Darkness slammed down like a guillotine.
A moment of silence—then chaos.
The sound of flesh hitting tile. A wet crunch. Bria screamed—her mist exploding into a scalding wave that lit the dark in pulses of steam-white and ember-red.
Eli ducked low as something massive whipped overhead. The air split open with the force of it—too fast, he thought—it's adapting to our speed. His ears rang, already damaged, pressure threatening to rupture something deeper as he shaped a wall of compressed atmosphere around Bria's flank just in time to deflect a barbed nerve dings aimed for her throat.
The blow struck the barrier and rebounded with a gut-turning crack. The sound of the limb breaking—or just realigning. The creature releasing a terrifying scream—emanating from all directions.
Halden's voice rose above the din. "Brace!"
Then the room imploded.
For a heartbeat, everything was silence again—but it was the kind born of suction, of a vacuum being forced into a chamber it didn't belong in. Then it snapped back out—an outward blast that hurled loose equipment, viscera, and fragments of fused bone across the lab. The creature shrieked, a sound like metal grinding through teeth.
Lightning flashed—Mitchel. His mouth open—no sound came out, fists clenched, electricity arcing like wild branches in every direction. The creature surged toward him—no longer a man, no longer a corpse. A shifting, writhing amalgam of bone and muscle wrapped in a slick membrane that glowed with leaking mana. Its skin writhed like it was suffocating under its own evolution. A second, malformed ribcage opened along its side—snapping outward like spider legs—and bit down on one of the medical tables as it moved.
A flash.
Mitchel's bolt struck it dead-on.
The thing staggered back—but didn't fall. It convulsed. For a second, it looked like it might die. Then the skin peeled off its left arm with a wet, eager sound. The raw tissue underneath was bristling with small, twitching mana-cores—stolen ones. You could see the imprint of the hosts, faces stretched across the flesh in agony, eyelids fluttering.
"Holy shit," Bria hissed, stumbling. "It's… using them."
"Kill it before it finishes molting!" Halden bellowed, gathering air pressure again, this time tighter—too tight. The air hummed. Blood pooled across the tiles, some of it evaporating as Bria sent a wave of freezing mist outward—solidifying the liquid into jagged red slush.
Eli didn't hesitate. He surged forward, riding the edge of Halden's pressure zone, calculating the vacuum flows in microbursts. His magic danced through the currents, slipping past the worst of the drag, and he snapped his palm out—directing a concentrated blast into the creature's exposed throat.
The blow landed—tissue burst outward.
A thick, greenish ichor sprayed across the floor, steaming.
The creature screamed, its entire torso convulsing. It tore free a section of itself and hurled it—an arm that had become a javelin, spined and wet and twitching with latent nerves.
The makeshift spear flew past Mitchel—close enough to kiss skin—and tore his right ear clean off.
He didn't scream at first. Just gasped.
Hands went to the side of his head, cupping the wound like he could put the missing piece back. Blood poured through his fingers in rhythmic, heartbeat pulses—gush… gush… gush—painting the wall behind him.
Halden moved next, no hesitation. He opened his hands, palms splayed, and the very air reacted like it had been starving for release. A deep, concussive cylinder of pressure tore forward with a roar, catching ceiling tiles and shredded conduit in its wake. They came down like bone chips, splintering against the wet, trembling floor. The blast hit—ripping a wide hole through the creature's side.
It should've fallen.
It didn't.
The whole lab began pulsing again—faster this time. The rhythm of a dying heart trying to keep up. Nerve endings dangled from the ceiling like fine, twitching threads. Veins throbbed in the walls. The room had become an organ. A living, failing organ.
Eli moved.
No hesitation.
He slid across the blood-slick floor, hand catching on cold steel—a discarded syringe. He didn't think. He didn't need to. Muscle memory from years of quiet fascination kicked in.
He gripped it like a javelin. But his mind pictured a gun.
Rifled barrels. Spiralling grooves. Trajectory control.
