Hello Darkness, My Old Friend Pt. 4 (Worm) (Patreon)

Themes: No Sex, Horror, Suspense, Monster

Word Count: 4,576

Summary: Sophia as Shadow Stalker is dealing with some Merchants who have set up shop WAY too close to her home, when the shit begins to hit the fan. Can she escape before her fate is the same as the Merchants she was just beating senseless?

Part 4  

“P-Please, st-!”

The oh-so-satisfying crunch of cartilage cuts off the Merchant fuck that Sophia is currently beating senseless. He has a tranquilizer bolt in his leg, but those things can be real hit or miss sometimes. On some capes, they barely work at all and when it comes to normies, it can take several minutes for the injection to take effect.

Luckily, Sophia isn’t one to rely on knock out drugs in a fight. She’d shot this dumb bastard in the leg a moment before she was on him. His lower body had fallen asleep first and she’d pushed his flailing arms aside to elbow him hard in the chin, causing his teeth to click together and the back of his head to smack against the concrete.

After that, there wasn’t much resistance left in the scumbag. Besides pleading for her to stop, he just lay there and took it. And now as she punched his teeth in and watched the blood rush from his broken nose, he didn’t even do that, too fucked up to even speak. Sophia pounded away at the Merchant, not seeing a person beneath her, but just another monster to be brought low. In her head, she’s mentally screaming at every one of her problems.

The fucking Protectorate, the Wards, the worthless PRT. The Merchants had a safe house without walking distance of her goddamn apartment complex and for some reason Sophia had to learn about it from her YOUNGER BROTHER! There was something rage inducing about being tethered to an organization that was trumped by a fucking middle schooler in terms of intel.

Either that or they were keeping her in the dark about a threat to her fucking family and if THAT was the case, Sophia was about to phase one of her lethal bolts into Piggot’s fucking EYE! Letting out a ferocious snarl, Sophia finally lets up on the bloody and unconscious Merchant beneath her. She’s beat him to a pulp and judging from past experiences, without Panacea’s help he’ll take months to recover from what she’s done.

Good, that’s what she was aiming for. Rifling through his pockets, the dark-skinned vigilante finds the same roll of money and bag of weed that she’d found on the previous Merchants. This one made about twelve that she’d caught alone in this shitty little condemned motel down the block from her place. Though not all of them had only weed on them, but Sophia didn’t really give a shit about the differences in their fucking drugs. She didn’t do them, any of them. Had to stay sharp and clear headed for this kind of stuff.

Tossing the weed to the side as she’d done with each of the other Merchants, Sophia pockets the roll of cash and straightens up, letting out a low breath and stepping over the barely breathing body of her latest defeated prey. Licking her lips behind her mask, Sophia can admit that there’s another reason she’s pissed off at the PRT and the Protectorate and all those fucks that hold her leash.

The Merchant hideout practically next to her hideout is just the icing on a shit-cake. In reality, Sophia is more concerned about how the so-called heroes can be so goddamn clueless about the fact that there’s a Case 53 or something out in the city, sucking gang members dry. At the very least, they’re keeping the Wards in the dark about a very real threat skulking in the shadows of Brockton Bay! Sophia knows that much, because fucking Carlos had the audacity to congratulate the rest of them on crime being down for the last month!

Fuck, it was so stupid! The Protectorate, the Wards, the PRT… they were all so damn detached from the city they were supposed to be protecting, serving. Living it up at Arcadia, her so-called ‘teammates’ were completely oblivious to what had REALLY caused the drop in crime they’d been experiencing for weeks now. 

And it had taken Sophia all of a day at Winslow to track down some concrete information about it. It wasn’t like there were empty seats in all of her classes or anything, but Sophia kept an ear open for any and all conversations during the school day, and rife with gang activity as Winslow was, it wasn’t hard for her to overhear some of the students talking about people they know going missing. 

Those same students had gang tats and were usually in one of the three major gangs. Merchants, ABB, and E88. Over the last week or two, Sophia had figured out that NO gang was safe. All had missing members by this point, meaning someone… or something was out there that wasn’t affiliated with ANYONE as far as she could tell.

A sudden crash down the hallway tears Sophia from her inner thoughts. There’s a scream of absolute terror, masculine if she had to guess, and then abrupt silence as something ELSE cuts it off. Grimacing behind her mask, Sophia quickly ducks into the room right beside her and hunkers down behind a nearby desk. Once she’s in relative cover, only then does she swiftly switch our her tranq rounds for her broadhead bolts, the very lethal crossbow bolts a godsend and a balm on her aggrieved soul.

