20/365

  A lot happened when Bianca went missing, and in her mind, she’d done a pretty good job of convincing Rylee that she was the same person Rylee used to blush about whenever they sat together in class. It was sweet, it was nice, and it was normal. Weird. The most normal thing in her whole entire life was the half-alien superhero she was deathly obsessed with—and it had worked.

  But Bianca hadn’t been sleeping properly. She hadn’t been thinking straight. It wasn’t just the Arkphage inside her anymore, but her own thoughts. Or maybe those weren’t independent from one another anymore. Maybe they were so closely woven together that her thoughts were its thoughts, and its hunger was her hunger, and sometimes she just really wanted to get violent and beat the blood and teeth out of someone’s mouth. But that wasn’t Normal Bianca. That wasn’t Pre-Kidnapping Bianca. Normal Bianca was good.

  She was smart and she had goals, and she woke up every day with a can-do attitude, ready to conquer the day like a champion, just like the posters in her room said. She liked campy movies from the 80s. She liked listening to old superhero soundtracks and dancing in her bedroom late at night. She loved the butterflies she’d get when Rylee would text her, and she’d try not to grin and kick her feet as she scrolled through their texts and their pictures and—

  New Bianca wasn’t that person. She was trying to be that person again, because she didn’t want to freak out her mom, worry her dad, make Rylee more worried than she already was, because she was always so worried about the entire world and Lower Olympus that it was almost selfish to even think she should be on the list of problems Rylee had to deal with.

  Or maybe New Bianca was just Old Bianca. The little kid who got into fights with other girls and got punched in the eye by a boy twice her size because she kicked him in the groin. The one who got suspended for spitting on a teacher who called her stupid for failing a test. Then she got sent to live with her grandmother for half a year, and learnt that she needed to bottle all of that up because she didn’t have a reason to be so ugly all the time. Ugly. Yeah, that was the word grandma used. Anger was ugly on everyone. It made them nasty and vile and horrible to everything and everyone. If you ever want your life to bear fruits, love is the only fertilizer you’ve got.

  Right now, standing with her back against the houseboat’s door, blue-gray smoke snaking through the air, Savage snorting and choking on his own blood, a pack of mangy Kaiju staring death and hatred at her, she felt…

  Well, the Ross family had always felt a little weird. Off-kilter. Grandpa blew his own brains out.

  And Grandpa was a superhuman, called himself Mr. Amazing. Didn’t save anyone, though. He was a magazine superhero. A billboard, talk-show, cookbook hero who got people killed the first and last time he tried to help.

  And then grandma got a heart attack, but it was the guy who shot her in the gut trying to snatch her purse that kicked her heart into overdrive. Her dad was…well, her dad. He was a chef, and a pretty damned good one too. But he used to be in the military, never said which branch, just that he used to come home sometimes and stare into the fireplace, then his eyes would get wet and he’d have to go upstairs. Now he sat at home a lot of the time, cutting the grass with a ruler in his hands, muttering to himself about balance and precision. He stopped drinking, but liked to lick his lips and glance at the whiskey glasses her mother left in the dishwasher. He stopped smoking, but Ben wasn’t buying cigarettes on his own, and he had to have gotten them from somewhere. He was a family man.

  Perfectly suburban, perfectly groomed, perfectly normal dad with horrible scars on his hands.

  Her mother trained kids to become government assets and got a large bonus when the Olympiad bought them before they ever graduated. She always said she hated it, felt like it made her hollow and ugly.

  Just like her mother used to tell her she was. Grandma had never liked her mom.

  Said it wasn’t right for doing what she does for a living. That her mom should've just picked up the family business and ran a small show in the midwest, selling tractors and shovels for a living.

  Mom didn't go to grandma's funeral. She sent Ben and Bianca and their dad with flowers.

  Bianca’s mom said it was necessary. She was protecting the world. Sentry and Velocity and Belatrix and so many of them had swept through Olympus U and gotten pocketed by the Olympiad halfway through their junior year. And who signed those papers? Who got the two-hundred-and-fifty thousand dollar bonus per head? Well, that’s easy.

  The Ross Family, of course.

  So when Ben died, Bianca had to be the normal one in the family.

  With the violet domino mask on her face, with the flesh crawling all the way up to her neck, crowding around her throat like a hood, slithering down her legs and gathering around her feet like boots, she didn’t have to be Old Bianca. No. Pfft. She hated the thing inside her, hated its flesh and its whispering and all of its cold hatred.

  But God, she loved how it felt on every inch of her skin.

  Like she could breathe, and she did just that, making the only sound in the thick, nasty silence.

  No more killing people, she thought, almost a mantra now. I’m stopping bad people from being bad.

  Just like Ben and Rylee used to do. Just like Rylee was going to keep doing when she came back.

