White froth broke against her boot as a wave lapped up her thigh. The water was cold. Wet. Perhaps even inquisitive if you were willing to anthropomorphize the way it seeped through the fabric of her jeans. Sarah wasn't. Not when she couldn't sense the ocean beyond the abstraction she was modeling in her head.
Her eye twitched towards the pieces of her body that had been tossed into the rolling surf. Each of her severed tendrils bobbed gaily in the current before sinking down towards the loosely shifting sand. After the tide retreated, one of them was left half buried by the coarse brown flakes. When the water rushed back towards the sea, it wiggled like an excited lover bidding Sarah adieu.
'I said, "Get up."'
Painted fingernails scratched at the shoreline, leaving eight long rents in the shell-encrusted dunes. Sarah used the additional leverage to pull herself forward until their winding tails were erased by the friction of her passing stomach. She dug a second set a little closer to the road and then gazed at the mangled tarmac. Her vision blurred in and out of focus, stung by sweat and tears.
'Six inches down; another four thousand to go.'
The non-thought crossed her mind while dull spasms raced across her toes, and her legs kicked feebly at the beach. Each blow was too weak to impede her forward progress, but Sarah still took the time to clamp down on the rogue signals regardless of their paltry threat. Her arms groped towards her throat. Sarah reconfigured her tendrils to kill those impulses too.
"Wua... ugh... st-taa-taa."
'Ignore it,' Sarah ordered as her tongue tripped over her teeth. 'Hands down. Shoulders up. Now, push.' Her body rose. If she wasn't missing a quarter of her limbs, her knees would've slipped forward to help support her weight. Since those particular tentacles were busy stimming autistically, she had to make do on her own.
It wasn't enough. By the time everything was in position, a tremor threw her balance off, and she pitched over onto her side. Once again, her fingers crept towards her nape.
'Piss off,' Sarah hissed, too livid to even feel mad. 'Get back in your fucking bottle.'
Ribbons of muscle all across her host stretched and contracted in reply. Most were too isolated to do much more than throb, barring two exceptions. One, the middle pharyngeal constrictor, caused Sarah to rock within her fleshy tomb. The other was her lower left pec, which impaired her attempts to get up.
Sarah made an effort, anyway. Rivulets of carmine dripped down her back while her head ached from the blood loss. The distant sirens were not helping matters. In between her periodic bouts of dizziness, she could hear them linger in the air like a dry wind passing through an empty gorge. In - out; higher, then lower. The further she crawled, the more they seemed like the former than the latter.
Minutes passed. So too did the meters. Neither were enough to reach the parking lot before a set of strobe lights smeared the area with a paroxysm of red and white beams. 'No blue,' a part of her noted drunkenly. 'The cops aren't here, yet.' It was an observation unaccompanied by much relief. Instead, a nameless dread weighed upon her shoulders until she couldn't distinguish between the psychological pressure and the torn skin dangling from her spine.
Two figures wearing bright white shirts ran back and forth beside the curb. They paused for an instant by a familiar, fallen blob before working their way onto the beach. "'m fine," Sarah slurred, her tongue struggling to get the pronunciation right. "'m fine. I'm fine. I'm fine." She practiced the phrase a few more times to ensure it would be ready when the paramedics finally reached her.
The line might have been more convincing if she could've said it while controlling her legs. A shiver wracked her thigh and then exploded outwards in a minor seizure. Centered around the strip of flesh, located half a foot from her hip, the tremor spread up along the joint and took her sense of stability with it. Sarah lurched to the side. Once she recovered from the disturbance, she found herself leaning upon a Hispanic woman and couldn't remember how she had gotten there.
"Careful, miss," the EMT said, her arm wrapped around Sarah's waist. "Why don't we just have a seat for a second?"
Rest was the last thing on the warspawn's mind as a pair of sun-warmed fingertips reached up to check her pulse. "No, no - I'm fine," Sarah insisted before slapping the hand aside out of habit. "It looks worse than it is. My friend should receive treatment first."
