Chapter 81: Drift worms
He looked at her, an unspoken question in his gaze pressing for an answer.
"Tearing it off could just leave its teeth in you; that’s how things are with normal leeches."
Ryan glanced at her.
"You’ve had leeches before?"
She replied, already searching for something in her pockets.
"I watched it in a documentary."
Brandon facepalmed before asking.
"So we just kill it on his back then?"
"No, it could vomit everything back into the wound..."
Her voice trailed off, distracted as she ruffled through her pocket for a few more moments before freezing.
"Found it."
She pulled out an ID card from her pocket, then looked at Miles’s back for a moment before choking again at the sight. She barely stopped herself from puking at the sight of the writhing thing on his back.
Seeing her plight, Ryan took the card from her before asking.
"What do you want to do with it?"
She’d recollected herself now, hesitating before looking back at Miles. She nearly threw up again but forced herself to watch.
"I... I need you to slip the card under the leech’s mouth, then use it to pry it off."
He nodded, then approached his back. Miles turned his head away, facing his front again. He also took his barely controllable fingers away from the monster, giving Ryan some space to work.
The cool surface of the card scraped along his numbed back before hitting something. He felt Ryan tapping it over and over again until a part disconnected.
The pain shot up an octave, but he kept his teeth clenched, staying silent through it. Having found a way in, Ryan slid the card further down, then used it as leverage to pry the leech off.
It disconnected with a pop, landing softly on the corpses between the two. The pain vanished in an instant, completely suppressed by the numbness permeating his body.
Miles let out a small sigh of relief at that, then turned back to find the creature wriggling down there, stretching its mouth to try reconnecting with him.
Ryan had already taken a few steps back for safety. Not that it was necessary; the creature seemed too fat to even move half properly.
Its body looked like a long, white, misshapen tumor. Fat to the point its skin was taut under its own tension. A mix of black and purple bruises, or bruise-like markings, covered its body.
’Disgusting.’
It was simply disgusting to even look at.
Before any of the others could react, Miles grabbed its distended body, then threw it hard against the far wall of the room.
The creature let out a garbled cry, then burst in a mix of red and black blood against the wall. Its deflated remains slowly slid onto the ground.
A notification popped up in front of him.
[You have slain an anomaly.]
[Soma-class Larva slain: Drift worm.]
[You have been awarded 10 points.]
Seeing that red blood, his blood, splatter against the wall suddenly made him dizzy. The unnatural cold, numbness, and stiffness in his limbs were slowly backing off now. And for the first time in a while, he could feel the warmth of [Cold Resistance] roaring to life in his chest once again.
The sliver of relaxation barely lasted a moment when he felt a throbbing pain in his head. Reaching for it, his hands came away stained with blood.
Not only that, his back, almost all of it this time, started squirming in pain under the abuse it had received so far. The only place spared was the point the leech, or rather drift worm, had bitten into. It was still numb.
"Did anyone pack a first aid kit?"
"I did."
Mia answered before heading towards the storeroom. Seeing her move towards that dark room made a thought surface in his mind.
Sarah had been feeling strangely cold outside too. Sure, she didn’t have any [Cold Resistance], but neither had Kyle. And the boy had lasted much longer than her, in much lighter clothes too.
’Shit.’
He pushed himself off the ground, reaching to the nearest cabinet for support only to grasp nothing. He stumbled forward, luckily caught by Chloe before landing face first in the corpses.
"Hey, don’t move so suddenly, Miles. You’re hurt."
Miles used her as support to properly get to his feet. His legs felt weak; they quivered beneath his weight.
Still, he eased himself off her, turning to Ryan before snatching the card out of his hands.
Chloe stretched her hands towards him, then hesitated, unsure if she would only make things worse. With her hesitating and Ryan shocked, he stumbled his way towards the storeroom, tripping and barely catching himself over an arm.
Mia looked up from her bag with widened eyes as he burst into the dark room. He only had to look around for a few moments before finding Sarah.
She lay shivering in a corner, wrapped in her thermal blanket.
Using the wall as support, he pushed himself towards her. Behind him, Chloe, Ryan, and the rest entered in a rush. Mia stood up as well, taking out a white box with a red cross from her bag.
Miles paid attention to none of them. Reaching Sarah, he knelt in front of her, grabbing the blanket with his still recovering fingers, then pulled it off.
The others gathered behind him, with Mia reaching last. She shot Ryan a worried glance, but the boy could only give her a hesitant nod in reply.
"He won’t do anything cra-"
He stopped his sentence midway as Sarah’s body hidden beneath the blanket came into full view. Her skin was deathly pale, and every part of it was shivering violently. Her eyes moved restlessly beneath her eyelids.
Miles wasted no time in patting around her stomach. Nothing. A thought flashed through his mind, but he dismissed it, choosing to flip her over instead.
He felt carefully along her back. Luckily for him and everyone there, his hands finally hit something protruding out of it. It was on her lower back, soft and disconcerting in an awfully familiar manner.
Rolling up just the bottom part of her shirt, he found the same ugly, white, tumor-like mass pulsating on top of it.
A drift worm.