Vern quaked with fury as Ollie blithely discussed a massacre. This was Ollie’s hubris, showing itself again. Her certainty that things would always work out in her favor, for they always had before, hadn’t they?
“Don’t cry, Vern. It doesn’t suit you,” said Ollie.
Vern’s nostrils flared with her wild, angry breaths. “I’m not crying,” said Vern. “I’m gathering my strength.”
Her bare feet touched the metal flooring of the van. She buzzed with hunger and want. Mycelium, heeding the calling of their distressed symbiont, fed her their nutrients.
“What are you doing?” Ollie asked.
In answer, Vern released her exoskeleton. Its span far outreached the capacity of the small glass cage. Either the carapace would break against it, or the cage would give.
Vern won out, her exoskeleton denting the glass of the cage and causing the great metal body of the vehicle to shudder backward and forward from the impact. She let the exoskeleton click back into its sheath, and released it again, flinging the boned flanks out from her body harder and faster.
The driver swerved, then regained control of the vehicle.
“Don’t be stupid!” Ollie called out. “You’ll kill your little girlfriend.”
Vern glanced sideways. The gurney Gogo was strapped to was fastened to the van’s floor. Even if it wasn’t, Gogo’s fate at the end of this journey would be death. This was Vern’s chance to save not just her but everyone back at Cainland.
“Queen!” Ollie shouted, but what could she do, strapped down just as Vern was? If she moved the one part of her body she had control over, the exoskeleton, she’d only be helping Vern.
Vern folded and unfolded her exoskeleton once more. This time, the shake of the vehicle disrupted the driver enough that the vehicle ran off the road, spun, and flipped. Ollie was belted securely in, but her head rattled back and forth and landed in an awkward angle when the vehicle finally stopped. Her eyes were closed.
Gogo groaned awake, still strapped in.
The chains around her wrists and ankles held firm. She tugged and tugged against them, but they didn’t budge.
Ollie’s eyes opened, alert.
“What are you going to do now?” Vern asked, in threat. If Ollie unbuckled herself, Vern could shake the van again. If she stayed strapped in, what could she do but wait? And for what? Backup?
“Let me out of here, and I’ll let you live,” said Vern when Ollie didn’t answer.
“You will never learn, Vern, will you?” Ollie asked, anger peeking through her composed facade. This was the Ollie of the woods surfacing. She unbuckled her seat belt.
Vern unfolded her exoskeleton hard, shaking the van. Her seat belt unbuckled, Ollie stumbled toward the door, and Vern refolded and unfurled her wings again, knocking the van back and forth so that Ollie couldn’t regain footing.
“Let me out, and I’ll spare you,” said Vern, though she would not. Ollie looked like she was about to protest, but Vern shook the van again, forcing Ollie onto her hands and knees, her cheek crashing onto the floor. It was intoxicating to see her in such a humiliating state. This feeling, this potent high that accompanied the realization and onset of power, had toppled many. It was possible to suffocate on your own ego. “Get up and release me,” Vern said. Next to her in her own cage, Queen growled and screeched.
Instead, Ollie reached for her phone. Vern shook the van again, the phone falling out of Ollie’s grasp.
“Give up,” said Vern.
Ollie held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, okay,” she said, and headed for what Vern hoped was the lock that would undo this cage, but then Ollie smiled. She reached for a button, bright green, and pressed. The cage door did not release. Instead, the sound of hissing funneled in. White mist sprayed into Vern’s glass cage.
“That would be a nerve agent,” said Ollie. They’d devised a way to subdue Vern without direct contact. Vern should’ve realized they’d have arranged something like this.
Yet Vern didn’t feel herself sicken. She breathed in the chemical, no doubt, but her lungs did not burn with it. Her mind was clear.
Ollie, however, fared less well, wobbling, rubbing her eyes, coughing. The glass cage had been compromised when Vern had pounded her exoskeleton against its walls. There was a hole large enough to let the gas out. Unbolstered by the fungus, Ollie was more sensitive to the nerve agent’s effects. But Vern had more time before it would harm her. “Let me out, and I’ll let you out.”