The third cell Sera approached held individual cages inside the cell.
They weren’t much different from the dog cages she was familiar with. These were simple tal crates with narrow slits that only hinted at what was inside. Whatever it was, was scratching at the bars.
Another crate held the remains of soone who had turned partly and then failed. Their bones showed through thin skin and you could see that the parasites had dried into hard tangles inside the ribcage.
Luci’s hackles rose. A low rumble built in his chest.
"They tried animals before people," Aerenyx said. "Or after. I don’t think that the timing matters all that much. They were looking for a body that would not fall apart."
Sera’s attention kept returning to the sound farther down. The laughter echoed there, deeper, more focused.
The last cell on this row held empty restraints.
The walls bore scratch marks. The door held dents from inside. The caras in the corners had been ripped down. The cords hung in broken loops.
The restraints were open.
Her creature tasted that absence. One of theirs got loose here. They moved it. They did not kill it. They were greedy... And stupid.
At the end of the corridor, another door waited... even heavier than the ones that ca before. Warning signs crowded its surface: biohazard symbols, quarantine stripes, words about level access and lethal force.
Sera reached for the handle.
This lock did not give on the first pull, the bolts were thicker, and the doorfra had been reinforced after installation. She braced her feet, pulled harder, and felt tal strain.
Zubair stepped beside her. "Take the hinge," he said.
Heat rolled off his hand in a focused band. The tal softened under his grip and Lachlan set his palm against the lower hinge as he delivered another small electric surge. The weakened structure jumped.
On the third pull, the door ripped free and landed to the side.
The room beyond was larger.
Bars ringed the outer section in a square while inside that square, smaller cages had been bolted to the floor. Each held a host at a different stage. So strapped upright. So chained on all fours. So already partially opened, parasites half-erged and then pinned, as though soone had stopped mid-procedure.
The sll here was worse.
Old blood. New infection. Preservatives. Burnt tissue. The faint sweetness of decay that had been slowed but not stopped.
Her creature recoiled for a second, then forced itself steady. Ugly. Rushed. This should never have been allowed to live.
Lab equipnt lined the walls between cages. Stainless tables. Trays with instrunts. Clear containers holding parasite samples in fluid. So writhed against the glass. So had gone still and white.
At the far end of the inner ring stood the main containnt.
Bars. Reinforced glass behind the bars. A door crisscrossed with locking rods. Inside that cube, the stolen hosteader stood.
He was taller than she expected with broad shoulders, thick arms, and his wrists wrapped in restraints that had been bolted to the floor. His head hung forward, his dark hair clumped with sweat and dried fluid. His clothing had been cut away and replaced by a stained hospital gown that hung in tatters.
His chest rose and fell in shallow pulls.
His stomach had been opened.
Not a jagged tear like those in the barn. Not a single slice. A precise circle had been cut around his navel, then widened. The edges had scarred over. The wound did not close because the thing inside had claid the opening for itself.
The parasite looked out from the cavern that had been made for it.
It filled the hole, pushing host flesh aside to make room. Tendrils thick as her wrist braided and unbraided themselves in slow, deliberate patterns.
Smaller cords split off and rejoined. The surface was pale with dark fluid pulsing beneath it. Around the center sat rows of little pits that flexed and closed. It was not eyes. It was sothing else that had learned to focus.
As the door crashed down, the parasite turned toward her.
The host’s head lifted.
He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing ca from his throat.
The sound ca from the cavity in his stomach instead.
"New," it said.
The word vibrated in the air and in the floor. It did not match the movent of the host’s lips. It ca from deeper, pushed through tendril and fluid, shaped by sothing that had no business speaking at all.
Her creature went very still.
The parasite’s tendrils tightened along the edge of the wound, gripping the host from inside. It seed to brace itself.
"You are new," it said again, this ti in a more coherent way. "Different. Stronger than the others."
The host’s eyes rolled toward her. They were cloudy and red. Whatever remained of the man behind them had been shoved aside long ago.
Sera stepped closer to the bars.
Her creature examined the thing with clean, clinical interest. It watchs through him. It used his senses. It used his voice. It learned. It thinks it understands the food chain.
"I am," Sera replied with a shrug. "And I am hungry. I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that you are not food."
The parasite twitched. "We are everything," it replied. "We are inside them. They carry us. They break for us. They open doors."
Its tendrils brushed the rib edges around its hole. Smaller cords slipped deeper into the host’s body, then out again. It moved with ease inside him, as though he was only casing.
"We are better than rot," it said. "We do not wait in the ground. We climb. We ride. We learn. We will be in all of them."
Her creature’s disgust sharpened. It intends to colonize. It wants to seed itself in every body. It is not a predator. It is mold with ambition.
One of the side cages rattled.
A host inside slamd against its bars. Its chest bulged as a smaller parasite fought to erge. The cords in that one had not yet found an exit. They pressed against bone and skin, pushing for a weak point.
Another cage showed a failed version. The parasite had torn itself out and then shriveled. The host lay with a hollow cavity where organs had been. Dried strings clung to the bones.
"Their first ones broke," Aerenyx said. "The tissue did not hold. They compensated."
He looked at the main containnt again. Wary. Intrigued. "They allowed this one to adapt," he added. "They let it control when it fed and how far it spread. They wanted to see what it would choose."
The parasite heard him.
"They brought us fresh," it said. "They brought us sick. They brought us strong. We tasted them. We took what we needed. We learned what stayed and what broke."
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