Chapter 159: Chapter 153

We rested a little, holding each other close and warming her up, before I called up a portal to bring her home.

Our portals were limited by our affiliate level. They would only allow the passage of one metric ton of material, one sapient, or twenty non-sapients. The range was also limited to ‘short,’ which meant the immediate solar system, in BuyMort language. ‘Medium’ was anything outside your solar system, but inside your universe. ‘Long’ distance was classed as anything outside your current universe, even if it was a universe right next door to your own.

Just because BuyMort could do a thing, did not mean it would do that thing for free. The fees and service changes we ended up paying weren’t gigantic, but it added up if you weren’t careful.

Molls happily accepted a portal to our apartment at the top of the Prescott tower, and I watched as she dropped the blanket once on the other side. She turned back and smiled softly at me, before the portal closed and the pod zipped away with a happy whistle.

With Molls safe at home, I turned my attention to the departing pod. With a quick burst of focus, I took off, falling through the air behind it. I wanted to know where the local fruition center was, and the pod didn’t seem to notice or care that I was following it, falling at rapid speed directly behind.

The fruition center I was looking for was situated in Mexicali. I was overdue for a visit with Tower anyway, and the surrounding area looked clear of life. An old Dearth fence still stood around the fruition center, weapon scarring and hand-cut holes riddling it.

Scattered human remains surrounded the giant warehouse, where BuyMort had summoned bugs to deal with trespassers. In this desert, any structure was a shelter, or a chance at food and water. These people had been my people, and it hurt to see the cold way they had been dealt with as I flew overhead.

The pod swung in low and slowed its speed as it approached a small doorway. I saw it cycle open and pushed the gravitic drive harder, trying to follow the pod inside.

My biggest problem with visiting Tower was breaking in. The Yarsps had dug up from below ground, and not many of the other fruition centers had the ability to easily dig into, in spite of having no flooring. I tried. There was a buttressing wall that delved deeper than I had expected, and any attempt to breach the walls of a fruition center resulted in a BuyMort bug. Usually a kaiju-worm, if I was the cause of the damage.

So when I tried to slip in behind the pod, and its door slammed shut immediately in front of me, I had just enough time to raise my hands as cover before I slammed into it. The pod hatch crumpled but didn’t break open.

I bounced, hard and fell for real as my focus on flying was disrupted, plummeting right down into the desert hardpack. My drive vanished into my metal lines, and I fell for real. The hard ground knocked the wind out of me, and hurt, but I wasn’t damaged enough for the suit to activate, which I took as a boon. That cartoon starfish made fewer appearances the less I needed instruction from it.

With a groan, I picked myself up out of the dirt and brushed off my pants. A different pod door opened, and a pod emerged to warp in my giant worm.

Over the few visits I had managed to get in with Tower, the punishment for breaking into the warehouses kept getting bigger. It was like BuyMort knew this creature could kill me, if only it could find one big enough to get the job done.

For the first few, I had simply let Tower have a crunchy treat, he loved the chitinous armor plating the kaiju worms all came with. However, the last one had almost been too big for the warehouse, and Tower had a tougher time than usual getting it into his gaping maw.

The kaiju worm BuyMort summoned on me this time was taller than the warehouse and was easily the biggest one yet. I fell sideways, activating my gravitic drive and hurtling across the sand as the worm tried to crush me with a slap of its tail.

I flopped into the dirt as the drive deactivated. Keeping concentration on moving with it was difficult.

I rolled over just in time for the worm to loom over the top of me again, great jaws hanging open. I activated the drive and shot backwards across the ground once more, avoiding its lunging bite by inches.

The worm rose again, towering over me and dropping chunks of torn earth from its jaws. It trumpeted a roar and gave chase, undulating across the ground. My initial surprise wore off and I fell straight up in the air.

Not to lose its prey, the kaiju worm stretched out as far as it could, reaching up into the sky after me and clicking its jaws at my heels. I tumbled and righted myself, still falling up and away from the worm. It receded quickly as I plummeted into the sky.

I summoned my atomic breaker gauntlets and helmet, before focusing on the worm far below and redirecting my drive. Gravity kicked back in, and I started falling toward the ground and worm. It reared back and lunged up at me, and I closed my eyes.