Sophia didn’t care if she ended up killing some Merchant scumbag. She’d done it before after all… though not intentionally. Still, her own life was way more important to her than a Merchant’s. Breathing in and out a few times to calm her rapidly beating heart, Sophia turns to the wall behind her, which just so happens to be adjacent to the bigger room that the scream had come from. The female vigilante (because she sure as hell doesn’t identify as a Ward right now) isn’t stupid enough to charge in head on. That was something Aegis might do, if the idiot boy scout was here.

But her? Shadow Stalker? Sophia grins as she rolls her shoulders and carefully phases through the wall into the next room, crossbows lifted up and in front of her as she does so. Sophia’s eyes track around the place and she finds an absolute wreck of a room, with the exception of a single lazy boy chair facing away from her. She does a double take however when she sees what’s on the walls.

Eyes wide, Sophia realizes she just came close to maiming herself, or worst. The room is a fucking shitty ass trap made specifically for her, and the worst part is, the only reason it didn’t work was because the power was busted ahead of her arrival. There are Christmas Lights strung all up and down the walls in a net pattern and a rug torn away from the floor reveals a huge metal sheet that stretches across the entire room.

The busted generator is quiet and dead and that’s the only reason she’s still even alive. Meanwhile, the door she’d chosen not to go through, while wooden in the outside, is fucking metal on the inside with electrical wires connected to it. Nostrils flaring in anger and confusion, Sophia steps forward and grabs the edge of the lazy boy, slowly turning the large recliner around to face her. She’s confused for a second as she looks at the dried-out husk of what looked to be a well-dressed Merchant. 

She assumes it was a Merchant at least, why the hell would anyone else be in a place like this? Buried in the husk’s shoulder is one of her broadhead bolts. Sophia doesn’t really understand what’s happening here. She hasn’t put it all together yet, but it’s on the tip of her tongue. Brow furrowed, the young vigilante takes a step back and accidentally steps on something that cracks from the weight of her boot.

Blinking, Sophia looks down and finds a smartphone beneath her foot. It’s still on, even still calling the last number that was dialed. The PRT. That’s who the husk was dialing. Finally it all clicks and Sophia’s eyes bulge behind her mask as she realizes just what the fuck this all means. The dark-skinned girl doesn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or break down crying as she finally understands that the Merchants are trying to set her up.

Not only had the Merchants somehow figured out her biggest weakness and made a trap room solely designed to get her. Not only had they gotten ahold of one of her broadhead bolts to use as a prop. But they’d probably also set up this whole fucking place just to set the trap inside of it. Sophia couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been. Her late night unsanctioned patrols… she’d kept them relatively close to home. Not THIS close obviously, but still within a certain area of the city that she could travel to by foot or at least rooftop shadow travel.

The Merchants had figured that out. They’d gotten close to her actual home in their attempt to lure her into this fucking trap. And even now she can hear a small voice on the other end of the phone call as someone from the PRT calls out for an answer. Sophia is thankful now that she didn’t start laughing or crying immediately. Her indecision has allowed her to stay silent in her shock. Licking her lips behind her mask, the vigilante does the only thing she can do.

Ripping the broadhead bolt from the Merchant husk, Sophia spins around and runs for the door, yanking it open and sprinting out into the hallway she’d just come from. She’s almost to the stairs when she trips over her own feet. Literally, there’s nothing on the ground beneath her that would cause her to trip. Sophia almost falls on her face because she realizes there SHOULD be something. More importantly, there should be someone!

Skidding to a halt, the dark-skinned vigilante looks around frantically but can find no trace of the Merchant she’d just beat up. There isn’t even blood left behind from the splatters of the stuff that she’d left all over the floor and wall. Staring in abject shock, Sophia brings up her gloved fists and looks at the knuckles. Confirmation that there IS blood still drying on her knuckles doesn’t actually make the young woman feel better though.

Because if she didn’t hallucinate beating up that Merchant… where did he go? Sophia’s heart beat speeds up dramatically and her body begins to shake with fear as she realizes the obvious. The thing, whatever it is that’s been causing the disappearance of gang members… it’s here, in the building with her. There are only two questions worth asking at this point. How long has it been in the building… and where is it now?

