Sector 9. The Slaughterhouse.
The air tasted of bleach and old pennies. It coated the back of Ranveer's throat, a chemical film that made him want to spit, but the helmet wouldn't let him.
He stepped through the shattered glass of the entryway. Crunch. Crunch. The noise was too loud.
The suit felt tight today. It wasn't just armor; it was a parasite hugging his ribs, a wet, heavy second skin that pulsed in time with his own erratic heartbeat. Under the dying flicker of halogen strips, the black bio-matter shimmered—oil slick on midnight water.
Two figures at the far end. Rubber aprons, yellowed and stiff. They were heaving something wrapped in heavy plastic toward a vat that hissed. The shape slumped in the middle. Dead weight…
Ranveer moved. He didn't run; he just stopped being here and started being there.
The first man turned, eyes wide, white rims in the gloom. He dropped the legs.
Ranveer didn't think about the strike. The suit did it. A gauntlet lashed out, the bio-matter hardening into a hammer the split second before impact.
Thwack. Wet and final.
The man's jaw went sideways. He folded, limbs jangling like loose wire.
The second cleaner scrambled, boots slipping on the slick concrete. He grabbed a crowbar. Desperate. Stupid. He swung. The steel rang off Ranveer's shoulder, vibrating, useless.
Ranveer reached out. Grabbed a throat. Lifted.
The cleaner kicked, boots drumming a frantic rhythm against the air.
"Basement," Ranveer said. His voice scraped against the inside of the helmet, sounding foriegn, distorted by static. "Who's down there?"
The man clawed at the black gauntlet. His face was mottling, turning the color of an eggplant. He wheezed, a pathetic, leaking sound. A shaking finger pointed to a steel door.
"Gone… just the meat… left…"
Ranveer squeezed. Just a twitch of the wrist. The cartilage gave way with a soft pop.
He let go. The body hit the floor—a sack of wet sand. Ranveer didn't look down. He kicked the steel door. It didn't just open; it tore from the frame, clattering down into the dark.
He went down.
The air changed. Warmer. Heavier. The chemical bite faded, replaced by the copper tang of a butcher shop.
It wasn't a medical bay. It was a deli counter for nightmares.
Tables lined the room. Hooks in the ceiling. Meat on the hooks. Some of it still looked like men. Some of it didn't. The patrol squad—missing since morning—was piled in the corner. Hollowed out. Ribs cracked open like spread wings.
Ranveer walked past a cooler. A liver, packed in bagged ice. A price tag stuck to the plastic.
Retail. Malak had turned soldiers into inventory.
Ranveer stood in the center of the damp room. He spun slowly. Nobody. Just the drip, drip, drip of something viscous hitting a drain.
Rage didn't burn; it froze. A growl vibrated in his chest, and the suit reacted instantly. The black material along his forearms spiked, bristling like a dog's hackles. The core temperature spiked. He was cooking inside his own armor.
He punched a support pillar.
Concrete dusted the air, grey snow falling on red puddles.
Breathe, he told himself. Don't let the suit take it.
He raised his left forearm. The armor looked soft there, fleshy. He dug the fingers of his right hand into the material. It felt gross—parting like warm dough, wet and yielding. Buried deep in the synthetic muscle, a hard rectangle.
He fished out the phone.
The bio-armor receded from his thumb, peeling back like gums from a tooth. He typed. His human skin looked pale against the black tech.
TARGET GONE. BUTCHER SHOP. SECTOR 9 IS A MORGUE.
He shoved the phone back deep into the suit's meat. The bio-matter swallowed it whole, sealing the wound. Ranveer turned back to the stairs, leaving the dead to the dark.
Ross Island. Hangar 4.
The politicians were gone. The air felt lighter without them.
Dr. Iyer was asleep, head on a stack of charts, snoring a soft, rattling rhythm. The other linguists were slumped in chairs, broken by the mental sprint.
Valen stood alone in the center of the vast concrete floor. He looked at the whiteboard. The math was right, but the logic felt… small.
Shadows stretched from the crates, long fingers reaching for him. The only sound was the high-pitch whine of the floodlights. It hurt his ears.
He felt the presence before he heard it. A displacement of air.
Valen turned. Sharp. Toward the darkest corner, behind the turbines.
"Who… are… you? …"
The words felt like gravel in his mouth. He was still learning how to shape them.
A shadow peeled itself away from the wall. The Masked Man. He didn't walk; he flowed. A ceramic skull face, grinning a fixed, white grin.
He stopped ten feet away. Hands open. Palms out.
"I am the alternative," the man said.
Valen tilted his head. He could hear the man's heart—slow, steady. Thump… thump. No fear.
"You… hide," Valen said.
"Survival," the man corrected. He nodded toward the sleeping scientists. "They look at you and see a miracle. The suits—the government—they look at you and see a gun."
Valen stood very still. "Gun."
"A bomb. A missile." The Masked Man stepped closer, voice dropping to a murmur. "They'll study you. Cage you. Aim you. They call it security. I call it a leash."
Valen narrowed his eyes. The concept bloomed in his mind. Control.
"You… different?"
"I read Iyer's encrypted files." The man tapped the side of his skull mask. "I know what you see. The density. The layers. You see the atoms dancing in the steel beams, don't you? You see the cancer in the doctor's lung."
Valen stiffened. The air around him grew heavy, charged with static.
"Peace," the man said, not flinching. "I know about the reactor in your cells. You could vaporize this island by blinking. But you don't."
He paused. "You came to fix. Not to break."
Valen's fist slowly unclenched. The static faded. "Yes. Help."
"They will make you break things. I offer a way to heal the rot."
Valen looked at the mask. Really looked. His vision shifted, bypassing the ceramic. He saw the scarred tissue underneath. The bone structure. The eyes—tired, cold, but clear.
"How?"
The Masked Man pointed North.
"Five kilometers. Past the wire. Old stone ruins. A temple."
Valen looked North. His pupils blew wide, swallowing the iris. The hangar wall turned to mist. The steel girders became ghosts. He pushed his sight through the jungle canopy, zooming, focusing.
"Stone deity. Reclining," the man said. "Look inside the mouth."
Valen focused. Layers peeled back. Leaf. Moss. Stone. Hollow.
There.
"Phone," Valen whispered.
"When you decide—and you will—take it. Dial three-two-three." The Masked Man lowered his hand. "Can you write?"
Valen turned to the whiteboard. The marker felt slippery in his hand.
He drew a 3. A 2. A 3. The squeak of the marker echoed in the silent hangar.
"Good."
A buzz from the Masked Man's pocket. Short. Sharp.
He checked the screen. The blue light reflected in the hollow eyes of the skull mask.
TARGET GONE. BUTCHER SHOP. SECTOR 9 IS A MORGUE.
The man thumbed the screen dark. He looked at Valen.
"The world is sicker than you think," he said. "We have work to do."
He reached out, grabbed the eraser, and wiped the numbers away. Two swipes. Dust.
Then he stepped back into the shadows, and the darkness just… ate him.
Valen stood alone. He looked at the white smudge on the board. Then he looked North, through the walls, at the stone mouth waiting in the wet jungle.