Chương 15: 14: Fumbling in the Fog

In the early hours of the morning, it struck me how dark the corridors and classrooms were. With every window blocked by thick layers of Liz's rebar and electricity having completely failed we all huddled in gloom and silence. Well, everyone else huddled; I'd been waiting for them to fall asleep so I could sneak out instead. Tomio and Julia had turned up for a very late dinner, eaten in five minutes flat then fallen asleep, both obviously exhausted.

Neither word nor clues were given as to what they'd been doing but while the boy had remained unchanged, Julia showed signs of lean, wiry muscle under her new curves, the kind that came only with years of hard work... or power enhancements. At least they'd taken my worries of needing to prepare against monsters seriously. Finally only Tim the Goth remained awake, scribbling furiously pages upon pages of his magical symbols on duplicated notebooks Julia had provided.

The double brunette's duplication power couldn't copy whatever special properties Tim put into his magic notes, so the shy boy had to do all the work himself. On the other hand, the ability to stockpile even minor superpowered effects would make a great difference if the monsters attacked again, so disturbing him was the last thing I wanted. For the first time outside some brief training, I used Proximakinesis to rise in the air. It wasn't really flight, not how I had imagined flight to be.

There was no flapping of wings, no rush of wind, no precarious balancing or great effort to keep it. The power was like being pulled along by somebody else and no more difficult or involved than picking up a bottle of water; even then it was just a bit of mental focus to hold on to the metaphorical bottle rather than physical strain.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise; with a Might of nine lifting a thousand pounds without powers was within my capabilities and the effects of Proximakinesis were as strong as my whole body. Force Adjustment increased that by a factor of five while reducing my own weight by the same; getting used to being carried around was the only hurdle. Almost entirely soundlessly I rose all the way to the ceiling, a bit of rustling from my clothes and hair the only signs of my passage.

Then I slid across the cafeteria's ceiling, directly over an unsuspecting Tim and a dozen passed-out students, through the kitchens where even the cook was taking a nap, through the service door, over two dozen cans on strings that served as a crude alarm system, then a barricade that didn't quite reach the ceiling. The outer exit creaked ominously as I opened it and the danger of leaving it unbarred struck me then... but it wasn't as if barricading our only way out would be any better.

It was either a narrow opening where we knew monsters might come through, or being locked in with no escape if some big monster ever broke through. Something about the whole setup struck me as odd still, but I'd wasted enough time thinking about Tomio's questionable decisions. xxxx xxxx Yet another zombie shambled through the ruined upper floor, its arrival preceded by the stench of foul, sickly flesh and carnage clashing with the more mundane rot of the actually dead corpses littering the floor.

Many more half-glimpsed shadows followed through the mist, dozens of heavy, uneven footsteps indicating it was far from alone. It did not make any difference. Descending from above, I lightly clapped the zombie's skull with both hands, Proximakinesis applied on impact both crushing it and pushing away its dead contents before they could stick to skin. The walking dead fell like a puppet with its strings cut; by the time it hit the floor I was already doing the same to the second zombie in the group.

In the span of ten seconds an entire classroom's worth of undead had been laid to rest. Trickles of power flowed from their deaths, adding to those of three previous classrooms' occupants but still not enough to push my abilities into further growth. A look around confirmed there were no more monsters in the immediate vicinity. Cautiously, I lowered myself closer to the remains of dozens upon dozens of students, searching them one by one for any sign of Jerry or Mandy.

As before, there was no sign of my friends in this part of the school. And just like before, the moment I sighed in relief and seemingly relaxed several corpses exploded out of their skins from all around me. An ambush of seven skinless monsters in a narrow space with the monsters having already surrounded me would have been a deadly threat a mere two days before. Now? I simply rose above them, letting their charges spend themselves against each other.

Most fell down in a tangle of flayed limbs as their quarry dodged in a direction they could neither anticipate nor follow. The two that did not, slightly taller and bulkier than their fellows, briefly became my targets. They tried to keep up as I literally flew circles around them but were simply too slow and gloved hands caught the first one's neck from behind.

Pressing my hands together with Proximakinesis met with as much resistance as messing with clay in the school workshop once had, the monster's head popping off easily enough. The second I met with an uppercut that hit like a slow-moving car; messier but more satisfying. Of the remaining freaks one's flesh started to bubble and twist, the influx of power from nearby kills starting its mutation.