There’s a thump from the room she just left and Sophia spins on her heel, staring back through the door she’d left open at the lazy boy now on its back, the Merchant Husk she’d left in it abruptly gone. All the hairs on Sophia’s neck suddenly stiffen in a primal, primordial fear and she slowly turns back around to find she’s no longer alone in the hallway. The monster is right there, staring at her with six empty white eye sockets in two triangle-like formations.

This is not the creature that she faced before. Or if he is, he’s grown a lot bigger, transformed into something MORE than he was before. His body is a more distinct, solid mass of shadows than it was previously. There are two more arms coming out of his sides and he’s hunched over to fit in the hallway. Over his shoulders come two tentacles, waving about in the air as if testing it for a moment. Slowly, the ends of the tentacles blossom out into four petaled mouths.

They lung towards her, grasping at her and Sophia trips backwards with wide eyes, a shout on her lips as she outright falls on her ass in the process of ‘dodging’ the tentacles. It works though, at least this time. The tentacles miss and then draw back and Sophia watches in horror as the monster falls forward onto all six limbs. Its body begins to shift right before her eyes, and worst of all, it’s completely silent as it does so.

But Sophia has seen enough videos of Lung fights to know to start running. Scrambling to her feet, the female vigilante sprints up the nearby staircase, trying to put as much distance between herself and it as she can before it gets into whatever ‘mode’ it’s currently aiming for. Only, without sound to even give her a hint of the thing’s progress, Sophia has to rely on sight. She stops at the next floor and looks down to find the creature prowling at the base of the stairs.

Its movement actually looks familiar. Almost like a cat about to pou-OH FUCK! Sophia barely manages to dodge out of the way as the shadow monster manages to leap up the entire staircase in one smooth motion. Fuck the stairs, she is NOT staying inside an enclosed space with this thing ANY LONGER! Getting to her feet yet again, Sophia runs down the new hallway she’s found herself in and leaps straight at the window at its end. She phases right through it and then goes solid as she grabs onto the fire escape and begins to climb for dear life.

Sophia makes it to at least the next floor before the creature follows her out of the building, phasing through the wall just like she did, yet somehow maintaining its solid-seeming shape. Her heart beats rapidly in her chest as the shadow monster leaps to the much shorter building across the way, giving her a better look at it. It looks like a six-legged panther with tentacles. That’s the only thing Sophia can even think of when she stares at the monstrosity. 

She climbs higher and higher as it looks about, searching all along the roof tops and down in the alleyways and streets. For a brief moment, Sophia really thinks she’s going to manage it. It doesn’t think she’ll go up for some reason, if she can just reach the lip of the roof and get onto it, she’ll be out of its line of sight. The young woman isn’t nearly stupid enough to believe that means she’ll be home free, but at least it’s a fucking start.

And hell, the more time it’s not chasing her, the more distance she can put between her and it, right? The roof top lip is only inches away from Sophia’s hand now as she reaches out and grasps it, but then she makes the mistake of looking back down, only to find the six-eyed shadow monster staring up at her unerringly.

“Fuck!”

She gets over the edge of the roof and then looks down, only to see the creature leap back across to the building she’s on. Somehow, it outright clings to the side for half a second and then starts RUNNING UP THE BUILDING! Sophia spins around and begins to sprint, putting every bit of track and fitness she fucking has into her legs, even as she uses her lungs for something else entirely.

“BULL-FUCKING SHIIIIT!!!”

Probably a waste of good air, but at this point it’s a little cathartic for the terrified parahuman. Making it to the end of the roof, Sophia leaps to the next building and shifts into her shadow form to both slow her fall and carry her the rest of the way across the gap. When she lands, she doesn’t stop moving, though a quick glance over her shoulder shows that it’s following her. The chase continues across roof top after roof top as Sophia desperately tries to elude the massive monster hunting her down.

She quickly discovers that trying to phase into buildings to hide and catch her breath is a waste of time. More than once, an attempt to do so ends with her nearly being caught by the shadow monster’s back four petaled back tentacles. In the end, it takes her a while but Sophia eventually realizes that any time she uses her power, the Monster is able to find her again.

In the end, she can only rely on her physical conditioning and her track experience to see her through this, with her power reserved to only emergencies, when the shadow monster is about to take her. As terrifying as all this is, as scared as Sophia is, she can’t help but enjoy it, just a little. There’s no fucking hand-holding here. No teammates she has to be gentle with, no tests to force her to hold back.

