Variant Strain

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Two.

Now it was two against several tens of thousands.

Mathematically, he'd just doubled his odds.

Which if he were to really think about it, didn't improve matters as much as he'd hoped.

One more on his side, no matter how dangerous-- and boy is he dangerous-- wasn't going to do the trick. No matter how impressed Peter was with himself at the accomplishment.

No need to break your arm patting yourself on the back. Cletus won't be enough, Donna murmured.

To be fair, his arm is flexible enough to do it. Connors quipped unexpectedly.

Cain grumbled irritably, You let him out first?

"Who else am I supposed to have out first when we need to kill things?!" Peter exclaimed aloud, lashing out with a negligent backhand to send a drone flying back into the crowd.

"Love you too, kiddo." Cletus drawled, driving a heel kick into the face of a drone that had gotten too close, practically crushing its skull. His teeth were the only thing that didn't quite match his original appearnace. They were the fine needle teeth of a Tracker. He had a tracker's claws and strength... but he was fast. Almost as fast as a Scorpion.

Custom design, Connors whispered and his voice had gained its baritone echo once more. Not a Tracker, not a Walker, not a Scorpion. Something else. Accelerated reflex response. Enhanced neural transmission rates. Spring loaded, finer edge claws. Perfectly built for close combat specifications. A Cletus Cassidy original.

Distantly Peter could still hear Jessica screaming and complaining at him. His attention being split between himself and whatever it was Cletus was doing seemed to be drowning her out.

Cletus pressed the tips of his splayed fingers onto the just killed Spider's chest, causing fresh blood to well up at the points of contact as his claws effortlessly pierced the Rhino hide on its torso.

With casual grace, he flung the disarmed, infected corpse over his shoulder at Peter, sending blood flying all over. Peter caught the body by reflex, the blood still welling up fresh from it's nearly severed neck and shoulder, splattering all over him. He could still feel it twitching against him. Not as much as a dead Hunter that hadn't quite gotten the message, but enough to make holding it awkward.

His tendrils flicked out and wicked the blood away eagerly.

"Chow down, kiddo." Cletus chuckled, flexing his fingers once more. "Y'all got a lot more work ahead."

Cletus grinned and dove into the fray, beating back the Drones and tearing apart any that came within his reach.

Give us some room, his voice drawled.

He was right, Peter knew immediately. He was swamped with drones and who knew what else was in that crowd. He'd taken out the mobile hive, but given how many they were going to have to fight through, they didn't even really need the hive to refresh their numbers. They'd be dead... or at least immobilized and helpless long before they ran out of bodies to throw at him and Cletus.

Make their numbers work against them, Cain murmured.

Kill their coordination, Peter thought back. The Beck is still out there.

Cain graveled, Not alone anymore either. We can pick up the scent of at least a couple more mixed in with the crowd.

Even with a dozen or a hundred, they'll be easier than trying to sweep the room outright. Donna murmured.

Give them back... Jessica's quiet, desperate voice whispered in his mind.

Peter shook his head to clear it, then took a deep breath and allowed the alien words to wash through him, they were getting a little bit louder as he fit the pieces of a new form together. Command interpreters. Activation parameters. Accelerated development thresholds. The words were not exactly as he had them in English. The meanings of every syllable seemed wider-reaching. More encompassing of a multitude of ideas inherent beyond the sound of the word, but in a feel to it. It was embedded in the structure and the logic of the alien language. It was starting to make sense.

You would think that should scare you more, Donna murmured.

Jessica scares me more. Peter shot back.

At the mention of her name, Jessica's voice seemed to gain in strength, it had risen to something like a crescendo shriek, Don't take everyone away! She wailed, but he could only hear her as though from a long way away.

Peter felt shaken at how... desperate her voice had gotten. But she'd set this into motion. She was causing all of this. The last thing he needed was to start feeling sorry for her. He thought to Donna, Get ready.

He breathed out and a blast of red smoke enveloped the dead spider in his arms. It's head began to blur with red and black tendrils at first, but those spread through its body, rebuilding it. He dropped the now spasming Spider body on the corpse of a drone, the tendrils spread to enwrap that body as well.

Jessica gave another incoherent cry and her voice seemed to whimper into silence.

It will need the biomass to replace the arm, Connors said into the silence in his mind.