Sarah motioned towards Anthony, hoping to redirect the medic's attention. It worked until the woman noticed a thin trickle of blood, sliding along Sarah's collarbone. She traced the trail back to its source. A sharp wince was sucked through her teeth. "Thomas, get over here! And bring the road rash kit!"
"I'm a little busy, Carrie!" the man screamed back. Bent over Devon's prone form, he had his ear pressed against his patient's chest and his palm cupped over his mouth. Thomas waited a couple seconds to check the insensate student's breathing. Then he swore. Chest compressions began shortly afterwards.
Sarah gestured more insistently at Anthony. "Please, he really needs your help. I can wait by the van. It's only a half-minute walk."
Carrie's will began to waver the longer Sarah spoke without slurring. For a moment, the parasite thought she'd get away without having to answer any awkward questions. Emphasis on the past tense. Her knees buckled. She shouldn't have rerouted so many tentacles up to the top of her spine.
"Fuck," Carrie cursed before catching Sarah beneath her arm. "I guess, we're doing this. Dispatch, I have two U's, one NPB, and a third V going into hypovolemic shock. Please reroute additional units to my current location ASAP."
"Surely, it's not that bad," Sarah whined, only to catch sight of the woman's blood-covered hand. She blinked in confusion. A moment later, the warspawn could sense a strange fluid soaking through the waistband of her jeans. She had a feeling it wasn't sea water. "...Oh," Sarah muttered as a couple ruddy drops struck the sand. "Oh, that's actually quite severe, isn't it?"
Like diving into a frozen pool, the pain hit her in stages: first, after she slammed through the thick ice, and then again once her body slipped beneath the frigid surface. When experienced side by side, the agony of the impact made the ache of the water's chill hard to parse through her overworked tendrils. No wonder she hadn't noticed her host's difficulties until they were sliding down the crack of her ass; she'd barely even had the right tool kit.
A nauseous groan bubbled up Sarah's throat as Carrie laid her charge on the ground. When the astringent scent of alcohol entered her nose, Sarah wondered if she'd missed another mage during the scrum before she realized it was coming from a package of anti-septic wipes, which the medic had hastily torn open.
"Please hold still; this is likely to hurt." Particles of displaced sand were whisked away from Sarah's wounds in swift, delicate strokes. Carrie wasn't at the point of investigating the main gash, yet, but it was only a matter of time.
Sarah wasn't sure she had the strength to stop her once she finally made the attempt. She wasn't sure her host did, either. It was only now, as Sarah wept through her salt-caked lashes, that she detected a disquieting silence in the normally fraught synapses of her brain. Her better half had passed out. She couldn't tell if it was from the trauma or the pain, but neither was an encouraging sign. The former was worse, though: you could drink away bad memories; organ failure was a lot more permanent.
"I don't know if I can fix this," Sarah muttered softly to herself.
She'd meant to keep the admission locked away; however, it accidentally slipped free as Carrie prodded the avulsions along her back. "Don't worry," the medic reassured her. "That's why I'm here. You just try to relax. I promise you'll be fine."
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Sarah laughed. The worst part was Carrie was right. If she simply shut up and let the woman do her job, she'd make a full recovery. The only fly in the ointment was the infiltrator herself. So long as there was a parasite fucking around with her life, the woman called Sarah Fields would always be on the cusp of death.
Metaphorically or otherwise.
"I hate this. Why couldn't everything have just stayed the same?" She was happy, damn it. Like peanut butter and jelly, or weed-infused brownies, Sarah had finally found her niche. It wasn't a great one, nor terribly healthy in the long run, yet it was hers all the same. Hers until someone could pry it from her detached and broken nails. Was this that moment? Had the inevitable come at last?
Sarah reached for the mana in her gut. Her tiny core trembled harder than either of her shaking limbs. Could the toxic orb sense it? What she planned to do? If so, then she was glad to hear it was repulsed. She hoped the spell loathed the idea until the last mote burned itself out.
'Flower... twist to poison... Propofol... drip feed the release.' Sarah sunk a pair of arcane fangs into her left arm. The sharp burn spread up along her shoulder and down into her chest. Half of the signals in her brain started to get fuzzy and soft. The rest grew increasingly clear once they were no longer distracted by her host.
