Shade: Unbound

Running away was an exercise in futility. Lyra knew that, but she did it anyway.

What was the alternative?

It’s simple. You need to finish what you started.

Her expression tightened. The voice was back again, at the most inconvenient time imaginable. She absolutely could not afford to be distracted right now.

“What class?” Finn asked as they sprinted.

“Can’t tell. Don’t assume it’s colossal though,” Gridlock said, the words practically stumbling over each other for how fast they came out of his mouth. “Just hold out until help arrives.”

Lyra had learned those classifications in school, at one point. But she failed to recall the specifics. She didn't have time to ask either, as the creature fired its first attack at them. Lyra could hear it coming, but she still almost got hit because of how fast it was. She and Finn jumped out of the way, a massive blade of water rushing past, carving a deep furrow in its wake.

Lyra had to shield her eyes from the debris and droplets of water. They were outmatched here. Even Shade and Gridlock, skillful as they were, wouldn’t be able to defeat something like this. This was the kind of thing the military dealt with in force.

How were a couple of teenagers supposed to fight a primebeast?

For a while longer, they ran, but then Lyra realized Finn wasn’t using his grappling hooks, and he slowed his pace after some time.

She turned to him. “What’s wrong?”

“If we keep running, we’ll lead it back to a populated area,” he explained. He wasn’t wrong. They’d unleash this beast on thousands of innocent civilians if they ran, but what else were they supposed to do? Fight this thing?

Then she looked back toward the docking area. Her stomach flipped when she saw the bodies of drowning men struggling uselessly in the floating water around it.

Even worse, it clamped its tentacles around them and began to eat them.

It was growing, too. With each horrific bite, its body rippled and expanded. Soon, the monster had gone from the size of a beachball to that of a house.

Diluted blood sank into its skin, painting it a dark red color, and the rest of the water flowed to the ends of its glowing tentacles. Or whatever octopi limbs were called—and classifying this thing as an octopus was debatable, but she'd never been particularly knowledgeable about animals.

Which she was coming to regret, because knowing how this primebeast’s powers worked was of the utmost importance here. They needed every advantage they could get.

So far, it seemed to be able to attract water with its glowing appendages. And also repel it, considering how it fired those crescent blades.

Levitation was part of its arsenal as well, because it was once more floating in its water sphere, absorbing stray thugs and consuming them in one enormous gulp.

Then, the beast surged forward in a raging torrent, eerily hollow eyes staring right at them. Lyra threw herself out of the way, but Finn charged to meet it head-on.

She gasped, instinctively reaching out a hand to stop him, but it was too late by then. He was too close to the massive sea monster, a deadly collision imminent.

Finn slid underneath it at the last second, using his grappling hook to pull himself forward. He stuck a hand into the water, electrocuting a public pool's worth of volume.

Sparks lit up across the bubble, and the creature shuddered.

But that was it.

In fact, the luminescent suction glowed even brighter after the shock ended. It pointed one in Finn's direction, the water bulging out. However, Finn had already camouflaged himself. The creature turned and searched, yet found nothing.

So it decided to hit everything. The other arms stretched, pushing out the water in an omnidirectional blast.

Lyra couldn’t even see where Finn was, let alone if he was hit. She had to focus on not getting pulverized herself, leveling her sonic shield and concentrating her power into it.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she fought to maintain her sonic shield against the onslaught of water and mud. The creature's power was overwhelming, and the force behind its attacks threatened to break through her defense. It held, thankfully.

Standing still was a death sentence though. She rushed to support her teammate. He seemed to be swinging around with his grappling hook again, but his mobility was limited in an area without too many tall structures to hold onto. The surroundings were mostly just an empty road, the company building, and the grassy slope she was now running off of.

And the noise of all this rushing water. It reminded her of the times she visited the coastal districts with her as a kid. She hadn’t disliked the ocean then, but this experience was making her reevaluate her opinions on it.

It turned out that Finn was fine, but the fact that he’d hidden from it meant Lyra drew the monster’s ire. Facing down a primebeast was certainly not on her bucket list, but here she was, taking a shaky step back as it reared its body back for another attack.

She leaped from the reverberating ground beneath her, to the side of the incoming water blade. Its gaze tracked her, the mass of water orienting its body to follow her movements.

Finn chose that moment to come back, with an assault rifle. She figured those must have belonged to the criminals that got eaten.

“Cal, I need you to use your power on it again,” Jack told her.

“Uhm, what? How?” she responded, quite distracted with making sure she wouldn’t get split in half.

“If you can somehow disrupt the hold it has on all that water, we might stand a better chance at hurting it.”

She tried, but her shock waves were too weak. She would need to channel something more potent in order to get through but that would take time. “I need some time.”

“Okay, just focus.”

Finn started to distract the primebeast again, buying her precious seconds. He swung around, narrowly dodging and disappearing for short moments. Never too long, lest it shift its attention to Lyra again.

