Are You Even Human

As the twitching alien tendril falls from the roof, new organs blooming out from it into an entirely new copy of the Angel, the thought running first and foremost in my mind is 'I should probably stop running directly towards that.'

I keep running anyway, because I'm not yet sure where else to go and running is certainly better than stopping. Emily isn't giving me any alternate directions either, though I'm not sure if that's because this is the best path or because she's a bit shell-shocked by the dismembered tentacle thing. I bark at her, trying to get her attention and hoping she'll figure out what I mean.

"Left!" she says, because of course she gets what I mean, god damn I love how she does that. I break left immediately, tearing through someone's yard and trying to get at least a fence or something between us and the Angel. Line of sight might not mean a whole lot to the aliens, but they can still see things so it can't hurt to deny them that.

Especially given the Angel's weird eyes. Who knows what's up with those. I rush across the ground, the dry, unmaintained grass of the yard crinkling between my toes with every thudding footfall. In the rush of adrenaline—or whatever weird alien equivalent is in my bloodstream right now—my mind feels clearer than ever, obsessing over every tiny detail of my footfalls, charting a course for each step to ensure I run at my maximum speed with minimum risk of tripping. I'm ready as the recently-cloned Raptors jump over the fence to attack us, already leaping to the side so I can stab one with my forelimb.

Anastasia gets to it first, shearing the monster in half with a rising arc of blood. But as she does we feel that pulse of power, that demand for separation as creation, and both halves of the fallen Raptor ripple and bubble as they regenerate into wholes.

"Stab, Ana!" Emily shouts. "Don't cut!"

"R-right!" Anastasia confirms.

Is that really all there is to it? I guess we'll see. My number one focus is just going to be on maintaining maximum speed as much as physically possible, since it's pretty clear that if we let ourselves stay in one place for more than a second we'll get completely swarmed. …As opposed to just regular swarmed, I guess.

I might be faster than other Raptors, but we're directly in enemy territory rushing towards an active battle zone. There are plenty of Raptors already in front of me. More dangerously, I'm not faster than Wasps… and I don't think I'm faster than that Angel, either. That one might be particularly bad.

The moment we're over the next fence, the monsters are back in view and closer than ever. The multi-tentacled abomination moves like nothing I've ever seen before in my life, effortlessly twisting from limb to limb with complete disregard for its resulting orientation. It reminds me almost of one of those novelty plasma globes, the ones that look like an ever-shifting ball of lighting that twists and reacts to your fingers when you touch the glass casing. It's almost hypnotizing the way the Angel flows as it moves, gliding across the ground in a manner completely detached from any living being I've ever seen before in my life.

I kind of want to move like that. Is that weird? I feel like that's weird. It's definitely not something that I should be thinking about right now, fleeing for my life with the responsibility of keeping three other people alive literally weighing on my shoulders. But for basically my whole life, as long as I can remember, I grew up in a body that more or less just didn't work. I've been tuning it out as much as I can, since we're in this whole life-or-death situation, but just walking and running in a normal human body feels as alien to me as doing it as a Raptor. It feels wrong to me. I have to actively suppress the instincts I'm used to: the vertigo from speed, the constant search for walls to brace myself against, the flashes of panic when I realize I don't have my cane… running my mind on someone else's brain tends to help bury those instincts, but somehow deep down they're still there. I still have just enough of me to be terrified of how little of me is really left.

What's the difference between a body like Lia's, a body like this Raptor's, and a body like that Angel's? I'm scared to find out, because I'm pretty sure the answer won't be anywhere near as much as I feel like it should be. And the way the Angel moves is beautiful. Maybe that's just the Raptor brain talking, in the same way it feels so unnatural and strange to not drop everything and kill myself for disobeying the monster approaching me. But maybe it isn't, and I'm not sure what that says about me other than the fact that I'm still really bad at not letting my mind wander while running for my life.

…I guess that could be the part of this that's Raptor-brained. My task doesn't require a lot of thinking, and while my odds of death seem quite high I just can't bring myself to be afraid of that because I can't be afraid of anything at all.

Step, step, jump, step. Outside the realm of my thoughts, the world is a blur of movement and a rhythm of claws against the ground. Above all else—even speed, for it is essential to speed—is balance. Balance as I push each foot off the ground and drive myself forward. Balance as I leap over a charging Raptor and bat away its tail as it tries to yank me to the ground. Balance as the three girls cling desperately to my back, the slightest jolt of uneven footing threatening to send them tumbling into an army of hungry maws. I am their life and they are my Task. We must run, so I run.