A few seconds later, the parasite could hear Carrie shout as 'Sarah' fell into a coma. 'Eleven days,' she reminded herself while the medic's muffled yell vibrated through her back. 'There should be enough mana in the wound to keep a human quiet for nearly two weeks. If not... if I can't get back before the drug wears off... I'll just blame everything on hysteria. I could use the therapy, anyway.'
Her relay buzzed with amusement until a wave of visceral discomfort washed the sensation away. Sarah missed her mouth. She missed her tongue. Could she really handle this for the better part of a fortnight?
'Don't think about it,' the parasite grumbled to herself. 'Just get ready to run. Out, down and then into the water.'
Sarah pushed through her own ravaged flesh with the tips of her surviving tendrils. Along her side, near her implant, she could feel her three mangled stumps slowly spurting more blue ichor. Something was going to have to be done about those eventually. Maybe if she got desperate, she could pinch them closed with her teeth. It'd depend on how her body reacted after she slipped into the filthy harbor.
'What the fuck did the Sea call my old adaption? [Hydrostatic clotting]? [Saline sutures]?' Sarah almost wished she could pull up its interface, solely for ease of reference. It had been almost three decades since the last time she'd seen the details, and the stress wasn't making it easy to translate the words from her native tongue.
She took a deep breath. Sarah blew the air back out her gills. 'Fuck it. Stop procrastinating. It either works or it doesn't.' She squirmed through the last half-inch of ruined meat protecting her from the mana-infused air. For the first time since the Good Friday Agreement was being touted, Sarah felt real sunlight playing across her fins.
The burning rays sucked twelve different flavors of ass. Carrie's horrified screech didn't add much to the ambiance as she lashed out with the flat of her hand. "What the fuck!" the EMT screamed, horrified by Sarah's true form. "Ew - ew - ew - ew - ew."
The parasite hopped over the terrified swat and landed amidst the blood-flecked dunes. Half a dozen pores along her flank began to secrete a layer of mucus while her eyes closed in carefully staggered blinks. First, the set at the front of her face just above her mandibles and jaw, then the pair beside her primary fin, where her trunk tapered towards her crest. The tertiary clusters followed afterwards, along with the ancillary globes set deep within her belly.
'Fuck, that's bright. Now, where the hell's the water?' Sarah skittered around a thrashing boot, paying Carrie's panic little heed.
Off to her right, an expansive glare shimmered across the hardpacked sand. By the time the ocean's waves receded, Sarah could almost make out the clouds' reflection in a few of the lingering pools. She darted for the nearest one, hoping to coat her body in the shallow brine. The salt burned her spongey carapace as soon as it intermingled with her wounds. 'Ugh,' she groaned. 'Puddle's too shallow. I'll need to fully submerge.'
Sarah could feel her thoughts growing sluggish the longer her lacerations continued to drip. What little clarity she'd regained from narrowing her focus was once again slipping away with each beat of her heart. She probably had twenty minutes at most before her body slipped into torpor. At that point, she'd be dead to the world until her constitution could affect repairs.
A strangled shout spurred her on as she dug her tendrils into the basin. With an irritated hiss, Sarah pushed herself above the towering lip and drunkenly squirmed towards the sea. She hit the water while the tide was coming in. After the current began tugging on her limbs, she relaxed her grip and let the surf carry her along like a piece of misplaced flotsam.
Her tendrils scabbed over once there were a few more meters between the shore and her battered flesh. She'd call it a quick recovery, except she knew it would've been faster had the ley line not interfered with the process. The excess mana was really scorching her raw. Most of the motes were headed south, instead of west towards the coast, but that didn't mean she couldn't sense the field as she swam for deeper water.
'Feels like... what - six mana an hour? That's really too damn high, considering how far I am from the seed.' As it was, she'd be waiting two or three weeks for her tendrils to fully regrow. If she had to deal with mana burns on top of that, they could be gone for the next few months.
