Demons, Part 3 By Nathan The Escape 12:22 AM The night air was blissfully cool against Katherine Starr's skin as she barreled through the darkened forest. It was about the only good she could find in her current situation. Her house had been ransacked. She had been kidnapped by a giant Austrian woman. And, just minutes ago, she had been the unwilling subject of a mad scientist's horrifying human experiments, which had transformed her into an immense, incredibly strong muscular freak. Things were definitely bad. Even worse, the roar of engines from the forest behind her was growing louder and louder...wait, not just behind... She began to stop herself just as a series of spotlights turned the world white. Her huge feet ploughed deep furrows in the soft forest floor, smashing through several buried roots and boulders before she finally came to a halt, knee-deep in dirt, about twenty feet from a semicircle of heavily armed men wearing strange, armored suits and several jeeps mounting extremely large guns. Even partially buried, she still towered over them. Unfortunately, this didn't make their weapons, expertly trained on her heart and forehead, any less threatening. They looked like something out of a science fiction novel. One about war. As Katherine stared, three more squads, all similarly armed, took up positions behind her and on either side, completely surrounding her. She looked around desperately for some avenue of escape, but she was simply out of options. She swore under her breath, noting that, at least, her voice still seemed to be the same, and took another look around the ring of troops surrounding her. Every last one wore a full helmet with a dark mask, making their faces completely inscrutable to her. Every last one was thankful that Katherine couldn't see the cold sweat of abject terror pouring down their faces. Sweat poured from Robert's brow as his fingers flew across the keyboard in a feverish attempt to bring the control system back on-line. Doctor Krantz's holographic camouflage had saved them from the immediate wrath of the giantess they had created, but her escape had caused near-catastrophic feedback damage to the Compound's computers, sending them into a spectacular domino- effect crash which had effectively knocked out their ability to control the creatures which they called neoforms. These included not only Katherine, but dozens of other subjects, created in experiments dating back to the establishment of the Compound. It wouldn't affect those currently dormant, or the independent field agents, but the failed experiments, the utterly grotesque, malformed things only useful as templates for avoiding mistakes, were already becoming unruly. Even from the safety of the central computer core, he could hear their howls of anguish and the clashing of their cage doors. They would not hold for long. Soon, he might have to deal with them himself, a task he did not relish. He hated the gibbering, insane things, now little else than mere bags of guts, and hoped that their keepers could handle them for just a few minutes more. The communication systems and cameras, thankfully, still worked. Robert glanced sideways at monitors which showed the firefighting crew attempting to contain the blaze in the shattered lab, and the enormous holes left in the walls by Katherine's passing. He saw the Doctor, over at command, rasping out orders to his capture squads over a series of microphones. He saw the pursuit jeeps, just pulling out of the underground garage. And, deep in the basement, he saw the cages. "Hold on, boys, we're almost there," he whispered, his fingers racing without interruption over the clattering keys. Katherine's mind raced. She couldn't run. She couldn't hide. More guns than she had seen throughout the course of her entire life were now being pointed at her. She had to think of something fast. She desperately felt behind her for something, anything to fight with. Her hand touched something wooden. It felt very light, almost as if it were completely dry. Rotten, too, she noted, as she felt her fingers sink into it. It wouldn't do any good at all against those guns, but at least she'd go down fighting. She lifted it off the ground and swung it around in front of her, wielding it almost like a sword. There was a collective gasp from the assembled capture troops. They all backed away a couple of paces. She could hear armor rattling as hands and arms started to shake uncontrollably. She looked at the stick in her hand. It had roots. It was, in fact, part of a fallen oak tree, about fifteen feet long and very thick. her fingers were deeply buried in the still-green wood, providing an excellent grip. She gave it a couple of experimental swings. It weighed practically nothing to her. How could she possibly be this strong? How could anyone? She hefted the tree and climbed easily out of the hole her legs were in, rising even higher over the tiny men, whose guns were becoming increasingly less threatening. Looking down from her full fourteen feet, she began to speak. Her voice was still hers, but now it boomed and resonated with a force that echoed the power coursing through