But despite my best efforts, I am not running fast enough. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that a plan with 'step one: have Julietta use her legs' is already encountering a snag. A week ago, the closest I could get to running was to smack the ground with my cane harder so that people remember I'm behind them and slow the fuck down. Yet now I've slipped into a monster's body like a second skin, wrapping up everything I used to be into brand-new packaging, so it almost made me believe there was someone different inside.

Anastasia attacks the Angel as it rapidly gains on us—it and its clone, not that I can tell which is which anymore—but as she reaches out to strike at the edge of her range, another pulse of power reaches out, briefly hitting my senses for just a moment and seeming to disrupt Anastasia's control. I feel her flinch on my back and a large chunk of her blood falls to the ground, left behind as I continue to run. Still, the brave kid immediately gathers what she has for another attack.

"Wait, Ana," Emily says firmly, twisting around and putting a hand on her shoulder. "Don't attack. Let it come closer."

"Closer?" Anastasia asks, scared and a bit incredulous. I leap over the back of another intercepting Raptor, gouging it with my talons as I use it as a springboard.

"You felt it, right?" Emily asks. "It pushed you away. Your power is like a balloon. The more you expand it, the thinner it gets, until the slightest poke can make you pop."

"Pop!?" Anastasia yelps, turning to her.

What is Emily talking about? This is the first I'm hearing of this. I'm a little busy focusing on the Angel behind us, watching how its undulating limbs hook into and carry it across walls just as quickly as it seems to move across the ground, and decide to head for the road. It'll have dangerously long sightlines, but the Angel is way better at cornering than I am and avoiding straightaways will put me at too much of a speed disadvantage. That monster is gaining on us, but the faster I go the more time I buy us and the closer to our destination we get before the inevitable fight.

"You'll be fine," Emily assures Anastasia, squeezing her shoulder a little tighter and pointing to the Angel. "Stay focused. Look at your target and listen to me. Your power has a range. Inside that range, you can move your blood. But you can also keep other powers out. That's how you and Christine protect me from the Queen. And that's how the Angel is going to protect itself from you."

"W-what do I do, then?" Anastasia asks.

"You wait for their balloon to expand," Emily says, "and then you pop it. Christine!"

"W-what!?" Christine yelps, nearly falling off my back.

"You been listening?" Emily asks. "Because if there's any time we're gonna need you, it's now."

"I-I don't know if I can really help…"

Are you kidding me, Christine? Is this a joke? You can get stuff out of my way. You can blow up objects close to the ground so their pieces block pursuers. You can rip structures apart in front of me and then reform them around things. Anything with a brick or concrete foundation thick enough could probably let us give the Angel the slip just like that!

"You take things apart," Emily says. "Living things are made of parts. I'm pretty sure you can explode aliens."

Or maybe you could have just done that the whole time! What!?

"N-no," Christine stammers. And then, a bit more firmly, "No."

"Christine," Emily says in that classic, patronizingly pleasant customer service tone, "we're going to fucking die."

"I-I know, but I can't," Christine insists. "I can't just do things! It's too much! I'm not like you or Lia or Ana, none of this—"

A crashing sound cuts her off as a Behemoth suddenly walks through a house in front of us, splintering the wooden frame and shattering the drywall with all the ease of wading through a kiddie pool. Seriously, why didn't they do that the whole time we were taking shelter? No time to turn, that'd just get us caught. We're going under the legs.

Christine screams bloody murder as I barrel directly towards the gangly Behemoth, not sure if I can rely on my reflexes to actually dodge its legs but not having much in the way of choices. I've been one of those, if only briefly. I know how its legs work, the sort of angles it's designed to be stable with… but I don't have time to try and analyze it for some hidden weakness, it's already here.

The first leg moves predictably, though the jerking leap I have to perform to dodge it still almost knocks everyone else off my back. It's the second strike that I fuck up on. Not even the fifth, fourth, or even the third. I fuck up right at round two, before I even manage to get under the thing at all. The next giant, bladed leg is on its way to cut me in half, and while I might actually survive something like that nowadays I don't think it would bode well for our escape chances.

