The man's smile wasn't warm, and it certainly wasn't human.
Darian felt the wrongness instantly, a cold spike of adrenaline hitting his stomach. The fog of the rail yard swirled around the rusted freight cars, swallowing the faint moonlight. Deep in the derelict tracks, settling metal groaned under immense pressure.
Ravion stepped up, his spear lowering to chest level. He didn't flinch. "Hey," he barked, trying to mimic the flat, heavy authority of their Institute instructors. "Stand down. Don't make me use this."
The man didn't raise his hands. He didn't even look at Ravion's face. His gaze was fixed on the glowing tip of the spear. "Standard issue," he murmured, his tone eerily conversational, like a biologist examining a mildly interesting insect. "They're sending cadets into the undercity now. What a waste of resources."
Darian's thumb slipped under his coat, his hand shaking as he fumbled before finding the emergency beacon. Click. A silent POND distress pulse fired into the night.
The man paused. He tilted his head, listening to a frequency neither of them could hear. "A localized distress pulse," he noted, his voice devoid of anger or surprise. "That compresses my timeline. Pity."
His neck elongated with a sickening crunch, veins bulging like black cables beneath his collar.
His mismatched coat ripped open. Ribs shifted and cracked beneath his shirt, rearranging like gears finding alignment. The skin around his mouth stretched, tearing slightly at the corners to reveal a dark, wet abyss.
Ravion's jaw tightened. He didn't back away. He thumbed the ignition on his spear, the blade roaring to life. "I said don't move!"
The man's eyes flooded with liquid silver, swallowing the pupils entirely. The packed dirt beneath them buckled.
A train car length away, the makeshift shelter inside the collapsed depot building was suffocatingly quiet. Zeri hovered a few inches off the ground on her board, chewing her synth-gum as she stared at the threadbare blankets and empty ration tins.
The bioluminescent moss nearby dimmed, died, and flickered back on.
"Can you help us?"
Zeri sighed, popping a bubble. She turned toward the dark corner of the storage room, annoyed more than anything.
The missing kids from the street were standing there. They hadn't been there a second ago. They just stared at her, their faces slack, their eyes dull and unblinking.
"Whoa. Okay," Zeri said, crossing her arms. She projected total, dismissive confidence. "You kids aren't supposed to be out here. Where are your parents?"
The children tilted their heads in perfect, unnatural unison. The skin of their jaws tore. With a wet, ripping sound, their mouths unhinged, vomiting thick, writhing black tendrils. Small ribs cracked outward, piercing their shirts as something monstrous forced its way free from inside them.
Zeri's nose wrinkled in deep disgust. "Ew. What the hell is that?"
She didn't run. She just threw her hands up. Holographic cannon arrays snapped into existence around her forearms, whining with sudden, blinding heat.
A creature lunged.
"Die," Zeri snapped, firing at point-blank range.
The heavy plasma blast vaporized the creature's torso, spraying hot black fluid across Zeri's boots. She scoffed, lowering her arms—but the severed limbs were still crawling toward her, dragging the ruined halves of the body forward.
Zeri's cocky expression cracked into genuine, irritated disbelief. "Are you kidding me?" she muttered, stepping back as three more dropped to the floor and scrambled toward her. "I blew it to pieces, just stay dead!"
Back between the freight cars, the dirt violently ruptured.
Thick black tendrils erupted through the ground like harpoons. One slammed into Ravion's chest. He grunted, bracing his feet, but the sheer kinetic force launched him backward into the rusted side of a boxcar with a heavy thud. Another whipped toward Darian, who dove frantically, scraping his face against the gravel as the ground gave way beneath him.
Darian gasped for air, his lungs burning. "Ravion! Get up!"
The boxcar shattered as the man rose into the air, elevated by a throne of writhing black muscle. He looked down at the teenagers with clinical detachment.
From the twisted scrap, Ravion pushed himself to his feet. A thin line of blood ran from his nose. His pride was bruised worse than his ribs. He gripped his flaming spear, his eyes narrowing in furious defiance. He didn't hesitate. He sprinted forward, vaulting off a piece of scrap metal in a bold, reckless strike aimed right at the man's chest.
The scientist didn't even flinch. He just raised a hand.
