The entrance to the Nest looked like a wound in reality.
Organic matter—pulsing, wet, alive—framed the opening. It breathed. The entire structure breathed, expanding and contracting like massive lungs. The smell hit me first. Rot and copper and something sweet that made my stomach turn.
"Last chance to back out," Yuna said, though we both knew that wasn't an option.
"I'm going in." I checked my gear one final time. Limited ammunition. Two grenades. A combat knife that felt pathetically inadequate. "How long can you hold the line?"
"Long enough." She ejected her magazine, checked the rounds, and slammed it back in. "Probably."
Behind us, gunfire continued. Screams. The wet sounds of Devourers feeding. Our unit was getting massacred out there, buying time they couldn't afford to give.
"Minjae." Yuna grabbed my arm. "When you're inside—don't hesitate. The Nest will try to consume you. It'll show you things. Memories. Fears. People you've lost." Her grip tightened. "None of it is real. Remember that."
"You've been inside one before?"
"Once. Two years ago." Her expression went distant. "Lost half my squad. The ones who survived..." She shook her head. "Some things you don't come back from."
Comforting.
"I'll see you on the other side," I said.
"You'd better."
I turned toward the entrance. The organic matter seemed to sense me, tendrils reaching out like fingers. Beckoning.
This is insane. This is absolutely insane.
I stepped inside.
The world changed.
The temperature spiked instantly—hot, humid, like walking into a sauna made of flesh. The walls weren't walls. They were organs. Pulsing veins ran along the ceiling, pumping something black and viscous. The floor was soft, yielding under my boots with each step.
I was inside a living thing.
My augmentation reacted immediately. The tendrils beneath my skin writhed, eager. This was biomass. Raw, abundant biomass. My power wanted to feed.
"Focus," I muttered. "Find the core. Kill it. Get out."
Easier said than done.
The passage branched. Then branched again. A labyrinth of organic corridors, each one identical to the last. No markings. No way to track where I'd been.
Think. The core will be deep. Central. Where the Nest can protect it.
I chose the path that sloped downward.
That's when I heard the voice.
"Minjae?"
I froze.
"Minjae, is that you?"
I knew that voice. Knew it like I knew my own heartbeat.
"No," I whispered. "You're not real."
"Please. I'm hurt. I need help."
Park Junho.
The first person I'd executed. The first Augmented who'd turned, who'd lost control and become something monstrous. I'd put three bullets in his head while he begged me to stop.
He stepped out of the shadows ahead.
He looked exactly like I remembered. Young. Maybe twenty-two. Friendly face. The kind of guy who'd share his rations when supplies ran low, who'd crack jokes to break the tension before missions.
Except his chest was torn open. Organs visible. Blood dripping.
"Why did you kill me?" Junho asked. "I trusted you."
"You're not real." I forced myself to keep walking. "Yuna warned me. The Nest creates illusions."
"Does it?" Junho tilted his head. "Or am I a memory? Your guilt given form?" He smiled, and his teeth were too sharp. "You murdered me, Minjae. Shot me while I was still me. I was still in there, screaming, and you pulled the trigger anyway."
My hand went to my sidearm.
"Going to kill me again?" Junho laughed. "How many times do I have to die before you feel better about it?"
"Get out of my way."
"Or what? You'll add another name to your list?" He gestured behind him. Three more figures emerged from the darkness.
Kim Sera. Choi Minwoo. Lee Hyejin.
All the Augmented I'd executed. All standing there, watching me with dead eyes.
"We trusted you," Sera said.
"You were our friend," Minwoo added.
"And you murdered us," Hyejin finished.
The walls were closing in. The air was too thick. I couldn't breathe.
They're not real. They're not real. They're not—
"Does it matter?" Junho asked. "Real or not, you still killed us. That blood is still on your hands."
My augmentation flared. The tendrils burst from my arms, lashing out.
The illusions dissolved like smoke.
I stood alone in the corridor, breathing hard, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Keep moving. Don't stop. Don't think.
I ran.
Deeper
Time lost meaning inside the Nest.
