It was impossible to break free from the mutant's grip. The harder I struggled, the tighter she held me. And she liked it! When she took one hand away to move the concrete slab with the other, I decided that was my chance! In vain.
"Oops," she said, finally putting me down on the floor of some kind of basement.
"What, do you realise how stupid you just were? Apologise immediately, and maybe I'll pretend nothing happened.
"Shut up, slave?" she asked uncertainly. Her gaze darted around the basement, then settled on me:
"Don't go anywhere, okay? It might be dangerous outside.
She quickly jumped out of the basement and closed the entrance with a concrete slab. The electric light was on in the basement, and I began planning my escape. Cunning plans are my real superpower. And... super weakness? Anyway, sometimes my cunning plans didn't work out very well for me, but I can't help it, multi-step plans just seem to come to me naturally.
First, let's test Mary Jane's bold statement: I'm stronger than I look. There's a notch in the edge of the concrete slab that the owner uses as a handle. I grab it, brace my foot against the wall and pull the slab towards me with all my strength. The sound of stone scraping tells me that my efforts are not in vain!
This slab weighs at least three tonnes.
I doubt that ten people could move it, and I did it alone! True, only a couple of centimetres. But another dozen tries like that, and there it is — freedom!
Hmm. The whole wasteland is at my disposal, survive as you will. "By right of the strongest, you now belong to me" — how many times will I hear something like that in the future?
To hell with them all!
The strong, the masters of life... It doesn't matter if you have thugs with machine guns working for you or if you can just move concrete slabs with one hand. Maybe I want that too? I want both, and a million dollars to boot! I'll run away from here, get stronger, and take cruel revenge on all of them!!!
With all my anger, I threw myself at the slab blocking the entrance, but it wouldn't budge. I strained until my muscles ached unbearably and the skin on my fingers was torn, but for some reason, the concrete slab began to behave like concrete again: it responded to everything with immobility and stone-cold indifference.
I needed to look around. In the corner was a mattress, next to it a table with an electric hotplate. In a nook separated by a thick concrete partition were several boxes of canned food. I picked up one box, and it weighed as much as a box of canned meat should — a hell of a lot. So I don't have any superpowers. Maybe a pebble had fallen under the stove and I just needed to push it out slightly for it to fall off? Oh, what does it matter? Excuses for my own weakness — not what I need right now.
My "slave owner" will be back soon. I have to defeat her. In open combat, my chances are not even zero, they're negative. But I've noticed a certain awkwardness in her communication with me, and besides, she calls me a slave but doesn't consider me a thing, which means she's completely unaware of her own superiority. And I already have a cunning plan to turn this situation to my advantage.
The stove moved with a noise, and I came out of my hiding place. Mary had forgotten her costume on the battlefield and was coming back for it. She folded it up at the entrance and headed towards me. With a gentle, smooth movement, she pressed her finger against my nose.
"I can't believe it! No, you're definitely an angel. You won't leave me, will you?
"Make up your mind, woman, am I your slave or your angel?
"I've got it! Ha ha, I've got it! We just need to test it, and everything will be clear! How do you like the plan?
"Awesome plan, as reliable as a Swiss watch...
"Yes! I like it too. Come on, get undressed.
The fact that she wasn't forcing me was very telling. The most important thing now was to keep the dialogue going; apart from words, I had no weapons against this mutant. I took off my T-shirt and jeans. Now we were standing opposite each other completely naked. Mary touched my neck, moved lower, to my chest muscles, ran her hand over my abs — it was funny to feel them separately, not as one big ball. Her hand moved down to my groin, touched my friend, and left.
"Do you want me?" Mary asked, blushing.
"I want you...
Step forward, her breasts pressing firmly against my shoulders.
"For you to...
I leaned my head forward, our faces getting closer.
"Give me...
Further, to her ear.
"Freedom," I whispered, my lips almost touching her ear.
"But..." Mary said, sounding hurt. She took a step back to look at me. She could have pushed me away.
"You're not turned on at all! But you look so grown up! Oh..." The mutant girl paused again, but after a second she continued:
"Who are you and how old are you?
