Chapter 3
Among them, small many-eyed serpents and metallic-colored centipedes slithered slowly, as though savoring the parasitic energy radiating from the colossal vessel, becoming part of the horrifying ecosystem born of this anomaly.
Meanwhile, the lower half of its body underwent an opposite yet equally disturbing transformation.
Both legs, still standing firmly upon the rubble, appeared normal from a distance.
Yet along its thighs, the muscles swelled and hardened to an extraordinary degree, tightening like steel cables wrapped in pale skin.
Each strand of muscle fiber was clearly visible, moving and pulsing with almost mechanical force, as if engineered to support the grotesque weight of the distorted upper body and the enormous abdomen that nearly brushed the ceiling.
This contrast created an even more unreal impression.
The powerful, nearly perfect legs of an athlete serving as the foundation for a masterpiece of biological madness.
Any step this entity might take—should it decide to move—would shake the floor with seismic force.
Nirmala Surdaya's face, once pale and alert, suddenly changed.
A smile bloomed upon her lips, spreading slowly and unnaturally until it nearly reached both cheeks.
It was so wide and unnatural that her own face seemed strained to contain it, creating folds and distortions that made her resemble a warped mask.
Her expression became ambivalent, no longer readable as courage, madness, or despair, but rather a pure reaction erupting from within at the confrontation with absolute absurdity.
From behind that stretched smile came laughter.
Not joyful laughter, but a short, broken, trembling snicker, like someone who had just understood the darkest and most private joke in the universe.
The sound filled the silence left by the layered voices of the creature, a piercing contrast.
As the laughter lingered, both her hands moved with mechanical precision.
From within the folds of her clothing, her right hand had already gripped her old single pistol.
Her left hand, with equal speed and certainty, seized a metal support rod from the remains of a shattered chair nearby.
She did not raise it to strike, but held it tightly, as though it were a second weapon—an extension of a resolve that had transformed into something deeper and more dangerous than mere anger.
With the wide smile still carved upon her face and the remnants of a hiss-like chuckle in her breath, one of Nirma's eyes—now gleaming with an almost feverish light—stared directly into the swirling blue glow within the eyes of the twenty-eight heads.
"You think this is about form?" she said, her voice no more than a hoarse whisper, yet piercing the low hum of energy.
"You think chaos is the final weapon?"
She stepped forward, not backward, crushing shards of glass and wood beneath a firm stride.
Each step was a challenge against the gravity of madness ruling the room.
Those two seconds of silence stretched endlessly, filled only by the hiss of energy from the monstrous abdomen and Nirmala's deliberate breathing.
The wide smile had faded, leaving only a sharp tension around her eyes.
Suddenly, from the small earpiece attached to her left ear, a clear yet hurried transmission sounded, fragmented by temporal static interference.
"How long are we staying in this era? Indonesia in the 1950s is tinder waiting for a spark, and what you're facing now might only be the warm-up."
The voice cut off briefly before returning, firmer.
"I hope your judgment proceeds successfully."
Before Nirmala could reply, from one of the large breaches in the wall created by the earlier blast of wind, a silhouette leapt inside with powerful, purposeful motion.
The new man landed lightly atop the rubble, his build lean yet evidently well-trained.
In his hands was a weapon that appeared to be a technological anomaly in itself.
Its body resembled a modified M4A1, fitted with a long barrel akin to an AWP, equipped with a stock and handguard reminiscent of an XM8, and beneath it a thick forward-facing tube resembling a portable rocket launcher.
Keeping her pistol aimed steadily at the creature's massive abdomen, Nirmala slowly turned her head toward Arya.
The earlier grotesque smile still lingered faintly, but had hardened into something colder and calculated, like a deliberately sharpened blade.
Her eyes met Arya's, holding both recognition and warning.
Her voice emerged flat yet clear, cutting through the low energetic hum filling the room.
"Easy, Arya," Nirmala said, the address familiar yet edged with steel.
"We'll be leaving shortly. Just before the Temporal Cross-Police complete their triangulation and storm this location with all their paradox-suppression protocols."
She tilted her head slightly, as though listening to something through her earpiece, before returning her gaze to Arya.
"Our signal's already being traced. We've got five minutes—maybe less."
Her head turned back slowly and deliberately, leaving Arya behind and fixing once more upon the swirling blue light within several of Subjekt Mydra 9-C's heads directed at her.
The cold smile had vanished entirely, replaced by a blank expression even more terrifying, like the frozen surface of a lake before a storm.
When she finally spoke, her voice was flat, clinical, measured—slicing through the hissing energy in the air.
"Subjekt Mydra 9-C," Nirmala uttered, each syllable articulated with perfect clarity, like a scientist naming a specimen.
"If granted the choice of punishment, after all the temporal violations and distortions of reality you have unleashed, what would you choose to endure?"
Her question hung between them—not as an offer of mercy, but as a final inquiry, an attempt to comprehend the logic behind this embodied chaos before everything ended.
Simultaneous with the echo of her final question, Mydra 9-C's body delivered an unexpected yet final response.
Within its roiling giant abdomen, the swirling copper and violet light suddenly turned white, blinding like a newborn miniature sun.
There was no time for warning, no roaring prelude.
Only a colossal explosion preceded by a heartbeat of silence before the shockwave struck.
The detonation was deafening—a concentrated release of pure energy that compressed, then expanded at terrifying speed.
The already weakened apartment walls disintegrated into dust and lethal fragments.
The floor and ceiling burst outward, spewing debris into the levels below and above.
Flames ignited instantly—not ordinary orange, but pale blue and violet—devouring the remnants of furniture, paper, and even the air itself with heat that felt atomic.
The wave of heat hurled Nirmala and Arya backward, slamming them into rubble deeper within the now-exposed corridor.
Amid the vortex of anomalous fire and blazing destruction, a core silhouette of Mydra 9-C—a denser, darker form, perhaps the remnant of its original body before mutation—shot outward like a projectile fired from a cosmic cannon.
It moved not by running or conventional flight, but with acceleration so extreme it left a fleeting trail of plasma in the burning air.
Its velocity resembled a rocket achieving orbit, capable of circling the Earth within an hour if unimpeded.
The silhouette pierced through what remained of the apartment's outer wall, streaked into the layered night of the 1950s city, and vanished from sight in a fraction of a second, leaving behind a fading scar of strange light across the sky.
To be continued…