Shift (Rewrite)

 

Human beings are herd animals. We only survive in extremely coordinated groups.

― On the Human Condition, chapter 1.

***

Clara Freemont was having a bad day. No, she was having a fucking horrible day, and it was part of an even more horrendous month. 

It had started weeks ago when she totalled her car because some skidmark suddenly stepped into the road, and she'd crashed into a shop while avoiding the entitled asshole. 

Her useless fucking insurance only covered the damage to the shop and medical bills for the people she'd hit, but her car was all on her own dime.

The pigs also blamed her. As if it was her fault that some stupid drooler had thrown himself in front of her car. 

She'd been in the pigsty answering stupid fucking questions while the fuckwits were trying to entrap her because she might have been going a little over the snail's pace until, well, the place just up and exploded. She ran, but the armoured fucks caught her before she could bug out. 

Everything after was a blur. 

The shitstains had fucking cut into her. Shoved shitdrippping metal inside of her. Then they'd fucking mind-raped her and taken every choice away from her. She angrily grit her teeth, thinking about how they'd taken her choices away. How they made her stand around like fucking cattle in a fucking slaughterhouse and then dumped her into the ruins like a dripping cumrag.

She'd never lose control again.

Clara had met others who had been taken and discarded over the previous two weeks. But every one of the stupid cuntflaps had gotten themselves killed. The last two had gotten themselves ripped apart not even an hour ago when the three of them ran from a pack of hounds and blundered into a Bug ambush. 

So, not being a fuckbrained drooler, Clara used the distraction to get away. Except one of the shit-guzzling bugs had followed her, and she'd been running until she almost ran into that brain-dead whitebread cunt. 

Clara hadn't slowed down when she blew past the bitch, getting some distance while the Bug ripped the stupid cunt to bits. A few dozen meters later, she found half a wall that she took cover behind. 

She bit her cheek hard to try and control the nameless fear that had kept her running and focused on what was happening behind her. Even with the constant overcast sky and the wisps of mist drifting through the streets, the weak moonlight was enough to show her a bizarre tableau when she got close enough. 

She had expected to watch the Bug mauling the white cow's screaming corpse. That was what the aliens had taken the time to do every time they killed an Implanted, even if there were still other Implanted nearby. 

Instead, Clara saw the Bug standing in place, violently shaking but otherwise entirely immobilized. The stupid bitch was doing something to keep the cuntdrizzle from moving and then just stood there for almost a minute, doing nothing. 

The idiotic fucktrumpet almost fell on her flat ass when she finally moved before she apparently decided to hit the Insect with a giant fucking sword. 

Clara had always known the average stuck-up white bitch had shit for brains, but choosing a huge fucking weapon that was almost as tall as she was and not even charging it definitely proved the cunt had crusty jizz for brains.

It was immediately obvious the twatwaffle wasn't somebody used to fighting for her life; she almost dropped her weapon after she hit the Insect. Clara watched the shit-for-brains frantically recover from bouncing her sword on the Bug before finally moving to the side and stabbing the beast through a hole in its chitin. Of course, the stupid twatdrip stood there and was thrown over six meters when she was bitchslapped. 

Whoever she was, the fuckwit had an ability that stopped the Insect in its tracks, but it was more than clear that she was simple. She probably had no combat experience other than shoving a silver spoon up her cunt. The fucktard should have stayed away after stabbing the Bug. 

A simple fucking rule that; everybody who got close to the aliens got dead. Even after they killed them. Clara had seen it happen at least half a dozen times to other Implanted shit-for-brains during the last two weeks. 

At least the cunt's death wasn't a total loss; she had given Clara the breather she needed to finally finish the jizzbreath off.

The foul-mouthed woman had already caught the Bug with one solid hit half an hour ago when it did that slow stalking-the-prey thing they did after it had seen her. Before that, she'd almost escaped it when she ran and hid, but something had sent her bolting from her hiding spot into the street where the Bug could fucking find her again. 

The cat and mouse game the Bugs played had cost the dickwad one of its arms and almost killed it. It hadn't been enough, though. The alien bastards were built like tanks. Nothing but a full-powered perfect hit would kill them with a single shot of her Ability.

During the subsequent running battle she'd been having with the knobcheese for the last hour or so, Clara had cursed her pathetic aim. She could shoot the tits of a flee with a rifle at a hundred metres, but firing air bullets was a lot fucking harder. Twenty centimetres to the right, and this would have been over with that first exchange. 

Instead, the fucker had dogged her steps persistently and hadn't given her enough time to form another attack strong enough to do more than tickle the dickcheese. Until she had cut through some house's wreckage. The shitspittter had followed her into the ruin and then predictably switched its attention to the easier prey they'd run across. 

Prey that had apparently been able to freeze it in place. 

Somehow. 

The things Clara had seen the implanted do were insane -things like she herself could do now- but stopping one of the alien fuck cold, that was something else.

With the distraction, Clara could finally catch her breath. Not having to concentrate on avoiding things hidden in the misty night while running at a breakneck pace was giving her the time to form another ball of compressed air while watching the two cockgobblers face off.

The constant nameless terror had Clara almost launch her incomplete air bullet after the pissartist's first mishandled hacking, which would probably have hit both the two smegheads, but the twat had regained control for long enough to attack again. 

This time the fuckwit had been smart enough to stab through the wound Clara had caused when she had blown one of the Bug's arms off. Of course, the twat was also stupid enough to stand there like a deer in the headlights and get clobbered. So maybe it hadn't even been a brain cell triggering, but just luck, which had evidently run out. 

