His HUD pinged sharply—a soft blue pulse swept across the screen.

  

APPROACHING: SITE LAMBDA

  Just a little further. One last push.

  And the timing was perfect.

  The Leviacrusher cut through the pitch-black ocean like a predator.

  Its engines thrummed with purpose. Simon angled downward, gliding just above jagged stone ridges, his sonar filled with the red shadow behind him.

  The DUNBAT.

  

"Closer... closer..."

  Simon murmured, his voice quiet within the cockpit.

  The voice came again—static-burned, broken beyond comprehension:

  

"STOP RUNNING! COME BACK!"

  It was grief. Fury. A ghost howling through steel.

  He fired the thrusters.

  With a boom of displaced water, Leviacrusher rocketed upward.

  The DUNBAT didn’t have time to react.

  It plowed headfirst into the seabed. The collision shook the trench. A geyser of silt and rock exploded around it.

  Simon looped back. No hesitation. The EMP generator flared to life.

  A white pulse bloomed from the Leviacrusher, like lightning frozen in water.

  Circuits fried. Structure gel convulsed. The DUNBAT seized mid-motion, twitching.

  

"Now."

  Simon plunged.

  

"Take this, motherfucker!"

  The Leviacrusher crashed down upon the stunned machine. His claws ripped through armor plating. Metal screamed. Structure gel erupted in thick black strands.

  The DUNBAT shrieked.

  

"STOP HURTING ME!"

  One of its limbs spasmed. It struck Leviacrusher’s flank, sending Simon tumbling through the water.

  He corrected his orientation with a jolt of gyros, and spun to face it again.

  The DUNBAT rose from the rubble.

  Limbs mangled. Lights flickering.

  Still alive.

  

"YOU LIED! CATHERINE LIED! YOU LEFT ME TO DIE!"

  Simon said nothing. He just surged forward.

  Titan met titan.

  Claws clashed with a spray of sparks. The plasma cutter hissed—white fire slicing into broken steel. The DUNBAT howled, dragging them both into a brutal, flailing spiral.

  Simon rolled beneath it, his claws finding the ruptured seam.

  He drove the cutter into the exposed core.

  Structure gel poured like blood.

  

"IT HURTS!"

  Simon twisted.

  The arm plunged deeper.

  The DUNBAT gave a final convulsion before all movement ceased.

  A single scream echoed through the deep.

  Then silence.

  Its body sank to the ocean floor like a forgotten monument.

  Simon hovered, the Leviacrusher venting steam.

  Threat: neutralized.

  He exhaled slowly. Systems dimmed to standby. Lights pulsed soft blue.

  He looked to his right.

  Jerry. Curled in his alcove. Trembling.

  Simon placed his palm on the glass.

  "It’s over," he whispered.

  His HUD pinged.

  

DISTANCE: 1.3 KM

  Lambda waited.

  "Holy shit," Simon murmured, staring into the gaping crater that stretched before him.

  Even through the modulation of his digital voice, the tremble of disbelief was unmistakable. Not from the vastness of the crater alone—but from the realization that this devastation, this gouge in the ocean floor, was his doing.

  Twisted rebar jutted skyward like the broken ribs of a leviathan. Chunks of rusted hull plating lay half-buried in silt, their edges warped and blackened. The water stirred them gently, like a mourner brushing ash from old bones.

  It looked like a war had been fought here. And in many ways, it had.

  He remembered it too clearly.

  It had started when he had discovered an escape vessel near Lambda.

  Catherine had tried to power it up but its propulsion system was dead.

  It hadn’t worked.

  So they set out across the ocean floor, following the trench toward the shattered corpse of the CURIE.

  That ship... The WAU had kept it in a half-life, its systems flickering with unnatural persistence. The last functioning escape pods were sealed tight, held hostage behind safety locks that wouldn’t budge.

  Unless the reactor was taken offline.

  Simon hadn’t hesitated.

