A skin suit.
He needed a human skin suit. Like that cockroach guy in the movie.
The dead-ish one seemed to have a certain power among the humans. It had been recognized. The solution was obvious.
Avidex never did anything by halves, except when it involved preserving his own genetic matter. Some of Avidex would go down below to kill humans. Some would stay here. The reunion with himself would be joyous.
In one rapturous flurry of goop, gobbets, and disarticulated vertebrae, of tearing and shucking motions, Avidex tore the dead-ish one’s head from the neck stalk connecting it to the below body, then forced half of his own brain and tentacle flesh inside the fresher human, making the skin bulge here and there.
He wrenched off the fresh head, then squashed the dead-ish human head on top instead.
Watching himself be inside the skin suit and yetalsostill outside with most of the tentacle swathe was giving him a headache.
A splitting headache.Ha-ha.
The new glued-together human managed a liquid laugh, coughing up a mess of blood afterward. The windpipe was barely abutting onto the other bit of windpipe. And eating?Oy vehnow that would be something impossible.
He must go below, post-haste, and kill people and drag the girl back here to himself before this body properly expired and fell apart… kicked the bucket, like a dead cockatoo.
What curious phrases these humans used.
Before Avidex-human left to descend, he made a final effort to look presentable—tucking the shirt in, swiping off the biggest flesh gobbets, rearranging the torn flesh of the neck join with these new foreign fingers.
He could see his fingers below! Skin suits were amazing, he decided. He must do this more often.
Though, as he walked, bits did insist on oozing and spilling and bleeding. Seriously icky.
I should have a name for alternate me. Avi-man? Hu-dex?
Hudex. Yes.
Hudex waved goodbye to the rest of himself, to Avidex, and set off whistling and burbling for the nearest stairs. Undoubtedly, his eyes shone with effervescent white glee. A few rippers scampered at his heels.
With the Lure given to them, up close and personal, the humans below would be duck food.
22
So busy.He was getting itchy just seeing them all, milling about.
Mercantor had fewer people and a less-imposing camp. Trees—hadn’t seen those up close for ages, and three stories of open space above? Fuck. He craned back his neck to look then found Rutger had returned. Still had not decided how to react to this horned ‘god-monster’.
He’d trespassed on his territory—Cyn.
After a fast goodbye, Rutger waved them onward to the center of the crowd. Vargr nodded, distracted by his memory of the blood roaring in his ears when he’d been told about this beaster feeding Cyn his come.
“I have to go punch some walls. Locke will find you and take you to the biotechie we have here. She’s called Willow.”
The memory faded when Rutger left and headed for a grand set of stairs leading downward. Trees, grass, plants were a big part of the scenery here. Some of the green stuff was artificial, some not. It was real over by the observation area… That looked out over the landscape.
Out over the fuckingoutside.
He shook his head. Were they insane here? This must be vulnerable to assault?
“People everywhere,” Cyn murmured.
“Yeah.” He ran his hand over his head, gaining a strange comfort in the hard-soft triangles of his hair.
The caravan idea was a hit, with the packs on Toother being unstrapped and unloaded, as well as the two bodies. He helped to lower the bodies and place them to one side. Blood had seeped through the cloth in which they were wrapped.
