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“No,” he laughs. “I was a later hatchling. The first generation of heroes is dead, but some of them found that they were able to procreate in different ways. Some with each other. Others with human females or males.”
“I feel like I’m being set up to hear something extremely gross,” I say.
He looks offended, and I immediately feel guilty.
“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t mean you’re gross. I just can’t imagine giving birth to a spider baby.”
I’m making this worse, actively worse with every single thing I say. I decide to stop talking.
“Our kind is unlikely to survive beyond another generation, in large part due to the sentiments you expressed, but moreso because our initial mission no longer exists. We were made to be super soldiers. We were made chimeras, imbued with the powers of other creatures. It was our creator’s desire that we be able to function in environments that normal humans would immediately perish in. My skills, for instance, are designed to be deployed in mountainous regions, or areas with low access.”
“Spider things,” I murmur. “So your creator. He was inspired by mostly insects, it seems?”
“There are a great many powers contained in the insect kingdom that, when harnessed by creatures with human size and intellect, make for fearsome foes. Justice is able to fly. I am able to climb vertical surfaces…”
I am tempted to ask him to show me that trick but this is not the time. He is telling me something he has no doubt never told anyone, sharing properly. I like this side of him. I love it when he opens up to me and lets me into his world a little more. It’s also kind of hot to hear him explain things in his formal, slightly stern way. I don’t think he means anything by it, it is just how he is.
For a little while, it is almost like this is a romantic getaway, very secluded and absolutely intimate. Order talks and I listen. He tells me about a big old factory that is actually their ancestral home, as it were, subterranean layers that descend deep into the earth and provide the conditions for storing and gestating new hero eggs. It sounds like an amazing place, and I am starting to get quite excited to see it.
In the midst of our conversation, a little white-tipped ginger paw establishes itself on my knee, and Obigor looks up at me with his perfectly round little eyes. He’s very polite about it, but I know exactly what he wants.
“Obigor needs food. I guess there’s no senior dog food in this vault, and you didn’t give me a chance to get his special food out of the car.”
“He can have leftovers.”
“No, he can’t. He’s an old man. He gets pancreatitis if he eats anything too high fat.”
Order looks at me, then back at Obigor. “I will make him something low in fat with appropriate protein and vegetable content.”
“He needs his proper food,” I insist. “It’s very expensive, and it’s formulated specifically for his breed and his age. He might get an upset tummy if we change the food. We have to get out of here tonight.”
He sighs at me. “You are testing my patience.”
“You got us trapped underground. Get us untrapped, hero.”
* * *
After a brief pause in which I am sure he is considering whether or not to whip my ass, Order goes back to work on the control panel. It is very polite, but very obstinate. I know Order must be getting frustrated with it, but he too remains polite and restrained. I guess he’ll find some way to…
BOOM!
The vault seal blows open in a sudden detonation that fills the vault with bits of dirt and smoke. I can only imagine what has happened to the lid itself, probably spiraling off into space with the force of the explosion.
“Wow, how the fuck did you do that?” I knew he was trying to get us out, but that detonation made the entire vault shudder.
Order looks at me, and I emit an involuntary shriek. He does not look like his normal pleasant self. His eyes are all wide, more round than the normal human shape, and his mouth has changed dramatically too. There are fangs now, descending from behind his lips, through his teeth. As I stare, horrified, both of them start to drip with a purple poison. I’ve never seen him in attack mode before, and the sight is fearsome.
But that’s not the scariest thing happening right now. Something is coming down through the hole. Something scaled. Something slithery. Something wrong and dangerous and bad.
It’s a fucking snake. But also a man. It’s a mutant, in the same way Order is a mutant. He comes down head first, in the way people are absolutely not supposed to descend stairs. He has arms and legs, but the way he moves is more sinuous than one might expect from a person with bones in their body.
His face is covered in small green scales, and his eyes are slitted yellow. There’s no way he is going to fit in at a public park. He’s a beast and a predator, and he is invading our little burrow with malice in mind, a serpent breaking into a burrow for its own nefarious reasons.
The snake hisses and strikes out, leaping across the space toward Order, but Order is not there anymore. He is on the side of the wall, crouching horizontally, sticking to the surface.
I cannot see how a spider could ever take a snake, but that swiftly turns out to be because I don’t know jack about the animal kingdom. The snake is at a disadvantage in the relatively confined quarters of the entrance area. Order leaps from the side of the wall and onto the snake’s back, and wrapping his many arms around its torso, he begins to absolutely pump web out around not just the snake, but around the walls too.
The snake is not going down easily. It twists and thrashes its body, limbs flailing. But this kind of fight is not going down the way a fight between two strong men would usually go. They are both deploying their mutant powers against one another hard and fast.
