Ah, searge, you always manage to brighten my mood. And so, as thanks, the freshly produced...
Chapter 34
Splat
“You’re gonna die in about 15 seconds!” Said an annoying little voice in my head. Now most people who know me (which was pretty much no one right then) know I have this thing about little annoying voices (eg, Munch) and generally when I hear a little annoying voice I do the opposite to what the voice tells me to do. That is why, suddenly and totally out of the blue, I screeched the screech of angry scrabs everywhere. Battered and bloody and barely conscious, I prepared to face about 500 carnivorous meeps intent on making me lunch.
Biology lesson: shred power has a record of destroying anything that isn’t harder than rock or metal. Carnivorous meeps are not harder than rock or metal.
Blood and flesh and fuzz went flying everywhere. Much of the blood was my own, blood that was being flung out of my body by the force of shred power.
Another biology lesson: a healthy scrab can take down most opponents without using shred power. A bloody, chewed up scrab can be taken down by most opponents as soon as shred power runs out.
I found myself pinned against the door by the weight of 500 killer meeps. The solid wall they had formed meant none of them could stay still long enough to get a solid grip on me. Instead they were shaving off bits of skin and flesh as they dug in teeth and were then shoved aside. Pain surged through my dying body. Blood was sprayed everywhere, I couldn’t see. Then I felt myself falling backwards. I love irony.
I hit metal ground hard and heard faintly through the blood and fluff that muffled my ears a panicked yell. I smelt sizzling flesh. The meeps covering my body had stopped moving. I tried to move but found myself to weak.
I heard a voice: “Don’t move!” He was an idiot, whoever he was. I lost consciousness.
My every inch of my skin stung. I could smell something… familiar… what was it? I tried to move and immediately felt my stomach heave. I quickly leant over and what felt like everything I had eaten in the last month was spewed out of my mouth onto the floor with a splatter. Weird that none of it fell over me. I forced myself to open my eyes despite a murderous headache that seemed to appear as soon as I had moved.
I realised that I was lying on a metal bed inside a metal room with metal walls and floor and ceiling. Where was I? Then it came to me: the corridor, the meeps, the door opening behind me and then… a voice?
I looked around the room again but saw nothing else in there. I looked down at my own body: I was covered in clean white bandages that had been soaked in soaked in some liquid. I sniffed. Of course: antiseptic! It was antiseptic that I could smell and that the bandages were soaked with. I remembered the smell from the labs where I had lived for 4 years.
I tested my spindles and found them covered over. I reached onto my back and felt a strip of bandage over them… or it? Whatever, I ripped the bandage away and instantly felt blood come gushing out. I quickly shot out a rope of thread and covered the bleeding patches on my back. Then I slowly and carefully ripped off the artificial bandages and replaced them with my own web. Most of the wounds were only flesh wounds; it was just that I was covered in flesh wounds so I had lost loads of blood. Whoever had saved me from the meeps had obviously replaced the blood I’d lost: there must have been a medical cupboard nearby. Anyway, flesh wounds would heal quickly with paramite healing potion stuff on them. I lay back on my metal bed and gazed up at the ceiling.
I jerked awake to the noise of grinding metal. I leapt up. I couldn’t believe I had fallen asleep! I looked around the room to see where the noise was coming from; in the wall to my right a metal door was swinging noisily open from the wall. I leapt off the bed to the door and kicked whoever was coming through in the stomach. A young vykker went reeling backwards. “You can’t kill me!” He screamed loudly as I pinned him to a wall.
“Give me one reason why not… and don’t bother trying to pull the poisonous vital organ thing on me!”
“Cause I just spent the last 41 hours trying to cover up for the meep incident! If the other vykkers find out you’re here they’ll steal you before I can claim the reward.”
“I’ve been unconscious 41 hours?” He nodded nervously. “Then why don’t you just kill me now?”
“Don’t you ever watch the news?”
“Not any time in the last 43 hours at least,” I answered.
“Handing you in alive is worth 65,000,000 moolah while your body can only fetch 2,000,000!” (Which just goes to show how important it is to be up-to-date with the local news)
“Seriously?”
“Y-yeah!”
“Weird.” I muttered.
“So you gotta let me go!”
“Oh, yeah, whatever. But tell me first, which way is it to the mudokon bunks?” He pointed a shaky finger down the corridor. “Cheers,” I answered and chucked him into the vault where he’d been keeping me, slammed to door after him, locked it (it was a combination lock, all I had to do was change the number he’d entered) and turned and headed down the corridor.
Hope you guys like, sorry it took absolutely ages and ages and ages.
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