To Kill an Octopus

The rig town was bustling with activity as everybody went about their daily routines.  People going to and from the fish market on the lower deck, others enjoying the sun before the inevitable storms that hit especially hard when you’re out in the middle of the ocean.  There was the fishing trolley coming in with another load of fish to feed the every-hungry masses of people stored on this rusty old oil rig.  If it wasn’t for that trolley and the trading boats, this rig town would surely waste away until pretty much everybody left for a boat town.

As far as rig towns went, this was bigger than most.  It wasn’t just one oil rig, but two with a catwalk connecting them along with multiple gangplanks and shoddily welded metal beams.  It was obvious that they used to be separate and the people living here decided it was a good idea to connect them for whatever reason.  But there were more than just oil rigs here as well.  Surrounding the rig town were a bunch of docks half-hardy lashed together for boats to dock at.  Mine was docked about midway down one of the zigzagging docs.  It was close enough where I could run to it, but far enough that it wouldn’t get immediately destroyed by the unsavory beast lurking beneath this rig town.

It didn’t matter anyway.  I was here for a purpose.  The sun was beginning to set, and I needed to get to my designated place. I needed to see what was going on today.  Today is what the townspeople were calling the sinking, meaning we got here just in time.  There was a big gathering around the oil pipe in the center of one of the oil rigs.  I went to it to find a group of townsmen loading a man into the pipe.  The man was fighting and clawing his way out of the pipe, but the townsman kept shoving him back in.  The man was desperate, tears streaming down his cheeks as he screamed for help… nobody stepped forward.  In fact, they were here to stop the man from escaping.

He was an offering for The Beast.  This monster is not your run of the mill sea monster either.  It’s a sentient being from outer space, or at least that’s what Piper told me.  It was sent here to keep an eye on any of the surviving humans once the space monsters had flooded the world.  The creature soon got bored with lurking the depths and keeping humans from diving down to the flooded towns and cities.  It decided to have some fun and began to demand sacrifices from this town.  The people would send sacrifices down the modified oil pipe.  The bottom of it was cut off and replaced with a glass tube large enough to claustrophobically hold a single person.  The sacrifice would then remain there, completely exposed to the monster.  It wouldn’t touch the sacrifice though.  It would just talk to them.  Talk and talk and talk, for about three hours.  By the time three hours was up, the sacrifice was lifted back up, completely and utterly insane.  The Beast demanded a new sacrifice every week.

The sacrifices were chosen from the prison kept on the rig town.  A rig town as big as this one tends to have some crime.  Minor misdemeanors like petty theft and the occasional brawl.  The murders and serious crime stopped years ago when they came up with the punishment for any and all crime, which was to be a sacrifice.  The things people would do out of fear.  If they didn’t give The Beast a sacrifice, it would destroy part of the rig town.  From what I gather, there used to be three oil rigs… the town didn’t give the monster a sacrifice the week before the third oil rig was destroyed.  Needless to say, the townspeople never skipped a week after that.

“Sol,” Piper whispered to me.  “We have to help him.”

“We can’t.  That’s a crime.  If we tried to help, they’d just make us offerings for next week and the week after.”

Piper’s back got rigid and she stopped talking.  She was an alien too, but of a different race than the one demanding sacrifices.  She came here seeking my help to stop these aliens from destroying her home world.  I had other plans in mind first.

“I know you don’t like it,” I said to her.  “But this guy is going to be the last sacrifice, I promise you.”

“Fine.”

My plan was coming together perfectly.  First, this poor guy was going to distract the monster for a good three hours while Vic was laying down the explosives outside the creature’s layer.  Once the creature was finished, it would go back to its layer and trigger them, getting blown to smithereens.

The man was finally thrust into the tube, being blessed by a priest as the door was shut.  Yes, even the priests were on board with this.  Just goes to show that all men were the same, regardless of their supposed beliefs.  Everybody was afraid of death.  Hell, so was I.  The only difference between me and those other animals was that I had some class.  We all die eventually, and I don’t want to die in a bed with a whore’s mouth around my cock.  I want to go out with a bang.

The screams were still audible but muffled by the metal hatch.  The townspeople began to twist a crank, lowering the man down the tube.  From my data collection, the tube went down about sixty feet before it ended with the glass attachment.  They continued to crank away for ten minutes, then stopped.  The sacrifice was in position.

I tapped the side of my forehead with my instruction glove, and my vision changed to infrared.  I had tossed together a special type of contact that could magnify my vision, give me directions, let me see different spectra of light, and a couple other cool things.  It was all controlled by my glove.  If I moved my fingers in certain ways, then tapped my temple with the glove, my contact would change according to the type of hand movement I performed.

