Fighting through induced pain

"You'll melt!"

My skin burned, the bandages I still wore on one hand felt unbearably tight.

Blood welled at my neck where I'd just stopped the bleeding, and then it foamed. What had been a slash of a non-cauterizing laser or pressurized blood or whatever else was opening up, parting. A dribble touched my armpit and ran down my side, and it stung like a sunburn.

I had to ignore it. I needed cover from Mathers. I disengaged from my forcefield, and sent her along the ceiling, raking it.

Plumes of dust came down. I used them as a shield.

"You'll die!"

***

"Melt, Antares! Die!"

At my collarbone, where I'd been lasered, the bone snapped. I screamed. Foaming blood dropped onto the concrete, sizzling on the concrete.

I flew before more darts could be thrown my way. Toward the exit.

"Antares!"

I fought past the reaching spider-legs, and the act of trying to move my arm nearly left me insensate.

"Antareeees!"

It was every part of fighting some of the worst enemies I'd come up against in recent memory. My sanity at stake, black limbs reaching for me, my flesh melting.

I could only tell myself it was a trick. All of this was a master-stranger thing, and I couldn't trust the reality. I had every excuse to dismiss any part of this as head games, as scary as that was.

"Antares! Please!"

***

The whispers continued.

I searched, avoiding looking at the giant, who wasn't moving. The pain in my shoulder was getting worse, and that sunburn feeling was becoming a constant burn. My back, my side, my arm.

If this was the extent of what the Mathers Giant was doing, I could deal. Fake pain, fake burns.

If this wasn't what the Mathers Giant was doing, I lost nothing by continuing to fight through the pain.


- Last 20.5