Peter's arm blurred into its whip arm form as he swept the bladed appendage through the nearby crowd, tearing through drones that were replaced almost as fast as he crippled them. Just keep buying time, he thought to himself.

His next sweep revealed a Hunter that burst suddenly out of the knotted mass of drones. It leaped for him, claws outstretched, but before his reflexes had a chance to kick in, Cletus was already intercepting it.

That is the reflex response, Peter realized.

Cletus stepped around him, as he deftly skipped back, getting out of the taller man's way as though they'd practiced it. It was almost like... how your legs didn't get in each other's way when you were walking normally.

Cletus held an arm out to his side and for a moment Peter thought he was going to clothesline the Hunter in its charge, but his hands were flat, fingers spread and instead of catching the Hunter by its neck on his forearm, he simply brushed his fingertips with pinpoint accuracy across the Hunter's throat.

In midair the Hunter couldn't reorient on the new threat and never had a chance to before its head came off cleanly, popping off at the neck and bouncing to the floor, sending more blood fountaining into the air.

Cletus spun on his toes and laughed then, clearly pleased with himself. "Did you see that? Nothing but net!"

Donna's voice came out in an eerie echo from Peter's mouth and the spasming mass of spider at his feet. "Focus!"

Look out--! Cain began to growl, but Cletus's momentary elated distraction had been enough for the Hunter that had been behind the one he'd just beheaded to tackle him to the ground. Peter surged forward, slashing at its head with the blade at the end of his arm. There wasn't much need for sophistication in the move, as the blade almost the size of his torso.

The Hunter rolled over, carrying Cletus with him in the process of putting him into a full nelson, narrowly avoiding anything more serious than a gash to its back.

"Oh, you SUCK!" Cletus complained loudly, unable to get the leverage nor the position to bring his fingertip blades into play to free himself. He was also realizing that the Hunter's multitude of needle-like teeth were in the near perfect position to start tearing into his fresh new body. Worse than that, it was using Cletus as a shield to keep Peter from getting at it.

More Hunters coming, Cain reported.

I swear, Donna's voice had an amused edge to it, Every time I leave things to you boys, somehow it never works out right.

The spasming, tendril blurred mass of spider that had been close to Peter rolled over suddenly. One limb, that seemed to be composed entirely of woven together tendrils lashed out.

The Hunter that had been fending Peter off, hadn't noticed the movement until it was too late.

The woven tendrils flowed together at the tip, quickly merging into a single spike-shaped blade. Six inches long, an inch wide, and driven with perfect aim through the top of the Hunter's head and embedding all the way to the hilt. The Hunter gave a gurgling scream and lost control of its arms.They spasmed suddenly, almost dislocating Cletus's shoulders, but he'd moved in just the right way to slip out of its grasp. Just enough to slide down and reach over his own shoulders, tearing the Hunter's face to shreds and ripping its throat open along the way.

Cletus rolled back to his feet amidst blistering curses as he hurled himself against the drones once more, slaughtering any that came within his reach. With his speed, his reach was considerable.

Peter watched in fascination at the transformation of his new... ally? Was that the right word? The tendril-arm retracted back towards the main body which was getting to its feet. The rest of the arm seemed to stabilized first, the tendrils settling into forms moving back from the-- relatively-- small blade.

Rather than the morning-star tip or his own bulbous giant-bladed lower arm, this one reformed into a strange two-foot long cylinder of flesh with the small blade at its tip. Near the base of the cylinder, a dozen angled bone-spikes, pointing away from the far end protruded almost all the way around it. The rest of the arm formed in the same brightly glowing red shade that the Spider's limbs had been, but even as he watched, the settling tendrils formed into overlapping layers of bone-armor, encasing the entire upper arm. The vertebra-like bones on Peter's own whip-arm with their blades fit together almost as an afterthought. Just stable spots to plant his arm blades on. On the newly formed arm, the interlocking armored bone-plates were clearly deliberate.

