The rope was a grotesque masterpiece.
It was fifty feet long, braided from the stripped copper of the maintenance cables and the fibrous, steel-strong intestines of the Rust Roaches. It dripped with yellow hemolymph and smelled of copper and rot.
Ren tested the knot he had tied around the ventilation fan's housing. It held.
"It's sticky," Kaira noted, her voice muffled by the rag over her face. She touched the braid with her good hand. "And warm."
"The Aether in the gut-fibers is still reactive," Ren explained, wiping his own slime-covered hands on his pants. His blackened arm throbbed with a dull, distant ache, but the Marrow Crystal was doing its work. The raw meat was already covering over with a fresh, translucent layer of skin. "It will hold. Physics doesn't care if it's gross."
He looked across the gap.
Fifty feet away, through the swirling, toxic yellow smog, was the circular airlock door of Sector 4. The bio-hazard symbol painted on it was faded and scratched, but the light above the keypad was a steady, blinking red.
Below them, the Chemical Sump churned. The green fog seemed to be rising, hungry for anything that fell.
"Titus goes first," Ren decided. "If the anchor holds him, it holds us."
Titus looked at the rope, then at the abyss. He didn't argue. In the Hives, hesitation was just a slower form of suicide.
"Wrap the loop," Titus grunted.
Ren helped the giant secure the loop around his massive torso. Titus gripped the rope with hands the size of shovels. He walked to the edge of the platform.
He looked back at Ren.
"If I fall," Titus rumbled, "don't come after me. Just cut the rope so I don't drag the fan down with me."
"You won't fall," Ren said, though his own heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
Titus jumped.
WHOOSH.
Two tons of Hippo-Totem muscle swung out into the void.
The rope went taut with a sound like a gunshot. CRACK. The ventilation fan housing groaned, metal screeching against metal. Dust and rust rained down on Ren and Kaira.
Ren threw his weight against the anchor point, bracing his feet. "Hold!"
Titus swung through the smog, a massive pendulum of gray flesh. He hit the wall of the opposing factory tower with a deafening CLANG.
Ren held his breath.
A second passed. Then two.
The rope went slack.
"Secure!" Titus's deep voice bellowed from across the gap. It sounded tinny, filtered through the distance and the gas.
Ren let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "Go, Kaira. You're next."
Kaira looked at the rope. She looked at her own hands. She was squinting, her head moving in small, jerky motions.
"I can't see the wall, Ren," she whispered. "My eyes… everything is just heat haze. The wall is cold. It looks like… nothing."
Ren realized with a jolt of horror that her vision had degraded further. To her, the cold metal wall across the gap was invisible against the background temperature of the smog. She would be jumping into a void.
Ren grabbed her shoulder. "Listen to me. You don't need to see it. You just need to hold on. Gravity works the same for blind people."
Kaira swallowed hard. She nodded. "Right. Gravity. My old nemesis."
She grabbed the rope. She didn't hesitate. She launched herself.
She landed gracefully, her boots magnetizing slightly to the metal (a subconscious use of Aether she hadn't even noticed yet).
"Safe!" she called out.
Now it was Ren's turn.
He tied the rope around his waist. He looked at the anchor. He looked at the Sump.
Jump, the Axolotl ghost whispered. Fly, little dragon.
Ren jumped.
The wind rushed past his ears, screaming. The green fog seemed to reach up for him. For a split second, he was weightless, suspended between the hell of the Hives and the promise of safety.
Then he slammed into the wall.
Titus's massive hand grabbed him by the back of his tunic and hauled him onto the small maintenance ledge before he could slip.
They were huddled in front of the airlock.
The door was a slab of reinforced titanium. There was a keypad, but it was smashed.
"Locked," Titus grunted, trying to pry his fingers into the seam. "And heavy. Even I can't bend this. It's blast-proof."
"It's a clean room," Ren said, coughing as the smog swirled around them. "It's pressurized. If we breach it, the air will rush out."
He looked at the locking mechanism. It was electronic.
"Kaira," Ren said. "Your arm."
Kaira looked at her fused, chitinous gauntlet. "It's jammed, Ren. If I fire it, I might blow my own elbow off."
"Don't fire it," Ren corrected. "Just heat it. The door is titanium, but the seal is rubber. Melt the seal."
Kaira understood. She placed her hand against the rim of the door. She closed her eyes—or what was left of her human eyes—and focused.
The vents on her elbow hissed. The chitin began to glow a dull, angry red.
HISS.
The rubber seal around the door began to bubble. Acrid black smoke mixed with the yellow smog. The metal groaned as the heat expanded it.
"Now, Titus! Push!"
Titus lowered his shoulder and drove his weight into the center of the door.
CREAK... POP.
The vacuum seal broke.
WHOOSH.
A blast of compressed air exploded outward, knocking them back. It was like opening a shaken soda can. The clean, sterile air from inside the facility rushed out, blowing the smog away from the entrance.
Titus shoved the door open.
They fell inside.
Ren scrambled to his feet and slammed the manual override lever, sealing the door behind them.
CLUNK. HISS.
Silence.
Absolute, ringing silence.
The roar of the factories was gone. The clicking of the Weavers was gone. The wind was gone.
The only sound was the hum of high-powered air filters and the harsh, rhythmic breathing of the three survivors.
Ren pulled the rag off his face. He took a breath.
The air was cold. It tasted of antiseptic, ozone, and recirculated oxygen. It was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.
"Clear," Ren whispered.