But as always, Anastasia's got it covered. A child cuts herself to make up for my mistakes, and the limb that was about to shear me in half is torn apart in my stead. The massive monster stumbles as its weight suddenly unbalances from the loss, and that's all the time I need to jump around the back limb and keep running. Thank you, Anastasia, thank you. I'm so sorry.

Another pulse of power pushes against me from behind, and the Angel picks up the discarded limb with a tendril as it passes by, rushing under the Behemoth after us and hurling the leg our way like a javelin. I dodge to the side, barely avoiding the crystal spear as it passes us and clatters to the ground ahead of us… where an entirely new Behemoth starts to form out of it and stand back up.

Out of the frying pan and then back into the frying pan, like a flipped omelet. We don't even get the progress of the fire. This is crazy! What the hell is this nutty power? How come I have to eat my weight in peanut butter in order to have enough mass to shapeshift but this thing gets to generate free Behemoths out of thin air!?

Trying to go under the legs didn't work well last time, so I veer off to one side of it. I can't give it a wide enough berth to prevent myself from being attacked while still heading mostly in the right direction, but only being under threat from two legs instead of four might help. Emphasis on 'might.'

I have to dodge this time, though. I can't just let Anastasia keep saving us, especially with how her power seems to make it easier for the Angel to use its power. So fucking focus this time, Julietta. Quit getting distracted and get prepared. It's not a matter of whether you can do this or not. You don't have a choice.

Failure isn't excusable, regardless of whether or not it's in any way my fault.

One step, two, three… now. Feint right, dodge left. The Behemoth doesn't fall for it, taking a swipe at me, but I kick off the ground again and let it barely pass by. The next leg comes for me, too, but I'm ready for it, having learned my lesson and avoided jumping too far off the ground. Two more quick steps, and the blade whiffs by me. We're home free. I did it. I did it!

Then Anastasia cuts a leg off anyway.

What? Damn it, no! Another pulse of power slams into my back, devoid of physical force but still a crushing weight against me, clawing at my mind in eager anticipation of seeing me cut apart. Shit, the same thing is going to happen again! I suppose the Angel could always rip the limb off itself, but that would at least slow one of its bodies down a bit. Did Anastasia panic because I cut it too close? Should I be taking a more circuitous route after all?

I flinch in shock as, in the same moment I start to panic about this, Anastasia rips a deep gouge across the entire length of her arm and launches the blood at the Angel and its clone all at once as two giant, impaling spears of crimson. She shouts in fury, her own power flaring out as she does, emboldened by her rage and her injury. And this time, they don't dissolve. Anastasia reaches out to the Angel at the same time the Angel reaches out to the Behemoth, and her spears strike true.

Both Angels are impaled dead-center, knocked back and sent collapsing onto the road behind us as Anastasia's blood rends them from inside, puncturing countless holes without ever cutting a piece off.

"Holy shit, Ana, yes!" Emily whoops. "That was perfect!"

Anastasia just nods, the grip of her knees on my back loosening a little as she presses the deep wound on her arm firmly against her body. She's still awake, still glowering at the Angel, but that attack just left a lot of blood behind. While her tiny body has a lot more of the stuff in it than the average kid, it's clear she's not in good shape. I bark loudly a couple times.

"What's up… oh. Oh!" Emily yelps. "Christine, grab Ana! Don't let her fall!"

Christine jolts and takes a moment to comply, but she successfully twists around and gets a firm arm around Anastasia, though it's a little awkward since the girl is sitting behind her.

"Take deep breaths, Ana," Emily says as we continue to make distance from the dying Angel. "You did good. You did really good. Just don't fall asleep now, okay?"

Yeah. She really did well. She protected us, but she had to hurt herself to do it. It's not right. It's not. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it so much. And yes, I get that I do it too, but I'm not nine years old, damn it! Still. Given the size of those wounds, she very well might have just killed an Angel. That's incredible, and it almost certainly saved our lives.

But then, of course, that horrific mass of tentacles reaches inside its own wound and rips itself in half. It twists and bubbles and regenerates into two new wholes, and then it continues to rip off parts of itself to expand its army. In the end, all Anastasia did was buy us a bit of time and convince the monster to stop holding back. But you know what? I'll take it. It's more than I could ever ask of her, and now it's up to me to make sure the time isn't wasted.

