The roots reached for the tunnel behind them first.
That was how Glen knew the mass was not panicking blindly anymore. It did not throw everything at him. It did not chase Isla across the ice or try to crush Caleb under another limb. It spread. Black ash roots pushed through the cracked concrete and crawled along the rails, sliding beneath corpses, broken armor, and old blood as they searched for sothing to feed on. So twisted toward the walls. So sank into corpse piles. So stretched back toward the south access artery like rotten fingers trying to find Eden’s door.
Glen moved to cut the nearest one, but the mont his blade ca down, three more burst from the floor around his boots. Obsidian Skin hardened over his legs as the roots snapped shut. They wrapped around his shins, tightening hard enough to crack the wet concrete beneath him.
Isla fired imdiately. Frostbreaker sent a beam of cold across the floor, freezing the roots around Glen’s legs before they could climb higher. Her pistol flashed orange a breath later, and the frozen roots shattered into black splinters.
"Do not let them touch the suppressors!" she shouted.
Caleb was already moving.
The two Eden devices were still pulsing, their black tal petals open, silver needles drilled into the floor. The roots curved toward them from both sides, drawn to the suppressor cores like starving things. Caleb planted himself between the devices and raised both hands. His titanium focus spun above his palm, faster and faster, until the air around it bent.
Gravity dropped in a ring.
Every root within five ters of the suppressors slamd flat against the ground. The concrete cracked under the pressure. Black ash fluid leaked from the roots and hissed against the floor, but they kept writhing, trying to crawl forward even while crushed.
Caleb’s jaw tightened.
"Glen," he said through clenched teeth, "I can hold this, but not forever."
Glen cut through another root and looked at the mass. Its chest was still open, the trapped hunter core pulsing inside the blackened rib cage. The broken left flank twitched as roots fed material back into it. The creature was rebuilding and anchoring at the sa ti. If they let it finish, the junction would beco its territory. Then the route to Sector Seven would not matter because the mass would bring the nest to them.
"Isla," Glen said, "how many charges left?"
"Two."
"Save one for the heart."
She understood the rest without him saying it.
The other one was for the roots.
Isla slid across the frozen floor toward the nearest corpse pile, Frostbreaker carving a clean path beneath her boots. Roots erupted near her, but she moved with sharp control, not wasting movent, not showing panic. One tried to spear upward beneath her ribs. She twisted aside, froze the tip, and shattered it with a pistol round. Another wrapped around her ankle. She looked down, almost offended, then burned it off with a close-range fire shot before kicking herself forward on ice.
The mass saw her.
Several heads turned.
The open chest pulsed red.
A wave of ash surged across the floor toward Isla.
Glen stepped in front of it.
This ti, he let the Abyssal Juggernaut Armor spread across his shoulders and down his arms in thicker plates. The weight hit him like chains locking into his bones, but he welcod it. The ash wave crashed into him with enough force to shove him backward across the floor. Black armor smoked. His boots dug trenches through the ice and concrete. The wave tried to split around him and reach Isla.
Glen drove his sword into the ground and stopped.
"No."
The word ca out low.
The ash wave pressed harder.
He smiled through the pressure.
"I said no."
Savage Strike surged through his arms as he ripped the sword upward. The force split the ash wave down the middle, tearing a gap wide enough for Isla to pass through behind him. She did not thank him. She did not slow. She slid through the opening and reached the central corpse pile where the roots were thickest.
Caleb saw her position and shifted his gravity field.
The roots around Isla grew heavier for one second.
One second was enough.
She planted the purifier charge into the frozen corpse pile, turned the seal, and kicked backward.
"Charge set!"
The mass reacted instantly. The hunter core in its chest flared, and every root near the pile pulled back at once, trying to drag the charge into its own body or throw it away before detonation.
Caleb’s eyes widened.
"Oh no you do not."
His focus flashed silver.
Gravity reversed around the charge.
The roots that tried to pull it loose suddenly slamd inward instead, pinned around the device like hands trapped around a blade. Caleb’s face went pale from the strain. Blood ran freely from his nose now, but he held the field.
The charge detonated.
