The creature's one good leg held its weight like a pillar of concrete and hate. Blood the color of motor oil poured from the stump where its right knee used too be, pooling across the asphalt in patterns that caught the dawn light wrong. The carved symbols on its bone spurs pulsed brighter now, reactive, angry, flooding the intersection with a low harmonic that made my fillings ache.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. The blood on my lip was mine. The blood on my bat was not.
"Jacob. Time since formation."
"S-seventeen minutes. The seam is still active. More signatures moving behind the membrane. Smaller. Lots of them."
"How many is lots?"
"I genuinely do not want to answer that question."
"Jacob."
"Sixty plus. Maybe eighty. They're queuing."