Who am I? A small-time entrepreneur with dreams of something bigger? A lover of cunning plans? I don't know. Right now, I'm just a man with no past, no name, no goal. Although, I guess I do have a goal. I want to become stronger so that no one can tell me what to do. And my rise to the top of power begins here and now!
"Call me Peter Parker," I lied.
This superhero has one interesting quirk: making sarcastic comments during battle.
"Are you an adult?"
"Strange question.
"In biology class at school, they explained the difference between boys and girls, you know" — why men are born ten times less often than women, and all that... If you're a minor, some part of your brain doesn't work, and that's why your willy doesn't get hard," Mary blushed and looked down.
"You're so cute when you're not pretending to be someone else. You scared me with your talk about slavery, but you're not really like that. Why did you say that there are ten times fewer men than women?" I asked, keeping my tone gentle. She considers this fact obvious, so I need to ask carefully.
"You're right, actually there's about one man for every eight women.
"Well, that's much more accurate!" I lied with a sly smile on my face. "Now let's get dressed and discuss the rest.
What madness, such an imbalance in the distribution of the sexes? Although, I can feel with my butt that this is far from the last fact of life in this world that I will have to come to terms with. And not the worst, belonging to the male gender in such a situation can be incredibly advantageous. By the way, the "thing in the brain" of this body works, it took me a lot of effort not to get excited next to such a beauty. Meanwhile, we got dressed in everyday clothes, and Mary asked suspiciously:
"How did you get here?
"Just took a chance," I replied automatically, busy trying to come to terms with the gender ratio.
"Nothing happens in the wasteland just like that! Did someone send you? Do you work for Fisk? Answer me!
"No, I don't know this Fisk of yours! I've never heard of her before.
"Don't lie to me! You must have heard of the Queenpin Corporation! And where were you before you met me?
"I don't remember!" – another lie, but this time I simply cannot tell the truth.
"What do you mean, 'I don't remember'? Do you have amnesia?
"I don't remember much about yesterday or before. I don't even remember how many men and women there are in the world, I just didn't want to seem too strange to you... But it's true, I woke up there, in the factory, and there was a battle going on around me! I still don't understand anything.
"Peter, don't be afraid, but I'm going to have to tie you up. I heard that Fisk has a mutant or a device that can brainwash people! You may not know it yourself, but you could actually be her agent.
Instead of ropes, Mary used steel bars as thick as my finger. She locked the loops made of long rods around my hips and chest, leaving my hands free, and then tied the loops together. The resulting structure barely touched my body, its weight resting on pins driven into the wall unless I tried to move away from them. But even if I removed it from the pins, the only way to get rid of it was to bend the rebar or cut it. Mary herself sat down at the table and took out a radio station — a bulky device with relays, switches and antennas. She put on headphones and began to listen to what others were saying. She switched frequencies one after another and frowned more and more. Finally, she took off her headphones and began to untie me.
We sat side by side on the bed. Mary explained, and I listened.
Five years ago, Thanos, an alien from the race of Titans, attacked Earth. Her attack was so swift that no one except a team of superheroes calling themselves "The Avengers" had time to react. What is commonly referred to as "The War for the Infinity Stones" lasted only a couple of hours for Earthlings and ended in complete defeat. Thanos collected all six Infinity Stones, and that...
No way, I refuse to believe it.
Having collected the six Infinity Stones, the alien gained the ability to make a wish upon the universe, absolutely any wish. And what did she wish for? To reduce the population of the universe by half!!! What nonsense! However, for me, this is now an indisputable fact; I live in a world where such things are possible.
Thanos made her wish, snapped her fingers, and people all over the planet began to disappear. Many decided that the end of the world had come, the apocalypse, and that tomorrow would never come, so they gave themselves over to debauchery. But the most fun was in New York. Tony Stark, also known as the superhero Iron Lady, disappeared. She was the only person who could keep the board of directors of Stark Industries, the world's largest arms company, in check. However, the Stark Corporation itself had no intention of getting its hands dirty in a war for New York — for that, they had a long-time partner with vast experience in semi-legal and sometimes outright criminal force operations. The Queenpin Corporation, owned by former crime queen Vella Fisk.
