dazed and pale as I saw hundreds of still-living 'bloodbags' suspended in chilled freezers.

And then I saw their eyes. Red-and-white. Soulless.

Shaun’s arm burst out like a whip to impale one, then he flailed it across as blood and gore spilled out in a wave that was sucked into his arm like he was an amoeba. Spikes launched from his other arm, red icicles that forced me to twist onto the ceiling — unable to stop him as he absorbed more blood. His body swelled in size instantly as nearly a hundred liters of crimson wrapped around him.

He was ten feet now, and had ingested Titanium-strengthened Implants. The air around him felt twisted as he stumbled on both feet like a drunkard, the wild thrashing of his limbs — and tendrils, now — shattering concrete and metal like glass. A blood-inebriated cackle, both high-and-low pitched at the same time, shivered through the space between us.

“Skeleton tells me he’s made leaps and bounds in his vaccine ever since yours went on the market! Always been a tool, Ripley! You and your mother, both!”

Four scorpion stingers engaged on my Arachnodyne, and I leaped forth into the hulking wall of flesh.

I felt like I’d been hit by a train as a wild sweep met my stingers and shattered them. Even Steel Vanguard hadn’t been this strong.

Every slight blow from his blood-formed musculature ripped the air between us as dozens of attacks came from everywhere. I only had four black tendrils to match his innumerable crimson appendages.

But I would fight. I would fight until all the red was painted black.

Crimson spears rained down on me. And black tendrils of my own lashed out in a clash of impossible force. He penetrated my defenses, and I dodged to the sight of red blur chasing me. My mind processed each moment calmly, sequentially, yet rage was the driving force. As dozens of wild attacks pincered upon me as scarlet spears, sickles and fangs, my own inhuman architecture molded to the environment to grapple, swing, swipe, and lunge.

And claw.

He'd charged like some wild beast, but I'd flipped over him. His eyes burnt as I fried them with a rake of my talons in that same movement. Then, my own ached when another blow — some unrefined elbow jab — slammed me against the wall like I'd been hit by a truck. My vision swam, but I fought back as a wave of blood surged towards me with devastating intent.

Each time, I led with a desperate lunge. A desperate parry to capitalize on his brutish technique. A desperate dodge followed when he simply absorbed my attack like it was a nuissance.

But no desperation could protect me when he grabbed one Arachnodyne tendril and tossed me like I weighed nothing. The limb even tore from the sheer force as he flung me. I went through a massive steel pipe and splashed down into wet, flowing chunks of sewage. He burst through the metal like a monster, the steel tearing like paper as he roared like stone being split. “Don’t think you can run, Donovick!”

“Like hell I am! That’s your specialty!” I yelled, commanding the Arachnodyne tendril he still held like a trophy to remotely curl around his arm. I launched a claw into it and transferred the charged golden force into the limb.

Blood and steel eviscerated the sewers with such force that the methane ignited.

An incinerating wave exploded around us, hot orange flame expanding as I ducked and used the remaining three Arachnodyne limbs to flatten over me like an umbrella. Heat was the one thing Neolymph couldn’t withstand, hence why I needed Dianium as a coolant for it.

Even then, this was testing its limits as my black tendrils shaved down into smoke and electrical sparks flickered all over my Shardware. Shaun was in even worse condition, his body shrunk and cracked as he tried to move.

But he did, like a creature breaking out of a prison of stone and ash, he lunged with a sickle for a hand. My own daze was piloted away by the Preservation Matrix, but my scorched arachnid tendrils were too slow.

The sickle pierced my lower jaw, through my tongue, but before it could pierce through the roof of my mouth — I pulled back with a desperate reel of my tendrils.

My lower jaw — the mandible — tore off.

The sickening sound coming from within my skull as I staggered back and felt nothing but raw meat and an exposed wind-pipe where my mouth should be. Daylight screamed something, but I couldn’t focus on it amidst the white-hot agony searing my senses. I only knew that she was working to keep the worst from me. The pain still flooded everything I knew, but I kept standing. Kept persevering.

My feet stumbled, and I gripped the wall for support.

I barely had any remaining Neolymph. I needed more. I needed… a lot more.

Guilt consumed me as I sent the kill-order for the civilians, and ordered Midnight.

{Flush it all down.}

The Ruinforge Heart tensed as I drew from the droplets of energy remaining, reaching into the souls I’d infected and draining them dry to the bone.

All that would be left of them was bone. But when I’d be done, not even that would be left.

Shaun laughed as he inspected my torn lower jaw. What flesh remained was dissolved away until he threw the metal-plated bone into the sewage and crushed it. “Now this is right, no more barking and well… no more biting. But you never could in the first place.”

———

2492

Ripley (17 years old)

“That bastard!” My mom cried as she gulped down a bottle. “Where the hell did he get that thing?!”

“Get what…?” I held onto my mother, trying to get her into the bed.

