The air up here was thin, sharp, and hostile, the kind of altitude that turns lungs into dry paper. But Ranveer wasn't breathing it. Not really.
He was sealed inside the matte-black coffin of the suit.
It felt less like armor and more like a parasite. It hugged his skeleton too tight, pressing against his ribs, a constant, dull pressure that reminded him he was biology trapped in geometry. He drove a gauntlet into the granite face. Stone cracked. Dust puffed, instantly snatched away by the wind. He wasn't climbing; he was violating the mountain, gouging his way up with mechanical indifference.
A thought. A twitch of a nerve. The suit listened.
The mercury-black liquid covering his right hand shivered. It felt cold—a sudden drop in temperature that pricked his skin—as the metal solidified. It didn't just form a blade; it grew one, jagged and heavy, humming with a vibration that rattled his teeth.
He pushed off the rock face.
For a second, there was just the drop. The stomach-turning lurch of gravity taking hold. Then, impact.
He hit the ledge, but he didn't absorb the shock—he redirected it. The blade dissolved, sucked back into the suit's weave, replaced instantly by a heavy, dense fist. He slammed it down. The frozen earth didn't just break; it shattered, pulverized into a crater of mud and ice.
Ranveer stood up, his breath hitching in the recycled air of the helmet. His heart hammered against the chest plate. Too fast, he thought. Control the adrenaline.
He flexed his left arm. The bio-plating peeled back. It looked gross, organic—like skin flaying itself to reveal the muscle beneath. A screen from a phone fitted inside the suit flickered.
New orders. The Masked Man...
The text appeared on the screen.
SECTOR 9.
TARGET: MALAK.
Use: Bio-manipulation. Carcinomas.
Ranveer read the rest through a haze of disgust. Malak wasn't just killing people; he was farming them. Growing cancer like a crop, harvesting the fresh organs once the host was spent. It made Ranveer's stomach turn.
Dispatching.
The suit sealed the screen away. The visor's slit narrowed, glowing a dull, angry crimson. Ranveer turned south. He didn't run. He launched, his boots cracking the stone, eating up distance in strides that no human legs should have been able to make.
The Breach at Sector 9
The warehouse smelled like bleach and copper.
It was a heavy, wet smell that stuck to the back of the throat. The five-man patrol moved through the gloom, boots crunching on broken glass. They weren't special forces. Just grunts. You could see it in the way their shoulders hunched, the white-knuckle grip on their rifles. They knew they were somewhere they shouldn't be.
"Stay close," the Senior JCO murmured. He tried to sound authoritative, but his voice cracked on the last syllable…
Dr. Malak was waiting for them.
He stood by a surgical table, wiping his hands on a rag that was already stiff with dried blood. He didn't look like a monster. He looked like a accountant who had been awake for three days. Pale. Sweaty.
"You're early," Malak said.
His voice was wrong. It buzzed, like a speaker with a torn cone.
The soldiers raised their rifles—jerky movements, fueled by panic—but Malak moved first. And he didn't move like a man. He blurred.
His arm didn't reach out; it erupted. The skin split, wet and red, and a cluster of bone-needles shot forward. He stepped into the lead soldier's guard. No technique. Just biology gone wrong. Malak flicked his wrist, and the soldier screamed—a high, wet sound. The man's chest caved in. His ribs audibly snapped, warping inward, puncturing his own heart.
"Fire!" the JCO screamed.
The warehouse lit up with muzzle flashes.
Malak didn't duck. He just stood there. The bullets hit him, but they sounded like stones hitting wet clay. His skin had turned grey, calcified and hard. He walked through the hail of lead, unbothered, annoyed.
He grabbed the next man. Fingers elongated into thin, white filaments. They threaded into the soldier's throat. The man gagged, eyes bulging, as dense tissue bloomed in his windpipe, sealing it shut.
It was butchery. Fast, messy, and quiet.
In ten seconds, the JCO was the last one standing. He backed up, hitting a wall of rusted crates. His chest heaved.
Malak stepped over a twitching body. His arm was a serrated blade of bone now, dripping onto the concrete.
"Don't worry," Malak smiled. His teeth were yellow shards. "Your liver looks pristine. I'll scrub the memories out of it before the sale."
He lunged.
Needle-fingers sank into the soldier's temple. The JCO's eyes rolled back, white and terrified, as the intrusion began. A violation of the mind.
But the soldier had one card left. His hand was already on his belt.
He didn't throw the grenade. He hugged it.
He pulled the pin and held it tight against his vest.
BOOM.
The sound sucked the air out of the room. A shockwave of heat and pressure flattened the surgical trays, turning the corner of the warehouse into a whirlwind of shrapnel and dust.
Malak was torn apart. Blown backward, his torso shredded, his left leg gone entirely.
Silence rushed back in. Just the hiss of a broken steam pipe and the smell of cooked meat.
Then, a wet slap on the concrete.
The ruin of Dr. Malak moved.
He didn't scream. He didn't seem to care. He dragged himself across the floor, trailing gore. As he moved, the meat bubbled. A sickening, rapid regeneration.
The missing leg shot out, bone snapping into place, muscle weaving around it like fast-forwarded rot. Steam hissed from his knitting flesh. By the time he reached the center of the room, the charred skin was sloughing off like a snake's molt, revealing raw, grey dermis underneath.
Snap. Click.
His spine realigned. He stood up.
He walked to a high-backed leather chair, the limp gone, his stride rhythmic and terrible. He sat down, sinking into the shadows. He closed his eyes, digesting the data he'd stolen from the dead man's brain.
"More stock coming," he whispered to the empty, blood-stained room.
He opened a ledger on the desk, his hand steady. Buisness as usual.