Chapter 136

  The forest pressed in from all sides.

  Alexander flew between the massive trunks, keeping his altitude low, weaving through gaps in the undergrowth. The surveillance drone network fed him constant updates. Heat signatures of small creatures, both down amongst the foliage and up within the canopy. The topographical map being developed in real-time revealed burrows and crevices, along with slopes and hills.

  He didn’t rely on drones alone.

  His Electrokinesis reached outward, sensing the bioelectric signatures of everything around him. And the forest was alive. Thousands of pulses, large and small, scattered through the trees in every direction. Insects. Birds. Things he couldn’t make sense of.

  The sheer density of life made it impossible to isolate individual threats at range. Even the trees felt alive, connected to an extensive, deeply threaded mycelium network, pulsing signals back and forth with the intensity of a brain.

  Every crack of a branch made him tense. Every shift in the canopy drew his eye. He forced himself to keep moving, to trust the drones to catch what his senses overlooked.

  The air grew heavier and hotter as he pressed deeper. Patches of mud appeared below, dark and wet, fed by moisture dripping from the canopy above. Water ran in thin rivulets down the bark of the giant trees, pooling in the hollows of roots. Thick vines hung from the branches overhead, coiling around trunks and draping between trees like forgotten rope.

  He passed a corpse.

  Something large, four-legged, slumped against the base of a tree. Fur matted with old blood. Vines and moss had already begun to creep over the body, threading through the fur. The smell reached him even from this height, thick and rotten. He didn’t slow down to examine it.

  A second corpse appeared minutes later. Then a third. All beasts, all in varying states of decay. Whatever hunted in this part of the forest wasn’t eating its kills.

  Hjordis’s voice cut through the comms. “Contact.”

  Alexander slowed, attention snapping to the feed. He waited.

  Silence stretched for several seconds.

  “Under control,” she added.

  More silence. Alexander counted heartbeats. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

  “Kill confirmed. Just the one.”

  He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Then Hjordis spoke again.

  “Something’s off. This one’s grey. It’s a lighter color than the others we saw on the hill.”

  Raelene’s voice came through, calm and measured. “Could be more minions. Servants of the main targets, rather than the targets themselves.”

  “Wonderful,” Hjordis muttered.

  The hunt continued.

  Alexander pressed forward, senses straining. The surveillance drones swept ahead in overlapping patterns, their feeds filtering through the command drone. Minutes passed without incident.

  Then one of the mini-drones flagged a heat signature.

  High up in a tree, roughly a hundred meters ahead. Large, warm-blooded, and holding unnaturally still.

  “I’ve got a contact,” Alexander said. “A hundred meters ahead. Moving to eliminate.”

  Raelene’s response was immediate. “Copy.”

  He adjusted his trajectory, circling wide to approach from behind. The mini-drone kept the target tracked, feeding him its position in real-time. The creature hadn’t moved. Hadn’t reacted to the drone’s presence.

  Waiting, perhaps. Or sleeping.

  Alexander commanded his five shield-blade drones forward, sending them in a wide arc that would bring them to the target from multiple angles. He hung back, watching through the foliage as they closed in.

  Fifty meters.

  Thirty.

  Twenty.

  The mud below him erupted.

  Alexander was already moving. The mycelium-saturated mud had masked its bioelectric signature completely. He’d expected an ambush, just not from that direction. Metallokinesis seized his armor and hurled him sideways as a massive shape burst upward, arms reaching for where he’d been a half-second before.

  Mud sprayed across the undergrowth. The orangutan was huge, easily twice the size of a gorilla, its fur slick and dark with muck. It roared as it missed, the sound echoing through the trees as it fell back to the ground.

  In the branches above, the first target heard the commotion. Alexander caught it in his peripheral vision, turning, spotting the incoming drones. It moved faster than something that size should, twisting away from the first blade, catching the second drone by its spinning edge.

  Metal shrieked. The orangutan slammed the drone into the trunk beside it, embedding the blade deep into the wood.

  Then it leaped, launching itself through the branches toward Alexander.

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  Raelene’s voice came through, sharp. “Two attacking Alex. Do you need assistance?”

  “No,” Alexander said, tracking both targets. “I have it.”

  He wrenched the stuck drone free with Metallokinesis, sending it and the others spinning after the mud-covered orangutan below. The creature was already recovering, shaking muck from its eyes, preparing to leap again.

  The drones would keep it busy.

  Because the second orangutan had found a thick branch, braced itself, and launched from it directly at him, both arms raised overhead. Ready to bring them down like hammers.

  Alexander watched it come. Gravity-assisted. Several hundred kilograms of muscle and bone accelerating toward him.

  A lot of force.

  He’d theorized that this would work. Run the numbers. Considered the applications. But theory only went so far.

  Alexander clenched his cybernetic fingers into a fist and raised his left arm to catch the blow.

  He braced. Focused.

  And at the last instant, seized the arm with Metallokinesis and locked it in place.

  The orangutan’s fists slammed down.

  The impact shuddered through his body, though far less than it should have been. The arm itself barely moved, his power absorbing the blow.

  But he heard the bones in the creature’s hands and wrists shatter on contact.

  It roared in agony, the sound raw and broken. The force of its own attack sent it tumbling down, limbs flailing, unable to arrest its momentum. It crashed through branches on the way down and hit the mud with a wet, heavy thud.