Another contender for the city was the Osborn corporation, known as Oz-Corp. Like Stark Industries, they were involved in weapons, but to avoid competition, their developments were more in the field of biology and chemistry: living weapons like Mary's suit, enhanced humans, artificial mutants... After the previous alien invasion, New York became the "big apple of discord" for everyone concerned about the safety of the planet in the face of threats from space, or more precisely, those who make money from it. Neither Stark nor Osborn could just abandon a city littered with alien goodies. And transporting everything to the mainland was risky, not to mention prohibited by the government.
The war for New York began long before the "Decimation" — the name given to the disappearance of half of humanity after Thanos' snap. There were minor skirmishes, street fights, and acts of sabotage, but after the Decimation, the conflict escalated rapidly. Less than a month later, both sides brought tanks and artillery into the city. The result was that not a single building in Manhattan remained intact, Staten Island became an independent state of mutants, and Wella Fisk, who won the war, settled on Long Island.
And today, somehow, all those who disappeared during the Decimation have begun to reappear. An unknown force was trying to return everyone to where it had taken them five years ago, but New York had suffered too much during that time, and almost no one returned to the wasteland. Many of those who did return complained of amnesia, so Mary no longer questioned my sincerity.
But there was something else.
"The Osbornes were losing, and my sister and I had been working for them from the beginning. I couldn't escape the islands anymore" — the whole wasteland knew me and my costume. But I persuaded my sister to run. Many people helped us, and we kept it secret, but when the time came to escape, Vella Fisk herself was waiting for us with a squad of cataphracts — walking fire platforms based on the Iron Lady's armour. I fought Fisk and lost. She threw me from a great height and left me for dead, while the cataphracts shot the rest. I saw torn bodies and melted bones... Since then, I have lived only to avenge my sister.
Mary began to cry.
I began to comfort her: stroking her, kissing her, speaking words of consolation. She gradually calmed down, began to respond to my caresses, and somehow, imperceptibly, she straddled me. I froze in anticipation, but at that moment...
A loud, deafening sound, roaring on a single note for what seemed like an eternity. I covered my ears, but it filled the entire space, penetrating my skull and entering my head. Mary leaned against the wall and opened her mouth wide. Finally, the sound grew quieter, becoming just a ringing in my ears.
"... ship... I'll go...
She got dressed again and left, leaving the passageway open. If I was going to run, this was my best chance. But right now, it was more advantageous for me to help Mary Jane with her revenge than to run away in search of happiness in an unfamiliar, deserted and ruined city.
The mutant returned five minutes later, when my hearing had almost completely returned.
"The container ship has docked. We'll hide here today, and tomorrow they'll unload it and it'll leave.
"Was that a ship's siren?
"Yeah. To scare away rats and dogs.
"I see. Shall we have a bite to eat?" I suggested in response to Mary's advances.
The canned corned beef and beans, heated on the stove, seemed very tasty and unusual to me. There was a kind of stalker-like, camping romance to it.
People were stomping and talking outside, but not for long. When we finished eating, everything fell silent. I led Mary to the bed myself, started undressing her, and then stood in front of her, allowing her to undress me. Seconds passed, but I didn't feel her gentle hands. Mary stared at the entrance to our basement, as if a monster were about to appear.
And it did appear.
A grey figure threw aside the stove and filled the doorway. It was a woman with grey skin, large muscles, and so tall that only her chest was visible in the doorway. But soon her head appeared, splitting the concrete with a long, thick horn in place of her nose. She got down on all fours and pushed off the floor with such force that her body flew forward faster than the eye could see.
Mary shielded me from the monster and grabbed it by the face. The rhino woman began to growl and kick, pressing Mary against the wall. I ran to the side. Following the mutant, two women in tight-fitting black clothing and masks, with rifles in their hands, burst into the basement.
And again, a blow to the face!
But I stayed on my feet and struck back. I didn't expect her to be thrown back like that! The second one was already getting ready to shoot me. I quickly moved out of the line of fire and closed in on her, grabbed her rifle and hit her somewhere in the head. It all took less than a second. Two female soldiers are dead, but I'm still alive. But my problems don't end there. Nosorozhka has almost pierced Mary and will soon be on me. I doubt she'll be knocked back by my blow either.
