The view from the Serra do Mar was desolate. The Pangea Consortium blockade wasn't a medieval siege fueled by gunpowder and fury; it was a clinical containment grid.

  White cruisers floated in Guanabara Bay, their plasma barriers creating an impenetrable perimeter around Leviathania. In the sky, drones patrolled in perfect algorithmic patterns, projecting beams of infrared light onto the dark waters. The Consortium wasn't trying to destroy our city; it was placing a quarantine seal over a valuable biological asset.

  "We can't just accelerate the truck and pray the ram punches through a plasma shield," Valéria sighed, shutting off the Dreadnought's Ether engine in a ravine hidden by the dense foliage of the mutant Atlantic Forest. She began covering the vehicle's scorched bodywork with thermal camouflage tarps. "If they detect our heat signature, they'll vaporize us before we even reach the bridge."

  "Then we won't take the bridge," I said, taking off my tattered lab coat and tightening the straps of my tactical vest. My Black Crystal arm glowed softly in the gloom. "We'll go underneath. Through the patient's intestines."

  Gristle frowned, testing the edge of her cleaver with a green thumb.

  "You're talking about the drainage tunnels? Doctor, that's the smuggling zone. The sewer tunnels connecting the bay to the Leviathan's petrified guts. That place is full of abyssal parasites and scum not even our city wanted to accept."

  "Exactly. Scum is chaotic. The Consortium hates chaos." I pointed to the immaculate ships below. "Silas Vance's luxury suits are occupying the surface, the ports, and the administration. But I doubt they've had the stomach to go down into the sewers yet."

  Valéria handed out underwater respirators—bronze cylinders stolen from the Steam Seraphim.

  The descent to the waterline was made in absolute silence. The ocean lapping against the slope's rocks smelled of dead fish and ozone.

  We dove in.

  The bay water was freezing, but the Parasite in my liver immediately adjusted my internal temperature, thickening my blood to prevent hypothermia.

  We swam through the shadows of the rocks, avoiding the beams of bluish light that the Consortium's underwater patrol drones swept across the seabed. They were Amphibious Auditors—biological torpedoes with titanium fins and high-frequency sonars.

  "Arthur, a patrol is approaching!" Luna's voice sounded in my underwater receiver. "They are using active sonar. They'll detect our heartbeats!"

  I looked up. Three Amphibious Auditors were gliding toward us, perfectly synchronized.

  "Luna, create an acoustic vacuum around us! Gristle, Valéria, stop swimming and hug the bottom!"

  Luna gripped her baton, emitting a frequency that didn't produce sound, but rather the absence of it. A bubble of absolute silence enveloped us, nullifying the drones' sonar waves.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Simultaneously, I dug my Black Crystal arm into the mud of the seabed. I channeled the prosthesis's absolute zero, drastically lowering the water temperature around us to disguise our thermal signatures. The cold crept up my shoulder, anesthetizing my human mind and bringing back the icy echo of the Babel Code.

  The drones passed over us. Blind and deaf to our presence.

  I released my breath in a trail of bubbles that mixed with the current.

  Ten minutes later, we found the fissure. A colossal crack in the calcified structure of the dead god's pelvis.

  We swam into the darkness and emerged in a vaulted cavern, where seawater met pools of petrified gastric acid.

  We removed the respirators. The air there was breathable, but dense, smelling of sulfur, cheap tobacco, and despair.

  We had arrived at The Bilge. The black market and unofficial suburb of Leviathania.

  The place was unrecognizable. Before, it was just a smugglers' den; now, it was bursting at the seams. Hundreds of surface citizens—amphibious mutants, former Hollows, and local mercenaries—were huddled in damp canvas tents, fleeing the corporate occupation upstairs.

  We walked along improvised walkways of rotting wood and bones. The looks we received were of fear and hunger.

  "What happened to them?" Luna murmured, horrified to see a family of mutants trying to keep warm around a barrel with burning trash. "Is the Consortium kicking them out?"

  "Worse than that, little princess," a raspy, wet voice echoed from the shadows of a tent made of shark skin.

  A man emerged. Or rather, a bipedal ecosystem. It was Master-Caries, the crime lord of The Bilge. His skin was a mosaic of marine bedbugs and living coral. He smiled, revealing teeth that looked like sea urchin needles.

  "Doctor Veras returns home," he gave a theatrical bow, exhaling a breath of fermented seaweed. "And just in time to see the wake of his own city."

  Gristle snarled, resting her hand on the cleaver. "Watch your tongue, walking sludge."

  "It's not me you have to cut, Orc General," Caries laughed, pointing to the ceiling of the cavern, which corresponded to the pavement of the city above us. "The ones in white suits aren't firing shots. They're offering contracts."

  "Contracts?" Valéria frowned.

  "The Pangea Consortium arrived with pure supplies. Clean water. Medicines that don't involve magical amputations." Master-Caries spat on the floor. "They said Leviathania is corporate property. Whoever signs the exclusivity contract gets Pangea citizenship, access to luxury clinics, and a place on the upper levels. But the price... is the compulsory donation of genetic material and lifetime servitude in the bone extraction factories."

  "They're turning the city into an assembly line and the people into genetic cattle," I understood, feeling the anger boil beneath the cold skin of my crystal arm. "And those who don't sign?"

  "Those who don't sign, like us, are classified as 'Unlicensed Biological Waste'. They cut off our steam power. They shut down the fresh water pipes. They're starving and freezing us to death to force us to go up and beg for a pen."

  The Parasite vibrated with disgust. Not even the cruelest predators humiliated their prey with bureaucracy.

  "Silas Vance thinks he can buy my blood with an insurance policy," I said, looking at the dozens of black market refugees who were now gathering around us, looking at me waiting for a cure.

  "Master-Caries. How many armed men do you still have down here who haven't sold out to the Consortium?"

  The mutant scratched his coral chin. "Three hundred, maybe. With rusty steam weapons and bone knives. We wouldn't last ten minutes against the black polymer armor and plasma rifles. They have the control tower. They have the boilers. We only have mud."

  "You have the chief surgeon." I adjusted the collar of my lab coat. My left eye blinked, projecting schematic blueprints of the Leviathan's internal anatomy onto my retina. "They took the boilers on the surface, but the boilers are fed by the carcass's arterial valves. Valéria, Gristle. We are going to cause a pulmonary embolism in this city."

  I looked at the frightened crowd.

  "Gather anyone who can fight. We're going up through the monster's central nervous system. The Consortium wants to audit the city? Very well. Let's show them our cancellation policy."