The rotor-saw's scream died in a shower of sparks as the teeth snapped off one by one, each broken shard embedding itself in the Hollowed's flesh like shrapnel. Karen barely felt the recoil through the mounting bolts in her shoulder—her entire world had narrowed to the thing that had once been Gristle, its too-long fingers wrapped around the saw's housing, squeezing until the metal buckled.
She had half a second to register the sound of tearing steel before the augment came apart in a burst of hydraulic fluid and severed wiring. The pain came late—a distant, secondary concern as she stared at the stump of her arm, the frayed cables sparking weakly in the dim light. Then Gristle backhanded her, and the world tilted sideways.
Nex caught her before she hit the ground. His organic hand fisted in the back of her jacket, hauling her upright with a grunt. Blood—black and thick as engine oil—dripped from the fresh gashes across his chest where the Hollowed's extra limbs had grazed him. His breathing was ragged, his prosthetic leg hissing with every shift in weight, but his grip was iron.
"Stay on your feet," he growled.
Karen tried. Her boots slipped in the gore slick debris as she scrambled back, her remaining hand clutching at the ruined augment socket. The pain was a living thing now, chewing its way up her shoulder and into her spine.
Gristle didn't rush them. It never did anymore. It watched, its milky eyes reflecting the flickering emergency lights as it tilted its head, considering. The other Hollowed—what was left of Nex's crew shuffled behind it, their movements synchronized like puppets on the same string.
The door at their backs was still sealed. The corridor ahead was collapsing, the ceiling tiles crashing down in clouds of dust and rust. There was nowhere left to run.
Nex's Conduit was in his hand before Karen could blink. The screen was spiderwebbed with cracks, the battery icon pulsing red—critical overload. She knew what that meant. Knew what he was going to do.
"Don't," she croaked.
Gristle lunged.
Nex met him halfway.
His steel talons locked around the Hollowed's throat, his prosthetic arm whining as he heaved, driving Gristle back into the sealed door. The impact rattled Karen's teeth. Gristle's extra limbs—the ones that had burst from his ribs in jagged, glistening spikes—punctured Nex's stomach, his chest, punching through armor and flesh alike with wet, crunching sounds.
Nex didn't scream.
He laughed.
A wet, choking sound that bubbled up through the blood in his lungs as he pressed his Conduit to Gristle's chest. The glyph on the screen wasn't one Karen recognized—something old, something illegal, something that burned the air with the stench of ozone and scorched copper.
It starts with a blinding light.
Next was the explosion so loud.
Karen thought that she would go blind and deaf with those happening to her so near. Then the pressure wave hit, and the world came apart in slow motion.
Karen saw the door disintegrate first—not just blown open, but unmade, the reinforced steel peeling back like paper in a furnace. Gristle came next, his body fragmenting into ash and twisted bone before the fire took him. Nex lasted half a second longer, his silhouette stark against the blast, his arms still outstretched as the light consumed him.
His mouth moved.
Not a shout. Not a curse.
Just her name.
Then the darkness took her too.
When Karen woke up, the taste of blood and burning plastic. The corridor was gone—replaced by a yawning crater where the door had been, the edges still glowing faintly with residual Aether. Chunks of concrete and twisted metal littered the ground, some still smoldering.
Of Nex, there was no sign.
Of Gristle, even less.
Her augmented arm was a lost cause, the mounting bolts torn clean out of the socket. The wound beneath was a ragged mess of torn muscle and exposed bone, but it wasn't bleeding as much as it should have been. The heat of the blast had cauterized it.
Small mercies.
She dragged herself upright, her boots slipping in the debris as she staggered toward the ruined doorway. The space beyond was dark, the air thick with the scent of old blood and something sharper—something electric.
Nex's steel talons lay embedded in the far wall, the fingers still half-curled as if grasping for something just out of reach.
Karen left them there.
She had her orders.
Run.
