"...But what is the actual plan to get out of here?" Jasmine asks as she puts away the written directions.

  "Okay, so, blue whales are approximately 30 M long, people can crawl around in their arteries, while this little beastie is fucking huge. And it's transparent. You can make out the vague shapes of organs and veins," I gesture to the vague translucent shapes past the stomach wall. "You make a little hidey hole in the wall of the stomach for the free fall for everyone who helps. Meanwhile, I will be making my way, stabbing shit with my other tools until it drops. Once it's dead, I can use my powers to make my hidey hole." I hand her the rose steel circular saw and grin through the pain.

  "Uuuhhh, alright then. That sounds terrible, hahaha. But we have literally nothing to lose. How will you breathe in the arteries?" She asked a valid question, prompting me to get out my fake scuba tank made from thin metal that I had spray-painted a dull grey. I created it a few days ago as a half assed attempt to hide the fact that I can breathe underwater. I was not expecting it to be used in this scenario.

  "Haha, of course. Is there anything you don't have in your inventory?" She laughs while trying to get a better look at the fake tank of air.

  "I…stole a lot of things on the first day and made a lot more since," I say lamely, unsure how to lie out of an explanation if pushed. Luckily, or unluckily, depending on how the next few moments played out, the angry man came over with the perfect change of topic.

  "You think that will work?" he asked in a rough Bristolian accent. Now that he was actually facing me, I got a good look at the angry-looking fella. He was barrel-chested, bold, with hazel eyes and a permanent scowl written across his face. "Do you think you can kill it?" he asked again, seemingly having overheard our earlier conversation as he gestured at the circular saw.

  "Um, maybe", I hesitantly answer, not used to talking to so many new people in one go. "It would properly die but surviving the fall…" I trail off and shrug, only for Jasmine to continue, "The challenge feels like it's set up for us to survive, even the stomach acid is weak. If they want to watch us do the challenge, it's unlikely they would kill off their more interesting characters."

  "Should pop it, fall slowly, like letting air out of balloon." A sickly looking, tall, pale woman with a thousand-yard stare states matter-of-factly in an Eastern European accent after appearing out of nowhere. I jump as much as my ruined leg allows and turn around to face her, only for the woman to stare straight past me as if I wasn't there at all. I was about to ask for more context before her spindly hands reached into the air to make vague yet precise movements.

  "The sacks grow and…small?, always with the way we go. Even through wind," she states again, her hands making a strange waving motion as her eyes begin to move in slow, deliberate movements, seemingly tracing something invisible to everybody but her.

  "What the fuck are you on about, love? What sacks?" The unnamed pissed off not-so-gentleman asks, his previous frustration threatening to boil over once again, causing her to step away. I saw Jasmine look on in confusion from the corner of my eye, but my focus was on the woman's eyes that reflected illuminated grid-like lines in a dull green. Synapses fire in rapid succession as I try to piece together what the now panicked-looking woman was trying to say.

  "Wind and grids. Can you see a map? Can you show it to us?" I step between the man and woman and try to appear calm and supportive. Her eyes and face light up at my question, nodding enthusiastically. "Map. Yes. You no see, I show pen? Pen, paper…" She trails off, looking frustrated, and mimes drawing, causing me to retrieve a pen and blank sketch book in a flurry of blue lights. "Ah! Yes, yes, thank you." She exclaims at the gift, taking it from my hands and launching into a whirlwind of activity.

  'Her eyes can reflect the map's light, but it can't be seen? Is it projected onto her lens? Questions for later at a less pressing time.'

  Having calmed down from his earlier outburst, the man came to look over my shoulder at the woman's surprisingly detailed drawing of the sky's lurkers' insides. The map was complete with hollow chambers she claimed swelled and shrank with the monster's movements, suggesting they were some kind of buoyancy organ keeping the large creature up in the air and letting it choose where to go.

