He was big and fast enough that he didn’t stop by his own power. Instead, he hit enough of the outcroppings of needles that he was impaled sufficient times that they made him stop.

I saw them react like they were spring-loaded, plungers depressing, filling his exposed flesh on legs, lower pelvis, and arm with enough noxious fluids that the skin visibly darkened and swelled, excess fluid foaming and bubbling out around the injection sites.

He threw one hook out in the direction the pair had gone. Glass broke as he hauled it back in. An apparent miss. Fume Hood pelted him with orbs, and he didn’t seem to care, except for the way it limited his vision.

He hurled the hook blindly my way, and it embedded into the wall ten feet behind me. He hauled on it, hard, and the wall panel came away, syringes included. My forcefield served to knock the worst of it away, but the remainder it still came at me, now festooned with broken glass and a spray of fluid. I had to perform some frantic acrobatics to avoid it. Needle tips scraped against the fabric of my costume to the extent they vibrated against the individual fibers.

He was backed up by a bunch of thralls. Men and women in what looked like padded hazmat suits, heads covered by domes, all carrying what might have been laser cannons. Needles receded as they entered the area across from me.

Emerging from the smoke, he reached out the hand that no longer held his hook. Whatever he did, there was no dodging it, no avoiding it. My head, nose, and throat exploded in pain, fluids simultaneously choking and suffocating me, flowing out of my nose and down the back of my throat. Ear pressure went wonky, momentarily deafening me, and the stirrings of a bad headache momentarily stole my ability to think. My stomach did a flip-flop, and my injured hand roared in fresh, hot pain.

I was dimly aware of him rearing back to hurl his hook.

A silver blade struck the brute. He turned his attention to Withdrawal and Precipice. The way he threw his hook was power-augmented, making it fly straight, and it used enough of his physiology that the silver line at his shoulder and chest split.

Pus and suppurated, swollen, infected flesh overflowed from the wound.

Two of the thralls fired their cannons in the direction Precipice and Withdrawal had gone. The big guy threw himself in that same direction.

Another two fixated on me, raising their guns.

I flew hard at the corner, where needles bristled from pipes and ductwork. The Wretch hit the needles and damaged one of the pipes, causing it to start bubbling something that smelled like a sharper rubbing alcohol from the seam near the ceiling.