Chương 227: Act 3, Chapter 76: Playing the part

Day in the story: 28th January (Wednesday), night Alex Weatherlight If that was indeed Malik, in some way, shape, or form, then it was only fitting that our encounter brought upon me a problem that could have been easily avoided—that had been avoided before, when I was careful and retreated the moment something felt off. And yet now, teleporting out wasn't an option.

I needed to maintain my identity as Robbie Reyes in the eyes of Edge of Tomorrow, and that meant that teleporting out of trouble was a last-ditch resort, something I'd do if all else failed. I should have left those birds circling over the compound when I got out, but that was a hanged man's wish now. The eyes in the walls painted a clear picture—enemy forces advancing on us from multiple directions at once in the form of muscle and sinew protrusions. And I couldn't be sure how much they'd seen, if anything.

"Our reunion has to be postponed a bit… Malik. We've got company to deal with. You can either help me deal with them or stay out of my way." My voice turned stern.

"Try not to kill any of them, if that's possible. Let's stop them and run away." That had to be my second goal, besides maintaining an image. Leaving as many of their mages alive so they could later be used against the real Robbie was my priority. They could hate the Rhythm all they wanted, but they needed to still be breathing to fight him.

"What?" he responded.

"I thought I knew who you are, but… that person would never say that." I ignored the remark. Didn't have time for bickering now. This would be the first mage of EoT I'd properly face, and doing it right mattered. That didn't mean I couldn't cheat, though. Using every piece of the arsenal available to me as a sourcerer of the Domain of Artistic Creation was my prerogative. It just had to be veiled and smart.

To do so, I faked a retreat, bolting toward the side alley, but in a way that intentionally put me in a bad position. I slipped on purpose and dropped into the wall, hitting it with my shoulder. The Spellbook materialized for just a second in the hand closest to the wall, hidden by my body. Within its pages, I found the one that depicted the swarm of art-crafters and summoned them immediately into the garbage near the dumpster I had nearly fallen into.

With that done, I dismissed the book and rebounded quickly, continuing my run.

"Come!" I shouted toward the man, who joined me. But we didn't get far. The opening of the alley onto one of the bigger streets sealed itself off with a thick wall made of stretched ligaments and muscle. They fused into the brick and the ground, sprouting from something above us on the roof and spreading along the alley walls. The tattoo on my back began playing my faster piece—a techno song with enough bass to feel like an explosion.

I reached out to it and gave it enough confidence to become a real, forward-facing shockwave that tore through the biological wall in front of me. Muscles and ligaments stretched like a trampoline, but they held and rebounded after the wave passed. Backdraft hit us with weakened strength. Malik's wannabe tried his own attack, repeated with an echo, but it too was met with elasticity that spread the force well enough to hold.

I produced a knife from under my coat and ran it through this awful, filthy human tissue, but as soon as the blade touched it, it hardened, turning into some form of a shell—something one would find on a turtle or an oversized snail. It was clear who I'd have to face here, but we both turned around anyway—me, more for keeping up the pretense than anything, as there were two big eyes painted on the walls before that allowed me to see.

The spiders I just released were already placing a few more too right along with other creations taken straight out of my mind and done in my style. The Biology Domain user, Dr. Gerard Jugger, was expected, but he wasn't alone. There was a woman with him. Jugger stood further back, arms spread wide, as ligaments and muscle strands unraveled from him like spools, creeping across the walls to cut off every escape route.

The woman in front of him was petite, dressed in something close to guild-issued protective armor, though modified, judging by the gems embedded into it. She was of Chinese descent, with warm-toned skin and short, dark hair. She raised her arm toward us, and with a flash of shadowlight, the walls around me and the other man gradually shifted, changing as the wave of shadowlight ran along the brick—transforming them into rows upon rows of bookshelves, all the way up to the ligament and muscle-barred exits.

"Robert…" Gerard said, his head jerking forward as the flow of tissue finally stopped. He freed his arms, one hand moving to massage his wrist as he stepped ahead of the woman, taking the lead.

"You thought we wouldn't figure out you were targeting weakened outposts? Are you really that stupid?" I laughed theatrically, pouring a lot of finesse and flamboyance into it as I pushed the man at my side back behind me and stepped forward. With my opponents' attention on me, my paper minions continued painting a myriad of traps on the walls, in places out of their sight—I needed to buy them time to finish.

