Out of life's school of war: that which does not destroy me makes me stronger.
--Friedrich Nietzsche.
Thrax lets Spider into the Central Data Core's room with his claw, and spares a glance behind him. They've gotten to their goal in record time thanks to Jones' info, but alarms are sounding all over the building and if they don't get out of here soon they're going to find themselves surrounded. He flexes and relaxes his killer claw as he tries to be patient, tries to hear Jones coming down the hall after him. He knows that he and Spider can take care of themselves in a fight, but Jones is so new, so raw.
And he used to be a cop.
Thrax shouldn't have left him with that girl, he thinks. Hostage is just another word for liability, when it came to heists. When it came to viruses. Use it or lose it, really.
(Jones' hands shake as he holds the pen, draws the map, and Thrax tells himself it's just nerves, the kid will be fine, just fine--)
And he was going to do this right. Already everything's coming apart on him...
Jones still isn't coming. He strains for any sound, takes a few steps back along the corridor. He wishes he still had his old chain of hypothalamus beads, but he'd lost it a while back in a fight, some near-miss cock-up with a suicidal Immunity, and Thrax hasn't killed enough people since to have a chain. Just a tight cuff around one wrist. He picks at it fitfully, the beads glittering and flaring as he prods them, but the motion doesn't do anything to dispel his nervousness.
Where is Jones?
"Uh, can I get some backup over here?" Spider demands from behind him. "I'm only disengaging the command module, sweet stuff, no big deal!"
He retreats back to Spider's side, all senses straining for any sign of his boy. The yellow virus makes a satisfied noise and pats his ass, absently, as he pries the Data Core free one tiny strand at a time.
He's going to kill Spider after this. He's going to pin Spider to the floor with his boot and rip out each and every finger. Thrax picks his teeth with his claw and goes over this thought slowly, lingering. He's going to pull off each finger and then he's going to prick his eyes, just lightly, and let the sweet killing fire burn through Spider's head slowly, slow enough that he can beg--
"And we're done, man!" Spider crows, hefting the Data Core in his arms like it's a baby. On close examination, it is a baby, a tiny white body with a huge head and one glowing eye that fades from white to sky blue as it writhes in Spider's hands. It makes a vague chirpy noise and waves chubby little fists at them. Spider deftly twists the frayed, trailing strands of its umbilicus into one thick knot and then props it up against his shoulder, cooing.
"I thought it would be bigger," Thrax comments doubtfully.
"New branch office, new furnishings," Spider murmurs, gently patting at the baby. "You know how it is, man, you get 'em when they're young and adorable, yes you are, yes it's you, you're adorable!" His grin is the soppy, half-disbelieving grin of any new daddy, feeling the first heady rush of paternal affection.
(When Thrax was young he once thought it would be funny to scare a little cell girl who got lost in the park. Only, after he's changed her she looks up and takes his hand in her little bitty claws and suddenly it's not funny anymore. Suddenly, he loves her.)
"He's tiny," Thrax says spitefully. "I prefer mine walking, at least."
"He's darling," Spider bristles, then nuzzles his face blissfully into the little white creature's cheek. "Aren't you? Aren't you the sweetest little Data Core? Aren't you? Who's my boy? Oh my fucking shit, he smells so good. Thrax, check it-- who's my little Data Boy? Who is? Is it you? Yes! Hey, you wanna hold him?"
Thrax growls, and raises his glowing claw. Spider makes a sour face at him, jiggles the Data Core."Suit yourself, Big Daddy," he says, and strolls off down the corridor. "Come on, let's bounce. Awww, isn't that right? Isn't that right? Who's my little boy? Who's gonna bounce? We are!"
(His last kid called him 'daddio' and made him laugh. The kid before that only spoke Spanish, a tall and formal girl who called him 'patron' and cried sometimes at night but she liked it when he took her dancing...)
Thrax digs his claw savagely into the gutted, empty Central Data Core chamber. It bursts into flames instantly, the fibers twisting and popping and licking fire across his face. He takes a deep, superheated breath of flame and smoke, lets it run across his teeth, and feels a little better. He and Spider will meet up later, a warehouse across the city. It's better to leave separately-- less of a profile for the cops, and if Spider screws with his Jones one more time he is going to take the yellow virus's head clean off, intricate torture plans or no.
(Poor Jones doesn't want to call him anything at all, something shattered and untrusting held close behind his eyes, and he doesn't know if he'll ever--)
He turns and strides off purposefully, looking for his baby.
***
"It's okay," Jones' police girl says, coaxing him, tugging him gently outside into the light.
They're surrounded by police, the building surrounded in a thick cordon of cars and flashing lights and barricades and Immunities with big heavy guns and he feels a thick rope of fear knot up inside him. Those guns would hurt him now, rip into his tough inflexible skin and hurt.
(He aims, fires, the gun in his hand kicking back and the target on the range blowing apart, sizzling and he laughs and laughs and--)
He's so tired of hurting.
"I'm scared," he says.
"It's okay," his girl says again, and gives his hand a gentle squeeze.
