Silence.

The effect was instantaneous. It was like someone turned off a blaring radio.

Credits to Mom and her lectures on how a young lady could protect herself when assaulted: a strike using anything hard on the temple could potentially knock someone out. And thankfully it worked. I was concerned I didn’t hit hard enough and this woman would just get hurt but not pass out; she’d just end up screaming more and fighting me back even harder.

I concentrated on sending energy to her through the glowing blue thread connecting us. SpookyErind didn’t instruct me to do this; I simply felt like it was the right thing to do after we connected.

I was momentarily mesmerized by the tiny red symbol painted on the finger nail of my right index finger coming to life, hypnotically rotating, until the mournful groans of the zombies coming nearer brought me back to reality.

And what a fucked-up reality this is.

The zombies paused a couple of doors away from the woman and me, apparently sizing us up, growing even more tentacles. The heads of the zombies were no more, skull and flesh torn to shreds like a violently peeled banana but with bony bits. The tentacles were practically growing out of the zombies’ neck. Those tentacles, in turn, were covered with claws, spikes, suction cups, mandibles, all sort of gross things.

And they were filling up the corridor.

The green color outlining the bodies of the zombies faded, almost gray now. The red from the tadpole-like creatures inside them—or perhaps ‘parasites’ was the right term for those critters—became the dominant color. I pointed the index finger of my left hand and thought, shoot!

But nothing came out. Did that mean red wasn't the correct target?

“This is bad,” I said. I looked at my puppet—I decided to refer to her as that since I was controlling her body. She had started to change after I gave her power. Her muscles grew, their definition apparent as they stretched her skin thin, pushing her veins against it. The green hue covering her, while still glowing strong, was also noticeably starting to fade. “I hope you’re up for this.”

The tentacles snapped through the air and lashed at us.

I bent down behind her, hands covering my head. “Protect me!”

My puppet punched the tentacles with amazing accuracy, fending off all of them as they came close. Her speed and power were incredible. Just from the sound of each impact alone, I could sense the strength of each of her punches.

(Power! More power!) From a ball of swirling energy inside of me, I drew power to send to my puppet. (Defend me with all you’ve got.) It was different from the overwhelming strength I felt when using the Blanchette face. This new immense power was stored inside me, inexplicable in its potential, but I knew it wasn’t for me.

It was for my puppet…or puppets.

The tentacles went splat on the walls and floor as my jacked-up puppet swatted them away. I tossed my knife to her and she grabbed it without looking. She proceeded to slash away at the disgusting things reaching for us.

She was a fucking meat grinder! A goddamn weedwhacker on steroids!

Slimy blood, and bits and pieces of the tentacles covered the floor as she advanced on the tentacle zombies. My knife was just made for cutting food. It wasn’t supposed to be able to hack monsters to pieces, but through sheer strength and speed she was able to do it.

I gaped with my metal mouth as I stared up at the carnage she wrought on the mesh of tentacles. I couldn’t follow the wild movements of her arms at all. If I was in my Blanchette form, I bet she could turn me into sashimi before my powers could kickstart my regeneration and begin my werewolf transformation. I didn’t think I could even heal that fast.

Stop gawking, you idiot.

Right! I looked back to check if the first zombie was finished killing this woman’s husband. The corridor behind me was clear. Was it still in their unit?

Better get back to the safety of my room, I thought as I continued pumping my puppet with energy and egging her on to kill the two tentacle zombies. Finish these two and then find that other one, then I was going to carry my human body to the elevator once everything was safe.

Nice plan.

I nearly slipped on the scattered pieces of the tentacles as I crawled on the floor. Some of the pieces were still alive, squiggling, trying to attack me. Fortunately, they were small and couldn’t pierce through my hard plating. I ignored them.

I hid behind the open door of my room and cheered my puppet on, amazed by her fighting prowess.

This is a really cool power!

Perfectly fitting the modus of my kind to manipulate other people.

But she wasn’t winning. More and more tentacles came. The tadpole parasites, which were really not tadpoles at this point but rather horrific creatures of sprawling tentacles, had eaten the upper body of their hosts, assumedly using it to create more tentacles. They were just tentacles with legs now.