"You callin' me a fool? Ain't it you who's trapped yourself with me? Should I remind ya how our duels end?"

"Fuck you!" he shouted.

"You are just a common thug! We should have never associated ourselves with you."

"This is pointless, Gerard," the woman added.

"Can we talk it through?" the man by my side asked suddenly, his cadence completely different than before.

"There is no need for escalation, you know?" Gerard took off his jacket, and his torso bulged as he increased his muscle mass to unnatural proportions. The woman behind him reached into the backpack she carried and started pulling something out. It was clear they didn't want to talk it through. Time-buying would have to be paid with blood, not words. I lunged forward in one quick motion, rebounding after a step and jumping toward the shelf at my side, as my oversized opponent launched a fist in my direction.

It extended like a rocket on stretching ligaments and muscle. Faux-Malik dodged by chance or pure instinct, dropping low, while I drove an elbow from above straight into Gerard's face. As I did, I ordered the shockwave music to start playing again. It didn't. Whatever I tried to project was opposed by a strong Authority that demanded silence. I pushed against it, but it felt like an uphill battle. As my physical strike connected, I created a platform with the device in my leg and rebounded off it, rolling away.

It was a good call—Gerard's body opened right where I would have landed, trying to catch me. I reordered the art-crafters within my aura to paint two speakers somewhere above, so I could try playing music outside my body and beyond the aura of whatever the woman was using to keep us in silence. Hopefully. I also sent a mental note to Elle.

The platform-barrier I had created through the device in my leg could probably be replicated by painting it onto a circular piece of paper—capturing whatever lay beneath it at the moment of creation. With a bit of artistic flair to emphasize the shimmering edges, I suspected we could recreate the device's magic in a far more accessible form. Assuming, of course, that we kept enough of them prepared in advance. Gerard launched another attack at me.

I dodged with a very short-range teleport—just a flicker to the side, toward the blade hidden in my sleeve. I appeared holding it in my other hand. I felt like he wouldn't consider it something out of the realm of possibilities of Robbie's abilities. At the same time, Malik moved in a blur and launched a kick at the mass of muscle Gerard was becoming. When it was blocked, a golden, blue, and purple shadowlight afterimage of the kick followed with enough force to send Gerard backward.

His body slammed into the building, breaking the shelves and sending books crashing onto the concrete below. I felt the enemy's Authority ease slightly, and my music started playing again around the broken walls, but I didn't turn it into a shockwave just yet. Instead, I used it as cover—something to explain my next attack—the military-grade laser paintings my minions had prepared above. I gave them Authority to move and adjust their aim, and they fired at Gerard.

With this and another echo hit, he turned into a pulsing mass of bulging muscle and sinew. After only a few seconds, with him already burning under the intense rays, I shut the lasers off—they drained too much Authority—but the damage was done. The mass pulsed as if breathing, but otherwise remained still. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Then the shelves became the problem.

They exploded all at once, turning into a storm of wooden splinters that shredded the books with them. Fragments of paper and wood shot toward me at incredible speed. They struck, slicing into my skin—some piercing through, embedding deep into my body. Too late to avoid most of it, I dropped the pretense and teleported above it all, toward the painted laser, hoping to be lost in the chaos of it.

I let the slow-fall song start playing, hoping the Authority I gave it would soften my descent and dull any follow-up attacks. Instead, the shelves and books reformed around me, and my music was suppressed again. I hit the ground hard. When I looked around, my head throbbing with pain and my mouth filled with the taste of iron, Echo's pretender was doing the work.

He weaved between the woman's attacks—each one followed by a nearby shelf extending into a wooden whip, trying to strike him—but he handled it well, dodging the hits and blocking the rest with the echoes he left behind. Each time the wood met his solidified shadowlight, it exploded into splinters. I stood up—briefly—and hit the ground again, thrown onto my back by a tentacle that yanked me sharply by the ankle.

"You think you've won our duels!?" Gerard shouted from the opposite side of the alley, while the mass he previously was still heaved in the middle of the whole mess.

"I let you think that!" He pulled me toward him, while his naked body—looking like it had just been freshly remade somewhere—unspooled into a mass of tentacles, latching the core mass into the walls of shelves and shooting even more of that crap toward me. In response, I activated the traps painted above it all. Spiders etched into the concrete began crawling beneath those manifested rows of books.

