Diary of the Dead

by AppleTank

10: Anti body

They weren’t much for conversation. It seemed as if they were even quieter than flesh and blood creatures, ghosting through hallways on invisible paw steps, their eternally glowing sockets following you no matter how much they felt like pretending to be alive.

I felt the best option would be to observe, and ask the opinions of the rest of the members of Honeycomb. First, descriptions. The eldest was, ironically, the smallest, contained within the rat named Stuart-5. If your vision was truly horrendous, he may appear to be no more than a simple lab rat. However, on closer inspection, you would not be wrong for wondering how he isn’t dead.

Stitches seem to cover more of his body than not, with massively oversized claws and a mechanical-imitation of a scorpion's tail screwed on somehow. When angry, the skin on his face burns off like a bad memory, and you better hope his ire not be pointed at you. And you have to do something exceptionally dumb to put him in that state, in which there would be little option for you to defend yourself. Any physical contact with him will soon have you missing that bit of flesh, and more.

When not angry at someone’s foolishness, which so far, is most of the time, he ghosts through doorways to peer in quiet observation. Agatha is tailed by them most often by far, a constant reminder of the blade they hold at her neck.

The next is Hellcat, test eighteen. He used to be a black cat in life, now he’s the center of a constantly flickering torch. Stuart assumes they were trying to figure out how to transfer dragon traits. Hellcat has inherited a bit of the dragon’s trademark flaming breath, but not much of a dragon’s natural fire-resistant flesh, leading to his constant glowing-coal look.

Contrary to Stuart, Hellcat is a lot more placid, almost a stereotypical lapcat if it wasn’t from his quiet meekness to strangers. It takes months for him to place trust in anyone. Those he trusts however, will find a fierce protector. His straight line speed outmatches Stuart’s, and he will set himself aflame to get at his attackers, sometimes burrowing a hole straight through.

Finally, there is Wildcat, thirty-six. The lich wanted to try out manticore crossbreeds, thinking that both having feline characteristics would make the combination easier to take. Maybe that would have been true had they tried their experiment 100,000 years earlier. Unlike Stuart’s smoldering hate, Wildcat is far more spirited, in happiness and anger. She fiercely defends her little family, assisted by her ability to fly short distances and perch in places far above where one would expect a heavily clawed cat to be.

I watched them from a distance for a few weeks. Though they visited all of the Honeycomb members equally, they definitely spent the most time hovering in the Seer’s shadow.

---

“Bother me?” Agatha asked, pointing at herself. She laughed. "You couldn't be further from the truth! It's amazing, I'm learning something every day. I've never experienced having a moral code forced on me. How the heck do y’all function with self-doubt holding you back all the time?”

“By .... naturally not being an asshole?”

She tapped her chin. “Sounds difficult. Anyways, usually they come hovering in my shadow to remind me about the blade they’re holding over my head. It’s great! I can’t do anything about it. Though ... I will admit it is slightly frustrating in that they start glaring at me if I do anything more than practice with a slingshot, or exercise. My ability to wield a blade was already poor compared to even you, who started training less than a few months ago, out of decades of neglect. And my body is still near fully unaltered, so I’d have even more difficulty catching up.

“Then again,” she laughed, “it does mean that y’all get the knowledge that any resistance I put up will be utterly dismantled by any single one of you, so I don’t really have to worry about, say, Dimitri getting worried enough to perform an assasination.

“Otherwise? They just watch me.” She jerked a thumb behind her, through the window at a pair of red eyes I hadn’t noticed. “There’s a tiny black cloud sitting outside, that’s been sitting there for the past thirty minutes. They don’t approach me like they do with the others, they don’t rest near me (even if its near optional for them), they don’t make sounds near me. The only interaction I have with them is a deepening of their aura whenever they start getting suspicious of my actions, and I have to either explain myself or stop.”

I think most of Honeycomb realized that there was something really wrong with Agatha’s head, but with the Antibodies watching her, and the fact she’s arguably the least combat capable of us as the years goes on, we let her do her thing. She knows that she would swiftly run out of allies without the buffer the rest of the Club provides, and in turn the Club is sure she wouldn’t willingly backstab.

Yet.

---

The one the Antibodies hung around the most after Agatha is Gladas Falcowolf. I barely remember the smoky figures hanging around the corners during my own operation. Unlike Agatha, who revels in their barely veiled threats, Gladas is fairly fond of them.