“He got a fucking… Personality Editor. He’s making me install into-”

She puked, nearly collapsing until I helped calm her down. But the words she said drove a stake through my heart, and I felt like that wound would consume me. But it never did, the very thing she detested had kept my mind from succumbing to the worst of things.

The next day, I confronted Shaun about it.

“You told me that you’d-!”

His hand struck my jaw as he looked at me with indifferent eyes. “I said I’d help you. That was true… I am helping you both. This place is about to get a whole lot more popular. You understand?”

“What-?”

His hand struck me again and this time a tooth flew out. “Listen, Rip. Your mother’s days are limited. Her Implant’s not getting her anywhere… she’s cheap labor is what she is, but a smart cookie who can handle the sensitivities of code like that. It’s either this, or she could service my guests. She made her choice.”

“Then let me handle it instead!” I begged.

That day, I went above my limits. Tried to work on things my mom said I wasn’t yet ready for. One storage box hadn’t been prepped by her, and when I got a little to hasty… it blew up.

My right hand went with it.

———

The Present

The pain kept me unaware that I’d even been grabbed by Shaun and thrown, so my face drank in the sewage, the raw wound of my torn jaw exposed to the filth of this city.

“Now, you can really shit-talk!” He had the time of his life as a spear pierced my spine before lifting me up and tossing me around once more.

He tried to stomp on my head, but some desperate need to live grappled my Arachnodyne onto the ceiling a blink before he could smash my face in. Neolymph, what was left, kept restoring me or yanking my broken Shardware back into place. I couldn’t count how many holes I had in my body, or how many bones were broken.

My vision was blurry, my ears rang, my mouth was a gaping hole, and Shaun was still standing. All that kept me moving was the knowledge that I’d just sacrificed 23 civilians by devouring their Implants and turning them into black sludge just so I could kill this bastard. I was in so much pain. But I couldn't afford to let myself think about it. I just had to channel it before it overcame me.

Grief x Pain x Killing This Bastard

A wild roar tore from my non-existent mouth as I met Shaun’s charge head on. The sewers splashed with each wild torrent of movement, every second a blur of black and red as we clashed amidst filth. This was fitting! This sort of filth was where we both belonged!

I remained just a little-bit quicker than him. The explosion had severely diminished his size down. Now, at only seven-feet, I could see some of his human skin whenever he overextended that suit of gore.

But he was just so strong. One Arachnodyne limb snapped as he dug a sickle through my side and into the depleted Neolymph sac, that movement dragged me into the air and flung me away, but not before I could slash with my claws and gouge half his face off.

One of his eyes hung out of his face as he gripped a wall. It slowly sucked back in like a retreating worm, but I shot a claw out and severed that optic nerve so the pale globe splashed into the flowing sewage beneath us.

I laughed through an exposed throat. No words; all mock and insanity.

The indignation led him to tackle me, and my limbs and tendrils grappled with his as we wrestled down in the muck and grime. Shit, piss, and other waste was flung by our wild thrashing — all of it was organic matter that my dripping blood had infected.

And now, even more Neolymph was flooding into the sewage system through the pools and tubs in the bathhouse above. It swam across my body, plugging in the holes within me and all the way up to my mouth.

From my Ruinforge Heart, particles of Ruinsteel carried up to where my lower jaw should be and hardened over the framework presented by Bloodforge, until sharp jagged obelisks of black teeth dug into the flesh of Shaun’s neck.

I bit and tore out his throat like a wild animal. He responded likewise as a sharp punch burst through the skin of my abdomen and his fingers tangled with my intestines. We rolled, limbs locking and punching as black and red mixed with sewage. I clawed into him, and he dragged my intestines out inch-by-inch until I cut my losses and severed them.

I was only kept alive by the constant swarm of black blood flowing into me.

All of it derived from murder.

It gave me just the edge to get him under me. I bashed his face again and again into the sewage, filling his torn throat with it.

“What did you say?” My new mouth managed to growl out. It didn’t sound like me.

“You said you’d drown me in my shit and blood, right?” I stuffed his face deeper into the flowing sewage. His limbs thrashed — completely depleted and torn from the blood he’d devoured.

“Well?!” A maniacal laugh burst from me. “This is my blood! And everyone’s shit! How about that! You bastard!”

He tried to tear me off him, but my remaining two Arachnodyne limbs kept him pinned down. Even then, he had the strength to grab them and stretch their near-shattered forms to the point where they broke apart. But each movement tired him out, and as Neolymph finally overwhelmed his systems, I began devouring his Energy.

My claws broke through the back of his skull with the strength I used to drown him in shit and blood. A pained yell filled the space like music, and his skull further crumpled as I pressed down until I could see the meninges beneath his brain. His limbs tired out, his wounds stopped healing, his Implant dried of Energy.

And then he stopped resisting. He was limp as his lungs filled with sewage, and his wounds began to bleed.

I breathed heavily, still keeping weight pressed on top of him. Until, finally, his Implant — Silver and a grotesque fly-like creature — dug out from the wound in his throat and rolled into the filth.