An army knife glints on the belt of the nearest female warrior. Shooting at Nosorozhka is dangerous; I might hit Mary or even myself with a ricochet. A knife will do the trick. I grab it and plunge it into the grey-skinned mutant between her shoulder blades. I put all my weight and strength into the blow, but the knife only goes in halfway! She's tough, the bastard. But I hit her well, she screamed in pain, and Mary rammed her horn into the wall. My supergirl got a better grip, grabbing the top and bottom of the rhino's snout — it's hard to call it a face — and twisted it ninety degrees. The carcass twitched in convulsions and fell silent.
"Damn, it looks like it's from the ship! They decided to take control of the port and found us!
"Your door is hard to miss. Not many people can open it.
"Rino works for Queenpin! What luck, one less powerful mutant for Fisk, and I'll be able to feed the suit.
"There were two other women with her.
"Vigilantes?
"They don't look like the ones I've seen.
"Mercenaries. They won't come after us again.
"We still have to leave!
"We have to, but we can't until I get the suit back.
Mary laid the lifeless body on the floor, pulled the knife from Nosorožka-Rino's back, and began to pour blood onto her costume. When it came back to life, she threw the corpse on top of it and began to look outside.
"It seems quiet, but we'll leave through the other door anyway.
In the half hour it took the suit to absorb the corpse, they could have set up not just an ambush, but a deeply echeloned defence. And yet, Mary's appearance from a freshly made hole in the floor of some administrative building came as a surprise to the mercenaries. She killed several of them, the rest fled, and Mary helped me up. An armoured truck was parked outside the windows.
"Shit! That's a transport vehicle for cataphracts!
"Looks like a great way to get out of here and into the wasteland.
"Yeah, it's worth a try," said Mary, taking a set of keys from the corpse dressed in a uniform with the word "quipin" written on it.
"There's a turret," I pointed to the hatch in the cab.
"Yeah, so what?
"Open it, I'll try to use it.
"You're a man! With amnesia!
"Aim it at the enemy and press the button," she said. "Is that how it works?"
"I'm not sure," she said, but opened the hatch anyway.
A minute later, a heavy vehicle was picking up speed along the embankment. They were indeed waiting for us at another location, which we had bypassed, but we had revealed our position. Something resembling a blurred human silhouette pointed a barrel at us, and I saw several flashes, and in the next second, the car was shaken by an explosion. The shooter was far away but hadn't lost sight of us, and the second volley was more accurate. I ducked under the turret mask, and that's the only reason I didn't get blown out of it. The shell hit the back of the vehicle and it caught fire.
"Meri, we're on fire!
"Not us, them! These transporters are almost indestructible; the more they get smashed up, the more expensive the repairs will be!
We didn't slow down, so we soon rammed through the port fence and drove off along the broken road. Several cars followed us out of the port and started chasing us. I shot the most brazen one, and his jeep swerved, flipped over and rolled down the road, ramming another one of our pursuers. The rest preferred to keep their distance, but I still fired a few shots to scare them off and in the hope of getting a lucky hit.
We were already quite far away when two more trucks like ours appeared behind our pursuers.
"Peter! I don't know how to engage the engine boost!
"Are you suggesting I crawl across the bonnet and spit petrol on it?
"No, what kind of weird fantasies do you have! We'll have to jump out and run away on foot.
"You can run faster than a car?
"No, but the jeeps won't follow us into the ruins, and the trucks won't be able to find us there!
The transporters chasing us were rapidly closing the gap, and together they would definitely trap us. And they don't care about my machine gun. We'll have to take a risk. Mary jammed the steering wheel and the accelerator pedal, steered the truck towards the wall, took off her suit to grab me, and prepared to jump. As I fell, I thought my insides would spill out, but I was lucky — I landed on the mutant's body. Mary was only slightly bruised, and her abrasions were healing before my eyes. The truck crashed through the wall and rolled on, and we ran after it.
I thought we had gotten away when a drone with a small bomb dove down from above. The explosion behind me knocked me down, and my vision darkened.
***
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