Georgia swung around the corner in the dark corridor. Crouching, peering. A grate made up the floor with a pit of wires beneath. A single swinging, flickering light lit the long passageway. The unmistakable sound of crashing metal as an automaton patrolled the corridor. Stiffly marching up and down. As it turned around she jumped out. Catching its fabricated skull with both her hands and landing her feet on its shoulders she pulled. Wires and screws snapped in the neck. The head came clean off as its bright purple eyes dimmed. The body fell to its knees and then to the floor. Georgia eagerly stuffed her hand up the neck into the cranium and pulled out a small piece of brown rock littered with purple crystals inside. She took a bite out of the rock like an apple. Liquid gushed out the sides of the pieced skin down her chin.
She continued, her low-hanging scabbard hitting the back of her legs as she ran. The sounds of industry were getting louder. The machines had constructed this underground factory unlike anything seen in the old world. Maze-like corridors took her past gaping glass windows looking down upon large turning wheels and molten rock being fed along trenches. Machines of differing complexity were hard at work in the construction of more of themselves. At last, she came to a docking bay for a huge equine machine. A hanging catwalk crossed in front of its head. Two simplistic automatons were repairing the machine as Georgia pulled her sword from her scabbard and threw it at the hanging wires on one side. The wire was cut. The catwalk fell away and the robots disappeared into the dark pit below. Their exploding bodies briefly lit up the floor below. The wire connecting the sword to her scabbard was taught and it began to pull back. She caught the sword on its return effortlessly. Sidling along the half-hanging catwalk she leapt on the machine's shoulder. There she found a hatch on what would be its ear. Forcing the hatch open, she found large tentacle-like structures attached to the inside walls of the interior. Following the tentacles through the machine as they got thicker. She reached the engine room. Inside a small green beast was suckling on the central furnace. As it sucked its tentacles pulsated. Purple energy rushed down the clinging vessels. She drew her sword once again. The room was warm. She stepped quietly toward the monster. Halfway down the room, the small creature's head snapped back. The sound of bones snapping as it contorted its neck to face her. A putrid green face with pure black bulging eyes and a circular mouth faced her. She rushed at it with her sword in front of her. The creature produced tentacles from its formless body that she slashed away. Mere steps away from it she missed one of the tentacles. Her eyes widened as she saw it pass her blade. The tentacle dove into her stomach and burst out multiplying itself over her body. Strands and vessels burst out of her mouth and eye sockets. She died. The veins and tentacles in Georgia began to pulsate with the same energy the machine provided. The colour drained from her skin and her hair went grey and fell out. Her lifeless body was completely sucked dry.
"Life signals: negative, she's gone". Mary said quietly looking at a small device.
"That fool was always going to get herself killed, always refusing help." Anne replied.
The two girls were standing outside the factory doors Georgia was inside. Anne leaned on her lance.
"eugh, what now?" Anne moaned
"I suppose we go and complete her mission". Mary pocketed the device and picked up her long rifle. Not long after the pair set off the ground rumbled as the wide bay doors on the factory began to open. A horse-like machine charged out smashing the sides of the doors before they were fully open. It drove using the set of tires on the sides of its lower legs. "Shit, Hengist's loose." Anne spat. weak dilapidated buildings crumbled in the wake of the Centaur's charge. The vines covering them snapped the trees and plants crushed. Anne and Mary ran after the machine. The tentacles from inside burst out from holes in the machine's body attaching themselves to the hull. In between the tentacles, a film began to grow spanning the body of the machine. The monster had grown skin around the machine incorporating it into its own body. Mary ran up the side of one of the taller nearby buildings and aimed her rifle. Her bullet pierced the machine's new skin in the head exploding and creating a hole in the wall. The mouthless machine let out a scream in Georgia's voice. Tentacles quickly came to fill out the hole and the skin closed up, then opened again now revealing a giant black pool the same as the monster inside's eyes. Anne managed to leap onto the left hind leg of the Centaur and dug her lance into it. Hanging from it she swung around it and flung herself upward. The same wire mechanism as Georgia's sword activated as it was pulled taught dragging the lance upwards back to her splitting the skin up the leg as it went. Giant tentacles spilt out as the thin skin split. The machine faltered falling slightly to one side on its now damaged leg. The monster's head reared and split open creating a mouth revealing the faceless machine head inside. Georgia's voice screamed again. The Monster's new lower body began to convulse, Anne dug her lance into its lower back and held tight. Seeing this Mary looked up from the scope of her rifle in awe "What is it doing?" Leaning forward the monster began thrusting its back out. A hole emerged in between its legs and a waterfall of bright green liquid gushed out filling the overgrown street below. As the monster convulsed it pushed something metal out of its new hole. The previously internal machine's back legs lifelessly crashed to the floor its body following. The machine now covered in green mucous it dropped demolishing a 3 story building with its shock waves. "It gave birth?" Anne asked now running up the monster's back and tearing herself away from the disgusting sight below her. Mary stared unblinkingly at the scene holding down vomit. Anne could see spikes launching up toward her as she stepped through the pink translucent skin. Writhing tentacles within now the machine skeleton was removed. Anne narrowly dodged the first two, stepping back before the third allowing the skin to cleanly open up releasing the spike she stepped on. Using the momentum she jumped throwing her lance into the spine of the up-right section of the monstrous centaur. It flung its malformed arms back in pain, and Georgia screamed again. Anne activated the wire pulling herself toward it. She pulled herself up onto her protruding lance looking up at the back of the monster's bald head. The centaur's head turned around to look at Anne. It now had Georgia's face with huge deep black eyes. Mary began shooting at Georgia's massive face wildly. The centaur's skin opened to allow the bullets to pass through without doing any damage.