***
The air in a random room they managed to find clung to their skin like a second layer of grime, thick with the scent of iron and burnt wiring. Karen's breath came in shallow, irregular hitches—each one a fragile thread tethering her to the world of the living. The blood loss had turned her lips pale as chalk, her skin waxy under the sickly glow of Kai's Conduit.
Lucent's fingers moved methodically through the wreckage of her augment port, probing the torn flesh where metal met meat. The socket was a ruin of frayed neural wires and shattered alloy, the mounting bolts sheared clean off by whatever horror had ripped the rotor-saw free. No infection marred the wound—just raw, brutal trauma oozing sluggish crimson.
He wiped his hand on his thigh, leaving dark streaks across the worn fabric of his pants. The pistol he'd taken from her hip was an old Myriad-issue sidearm, its grip worn smooth from years of use. Thirteen rounds in the magazine. One in the chamber.
"We leave her," he said again, quieter this time. As he gave the gun to Kai.
Kai didn't respond at first. His fingers traced the pistol's slide, the metal cold against his skin. The weight of it felt foreign in his hands—too heavy, too final. He'd trained with Conduits, with glyphs and calculated spells, not this blunt, brutal instrument of last resorts.
The silence stretched, broken only by Karen's ragged breathing and the distant, echoing drip of water through Sector 12's rotting bones.
Then—
"You're serious." Kai's voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut through the gloom like a knife.
Lucent didn't bother looking up from where he was checking the door's hinges. The metal groaned under his touch, rust flaking away in orange petals. "She's dead weight."
"She's breathing."
"And every second we waste here, that changes." Lucent finally turned, his eyes glinting in the dim light. "You want to play hero? Try carrying her through the tunnels when the Hollowed come. See how far you get before they rip you both apart."
A muscle jumped in Kai's jaw. His grip tightened on the pistol. "There's always another way."
"Yeah. There is." Lucent nodded to the gun. "You put one in her head now, it's mercy. You wait, and it's done deal"
The words hung between them, ugly and undeniable.
Karen stirred then, a weak cough rattling in her chest. Her eyelids fluttered, the pupils beneath dilated with shock. Her remaining hand twitched, fingers scraping weakly against the concrete as she tried to push herself up.
Kai was at her side in an instant, his free hand hovering uncertainly over her shoulder. "Hey—hey, don't try to—"
Karen's fingers were fever-hot around Kai's wrist, her grip too tight for someone hovering on the edge of consciousness. Her cracked lips parted, but the words that spilled out weren't directions or warnings—just a name, whispered like a prayer or a curse, he couldn't tell.
"Boss..."
Her eyelids fluttered, the pupils beneath rolling back as her body twitched in some unseen struggle. A nightmare, maybe. Or something worse.
Kai shot a glance at Lucent. The older man had gone still as stone, his knife half-drawn, his gaze locked on Karen's trembling form. There was something in that look Kai had never seen before—not fear, not pity, but a quiet, simmering recognition. Like watching a ghost step out of the fog.
Karen's breath hitched. "Don't... leave..." Her fingers spasmed, nails biting into Kai's skin. "The door... the door's—"
Then she went limp, her hand sliding away to thump against the concrete. The silence rushed back in, thicker now, weighted with things unsaid.
Lucent exhaled through his nose. "Delirious."
Kai didn't move. The imprint of Karen's fingers lingered on his wrist, red and angry. "She was trying to tell us something."
"Dead men talk plenty." Lucent turned back to the door, his shoulders rigid. "Doesn't mean we listen."
The words should have been harsh. Final. But Kai heard the undercurrent—the way Lucent's voice caught ever so slightly on dead.
The dim glow of Kai's Conduit flickered across the cracked walls of their makeshift shelter. Karen lay unconscious between them, her breathing shallow but steady. The air smelled of rust and damp concrete, the distant hum of failing Aether nodes the only sound in the oppressive silence.
