The walls of the dead-end chamber pressed inward, the rusted metal softening into the horrifying illusion of breathing flesh. Darian slammed his hands against the wall, coughing on the sickeningly sweet yellow vapor.
"It's an illusion!" Darian shouted, forcing his green Essence to flare around him, anchoring his mind to reality. "The walls aren't real! It's the gas!"
Through the hallucinogenic fog, Zeri was drowning. Her father stood over her, immaculate in his burial clothes, his pale face a mask of absolute, freezing disappointment. "Look at what you've become, Zeri. A failure, to the very end."
"Stop it..." Zeri whimpered, her hands gripping her head as her holographic blasters sparked wildly, shattering into useless, dying sparks under his freezing stare.
"Veynar! Flank it!" Ravion roared. He was holding the narrow entry of the spur, desperately parrying a massive, swinging arm made of fused rat-torsos with his crimson-wreathed spear.
The rat-abomination tore through the hallucinated flesh of the doorway, its dozens of mismatched skulls snapping and chattering. As it lunged, its horrifying silhouette perfectly overlapped with the hallucination of Zeri's father.
You're a failure, Zeri.
Something inside Zeri fractured. It wasn't a snap of anger, but a surge of agonizing, heartbreaking clarity. She loved her father. She missed him every single day. And because she loved him so much, she knew this cold, cruel phantom was a twisted lie.
"You're not him," Zeri sobbed, her voice shaking as tears spilled hot and fast down her cheeks. "My dad loved me. He would never look at me like that." She forced her trembling hands forward, pushing through the psychic feedback.
The illusion of her father flickered, distorted, and violently shattered like broken glass, revealing the true, rotting face of the rat amalgamation just inches from Ravion. The shrinking, fleshy walls instantly dissolved back into the rusted iron grating of the sewer junction.
Zeri's blasters flared to life with blinding violet light. Her erratic plasma fire didn't hit the beast, but it severed the primary support struts above it, raining molten slag down into the sludge.
Darian was pressed hard against a corroded pump control console, his breathing shallow. Move. Just move.
Fifty feet away, Ravion was fighting a desperate, losing war. The tangled monstrosity of weeping muscle and gnashing teeth lashed out with its fused claws.
"Bring it to the center!" Zeri yelled, her monorover spinning wildly to dodge a spray of hallucinogenic yellow vapor.
Ravion gritted his teeth, abandoning finesse. He channeled a massive surge of Essence into his boots and vaulted backward, drawing the hulking abomination directly beneath the center of the crumbling ceiling. He threw his spear like a javelin—not at the beast, but at the massive, rusted coupling holding the remains of a suspended effluent tank.
Zeri gritted her teeth, tears of phantom psychic feedback still blurring her vision, but her mind was finally her own. She stabilized the violet plasma through sheer willpower and hit the same coupling with a massive, overcharged blast.
The metal groaned, snapped, and gave way.
"Look out!" Darian choked out, diving deeper under the console.
Hundreds of tons of rusted iron and stagnant wastewater crashed into the floor. The impact shook the foundation of the sewage tunnels, throwing Darian against the wall. The beast didn't even have time to shriek. The massive tank crushed it flat, sending a tidal wave of foul sewage and acidic black blood washing over the platform.
Then, there was only silence, broken by the hiss of melting metal and dripping wastewater.
Darian pushed himself up, coughing up foul-tasting mist. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely push his wet hair out of his eyes. He looked across the wreckage.
Zeri was sitting on the sludge-covered floor, her hoverboard deactivated. She had her knees pulled tight to her chest, her hands clamped hard over her ears as if trying to block out the lingering echoes of the hallucination. She was trembling, her chest heaving with dry, silent sobs, the trauma of seeing her father twisted like that still gripping her throat.
Ravion stood a few yards away, leaning heavily on the shaft of his retrieved spear, his head bowed. When he looked up, his face was pale, stripped of his usual haughty bravado.
Darian swallowed hard, forcing his trembling legs to move. "Are... are you guys okay?"
Ravion gave a single, jerky nod. Zeri slowly lowered her hands from her ears, exhaling a shaky breath. She didn't look at either of them, just stared at the sludge, wiping a streak of toxic soot—and tears—from her cheek. There was no yelling. No accusations about who missed their cue. The adrenaline had completely burned out, leaving only a hollow, exhausting shock.
A soft, frantic whining drew Darian's attention.
The bioluminescent pet, miraculously unharmed, was cowering atop a fallen pipe. Its cyan glow flickered anxiously. Darian reached out and scooped the shivering animal into his coat, holding it against his chest. The warmth of the creature somehow grounded him.
"Let's just get out of here," Zeri whispered, her voice cracking.