I fell on top of it like a ton of bricks - or rather two and a half tons, with the point of impact being as narrow as the heels of my boots as they struck between its shoulder blades. It died before it could finish its mutation, a burst of power bigger than the two previous deaths combined partially absorbed by me, with what was left triggering more mutations.

This mutation process was a terrifying - and terrifyingly effective - way of turning more losses into greater power for your shock troops, but it came with one small flaw; it took time. Only a few seconds, not much time over the course of a battle... unless the enemy had superspeed and already knew what was coming. The minute that followed became an exercise of pest control, killing one helpless mutating monster to cause mutation to trigger in more and thus openings to kill them in turn.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m7d Powers [1/14 pts] Force Adjustment II Forced Acceleration II Progressive Regeneration II Proximakinesis II Super Suit I Attributes [0/14 pts] Might 9, Agility 8, Reason 2, Vigilance 3, Ego 8, Luck 1 With the total energy pushing me through one power-up and a fair bit towards the next, I immediately placed the Attribute point into Ego, raising it to the same level as Agility and pushing my confidence and surety even higher.

It was less becoming accustomed to my body now and more as if I'd always been like this. Not just with the increased attributes, but with my actions themselves. Intellectually, I knew I'd never flown before this day. Instinctively, it seemed like I'd done it hundreds of times. Not skill or mastery but an ingrained familiarity that made taking those first few steps in skill automatic.

Much like a bird got the basics of flight between being dropped from the nest and hitting the ground, every action I could do just clicked the moment I tried it. The Ego attribute had to cover talent to some extent, aptitude. Added to the appearance boost and force of personality it also had going for it... too bad putting every point in it would mean being too slow and weak to fight monsters.

xxxx xxxx The school yard was a field of endless grey, details as significant as entire buildings fading within twenty feet and vanishing entirely in less than forty. The motionless corpses lying on the ground were hidden entirely by the thicker layer of mist clinging to the first two feet above the ground like a tranquil silver lake concealing the horrors just beneath the surface from the human eye. But the stench of rot, the iron tang of blood, the acrid stench of smoke, those were not hidden.

They mixed with the humidity hanging heavily in the air and clung to every surface they touched. I pulled wet blonde tresses from my face and caught them in a ponytail as I hung in mid-air between the secondary building and the main school. Using my powers to get rid of the foul-smelling dew had worked... for all of two minutes till more of it drenched my everything once more. More to the point, Force Adjustment did not extend to my clothes directly, which now were annoyingly cold and dripping.

Not that getting sick was even possible with my high Attributes and Regeneration; everything just felt like that one match in Freshman year when a sudden squall caught everyone in the open. The second and potentially bigger problem with the mist was the high chance of getting lost. Despite knowing the school almost like the back of my hand I still got turned around once before reaching the old lab.

The only way I could even tell it was the old lab was the cable ladder hanging off the window; there was enough mist inside every other window showed just a grey mess. Returning to where Jerry, Mandy and I had first gotten our powers felt strangely... empty. Broken computers, thrashed desks, cabinets torn open and ransacked, the barricade we'd built still half-blocking the door, multiple zombie and student corpses lying on the floor where they'd been left.

Everything was the same after four days - had it really been so many? - except for Mandy and Jerry's absence. Time seemed to stretch and twist every time I examined my memory of events, trying to find something I could have done better, but my own mind would not let me. We hadn't known about the flayed freaks back then. I'd been the first to be knocked out, savaged so badly I'd passed out. It had probably looked like I'd died and with the monsters after them my friends would have had no other option but to flee.

And there, their trail simply vanished... or did it? Going through the school buildings thoroughly, searching every floor classroom by classroom was the only way to be certain I wasn't missing any clues. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. The barrier we'd been so proud of back then, that offered us safety from the zombies, I pulled aside with one hand as if it were an empty cardboard box.

We'd been very, very lucky no evolved monsters stronger than that first fat zombie had attacked all the time we spent within. It just showed how wrong Tomio's continued passive approach was; any defenses we built evolved monsters would eventually overcome unless we kept growing, improving ourselves. Four days after our clearing of the top floor a decent number of undead had snuck in again.

Unlike the first day, these were either bloated zombies, grotesques almost too wide to go through a classroom door, or gangly, ghoul-like things with clawed limbs reaching almost to the floor, bulbous, milky-white eyes and too-wide mouths full of serrated teeth. The stench of death and decay clung to them but it was a dry, acrid thing unlike the mouldy, sickly-sweet rot of normal corpses or the sharp tang of the flayed.

