The kitchen was a stainless-steel graveyard waiting for bodies. The triumphant swagger the Breachers had earned in the lobby evaporated the moment they stepped into the oppressive, shadowed maze of the back-of-house. The air was cold, still, and heavy with the smell of centuries-old rot, a scent that seemed to cling to the back of the throat. Their silenced weapons, which had seemed so omnipotent against the slow-moving Shamblers, now felt clumsy and inadequate in the tight confines. The beams of their shoulder-mounted lamps cut sharp, nervous cones through the darkness, revealing long preparation tables like metal altars and the gaping, black mouths of walk-in freezers.
"Eyes up," Fred's voice was a low, tense whisper over the comms, a veteran's instinct screaming that the easy part was over. "Something's not right."
The attack came with no warning. It was not a charge; it was an eruption of violence from all directions at once. A shadow detached itself from the ceiling above a row of ovens, and a creature, impossibly fast, dropped into their midst. It was a Stalker. Vaguely humanoid, but its limbs were too long, its joints bending at unnatural angles, allowing it to move with a terrifying, insectile grace. It was naked, its skin a pale, corpse-gray, and it moved on all fours, its head swiveling on a long, thin neck, its eyes two large, black, soulless pits.
It landed on a Breacher in the middle of the formation, a man named Roric. Before Roric could even register the threat, the Stalker's claws, long and sharp as razors, tore out his throat in a single, brutal swipe. Blood sprayed across a steel countertop in a hot, shocking torrent, and Roric collapsed, his new submachine gun clattering to the floor. The entire, shocking event happened in absolute, horrifying silence.
The kitchen exploded into a disorienting chaos. More Stalkers poured from the shadows—out of the open freezers, from beneath the prep tables, dropping from the ventilation shafts in the ceiling. They were a tide of silent, lightning-fast death. The Breachers' disciplined formation shattered. The open space of the lobby had allowed them to bring their superior firepower to bear. Here, in the cramped, cluttered confines of the kitchen, their rifles were clumsy, their lines of fire blocked by steel tables and their own comrades. The fight devolved into a series of desperate, one-on-one struggles for survival.
A Stalker leaped onto another Breacher, its weight bearing him to the ground. The man screamed as the creature's claws raked across his face. He fired his weapon, the silenced thump-thump-thump of the submachine gun a frantic, muffled drumbeat against the creature's body. The bullets tore through its flesh, but its momentum was too great. Fred roared, the silenced whump of his shotgun a heavy, percussive sound as he fired a point-blank blast that turned the creature's head into a spray of black ichor.
The sudden, shocking violence, the sheer speed of the enemy, and the loss of a comrade in the blink of an eye sent a jolt of pure, disorienting shock through the squad. Their overconfidence, born from the easy slaughter of the Shamblers, was instantly and brutally liquidated. This was not a turkey shoot. This was a meat grinder, and the silence of their own weapons only made the wet, tearing sounds of the Stalkers' claws and the pained grunts of their comrades more terrifyingly intimate.
Damien, caught in the heart of the ambush, was a whirlwind of cold, calculated violence. He dismissed the assault rifle he had been carrying. In his right hand, his sabre-cutlass materialized. On his left forearm, his padded buckler shield shimmered into existence. A Stalker lunged at him from the side, its claws aimed for his eyes. He met the attack with his shield, the impact a jarring shock, but he held his ground. His cutlass, imbued with a sliver of his own Saupa, flashed in a clean, swift arc, severing the creature's head from its shoulders.
He was a commander, not a brawler, but he was also an Awakened, and his combat instincts were sharp. He became the anchor in the storm, his voice cutting through the rising disorientation and the pained shouts. "To me! Form on me!" he commanded over the comms, his voice a blade of pure, cold authority. "Back to the corridor! Controlled withdrawal!"
He fought his way through the chaos, his shield blocking, his blade a blur of dark metal, creating a pocket of relative safety around which the surviving Breachers could rally. Bane, who had been a silent, lumbering presence at the back of the formation, now proved his worth. He moved with a brutal, unstoppable force, his massive, armored fists caving in the skulls of Stalkers that got too close, his regenerating body absorbing claw-strikes that would have disemboweled a normal man, the sharp talons scraping uselessly against the conjured plate.