her mighty muscles and veins. "Um," she said. "I really don't want to hurt anyone, so if you could just get out of the way..." She trailed off, fully aware of how stupid she must have sounded. "The hell we will, lady!" screamed a jeep-mounted trooper. "Dead or alive, you're goin' back! Open fire!" Katherine reflexively brought her arms up to protect her face and closed her eyes. She heard the sounds of guns firing, and then, suddenly, it began to rain. She could feel the drops pattering softly off of her entire body and...wait...it didn't rain sideways. She opened her eyes. The entire contingent of troops was blazing away at her full-auto. The tree in her hand was being ripped apart in a hurricane of bullets. Automatic gunfire was shredding the forest canopy as they fired up at her. Not a scratch appeared anywhere on her exposed body. Not a scratch, or a bruise, or even a welt- no sign that they were affecting her at all; just a rapidly- growing pile of flattened bullets around her feet. "Shit!" screamed the leader, "Hit her with the fuckin' artillery, for chrissakes!!" Katherine's eyes widened as the enormous cannons mounted on the jeeps swung around to face her. There was the click of loading, a brief, mechanical hum, and they fired as one. The shells exploded harmlessly against her skin. They didn't even singe her hair. They might as well have been throwing water balloons at her, with about as much destructive effect. She looked down at herself, her immensely powerful body which was still completely unscathed, and she smiled. She looked back up at the utterly bewildered troopers. "You boys are in an awful lot of trouble," she grinned, and lightly tossed what remained of her tree-club at the nearest jeep. It hit with incredible force, instantly smashing the vehicle into an almost unrecognizable shape, scattering men like flies as it exploded in a blazing ball of fire. Those troopers with any presence of mind whatsoever wisely elected to flee into the relative safety of the surrounding woodlands. The few who stayed watched their guns disappear from their hands, only to reappear in the hand of the giant woman who crumpled them into a tiny ball with a single, offhand gesture. She then began a systematic destruction of the remaining jeeps, either grinding them under her massive feet and legs, or lifting them into the air and squeezing them into crumpled accordion shapes. Sometimes they exploded, and sometimes they didn't, but she seemed totally unfazed when they did. She winked at the remaining troopers. "Just so you don't follow me," she laughed. As if they'd want to. Although...they didn't seem as scared as they had a moment ago. Certainly not as scared as she would be, had, indeed, been, in a similar situation. Perhaps they were simply rallying behind their leader, who was defiantly holding a small device which looked like a tiny megaphone. He pointed it toward Katherine with an intensity which made its size all the more comical. "What are you planning to do?" she smirked, "Shout me down?" "Laugh all you want, sweetheart," he replied, a definite edge to his voice, "this is the one that's gonna bring you down. It's the one we ain't supposed to use. Ever. Kills ya stone dead, and the doctor don't like losin' specimens. But maybe I'm just mad enough to use it. Hell, why not? He'll kill me anyway, if you get away." He pointed it toward her head. "Sayonara, bitch!" He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Katherine looked down at the small, armored man. His faceplate stared perplexedly back at her. He kept pointing the micro-bullhorn at her, his finger mashed down onto the trigger so hard that it was in very real danger of falling off. "Well, that just does it," thought Katherine, "Here I am actually starting to enjoy myself, and he goes and threatens me with some death ray that doesn't even work, why, I have half a mind to pick him up by the scruff of his neck and throw him clear into next...what's that?" A small itch was starting at the base of her skull. Her right eye began to twitch. As she reached up to feel what was wrong, her entire brain was surrounded by a raging inferno of pain. It assaulted her senses. It assailed her thoughts in a way which made her feel at once violated and robbed. She began to feel herself slipping away from her body as the thing started to shut off her senses, one at a time, slowly, horrifyingly. All sound ceased as her hearing was stolen, causing her ears to feel as if they would implode. A black curtain descended over her eyes as she felt her sight severed. She couldn't think. She could only feel the flow of her mind as it gradually receded. She knew only that she had to stop this degeneration, or soon she would be unable to even breathe, but she couldn't move. She could only fall further and further into oblivion... Something snapped inside her skull. For a split second, she felt her limbs again, felt the ground under her feet. It was all she needed. She lashed out desperately with her huge right arm, bringing it around in a sweeping arc. She felt a slight impact, and her world returned to her. She was completely unprepared for what it