I wish there was something more I could do than run. It's harder to do that, now, since Anastasia is barely conscious. She's holding on, but her attacks are slower, her decision-making is poorer, and I can't simply rely on the obstacles in my way being cut down before I need to deal with them. I can feel her swaying on my back, and she would have long since fallen off if not for Christine holding onto her. At least she can do that much.

Minutes of sprinting pass, my energy reserves slowly burning as my alien muscles tire and get replaced with identical, fresh copies. The Raptors still hound us and the Wasps start to swarm, slowing us down as I have to bob and weave wildly between sprays of deadly acid, but something's weird about it now. Especially with the Wasps. Given how many of them there are, the attacks on us are strangely infrequent. Some of them even seem like they're intended to miss, to just try and slow me down or corral me. I don't like it. There's nothing I can do about it, either, and that makes me like it even less.

Maybe it's possible to return fire, though. I do have a mental repository of Wasp biology, and while the acid organs are damaged I could potentially figure out how to repair them and fire back… but would that even help? There's a ton of Wasps, and they're designed to attack from above. Even if I could fire an acid glob high enough to reach them, they could just fly out of my range and continue attacking me anyway because they have gravity on their side.

…No reason not to have the trick in my pocket though, right? I've already been thinking about this for the past few days, and finally cracking this problem and solving it could be key to getting us out of here alive. I just need to… oh, shit.

It's back. And it has brought a lot of friends.

I can feel them. The Angels. A swarm of them, something that shouldn't even be possible because that's not what Angels are. They're the powered aces, the super-dangerous singular threats that might only number in the single digits in any given incursion. Even the Raptors and Wasps around me seem perturbed, confused, overwhelmed… I don't know how I feel it but I do, the pervading sense that this is wrong, this is a lie, this isn't what Angels are because Angels are special, unique, exalted, chosen! They cannot be copied so cheaply, and yet… and yet…!

This… this might be the closest thing I've felt to fear while in this body.

A dozen Angels… no, two dozen have all entered my senses all at once, and soon after we see them. Swarming over rooftops, surrounding and overtaking us, I get the distinct impression that everything up until now involved a few pairs of kid gloves and now they are coming off.

"Oh fuck," Christine whimpers predictably.

"Oh, fuck," Emily swears, and that actually makes me worried. I give her a questioning bark, slowing down very slightly as I watch her head whip around in panic, looking for a new way out.

"I-I don't know, Lia!" she answers me. "They circled around us, I don't… I think we can't…"

She glances around in every direction, her panic increasing until her eyes finally settle on Christine. Then she takes a deep breath and lets it out.

"We'll have to fight," she tells me. "Don't try to jump over them or dodge them. We have to kill them."

Literally how, though?

"How?" Anastasia croaks. Yeah, thank you, what she said. "I tried. I tried and it didn't… I couldn't…"

"Lia," Emily snaps. "You'll need to figure it out. Grab one. Learn where its goddamn brain is."

…Ah. Okay, I can see the strategy. If we can kill it instantly, it can't use its duplicate power on us. Risky as fuck, since we'll be getting in close to the monsters, but I guess we don't have a great alternative. I bark in affirmation and speed back up, picking my target as best I can. We want to maximize the amount of time it'll take to be swarmed in any particular engagement, or even better… there. That one's going through a thin alleyway. We'll only have to fight on two sides, rather than in every direction. I rush for it.

Touch it. All I have to do is touch it, keep everyone alive in the process, and tell Anastasia how to kill it. Easy, right? So easy. It's only a writhing mass of dexterous limbs covered in sharp scales, able to trivially reach around me to grab the people on my back and rip them in half. We're pretty much doomed, no two ways about it.

But for better or worse, I can't feel fear.

Twenty feet, ten feet, five feet—! I jab out my forelimb blade as the writhing mass reaches greedily for me, tendrils rushing forward to tear us all to pieces. But my feet sprout new back toes, digging into the concrete and hooking into a crack. The newly made bones snap as my momentum suddenly halts, but I ignore the pain because all that matters is this one little touch!

And I get it. My blade scrapes its scales, and I feel the Angel in all its glory. A glorious masterwork of near-incomprehensible biology, the Angel's flesh is perhaps the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed. Its scales are made of tiny crystals, protruding from the skin underneath as miniature versions of the blade-limb tips of other aliens, stacked and interlocked in such a way as to provide phenomenal protective coverage without sacrificing its dazzling flexibility. The skin itself is loose on the creature's body, capable of shifting and twisting over its internal organs in ways completely unlike anything I've seen before.

