Galatea 2 - Chapter 26 (Patreon)

CHAPTER 26: UNAVAILABLE SPECIMEN

On one side of a lengthy corridor that stretched a football field, hundreds of boot stomps could be heard. One would struggle to count exactly how many from the audio alone. The echoing acoustics of the metal hallway made them sound like an encroaching thunderstorm of force. On the other side, only the light, casual pitter-patter of a single woman’s tiny feet were barely audible. The town’s worth of combat boots slowed, all assuming positions as they stood their ground. The pitter-patter from the opposing side did not cease in speed or tempo—nor would it ever.

“Stop right where you are! Drop to your knees and put your hands behind your back!” shouted one of the men. Probably a commander of sorts. Not that Vanessa really cared, she wasn’t listening to him anyways.

All she could think about was what she’d do after all this was over. After she had gotten her revenge on the men who kept her here and the scientist who trapped her within her own mind. She would be free, unburdened by the limitations of being a human—able to become the prettiest and most powerful being the world had ever seen! But why stop there? If intelligent life truly did exist beyond the cosmos, then they too deserved to bear witness to her beauty!

As Vanessa’s mind continued to travel in fantastical escapades, her body made quick work of any opposition. Ignoring the demands of the commander had accidentally called his bluff, as the troops weren’t supposed to kill their prime specimen.

Not that they actually could.

Out of fear, some of the men betrayed their orders and opened fire upon the overpowered college girl, though their bullets did little to dissuade her as they pierced through her attire, only to mushroom upon impeccably impervious skin. She found the sounds that these useless machinations created to be rather annoying, so a flick of her finger dismantled the nearest one into its individual parts. With the next gun, she was far less precise in her destruction, forcefully thrusting her hand forward which shattered her opponent’s rifle into scrap as well as dislocating the shoulder and shattering the radius and ulna bones of the arm the gun was attached to. When this man began to scream in pain, annoying her further, a quick touch to his temple silenced him for good. His head was sent whipping back. The backside of his skull cracked the hardwood floor, the rest of his limp body landing shortly thereafter.

With a powerful stomp, the roadblocks one could easily mistake for soldiers near her crumpled to the ground. She was ready to pick up the pace, this was simply a waste of her time. Only then, a certain weapon caught her attention.

Holy shit, some stupid motherfucker actually brought a rocket launcher into this cramped hallway.

Vanessa almost had to respect the man’s gumption, but she figured that attracting her attention was enough. Flashing across the room, a quick uppercut sent the man sailing through the ceiling in a shower of broken plaster, only for ‘broken’ to apply to his body as it clashed with concrete and rebar above that. The gorgeous woman sent a spinning kick into the jaws of all nearby men to give herself some distance, sending limp bodies indiscriminately flying into walls and other soldiers. For the first time since arriving at this backwater prison, her smile finally breached the lips, perfectly white teeth showing as her eye hungrily gazed upon the destructive capabilities of the weapon she now rightfully stole.

One-handed, she aimed the trajectory of the explosive rocket to the door that had been recently barred shut by the fledgling soldiers who were fortunate enough to escape. They, however, were not fortunate enough to live much longer. Perhaps they should’ve known better before engaging in combat with a woman as deadly as Vanessa.

The rocket was a run cap-off to the battle, but now she was growing tired of the constant failed attempts to subdue her. Eventually, she took to levitating off the ground, walking along the ceiling as the leverage just made her harder to interact with overall. Her heels clacked along the vast roofed interiors as she flawlessly retained her runway strut.

Even knowing exactly where she needed to go, this complex was still needlessly, well, complex.

***

Warning Klaxons blared as Audrey sat slumped in her holding cell. It had been several hours since they had dropped her in here with the promise that they would wipe her memory.

What’s taking them so fucking long? Audrey angrily thought. I just want someone to hurry up and erase this waking nightmare out of my brain so I can scrounge some semblance of a normal life back on campus.

Then her nightmare, for the briefest of moments, became the most pleasant dream she’d ever experienced.

“Audrey! Audrey, it’s me, Brian! I’m here to rescue you!”

The blonde’s voice was nearly caught in her throat as she stood up in surprise, mouth contorted into a beautiful, wobbly mess of a smile as she witnessed her loving boyfriend on the other side of the metal bars, finagling with a pair of blood-stained keys as he tried to find which one fit into the lock of Audrey’s door.

Audrey couldn’t hold back as soon as she was freed. Brian felt a lengthy, undulating tongue breach his lips as she held him in place. While he knew this was no place for a French kiss, he knew better than to attempt to resist Audrey’s ubermensch grip. Then again, were the situation not so high-stakes, Brian probably would’ve climaxed on the spot.

“I-I can’t believe it! I must be dreaming!” Audrey confessed, tears coming to her gorgeous eyes as she tenderly held Brian’s head in her hands. “You— but how? How did you manage to escape?”

Brian wouldn’t get a chance to reveal the answer on his terms, as it would saunter into the holding cell bay as casually as ever, striking a pose.

