Chapter 45

A group of warriors poured out of the stairs. Their leader was a solid matronly woman holding a large metal pipe causally.

“We should have repurposed the plumbing.” Luke said immediately upon seeing it.

Daniel shrugged. The extra weight could have helped, but it was not like the weapons he had constructed for everyone else didn’t perform their jobs. Having a consistent edge was useful. Rosica’s group had not possessed the luxury of Daniel’s powers and had been forced to improvise. All five of the strangers following her had the same type of weapon. Mainly an ugly length of pipe which would be deadly against bugs… but not the lightning ones. Daniel thought ruefully, remembering the energy they had accumulated around them had zapped him through his wooden club when he had squished them. With a metal pipe conducting the blow, he was not sure attacking one of them would have been survivable.

“Were you winning, Rosica?” William the old man asked immediately.

“Maybe.” She answered while she openly studied the teams that surrounded Daniel.

“Nope,” a short Indian guy next to her said.

Rosica looked at him with an annoyed disagreement. “What are you talking about, Arjun? We had beaten it back four rooms.”

The Indian man shook his head to show how much he disagreed with that assessment.

“It was steady progress, Arjun, but I’m sure now that its stopped it would have undone all of our progress by the time we get down there. It grows too fast. Now!” Her voice was bitter. “You stopped our attempt. Who are you?”

“We’re survivors from the floors above.” Daniel answered.

She nodded. “I remember from last night. Is this all of you?”

“A little over half our strength,” he responded honestly. “Then we’ve got a similar number of non-combatants.”

“Will you help us beat the plant?”

“Our aim is to get to the ground floor as quickly as we can, so if it’s in the way then yes we’ll fight it.”

She snorted. “Oh, it’s absolutely in the way.”

Luke stepped forward to be next to Daniel. “You might be able to magic it away, Daniel.”

“I’m aware of that, Luke.” He answered, refusing to take his eyes off the unknown quantity before him. She seemed tense.

Rosica’s eyes went from the mouse on his shoulder to the dog at his heels. “You some sort of druid.”

“Something like that.” Daniel agreed. “Hopefully, I can tame it without fighting. If your force was driving it back as slowly as it sounds, then brute force might not be enough.”

“We were progressing.”

“We weren’t Rosica,” Arjun said quietly. “You know that.”

“If we double our forces.”

Arjun shook her head.

“As I said avoiding a confrontation is superior.” Daniel interrupted. “The fewer fights we get into the more likely we are to survive without losing anyone.”

Rosica hesitated.

“What have you got to lose?”

“It killed…” she started.

“Revenge is meaningless if it kills more.” Arjun said quietly.

Daniel could see water in her eyes, but said nothing. “Okay.” Her voice broke and then she shook herself. “It seems unreal a force coming down from the upper floors past that powerful feral. Like we’ve watched the light show, we sort of knew you guys were up there but I assumed you were like us and had been lucky enough not to run into deadly. Unlike our group, sandwiched as we are between.” She paused. “I mean it’s not that hard to control a floor till you come in contact with something like the feral or plant. I guessed they were the only ones in the building and that you’d been fortuitous.”

Daniel shook his head. “There’s dangerous stuff out there. The feral and this plant weren’t the only material threats in the building.”

“You telling me the feral wasn’t the hardest thing you’ve faced.” Rosica said tightly.

“It probably was,” Daniel admitted.

“See.” She pounced on the statement as if it proved her group had faced unfair odds.

“Bullshit,” Luke exclaimed. Other fighters behind them grumbled angrily. “The octopod was just as.”

Daniel stilled the rising emotion with a warning hand and tried to not to rise to her bait. She was acting defensive and had clearly lost fighters, so he understood her pain. If others succeeded where you failed, did that mean your friends’ deaths were your fault? Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Luke shift. Nothing much changed, but his stance switched to allow him to spring forward to intercept a threat. Completely unnecessary. As far as Daniel was concerned, then again there would be broken people and Rosica looked like she might be one.

She hesitated. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just surprised I felt we were the strongest.”

“We reported our numbers and progress.” Daniel objected. “It shouldn’t be a surprise.”

She had the grace to look embarrassed. “I thought you guys had it easy up above and we were going to have to save you.”

Luke chuckled darkly at that statement.

“And were big noting yourself,” she ploughed on. “Now you’re here claiming you have three times my numbers and significantly more in fighting strength.”

“Wait?” Luke asked suddenly. “Three times.”

She nodded grimly. “I’ve got seven fighters and ten mutated humans. The rest are non-combat classes who have volunteered to help fight.”

Daniel did the calculation in his head. Something didn’t sound right. The numbers weren’t aligning with the tale that Simone had told. “I thought you would have more.”