  And they’d do that together. Save the world and hug and one of them would finally ask the other if they could actually, officially, become something more than just the weird state of limbo they’d been in for years now.

  Before one of them died and the other didn’t have a label for their relationship at the funeral.

  “I’m gonna be honest, Ru,” Bianca said, voice tight. “I’m not Rylee. I really fucking hate Kaiju.”

  Ruslana rolled her shoulders. Cedric stood shakily from his chair, lower lip trembling, fear so loud in his eyes they were almost startlingly white. The Pride watched, teeth sharp, prowling, ready. One of them got to their leader and tried to tilt his head, stopping him from choking on his own tongue, because God, that would be pretty fucking pathetic, dying that way after all this trouble. The lioness was staring at Bianca, teeth still bloody, human meat wedged between canines larger than her fingers. Cigarettes smoldered. Beams of light turned the air humid, pale and yellow.

  Bianca’s neck was sticky with sweat. She palmed it away, dragged the back of her hand across her forehead, then lunged at the lioness, catching the side of her muzzle with her bone-lined knuckles. Crunch. The sound was loud enough for it to violently echo, almost like a gristly gunshot. The Kaiju roared, mouth crooked, blood spilling through its bared teeth. Bianca didn’t stop there. She grabbed a fork off the table and jammed it deep inside the thing’s meaty shoulder, drove it so hard the Kaiju stumbled backward and crashed against the wall. The lioness roared, sank her massive black claws into Bianca’s biceps. Pain flooded her mind, loud and raging like the blood roaring in her ears. She gritted her teeth and worked the fork, slowly turning it, taking threads of muscle and flesh around it like they were pasta.

  Then she tore the fork out, and slammed it into the lioness’ throat.

  Not once. Not twice.

  Enough times to make grizzly meat out of it. Enough times for blood to sloppily gush out and cover her face and chest, onto the ceiling, the floor, everything around them. The worms were frantic, excitable. Hungrier. Adrenaline, sickly sweet, hot, pumped through each of her veins.

  The lioness choked once, gasped for air as her throat and lungs filled with blood. She grabbed hold of Bianca and drove her backward. Bianca's spine hit the edge of the table, then the lioness' large, strong hands wrapped around her throat, tighter and tighter. Blood spilled from her throat, fork still wedged in deep. Eyes wild. Face matted with scarlet. The rest of the Pride were howling and wailing, noise in the background as Ru fought them. Plates of food flew through the air. The baked human corpse smacked, thudded, greasy rolled onto the ground. And Bianca kicked and thrashed, vision blinking and heart pounding against her temples. Then the lioness raised her fist and brought it down. Bianca’s head slammed against the table. Her eyesight flickered. Another jackhammer punch. Blood burst into her throat, filling her nose. The worms felt like hot static against her skin, violently twitching and moving.

  Bianca grabbed and snatched at the lioness’ crooked muzzle. Batted away her hand. Reached for her maw and jammed her fingers inside of it. The Kaiju brought her teeth down. They sank through her hand, the meat and the bones and the tendons all turning to meat. Pain. Hot, unbearable pain. Bianca screamed through her teeth and let the worms flood inside the Kaiju.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The creature froze, suddenly jerked. Paused. Punched Bianca again, but missed, smashing its fist through the widden table and grazing her cheek, cutting it open just under her mask. Then the lioness' body seized, arms going rigid, head craning painfully toward the ceiling as foamy saliva gushed from its mouth, turning pink as it mixed with the blood covering its chest. And then the worms exploded from its nose, from its ears, shoved the eyeballs right out of their sockets and left the massive creature twitching and shaking and clawing uselessly on the floor.

  Bianca breathlessly watched the creature spasm and roar and twitch. She knuckled saliva off her lips. Blood still in her mouth. Head heavy, eyesight blurry, something metallic clogging her nose.

  She couldn't wait, though. Ru was fighting - no, slaughtering, so she should, too.

  Agonizingly slowly, she rolled off the table and landed on all fours. She panted. Rested her forehead against the blood-filled wooden floor. Bianca held her mangled hand, and watched the worms force her fingers back together and attach the severed tendons.

  It hurt so badly she wanted to vomit and scream and cry all at once.

  Job’s not done yet, B.

  She pushed her face off the floor, knuckled the blood off her cheeks, and spat on the dead Kaiju.

  Bianca frowned. Wait, something feels—

  The gunshot was loud. Ear-splittingly loud.

  Her senses, tweaked to eleven, flicked her eyes to the right. The doors were open. Cedric was there, gun in his hand, smoke trailing from the barrel. O’Reiley stood behind him, cigar getting chewed, watching her sharply.