  If that were the case, bleeding them would let us down gently and be significantly safer than my plan of rediscovering gravity. But first, we had to get to the glorified balloons. We spent a few minutes planning, which attracted quite the crowd that Jasmine would arm with more copied power tools to advance towards the inflated organ close to the stomach, while I would crawl my way through the beast's insides to pop the other side and kill it if the bleeding didn't work. While Jasmine was able to copy the tool, she couldn't repeatedly make more rose steel, so I switched it out with a regular blade and installed the toxic metal into one of the copies.

  But before we could start the plan I needed healing, or in this case, my wounds needed to be confiscated. Turns out the pissed off man could transfer injuries and was trying to send his own electrical nerve damage into the jellyfish wannabe, but its energy was too dense for him to harm the great beast. Luckily, he was more than capable of distributing mine and others' wounds amongst our ragtag group to the point I could move around with minimal restrictions and keep the cool scars, greatly enhancing our odds, even if the process caused him to pass out.

  How his energy interacted with my body and injuries was fascinating, and I invited him and the others to meet at the same address I gave Jasmine if we survived the fall and the upcoming week. It was odd offering a group of strangers to work together in the future when I spent most of my life avoiding people, but I couldn't deny the usefulness of some of their abilities. From manipulating age to controlling metal, everyone's ability could be used in one form or another, and if we could form a working relationship, all the better. The age manipulator was even able to wind back time for our self-harming healer and wake him from the realm of sleep. I have no idea why they didn't do that in the first place, but by the looks of their huffing and pushing, it took a lot out of them.

  With everyone up and running and the tools mostly copied over, the gathered survivors began their bloody, brutal work of cutting into the living wall of flesh. The effect was immediate. Meat quivered, lights pulsed, and sparks of electricity lashed out from the opened wound moments after it was cut, only from it to heal shut again like nothing had happened.

  No, not healed, not really. It just reformed into the shape it was before. The cut was still there, bleeding ever so slightly. Jasmine pokes it with a trembling finger to confirm the monster couldn't heal itself before readying herself to start cutting again.

  I stared in fascination at the effects of the rose steal and defence properties of the sky lurker before shaking my head, glancing at the Ukrainian woman's map and heading off to the other side of the swimming pool of acid. It was time to make my own contributions to our great escape. But not before I whipped up a quick wooden handle for my blade so I wouldn't be electrocuted again. It didn't take too long, and I was eventually able to make a big enough cut to squeeze myself into a giant vein of blood and was swept away by the current far enough away that I could put my fake air tank away and focus on the real issue at hand.

  'How do I make sure I'm the one who kills this bitch to get the reward?' Because while I wanted everyone to make it out alive, I sure as hell wanted to be the one to complete the challenge. They would likely "Lose" or "Damage" my tools while I wasn't there, after seeing how valuable the rose metal was. Especially the metal manipulator. Ideally, they would meet up with me in the future, and we could try to live in a beneficial mutual agreement, but who knows what life will throw at us? Hell, I didn't even know if I'd stick with my current group for long or if the wheels would make us kill one person each or some shit.

  All I really had control over was my actions, and for once, my effort meant something more than a few less trips to the hospital, and I will be damned if I don't seize every opportunity I can. So instead of being a good little boy and forcing my way to another cluster of supposed buoyancy organs, I headed to where I thought the brain would be, according to the map. Which, in my defence, also had a supposedly large buoyancy organ, so I wasn't too far off the mission.

  Or at least I tried to head towards the brain, floating around in alien monster blood was an odd experience, with the distinct sensation of drowning in oil that made navigation somewhat challenging. Luckily, all I really had to do was allow the blood to drag me along with it up to the top of the cruise ship-sized monster before cutting my way through the vein and into the fleshy organ-filled cavity. 'This is so fucking dumb and most definitely not the blood-pumping fight I had envisioned when I was kidnapped, ' I finish cutting out the basketball-sized hole and watch the blood flow into the monster's internals like a macabre hose pipe.