Sophia prefers to be the predator, the hunter, that’s for damn sure… but there’s something exhilarating, primal about being the hunted and having to do everything she has to survive. Worse though, is that among all the sweat and the blood from the myriad of scrapes and bruises she’s managed to accumulate while running, Sophia realizes that she’s getting turned on.

Beneath the terror and adrenaline is a spark of arousal. The dark-skinned girl doesn’t know where it’s coming from. She doesn’t pretend to understand it. She’s being hunted in the middle of the night by a creature straight from the depths of her worst nightmares and for some reason, that’s her fetish?! It distracts her, the arousal. In the end, that’s what allows the creature to finally catch her.

The chase ends between buildings, as she leaps from one roof to the other and a tentacle lashes around her ankle, screwing up her jump and sending her into the alley below. Sophia immediately phases to slow her fall, but she has to go solid again close to the ground and she still manages to hit hard. Gritting her teeth, the exhausted young woman manages to push herself from prone to her knees, and then from her knees to her feet. She scrambles out of that alley and stumbles onto an empty street.

She’s almost into the next alleyway when one of the tentacles latches onto her ankle yet again, causing her to fall to the ground. It all comes to a head as she reacts instinctively by grabbing onto a light post right beside her. The tentacle is trying to pull her back towards the waiting beast and she’s holding on, her front scraping against the ground. Sophia knows that the creature could leap at her any time it wanted to, grab her and drag her kicking and screaming into the shadows.

But then, Sophia is pretty sure the creature knows it to. Her fingers are slowly loosening around the light pole, no matter how hard she tries to hold on. The shadow monster is intelligent enough from what Sophia’s seen to know it’s only a matter of time before she loses this battle of endurance. Its feeding off her fear, increasing her terror with each heart pounding moment. 

And worst of all, it’s working. Sophia has never been more scared, or turned on for that matter, in her life. It’s humiliating, but she’s dripping wet from arousal and damn near ready to piss her pants, all at the same time. A whimper leaves Sophia’s throat in stark contrast to the stern face mask of ‘Shadow Stalker, Probationary Ward’. Is this truly it? Is this where she dies, alone in the dark?

Just when she’s sure that she can’t hold on anymore, a blinding white light and the loud blaring of a horn fills her vision as well as the alley behind here, where the monster is lurking. The dark-skinned girl thinks she hears a sound similar to water landing on a scalding hot skillet as the tentacle releases her and the creature leaps up, up and onto a nearby rooftop, vanishing from sight.

Sophia makes the mistake of looking towards the white light and when they dim, there are spots in her eyes as she rubs at them to see what the hell just saved her. For a moment she was afraid it was fucking Purity, but thankfully no. Instead, she sees a familiar Brockton Bay Cab, tricked out in all the best shit but still the distinct yellow of a Taxi.

It's Cabbie, the kind of man that fell into the gray area between ‘highly skilled human’ and ‘low powered parahuman’. The man was a strange type of mercenary/bodyguard. As a cab driver, he’d take anyone anywhere they wanted to go, for the right price. He wasn’t a getaway drive or anything like that, but he was reliable and trustworthy, and more than a few capes without mover powers went to him when they needed transport around the city.

Sophia only knew who he was because of her time as a vigilante. He’d actually saved her bacon once before, running down some E88 that had the drop on her, her first night out. Even though Cabbie was white from what she had seen of his skin color, the one gang he wouldn’t drive for was the E88. She suspected he might be Jewish, behind the mask, but she wasn’t about the pry… especially after this.

With her heart still pounding, but the terror beginning to fade ever so slightly (and the arousal along with it) Sophia very carefully gets to her feet and limps over to the back door of the cab. It opens without issue and she half-climbs, half-crawls into the taxi’s backseat, laying down and slowly breathing in and out as she takes one of her bundles of stolen money and pushes it through the slot in Cabbie’s bullet proof glass divider.

“Rough night Shadow Stalker?”

Sophia shudders, her eyes squeezing shut behind her mask. She’s glad that Cabbie can’t see her face, can’t see how terrified she is… but given she can’t quite stop herself from shivering uncontrollably, he might be able to tell from just her body language. Still, the girl does her best to make sure her voice comes out even and slightly calm.

“… You don’t know the half of it. Thanks for the save, Cabbie.”

“No problem. Money checks out, where am I taking you?”

