How compact everything is in these small towns. It's even more frustrating that we missed someone. I reason, hurrying to cover the distance from the center to a small residential area. It was naive to assume that the "warriors of good" wouldn't suddenly hide behind civilians at the last moment. Start clearing with the residential sector? Risky. And time-consuming. Preventing detonation was the primary goal. But now the fascist remnants have definitely occupied the upper floors. We'll have to finish them off using the old method: make a loud entrance, exit dramatically. From upstairs, the first bursts of automatic gunfire ring out. And inside me, I feel the rhizome activating again. Hurrying to strip away human form once more. Ah... I don't like losing control.
Near the entrance of an old Soviet courtyard, several bloodied bodies lie scattered. I don't have time to examine them properly. They seem to be some old women. But my eyes still catch on a man in stretched-out tracksuit pants, leaning against the wall. Next to him is an empty bucket. Probably he went out to throw away trash and stopped for a smoke. Smoking kills. Who did they register him as? A loafer? A representative of the hostile Russian world? An accomplice of the occupier? It doesn't matter anymore. A gunshot puts an end to it all. Like in a bad vaudeville. Well then... Life is a cabaret, my friend. Welcome to the cabaret.
Transformation begins as soon as I manage to dash into the building's entrance. Tentacles, bursting forth from my neck, arms, and stomach, leave their human parts behind and rush upward along the banister. Using the excess energy stored in my cells, the rhizome expands explosively. It knocks on every door, penetrates every opening, searches every corner. In less than a minute, it reaches the fifth floor. The rooms targeted by gunfire are apartments with windows facing different sides of the building. Clearly, the fighters decided to hold a circular defense. They even brought along an anti-tank guided missile. Idiots... You won't live long enough until the tanks arrive.
Spiraling tendrils burst into the room, thrusting directly into someone's abdomen. Turning internal organs outward, they tear the body apart. Unlike my partner, I don't like staging things. I act according to the situation. This one—holding an automatic rifle—can have his arms torn off, leaving his legs intact... We'll deal with him later. His companion, apparently young and therefore particularly sensitive, panics and jumps out the window. He aims for a parked car but misses, crashing onto the sidewalk with a thud. Inside the apartment across the hall, the rhizome is already dismantling the rest of his comrades. Will there be any hero left with a grenade now? Come on! None? Oh well... From the last opponent who hid in the corner, the tentacles rip off his helmet along with his face. The performance is over.
Still attached by hundreds of tendrils to the raging biomass, I slowly emerge from the entrance. There I meet Agnia, who has arrived late again. Not surprising. She'll take her time... By herself.
But from her expression, I immediately understand something is wrong. The girl seems not just confused, but stunned. Frozen, she stares unblinkingly at the bodies lying near the bench. Did she recognize someone? I understand whom. Wide camouflage-colored trousers. A hooded sweatshirt. In daylight, you can see it's not black, but dark green. And chestnut hair stained with fresh blood. The bullet entered the head almost in the middle of the forehead. The body was thrown backward immediately. Now its pale face looks up at the sky with glassy eyes.
She was shot shortly before our arrival. Absolutely senselessly. Just hours before the troops approached and the official liberation of the city. Those whom I had just killed. But even this will no longer change anything. I crouch down beside her, gently close her eyelids. Rhizome filaments automatically reach toward the entry wound, testing the blood, retreating back inside. Dead flesh usually interests the biomass less than fresh. Or maybe it's already satiated today. But suddenly I realize something is wrong. I sense through my spinal cord what my organism has just detected, and sharply turn around to look at Agnia.
"He's still alive... Inside."
"This is..."—my partner says, staring at me in horror.
"Try."
"No... I don't want to. It'll be like last time."
"You won't learn otherwise. Try!"
On the girl's face there's still a mixture of fear and doubt, but her rhizome's tendrils are already reaching toward the body. The creature lacks human reason, and therefore human hesitation. It simply performs the tasks assigned to it. The tentacles lift the baggy sweatshirt upward, exposing the rounded abdomen, wrap around it. Intuitively sensing the location of the living being inside and determining the optimal cutting line, they begin burning through the dead tissue with enzymes, penetrating deeper into the body. What month was she? Around the sixth? Such premature babies are usually not saved. They weren't saved. No one saved them before us. But this isn't a cesarean section... I watch as the rhizome tears apart and consumes fragments of flesh, joining the circulatory system, wrapping itself around something, gaining mass. And like a large black egg, it pulls out the amniotic sac together with fragments of the former uterus. Dragging it toward itself, it submerges it within the serpentine body, immediately closing the horny plates above.
I meet Agnia's still-surprised gaze.
"This is so strange... He's inside. But still alive. I can feel him..."
"I can feel that it's time for us to leave."
From the direction of the forest, cannon fire can already be heard. Assault units on armored vehicles, under artillery cover, have broken through to the city.