Internally, it is no less impressive. The muscular and organ structures necessary to enable that level of strength and power across the entire creature's body are incredible. All its necessary systems are efficient and well-protected. Like the other Angel I've seen, this one is clearly crafted to perfection, a labor of love with clear evidence of wisdom and understanding behind the design. But looking back now, I can see that the last Angel I touched was designed to be art, but this one? This one was designed to be a weapon.

Copies of its tendrils burst forth from my back, almost entirely without thought on my part. I don't think I could have stopped myself from making them if I wanted to; my body needs these changes, it needs this beautiful new form, at least in some small way, or else I'd go mad from the yearning for them. They burst from my flesh and clash with the tendrils seeking us, fighting them off long enough for Anastasia to strike.

She doesn't know where she's aiming, not yet, but at point-blank range she doesn't need to. Her blood stabs deep into the Angel's body and tears it to shreds from the inside, pulping every organ in seconds. The brain, naturally included among them, is no exception. The monster falls limp.

And then, just a moment too late, the pulse of power hits us from somewhere else.

I don't really have a good idea for a way to communicate while in this body, so I opt for a bad one and form an eyeless human face on the end of my tail while I burst back into a sprint.

"Brain is off-center, a little over a foot away from the midpoint of the monster," I say. Geez, my voice sounds weird like this. "Also, I think we just confirmed the clones don't have powers. There's an original."

"Off in which direction?" Anastasia asks, breathing heavily.

"That depends entirely on the core body's orientation to the ground, which can be anything," I answer. "It has no set up, down, left or right; you can see them rotate as they move."

"But… then where do I aim?"

I don't have a good answer to that, and we don't have any more time to talk about it anyway. I shift my tail back into the weapon it should be just as we get flanked by three other Angel clones at once. The Angel's pressure fills the air, and while I do my best to leap away Anastasia still has to cut through a tentacle that latched onto my leg, nearly dooming us immediately. And so, yet another monster starts to form.

"Christine, do something!" Emily shrieks.

"Do what!?" Christine shouts back.

"It doesn't matter!" Emily says. "Something! Anything! Just use your goddamn power!"

Christine's only response is to start hyperventilating, because to everyone's unparalleled surprise it turns out that screaming and swearing at a person with an anxiety disorder doesn't help them focus. I don't know why Emily hasn't already written the girl off; I've been operating under the assumption that she's dead weight for days, since it seems like the only logical way to make plans around someone who would fail to uphold her end of them ninety percent of the time.

I grab another pair of tendrils with a pair of my own and quickly toss them as far away as I can when Anastasia cuts them; she seems to intuitively understand that delimbing the Angel is definitely bad but letting it lock me into a grapple is far worse, so we don't really have much of a choice in the matter. Her blood swirls in a crimson storm around us, blocking and protecting and attacking all in one as it pours from her still-bleeding arm. I don't think I've ever seen her control this much at once before, and where my power brushes up against her skin it warns me that her blood pressure is dangerously low. Her eyelids flutter with an empty-headed need for sleep, Christine's grip the only thing keeping her on my back and raw adrenaline the only thing keeping her still conscious.

This isn't sustainable. We're going to lose, and I don't see any way to turn the tables.

More and more of the swarm catch up to us as we make our fighting retreat, slowly but surely completing the encirclement that will spell our demise. I fight harder, dodge better, move more and more erratically as I desperately look for a way out, but all I ultimately end up doing is fucking up. I kick off a wall a little too hard, and the sudden movement is finally too much. Anastasia jerks out of Christine's grip and starts to fall.

I try to catch her with a tendril, but the addled girl cuts it off thinking it's an enemy and hits the ground hard. Fuck! The Angel clones try to converge on her, so I step over her body and shield her with my own, growing limbs and blades and anything I can think of to protect the people that I must protect, burning through my reserves of energy with reckless abandon to become something I don't even understand, a whirlwind of panicked limbs and inefficient, barely functioning nonsense.

It's not enough. The Angels tear me apart. They peel open my cocoon of arms piece by piece, scrambling for the rich, gooey center of the humans I have to save. Emily screams, cowering back from the questing tendrils of the monsters. Christine screams as alien arms wrap around her body, yanking her off my back. And then Anastasia screams, and the world becomes red.