Jones takes a step forward, then another, then lets the girl bring him step by unsteady step into the ranks of the Immunities. The outfits are a little different and he doesn't recognize the faces but it feels almost like being home.
Like being safe.
The cool blue glow of uniforms and porous membranes, the crisp official smells of plasma guns and shoe shine and hard work, the shift and flow as they circle and size him up: if he doesn't look at his reflection in their eyes he can almost pretend that he's one of them. He closes his eyes and thinks Yes, thinks I can do this. Thinks Frank--
"Cuff him," His girl says.
"What?" He asks, before strong arms grab him, before he's kicked roughly to his knees. "What? Please--"
His girl moves in front of him, kneels down. They're face to face, close enough to kiss but her eyes are flat and glittering, her face cold and closed off and a little disgusted. A little pitying.
"Girl, what's going on?" He asks, "I already surrendered."
He feels stupid, bewildered.
Betrayed.
"It's for your own good," she says. Someone has given her a gun. The fear in him flares up, twining with the hunger and he moans like an animal, trying to struggle back to his feet. The cops holding his arms shove him back down to his knees.
She puts the gun up against his forehead.
"Stop, put that down! What are you doing?" He begs.
"Mercy kill," she says, and for a moment the pity wins out over the disgust. "I'm putting you out of your misery."
"Please," he says, and his voice cracks. There's nothing else he can say.
"Goodbye, Osmosis," she says.
She pulls the trigger.
***
Thrax finds cops before he goes too far, and pulls up short. They're an armed strike team, big cells, almost as big as him and bristling with weapons and thick black armor. They all draw on him with choreographed precision as soon as they see him.
Thrax puts his hands up and, as an afterthought, retracts his killer claw.
There is a tense silence.
"Stand down, virus," The lead cell says. "We are arresting you on the authority of Cyndi Police Department on suspicion of aiding and abetting the known terrorist Spider T. Pallidum. Anything you say can and will be used against you--"
"Y'all seen my man Jones?" Thrax interrupts. "Looks like me only cuter? Y'all hurt him?" He flexes his claw back out, letting it spark and glow. "I'd be a little upset if anyone hurt him."
The assembled police shift uneasily. A guy in the back hisses, "Isn't that-- didn't whatserface, the new girl--"
"Shut up!" The spokesman in the front hisses back, then refocuses on Thrax. "Your junior associate has been apprehended," he says firmly. "Come quietly and we'll see what we can do to get you two in contact."
"I don't think so." Thrax says. It's only a half step forward before he's close enough to sink his claw through the cell's face and he makes it before the rest of the team can blink. One man down, he spins in a tight roundhouse kick, taking down the next cell in line and the guy behind him, his coat flaring out and up around him, obscuring his silhouette as the assembled guns begin to bark and fire, filling the air with noise and an acrid tang. A bullet catches him across the forearm and he shouts with pain, clutching it in his free hand, wielding his claw like a scythe to cut open two cells at once, and the final cell through his neck on the backswing.
The sound and fury is over as suddenly as it begins, as there are no more cells left to shoot. He catches his breath and watches the fire consume their bodies, then checks his arm. The bullet track is has gouged a deep, cauterized furrow between his elbow and wrist, and it aches sullenly as he flexes his hand. It's nothing incapacitating.
"You fight fire with fire," he says to the charred corpses around him, and grins mirthlessly.
The new girl, the strike team cell had said. Now she has his Jones. Her blue fingers on his skin, her pretty eyes looking at him, her pretty mouth, lying to him--
("I can't do this," Jones begs him, and he sounds so afraid. Why hadn't Thrax ever asked about just how recently Jones had been turned?)
He is running, racing down the hallways, dragging a whirlwind of fire after him: a twisting, flaring inferno of rage. There's a low hissing growl coming from his throat as he retraces the twists and turns of this warren he had followed Spider into, leaving his boy, his baby, his responsibility, leaving him to some girl, some cop, some girl. Jones used to be a cop, it's clear in every broken line of him, how had Thrax ever thought he would be okay left with temptation like that dangling so sweet in front of him, as pretty as poison?
He's going to kill Spider for doing this to him, doing this to them, all probing fingers and glib smile. Being cute and clever and charming, making Thrax want to do him favors. Making him think everything was gonna be okay. Thrax's gonna kill him. He's gonna kill everyone.
Thrax bursts through the front doors, red flames snapping and howling around him, taking the building apart as he takes one step, two, into the thick cordon of Immunities. Guns bark and pop around him, tearing chunks out of his coat, his arms, his body as he wades forward into the crowd: elbow-deep, claw flashing, cop cars going off like firecrackers, cops screaming and howling in the heat and the fire and the rage of him.
(That tattered little figure crouched on the barstool, bent over like a hunting hawk with a broken wing: something made more dangerous by its pain, something determined to go down fighting--)
If his Jones has been hurt, if his baby's been broken any more than he already is, he's gonna kill the whole world.
"Jones!" He shouts. "Jones, boy, where are you!?"
