The quiet that rushed in was worse than the sound had been.
A heavy, suffocating stillness that pressed on the eardrums, thick with the smell of rot. A cloying sweetness that coated the back of Leo's throat and made his eyes water. He swallowed, and the taste was there too. Dust and decay. No one moved. They were four statues in a tomb, frozen in the flickering emergency light.
Something drained them. The thought echoed, cold and sharp.
Maya was a coiled spring, her knives held low, her gaze pinned to the dark, gaping maw of the industrial kitchen doorway. Ben's breathing was a ragged, audible thing, a frantic counter-rhythm to the drumming in Leo's own chest. Chloe had a hand clamped over her mouth, her stare fixed and hollow.
"We should… we need to go," she whispered, the words muffled by her fingers. "Now."
"No," Maya's voice was a low rasp, barely a sound. "It knows we're here. Running's how you get killed." Her head tilted slightly, listening. Not for a sound, but for the absence of one.
Leo forced himself to think. Work the problem. His phone was still in his hand, its light a feeble weapon against the oppressive gloom. He swept the beam across the room, past the desiccated corpses, and landed it on the kitchen entrance. The slime coating the floor was thicker there, pooling near the threshold like a foul, greasy tide.
And then, it emerged.
It poured from the doorway, a slow, silent wave of translucent, grayish flesh. It didn't walk or crawl. It slithered. An amorphous, quivering mound of gelatinous tissue, maybe five feet across. No eyes, no mouth, no discernible features at all, save for the dark, shadowy shapes of what looked like organs suspended within its semi-liquid body. A network of faint, pulsing blue veins, like corrupted circuitry, was the only sign of its unnatural life.
A monstrous, reality-breaking slug.
As it moved, it left a fresh trail of the glistening, corrosive slime. Leo's stomach heaved. He swallowed hard against the rising bile.
He didn't need to be told this was the thing responsible for the husks in the room. He could feel it. A palpable aura of hunger emanated from it—not a normal, animal hunger, but a deep, systemic need. A void that had to be filled.
He forced his focus, the world narrowing to the monstrous shape. [Inspect Element]. The code shimmered into view.
[Corpus Leech Lv. 5] [Type: System Anomaly / Energy Parasite] [HP: 250/250] [Energy_Capacity: 12/100] [Physical_Damage_Resistance: 95%] [Energy_Damage_Resistance: -200%]
A tremor started in Leo's hands. Ninety-five percent physical resistance. Maya's knives… they'd be useless. Like stabbing a water balloon. But it was the other lines that held his attention. Energy_Capacity: 12/100. It was nearly empty. Famished. And a negative resistance to energy damage. A vulnerability. A massive one.
The Corpus Leech paused its slow advance, its form quivering. It seemed to sense them, not with sight or sound, but with some other, more primal faculty. A tendril of gray ooze extended from its main body, stretching, questing, sniffing the air. It pointed directly at Maya.
With a wet, sucking sound, the Leech surged forward, its speed deceptive. It moved like spilled liquid, flowing across the grimy linoleum.
Maya didn't hesitate. She dodged to the side, a blur of motion, and her knives flashed out. She didn't aim for the main body. Smarter than that. She slashed at the extended tendril, severing it.
The effect was… underwhelming. The tendril fell to the floor and dissolved into a puddle of inert slime. The main body of the Leech didn't seem to register the hit. It simply reabsorbed the puddle as it passed over it, its form shuddering for a moment before continuing its relentless, flowing advance.
"My blades… they're not working," Maya said, a tight frustration in her voice he'd never heard from her before. She danced back, keeping her distance. "It's like trying to stab water."
"It's the energy," Leo blurted out, finding his voice. "It's not—it's not alive. Not in the way we are. It feeds on bio-energy. That's why the bodies… they're not just dead, they're empty."
"So it's a parasite," Chloe said, her mind grasping the horrifying concept.
"Worse," Ben breathed, leaning forward despite the danger, utterly transfixed. "It's a bug. A rogue process that's consuming system resources. The bodies… they're just corrupted files."
The Leech ignored them, its focus solely on Maya, the one with the highest energy signature, the highest level. A heat-seeking missile for life itself.
"Its resistance to physical damage is almost total," Leo called out, forcing himself to be the analyst, the helpdesk tech. "But it's weak to energy! Massively weak."