The Breachers, their initial shock giving way to the grim discipline Fred had drilled into them, began to fall back, their fire becoming more controlled, more focused. They were no longer swaggering conquerors; they were hardened survivors fighting for every inch. But the Stalkers were relentless. As the last of the squad pulled back into the relative safety of the corridor, another Breacher, a young man named Pike, was swarmed by two of the creatures. They dragged him down, and his screams were cut short with a sickening, wet tearing sound.
They secured the corridor, their backs to a solid wall, their weapons now facing the single, dark doorway from which the Stalkers hissed and chittered, their black eyes glowing in the darkness. They had won the engagement, but the cost had been staggering. Two men dead, another grievously wounded. The triumphant confidence of the lobby was a bitter, metallic taste in their mouths, replaced by the grim, terrified reality of their new war.
"Lord," Fred panted, his voice ragged, "the main stairwell is just ahead. Kenji's map says it's our only route to the second floor."
"Secure it," Damien commanded, his own breathing heavy, the drain on his Saupa from the intense combat a dull ache in his core. The loss of two of his hand-picked men was an unacceptable failure, a flaw in his own calculations.
They pushed forward, a tight, grim formation, and found the stairwell. It was a scene of utter devastation. The massive, reinforced concrete staircase had collapsed in on itself, a tangled mess of rebar and shattered stone that completely blocked the way up. It was a dead end.
Damien stood before the wreckage, the surviving members of his Breacher squad looking at him, their faces pale with shock and despair. Their first day, their first real contact with the enemy, and they were battered, demoralized, and trapped on a floor full of monsters with no clear way forward. The vertical campaign had just begun, and it was already a catastrophic failure.
"Kenji's maps," Damien said into his comms, his voice a low, dangerous calm. "The secondary routes. Report."
Kenji's voice crackled back, laced with a new, profound dread. "Lord… there's only one other way up from this level that isn't a complete structural collapse. The main ventilation shafts. But the old logs… they're not safe."
Damien looked at the faces of his men, at their fear and exhaustion. He looked at the collapsed stairwell, a monument to their failed plan. There was no other choice.
"Lead us there," Damien commanded.
The entrance to the ventilation system was a large, rusted grate in the wall of a maintenance corridor, a dark, square mouth that promised only claustrophobia and death. Jonas's team had been summoned, and with a screech of tortured metal, they cut the grate free. A wave of cold, stale air, thick with the smell of rust and something else, something acrid and organic, washed over them.
The Breachers hesitated, their reluctance a palpable force. To enter that tight, black space after the chaotic, open battle they had just survived felt like trading a nightmare for a grave.
"Bane. You first," Damien ordered.
The armored giant, without a word, squeezed his massive frame through the opening and disappeared into the darkness. One by one, the Breachers followed, their movements slow and heavy, the scraping of their gear on the rusted metal echoing in the oppressive silence. Damien was the last to enter, the darkness swallowing him whole.
The crawlspace was a hell of tight corners and absolute blackness, broken only by the narrow, bouncing beams of their shoulder lamps. The shaft was barely wide enough for a man to crawl on his hands and knees, and for Bane, it was a brutal, scraping ordeal. The air was thick with dust, and the silence was broken only by their own ragged breathing and the constant, unnerving creak and groan of the ancient metal around them.
They found the first signs of the new threat after a hundred meters. A thick, sticky, organic webbing, like a morbid parody of a spider's web, coated the walls of the shaft, its strands glistening wetly in their lights. A little further on, they found the husks. The desiccated, half-eaten remains of rats, Gutter-Cats, and even a Stalker, all wrapped in the same sticky webbing, their bodies drained of all fluid. And then came the sound. A faint, unnerving, rhythmic clicking, echoing from the darkness ahead, the sound of a million tiny, chitinous legs skittering on metal.
