Evolution's Essence Read Free Page B

‘EM!”
    Stone jumped back, drawling the hatchets with
a hole in their faces and readied for further attacks. Steven’s
lance kept the electrical charge to a point where focus to use the
Psionic arts was impossible. Oliver though hooked the shield back
underneath his cape and willed the Valek to heat up, just like he
tried when trying to see if raw beast was better cooked. It wasn’t,
but the extreme heat allowed him to cauterize the four missing
limbs as well as use a scanner built into the top of his left hand
to scan and find the spear missed all major organ and arteries.
    “ Ha! Shocked grub anybody?”
Steven joked seriously.
    The Ligers’ surrounded them, Nova staying
back as usual, in eleven feral mouths were spheres of condensed
plasma in readying Kinetic Blasts if there was any more tricks.
    “ This is for hurting my
husband, Fucker!” Renee suddenly appeared and punched the spitted
person fully in the face the moment they got close. The ceramic
shattered and she grimaced as she landed on the balls of her feet.
“Yep, infested and fucking ugly.” Said the hellcat. “Armor stays
up. He’s got Keptl spores in his blood, Boys.”
    Without the mask hiding, the Corrupted One
was grotesque to say the least. Wormlike bubbles under puckered and
inflamed red skin moved unnaturally as Keptl blood cells began to
corrupt anatomy. Spores create worms that take over the host and
remake them in time. Usually infestation takes a week and this is
the last stage before the host’s biology begins to reshape into
another Keptl minion who is mindless and controllable.
    Realizing he had been bested, he planned to
give them nothing. Even through the screaming pain electrocuting
what remained of the body he managed to move his jaw enough to
crack a back false tooth.
    Renee realized this the moment symptoms were
different from what he was experiencing and acted fast. She smiled.
“Nice try, Fucker! I’m getting what I want regardless of what you
believe.” And raised her right arm to launch a black tendril from
her bracelet. At the end was a sucker-like appendage from an octopi
tentacle. It latched onto the middle of his hideous forehead and
removed after a few moments before connecting to her own forehead,
clean of any spores.
    Called brain-hacker, a Valek can download the
memories of any sentient creature and transfer images and feelings.
It cannot transfer consciousness, but Renee just downloaded
everything from the subject who was already dead from a fast acting
poison that kills in seconds. Seconds were more than enough to get
information.
    Downside to the brain-hacker is it applies a
lot of mental strain. Oliver electrified his sword to clean it,
slid it in the sheath and managed to scoop her into his arms before
she collapsed onto the bloodied floor. He moved her away as Steven
let the dead body fall and slammed his heavy boot in the skull to
make sure the job was finished for good. It squished like a
watermelon.
    Another kick was for Elder Scimitar.
    “ Red?” Oliver whispered,
laying her down. His hard helmet rippled and became malleable to
retract into his suit. Golden mist seeped from his eyes that were
worried. He hadn’t expected her to do it. He planned to take the
memories.
    Eyes shifted fast under shadowed lids as she
assimilated the information nanoseconds at a time. In a few more
silent moments her eyes opened as Oliver pulled his energy back
from the Pride and stored it in the device on his right arm.
“Olly?” she whispered, sat up and shook her head. “Damn it. I hate
the after effects.”
    “ Mrs. Void, are you
alright?”
    Green eyes let out mist the
same color looked up at a blood soaked Stone as Satellite circled
above. She gave an evil grin. “Oh yeah. That bastard had all the
answers to our recent problems and now I got them. I couldn’t take the puzzle
pieces from the cores, but I’ve hit the mother lode and we don’t
have much time if you want to catch Chandler and the bitch
responsible