The landing was squishy, and hot. I slammed into the kaiju worm's guts and activated the breaker gauntlet. I burst out of the back of its neck, in a flash of blue light and gore.

So much for the pants Ordo gave me. I gave them a good long glance. They were wholly covered in slime.

After landing in a stumbling run, I turned to see the kaiju worm sway unsteadily before toppling onto the fruition center. Metal screamed and tore, as glass shattered and the ceiling collapsed, taking a huge part of the wall with it.

Roughly a third of it collapsed with the worm, torn down as a gash was torn in the ceiling.

I gasped, drawing a hand up to my helmet-covered mouth as I waited for BuyMort to respond.

But nothing happened.

No pods, no more bugs, not even one of those pathetic little laser pods that liked to shoot me up when I visited Tower. Just me, the desert, and the smashed up fruition center.

Before long, the kaiju worm began to move again. Its tail lifted and was dragged inside the ruined warehouse, while loud crunching sounds began.

My curiosity got the better of me, and I fell up and through the gaping hole in the ceiling. I directed my fall to avoid the bustling robots, but it was an easy task, as the massive fruition center was nearly empty.

Only a small handful of pods and shipping robots were in the warehouse, along with the customary vat of Tower. This time, he looked different. Pale, sickly, gray in pallor.

Tower still had the same pudgy features and fists, but the mound of meat he formed his face out of was significantly lower. A chubby meat hand waved limply at me.

“Hi Tyson!” Tower exclaimed. “Thanks for bringing me something to eat! You’re a good friend.”

I took a few steps away from the rear wall, which was where BuyMort was still doing business, albeit at a reduced rate. The portals in the ceiling and floor where the worm had crushed were simply not active, and the few remaining BuyMort machines operated around the wreckage in the room.

“Hey! It’s good to see you again,” I shouted up to the creature. He liked my shiny head, and I never quite trusted him not to eat me, so I kept the helmet in place.

I looked around again, before facing the giant flesh creature while he ate his jumbo sized worm. He wasn’t savoring it, like he usually did, he was just inhaling it as quickly as he could. As I watched, some color began to restore in his meat, shifting slowly from gray back to pink.

“Are you okay, buddy?” I finally asked.

Tower finished chewing his mouthful and swallowed hard. The mass of worm meat and armor plating visibly distended his mound as it passed through.

“I’m hungry. BuyMort decided this center wasn’t worth keeping anymore,” he said. A pudgy hand of meat stretched up to flick his large rubber feeding tube, which was attached to the ceiling. “No more food for me.”

“Wait, BuyMort just lets you starve if it doesn’t need your flesh-tape anymore?” I asked, hands on my hips.

“That’s part of the deal,” he rumbled from above me. “Besides, not like I’m the only me around.”

Tower closed his watery, bloodshot eyes and pressed his giant lips together in concentration. “I can sense . . . three more close, and another . . . this many on this landmass,” he said, raising all his pudgy fingers on one hand. He looked at the hand, and another group of fingers protruded from the meat bulk.

The number of Towers on the landmass was undetermined. He seemed to struggle with counting beyond anything he could do on his fingers. With the extra fingers protruding and retracting seemingly at random, he gave up and focused on his meal.

“How long since you’ve had anything to eat, buddy?” I gently asked. My concern for the well being of a friend was false, I wanted to know this thing’s vulnerabilities.

“Oh I dunno,” he mumbled. “A while.”

There was a significant problem surrounding my conversations with Tower. He was innocent and child-like until you started saying his name repeatedly. Clarity was not his strongest suit, until that crown of heated bone rose, and his features changed to look like a skull. Then he managed to find clarity, but with it came some rather unsettling aggression.

The meat creature hadn’t tried to harm me yet, but the way our conversations had been going, I imagined it was only a matter of time. I’d ask the wrong question, and he’d smush or eat me.

“Well, maybe I can help bring you food. How much do you need a day?” I asked.

His eyes wavered and wobbled, and he rolled them up in thought. I wondered briefly where his brain was, and if he had one. The meat in the vat formed his face seemingly at will, though he did avoid areas that were frequently shaved for BuyMort packing purposes.

“I dunno. Lots,” he finally said. The kaiju worm had been the biggest BuyMort had sent against me yet, by an order of magnitude. The rest had fit inside the fruition centers. This one would not have, evidenced by the giant mess it made of the place when it fell on the thing.

