Chapter 4: Birth of a Monster

Final entry of a journal found within an empty grave located in Brooklyn, USA. Credited to a man named Mandel; entry dated May 24th 2101, three days after the MAL had descended. Author is suspected to have attained a Bronze BUG with the Features: Sustain and Integration.

Auntie’s dead, and Maya’s not in any better condition. We were attacked by these… shapes? I don’t know. We were crawling through the old ruins, hoping to find some of those canned foods back from when they were mass produced but found nothing.

Auntie had stopped by an old electronics store, she reminisced about something called a PlayStation. Said it would allow them to experience stories shown on a screen that you could control with a seperate device, even that there were magical goggles you could put on your eyes to hallucinate things that weren’t there. I don’t know when, but at some point we noticed that the store had seemed… disturbed. Like everything was moved or altered in some way.

Maya found a working display, we hadn’t seen one properly working since seven years ago before the Scorch. Electricity hasn’t been flowing through the city for thirty years. Auntie thought it was a miracle, a sign of things changing.

But me and Maya knew something was wrong, maybe one of The Tinkerers had worked something up to get old tech functional again, but even that was bad. Then… then the screen flickered. And all around us, pieces of old world technology lit up. Auntie stared like she had become a child again, I tried to warn her.

A wolf cub? Or was it a badger of some kind? I couldn’t tell, all I knew was that it grabbed her throat and I tried to rip it off, but it was so solid it felt like metal… no, it was metal. My mind is fuzzy, I feel wobbly and my vision’s blurry. Everything in my mind is doubled down or half-written.

I’m hoping writing this all down makes me remember more.

I hammered it against the wall. My hands still bleed from its sharp body, but then something slithered out onto my hands. It looked like a cockroach made of bronze metal. It stabbed into my skin and then I fell in pain, all I remember next was Maya screaming at me as more of those… things burst into the room. We ran, and I don’t know how, but I’d run faster than I ever have before. There’s this strange warmth in my body.

I nearly left Maya, her legs are injured and strangely, I’m not. Despite the fresh wounds I can see on my arm right now, I feel energetic… but remembering Auntie… fuck! She’d always said that when her time came that I should put her to rest next to Uncle’s grave. We just left her body there!

I don’t know what’s happening, why did that store light up again? What were those things? Why do I feel so… so different?!

—

I’m staring at the old radio. It hasn’t worked properly since the Scorch, but I can feel the buzz of it… Like it’s talking to me? Am I going crazy? There’s this tingling in my fingertips, and it’s leading me to the radio…

—

I can hear the frequencies. All of them, they’re everywhere. It was a mistake… I don’t even know what I did to the radio. But it’s a part of me now. And I can’t turn it off… I’m hearing their voices in my head. They don’t feel, they only feed. I want it to stop. Make it stop!

Auntie’s dead and it’s my fault. I knew there wasn’t any food… I just wanted to see the city one more time before we left south.

I feel them getting louder, I hear them conspiring in languages I don’t understand. But I can feel it, they’re hungry. They’re looking for something, searching.

—

My face is bleeding… Maya’s terrified but she’s still taking care of me. She can hear noise around the house. I pulled it out of me too slowly.

They could hear me from the radio… they were searching for me.

I was too late.

I don’t know why these malignant creatures are here… but they’re somehow connected to old tech that should have been fried by the sun. I don’t know what’s happening.

I’m giving this book to Maya. They were looking for me, so I’m going to run out and take them away from here.

Maya if you’re reading this. I love you.

1:21 AM

June 2nd, 2497

Ripley and Diana

Diana stared, eyes wide as the gun barrel pulled from Selene’s head. A very much clenched breath ripping free of her. What the fuck? This wasn’t how they worked, how they were supposed to! She glanced at Ripley, feeling guilt shake her hands. This was- he was stuck between two guns aimed at each other.

His already faded complexion was paler than a ghost, like he had rubbed ashes over it and frizzy black hair fell past his eyes, the sharpness of his irises beaming out of the frayed strands. They were intense like a crooked dagger but dulled by rust, the same as the color of his eyes.

