12/365

Bianca had memories of a place she'd never been to before circling through her mind, all whispering and hissing, coming to her in violent flashes of light and sound that would temporarily leave her wincing and cradling her skull. She massaged her temples, kneaded the tension out of her face with her fingers. She staggered and knocked over a trash can, tasting something metallic and stale in the base of her throat. Where…? Lower Olympus. Right. How long had she been here? Bianca shook her head and got off the ground, knees wet with alleyway grease, hands filthy with whatever gunk coated the slimy old bricks. February. Winter. Her teeth chattered as a gust of wind smeared bitterly cold rain against her face. No snow. None. Something to do with…with the… What was it again? Think.

Something about superheroes. Something about…about the atmosphere and…and Zeus. Maybe.

Whatever. She needed to figure out where she was. A crumbling brick wall in front of her. A hollow, burnt out building behind her. Everything stank of trash and smoke, and a weird, tangy rot that spilled from the sewers.

"Hey, there, little sis." Bianca flinched. A shard of ice just dug through her skull. Over her shoulder, that's where Ben's voice had come from. Sitting on the fallen trash can, untouched by the constant rainfall and the cold dryness of early afternoon. He smiled at her. Softly. Weirdly. His lips were long, his face a little hazy. Bianca shook her head again and got closer, knelt down and reached for his hand. Ben pulled away and said, "We're kinda on a time crunch, remember? Cassie's more than rich enough to hunt you down, and you need to find Zeus. You really don't want Rylee to get hurt again, right?" She shook her head. No came out of her mouth like saliva. "Good, 'cause remember, we're looking for Ava. I need you to stand up and get going, soldier. Nothing's hard for us Ross', right?"

"Right," Bianca whispered, then wiped her mouth across her forearm. Nothing's too hard for a Ross.

Her hoodie was soaked, so were her sweatpants. Her sneakers were gone. Her feet slid on the bricks as she shakily stood. She doubled over and coughed so violently that she tasted blood that smacked against the roof of her mouth. Bianca spat. Sniffled. Used her sleeve to wipe her stale mouth and turned around. Slowly, she limped out of the alleyway and onto the empty street. People. Enough of them to make her head buzz. Some of them hid in doorways from the rain. A group of guys huddled around an engine block beside a car propped on cinderblocks. Ice slid down her spine. She looked up and watched a Cape zip through the smog, there one minute and gone the next.

Two flags snapped in the breeze. One American, torn up, bits of stringy red, white and blue fluttering in the wind. And another. Dirtier. Newer. More whole. A deep shade of red with something painted on it. A lightning bolt.

A man smoking an unfiltered cigarette watched it dance in the wind, sitting motionless on the curb.

Like he was expecting Olympia to see it and come back home.

"Excuse me, miss?" Bianca turned around. A thin, wiry little old woman was standing behind her, a smile on her face tucked under an old brown rain coat. She offered Bianca a piece of paper, torn up and wrinkled and entirely golden. It was the same with her bony fingers, quaking and tiny, but entirely gold. "Are you a believer?"

Bianca blinked slowly, rain getting into her eyes, matting her hair to the sides of her face. "What?"

The old woman gestured for her to take the paper again. "In the Golden Fist, of course." A grin.

A grin that made her skin crawl.

Bianca stepped back and swiped her hand through the air. "I don't have time for this, but thanks."

"You look lost," the old woman called, voice echoing. "If you believe, salvation will be found."

"Salvation?" Ben mutters beside her, arms folded, expression dark. "Not in this life, sis."

Something made Bianca slow, stop, and glance over her shoulder. The old woman was still there, waiting, piece of paper getting more and more damp the longer she waited for Bianca to take it. She looked around warily, at the dark empty windows, the buildings destroyed by fires and supervillains and turf wars that screamed through the rain-heavy air. It made Lower Olympus groan and echo, almost like it was this one, massive creature in terrible pain.

The old woman got closer again, and this time, Bianca took the piece of paper from her.

It was Rylee.

Maybe an old, grainy picture, or a shitty drawing—she had her fist to the sky, golden sparks of electricity snapping and sparking around her knuckles. It lit the heads standing in front of her. Threw a shadow on the people furthest away, unsure whether to get close to the mass of people standing in front of her. The light made her eyes sparkle. The shine of golden light made that bolt of lightning on Rylee's chest catch and brighten and almost glow right off the paper. Bianca swallowed, nearly choked on her spit. She stared at her face, at her eyes, at that raised fist.

