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Chapter 7: Shocked

Fang awoke exactly where he had collapsed, his head in a dirty puddle and his limbs splayed at awkward angles around him. Levering himself onto all-fours, he was sure he could feel his left arm spasming with electricity, an odd tingling sensation running along his skin and diffusing at the fingertips.

Getting to his feet was harder than usual; a deep ache had settled within him, yet it didn't feel like a muscle ache. It was as if every fibre of his being was complaining about something. Even so, he could feel his rapid immune system dealing with the pain, and by the time he was on his feet, it had been reduced to a slight discomfort.

It was then he took a few seconds to study his tingling arm. Painless tendrils of electricity jumped about the skin along his forearm, becoming more concentrated towards the fingers. Flexing his fingers, the boy felt a slight tickle as this energy jumped between them, emitting a small surge of light as they did so.

A hand clapped him on the back, and Fang stumbled slightly.

Turning his head he was faced with Ari's large grin, who was looking down at the boy's electrified arm with an almost jealous gaze. Fang wondered if he regretted not keeping the ADAM for himself, but he wasn't sure if you could even have more than one; he supposed so from all the deranged splicers, but Ari had yet to explain it in any depth.

"Doesn't it feel fantastic?" the mutant laughed, putting a hand close enough to the preteen's arm that some of the electricity was attracted to his fur, bristling it with static. "Wasn't it worth the pain? Any other plasmids or tonics won't even hurt a bit, now that your DNA has been rewritten to receive them."

Looking back down at his arm, Fang turned it over, studying the tendrils of electricity as they curved a path across his skin. He wasn't sure he enjoyed the sensation, and he was certain he wouldn't be getting any more plasmids; if this one was as effective as Ari thought it would be, he wouldn't need any more.

Suddenly, the electrified boy shot his head up, ears tuned into their surroundings. He swore he'd just heard chinking sound – the calling card of metal on metal – but hadn't been concentrating enough to locate the source. Despite Ari continuing to talk beside him, Fang zoned him out, focusing his enhanced hearing on the room around them.

Chink. It was coming from the ceiling, directly behind their heads.

Throwing his body weight into Ari, applying extra force to compensate for the boy's excess weight, the two stumbled to the floor in a heap just as a metallic implement flew past where Fang's head had been moments before. It was so sharp it stuck into the floor blade-down, the hilt wobbling slightly from the momentum. Both boys looked at the weapon as it swayed, then back at each other.

"Spider," was all Ari said, and Fang felt his heart drop.

There were two kinds of splicer he had yet to encounter; the Nitro known for throwing grenades and other fire-y projectiles, and spiders that liked to throw hooked metal weapons into the backs of unsuspecting victims. Following the brief overview Ari had given him in their first lesson, Fang turned his eyes to the ceiling, searching the shadows for the vague shape of a human.

It didn't take long to find it. The splicer was hanging by all fours behind a metal rafter, the metal hooks it carried glinting in the orange hue. Jumping to his feet Fang seized the metal hook from the floor, took careful aim and threw the implement back with all his might.

Apparently he took too long to aim, as the splicer scuttled off on all fours before the hook even hit the rafter, falling to the floor with a clang. A cackle followed the spider as it scurried across the ceiling, but it moved so fast the preteen could barely keep his eyes on it. Suddenly, there was a soft thud behind him and, upon turning, found himself face-to-face with the creature.

Not masked, this particular splicer had a multitude of healing and rotting cuts that made it smell revolting. It wore ripped trousers and no shirt, for all about its chest were the creature's favoured curved weapons. A small amount of bile rose up in the back of Fang's throat; this splicer had chosen to imbed these in its skin, which made a horribly slick noise as the mutant withdrew on and brandished it in the air.

A swift jump back saved Fang from being gutted. Another left his appendix exactly where it should be. A third saw a small slit open up in the front of his grey shirt, while a fourth came too close to ripping one of his eyes out.

"Use your plasmid, you twat!"

Fang turned his head slightly to glance at Ari. He had yet to learn how to use his newfound power, and yet the mutant was offering no constructive advice, simply pointing at his own left hand in an exaggerated fashion. Out of the corner of his eye Fang saw the creature taking another swing towards his face, which he ducked, before aiming his left hand right at the creature's chest and willing the electricity to spring from his fingertips.

Nothing happened. The splicer raised its weapon and struck him in the centre of the skull with the blunt curve, sending him sprawling onto his back with a thud. Looking up to find the splicer looming over his belly with a curved weapon in hand, Fang raised his left hand with a yell as the splicer raised his own weapon, intent on tearing Fang a new orifice.

To his surprise, a large ball of electricity expelled itself from his hand and thumped the splicer in the chest. While the force itself was not enough to knock the splicer backwards, the convulsing it created within its body had the creature writing on the floor in uncontrollable spasms, its weapon dropped and abandoned nearby.

Taking a second to stare at his hand in surprise, Fang then scrambled to his feet and grabbed the curved implement from the floor, standing over the splicer as it writhed. A glance at its face showed the creature's face to be contorted in fear and, just for a second, he had second thoughts about ending its life.

Then the shock wore off, and the Spider's face lost its humanity. It reached for another weapon, beginning to extract it from the grey skin about its ribcage. Without further hesitation Fang sliced the sharp metal of his own hook across the splicer's throat.

Two long minutes of gurgling later, the splicer lay still, hand falling from its half-extracted weapon.

Fang just stood there, staring down at the corpse, unable to find an emotion to pin to his current feelings. For a moment the splicer had almost seemed human; the manifestation of emotion and humanity clear on its face. And then it had reached for another weapon and Fang had acted on instinct. He had never had the time to study a splicer's face in the other ambushes, and what he had seen had thrown him.

He was jarred from his detached state by Ari kneeling next to the body, a knee in the pool of fresh blood that had just flooded from the splicer as he searched the creature's pockets for loot. Fang took a step away from the body and turned, closing his eyes and rubbing a grimy hand over his face, though all he saw was the fear in the splicer's eyes as it writhed on the ground.

It would have killed you, he reminded himself. He opened his eyes to see the newly-bloodied curved weapon he had used to finish the splicer off, its length covered in years of grime and crusted blood. It would have killed you with your back turned. This was the right thing to do.

"No ADAM, but a good stash of money," Ari shouted from behind him, oblivious to the preteen's turmoil. "We're eating fresh from a vending machine tonight!"