My infrared vision told me a lot.  I was able to look through the oil rig into the water.  I could make out a faint signature from the sacrifice in the tube some sixty feet down, as well as a massive red blob swirling around the sacrifice.  That was the beast.  I looked to my right to see an even fainter signature moving around near the ocean floor.  That was Vic setting the explosives.

Everything was coming together.  I clenched my fist tightly.  I’d kill every last one of these bastards, then move on to Piper’s world to kill some more of them.  I was clenching so hard, the exoskeleton on my fist began to wire slightly as it exerted a metric ton of pressure on itself.  I didn’t want to ware out the battery too soon, so I relaxed my grip.

I looked at Piper.  She had elegant features, with pale skin, weird pink designs imbedded in her skin, and pink hair.  I had her hide it with a deep hooded cloak.  She was part of an alien race that was at war with these monsters but was losing.  She barely escaped and came to our planet for help.  Apparently, all the geniuses on the planet were closely tracked by her people, and she followed one of the trackers directly to me.  Her people were a delicate race with flimsy bodies, so she sought me out because I specialized in enhancing bodies.  I had my storm jacket on to hide the exoskeleton I had created, but I wasn’t willing to give away any of my creations to just anyone.  I wanted to get to know this person a little bit first.

After three hours had passed and Vic had joined us on the rig town, there were dull booms coming from beneath the water.  I looked down with my infra-red vision again to see huge pockets of red clumps near the entrance of the beast’s cave.  There was no sight of the beast, so I could only assume it was in the giant red explosions.

The people on the town went quiet.  They had no idea what had happened other than that there were explosions beneath the rig town.  After about thirty seconds, the explosions stopped, and I looked down to check again.  There was one heat signature left… The Beast.  It wasn’t moving though.  Just floating down there.  Suddenly, it did, and it moved fast.  It darted towards the rig town faster than anything I had ever seen.  The town tilted as the heat signature climbed the side of it.  I moved my fingers and tapped my temple, my vision returning to normal.  I saw a giant tentacle draped over the side of the rig town and more were on their way.  Everybody around me was running away, trying to find refuge in the bowls of the rig town.

The head appeared.  It was a great, squishy red dome with two huge piercingly intelligent, yellow eyes.  Its body resembled a huge octopus.  Its body was covered in burns, but other than that it seemed unfazed by the explosions.  It seemed to breathe in and out, as if testing the air.  “Ahhh.  You are an experiment?” it said, looking right at Piper.

What the hell?

“You smell like one of us as well as one of your own people.  No matter.  Be calm, no harm will befall you.  Let me enter one of my less…intimidating forms so that I may interrogate you appropriately.”

Before my eyes, water seemed to gush from the creature like a sponge being squished.  Its skin seemed to transform before my eyes.  It became smooth and pale.  The tentacles were absorbed into its body and appendages came out instead.  I had to step back as the copious amount of water crashed onto the deck and streamed off the side of the rig.  In a matter of seconds, a member of what looked like my race stood before me, just with very pale skin.  He had pale, almost white hair that cascaded down to his bare shoulders.  His face was angular and would have actually been beautiful if it weren’t for the ever-present cruelty in his yellow eyes.  He was bare chested with a white cloth around his waist that stretch down to his ankles.  Very lean muscles covered his body, yet his stature was slight.  The cloth flapped in the light breeze.

It looked at me.

“You are the one responsible for the explosions?”

“Damn right,” I replied.

“What is your name?”

“Sol, short for Solomon.”

“Ah, a wise man.  It wasn’t very wise to attack me.”

“I never claimed to be a wise man, that’s just my name.”  Just have to wait until it got closer to me.

It continued towards me.  “You are also one of the geniuses this woman’s people have been tracking.  My people could use a man like you.  We could enhance you to be just like this,” he said.

“My skills are needed elsewhere,” I said.  I needed to bait him into coming closer… make him think I might be able to be swayed like any other person.  I’m just like other people, but there are some convictions I have to stick to.  Eradicating this thing is one of them.

“Oh really,” he said.  His voice was calming, smooth, and deep.  “And what exactly would that be?”

