He lost his grip on the spear and it clattered to the ground. “Son of a—”
CRACK! Another tentacle clocked him from the other side, knocking him away from the spear.
“—bitch!”
Karnage staggered back. He turned in the direction of the last hit.
CRACK! A third blow caught him in the back of the head. He stumbled forward, stars shooting across his vision.
“Monkey—”
CRACK! Another blow caught him across the face. Karnage grabbed the tentacle before it could recoil. He yanked it hard towards him, throwing a punch along its length.
“—FUCKER!”
His fist sank deep into soft flesh. There was a terrible squeal, and the squidbug appeared in a flash of cycling colours. It fell to the ground, lying limp on the floor as all the coloured drained out of its skin, leaving it an insipid grey. Karnage’s neck buzzed. “Warning. Sanity Level upgraded to Peachy Keen. Please refrain from violent behaviour.”
Karnage grabbed the spear and used it to fish Sydney’s sphere down from the ceiling. He braced it against the wall with his foot and stabbed it with the spear, cracking open the shell. He tore it apart with his hands as his Sanity Patch upgraded from Peachy Keen to Tangy Orange to Sharp Cheddar.
Sydney lay on the floor, coughing and gasping. Yellow smoke poured from her lungs. Karnage threw her over his shoulder and headed to the closed door. He tried pressing on the nodules beside it. The green lights seemed to ignore him. A sliver of white flowed down into the nodule, stopped, and circled around Karnage’s hand. White slivers started flowing down into the nodule from the surrounding tubes, and it soon filled with white. The door spiralled open, and Karnage stepped through it.
CHAPTER THREE
Karnage walked down the dimly lit corridor. Giant doors lined either side. Soft green pulses of light flowed through the squiggles along the walls. Karnage felt like he was walking through Cookie’s forearms. The occasional line of white light would stop, bunch up into a hovering ball as he walked past it, then streak off again, lost in the green mass.
Karnage felt a strange tingle at the base of his neck. Suddenly he lost all feeling in his body and he fell to the ground. “Right, mate,” Sydney said. “Now we do it my way.”
“Captain, it’s me,” Karnage gasped. “Major Karnage.”
“I know who you are,” Sydney said. Karnage heard the familiar jangle of handcuffs.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
“Arresting you,” Sydney replied, as she snapped the cuffs on Karnage’s wrists.
“Goddammit, Captain, this is neither the time nor the place! Look around you! Do you have any idea where we are?”
Sydney looked around. “Dimly lit corridor. Probably somewhere underground.”
“UNDERGROUND?!”
“We’ll find our way out, though, no worries.”
“Are you outta your mind?! We are deep inside an alien ship! Hurtling across space! Probably halfway across the damn galaxy by now!”
“Sounds like you’re the one out of your mind.” A finger touched Karnage’s neck, and he could move again. Sydney pulled him to his feet. She thrust a pinky in his face. “No funny business or I cart you out of here like a sack of potatoes.”
Sydney jerked Karnage forward. “For god’s sake, Captain, how can you not believe me? Didn’t you see that ship come hurtlin’ outta the sky? How the hell do you think we got here?!”
She frowned in reply. “I can’t remember, exactly. My head’s still fuzzy. I remember the sky went dark, like a freak thunderstorm or something—”
“That was no thunderstorm! That was a goddamn unidentified flying object of DEATH! It opened up one monkeyfucker of a death ray on us, and here we are!”
“Sounds like it’s not a very good death ray. Come on, keep moving. We need to find our way out of here.”
“This is a hell of a way to treat your rescuer! They had you all trussed up in a big hoverball thing. I had to break you out. I saved you from bein’ bottled up like… like a goddamn pickle in a mason jar!”
“A hoverball, huh? Then that proves it. We’re not on an alien spacecraft.”
“What?!”
“Come on, Major. Hoverballs? That’s not exactly alien technology. This probably has something to do with the Dabney Corporation. Probably some top secret operation. We just need to find somebody in charge—”
“Captain, did you miss the part where I told you they had you locked up?!”
Sydney stopped walking, and looked at Karnage. “You really think we’re on an alien spacecraft?”
“YES!”
Sydney looked around, and shook her head. “I’m not convinced.”
“Open your eyes, Captain! What the hell more proof do you need?”
“Some aliens would be a nice start.”
“Oh there are aliens, all right. I’ve seen ’em with my own eyes! They’re giant squidbuggy things with squiddy heads atop of buggy bodies with eyes like… like…”
“Like squidbugs?”
“NO! Like squiggles! Squiggly like the walls! Squiggly like the worms! Squiggly like the squiggles on Cookie’s arms! Goddammit, Captain, can’t you see the connection? Its all fallin’ into place. They got squiggly tentacles, too, and they shoot giant squiggly balls of electricity from their squiggly spears and… quit lookin’ at me like that! They’re here! I’ve seen ’em!”
“Where? Where are they? Where are these aliens?”
Karnage eyed every darkened corner suspiciously. “That’s just it. They could be anywhere. All around us. Ready to attack at any moment. Now get these cuffs off of me before they launch their squiggly squidbug attack!”
“They could be anywhere?”
“That’s right. Anywhere. Just lurking, waiting for the right moment to strike.”
“Where?”
“Where what?”
“Where are they hiding? Why can’t we see them?”
Karnage leaned in close and hissed. “That’s cuz they’re invisible.”
“Invisible?”
“Yes!”
“And you’ve seen these invisible aliens?”
“YES!”
“Are you seeing any right now?”
“No! They’re not actually invisible. It’s more like camouflage— goddammit, Captain, get these handcuffs off of me!”
“So far, Major, you have said nothing to make me want to do that.”
A squiggly squeal echoed in the distance. Sydney turned in its direction. “What the hell was that?”
“That,” Karnage replied, “was a squidbug.”
Sydney backed down the corridor. “It sounded like a worm.”
“They all sound like that,” Karnage said.
Sydney rounded on Karnage, her eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “This is a military thing, isn’t it? That worm was some kind of superweapon, wasn’t it? Some mutated superweapon grown out of control—”
“Now who sounds ridiculous? Why can’t you accept the simple fact that this is aliens?”
Sydney looked around. She shook her head. “That’s just so crazy. I mean, this place doesn’t look that alien.”
Karnage did a doubletake. “What do you mean it doesn’t look alien?! What the hell do you want it to look like?”
Sydney shrugged. “I don’t know. Just more… alien.”
They heard another squiggly scream, much closer this time.
Karnage rounded on Sydney. “Captain, with all due respect, get these fuckin’ cuffs offa me!”
Sydney shook her head. “I’m not convinced. I have to see ’em for myself.”
“So we’re just gonna wait here until one of those squiggly bastards comes up and bites us in the ass! Jesus, Captain, what do I gotta do to prove it to you?”