Limitless Evolution As a Snake

I don’t wait to see what the next nine do. I’m already spinning hard the other way, full speed, low to the ground, because I know what’s coming and I want as much distance between me and it as physically possible before-

The shockwave picks me up anyway. Deposits me approximately six feet further along than I would have gotten on my own, which is, genuinely, fine by me. The alley opens ahead, cold air a distance away and the actual possibility of getting away.

Then the wall at the end of the alley moves.

Not the wall. A fifth one, bigger than the rest, who has been standing perfectly still in the dark this whole time, arms folded, waiting.

[System: They sent five, mate. Your uncles sent five.]

The impact knocks the wind clean out of me. I hit the ground hard enough that my vision whites out, and when it clears, a figure is blocking the exit. He’s massive—elephant-thick arms, tusks curving from his jaw—and he isn’t even in a fighting stance, just staring down like he’s got all the time in the world and I’m something he’s about to step on.

”Hi,” I say.

Not my best line. But I’m a snake on the ground looking up at a guy built like a filing cabinet, so I think I get a pass.

He doesn’t say anything back.

He just looks at me for a second, like he’s deciding whether I’m even worth the effort, and then his foot comes up.

I see it coming and I still can’t do anything about it, because there’s a difference between seeing something and having a body fast enough to dodge it, and right now I’ve got neither the reflexes nor the reach. The foot connects with my face, and it’s not just a foot; there’s metal in there, steel plating bolted right into the sole like he had it custom-made for exactly this purpose, exactly this moment, exactly my stupid face.

The kick sends me spinning, the alley a blur of brick and sky. I tumble end over end, weightless for a sickening moment before the dumpster wall slams into me with a solid, metallic crack. My whole dorsal line screams, and my head rings like a bell someone won’t stop hitting.

[System: reckon you’ve got a thing for dumpsters, mate.]

I can’t even respond. My mouth isn’t working right, nor is the thinking part. Something’s loose in there that shouldn’t be loose.

[System: three times now. counted. you and dumpsters, must be a whole love language thing going on.]

Not now, I think, except I don’t actually think it; more like I just feel the shape of the words without the energy to put them together properly.

Everything’s swimming. The alley’s tilted at an angle that alleys shouldn’t be tilted at. Big guy’s walking toward me now, unhurried, like he knows I’m not going anywhere. Which, fair to be fair, I’m not.

[System: get up. Seriously, mate, get up now, or you’re not getting up at all.]

I try, but my tail refuses, and there’s dumpster juice soaking into my eyes, and I can taste blood, and I’m pretty sure that’s my own fang in my tongue.

The footsteps get closer. A thought sparks through the pain: I can shoot. The Ballistic Mouth-Chamber clicks, a horrible dry feeling like I’m about to sneeze a bullet. Before he can react, my mouth is open, and three rounds are gone.

3 hardened scale rounds punch into him, and he doesn’t even really fall so much as sort of sit down, slow, like his legs forgot their whole job at once. Dead before he hits the ground, probably; I really don’t stick around to check.

I’m already turning for the exit- well, rolling; I’m rolling towards it, thinking about cold air and freedom and maybe never coming back to this stupid alley ever again in my whole life, when something grabs my tail.

Hard.

I get yanked backward across the concrete, scales scraping, and I twist around to see the three from before, the ones I maybe sort of forgot about, hauling me in like I’m a fish on a line.

”The fuck is this tail made of?” one of them says, genuinely offended, like my tail personally insulted his mother. ”Feels like rebar.”

”Steel snake upgrades,” another one mutters.

I don’t really have time to appreciate the compliment. I twist my forward half around, chamber up another round, and put it straight through the mouthy one’s chest. He goes down mid-sentence, still complaining about my tail texture on the way to the floor.

That should scare the other two; sadly for me, it does not scare the other two. If anything, it gets worse. Their ripping steel pipes out of the walls, and they come at me like I personally murdered their favourite cousin, which, to be fair, I sort of just did.

Fine. New plan: kill the source, not the hired muscle. I flare my hood out wide, feel the skin stretch, and lock eyes with both of them at once, the spiral pattern already lighting up behind my pupils, swirling slow and hypnotic and stupidly pretty for something about to ruin two men’s whole lives.

”Go back to my uncles,” I rasp, and my voice has gone somewhere else entirely, low and slow and thick, the kind of frequency that doesn’t ask permission. I’ve clocked maybe forty hours of practice on this exact register, and it shows.

”Walk straight back in there and tell them you couldn’t find me, and then,” I let it hang, because the pause is part of it, the pause is where the suggestion really beds in. ”beat them half to death, use the pipes.”

One of them lowers his pipe, his eyes going distant. The other’s mouth hangs slack.

I feel the particular satisfaction of a thing going exactly right for once tonight.

And then I make the single dumbest mistake of my entire short violent life.