Limitless Evolution As a Snake

The thing beneath the road was following a smell I could carry, which meant my next sensible decision involved stealing a box of monster breakfast. Pike fastened the bait cartridge inside an old tool basket while I checked that its handle could survive more than a polite suggestion.

”If this leaks on me, I’m making the captain explain why her rescue service has started seasoning the customers,” I told him. He pointed towards a dry quarry basin away from the camp and said its bare rock floor would stop the creature approaching beneath me.

[System: Take the stink downhill and come back from the other side, mate. You’re delivering takeaway, not starting a relationship with whatever’s coming out of that bloody road.]

Bridget’s idea of getting me alone sounds considerably better, but apparently saving the neighbourhood means flirting with a rubbish disposal first. I looped a coil through the basket handle and accelerated above the fence, keeping the jets behind my fins clear of the container’s straps.

The moving ground turned after me, splitting around old foundations before joining again beneath a long plated back. It wasn’t three separate animals, which improved the counting without improving the size of the problem following my delivery route.

I dropped the basket into the quarry basin and climbed as the creature surfaced beside it, throwing gravel across the rock. Its mouth closed around the tool basket with a noise that suggested Pike wouldn’t be getting that particular piece of equipment back.

Hollis’s patrol truck reached the ridge above it while I circled wide and returned towards camp. She kept the crew watching the basin rather than firing blindly, giving everyone behind us time to repair the gate before the creature finished discovering what it had swallowed.

Back at the shed, Pike had disconnected the exposed speaker, but a second pulse still travelled through the ground. Two more sealed lure units sat beneath the ration platform, with timers showing later releases and a control light responding to something outside the camp.

Bridget wanted to cut them free until Pike showed her the pressure valves beside their scent chambers. Breaking the cases would dump the bait under the food store, and hauling every unit away while more animals arrived would turn me into a very busy delivery service.

The remote receiver identified its control station as the cold store on Iona’s map. Rusk had put the people we wanted beside the equipment hurting everyone else, which was efficient in the same way setting your house on fire saved time heating dinner.

[System: New mission, Find the Dinner Bell, worth seven hundred and fifty EXP if you stop the camp’s scheduled lures at the source. Smashing the food store doesn’t count as a creative interpretation.]

You’re adding restrictions because you know I’d earn the reward too quickly otherwise. I accepted while Bridget asked Pike what the controller looked like, and he drew a square handset with a yellow stop switch beneath a hinged cover.

It needed a physical operator key, kept on the dispatch supervisor’s belt during transport. [System: Pinch the key, mate; one sweaty supervisor’s belt should be easier than another warehouse full of forms.]

If I need a receipt for his trousers, I’m resigning from public service.

Iona checked with the independent shelter before we moved, confirming they could receive the nine workers while the camp decided what to do about Rusk. She also arranged beds for anyone hurt at the fence, refusing to let one rescue consume all the available space.

”I was hoping we’d finish the bit with the boxes and stop discovering extra people attached to the problem,” I said. She asked whether I wanted them to become less attached before or after a monster found their bedrooms, which was difficult to answer without sounding like Adrian.

Bridget handed me a sandwich and asked whether I needed payment for thinking of other people. I told her lunch was acceptable, and she warned that the next reward depended on finishing the rescue. My imagination immediately made that arrangement unnecessarily interesting.

Lukas offered to scout the cold store roof, then caught Iona’s expression and changed the suggestion to the loading road. He could watch the vehicles from the abandoned scale office without climbing anything, and the office had an actual chair for his increasingly expensive ribs.

[System: Spider boy’s discovered chairs, champ; give him a fortnight and we might stop needing a bloody roofing contractor every time the bastard visits someone.]

Let him keep one bad habit, because somebody needs to distract the women from the much better dressed disaster beside him. Bridget took the driver’s seat while Lukas settled beside her, and Iona remained with the camp medics until we knew where the prisoners would be moved.

The cold store stood beyond a row of dead refrigeration trucks, its white walls stained orange near the ground. Guards wore Rusk’s bronze shoulder patches, but their rifles stayed pointed towards the workers loading boxes rather than the dangerous country beyond the fence.

Bridget parked behind the scale office while Lukas photographed the loading lanes on his own phone. I drifted below the window line and watched a small stoat man carry a crate towards the nearest truck with another worker holding his arm to keep him upright.

Iona had shown us a photograph of her brother, Niall, and the bent patch on his medical satchel made the identification easier than his frightened face. He was still wearing it while somebody ordered him to stop pretending he was a medic and finish lifting.

The dispatch supervisor unlocked a cabinet inside the office and lifted the controller Pike had described. Beside him, a driver turned three vehicle boards towards the yard, each showing a different route and the same departure time only minutes away.

I could steal the controller or follow the workers before the convoy split, but doing either badly would leave someone behind. Then the supervisor hung his key inside his shirt and started walking towards the washroom, carrying our best chance to stop the lures straight into the building.