"Wait," Ravion said, staring past the crushed remains of the beast. He walked closer, his boots splashing in the acidic blood, and pointed toward a dark, cavernous alcove. "Look at this."
Darian and Zeri cautiously approached.
Inside the alcove, the stench of rotting meat was overpowering. The floor was carpeted in a gruesome mosaic of skeletal frames. Most were the remains of smaller sewer vermin, but scattered among them were the unmistakable, fractured ribs of larger prey, and the torn, bloody shreds of scavenger coats.
Darian frowned, his heart rate picking back up.
"It wasn't just passing through," Ravion muttered. "This is a nest."
"It's been feeding here for months," Zeri realized, covering her nose with her sleeve.
The realization hung heavy in the damp air. A heavy-tier feral had established a hunting ground deep in the undercity's drainage network, and the upper city's surveillance network had completely missed it.
Darian pulled a field holo-projector from his belt and keyed in the encrypted frequency. A moment later, the flickering, pale blue projection of Captain Halden materialized in the smog. She was at her desk, but her posture instantly straightened when she saw the state of them.
"Darian. Report," Halden demanded.
"Asset secured, Captain," Darian said. "But we ran into a heavy-tier monster. We eliminated it, but... Captain, we found a nest. It's been down here for months. Humans and animals. It claimed this whole sewage sector."
Halden's holo-image went dead still. The silence stretched for an agonizing second.
"The perimeter sensors present in the undercity should have picked up a monster of that size the moment it established a biological footprint," Halden murmured, her brow furrowing. "If it's been down there that long... someone is actively masking the sensor logs."
"Deliver the pet to their owner, and return to the Institute immediately," Halden ordered, her voice hardening. "You three are battered, and this is now an active anomaly. Do not engage further. I am sending an armed forensics team down to sweep the grid. Do you copy?"
"Yes, Captain," Darian said.
"Get out of the dark. Halden out." The projection vanished with a sharp static pop.
The hand-off at the transit hub was a quiet affair. When they reached the upper concourse, the block warden's daughter rushed forward, weeping as she took the glowing, shivering pet from Darian. Darian gave her a tired nod, his energy spent.
He turned toward the heavy mag-lift that would carry them back to the pristine, safe halls of the Institute. Zeri was already floating toward the doors.
But Ravion didn't move.
He stood in the middle of the grimy concourse, his eyes locked on a heavy maintenance corridor branching off to the east. The corridor ran parallel to the city's primary data conduits.
Without a word, Ravion turned his back on the mag-lift and started walking toward the dark corridor.
"Ravion?" Darian called out. "Where are you going? The lift is this way."
Ravion stopped, but didn't turn around. "I'm going to investigate that monster's origins. A feral of... that level of strength doesn't just naturally exist down here in the undercity. It's impossible."
"Halden gave a direct order to return to base," Darian said, stepping after him. "She's sending forensics."
"Forensics won't do a damn thing," Ravion snapped. He spun around, and the raw vulnerability on his face stopped Darian in his tracks. Ravion was covered in acidic sludge, his armor cracked, his hands trembling slightly from adrenaline withdrawal.
He gritted his teeth, his trademark arrogant scowl returning. "The government doesn't actually care about the undercity. By the time they authorize a real sweep, who knows how many more of those things will crawl out of the dark? God knows how many of them are out there already, undetected and killing innocents. The people down here are on their own."
He tightened his grip on his spear. "I'm finding the source. I'm going to prove to Halden that we are competent. But I'm doing it on my own. You two go back up to the Institute. I don't need you slowing me down."
Darian clamped his mouth shut. The harsh dismissal stung, but seeing how hard Ravion was trying to mask his desperation to prove himself, Darian didn't have the energy to argue.
Zeri floated past Darian on her monorover. She wasn't blowing synth-gum; her jaw was set in a tight, rigid line, her eyes still red but blazing with a sudden, fierce intensity. "Yeah, no," she said, her voice lacking its usual, apathetic drawl. "I'm coming too."
"I said I'm doing this by myself, Zeri," Ravion growled. "I don't need you tagging along."
"And I don't need your permission." Zeri stopped her rover next to him, turning to meet his glare.
Ravion stared at her, his jaw working silently, completely disarmed by the raw, wounded defiance in her eyes.
Darian let out a long, exhausted breath. He looked at the brightly lit mag-lift, thinking of the warm showers and the safety of his bed. Then he looked at his two fractured teammates standing in the dark, both of them fighting ghosts he couldn't see. They were a mess.
He really had no choice.
Darian adjusted his grip on his holstered blade, walked past the mag-lift, and clapped Ravion lightly on the shoulder as he passed.
"Lead the way," Darian muttered, stepping into the dark.