Three dry coughs burst out. With each one, Victor spat dust. His throat parched and clogged, he turned to the right, trying to push himself up with his arm. His movements were unsteady. The boy was still trembling, letting out small, muffled sounds. “Em… eh.”

  Once upright, with his hands barely managing to brace against the hot, jagged rubble, he gagged, trying to rid himself of the sensation. He stuck two fingers from his right hand into his mouth as far as he could.

  He vomited. Twice in a row.

  For a few seconds, Victor stared in horror at the liquid mass on the ground, which smelled exactly like what it contained: chunks of concrete, blood, and gastric fluids.

  He was shaking.

  All around him, everything was dark. Above, the sun’s rays striking the mountains were the only source of light. Down here, in the depths, there were only wreckage and debris, swallowed by darkness, rooted into the environment—deep and hollow. So hollow that just looking at it made Victor feel even more suffocated.

  “Shit…”

  Victor tried to stand. However, his legs were still badly numb. He attempted to rise slowly, even though they trembled violently, making it especially difficult; with every extra effort, he felt himself locking up.

  “Fuck!”

  Victor turned as quickly as he could, but sliced his left hand on sharp metal objects when he braced himself. Despite the pain, he stayed silent, exhaling sharply and grimacing.

  He sat down carefully, rubbing his hands along his thighs and legs, trying to relax the muscles and get the blood flowing.

  Then a scream—male. Horrifying. As if someone were being attacked.

  It came from the darkness, straight ahead.

  Victor froze for a few seconds, perhaps waiting for another scream.

  “Hey… is anyone there?” Only a metallic echo answered him. The silence returned.

  He tried one last time to get up. He could feel the blood moving in his legs now, but he was still far from fully recovered. He pushed himself up, using his left leg—the more responsive one, the less fractured one. No good. Then a second push, harder. Debris dug into his hands, even into the earlier wound. The pain was excruciating.

  That shove got him upright. For a brief moment, he nearly lost his balance, partly because of the slight slope pulling him downward. His right leg was fractured. Not too badly. Still, his mobility was severely reduced. As he moved toward the screams, he limped, carefully watching his steps to avoid as many obstacles as possible.

  He had no flashlight. Nothing to illuminate his path. He could only rely on his sense of direction and on his eyes, which were slowly adjusting to the dark, allowing him to see just a little better.

  “Hey, can you hear me?!” Victor kept searching. The hope that he hadn’t been the only survivor pushed him forward. Seeing that man trampled by the crowd—emitting electronic groans, straining to speak, reaching toward him with a scarred hand, his trembling arm slowly lowering as the mass crushed him—was yet another time Victor had watched someone die before his eyes. Seeing people killed in front of him had become almost daily. His emotional detachment came also from that. On Earth, for many, it was normal to remain indifferent to death. But Victor couldn’t tolerate it. He couldn’t accept it, and it made him feel twisted. For him, it was a matter of ethics, of respect for life and justice. An inner battle he fought alongside the one in this collapsing world.

  “Hey!” he shouted, stretching out the words. “I’m coming to save you!”

  “Go away…”

  There was the voice. Still from the darkness. This time, directly in front of him.

  He didn’t understand that “go away.” Why would he say that? he thought.

  “What do you mean with “go away”…? Can you hear me?”

  Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a hand—but its shape looked wrong. The middle fingers were longer, warped. The forearm was thin and frail, covered in strange, indistinct filaments.

  “What the…?”

  He was already stepping backward, slow and cautious, trying not to make a sound. His breathing grew shallow and rapid, his heart climbing into his throat, choking him. The person’s groans became harsher, more pained. And the voice—it shifted. Lower. The groans turned into grunts, guttural sounds. “Uom… uom.”

  Victor’s heel struck something light and plastic. Without taking his eyes off the source of the sounds, he picked it up. A flashlight.

  “It’s still charged…”

  He wanted to run. He didn’t want to turn it on. He didn’t want to know. But the fear of abandoning another dying life forced him to stay, to risk it anyway. The flashlight trembled in his sweaty hand. He gripped it tighter and tighter, rigid as stone.

  He slowly extended his arm, not aiming directly at the “man.” He pointed it slightly lower. As he approached, the beam stabbed into his eyes like needles, burning for a moment from the sudden brightness.

  When his vision adjusted, he advanced again. Each step was measured. Each breath carefully controlled. His eyes fixed on the beam illuminating the ground, revealing scattered metal scrap and settled dust.

  Finally, Victor illuminated the body.

