I felt no pain as my knee came away from whatever had crushed my leg. I even managed not to gag as I spotted the flattened chunks of flesh and bone I’d left behind. Less blood pooled around the spot than I expected. The mule whined overhead as I shoved the last piece of rubble aside, crawling into sunlight. No spiders had noticed me yet.

  Waffle’s bag slung over a shoulder, I dragged myself to where I heard the mule set down. It was several feet away and cloaked. I spotted the dust first, puffing out from beneath its landing struts.

  The mule shimmered into view as Belial opened the door. Waffle thrashed inside his bag as I swung it from my shoulder, and tossed it onto the ramp.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, as the ramp lifted shut, sliding the bag safely inside.

  “How much time do I have left?”

  “Enough to see him off.” Belial said.

  I could tell he was doing his best not to sound sad, but it wasn’t working. I smiled as the mule took off, finding it more difficult to keep my head up.

  “Belial?” I asked, softly.

  “Yes, Aine?”

  “Thank you for—no…” Swarm mother had spotted something in the air and was racing for it.

  Belial cloaked the mule the instant it took off, but it didn’t matter. Somehow, she knew it was there.

  “NO,” I screamed, as swarm mother’s teeth clamped down.

  Endless rows of teeth sank into the still invisible mule. It seemed to give slightly. Sparks shot out as the invisibility ceased to function, and a half-crushed mule flickered into view.

  I tried to scramble up, but my arms gave out, dropping me face first into the rubble. I laid there, muttering into the dirt, my already failing mind trying to think of something—some way to save him. I could barely move, barely lift an arm towards the mule as its metal crooked and bent.

  “Waf-le.” I inched my body forward, raking the dirt with one side of my face. “Waff—”

  There was a sharp metal whine. Then, I watched it crumple, and I knew that Waffle was dead.

  I screamed—howled into the dirt, not caring what the sound attracted. Belial spoke frantically--something about the mule’s cloak. Probably trying to console me—to tell me he’d tried. I didn’t care. I writhed and sobbed, repeating Waffle’s name until the sound became incoherent howls, half-dying in my throat. Before long, even the strength to mourn had fled me. I laid there in silence, waiting for the spiders to come.

  “The cloak.”

  Belial’s voice cut through just as a rush of air pushed down on my back.

  “Cloak…?” Belials words made no sense. The cloak hadn’t worked, swarm mother had seen the mule—crushed it. My brow drew together as bits of metal rained from the sky, pattering around me. Something heavy met the ground with a clank. My hammer—how? I let the thought go. My eyelids were heavy now, and it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Waffle was gone, and soon, I would be too.

  Each thought came slower than the last. I could feel myself fading. One by one, my senses bled away, until I was drifting somewhere cold and empty.

  “WAFFLE IS ALIVE.”

  My eyes snapped open. I managed to tip my head back, just enough to see an orb of light floating in the sky. It was sixty feet in the air, but I could still make out the tiny purple speck inside it. His cloak.

  “YES.” He huffed, “that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. And that’s not all.”

  A powerful tremor shook through me as a snot-yellow mass came crashing to the ground. I closed my eyes as a cloud of dirt and dust hit my face. When I opened them next, a building-sized spider lay dead.

  Swarm mother, only she was missing most of her face. A round section around her mouth was gone, like some giant spoon had scooped it away. Some of the spiders covering the mole reared up from their meal to stare at the corpse. A handful more looked on as their mother tumbled forward. Eight redwood sized legs curled up beneath her,

  Hope flooded my chest, then the orb of light began to flicker, and the tiny purple dot that was Waffle slowly drifted towards the ground. “Lucia—tell Lucia she has to come—the mule is—”

  It was still hard to think, I concentrated on the purple dot, tracing it to where it landed. It floated gently between swarm mother’s curled limbs, landing somewhere in the center of the dead spider’s abdomen. Some of her children were already skittering in that direction, leaving their meal behind to investigate. I couldn’t tell if the giant mole was still alive, but parts of its flesh had been dissolved—turned to white paste. Either way, it wasn’t moving, and soon it would no longer distract the swarm.

