Katherine Legato

  Katherine felt like bonding with a Star Core should have felt like a fantastic opportunity, some kind of impossible dream come true, or, at the very least, exciting. Instead, she just felt tired and overwhelmed—and a little bit guilty. I don't deserve this—that had been her first coherent thought when it all started happening. Surely there were plenty of people who were more deserving? And not just that—better suited, as well.

  But the Star Core had chosen her, and it didn't seem like there was any going back from that. Part of her expected she'd have some kind of personal guide to help her through everything that came next, but there wasn't. The only advice she'd gotten—back when she was still hurt and confused and only just starting to understand what was happening—was to 'choose wisely,' whatever that meant. Thinking back to those words, Katherine realized she would have expected something to happen. Like a vision where I had to choose who to save, or even just picking a power or something.

  There was none of that, though, and all that happened was that she slowly regained consciousness. Well, it felt slow, but it couldn't have been too long. She'd seen the guy who tried shooting the other girl get killed by some kind of Anathema, and then more masked people with guns showed up. Katherine hadn't seen what happened to that other girl, and she hoped the Anathema hadn't gotten to her. She'd never gotten a good look at it, as she was still disoriented after regaining full consciousness. It was also a lot stronger than the skinners, that was for sure. Several of the masked attackers had opened fire on it, but the Anathema didn't seem bothered by the bullets as it continued to rip through the first guy in seconds.

  The last glimpse Katherine got of the monster was it dragging someone else up into the trees. She hoped it wouldn't come back. I don't know what we could do to survive against something like that.

  She might be a Star Guardian now—as unbelievable as that was—but she barely understood her power. She knew that from the outside, it probably looked relatively simple. The other girl—other Star Guardian—probably assumed it was just reanimating the dead to carry out her orders. The thought of that made Katherine's insides squirm. More importantly—in a practical sense—it wasn't really correct. Katherine didn't know if the true nature of her power was any better, and part of her expected the worst—but what she knew for sure was that it wasn't so simple. Or, at the very least, it's something different that my subconscious used in a way that would give the same ultimate effect.

  Now wasn't the time to spiral further into despair and self-pity, though. The Star Core had given her a second chance. It might not be a chance she deserved, but it was a chance—and there were at least two other people now depending on her. She couldn't let them down. And if I do, it can't be because I gave up instead of trying. The other girl offered her hand again, and Katherine took it. With the other new Star Guardian's help, she made it back to her feet.

  She tried to wipe her face clean, but after just a few seconds, she gave up. It didn't really matter right now, but Katherine still felt embarrassed. Both of them had gone through the same hellish events, and both had just been chosen as new Star Guardians. But while Katherine had collapsed in on herself, sticking her head in the sand and wishing it would all go away, the other girl had faced things head on. She'd stood up to the events rather than hide from them—and not only that—she was the one who came looking for Katherine and helped her back to her feet.

  Even after bonding with a Star Core, I kept acting weak and selfish. Katherine knew she could never live with herself if she continued like that. She hadn't been prepared for the duty of being a Star Guardian, but there was good news as well—she didn't have to be. After all, it wasn't just another new Star Guardian standing in front of her. If Katherine ever needed help figuring out the right thing to do, well...

  It looked like she'd found a role model.

  In what was a complete subversion of our respective narrative roles, I'd somehow become the de facto leader of our trio. What made it weirder was that I hadn't been trying to manipulate myself into the position. It just happened, and, truth be told, I was almost a bit annoyed by it. It was less entertaining than what I'd been anticipating, and worse, it was more work.

  Ever since her starry-eyed declaration of our mutual Guardianhood, Sidekick had started acting like I was ontologically trustworthy on just about anything. As for Rambo, the dude was just exhausted to the point that his aura shifted from occupationally hazardous levels of manliness to something resembling a tired golden retriever. It might have been cute, if you were into that sort of thing.

  Me, personally? I was more interested in seeing what was going to happen next. The effect of the incursion was continuing to grow stronger, which was the source of the weird, omnidirectional buzzing. It was like the radio static version of spontaneous tinnitus—weirder but also less annoying. While it came from every direction, it was hardly uniform. The intensity of it would surge at times, and it sounded like there might be various different hotspots. I wonder if that indicates the location of the breaches?

  We ended up walking back towards the fence. The buzzing was stronger that way, and I assumed the center of the incursion would be back on the other side. My previous goal of getting out of here had changed, and I now intended to get my first close look at a breach.

  There were a couple reasons for this. One was my earlier idea about going through it to whatever was on the other side. I had no intention of doing that anymore—not here, at least—but I felt like it would be a good idea to take a look and see if it looked like a real option. The second main reason was that I wanted to see if we could stop it. I wasn't worried too much about the danger, or at least not so worried that I didn't think we could count on making a run for it if needed. Taking out an incursion would go a long way to cementing the roots of my current gambit. And more importantly, it sounds kind of fun.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Convincing the other two didn't prove difficult. Sidekick seemed eager to prove herself, and Rambo was now the one who was just along for the ride. What was he going to do, anyway? Leave us and try to escape the incursion on his own? If I were in his place, I would stick around with the two alleged Star Guardians if it came down to it.