She flushed. “The skirmishes with the ferals were costly. We’ve lost a lot of fighters.”

“Oh, upstairs,” Daniel said, kicking himself for putting his foot in it.

“How did you beat the powerful one?” Rosica asked finally.

Now it was Daniel’s turn to feel bad. “One of us had a big skill that fried it.”

“Great, maybe they can kill the plant,” Rosica said excitedly. “I mean, if you can’t sideline it.” Her tone made it clear how little faith she had in that second option.

“Ivey’s still unconscious.” Daniel answered. “The spell to destroy the feral took a lot out of her,” he explained probably unnecessarily. “Come on, take me down to this plant. Let’s see if I can do anything.”

Rosica nodded and held out a hand. “Its pleasure meeting you. I’m Rosica.”

Daniel smiled and shook the offered hand. It was a peace offering, pure and simple. “Daniel, I’m sort of our primary melee fighter.”

Luke snorted.

“You got a better suggestion to describe him.” Daniel snapped at him.

Luke held up his hands defensively. “Yes, you’re our de facto leader. Partially because you’re the strongest, but mostly because of your values.”

“Really?”

They ignored him, but Rosica nodded. “I’ll show you the plant.” She looked at him curiously. “You’re a reluctant leader.”

“Yes, and no.”

“Why no?”

“I wouldn’t forgive myself if I let someone else take control and that resulted in lots of people dying. That’s why I lead.”

“Because you don’t trust others to do a good job.”

“It sounds terribly stated that overtly but… I’m not going to apologise.”

Something about his tone or how Luke deferred to him from a position of respect must have had an effect upon her. Because she relaxed like a giant weight had been taken off her shoulders. She elbowed him. “This new world sucks doesn’t it.”

Daniel thought. “People dying yes. The rest of it,” he subconsciously patted Priscilla’s head. “Isn’t that bad?”

Rosica frowned and looked unconvinced. “Is it good? I’ve got superhuman strength.” She spun the heavy pipe in her hand like it was weightless. “I can literally put holes in a wall with my fists. Once I would have thought that was superhero power. But,” surreptitiously she wiped an almost formed tear away. “It’s completely useless.”

“They’re helping you keep every alive.” Daniel told her quietly. She did not respond.

When he reached the stairs, they discovered the rest of Rosica’s fighters had come up to greet them. Daniel nodded to each of the people he passed on the stairs. There were both yetis and zombies in the mix, but all of them were wearing clothes.

“Keep some alive,” Rosica said finally after a long pause. Her words were bitter. “You know I hit the big one from upstairs. Used like a day of charge ups and the arrogant thing didn’t even bother blocking and I knocked it off its feet and it flew over ten metres in the air, landed and rolled and crashed into the wall. It was almost airborne from one end of the corridor to the other, the short side at least. It got up and laughed.” They passed floor eight and then kept going. “Then it attacked, and we lost people. I stuffed up. I should have waited and then punched it out the window.”

“What do you mean stored up?”

“Do you know how there are multiple types of interfaces?”

“Yes.”

“I got one of the non-standards ones.”

“That’s what Ivey’s got.”

“I figured when she had a skill that killed the feral leader. When levelling I got super strength and then I can build up magic patterns and slot them into my muscles. It’s hard to explain, but it’s sort of like a wire frame of me doing a movement. Single punch.” She showed him the punch arm going straight out. “Upper cut,” she mimed, getting under someone’s guard and hitting the chin. “Just those two at the moment, but I can create these wireframes. Each wireframe hits with the same power as my normal punching. But they’re additive. See. If I use one I punch twice as hard. If I use two, then three times and so on. I can stack up to fifteen of them and I can use them all at once, or individually.”

“Sounds useful.”

“It’s shit. I don’t know what I was thinking. To get a punch that hits fifteen times harder than normal takes me over a day of preparation.”

“I guess when you put it like that.”

Rosica’s arm went across his chest, stopping him dead. “There.” She pointed at a purple root or vine or something that was running over his head. The bit above him was only half centimetre thick but even five metres down the hallway that had increased to the size of his wrist along with their being numerous other ones. “If we go around the corner,” Rosica explained. “The plant fills the corridor.”

Daniel looked and spotted an even thinner tendril that ended two metres further away. “Can I go there?” He pointed.

“I’ll watch your back.”

A giant plant concerned Daniel. Part of him wondered whether it would immediately succumb to his power and if he did what could he do with that amount of plant matter available for him to use. The bit that remembered the super, and the octopod was terrified. He knew what plants could do in this new world, and that scared him. What happened if his skill didn’t work on this creature? Would they be able to defeat it? His breathing rate had increased, and he internally laughed. There were octopus the size of a car and he feared a plant.

