Location: Sector 7 HQ, The Flesh-Cathedral.
Time: 17:00.
The Flesh-Cathedral did not have a front door. It had a sphincter.
It was a colossal, pulsating mound of calcified bone, vat-grown muscle, and synthetic sinew, rising from the center of Sector 7 like a malignant tumor the size of a mountain. The air around it was hot, humid, and smelled of copper, ozone, and the sickly-sweet scent of nutrient slurry.
Dante, Silas, and Valerius crouched behind a ridge of rusting waste-pipes, looking up at the monstrosity.
"The main entrance is DNA-locked," Valerius whispered, pointing to the massive, puckered gate guarded by biological turrets that looked suspiciously like giant, bloodshot eyeballs mounted on swivels. "If you do not have the Overseer's specific genetic marker, the building digests you. The floor turns to acid."
"Charming," Silas muttered, pulling his leather rebreather tight over his nose. "So, how do we get in? Please don't say the back door."
"Through the ventilation," Valerius corrected. "The respiratory system."
He pointed to a series of massive, gill-like vents near the base of the structure, fifty feet up the wall. They opened and closed rhythmically, exhaling clouds of warm, spore-laden steam.
"We go in during the exhale," Valerius explained. "We hold our breath during the inhale. If you breathe the spores inside the ducts, your lungs will fill with rapid-growth moss. You will suffocate in three minutes."
Dante checked the loadout on his mechanical arm. He ejected the empty nitrogen vial and loaded a canister marked with a skull and crossbones: Concentrated Herbicide.
"Lead the way, Sword-Saint," Dante said.
Inside the Lung-Ducts
It was dark, wet, and slippery. The walls of the tunnel were lined with cilia—millions of tiny, hair-like tendrils that brushed against their suits as they crawled, sensing their movement.
HUUUUUH.
The building inhaled. The sound was deafening, a gale-force wind rushing past them, pulling them deeper into the darkness.
"Hold your breath!" Valerius hissed.
Dante clamped his mouth shut. Silas buried his face in his arm. They waited, muscles tense, as the spore-laden air rushed over them, carrying the dust of a thousand experiments.
HAAAAAH.
Steam blasted out, hot and wet, pushing them back.
"Move!" Dante ordered.
They scrambled forward, fighting the wind, their boots slipping on the mucus-lined floor. It took twenty minutes of agonizing crawling—hold, crawl, hold, crawl—before Valerius kicked open a grate made of calcified cartilage.
They fell onto a floor that felt like warm leather.
They were in a hallway. The walls were translucent pink membranes, pulsing with light. Through them, Dante could see massive organs pumping fluid to the upper levels—heartbeats thumping in the walls like bad plumbing.
"We are in the Circulatory Ward," Valerius whispered, wiping slime from his chitin armor. "The Vault is three levels down. In the Neural Center."
"I hate this," Silas squeaked, wiping green slime off his goggles. "The architecture is looking at me. I swear that wall just blinked."
They moved fast. Valerius knew every vein and artery of the building. They dodged patrols of Flesh-Golems—mindless husks stitched together from spare limbs and metal plates—by hiding in alcoves made of hollowed ribcages.
"There," Valerius pointed.
Ahead lay a massive, spiraling staircase made of fused spinal columns. At the bottom, a heavy door of black chitin pulsed with violet mana veins.
"The Vault," Valerius said. "Gorm keeps the Crown-Class Embryos and the Antidote Synthesis machine inside."
They descended the spine-stairs. Dante kept his mechanical hand ready, the herbicide nozzle primed. Silas held his sawed-off shotgun, looking ready to shoot anything that squished, twitched, or looked moist.
They reached the door. It was seamless, organic, and intimidating.
"It's sealed," Dante noted. "No keyhole."
"It responds to pain," Valerius said grimly. "Gorm built it to enjoy suffering. You have to feed it blood."
Valerius stepped forward. He raised his hand, a sharp piece of bone ready to slice his own palm.
"Save your blood," Dante stopped him, grabbing his wrist. "You're anemic enough."
Dante placed his mechanical hand on the pulsing door.
"Decay."
He didn't hurt the door. He aged it. The black chitin turned grey, dried out, and became brittle. The violet veins withered and turned to dust.
CRACK.
The door crumbled into a pile of dry, flaky dust.
"After you," Dante gestured.
The room inside was freezing cold—a stark contrast to the tropical heat of the rest of the building. Rows of glass tanks lined the walls, bathed in sterile blue light.
In the center, on a pedestal of bone, sat a machine filled with glowing orange liquid. The Antidote.
And next to it, floating in a reinforced, lead-lined canister, was a small, pale fetus. It had no face, only smooth skin, but it radiated power so intense the liquid around it vibrated.
The Crown-Class Homunculus Embryo.
"Jackpot," Silas whispered.
"Grab the Antidote," Dante ordered Valerius. "Silas, secure the Embryo. I'll watch the door."
Valerius rushed to the machine. He frantically began filling injectors with the orange fluid, his hands shaking. He jammed one into his neck immediately.
