Limitless Evolution As a Snake

The cable guide jumped when the ship rolled, and I decided the best place for an A-rank bastard was somewhere that heavy machinery could help me argue with him.

I slid toward a stack of spare cargo straps, pretending the launcher worried me more than the cable. Horass watched the straps, watched my eyes, and stepped onto the dry raised walkway without putting a toe in the loose loops.

”The same trick failed against the turnip cavalry at Black Apricot,” he told me. ”An enemy who noticed the trap was often less useful than one who admired it.”

”I was beginning to think your entire military career happened in the produce section, and nobody had the heart to ask you to leave.”

[System: He’s right about the trap, though. You’ve stared at that rope like a teenager meeting his first pair of tits, and now the salad knows where the party’s happening.]

I could admire an opportunity without making it weird, although I accepted that the staring had become a professional problem.

I brightened my lure near the straps and slipped beneath the walkway. Horass didn’t follow the light, but his head turned toward the moving reflection long enough for me to reach a low cargo trolley.

Theft had cleared again. I brought its center inside three meters, selected the open space against my coils and took the trolley, which arrived with its full weight and rolled into the wall when I shoved it away.

I had wanted its padded load to block his route. Instead, Horass caught the trolley by its frame and drove it across the floor like an oversized shopping cart powered by personal hatred.

The corner hit my side before I cleared the lane. Pain shot through the bruises, and the trolley carried me into a stack of soft packing rolls with enough force to knock the breath out of me.

My body didn’t become harmless smoke on command just because solid impacts were inconvenient. I pulled free with my scales scraping the frame, leaving a torn strip of bandage behind while Horass let go.

”You had a useful power and an unfortunate habit of mistaking access for strength,” he said. ”Taking a thing did not make you better at using it than the person standing beside you.”

[System: That’s a fair assessment from a bloke who could lose an argument to a barbecue, but let’s survive before we put it on a mug.]

If we survived, I was printing his face on a packet of salad dressing and selling it outside his house.

I crawled behind a loaded cargo rack while my phone clock showed more than four minutes since the collector’s bullet. Beer still needed time, and every ordinary second had become an insulting amount of personal suffering.

The rack held sealed cases of luxury tableware. I couldn’t steal the entire rack, because its center was too far away and there wasn’t room against me, but the nearest release latch was within reach of a tendril.

I pulled it and shoved the lowest loose case into the open lane. The ship’s angle did the rest, sending it sliding toward Horass with all the threat of an expensive cupboard having an accident.

He stepped around it without effort. The case struck the cable guard behind him, breaking open and spilling silver plates across the floor, which made my attempt look even worse than it had been.

That part had been deliberate. The damaged guard tilted under the load, leaving a section of return cable exposed beside a low structural beam.

I saw Horass notice it. His gaze moved from the plates to the guide and back to me, and I stopped pretending the plan was a secret before he could use my confidence against me.

”You were meant to slip on those and fall into the rope, but apparently somebody bought the deluxe legs package.”

”Roots,” he corrected, lifting one foot enough to show the gripping growth beneath it. ”They worked well on wet surfaces, provided nobody expected them to explain themselves to an idiot.”

I respected that answer so much I wanted to bite him somewhere expensive. Instead, I used the open lane to reach the crew passage while he crossed the scattered plates without slipping.

A damaged cargo door blocked half the passage. Beyond it, a service hatch opened toward the outer loading deck, where cold air and alarm noise suggested an exit that hadn’t yet been turned into a hole.

I sent Bridget the hatch marking as I passed. She answered that the response launch was moving, and the ship’s crew had confirmed our position, which meant help finally had somewhere real to go.

”I would try to keep the next door intact for you, although my recent performance made that more of a personal hope than a guarantee.”

”Keep yourself intact first, and we could discuss your talent for home improvement afterward,” she said, sounding calm in the careful way that told me she wasn’t.

I wanted to promise an easy ending. Instead, I told her where the pain was and kept moving, because she deserved facts she could use more than another charming lie.

Horass reached the far end of the passage as a second door opened beside me. The collection boss shoved through it with a phone pressed to his ear and a small pistol in his free hand.

He hadn’t noticed me beneath the broken door. His attention stayed on the voice coming through the phone while he argued that the club attack should happen before the girls had time to move anything valuable.

The caller asked about staff, and the boss told him to deal with anyone who got in the way. There was no confusion about a wrong address or an unpaid delivery this time.

The words landed harder than the trolley. I stopped looking for the exit and watched his boots cross the narrow gap between us, while Horass quietly lowered his launcher at the far end of the hall.