  “How much time?”

  My minute had already passed. I had to be seconds from death. Even so, my body ached with the desire to do something. Anything. If I could deal with the remaining spiders, Waffle could still make it away from here on his own.

  “I’m circulating proteins from your liver that should buy you 20 seconds.”

  “Did Lucia answer?”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “No, she might be unconscious from the infection…Aine, I’m not sure what more we can do.”

  I tried to swallow, giving up when even the muscles in my throat refused to move.

  “The vials,” I said, already willing an arm towards Waffle’s old bag. Somehow, it was still slung over my side, “I can inject myself…distract—”

  It took too much effort to finish the thought, instead I focused on the bag.

  “I see. You mean to lure them in and then explode.”

  “Ye-s.” I managed, sliding my arm into the bag.

  There was barely any feeling in my fingers. A second later, everything below my waist went numb, and feeling returned to my hand.

  “There, that should help.” Belial said.

  Despite all he’d already done, his willingness to help caught me by surprise. My chest hitched as I picked one of the vials, then felt for the injector. After some fumbling, I found it and clicked the vial into place.

  Rolling to my back, I craned my neck and stabbed the tip into my forearm. For how thick the needle was, it hurt less than I expected. Only two of the remaining vials were explosives, hopefully my luck wasn’t exaggerated…though given the events of today, I was starting to think it was.

  “HEY YOU CREEPY FUCKS.”

  Belial groaned at the choice of words. “If there’s a next life, remind me to delete ‘fuck’ from your vernacular.”

  I scoffed at that.

  “If there’s a next life—” I was going to say I hoped he wouldn’t be there in my head. Instead, I smiled, “then sure, go ahead.”

  The sound of pointy legs stabbing in my direction drew nearer. I strained my head to look behind me, frowning at the two spiders moving to investigate my shouts. It wasn’t enough. I needed all of them…or at least most if Waffle stood a chance of getting away. Hopefully he wouldn’t waste time looking for me.

  I gave up on shouting words, deciding to go with ‘Ahhhh’ instead. That drew more of them. The one nearest to Swarm Mother’s corpse had even turned back and was now headed my way. This could work. It had to.

  Just then the message icon in my interface flashed.

  “It’s Lucia.” Belial sounded slightly confused, “she says she found a friend and to hang on.”

  “A friend??” I shook my head. Even if she had, she was hours away. It was too late. I could hear the spider’s legs clicking over rubble nearby. They were a few feet away from tearing me apart, and I couldn’t even move. I sighed, “tell her where Waffle is, and that I’m sorry.”

  “Already did. You may want to inject that now, it’ll likely take a few seconds to explode,” Belial said.

  I pulled the trigger on the injector, staring up at the sky as something cold and foreign swam into my veins. Part of me wished it were the real sky, not some strange illusion. Still, it was pretty. I picked out one of the clouds, deciding it resembled a flower with its petals drawn shut. Just the way they look before they bloomed.

  “Aine—” Belial started, with a hint of wistfulness, “for what it’s worth, I’m very proud of you.”

  “For what?” I scoffed, “killing myself?”

  “Ha! No.” He chuckled, “When you found that little furball, you made a promise to keep him safe, and you gave everything you had to see it through. I don’t know much about the person I was copied from, but I sense they would’ve found your actions today admirable. I certainly did.”

  Smiling, I focused on my cloud as the first group of spiders surrounded me--trying to imagine myself laying there instead. Wafting along atop its pillowy surface. Maybe it was because I wasn’t moving, but from the corner of my eyes, the spiders appeared tentative in their approach. They lunged then skittered back, as if suspecting a trap. In the seconds that passed, I started to wonder why I hadn’t exploded yet.

  Had I chosen wrong again? Was it the anesthetic? Or, worse, the combat one? I told myself that if I’d injected the anesthetic, some of the spiders that ate me might fall asleep. I had no idea if it worked like that, but the thought brought me comfort. The feeling spreading through me, however, did not feel like drowsiness.

  “Oh.” Belial hummed curiously.

  “What now??”