  The halls of the CURIE were an open grave. Lightless. Collapsing. Claustrophobic. Each breath—if he still breathed—was heavy with tension. And in the dark, the Flesher hunted.

  That thing... its groans, its dragging limbs. He could still hear it. Still feel the vibration of its presence like a disease in the walls.

  Every step inside had been a dare. A prayer.

  But he’d made it. To the reactor. To the heart.

  And he'd pulled the locks, one by one.

  Not because he was brave. But because he was desperate.

  He ran. Alarms howled. Bulkheads screamed. He dove into the pod just before the core ruptured.

  And then—

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Hell.

  A lightless fire erupted across the deep. A shockwave that tore through steel. The escape vessel was tossed like a toy, ripped from direction and sense. They crashed hard onto the plateau of Delta. Twisted. Half-broken.

  And now…

  Now he stood here.

  Looking down into the grave he'd made.

  “I did this…” Simon whispered, almost reverently.

  To his right , Jerry stirred in his alcove. Simon gently placed a hand on the glass. The rat shifted in his sleep, unaware. Blissfully ignorant of how close they had come to non-existence.

  Simon turned back to the crater.

  The ocean was silent now. Deceptively so. Not peaceful—never peaceful.

  Down here, silence was not a gift.

  It was a warning.

  Stillness did not mean safety.

  It meant the dead were listening.

  His sensors picked up a ripple—electromagnetic anomalies blooming faintly on the periphery of his detection field as he approached Site Lambda.

  Simon didn’t need confirmation.

  He already knew what was causing them.

  The Flesher was still alive.

  Somehow, impossibly, it had survived the CURIE’s destruction. And now, it was here. Roaming the dark.

  The Leviacrusher glided silently toward a nearby warehouse, its clawed feet crunching into the seafloor.

  The warehouse docking doors hissed open with a reluctant screech, revealing a shadow-drenched chamber beyond. Simon maneuvered the mech forward, each step echoing with mechanical weight.

  Inside, he guided one of the Leviacrusher’s claws toward a control panel. Structure gel snaked from the limb and touched the interface. The connection pulsed. Behind him, the doors groaned shut, and massive pumps roared to life. Water gurgled and drained from the chamber as the pressure equalized with a long exhale.

  The Leviacrusher's top panels peeled open, hydraulics releasing with a low sigh. Mechanical limbs withdrew. Simon rose from his cockpit, gently lifting Jerry from his enclosure, and climbed down. His boots hit the steel floor with a deliberate thud.

  A compartment at the rear of the Leviacrusher clicked open. Simon retrieved the modified A95 drone—the spider-legged submersible—and placed Jerry inside.

  Simon secured the drone to his back. The magnets clicked. Locked.

  He ran a quick scan of the Leviacrusher. Scratches. Dents. Surface damage. Nothing vital.

  Good.

  The warehouse's interior door hissed open.

  Simon stepped into the main floor. Towering crates stretched up like the ribs of a sleeping giant. Massive rust-coated containers sat in uneven rows.

  Overhead lights flickered, as if struggling to stay awake in the oppressive gloom.

  His sensors swept the air. No motion. No movement. Only the hum of a dying building.

  Then he saw it—a functional panel.

  Simon approached it and placed his hand against its cold surface. The interface stuttered, then lit up. With a low data pulse, his mind connected to the site's camera grid. Feed after feed slid into his neural interface—most black, some static, a few still functional.

  He scrolled through the halls.

  Stillness.

  Dust.

  Then—

  A flicker.

  A stutter of static across one of the closer cameras. And in that brief burst of corrupted light, a figure lurched into frame.

  The Flesher.

  Simon disconnected immediately. His cloaking system activated with a shimmer of light, bending the air around him. Leg suppressors engaged, and the whine of servos dulled into silence.

  The door at the far end of the warehouse creaked open.

  And it entered.

  Lumbering. Pulsing. A malformed silhouette dragging itself into the space like a nightmare on legs.