'And I don't have that kind of time.' Terror was already nipping at her heels as she dodged the energetic undertow. Aiming for the sea floor, and its layers of thick particulate, Sarah hunted for a natural chasm and then lashed out at the rear wall once she'd found one that would offer some protection. Her tendrils dug into the sticky grains until she was a few feet below the surface. It was only then, after she had covered herself in silt, that she sensed the mana level begin to drop.
Sarah paused to take stock of her pain. In short? It'd be nice if she could say that her injuries were soothed by the heavy sand. Instead, the sediment lent weight to the shadows and reminded her of all she had lost. Her host; her mana; her dignity and self-respect. Bits of her tail were missing - as were one of her eyes. Ironically, the only thing that didn't seem to be gone were the teeth she had used to kill Barkley, and a couple of those might still fall out while she basted in this lightless hell.
'At least, I'm still on Earth,' Sarah consoled herself. 'I suppose it could be worse.'
'It could be worse.' She'd said that a lot before she'd left the oceans of Deravan. She'd spent much of her time squatting in similar holes as well. It was strange how easy it was to imagine she was still there. If she let her body relax, Sarah could almost feel the weight of the Seven Networks hovering just out of sight.
The Sea; the Light; the Loom and the Canvass. The Red Library and the Astral Verve. And the Unspeakable One, of course. You could never forget that broken hunk of scrap, no matter how many sleepless nights you'd spare yourself by ignoring its moldering corpse. It was too dangerous. Too unpredictable. Every time its interface popped up, you were literally gambling with your life. So much so, that it'd actually become the preferred form of suicide amongst her bitter cohort. Mostly because you might take someone with you if you got a bad enough roll of the dice.
Fuck, but they had been desperate. Had it really been close to thirty years? Sometimes, Sarah felt like she'd barely cleared the portal - as if she could glance over her shoulder and still see a million infiltrators being fed into an arcane cheese grater. Hell, a few of her compatriots had been so terrified of the unstable fissure that they'd preferred to bet on the mutilated Network, instead of searching for a figurative gap. If you were lucky, it might teleport you away in a flash of orange light. Where you went was anyone's guess, but at least you wouldn't be in the middle of the nobilities' latest power play.
...Most weren't that lucky. The quiet pop-pop-pop of imploding warspawn had hung over the shuffling crowd as Sarah slunk forward. Every once in a while, the Riftkeepers would call another section forward and then pack them into parade-perfect rows until they resembled a can of sardines.
Sarah had given him a dirty look up right up until the water had begun to warp. Then a whirlpool had formed around his fins and chased most of her expression away. She remembered his skull had turned inside out after she'd fled a few body lengths to the left. A couple seconds later, the rest of him had followed its example, leaving behind a cloud of expanding viscera. He'd almost beaten the odds.
Their minders hadn't cared. They'd just grabbed the next person in line and pulled him through the drifting gore.
That infiltrator hadn't made it, either. Sarah knew because she'd seen his body being torn apart as they journeyed across interstellar space. It had happened about twenty minutes in. The portal had been driving them past the edge of a black hole, and the gravitic pressure was right on the cusp of tearing the passageway in two. Sarah had managed to cling to the transparent currents and safely arc by. Her neighbor had slipped through the cracks and been spat out into hard vacuum. If you swung by Ophiuchus, you might still be able to see his corpse spinning through the interstellar dust.
'Like David Peoples' C-beams or those burning ships Batty spoke of.' A wave of lethargy settled over Sarah's shaking limbs. The opening cords of Blade Runner played in her mind as plumes of phantasmal fire ignited behind her eyes. Sarah couldn't tell you whether androids dreamed of electric sheep, but she knew she'd never dreamt at all until she'd been spat out above the Atlantic. Now, such visions came to her regularly. At home; in the office; whenever she stared out the window during the waning hours of the early morning. And yes, in this hole, as she waited for the salt to seal her wounds. Where better to be reminded of the past after everything she'd said and done? No tears, though. Those would have to come later.
'Eleven days,' Sarah promised herself. She'd cry when it wasn't a pretense.