"Cut the power. The blade's caught in the bone."
Jax slapped the emergency release on the industrial bone saw.
The heavy engine sputtered out, leaving a ringing echo in the massive, blood-slicked containment bay.
Caleb wiped his visor with a fluid-stained glove.
It didn't clear his vision. It only smeared the black, oily residue left behind by the dead Class-4 Siege-breaker.
He leaned his weight against the saw's iron handle, groaning as his boots slipped.
The blade didn't move. It was wedged deep in the monster's cartilage, going absolutely nowhere.
"We are missing quota," Caleb said, his voice tight.
He braced his boots against the slick, grey scales covering the beast's chest and pulled with everything he had. The saw groaned against the thick bone, but refused to budge.
"I don't care about the quota," Jax muttered.
He reached up and adjusted his oxygen regulator. The sharp hiss of recycled air sounded loud through the local suit comms, a stark reminder of the toxic air outside their helmets.
"The Guild docks us anyway for material degradation," Jax continued, kicking the beast's flank. "Look at this thing. The Defense Force already blew half its profit margin into ash."
He shook his head, leaning back.
"We should transfer to sanitation. I'd rather scrub the mid-level filters than stand knee-deep in a rotting Kaiju."
Caleb gritted his teeth.
"Sanitation pays thirty credits a cycle. My family debt interest is forty. Help me pull."
Jax sighed, grabbing the secondary handle.
They heaved together, their boots slipping uselessly on the concrete.
Coagulated blood and highly corrosive stomach acid coated the floor of the bay. Every step they took cost something, and neither of them had much left to spend.
Their standard-issue hazard suits were lead-lined and built for radiation leaks, not for manual labor. Inside Caleb's suit, the temperature was pushing a suffocating ninety degrees.
"Quit complaining and attach the hydraulic spreaders."
Vance's voice suddenly crackled over the radio from the crane operator booth, hanging forty feet above them in the shadows.
"We need that chest cavity open before the core cools. You let a Class-4 core crystallize, and the Guild voids our entire contract."
"The blade is stuck, boss," Jax called up, shielding his eyes from the harsh overhead floodlights.
"Then leave the saw and get the spreaders," Vance barked, his voice dripping with coldness. "Time is money. Move."
Caleb let go of the handle and waded heavily toward the tool cart near the bay doors.
He had watched the live feeds on the transit rail over. The military elites had brought this massive creature down twelve hours ago. The broadcast rights were sold before the body even hit the floor.
The military took the glory. The disposal crews got what was left.
He grabbed two heavy iron spreader bars and hauled them back to the massive carcass, the metal clanking loudly against his thigh plates.
"I'm going in," Caleb said, checking his air supply.
Jax took a step back, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Better you than me."
Caleb climbed up the side of the open wound, his boots finding slippery footholds between the shattered ribs and torn muscle tissue.
He forced himself deeper into the chest cavity, the darkness swallowing him.
The overwhelming smell of ozone and rotting meat bypassed the suit's basic carbon filters instantly, coating the back of his throat in a bitter, metallic film. He swallowed down his rising nausea.
He jammed the first hydraulic clamp against the upper ridge of the beast's ribcage and locked the heavy steel pin in place.
"Cable one secured," Caleb said, his breath hitching.
"Taking up slack," Vance replied over the comms.
The thick steel cables tightened overhead. The winch groaned in protest, and the massive carcass shifted around Caleb, cartilage tearing loudly in the enclosed, echoing space.
"Cable two."
He moved deeper into the cavernous chest, wading through ruptured, gelatinous organs and pushing aside heavy flaps of tissue.
He set the second clamp against the lower sternum. As he locked the mechanism, the flesh beneath his boots twitched.
Caleb froze. He kept his hand dead still on the iron bar.
"Vance. Did you adjust the tension?"
"Negative," Vance's voice crackled. "The winch is locked."
The cartilage shifted again. This time, it threw him.
Caleb fell backward, his shoulder slamming hard into a massive, unsevered artery. Unnatural heat was coming up through the soles of his boots now.
"It's a post-mortem nerve spasm," Jax's voice floated in from the ground outside. "Happens all the time with Class-3s. The muscles hold a charge."
"This is a Class-4."
Caleb scrambled frantically to his feet. The massive artery he had just hit wasn't just warm. It was pulsing.
The severed spine arched violently.
The beast rolled its full, crushing bulk to the side.
The steel cables snapped taut and screamed under the impossible weight, pulling the entire gantry rig down from the ceiling.
"Code red! Sector Four! The asset is active!"
A claw the size of a transport truck swept blindly across the concrete floor. Support pillars shattered instantly, raining massive chunks of stone from the ceiling.
The impact caught Jax squarely in the midsection.
The force drove him into the far wall, the concrete cracking into a spiderweb behind him. Jax crumpled to the ground, his hazard suit torn entirely open, silent.
Caleb desperately tried to climb out of the collapsing chest cavity, but the beast rolled again, throwing him out like a ragdoll.
He hit the concrete hard.
His visor cracked violently against the jagged edge of the abandoned bone saw. Something wet and heavy gave way in his chest.
He forced himself onto his hands and knees, coughing up blood as his damaged oxygen regulator wheezed uselessly against his face.
The Siege-breaker dragged its ruined lower half forward. Its massive jaw unhinged, revealing rows of jagged, broken teeth dripping with venom.
From the open, bloody wound in its chest, a barbed tendril shot out faster than a gunshot.
It bypassed the heavy armor plating of Caleb's suit instantly, punching straight through the Kevlar weave and driving deep into his sternum.
