Three days before Lucent and Kai would find themselves running for their lives through the corpse of Sector 12, Nex's crew moved like shadows through the abandoned transit tunnels. The air hung thick with the stench of rotting metal and something darker the acrid tang of corrupted Aether that seeped from the walls in iridescent streaks.
This far beneath the Junkyard's surface, even the ever present hum of the nodes grew muted, replaced by the drip of condensation on rusted steel and the occasional skitter of creatures that had long since abandoned any pretense of being rats.
Nex's steel talons bit into the grated walkway with each step, his hydraulic leg hissing like a restless serpent. The glow stick in his hand cast sickly green light across the tunnel walls, revealing where the metal had begun to warp in strange, organic patterns bulging outward in places as if something beneath the surface was trying to push through. He paused, running a calloused finger along one of the ridges, feeling the unnatural warmth that radiated from it.
"Told you," Gristle muttered from behind him, his augmented jaw clicking with each word. The wiry man's elongated fingers twitched toward his belt of tools, the motion sending shadows dancing across his hollow cheeks. "Place is rotting from the inside out."
Nex didn't answer. He'd been hearing the rumors for weeks, whispers from scavengers who had ventured too deep into Sector 12 and come back changed. Men who woke screaming about things moving in the walls. Women whose augmented parts started responding to commands no one had given. The stories all led back to one place, the old Myriad labs, buried like a tumor in the heart of the sector.
The rotor-saw woman - they called her Karen - shifted her weight, the blades on her wrist-mounted weapon spinning lazily. "We should've brought more firepower," she said, her voice tight. The usual cocky swagger was gone from her stance, replaced by a tension that made her shoulders hunch.
Nex finally turned, the light catching the network of scars that webbed across his face. "Scared, Karen?" His grin showed teeth filed to points. "Thought you liked playing with dangerous things."
Before she could retort, a sound echoed through the tunnel, not the usual groan of settling metal, but something wetter, more organic. Like flesh sliding across rusted steel. The crew froze as one, rising their guns instinctively.
For a long moment, there was nothing. Then, a movement at the edge of the light. Something pale and too long unfolded from a side passage, its movements fluid in a way that made Nex's augmetic eye stutter in its tracking. Not a Hollowed or at least not like any he'd seen before. This thing moved with purpose, its elongated fingers trailing along the walls as if reading braille only it could understand.
Gristle made a sound low in his throat. "That's new."
The creature's head snapped toward them, milky eyes reflecting the green glow. Its mouth opened, too wide and its jaw unhinging like a snake's, and letting out a sound that wasn't a scream or a growl, but something between. A vibration that made the metal beneath their feet hum in response.
Nex felt it then, the first real prickle of unease crawling up his spine. This wasn't just another mindless husk. This thing was watching them. Learning them.
Karen's rotor-saw whined to full speed. "Orders, boss?"
Nex's fingers tightened around his weapon, a modified rebar cutter he had reforged into something meaner. The creature tilted its head, mirroring the motion with uncanny precision.
"Same as always," Nex growled, his hydraulic leg tensing. "We kill it. Then we find where it came from."
As the creature launched itself forward with that terrible, liquid grace, Nex had one last thought before the world dissolved into violence - whatever was happening in Sector 12, it was worse than they'd imagined.
***
Consciousness returned to Lucent in fractured pieces, each sensation sharper than the last. First came the coppery tang of blood filling his mouth, thick and warm. Then the throbbing ache radiating from his temples down to his clenched jaw, pulsing in time with his sluggish heartbeat. Finally, the burning sensation, just the expected fire along his nerve endings from rawcasting. As if his very bones had been soaked in acid and set alight.
He tried to open his eyes, but the dim light of the chamber stabbed through his pupils like needles. A groan escaped his cracked lips before he could stop it.
"Easy."
Kai's voice came from somewhere to his right, closer than expected. The word carried a weight Lucent had never heard in this guy's tone before, not just concern, but something harder. Something like resignation.
Lucent forced his eyes open again, slower this time. The world resolved into a nightmare he hadn't expected at all.
They were in a circular chamber, its curved walls resembling the interior of some gigantic, rusted esophagus. The metal surfaces were no longer smooth but textured with strange, bulbous growths that pulsed rhythmically, their translucent skins revealing dark veins beneath that throbbed in unison. The air hung heavy with moisture, each breath coating Lucent's tongue with the taste of spoiled meat and something electric, like the aftermath of a storm.
He realized with dawning horror that the floor beneath him wasn't metal at all, but a spongy, fibrous mat of the same organic material, warm to the touch and slightly yielding. When he lifted his hand, thin strands of glistening mucus stretched between his fingers and the surface.
Kai crouched beside him, his once pristine jacket now a tattered ruin. The makeshift bandage on his forearm wept dark fluid, the edges of the wound beneath visible as angry red lines radiating outward like cracks in porcelain. His face had lost its Spire bred softness, the hollows beneath his eyes making him look years older.
"You've been out for nearly an hour," Kai said, his voice low. He kept glancing toward the chamber's single visible exit, a ragged archway leading into deeper darkness. "I tried to drag you further in, but..." His throat dry and parched. "There are things moving in the walls."
Lucent's fingers twitched toward his belt, finding his knife still secured there. The Conduit lay nearby, its casing blackened, the screen dark. Dead weight now.
He tried to sit up, muscles screaming in protest. The movement sent fresh waves of pain radiating from his core, where the rawcasting's backlash had settled like a nest of live wires. His vision swam dangerously, but he gritted his teeth through it.