“Hey, so BuyMort won’t come fix up the place?” I asked, gesturing around.

Normally, when I broke a window or wall portion to get in, BuyMort would get to work on fixing it, and I’d have to deal with a second kaiju worm on my way out. Tower would eat the first one, but the second usually got warped-in outside, which meant it was BlueCleave’s job to kill the thing. They liked the meat, but it hardly seemed worth the heavy ordinance required to bring one down.

All of these disparate BuyMort-tainted pains in my ass were the reason I didn’t visit Tower as often as either of us would like. I appeared to be his only friend, but he was my only lead on BuyMort. On how it operated, and how I could beat it. But it was hard having a conversation with him. Until that fruition center in the middle of the Calexico desert.

“Naw, BuyMort not gonna fix it. No point. Once it shut down fully, pods warp away what left, including poor Tower,” he said. At the sound of his own name, he blinked. His eyes stopped watering and wobbling, fixating on me below. “Why are you asking?” he said.

I thought for a long moment, staring up at my towering ‘friend.’

“Maybe I can bring BuyMort back. Get you more food, keep this place going,” I carefully answered. “I don’t like knowing my friends are suffering, and you’re starving to death.”

Tower rumbled and shook as he laughed. “I cannot be killed,” he said. “Not truly.”

That sent a shiver down my spine, but I decided to press my luck. The knowledge that I could just fall away through the open roof emboldened me.

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“Hey, cool!” I exclaimed. “Me either!”

Tower stared down at me, steam beginning to rise from around his head. “But you are just you,” he eventually said. “How can you remain alive once killed?”

“How can you?” I asked.

Tower frowned. “I told you, I am everywhere. Everywhere BuyMort is, anyway. I grow strong with its spread.” Bones began to appear from his meaty pulp, rising to slowly form a skull shape over his face.

“Right, but that doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand what you mean when you say that,” I clarified. He was starting to become coherent, which meant my time was getting short. Once he awoke more fully from his child-like form, he changed. I felt as though his answers were cagey, and his questions became probing.

“Tell me how you cannot be killed,” he rumbled. “I don’t believe you.”

I stared up at him, watching as the pink spread through his meat more fully, and more patches of steam began to emerge.

“Fine. My body repairs, if damaged,” I said.

“Oh ho ho!” Tower bellowed. “That is not unkillable, tiny human. That is how flesh exists across the multiverse.” A gout of steam billowed from his skull mask as his eyes hardened on me. “I could kill you now.”

I slowly shook my head. “Don’t kill your friends, Tower.”

The flesh beast raised an arm, and I watched as it formed into a sizable fist. Lengths of bone emerged and formed into a massive cutting blade, extending from his wrist back to his elbow.

“Friends,” he mumbled. “Don’t kill your friends . . . are you my friend, tiny human?”

When speaking to the child-like version of Tower, my responses had been kindly, and encouraging. When his skull mask came out, that kind of interaction seemed to upset him, so I decided to change course.

“I’m the closest thing to one you have, as far as I can tell,” I answered. “Why would you want to kill me anyway?”

“You ask too many questions, human,” he said, staring at his arm blade as if trying to remember something. “I’m not supposed to answer questions.”

Suddenly, the arm lashed down, palm extended. I activated my drive and fell up to the ceiling. He struck the ground with a resonating thud, and the tip of his bone blade sunk deep into the desert sand. As I clung to the rafters, Tower lifted his palm and looked beneath it.

He looked around, side to side, sweeping the ground with his sight. “Where have you gone, human!” he roared, trembling the damaged rafters.

“I got you a worm to eat too, Tower,” I said from the ceiling. “Is this how you treat a friend?”

His gaze whipped up to see me attached to the roof and a great billow of steam arose from his flesh. Around his head, flames began to crackle and lick at his meat, charring it as more layers of bone arose from within. The flesh beast lunged at the ceiling, and I dropped, falling directly toward his hand.

I activated my power blow ability and slammed both feet into his palm as I dropped. The meat and bone he was composed of splashed apart as I punched through his palm. Tower roared in pain, retracting the blasted stump into his body.

After landing among the scattered slop of his flesh and bone shards, I turned to stare up at him. Horns grew from my silvery helmet, and I prepared to attack him again.

