Mega Worm Apocalypse

TWENTY NINE

Twenty feet of surging muscle and a mouthful of countless serrated white teeth - the Shark Queen moved through the depths, silent and strong and vigilante. Her army followed at her back - hoards of sharks of all sorts of species, each of them completely and unquestionably devoted to the Whole. All of them following her majesty, the most powerful of them all.

Kayla moved along the current - her control over the Shark Queen was total, and her affection for the powerful creature contained in the mental barricade Kayla had re-constructed only grew as she came to feel at home in the Shark Queen's body - her strength, her calm, her focus, her rage. It belonged to Kayla now, and it belonged to the Shark Queen, and they were the same. They were each other. Whatever happened next, wherever Kayla found herself, the Shark Queen was now part of her, she knew that in her deepest core. 

Was this what it had been like for Nat and Gaisgeil? Was their special bond the same as what Kayla felt for the Shark Queen? A part of her hoped so. A part of her hoped the Shark Queen saw Kayla for who and what she was just as sure as Kayla saw the Shark Queen. But Nat never controlled Gaisgeil. And Kayla wasn't sure that offense, that violation, was something the Shark Queen could forgive. How Kayla wanted to free the shark from the prison the Whole had made her. But she couldn't, not now. In controlling the Shark Queen, Kayla controlled the hoard.

As long as she followed the Whole's plan, guiding the army of undead sharks to the coastline of New York city, she was undetectable. She was one of them. A superior in the eyes of their highest power - the Worm Queens - but still a part of the Whole. And being undetectable was the most precious asset she had right now.

As long as Justin didn't screw it up.

If you can't control him, the Worm with Franklin's face was saying inside her mind, I will. The worm wearing Franklin's face had stayed behind with Kayla's and the other's bodies, in transit with them by helicopter to the city. And still they were connected. The worm watched with disapproval as Justin spun more and more out of Kayla's control.

Justin had pulled ahead of the hoard, the great white he'd over taken, a massive male with a rich, inky skin above a milky white belly, the darkness of him hard to make out in the murk of the North Atlantic. But he was there, somewhere up ahead - ignoring Kayla's rank as the Shark Queen.

Worm Franklin was right - the longer she let him go on like this, the more danger he put them all in. Not just Kayla and the Worm - but Nat and Gaisgeil and Andres, wherever they were with the massive blood thirsty unicorn herd, and Eidon and Celia and Franklin, stalking ever East in the bodies of razor fanged sabers - all their friends about to converge on one of the world's biggest cities, each with their own army of monsters in an attempt to save the planet.

The smallest loss of focus from any of them - and those very same monsters would put an end to their plan immediately.

And the one who seemed most likely to slip was Kayla's own Justin Heard.

And if Justin Heard did indeed slip - that was Kayla's fault.

She'd been monitoring his mind through the connection of the Whole - quietly and carefully so as not to startle, make him react on instinct and somehow alert their presence to the worm queens. She watched his shark in the dim just ahead, further now - fading into the darkness just like his mind. He was slipping away. She could feel him reveling in the power of the shark, feel him delighting in the freedom from his own human body, his own mental confinements. Feel him relishing being more than the Justin Heard he'd always been. The connection to the Whole, to the shark he'd commandeered, all of it was pulling him farther and deeper into the hivemind of the Whole.

If he went any deeper, Kayla knew - he'd lose all sense of self. He would just dissolve into the hive like dust into water. As if he'd never been.

Justin, you're too far, she told him. Please get back with the group.