  It was still alive—but the skin was almost entirely liquefied, bubbling over the prone body, releasing a nauseating odor. The face was gone. The eyes, bursted, dangled outside the skull, which had partially disintegrated at the right temple. The jaw, soaked in bloody tears flowing from the empty sockets, had detached on the right side and hung by a few strands of flesh. “A…ha…”

  The voice was broken. The vocal cords, partly visible through the torn neck, were rotting, dissolving.

  Then, just before collapsing, under Victor’s petrified gaze, the carcass began to spasm—at first faint, then increasingly violent. The back cracked lengthwise, as if something were pushing out. A series of macabre sounds followed, bones snapping, wet gelatinous flesh tearing faster and faster.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Victor was already moving in the opposite direction. Running was generous—he limped quickly, half-hopping to propel himself, shining the flashlight at the ground to avoid falling. But despite the light, he was completely disoriented.

  “Where the fuck do I go?!” he thought, sweating cold, not daring to look back.

  Behind him, the beast panted in the shadows, grunting and roaring violently, uncontrollably—like something driving it. Almost a lament, the kind born from unbearable pain.

  Victor stumbled. The impact was brutal. When he got up, his face and hands were scraped raw. The wounded hand suffered again as a large shard of metal drove into the open cut. He pulled it out with difficulty, more blood spilling.

  He wanted to scream.

  As he rose to flee again, the flashlight beam fell on something familiar.

  His armor.

  Perfectly intact beneath dust and debris.

  He also glimpsed the Hertz-Type transport unit, split open and destroyed, with what looked like the corpse of its previous pilot inside, the cockpit flooded with blood.

  Victor immediately cleared debris off the armor. Fortunately, the Kariudo opened from the front in its current position. At first, he panicked, unable to find the release.

  “Where is it…?” he whispered, panting from the stress.

  “There.”

  He pressed the small lever just beneath the helmet of the armor. It clicked, unlocking the chest plate, helmet, and the four limbs, which opened almost immediately, releasing a faint metallic screech that sounded worn, almost damaged.

  Victor didn’t hesitate to climb inside. At first, he felt uncomfortable—the soft inner lining was slightly dented. Even as he stepped in, he felt like he was suffocating, despite the armor still being open.

  Once positioned, he quickly pressed the second lever located near the lower section of the helmet, around the height of his right cheek. He pressed it with the corresponding hand, then slid that hand into the appendage just before it, along with the rest of the suit, sealed shut.

  Now the air truly disappeared.

  The armor allowed nothing to pass through. No light. No air. Total darkness. Total silence. Not calm. Not peaceful. Nothing. Not even static.

  And yet, he felt himself rising to his feet—with little effort.

  He felt that the armor was not merely soft.

  It was embracing him.

  He felt cradled by the cold metal.

  But he wasn’t at peace.

  Those embraces felt like they were driving him toward madness.

  He resisted.

  Suddenly, the air no longer seemed to be lacking. The filtration mechanism had activated, channeling air through the tube embedded just beneath the helmet, roughly between the mouth and the chin.

  And it was scented. An aroma unknown to him. He did not remember that smell. He did not even know it existed. I don’t remember any of this, he would have wanted to think, if the armor hadn’t been sterilizing him of every thought, forcing him to remain impassive as he moved through the darkness.

  Suddenly, he stopped. The footsteps resumed, echoing over the metal floor. Macabre sounds. Diabolical laughter. That’s what they seemed like. Victor couldn’t hear them, yet he knew they were there. He turned slowly, scanning every direction in front of him. He was searching for something that, in turn, was searching for him.

  And it was closer than he thought.

  Then, a voice in his head—dry, robotic:

  IJO DETECTED: K76-65.

  ESTIMATED LEVEL: BETA.

  CODENAME: TOMBFACE.

  The creature lunged violently at Victor, striking him in the head with its left arm, whose long, twisted fingers—tipped with razor-sharp nails—scraped against the armor, trying to pierce it.

  It roared. It roared like a demon. Its cries were macabre, just like its body—crooked and grotesque—equipped with those thin, gaunt arms whose impact strength was comparable to a high-speed car crash.

  Victor was shoved back by the beast’s brutal force before managing to gain a slight advantage, trying to wrench its hand away from his head, gripping its arm as tightly as he could. Useless. The Ijo pressed harder, driving forward with even more force. This time it tried to bite his head. Victor blocked its face with his hand, struggling to keep it from sinking its teeth into him.

  Its head was aberrant. It didn’t seem to have eyes. The skin was wrinkled. It didn’t feel like flesh at all, because it grated against the metal of the armored palm. The forehead was slightly elongated upward, crusted and dark gray like the rest of its body. Despite its immense strength, it looked malnourished and gaunt.

  Victor perceived all these details. He didn’t know how. He just did.

  He could also feel the monster’s crooked, sharpened teeth getting closer and closer. He could smell it—not only nauseating, but hot, burning hot, like flames or gasoline set ablaze.