“Yeah, they’re fairly nice to me,” Gladas said, brushing Hellcat’s head as it snaked by her side. “They helped me with my pet, well, friend, Blackbird. He’s a crow.”

I blinked. “I don’t think I’ve met him before?”

“He comes and goes. Right now I think he’s watching over a small group of corvids in the forest. Anyways, Stuart helped me split off a bit of my Phylactery to place within Blackbird. Now, I can help keep him alive through our bond. He’s almost ninety years old now.”

“Huh. I’d like to meet him sometime.”

“Sure. I’ll call for you whenever he comes to visit.”

“Anything else?”

Gladas tapped her chin. “I'll admit I’m kinda interested in how their bodies are coping with their mental passengers. Honeycomb is planning a few expeditions to recover data lost in the labs. Several of them, Agatha buried them so they wouldn’t get found.”

She shrugged. “Fortunately, we have time.”

The Antibodies act far more like the creatures they take the form of around the others, but they seem to be fond of Gladas the most.

---

I squatted in the grass, watching the three Antibodies. Their ability to stalk had gone to superequine levels; anything I could do would be infinitely more noisy than what they were doing now. Instead, I sat as still as I could with my piece of parchment, and a quill on my lips.

The three spread out, heads turning to keep their target in sight. Once in position, they burst into motion, with Stuart and Hellcat racing across the ground, while Wildcat spiraled into the sky.

In the middle of the clearing, Wally breathed out, and shifted his paws. A short hop to the side, and a curling of his limbs, left the two ground bound Antibodies catch nothing but air. A stripped branch, cut into a staff, shot into his grip, slapping Wildcat-- he hissed, tossing the staff into the air as Wildcat looped around and dove for his head.

I scribbled furiously into my parchment, watching as Wally shifted as little as he could to dodge or push away the speeding Antibodies. He slipped under and over their dangerous claws and teeth, what fur remaining on him rippling from their passage. His every carefully chosen sidestep moved him millimeters away from instant capture. His staff waved erratically to avoid Wildcat from swinging into his face. He flowed like water around the river sharp blurs weaving through his feet.

With each pass, Wally had to move more and more to avoid their grasping maws, their range and reach suddenly increasing, until Wally had no choice but to leap and roll forwards. In the brief moment where his eyes were obscured by the spray of snow, the Antibodies swerved like starving hummingbirds. Hellcat rushed his rear legs, knocking Wally off balance. Wildcat divebombed his free hand, forcing Wally to drop his staff against the floor to brace himself. Stuart landed nimbly on Wally’s chest, snapping his bladed tail over his back to tap Wally’s beak.

Wally sighed and dropped into the snow. “Your reach. Impressive,” he breathed.

Stuart tilted his head. “Anything less would be to let Agatha get away.”

The four of them did this pretty regularly. They choose a scenario and limitations, and see how long one could last. As far as I could tell, these four were likely the best powerhouses we had. I was still in training, Gladas field specialized in precisons, and Dimitri was ‘merely’ a decent melee fighter good enough to get away. Then there was Agatha, who barely did more than keep in shape.

Wally cared little about what the Anitibodies were, only what they wanted to do, and I think the Antibodies appreciated his straightforwardness. With each other, they don’t have to care about their appearances, nor the costs of the life they now lead. Together, they were monsters, and content.

I breathed a cloud of steam, stepping away as they discussed their session and storing my notes. I headed back to Plan P, kicking off the snow that clung to me on the doormat.

“This young?” a new voice asked.

I turned to see what appeared to be a heavy set dog standing on his rear paws. “It was an unfortunate accident that sent me here years ago,” I said, an eyebrow raised, “and now I am merely paying them back. Who are you?”

---

Several decades earlier

Wally’s talon squeezed Barnabee’s throat, slamming his head into the dirt. Wally’s other arm raised, a glowing blade hovering over his head.

“Hello there,” the Dog croaked.

“I know what you are, flesh golem,” Wally hissed. “For what reason did your masters send you here?” The blade drooped, repositioning its point to a spot on its neck that made the Dog’s blood freeze. “Speak, or forever hold no breath.”

---

He gave a short bow. “Barnabee Spirit, my fellow trainee.”

Author's Note:

yes its kinda a pun. formed creatures specialized for anti-Agatha work