My puppet hacked and hacked until the knife broke. Then she grabbed any tentacle she could catch and began ripping them with her bare hands. The tentacles were unrelenting, and those that she couldn’t catch hit her body, tearing her clothes, her skin, her flesh. I heard her bones crack. Her blood painted the walls and floor, mixing with the blood from the chopped tentacles.

Unfeeling of pain, she kept on fighting. With her consciousness passed out, and probably for good, she couldn’t go against my order to fight and protect me, even at the cost of her own life.

The color…just as I thought. A green tinge didn’t only mean an ‘appropriate target’, it also referred to the life force whatever of the target. And this woman was dying.

Maybe from getting pumped with my power, her body achieving strength that it couldn’t sustain for a long time. Maybe from the attacks of the tentacle monsters.

Probably both.

I needed her to win before she died.

(Get even stronger), I thought, concentrating on further juicing my puppet. She fought even more fiercely, breaching the wall of lashing tentacles and jumping on the main body of one of the zombies.

Several of the surviving tentacles of both monsters coiled around each, merging into one particularly large tentacle, its end formed a huge ball covered with spiky barnacles. They smashed my puppet with this new giant tentacle-mace, throwing her across the corridor. She slammed into my door, breaking it, knocking me back as well.

Both of us, as well as broken pieces of door, skidded across the floor.

I scrambled to sit back up, disentangling my body from my puppet and the wreckage. “Are you okay?” I stupidly asked her, as if she could reply.

Answering for her: No, she wasn’t. She was horribly deformed and mangled beyond recognition. Her skin was red from the blood vessels that burst from her rapid growth, and there was tearing in some spots where her muscles suddenly grew too large. Some of her broken bones also protruded out of her flesh. It was her mutated muscles that somehow kept her body going…but not for long.

If only she had the regeneration of an Adumbrae. She was beyond saving now, the green color turning muddy gray like the first zombie I saw.

Unfortunately, the tentacle zombies were still alive. I needed her to fight while I find a replacement. I scanned the other rooms—

The door of the room across the unit beside mine creaked open. A man crouched in the darkness of his room with a gun in hand. He peeked suspiciously at me, trying to understand what he was seeing. His eyes darted between me and the bloody woman struggling to get up to fulfill my order to continue fighting. I could see it in his eyes that he assumed the worst.

“Don’t shoot—”

“Die, you killer robot!”

Bang! My head jerked back. He fired his gun a couple more times, accurately landing headshots. I hit the floor again.

The man rushed out of his room his gun still trained on me. I laid unmoving, keeping my jittery cyclopean eye still as he gave me a quick look over. I couldn’t feel pain but I did feel the heavy impact of the bullets vibrating through my body.

Then he rushed to the aid of my puppet. “Are you okay, miss?” He turned his head towards the sound of the thrashing tentacles, letting out a yelp of surprise.

My hands checked my face and I didn’t find any holes. Am I indestructible?

“What the hell is that?” he exclaimed at the conjoined twin zombies sharing a huge tentacle-mace. He raised his gun, fired a single shot which didn’t do anything to stop the monster walking towards us on its four legs. The man thought better of it and decided to instead pull the woman to his room rather than try to stupidly fight it.

(His gun!) I ordered. (And disable him.)

The woman slapped the gun out of the man’s hand and punched him in the stomach. He doubled over yelling profanities. My puppet followed it up with her knee at his lowered face. He fell back through the doorway of his room, unconscious. I hoped she didn’t kill him.

(Go fight! Kill the tentacle fuckers if you can. Buy me time.)

My puppet roared with a guttural voice of a dying beast as she charged at the abomination.

I quickly crawled to the unconscious man.

His head was bloody from getting hit by my puppet. He wasn’t dead, was he? Even if his room was dark, the dim lights from the corridor barely entering, my special eye could see that his chest was feebly moving. He also had a healthy green color.