Two tendrils snapped like whips, catching the spear shaft mid-thrust. Ravion gritted his teeth, straining with all his might, but the man simply leaned back, effortlessly redirecting the momentum. With a casual flick of his wrist, he threw Ravion into the dirt like a discarded toy.
Three tendrils shot toward Darian, who was scrambling up the wreckage. Darian threw himself sideways, feeling the wind of the first two, but the third grazed his ribs, shredding his jacket and sending him tumbling back into the dirt, clutching his side.
Before Darian could find his footing, the depot wall exploded outward.
Zeri rocketed through the dust on her hoverboard, her face flushed with angry exertion as she fired a relentless, chaotic barrage of plasma behind her. A massive, thrashing horror breached the wall, tearing the corrugated metal to shreds.
Darian and Ravion froze.
It was a towering, bulbous cathedral of fused flesh. Dozens of children's limbs jutted from the mass like broken branches. Faces surfaced across the tumorous body—screaming in silent agony—before being sucked back into the black, pulsing muscle.
Zeri hovered backward, her chest heaving, the cocky facade entirely burned away by manic frustration. "It just eats the plasma!" she yelled, her voice pitching up. "They were just kids! I don't know how to stop it!"
The scientist simply watched from his perch, ignoring the teenagers entirely as he observed the monstrous amalgamation. "Fascinating," he murmured, pulling a small device from his pocket. "The biomass integrated perfectly."
He tapped the device. The monster shrieked, a sound like grinding metal, and released a concussive shockwave. Darian covered his ears, dropping to his knees.
When the dust cleared, the scientist was gone.
The abomination didn't care about the cadets. It turned, every embedded face opening its mouth to unleash a deafening, unified scream. Its massive limbs dug into the dirt, ignoring the teenagers entirely as it hauled its bulk toward the perimeter of the rail yard.
Beyond the rusted tracks lay the undercity settlement.
"The street," Darian stammered, pulling himself up, his eyes widening in absolute horror. "Ravion, there are people out there!"
"I don't care! It's not getting past us!" Zeri snarled, unleashing another blind, furious barrage of plasma fire. The bolts tore huge, sizzling craters into the monster's back, but the flesh bubbled and stitched itself closed almost instantly.
Ravion sprinted after it, limping but refusing to slow down. He launched himself into the air, driving his flaming spear blindly into the creature's flank. The monster barely registered the strike. It swatted backward with a massive arm of tangled bodies. The blow caught Ravion mid-air. He skipped across the dirt and slammed into a rusted railcar, collapsing into a motionless heap.
"Ravion!" Darian yelled, breaking into a desperate run.
The monster crushed the perimeter fence beneath its weight and spilled out into the narrow, sludge-filled streets of the shantytown. Civilians shrieked, scattering in blind terror. A scavenger dropped his bag, scrambling backward on his hands and knees as the creature raised a colossal, fleshy limb to crush him. Darian pushed his burning legs faster, knowing he was too far away.
Then, a figure stepped into the intersection.
He didn't run. He just walked into the glow of the flickering bioluminescent moss. He wore the black coat of a POND officer, covered in layers of street dust. His face was heavily scarred, and where his right arm should have been, an empty sleeve was pinned neatly above the elbow.
In his left hand, he held a katana.
The monster roared, dropping its massive limb down to flatten him.
The man didn't shift into a fighting stance. He didn't say a word. He just drew the sword. One fluid, silent motion.
The steel flashed in the dim light.
For a breathless second, the shantytown went perfectly still.
Then, the abomination bisected. A flawless, invisible line parted the creature from its crown down to the sludge. With a wet, sickening thunder, the two halves sloughed apart, collapsing onto the street in a tidal wave of black fluid and severed tissue. It didn't twitch.
Silence slammed back down onto the block, broken only by the distant hum of the undercity's machinery.
The man smoothly flicked the dark blood from his blade and sheathed it with a sharp click. He looked at the mess in the street, letting out a long, exhausted exhale. Only then did he turn to look at Darian, Zeri, and the unconscious Ravion.
He didn't smile. He just looked at their pale faces, taking in their torn uniforms and shaking hands.
"Heard, you three needed help," he said, his voice flat and worn tired. "Sit down before you fall down. I'll call dispatch."