Chapter 73 Kord.

Chapter 73: 73 Kord.

"Rhea, run!" I barked, not taking my eyes off the metal-plated ape.

"But—"

"Now!" I yelled, throwing my hand out.

I didn’t wait to see if she listened. Kong was already moving.

For something that weighed as much as a small tank, the cyborg gorilla crossed the distance with terrifying speed. He bounded off his massive metal knuckles, launching himself into the air.

He brought both gauntlets down in a double-fisted hammer blow meant to turn me into a very fine paste.

I lashed out with my aura, latching onto the thick steel beams running through the ceiling above.

I didn’t try to stop his momentum—that would have shattered my concentration—instead, I yanked myself violently upward.

Kong’s fists slammed into the spot where I had been standing a fraction of a second before.

The impact sounded like a bomb going off. Concrete shattered, chunks of linoleum flying like shrapnel as a crater formed in the floor of the lecture hall.

Hanging upside down from the ceiling by my magnetic grip, I thrust my hands downward.

I seized the metal plating bolted to Kong’s back and shoved with every ounce of electromagnetic force I could muster.

The gorilla roared as he was forced face-first into his own crater, the sheer pressure pinning him to the concrete.

Easy, I thought. Just a big dumb robot—

Something massive slammed into my side.

I didn’t even see the bear jump. One second I was on the ceiling, the next, a wall of steroid-pumped fur and muscle tackled me out of midair.

The sheer kinetic force broke my magnetic anchor, and the two of us plummeted twenty feet into the stadium seating.

We crashed through three tiers of desks in a catastrophic tangle of snapping plastic and twisting metal.

The bear was completely organic, which meant my powers couldn’t get a direct grip on it.

I threw my arms up just as its massive jaws snapped shut, inches from my face. Hot, foul-smelling saliva dripped onto my cheek.

Its snake-like tail whipped around, wrapping tightly around my waist to crush the breath out of my lungs.

"Get off!" I grunted, my ribs groaning under the pressure.

I reached out blindly with my powers, grabbing a jagged, twisted piece of desk framing. I ripped it through the air and drove the metal strut directly into the side of the bear’s head.

The beast yelped, its grip loosening for a microsecond.

It was all I needed. I clamped my aura onto the rebar beneath the floorboards, reversed my polarity, and repelled myself backward like a bullet ricocheting off a wall. I skidded across the ruined desks, tearing my jacket but keeping my limbs intact.

I sprang to my feet, panting, and quickly scanned the room.

"Rhea!"

She wasn’t by the exit. She wasn’t hiding behind the bleachers.

My heart dropped into my stomach until I spotted her.

She was down on the main demonstration stage, completely ignoring the giant mutant death-match happening in the stands.

Instead, she had her hands buried inside the smoking remains of Professor Kord’s control console, frantically ripping out wires and tearing apart the microphone stand.

"Rhea, what the hell are you doing?!" I screamed over the din. "Get out of here!"

"Keep them busy!" she yelled back, aggressively stripping a copper wire with her teeth. "I have a plan!"

"I don’t care. Get the fuck out of here!"

A mechanical roar interrupted our very unhelpful chat.

Kong had pulled himself out of the crater. The ape’s metal plating was dented, and the hydraulic tubes on his shoulder were hissing steam, but he looked exponentially angrier.

And now, the bear had recovered too.

The two monsters locked eyes for a brief second. A silent, primal agreement passed between them.

The human in the leather jacket was the problem.

They charged simultaneously.

Fuck me.

Kong took the low route, bulldozing straight through the tiered seating like a runaway train. The bear took the high route, leaping from desk to desk with terrifying, unnatural agility.

I backed up, extending both hands. I seized the remains of the seating arrangement—hundreds of pounds of steel framing, bolts, and aluminum backing—and violently tore it all loose.

I hurled a localized tornado of shrapnel directly at the ape.

Kong didn’t even flinch. He raised those massive metal gauntlets like a boxer, the jagged metal sparking and pinging harmlessly against his armor. He was using his sheer mass to tank the hit.

