The huge lift hissed to a halt, its doors dragging open with a metallic groan. We stepped into the industrial level of the central lift complex, a cavernous chamber that might once have thrummed with purpose. Now it was a shell, half-lit by sputtering lamps, half-buried under the jagged ribs of the collapsed upper city. Rusted catwalks dangled like severed tendons overhead, swaying in unseen drafts. The air was a cocktail of scorched wiring and old oil, poorly masked by the sharp antiseptic mist bleeding from leaky vents.
Guard droids hailed us from recessed alcoves, voices identical: “Hail Director.”
Two Directorate officers barreled out of a side office before we could respond. Their expressions jittered between shock and relief as they skidded to a halt in front of Larek.
“Sir, Director, by the Divines, we…”
“Later,” Larek cut in, voice sharp enough to slice air. “Has safe passage to headquarters been built?”
They traded a nervous glance. “Not yet, Director… we’ve cleared part of the old south corridor, but…”
Larek’s curt nod slammed the door on excuses. “Follow me.” He was already moving.
We fell in behind him, boots echoing against reinforced flooring. The tunnel ahead stretched long and straight, branching into sealed side chambers. Windows offered quick snapshots of industrial facilities in triage. A coolant plant where drones sprayed sealing foam over ruptured pipes. A machine hall littered with dismantled exosuits stacked like corpses awaiting burial. A bio-assembly room, its vats glowing sickly green, half of them shattered, miasma creeping along the floor like pale mold.
In one window, I caught sight of a familiar silhouette, a short figure in tattered armor, hunched over a console. Jaerek, or maybe just someone with the same haunted face. I slowed for half a step, but the others were already moving fast. I had to keep up.
The tunnel ended abruptly at a mound of fused rubble, metal and concrete welded together by raw force. To the left, a broad security door yawned open, flanked by two droids standing statue-still. Their sensors flickered lazily as we passed.
Beyond lay the remains of a droid assembly plant. Half the space was choked with rubble, concrete injected into gaps to seal out the Nether-tainted void beyond. The other half had been jury-rigged into a Directorate outpost. A conveyor belt served as a command desk, holo-displays strung from chains bolted to the ceiling. Temporary bunks leaned against the rusted shells of assembly lines, ammo crates stacked like sandbags. Guards moved through the chaos with the brittle, overworked focus of people running out of options.
We wove through, salutes and stiff nods rippling ahead of us as news of Larek’s survival spread. At a guard post near the rear exit, worker-class citizens were being interrogated. One, a woman with the hollow-eyed fatigue of too many shifts, held out her papers with shaking hands.
“We’re assigned to the Kalveth Spindleworks, on the far side,” she said.
The guards barely managed to glance at her credentials before spotting Larek. Their discipline cracked like thin ice. “Director! Sir…”
“Continue,” he said, a single gesture dismissing them.
Flustered, they checked the workers’ papers, handed out breather masks, and warned them the path ahead was still heavily infested. The citizens shuffled off, masks hissing as they sealed.
Then it was our turn.
I waved off the mask a guard offered me. “Don’t need it,” I said.
His gaped like I’d just admitted to being immortal. Vex, of course, couldn’t resist. “Show off,” she said, loud enough for everyone to enjoy. My ears burned.
We filed through a narrow Breather chamber, disinfectant mist rolling down from the ceiling. A hiss, a pressure drop, and the doors parted to reveal the outside.
The crater hadn’t gotten any prettier.
A vast wound split the city, steel and concrete curling back like scorched parchment. Girders jutted skyward like jagged ribs. The depths were lost to a luminous sea of swirling miasma, tendrils drifting upward toward the fractured dome. Shafts of cold light knifed through the gaps, catching on splintered towers and broken windows. It was beautiful in the way a corpse can be, silent, final, impossible to ignore.
I’d been here before, I thought, boots crunching on shattered glass.