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  I feel a grimace form across my face as I fall onto transparent elastic organs and begin to wiggle, stab and bite my way further up towards the brain. But it wasn't easy; the organs didn't take kindly to my parasite roleplay. Zaps of electricity scorch my skin and light up my nervous system like a Christmas tree. The pain sent me reeling, but I managed to carry on stabbing and eating the empowered flesh to fuel my endless stamina and mild healing factor due to everything I consume being converted into what my body needs and processed at high speeds. But it was mentally exhausting, and made my poor blood-covered body bloated, sore, and twitch periodically from nerve damage.

  But nerve pain was nothing new, and the suffering was welcomed when I knew it would only make me stronger. I just had to survive and make it back to someone who could heal me before I get eaten by the dead. 'Sooooo no biggie? Not like I had anything else going on.' But that didn't mean I had to like the process of my body slowly unravelling from constant mutilation and being pushed forward by unrelenting stamina that wouldn't let me rest.

  Powerful flesh ripped and tore free only to be caged behind my relentless jaws as I swallowed more of the electrifying meat, pumping more fuel into my mortal coil and flooding it with adrenaline that soothed the pain. This endless cycle bounced my mind between exhausted and hyperactive faster than a bipolar hamster, yet I climbed, cut and wiggled my way far enough up the monster that I could see something that didn't look to be made of melted glass. Falling face-first yet again due to the beast's trembling and getting a healthy dose of zap zap juice straight to the dome, I crawl towards a large jagged multicoloured crystal suspended within yet another car-sized organ. It looked more promising than the last hallucination simply because I didn't know the human eye could see that many colours. Bright orange, neon greens and half a dozen colours I didn't have names for danced across the jagged crystal, leaving me in a psychedelic trance.

  I could have stayed like that for hours staring at the beautiful sight, but I had more pressing matters, like the slowly inflating, glowing sack above me that guided me up to the top of this meaty prison. It was almost too bright to look at; its blue-purple light made me shield my eyes in discomfort as it flashed in an almost strobe-like manner. It looked like its gas bladder was filled with some kind of ionised gas lighter or hotter than air, allowing it to float high up in the sky. Or magic? I had no idea how interdimensional monsters worked. I just hoped it would deflate if the pretty light show was popped somehow. The problem was I didn't think the mystical smoke would be good for my health, especially if the amount of sweat streaming from my pores being this close to it was any indication.

  'But when has self-preservation ever gotten in the way?' I begin sliding away from the rainbow crystal as far as I could, slipping past other organs and sacks of jelly-like flesh and take out the needed items in flashes of blue. 'It just boils down to not dying.'

  Gas casters, forged rose steel scrap, multiple crossbows and bots tipped with my most toxic metal. 'And that's like one thing.' Timed firing mechanisms made from modified egg timers, springs and a fishing line click into place on the mounted crossbows, hastily duct taped to the elastic surface to try and provide a stable surface.

  'And if they wanted to make that hard, the fuckers shouldn't have left me unsupervised with a dream and an unhealthy obsession with things that spin.' I cackled and set the timer for five minutes before hurrying through the maze of organs to the new shiny I wanted to grab. I just had to get through the packaging, but that's what knives are for. Well, that and other things that, oddly enough, usually have less blood involved than popping the giant fluid-filled container.

  "Ah, that may have been the brain." I hum into the ozone-infused air. I haven't been able to feel the matter around me since I entered the monster, but stabbing the crystal holding organ opened the floodgates to my abilities' sixth sense. I felt the whole fleshy chamber violently shake one last time, making me grin through the sticky blood plastered across my face. The beast was dead. I do a little self high five in celebration and look at the timer I set on my watch before yelling a curse and jumping into the no longer functioning brain as the timer went off.

  A shrill ringing pierces the air, followed by two dull "thurps" that went off in quick succession. For a moment, there was silence before the world started to burn. A loud boom shook the corpse as the IED went off a moment later, spewing miasma-infused flames and shredding what remained of the organs surrounding it. Flashes of purple power arcs around the mutilated brain, raising the temperature higher and distorting the chamber through a haze of heat.

