Vael's spine aches. Not a bruise, not a cut, but a deep, structural ache from the new metal in his back. He stood, barely. His SymSuit felt like a second skin, but a skin grafted onto raw nerves. A bio-needle had pierced his vertebrae, locking him into this armor. Eight pilot trainees had died during their own bonding failures, their screams still echoing in his head, before he became Pilot Rask.
A harsh light blazes. The chamber walls retract. It is a vast, open training ground. Concrete slabs, rusted metal structures, and shattered vehicle husks litter the landscape. Dust hangs thick. His comms crackle.
"Pilot Rask. GRAVEMIND-7." The voice is flat. Dr. Elena Voss. She is in a secure control booth high above. Her burn-scarred face is a clinical blur on his internal display. He hates the detachment in her voice. He clenches his armored fist.
"First live-fire exercise begins," Voss states. "Simulated threats incoming. Objective: demonstrate SymSuit functionality. Survive."
Survival. That is all he knows now. The suit thrums, a low vibration against his ribs. The Gravemind neural crown activation pulses at the base of his skull. It feels cold. It feels invasive. His vision overlays, showing targeting reticles and threat indicators. A digital ghost of a battlefield.
Target detected. Three simulated Scarp Maw Gorebreed appear from behind a crumbling wall. Holographic projections. Their forms shimmer, grotesque. Stitched human skin. Too real. Vael's suit auto-locks. His arm raises, heavy. His fingers tense on the trigger of the integrated energy cannon.
"Fire, Rask," Voss commands. No emotion.
He fires. The cannon roars. Energy bolts tear through the first simulation. It dissolves into pixelated dust. Two more emerge. He moves, slow at first, then faster as the suit responds. His body is a tool. He fires again. The second simulation explodes.
He moves towards the third. His joints groan. The integration is still raw. Pain flares behind his eyes. A flash of a memory. A sterile room, blinding lights. His father's face. Then it twists. Gone. The memory flickers like corrupted data.
A voice, too close. "Help me. Please. It hurts."
Vael freezes. The voice. It is not on comms. It is from the training ground. A human sob. A child's whimper. It slices through the simulated gunfire.
The suit's internal system flashes. Unidentified bio-signature.
Voss's voice cuts through the comms. "Anomaly detected. Standby, GRAVEMIND-7. Real threat incoming." Her voice is still calm. Too calm.
A deeper growl. Not simulation. The third projected Scarp Maw Gorebreed flickers, then dissipates into the dust. Nothing is left. But the sobbing continues. Closer now.
A pile of shattered concrete and bodies. Three bodies. They were other pilot trainees, their bonding failures ending in grotesque death in the pierce-lock integration chamber. Their bodies still lie here, unrecovered. The sobbing comes from them.
A shudder rips through Vael's suit. He feels a strange pulse in his bio-armor, a subtle shift in texture at the seams. Flesh integration. The line blurs between his suit and his skin. He watches the corpses. A seam in the skin on the top body tears. A wet, tearing sound. Not a hologram.
It smells of blood.
A real Scarp Maw Gorebreed explodes from the pile of dead trainees. Its body is covered in stitched human skin. It uses the bodies of others as camouflage. Its mouth is a black void of teeth. It moves with a sickening fluidity, a nightmare given form. It is huge. The sobbing stops. A guttural snarl takes its place.
The suit's systems overload with new data. Threat: Scarp Maw Gorebreed. Confirmed Hostile.
"Ambush," Voss states. No surprise in her voice. "Training simulation terminated. Live combat protocols engaged. Eliminate the Scarp Maw Gorebreed." Her calm makes his skin crawl.
Three other surviving trainees, armored in their own SymSuits, move from cover. They are raw, terrified. They raise their weapons. One screams. The Scarp Maw Gorebreed is fast. Too fast. It lunges.
Tactile gore. The creature's elongated arm, covered in flayed human skin, lashes out. It wraps around the trainee's torso. The SymSuit armor groans, then cracks. The trainee screams. A wet, crunching sound. The pilot's bones splinter. The suit crumples.
Vael watches. His neural crown activates. A cold, strategic clarity floods his mind. He sees trajectories. Weak points. He ignores the dying scream. The suit processes data. Scarp Maw Gorebreed: Vital points identified. Head, joint articulations, exposed neck tissue.