would contain. The demolished wreckage of the pusuit jeeps was still strewn about her, crumpled and smoking. Abandoned weapons lay all over the forest floor, including the tiny, bullhorn-like device, next to which lay... She gasped, clasping her hands to her mouth. The body of the lead trooper was slumped, broken and bleeding, against the base of a nearby tree. He was torn nearly in half at the waist, and his limbs seemed to be attached to his body in the strangest, most haphazard way conceivable. They were all backwards, and his head... Oh, God. His facemask was shattered. Huge shards of plexiglass were lodged in the soft flesh of his face and deeply buried in one eye. The other stared out at her from between the halves of a torn eyelid. Blood trickled out of his mouth and dripped from what remained of his helmet. She looked down at her hand. It glistened red. She felt pressure in her throat and chest. Hot tears welled up in her eyes. She turned her attention to the last remaining trooper, who was curled into a ball on the ground, clutching his head in abject terror, mumbling unintelligibly. The giddy excitement of power was gone. All she felt was horror. Horror at what they had done to her, at what she had become. What she was capable of now. She had to get away, to run from what she had become. Tears streaming from her eyes, she barreled away through the trees into the dark, indifferent night. Robert heaved a sigh of relief as he clicked the final few keys to restart the main computer. Instantly, dozens of previously darkened lights winked back on, indicating that the neoforms were back within their control. The shrieks from the basement ceased as the control chips exerted their calming influence over the failed experiments. Now relaxed, Robert initiated a simple subroutine which would bring Katherine's chip on-line. Which should have brought it on-line. Instead, the screen displayed only an error message: Terminal damaged. Unable to contact. Those idiots. Only one thing could have caused such catastrophic damage to the chip. The Neural Degeneration ray. The last resort. A device designed to bring down subjects unstoppable by any other means. An invariable kill. Well, then, she was dead. Robert began to get a fix on her position for recovery of the body. A small green dot appeared on a holographic map of the surrounding area. He reached for the radio to report the location when a flicker in the corner of his eye told him something was wrong. The green dot was moving. It was moving away from the compound at high speed. Crap. Class one scenario. He called the doctor. The sounds of chaos filled the command center. "All squads have been demolished, Robert. Tell me that the computer is back up. Now." "It is, doctor, but..." "But what? I do not wish to hear this." The doctor's voice became a shrill scream. "Activate the chip! NOW!" "I can't! They hit her with a neural..." "She is dead!? Verdammte Scheisse!" He sat down heavily. "Fifty years of work, of waiting gone! All gone!" "Doctor! She isn't dead! The neural didn't kill her, it only fused her chip!" The words hit like a hammer. "Then, she is out of control." There was a pregnant pause, then, simply, "Where is she now?" "Thirty miles west, proceeding straight ahead at about sixty miles an hour. What should we do?" "Activate units five through eight. They are closest." Robert cleared his throat. "They won't stop her. You know that." A hoarse laugh rasped through the speaker. "No, they will not stop her. But they will slow her down long enough for us to find her. I am quite sure that we can...persuade her to return." His voice hardened. "Ready a jeep. We leave immediately!" Katherine continued to plow through the woods, tears still streaming from her eyes. The merest thought of what she had done filled her with unspeakable dread. She had killed a man! A man who probably had a family, small children, a wife, and a small, blue house in the suburbs, just like... Her thoughts paused. Just like hers. The one containing every memory and posession she had. The one they had ransacked and demolished within, leaving little more than a gutted shell. They did this to me, she thought, and my life is over. I can't ever go back anymore. She pictured herself, huge and naked, standing in the middle of a city street, people screaming, running, children crying. She saw herself trying to squeeze into her old home, a gigantic woman crawling on her hands and knees through the rubble of a lifetime, unable to touch anything without reducing it to dust, and the tears flowed even more strongly, backed this time not only by deep sorrow, but also a seething anger, a deep-seated fury which she could feel just beginning to well up inside her. She hadn't meant to kill him; Her blow was simply a reflex reaction, a last-ditch effort to preserve herself. If they hadn't made her so strong, he would still be alive. If they hadn't kidnapped her in the first place, he'd never have been chasing her. He had been a stupid, violent little man who'd insulted her, taunted her, and then tried to kill her. But she kept thinking about his eye, his one, glassy eye staring up at