Lights flickered. Consoles beeped. A flat synth voice repeated, "Access denied. Access denied."
At the door controls, the Infiltrator Lord pressed another dead man's face to the eye scanner, smearing fresh blood across the lens.
Genesis stepped into the control room, shotgun slung, a grenade in each hand—pins already pulled, spoons pinned by his grip. Behind him, the three troopers ghosted in, keeping the distance he'd ordered.
Nine meters out, the Lord let the body drop. Its head turned—just enough for Genesis to catch two glowing yellow eyes and a broad, meat-slick grin, teeth red to the gums.
Stealth ended.
Genesis broke forward, arms snapping wide as he pitched both grenades—left and right—then dragged the shotgun down off his shoulder in the same motion.
The blast pair hit like doors slamming. Fire blossomed on the Lord's flanks; shrapnel rang from carapace; hot smoke rolled across the floor and swallowed the thing's outline.
Genesis kept coming. One. Two. Three shots punched into the haze—metallic impacts answering him instead of screams. Five meters now. He fired again into the smoke, trusting angles more than eyes. Pellets sparked off armor and thudded into flesh, but nothing important gave.
The Lord answered with a roar that blew the smoke back in a rippling ring and made the air itself shiver.
Four meters.
No damage he could trust. No time to swap mags.
Genesis threw the shotgun—a spear of steel and polymer—straight into the open maw.
It jammed deep, made the thing gag, and then the teeth bit down. Metal crimped. A chambered shell crushed and cooked off. The weapon burst inside its throat, a dirty flash that tore meat and spit fragments of receiver across the room.
The Lord reeled and screamed. Genesis was already there, Moonsteel knife in both hands, driving the gray blade up under the breastbone where a heart ought to beat.
Bang—crunch. The knife bit—through a scale, through something hard beneath—and stopped, sunk but not through, like a camp blade trying to pry into cliff rock.
Behind his visor, Genesis's eyes widened. The Lord's upper arms came scissoring down, fast as guillotines.
He ripped the knife free, jumped back a half-meter, and still caught both blows across the chest plate. The impact lifted him and threw him sideways. He hit the deck three meters away, skidding against a dead console in a spray of broken glass and sparks, breath punched hard from his lungs.
Seeing Genesis thrown aside, the others opened up.
On the left, the Sergeant snapped two grenades past the Lord's flank and hosed its torso with his SMG. The blasts made it flinch; the bullets did little more than scratch hardened hide.
In the center, Heavy's machine gun came alive—one continuous rip like a waterfall of metal. The Lord crossed two of its arms over its vitals and weathered the stream, then turned toward Heavy with a snarl and charged. The floor shuddered under each step.
A sharp crack from the right—the Sniper's rifle—snapped the Lord's head aside. A fracture spidered across the left side of its cranial plate; dark blood webbed down the cheek. It hissed at her, then pivoted and rushed.
"Oh, shit! Little help!" the Sniper yelled, backpedaling along the right wall, firing as she moved.
Rounds from Heavy and the Sergeant pattered the Lord like rain on armor. "Doing the best we can!" Heavy shouted over the roar of his gun.
The Lord charged blind behind its raised forearms—two meters, four, six—closing fast. The Sniper searched for the damaged eye, found no angle, then saw a hairline crack in the chest where Genesis's knife had bitten.
Heavy's gun went dry. "No—now? Dammit!"
The Sniper planted her feet and took the harder shot. At four meters she pressed the trigger. The round hit the weakened chest with a brutal clang. Carapace chunked away in fist-sized shards. The pale dermis beneath blackened, fissured, and bled through new cracks—but the plate didn't give.
She realized it a heartbeat too late. The Lord's claws scythed for her face.
They missed by inches—checked mid-swing.
The Sniper stumbled back, blinking. Heavy had stepped in, both arms locked under two of the Lord's, boots scraping, back bowed like a wrestler locking a giant. "Aaaah—shoot it!" he bellowed as the creature drove him backward, reaching around him for the Sniper.
She recovered and fired again, walking shots into the Lord's elbows and wrists. The Sergeant appeared at its back—climbed fast on overlapping plates, hooked a knee, grabbed the head ridge, and dumped an SMG mag point-blank into the skull while the monster thrashed.
It did not stop.
With a contemptuous heave, the Lord snatched Heavy one-handed and flung him aside like a sack. The big man hit a workstation, metal shrieking.
The Sergeant ditched the empty SMG and drew his knife. A great hand swept for him; he ducked, drove the blade into the cracked, bleeding seam along the Lord's head. The edge slid under carapace and bit deep into rubbery flesh. The Lord howled and whipped its body, trying to shake him loose.