  Its skin was stretched and bloated, glistening with dark fluid. Veins wormed beneath the surface like ink trapped in jelly. But what stood out most was the head.

  Or what should’ve been the head.

  In its place was a writhing mass of bulbous, bioluminescent growths—dozens of them—each one blinking in sickly blue hues like the dying lights of forgotten stars.

  A rasp escaped its maw—if it even had one. Wet, gurgling, like death trying to breathe.

  Simon crouched low behind a rusting crate, every artificial nerve in his body burning with tension. He watched the creature shamble deeper into the room, each step leaving behind flickers of electromagnetic static.

  Its glowing head cast eerie halos across the metal walls. Like some twisted deep-sea lantern. Like a lure.

  And then—

  Simon froze.

  His mind flashed back to the CURIE. To the original Flesher. And something didn’t match.

  He remembered details. Details he’d never forget.

  And this one—

  This wasn’t the same.

  The configuration of its body. Its proportions. Even the shape of its limbs—similar, but wrong.

  It wasn’t the same Flesher.

  'There’s more than one…' Simon though.

  The implications hit like a sinking weight.

  If there was more than one here…

  How many still lurked in the shadows of this sunken graveyard?

  It didn’t matter.

  They were prey now.

  His body—and Jerry’s drone—were both insulated against electromagnetic interference. The Flesher’s disruptive pulses wouldn’t disable him this time.

  Simon moved.

  Time slowed.

  The blade emerged from its housing, the right forearm.

  He lunged.

  A single clean horizontal slice.

  The blade carved through the Flesher’s swollen neck. Its head—if that mass of glowing tumors could be called such—tumbled to the floor with a wet slap.

  The body staggered. Twitched. Took two more lumbering steps before crumpling. Structure gel oozed from the ragged stump. Dark blood pooled in thick, congealed rivers.

  Simon’s visor locked onto the head.

  It was still moving.

  Screaming.

  Flailing its growths like a severed limb remembering pain.

  Simon didn't hesitate. His second blade emerged. One precise, brutal strike.

  The head split open with a sickening crack.

  Inside, what should have been a brain was a parasitic mass—long, rootlike tendrils pulsing where thought once lived. The skull had elongated, warped. Wet cords of structure gel clung to the bone like veins choking a corpse.

  It twitched once more.

  And then it was still.

  He turned away.

  Moved toward the corridor.

  He passed through the doors the Flesher had entered from. The hallway beyond was narrow, dark, lined with doors that had long since forgotten the warmth of human touch.

  The hallway narrowed. Pipes curved around like the veins of the facility itself, some leaking brown fluid that reeked of salt and iron. Every step Simon took echoed, a hollow clink against metal tiles. Some doors were ajar, others sealed with rust and barnacles. The deeper he moved, the quieter everything became—until even the distant hum of machinery faded.

  Only silence remained.

  And breathing.

  Not his.

  Simon stopped.

  Ahead, down a side hall shrouded in flickering red emergency light, something moved. A wet drag across the floor. Muffled sobbing—no, not sobbing. Whispers. Like overlapping voices all murmuring from the same throat.

  He activated his snake camera and slithered it around the corner.

  What it showed made his internal systems jolt.

  "What the actual fuck..." he muttered, his voice a rasp through the comms.

  The corridor beyond was warped, torn open by something massive. Walls bent outward as though they'd tried to repel the force from within. Chunks of flesh, bone, and blackened machinery pulsed on the floor like tumors. The stench hit even his sensors, thick with rot and burnt plastic.

  And at the far end—

  A shape.

  Towering. Shuddering.

  A seething, festering abomination of flesh. Dozens of bodies fused into one grotesque whole. Human torsos merged at the spine. Arms where no arms should be. Legs jutted sideways, some dragging uselessly. Heads—a forest of them—rose from the back and shoulders. Each head was a grotesque mass of bioluminescent orbs.

  Some blinked erratically. Others just stared. One wailed, a high, broken keen that made Simon's hands tremble.

