Wexler fought back nausea as he staggered out of the aerobug onto the rough, coralstone surface of the roofpad. Blood stained the front of his shirt. Not his.
He wiped sweat from his brow, needle pistol gripped in his hand, and scanned the surrounding polyp towers for signs of pursuit, a dull pain blooming behind his eyes.
The bloated red sun beat down on him. Something crawled under his skin, rooted deep into his musculoskeletal system. Invasive. Dangerous. Alive.
A bullet ricocheted off the roofpad, followed by the audible crack of a rifle.
Sniper!
Wexler rolled out of the line of fire and dropped into a down chute, which carried him into the bowels of the hotel.
Cool air rushed over his face, chilling the sweat and making his eyes water.
He checked behind him as he crossed the lobby’s sponge moss carpet, concealing his weapon inside his jacket.
Nervously, he pushed into the nearest public restroom and sealed the nictitating door behind him.
He used the sonic cleaner to scrub the blood and dirt from his hands, resisting the urge to look into the mirror above the wash basin.
Already, his wounds were beginning to heal. But not just heal. Change. It had started with a few suspicious callouses but had quickly progressed to patches of hardened black carapace, slick exoskeleton replacing soft tissue.
The implantation site between his shoulder blades itched, the skin irritated and inflamed around the bulging spinal node. Wexler could only begin to imagine what transformations it had wrought inside him.
He could feel stuff shifting around, chitinous plates scraping against each other within his body cavity.
The gene splicer who’d sold him the node had told him it would be uncomfortable at first. Adrenaline accelerated the process. But soon, the hard part would be over.
Against his better judgment, Wexler glanced up at the mirror. A cluster of black orbs was pushing its way through the skin beneath his right eye.
Drying blood caked his jaw and neck. He stuck a probing finger into his mouth and pulled out one of his teeth, then spat a clump of bloody tissue into the wash basin.
Rancid bile stung the back of his throat. He tore away from the mirror before he made himself sick.
Ryken’s goons found him in the parking deck beneath the hotel, chasing him through the ranks of crawlers, wheelbugs, and rollers, bullets pinging off their metallic shells as gunfire echoed through the spacious alcoves.
Wexler crouched behind a silver wheelbug and checked his needle pistol. The weapon pulsated in his hand, organic tendrils meshing with his nervous system, tying its action to his reflexes.
He heard footsteps approaching and calculated the position of his three pursuers with his heightened perception.
Full of nervous energy, he sprang up from his hiding spot and peppered the nearest thug with needlefire, the poison darts sinking into his orange flesh-suit to deliver their toxic payload.
The man collapsed onto the pavement, clawing at his wounds.
One of the other goons raised a pincer weapon, an oversized crab claw into which their hand neatly fitted, but Wexler shot them in the face before they could use it.
The third uncoiled a nerve whip and snapped it at him, knocking the needle pistol from his hand. She moved in close and flicked implanted blades from her fingers, which she used to claw him in the chest.
Wexler raised his arm to block her attack, black spines quivering at his wrist. The skin around his knuckles had grown gnarled and blistered.
An injector pushed out of her fingertip, and she pressed it against his neck. He felt a flush of heat. Then his muscles turned to jelly, and he went down.
A curtain of darkness fell across his vision.
He came to on a luxurious clam couch in an elegant room furnished with an antique wood desk—obviously imported—ornate cabinets, and a panoramic window overlooking the sprawling crater city. A stormy, purple gas giant loomed over the rocky horizon.
A man wearing a scaly flesh-suit and a pair of pearlescent slip-shoes stood by a roaring fireplace, cupping a glass of some dark spirit.
He faced Wexler. “Ah, you’re awake.”
Wexler sat up. His head pounded, and there was a putrid taste in his mouth. As his vision sharpened, he recognized the man’s too perfect, bio-sculpted features. Ryken.
“Sorry about the headache,” the ganglord said, gesturing at his temple. “You put up quite the fight. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. Although it’s going to take the menders some time to put Skaggs’s face back together.”
“What do you want?” Wexler managed, his lips still numb from the tranq.
Ryken took a swig from his drink. “It makes no sense. With all the money and power I gave you, you could have had any woman you wanted. But you had to have mine.”
“She’s not your property,” Wexler said. “And you’ve got it wrong. You’re so narrow minded you can’t even see it. I love Yelena, sure, but she’s not the only reason I left.”
“You’re a fool,” Ryken snapped. “If it wasn’t for your meddling, we could have had something real. But because of your insolence, I had no choice but to feed her to the digester.”
Wexler leaped to his feet. Blood rushed to his head, and he nearly lost his balance. “What?”
“Don’t look so surprised. She was spoiled goods. After your betrayal, I couldn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut. You have only yourself to blame.”
A fiery rage swelled in Wexler’s chest. His muscles spasmed, and his mouth began to fill with saliva. Something pushed its way up his esophagus, and for a moment he thought he might throw up.
Mandibles forced their way out of his mouth, peeling his lips back until they ripped, blood running down his jaw.
Ryken stumbled back. He spilled his drink on the sponge moss carpet. “Fuck, help!”
Before his guards could respond, Wexler was on top of him.
His mandibles sliced into Ryken’s soft neck, chewing through arteries until the man’s warm, savory blood splashed in his mouth.
A tongue probed out, blossoming like the head of a parasitic worm, its spines hooking into his former employer.
With his consciousness waning, Wexler finally let go, giving in to his baser instincts. As Ryken struggled beneath him, limbs twitching in their death throes, he began to feed.
###
M.T. Preston, Jr. 