The Hollow did not roar. It did not snarl. It made a sound like a wet sponge being dragged across a chalkboard.
It launched itself from the puddle of green amniotic fluid, its limbs moving with a disjointed, staccato rhythm that defied the laws of biology. It didn't leap so much as it snapped through the air, closing the twenty feet between the shattered tank and Titus in the blink of an eye.
"Shield wall!" Titus bellowed.
The giant Hippo brought the broad side of his stone axe up, bracing for the impact of a heavy predator. But the Hollow didn't hit the axe. It flowed around it.
Its body was unnaturally malleable. As it collided with the weapon, its ribcage collapsed inward with a sickening crunch, allowing it to slide past the stone blade like water around a rock.
Before Titus could recover his balance, the creature was on his back.
Its long, pale limbs wrapped around Titus's thick neck. The bone mask split open, revealing the dark, writhing proboscis. It struck like a viper, aiming for the juncture between Titus's shoulder and neck.
SHLUCK.
The needle-like tube pierced Titus's tough, rubbery hide—a feat that steel swords had failed to accomplish earlier that day.
Titus roared, a sound of genuine pain and shock. He reached back, grabbing the Hollow by its spindly arm, and hurled it over his shoulder.
The creature slammed into a stainless steel surgical table, snapping the thick metal legs like twigs. It hit the floor, rolled perfectly, and popped back onto its feet, its head twitching to the side.
It left behind a chunk of its own arm in Titus's grip. It didn't seem to care. No blood flowed from the stump; only a sluggish, dark violet sap.
"It's fast," Titus grunted, clutching his neck. The wound was already turning black, the veins around it throbbing. "And it drains. It took my stamina. I feel… cold."
"Kaira! Hit it!" Ren yelled, stepping in front of Titus.
Kaira was already moving. Her boots squeaked on the pristine white tiles. The vents on her right elbow shrieked as she forced the jammed chitin to heat up, glowing a dull, angry orange.
"Impact!" Kaira shouted.
She threw a straight punch aimed directly at the center of the Hollow's mass.
The shockwave blasted forward, rippling the air. It hit the wall behind the creature, leaving a massive, spiderweb crater in the ceramic tiles.
But she missed the creature entirely.
The Hollow had dropped to all fours, skittering to the left with impossible speed.
"Dammit!" Kaira cursed, rubbing her eyes with her good hand. "I can't lock on! Ren, it's a ghost! It doesn't have a heat signature!"
Ren squinted at the Hollow.
To Kaira's thermally-shifted Mantis eyes, the world was a map of temperatures. Titus was a blazing furnace. Ren was a pulsing blue star of Aether. But the Hollow?
It was dead. A failed experiment. Its biology was so broken that it produced no body heat. To Kaira, trying to punch it was like trying to punch a shadow in a dark room.
"It's adapting to the environment," Ren realized, watching the creature's jerky movements. "It's a blank slate. Dr. Bane said it couldn't integrate the Aether, so it's just… empty. It's trying to fill itself with us."
The little man in the lab coat—the Norm janitor—was standing in the corner, leaning on his mop, giggling nervously.
"Subject 89 is very hungry," the janitor whispered, his eyes wide behind his cracked glasses. "It eats the soul. It eats the spark. You have a very bright spark, fish-boy."
The Hollow's smooth, faceless mask turned toward Ren.
The proboscis lashed the air, tasting the heavy concentration of raw, unrefined Aether that Ren had absorbed from the Marrow crystal.
Hunger, the Axolotl ghost echoed in Ren's mind. It wants to eat us. Eat it first.
Ren shook his head, fighting the Feral instinct. "I don't have weapons. I can't punch."
"Then you run!" Titus yelled. The Hippo charged again, ignoring the black poison spreading from his neck. "EARTH SHAKER!"
Titus slammed his foot into the floor. The ceramic tiles shattered, sending a localized earthquake ripping toward the Hollow. The creature was thrown off balance, tumbling backward into a row of computer banks.
Sparks showered the room.
Kaira used the distraction. She ran along the wall, pushing off a centrifuge to gain altitude. She dropped down on the Hollow, leading with her heavy, booted heel.
CRUNCH.
She stomped directly onto the Hollow's chest. The ribcage caved in completely, pinning the creature to the floor.
"Got you, you creepy freak!" Kaira snarled.
But the Hollow didn't struggle. It didn't scream. It didn't have pain receptors.
Its broken arms reached up, wrapping around Kaira's leg with the strength of a hydraulic press.
"Let go!" Kaira yelled, trying to pull away.
The bone mask split open again. The proboscis shot upward, aiming for Kaira's exposed thigh.
"KAIRA!" Ren screamed.
He didn't think. He didn't calculate.
Ren lunged across the bloody tiles. He slid on his knees, reaching out with both hands.
He grabbed the Hollow's proboscis with his bare hands just inches from Kaira's skin.
The needle was incredibly sharp. It sliced through the flesh of Ren's palms effortlessly, burying itself deep into his hands.
Instantly, Ren felt a terrifying sensation. It felt as if a vacuum cleaner had been attached to his soul. The creature was sucking the Aether directly from his bloodstream. The blue light under his translucent skin began to flicker and dim.
"Ren!" Kaira cried out, trying to kick the creature away, but its grip was like iron.