“I hope this works on you. Time for some finger action,” I said, as I shot him between his eyes with my left index finger. “That sounded wrong.” Feeling our minds linked, and making sure that he really was passed out, I fed him power from the well of energy inside me through the blue thread linking us. It was too dangerous to give him powers if I didn’t have control of his body.

(Uhhh…What…)

“He’s waking?” I said in surprise. His green light blinking brighter. The gash on his forehead stopped bleeding and was actually healing. So that's my second ability. (Don’t move), I transmitted to his mind.

(What’s happening?)

(Don’t move), I repeated, firmer this time. After confirming my second ability, I stopped pumping him with its power.

(You! Monster! Wha…I can’t move?) Just as with the woman before, the two of us struggled for the control of his body.

Before he could fully understand what was happening, I pummeled his head with my fists. I didn’t have much power behind my punch, and yeah, these are girly punches. But my fists were made of fucking metal.

(Stop! Stop! What are you doing to me?) This guy was tough. His face was getting bruised but he was still awake. I tried landing my punches on his temples but he was starting to push me away from his mind; he moved his head to at least try to soften the blows.

“Go. To. Sleep,” I said with each punch. I could still save my puppet if I hooked her up with my healing ability while using the finger of strength on this guy. I really needed to think of better names for these.

The man fought with amazing willpower to push me out of his mind. He broke our stalemate and slowly raised his shaking arms to cover his face. I pried them open while pushing back in our mental battle to make him surrender his body.

(Don’t fucking move!) I held his head, pinning to on its side to the floor, then I repeatedly punched him with my right hand, making sure my knuckles hit squarely on his temple. (Both of us will die if you don’t help me. Sorry in advance for this.)

One more downward punch, this time putting the weight of my upper body behind it, and I finally sent this guy to the dream world.

Yes!

But then I also sensed that my connection with the woman was broken.

No!

I opened my fist and checked the symbol on my right index finger. It stopped swirling. Fuck it. I legit wanted to try and save her with my newfound healing power.

Did she at least kill the tentacle monster outside?

The grating screeches and roars from the corridor filtering in the room answered me in the negative.

No matter. I had a new toy—ahem, helper, excuse me. “You’re going to fight so both of us will survive,” I said, as I ordered him to go out of the room before me. I spotted the gun on the floor. I picked it up knowing that it wouldn’t be of much help with the enemies we were facing. “This is for our own survi—what the hell happened here?”

A giant ball of leathery brown flesh was on top of a bloody mess of human limbs and tentacles. It was barely able to fit in the corridor.

Where did this new asshole come from? I groaned inwardly. Why won’t you fuckers give me a break?

This ball stood up on its two feet—or hands, it didn’t have any feet, just muscular arms extending from its sides—and turned around to face me.

It wasn't an asshole. It was a freakin’ hugeass mouth! A mouth wide enough to swallow a full-grown man. Its square teeth, each one as large and as thick as phonebooks, were chomping on a leg.

The scraps of shredded satin on the floor and in between the mouth monster’s teeth were enough to tell me of the fate of my first puppet. Judging from the severed anaconda-like tentacle still squiggling on the floor, and the clump of four legs by its side, she did pretty well before this new guy showed up and ate her.

There was banging behind me. I turned around and pointed my gun. A zombie, the fucker who was knocking on my door, came out of a room a few doors down, presumably the unit of my first puppet. He had a knife lodged deep in his head.

Another zombie followed him out of the room, a guy in his underwear. He had deep cuts across his chest, but they were being sewn shut by tiny tentacles erupting out of his skin. He was possibly the husband of my first puppet. In the end, they both died around the same time. How sweet.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m going to send you to wherever afterlife your sweetheart is now.” I looked to the left and right at the enemies sandwiching me.

They were coming nearer.

How I wished I had facial muscles so I could smirk. I was more confident this time. My new puppet was rapidly growing in size. And I connected my healing thread to him too, counteracting the massive damage his body endured from being forcibly mutated into a brutish monster. He was still dying at a pretty rapid rate which was why he didn’t wake up even if I was healing him. “Time for round two, you pieces of mutated shit.”