The man Darian had dragged from the sewer slumped against the rotting brick, trembling and clutching his ribs. He let out a shaky laugh that quickly dissolved into a wet, rattling cough.
"Medical help?" he wheezed, gesturing weakly at the collapsing alleyway and the shadowed figures watching them from blown-out windows. "Down here, you either walk it off, or you don't."
Darian didn't argue. He drew a compact injector from his belt, the device clicking softly as he primed it. Before the man could protest, Darian pressed it against his ribs. A hiss of pale blue fluid hit the civilian's bloodstream; his eyes widened, breathing instantly leveling out.
"Clot stabilizer and a heavy painkiller," Darian said, pocketing the device. "It won't fix broken ribs, but it'll keep you standing."
A few yards away, Ravion knelt beside the creature's corpse. The malformed, catlike hybrid lay twisted on the pavement, its elongated limbs slack and rudimentary wings folded like broken scaffolding. Patchy fur, matted with black fluid, clung to the warped bone structure. Ravion used the shaft of his spear to nudge one of its heavy, distorted paws.
"The mutation is incomplete," Ravion noted, his voice cold and analytical. "Fresh. Driven by a violent spike in negative emotion." He rubbed his thumb against the creature's claws, peeling away a thick, dark grime. "Oxidized iron. Heavy industrial lubricants."
Zeri leaned in, her nose wrinkling at the stench. Her gaze caught on a frayed, half-melted strip of nylon buried in the creature's thickened neck. Her expression dropped. "Wait. Is that a collar?"
Darian stepped up beside her. "The missing cat."
Zeri stared at him. "You're telling me this nightmare used to be someone's pet? Animals are turning now?"
"When survival instincts are pushed past their limits by localized Essence corruption, the biology fractures," Ravion said, standing. He wiped the dark grease from his gloves. "Human or animal. The result is the same."
Darian closed his eyes, tuning out the ambient noise of the slums. He focused on the residual, sickly resonance radiating from the carcass. It wasn't isolated. He caught a faint thread of that same dark Essence drifting on the smog, pulling deeper into the district.
"It didn't transform here," Darian said, opening his eyes. He looked down the street, where rusting transit rails hung overhead like a skeletal canopy. "It brought the corruption with it. There's a trail."
"Then we follow," Ravion said, resting his spear across his shoulders.
The deeper they pushed into the district, the more the city decayed. Buildings leaned at impossible angles, patched with scrap and welded plating. They followed the invisible thread of Essence until it intersected with a physical commotion—a small, panicked crowd gathered near a corrugated metal stall.
"Same as last week," a man muttered as they approached. "Just vanished."
Darian pushed to the front. A pale, grime-streaked woman was clutching a child's torn jacket to her chest, weeping frantically. The moment she spotted the POND insignia on Darian's uniform, she grabbed his sleeve. "He's gone! My nephew—I only looked away for a minute!"
"Hey, breathe," Darian said, steadying her. "No signs of a struggle?"
"Nothing!" she cried. "He was just playing. I told him to stay away from the older boys, told him to stay out of that rust-pit..."
Ravion stepped forward, his eyes narrowing. "Rust-pit. Do you mean the old transit rails?"
The woman flinched, nodding shakily. "The old rail yard. Been abandoned since before I was born. The strays run there. Now the kids use it as a hideout. I told him not to go..."
The pieces slammed together in Darian's mind. The missing cat coated in rail-yard grease. A localized spike of corruptive Essence. Children vanishing without a sound.
Zeri rubbed the back of her neck, her cynical facade cracking. "Okay. That is way worse than a mutant stray."
Darian tapped his comm. "Halden, it's Squad Nine."
Static popped before the instructor's crisp voice came through. "Go ahead, Nine."
"We've got a localized corruption source and a pattern. Missing pets and missing kids, all linked to the same location." Darian looked up at the rusted tracks disappearing into the thick, unnatural fog ahead. "The old rail yard sector."
A heavy sigh crackled over the comms. "Of course it is."
"You know it?" Zeri asked.
"Officially, it was shut down decades ago due to infrastructure collapse," Halden replied, her tone grim. "Unofficially? People realized whatever wandered in there stopped coming out. Watch your backs, Nine. You're walking into a sinkhole."