Chương 35: 34: The Wolf-thing

They continued down the corridor, ornate stone giving way to a broader transit hall lined with recessed lighting and polished black metal. The silence didn't last. A figure stepped from an intersecting passage. White circular lenses gleamed behind a sleek avian helmet. Crimson and gunmetal-gray armor covered his body, feather-like panels layered along the shoulders, thighs, chest, and arms.

A high collar framed the base of the helmet, blending into the suit's armored gorget and giving the uniform a sharp, military silhouette. A utility belt hung at his waist, packed with equipment. The suit was lighter than a Talon's, built for mobility rather than overwhelming force. Before Katherine could fully process the sight, a compact weapon had already unfolded from his belt into a full-sized dark-magneta blaster. Butter's eyes widened slightly.

"Oh, that was quick." KRAAAM! A beam erupted down the corridor. The impact should have eviscerated them. Instead, Sonata flashed violet around Katherine while Requiem bathed Butter in silver light. The blast shattered against the barriers and exploded harmlessly around them, vaporizing chunks of wall and leaving a molten crater stretching hundreds of meters behind. Katherine blinked.

"... Was that supposed to hurt?"

"A little." The operative fired again. KRAAAM! KRAAAM! KRAAAM! Three continent-cratering blasts hammered into them. Three bursts of violet and silver answered. Neither girl moved. Katherine burst into laughter, pointing at the armored man.

"Nice try, buddy." She tilted her head, still grinning.

"Why's his suit different from the Talons?" Butter watched him carefully as another blast burst against Requiem's glow.

"Different divisions. Different jobs. Talons are heavy hitters."

"Then what's he?"

"An Operative. Steppers wear something similar too. No collars, no feathers, usually bulkier armor. Less fancy. More practical."

"I see."

"Basically." Katherine nodded.

"Got it." The operative abruptly stopped firing. A small metallic object slipped from his hand and clattered onto the floor. It was a matte-black disc about the size of a drink coaster, its surface etched with concentric silver rings that pulsed with a faint, sickly violet glow. Tiny vents unfolded around the rim with a sharp click-click-click, releasing shimmering distortions that rippled through the air like heat haze as the device activated. Butter's expression changed immediately.

"Haven't seen one of these in a while." The device unfolded. A pulse erupted outward. Invisible waves rippled through the corridor. Reality seemed to wobble. Katherine felt pressure slam against her thoughts, something invasive trying to crawl into her mind and tear it apart from the inside. The amulets flashed. Violet and silver light pushed the influence away. The pressure blinked away. Mostly. Requiem only blocked seventy-five percent. Butter's eye twitched. For a brief instant she heard whispers.

Saw impossible geometries. Felt a profound certainty that every object in existence was secretly judging her fashion choices. Her lip curled.

"Perpendosi." The word left her mouth like a verdict. The operative's shadow rose off the floor and swallowed him whole. Silence followed. The image flickered. Once. Twice. And dissolved into static. Katherine stared.

"... That was a hologram." Butter glanced down the corridor. The real operative was nowhere to be seen.

"Oh my. He escaped."

"Seriously?" Butter nodded.

"Smart." There wasn't even annoyance in her voice, only professional acknowledgment. The operative had taken one look at the situation, decided fighting was a terrible idea, left a hologram behind, tossed a desync mine as a parting gift, and run. Frankly, Butter respected it. Katherine looked down at the device still humming on the floor.

"That would've made us insane?"

"Completely looney in seconds."

"Wowie." Butter stepped forward. CRUNCH. The mine flattened beneath her prosthetic foot, metal folding like tin foil. The destabilizing hum died instantly.

"Let's keep moving." Katherine glanced at the amethyst hanging around her neck.

"How strong are these things?" Butter blinked.

"The amulets?"

"Yeah. What are their limits?" Butter scratched her cheek.

"Sonata can absorb roughly enough force to destroy Earth ninety-five times over. Requiem can handle about twice that. One hundred and ninety." Katherine nearly missed a step. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Holy mother of Christ" Butter shrugged.

"You asked." Katherine stared at the amethyst, then at the gray marble teardrop resting against Butter's chest beneath its faint silver glow.

"Ninety-five Earths?"

"Mmhm."

"And one hundred and ninety?"

"Also mmhm." Katherine scratched her chin thoughtfully.