They reached a large air circulation hub, a cavernous space where a dozen smaller shafts converged. And they saw them. The Chitter-mites. They were the size of a man's hand, a hideous fusion of insect and arachnid, with too many legs and a pair of sharp, glistening mandibles that dripped a clear, viscous fluid. They covered the walls, the ceiling, the floor, their countless black eyes reflecting the beams of the Breachers' lamps.
Before anyone could react, the swarm attacked. They didn't charge; they dropped, scuttled, and swarmed from all directions at once. One of the Breachers, a man named Corran, cried out as a dozen of the creatures dropped onto his back from a grate above. He tried to swat them off, but it was too late. One of them bit him on the neck. His body went rigid, his rifle clattering to the floor. The combat stimulants in his veins fought the paralysis venom, but it was a losing battle. He was still conscious, his eyes wide with a terror beyond imagining, as the swarm dragged his stiff, unresisting body into a side tunnel. His terrified, gurgling screams echoed through the hub for a few, horrifying seconds before being abruptly cut off.
The team was in a state of pure, primal panic, their silenced weapons spitting uselessly into the swarming tide. The small, fast-moving creatures were too numerous, their silenced submachine guns unable to stop the sheer mass of the assault.
"To me! Defensive circle!" Damien roared, his voice cutting through the chaos. He became the center of their failing formation, the surviving Breachers scrambling to form a tight, back-to-back circle around him. Bane stood like a mountain of black iron, the chittering creatures swarming over his armor, their bites useless against the conjured plate.
The situation was untenable. Their current weapons were a liability. Damien's mind, a cold engine of calculation even in the heart of chaos, saw the only viable solution. It was a massive gamble, a huge expenditure of his precious Saupa, but the alternative was to be eaten alive in the dark.
"Hold your fire!" he commanded. "Brace yourselves!"
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, not in prayer, but in absolute focus. He reached out with his will, not to create something new, but to connect with the eight perfect, conjured weapons that were already extensions of his being—the seven held by his terrified Breachers, and his own dismissed assault rifle. He felt the tethers of power that linked him to each one.
Then, he gave the command to change.
The Breachers cried out in shock as the weapons in their hands began to transform. The metal grew hot, shifting and reconfiguring with a silent, terrifying fluidity. The compact frames of the submachine guns and shotguns elongated. Barrels widened into flared, ugly nozzles. Small, cylindrical canisters materialized beneath the main bodies, connecting to the new ignition chambers with thick, braided hoses. In the space of five heartbeats, the eight firearms ceased to exist. In their place, the Breachers now held eight perfectly formed, brutally efficient flamethrowers.
The men stared at the impossible new weapons in their hands, their minds reeling.
"Burn them," Damien's voice was a low, lethal hiss. "Burn them all."
Fred was the first to react, his soldier's discipline overriding his shock. He aimed his new weapon at the swarming tide and pulled the trigger. A thick, roaring jet of jellied, liquid fire erupted from the nozzle, engulfing a wave of Chitter-mites. The chittering sound was instantly replaced by a high-pitched, collective squeal of agony as the creatures were incinerated. The organic webbing on the walls caught fire, and the entire hub began to light up with a hellish, orange glow.
The other Breachers, seeing the devastating effect, opened fire. The cramped, dark hub became a furnace. Eight streams of liquid fire painted the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, a cleansing inferno that left nothing but scorched metal and the stench of cooked chitin in its wake. The swarm, which had seemed an unstoppable tide moments before, was annihilated in a storm of fire.
When it was over, the team stood in the scorched, smoking ruin of the circulation hub. The air was thick with smoke and the nauseating smell of their victory. The intense heat from their assault had warped a large, sealed maintenance door on the far side of the hub, the metal glowing a dull cherry red. They had their new path forward.
They were alive. But another man was dead, and their confidence, the swagger they had felt in the lobby, was now a pile of ash at their feet, indistinguishable from the burned remains of their enemies. They looked at their Lord, who stood calmly in the center of the inferno he had created, and the fear they felt for the horrors of the hotel was now matched by the terrifying awe they felt for the man who led them.