her. His human eye, the eye of a fellow human being, now nothing more than a lump of lifeless flesh. She saw the eye stare straight through her, piercing her super-tough flesh, laying her bare. Without warning, it blinked. She snapped from her reverie just in time to see a line of four armored men arrayed in front of her, blocking her progress with their lives. She stopped again, this time much more easily than before. There was something familiar about them, and not just the armor. None of them wore helmets. She focused in on the nearest figure, and gasped. The figure burned into her thoughts appeared again, but add an eye, remove the debris, and wipe away the blood... It was him. The nameless man she had killed, now whole again, but still staring, staring, staring, with that same deathmask intensity. Her entire body tensed, making her enormous muscles leap out to even greater size, vibrating with the intensity of a hard, long-held flex. An electric chill ran through her body, causing her sizeable nipples to harden. She saw the lips beneath his stone-dead eyes begin to move. "Cold out here?" It was not one voice that spoke, but an exact chorus, completely simultaneous. She looked at the other three men, and the same dead eyes stared out from the same face as the first. The exact same face. They were all totally identical. They continued their uncanny concert as they spoke. "Don't be surprised. The Doctor simply can't afford to keep a private army on retainer day and night. With his technology, he doesn't have to. He creates us and kills us as he sees fit." Their faces widened into four inhuman, programmed grins. "Don't feel too bad about number 142. His biomass will simply be rendered down and added to the common pool." Here they paused, as if contemplating some inside joke. "And he was only a standard model. No abilities. Only average intelligence. Hardly worth your time." They began to chuckle hideously. Katherine backed away. "But if you're all...things...made in that lab, why did those others run away from me? Why aren't you scared of me?" she asked. They answered. "The others were all standards, programmed to emulate real human emotions. The doctor uses them to fool both empathetic escapees, like yourself, and any fools who might stumble upon this site, and who might be missed if simply held for experiments. The helmets are because he has no time to engineer dozens of faces. As to whywe are not afraid of you..." Suddenly, there was a series of disgusting, wet snaps. The four men began to convulse violently, wildly flailing their arms and stumbling as if under the influence of some powerful hallucinogen. Katherine could hear bones cracking and joints dislocating themselves under the strain of the unbelievably wild seizures. The four men seemed only vaguely aware of what they were doing, occasionally letting out a strangled moan or grunt of pain. The hideous montage of sound grew louder and louder, and was soon joined by the sound of tearing material as she saw the four men starting to grow. No. To change. The transformations she was witnessing now were not at all like the one she had seen in the basement of her home, before Ilsa had kidnapped her. That, while horrifying in its own way, was simply a magnification, an increase in size and muscle mass to enormous proportions. This was much worse. The four figures were all strangely hunched now, muscle, bone and gristle making a horrifying grinding, squelching sound as the human proportions of their bodies changed. Arms lengthened, stretching until they dragged on the ground. Teeth burst from wide-open mouths in showers of blood, replaced by rapidly growing, razor-sharp fangs. Two of the figures were now covered in thick, black fur, while another's skin had become wrinkled and leather-like. The skin of the fourth was sloughing off to reveal a layer of shimmering reptilian scales. Leg joints reversed with horrific crunching sounds or disappeared altogether as legs fused into long, muscular tails. The last thing she saw before the hideous things rushed at her was their hideous claws, stretching nastily from gnarled, reptilian hands, dripping their own blood. Then, they were on her. Katherine hadn't had time to brace herself, but even the combined weight of the four hideous creatures was not enough to budge her massive frame. They climbed over and onto her, desperately searching for a soft, vulnerable area anywhere on her steel-hard body. She heard a crunch as one of the monsters shattered its teeth attempting to bite through her neck. She grabbed it by is head and, with a very slight effort, pulled it off of her back. Its strength must have been considerable to force her to exert even the tiniest fraction of her own incredible might, but compared to hers, its power was utterly insignificant. She held it at arm's length and said, "I'm sorry you're not human. I really am. Because I really don't like hurting animals." She grasped the thing by its struggling torso and gave its head a light flick with her finger. Its neck snapped backwards and she felt it go limp. Another of the things was attempting to climb up onto her arm. She stretched it