HISS.
His eyes rolled back. He gasped, falling to his knees as the burning in his veins subsided, replaced by the cool sensation of stability.
"I'm... free," Valerius breathed.
Silas was busy with the Embryo canister. "This thing is heavy. And I think it's dreaming. The liquid is vibrating. It's humming a tune."
"Pack it up," Dante said, his eyes fixed on the darkness of the hallway. "We're leaving. Now."
"Leaving so soon?"
The voice gurgled from the shadows of the ceiling. Wet. Mocking.
Dante looked up.
Hanging from the biological rafters like a bloated spider was Overseer Gorm.
But he wasn't just a fat man anymore. His back had split open, and four massive mechanical spider-legs jutted out, anchoring him to the roof. Thick, pulsating cables ran from his skull directly into the flesh of the ceiling. He was plugged into the building's nervous system. He was the building.
"I saw you," Gorm giggled, spittle flying from his lips. "Through the eyes in the walls. I felt you crawling in my lungs like nasty little parasites. Did you think you could rob me in my own stomach?"
"Gorm," Valerius stood up, his voice hard. He looked healthier already. "It is over. We have what we came for."
"You have nothing!" Gorm shrieked. "You are my property, Valerius! Defective property! And you brought thieves into my house!"
Gorm pointed a bloated finger at the floor plates.
"Awaken, my children! Feeding time!"
The floor panels slid open with a wet suction sound.
From the pits beneath the vault, things crawled out.
They were the Rejects. Failed experiments Gorm had kept for amusement. Lumps of flesh with too many mouths. Dogs with human hands grafted to their spines. Men turned into writhing masses of tentacles and teeth.
There were dozens of them. A tidal wave of biological mistakes.
"Silas! The Embryo!" Dante shouted.
"I got it!" Silas yelled, hugging the canister like a baby. "I'm keeping it!"
"Valerius! Clear a path!"
Valerius didn't have a sword. But he had the Antidote in his veins, and for the first time in years, his body wasn't fighting itself.
He moved.
He didn't need a blade. He used his hands.
A Reject with a shark's head lunged at him. Valerius stepped inside the guard, drove his stiffened fingers into the creature's throat, and ripped out its windpipe with surgical precision.
SQUELCH.
"Go!" Valerius roared, kicking a tentacle-monster in the face.
Dante stepped forward, facing the wave of horrors.
He loaded the vial of White Phosphorus into his arm.
"Let's add some light to this party."
"Flash-Fire."
He punched the air. A cone of blinding white fire erupted from his arm, engulfing the front row of Rejects. They screamed—a sound of bubbling meat and popping sinew—and recoiled from the heat.
"Run!" Dante commanded.
They sprinted back toward the spine-stairs, leaping over burning monstrosities.
Gorm scurried along the ceiling, laughing maniacally. "Close the valves! Digest them! Crush them!"
The hallway began to constrict. The walls pulsed, expanding inward to crush them. The ceiling lowered.
"Silas, explosives!" Dante yelled, looking at the narrowing tunnel.
"I only have mining charges!" Silas screamed.
"Use them!"
Silas threw a stick of dynamite at the contracting sphincter-door ahead of them.
BOOM.
The meat blasted apart, spraying hot blood and chunks of muscle everywhere. They dove through the hole, sliding on the gore like it was a water slide.
They were running blind, chased by monsters, inside a building that was trying to eat them.
"Up!" Valerius shouted, pointing to a dark tunnel. "The waste chute! It dumps into the Ash Wastes!"
"We're escaping through the ass?" Silas gagged.
"It's the rectum or the stomach acid!" Dante yelled. "Choose!"
They reached a massive, circular opening that angled sharply downward. It smelled indescribable—like a sewer mixed with a slaughterhouse.
"Jump!"
They jumped.
They slid down the slick, dark tunnel, picking up speed. It was a terrifying, frictionless descent. Behind them, the roars of the Rejects faded, replaced by the rushing wind.
Gorm tried one last trick. Spikes of bone shot out of the tunnel walls.
"Down!" Valerius shouted.
They lay flat on their backs. The spikes whistled over their noses, missing by inches.
They shot out of the side of the Flesh-Cathedral, airborne.
They landed in a massive pile of refuse—bones, failed experiments, and bio-sludge—at the base of the structure. It was soft enough to break their fall, but disgusting enough to ruin their day forever.
Dante stood up, wiping grey slime from his face. He checked the canister. The Embryo was intact, glowing peacefully.
Valerius checked his pouch. The Antidote vials were safe.
Silas was vomiting into a bush made of bone.
"We did it," Dante panted, checking his limbs.
High above, on the side of the Cathedral, Gorm screamed in rage, his mechanical legs twitching against the skin of the building.
"This isn't over, Silvergrin! I will hunt you! I will unleash the Garden! I will turn you into mulch!"
Dante flipped him off with his mechanical hand.
"Get in line, fat man," Dante muttered, turning his back on the screaming tumor. "Everyone wants to kill me. Take a number."