Stopping syringes

Withdrawal yelped as he avoided a sudden emergence of syringes. I crashed into the needles with the Wretch, shielding my face with my arms. Withdrawal already had his mask, so he didn't need to worry about the spray.

"Help," Caryatid said, voice quiet. The needles had cut her off while she wasn't moving, and now grew in thicker, until they came at her from every direction, all stopping millimeters away from her face, neck, arms, chest, belly, and thighs. She had gone human to talk, her back straight, arms at her sides, wearing the long, slim black dress with the yellow-orange poofs at the wrists and feet. She resumed her breaker form, the poofs and her head becoming something more fractal.

For the time being, I couldn't do a lot. The broken glass and shattered plastic of syringes pressed in even though I'd broken them, edges reaching for me. I backed off, hemmed in.

The geography of this particular stretch of hallways was a H turned ninety degrees, and I was in the lower intersection, Caryatid to my right. Withdrawal was up ahead and around the corner to the left, periodically visible through the thicker pipes.

*****

I could bust up the syringes, but I couldn't bust up the syringes and then tackle the areas with more syringes. Our attacker was staying out of sight now, but I'd glimpsed her a minute ago. Tall, possibly breaker class, a slim, ghostly silhouette similar to Caryatid's, with red eyes, a surgical mask over the lower face, a white covering from the neck down, so tight at the legs that it looked like she couldn't walk, and feet impaled by the bristling syringes, points sticking out and through bare flesh. When she'd moved, it had been on that moving 'cushion', syringes appearing and disappearing to stab her feet and back repeatedly while buoying her away at a runner's speed, her body twisting and arching with each set of impacts.

Breaker class, but shaker in practice. With a sweep of her arm, she caused syringes to spring out from the ground, walls, and ceiling like a crashing wave. All loaded to bear, apparently, with stuff that would guarantee we died a few months or years from now.

She moved away like she considered us dealt with, and in reality, I wasn't positive we weren't. Crashing through the syringes with the Wretch would disable the Wretch and impale the Victoria. Caryatid couldn't move without losing her invulnerability. Withdrawal had a great deal of movement and a lot of gaps in his defenses, which were a bad combination in this environment, where moving in the wrong way would get us pricked.

I'd thrown myself into this side of the fight to help the C-team and now I was in over my head. I hit a cluster of syringes, clearing some of the way, putting myself in the midst of them while waiting for the Wretch to return. Then I let it do its thing. Reaching out, clawing, destroying. A swathe of destruction around me.

Putting the Wretch aside for a moment, I grabbed a fire extinguisher that was mounted on a wall, and I swung it full-bodied in Caryatid's direction. It arced through the air, and it crashed through the syringes, giving her some ability to move. When she did move, it was in sharp, careful movements that cleared more of her way.

***

The Wretch swiped, tore, and crushed the syringes in my way. The ground was a carpet of broken glass, broken plastic, needles, and fluids in noxious colors.

- Dying 15.4