"It's draining him!" Titus yelled, raising his axe for a finishing blow.
"NO! WAIT!" Ren choked out.
The pain was blinding, but through the agony, a cold, calculating logic settled over Ren's mind.
It was the Scribe's intellect, combined with the cold-blooded pragmatism of the Leviathan.
Read the enemy, Ren thought.
He remembered Dr. Bane's notes on the clipboard.
Cause of failure: Genetic Rejection. The human mind cracked under the weight. Empty vessel.
The Hollow wasn't a predator. It was a sponge. A sponge that had failed to hold water, so it became a black hole.
But what happens when you hook a sponge up to a firehose?
"You want it?" Ren whispered, his black eyes locking onto the faceless bone mask. "You want the Aether?"
Ren stopped fighting the pull.
Instead, he pushed.
"Vitality Transfer: OVERLOAD!"
Ren opened the floodgates. He didn't just give the creature the ambient energy he had taken from the crystal; he gave it his own regenerative life-force.
The blue light in Ren's veins didn't dim. It flared, turning blindingly white.
He pumped raw, unfiltered biological energy into the Hollow's proboscis.
The creature stiffened.
For the first time, it made a sound that wasn't a wet scrape. It made a sound like a kettle boiling over. A high-pitched, vibrating whine of pure cellular panic.
Life is not always a blessing. Without a blueprint, without a soul to guide it, raw life energy is just chaos. It is cancer.
The Hollow's body began to react.
Its pale, dead skin flushed a violent, angry red. The chunk of arm that Titus had torn off earlier didn't just heal; it exploded with growth. An entire new arm—warped, twisted, and covered in tumors—sprouted from the stump in seconds.
The creature spasmed, letting go of Kaira's leg to thrash on the floor.
But Ren didn't let go of the proboscis. He held on tightly, his own blood mixing with the creature's sap.
"Drink!" Ren screamed, his voice distorting into a guttural, aquatic roar. "DRINK IT ALL!"
The Hollow's biology was collapsing under the weight of the hyper-regeneration. Bone spurs ripped through its skin. Extra eyes—blind, milky, and useless—opened up on its chest and shoulders. Its legs fused together into a useless mass of twitching muscle.
It was evolving and devolving simultaneously, its cells multiplying at a million times their normal rate.
With a final, sickening POP, the creature's bone mask shattered from the pressure inside its own skull.
The Hollow went limp.
It was no longer a humanoid creature. It was a steaming, twitching mound of overgrown flesh, bone, and violet sap. A victim of too much life.
Ren let go of the needle.
He collapsed backward onto the tiles, gasping for air. His skin was deathly pale, the translucent quality entirely gone, replaced by the gray pallor of exhaustion.
"Ren…" Kaira crawled over to him, her breathing ragged. She looked at the pile of flesh, then back at Ren. "What… what did you do?"
"I healed it," Ren rasped, a weak, dark smile touching his lips. "I healed it to death."
Titus lowered his axe. He looked at the boy on the floor. The giant's small eyes held a new, profound respect. And a hint of fear.
"A Scribe indeed," Titus murmured. "You write with blood."
Suddenly, a slow clapping echoed through the ruined lab.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The three of them turned.
The little man in the lab coat—the Norm janitor—was clapping. He had dropped his mop. He wasn't smiling a nervous, twitchy smile anymore.
He was smiling a cold, terrifyingly sane smile.
"Fascinating," the little man said. His voice had changed. The submissive, giggling tone was gone. It was replaced by a smooth, aristocratic tenor. "Simply fascinating. I had hypothesized that the Aether could be used as a biological weapon, but to weaponize regeneration? I must update my notes."
Titus stepped forward, casting a massive shadow over the little man. "Who are you?"
The man adjusted his cracked glasses. He reached up and peeled the latex-like skin from his own cheek.
It wasn't skin. It was a highly advanced, synthetic mask.
He pulled it away, revealing a face covered in fine, overlapping green scales. His eyes were slit-pupiled and yellow. His tongue flicked out—long, forked, and tasting the air.
"Forgive the theatrics," the man hissed. "It is so rare that I get to observe my subjects in a true, unsimulated stress environment. The janitor was a useful disguise to watch the rats run the maze."
Ren felt a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the Aether.
"You're not a janitor," Ren whispered, pushing himself up onto his elbows.
"No," the Reptile smiled, stepping over the puddle of green fluid. "I am Doctor Victor Bane. And I must thank you, Little Fish. You just solved the Chimera Equation for me."
Dr. Bane looked at the twitching mass of the Hollow.
"Subject 89 lacked a governor. It lacked a soul to direct the energy. But you… you can act as the governor. You can fuse the DNA without the host rejecting it."
Bane looked at Ren with the manic gleam of a scientist who had just found the holy grail.
"You aren't just a survivor, Ren. You are the catalyst. And you are not leaving this laboratory."
Dr. Bane reached into his lab coat and pulled out a remote control. He pressed a single red button.
Behind them, the massive steel doors at the far end of the lab—doors that Ren hadn't even noticed—began to grind open.
From the darkness beyond, a low, synchronized growl emanated. It didn't sound like one beast. It sounded like a choir of them.
"Subject 89 was a failure," Dr. Bane hissed, his forked tongue dancing. "Let me introduce you to my success. The Chimera Unit."