She ran her thumb over her face, feeling something thick sit low in the base of her chest.

Barbed wire curled around her heart, her lungs. She swallowed, and it felt like shards of glass were tearing down her throat and into her stomach, churning and churning and making bloody meat out of her frigid intestines.

"Miss?" the old woman whispered. Her fingers grazed Bianca's face.

She stepped back and pressed her fingers into her eyes, then crammed the piece of paper into her back pocket and said, "Don't touch me. I'm fine. Get out of here, this place isn't safe for anyone, least of all old people."

She smiled at Bianca, this time softer, making her glassy gray eyes sparkle. "It will be. She'll be back."

"Bianca," Ben said sharply. She flinched. "Time's ticking, sis. Come on, let's move it."

Bianca stepped back, foot splashing deep into a puddle. The old woman smiled at her until Bianca turned the corner, her chest so tight she could hardly breathe without choking on her own spit. She wiped her face and kept walking, not knowing where her feet were taking her, just knowing she had to go, to move, to not stop going until she found…something. Someone. That's right, I'm looking for someone. She could smell them. It made her nose twitch and her stomach curl, and then came a hunger pang so violent she doubled over and threw up into a drain.

"Hm," Ben hummed quietly. Bianca looked up at him. His face was hard. Disapproving. "We need to get you something to eat before we keep searching, right? What good is a superhero on an empty stomach to anyone?"

Food. Yeah, that sounded great. Chili fries. Chili dogs. Something with meat. Something…

No.

She was hungry for something else, something so deeply rooted in her veins that it made her mouth water the second she thought about sinking her teeth into something and hearing it moistly shred between her canines. She straightened, rolled her shoulders. Her nose latched onto a new smell, that tangy one gushing from the sewers. Bianca licked her lips, got on her knees before she even knew what she was really doing, and dived into the guts of New Olympus' rotting underbelly. Swamped in stenches. Drenched in garbage. The rusted ladder only took her so far down. It had been broken off at some point, which left the last few feet a free fall until she landed on hard stone.

Her impact echoed through the tunnel. Soft afternoon daylight, muted by the rain, turned gray by the smoke and the wetness in the air, came through the manhole opening above her. Bianca remained crouched. The stench was terrible. Hot. It made the air slimy, and it almost felt like it was slowly getting between her teeth. She spat. Wiped her mouth again. Then paused and pulled something out from between her lips. A tiny purple worm.

She watched it wriggle and squirm between her fingers, its tiny little mouth violently gnashing.

Bianca opened her mouth, tilted her head back toward the light, and dropped it back down her throat. She swallowed it, hated its slimy, bitter taste, and the skin-crawling feeling of it sliding down her chest and into her stomach, or dissolving through her organs, or wherever the worms went when she wasn't using them—and then she started walking, following this smell that pulled her away from the thin beam of silver light and into the darkness.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The river of sludge crawled beside her. Toys. Clothes. Human waste and body parts. A bloated, startled gray face stared up at the ceiling from the mass of molding garbage, mouth agape with roaches eating through his eyes and digging holes through his tongue. She kept walking. He wasn't the smell. It was closer, but not quite him.

"You know," Ben said quietly, a whisper so loud it filled her entire skull. She came to a cross road in the tunnel. Left. Right. She'd have to leap over the river of trash to go right, and that's what she did, almost without pause. She kept walking. Ben followed, footsteps silent, just like Katie's had always been. Just like his during those last few horrible months. "I came down here a lot back in the day. Lucas told me that I should know everything about this city, how big it is. These tunnels can vomit you out at the beach, or into the forest a hundred miles from here. This city is a labyrinth, above and below ground. So many holes. So many secrets. Wars are fought, lost, the dead are buried and lives are taken, and nobody except two people will ever know anything about it. Sad, right?"

"Do you miss being alive?" He stopped. So did she. Bianca looked over her shoulder. "Well?"

That smile, that shrug—too exaggerated, too hazy. Something was wrong with his eyes. They'd never been blue…or was it green? What color were hers? "That's…one heck of a question," Ben said, chuckling. "I'm alive, B."