Minutes? Hours? I couldn't tell. The organic passages twisted, branched, and looped back on themselves. I marked my path with shallow cuts in the walls, but the flesh healed almost instantly.
The Nest was adapting. Learning.
I encountered Devourers. Three at first, then five, then a dozen. They came from the walls themselves, birthed from the living tissue. I killed them with my tendrils, with gunfire, with grenades that left craters in the organic matter.
The Nest screamed each time. A sound that wasn't sound—something I felt in my bones, in my teeth, in the augmentation itself.
It's afraid. Good. That means I'm getting close.
The passage opened into a chamber.
And there it was.
The core.
It was massive. A pulsing mass of tissue and organs and something else—something that looked almost technological. Wires and flesh intertwined. A hybrid. The Devourers weren't just monsters. They were manufactured.
Someone had engineered this. Someone had created the Fracture.
"Holy shit," I breathed.
The core pulsed, and I felt its attention turn toward me. Not hostile. Not yet.
Curious.
Then it showed me.
Images. Flashes. Memories that weren't mine.
Laboratories. Scientists in hazmat suits. A portal being opened, contained, studied. Something coming through. Something ancient and hungry and utterly alien.
Then the containment failing.
The Fracture spreading.
Humanity scrambling to survive.
And the Augmentation program. Desperate scientists injecting survivors with Devourer essence, hoping to create weapons that could fight back.
We're not fighting an invasion. We're fighting our own mistake.
The core pulsed again. An offer? A question?
It wanted to merge. To take my augmentation and understand it. To adapt. To evolve.
If I let it, the Nest would become stronger. The Devourers would become unstoppable.
But I'd also know everything. The truth about the Fracture. About what really happened seven years ago. About who was responsible.
"Tempting," I said. "But I've got a better idea."
I drove my tendrils into the core.
Not to merge. To consume.
My augmentation spread like wildfire, black tissue racing through the core's structure. The Nest screamed—really screamed this time. The entire chamber convulsed.
Pain exploded through my body. The core was fighting back, trying to break down my cells, absorb me, and turn me into another Devourer.
Not happening. Not today.
I pushed harder. Let the augmentation do what it was designed to do—adapt, consume, destroy.
The core's struggles weakened. Its pulse slowed.
Then stopped.
The Nest began to collapse.
"Oh, now you decide to fall apart," I gasped, pulling my tendrils free.
The walls were dissolving. The floor was giving way. I ran.
Back through the labyrinth. Through passages that were liquefying, dripping, dying. Devourers fell from the ceiling, half-formed, shrieking.
I didn't stop. Didn't look back.
The entrance was ahead. Light. Real light, not the bioluminescent glow of the Nest.
I burst through the opening and hit solid ground.
The Nest collapsed behind me with a wet, final sound.
Silence.
Then cheering.
I looked up. Our unit—what was left of it—stood in a defensive perimeter. Bloodied. Exhausted. But alive.
Yuna appeared above me, offering a hand. "You actually did it, you crazy bastard."
I took her hand and let her pull me up. "The civilians?"
"Extraction team secured them ten minutes ago. They're safe."
Safe. Two thousand people were safe.
I'd actually done it.
Then my legs gave out.
"Whoa—" Yuna caught me. "Medic! We need a medic!"
"I'm fine," I said, but blood was dripping from my nose. My ears. The augmentation was burning through my cells faster than they could regenerate.
The price of pushing too hard. Of consuming something as massive as a Nest core.
"How long?" I asked quietly.
Yuna didn't need clarification. "The medics will know more, but..." She met my eyes. "Maybe a month. Maybe less."
A month.
I'd traded a month of my life for two thousand others.
Worth it.
"Get him to the transport," Commander Park ordered, appearing beside us. "Good work, Kang. The best kind of work."
The kind where you survive.
Barely.
I let them carry me to the transport. Let the medics hook me up to machines that beeped and whirred. Let exhaustion drag me under.
But before I lost consciousness, I thought about what I'd seen in the core.
The truth.
Someone had caused the Fracture. Someone had opened that portal deliberately. And they were still out there.
Still in control.
When I get out of the medical bay, I promised myself, I'll find them.
I'll find whoever did this.
And I'm make them pay.