Chapter 531

Owen was fine now. He was no longer controlled by the chip the Grafters had implanted in his head. While it was still there, it didn’t dictate what he did anymore. Which was great. It meant Jake had his friend back.

Still, it was best not to keep the thing in Owen’s head any longer than necessary. There was no telling what kind of long-term damage it could cause if left in place. Jake needed to get Owen to Mick’s base so their human friend could extract the chip from his head. The sooner they did that, the better. But first, they had to get out of the living vessel.

Through his connection with the bio-ship, Jake knew it had taken a serious beating from his crawlers, and especially from his Kaiju, which still clung stubbornly to the hull. Through the fleshy tube attached to the palm of his hand, he was receiving a constant stream of alerts informing him of all the damage being dealt to the ship.

The living vessel’s systems relayed each new rupture and structural failure directly into his mind. So he knew that one of the bio-ship’s engines was heavily damaged and no longer functional, its organic machinery failing beyond recovery. The other, mounted on the opposite side of the vessel, wasn’t in any better shape.

His crawlers kept attacking it nonstop, relentlessly tearing into the living engine with their claws, and judging by its current state, it was only a matter of seconds before it was put out of commission as well. The bio-ship was rapidly running out of options, its systems struggling to compensate for damage they simply couldn’t keep up with. It was just a matter of minutes before the living vessel was destroyed.

Suddenly, in his peripheral vision, Jake caught sight of Owen dashing past him. He wondered where his friend was going. The answer came a second later when Owen lunged at one of the crab-things and tore into it with his claws. Chitin cracked beneath the savage assault as the creature staggered backward, shrieking in pain.

The other monsters stopped staring at Jake and immediately turned their attention to Owen, who was ripping his first opponent apart with ruthless efficiency. For the briefest moment, they hesitated, as if reassessing the threat before them. Then, without waiting for commands from Jake, they attacked Owen all at once.

Bolts of energy erupted from their organic weapons while others charged forward on bladed limbs, trying to overwhelm him through sheer numbers. Apparently, they were programmed to take the necessary action whenever the situation demanded it, even if no commands were being transferred to them. Their instincts, or whatever passed for them, were enough to keep them fighting.

Bolts of energy sizzled through the air toward his counterpart just as he dealt with his first opponent. Two shots slammed into his body in rapid succession, the impacts ringing off his armor and staggering him a half-step but doing no visible damage to his armored form. The force of it rippled through the plating, but it held firm without so much as a dent.

Owen spun and rushed toward another monster, ignoring the bolts of energy zipping past him and tearing into the ground and walls behind him, blowing open large scorched craters in the organic surface. He didn’t slow, didn’t even acknowledge the incoming fire. He tore into his next opponent with brutal efficiency, reducing it to a heap of shattered carapace and broken limbs in no time flat.

If Jake had needed another confirmation that Owen was no longer under the influence of the brain chip, he definitely had it now. There was no trace of mechanical obedience in his movements anymore. His friend was back and doing what he did best.

Suddenly, another message from the bio-ship’s systems flashed through his mind, informing him that the second, and last, engine had just been destroyed. Immediately afterward, Jake felt the living vessel begin to lose altitude, the subtle steadiness of flight giving way to a slow, unmistakable drop.

The air around him seemed to shift as the bio-ship adjusted instinctively, but the damage had already been done. There was no way to repair the engines, so their only option was to bail out.

He gave a firm mental command for the fleshy tube attached to the palm of his hand to let go. A pulse of acknowledgment came back at once. He wasn’t really surprised when it immediately loosened its grip, peeling away and slithering back toward the central console. It merged seamlessly with the mass there, sinking into the organic surface and turning into nothing more than a fist-sized lump of pulsing tissue on the console’s skin.

Jake then joined Owen in dealing with the crab-things. Between the two of them, it took less than half a minute to take out the remaining crustacean monsters, the last of them collapsing in twitching heaps of shattered chitin and broken limbs. The bridge fell briefly silent again, aside from the distant groaning of the damaged ship around them.

Retrieving the electrolarynx from his inventory, Jake quickly explained that the living vessel was falling and they had to bail out. The device buzzed to life as he spoke, its mechanical voice lacking inflection. When he finished by saying he had a plan for getting off the ship, Owen nodded once and simply kept staring at him, clearly expecting Jake to lead the way.

He darted out of the bridge, closely followed by Owen’s heavy footsteps pounding behind him. They sprinted through the bio-ship’s internal corridors at top speed, the fleshy walls pulsing faintly as they passed.

The two obsidian-like mutants completely ignored the synthetic monsters they occasionally encountered along the way. The synths attempted to intercept them, firing bursts of energy and lunging from side passages, but the two mutants barely paid them any attention. Bolts of light scorched the air around them, glancing off armor and tearing into the organic structure without slowing either of them down.

It wasn’t long before they arrived at one of the massive breaches the Saurian Prowler had ripped open in the vessel’s organic hull. The torn edges of living material flexed weakly with each drop in altitude, framing a jagged opening into the open sky beyond.

The wyrmcaller Jake had summoned moments earlier was already there, perched on the edge of the ragged breach, its massive form crouched low against the pulsing rim of torn flesh. Jake climbed atop the wyrmcaller creature and merged with it, becoming one with the beast.

He then closed its large, curved talons around Owen’s armored form, securing him tightly against its grasp. With a powerful beat of its wings, he launched upward, forcing himself through the jagged opening and out of the living vessel in a rush of wind and torn organic strands.

He was now in the open air. Below, the living vessel continued to lose altitude, its wounded hull sagging and pulsing as it fell. The Kaiju still clung to the descending bio-ship. Its three massive limbs were latched onto the organic structure while the claws on the fourth one were still raking the hull of the vessel, carving deep slashes into it.

But now that the captain was dead and the vessel was no longer a threat, there was no point in maintaining the assault. Jake mentally instructed his Kaiju to let go of the bio-ship. A moment later, the colossal creature disengaged and dropped away, its immense body falling toward one of the rooftops below.

As he circled overhead, Jake quickly studied the city far beneath him, and he saw something that surprised him. The Spartans were still there. He narrowed his focus, scanning the cluster of figures. He could clearly make out Silvia and Catalina among them.

Jake couldn’t believe it. He had told them to get off the streets and retreat to the safety of their subway base, to pull back underground and stay out of sight, but they clearly hadn’t heeded his advice. Sure, they had moved from their previous position, but they were still out in the open, exposed among the structures smothered in the organic plague.

And worse, from the angle of the living vessel’s descent, he could see that the bio-ship was falling directly toward them.