The tendrils continued to settle down, completing the body's transformation. Other than the seemingly armored arm, the rest of the former Spider had reformed into an athletically built female form. The actual figure of the form in question was obscured by her clothes. A pair of baggy black fatigue pants tucked into a pair of combat boots. As a top, she wore a tactical armored vest and Peter couldn't tell for certain if she had anything on underneath it, but both her arms, armored and normal, were bare. Her normal hand was covered in a glove that ended at her wrist. Her face, however, was unfamiliar. She didn't have the face that he'd taken on on the train when MJ had first asked to see what Donna had looked like.There was a bit of Peter's features in her new face, making them appear to be vaguely related. Her hair was the same red shade as Cletus's and styled into a neat pageboy haircut.

"Lookin' mighty fine there, Donna." Cletus leered around slitting open a pair of Drone throats.

Donna ignored him with a haughty look and raised her armored arm with it's spike-- bayonet-- tipped end. Red light flared briefly through the gaps between the armored segments and the entire cylindrical lower arm area shot towards the ceiling. It happened far slower than Peter was used to. He could actually see the end of the arm shoot upwards towards the ceiling, rather than simply reappearing, already embedded. The trailing cable of glowing red flesh studded periodically with the segments of formerly interlocking bone armor.

He felt the brief flare of heat at the launch in his arm. Her arm. He blinked away the moment of confusing crossed sensation as Donna reeled herself up to the ceiling. Slower. Definitely slower than a normal Scorpion. He knew it was designed that way. Donna's own custom build. He had a vague idea of how it was set up. It was slower because the Pym Particle bearing vessels in her arm were set up differently from a normal Scorpion. She was built with a completely different skillset in mind.

Halfway up her climb, Donna flipped over, allowing her feet to strike the ceiling first. Small curved spikes slid out of the pseudo-leather material at the sole of her 'boots' as she freed her arm and looked down at the rest of the chamber.

Peter and Cletus began moving around one another once more, coordinating their movements perfectly as they held off the drones. At least his disruption was keeping any drones that got too close from being effective. They seemed to get confused once they'd been near him for more than a few seconds.

The problem was that even those few seconds could be potentially dangerous. Just as well they were going to be taking care of that for the whole room.

Peter's perspective seemed to enlarge and shift suddenly. He could see the entire chamber. The detail was limited, but he could see all around both him and Cletus, making it even easier to keep fighting.

Most minds don't have to deal with the combined input from six widely separated eyes all at once, Connor's voice murmured. Hexanocular disparity is giving us a great field of view.

The entire field, in fact. Color seemed to wash out of the entire scene, but Peter could begin picking out individual figures highlighted in a red haze. Nine. Nine Becks were coordinating the entire horde, along with several squads of stalking Hunters and a handful of Rhinos making their own slow way towards Cletus and Peter's positions.

"More fun." Cletus growled gleefully, licking at some blood that had splattered on his lips. "I missed having a sense of taste."

Even as far as she was, Peter could hear Donna's voice as clearly as though she were still in his head. "Focus."

Three Becks in particular seemed to glow brighter in his desaturated and colorless panoramic view. One directly in front of Peter, within easy reach of his whip-blade. Another deep within the crowd of Drones to Cletus's right. The last was at the edge of the room. Practically at one of the larger entrances. Isolated, but probably coordinating the entrance of more of the drones into the chamber.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Peter realized he... or Donna... was prioritizing the targets. He wasn't entirely sure if he actually was downloading his mental roommates into their own bodies or if he was in some way directly puppeteering the bodies himself. They'd told him that they'd merely been reflections of him. Voices that answered because he needed a way to cope with his changes.

Adaptations. What kind of mind ran multiple bodies?

Most of our biomass is elsewhere, Connors murmured his voice echoing strangely once more. Hank's baritone was there as well, but much clearer now was the high girlish alto that seemed to be translating the words. Or perhaps what he was hearing in english from Connors and Hank was the translation. We can limit our direct interaction with normal space-time for those games you like to play with mass and gravity. We consume and make things part of ourselves. We are tied to ourself. There is no multiplicity. Our mentality adapts. Multiple channels. Simultaneous thought tracks. Still the same mind, but thinking many thoughts at once. We are ourselves always a part of ourself. Stronger than tears.

There was a moment. A brief flash as he actually understood what that meant in the original language. Limitless acceptance. Boundless...not love, but something more complete. English didn't have the right words to encompass the totality of its concept.

A sudden spike of pain drove itself into Peter's brain with Donna's furious voice commanding him, all of him. "Focus, for God's sake."

