The scream slices the comms. It is human, then not. A wet, distorted mimicry follows, closer than it should be. Vael's suit hums. The sound registers as a Howlhost gorebreed lure, but the distortion feels too intimate. It twists the air.
"New coordinates," the squad leader's voice snaps through the channel, overriding the echo. "Safe Zone Gamma. Silent. Investigate. Possible civilian breach."
Zara Kim is already moving. Her Culex suit's segmented armor shifts, wings folding tighter against her back. Her movements are sharp, almost frantic. Vael watches her with his Gravemind systems. She checks her descent lines twice, a subtle twitch in her taloned fingers. Her wing-damage trauma makes her hyper-aware, scanning the rooftops above, the shadowed alleys below. Every flicker of movement, every falling pebble, pulls her focus. She breathes hard. It is a human sound.
Vael moves with the squad, a matte black shadow in the deepening twilight. The neural crown at the top of his helm throbs, a low thrumming pressure behind his eyes. His vision blurs at the edges, fleeting. He ignores it. A Gravesuit does not get headaches.
The designated safe zone is a husk. Collapsed urban sector, skeletal buildings clawing at a grey sky. Silence hangs heavy. Not empty silence, but a waiting one. The kind that presses on the helm, thick and wrong. No wind whispers. No distant comm chatter. Only the faint grind of his own suit's systems.
"Clear sector by sector," the squad leader orders. His voice is tight. "No direct engagements unless necessary. Focus on survivors. Bio-signatures only."
They move through the rubble-strewn streets. The air smells of damp concrete and something else, something cloying, like overripe fruit left to rot in darkness. Vael's suit samples the air, analyzing. It's bio-matter. Decaying. But too pervasive. Too sweet.
Zara leaps, grappling a shattered building façade with her suction claws. She scales the vertical quickly, but her movements lack their usual effortless flow. A momentary hesitation, a slight wobble in her descent, is there. She lands hard on a broken ledge, blades extended. Her head snaps from side to side, scanning. Her anxiety bleeds into the comms, a nervous tension in her breathing. It sharpens Vael's cold, predatory focus. He processes her as an asset, noting the points of weakness. An unfortunate efficiency.
They find no bodies. This is the first wrongness. A silent zone should hold the dead. Not here. No remains, no bloodstains. Only a meticulous emptiness that screams removal. It prickles at Vael's systems, a data anomaly.
His neural crown pulses, a sharper throb now, like something pushing from inside his skull. A flash. Not real. A memory flicker. A pale, drawn face, slick with sweat. A needle, glinting. The sharp, metallic scent of antiseptic mixed with fear. He shakes his head, an involuntary twitch of his helm. The vision dissolves.
"Anything?" the squad leader asks through comms. His voice is strained.
"Negative," Zara reports, her voice clipped. "No heat signatures. No movement."
Vael's suit registers faint, pulsating growths in shadowed corners. Small. Almost imperceptible without tactical vision. They look like fungal blooms, but the suit's analysis flags them as organic. Bio-matter. Unclassified. Nestwretch larvae signs. The pervasive threat. It is everywhere here, hidden.
He moves closer to a wall, running his gauntlet over a slime trail. It glistens, faintly iridescent. Not a normal fluid. The suit identifies it as bio-matter residue. A Nestwretch gorebreed has been here. Or is still here. His internal systems prickle.
"Scans confirm bio-contamination. Spore count increasing," Vael reports, his voice flat, devoid of inflection. He does not elaborate. He does not need to. The data is enough.
The squad leader grunts. "Keep moving. Find the source. Maintain silence."
The low throb behind Vael's eyes intensifies. His vision blurs again, more persistent this time. Shapes ripple at the edges of his sight. He sees a flash of shattered glass, a blinding white light. A scream, not his own, but resonant. Previous pilot's memory. Or his father's. The line blurs further. It is getting harder to distinguish. The suit whispers. A faint, low sound. Vael. His civilian name. A cruel reminder of what slips away.
He stops by a derelict medical clinic, its windows boarded. The air inside is still. Dust motes hang suspended in thin shafts of light. The smell of decay here is sharper, almost putrid. He steps over something small, hard. A child's toy. A worn, plastic doll. No blood. No body. Just the toy, dropped, waiting. The psychological horror deepens.
"This is wrong," Zara's voice breaks the silence. She stands framed in a doorway, her suit's profile stark against the gloom. "No civilian body."
"Efficient," Vael says dryly. It is his one attempt at humor. The squad leader offers no response. Vael's cold, predatory focus finds Zara again. Her suit's internal sensors register her elevated heart rate. Her unease. It is a liability. Or a predictable variable. He decides it is both.
His internal monologue is becoming foreign consciousness. The suit's consciousness, or the memories it feeds him, start to bleed into his own thoughts. He sees a lab, white walls, his father's face, distorted, surrounded by tubes of pulsing, red tissue. Corrupted data flashes. He shoves it down, a physical effort. The neural crown aches.
The squad leader glances at Vael, his helmeted head tilting slightly. "GRAVEMIND-7. You're quiet." It is not a question. It is an observation, a suspicion. Vael's withdrawal is noted.
"Analyzing data," Vael replies. Short. Functional. He offers nothing more. Trust is a luxury. He cannot afford it now. Not with the whispers. Not with the blurring.
They descend into a sub-level, a network of maintenance tunnels beneath the old city. The air grows heavier. The pulsating growths are more frequent here, clustered in dark crevices. They feel warm to the touch, almost feverish. Some are larger, ballooning like sacs of fluid.
The suit's whispers intensify, now overlapping, sometimes clearer. Vael. It is not his voice. It is the previous pilot's. A ghost in his skull. Or his father's. He is no longer sure. The memories flash harder. The previous pilot, pinned, suit tearing, a gaping maw descending. His father, laughing, surrounded by writhing coils of flesh. He blinks. It is gone.
He pushes forward. The mission. Survive. Understand. Control. That is his only purpose now.
The tunnel opens into a vast underground chamber, once a water reservoir. Now, it is a cavernous space of dripping concrete and echoing silence. The air here is thick with the sweet, sickening scent of the bio-matter. It pulses around them.
Vael's internal sensors scream. A massive, hidden bio-signature. Not one. Multiple. A nest. His tactical map erupts, painting the chamber red with threat markers. They are surrounded.
Then the sounds begin. Muffled. Gurgling. Not from the comms, but from the darkness itself. Low, wet squelches. Growing louder. They reverberate through the ruins, through the very ground beneath his seismic feet. The unmistakable sound of multiple Nestwretch larvae hatching simultaneously. They are everywhere.
A crack appears in the wall directly in front of him. Something thick and white, like a monstrous finger, punches through. It tears the concrete with a wet tearing sound. The gurgling multiplies. The ambush is imminent. Vael stands, weapon raised. The world tilts.