Chapter 12: Mercy
The world outside the labyrinth was a blinding slap of cool, fresh air and watery sunlight filtering through the high canopy of Wild Spore Cavern. They burst from the tunnel mouth like rats fleeing a flood, stumbling onto the soft, mossy earth, their lungs heaving out the last of the refinery’s toxic stink.
Fred’s eyes, adjusted to hellish glow and sterile white light, took a second to register the figure standing twenty yards away, camera lowered, face pale.
Trixie.
She was just staring at the tunnel entrance, her knuckles white around her viewscreen’s handle. The feed had died with the camera on his shoulder. She’d seen the trapdoor give way. She’d seen nothing but static after that. For hours.
Her eyes found his, wide and unblinking. Then she was moving, sprinting across the clearing. She didn’t say a word. She just crashed into him, her arms locking around his torso, her face buried against his chest plate. The impact knocked a grunt from him. He could feel her shaking, a fine, constant tremor. He smelled soot and sweat and her shampoo, something like wild berries.
His arms came up, clumsy around her, one hand still gripping his blaster. He patted her back, a rough, awkward gesture. “Hey. We’re okay. We’re all here.”
She let go as suddenly as she’d grabbed him, stepping back, her professional mask slamming down so fast it was almost audible. Her eyes flicked to Eli, to Kord, to a wheezing Pronto, doing a frantic headcount. “You blew up the source,” she stated, her voice only slightly unsteady.
“We redirected a lava flow into it,” Eli corrected, grinning through the grime. “Then we blew up the refinery.”
A triumphant whoop died in Kord’s throat. A barrage of blaster fire erupted from the tunnel mouth, sizzling into the dirt around their feet. Dark-suited henchmen poured out, not in orderly lines but in a desperate, angry scramble, their protective gear discarded, their faces contorted with rage. Their refinery, their work, their Dark Water—gone. And the Shane Gang was right there.
The clearing exploded into chaos.
Fred shoved Trixie behind the broad trunk of the hideout’s central tree. “Stay sharp!”
“I am sharp!” she snapped back, already raising her camera. But she didn’t film. She switched modes, her Tormato slug chirping on her shoulder.
No one had a plan. It was pure, reactive survival. Fred’s mind, still buzzing with the methodical destruction of machinery, switched to the older, more intimate calculus of a duel. Target priority. Terrain. Ammunition.
A henchman charged him, wild-eyed, firing a rapid stream of ghoul slugs. Fred dropped into a crouch, loaded Zero, and fired at the ground in front of the man’s boots. The Frostcrawler hit the dirt and velocimorphed, a wave of instant frost flashing outward. The man’s feet froze to the moss in a block of solid ice. He yelped, off-balance.
“Kord!” Fred yelled.
“On it!” The Cave Troll, already in motion, loaded his blaster and shot a Rammstone slug like a fastball. It transformed in mid-air, becoming a living battering ram. It hit the frozen henchman square in the chest with a sound like a sack of wet gravel being dropped from a height. The ice shattered. The man flew back ten feet and didn’t move.
To Fred’s left, Trixie was a whirlwind of precise fury. A trio of henchmen tried to flank Eli. She tracked them with her blaster, waited for the perfect convergence, and fired. Her Tormato slug shot out, transformed, and turned into a localized, violent tornado. It wasn’t big, but it was fierce. It plucked them off their feet with comical indignity, whirling them around in a tangle of limbs before launching them skyward like discarded rags. Their fading screams faded away into the cavern’s upper reaches.
“My turn! The glory of Pronto is nigh!” the Molenoid screeched, popping up from behind a rock. He fired his Flatulorhinkus. The purple, lumpy slug landed amidst another advancing pair. It didn’t morph. It just… pulsed. A visible, purple-black cloud erupted from it with a sound like a deflating balloon. The smell hit Fred even from fifteen feet away—a gut-churning mix of rotten eggs, sewer gas, and overcooked cabbage.
The two henchmen stumbled, their eyes watering instantly. One retched, vomiting onto his own boots. The other turned and ran, gagging, straight back into the tunnel they’d just left. Pronto puffed out his chest. “Behold! The sweet stench of victory!”
Eli and Burpy were the heart of the storm. Eli moved with a fluid confidence, no longer the kid trying to live up to a name, but the Shane in truth. Burpy, a streak of orange and gold, became a living incendiary. He’d zip past a henchman’s face, a searing flare forcing them to duck, while Eli’s second shot—a well-aimed Hop Rock slug—would slam into their blaster, sending it spinning from numb fingers. It wasn’t about killing; it was about dismantling their ability to fight. One burly man swung a wrench at Eli’s head. Fred intercepted, losing and shooting Flare out of his blaster, a brief, intense jet of white-hot flame that turned the wrench head molten. The man dropped it with a howl, clutching his scorched hand.