"Great!" Maya grunted, dodging another lunge. "Does anyone have a lightning bolt in their pocket?"
"The core," Leo said, his eyes snapping to Ben. "Your core. Can you make it spark? A big one?"
Ben looked down at the bag at his feet as if seeing it for the first time. The blue light of the [Corrupted Security Core] pulsed softly through the canvas. "Spark? Leo, it's not a battery, it's a—a quantum processor. If I short it out, it could just… die. Or explode. Or…"
"Or it could save our lives!" Chloe snapped, her pragmatism cutting through his hesitation. "Ben. Can you do it?"
"I… I think so," he stammered, his mind already racing. He dropped to his knees and ripped the core from his bag. "But the discharge would be omnidirectional. Unfocused. We'd be caught in it too." He looked around frantically. "I need a conductor. Something to direct the charge. Something metal."
Chloe was already moving. She scanned the room, her eyes landing on a large, stainless steel serving tray lying amidst the debris. "Here!" she yelled, kicking it across the floor to him. It skittered to a halt in front of Ben.
"Yes, yes, that's perfect," he muttered, pulling wires from his bag. His hands, though trembling, moved with a feverish precision.
Maya was being forced back toward the overturned tables. The Leech was relentless, its amorphous form allowing it to flow over and around obstacles. She was running out of room.
"Leo, a little help here!" she called out, her voice strained.
Leo focused on the creature's code again. He couldn't edit its stats, not without another brain-splitting headache, but maybe… [Minor Edit]. A simple property change. The floor was covered in spilled soda, rotting food, and the Leech's own slime. He focused on a large puddle of sticky cola directly in the creature's path.
Object: Spilled_Soda [Property: Viscosity_Low]
He pushed. The familiar, dull ache flared behind his eyes, a pale imitation of the agony from the golem edit, but still draining. The code flickered.
[Property: Viscosity_High]
In the real world, the puddle of soda instantly thickened, becoming a sticky, tar-like trap. The Corpus Leech flowed right into it, and its advance slowed dramatically. It struggled, its gelatinous body adhering to the floor, its momentum lost.
"Now!" Leo yelled, stumbling back, a hand pressed to his temple.
Maya saw the opening. She didn't attack. She ran, putting distance between herself and the mired creature, giving Ben the space he needed.
Ben worked, his face a mask of intense concentration. He pressed the wires from the core against the metal tray. "It's ready!" he shouted. "But once I connect this, the discharge is instantaneous! Get clear!"
Chloe and Maya were already backpedaling, pressing themselves against the far wall.
"The floor is wet! It'll conduct everywhere!" Chloe warned.
"The rubber soles on our shoes should insulate us!" Ben yelled back, his voice a high-pitched squeak of hope and terror. "Probably!"
He took a deep, shuddering breath, looked at the struggling Leech, and completed the circuit.
There was no sound.
For a single, silent moment, the blue light of the core flared, consuming the room. A brilliant, silent arc of pure, white-hot energy leaped from the serving tray. It didn't travel through the air. It hit the wet floor and spread, a spiderweb of lightning that instantly converged on the single largest target in the room.
The Corpus Leech.
The creature convulsed. It didn't scream. It couldn't. But its body swelled violently, the semi-transparent skin stretching, the pale blue veins within glowing with a blinding intensity. It lit up like a horrifying, organic lightbulb.
Then, with a wet, final pop, it burst.
A wave of hot, foul-smelling vapor and lukewarm slime washed over the room. The lights—the emergency fixture and their phones—flickered and died, plunging them into darkness.
The soft, steady blue glow of Ben's core, which he still held, was the only light left, seeming calmer now, more stable.
No one spoke. Only the sound of their own ragged, desperate breaths filled the space.
They had done it. They had actually done it.
Leo leaned against a table, his legs shaking, the smell of cooked slime and ozone filling his nostrils. They were alive. And the cafeteria, with its broken vending machines and scattered supplies, was theirs for the taking.
He looked at the puddle of goo on the floor where the monster had been. It wasn't just a monster. It was a resource drain. A bug. And he was the only one who could read the error logs. A cold, heavy certainty settled in his gut.
This wasn't the last one. Not by a long shot.