He slapped the tendril.

The moment he contacted the plant he found he could manipulate it like any other piece of plant matter. His consciousness entered the plant material as it always did. Soaking into it to get a feeling before he directed it to do his bidding.

He jerked his hands away and looked at the vine tendril suspiciously.

Even without the stories that Rosica, Seb and Simone had shared a single touch of the tendril would have told him it was not a normal plant.

For one, it was not technically a plant.

Well, specifically, it was mainly a plant. But not fully. There was also an animal component. Daniel shouldn’t have been surprised that it was dangerous and special. After all, it had stymied a fighting group as large as at Rosica had brought against it.

“Something wrong?”

“No.” Daniel answered without bothering to look at Rosica. “It’s makeup differed from what I was expecting.”

Once more, he touched it. This time with only the tip of his finger. His mind entered the tendril once more. As he worked, he noted the separation between plant and animal. That might be something that he could manipulate. Curiously, he teased out more details. It was not a symbolic affair where both parts benefited like each lichen, instead the animal part was a parasite. It controlled and dominated the plant side but in doing so it gave the otherwise stationary creature more room to move it was like adding muscles a trunk.

Fascinating.

He continued to puzzle out the complicated relationship and the implications and then felt a stirring in the plant. It was sort of how he imagined a spider would sense when something touched its web.

Then there was a shift and the will of the creature focused upon him.

It was aware of him.

Then, acting purely within the conduit of the plant animal hybrid the opposing mind struck out.

Its power rushed down the tendril and tried to destroy him. It was furious, unyielding, and consumed with hatred. There was no mercy, just rage that his consciousness had infringed upon its existence and a desire to eliminate everything.

It was not moth levels of evil but the plant, the animal, the plamal hated all opposing. It wanted to grow by consuming everything around it. A survival of the fittest mindset and an alienness in its thoughts that briefly paralyzed him for a moment.

Pain slashed across his mind.

It was as if his brain was being whipped.

The enemy drew back and Daniel could sense more power being focused on the attack. It was going to strike back with even more powerful than in the first attempt.

No. Priscilla’s thoughts were with him. Her mind blending with him to slow time down and give him a chance to respond. The next attack spike struck towards him and he imagined creating a shield to protect against the lashing energy.

Priscilla was there too, with her own version of the defence. The second strike hit their combined shields and shattered. There was not even a tingle of pain this time. It was not however the end; the consciousness pulled back and started to generate a stronger attack. Daniel could see the extra focus that was being applied to these new spikes. Just like Daniel had learned from the first attack it had learnt from his successful defence of the second. It was not a simple creature that would continually use the same patterns it was going to adapt to him.

A small pit opened in his belly.

Dumb, why could they be dumb.

Me smarter, Priscilla assured him along with a push for a counterattack.

His logical brain processed the sensations and labelled the attacks. What had hit him was not that strong in terms of raw mind power. Daniel was hardly experienced in the context of mind strength, but the nascent seed weapons had seemed to be stronger and more internally coherent than the creature that had mentally attacked. While it would adapt strategies, it had less permanence than those examples, but Daniel suspected far more raw strength.

That was good because there was no way Daniel would have been able to subdue a seed weapon. This creature he faced was different. With time and effort, Daniel decided he could force the enemy into submission.

The opposing mind gathered once more and this time as his companion had pushed Daniel waited till the energy was concentrated and was formed into a strike and only then did he preemptively counter. His own mind pushed back and, for a lack of a better word, he was more solid. He did not need to pack his power together before striking. His crystalline mind hit the consciousness, gathering the power and the other mind broke. The gathered energy was suddenly no longer being directed and dissipated.

Inside, he smiled.

The plant had taken its swing and failed. He could take his time and–The connection to the tendril was abruptly severed.

He felt an immediate whiplash that ate at the centre of his brain.

For an agonising moment, he was in the plant and his body was separated from him. He was no longer connected and this his mind snapped back into his body.

What?

Indignation flared from Priscilla along with an image. Only a moment of normal time had passed and there was an image. His hand, an air gap and then the tendril that he had been working. He had been pulled away from it.

“Bloody oath.” He groaned his heart beats thumping like a drum.

What?

His world was heaving.

He was upside down.

Swinging.

His face smacked into someone’s moving thigh.

There was a chaotic jumble of images. His ears caught gasps of fear. Eyes spotted carpet, rapidly transitioning from square to square.. Blood rushing into his head. Pressure on his hips, he was bent over. Torso on one side, legs on another. Bouncing up and down.

His brain was a banana mash from the abrupt severing of contact, so it was all jumbled images.

But…

He was being unceremoniously carried like a bag of potatoes.