Unity by Carl Stubblefield (epub read online books TXT) 📕

She leaned forward to brace herself as she looked inside but pulled her hand away. It was warm! And soft, like flesh. Revulsion made her gag slightly. Gross. She pulled her hand away as if the wall was hot and shook it, trying to fling off the unpleasantness that made her skin crawl. Strands of something sticky and syrupy trailed from her fingers as she pulled her hand away, but there was nothing to wipe them on to clean them.

Something was in this place and she had hacked enough AIs to know that this looked like a boss lair. And it probably wouldn’t show itself until she was irrevocably committed.

So be it.

She gripped the sides of the window by activating Silk Stalkings and she used them to launch herself into the room. She sailed through, swan diving and executing a flip. She caught herself with the two ribbons, absorbing the impact of the fall and keeping her just shy of touching the floor.

Nothing happened.

Easing herself to the ground, she scratched her head and looked around, groaning as the leftover syrup on her hands came away on her hair. This room was just a big hollow chamber, brownish white, and stinky as hell. The only thing different was a small raised circle in the center of the room. Taking a tentative step forward, the ground wobbled like a trampoline, rebounding slightly with each step. As she got closer, she could see a small opening in the rubbery floor.

A pulsating mound of pink trembled in the center of the large room, its top barely visible from the gray membrane that surrounded it. As Yuki stared at it in disgust, there was a flatulent release and the pink material began to extrude from the opening. The membrane became taut as it stretched, and the mound began to widen, revealing its wrinkled and shriveled surface.

Yuki retreated back as the floor began to flutter and the pink kept forcing its way out of the ever-widening opening. The more that was visible, the more it had the appearance of a… brain?

Yuki activated Data-mine on it and got very little information.

M.I.N.D.

HP: ??

Weaknesses: ??

Abilities: ??

Good luck!

Yuki scowled. Dammit to hell! She began to pace like a cat, backing ever closer to the wall as the M.I.N.D. continued to spill forth. How big is this thing?

Sluggishly, it began to raise in the air, its veiny purple red and pink color contrasting with the bone-like background as it squeezed its way out of the opening. Phlegm-like gobbets of syrupy slime dripped off of its corrugated surface, hitting the floor in large splatters.

The miasma intensified as its source was revealed. Yuki had to cough to keep her gorge down as a wall of stench hit her in the face. An acrid, sour taste still reached her tongue despite her best efforts.

Along the seam of the two lobes, thorny teeth could be seen as it emerged, folded almost parallel to the groove.

The brain hung up and trembled for a bit, struggling to push through, then the raised metal rims of two shutters embedded in the front lobes made it past the lip of the opening. Shutters irised open and closed within the brass rings where the eyes should be, each moving independently until they saw Yuki standing there, mouth agape. They centered on her and the rings spun, telescoping out of the brain to get her in better focus.

Yuki thrust her hands forward in a forceful clap, the ribbons shooting forward. She intended to plunge them deep into the giant brain before it could fully emerge. There was a loud *clang* as if a gong had been struck, and two diamond-shaped shields were floating in front of her sentient sashes. She tried to dart them around but they reacted too quickly to circumvent, easily parrying any of her probing attacks or feints.

To make matters worse, she could see more of the rhombus-shaped shields detaching from the inner walls of the chamber and begin to circle the brain as it continued to extrude from the floor. By the time the stalk of the brain stem was visible, there were three rows of the shields rotating around the brain, surrounding it on all sides. Their mother-of-pearl shimmer was mildly hypnotic and Yuki had to force herself to stop staring at their rhythmic motion.

She tried launching the ribbons with more force, winding up like a baseball pitcher to see if she could power through one of the shields, but it only resulted in a louder gong sound that reverberated a little longer. The shields seemed to pick up speed as she exerted more energy towards them. She charged towards the brain, hoping to throw it off, but a group of eight shields came together. Their sides joined together seamlessly and the whole shield wall shot forward like a piston.

Yuki was hit like a freight train and flew into the back wall. The soft, organic nature of the structure absorbed her impact for the most part, but the attack still rang her bell. She shook her head to clear it, and saw that the diamond-shaped shields had resumed their circuit around the brain.

She had the inklings of a plan. With one ribbon, she lunged forward and with the other attempted to grab the shield that moved to block it. Success! She got a grip on two of the edges and held the shield in place. It quivered violently, trying to break free, and Yuki shot her free sash out and scored a glancing strike on the soft brain.

There was a bellow of pain and another shield dashed in, point first, and sliced through the center of the ribbon holding the shield, which sped off as the end of the ribbon fell limp. With the runes destroyed, everything from the cut to the end of the ribbon was limp and just hung there. Sagging down like a child’s arm in their parent’s jacket.

She could whip it around but it would not move of