No one answers, and he can't hear anything over the fire and the guns and the cops screaming.
(That fear in his eyes when Thrax sat down, that gorgeous seething anger--)
"Jones!" He roars.
And then he sees him.
The world goes white.
***
Spider is working on hooking his new Data Core up to the existent data processing systems already assembled in his base, braiding the cords of monitors and interface panels and coolant systems and nutrient feeds into the Data Core's shredded umbilicus. He hums as he works, and tickles the Data Core's little feet as it kicks. He is totally, really, this time for true in love.
A shadow falls across his workstation, and he freezes. His base is embedded deep within a cancerous tumor, wrapped in layers of failsafes and deadlocks.
No one should be in here.
He reaches and picks up his soldering tool casually, still humming, then whips around with it in a brutal arc, the tip sparking blue-white and lethal.
Thrax catches the tool firmly before it makes it halfway to his face, then kicks Spider to the ground and kneels on his throat. Spider thrashes, reflexively, and then that long glowing claw comes up in front of his face and he freezes.
Spider makes it his business to know things, and he knows what that claw can do. Exactly what that claw can do.
"Thrax, buddy," he smiles, pouring on the charm. "What can I do you for?"
Thrax snarls above him like a wildcat and digs the claw into the floor by Spider's head, letting him feel the heat. He's tense, almost frantic, breathing hard, wound to his breaking point with rage and fear and pain. The body he has tucked up against his chest, wrapped in his coat, is very still. The big virus's eyes glitter with murder.
It's sexy. It's really sexy, but also really scary. Spider contemplates the fact of his increasingly imminent death.
"Buddy?" He ventures, still smiling. "Baby? Sweetheart? Come on, talk to me."
"Spider," Thrax hisses, low and grating, as if he has only just remembered how to talk.
"Yeah, that's me, Thrax." Spider says, encouraged.
"Spider, I have a-- problem," Thrax hisses, and his voice breaks a little on the last word. "I think you want to help me with this problem."
The body. He can see just a sliver of skin, peeking out from Thrax's bundled coat, and the skin is a familiar dull red.
"Jones," he says. "Oh."
"Yes. Oh." Thrax hisses. The claw digging into the floor by Spider's head flares white.
"Is he--"
"He's not dead!" Thrax barks, eyes going crazy for a moment, and then reigns himself back in.
"He's-- he's hurt bad, Spider," he says tightly, and backs off of him. "Not as bad as you're going to be, if you can't fix him." Pulling Spider to his feet, that killer claw sizzling against Spider's jacket, Thrax growls, "No one's ever been as hurt as you're gonna be."
"Okay, okay, jeez," Spider says, and eels out of Thrax's grip. Away from that dangerous claw. He quickly tucks the Data Core back in its protective cradle hanging from the ceiling and brushes the remaining wires and equipment off the work table.
He puts down a sheet.
"Lay the kid here," he says.
Thrax does so, unwrapping him like the world's most horrible birthday present. Then he hovers, snarling at Spider when the yellow virus tries to shoo him back.
Jones is limp and small on the white sheet, under the harsh bright lighting Spider uses to work on his projects. His pretty mouth is slack, his eyes are closed-- he doesn't respond when Spider peels back an eyelid. His pupils don't dilate. Under a crude bandage made of an Immunity's shirt, he has a small neat hole burned into his forehead, like a horrible third eye, and a much larger, messier hole out the back. The holes leak black plasma steadily over Spider's fingers.
He's breathing-- shallowly, impossibly slowly, but there's still some part of him clinging to life.
Spider grins. "We can save him."
Spider kicks into a blur of motion, laying out scalpels, screwdrivers, wires, tubs of oil and plasma and glue, a protein dripline, two different power generators --electric and thermal-- and the cradle with the Data Core. He starts splicing wires together, taping them down, plugging them in.
"We can fix this," he says, "I just have to hook him up to an energy source, catalyze it-- dangerous work, man, really fiddly, but you took your boy to the right man. I'll have him up and running like a skinned cat at a dog convention--"
"And what do I do?" Thrax asks, looming suspiciously over Spider's shoulder. He reaches a big clawed hand out and cards through the hank of wires Spider's braiding together, making them tangle and spark. Jones twitches like a landed fish.
"You can get me some headlight fluid." Spider snaps, elbowing him away.
"Headlight fluid," Thrax repeats. "What for?"
"It'll get you out of my hair," Spider mutters.
"What?"
"It'll help Jonesey here breath fresh air," Spider says, much louder. "Headlight fluid-- it's the gunk in his head, helps him see what he's doing. Powerful stuff. I need it to fix that hole there."
Thrax nods, the suspicion fading to a resolute determination, and he shrugs his stained coat back on. He looks bigger with the coat on, more dangerous, a nightmare beast, but then he leans over Jones' still form and brushes his cheek with his thumb, so, so gently.
"Back soon, baby," he says, and hesitates once more. Then with a sharp warning glare at Spider and a dark swirl of his coat he is gone.
Spider breaths a sigh of relief.
"Fucking finally," he says.
Then he gets to work.