Peter's blade whip equipped arm flared and shot through the crowd of drones blocking him from the closest Beck. The immense blade punched through their bodies easily, slamming the entire mass, which was already beginning to dissolve into a tangle of tendrils into the Beck, the blade having punched easily through the Beck's head.

He retracted the writing mass of his arm, the dead Beck having been lost in the press of the crowd.

Cletus had hurled himself once more into the crowd of drones, this time, leaving Peter to fend for himself. He could see the taller body cutting its way to the Beck that had been marked out for him.

Peter lost track of him as more drones and a Hunter closed in on his own position. The strange view that let him simultaneously see out of his own eyes and the panoramic view that Donna was providing was confusing. It wasn't so much overlaid as expanding his field of view. Her own attention seemed to suddenly lose focus on the wide view and narrow entirely towards the distant Beck at the entrance and the others that had already been picked out of the crowd.

He could both see and not see her strangely formed cylindrical forearm aimed. Both from the first person perspective and as a distant, dimly lit image against the ceiling.

There was an odd shifting in his-- her-- arm. Almost like a joint popping into place after having been dislocated and the feel of one of the bone spikes protruding from her elbow sliding into her flesh.

Then the heat. A blaze of heat running down the length of his-- her-- forearm and an echoing BANG that cut through even the sussurus of sound from the entire chamber of drones.

The Beck at the entrance to the chamber slumped, its head suddenly and simply gone in an explosion of gore. Donna's arm swung, sighting and targeting another Beck. The dislocated bone pop and the blaze of heat almost simultaneous now as another immense BANG caused another Beck's head to vanish. The drones behind it that had been part of the crowd screening it also suddenly torn apart in a straight line behind it.

We can do a gun?! Peter thought to himself incredulously.

Connors voice, still echoing with Hank's barritone replied, Not quite. Gravitic catapult. Aligned Pym Particle channels to induce a bone spike inside the barrel to 'fall' in the specified direction. Imagine an orbital kinetic bombardment you can wear on your arm. The instructions for it were in the mobile hive.

Peter thought furiously even as he continued to fight off drones, practically by reflex. Then why didn't the Hive use it? Why these... things? They're tough to fight in large groups like this but individually they were pretty fragile.

Well... compared to him, he amended mentally.

The hive seemed to only be building off a small handful of simple templates... there were all sorts of interesting designs in its head that it seemed to know nothing about, Connors voice continued smoothly. Too smoothly. Maybe its a resource issue. Maybe its simpler to construct the drones in large batches as opposed to--

"Focus." Donna roared out and her gun arm focused on another Beck. It's head vanished with the distinctively loud bang.

Peter's arm blurred into its whip-blade form and slashed wildly, disarming a nearby Hunter, following the movement up with a kick that drove it back into the crowd of drones, scattering and crushing them, giving him some breathing room. He'd lost track of Cletus in the fighting and his distraction over Donna's new toy.

In that gap in his concentration, Jessica's voice whimpered softly.

He tried to focus on where Cletus was. There was a moment of dislocation and the feel of biomass entering his body and more information slotting into his mind.

He found where Cletus had gotten to. The Beck he'd been set to target by Donna had already been decapitated. He's kept his finger-blades dug into the over sized head and was fending off drones with his feet and free hand. He was keeping hold of the head like a basket ball, and idly biting into it in between slaughtering any drones that got too close. The razor sharp needle-teeth tearing neat, scalpel-like bites out of the swollen, spongy mass of flesh, peeling it off the skull with almost dainty bites. Blood flowed freely down his chin and spattered the front of his hoodie when he finally came back to the small cleared space around Peter.

There were another set of bangs and Donna had simply counted off another three Becks down. The crowd had started turning on itself in a mass of confusion, giving Peter and Cletus a breather. A bubble of space had opened around them where the drones would get close... but suddenly seem to forget what they were doing and begin wandering off once more, back into the crowd.

Peter stared in numb shock even as the taste... the exquisitely heavy, meaty, bloody scent and taste of what Cletus was eating hit him.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Peter screamed.

"Catching a snack." Cletus replied negligently. "We can't all eat as neat as y'all can."

"But--" Peter sputtered.

Cletus made a dismissive noise and threw the head at Peter. "See? Now you're catching a snack."

