The gurgling sound rips through the comms. Pilot Jax screams, a ragged sound that ends in a wet gasp as he collapses, clutching his chest. Vael watches through his suit's optical feed as the armor at Jax's sternum bulges. A network of thin, dark veins rapidly spreads across the bio-plate. Jax convulses, limbs jerking, a rattling noise tearing from his helmet.
"He's compromised" the squad leader's voice cuts through the comms. His tone is flat, devoid of panic, chillingly clinical. "Containment protocol. We move. Now."
Zara Kim, a Culex pilot, hovers momentarily, her jet-assisted boosters flaring. She stares down at Jax, her head tilting. Her suit's segmented shell gleams under the emergency lights of the shelter. Vael feels the shift in the air, the cold snap of a decision already made.
"He's still alive" Zara says, her voice tight, a tremor barely suppressed. Her wing-damage trauma, an unseen scar, bleeds into her posture. She hesitates, her taloned fingers flexing.
"Negative. Biological contamination imminent" the squad leader retorts. "He's gone. It's a resource drain. Pilot Rask. Zara. Fall back to extraction point Gamma-4."
Vael's suit thrums. A low, persistent pressure pulses at the base of his skull. His neural crown, newly grown, pulses faintly with light beneath the helm, a silent bloom of energy. He feels a phantom sensation, as if an extension of his scalp is physically stretching, hardening. It's not pain, not exactly. More like a cold, involuntary adjustment. The suit is working, processing. Nervous feedback jitters through his neural crown. His vision blurs for a fraction of a second, an ephemeral glitch.
Jax claws at his own suit, incoherent sounds bubbling from his helmet. The bio-plate on his chest cracks, not from impact, but from something pushing out from within. A glistening, worm-like tentacle, pale and wet, pushes through the fissure. It pulses, extending, then retracts with a sickening slurping sound.
"Move" the squad leader orders again, his voice now a low growl, laced with iron. "Now. Or you'll be containment, too."
Zara flinches. Her gaze snaps to Vael. Her eyes, or where they should be behind the Culex helm, bore into him. A silent question. A challenge to his emerging cold, predatory focus. She wants him to argue, to fight the order. Her past suffering, the phantom ache of wing damage, makes her empathetic to abandonment. Her training screams otherwise.
Vael does not move. Not yet. His suit's systems register the accelerating bio-signature of Pilot Jax. The larvae are spreading rapidly. The transformation is already irreversible. The suit tells him this. His own growing detachment, his "Identity Drift", echoes the suit's cold calculation. Jax is already gone. A tactical liability.
"Pilot Rask. This is a direct order" the squad leader's voice sharpens.
Vael feels the pressure from Zara, the unspoken plea in her stillness. He acknowledges it. He understands the human impulse. But the suit is already pulling him away from it, pushing him towards a starker, colder efficiency. He makes a choice. Not a conscious one, but an instinctive shift. His heavy Gravemind boots lift from the floor. He turns.
"Follow" Vael says, his own voice filtered through the suit's comms, flat and devoid of warmth.
Zara hesitates for another beat. Her Culex suit's boosters flare, then she pushes off, angling away from Jax, but her movements are jerky, uncharacteristic. The moral dissonance is a physical burden on her.
The squad moves, a tight, grim formation. The shelter they were trying to secure now echoes with the wet, tearing sounds of Pilot Jax's accelerating transformation. His screams are no longer human. They warp, stretch, becoming guttural, almost animalistic, then higher, mimicking the cry of a wounded infant. A terrifying lure.
"Keep pace. No stragglers" the squad leader barks. His tone is unyielding, devoid of any regret. He only refers to Jax as a tactical problem. "Pilot Jax is a vector. Priority one is containment. Move, move, move."
Vael's Gravemind suit pounds across the collapsed urban sector. Rubble crunches underfoot. The scent of ozone and decaying bio-matter hangs heavy in the air. The sounds of Jax's transformation begin to fade behind them, but the echoes remain.
He processes the squad leader's decision. It confirms the "disposable test subject" mentality he first heard during his own agonizing suit bonding. He was just a weapon then. Jax is just a weapon now, a failed one. The trust within the squad, already fractured, shatters irrevocably. There is no loyalty here, only utility.
A memory flickers. Not his own. A fleeting glimpse of a lab, dimly lit, tubes and wires. A deep, resonant hum. His father's face, seen from a strange, low angle. Not a memory. Corrupted data, a sudden influx from the suit's internal systems, triggered by the raw clinical betrayal. It's gone as quickly as it came, leaving only a metallic taste in his mouth.
Zara's movements are less fluid now. She glances back, almost imperceptibly, before catching herself. Her silence is loud. She battles with her own demons, the cost of their choices.
Vael feels his neural crown pulse again, more strongly this time. A phantom pressure, as if something is trying to push through his skull, not just grow beneath it. He feels a subtle, involuntary hardening or shifting sensation beneath his scalp, marking the very beginning of his neural crown growing through his skull. It's a progression, a deepening of the mutation. The suit is changing him. It integrates, it adapts, it takes.
A dry thought slices through the internal chaos. Faster than advertised.
The squad approaches the extraction point. The air is thick with the dust of collapsed buildings, the metallic tang of something burning in the distance. The sounds of the transformed Pilot Jax are now faint, carried on the wind, a disturbing chorus of shrieks and growls. He is a new threat now, a mobile biological hazard.
"Extraction grid active" a comms voice announces. "Secure perimeter."
Vael scans the area, his suit's enhanced optics painting heat signatures, structural weaknesses, potential ambush points. His tactical awareness, honed by the Gravemind neural crown, is chillingly precise.
Then, his suit pings. A sharp, unexpected internal alarm. Not a comms signal. A direct, unauthorized neural link.
His vision flickers. A wave of nervous feedback, sharp and cold, courses through his system.
He hears it.
A sound. Not through the comms. Inside his head. A wet, gurgling gasp. Then, a voice. Distorted, ragged, choking. It's Pilot Jax's voice.
"No... please… not… like… this…"
The words are ripped apart by a tearing, wet sound, as if flesh is rending. A final, terrified shriek. Not human. Pure, undiluted terror and agony.
The link snaps. Silence. Cold, absolute.
The suit. It just connected him to Jax's dying thoughts. It consumed them. It knows.
Vael's neural crown throbs, a raw, exposed nerve. The pulse of light beneath his helm intensifies, visible even to him, a crimson glow. Something deep inside him snaps. Not bone. Not metal. Something else.