Lucent wiped his knife clean on his thigh, his movements methodical. "We came to deal with the mutated Hollowed. That thing in the tunnels—the abomination—it's still out there. But we don't even know where it is now."
Kai frowned, turning the pistol over in his hands. "So what's the plan? We can't just wander around hoping to stumble into it."
Lucent exhaled sharply. "We blow the lab. Collapse the tunnels. Bury everything."
Kai opened his mouth to argue, but a weak groan cut him off.
Karen stirred, her eyelids fluttering open. Her gaze was hazy at first, but it sharpened as she took in their faces. Her voice was rough, but clear. "You're not gonna find it by wandering around."
Lucent's eyes narrowed. "You've been awake."
She coughed, wincing as she tried to prop herself up. "Long enough to hear you two idiots talking about blowing shit up." She reached weakly for her boot, fingers fumbling until she pulled out a keycard—scuffed but intact. "You want the abomination? It'll probably be in the sub-levels. Where the real experiments happened."
Kai leaned forward. "You've been down there?"
Karen's lips curled into a pained smirk. "No. But I know people who have. Or at least, people who tried." She tossed the keycard onto the ground between them. "Rumor is, Myriad left weapons behind. Things that could wipe out the Hollowed for good."
The silence in the cramped chamber stretched like a wire pulled too tight. Karen's keycard lay between them on the concrete floor, its edges worn smooth from years of handling, the Myriad logo barely visible beneath layers of grime and old bloodstains.
Lucent didn't reach for it.
He studied Karen instead—the way her breath hitched when she shifted her weight, the sheen of sweat on her forehead despite the chill in the air. She was holding onto consciousness by sheer stubbornness, her one good hand clenched into a fist against her thigh.
"Rumors," he said at last, the word curling like smoke in the dim light. "You expect us to stake our lives on a fucking rumor?"
Karen's laugh was a dry, broken thing. "Better than your plan to blow shit up and hope for the best." She nodded toward the keycard. "That opens Sub-Level 3. Last place Myriad was working before they pulled out. Whatever they left behind—"
"—could be nothing," Lucent cut in. "Or it could be worse than what's already out there."
Kai picked up the keycard, turning it over in his hands. The plastic was cool against his fingers, the magnetic strip on the back still intact. "What kind of weapons are we talking about?"
Karen shrugged, then winced at the movement. "Depends who you ask. Some said they were working on targeted Aether disruptors—things that could fry a Hollowed's core without touching human cells. Others..." She trailed off, her gaze drifting to the ceiling. "Others said they were making something new. Something that didn't just kill Hollowed. It changed them."
A beat of silence.
Lucent's jaw tightened. "Into what?"
"Don't know. Nobody who went down there to check ever came back." Karen's fingers twitched toward her ruined augmetic port, her expression darkening. "Nex thought it was worth the risk. Guess we'll never know if he was right."
The weight of her words settled over them. Kai stared at the keycard, his mind racing. A weapon that could end the Hollowed threat for good—or something far worse, waiting in the dark.
Lucent pushed to his feet, his shadow stretching long against the wall. "Even if there's something down there, we don't know how to use it. Or if it'll work on that thing in the tunnels."
Karen met his gaze. "You got a better idea?"
For a long moment, no one spoke. The hum of the failing Aether nodes filled the silence, a constant, staticky buzz at the edge of hearing.
Then Kai stood, slipping the keycard into his pocket. "We won't know unless we look."
Lucent exhaled sharply through his nose, but didn't argue. The set of his shoulders said everything—this was a gamble, maybe their last one.
Karen leaned back against the wall, her eyelids fluttering shut. "Sub-Level 3," she murmured. "Take the east service elevator. Code's 7392. If it still has power."
Kai nodded, committing the numbers to memory.
Outside their makeshift shelter, the tunnels waited—silent, for now. But the abomination was still out there. And if Karen was right, the only way to end this was to go deeper.
Into the heart of the lab.
Into the unknown.