  The sludge-like liquid holding me in its embrace begins to bubble, my flesh burns from the scolding brain matter as the ionised air wreaks havoc around my prison. Dark circles start to appear around the edges of my vision, my mind begins to feel fuzzy as my consciousness retreats from the pain of my demise. Loose, jumbled words begin to spill out of my mouth in a torrent of panicked gibberish as my mind starts to slip through the cracks, and the world fades away in the blinding agony of being boiled alive.

  "If I lose it all, slip and fall, will you laugh at me?"

  "You're nervous." The hazy apparition of my father states.

  "Huh?" My head whips round from staring at my new, overly bright trainers to stare at my father standing next to me in the car park.

  "You sing when you are nervous, you're like your mother. If you don't like the shoes, we can find a new pair." He says like they weren't the only pair that fit my weirdly shaped feet, even if they would make me stand out even more at school. "But if they work, use them…"

  My blood begins to surge and boil beneath the surface, making my veins bulge and strain against my scorched skin.

  "...Make the most of what you got…"

  Sparks of light blue power ignite through my eyes, blinding me.

  "...Who cares about what other people think of you…"

  Current peels away from my fingers in visible, sharp, jagged lines of electricity that branch off into the matter around me.

  "...And if they are that focused on your shoes, then you have already passed them."

  My eyes snap open, the jumbled hallucination fading back to the recesses of my mind, letting the pain hit me like a truck. I'm moments away from being boiled alive, but I can't help the bloody grin that spills out from the depths and shapes my face. Clenching my clawed hands into fists, I freeze the rapidly moving matter around me, solid, delaying the transference of heat and begin pulling my way up and out of the brain into the ionised chamber above. I move as if in a trance, pulling the solidified blood and brain matter up with me as a twisted form of armour against the blazing heat.

  Each step upwards was agony, each step forward tore against my resolve, but each step was further away from where I would have been, and that was all that mattered. A laugh slips through my cracked lips as I heave the last of my prison up into the chamber and stare in awe at the power of the now dead beast. The new chamber spans endlessly, its edges hidden behind a foggy haze of ionised gases.

  I stumble as the plasma licks and hisses against my armour of decaying flesh, its heat raising my fever even higher. Skin peeled, hair became brittle and snapped at the scalp, yet more laughter escaped between mouthfuls of putrid brain matter that converted into the best source of hydration I could ask for.

  Currents of power burst free from my unravelling body with every step, joining the storm around me, liquifying everything in my path as I stumble forward. Plasma falls to the ground in wet splats as flesh melts, sinking deeper into the prison the beast's corpse had become. If I were more lucid, I would have marvelled at the unnatural level of power on display, but my fraying mind could only think of popping the overgrown bubble.

  Snakes of pale blue power ripped the buoyancy organ apart as my blood boiled and sang for sweet release until a deafening pop crashed against my eardrums. Ionised air burst into the clear sky, releasing atmospheric pressure. The floating corpse lurched like a broken elevator, tilting to the side as more and more tears ripped through the dead beast, causing it to fall.

  Wind and plasma swept past me out of the gaping wound, lifting me up as the floor fell beneath me. "You could let it all go, you could let it all go." Lyrics heavy themselves out of my lungs as I slowly become airborne. "It's called: freefall"

  Solidifying and freeing a hook of solidified flesh churns my stomach as my hold on my power slips, but I catch the floor before it pulls out of reach. "It's called: freefall"

  I heave myself down and begin pulling open the translucent flesh "You could let it all go, you could let it all go". I burrow into the corpses like a maggot, burying myself deep in the elastic substance "Cause ain't shit free but falling out".

  My vision swims through black visages, my mind spirals as the world falls around me, "And that shit's easy let me show you how…" My voice trails off into nothing as my mind slips away into blessed nothingness.