Sis. Ben called me sis. Not 'B,' because Rylee calls me that and barely anyone else.

But that thought was dog-piled, lost under so many others that rushed into her head and suffocated her before it could permeate. So she nodded. Nodded slowly, smiled slowly, and met her brother's ever-changing eyes.

Bianca found her food barely ten minutes later—a feral, naked woman chewing on rat carcasses.

In the back of her mind, Bianca knew it was dark down here. She knew that it was blindly dark, and that she shouldn't be able to see where she was going—but she could, clear as fucking day. Dozens of tiny rodent bodies littered the ground, their guts pulled out of their torsos and their heads gnawed on between bright red gums. Bianca looked down at the woman. Girl. Maybe around her age. Maybe a little older. Thick scarlet hair poured down her spine in a sheet, wavy and thick. Her fingernails were daggers, filthy black shards wedged into her fingertips. She stared at Bianca, chewing on the fattest rat of them all, blood pouring from her mouth with each wet gristly crunch.

She had freckles. She had glassy, green eyes. She had a yellow headband with a peace sign on it.

A tiny little dandelion had been woven through her hair, a lilting thing without most of its petals.

It wasn't the rats she wanted. She wanted the girl. She wanted her muscles, her filthy skin and greasy hair and those wide, wild eyes. One of them was bruised. She'd been hit recently, so badly that half her face was a dark purple shade, and her throat was raw and red from being grabbed and strangled. But she'd lived. She'd escaped.

Just for Bianca to come around and change that.

Bianca tackled her, sinking her fingernails into her wrists and pinning her to the ground. She screamed so loudly it made Bianca's ears ring. Bianca slammed her forehead against hers, dazing her. She lay there, breathing hard, bare chest rising and falling, hollow gut growing and shrinking underneath Bianca. She smelled terrible. So raw and pungent she was like a junkyard dog that had kicked and shot and cut and thrown away so many times that it had all just seeped through her skin. Bianca stared at her. The girl with scarlet hair stared at her back. She fought and struggled, muscles straining. There was power here. Strength. She could rip someone apart with her bare hands.

Judging by the gunk underneath her claws, she must've—just another rat to her, probably.

Bianca swallowed a heavy swab of saliva that trickled out between her lips. It landed on the girl's face and slid across her cheeks. And then she got closer to her throat, so close that she ran her tongue across her dirty skin. It tasted like old blood, and grease, and something septic and also something bitter. But she had it in her, something sweet and slightly burnt. Ambrosia. Enough to make her full. A body this lean, this athletic—Ben won't get hungry.

No, wait. She won't get hungry.

Right.

Bianca opened her jaw, saliva coating her teeth as she inched for her throat.

Then she smelt soil. She heard stone splinter and crack.

A pause. Loud silence. Bianca pulled away slowly, shutting her jaw as the flesh underneath her own covered her entire body until the mask covered her eyes and sat firmly on her nose. There, behind the girl's head, was a root that had punched upward. A tiny thing that had curled around the girl's ear. She was still bucking. Still fighting. But she was weak, she was exhausted. She must've ran for so long that she'd had almost nothing left. Any other day, and this would've been a fight. A war. One of them would've died. For now, for this very second, Bianca wasn't the one who was going to die. Not when Rylee needed her. Not when Ben and Katie weren't waiting for her.

The root grew, splintering more of the stone. Then another came from the wall. From the ceiling. An icy shiver flew down her spine, and Bianca launched herself backward, rolled off her shoulder and into a low crouch.

The girl with scarlet hair slowly got up, massaged her cut wrists and glaring at Bianca. She bared her black teeth and snarled, getting onto her feet. But a root snatched her foot, her arm, before she could charge forward. She screamed and cut them apart with her fingernails, flailing and wild, but more of them covered her body until she was sedated and heavy and back onto her knees, covered with vines. What the fuck? Bianca thought. She slowly got up. A spindle of bone curled around her fingers, forming a short knife. She looked around. Nothing but the dark and the dead rats, and a girl restrained by dense green vines coming from the ceiling and the walls and the floor.

She would've liked to think this was the universe finally going easy on her. After just so, so much…

There, her food had been presented to her, and she could cut open her throat and eat her hea—

"All this time," a voice said. Bianca startled, stepped back. Nothing behind her. Nobody around her. The voice echoed, ringing down the dense, silent tunnel. "And you were still alive. I thought the devil got rid of you."