Stomach acid and bile flooded Caleb's throat.
He gripped the cord with both hands, trying to rip it out. The barbs shredded through his protective gloves, slicing deep into his palms.
The tendril pulsed, hot and invasive. No power. No strength. Just a mindless appendage anchoring itself to his nervous system, eating him from the inside out.
His body went completely rigid, his muscles locking in violent, agonizing spasms.
The sheer physical trauma to his chest jolted his suit's internal computer. His tactical interface flared a blinding red across his cracked visor.
[CRITICAL TRAUMA DETECTED.]
[VITALS FAILING. EMERGENCY AUTO-RECORD INITIATED.]
"Override," Caleb choked out. He pulled at the cord, ripping his own skin to ribbons, but the barbs were locked permanently into his bone.
[OVERRIDE DENIED. BROADCASTING TO PUBLIC FREQUENCY...]
The shoulder-mounted camera on his suit spun to life with a mechanical whir, its red recording light blinking ominously in the settling dust.
The giant beast dragged itself closer, pinning Caleb entirely under its shadow.
Things were moving in the dark.
From the crushed corners of the containment zone, crawlers skittered out. They were blind, segmented scavengers the size of wolves, clicking their mandibles hungrily.
They swarmed over the broken concrete, searching for fresh meat.
Caleb reached weakly for his sidearm.
The holster was crushed flat beneath his hip, the weapon bent entirely out of shape. He was completely unarmed.
He was going to die here. Crushed, eaten alive, and broadcast to an empty military dispatch channel.
But then, the system notification flickered in the air, its glow casting a faint light over his cracked visor.
[A viewer from an encrypted network has entered your channel.]
Caleb's mind, sluggish from impending death, barely processed the strange message.
'What…?'
[??? has subscribed.]
The viewer's name was completely hidden, displaying only question marks.
[??? : Oh my. What a fascinating mess you are in.]
[??? : I am quite bored today... do you mind if I watch you struggle?]
The first crawler leaped directly at his face. Caleb thrashed weakly, his ruined gloves slipping against the concrete. The tendril in his chest pulsed again, sending fresh waves of agony through his spine.
[??? : How disheartening. I guess this is the end of your livestream.]
[??? : Unless... you accept a little help?]
His fingers twitched.
His lips, cold and pale, parted slightly, though no breath escaped.
'Anyone… help me...'
[??? : I'll give you a gift. In exchange, your broadcast belongs to me.]
[??? has sent you an Executive-tier gift. Do you accept?]
'I don't care! Even if you're the devil, I will gladly accept it!'
Caleb didn't hesitate.
He reached out. Not with his hand. He triggered the prompt the only way he still could.
High above, the reinforced glass skylight shattered.
A sleek, unmarked corporate delivery drone dropped into a steep, calculated dive and released a steel capsule.
It hit the concrete exactly three feet from Caleb's reaching hand. The drone hovered silently, its high-definition lens tracking his every twitch.
The capsule popped open on impact.
Inside rested a heavy thermal machete and a pressurized, military-grade combat stimulant injector.
Caleb lunged for the capsule.
He grabbed the injector and blindly drove the needle straight into his thigh, right through the heavy fabric of the suit.
The chemical hit like a freight train. Something hot and violent tore through his veins, burning the parasite's grip back just enough to move.
He grabbed the thermal machete. The grip was large, but his shaking fingers locked around it in a death grip.
He swung upward.
The blazing strike shattered the nearest crawler's reinforced carapace in half, splitting its head open and spraying burning yellow fluid across his visor.
He grabbed the fleshy tendril in his chest and pulled.
His own human muscles tore under the sheer force, but the stimulant-fueled strength held out. The cord ripped free.
Whatever was left of the barb went deeper inside him and didn't come back out.
He gasped. The air burned going in.
Three more crawlers rushed him from the left flank.
Caleb stepped effortlessly inside the first one's guard and drove the machete straight through its sensory cluster.
Thick bone crunched up into his forearms.
He pivoted on his heel and swung wide, taking the second crawler's head clean off its shoulders.
The third lunged for his legs, and he stomped it flat against the concrete, crushing its spine to powder.
The massive Siege-breaker roared, bringing its intact, armored arm down to crush him.
Caleb raised the thermal machete with both hands.
The monster's claw slammed into the flat of the blade, driving Caleb straight to his knees. The concrete cracked beneath him, his spine screaming in protest.
He screamed, pushed upward with pure chemical force, deflected the massive claw, stepped forward, and drove the blazing machete directly into the beast's open chest cavity.
He twisted the metal, completely shredding the internal core.
The beast seized once, violently, and collapsed.
Caleb let the weapon drop from his trembling hands.
The combat stimulant quit instantly. His broken ribs shifted, grinding agonizingly against his lungs, and he went down onto his back, staring blankly up at the shattered ceiling.
Jax's body hadn't moved. The crane booth hung empty. There was no sign of Vance.
The containment zone was dead quiet.
Above him, the drone held its position, its red recording light still watching him bleed.
On his cracked visor, the tactical HUD blinked one final time.
[??? : Very entertaining. I think I will keep watching.]
[SYSTEM UPDATE: BROADCAST RIGHTS PURCHASED BY USER ???.]
[PUBLIC CHAT DISABLED. MODE LOCKED: SINGLE-VIEWER.]
The rescue channel was dead. The military wasn't coming. His distress beacon had been completely wiped from the public grid.
His survival, his livestream, his life. All of it belonged to whoever ??? was now.
Caleb's vision blurred at the edges.
The cold concrete came up fast to meet him.