  Tombface finally bit him. Not in the head, but at the clavicle, lunging like a starving predator. Those seemingly fragile fangs sank in, nearly piercing through Victor’s body.

  The boy fell to the ground. He struggled wildly, pushing back its arms, its jaws. He began kicking. The beast seemed indestructible. It felt like the end.

  “Why won’t it activate…?”

  Tombface kept biting and tearing at the metal. After numerous fast, targeted strikes, its claws managed to pierce the chest plate. It kept raking at it. With every scrape through the grinding metal, more of Victor’s flesh became exposed.

  “Activate… come on!”

  Visibly furious and exhausted, the monster drove its claws in one last time. This time it decided to force the chest open, pressing down on Victor’s stomach with its right leg—made of only four toes, thin in appearance and razor-sharp. It pushed with all its strength, bracing its foot as leverage while prying apart the heavy metal.

  All the while it grunted, emitting horrifying guttural sounds. “Hem… eh…” It sounded like laughter. Its mouth twisted into a distorted, malicious grin, as if saying, I’ve won—looming arrogantly over the helpless boy.

  Then Victor delivered one final kick. “Uom…”

  The monster was hurled backward. The blow was powerful and sharp. He had aimed at its stomach, and even after the violent crash among the rubble, it weakened the creature for a moment. Still trembling, confused, and furious, it tried to rise immediately.

  Victor rose as well.

  Victor… but it wasn’t him.

  Despite the armor’s damage—small electric sparks snapping and sharp bursts of static crackling, metal grinding—Victor was preparing for the next clash. He, too, growled. But his sounds were metallic.

  His body convulsed, spasms moving against the rigid structure of the armor. Again, that wet, disturbing sound of flesh and bone realigning.

  “Victor” let out roars. They were not random.

  Tombface felt threatened. Even offended. It answered with roars of its own.

  They were face to face again, in the darkness.

  Monster… against monster.

  Victor roared powerfully, a harsh robotic tone that could have ruptured any eardrum. His helmet split open around the filtration tube. It wasn’t broken—two slits formed, opening laterally to the right and left. From within, an electric blue glow burst out, mixed with smoke and crackling energy. Along with the nearly exposed sharpened teeth, it transformed what had once been a normal boy into something worse than the monster before him.

  From his back and shoulders, sharp plates emerged, like the ones forming along the fingers of the armor. They were veined—luminous and pulsing. Electric blue. They emitted the same crackling discharges.

  Tombface roared back.

  It didn’t matter how powerful or horrific its tone was.

  There was no comparison.

  They charged each other head-on.

  Victor gained the upper hand, slashing and striking at Tombface’s chest and face. At last, the creature was wounded. Its blood—boiling, almost fizzing—spilled over Victor. He felt the pain.

  He continued.

  Tombface tried again, clawing at Victor’s head to break through. It gained only a brief advantage before being pierced by razor-sharp blades that formed instantly from Victor’s arms. They drove through its armpits, ripping deep gashes of searing pain that even the monster couldn’t endure, preventing it from using its arms.

  Tombface staggered back.

  LESS THAN 30 SECONDS…

  Victor counterattacked. He hurled himself at the beast, which no longer roared in defiance. Its voice had become a cry—a pleading whimper.

  Victor didn’t care.

  He began by tearing off its arms. The pain was atrocious. At first it was difficult, partly because Tombface’s agonized screams distracted him. Then he continued, slicing straight down the creature’s abdomen, splitting it open and slowly emptying it, prolonging the suffering as its entrails spilled out.

  Blood and flesh sprayed everywhere.

  Tombface began to tremble. Its roars were no longer strong. The horrifying sound had dwindled to faint, suffocated whimpers. It was dying, gurgling as blood poured from its mouth. It convulsed.

  Victor wasn’t tired at all.

  …10 SECONDS…

  He slowly approached Tombface’s face, from whose mouth rivers of blood were flowing. With a single, decisive stomp, he crushed its head.

  It died.

  Flesh splattered everywhere. The body went still. Permanently.

  …4 SECONDS…

  Victor let out one last powerful, terrifying roar—distorted and metallic—a kind of triumph over Tombface’s mangled corpse. The shriek, sharp and feral, echoed throughout the entire area. It was loud enough for anyone to hear.

  …0 SECONDS. INITIATE INHIBITOR INJECTIONS.

  Victor stopped roaring instantly as syringes inside the suit drove into him in multiple places—forcefully—especially at the base of his skull, along his spine, and between his ribs.

  There were no screams.

  Only a few low, broken grunts. “Orh… okh.”

  Victor collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

  One final metallic thud echoed for a few brief moments.