  A few skinners tried their luck on us along the way, but all of them fell to the goon squad's bullets. It was a sign that things were getting more serious though, because we encountered more Anathema in the first thirty seconds than we did the entire time before that. Now, we just needed to figure out how to get back through the fence. There was always the option of climbing it again—but that would be super lame. Two of us have special powers now.

  I was the one who stepped up first. "Don't worry. I've got this." I totally don't know if I have this, but no one else needs to know that. "I think I can get us straight through." Here goes nothing.

  Focusing on my memory of what it felt like when I shifted my hands back to normal, I tried summoning back the metal claws. I was careful to restrict it from changing my face in any way, and I also did it out of sight of the two behind me. I wouldn't be able to hide all of my abilities forever—not if I continued pretending to be a Guardian—but I wasn't going to throw away every bit of caution. At minimum, there was no reason to show them the specific nature of the transformation.

  It took place over the span of a single second, leaving me now ready to test how my metallic claws would fare against normal, more inanimate kinds of metal. One of my bigger hopes was that I'd have some extended control over metallic materials that would make this sort of thing extra easy. There was nothing left to do now but try—and of course that's when someone shoved me straight into the damn thing. That was also the moment I found out the fence was still very much electrified.

  Well, this kind of hurts.

  I wasn't an idiot. I wasn't going to just bring my metal claws down on the metal part of a potentially electric fence. I was going to test it first on barbed wire bits, but that didn't exactly work out, did it? For the second time in like five minutes, that other bitch had shoved be face-first into something painful. To be fair, the alternative the first time was getting shot, but also, fuck this! I was just kind of stuck there getting electrocuted, and it wasn't exactly great. It was way more tolerable than it had any right to be, given that I had the presence of mind to grumble to myself about the situation. But I digress.

  Wrenching myself away, I took a few ragged breaths while turning around to see what the fuck was going on that made my new bestie think shoving me straight into architectural conversion therapy was a good idea. It didn't take me long to figure it out though. Oh. Fair. A truly enormous clawed hand was rising back up from where it had slammed into the dirt, thigh sized fingers scraping the ground where I'd just been standing.

  Craning my neck skyward, I bore witness to a genuine titan.

  Titan was an actual technical term used for certain kinds of Anathema. It didn't refer to a specific variant like a skinner or chamelium, but instead described an observation-based category. Really, it just meant any Anathema bigger than any existing land megafauna. Naturally, that still encompassed a huge range of sizes. This particular titan was an apelike thing with a height comparable to a two-story house. Small.

  And Tier 2 or 3, I'd wager. That meant we were dealing with something that was tough, strong, regenerative, and might have some kind of minor esoteric ability. It only took me a moment to identify it as a particularly big example of a common type of low-tier Anathema—a smasher.

  Once again, Anathema names tended to be both descriptive and simple bordering on stupid. In this case, it wasn't a bad name. It's a big brute that goes around smashing things. I don't think I have any grounds to complain about that one. I did, however, have ground to complain about a really fucking big one showing up and trying to squish me. Frankly, the idea pissed me off. Tier 2 or 3, huh? We'd only encountered Tier 1 Anathema until now, and for our first higher tier opposition, this was a pretty damn big one. But you know what else is definitely at least a couple tiers higher than the bottom?

  A goddamn fucking chamelium, bitch.

  The smasher loomed over me. The whole thing was covered in thick, matted fur, so dense and knotted it almost looked like a hard carapace. Everything about it was equally thick—except for its stupid little head, which was barely bigger than a watermelon. It looked utterly ridiculous—and it made me want to get up there and rip it off. The idea of scampering up its body like some kind of angry beetle sounded stupid, and yet, I felt like I could pull it off. Also, wait. Where the fuck did everyone else go?

  There was no sign of Rambo or Sidekick. Wait. Did she actually shove me into the fence to disable me and then run off? Was it possible seeing the giant smasher changed her mind, and she'd sacrificed me as bait to run off? That bitch!

  I was going to personally hunt her down after this, and she'd better have a good explanation. But first? Well, I was still far too hungry. I'd done a good job of keeping control in the face of that uncompromising ache—but it was always there. It hurt, and I knew that all I had to do to fix it, was to

  ...eat.

  And I was so hungry, not even a horse felt like it would be enough. It was a good thing, then, that I'd found something much bigger than a horse.

  I licked my lips. My mouth was once again filled with the taste of metal, and my jaws had a sudden, immense weight that made me feel like I could bite through just about anything. Like the world itself, if it came down to it. I didn't know if the changes had stopped there, and frankly? I don't really care. Claws flexing and mouth now pooling with liquid metal, I lunged.

  And a titanic fist smashed me straight through the ground.

  Ow. My skull was ringing like a bell, and that wasn't even metaphorical. I could feel bits of my body quite literally vibrating from the impact. Asshole is faster than it looks. It turned out that being slammed into the ground hard enough to form a me-shaped indent actually kind of hurt. Like, a lot. It was also way less deadly than it had any right to be, though, and I was able to sink my claws deep into alien flesh. In fact, it was shockingly easy. Kind of feels like I'm digging my fingernails into mozzarella cheese.

  The smasher might have been bigger and stronger—but it turned out that I was way fucking harder. A moment later, the titan lifted its fist, probably expecting to see nothing remaining but a goopy paste. I, however, had other plans—and as soon as I was high enough off the ground, I dropped down onto the Anathema's big, hairy chest.

  Then, I began to burrow.