out fully in front of her, causing the creature's feet to dangle a couple of yards off of the ground. After some flailing, it was able to pull itself up on top of her massive limb. Before it could dash toward her head, however, she swung her arm to the side, knocking the creature off-balance, causing it to fall and land squarely across the crease of her elbow joint. She smiled over at it and began to flex her bicep. The mere act of tensing was enough to trap the thing's waist far too firmly for it to escape. Katherine's muscle began to rise like a mountain, squeezed by tectonic forces out of a still- molten earth. She felt surges of power crackle through her body as blood rushed into her mighty arm. There was a rush of something akin to ecstacy as she flexed the muscle larger and larger, the horrors of the last day forgotten for one blissful moment as she reveled in her own strength... There was a squish. The creature, trapped between her steely forearm and unyielding bicep. had been utterly crushed and severed in the middle. Katherine hadn't even realized what she was doing. Its two halves slid off of her arm and hit the ground heavily, their blood spreading out onto the carpet of leaves, dripping from her still fully-flexed arm. She was slightly shocked, but more at her own power and strength than at the act she had just committed. It's true what they say, she thought, it does get easier every time. The other two creatures were slowly backing off, staring at her with burning red eyes. As she started towards them, she was startled by the sound of applause from directly behind her. She spun around. Standing in the center of a clearing, flanked by Robert and the first unconscious creature, was Doctor Krantz. "A most amusing performance, my dear! " His voice still abraded Katherine's every nerve. "Most unusual technique...quite inefficient, if I may say so. A little combat reprogramming may be in order, ja?" He let out a wheeze which might or might not have been a laugh. " You were quite naughty to run away like that, child. Making me run all the way out here in the dark and cold. And with my ill health! And you've troubled Robert, as well. I am afraid your first foray into the outside world is at an end. Robert hates it when our subjects try to run away." Robert was standing like a stone next to the doctor. His icy stare made Katherine far more uneasy than even the dead-eyed gazes of the creature-men. It had a keen, contemptuous intelligence behind it that seemed to say, You are worth nothing, stupid girl. You can and will be replaced. I will replace you myself. And I will not care when you die. "Robert is such a good boy," continued the doctor, with all the adulation of a proud father. He seemed to have gone almost senile since her escape from the lab. What was it about Robert, Katherine wondered. The doctor prattled happily on. "He always takes his medicine without raising such a fuss. He hates it when my other children don't want theirs. That is why he is my best. My very best." He stepped back a few paces. "Go ahead, Robert." His face hardened. "And try to be neater this time. The last three were very difficult for the cleanup crew." Robert's expression did not change, but Katherine could see sweat dripping down his face. His jaw quivered with effort. His eyes widened with a strange crackling sound, and then a series of snaps, similar to the sounds made by the strange creatures, but deafeningly loud, shook the forest. Robert did not convulse as the others had, but held in the horrible jerking motions with what appeared to be superhuman effort. His metamorphosis began. His head was the fist to change. His eyes, still staring directly at Katherine, developed strange slits down their middles, then split open completely, revealing huge, multifaceted compound eyes like those of a spider. His jaw creaked open and jutted forward as a layer of jet-black exoskeletal chitin engulfed his face. Two huge mandibles ripped through his cheeks and began to snap open and closed in front of his mouth like a pair of garden shears. His neck creaked and groaned as it lengthened. Robert was gaining size and mass much faster than the other creatures had, and seemed to be changing in a different way. His labcoat and pants, rather than ripping off, seemed to be fusing with his skin. Before Katherine's eyes, Robert's clothes were transformed from cloth into a thick, black sheath of more armor- like chitin. His arms were thickening at a frightening rate until a strange furrow appeared between his fingers on each hand, running all the way up each arm to the shoulder. The furrow deepened until Robert's arms divided in two with the sound of tearing flesh. Each of the four new arms then lengthened impossibly, the half-hand left on each fusing into a solid stump, then flattening out into a wickedly sharp, hooked claw, which whipped around menacingly on the end of a long, gangling limb. Robert was already taller than Katherine when the lower half of his body fused into a giant insectoid abdomen. He seemed to balance on its end as six multijointed legs thrust outward through holes in its chitinous armor. There was