Six months since I should've died.
I wasn't a soldier anymore. Not really. Just another piece of scrap left over from a dead country, a tool with too many cracks to fix—but too stubborn to stop moving.
They called this place Zone 9. Some kind of deep-sea platform welded together from rusted warship hulls and forgotten oil rigs. It floated in disputed waters, far from satellites, far from treaties. A perfect place to hide monsters.
Most of us worked stripping dead machines. I didn't talk. Didn't ask. Just survived. It was simple math.
Until they reassigned me.
"Unit 12," the foreman crackled from his gantry. "Test wing. Now. Move."
I didn't argue. Arguing gets you thrown off the deck.
They marched me down past the service decks, past areas I didn't even know existed. Lights got dimmer. Air got colder. My skin itched.
And then I saw it.
A mobile suit. Suspended like a crucified god in a rusted launch rig. Black plating, subtle green undertones beneath the light. It looked like it was asleep—but not dead. No, this thing was waiting.
The label stamped across the grated floor beneath it read:
MALAYA / PROJECT XJ-07 / BIO-SYNC: CLASSIFIED
I stopped walking.
"This isn't a mech," I muttered.
Behind me, a door hissed open. Footsteps. Slow, steady. I didn't have to turn to know who it was.
The man with the bandaged face and silver voice.
"We know what it looks like," he said quietly. "But you're right. It's not a machine."
He stepped beside me. I saw now—his bandages weren't for show. His arms trembled beneath them. His fingers were too thin. Scarred. Veins bruised black.
"How many pilots?" I asked.
He didn't answer. Just looked up at the suit.
Malaya.
"It doesn't run on fuel," he said finally. "It doesn't respond to conventional link systems. What you're looking at is a neuromorphic parasite. A symbiotic combat platform. It needs a pilot's blood to activate… and their nervous system to stabilize the sync."
He gestured toward the cockpit ladder.
"Six injection ports. Three in the spine. Three in the lower back. It draws blood, then routes neural signals through a grafted interface. Most pilots die within the first two minutes."
I didn't move. "And you brought me here because…?"
He finally looked at me. "Because you're already dead."
He said it with complete calm. "You survived the war. Alone. No command. No reinforcements. You buried your unit and scavenged their bones. You weren't chosen. You're disposable. We need data."
I stared at the Malaya unit. Its visor shimmered softly in the dark.
"Why name it that?" I asked.
"The name is old," he said. "We didn't give it. It gave itself that name when it first activated."
That didn't make sense. I didn't ask further.
He gestured again.
"The platform's ready. Get inside."
I climbed the launch rig like I was walking to my own execution.
No instructions. No protocols. Just the hiss of hydraulics and the smell of rust and dried coolant. The cockpit opened for me on its own—like it knew.
Inside was worse.
No seat padding. No harness. Just six metallic tubes, each about the width of a finger, curved inward like fangs, waiting to strike from the spine and lower back brackets.
I stared at them.
Then sat down.
The moment I touched the seat, the chamber hissed shut.
> NEURAL UPLINK: UNVERIFIED.
BLOOD CHANNELS UNFILLED. INITIATING PILOT HARVEST.
Then they struck.
All six at once.
Pain. Not sharp, but deep. Like something was boring into the core of my nerves—into the marrow. A white-hot spike drilled through my lower spine and straight into my brainstem.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"GAAAARGHHHHH!!!!!!! AAAARGHHHHH!!!!!"
I screamed.
Loud. Raw. Animal.
Not tactical. Not restrained. Just instinct.
"AAAAAAARGHHHHHHHH—!!!!!!"
I slammed the wall inside the suit machine until my fist bleeding.
I bit down hard—on instinct—and felt something tear inside my mouth. Blood filled my throat. I couldn't stop the scream. I couldn't even hear it anymore over the static screaming behind my eyes.
My hands gripped my thigh hard enough to bruise. Then I clawed at it—dug my nails in deep, anything to find a new pain, something to fight the old one.
Skin split under my fingers. I felt warm blood pour down my leg.
The machine didn't stop.
> BLOOD CHANNEL 1… FULL.
BLOOD CHANNEL 2… FULL.
BLOOD CHANNEL 3… FULL.
Every second felt like an hour. Every heartbeat felt stolen.
I shook. Couldn't think. Couldn't even strategize. All I could do was endure. Barely.
> CHANNEL 4… FULL.
5… FULL.
6… STABILIZING.
Then silence.
And a sudden, unbearable stillness. The pain didn't end. It just plateaued—became something distant and humming, like a blade still stuck in my spine, vibrating against the bones.
I could hear myself panting.
Blood dripped from my mouth. My thighs. My fingers were trembling.
Then came the voice—not from speakers, but inside my skull.
> PROJECT MALAYA: BLOOD LINK ESTABLISHED.
NEURAL THREAD RECOGNIZED.
PILOT STATUS… ACCEPTED.
"What the fuck is this-"
The cockpit lit up. Dim green data flowed across the interface in half-legible script. The machine exhaled. It didn't sound mechanical. It sounded… organic.
"Haaah..."
I sigh because of unbearable pain
And in that moment, I knew:
This thing wasn't just alive.
This wasn't machine.
It had tasted me.
It wanted more.
It want me die.