He closed his fingers around the base of the syringe—and inside his palm, the air shifted.
Not a blast.
A spiral.
Tight, fast, focused. A vortex of microscopic rotations, mimicking the twist of a bullet being forced down rifled steel. He compressed it, denser and denser, air pressure forming the ghost of a chamber, the phantom of a muzzle. The magic whined in his bones, but he kept it together.
He locked eyes with the creature.
That gaping hole in its chest was open now—exposed. A tangled nest of bone and artery hanging like torn cables. But at the very back, cantered just at head-height—he saw it.
The mana-core.
Not stable.
Not natural.
But real.
He exhaled.
And fired.
The syringe didn't just fly—it snapped. A thunderclap of compressed air ruptured behind it, sending it forward at supersonic speed. It cut through the air with surgical precision, spun like a bullet from the gods, and plunged straight through the creature's upper jaw—up, up—before shattering into the core lodged deep in its throat cavity.
The effect was instant.
The mana-core ruptured with a shriek of bent magic. A sound no living thing should make—like glass crying.
The creature convulsed.
Then froze.
Every nerve in the room went still.
The pulsing stopped.
The blood—flowing freely from walls and vents—ceased mid-drip.
The lab was silent.
The room died with it.
The false life that had assimilated the floor, the walls, the ceiling—gone. Just flesh now. Cooling, putrid, still.
Eli stood slowly. Breathing heavy.
And whispered, "That better be dead enough."
Halden collapsed.
Not from injury—but sheer backlash. The moment he send his last attack, his mana-core got pushed to its limits, it was like the tension he'd been holding snapped violently back into him.
He dropped to his knees, hands clutching at his skull, fingers digging into the sides of his head like he could claw out the pain. His breath came in wet, stuttering gasps.
"Ghkk— Agh—!"
Eli turned just in time to see blood begin to leak from Halden's nostrils. His lips were pale. His eyes glassy and wide, pupils blown out.
Migraine. Mana recoil. He pushed too far.
Eli stepped forward, chest still heaving, and caught Halden by the shoulder before he could pitch forward fully. The professor trembled under his hand like a frayed wire under current.
"Breathe," Eli said, voice rough. "It's over."
But the room still stank of blood.
Of death.
And of something deeper—
Across the lab, Bria moved.
Fast.
The swagger from earlier—gone. No smug grin. No lazy roll of the eyes. Just panic, sharp and visible, stripping away everything but instinct.
She dropped beside Mitchel, who had slid to a seated position against the far wall. His hands were still cupped over what was left of his ear, blood coating his palms, elbows, neck. His entire body shook.
"Shit, Mitchel—Mitchel," Bria whispered, voice hitching. "Hey, hey, loser, look at me."
He did. Eyes wild. Unfocused. Pupils trembling with shock.
Bria reached out slowly, her mist curling along her fingers—cool now, instead of scalding. Gentle. She placed her hands on either side of his face, easing one away from the wound just enough to get a better look. The ear was gone. Torn off at the root. Skin shredded back. Exposed cartilage and leaking blood in thick ropes.
Bria didn't flinch. Just swallowed hard.
"Okay," she said, softer now. "Okay. You're alive, yeah? You are alive, dumbass."
Mitchel nodded once. A jagged motion. Then started crying—not loudly. No sobs. Just silent, tearing cries. Shoulders heaving. Blood mixing with tears.
Bria pulled his head forward and pressed it to her shoulder.
"Hey," she said again. "It's okay. You did good. You stayed up."
Bria didn't let go of Mitchel right away.
But when his breathing finally evened out, when the worst of the panic had burned through and he was just shaking, she pulled back and rolled up her sleeves.
"Mitchel," she said, tone sharper now. Controlled. "I need you to stay very, very still."
He blinked. Blood still streaked his face. "W-why?"
She didn't answer with words. Just raised her hand.
