Chapter 10: Bigger Fish

Nathan heard the arrival of the woman who landed with the crashing of glass, and the dull thud of her feet impacting the office floor.

He had made himself small and low, behind one of the cubicles. His tendrils couldn't quite get a fix on the woman's location, and so Nathan assumed the same would be true with her. As if she could hear his thoughts, a volley of bolts slammed into the wall of the Cubicle Nathan was behind.

One managed to find its mark, burrowing into Nathan's left bicep and causing him to stagger back in pain, his tendrils quickly launching downwards to keep him on his feet.

Deciding not to waste a precious second, Nathan immediately began to sprint forward, wrenching the spine out of his arm. It took some effort, and Nathan was very much thankful for the adrenaline in his system, as when it did finally come free, he noticed that the thing was barbed.

Cursing and tossing the spine aside as he continued to dart from cubicle to cubicle, avoiding the incoming fire as best he could, his mind racing for a new plan.

From what Nathan could tell, if he was behind something solid like the wall of a cubicle then his tendrils would only be able to tell him she was near however she could still get a vague direction and so fire wildly at it.

This hypothesis was based on somewhat stupid experimentation, involving but not limited too standing slightly more stationary than he should of, out in the open versus doing the same behind cover. Having discovered this at the cost of having to wrench more of those barbed bastards out, Nathan had managed to come up with a plan.

To call it a plan in actuality was a stretch, it basically relied upon two observations. The first being that she never seemed to push closer to Nathan, and in fact if he moved closer to her even while using cover, she would retreat and try to keep a distance.

The second was that he managed to beat the shit out of her last time in close range, and so he sought to repeat that success this time.

Gathering his courage, and firming his resolve that he was likely to be hit and those spines hurt, even through his adrenaline haze, he prepared to rush her.

With a deep breath he burst out from behind the cubicle, and rushed towards her. Predictably she began to fall back, firing at him as he approached.

Nathan had managed to grab an office chair that he was attempting to use as cover, but the new rate of fire the woman possessed, on top of the new spines and force at which she fired, quickly made the improvised shield redundant and thusly useless. Aside from blunting the impact slightly.

Fortunately due to her retreating, her accuracy wasn't great and so Nathan managed to avoid any direct hits to the head though a few did come close.

This poor accuracy was quickly worsened, as Nathan pressed onwards faster than the woman could back pedal forcing her to turn and run.

Nathan had expected this, and so dipped into a walkway running parallel to the one she had run into, having changed her direction to avoid being pressed against the window with no where to run.

She could obviously sense his relative position and began to try to fire shots at him, but all this did was give Nathan an idea of her position.

Controlling his speed to fall slightly behind her, he waited until the pause between volleys, then pushed forwards at his top speed using his tendrils to rend him along to make it to the gap in the rows that would let Nathan slip into the same walkway as her, but ahead of her.

He did this in one swish motion, using his tendrils and limbs in tandem, and landed perfectly in front of a very surprised woman who was unable to slowdown in time to avoid the poised man sharply extending his fist and tendrils at her.

What followed next was almost an exact repeat of what happened at the supermarket. He landed the first punch on her face while his tendrils locked up hers.

While she was staggered he laid more blows one after the other into her, which dazed her and thus weakened her tendrils enough for his to rend and tear hers free. This time however, she staggered back and attempted to flee, firing wildly at Nathan and managing to land many in his gut causing him to buck over in pain.

As he did this, the woman leaped out of the building and down to the ground landing on a car with a loud crunching of metal and the shattering of glass, shortly followed by the car's alarm.

Nathan cursed and grunted, as he angrily wrenched the spines out. He did however notice that they were distinctly thinner and a few were actually lacking the barbed bit at the end, 'I guess she does have a limit then' Nathan thought, as he ran after his prey.

Nathan used his tendrils to clamber down the building by smashing into the easy to penetrate glass windows and wrapping around the support frame that ran all the way up the building.

He managed to do this at quite the speed, something he credited to getting used to his tendrils. As soon as he hit the ground he began to scan for the woman, his tendrils were doing the same but hadn't picked up anything since she ran.

This was strange, as even if she was obscured behind a building or object, they would still vibrate and send that chill into his mind yet there was nothing.

Confused he walked over to the crumpled car she had landed on, its alarm was almost defiantly blaring given the visual extent of the damage that had been caused on the car, with its roof being completely caved in and whole chassis being bent down so that the car looked like a U shape on two sets of wheels.

As Nathan inspected the car, his eyes settled on bright glints of red which as he focused he noticed a feint smoky trail of red wafting off these glints and coalescing into far denser clouds of the stuff.

Looking at the denser clouds he could see that they were blowing in an unseen wind, and when he looked in the direction of the unseen wind he could see more of the glints of red, only this time he could see more clearly what they were coming from: blood stains.

Quickly adding one and one together in his head, Nathan followed the trail his senses where laying out for him, once again unaware of the slight change to the boney ridge on his face which now completely covered his nose, leaving in its place four angled slits within a slight grove in the surface of the ridge.

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Samantha cursed through the pain, as she bit back tears of anger and fear. She was terrified of what Hayden would do, now that she had failed a direct order from him.

A part of her bit back at the thought, "If he wanted you to win, he should of sent more. After all, the guy is strong and even evolved after partially draining you." But her fear at how Hayden would react to the news, and the thousands of possibilities that populated her mind quickly drowned that voice out.

She staggered into a plaza of some kind, situated in front of one of the tallest buildings in the area. In the distance she could see one of the Godspines, and briefly contemplated resting against it and its soothing resonating hum.

She quickly dispelled the thought, knowing that if she didn't return to Hayden today he would assume she was dead and if he found out she lived, he would make her brother do far worse things than he had ever made her do.

With her will beginning to loose the battle with her tired and beaten body, she began to smell something wonderful. Her eyes panned up to see five, no twelve men approaching her. They were wearing military uniforms, with gas masks and had rifles cautiously raised towards her.

She smiled and thought, "Health Packs, excellent." One of them clearly misinterpreted the expression, lowering his weapon and cautiously approaching saying, "Its okay miss, you're safe now. I need you to come with me, so we can get you checked by a doctor."

Seeing no reason to give the jig up now, Samantha played innocently along thankful her evolutions had yet to rob her of her human like face like it had the two bastards she knew, who had one thing in common: They both refused vehemently to give up and die.