My third upside/downside situation of recent days. Upside, I now knew how many shots this thing could get off before a recharge. Downside, I had a very angry, very undisintegrated harpy queen heading feet-first for my face. I thrust the weapon's barrel upwards, catching her foot, pushing her off course, and giving me time to dive out of her way.

I cut away the weapon and turned to face the queen once more. She resumed showing off her magic, flinging more bolts of lightning at me. There were now a few fires around the place, and with all the dry hay and wooden structure, they were really starting to get going. The horses were panicking, and I saw the goon crawling along the floor back to his trap door, trying to hold his side shut. I was a bit worried about what he would do if he made it, but right now I didn't have the leeway to do anything about it.

The queen was far faster than the mantis monsters, and given how freely she was flinging her supernatural abilities around, I had to assume she was well fed. Then again, the goon had said something about killing off their whole stock. They would have had a sudden influx of meat available.

Thinking that maybe she had eaten the children I subconsciously wanted to rescue enraged me once again. She was still chipped, which weakened her. Her base form had an advantage over me, and I had lost a wing, but that only served to counter her chip disadvantage. The end result was that we were evenly matched.

I decided to repeat my ranged attack, evading her attacks as I made my way back to my severed wing, and grabbing a claw in each foot. With the smoke rising and filling the top of the barn, the queen was having a worse time of the fire than I was, although that would all change once I ran out of fire-free floor to tread on.

From first hand experience I knew that a harpy struggled to switch direction while diving unless it pre-planned the movement first, so for my best chance at hitting her I needed her to dive. A few lightning bolts later, and she obliged, once more heading for me feet first at a ridiculous speed. I spun and kicked up both claws, one colliding with her scales and leaving nothing more than a scratch, but the other tearing through a wing. It wasn't a large wound, but it was good enough, the brief loss of control causing her to slam into the ground. I took the opportunity to jump on top, kicking down and leaving her with multiple gashes and stab wounds before she managed to throw me off.

Her hide was tough, and I failed to leave any fatal wounds, but she came up limping, and with one wing hanging uselessly. It seemed that we were now both grounded. In the middle of a barn that was, by now, a raging inferno. Deciding that it would be advisable to take this fight outside, I charged towards the barn doors, barrelling my way through. The old Lily would have decried my abandonment of the horses, but they were hardly high up on my priority list.

A messy fight followed. Harpies weren't supposed to fight on the ground, and the unintelligent queen had little idea how to compensate. If it wasn't for her bolts of lightning I'd have taken her out in seconds, but I quickly learnt that taking one of them to the chest at close range hurt. Wishing that I'd grabbed my third severed claw on the way out, I was reduced to grabbing stones from the floor and flinging them instead. One struck the queen in the face, stunning her, and that single second was all I needed to end it. A single kick severed her head and ended her life. It was my victory. I was the new queen.

A slow hand clap started up behind me, and I turned to see Mr Goon sat on a tree stump. He had wrapped something very tightly around his chest, but he didn't look healthy, and was making odd gurgling noises. I was impressed he'd made it out this far.

"Well done, well done," he rasped. "You've successfully foiled my plan to capture you, and you've killed my pet. No doubt I could survive this wound with prompt medical attention, but I struggle to imagine that you're going to let me get it. So go ahead and ask me. Ask me why I'm smiling, I dare you."

"I wouldn't call what you're currently doing 'smiling', but sure, why not? What did you do?"

Some self destruct device for this facility, trying to take me out too? There wasn't too much I could imagine him doing in this situation.

"You see, the reason this site was built here is that the water main that supplies Kholakel runs underneath. Right under where I'm sitting, in fact. What do you suppose would happen if that pipe was flooded with mutagen?"

"Then the entire city would die. It kills everyone outside of a very narrow age range, and those it doesn't kill wouldn't last long enough to transform without the rest of the city functioning." I have to admit; that wasn't one of my guesses. Just how vindictive is this guy? Now I'm going to have to find another city to live in again.

A brief image of my family flashed through my mind. Dammit Lily, I'm going to have to go and rescue them now, aren't I? That's going to be hard with my injuries...

"Bah, you're no fun. Yeah, you're completely right. The mayor had some mad idea of turning the whole city into monsters and using them to take over the world, but it never would have worked. He had us trying to make delivery vehicles for the mutagen that would only infect those who would survive the process, as well as researching ways to increase the age range, but we were a long way off. My opinion was that we were better off with a smaller number of highly advanced super soldiers, but alas, I wasn't the one holding the purse strings. Seeing you makes it obvious that I was the one in the right."

As annoying as it was, there wasn't much I could do right now. Yes, I could kill him easily, but I didn't fancy walking back to the city. My parents pretty much lived off tea. Would boiling the water destroy the mutagen? Ben lived off anything that was fizzy and a minimum of fifty percent sugar, and hence wouldn't normally drink tap water. But did it have to be drunk in the first place? A shower? A hand wash? If I asked this guy, would he lie?