Across the room, Genesis pushed to a knee.
Only seconds had passed since he'd hit the consoles. The impact had blown panels and sprayed him with hot spark; his suit's systems had hard-stunned. On his visor, the shield bar ticked down—75% and sliding—each falling spark chewing at the honeycomb before the emitters recovered.
He clenched the Moonsteel knife and rose.
The Sniper's rifle clacked empty. She reached for a mag—too late. The Lord's hand found the Sergeant's wrist and squeezed. He grunted, slashed again anyway. The grip tightened. With a savage yank, the Lord tore him free and hurled him.
He hit the Sniper square-on. Both went down hard, armor on armor, sliding across tile in a tangle of limbs and breath.
The Infiltrator Lord threw its head back and roared at the ceiling, a sound like torn metal and deep water, triumphant and terrible.
Genesis moved.
Heavy footsteps hammered past the Sniper and Sergeant—speed like a cheetah, weight like a bull. The Infiltrator Lord began to turn toward the sound, but too late.
Genesis hit it full-on and drove the Moonsteel blade into its chest. The knife punched through the cracked carapace and bit deep into rubber-hard flesh.
The Lord howled, talons on its feet gouging the deck as it planted. All four arms drew back to scythe him apart.
The blade wouldn't go deeper. Whatever he'd hit wasn't vital—if the thing's heart even lived where human instincts said it should. Genesis yanked the knife free and folded backward into a handstand as the claws crashed through the space he'd just vacated, then kicked off and inverted toward the monster.
Armored boots smashed the Lord's jaw, lifting its bulk a few centimeters.
It stumbled. Genesis shifted the knife to his left hand, pressed the fingers of his right against the cracked chest, and murmured, almost conversationally:
"One-inch death punch."
His hand snapped to a fist. A palm-sized shock wave thumped, the air itself bucking. From the flank, Heavy saw only a blur and then the bang; the Lord flew backward and slammed into the far wall, denting metal.
Silence hung for a breath.
"Hold the door," Genesis said. "I'll handle that one."
The troopers grabbed dropped weapons and traded glances—confused why he wanted the Lord alone—until a heavy bang sounded down the hallway by the elevator, followed by a rolling chorus of beast-roars.
"Ah, shit," the Sergeant hissed. "They've breached the reinforced doors."
He turned to his people. "What are we waiting for? Heavy—mines. Lay a welcome mat. Sniper—make every shot count or we're cooked. Move!"
They sprinted for the hall. Genesis faced his opponent, knife low, and watched the Lord claw to its feet.
They circled. Two animals measuring range and breath.
At three meters both lunged.
The Lord roared. Genesis didn't.
He slid left, letting the first scissor strike pass, and cut the lower right forearm on the way—steel whispering through weakened plate. Blood welled. The thing barely noticed and came on again.
Genesis hopped back, avoided the next rake, then stepped in to exploit another seam—when instinct screamed.
The Lord's leg came up in a vicious side kick. He tried to slip right, but the limb was faster than physics had any right to allow. It hammered his left shoulder.
His shield flared—then shattered. The blow spun him through the air; he hit the floor hard and slid.
The Lord grinned at him—teeth all the way back, mocking.
Copying me? Adapting? he thought.
His shield bar pulsed red at the visor edge. A skittering scrape followed—many knives on metal. The Lord blurred—two meters gone in half a blink—and raised its right leg to stomp.
Genesis rolled right. The foot slammed down, buckling the deck.
He scrambled up; the left foot came down again. He abandoned the rise and backward-rolled, the stomp smacking the tiles where his head had been.
He came to a knee, knife still ready, as the Lord snapped a straight kick at his chest. He slipped outside the line and counter-cut, carving a chip from the shin plate, then withdrew.
Two top arms scythed in. He ducked and slid to its flank, drawing another fast line across a forearm. Step, cut, slip, cut—the rhythm tightened. The Lord missed, roared, missed again. Frustration bled into fury. Cracks spidered across carapace; plates lifted.
Genesis kept circling, carving, wearing the giant down—while, faintly, the firefight at the entrance droned and popped. Enemy return fire had a different bark—the Infiltrators were using guns now—but he trusted his troopers: good shots in good armor with mines in the mix.
Then opportunity.
Pressed toward the right-hand wall, Genesis felt steel at his back. The Lord smiled like a butcher and came wide, upper arms high, lower arms low—a closing cage.
Genesis dropped his center and cut right for the exposed elbow he'd been softening. Moonsteel hissed; the lower right arm parted at the joint.