For a couple seconds, all I can see or smell is blood. Then the crimson storm clears all at once, the blood splattering loudly onto the ground all at once as Anastasia loses her tenuous grip on the cliff edge of consciousness. And somehow, when it falls, there is no movement left around us. The corpses of aliens pile around us, ravaged and broken to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. Emily, Anastasia, and I are the only living things left that I can see.

Because Christine is gone.

Christine is gone!

My body twitches and shudders recollecting itself from the broken chaos of what I was into something almost human, because I need to talk and I need something familiar and I need a single moment of something approaching sanity after that chokingly throat-deep kiss with death. I-I have to… where is…?

A scream rings out. Her scream. There she is. I have to go. But I… no. The Angel has her. Or one of its copies. I can't keep up, I'm not fast enough! The only thing that could catch up to her would be a Wasp, but I haven't finished fixing… no. No. Quit letting such a fucking flimsy excuse stop you, Julietta. I don't need to 'know how to fix it.' My body just turned into a Lovecraftian horror and back, I can just patch the fucking holes and force myself to stay together.

The real problem is that a Wasp can't fly while carrying the weight of a human. I snap around to look at Emily, who's kneeling over Anastasia and wrapping her shirt around the girl's wounds.

"Can you keep Ana safe!?" I demand.

"What!?" she asks, seeming caught off guard. "Can I… oh no. No! We're leaving!"

"But I have to—"

"You don't have to do shit!" Emily snaps. "Are you nuts!? You wanna run back in there!? Look around you! This is our door! Ana opened it and we're home fucking free! If you grab us and go, right now, we live. I guarantee it."

"But Christine—"

"What about Christine!?" Emily demands. "For shit's sake, Julietta, you don't even like her! You gave up on ever expecting her to be worth something to you the same day you met!"

I stare at her, a little taken aback by the outburst and honestly struggling to process it a little through all my panic and burning need to do something. But I can't waste time, so I have to force the first words I can think of out of my mouth.

"You're completely right," I admit. "But fuck you for assuming that means I wouldn't save her."

I'm already regretting the words the moment they leave my mouth. Needlessly inflammatory, more likely to piss someone off than convince them. Stupid way to get my point across. Stupid, stupid. But Emily seems shocked for a moment, I watch her face slowly morph into horror as she realizes how serious I am about this.

"...You have five minutes," she growls. "You'd best be back before then or Ana and I are completely fucking dead, you got that?"

I snap her a quick nod and let my body shift. I don't have a working Wasp template? Fine. Who cares. I only need the body to work in the ways that matter. I can remove the ruined acid organs, I can seal up the holes, I haphazardly shift into something already dying and barely not bleeding out because it doesn't matter as long as my wings work and I can fly. My arms and legs twist into thin crystal blades, my head is devoured by my expanding body, and my back sprouts its four thrumming wings, my stolen brain knowing what to do when I demand to go up, to chase, to follow that goddamn thieving Angel. I attack the air around me with furious speed, kicking up a storm around me as the vibrations churn through my body. And then, I'm in the air.

There is almost a moment where I can appreciate the heart-dropping majesty of it, the sudden freedom from the ground, the willful defiance of god's pull. But I cannot, must not, will not indulge in any unnecessary thoughts anymore. I am now one of the very monsters that killed my family and stole my life, and I have someone to save.

I rocket off towards where I can still hear Christine screaming, and it isn't long before I see her, too. As fast as I had been as a Raptor, as fast as the Angel is in its beautifully perfect form, Wasps are still faster and still have the advantage of the air. I close the distance at a startling speed, the Angel seeing me and exuding fury and indignance. It carries Christine with surprising gentleness, cushioning her as it holds her, not letting her hurt herself as she thrashes in terror. It cares about her. It's worried for her. I can smell it.

The indicated is the one held. The indicated cannot speak or hear. The indicated is known to be loved. The indicated is known to be blessed. The indicated is of something beyond, something, theirs, something holy. It is contemptible to take such a thing from its place. It is contemptible to take such a thing from its place. It is contemptible to take such a thing from its place.

I am contemptible, a thief, an enemy. I know this to be true as sure as I know myself, because that which an Angel speaks is fact.

This is why we've been handled with care. This is why the aliens have been corralling us, not killing us. Because for whatever reason they wanted Christine, and they wanted her alive and well and in their hands. They care about her very, very much… but since the kidnapping bastards obviously don't seem to care enough to give a shit about her free will, I drop on them like a hammer anyway.