For a few, glorious minutes, it worked. They were winning. They were a chaotic, brutal machine, each part covering the other. Fred felt it—the unspoken rhythm they’d forged in the fire. He froze a path, Kord cleared it. Trixie disrupted groups, Eli picked off the stragglers. Even Pronto’s stink was a valid area-denial tool.
Then the blaster fire from the tunnel stopped.
The sudden quiet was more jarring than the noise. The remaining henchmen, maybe six of them, hesitated, looking back at the dark entrance. They shuffled aside, forming a rough, fearful corridor.
He walked out.
Dr. Thaddaeus Blakk didn’t stride, didn’t march. He strolled. His obsidian-black boots were unscuffed, his high-collared coat free of the ash and dust that coated everyone else. He held a data pad in one hand, scrolling through it with a thumb as if checking messages during a dull meeting. The carnage around him—the groaning men, the scorched earth, the lingering purple haze of Pronto’s slug—seemed to be beneath his notice.
He stopped in the center of the clearing, finally looking up. His eyes, cold and calculating, swept over them. They lingered on Eli for a moment, a flicker of disdainful acknowledgment. Then they moved to Fred, and a thin, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. It wasn’t friendly. It was the look a geologist gives an interesting, but ultimately worthless, rock.
“The Vanguard,” Blakk said. His voice was a dry, smooth baritone, devoid of the rage his men had shown. It made the hair on Fred’s neck stand up. “Frederick Lawrence. Red Hook’s prodigy. I reviewed the footage before your little transmitter failed. Impressive work with the Arachnet. A waste of talent.”
Fred said nothing. His finger rested on the trigger of his blaster. Voltage buzzed a low warning on his shoulder.
Blakk’s gaze shifted to the smoldering tunnel entrance. “You destroyed a significant capital investment. You contaminated a primary source. You have, admittedly, set my timetable back.” He sighed, a sound of mild inconvenience. “But you operate under a fundamental misunderstanding. You think you are fighting an army. You are not. You are fighting an idea. And ideas do not bleed. They do not feel pain. They simply… propagate.”
He tapped his data pad. “The Dark Water you saw was a prototype. A crude, liquid form. The refinement process you so childishly interrupted was designed to stabilize it into a gaseous aerosol. Far more efficient for mass distribution. The facility was one of three.”
A cold knot tightened in Fred’s gut.
“You see,” Blakk continued, taking a few slow steps, his hands clasped behind his back. “You haven’t stopped me. You’ve merely forced my hand into a more… direct methodology. I had hoped to convert the slug population humanely, systematically. Now, a demonstration of the gas’s efficacy will be required to secure further backing.” He looked directly at Eli. “A public demonstration. Somewhere symbolic. Where the failure of the old ways will be impossible to ignore.”
Eli took a step forward, his face hard. “You’re not touching another slug.”
“I’m not interested in ‘another’ slug, Shane,” Blakk said, his voice dropping to a conversational tone that carried across the clearing. “I’m interested in yours. And yours, Lawrence. The legendary Infernus. The unique Tazerling. What better way to show the futility of your tradition than to have its greatest symbols become the vanguard of the new order?”
What better way to show the futility of your tradition than to have its greatest symbols become the vanguard of the new order?”
He paused, letting the threat hang in the air, thick as the lingering stench of Pronto’s slug. He seemed to expect a reaction—fear, defiance, a plea. Fred just felt a cold, focused clarity settle over him. This wasn’t a duel. This was a man giving a lecture to future corpses.
Blakk’s eyes gleamed with the pleasure of his own vision. “The process is quite elegant, really. The gas bypasses all natural slug defenses. It rewrites their core energy signature at a molecular level. Your bond, your so-called ‘friendship,’ will be the first thing it burns away.”
Fred’s thumb found the release catch on his blaster’s magazine. The movement was hidden by his thigh. He didn’t look away from Blakk’s face, but from the corner of his eye, he saw Trixie shift her weight. He chanced a glance.
She was staring at Blakk, her head tilted. Her expression wasn’t fear. It was pure, unadulterated exasperation. She caught Fred’s look and her eyes rolled so hard it was a miracle they didn’t stick. A silent, shared understanding passed between them: This guy loves the sound of his own voice.
Fred’s left hand, shielded by his body, dipped to his bandolier. His fingers found the familiar, heavy tube. Hammer. The Rammstone was still groggy from the earlier breaching charge, but he’d do.
Blakk was still talking, gesturing now with the data pad as if diagramming his triumph on an invisible board. “The old clans will watch their beloved icons turn against them. The shock will break their spirit. Resistance will crumble. It’s not malice, you understand. It’s efficiency.”
He finally stopped, a smug satisfaction tightening his features. He gave them one last, dismissive look, as if they were already memories. “Consider your slugs already mine.”