He slid under the falling limb, pivoted, and in the same breath took the mirrored lower arm—two strokes, two severed forearms.
Blood sheeted from the stumps, splattering his visor. The upper claws screamed down through the spray. They barely missed, scratching his helmet. The lower claws raked after, carving four angry grooves along the front and cracking the visor.
He trapped the pain somewhere behind his ribs and cut again—both remaining hands at the wrists. They fell with a wet slap.
He stepped in to finish—and felt it again, the wrongness. He slipped left.
The Lord bit. Its head snapped through the space where his throat had been, then recoiled with startling speed. It leapt, clamped its jaws around a ceiling fire-sprinkler, and ripped it free.
Alarms blared. White fire suppressant vented across the room in a choking fog.
Genesis wiped blood from his visor with the back of his gauntlet and pushed into the haze, following memory and instinct to where the Lord had been.
He stopped and listened.
From the entrance, the gunfire had thinned—shorter bursts, harder breathing in the echoes, the hollow thud of mines. Closer in, the control room had gone almost still.
The fog curled. The blood-smell thickened. The monster was gone from sight.
Genesis tasted iron and air and waited, knife low, for the next sound.
From the direction of the armored door leading to the ship, a faint rustle broke the silence—then the sound of breathing. It was light, rapid, human.
Genesis turned toward it, cautious but curious. The Infiltrator Lord was nowhere in sight.
He approached the sound, boots quiet on the slick floor. A small mound of scientist corpses lay by the door console, and beside them, movement.
A woman.
She lay half-dressed in a blood-soaked lab coat, chest rising fast and shallow. She looked young—too young for a senior researcher—and had the kind of face that might have drawn a man's attention in another life. Genesis didn't have that life anymore.
He stopped a few meters away, scanning. Her right arm was gone, her left hand severed at the wrist. Sweat slicked her pale skin as she turned toward him, eyes wide and glistening yellow.
"Please," she whispered. "Please help me. I have a family... I can't die like this."
Genesis didn't move. He just watched her. The air between them filled with the low hiss of the fire suppressant still drifting across the room.
The woman turned her head aside and began to sob. "It hurts... Mother, please... it hurts so much. Mother... help me."
Footsteps approached from behind. The three troopers emerged from the haze and froze at the sight.
The Sniper gasped. "Oh my God. What are you waiting for? She's still alive!"
Before anyone could answer, she slung her rifle and hurried forward.
"Hold up!" the Sergeant called, but followed her anyway, while Heavy dropped to one knee and dug through his pack for a medkit.
The woman's eyes brightened as they approached. She even managed a small, grateful smile.
Then a knife whistled through the air and struck her clean through the skull.
The body convulsed once and went still. A spray of blood and brain matter splattered across the floor. Her last sound was a broken murmur—"...mother..."—before her head sagged sideways.
The Sniper fell to her knees beside her, stunned. "No—no, no, she was still breathing!" she cried, cradling the limp body.
The Sergeant staggered back, eyes wide. "What the fuck did you just do?" he shouted at Genesis. "You can't just kill people like that! She was hurt, yeah—but we could've tried to save her!"
Heavy rose, jabbing a finger toward him. "That's a war crime, you bastard! You don't get to decide who lives and dies! You may be an Elpis freak, but you're still under command!"
Genesis didn't respond. He stood where he was, staring at the corpse, visor blank and unreadable.
Then the Sniper gasped. "What the hell—?"
The woman's body twitched. Skin shifted under her hands.
Before their eyes, flesh began to stretch and ripple. Muscles bulged. The skin darkened, hardened, cracking into plates as the lab coat tore apart. Within seconds, what lay on the floor was no longer a woman at all—but a twisted, skeletal mockery of one.
The creature's mouth gaped open in a soundless hiss before slumping still.
The Sergeant stared. "Wait... are you telling me they can turn into humans?"
Genesis stepped forward, crouched, and wrenched his knife free. "That would explain how it got this deep without triggering the alarms," he said evenly.
The Sniper's voice trembled. "You—you knew? How could you tell?"
"I didn't," Genesis said, sliding the blade back into its sheath. "I guessed. First time I've seen an Infiltrator that could shapeshift."
The three soldiers stood frozen, trying to process what they'd just seen. Genesis rose to his full height and turned toward the sealed bulkhead.
"Sergeant," he said. "Open the door."
The Sergeant flinched, then straightened, swallowing hard. "Yes, sir."
He inserted the keycard into the console. The reader blinked, processed, and turned green.
"Access granted," the robotic voice announced.
As the reinforced doors began to slide open, Genesis stood before them, silent and waiting, the white fog swirling around his boots.