But it blinded him.

And it gave me a second to deal with the bear.

The giant beast lunged from above, jaws wide open.

I waited until the absolute last second. As its shadow fell over me, I magnetized the heavy iron fire doors at the back of the auditorium, tearing them right off their hinges, and slammed them together mid-air, sandwiching the leaping bear between two slabs of solid steel.

The beast let out a muffled shriek as the heavy metal plates collided with its ribs. Gravity did the rest, sending the trapped monster crashing down onto the steps.

Before I could secure the makeshift iron maiden, a massive metal fist burst through my shrapnel storm.

Kong’s punch clipped my shoulder.

The force lifted me off my feet, spinning me like a ragdoll. I crashed hard into the wall, stars exploding behind my eyes as the breath left my lungs in a violent rush.

I slid to the floor, gasping, my vision blurring.

Kong knuckled his way up the stairs, towering over me. The red lens of his cybernetic eye whirred, zooming in on my face.

The hydraulic servos in his arms screamed as he raised both fists above his head, preparing to bring them down and turn my skull into a modern art masterpiece.

I desperately reached for the iron in his arms, trying to force them backward, but the impact had rattled my brain. My grip was slipping. The magnetic field stuttered and sparked around my hands.

He swung down.

I closed my eyes.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A sound like a jet engine being shoved through a meat grinder suddenly erupted through the auditorium.

It was a piercing, hyper-oscillating screech that bypassed my eardrums entirely and rattled the marrow in my bones. I clamped my hands over the sides of my head, curling into a ball as my vision swam.

Kong froze, his metal fists hovering inches from my face.

The ape shrieked, clutching the sides of his head. The red lens in his eye began to flicker rapidly.

His hydraulic joints locked up, twitching and spasming as the unbearable frequency overloaded his cybernetic sensory inputs.

Down on the floor, the bear tore its way out of the metal doors, but it didn’t attack. It was thrashing wildly on the linoleum, pawing at its own ears, blood beginning to trickle from its snout as the high-frequency sound waves tortured its enhanced animal hearing.

Through watering eyes, I looked toward the stage.

Rhea was standing on top of Kord’s ruined machine. She was holding a makeshift, ugly contraption duct-taped together from a heavy-duty battery pack, three energy regulators, and a modified PA system microphone.

She had both hands clamped over her dog-ears, her face scrunched up in pain, but she was pointing the jury-rigged sonic emitter directly at the monsters.

She kicked a switch on the console.

The screech pitch-shifted, rising to an unbearable crescendo that made the glass remaining in the window frames shatter outward.

Kong dropped to his knees, his cybernetic eye violently popping in a shower of sparks. The ape collapsed sideways, completely paralyzed.

The bear didn’t fare much better. It let out one last pathetic, whining whimper before its eyes rolled back into its head and it passed out cold on the floor.

Rhea kicked the switch again.

The agonizing screech died instantly, leaving behind a ringing silence so heavy it felt like a physical weight.

I lay on the rubble for a long time, staring up at the cracked ceiling, taking slow, ragged breaths.

I could hear the distinct sound of Rhea’s boots crunching over the broken glass as she bounded up the stairs toward me.

She leaned over my face, looking incredibly pleased with herself. The terrifying sonic weapon was slung casually over her shoulder like a boombox.

"I told you I had a plan," she said brightly. "All I had to do was route the thermal feedback loop into the audio-transducer of the microphone, bypass the safety governors, and boom. Directional sonic cannon."

I groaned, slowly rolling onto my side and pushing myself up into a sitting position. My shoulder throbbed with a dull, heavy ache, and my ears were still ringing so loudly I could barely hear myself think.

I looked past her, glancing at the twitching, sparking cyborg ape, and then at the unconscious truck-sized bear.

Then I looked back at Rhea. Her tail was wagging happily behind her.

I lifted Kord from where he was hiding by his watch and belt. He yelled in surprise until he was hovering before me.

I looked between him and Rhea. "So which one of you would like to tell me what the hell is going on here?"