Peter reflexively caught it and actually found himself staring into the glazed, pinprick eyes of the dead Beck. There was a moment when Jessica's lovely, terrified face overlaid the distorted head, but he shook that off quickly and he could see where large strips of flesh from the forehead had been cleared off, little nicks in the white, bloody bone showing where Cletus' teeth had done their work. Peter felt his gorge rise once more, irrationally sickened at the casualness-- enthusiasm-- with which Cletus had done it.

Connors cut in, Logically, Cletus is right. You're losing biomass. Donna's trick with her gun arm is chewing through a bit of it and you and Cletus have both been using it to heal your injuries.

Peter tried to speak, still standing numb even as he stared down at the decapitated Beck's head in his hands. It wasn't the same... the feeding tendrils weren't... the act of consuming with them wasn't as visceral as what Cletus was doing. He could logically understand that there really wasn't a distinction. He'd already had to go through this. He could deal with this.

His voice whispered traitorously to him, Except for how much tastier it is going over your tongue... Dripping down your chin... He shuddered, but his voice continued. It's a Beck. You haven't had Beck yet. Who knows what you could pick up from its body. You need this.

We're doing alright so far, Cain added, But it's three against tens of thousands. They just need to get lucky once. We need every advantage.

"This is what you have me out here for." Cletus said smugly.

There's only one Beck left trying to hold this mess together, Cain murmured. Donna does good work.

"And someone finally figured out what I'm doing." Donna called down to them, her voice impossibly clear despite the distance and the noise. They could see her being chased from her spot on the ceiling by a fresh wave of drones. She ran upside down, the spikes in her heels allowing her to keep her footing, but not giving her a chance to take the last shot.

Too distracted dodging the drones and fending them off with the small bayonet on her gun arm, she stopped being able to provide them with an overview of the battlefield. They still had a vague idea of where the Beck was, but given the size of the chamber and the sheer numbers they would have to get through, it would've been impossible to reach their target.

And they'll move it. Provide cover. Cain pointed out.

"That's assuming they don't bring even more," Donna called back distractedly as she ran across the ceiling, dodging drones.

"More for us," Cletus grinned nastily.

Peter nodded and both of his hands blurred into feeding tendrils, tearing apart the head, flesh and bone and all in his hands. The trickle of information and knowledge from its structure slotted easily into his mind like it was meant to be there.

Distractedly, Peter's arms settled back down to their normal forms and he extended them out. Donna dropped out of the ceiling and neatly landed in them. The open area around them, bordered by distracted and confused drones seemed to be a better place for her to catch her breath than being chased around on the ceiling.

"Nice of you to drop in," Cletus leered.

Up close now, she shot him a disdainful look. Peter felt a small tug at his biomass reserve as the bone spikes projecting out of her gun arm regrew. Fresh ammo.

He didn't like their chances against however many Jessica had on hand to use. He didn't like their chances for what would happen if the horde that she had gathered down here mobilized. He could probably take control of a few more bodies, but then what? There was no way he could hold against this many. He wouldn't have held out against the horde in Forest Park if he hadn't been able to use the environment against them.

You can't play Horatio at the bridge when there's no bridge, Cain grumbled. We've got no perimeter and just three bodies to throw at them.

"No matter how pretty the bodies." Cletus smirked.

Donna glared at him once more but his smirk just grew. "I was talkin' bout me, Darlin'."

We should be able to take full control of one more body, Connors volunteered, then added apologetically. We only have enough neural capacity at the moment for five actively controlled bodies at a time.

That struck Peter as slightly odd, but he filed it away as something to worry about later. Cain had been right. There wasn't anything they could really use in the locale to their advantage.

The Drones had been strip mining the viral matting from the stone to build their own numbers up. There were multiple entrances and exits, some of which connected directly to the rest of Manhattan's sewer system. While he was pinned down slaughtering them here, enough of their numbers could slip out a back route and start infecting the rest of New York.

They'd been lucky that the Hive in Forest Park had kept the infected restrained.

He blinked as he realized something.

"That's what's happening here too." Peter blurted aloud as he turned to look at the Horde around them.

He could sense them much more clearly now. His sense of smell, or the simulated sense of smell that he used to detect Hydra sources seemed much more... refined. He could pick out the other Beck hiding among the crowding drones deeper into the chamber. It had gotten an honor guard of three Hunters to surround it.