"Could someone like Korhess break them?" Butter let out a laugh.

"Korhess? Honeycakes, Korhess could probably break them by accident." Katherine's eyes widened.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. If she genuinely wanted to, she could probably erase an entire solar system with a punch." Katherine stopped walking.

"She's that strong?" Butter looked over her shoulder.

"Duh." The answer came so naturally that Katherine almost felt silly for asking.

"Why do you think I had to use Fortissimo against her?" Butter continued.

"Korhess hits mother-fluffing hard. Even with my Gloom interfering, her punches still hurt, impossibly. Every time she landed one, it felt like my skeleton was trying to resign." Katherine grimaced, but the expression quickly shifted into something closer to concern.

"Sugarbear. I'm suddenly much less impressed with these necklaces." Butter snorted.

"Honeycakes, relax. There aren't many things on Korhess's level."

"Really?"

"Really. This faction is weak by Syndicate standards. Experiment-wise, anyway." She gestured vaguely around them.

"That's the only reason I even agreed to come here as a duo." Katherine blinked.

"A duo?"

"Yes. Me and Clock. No backup." Butter pointed at herself.

"Do you seriously think I'd stroll into one of the stronger factions like this?" The question answered itself.

"No," Katherine admitted.

"Exactly." Butter shoved her hands into her pockets.

"I wouldn't even risk walking around in the open if we were dealing with one of the nastier branches. We'd be sneaking, crying, praying, and possibly writing farewell letters." Katherine laughed despite herself. Butter shrugged.

"This place is basically the kiddie pool compared to some of the horrors floating around out there."

"I'm still scared."

"You should be." Butter offered a tired grin.

"The reassuring part is that we're not in those places." The two continued down the corridor. Katherine kept the satchel clutched against her chest. Inside, the Nonagon remained silent, hidden within its runed prison.... The two continued down the corridor. After several minutes, the passage widened and curved right into something more like a gallery than a hallway. Massive leaded-glass windows stretched between pillars of dark stone, casting fractured moonlight across polished marble.

Katherine adjusted the satchel against her chest.

"You know, I'm still not over the dog twerking competition." Butter groaned.

"I'm starting to think you're making fun of me."

"I'm not." Katherine laughed.

"I just keep remembering it." Their laughter echoed softly through the corridor. Then the world exploded. BOOM- CRASH -SHATTER! One of the enormous windows imploded inward. Glass, stone fragments, and a cyclone of frigid air tore through the gallery. Katherine jumped. Butter barely lowered her hand before a shape hurtled through the opening and slammed onto the marble floor. THUMP. For a heartbeat, Katherine's brain stalled. A wolf? No. A werewolf, but nothing like the ones from her pod-dreams.

It was far too large, better described as some kind of wolf-thing than anything recognizably human. Built like a greyhound for speed rather than brute strength, it was lean and sinewy, stretched long with unnaturally elongated limbs bent at sharp animal angles. Dark fur the color of a midnight bruise clung to its frame in uneven patches streaked with icy blue, and a thick muscular tail dragged behind it. Its head was narrow and angular, all blade-like bone and predatory intent.

Pale eyes glowed from a shadowed face while long forelimbs ended in grotesquely human hands tipped with black claws. SKRRRRRCH. The claws carved lines through the marble as the creature settled into a low crouch. Motionless. Katherine stared. Then slowly looked at Butter. Butter looked at Katherine. A terrible realization passed between them. Katherine pointed at the creature.

"Do you think-""No."

"But technically-""No."

"It is a dog." Butter's shoulders immediately started shaking.

"Oh no."

"The timing is incredible." Butter made a strangled noise, trying and failing not to laugh. The werewolf remained perfectly still. Katherine pointed again.

"Do you think it twerks?" That broke her. Butter doubled over laughing. The creature blinked once. Katherine lost the battle a second later. Now both of them were laughing in the middle of a shattered gallery while a nightmare predator crouched twenty feet away trying to look intimidating. The werewolf's ears slowly rotated backward. Then it wasn't there. Its needle-lined jaws suddenly appeared an inch from Katherine's face, the smell of wet fur, ozone, and raw meat flooding her nose.

Butter moved immediately, a blur of white hair and bandages as her fist carved through the space where the creature should have been. BOOM! The remaining windows rattled. Only a cobalt afterimage remained. World-denying movement speed. Butter's amusement vanished.

