Part X – This World Is Not the Worst of Them I
The east-wing patient corridor lay under a spreading cloud of pitch-black smudge. The stench hung thick and acidic, sharp enough to flood his mouth with saliva and churn his stomach even as he forced his breathing steady. Pressure crowded his chest, close to suffocation, but his senses stayed sharp. The tightness there had barely settled when he understood that what waited ahead was far beyond anything he had prepared for.
Behind him, the sealed room pulsed with muted life. Breathing bodies. Machines idling in standby. A fragile rhythm he kept anchored through stance and placement, a line he could not afford to break.
Ahead, the black mass gathered itself.
It had no eyes. No ears. Nothing human it could be reasoned with. Its parasitic nature answered only to heat. Tendrils drove into walls and ceiling, hauling its bulk forward as countless cells patched together into a single, pooled body that surged toward him.
Blue Qi bled from Kaodin's skin in a steady field. The reaction was immediate. The mass tightened. Tendrils lifted and coiled along its unstable surface, spiraling inward as it aligned itself to the thermal presence standing in its path.
Earlier, when the creature had reached for him and Arika, Wawa had intercepted just in time.
Unbelievable how it had come to this. Moments ago, the dream still clung to him. Now the corridor held a living weight of a massive-pooled black mass, waiting to feed on him. There was no way around it. Only forward through it.
Left foot forward. Weight centered. Knees loose. Left forearm angled to guard. Right hand close to his jaw, posture held loosely for a swift to react.
Wawa stood half a pace ahead. Low to the ground. Shoulders rolled forward. Hind legs coiled tight beneath compact muscle. Waiting for his master's signal, unfazed by an opponent, something hundreds of times his size.
Kaodin pivoted calmly, eyes tracking the unknown creature as it moved.
The black-pooled mass spread along the corridor floor and shuddered, ripples racing through it as bulges rose and collapsed at random. Tendrils tore free without pattern. Thin whips and thick, rope-like lengths snapped against doors, ceiling panels, and conduit housings in wet, eager strikes. Corridor frames rattled. A ceiling light burst, sparks vanishing the instant they touched the slick surface. The mass climbed the walls in heavy folds, strands stretching upward before slamming down again, each impact sending a tremor through its body.
Heat marked the path.
Warmth bent the body.
Pulse tightened. Then loosened.
Thirst rose.
Prey stood here.
Prey carried a strange glow.
An old glow.
Felt before.
From far back.
Before hunger.
The body remembered.
The mass widened its encirclement, spreading across the ground Kaodin and Wawa held. The motion sought to capture its prey to quench its insatiable hunger.
Kaodin's hands stayed high, guarding his face. There was no time for the knuckle guard. He could not risk exposing his hand to test the mass with a Qi palm. One mistake would cost him an arm.
The black mass answered first.
Tendrils erupted from multiple points and snapped toward Kaodin's rising Te-Chiang high kick. The clash shrieked, sound lagging half a breath behind impact. Blue Qi surged through his leg, heat drawn tight and controlled. The tendrils ruptured on contact, fragments tearing loose as their structure failed mid-strike.
Wawa struck at the same moment. His paw carried less force, but his Qi was dense. Heat injected cleanly on contact, ripping a section free that recoiled and fragmented.
More tendrils tore free at once. One dropped from above. Another slashed in from the right. A third skimmed low across the floor, while a thicker line drove straight down the center.
Kaodin did not step back.
His knee lifted and caught the low strike on the rise. The impact jarred through his leg, heat snapping tight as his Qi sealed the contact. Before the recoil finished, his foot was already down and his body had slipped inside the crossing angles.
A kick flashed out, short and sharp, blue heat carving through a tendril mid-whip. His shoulder rolled with the motion, weight settling just long enough for a left elbow to snap in behind it. The blow landed close. Too close. The tendril hissed, split, and burned away before it could pull free.
Fragments slapped wetly against the floor as the remaining lines recoiled.
Wawa moved with him. Low to the ground, half a beat behind Kaodin's steps. Tendrils aimed at Kaodin had their lines broken as Wawa cut across them, switching paws, striking from shifting angles with tight, contained bursts of Qi. Each hit fractured cohesion at close range. When Kaodin shifted, Wawa filled the space. When Kaodin struck, Wawa cleared the flank.
Their movements locked together through instinct and bond; timing exchanged without a glance.
The black mass drew inward. Folds climbed over themselves as its bulk tightened, tendrils curling close, surfaces shivering under stored force. Kaodin tracked the change, pulling a measured breath through his nose, eyes fixed as the mass gathered weight.
Something heavier moved.