They were in a decontamination antechamber. The walls were lined with white ceramic tiles. Overhead, UV lights bathed them in a purple glow, killing the bacteria on their skin.
"It's… quiet," Kaira whispered. She pulled the rag off her face. She blinked, looking around.
"Can you see?" Ren asked.
Kaira squinted. "Better. The walls are cold, but the lights… the lights are hot. I can see the outline of the room."
They moved through the second door into the main facility.
It wasn't just a maintenance room. It was a cathedral of science.
The room was vast, filled with rows of stainless steel tables, centrifuges, and computer banks that were dark and dormant. The floor was pristine white tile—or it had been. Now, it was streaked with dried, black fluids that looked disturbingly like oil mixed with blood.
Glass cylinders, ten feet tall, lined the far wall. Most were broken, their contents spilled long ago.
But one was intact.
Ren walked toward it, his boots squeaking on the tile.
Floating in the green, suspended fluid of the tank was a… thing.
It looked human, but wrong. Its limbs were too long. Its skin was translucent, revealing organs that pulsed with a dark, violet light. But the most terrifying part was its head.
It didn't have a face. It had a smooth, blank surface of bone, like a mask fused to the skull.
Ren placed his hand on the glass.
"What is this place?" Titus asked, his voice echoing too loudly in the sterile room. He looked at the equipment with deep suspicion.
Ren looked at a clipboard hanging on the tank. He dusted it off.
> PROJECT: CHIMERA PROTOCOL
> Subject: 89-Beta
> Status: Failure.
> Cause: Genetic Rejection. Subject could not integrate the Insectoid Aether. Resulted in 'Hollow' state.
> Signed: Dr. V. Bane.
>
"Dr. Bane," Ren read aloud. "The Komodo Dragon."
"He was making monsters?" Kaira asked, looking at the faceless thing in the tank.
"No," Ren said, his blood running cold as he read the next line. "He wasn't making monsters. He was trying to make… Gods."
He pointed to a diagram on the wall. It showed a human silhouette. Then it showed the silhouette being injected with something. Then it showed the silhouette changing, gaining the traits of multiple animals—Lion, Eagle, Snake.
"Forced Resonance," Ren whispered. "The Wilding happened by accident to us. The Prism broke, and we breathed it in. But Bane… Bane is trying to inject it. He's trying to stack Totems."
"Stack them?" Titus frowned. "One ghost is loud enough. Two would drive you mad."
"Exactly," Ren said. He looked at the "Hollow" in the tank. "Subject 89 didn't survive the second soul. His mind broke."
Ren walked over to a desk cluttered with papers. He found a journal. He opened it to the last entry.
> Day 402 after the Fall.
> The subjects are weak. The human mind is a fragile vessel. It cracks under the weight of the History. The Aether is not just magic; it is Memory. When I inject the essence of the Spider, the subject doesn't just get eight legs. They get the Spider's instinct. They forget how to love. They only know how to spin.
> I need a stronger vessel. Someone who can hold the history without breaking. I need a Blank Canvas.
>
Ren shut the book. He felt sick.
"He's looking for someone who can adapt," Ren realized. "Someone whose Resonance isn't fixed."
He looked at his own hand. The hand that had turned translucent. The hand that had channeled electricity. The hand that could heal others.
An Axolotl is a creature of eternal youth. It never grows up. It is biologically malleable.
"He's looking for me," Ren whispered.
CLANG.
A sound came from the back of the lab.
Titus spun around, raising his axe. Kaira's fist began to glow.
In the shadows of the far corner, a door labeled "Incinerator" creaked open.
Something stepped out.
It wasn't a Weaver. It wasn't a soldier.
It was a Norm. A regular human man in a ragged lab coat. He wore thick glasses that were cracked. He held a mop in one hand.
He looked at the three terrifying intruders—a giant, a glowing girl, and a boy with fish-eyes.
He didn't scream. He didn't run.
He adjusted his glasses.
"You're early," the man said. His voice was calm. Too calm. "The Doctor isn't receiving patients until the afternoon."
Titus stepped forward, looming over the little man. "We aren't patients. We are leaving."
The man smiled. It was a twitchy, nervous smile.
"Oh, nobody leaves Sector 4," the man giggled. "The airlock is one-way. Didn't you read the sign?"
Ren looked back at the door they had entered. The keypad was dead. The manual override lever was… missing on the inside.
"He trapped us," Kaira realized.
The little man tapped his mop on the floor.
Click. Click. Click.
The sound echoed through the lab.
Suddenly, the lights flickered.
The liquid in the tank behind Ren—the tank with the Faceless Hollow—began to bubble.
The creature inside twitched.
The little man's smile widened until it looked painful.
"Subject 89 is awake," the man whispered. "And he's very hungry."
CRACK.
The glass of the tank shattered.
Green fluid flooded the floor. The Faceless Thing fell out, landing on all fours. It shook itself like a wet dog.
Then, the bone mask on its face split open. It didn't have a mouth. It had a proboscis—a long, needle-like tube that whipped around the air, tasting the scent of Ren's Aether.
[BOSS ENCOUNTER INITIATED]
> Subject: The Hollow (Prototype).
> Rank: Unknown.
> State: Starving.
>
"Run?" Titus asked, looking at the sealed door.
"Fight," Ren said, dropping into a crouch. He felt the Marrow Crystal burning in his stomach.
The Hollow screeched—a sound like metal tearing—and leaped.