White-blue light erupted through the corpse pile and the roots connected to it. The explosion did not spread like normal fire. It burned through corruption in veins, racing along the black roots beneath the floor and up into the mass’s underside. The creature scread, its entire lower body lifting as several roots tore apart at once.
The suppressors pulsed stronger.
For the first ti, the red cores dimd for more than a breath.
Glen moved.
Thunder Phantom Step cracked under him, purple lightning carrying him across the chamber toward the exposed chest. The hunter core was still protected by blackened ribs, but the purifier blast had loosened the inner cage. He could see gaps now. Small ones. Dangerous ones.
The mass tried to close its chest.
Caleb raised one trembling hand.
Gravity caught the ribs and held them apart.
The effort nearly dropped him.
His knees bent. His focus shook so violently the air around it warped. Glen saw him struggling from the corner of his eye, saw the blood on his face, saw the way Caleb’s fingers shook and still refused to close.
This was Caleb’s mont.
Not flashy.
Not loud.
But without him, the chest would close, the suppressors would die, and the entire fight would reset worse than before.
"Hold it," Glen said.
Caleb laughed once, breathless and furious. "What do you think I am doing?"
The answer was good enough.
Glen jumped.
A limb ca from above.
Isla shot it out of the air with Frostbreaker, freezing it mid-swing. Her pistol fired next, breaking it apart before it reached him. Glen passed through the falling fragnts, shadow and lightning twisting around his body as he landed on the mass’s open chest cage.
The hunter core pulsed beneath him.
Close.
Too close.
Skill Predator stirred again.
The black flicker touched the edge of his vision.
Predation Target Detected.
Glen ignored it.
Not because he did not want the power.
Because wanting was not the sa as taking.
Not yet.
He drove his sword into one of the blackened ribs holding the hunter core in place. The blade bit halfway. He pushed harder. The rib resisted, shaking under his hands. The mass scread and shook its body, trying to throw him off.
Abyssal armor locked over Glen’s boots and calves, rooting him to the surface for one brutal second.
He twisted the sword.
The rib cracked.
The mass bucked.
Glen lost footing.
Before he could fall, Caleb’s gravity caught him.
Not gently.
It yanked him sideways, away from the chest just as a spear of ash burst from the hunter core’s cage and stabbed through the space where his stomach had been.
Glen hit the floor and rolled.
Caleb grinned through blood. "Useful?"
Glen rose to one knee. "Do not get arrogant."
"That is your job."
Isla landed beside them, breathing hard, frost climbing over the edges of her sleeve. "The ribs are cracking, but the core is still shielded. We need a cleaner opening."
The mass answered by slamming both front limbs into the ground.
The whole junction tilted.
Not literally, but close enough. Gravity warped violently as the creature pushed back against Caleb’s field. The suppressors flickered. The roots that had survived began digging deeper into the floor, not spreading now, anchoring. The mass lowered itself, protecting the heart, and the red cores along its back began pulsing in a new rhythm.
Caleb’s eyes widened.
"It is pushing against my gravity."
Glen looked up.
The creature’s back ridges opened. Not flesh. Channels. Red light ran through them like veins. The cores across its body beat together, feeding force into the ground, into the roots, into the tunnel itself. The junction groaned. Cracks spread along the ceiling.
Isla looked up. "It is going to collapse the chamber."
"No," Caleb said.
His voice changed.
Glen glanced at him.
Caleb Sterling was not shaking anymore. He was pale, bloodied, exhausted, but his eyes had gone hard in a way Glen had only seen a few tis. Usually when fear had been pushed so far it turned into anger.
"No," Caleb repeated. "It does not get to do that."
He stepped forward.
The titanium focus rose above his head, spinning so fast it beca a silver ring. The air around Caleb bent inward. Water lifted from the floor in trembling droplets. Broken rail spikes, shattered armor plates, and fragnts of concrete floated around him, caught in the growing gravity field.
The mass pushed down.
Caleb pushed back.
For a second, the entire junction held between them.
Then Caleb roared.
Gravity inverted across the creature’s rooted lower body.
The roots were not crushed this ti.
They were pulled upward.