When she was ready, she let Jack know and threw her charged sonic wave at the giant octopus. Her technique made a hole in the sphere, exposing its skin.

Finn shot at it, the gun’s recoil almost making it fly out of his grip. A few bullets actually landed, and did nothing to it.

Sure, they might have drawn blood, but they might as well have been pinpricks for how little effect it had on the creature. Besides making it more angry, that was. If it could roar, it surely would have, but instead they were stuck with this tense silence. The creature itself looked plenty mad, still.

How could she discern the emotional state of an octopus? That sudden increase in power, probably. The rushing water spun around it, its limbs directing it like a natural weapon, an extension of its body. Or perhaps just a means of expressing itself.

You should start doing that again.

The water formed into a veritable whirlpool around it, and it headed straight for her. She tried to get out of the way, but another water blade came for her from within the creature’s domain. She could just barely get her shield up in time, and it still knocked her violently into the ground, winding her and splashing out in a wave around her.

She wanted to stand, but the monster did not let up, sending out a barrage of water slashes in her direction, each one keeping her still longer, until it could get near her.

The familiar sensation of a hook attaching to her leg and yanking her away registered in her mind when she was already flying through the air. Finn caught her and set her on her feet, which she didn’t have the time to thank him for.

Finn tried shooting it, but the primebeast ignored him, akin to a hunter knowing the weakness of its prey and no longer viewing it as a threat. It was much more interested in her, especially when she waved her blinking shield gadget around.

“The light,” Finn said while they sprinted back the other way. “It’s attracted to light sources.”

That made sense, actually. Lyra remembered the gruesome display at the start of the battle when Panel had been killed from hundreds of meters away. Had it prioritized her because her power gave off light?

Before she could even say anything, Finn turned on his electric glove and raised it so it was in the cephalopod’s view. It instantly changed courses for him, firing another slash his way, but he sidestepped it and tried to lure it farther away.

Tried being the operative word.

A siren sounded some distance away, and three police cars were driving at full speed their way, with a costumed man following close behind. Was he an Aegis operative? None of the DHD members had that kind of outfit.

The creature didn’t even turn right away, simply putting out its tentacles and slashing away at the air in its usual fashion. The water blades flew, even faster than before, and two cars were obliterated, the third being pulled out of the way just in time by the man running beside it.

The man had super strength, that much was clear. A warrior type, and a strong one. He leaped into the air, throwing himself at the beast. The monster sent up an explosion to meet him, but he weathered it admirably, the armored panels on his body suit dripping wet when he emerged.

He grabbed the nearest humongous limb and wrapped both arms around it, spinning around and launching it away. It crashed into the road, leaving cracks and a flowing pool of water, now slackened.

Bounding toward it again, the hero raised a fist and punched it full force. It tried to wrap its tentacles around him, but he shrugged them off and kept pummeling it relentlessly. His hands were coated with blue blood, every punch doing more damage.

Yet it wasn’t enough.

Glowing from its entire body, the creature flexed, drawing in all the water from the surroundings again. But more than before. Way more. Nearly half the canal was drained, sending out a massive wave that crashed into both her and Finn. There was no avoiding it, it was simply too big.

At least the creature didn’t seem to be targeting them, so they only had to deal with a gargantuan wave of water ramming into them. It drenched her from head to toe, despite raising her shield and lessening the impact.

Finn was less fortunate. He had no sonic defense tool like her, and though she made an attempt to protect him with her power too, he went limp when the wave sent him crashing into a stack of crates. Panic set in. She tried to swim closer in the rushing water, but he was swept away.

When the wave abated, she sucked in a breath of fresh air as her eyes fell back on the monster.

It had the hero trapped in its sphere now, and the man struggled in vain against his inevitable demise. He even had a force shield protecting him from the water pressure, but the man’s oxygen was limited. A warrior type would have lasted longer under such conditions normally, but the creature eventually wrapped all eight of its enormous limbs around the man until his gadget lost the battle of strength.

She watched him get eaten, watched the creature’s wounds heal, and she watched the wave come at her from the other side when the primebeast repelled the water. They crashed into the canal, but she managed to spot Finn before darkness enveloped her.

Did that matter when she was blind? She couldn’t use her listening power underwater like this, she’d never practiced using her power through mediums other than air and sometimes solids. She propelled herself shakily through the depths, searching for Finn’s body with a shoddy version of echolocation. A panic-inducing eternity later, she found him and swam ashore, but he hadn’t moved a muscle the entire time.

They reached the surface, and she looked at his motionless figure. Even when she dragged him ashore, he didn’t give any signs of life. Jack shouted something in her ear, but she didn’t register it, or the fact that her earpiece had apparently survived all of that.

Finn’s closed eyes looked so peaceful now, a far cry from that hardened gaze he usually had. Wait, what was she thinking? He needed to live. He had to, she couldn’t afford to let him die here. Too many people had already died because of her today. It was all her fault.

She tried her best to reanimate him, seconds ticking by as his life hung in the balance.

“Please live…”