I tore a leg off the harpy queen, sliced through the scales, which seemed to have lost their durability once she died, and peeled open the flesh within. I hadn't tried eating monster before. How would it compare to human?

"That used to be a girl, just like you, you know. Eighteen years old, named Alice."

I paused for a moment, but I couldn't work up any sort of emotion towards that fact. "Alice was murdered some time ago. This was just something that was manufactured from the corpse." She tasted... okay, I guess. Human was better, but I could tell already that this was more energy dense. Whatever it was I needed, monster flesh had by the bucketful. Maybe the reason it seemed less appetising despite that was the fact that this was basically cannibalism.

"Oh? Is that how you feel about yourself too?"

Oh drat, we're back to the 'who am I?' question again. "Lily is a part of me, but she's not all of me. I have her memories, knowledge, intelligence. Not her personality, obviously, but even there there are bits of her. Like I said, cooperation. Lily chose to cooperate with me, not to fight me, and became a part of me as a result. If you wanted an intelligent monster army, all you needed to do was to use willing volunteers instead of kidnapping people. What sort of kid wouldn't panic and fight back when a monster starts taking over their mind? Well, apart from the obvious one, but Lily was weird."

The goon's mouth flopped open. To be fair, that wasn't the full story. Someone with a weaker mind couldn't have managed it without being overcome completely. The escape had helped too, calming down the raging harpy and giving Lily an opening to act. If I'd been trapped in the cell much longer, Lily's consciousness probably wouldn't have lasted against the rage and hunger. It also helped that my body shape was still basically humanoid, reducing her dysphoria and helping her not to panic. That sort of thing could be overcome; I'm sure there were some weirdos out there who wanted to be giant insects or worms or whatever, but it would never have worked for Lily.

"Anyway, I answered your question, so your turn to answer one of mine. What's the deal with the control chips?"

"Oh, they aren't anything new. It's a neural interface we shove into the brainstem, that filters the signals passing through. They've been around for ages, fitted to slaves and such to keep them under control. Ah, there's another juicy titbit for you. How many of the people you killed were actually obeying the mayor of their own free well, do you think? Anyway, despite giving us total control of the recipient, the filter slows down neurological signals. It makes them slow and stupid."

Most of them, as far as I knew... The brain is one of the tastiest bits, and I'd have noticed if they contained chunks of metal. Maybe there were a bunch in that group that had come seeking the mayor's crashed car, but aside from that, I hadn't really been on any mass killing sprees in the first place.

"Anything else you want to ask? Otherwise I've still got one more."

"Yes, you seem disappointingly blasé about me poisoning a whole city. Don't you care? I even used the harpy payload to make sure it was related to you, you know."

"Not really. Lily's family and friends, maybe a little, but right now I can't fly, and there's no point stressing about something I can't do anything about." He looked disappointed with my answer, apparently hoping to hurt me with this last act. To be fair, the bit of me that was Lily was shouting pretty loudly to do something, but it was perfectly true that I couldn't think of anything to do. Eat the queen and regenerate as swiftly as possible was the best I could come up with. "Okay, my turn. Why are monsters so weak? Three hundred years ago we supposedly wiped out most of the planet. Your pets are chipped and kept half starved to keep their strength down, but I'm not, and I'm pretty damn sure that I couldn't fight off a whole city."

"Yes, they were stronger, but they also all starved to death within days. What you need to keep running is in very limited supply in this world, so we needed to make a trade. Less raw power, lowered energy requirements."

Fair enough, but further conversation was interrupted by the goon hacking and coughing. I was impressed at how much talking he'd managed to do with his injury, but this seemed to be the limit. I ripped a claw from the harpy queen and flung it at him, piercing his throat, and leaving him to suffocate.

Once I got as far as the queen's brain, the control chip was obvious. It was huge, and from the look of it, some amount of brain matter had been lobotomised to make space. If I'd eaten anyone in this condition, I would have noticed. I was also pretty sure that there was no recovering from such an operation. I stowed it away in my bag next to the mayor's head, in case I needed extra evidence at some point.

Something else that had become apparent by that point was that my regeneration was... strange. My head ached, my wing was regrowing faster than I expected, and I felt stronger. Poking at my head revealed that my skull had sprouted new bumps. Apparently calling myself the new harpy queen wasn't just empty words, but also physical reality. Whether that was from beating her or eating her, I had no idea.

Upside, I'd soon have lightning bolts to play with. Downside, I was now strong enough to fly despite my wing damage. I couldn't deny the part of me that was Lily. She was as much 'me' as Leona was, and for all the psychopathic murderer that I was, I wouldn't let my family die if I could help it, regardless of my personal safety. I limped into the sky on my one good wing and made my way home.