Black ash roots tore from the floor in thick, wet strands. Concrete exploded around them. The mass scread as its anchors were ripped loose one after another. Caleb’s arms shook violently, but he kept lifting, dragging half the creature’s underside off the ground.
Isla stared for half a breath.
Then her eyes sharpened.
"Glen."
"I see it."
The underside was exposed.
Cores.
Not the main heart. Not the chest. Smaller ones hidden underneath, feeding the roots and the collapse technique. Three of them, arranged in a crooked triangle beneath layers of flesh and broken armor.
Glen moved.
Shadow Step took him through the darkness beneath the lifted body. He erged directly under the first root core and cut upward. The blade struck the shell. Savage Strike drove it deeper. The core burst, spraying red light and black fluid across his armor.
The mass thrashed.
Caleb almost lost it.
Isla fired into the second core before Glen could reach it. Frostbreaker froze the shell, and her pistol cracked it with fire. Glen appeared beside it a heartbeat later and finished the job with one clean thrust.
Two cores dead.
The third began retreating deeper into the body.
Glen chased it.
The mass dropped one limb free and swung down at him.
Caleb shouted, but he was holding too much weight to stop it.
Isla’s ice reached for the limb and missed by inches.
Glen saw the blow coming.
Too big to dodge normally.
Too close for Thunder Phantom Step.
So he let the Abyssal Juggernaut Armor take over for one full breath.
Black plates slamd across his entire upper body, heavier, thicker, crueler. Blood Rage pulsed beneath the armor, urging him to et force with worse force. Glen planted his feet and raised his sword sideways.
The limb struck.
The impact drove him into the floor up to one knee.
His bones scread.
The armor held.
Glen’s vision blurred red at the edges, but he smiled.
"Caught you."
The third core had flared when the limb struck.
He saw the light through the flesh.
He drove his left hand into the wound opened by the impact, grabbed the edge of the hidden core, and pulled.
The mass shrieked.
The core tore halfway out, slick with black veins. Glen did not let Skill Predator touch it. He did not let the system open. He simply raised his sword and brought it down.
The third root core split.
Caleb released the inverted gravity field with a broken gasp.
The mass crashed back to the floor.
But this ti, its roots did not catch it.
The entire junction shook as the creature hit, left side ruined, root anchors dead, chest cage cracked, and several cores flickering unstable beneath its flesh.
Caleb dropped to one knee.
His focus fell into his hand.
Isla moved to him instantly, keeping Frostbreaker raised toward the mass while using her body to shield his side.
"Caleb," she said.
He wiped blood from his mouth this ti, not just his nose. "Still here."
Glen stepped between them and the monster.
His armor faded back from full Abyssal form into smoking black plates over his chest and arms. His body protested the loss imdiately. Pain rushed in from everywhere at once. Ribs. Shoulder. Knee. Spine. He breathed through it and lifted his sword.
The mass did not rise imdiately.
It dragged itself forward an inch.
Then another.
Still alive.
Still trying.
But the rhythm had changed.
No roots.
No feeding.
No collapse.
Only rage.
Glen looked at Caleb without turning. "That was good."
Caleb gave a tired, bloody laugh. "Good?"
Glen’s mouth curved. "Do it again later."
"I hate you."
"You are still talking. You are fine."
Isla’s eyes stayed on the mass. "It is shifting the remaining cores inward."
Glen looked at the open chest cage.
The hunter core pulsed brighter than before, as if the mass had pulled everything important around it now. The outer shell was broken. The root system was dead. The support cores were gone. The creature had stopped being a moving fortress.
Now it was guarding the heart.
Glen tightened his grip on the sword.
"Then we are done cutting limbs."
The mass lifted its heads, all of them staring at him.
The hunter core beat once.
Hard.
The black screen flickered at the edge of Glen’s vision again.
Predation Target Detected.
This ti, the words stayed longer.
The corrupted core wanted him to take the bait.
Glen smiled.
"Not until I decide."
He stepped forward as the mass opened its chest wider, red light spilling over the broken junction.
Behind him, Isla reloaded her pistol.
Caleb forced himself back to his feet.
The suppressors pulsed.
The heart waited.
And Glen walked toward it.
Reviews
All reviews (0)