“Déjà vu?” Arvie’s voice purred in my head, warm and amused. “Or just remembering how poetic you got last time? You called it… what was it? ‘A twisted artist’s vision of the apocalypse.’ You’re improving. Almost sounds like you mean it now.”
I huffed a laugh and didn’t answer.
Guard droids flanked us through the open ground, optics sweeping constant arcs. Something large stirred in the miasma below, sliding between girders like a shadow with mass, but the droids’ cannons stayed quiet.
At last, we reached the Directorate’s gates: slabs of black metal taller than a crawler transport. They rumbled open, the vibration sinking deep into my bones.
Inside, Arvie chimed again. “Last time we came through here, they stripped you down and threw you in a chair. Now? You’re the honored guest. My, how things change.”
I couldn’t help but smile, again.
The HQ smelled the same, metal, sweat, the faint tang of bureaucracy, but it wasn’t dead quiet anymore. Cubicles buzzed with activity, officers hunched over terminals, voices clipped and urgent. Heads turned as Larek strode past. Whispers followed.
A few high-ranking officers rushed forward, their questions tripping over each other.
“Director, we thought…”
“Sir, what happened…”
Larek raised a hand. The noise died instantly. “Meet me in my office.” He didn’t break stride. We followed him into the chamber where I’d been stripped of my gear before.
“Bring his belongings,” he ordered a guard. Moments later, my satchel was pressed into my hands. He kept the scarred plasma rifle, weighing it in one palm as if deciding its fate.
I opened the satchel and retrieved the mutacell box. Sleek, pulsing faintly, a thrum of restrained potential. I nodded, slipped it back in, and slung the bag across my shoulder.
Larek led us into his office, where the officers delivered their report: how they’d tracked his captors through a hidden passage behind a vacant storeroom, how the saboteurs collapsed it mid-chase, killing several guards, how suspicion had festered ever since.
“Yes,” Larek said, flat as stone. “The traitor is captured. These people saw to it.” He gestured toward us.
The officers’ eyes cut to me with thinly veiled curiosity. I resisted the urge to look anywhere but forward.
Larek dismissed us with a brief nod to me and Aedan. ‘I have much to do. We’ll stay in contact. An officer will take you to the med bay.
The officer led us through another corridor into a vast hall repurposed as a medical wing. Alcoves lined the walls, each one a micro-lab full of ongoing experiments. Nether beasts snarled from containment cages. Sleek pods stood against one wall, quietly waiting.
Vulkred was all business. “Pods should auto-calibrate,” he said, already steering me toward one. “They’ll know what to do with a mutacell. You won’t.”
“Comforting,” I muttered, setting my satchel down.
“You’ll have to guess the nature of the enhancement,” he added, “unless you’re one of the lucky ones who get… options.”
That sounded like a joke. It wasn’t.
I stripped, climbed into the pod, and tried not to think about how exposed I felt. Vex leaned in, smirked, and whispered something I’ll never repeat. Then the lid sealed, cutting her laughter off.
A strange pressure flooded my veins as the mutacell locked in. My head swam. Somewhere deep in my head, a foreign interface unfolded like a puzzle, none of it made sense.
“I don’t understand it,” I thought.
“How strange,” Arvie murmured, sudden gravity in her voice. Then: “Wait. There are options.” She unfurled them in my mind like neon glyphs etched on black glass.
The first choice was raw, visceral. I’d be able to feel people and creatures, read the pulse of their emotions, push when they were weak, pull when they were off balance. With enough pressure, even the minds of lesser beings could be bent, reshaped like soft metal.13Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBZK5t2iO2Q
The second radiated outward, a lattice of awareness threaded through the space itself. I’d sense the spark of life at a distance, gauge the hazard level of every place, feel the tremor of danger long before it struck. A premonition, cleaner, sharper than the faint instinct already woven into me.
“Interesting. You already have a weak version of that second one,” Arvie said. “A kind of… twitch before something goes bad. No life detection though. I’d say the first option’s better. Especially in the infested zones. More versatile.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Take the first.”
The world went white, then nothing at all.
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