  The fact that I had not yet exploded or gone unconscious suddenly made the surrounding gaggle of spiders a lot more terrifying.

  “That’s weird,” was all I heard before a spider came into view above my head. A white substance dripped from its mouth as its fangs spread. I flinched away, closing my eyes just as its face surged at me. Then my leg moved, and I felt myself slide over the rubble. Before I understood what was happening, my arm moved next. I opened my eyes, confused to find myself both alive, and with a fist lodged inside the spider’s abdomen. It trembled overtop of me, as if it wanted to move, but no longer could.

  “Hmm…I guess that could work” Belial muttered, ignoring me.

  My arm sank deeper as the spider collapsed, its body covering my own. Then I felt my hand do—something.

  “What’s happening? Is it the combat drug?”

  Just then a massive lump traveled through my arm into my chest. I couldn’t see it. I was in near darkness underneath its corpse, but I could feel it…and what I felt was not pleasant. It was all I could do not to gag as several more lumps followed, like Belial had turned my arm into a siphon.

  “Turns out it wasn’t a combat drug, but yes.”

  “Then what—” I cried out as my leg began to ache, then blinked as I realized which leg I’d felt. It was the one I’d lost. Had Belial found some way to heal me? “Am I going to die or not?”

  “It’s a parasite…of sorts.” Belial answered, sounding busy, “and no--wait, I’d better hedge—Yes.”

  “YES? Your hedge is YES?” I felt a deep, throbbing ache below my knee, my mind finally registering the first thing he’d said, “Did you say PARASITE?”

  The other spiders stabbed at the dead one draped over me. One of them shoved its face underneath, its fangs folding outwards as it tried to reach my head.

  “Yes. Well, again, kind of. When we identified these with your mouth, I was looking for chemical compositions. The combat drug wasn’t all that was in that vial…”

  The nearest spider was still working its way underneath. In a horrifying display of creativity, it’d begun digging against the dirt with its fangs to pull itself closer.

  “BELIAL!” I shouted in full panic, trying to get his attention.

  He gave a lethargic sigh as my other arm shot back over my head, my flattened hand piercing straight into one of its eyes. Still alive, the spider tried to pull away. Its legs began to give, bending strangely before—with a final, violent shudder--it collapsed. Belial continued his explanation as if nothing had happened.

  “As I was saying, your mouth-lab,” he paused, “louth—identified a number of steroids. Thus, I labeled the vial a combat enhancing drug. What the louth did not detect however, was the nanite cloud—and the moment those nanites started breaking down your cells I realized exactly what they were.”

  “Breaking down my cells?” It was my turn to shudder as I tried to imagine what that meant.

  “Yes. Don’t worry, I’m in complete control of them. They’re really quite handy. I’ve got them converting this spider’s guts into something bio-compatible enough to patch you up.”

  Hearing that made the blood leave my face. Was that what was pumping into me from my arms?

  “Yep.” Belial answered my thought, “It’s starting to look like a real Ship of Theseus in here.”

  Somehow, I understood that reference…and it did not bring me comfort. Though, I supposed being partially rebuilt from spider parts was better than being dead. I glanced down, relieved to see my leg was almost completely regrown, and that—at least outwardly—it still looked like a human leg.

  “Why would Godwin need something like that?”

  “I have my guesses, but we can talk about that later. Right now, I believe we have a purple wombat to rescue from a horde of giant spiders.”

  I snorted, then answered in the same haughty tone, “I believe you might be right.”

  Checkout my friend Morgs story!

  Resurrection Raid

  by Morgan Grindall

  Graves are not forever, and freedom has a price.

  Teddy is a dead woman. She wakes in the Resurrection Raid with a companion and goal - she can defeat the Nascent AI and be reborn, or die here and have her soul fed into the data stream. Except her companion isn't what he seems, and there's a tag in her profile: LIMITER.

  Cato will get out. He has failed once, and he will not do so again. The System, the Resurrection Raid itself, an endless stream of dead souls seeking rebirth; none of it will stop him. Certainly not his LIMITER.

  Teddy and Cato can work together or die divided, but the Raid always takes its due.