Clara didn't hesitate and launched the most concentrated air bullet she could create at the alien fuckstick. The compressed air hit the beast squarely in the chest and, with a loud thunderclap, flung it against the remains of a bathroom wall behind it. Its thorax exploded into a gory mess, looking like somebody had stamped on the Bug. 

Clara heard the satisfying splattering of Bug gore she had grown to recognize and love. 

"Bug meet windshield." 

The black woman grinned at her quip, despite her renewed breathlessness, but a moment later, her smile was wiped from her face when the fucknugget twitched and flailed around, trying to push itself up. 

Fucking thing had a half meter of steel shoved into it, then been hit by the equivalent of a sniper rifle, and it was still not fucking dead. It was a lot tougher or more stubborn than the ones she had already finished off. 

Clara started forming another ball of air, ignoring the feeling of not being able to breathe when all the air was dragged from her lungs while she did it. She then took a few beats to aim and launched her power at the twitching git's skull. This time she hit cleanly and, with another thunderclap of rushing air, annihilated the head, splattering chitin, blood, and brain matter across the area.

"Double-tap required," Clara reminded herself through gasps for air afterwards. 

Instead of standing in the open -which was just begging to get gutted like a bug-eyed fish-, Clara took shelter beneath a propped-up door. 

She wanted to run; she could still feel the nightmare coming for her. Except she'd learned to take any time she could to recover before moving on. Forming the balls out of densely compressed air took a lot out of her, and two in short succession had her gasping for breath.

Clara bit down on the inside of her cheek and used the pain to keep herself from running off in a panic again. Slowly, it became easier to fight the terror trying to drive her into the open as the minutes passed. 

Whatever it was, it was weakening. Maybe it was moving away from where she was hidden. Clara was also slowly getting her breathing under control again and felt the pain in her lungs ebb. 

Two weeks ago, her lungs feeling like that would have scared her shitless; they were burning more than if she had been running up a mountain in subzero temperatures with full gear. 

Still, after surviving in this hellscape for two weeks and using this strange Ability every day after she had woken up with it after her implantation, she accepted the pain and breathlessness as the cost of having a fucking superpower. 

Clara wasn't worried about being snuck up on while she recovered. Since the implantation, she could 'feel' the air around her. She'd know if anything moved within fifteen meters or so of her. 

Especially if that something was breathing; respiring warmed up the atmosphere, and warm air felt different from regular air. And even the aliens breathed. 

At that thought, Clara's eyes snapped towards the white shitcunt's corpse lying only a meter or two away; she was still breathing. 

"Not my problem," Clara mumbled and continued respiring mechanically, trying very much to ignore the other cunt's shallow breaths. 

Which her fucking superpower made fucking impossible. 

"Fucking white cunts causing me more fucking problems with their stuck-up stupid fucking ways," Clara muttered after getting her breath under control when it was clear the bitch didn't have the common decency to just fuck off and die. She crept over to the cunt and pushed her a few times with her foot. The pissflap didn't react until she poked her in the ribs, and then all she did was moan. 

"Fuck," Clara said again, louder this time. 

The black woman made sure the sound didn't carry more than a meter or so by manipulating the air around them. A quick inspection of the unconscious bitch showed that when she had hit the shitpot, it had ripped a ragged gash across the right side of her face. It started at her eyebrow and extended down over the cheekbone, over her lips, and down to her chin. She was going to be shit-ugly. The thought made Clara grin unconsciously. If the bitch survived. 

The wound was bleeding profusely, and the cunt's cheekbone could be seen even with the free-flowing blood. It wasn't a lethal wound, Clara had seen and patched up a lot worse, but the Aliens could track her by the smell. Like sharks.

The white bitch was going to die. It was as simple as that.

Clara licked her lips and gave the girl a once-over. The girl had the same implant Clara had, and she had superpowers, but the bitch was a wreck. Leaving her would be smart. She didn't even have much in the way of stuff to help her survive. The fucking sword didn't count; it was far too big to lug around. 

"Look, fuckface, you're fucked up. You fucking understand that. Right? I can see your fucking skull through that hole, and I can feel you struggling just to breathe. Plus, you're fucking retarded. So you'll get yourself dead anyway. I can't waste time and effort on you that would get me fucking killed. You understand that, right?"

Clara nodded to herself, agreeing with her own words, turned, and took a few confident steps away. The cunt's Ability to freeze the aliens might have been useful, but sometimes you just had to cut your losses. She wasn't one of those touchy-feely types anyway. She could deal with sacrificing others. She'd done it not even a few hours ago. 

It wasn't like she owed anybody else anything here. She had to survive and return to her family and job. 

How she would explain this shit when she got back without them sending her off in a fucking straight jacket was beyond her. 

Getting killed trying to help some retarded white twatwaffle instead of doing what she could to survive and get back was more than foolish. It was downright idiotic. Leaving the cunt to die was the right thing to do. Nobody would fault her. 

Nobody could blame her.

Clara noticed she had stopped walking away after only a few steps and was now standing around. By herself, her Ability wasn't strong enough to allow her to hunt and survive. Let alone grow. 

"Fucking shit cunt crapstick assfuck!" 

The foul-mouthed woman growled in annoyance and returned to the half-dead bitch to try to patch her up enough to move the useless cuntpuddle.