At the same time, I reached for one of my singing blades and thrust it into the ground, stopping myself from being reeled in. With another, I cut off the tentacle that had grabbed me.

"You think that's going to stop me!? I am immortal!" The mass in front of me opened into dozens of mouths, each one speaking in unison.

"Yeah? And a dog put you down—" I tried replying, but suddenly the mass of tissue that crept along the wall launched onto me, grabbing and pulling my hands aside. The rest of whatever became of Gerard moved forward quickly on those tentacles, and with one quick unspooling, his body turned into threads that consumed me whole and forced me onto the ground inside a cocoon made of flesh that quickly started turning into something harder—probably bone.

It was getting difficult to breathe, and I was sure, from the smell of something foul and rancid, that his stomach acids were being expelled onto me. I saw from the outside as the Echo guy was trying to fight off the woman, who skillfully deflected his advances with extending books and the shelves themselves. I, on the other hand, was pinned to the ground by the mass, completely unable to move. Inside Gerard's body, protected from whatever form of Authority made everything silent, my music started playing again.

I changed it into Snowblind by System of a Down, and invisible, immaterial bullets of pure force started flying out from me at its center. They hit and tore through the mass that pinned me, but nothing made it all the way through. Whatever damage I managed to do was quickly overcome, patched by new layers of muscle and ligaments unfolding from somewhere within. I used the music to cheat, though.

Those painted spiders took their positions exactly where each of the tentacles had anchored themselves to the walls and around one of the walls blocking the exit. I let Authority flow into the bombs painted on their backs. The force erupting from them tore the place apart, shredding wood, paper, and the writhing biological mass that had seized me—blood, muscle, and sinew ripped to pieces. As the blasts rocked the alley, I was thrown free from beneath the slug-like Gerard.

I rolled across the floor, my body cut, torn, and pierced by fragments of wood, paper, and bone. I used the closest paper spider that survived the explosion and reappeared just inches from my previous position, but fully standing. The foreign, oppressive sound Authority lingering in the ruined space began to fade, and the two speakers I had my spiders paint on the walls started playing a lullaby of my choosing.

I forced the identity of falling asleep into that music, hoping that whatever remained of Gerard might finally give me some peace in the arms of Morpheus. He didn't go down without a fight. The mass closest to me lunged at my face, forming a quickly grown arm that ended in a hand with two sets of five fingers on each side. It clamped over my mouth, those fingers stretching to grip my entire face in an iron hold that left me breathless.

I grabbed the limb with one hand while slashing at it with a knife in the other, but whatever damage I dealt was instantly replaced with new tissue. Worse—ligaments and muscles, like spider webs, shot out from the mass on the ground and hardened into bone, reinforcing that single limb and keeping me upright… and unable to breathe. I ordered my remaining art-crafters—just five of them—to quickly paint a brain on the wall near the speakers.

Meanwhile, Malik's wannabe kept trying to break through the forcefield that moved with the Chinese woman, its surface glowing as the gems in her armor flared to life. His strikes hit the small dome and amounted to little more than ripples spreading across it. One of those hits finally slipped through the moment the dome collapsed—probably on her instruction.

He lurched forward, caught off guard by the sudden lack of resistance, and took the hit full in the chest as the gem set in the woman's armor erupted into a concentrated beam of energy. I managed to see, though, that he was quick enough to spawn an echoing copy of himself in front of him to shield his body from most of the damage.

Since the lullaby didn't work—probably because Gerard removed his own ears or more likely the need to sleep entirely—I decided to go with something more drastic and changed the music to two simultaneous shockwave tracks, while desperately trying to force the painting next to them to become his brain. I had to get through his protection, though, as my power of Trueform didn't manifest—I simply didn't know enough about the man to be sure who he was.

I desperately wanted to blast that external brain on the wall to pieces. I still felt the taste of blood in my mouth, and I started to smell it too when the blood vessels in my nose began popping one by one. My head throbbed with pain as I realized I wouldn't be able to change the identity of the brain above. But at the same time, the device within my leg readied itself again. I felt that shift. That readiness for action. Right within my soul.