  Simon pulled the camera back slowly, but the whispers followed. Not through speakers or comms—inside his mind.

  His visual sensors flickered. Distorted. The floor beneath him almost felt like it was pulsing.

  'Fucking hell. What the hell is that thing!?'

  Simon reeled against the overwhelming wrongness of it—not just biological, but existential. Something about it clawed at the edges of reality. Like looking at it too long would make him forget what being human even meant.

  He disengaged the camera and stepped back.

  A deep rumble echoed down the corridor.

  The thing was moving.

  Toward him.

  Simon sprinted through the twisted halls, boots pounding against metal slick with condensation and the reek of rot. The howls behind him rose—an orchestra of agony, fury, and hunger. The Choir, as he now silently called it, was no longer dragging itself. It was running.

  He didn’t look back. He couldn’t.

  The warehouse door loomed ahead.

  "Wake up, wake up—come on," Simon hissed, already transmitting the signal.

  The warehouse rumbled before he even reached it. The Leviacrusher stirred, red lights snapping on like eyes opening from slumber. Pistons hissed. Joints rotated. The massive machine stepped forward, its claws twitching with barely restrained fury.

  Simon tossed Jerry’s submersible to the side and dove inside the mech just as the doors sealed shut.

  The moment Simon connected to the neural port, the Leviacrusher became him.

  Outside, the warehouse walls shook.

  CRASH.

  The monster was here.

  The doors buckled—and then burst inward.

  The Choir roared.

  The Leviacrusher lunged forward, seismic footfalls making the earth groan. Claws swept out, rending huge chunks of biomass from the beast’s body. Heads flew. Limbs tore. Structure gel sprayed in black arcs. But it wasn’t enough.

  The flesh... moved.

  The torn masses of tissue slithered like worms, crawling over the Leviacrusher, wrapping around its legs, arms, even the cockpit. It didn’t matter how much damage Simon did—the thing just kept reforming, digesting metal like flesh.

  Inside, red lights flared across his HUD. Motors locking. Arm servos stalling. Pressure building.

  "Shit! No—no, no!"

  The Leviacrusher let out one last howl of effort before its limbs froze, overwhelmed by the monster’s mass. It fell to one knee with a groan of tortured metal.

  But Simon wasn’t done yet.

  He activated the EMP generator and detonated it. A sphere of electricity exploded outward from the Leviacrusher, burning away the flesh latched to its body. Unfortunately, the Leviacrusher went offline—some of its own systems fried in the blast. The upper hatch hissed open, and Simon jumped out. Jerry was safe in the storage compartment on his back.

  Flesh poured toward him from the remnants of the Choir.

  From the Leviacrusher’s broken form, smaller stalkers detached—twisted spawn of the Choir:

  One flung a sack of glowing gel—it burst mid-air, spraying Simon. His HUD fizzled into static.

  Another let out a pulse—his auditory feeds rang with feedback, throwing off his balance.

  A third crawled toward him, its mouth parting with a garbled voice: "Help me..."

  He roared through clenched teeth and shut the audio feed down.

  His right arm shifted. The Tesla cannon emerged, whining with a rising pitch as it charged. His boots anchored, electromagnets locking him to the steel floor.

  The bulk of the Choir rose again, a mountain of malformed death.

  Simon raised the cannon.

  "Take this, you ugly piece of shit!"

  The cannon fired.

  A beam of focused electromagnetic death screamed from his arm, slicing through the mass. The flesh ignited, structure gel combusting mid-air. The monster didn’t scream.

  It howled.

  And then, it disintegrated—turned to black ash and scattered limbs. Only silence remained.

  Steam hissed from Simon’s arm.

  He dropped to one knee, chest heaving with mechanical exertion.

  Before him, the Leviacrusher stood silent and wounded, pieces still twitching under remnants of crawling flesh.

  Simon looked up.

  And whispered, "We’re not done yet."