“C’mon, Brian. No time to dilly-dally. I want to find that professor of yours so I can rip his head off.” Vanessa spoke, dusting her hands off with three expertly-coordinated strikes. Even with a dull, gray military background, the act of her pausing to pick something out of her pristine teeth looked too good for a magazine cover.

“Wait, what’s going on?” Audrey asked, so taken aback that she released her grip on Brian. “Did—did Vanessa free you but not me?”

“Audrey, I’m not sure—” Brian began, only to be cut off.

“He’ll prove useful to me later, Audrey,” Vanessa replied dismissively with an eye roll, as if wine-drunk and talking down to an annoying child. “But he said he wasn’t going anywhere without freeing you first, so I reluctantly obliged.”

“WHAT!?” the blonde replied with disbelief. She stormed over to the taller raven-haired former roommate, her threatening aura diminished slightly upon having to look up to meet Vanessa’s verdant eyes. “You… you bitch! I was your best friend and now you wouldn’t even save me if we were in the same prison!?”

As Audrey bickered to the wall that was Vanessa, a different problem was emerging. More soldiers had triangulated their location and were pouring in from both sides of the hallways.

“If it makes you feel better, you could say I did it to repay the debt of you freeing me from Giles’ control. I didn’t, but you could say that,” Vanessa once more replied with frigid coldness in her tone.

“I can’t fucking believe you!” Audrey shouted, tossing the nearby guard table with a single hand like it was a football out or rage. It splintered into wood chips when it collided with three of the nearest soldiers. Vanessa may have had the superior virus within her, but Audrey’s strength was still nothing to scoff at.

“Guys! Please!” Brian shouted, attempting to direct the two overpowered women’s attention to what in his eyes was a far more pressing matter of urgency. Neither of them heard his cries over Audrey’s anger and Vanessa’s sheer apathy. Out of fear, Brian ducked into the nearest cell, closed his eyes and prayed that this would all be over soon.

Fortunately, for his sake anyways, the guards were mere half-conscious busywork for Audrey and Vanessa as they continued their one-sided chat about the raven-haired beauty’s behavior.

“I just… I don’t understand! You never acted like this before the virus, but it wasn’t the virus that did this to you!?” Audrey exclaimed as she bent a troop’s arm at an unnatural angle, shattering the riot armor as she did so.

“It’s always been me, Audrey. How could you not understand?” was all she replied with, gripping a man by his throat and crushing his windpipe before discarding him like a piece of rubbish.

“But… Why would you go through all this for us if it didn’t matter?” the blonde asked again, still trying to reach what she perceived to be the root of the reason as she punched through polycarbonate like it was styrofoam, knocking another man unconscious. “Why willingly allow yourself to become kidnapped if it wasn’t for your desire to help me?”

“Brian is here. He’s got the technical know-how to improve my body even further as Kevin’s protege. Giles is also here. I want to claw his eyes out from his skull, much like I am to this man right here,” she replied, very much doing the exact thing she described.

“So that’s it, huh? If they were two regular guys with no use to you, then you wouldn’t even save them, is that right?”

“That’s correct,” she replied once more with disinterest as she threw a man to the floor and brutally slammed upon his netherregions with a powerful stomp until a spider web of cracks formed on the floor beneath him.

Audrey would’ve become frozen in disbelief at the words that left her former friend’s mouth. Her body was currently busy punching three different troops’ teeth in.

Vanessa began to walk away with disinterest as the number of obstacles on her side had greatly diminished. “Come on, Brian, we need to get you out of here. If my thought process is correct, they’re still holding Giles at the interrogation chamber. I read their thoughts and determined that he would be questioned after me. And they’re definitely going to want to keep him in their sights.”

Brian was still too frightened to move, so Vanessa simply scooped him up and slung him over her sculpted shoulder. Audrey was not too pleased by this.

“H-hey! Let go of him!”

Vanessa was more than happy to reply, dropping Brian into an unexpected bridal carry by Audrey. “Whatever. He’s your boyfriend. Just make yourself useful and keep him safe.”

The blonde would’ve only grown more furious at Vanessa’s neglectful cruelty, but her anger was calmed with Brian in her possession. Sometimes, he was the perfect overgrown cuddle toy that she needed. Even in a scary environment such as this one, she appreciated the familiar face, especially when it was attached to such a rockin’ bod.

Brian didn’t mind being carried at all. Audrey couldn’t blame him. This was no place for a college student like him. Sure, this was no place for any of them, but at least Audrey and Vanessa could defend themselves rather effortlessly.

Once they arrived at the interrogation chamber, however, what they saw did not inspire confidence. The room was trashed, with the man in black laying in the middle of it, fatal cuts and gashes dispersed throughout his tattered suit. Audrey and Brian covered their mouths at the sight of such a grizzly scene.

Vanessa remained indifferent. “Where is Giles?”

His weak eyes looked upon the three college students. Attempting to speak, he coughed up a spatter of blood.

“Went back to… ensure the body was still there… he wasn’t dead… even after being shot in the head… Giles is… still out there…”

He recited the words as if they were the last things on his mind. With that, his eyes grew cold and distant and his body fell limp.