I dropped the knife I had been using to stab the arm that held me and reached for it with both hands now, while I flexed my abdominal muscles and contorted my body to bring my midsection higher and my left leg forward, parallel to the arm that held me. At that moment, I sent not a whisper of Authority, but as much as I could muster—almost half of my total—into the gems embedded in my limb.

That power manifested as a large, sharp, round platform of pure, solidified shadowlight that cut the limb cleanly and dropped me onto the ground. Without a direct connection to Gerard, the grip loosened. I threw the arm aside, turning and running away from the blood-sprouting mass, which quickly covered the stump with a layer of new tissue.

It was then that I noticed the Malik-guy launching a full-on onslaught at the woman inside the forcefield, each of his hits once again trying to breach the barrier protecting her. She noticed me running at her and, with a pivot, dropped low and pressed a hand to the floor, her gaze locked onto mine. Fear was written plainly across her face, colored with wide eyes and parted lips, but there was resolve there too. It showed when the ground flared with shadowlight, answering her Authority.

The rows of books vanished, replaced by white and blue tiles, toilets, and bathroom fixtures of every kind: showerheads, taps, faucets. Water began spilling at once, flooding the alley's floor. I lost my footing due to the sudden change and slid forward, while Gerard moved behind me like some twisted version of a daddy longlegs, some of his limbs latching onto the walls while others crawled and walked.

The walls he had erected at the beginning dissolved all at once—even the fragments of the one I destroyed earlier melted into the water that now pooled in the alley—and all of it flowed toward the rapidly approaching mass behind me. The woman was indomitable. Her forcefield flared, shimmering as it pushed the water away from her feet, and she retreated, matching my pace and watching me closely.

The tiles and pipes she created kept Malik pretender busy, blocking his attacks or forcing him to dodge under or jump over obstacles. And when he was busy like that, the gem on her armor fired another beam of concentrated energy, catching faux Malik off guard and sending him skidding across the water.

"You will die here," she said, reaching for the same device she had tried setting up earlier, now that the punches and echoes had paused. It was some kind of tripod with a few gems set into a sphere.

"Was it worth it? Going against us?" she added, placing it on the ground and stopping her retreat.

"My brother is dead because of that, so yeah, it was worth it," I said quickly, passing her and running after the other man. Gerard's mass crawled after me, casting a large shadow over the woman as it moved over her to reach me.

"The same brother I just blasted away?" She twisted her hands, and the tiles tore themselves from the walls, rushing at me from every direction, turning into a hellish storm of porcelain and spilling water.

"That's just some fuckin' pretender. I ain't got no idea who that is. I'll deal with that after you are done first. You feel me?" I answered despite the shortness of breath. I still needed to pose as the Rhythm, at least with words and parts of the power. Music surged from my back again, answering my call—the shockwave track once more.

I imposed its identity instantly, and one after another, powerful bursts rippled outward with me at the center of the havoc, pushing her attack away with each pulse, redirecting it against the approaching Domain of Biology user, tearing into his altered body and dropping him into the water with a heavy splash.

Where the shockwaves moved across the water, waves followed; where they met the walls, tiles cracked and fell into the liquid; but when they struck the woman's forcefield at the weakened edge of the ripple, she shook inside. Not because of physics, but because of the feeble wishes of the heart. I scared her, even if I couldn't hurt her.

"This is the strongest field I can make. You will drown while we remain safe here," she replied, restoring what I had broken, reapplying her changes to the walls.

"Enjoy the betrayal in your last minutes." I stripped the music of its Authority and reapplied it as the track that made me faster, better, stronger, then launched toward the other man. Outside the bubble, in a reality that, compared to mine, moved at half the speed, she reached for the device. Instead, however, she recoiled backward, and a streak of blood ran from her nose. A manifestation of her own hand struck her square in the jaw.

Another followed—blue-and-gold shadowlight—driving into her gut and sending her reeling. Her forcefield moved with her, slamming into the tripod and knocking it over. The crystal of the item she had set up shattered on impact.

"No!" she cried, dropping to her hands and scrambling away. Malik's pretender was back on his feet, a gaping hole torn through the cloths on his chest. The skin there was burned, fused with remnants of the fabric. One hand clutched the wound as he struggled for breath; the other stretched toward the woman, fingers curling tight as if crushing something unseen. I moved toward him, faster than anything here, Gerard still following me.