He was within arms reach now.  My brain sent an impulse to the rest of my body, activating my adrenal glands, and my exoskeleton.  With lightning fast movements, movements fast enough to rip my arms out of their sockets if it wasn’t for my exoskeleton, I punched this guy right in the mouth.  That should have been that.  My suit has been tried and tested against pirates, and every time I landed a punch like this, their head exploded into a bunch of tiny fragments.  I only left a slight indent in his cheek.  As fast as thought, I transitioned to an uppercut with my left hand, hitting him right in the chin.  His head jerked up, but nothing else.  This time, I didn’t even leave a dent.  That should have ripped his head clean off his body.  He grabbed my throat as fast as lightning.  I didn’t even have time to react, and my exoskeleton is wired directly into my nervous system.  It reacts as fast as I can think, and this guy was fast than me.  His hands were not normal.  They were covered in black crevices that seemed to intertwine down to his fingertips and up to the middle of his forearm.

I grabbed his arm, trying to loosen his grip.  My exoskeleton began to whirr, applying literal tons of pressure on this thing’s arm.  Nothing happened other than a slight indent in his arm.

A look of surprise appeared on his face.  “Did you make that device?”

I grunted.

“Not many things can make a dent in my skin like that.  You are smart.  This thing you are traveling with is one of our enemies.  They refuse to modify their bodies like my people did, but they had other advancements in technology my people wanted.”

All people were the same.  Even aliens were the same.  Ruled by greed and self-preservation.  It would be best if we all just died off from the universe, leaving the fish and animals to rule.  But I wouldn’t let that happen to humans.  I was just like everybody else: ruled by greed and self-preservation.  I wanted the human race to survive and kill all these assholes.  I reached for this bastard’s face, trying to grab this octopus’s neck, but to no avail.

“I assume I’ve done something to you?” the pale man asked me.  “My people are probably responsible for the death of a loved one?”

Bingo.

“Well, that would mean you aren’t willing to work with us.  You had so much potential.”  The creature began to squeeze on my neck.  I could feel my vertebrae shifting beneath his grip.

“Enough!” Piper shouted.  I couldn’t see what she was doing, but I could see this octopus/man in front of me grimace.  I managed to shift my increasingly narrowing vision down to his chest.  A hand was emerging from it, clutching something and covered in blue-green goo.  I couldn’t tell exactly what it was.  I looked back up to see a blank expression on the creature’s face, and his grip stopped applying more pressure on my neck.

The hand disappeared from the creature’s chest and Piper ripped his hand from my throat.  I fell to the ground, gasping.  She crouched next to me, trying to help me to my feet.  But I stopped her when I saw her hand.  It was covered in a blue-green blood, but that wasn’t what got to me.  It was the same hand as the octopus man.  Covered in black crevices.

“Piper,” I said.  “You’re one of them.”  I was the same as everybody else.  I was greedy.  I was vengeful.  I wanted the creatures that were responsible for the death of my family to die, and Piper was one of them.

“Sol listen to me.  If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you.  I’m not one of these assholes.”

“You told me your people didn’t change their bodies like these monsters.  Why do you have the same goddam hands as him!” I shouted at her.  I felt betrayed by Piper.

“My people did this to me so that I could defend myself against them.  I’m never going to spend my afterlife with the rest of my people because of it, but that’s a small price to pay to get help to save them in the physical realm.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“Because I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

“Pretty poor excuse not to tell me!  I’m the asshole you came to get so I could save your people with my tech!”

“Uh, Sol,” Vic said.  He was a six-foot-tall behemoth with a bald head.  He was in his mid-twenties and was simple in the head.

“What Vic?!” I yelled, still flustered.

“There are more.”

Son of a bitch.  I whipped around to see two more of those creatures writhing in the water, beginning to ascend the side of the oil rig.

“Break out your big gun.  Keep them busy while I charge up my suit.”  It was beginning to run out of juice, but I could charge it from the oil rig’s power grid.  Vic took out what looked like a mini-gun, except instead of bullets it shot explosive harpoons.  We used it to ward off some of the minor alien sea life in our underwater excursions.

“Sure thing.”  Vic walked to the side of the oil rig and began to shoot the harpoons at the monsters.  After a slight time delay, the harpoons exploded and the monsters let out loud, high pitched shrieks.  I ran to the nearest exposed wire and grabbed it with my hand.  Electricity began to arc up my arm and my suit whirred back to life.  Piper readied herself, arms getting slightly longer, and her fingertips became extremely sharp.  I wasn’t done talking to her about this yet, but that would have to wait for now.

I ran to join Vic and Piper just as the giant octopi-monsters began to eject tons of water and shrink to their humanoid forms on the oil rig.  They say their dead companion and stared me down with those yellow, hate filled eyes.  The one to the left pointed at me.  “You’ll pay dearly for this.”

“We’ll see about that,” I muttered, and as fast as thought I was upon them.  If I was going to die now, so be it.  I was just like everybody else.  I want these assholes to pay for what they took from me.