The Scarp Maw Gorebreed drops the mangled trainee. The suit is a twisted wreck. The pilot inside is dead. Vael feels nothing. A subtle personality shift. The terror is gone, replaced by a cold, predatory focus. He knows what he has to do.
Another trainee fires wildly. Energy bolts strike the Scarp Maw Gorebreed, but it barely flinches. Its stitched skin is thick. It charges the second trainee.
"Pilot! Move!" Vael barks through comms. His own voice is flat. His suit moves without conscious thought. He fires at the Scarp Maw Gorebreed's leg. The energy bolt hits. Black ichor sprays. The creature stumbles.
The second trainee tries to escape, scrambling over debris. The Scarp Maw Gorebreed roars. A new sound. A distorted human voice. "No, please, don't leave me."
The second trainee falters. Looks back. A mistake. The Scarp Maw Gorebreed is on him. Its mandibles snap. A spray of blood, a tearing sound. The SymSuit is shredded. The pilot's head is gone.
Vael observes. His priority is survival. He cannot save them. He must not. The suit confirms it. Optimal survival probability: Disengage from immediate threat. Re-evaluate. Target vulnerable points from range.
Another trainee, Pilot Jax, is pinned behind a wrecked transport. He screams, firing wildly. "Rask! Help me!"
The Scarp Maw Gorebreed is distracted. It stalks Jax, its grotesque mimicry restarting. "Mommy, it hurts. Save me." The sobbing is unbearable.
Vael's hand is steady. He aims. Not at the Gorebreed. At the wreckage near Jax. He fires a concentrated energy blast. The transport shudders, cracks. More debris falls, sealing Jax behind it. The Scarp Maw Gorebreed roars in frustration, its path to Jax blocked.
One less variable.
A cold, dry thought. This is efficient.
Vael feels a jolt. His suit's bio-armor pulses. The seams shift. More flesh integration. His skin beneath the armor feels taut, alive. He aims again. The neural crown burns. The Scarp Maw Gorebreed turns towards him. It senses him. It senses his resolve.
It charges. Fast. Too fast for the damaged terrain. It leaps, jaw gaping. Vael dodges, rolling, firing short, precise bursts. The creature is relentless. Its stitched skin is tough. He aims for its exposed joints, the places where the human skin grafts meet the raw Gorebreed flesh.
He strikes its knee. A sickening crack. The Scarp Maw Gorebreed screams. Not a human sound. A primal, alien roar. It lunges with its clawed arm. Vael brings up his forearm, blocking the strike. Metal groans. The creature's claws scrape against his armor. Pain flashes through his arm. The suit screams. Integrity compromised.
He sees it. A weakness. A momentary shift in its black adaptive muscle. The neural crown flares. He knows. He will take it down. He will survive.
He fires. A full blast. Direct hit to its exposed neck tissue. The Scarp Maw Gorebreed convulses. Its body shudders. Black ichor sprays. It falls. It twitches. Then it stills. The air is silent.
Vael stands over the dead Scarp Maw Gorebreed. Its body is a grotesque parody of life. He breathes. His suit's fan whirs, a low hum. The pain in his arm is dull now. His vision clears.
Voss's voice returns on comms. "Threat eliminated, GRAVEMIND-7. Combat trial complete." Still no emotion. "Return to extraction point."
He walks towards the extraction point. The bodies of the fallen trainees are twisted caricatures of SymSuits. Their screams are gone. Only the hum of his suit remains. He feels isolated. The training, he realizes, was not for their protection. It was a test. A test of the suit's limits. He was a disposable test subject, just as he overheard. The instructors are callous. They do not care.
He stands amidst the carnage. Dust settles. The sun casts long shadows. He is alone. The suit's internal systems, usually a cascade of data, suddenly quiet. Then, a voice. Not Voss. Not an instructor. Not his own thoughts.
A cold, foreign consciousness echo in his mind. Clear. Unmistakable.
"Vael."
The shock rips through him. Not just that the suit speaks. But that it knows his most personal, civilian name. A name he had never uttered to it. A name no one uses anymore. His body spasms. The neural crown pulses, hot. An involuntary, deep tremor shakes his armor. Something shifts in his skull. Something breaks.