Then, incredibly, he turned his back on them. He took a step toward the tunnel, toward his remaining men, his mind clearly already on the next phase, the next speech, the next facility.
Fred’s body moved before the thought fully formed.
It was a single, seamless motion born in Red Hook’s shop—the smooth arc of raising the blaster, the solid click of the trigger, the familiar kick against his palm. He hardly believed it was possible, to move from absolute stillness to lethal action in the space of a heartbeat.
Hammer left the barrel.
The maroon slug hit velocity instantly, the air around it distorting with kinetic force. It didn’t have far to go. It transformed six feet from Blakk’s spine, becoming a half-ton of concentrated momentum shaped like a battering ram with horns.
The sound was a sickening, wet THWUMP of high-impact collision. Blakk’s eloquent speech ended in a bitten-off grunt, all the air smashed from his lungs. The data pad flew from his hand, shattering against a rock. He was lifted clean off his feet and driven face-first into the soft moss, his body plowing a shallow trench before lying utterly still.
The clearing fell silent, save for the dripping of water from the cavern ceiling.
Fred broke the silence, his voice flat and casual. “Ain’t polite,” he said, ejecting Hammer’s spent tube. “Turnin’ your back on someone.”
He loaded Scorch without looking. He aimed at the nearest henchman, who was still gaping at his fallen master, and fired. The Flaringo streaked out, a focused lance of white-hot flame that caught the man square in the chest, not to burn, but to shove. The henchman yelled, stumbling back into two of his comrades, and they all went down in a heap.
It was the spark that lit the fuse.
The Shane Gang snapped out of their stunned paralysis. Eli whooped, a raw, relieved sound, and Burpy was already a fiery comet scattering the disorganized men. Kord’ laughter boomed as he launched a Rammstone of his own, bowling over a trio trying to raise their blasters. Trixie’s Tormato whipped up another mini-twister, funneling henchmen toward the dark tunnel mouth. Pronto just jumped up and down, screaming, “Run, you ruffians! Run from the glory!”
It was a rout. The fight had bled out of them the moment Blakk hit the dirt. They scrambled, they fell, they dragged each other up, and they fled back into the labyrinth’s shadows, leaving their weapons and their pride behind.
Fred watched them go, his breath steadying. He waited until the last echo of their panic faded. Then he turned.
Blakk was trying to push himself up. One arm was under him, bent at a wrong angle. A low, pained wheeze came from his crushed ribs. He tried to roll over, his expensive coat smeared with dirt and moss.
Fred walked toward him, each step deliberate. He stopped a few feet away. He pulled Voltage’s tube from its place on his shoulder. The Tazerling buzzed, eager and angry, a static charge making the fine hairs on Fred’s arm stand up.
He loaded the blue slug into his blaster. The mechanism clicked with finality.
He raised the weapon, arm fully extended, and aimed the barrel directly at the center of Dr. Blakk’s chest, right over his heart.
Blakk’s chest, right over his heart, rose and fell in ragged, wet hitches. Fred held the aim, unwavering. The clearing was utterly silent now, the only sound the distant drip of water and Blakk’s strained breathing. The others watched, a frozen semicircle of tension.
Fred’s thumb rested on the trigger stud. He could feel the potential in the chamber, the eager, angry buzz of Voltage waiting to become lightning. One tap. It would be so fast. A contained, precise burst through the heart. No more speeches. No more gas. Just an end.
He didn’t tap it.
Slowly, deliberately, Fred lowered the blaster. The muzzle dropped until it pointed at the mossy ground between Blakk’s sprawled legs. He watched the man struggle, a pathetic, writhing thing trying to get his broken body under control.
“Go on,” Fred said, his voice flat. “Roll over. Let’s have a chat.”
With a groan that was part pain, part fury, Blawk managed to flip onto his back. His face was a mask of dirt and fury, one eye already swelling shut from the impact. He glared up, his good eye searching Fred’s face for weakness, for hesitation. He found none.
“The only reason you’re drawing breath right now,” Fred began, his tone conversational, like he was discussing gear ratios back at the shop, “is ’cause I live by a code. Messy one, my pop taught me.” He shrugged one shoulder. “You don’t kill an unarmed man. Even if he’s a talkative waste of good air who wants to turn your friends into monsters.”
He tilted his head, a faint, humorless smile touching his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. “So here’s your one lesson, Doc. You walk away. You crawl, if you have to. And if you ever try to fight us again,” Fred leaned forward just an inch, his voice dropping to a low, casual certainty that carried across the silent clearing, “if you even think about ghoul-ing Voltage, or Burpy, or any slug in the 99 Caverns… I won’t be so merciful. Next time, the code don’t apply.”
He straightened up, his gaze never leaving Blakk’s. “You’ll just be a problem. And I fix problems.”
