(Rewritten) Ch. 45 – Walkie Talkie

The Pictures On The Screen Tell A Story - Part 1

Little fingers cradle a frame, little eyes stare silently at the screen. Little knees pulled to her chest, little girl's tears flow no more, long dry.

Her parents lay dead not far, father's hand dropped his ax, mother's hand dropped her knife. Five mangled bodies slashed and sliced lie there too, gruesome maws wide open, butcher's grimace.

Her brother bleeds weakly, his pistol droops to the ground, his eyes unfocused, thoughts grow faint.

The pictures on the screen move and tell a story, of many dead people and more dead creatures. She watches her sister fight and watches her die, impaled on spears of bone and claw. She watches as a switch falls from her sister's hands and fire swallows all.

The pictures on the screen move and tell a story, of many dead people and more dead creatures. She watches as strangers lift their guns and clouds of lead tear through the bodies of beasts. She watches as tidal waves of teeth crash against mountains of flesh and blood. She watches as many switches slide free and fires bloom.

– An artist's rendition of the war against the Antithesis

***

As we walked, hand in hand, I took a look at our points. We'd had three left from the preparation for the big fight. Counting those, and the rewards of the fight itself, we had…a total of five hundred sixty-four points. My emergency funds were full up.

More points than we'd had in a while. More than enough to start fighting large groups on the move, if we invested them wisely. And we still had five of those void grenades.

Absorbed in my thoughts, I didn't really notice how the steadily strengthening drizzle misted in the air, until eventually, a strange quiver went through my head appendages. Suddenly, my antennae shook, splattering water everywhere. A weird tickle went through my nose and made me sneeze hard enough to catapult myself half a meter upward from the muscular contraction in my core. Leah, thoroughly surprised, whirled towards me just as I sneezed a second time.

It would appear even the hydrophobic nature of my sensilla wasn't quite enough to keep them dry.

My feelers shivered again, reflexive tears wetted my eyes, and a nasal whine escaped me. Leah looked at my bedraggled form and aww'd at me, glomped me from the side and ruffled my hair.

I sniffled a little more. "Tynea?"

Er. The senses of your antennae are connected to those areas of the brain that use similar senses. Taste to taste, smell to smell. They're way more sensitive, however. You may find that certain bodily reflexes will be triggered in…unusually usual situations.

Another sneeze wanted out, but I vigorously rubbed the tip of my nose with my palm, and it receded again. Leah cooed at me, so I reached up to pinch her nose, and added another tally to my Tickle Time counter.

Laughing, she let go of me and I abused my silk-weaving to create a handkerchief for myself, to dry my eyes and my nose.

Huh… Make-up. I'd want to learn about that stuff too, and…that meant I'd need to learn how to not smear it, wouldn't I? Much stuff to explore!

Antithesis approaching, ETA twenty seconds. One Four, six Threes. They heard your sneezing, it seems.

My head whipped to Leah, who indicated understanding and pointed up. We selected a thick branch she could straddle, with her back to the trunk of the tree itself for support. I took her in a princess carry and deposited her three meters up with a single jump. Leah secured, I hopped back down and ran to get some distance from her gun.

The Four is traveling up in the foliage.

One of the drones' cameras picked it out, and Tynea highlighted it, as it swung itself from tree to tree with grabby tentacles. The Threes accompanying it were directly below, keeping pace on the ground with bounding leaps.

"Share with Ypsi and Leah, please?"

I have done so.

"Okay, I'll leave the Four to Leah, again. Rain's picking up, draw those outlines from before? The coding for approaching threats, and for splitting targets. They were really useful."

Certainly. Five seconds.

I decided to position myself in a tree as well, where I wouldn't need to scoot and dodge. Amazingly, not having to move your feet really made shooting easier.

Guns ready, I watched the timer until I gained line of sight on the hauling Four, and with it, the sextet of dog-like aliens.

Their juking around the trees made hitting them a little more difficult, but I still managed to screw with the model Threes. Two I killed immediately, the others I sent stumbling with body-shots, one of which broke an alien's spine. That Three kept crawling forwards stubbornly, jaws rabidly biting at empty air as it scented me.

I put it out of its misery with a bullet to the brain. Flechette. Whatever.

The Four flew by in a wake of rushing air just as I murdered the final Three, and I decided to drop to the floor, to stay out of any potential line of fire for Leah, whose projectiles zinged past me within a few meters.

Leah had troubles actually hitting the Four. It wasn't moving in a straight line, and going pretty quickly. It would reach her inside of five seconds, and it looked like she might need help.

I connected to Leah's bullets in her gun with a thought and found their guidance was turned off. Confused, I checked her targeting visor, and found that it was talking to the 9mm cartridges in the stashed Foxteeth still. Why?

I let my cerebral aug spin up a new tab to take control of the darts her gun was spitting out, and let it calculate corrected trajectories until they slammed into the xeno's brain moments later.

Its tentacles spasmed, splayed, got caught up in surrounding branches, and tossed the ballistic body off course. Instead of smashing into Leah, it hit the ground and slid to a halt with a wave of wet dirt smacking against trunks ahead of it. I stepped around the mess to get to Leah, who was already busy climbing down the tree.

That's good. She's starting to trust the Sleeve a little more, isn't she? I was glad to see her take control over her own mobility, even with the false feedback from the thing.