"An experimental speedster? Here?" Her punch had missed completely. Korhess had been different. A self-made horror who had clawed her way from beast of burden to demigod through stolen power. This thing felt engineered. Finished. A product. Butter backpedaled as a blade of compressed air hissed past her throat. New Zealand was supposed to be the Apis farm faction, she thought. Dreams. Logistics. Resources. Not this. The numbers didn't work.

You couldn't mass-produce monsters while maintaining the delicate systems needed to farm human potential. Unless the farms and experiments weren't separate. Unless the experiments were the quality control. And the best subjects for testing new Apis strains...... were the people you'd already broken. Katherine tried to track it. The pod had sharpened her perception enough to follow Talons, dissect micro-movements, and watch impossible techniques unfold in slow motion. This was different.

Even forcing her senses to their limit, stretching fractions of a second into subjective eternities, she saw only a smear of dark motion. It wasn't moving at Mach speeds. It moved like a bad film cut. Instantaneous repositioning, vaguely reminiscent of Butter's Moth-Step. Katherine never saw the attack. Never saw a wind-up. THOOM! The world lurched sideways. Katherine rocketed across the corridor tearing across the corridor and through an ornamental wall.

Stone and plaster exploded around her as she crashed into a dim side chamber. The amethyst at her throat, Sonata, erupted in violent purple light. The hit should have turned her into vapor. Instead the necklace absorbed the force, dispersing it through layers of defensive magic. Katherine slammed into the far wall hard enough to crater stone, the breath blasted from her lungs, but she remained alive. The purple glow flickered. Dimmed. Then Katherine's eyes widened.

A hairline crack ran across the flawless surface of the amethyst. Her stomach dropped. Butter had told her what Sonata could withstand. Enough force to destroy Earth ninety-five times over. And it had cracked. Which meant that single hit had carried at least planetary levels of force. Possibly more.

"Oh no," Katherine whispered. Before the dust settled, a sharp mechanical click cut through the ringing in Katherine's ears. CH - CHK. A rifle being readied. She looked up, terror icing her veins. Their armor was different - sleeker, more practical. Dark gunmetal plating reinforced the vitals, marked with warning-red accents, while twin circular white lenses whirred softly as they focused on her. Steppers. The grunts. But grunts armed with Apis. Two of them.

One flexed a pair of high-tech iron knuckles glowing with dull orange heat. The other leveled a rifle that looked more like a weaponized physics experiment. Its chassis was deep arterial crimson threaded with molten-gold veins pulsing beneath the surface, and a hexagonal-prism barrel bent light into a fractured halo as it pointed directly at her chest. The knuckle-user stepped forward.

"You. The anomalous energy signature within that bag is visible. Relinquish it. Refuse and you die by my hand. It will be inefficient. Painful." Katherine scrambled upright, clutching the satchel.

"And if I do relinquish it?" The rifleman answered immediately.

"Then you die by my hand. Quicker. Less painful." Katherine brushed dust from her hair.

"That doesn't really sound like a better dea-" The Stepper punched the air. WHUMP - CRASH! A focused train of concussive force slammed into Katherine like a god's fist. Sonata erupted in brilliant amethyst light as the reinforced stone wall behind her disintegrated into powder. She was blasted through the breach into yet another corridor, tumbling end over end through clouds of rubble. Without the necklace, there wouldn't have been enough left of her to identify.

She coughed, rolled onto her back, and glanced down at the glowing gem. Still intact. Still protecting her. A ridiculous surge of confidence bubbled up through the panic. She was alive. The necklace worked. Katherine pushed herself upright and shouted into the dust, "Is that all you-""Executing gem-disabling countermeasures." The rifleman's flat voice cut her off. A targeting laser snapped onto the amethyst at her throat. Then the rifle began to hum. Something she felt in her teeth.

The frequency shifted thousands of times per second, cascading through countless harmonics as the weapon searched, adapted, and recalibrated. Hunting. Seeking the exact resonance that wouldn't bypass Sonata. But shatter it. The confidence evaporated instantly. Run. Katherine turned and bolted. As she sprinted through the corridor clutching the satchel to her chest, one hysterically clear thought floated to the surface. Oh. So this is what Butter feels like all the time.