A shifting in the moss behind him. Eli stepped up to Fred’s left shoulder, his own blaster held low but ready. Trixie moved to his right, her camera now a silent witness. Kord’s massive shadow fell over them, his arms crossed. Even Pronto puffed out his chest, standing behind Kord’s leg.
Not a word from them. Just presence. A wall.
Blakk lay there, chest heaving. His good eye darted from face to face, calculating, reassessing. The smugness was gone, burned away by pain and this new, intolerable reality: he was at their mercy. The silence stretched, taut as a tripwire.
Then his eyes fixed on something past Fred’s hip—his injured arm twitched. A decision clicked behind his eyes.
With a sudden, guttural snarl, Blakk planted his good hand and shoved himself up into a sitting position. It was a clumsy, pained move. Fred didn’t flinch, his blaster still pointed at the dirt. It looked like a final, pathetic attempt at dignity.
It wasn’t.
As he sat up, Blakk’s boot lashed out in a vicious, sweeping arc. It wasn’t aimed at a person. It was aimed at weapons. The hard toe of his boot connected with the barrels of Eli’s and Fred’s blasters where they were held loosely, knocking them spinning from their grips. The move was shockingly fast, born of pure desperation.
“Hey!” Eli yelled, stumbling back a step.
In that fractured second of surprise, Blakk’s other hand—the one that had been cradling his ribs—shot to his hip. His own blaster, sleek and obsidian, was in his hand before anyone could breathe. He didn’t aim at them. He angled it skyward, toward the cavern’s high, crystalline ceiling.
A slug, already glowing a sickly, corrupted crimson, shot from the barrel. It sailed upward, a streaking comet of wrongness. It reached the apex of its arc above the clearing and detonated.
There was no sound.
There was only light—a bursting, all-consuming nova of painful, bloody red. It swallowed the world, bleaching color, erasing detail, burning pure white afterimages directly into their retinas. Fred threw an arm over his eyes, a searing pain lancing through his skull. He heard Trixie cry out, heard Kord roar in disoriented anger.
The light died as suddenly as it came, leaving a pulsing, greenish blotch swimming in Fred’s vision. He blinked rapidly, shaking his head, fighting to clear the blinding flash.
The first shape that resolved was Eli, scrabbling for his blaster in the moss. The second was the sight of Dr. Blakk, already thirty feet away and moving in a loping, uneven sprint towards the tree line. He clutched his injured arm tight to his body, his coat flapping behind him like a torn black wing.
“No!” Eli snarled, his blaster now in his hand. He brought it up, sights aligning on the retreating back. His jaw was set, his finger tightening on the trigger.
A hand closed over the barrel, forcing it down. Eli whipped his head around, furious.
Fred met his gaze, his own vision still swimming with spots. He shook his head slowly. “Let him go.”
“He’ll just come back! He’ll build another refinery!” Eli argued, voice tight.
“Yeah,” Fred said, his voice calm, certain. He watched the distant figure disappear into the thick fungal undergrowth. “He will. Men like him, they can’t help it. They always come back.”
He finally released Eli’s blaster. “And he’ll give us a real excuse to finish it. A better one.” He turned his back on the empty tree line, as if Blakk were already forgotten. He walked over, scooped his own blaster from the moss, and checked Voltage’s tube. The slug buzzed, a comforting, angry vibration.
Fred slid the weapon into its holster with a soft click. He strode past the others, not toward the hidden tunnel they’d used before, but toward the denser part of the woods where their mecha-beasts were tethered, hidden and waiting. “He’s hurt. He’s lost his toy. And now he’s scared. That’s when people get stupid.”
He didn’t look back to see if they followed. He knew they would. The soft whir-whir of Trixie’s camera powering down, the heavy crunch of Kord’s footsteps, Pronto’s muttering about “cowardly retinal assaults”—they fell in behind him.
Eli stood for a moment longer, staring at the spot where Blakk had vanished. He looked at the blaster in his hand, then at Fred’s retreating back. He let out a long, slow breath, the fight bleeding out of him, replaced by a weary understanding. He nodded to himself, holstered his weapon, and turned to follow.
Fred reached his mecha-beast, a sturdy, modified Rockethog with repaired plating and custom grip handles. He swung a leg over the saddle, the familiar leather creaking under him. He thumbed the ignition, and the engine coughed to life with a low, steady rumble that felt more like home than anything.
One by one, the others mounted up—the soft whine of Eli’s, the deeper thrum of Kord’s heavier model. Fred didn’t wait for a signal. He twisted the throttle, and the beast beneath him surged forward, picking a path through the glowing fungi and towering mushrooms, away from the scorched earth and the scent of ozone and defeat.
He led them, not in a frantic rush, but at a steady, purposeful pace, back into the deep, living green of the caverns, back toward the quiet alcove in Quiet Lawn they called home. The fight was over. The next one was waiting.