The bellow shook the room, echoed around us, and I found myself pressing my palms to my ears. That horrid noise made my teeth rattle in my skull. The sound, slowly, died down until it sounded like a yawn.

  We stood to attention as the creature stepped out. Even with his legs hunched as they were, it loomed nearly as tall as Dynamo’s transformed state. Lassie moved around to my side, growling as she glared at the lanky creature.

  Seeing it move felt beyond uncanny, a thing that should not and did not exist in nature, animated by some freaky science that STING had been meddling in. “They mentioned a project when I was spying on this place,” I mumbled. “But... I didn’t think it was anything like this.”

  “Dynamo, if that thing makes a move...” Cheshire trailed off as the creature rested on his haunches, big knuckles braced on the floor like a gorilla.

  He stared at us with big golden eyes, which seemed to glow faintly in the dim light. If it weren’t for the deep and rasping breaths it made, chest heaving on every one, it could have passed as an immobile and very freaky-looking statue.

  “It’s... not attacking us. That’s good, yeah?” Stretch asked. Her eyes darted rapidly between us and the creature.

  I frowned behind my mask. Sure enough the creature just stood there, staring stupidly at us. Even Lassie calmed down when the creature made no move against us. I reached down, patting the robot dog on the head. “They said this thing wasn’t complete, and that Hagen was having trouble getting it working. Guess she never got it actually... aggressive?” Not that I was complaining.

  Cheshire grunted. “Well, whatever. If it’s not attacking us, then we don’t need to worry. And I’d rather not waste energy attacking it. Come on, let’s get moving.”

  We started to leave. The critter started to follow us. His footsteps slapped wetly on the floor, knuckles brushing and bumping on the metal. “Uuuuh...” Dynamo froze by the doorframe. “Why is he doing that?”

  The big fishy face betrayed no emotion. The others started to inch back, and the strange creature did not move. It was only when I took a step back that it started to follow me. And then I realised it wasn’t staring at us, it was staring at me.

  “Oh come on, what the hell...” I murmured under my breath.

  “Shiiiit,” Foresight said, snorting with laughter. “This is like, when a newborn animal... uh, what’s the word...”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “When it imprints on someone,” Dynamo said, wincing.

  “Oh fuck my life,” I muttered. I had been closest when the thing came out of the pod, so I must have been the first thing he actually set his eyes on. Did it think I was its damn mother?! Hagen had perhaps hoped it would be her to be so fortunate, banking on luck when she did not have the chance to properly program its loyalty. “I don’t want this... thing imprinting on me. He stinks of fish.”

  “Well, what do you wanna do?” Cheshire asked, shrugging. “Have Dynamo pull his head off?”

  “Yeah, uh, I’m not gonna do that. That’s fucking gross, Chesh.”

  And, in truth, I wasn’t exactly excited at the idea of killing the stupid thing. He might have been a weird freak of nature, but I frowned on animal cruelty as a general rule. A controversial stance, no doubt. “I guess we just... head back to the hideout and bring this thing with us. Maybe we could make it into a guard dog?”

  What the hell did a creature like that even eat? The thought loomed in my mind... no doubt he had a big stomach.

  My soldiers stood to attention above us, their sudden movement making the hairs on the back of my neck stir. “Shit,” I hissed, glancing up. “We might have company.”

  We turned and raced up the stairs, the big wet thing following after us at a leisurely pace, leaving the smashed up STING lab behind us. “I don’t hear any sirens, or that whine you hear from the city’s security drones,” Stretch said. “You sure?”

  “My soldiers picked up on something. I can’t see through their eyes but they’re warning me.”

  We emerged from the stairwell in one long column, now joined by my soldiers, and we raced through the two large rooms of the factory. Our friends from STING were still out cold, but I did take the time to scoop their rifles up as we ran by. Finally we reached the destroyed doorway and took up positions on either side of the yawning openings. The creature loomed behind me, blessedly out of sight.

  The stink of fish still fed through my gas mask.

  I peered out, slowly and carefully. At first I thought the lot was empty. Then, faintly, I heard a small whirring sound. I narrowed my eyes as a small silver sphere slightly larger than a baseball hovered across the open lot, a stream of blue light flying from the underside to scan the ground.

  “Shit!” Cassie yanked me behind cover by my collar, pulling me as if I were weightless. “That’s a Vision Sphere! If one of those is here, then-”

  There was the sound of thunder in the distance, rapidly growing closer. Like a thousand footsteps striking the earth in rapid succession, joined by the wailing wind of the air being torn in twain. A figure in black and orange came to a skidding halt just outside the torn gate of the factory, his heels leaving twin trails of fire in the asphalt. The flame patterns on his sleeves and trousers glowed faintly, heatwaves rising off of him like the distant haze of a Summer day.

  Trailing after him, standing on a floating circular steel platform, came a man dressed in a white and blue, long fabric fluttering from his waistband. Several Vision Spheres floated around him, like bees orbiting a flowerbed, and on his head he wore a silver orb-like helmet that seemed to be almost a larger version of the spheres. Blue lines hummed and glowed in the carvings of the helmet.

  The orbs fanned out at his mental command, surveying the area in greater detail. And all the while they were drawing closer to our hiding spot.

  “Oh fuck me,” Foresight mumbled, sounding as if he was going to vomit.

  I had seen these two on the news enough times to have some idea of what we were dealing with, but that only made the icy dread in my gut all the colder. Honest to God superheroes, here to investigate a ruckus. “Trailblazer and Visionary,” I said.