What was left of the Beck he'd just consumed was offering... suggestions... for rewiring portions of his brain. Structural hints. Ones Connors seemed to simply shrug at, but they seemed to make a perverse sort of sense. The Beck wasn't entirely independent. It's brain didn't seem to be geared for independent action. If anything, it was as though it was set up as an independent lobe of a much larger brain.

Jessica was keeping her mind distributed through the Becks to better coordinate her horde of infected.

"We are down here for one specific reason," Donna offered coolly.

Peter turned his attention inward and called out firmly, "Jessica."

He let his words travel along the newly formed paths in his mind. Her scent came to him first, delicious, delightful, wickedly tempting. But before he could get caught up in it, there was the impression of sniffling as her voice came to him. It was no longer the siren call of a temptress, no longer steeped in seductive allure.

Now you're talking to me? She sounded... young. She sounded sulky and upset and... normal.

That was the surreal detail that he'd somehow missed after everything. She'd been asleep for decades. Perhaps Hydra psychosis had done a number on her mind and her thought processes, but some part of her was still the lonely and sick fifteen year old girl that Hank remembered from Middletown. A kid who'd been given more power than she knew what to do with.

Who, he could only imagine, had no clue what was going on. She hadn't been any better off than he'd been. He'd just been luckier--

"Stop that," Donna said sharply, slapping him up the back side of his head with her normal hand. "You're empathizing with her. She has been trying to kill us She's responsible for the deaths of your parents. If she isn't stopped she is going to infect Manhattan. Then the rest of New York City. Then the state and so on and so forth." Her eyes met his and he shuddered at the cold certainty they held. "We have a job to do. Focus on that."

Cletus snorted in amusement

Are you going to stop taking my friends away from me? Jessica asked, her voice petulant. He could almost see her in front of him. Her arms crossed over her generous bosom. She seemed to be pouting at him. Or as much as an insubstatial phantom in his own mind could be pouting.

Peter stammered, not sure what to reply, but Cletus chuckled and spoke quickly. "Sure, I can do that. I thought we were just havin' fun playin', ain't that right?"

We were! She replied, her voice getting heated, But then you started cheating and I couldn't find my friends any more! If you keep doing that I won't have any more!

"Well, shucks, darlin'," Cletus replied back, his voice full of Southern charm and friendly banter, "I didn't want to do that."

Peter shot Cletus a look. Cletus smirked at him and shrugged.

Your voice sounds funny, Peter. Jessica said curiously.

"I have a cold." Peter said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice as he gave Cletus a glare. "Since... we've had our fun... if... if you like, I can be your friend." Peter said carefully.

Would you? Her voice was curious and seemingly delighted at the prospect.

"Why don't I come see y'all personally and we can--" Cletus cut in before Peter could say anything further and leered suggestively, "-- get better acquainted."

The suspicion in Jessica's tone and the surly childishness were suddenly gone. The half-seen image in front of them seemed to clap delightedly and bounce distractingly on her toes. Oh, that sounds like fun.

The shifting drones suddenly stilled. The crowd shuffled and a corridor of drones suddenly opened up leading straight to one of the tunnel entrances at the far end of the chamber.

I'm this way. Her voice said as the phantom image beckoned them after her.

That seemed worryingly easy, Cain murmured.

We're speaking her language now, Connors replied. The Becks are part of her neural architecture. We're coming across, more or less, as an idea being offered by a voice in her head. It would seem natural to trust it.

Peter grumbled, "I personally have issues trusting some of the voices in my head."

Cletus laughed.

"Why did you keep butting in while I was trying to talk to her?" Peter asked him sharply.

Cletus made a dismissive noise. "I'm your wingman, kiddo. You have me to make sure you can do what you need to do." His eyes glittered. "This time what you needed doin' was talkin' to a pretty girl. Later, if what needs doin' is rippin' her heart out and eatin' it, then by golly, I'll be helpin' y'all with that too."

Donna nodded. "This is far better than fighting our way through all of that." She gestured at the unmoving drones.

In the end, they did follow the phantom vision of Jessica. Peter, flanked by a wary Donna and a laughing Cletus, walked past the silent lines of drones, deeper into labyrinth.

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