The bloated grotesques proved strong and tough, their flesh like layer after layer of oiled leather that took blows better than wood, while the ghoul-things flitted about in blink-and-you'd-miss-it dashes from corpse to corpse, making of them macabre meals. Had they shared both that agility and might they would have been dangerous, especially in numbers, but individually they were just a slog to get through. Their deaths combined pushed me into another power-up, though.

For the first time, I elected to save the points. I was still undecided on whether to invest on Might, Agility or Ego, or to explore the possibilities of the three attributes still left untouched. As for powers, the third tier cost four points if I was to pick from those I'd already invested in, while searching for new ones meant facing The List again. It was a decision that required more thought than five minutes between floors on my self imposed, building-clearing, fact-finding mission.

xxxx xxxx The second floor was emptier than the third, for the same reasons as the first time I'd come through four days before; the computers and biology classrooms and the student research center had been empty the day of the portals. Only a few monsters had returned after my last visit, almost exclusively those hugely muscled, towering zombie brutes. They had no special gimmick like the corrosive blood of the flayed ones or some mutants' regeneration, or even the ghouls' brief moments of blinding speed.

They were all-around physical powerhouses at half to maybe two-thirds my own abilities. With half a dozen of them around allowing myself to be dogpiled would be painful, so once again I used the tactical advantages offered by flight. I grabbed the closest "brute" and took it for a ride all the way to the ceiling. As long as I was touching it Proximakinesis could hold us together so I kept us hovering while we pounded each other.

Weaker, slower, more fragile, an easier target and definitely less skilled; it would be like beating up a little kid if little kids were mindlessly homicidal and hungry for your flesh... which was not entirely unheard of. After killing the first, careful to fly it a whole corridor away from the others before landing the final blow, I just went back for the next target and repeated the process.

When the bruises piled up I just remained out of reach and waited for regeneration to restore me before jumping back into the fight. Simple, moderately difficult, more like exercise than an actual fight. With another floor's worth of monsters slain, I searched classroom by classroom for any survivors. Perhaps predictably, I found nothing but the dead. No survivors would have chosen to stay so close to monsters without fortifications, but I had to be thorough.

Across the foreign languages classrooms and down the stairwell to the ground floor, my path was blocked by a major collapse. Half the staircase had broken up along with pieces of masonry from the walls, but between the rubble, half-hidden by the mist were large amounts of dark, foul-smelling soil. The stench was familiar even if I couldn't identify what it smelled like. Snapshots of a mad dash in Tomio's heels from days earlier came to mind; the unnatural soil had been there back then.

But there had also been a maintenance shaft, now half-buried under rubble but the shaft itself still intact. For a moment I considered backtracking to a window, flying out and getting in through the front door at the ground floor. That might alert some of the roaming monsters though, not to mention barging through the main entrance would draw attention from every monster within at once. Decision made, I prepared for a difficult slog through the narrow tunnel. Except it didn't come.

The tunnel was narrower, or rather I was significantly... wider than I'd been. But I was also a hell of a lot more flexible and my powers could push me through without requiring any sort of leverage. Far faster than the first time, I dropped in the near-total darkness of the ground floor. xxxx xxxx The first thing I noticed as I got to my feet was that the ground floor was a lot darker than it had any right to be.

Even without electric lights there were still the windows, two entrances at ground level, all the light coming in from classroom doors opening to more windows beyond them, plus several holes both people and monsters had opened to the exterior walls. It shouldn't have been so dark I could barely see where I was going; I even tripped on a metal bar, probably some desk's missing leg. Frowning, I considered spending a point on enhanced senses but held on.

I currently had three power points saved and was nearing a fourth. An upgrade to one of my main powers was just a brief fight away. Instead of doing that I just rose five feet in the air; that would take care of any ground-level obstacles. At least, I tried. My right leg got caught on the same piece of metal and refused to easily budge. Proximakinesis pushed at its full unempowered level of half a ton but instead of breaking, what I thought had been a desk's metal leg bent and stretched.

Was it some piece of rebar jutting out of broken masonry? With a slightly stronger pull it snapped, fell off my leg... and a trickle of the familiar kill-empowerment flowed through me. What? As I rose away from the floor, another metal-hard bar slammed against my left arm... and twisted all the way around. My right arm got tangled in two of the same bars a split second later, one hooking over the elbow, the second tightening around the wrist. Not bars; wires... or ropes.

