Darian didn't wait and began to climb.
The metal groaned under his weight, flaking toxic orange rust onto his shoulders. He pulled himself up onto the fractured ferrocrete beam, balancing precariously thirty feet above the sludge-covered floor.
"Easy," Darian murmured, keeping his hands low and his voice steady as he crept toward the glowing creature. "I'm not going to hurt you."
The pet was no bigger than a terrier, but its genetic modifications made it look like a spectral phantom. Cyan bio-luminescence pulsed beneath its translucent skin. As Darian scooped it into his arms, the creature let out a pathetic, vibrating whimper. It was incredibly cold to the touch, shaking so violently its tiny ribs rattled against his palm.
Darian frowned, stroking the creature's slick head. "I've got you. Why are you so scared?"
The hound didn't look at Darian. Its milky eyes were locked on the absolute darkness of the drainage culverts directly above them.
Click. Click.
The sound was wet and heavy, echoing through the cavernous sewer main.
Darian's stomach dropped. The shadows in the culverts began to shift, bleeding downward like a living, viscous liquid. The stench hit him a second later—a suffocating wave of raw sewage, stagnant water, and a sickeningly sweet chemical odor that made his vision instantly blur.
They didn't drop from the ceiling like a swarm. They poured out as a single, undulating mass.
It was an amalgamation—a tangled monstrosity born of raw sewage and illegal genetic waste. Dozens of feral rodents were fused together at the spine and tail, forming a singular, hulking abomination the size of an Ares Corp transport van. Mismatched skulls snapped and chattered in chaotic unison. Overgrown incisors clicked like rusty shears, while a central mass of weeping muscle pulsed like a diseased heart.
The beast exhaled. A thick, yellowish vapor hissed from its multiple maws, cascading down the rusted beams and flooding the air with hallucinogenic spores.
"Ravion!" Darian shouted, clutching the hound tightly to his chest as he scrambled backward.
Down on the floor, Ravion's eyes locked onto the descending nightmare. A cold, arrogant smirk touched his lips. He flicked his wrist. With a sharp, metallic snick-clack, the collapsed hilt in his hand violently telescoped outward into his lethal, six-foot spear, spiraling down the shaft.
Beside him, Zeri blew a bubble of synth-gum. It popped with a sharp snap. The air around her shoulders rippled and distorted as three heavy, holographic blasters materialized out of thin air. They hovered obediently in a jagged orbit around her head, whining as they charged with blinding violet plasma.
"Drop, Veynar!" Ravion barked, spinning his spear into a low guard.
Darian didn't hesitate. Holding the terrified hound tight, he stepped off the beam and plummeted toward the sludge below.
As his boots hit the ground, the yellow vapor washed over him, and the world violently tilted.
The sound of his boots striking the floor didn't echo like a splash of sludge; it sounded like a heavy plasti-steel beam crashing into permacrete. Darian choked, suddenly feeling an invisible, crushing weight pressing down on his ribs. He blinked rapidly, fighting the phantom sensation of the subway collapse.
It's just gas. It's in your head, Darian told himself, forcing his green Essent to flare around his legs to keep from collapsing.
"Open fire!" Ravion roared, lunging forward.
Zeri's blasters spun to lock onto the massive, writhing mass of rats as it slammed into the ground. But as her violet plasma reached maximum charge, Zeri froze.
The yellow fog swirled around the beast, and suddenly, the monstrous silhouette shifted. Through Zeri's tear-filled, dilated eyes, it wasn't a monster anymore. Standing in the center of the sewage, wearing the immaculate clothes he had been buried in, was her father. His pale face was twisted into a familiar scowl of absolute, freezing disappointment.
"Zeri..." the hallucination whispered, his stern voice echoing from all directions. "Look at what you've become. A failure, to the very end."
"No! I'm trying!" Zeri shrieked, staggering backward on her hoverboard. She wildly jerked her hands. The holographic blasters fired wide, incinerating a rusted support pillar instead of the beast. "Dad, please! Ravion, stop!"
Ravion didn't hear her. He drove his spear forward, aiming for the central mass of the abomination. The crimson blade struck true, sinking deep into the weeping flesh.
But the beast didn't stagger. The fused heads simply twisted around on their broken necks, locking their milky dead eyes onto Ravion. The central muscle mass violently contracted, trapping the spear. With a horrifying, synchronized shriek, a massive arm composed entirely of three fused, thrashing rat-torsos swung outward like a club.
The impact hit Ravion like a freight train. He was launched thirty feet backward, his spear ripped from his grasp, skipping across the toxic water.
"We can't fight this thing! Move!" Darian screamed, grabbing Zeri by the back of her coat and dragging her away from her hallucination.
They sprinted for the tunnel that led back to the main junction. Darian pumped his legs, clutching the shivering hound to his chest. The exit was only fifty yards away. The flickering emergency lights of the maintenance catwalk beckoned.
But as they ran, the air pressure dropped sickeningly.
The tunnel didn't get closer. It began to stretch. The rusted pipes lining the walls twisted and writhed like mechanical snakes, elongating the hallway into an impossible, infinite throat. The walls began to breathe, expanding and contracting with the wet, heavy pulse of the beast's heartbeat.
"The door!" Ravion coughed, limping up beside them, blood dripping from his nose. His eyes were wide with a terror he couldn't mask. "It just... it moved!"
SCREEECH.
The sound of a thousand claws scraping against metal echoed from behind them. The monstrosity was charging, a tidal wave of gnashing teeth and yellow fog barreling down the impossible geometry of the shifting corridor.
"Burn it!" Ravion yelled, hurling reckless, explosive arcs of Crimson Essent blindly into the fog.
"I can't!" Zeri sobbed. Her holographic blasters were glitching, flickering wildly as the violet plasma shattered into useless, dying sparks under her father's judging stare. The psychic feedback was tearing her mind apart.
"Just keep running!" Darian yelled, pushing her forward. "Keep running!"
They took a hard left down a sewage overflow spur, desperate to break line of sight. But the environment instantly betrayed them. The heavy iron grating beneath their feet suddenly softened, turning into a spongy, yielding surface that felt horrifyingly like breathing flesh. The walls slammed shut behind them with the deafening clang of rusted vault doors that hadn't been there a second prior.
They were trapped in a dead-end chamber that was actively shrinking. The rusted pipes above began to bleed thick, black sludge that smelled of copper and death.