  Below, the mud-covered orangutan roared and leaped for him, ignoring the drones entirely. The blades caught it as it rose in an arc, carving lines across its torso and arms. It didn’t slow.

  Alexander spun in the air, aimed his left hand, and fired.

  Half power. Center mass would have worked, but he aimed for its head.

  The lightning bolt connected, snapping the great ape’s head back. It went limp instantly. Momentum carried the corpse past him, tumbling back to the ground below.

  He redirected the drones downward. The injured orangutan was still writhing in the mud, cradling its ruined hands against its chest, making sounds that were almost pitiful.

  They ended it quickly.

  Alexander hovered in the sudden quiet. He ran a diagnostic sweep across the cybernetic arm. No stress fractures. No damage to the joints or capacitor housing.

  The theory had been sound. Locking the arm in place with Metallokinesis turned it into a nearly immovable anchor. Anything that hit it would break against the metal, absorbed by his power rather than transferring force through to his body.

  He’d improvised super strength. Or at least a defensive application of it.

  He filed away the possibilities for later consideration.

  “Two down,” he reported over comms. “They set an ambush. One hid in the mud while the other waited in the trees as bait. It was coordinated.”

  “Understood,” Raelene said. “Were either of them the ones we’re tracking?”

  “No. These were grey too,” Alexander said, glancing down at the corpses. “Same as Hjordis’s kill.”

  Julia interrupted. “Got something ahead. It’s huge. Definitely not an orangutan.”

  Alexander connected to the surveillance drone nearest Julia through the command network. It repositioned, bringing into view the strangest thing he’d ever seen.

  A tortoise.

  At least, that’s what it resembled. The shell was the size of a small house, mottled browns, covered in moss and lichen. Small trees grew from its surface, their roots threaded through cracks in the shell, branches swaying gently as the creature moved.

  It was eating.

  Alexander watched as its head dipped down, jaws closing around something on the ground. The crunch of bones echoed through the trees. It pulled back, tearing at the meat, and he caught a glimpse of jagged teeth that had no business being in a tortoise’s mouth.

  Another corpse. Or what was left of one.

  The creature chewed slowly, utterly unconcerned with anything around it.

  “Circle around it,” Raelene said. “Carefully. Somehow it hunted and killed… whatever that is.”

  Julia slipped between the trees, avoiding the meat-eating tortoise.

  “Things just keep getting weirder and weirder,” Alexander muttered, releasing the feed.

  ***

  Augustus paced behind the defensive line, wand in hand, eyes scanning for where he was needed next.

  The battle raged around him. Sven stood at the center barrier, arms spread wide, a massive cone of roaring fire pouring from his palms and sweeping across the battlefield. Beasts caught in the flames shrieked and tumbled, their fur igniting as they tried to retreat. The heat reached Augustus even from here.

  To his left, Felix crouched over Lars, hands pressed to a bloody gash across the man’s ribs. Green light pulsed between his fingers as the wound slowly knit itself closed. Felix’s first technique was both a powerful upgrade to his copied healing, and usable in any form. Lars’s face was pale, teeth gritted, but he was conscious. He’d live.

  The crack of Talia’s energy rifle echoed from somewhere nearby, steady and precise. Each shot was followed a half-second later by something dropping in the distance. The turrets added their own rhythm, a rapid chatter that never seemed to stop.

  Drones wove through the chaos. Some hovered near defenders, shield-blades deployed and rotating slowly, ready to intercept threats. Others swept across the battlefield in coordinated attacks, diving on wounded beasts or targeting smaller creatures.

  Droney orchestrated them all from its position above the gateway, the soul-bonded drone coordinating the swarm with an efficiency that bordered on prescient. It also demonstrated an understanding of both tactics and limitations that surprised him.

  Cash blurred into view beside him.

  Augustus didn’t hesitate. He raised his wand, spoke the incantation, and layered a fresh shield over the speedster. The energy settled across Cash’s form like a second skin.

  Cash gave him a nod and was gone, a streak of motion vanishing back into the chaos.

  If the beasts had been without fear, they would have been overrun in seconds. But with Cash keeping the stronger threats from reaching their defenses, and the rest of the ground team selectively eliminating or terrifying the rest as they approached, they were holding.

  Something landed behind him.

  Augustus spun. The leopard was already mid-lunge, spotted fur stretched over a body the size of a horse, claws extended, jaws wide.

  He twisted sideways, feeling the wind of its swipe pass his chest. Too close. He conjured a buckler onto his left forearm, a disc of shimmering energy barely larger than a dinner plate, and caught the second swipe against it. The impact rattled up his arm. The energy shield shattered on contact, repelling the attack.

  He thrust his wand forward. A firebolt caught the creature under the chin, snapping its head back, sending it stumbling.

  Before it could recover, he slashed in a horizontal arc. A blade of compressed air shot out and carved through its front left leg at the knee. The leopard collapsed forward, trying to right itself on three legs.

  It bared its fangs at him, snarling, coiling to lunge again.

  Augustus stepped forward and jammed the wand between its teeth.

  Fire erupted inside its mouth. The creature convulsed once, smoke pouring from its mouth and nostrils, then went still.

  Augustus stepped back, breathing hard. His shoulder ached where he’d wrenched it during the dodge. Blood that wasn’t his dripped from his sleeve.

  He turned, surveying the battlefield.

  Then he saw them on the hill that had been empty just a moment earlier.

  Familiar. Blackish-orange.

  Two orangutans.

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