On a nearby hill to the ensuing battle, a tent had been set up.
"We've not seen this before," said an old man in a general's uniform as he lowered his binoculars.
"It seems the monster has merged with one of our Victorians. She's been consumed and merged with one of those old Hengist Units" a woman in a white coat said sitting at a temporary desk looking at grainy black and white photographs.
"General Addiscombe do we order retreat?" a younger man asked the older man
"No, we can't allow something like this to cause further damage. Send in the artillery brigade for support".
"Aye Aye, Sir. Artillery regiment advance to battle" the younger man ordered into a handheld radio. Trucks towing old rusted howitzers were started up and drove away. Men disconnected the cannons and readied them for fire. A shell landed in Georgia's now giant face. It made contact but didn't explode instead her face was made concave softening the shell's movement and then sunk into her pink veiny skin. Her left arm was sucked into her body and moved upward toward the inside of her face where she carefully handled the comparatively tiny artillery shell and pulled her arm out again. She threw the artillery shell back toward the brigade stationed nearby, Mary managed to quickly shoot the shell causing it to explode into purple flame. The explosion pushed the centaur back lighting its thin skin alight. The tentacled skin withered revealing the floating mass within. Anne took a breath and dove into the hole. She found herself in the green mucous that escaped the centaur earlier. Tentacles shot toward her, she batted them away with her lance and swam deeper toward the central mass. "Please send more shells I can shoot them before they make contact" Mary shouted into her radio. The artillery brigade unleashed another barrage toward the centaur Mary shot each out of the sky as they arced toward the beast. Each shell exploded into the same purple flame as before. Big craters began to form on the centaur's skin, and green mucous and tentacle masses fell out covering the streets below in alien bio-waste.
Anne swam closer cutting her way into the central mass. She found a room from the Hengist Unit inside she turned the hatch door wheel. Mucous began to gush in but she quickly shut the door and the tentacles attached to the walls and floor sucked it back in. She saw Georgia's husk-like body floating centrally.
"Please, Anne. Please don't kill my daughter." Georgia's corpse gasped as tentacles flew toward Anne. She spun her lance around in the circle in front of her cutting the tentacles as they approached. She slowly stepped forward toward Georgia's body refusing to listen. The tentacle holding Georgia up from her stomach pulled her closer toward the small green beast they had been sent here to kill. As Georgia was pulled closer the beast hissed and merged itself with her body. Her skin turned green and her eyes a deep black. It tried to growl at Anne through Georgia's now fanged mouth but instead, it released purple miasma. Anne thrust her lance into Georgia's green skin, hitting her in the stomach and gouging a large part of flesh off leaving her intestines now sagging by her side. Georgia leapt at Anne. She dug her gnarled fingers into Anne's eyes. The room shook as the artillery barrage hit a second time throwing Georgia off Anne. Standing up Anne steadied herself on her lance. The room tumbled inside the monster's belly as the third barrage hit. Georgia threw herself toward Anne again as she stumbled from the impact. Anne spun her lance around cutting Georgia's hands away. Pulling her weapon back and pushing it forward once again into her stomach. Pulling it upward Georgia was lifted off the ground. She slid down the length of the lance. The Centaur outside let out its loudest scream yet and seemed no longer able to hold its form. First, the arms and legs melted away and the body contracted as the tentacles tried to crush the room inside itself. In the central furnace room, Anne was in sustained damage but held strong against the contraction. The tentacles failing to crush their power source tried to slither away but didn't get far before falling limp as the skin construction of the centaur completely fell away. The furnace room crashed to the floor of the street the centaur was destroying. The hatch door creaked open revealing Anne carrying Georgia's destroyed transformed body over her shoulder. Mary ran toward Anne and they met on a street in the deserted town. Anne threw down her body.
"What happened to her?" Mary asked,
"She was weak" Anne replied.
"Do you think she's still safe to eat looking like that?"
"We have to stick to protocol". The two then knelt down and bit chunks out of Georgia's green flesh, purple liquid leaking from the sides of their mouths as they chewed.