a sickening crack as its back bent ninety degrees backward, and the Robert- thing fell forward onto its legs with a thunderous crash which shook the forest floor. Even after this, it still towered over Katherine, at least twenty feet tall. It let out a horrible screeching roar unlike anything Katherine had ever heard. The Doctor grinned. "Robert is the result of twenty years of my finest bioengineering. He is the pinnacle of perfection. He will destroy you without a second thought. I do not look forward to the job of piecing you back together when he is finished, but this seems the only way." He looked at Robert. "Kill her." Before she could react, one of Robert's whip-like arms swept around in a long arc, slashing its bladed claw across Katherine's exposed chest. There was intense pain and she looked down to see her own bright red blood welling from a massive gash in her pectoral muscles. She gasped. Until now, it hadn't occurred to her that she could actually be hurt. She felt dizzy. Meanwhile, Robert brought a second arm around on the same side, slashing her left shoulder. Her enormous arm slumped to her side, numb meat. She attempted to move forward, but a third claw thundered into her stomach, knocking her back, breathless. She felt hot blood streaming down her leg. She couldn't breathe or think. She stumbled forward into Robert's shattering uppercut. The blow sent her immense form sailing, unconscious, through the air. She slammed headfirst through two huge trees before coming to rest, hidden from view, behind the trunk of a fallen oak. "Excellent, Robert," chortled the Doctor. "That was even faster than I predicted." He motioned toward the fallen tree. "Go and fetch her now. Make sure you get all the pieces or..." He was cut off in mid-sentence by an enormous hiss like a huge hydraulic pump starting up. The fallen tree shot up from the ground and struck robert squarely in the chest, bowling him over onto his back, his legs flailing ineffectually at the air. Katherine stood where the trunk had lain. A frightening change had come over her body. She was slightly taller and more massive, but the real change was in the enormous veins which stood out over her entire body. They were thicker than garden hoses and pulsed visibly and, even more grotesque, glowed with a firey inner light, as if Katherine's blood had been replaced by molten lava. Her eyes were a solid, blazing red. The gaping wouns inflicted just moments earlier had completely vanished. "My God!" breathed the doctor, his face whitening, "The hyper-adrenal stress response! But, without the control chip, this should be imposible to initiate!" He turned to Robert, who by this time had righted himself and was hissing angrily. "Quickly! Kill her!" Robert brought his arm down in the same blindingly fast motion as before, but this time Katherine's arm came up even faster to meet it. She grabbed it as it swept toward her, and yanked backward. With a hideous sound like lobster cracking and a shower of thick, white blood, both of Robert's left arms were torn away from his body. Katherine gathered them up in one hand and swung them like a club, smashing Robert across the face, breaking off large chunks of mandible and jaw. Robert managed to swing again, but when the blow arrived, Katherine was no longer where she had been. She lunged straight at his chest, her blazing eyes fixed upon a point just to the left of center. She drove her enormous fist deep into his thorax with a huge crunch, twisted her arm around once for good measure, and withdrew her dripping arm, leaving a gaping hole that spurted viscous ichor across the clearing. Robert collapsed, again shaking the ground as he hit the carpet of leaves. Doctor Krantz stared up at Katherine. "Amazing...! I have never seen anything like this before! My years of sacrifice and hard work have finally borne the ultimate fruit. You are perfect! You are more than..." Katherine's wicked backhand caught him utterly off-guard. The doctor flew, a ruined, bloody mess, in a fast, low arc across the clearing. There was an awful splatting sound as his body struck the base of an overturned tree and lay still, impaled through the chest by a jutting mass of roots. Katherine, still glowing, still eerily silent, and still clutching Robert's severed arms, quietly turned and darted away, back into the forest. She didn't get far before something drained out of her, like a dozen cups of coffee suddenly leaving her bloodstream. The adrenalized glow faded from her eyes and veins as the fact that she was, technically, still unconscious, caught up to her body and mind. She passed out, but kept running for several paces until her massive body finally fell, slowly and heavily, to the earth. As she lay there in a stupor, her muscular back rising and falling with each deep breath, the moon rose, casting a soft light which glistened off of the sweat coating each muscle, beautifully showcasing her utterly unprecedented form, giving her the appearance of a fallen goddess, until a large, dark shadow fell across the light, and a thick, rasping wheeze drowned out the sound of her own heavy breathing. TO BE CONTINUED...