Animals We Made

Operation Sunlight | Part 3

A vast quiet overtook the cavern.

Rae gripped Lyte's hand at this, and for the first time in all his years evolving and devolving with her, she appeared unsettled.

He'd misjudged her passion.

"Is there a safer route?" whispered Beme.

She looked down.

The monster peeked out of the shadows it inhabited, and it was apelike but furless and naked and gaunt, veiny all over, two-legged and upright, some of its fingers and toes webbed and others normal.

Rae hissed at it.

Lyte swayed and nearly collapsed.

A reeking tower of flesh, the monster bolted at the girl, and she'd obviously drawn its attention on purpose.

She would sacrifice herself.

In the context of this operation, her life meant little.

Why had she and her group run away from their utopia?

To have a chance.

If they all died they'd lose that chance but if just one of them died . . .

No!

Beme sprinted to assist Rae.

His visor glided up, exposing his calm, delicate face to the air.

The monster caught her and threw her into a wall. Her bones shattered and she wailed in anguish. Lyte jerked this way and that, understanding the importance of his next choice. Focusing, he ordered his suit with his brain to assist him, and the pliant fabric around his hand reshaped.

A blade extended there.

It jutted up.

Forming itself out of his bodysuit's own material—which hardened and sharpened where needed yet remained elastic around his torso and limbs—the weapon stayed attached to his fist that was now engulfed by the sword-like projection.

He jabbed his blade.

The monster dodged and passed through Lyte, and he noticed how much taller and faster it was than him, the blurs of its claws spilling him everywhere, ripping him precisely in half so he felt the abrupt weightlessness of his midsection separating from his hips and leaving him to writhe in two pieces on the ground.

Rae screamed his name.

Instead of her voice, those of his parents echoed through the caverns of his mind.

Beme jumped onto the monster and sank his fangs into its neck. Lyte ignored the chaos. All of a sudden, there was no value in fighting. Tempted to peer down at the ruin of his body, he kept his gaze upward.

He was not even close to the overworld.

Rae limped toward the monster. It wagged its head at her as if taunting. She massaged her broken left arm, shook her intact right, and produced her own blade over the fist with the suit's transformative material. Driving her weapon into the monster's belly, she howled so passionately her visor fogged.

Bats still chittered.

The monster hardly responded to her attack.

She wrestled in vain to pull her blade out of a jumble of flesh.

Lyte hyperventilated, impressed that he still had lungs, but he refused to check because he knew the image would send him reeling and he needed the closure of probability, the hope found in ignorance, the only way that up could be the same as down.