Even as he asks, Cabbie is already accelerating away from the alley. Smart, Sophia definitely approves. For a long moment, the female vigilante is silent. Finally though, she makes a decision.

“Fuck… fuck it. Take the long way around Brockton Bay and drop me off at the PRT building. Fuck this shit, juvie is better than dead.”

To his credit, Cabbie doesn’t ask her to elaborate on that. Instead, the taxi falls silent for a moment, save Sophia’s slow, shallow breathing. Finally though, he does ask the obvious.

“So… what the hell was that? The fuck was up with the tentacle panther Stalker?”

Sophia licks her chapped lips to moisten them and thinks on how best to respond. Well, Cabbie is a mercenary. He’s probably more in the know then the PRT or the Protectorate at this point.

“You hear about the gangs losing members Cabbie?”

“Yep.”

“You just saw what’s been taking them. It… I don’t know exactly what it does, but it makes husks out of full grown men in seconds, and then it does something with the bodies. Eats them maybe? I don’t know. Fuck…”

“Jesus… fuck is right, that’s some serious shit Stalker.”

A humorless, sharp bark of laughter drops from Sophia’s mouth.

“Yeah, that’s one way to describe it. It’s… it’s gonna be a long drive right? I’m going to rest my eyes, if that’s alright.”

“Go right ahead.”

The divider closes up and Sophia lets out a low sigh as she rests in the surprisingly comfortable back seat of the modified, enhanced cab. Her body is beginning to ache all over and her costume is clinging to her body from sweat. And yet… and yet she’s still feeling a different kind of ache, down below in between her thighs. 

She’s technically ‘alone’ now. Cabbie is up front and the divider is closed. Slowly, ever so slowly, Sophia’s hands move between her thighs. She’s so damn horny, all from being hunted like… like some prey animal. It’s shameful but that doesn’t stop Sophia from rubbing herself through her costume. It’s not enough, nowhere near enough to get her off though, but she doesn’t dare remove her gloves or stick her hand down her sweat-soaked pants. 

Instead, she touches herself for a few moments, but eventually she just falls asleep like that, legs curled up and knees too her chest, with her hands trapped between them. The adrenaline has finally worn off and Sophia is completely and utterly exhausted. That doesn’t mean she sleeps easily though, for the hour and a half that Cabbie is driving her the ‘long way’ around the city.

Instead, she’s plagued with what can only be described a “wet nightmares” as the shadow monster catches her again and again in her sleep, only to do things that could only be described as perverse and debauched. She’s unconsciously moaning, brow furrowed beneath her mask when a loud rap on the divider startles her wake.

“We’re here Stalker.”

Sophia sits up and looks out the window to see the back of the PRT building. Cabbie has managed to put her in the parking lot behind the place. Perfect, she really didn’t want to walk in the front door anyways. Slowly, the young woman eases herself out of the back of the cab and onto the pavement. It hurts far more to stand and to walk then it did when she laid down initially, but then that’s the price one pays when they give their body just enough rest to yearn for more.

“Thanks again Cabbie… really. I owe you, okay?”

The mercenary cab driver just tilts his hat towards her, a smile visible beneath his partial face mask.

“Any time Stalker. Get inside now.”

She nods and then he’s gone, driving away before anyone from the PRT can notice him and raise a fuss. He IS a mercenary after all. Letting out a slow shuddering breath that sort of mixes with a half-laugh, Sophia begins to limp towards the PRT building. She moves along the uneven pavement, barely keeping her footing as exhaustion sets in to her very bones.

It’s as she’s moving between a pair of PRT vans that she stumbles and trips, falling to her knees. Except, belatedly Sophia realizes that it wasn’t her own exhaustion that caused her to do so. Slowly, the female vigilante looks back over her shoulder at her ankle, where a familiar tentacle is wrapped around it, emerging from beneath the PRT van.

From her new position so close to the ground, Sophia can see under said van. And six empty white eye sockets stare at her from the darkness. Then the tentacle begins to pull.

“No! Fuck, no! I was so close, fuck, fuck, FUUUUUCK!”

There’s no Light Pole this time. Only the ground and her gloved hands scrambling to grab at it, to hold onto the uneven spots in the paved parking lot.

“NO! SOMEBODY HELP! DON’T LET IT TAKE ME! NOOOO!!!”

It’s just her head now, her entire body is under the van, in the shadows, with the monster. And then her head is pulled back into the dark as well and the screaming ceases immediately. 

Silence falls over the empty PRT Parking Lot.