Boosting Proximakinesis with Force Adjustment, I pulled down, snapping the metal-hard ropes from the ceiling and getting two more trickles of empowerment. What the hell? Which was when several ropes lashed out from the floor with a life of their own, wrapping themselves tightly around my boots and tying my legs together. Three? Four? In the gloom I had no idea how many of them they were!

This time I pushed Proximakinesis to the maximum, snapping the new ropes trying to tie me up and launching myself at the nearest wall. Fuck this shit, I was out! Except instead of a brick wall I slammed face-first into a writhing mass of the steel-hard ropes that bent but refused to break. Worse, some immediately snapped around my hands and wrists, while more flailed blindly at everything within reach like inch-thick whips of steel. Shit, shit, shit...

hadn't we passed through a corridor full of strange roots with Tomio the first time? But those hadn't been moving around or attacking! And they'd been way thinner and shorter than this new bullshit felt. Pulling backwards again, I tore myself out of the layer of roots - if that's what they were - before one of them could wrap around my throat. At the same time I cut off my flight almost immediately before I could slam into the opposite wall. Then I flew deeper into the school.

The roots had only been around Administration and the offices wing.

"Had" being the operative word; maybe due to passage of time, maybe from further monster kills the roots had grown to cover everything on the ground floor. The occasional ray of sunlight pierced through their network, giving some illumination to see by and indicating where they'd grown over windows or even doors. Even as I flew around looking for a way out, more and more of them came alive, grasping around blindly but with unnatural speed and intensity.

I snapped one, three, six, a dozen, each one a trickle of kill-energy that woke more and more of their fellows up even as I had to spend speed and effort to break them. I came to a stop before the school's main entrance, not because the roots ensnared me but because the double doors had been overgrown by the thickest, nastiest-looking tangle of snake-like roots.

A pulsing tar-like mass almost six feet in diameter beat in their midst like some grotesque, mutated heart while dozens of corpses, both human and monster, were slowly dissolving into black, foul-smelling soil. Roots slamming into my back were a nasty reminder that the roots were not going to let me escape. Apparently corpses were food to them and if I wasn't yet a corpse? They seemed to be willing to speed things along.

I broke a tangle as thick as my arm that was trying to go all around my waist but in the time it took me to do so, half a dozen tendrils had wound themselves around my boots. With a sudden pull followed by a push with Proximakinesis both my boots flew off, along with the roots tied around them. Reducing friction with Force Adjustment left my feet relatively free, but here my super-suit was working against me.

Force Adjustment could work on me but not on it so while I could enhance my strength or Proximakinesis, I could not reduce friction where the roots wrapped around the suit. More roots wrapped around my wrists and arms, I my left one free with a few quick slices of Proximakinesis, then got pushed through another power-up. In less than a second of distraction, more than a dozen more roots from all directions wrapped themselves around my torso and started getting both thicker and tighter.

I put all my available points into Might and a burning pain shot through my every muscle and bone. It was more points than I'd ever used at once and a crushing force constricted my arms, legs and torso like a giant, full-body corset. With all the recent upgrades to Ego the changes per point were much smaller than the first time I'd increased Might, trailing off almost completely. But "almost" no change was not zero, and there was zero give in the cocoon that held me.

Then with tearing sounds as loud as gunshots several somethings gave way and I could breathe again. Raw power trickled in and... oh... my suit had just torn open in several places while lots of tendrils had snapped all at the same time. Note to self; next time don't make it out of mostly skintight leather. WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! Tendrils as thick as my arms started beating everything they could reach even as those wrapped around my limbs pulled almost hard enough to tear them off their sockets.

With the Might boost and Force Adjustment Proximakinesis should have been strong enough to break them, but the disadvantage of being as strong as my own body was that when my body was getting beaten up worse and worse, the power weakened in tandem.

As I felt a shoulder on the verge of dislocation and a rib cracking, I knew I only had two options and zero time to find more; either betting everything on the next rank of Force Adjustment being enough to get me out of this deathtrap, or going for a less risky, far more painful solution...

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m7d Powers [4/14 pts] Force Adjustment II Forced Acceleration II Progressive Regeneration II Proximakinesis II Super Suit I Attributes [0/17 pts] Might 12, Agility 8, Reason 2, Vigilance 3, Ego 8, Luck 1