A larger tendril launched from deep within the body. Its full length contracted, then released in a single violent snap, hurling it down the corridor with crushing speed. The force came from far back inside the mass, momentum already committed before it cleared the surface.
Kaodin caught its line at the edge of his vision and felt the weight behind it. The creature shifted in response, awareness snapping toward him, but the strike could not be recalled. The tendril tore across the floor in a sweeping arc. The corridor screamed. Tiles shattered. The wall to his right took the impact, concrete groaning as the strike dragged upward and carved a tearing line through it.
Kaodin reached the wall a breath ahead of the blow. His foot planted. Pushed.
He ran two steps along the vertical surface, body lifting just enough. The tendril chased late, mass still pouring forward, unable to realign.
He turned midair and drove his right leg through the opening.
Qi gathered clean and dense along his shin as Te-Klang snapped out. Gravity and rotation folded into the strike. Blue heat bit through the tendril at the point of contact, the burn carrying straight through its span. The structure failed at once. The remaining length recoiled in a smeared collapse, fragments losing cohesion before they hit the floor.
Kaodin landed hard, breath sharp. His eyes met Wawa's.
And he recalled.
The reaction to Qi triggered the memory from the Colos Variant fight. Han Xiao's words surfaced with sudden clarity. Parasitic tissue also carried its vital organ within itself.
If this creature evolved from that small parasitic tissue within the Colos Variant, then it would meant…..
The black bulk surged inward again. Layers piled and folded, surfaces dragging tight as weight shifted deep inside. The corridor reacted before sight could follow. Air thickened. Sound warped as a heavy pulse slammed outward, squeezing the space from wall to wall.
Kaodin felt it through his feet. The floor drove back into his heels. His knees flexed to catch the load. Breath hit resistance, ribs tightening, then eased into a slower pull as his stance held.
Wawa's shoulders dipped. His body slid half a step left.
The first tendrils tore free from above. Lines of black snapped downward with crushing weight, carrying compressed air ahead of them. The corridor detonated in staggered impacts. Concrete burst outward. Panels caved. A section of ceiling split open, debris hammering the floor where Kaodin and Wawa had been a moment earlier.
Kaodin was already shifting through the recoil. His foot angled away from the patient-side wall, shoulder rolling as he redirected momentum down the corridor's centerline. Dust and fragments clipped his sleeve. One tendril scraped past close enough to peel heat from his skin before burying itself into the wall beside the sealed rooms.
The wall screamed. Cracks carved outward from the impact point, diagnostics flickering erratic amber.
Kaodin's weight shifted again, further from the doors. His back never touched the patient-side wall. Every adjustment pulled the fight outward, into open corridor, into space that could fail without killing someone asleep behind steel.
The mass answered. Its wide black jelly folded inward in a sudden compression, surface rippling as pressure surged through its bulk. Air crushed outward in a violent lateral blast. The force struck Wawa first. His paws skidded across the floor, claws shrieking as he cut low and angled sideways through the wave. Kaodin's sleeve snapped tight against his arm as the pressure swept past, dust flattening and smearing across the walls.
Another surge followed. Tendrils burst outward in a wide-area barrage, slashing through space in overlapping angles. Edges hardened and vibrated as they cut, lines stacking and crossing to flood the corridor, filling every lane with tearing motion.
Kaodin stayed compact. His elbows stayed close. Knees lifted and dropped in tight beats, intercepting lines just long enough to break their path before slipping through the gaps they created. A slash skimmed his shoulder and bit into the floor instead, carving a furrow deep enough to expose conduit casing beneath.
Wawa threaded the lower angles. His body stayed close to the ground, paws striking through slashes at their base where cohesion thinned. Every hit landed dense and contained, heat injected just long enough to fracture the edge before the tendril could recover its shape.
The wall beside the patient rooms took another devastating blow.
Concrete split. A support seam buckled. The diagnostic lights along the doors dimmed in a wave.
Kaodin pivoted hard away from it, heel grinding against debris as he tried to pull the fight further away from the patient room where the others were, yet before he could come up with any suitable plan.
The mass already adapted through instinct alone. Wild motion compressed into efficient patterns. Tendrils shortened their arcs, Strikes drove low and direct, chewing into the ground Kaodin and Wawa occupied, seeking footing, seeking collapse, pressing toward the moment where resistance would give way.
It was adapting, learning.
Tendrils cinched tighter in hard, grinding pulls, each contraction biting deeper as the coils stacked and locked, the way a python tightens its body around struggling prey. Pressure shifted along the wraps, readjusting, then slamming down with final weight. It tried to pop the joints and crushed the hard bones for the entire body until the prey lost its final breathe.
This marked the start of round two….