A vine shot out from the wall. It snatched her wrist and engulfed her hand, trapping the dagger of bone. Bianca cursed and ripped her arm free, just for a fist of others to shatter the concrete at her feet and wrap around her legs and torso before she could even rip herself free. She struggled and sank her teeth into them, tasting sap and something hot and bitter that hissed against her lips, making them blister and burn and turn bloody. She spat. She chewed. She fought and she struggled, but the vines got to her neck, covering her entire body until she couldn't move. And then she felt it. Her entire body shuddered. Past her shoulder. Over her back. Footsteps, slow and amble.

Panic. Sheer, hot panic erupted through her veins. She didn't know where it came from. Didn't know why her heart sped up so suddenly it made her cringe as it slammed against her chest. The worms on her skin writhed. Stilled. And then exploded outward in vines of their own, shredding apart the plants covering her body. Bianca lunged to the other side of the river, her back hitting the wall as she panted and spat and felt the worms shiver.

The tendrils coming from her back slid underneath her skin again, vanishing from view.

That's new. I like that. I like this.

A woman stood on the other side, staring at her oddly, as if she'd seen a ghost, or a walking corpse, and didn't really know which one she wanted to believe her eyes were telling her. Her eyes were amber. Her skin was a soft brown. Her dreads were thick, and the suit she wore was rolled at the sleeves, missing a jacket and a tie, and she had a tiny tattoo on her chest, almost like some kind of wreath, or wings. Bianca couldn't tell, not from back here.

If she got any closer, she'd probably get trapped by those writhing green vines again.

Poison slid down Bianca's throat when she swallowed. She didn't know how she knew, but something told her, something whispered it to her. Raunchy. Bitter. It churned her stomach until, finally, everything settled down.

"You must be the sister," the woman said, her voice loud, heavy—so clear it demanded attention.

But Bianca said nothing. Her eyes flicked toward the red-haired girl.

"I suggest you don't try," she said to Bianca. "I've been looking for her all day long, and I'd really hate it if you got in the way of that. Whatever you're after, you're not going to find it with her. So keep walking, alright?"

"We're hungry," Ben whispered beside her. "We need to find Ava, and we're hungry."

"No," Biana said, not to Ben. To the woman. "I need her. And I need her now. And I won't leave unless—"

"I knew your brother," the woman muttered, pocketing her hands. Bianca blinked. Looked at Ben. He was glaring at her, tensing his sharp jaw. "I don't think there's anyone from our days who didn't. He was…a good kid. I think maybe a little too good, or maybe Shrike just walked him right into his own death. But that's the past, and that's just another story we tell ourselves going to bed every night. So, for his sake, and his memory, I'm not going to hurt you. If you make this difficult, I will. And that thing that's infested your body won't keep you safe from me."

Ben quietly scoffed. "I wasn't scared of her then, we're not scared of her now. Kill her."

Bianca blinked. Paused. Kill her?

He looked at Bianca, his eyes narrowing. "Didn't you hear me? We have to kill her before she kills us."

"I-I don't…" Bianca stepped back. Swallowed. Her heart was still racing, getting so loud in her skull it felt like it was smashing apart her thoughts. "We don't do that, Ben. Right? Too…too many people are already dead because of us. No more killing. No more dying. That's what you told me. So…so maybe w-we can talk to her and—"

"Her father, Bianca," Ben said slowly, "killed me. He ripped me apart. And she watched."

"But," Bianca said, almost desperate, "you told me—"

Her leg lurched forward on its own. Stone cratered under her foot.

Hatred and heat and anger flooded her skull. Not hers. Foreign. But still hers, still so deeply inside of her that it flowed through her veins, rushed through her muscles and made them so rigid it almost hurt to even move.

She had to kill her. She just had to.

Ben told her to, and Ben was never wrong.

Bianca stood still for a moment, gasping for air, tasting garbage and rot sliding down her throat. She shut her mouth. Breathed through her nose. She rolled her shoulders, her neck, and then stared directly at the woman.

"But I guess," the woman said quietly, "without Shrike, Ben would've ended up just like you."

Bianca crouched, then lunged for her throat.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.