Mist coiled like a living thing, spiraling up her forearm and condensing into her palm. A faint hiss began to rise—a sizzle, barely audible at first.
Then heat shimmered the air.
It wasn't fire. Not exactly. But the temperature in the space between them shifted violently. Mitchel instinctively tried to pull back, but Bria caught his arm.
"Don't move. Seriously. You'll want to, but don't."
Her hand hovered just above the ragged, torn remains of his ear.
She glanced at him one more time. "This'll hurt. I'm sorry."
Then she pressed her palm against the wound.
The effect was immediate.
A wet sound—like hot metal touching raw meat. Mitchel screamed, finally, a brutal, animal sound, half-choked in his throat. His body convulsed, but Bria pinned him with her weight, forcing him down.
The smell of burnt blood and seared flesh filled the room.
Steam rose from the contact point. His skin blackened at the edges, blistering where it met her power—but the bleeding stopped.
Bria pulled back, breath shaking now too. Her hand smoked faintly. She didn't look at it. Just wiped it on her pants and leaned over Mitchel, who had slumped back, moaning quietly.
"Sorry," she said again. "But you're not bleeding out now."
Eli had turned away during the scream—not because he couldn't handle it, but because they didn't have time to waste.
He moved cautiously, every step deliberate, mana-core, tightened, like a muscle ready to move. One wrong movement. One twitch in the walls. He was ready.
But there was nothing.
The creature—if it could still be called that—was dead. Its body hadn't moved. The massive hole Halden had punched through it still wept thick, black rot, and the head was caved in where the syringe had gone clean through, pinning it to the wall behind like a trophy insect.
No other movement. No other threats.
Eli exhaled through his nose and turned his attention to the cabinets.
Medical supplies.
Most were broken—torn open or melted into the floor—but he managed to find one sealed drawer. He forced it open with a twist of air pressure and found a bundle of sterile gauze, a half-empty bottle of antiseptic, and some old thermal wraps.
Not much.
But enough.
The gauze he'd found was dusty but sealed—still sterile enough to use. He knelt beside Mitchel, who was slumped sideways, face pale, eyes glassy from pain.
"Mitchel," Eli said quietly, unscrewing the cap of the antiseptic. "This is going to sting."
"Everything stings," Mitchel muttered. "Just do it."
Eli didn't hesitate.
He poured the antiseptic in a slow stream over the cauterized edge where the ear had been. The hiss that followed was not magical—it was meat reacting to alcohol. Mitchel jolted, hissing through his teeth, clutching Bria's arm like a vice.
Eli worked fast, winding gauze around the side of Mitchel's head with practiced calm. Bria helped, holding the opposite side in place as he tied it off tightly.
It wasn't pretty.
But it would hold.
Eli wiped the blood from his fingers onto his pants and stood again, scanning the room once more.
Nothing moved. Not anymore.
Halden was back against the far wall, clutching his head with both hands. His lips moved silently, pain etched into every line of his face. Whatever he'd burned through to launch that final blast had nearly broken him.
"Can you walk?" Eli asked him.
Halden managed a nod. Barely.
Eli turned to the others. "There might be something useful still in here. Look for doors. Cabinets. Anything."
Bria nudged a broken exam table aside and gestured. "There."
In the far corner, half-obscured by torn blackout curtains and half-melted wiring, was a steel-reinforced utility door. No label. No light above it.
Eli approached, hand raised, ready to blast it if needed.
But it wasn't locked.
The hinges squealed as it opened inward.
And beyond it—clean.
Untouched by blood. The walls white. The floor uncracked.
Steel shelving lined the room, filled end-to-end with vacuum-sealed medkits, clean bandages, surgical tools, mana-infusion packs, and emergency water rations. One entire corner was stacked with compressed oxygen tanks and portable defibrillators.
They stared at it for a moment. None of them breathed.
"…Holy shit," Bria whispered.
Mitchel just laughed once. Hysterically.
Eli lowered his hand.
Finally.
A break.