Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Behind me, I can hear Dad screaming, actually screaming, something about insurance or assassins or probably both, but it’s already fading, already meaningless, because none of that matters right now.

Nothing matters right now except the woman going limp in my arms.

I’m flying, and I don’t even know where I’m flying to. What do I do?

Where do I take her? Is there a hospital? An emergency line? Fuck, I don’t know anything. I thought I had this figured out, thought I was invincible, thought nothing could touch me after surviving every fight, every knife, every idiot who tried. None of that means anything now because she’s not moving.

Her head lolls against my coiled body. Her lips are the colour of a bruise.

[System: OI LISTEN TO ME, YOU WORTHLESS CUNT!!!!]

”How,” I scream, not even a question really, more like a demand thrown into the void. ”How do I get it out? Tell me right now.”

[System: SUCK IT OUT. VENOM GLANDS CAN REVERSE FLOW, MATE, YOU’VE GOT THE BIOLOGY FOR IT, BUT YOU NEED TO DO IT NOW, RIGHT NOW, NOT IN FIVE SECONDS, NOW.]

”I know,” I snap out loud, my voice cracking somewhere between fury and terror, ”I fucking know, I can feel it.”

The wind screams past us. Twawi sprawls out below, neon and rust and steam vents.

I don’t spot anywhere flat enough to think, so I just drop, wings folding tight, gravity doing the work my brain can’t. The ground rushes up and I land hard on some rooftop, tail buckling, and I don’t even care what part of Twawi this is.

I nudge her jaw with my snout, forcing her mouth open just enough. I press my mouth against hers and pull.

It tastes wrong, bitter and cold and metallic, like sucking on a battery, and my whole throat burns up in protest, but I keep pulling anyway, drawing whatever poison I can find back through her lips and down into me where my own glands are supposed to catch it, reverse the flow, do the one trick my body was actually built for.

Her skin starts warming under my scales. That’s good, that has to be good, that means something is working.

My own head goes light. My vision tunnels at the edges, black creeping in like ink through water, and I realise distantly that I’m not breathing right, that pulling venom out of someone apparently isn’t free, that there’s a cost and I’m the one paying it.

The last thing I feel is her pulse steadying under my snout.

Lyra’s eyes crack open in a room she doesn’t recognise, low ceiling, exposed pipes, the smell of rust and old water. Her head is pounding, and her mouth tastes like she swallowed a penny, but none of that matters the second she turns her head and sees me slumped against the wall, not moving, lips gone grey.

”MATT!” She’s up before she even finishes saying it, scrambling across the floor on hands and knees. ”Matt, Matt, hey, look at me, come on-please...”

Her hands are on my chest, my face, checking for breath she can’t find. Her voice cracks into something that isn’t cop-speak anymore, isn’t organised, isn’t anything but raw.

[System: Listen to me, you magnificent, suicidal lizard.]

The voice in my skull isn’t cracking jokes. No slang, no dole-bludger drawl, just flat and cold like a judge reading a verdict.

[System: You can’t just drink a death poison and spit it out. Venom like that doesn’t disappear, mate. The System needs a life to close the tab.]

Somewhere far away, floating, not really attached to my body anymore, I try to claw my way back toward words.

Take Channel. I throw the thought out like a lifeline. Kill the harpy bitch, she’s the one who spiked the bloody stuff. Take her instead.

[System: Doesn’t work like that; you can’t sacrifice someone you hate, Matt. That’s not how the ledger reads. The universe doesn’t take out your rubbish for free. It has to be a true sacrifice. Someone you actually give a shit about.]

I DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT ANYONE ELSE! I scream inside my own skull, not caring how pathetic it sounds bouncing around in there. It’s just my girls, that’s it, that’s the whole list; everyone else can rot.

[System: Then it’s Cherry, isn’t it? Or your old man screaming his lungs out back there. Or that wolf-eared bird who’d take a bullet for you without blinking. Pick one, mate. Pick one right now, or both you and Lyra cark it together.]

NO, huh? What the fuck, Old mate? Not Cherry. The words come out of me like a wall slamming down, absolute, no room for argument. I am not choosing that. I’ll break your fucking koala neck first, Old Mate. I swear to every god that’s ever existed I will find whatever tree you live in, and I will burn it down.

Take my rank. Take my fins, take my smoke hands, take the wings, take every evolution point I’ve ever earned, strip me back down to some F-Tier garden snake nobody looks at twice, I don’t care, just don’t make me pick.

[System: I can’t take your stats, you absolute dropkick. This isn’t a shop. Flesh and soul, that’s the only currency that clears. A life for a life, choose before her heart stops, Matt, you’re running out of time to be stubborn about this.]

My chest feels like it’s caving in from the inside, like something’s got both hands wrapped around my ribs and is squeezing slowly, and I can hear Lyra’s voice getting further away even though she’s right there, right on top of me, hands pressed flat against my ventral scales like she can hold me together through sheer will.

Take me then. Kill me, do it; I’m right here, I’m offering; why is this even a discussion.

[System: If you die, the bond snaps and Cherry dies, and Lyra dies anyway. Both bonds run through you, genius. You’re not a sacrifice, you’re the wire. Cut the wire and everything downstream goes dark. Think, you magnificent, dense bastard, THINK.]