'The indicated cannot speak or hear' my ass. She's literally screaming for help right now. I have your body plans, I know you can hear it. I freefall at the swarm of Angel clones blades-first, aiming for the one in the middle holding my Task. And somehow, for some reason, the Angel seems startled enough not to dodge.

I impale it in four different places and keep moving through it, my blades slamming into the ground hard enough to break all my legs. Christine is nearly smashed into a pulp between the two of us, but at the last moment it throws her away, sending her careening through the sky and screaming even louder before another clone body catches her and keeps running.

So that's how it's going to be, then. I leap after her, my wings thrumming with strength as I tackle the next one, copies of its tendrils snaking out of my torso to fight over my Task. I have to cut off the tendrils holding her, I don't have much choice. My reserves feel so low. My power feels so weak. I'm so hungry, and the crushing weight of the Angel's power nearly chokes me now that I'm this close. Is this the real one? Is it one of the ones next to us? Does it matter? The power is everywhere.

Except for the inside of my body.

Because that's the thing, isn't it? Anastasia, Christine, the Angel… their powers reach out far into the air, creating huge bubbles of presence in which they may command the world. But my power doesn't extend past my own skin. On one hand, that seems like a weakness. On the other hand, it means my power is dense. It's concentrated. And it can keep. The Angel. Out.

I grow my tail out like a Raptor's, cut the tendrils off of the Angel, and devour them. The bubbling, regenerating horror stops the moment they slide down my throat, my power taking precedence as I swallow the delicious morsel and digest it in seconds, feeling it vanish from inside me and fill that waning reserve of power I don't understand but call my own.

But that's not important. What's important is that I've freed Christine, and with her still screaming I pull her away from the mass of Angels, tying her to my back with tendrils as I grow my body more, thicken my legs, increase my height, and devour more and more Angel flesh as they try to climb up my growing legs and claim back the girl they think is theirs by right. I won't survive against the swarm, I could never eat them fast enough, but fighting them was never the goal. With the last of my reserves, I grow into a modified Behemoth body and, with my enormous bladed legs, I run.

I can't track Emily and Anastasia the way I can track the aliens, so I don't know precisely where they are, but that doesn't matter. I just have to head in the right direction and Emily will be the one to know where to go to meet me. Even if she didn't have something telling her the right decision all the time, she'd simply be able to follow the sound of my rampage.

I saw a Behemoth crash through a house with ease, so I don't hesitate to do the same if one happens to be in my way. My enormous legs and massive stride mean I outpace the Angels… but not by anywhere near as much as I'd like to. My long, spindly legs are somewhat unsteady, and the additions I've made to the body don't help with balance either. And worst of all, I'm starving now. I've pushed myself to the limit of my shapeshifting. I won't be able to grow or regenerate anymore.

Not unless I get something to eat.

"Lia! Lia!" I hear Emily shout, and I immediately alter course to rush towards the sound. I spot her rushing out from a trapdoor to a cellar that she somehow found in a ruined home with Anastasia still unconscious in her arms. I stop next to her and kneel down just long enough to grab her with my tentacles and hoist her onto my back, and then I return to sprinting.

My lack of reserves means I can get tired now, but I ignore it as best I can while we head East, a swarm of aliens hot on our heels. But I can see our destination. Peering over the sea of abandoned houses, I can see the row of tanks that hold the line just outside the Queen's reach, the periodic explosions and sounds of industrialized combat all the clearer now that we're this close. We're almost back. We've almost made it to safety. We're going to make it. We're going to make it!

A new power presses into me unexpectedly, solid and united and made of endless hordes standing shoulder-to-shoulder. It is order and camaraderie and the many working as one, and as I feel it a crisp, clear voice from somewhere ahead of me rings out with its power.

"Leg shot! Take it down!"

A shot rings out as a high-caliber round shatters through a nearby window and punches a hole in my front left leg, shattering the hydraulic musculature with a perfect hit through the joint. I stumble to a stop but refuse to fall, because what would happen to everyone I'm protecting?

But the damage is done. I can't run anymore. And with an ambush squad of humans in front of me, the furious, slithering tide of Angels behind me pour over the homes and out from the horizon like a tidal wave, ready to drown me and reclaim what is theirs.

I guess I should have seen this coming. Looking as I do, there was no way human territory would actually be safe.