And it didn't even have to mean less physical contact!

I moved forward, ready to welcome Leah with a hug on the last drop, which she happily accepted the moment she noticed me. She let herself fall the last meter, landed on her feet right between my arms, and warmth spread through my chest at the easy smile she gave me. Once she'd removed her helmet again, I went up on my tip-toes and buried my face in the crook of her neck, which she answered with a squeeze tight enough to lift me up.

Yeah. I absolutely wanted more of this. Always.

Then the rain hit us for real and completely soaked me through in seconds. My shift was completely sodden and lost its shape as the fibroin absorbed all the water it got, while at the same time getting stiffer and denser. Leah immediately put her helmet on again.

I raised my arms, looked at myself, and sighed to Leah's giggle. I raised an eyebrow at her face, but refrained from other reactions—her overall wasn't waterproof either and she'd be just as miserable if we didn't get dry soon. But unlike mine, her body was already taxed by all the injuries, the healing she'd done, and no bionites or nanites to keep her healthy.

"Let's go back? We're three hundred meters out."

"Yep."

"Tynea, any more Antithesis along the way?"

None that I can find.

"Alright, thanks."

The rain came down in heavy sheets, dark clouds above our heads, and darker clouds smudging the horizon to the east, whenever there was a break in the foliage.

I parked my antennae behind my back as much as possible, and even the fuzz of my tail looked soggy and sad. I really was completely bedraggled. Leah suppressed a grin every time she looked at me until I gave her the stink-eye—which just made her laugh.

"Sorry, Tin-Tin. I'll help you dry yourself, later. If we can find a towel, or something."

My eyebrow rose of its own volition, as I slicked my hair back. "Tin-Tin?"

"Yes. You're too cute not to have a cozyname." Leah said, completely unapologetically.

Eyes squinting, I replied, "You're correct." To which Leah smiled brilliantly with a laugh.

She took me by the hand again, and we continued on our way back to shelter. Shelter. I considered that as we walked. Even though we hadn't actually spent much time here, and even though it was the place we got kidnapped to, it sure felt like it. Between taking control of the place and actually using it as a base, it wasn't enemy territory anymore.

"Leah?"

"Hmm?"

"How are you doing?"

"Uh." Leah paused a little, a frown between her eyebrows. "Better than I should by all rights, really…"

I gave her some more time to consider, but eventually it seemed like she didn't quite know what to say, so I prompted her. "I was just thinking about the facility, how it's sort of starting to feel like actual shelter to me. Which I thought was…at least remarkable, if not strange, because it's where I got kidnapped to, right?"

Her eyebrows rose higher and higher while I was talking, and I could tell she was not only surprised by my words, but also disagreed. Yet, as she thought about it more, realization bloomed across her face.

"Leah?"

"Well. Mostly I disagree, considering the time I spent strapped to that bed, completely immobilized. But when I think about your cocoon specifically, that's different. That feels like…sanctuary. More even than my own place, now."

I hummed. "It is a piece of me. It's…territory that they never conquered, even if they moved it. Do you, like, want to take it along? It could be a sort of home-away-from-home thing, I guess."

"Oh… Uh. It's hella comfortable and all, but I don't think that's quite right, either." She shrugged, unsure.

"Okay. And otherwise? About your limbs and stuff?"

"..." Leah looked down and opened and closed the fingers of her free hand. "Honestly, I can't wait for replacements that feel proper. This…ersatz stuff, I guess, it's good enough. But really? I don't feel like myself. I sorta got used to it, but every time I'm off in lala-land thinking about stuff, and I come back, suddenly I feel like a stranger in my own skin, 'cause of the fake feedback."

I pondered that a little.

"You know," I answered eventually, 'I think it's perfectly reasonable to prioritize prosthetics if you want them—especially because they probably don't have to be the expensive stuff to satisfy your needs. What's the cost for replacements that feel like the real thing? Does your Warforge catalog have any?"

"Yeah. The cheapest ones for non-combat use are a hundred and fifty points per limb. They're not that strong, but frankly, if normal humans can fight single-digit Antithesis, then these definitely can. They're just really basic. Zero functionality outside of being an arm or a leg."

"Tynea, what's the cheapest equivalent from my catalogs?"

Naturally grown, you would start at eighty points per limb. They would require roughly a week to fully grow, but you could speed that up with bionites, or nanites, to about three days. Combat grafted, they would cost a hundred and sixty points each. They wouldn't be armored though, unless you added a carapace.

"Chitin, huh? Leah?"

"Yeah, no. Not my jam. I'd prefer metal."

"Fair enough. Do you want to buy yours? Six hundred isn't that much, all things considered. We have slightly more than that."

"Ah, I'm not sure, yet? Let's talk about that later. There's other stuff we have to think about, first."

"Alright."

Let's see. We had…six hundred and forty-six points, now.

That was enough for a useful vehicle, if we didn't expect much from it. And if we didn't need an additional catalog. Hmm.

Well, that too, could wait. Sleep first, refresh the mind. I thought back to Tynea's advice from back before I went into chrysalis. I didn't want to come to regret a decision that I didn't even have to make, yet.

Leah and I continued walking hand in hand, until we arrived back at the facility. I took a quick trip around it, to check if anything had changed since we'd left, but found nothing but loads of mud.

After a last glance towards the horizon and the heavy storm front, we went inside.

***