But the flesh beast seemed actually hurt. His bones slid away under the skin again, and the flames crackling across his body snuffed. The charred meat sunk away underneath, replaced by fresh pink meat.

I watched Tower for a long moment, as he began to softly weep. His eyes were watery and wobbling when he finally looked at me again, and he raised a reformed pudgy hand to point at me.

“Why?” Tower cried. “I thought we were friends, Tyson!”

The pain had reverted him to his child-like state.

“I’m sorry, but you attacked me,” I replied.

Tower sniffled and stopped crying. “I did? I’m sorry, Tyson! I’m so sorry! Please don’t stop being my friend!” he wailed, waterworks starting up again fully.

I hesitated, and Tower continued crying, tears forming and flowing down into his own body mass.

“It’s okay, I’m still your friend,” I finally said.

Tower stopped crying at once, his pudgy hands lowering from in front of his eyes. “You mean it?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “Friends fight sometimes, just try not to attack me again.”

Tower waved the hand I had destroyed, now made of fresher, pinker meat. “You hurt, Tyson! Big hurt! I don’t wanna attack you anyway,” he said, with a short giggle.

“You could have hurt me too, big buy. Don’t forget about your worm.”

He’d dropped the rear half of the kaiju worm corpse when he converted, but upon my advice, he gasped in realization and snatched it up off the floor. After taking a massive, crunching bite, he nodded gratefully at me.

“So hungry. Thank you for the crunchy treat, Tyson-friend!” Tower said. “What was it you wanted to know?” he squinted, heavy meat eyelids bunching up over his watery eyes.

I thought about that question before answering. Tower was my best tactical information source about BuyMort. Based on his response to pointed questions about the system, however, I felt like I needed to be careful. As a child-like mind, he was nearly useless. But at least he wasn’t attacking me.

“I was asking what kind of stuff you need to eat. Maybe I can feed you, since BuyMort stopped,” I offered.

“Water,” he said without hesitation. “I’m very thirsty.” Tower munched on his worm for a few minutes. “I like these worm treats too. Need more though, if you feeding me now.”

“How many each day?” I asked.

In my helmet, a distracting icon rose from the fog of my crystal ball. It was my MortMobile account, with an incoming call. Axle was on the other side, I could feel the psychic deity that operated the multiversal phone system projecting his angst into my mind.

I pushed it aside, concentrating on my desire to call him right back, and then focused back on Tower.

“Maybe four? No, five!” he said.

“Okay buddy, I can’t promise anything, but I am gonna try,” I said. I readied my drive and waved a hand up at Tower. “I have to go, my affiliate needs me!” I told him. “But I’m going to try and get you another worm before I go.”

He nodded eagerly and took another massive bite of the kaiju worm. Looking around, I found a nearby BuyMort loader robot and fell toward it through the air.

I landed on the hovering machine and used my enhanced strength to rip off both its loader arms. It cried out an electronic warning as red lights flashed across what was left of the warehouse. One of the few pods in the building warped in another kaiju worm, this one just big enough to fit inside the building.

BuyMort appeared to have rules, when it came to bug summons around its own equipment.

“There you go buddy, all yours!” I gripped the metal arms and fell toward the hole in the ceiling. The kaiju worm lunged to snap at me in the same instant Tower lunged to grab it. Tower caught the worm by surprise and shoved its midsection into his gaping maw.

It squealed as I plummeted out of the gaping hole in the ceiling, before a loud crunch cut off the sound.

My fall diverted to the side as I focused on an image of the Prescott tower in my mind, and the starfish gravitic drive diverted my gravity.

I focused on the little glowing crystal ball icon in my helmet’s HUD and brought up the psychic phone. A gray, bald head appeared in the ball and looked around at his surroundings, before rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m with you. I hate the helmet too. Function over form though, connect me with Axle please?” I asked.

The psychic entity nodded, turned his head, and became a tunnel of gray fog, with Axle at the other end. “Where are you?” my friend and partner immediately asked.

“Uhhh, somewhere in Southern California?” I answered. “Why, what’s going on?”

“A dream storm has manifested and is approaching. Should be in Prescott within the next six hours. Molls informed me you have some experience with this particular kind,” he said.

 

 

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