"Where is it?" he ground out.
Kai shook his head. "Gone. For now." He nodded toward the far wall where the remains of their escape route lay in ruins. "It tried to follow us through the shaft, but..."
Lucent followed his gaze. The collapsed ventilation tunnel wasn't simply blocked, it had been sealed. Thick ropes of glistening, sinewy tissue crisscrossed the opening, their surfaces studded with bulbous nodules that pulsed faintly. The substance resembled the fungal growths but moved with disturbing purpose, contracting and expanding like breathing lungs.
Then he saw the figures.
Half-embedded in the fibrous mass, arranged with terrible symmetry along the chamber's perimeter, were humanoid shapes. Some still bore scraps of clothing, a scavenger's harness here, the remnants of a Myriad security uniform there. Their bodies had been... altered. Limbs elongated, joints reversed, skin stretched taut over distended ribcages. Their faces were frozen in expressions of silent agony, mouths open in endless screams, eyes replaced by clusters of the same glowing nodules that dotted the walls.
Not dead.
Not alive.
Transformed.
Kai made a sound low in his throat. "They're being... changed." His voice broke on the last word.
Lucent's stomach turned. The mutated Hollowed wasn't just hunting. It was cultivating. Building something. An army. A hive.
And they were standing in its heart.
The knife felt pitifully small in his grip as he forced himself to his feet. His legs trembled, but held. "We need to move," his voice rasped. "Now."
Kai didn't argue. He moved to support Lucent, but hesitated when a new sound echoed through the chamber with a wet, tearing noise from the corridor ahead.
Not the creature's laughter.
Not the shrieks of Hollowed.
But something infinitely worse.
The sound of something being born.
From the darkness beyond the archway, a figure emerged, not the mutated Hollowed, but something newer. Fresher. Its limbs twitched spasmodically as it took its first shuddering steps, the last remnants of its human skin sloughing away to reveal the glistening gray flesh beneath. Its head tilted at an impossible angle as it scented the air.
Then its milky eyes opened.
Darting everywhere on the dark as if its looking for something.
The Q-Serin vial weighed heavy in Lucent's pocket as his fingers brushed against it through the fabric. He could feel the slight slosh of liquid within, the glass cool against his fingertips even through the layer of grime-stiffened cloth. One dose.
That was all they had between them - a single chance to push past human limits when the moment demanded it. His thumb traced the familiar shape through the material, calculating. This far from Sector 12, with his Conduit fried and Kai barely able to hold a basic containment glyph together? It wouldn't be enough. Not nearly enough.
Lucent's gaze flickered toward the archway where the newborn Hollowed had vanished. His internal map of the Junkyard's underbelly spun behind his mind - the twisting routes through collapsed transit tunnels, the known Hollowed nests, the dead zones even scavengers avoided. Sector 12 lay deep in that maze, through territory that had clearly become something else entirely. Something worse.
"We should turn back," he said, the words gritty with exhaustion. "Make for the clinic..."
Kai's head snapped up so fast Lucent heard the vertebrae crack. "Are you out of your mind?" The whisper came out strangled, too loud in the fungal-choked chamber. "After what we just saw? Those things are—"
"Not our problem." Lucent wiped at his mouth, his palm coming away streaked with blood and soot. The movement pulled at fresh burns along his forearm where the rawcasting backlash had seared through skin. "We're not some fully equipped clean up crew. Look at us." He gestured between them with the knife still clutched in his hand. "One functional Conduit between us, and yours can barely light a cigarette."
Kai's fingers twitched toward his device, the cracked screen flickering weakly in response. For a moment, his mouth worked silently before the words burst out in a heated whisper. "You think anywhere will be safe if those things spread? That Rena's clinic has some magic barrier?" His free hand gestured wildly at the transformed figures embedded in the walls. "They're evolving, Lucent. That one recognized us. It's not just hunting anymore - it's thinking."
The truth of it settled between them like a corpse hitting concrete. Lucent's grip tightened on the knife until the leather-wrapped handle creaked. He wanted to argue, to point out that between Kai's half-functional tech and his own fried nervous system, they'd be lucky to make it to Sector 12 alive, let alone capable of doing anything useful when they got there. But the memory of that too-intelligent gaze in the ventilation shaft crawled up his spine like spider legs.
Kai saw the hesitation. He stepped closer, close enough that Lucent could see the fine tremors running through the hand clutching his Conduit, could smell the sour tang of fear cutting through the chamber's fungal reek. "I'm not saying we fight it," he murmured. "But if what you said about Sector 12, to those old Myriad labs... There has to be something there we can use. A way to stop this before—"
A wet, tearing sound echoed from the tunnels beyond the archway. Not distant anymore. Not even close.
Lucent's head snapped up, his battered instincts screaming. The Q-Serin burned a hole in his pocket. One dose. One chance. Against something that turned men into monsters and learned from every encounter.
His gaze met Kai's - the Spire brat's eyes wide but steady, waiting.
"Fine," Lucent ground out. He shoved the knife back into its sheath with more force than necessary. "But we don't fight unless we have to. We don't stop for anything. And if I say run—"
The rest of the words died as a new sound cut through the tunnels - not the shriek of Hollowed, but something deeper. A vibration that resonated in their teeth before it reached their ears.
The walls shuddered in response, the fungal veins pulsing faster, brighter.
Kai's throat worked. "Was that—"
"Move." Lucent grabbed his arm, yanking him toward the archway. "Now."
Behind them, the sealed tunnel groaned as something enormous began to push its way through.