Relief flooded me. Then joy. And then it all coalesced into a laugh of pure and utter mania.

———

2496

Ripley (22 years old)

I stared at my mother’s Implant. Iron, bloody, and with a compatibility of 4% to me.

We sold it for dinner. The entire time she was dazed and unable to speak, knowing the uncertain — yet absolute — future ahead of me. The future where I’d be working for the Snake Fangs. The future where the Swarm where was only four years away.

“Look,” I kept my smile, trying to focus on the positives. “At least you don’t have to deal with him anymore.”

“That’s not the point, Ripley…” she frowned. “I…”

She couldn’t say anything, but I knew what she wanted. I choked back my tears, my fears, the crippling knowledge of how impossible the task ahead was. But I said it nonetheless.

“I’m not going to stay with the Snake Fangs forever.” I said through a wavering throat, the slightest betrayal to the rampant thoughts within. I coughed, a program in my head forcing me to remain stable. “Soon as the Swarm kicks in. You bet your ass I’m out of there. And then… I’ll do good. I’ll be so incredible that this city will acknowledge me. Fuck, I’ll get out of there with a Silver, maybe even a Gold. All I need is for you to… for you to wait for me. And then we’ll live a long and happy life, and you have plenty of grandchildren to look after. I promise.”

She cupped my hand. And for that moment… she believed me. In the future I would make for both of us. One step at a time.

———

March 1st

1:03 AM

Ripley

The ecstasy rolled away into tears as everything overwhelmed me. The agony and the joy grew into one synonymous release of a past that had dragged its chains on my ankle no matter where I went. It was because of The Snake Fangs that I even had a Personality Editor.

“Fuck…” I sniffled as I looked at Shaun’s corpse and the Implant in my hand. “He’s dead! He’s finally dead.”

Midnight snapped into my vision, concern etched on her. “Yeah! Woohoo. But we need to get out of here quick! Twilight’s been poking around and that little explosion you caused blew up half the toilet seats in the block! Get out of here now, before-“

Midnight couldn’t finish before I collapsed. My body was torn, everything only held by threads of Neolymph, half of which I didn’t even have the Energy to sustain. Everything was growing into a blur that was gradually getting darker.

And I felt fine with it.

“Mid.” I wheezed. “Fuck it… just let me die here.”

“What?!”

“I’m serious.” It took too much effort to even look at her. “I just killed a lot of people to get to Shaun… and… I don’t feel guilty about it. Not yet. But… it’s made me realize something.”

“God damn it, Rip…”

“It’s really not the Personality Matrix that’s the problem. Skeleton was right. It’s me. Like it or not, I’m the villain.” I said simply. “Maybe not by choice. But I always will be…”

My jaw began to dissolve away, I resorted to thinking to get my point across.

{I always will be a villain. That’s the fate of lowlives like us. Desperate and needy, wanting to make change in a City where change means stepping on others. I could never be the one to fix things. Instead… all I am is the bastard who will ruin whatever it takes to get to his goals. And I feel great about it right now. So then… how many more people will be sacrificed to kill Skeleton? I’d wager several hundred. Maybe even a thousand.}

I closed my eyes for a second, imagining the life I wanted. And the life I was living. {That’s a thousand Alice’s. A thousand of my mom’s. A thousand of my dad’s. A thousand Selene’s.}

“So you’re just going to… give up?!”

{Yeah.} I said. {It’ll piss Skeleton off. And besides…}

Even my mental voice broke. {I’m so fucking tired. Just let me die happy like this before the past catches up to me like it always does.}

“Ripley… just fucking jab your black goo into that Implant and absorb it! There’s more still stuck in the pipes and- fuck! You got prime meat right over here to experiment with!” She pointed at Shaun’s corpse.

{You want to get out of my head. Go for it. Or just do what we agreed on. Get in my left arm and finish the job.} It took all my strength to shake my head at her.

“Rip…” Mid seethed.

Daylight faded in and sniffled, a sad but accepting face on her as she sucked in air. “Oh… I feel bad… but if Ripley’s happy about this then… why not? I’ll stay with you, I’ll always be there for you.”

She reached down to ease my pain. Even now, I felt a part of me glad to have her despite all the lies. My Implant accepted her, and even now, it was still trying to keep me alive.

It would. I was fighting back the urge to absorb the Energy from the Silver SIM the best I could.

{Midnight… please.}

Midnight’s face contorted, tears dripping down the side of her face as she knelt down and touched my left arm.

Midnight Protocol Activated.

Pain seized me as black sparks wreathed over my left arm until the metal peeled back to expose the Nul-Serum vial.

Despite me not having any strength, the limb moved, and the needle aimed for my clavicle.

The Preservation Matrix begged me to stop, but I’d suffered so many wounds that the best I could manage was a twitch of my right arm, instantly absorbing away the fleeting droplets of Energy.

Before any other idea could come to my Implant, Midnight thrust the needle through my skin.

------

Next chapter is titled: The Daughter of Dread, and we return to Diana's POV very soon!