  The bronze slug crawled through the air, barely a foot away from her skull, ripping through one body, then the next, on a deadly warpath right toward her-

  The lioness’ body suddenly jerked, then flung itself off the floor and in front of the bullet.

  The round blew a chunk out of the Kaiju’s skull, sending brain matter and bone into Bianca’s mouth.

  It was a good thing she’d already vomited, because grossgrossgrossgross was all she could think as she coughed up pieces of Kaiju skull. The body staggered, then stood, worms spilling out the side of its meaty head.

  “Holy shit,” she whispered. The eye-less lioness staggered, stopped.

  Cedric fired another round. The bullet tore through the Kaiju’s shoulder, its chest and then its bicep. But it stood, worms pouring out of the bloody, meaty wounds. O’Reiley took the cigar out his mouth and stared at the bloody body.

  Bianca slowly stood up, shielded by the creature’s large, muscular back, then…

  She smiled, a sick, thin smile, and mentally whispered, Sick ‘em.

  The lioness roared so loudly almost everything stopped, she threw herself madly through the room, claws shredding the air, broken maw trailing saliva and blood and teeth, then violently lunged onto Cedric. The gun went off, five shots swallowed by the lioness’ gut. The Kaiju, mangy and wild and bloody, slammed into him and sent him skidding across the ground. Then it started tearing away at him, claws and teeth, shredding through his jacket and shirt, gouging his arms open as he shrieked and flailed on the floor. Bianca tried not to smile, and she knew she shouldn’t be smiling, but the hallway was dark, the noise of a body getting cut open was loud and grotesque and it was all she could hear as the worms hummed underneath her own skin and—

  O’Reiley raised his sleek white rifle, and sent a golden beam of light through the Kaiju’s body.

  Bianca felt something inside her gut suddenly go cold.

  The lioness toppled over. The worms, burnt and black and dead, fell out of its corpse as the creature slumped over.

  Something hung in the air. Something nasty that made her throat burn. Bianca hated the smell.

  The worms hated it even more.

  “Get ‘im up,” O’Reiley said, spitting out his stubby cigar and jerking his head at Cedric. Well, what was left of him, wheezing and gouged open on the ground. “And get him healed. He’ll be fine. Minus an eye and his arm, maybe in the IR for a while, but he’s got deep pockets—find a Healer if you can, or kidnap one if you can’t. I’ve seen people alive with less in this god-damned city.” Then he turned his head to look at Bianca. He smiled, nothing reaching those pale green eyes. “Well, well,” he said, swaggering closer, hell breaking loose around them with Ru tearing holes through Kaiju with nothing except her fists, leaving them looking like shotguns had been put to their guts and heads. O’Reiley walked slowly, stepped over fallen bodies and the nasty cooked human corpse, rifle still resting on his shoulder, until he was standing in front of her, unlaced boots wet in the pool of blood on the floor. Bianca’s body burned and ached. She held her stomach, still feeling that shard of ice wedged in between her ribs. “You’ve got violence in you, kid, and I’m fuckin’ impressed. Here I was thinking you were some kind of timid little bitch with ideas too big for her head.” He leaned closer. His saliva smelt like shit. “We could use someone like you, y’know.”

  Bianca stared at him, breathing so deeply her shoulders rose and fell. “You’re offering me a job?”

  “Olympia worked for less than we’d pay you,” he said. Bianca’s gut knotted. What? “Well? We can get something done around here. Get some real changes built into this fucking place. Restore some good old order.”

  “With a hired gun in charge of everything?” she whispered, mouth going bitter.

  "Better than a tyrant in a costume, preaching about how good and rightous she is as she rips homans apart in her hands."

  "I'd rather that than whatever the fuck you are," Bianca spat.

  The lioness’ body twitched. But not enough. Too many of the worms had died.

  Enough of them to still leave a cold hole in her stomach. She felt drained. Weaker.

  Sweat worked under the mask, slipping into her eyes, making it hard to stare at O’Reiley.

  Beams of sunlight cut across the room, lighting the blood flying through the air, making the limbs Ru severed from bodies shine as they slammed into the walls and crashed through windows and splashed into the filthy waters outside.

  The sunlight only cast a shadow over O’Reiley’s face. Sharp edges. Pits under his eyes. A dark, wet smile.

  Ugly. Nasty. Vile.

  That’s what O’Reiley was, that’s what he’d been so long that it had carved itself into his face.

  He wanted to grow flowers for this city, and the only love he had was the money he’d get from the corpses he'd steal from.

  “Huh,” he said quietly, leaning back and dropping the rifle from his shoulder. “The righteous type.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m that easy to read,” Bianca said flatly. The lioness’ arm jerked and flopped.

  Something tugged in her skull. She smelt blood in her nose before it dribbled onto her top lip.

  “Got a little somethin’ there, superhero,” O’Reiley said, levelling the rifle in his hands. “Looks like that party trick was more smoke and mirrors than I first thought.” The weapon hummed. Golden light pooled along its barrel, sounding like garrish, terrible hell in her ears. Screaming. The worms were screaming for her to run. The fear they plunged into her heart made her sick, almost physically want to vomit again as cold sweat slid down her face.

  Neither of them moved, neither of them wanted to move.

  The lioness corpse moved first.

  The mercenaries had cleared Cedric’s body, shot up the Kaiju corpse and left, snatching what they could from doors and hallways as they ran. Nothing between O’Reiley and the lioness. Nothing between the rifle and Bianca’s chest. O’Reiley put the barrel to her face, heat so terrible it peeled the skin off her lips as horrible, horrible heat oozed from the thing’s barrel. Then, one-by-one, several things happened at once, all so fast Bianca could hardly even blink.

  The lioness, a hole in its chest, missing half its skull, throat torn open, shoulder fucked up and muzzle broken and bent and gushing with blood, bone, gristle and worms, crashed into O’Reiley, slamming him into Bianca. The gun went off—but not in her face. Close. So fucking close. Close enough that it singed her hair and torched the worms on her shoulder and throat, then the beam of light exploded through the houseboat, carving through the floor, the wall, and into the ceiling, cleaving the wooden beams apart. The boat didn’t move. Not at first. The gun smashed into the floor. The lioness slumped over, finally dead and useless, suffocating O’Reiley underneath it. Then the houseboat groaned, a terrible sound of metal rivets coming apart and wood shredding and snapping. A chunk of the ship splintered, cracked, and suddenly water gushed through the floorboards, then it began sinking.

  It wasn’t slow.

  Bianca, shoulder screaming with pain, dizzy with agony, took three steps, then suddenly plunged into neck-deep water so icy it made her gasp and swallow gallons in one go. She choked. Vomited filthy garbage water. Clawed with one hand, but the vacuum of water underneath her frantically kicking legs sucked and pulled and grabbed her feet. Her head vanished below the thrashing surface. Water surged into her mouth and stung her eyes. Air again. Briefly. O’Reiley clawed at the water, grabbed a fistful of her hair, swung his fist and punched her in the jaw; anger, violence - it all roared through her skull as she grabbed O'Reiley's throat and battled the raging current, then the lioness’ body wrapped around his, and its jaw clamped around his bicep. He shrieked. The roaring ride underneath them screamed louder as the houseboat began tilting. Under again. Darkness. A hailstorm of debris that cut and stabbed and FUCK. She screamed. Felt her ribs. Something—wood, metal, fucking something—wedged inside of her. Then a body slammed into her head in the wild dark vortex. She spun around. Aimless. Breathless. Lungs screaming. She gritted her teeth and kicked, pain rocketing down her spine. C’mon, B. Swim. Fucking swim. Up. Closer to the surface. Faint light. Maybe—

  A hand jabbed downward, searched, vanished. Bianca kicked violently, stuck her arm out—

  She felt someone grab her, then haul her upward and out of the water at a terrible angle. Half the boat was tilted, bent sharply into the water. She slid against the wet floorboards and crashed against the table and dead Kaiju bodies and the cooked human corpse. Ru grabbed her forearm, then threw her upward. She flew through the air, then snatched onto the wooden door that led into the hallway they’d come through. There was screaming. Loud, loud screaming from the hallway as people desperately tried to escape. Naked, frantic women too thin and pale to keep hold of their footing.

  Her arms ached. The piece of jagged wood in her torso made her head spin with pain.

  She still had enough sense to force the worms out through her back, the appendages darting downward and grabbing Ruslana, wrapping around her body as even more of the worms dragged Bianca up. Sweat built on her face. The icy waves roared underneath them, a large, black, gaping mouth that chewed wood and bodies and blood.

  But she went up, and up, toward the end of the hallway, appendages grabbing people, wrapping them in the worms, leaving Bianca’s body more and more cold and naked until all the worms sprouted from her spine and shoulders, dozens dragged behind her as she clawed and fought and dragged herself up the hallway, hell screaming underneath her as bashful, blinding sunlight blinded her. She tore fingernails. Her burnt shoulder gave out, buckled. Ruslana grabbed Bianca around the waist, and together they pulled hundreds of pounds of people toward the light above.

  A foot away from the sunlight, from the pale sky alight with afternoon shine, a shadow appeared.

  Small. Ugly. Twitching.

  The mangy Kaiju stood above them, wet, shivering, teeth bared and broken, with a rifle cradled in its arms.

  The muzzle pointed at Bianca, just as the houseboat buckled, and the ocean suddenly rose behind her.