A solid gray with flecks of burnt orange sizzling over them.

“Selene’s safe-“ She tried to tell him through their Neuralink.

“Shut up!” The call cut abruptly and it left a panging in Diana’s head. The AdStim hadn’t worn off yet and she imagined her blazing fury visibly stirring around every second.

The Lieutenant lifted the box, a winning smirk peeling the confidence off everyone in the room. “Last chance, Shaun. What’s in the box?”

Shaun sighed with clenched teeth, defeated but not yet lost. “Fixer never said, you’re better off asking the Yuzhou corps.”

Before the Lieutenant could even ask, the female corporate had already started speaking. “It appears the owner of the package is now you, Lieutenant. How much would it take for it to be ours?”

Shaun’s expression contorted in rage as the Lieutenant smirked. Grazhe studied her face, and only after a moment of deliberation did he speak. “That depends… If it’ll be worth more in my hands, or would the five million Shardynes you offered Shaun be better? I can only know that if you tell me what’s in it.”

Both of the two corporates remained utterly still, but the Lieutenant didn’t. A faint glow in his eyes indicated a communication protocol, and then the overwhelming clench of his hands around the box sent a low vibration echoing across the room.

“You sneaky corporates… Five million for this? You’re fucking stealing from him, you know that?!” The Lieutenant let a grin beam out of him, a salivating one like a feast was in front oh him. “No wonder Shaun’s fixer didn’t allow him to look. What’re you paying them?”

“That is not for you to know.” The female corporate said. “And please, since we’re engaging in business now, call me Ms. Himiko.”

A knowing look of shock settled into the Lieutenant’s gaze, a humorous chuckle boring out. “Very well, Ms. Himiko, but I can’t go back empty handed, you know that. I’ll need some false contraband to be placed in this container as a safeguard if you want it exchanged now.”

Ripley stared in disbelief, he could see the rage quivering in Shaun’s body, how his hand itched for the gun. This was all his fault, they both knew it, and he wasn’t even sure if he could get anything out of it.

“Access codes were to be sent by the original seller once the Fixer confirmed I had retrieved it.” Ms. Himiko said, her body like a frozen statue. “And I can’t do that in good faith if it is not in my hands. Away from danger.”

The Lieutenant’s grasp on the box only tightened. Like a child with his favorite toy. “And I can’t do that unless I’ve confirmed the goods. Away from prying eyes. After all, if what’s in here isn’t what you said it was… then I’m left with nothing.”

The male — still unnamed corp — retorted. “Except five million Shardyne.”

“Like I’d take that with what could be gained. I have an idea, one where we all win. I take half of what’s in here, you pay Shaun half of what you promised him, and you get half of the package as well.”

Shaun rose up, his face contorted with rage. “This wasn’t what we agreed to-!“

“One million for Shaun and Lucille each.” Ms. Himiko agreed. “And you, lieutenant, will pay him an extra half a million for his discretion. As for the other two here, I trust you will find ways to silence them. For the package itself, while I do not like it being logged into the station’s system, it is hardly the first time police contraband has been resold to us. If you can agree to keep its contents concealed from the rest of the Westbrook Police District, then very well. We have a deal.”

Ripley and Diana both listened in, but their hearts stammered at one statement.

‘As for the other two here, I trust you will find ways to silence them.’

They shared an equally uncertain look, and Ripley lurched as the Lieutenant looked at him. That once elderly gaze now devoured under the desire of greed.

It would be so easy for the man to ‘silence him’, a single one of his fingers could end Ripley’s life. And so… he reached within him, for the sheer bravery and confidence only found in the seconds before death.

The only way to preserve himself was to sell himself.

“I can open that box.” Ripley said with false confidence. “It’s a variant of a SynTec Pandora, uses custom made magnetic locks protected by a holo-weave mesh. Just give me a moment and I can open it, then you two can finish the deal here and now. But Shaun gets the full two-and-a-half, and I-“

Ms. Himiko interrupted him, and for the first time her mouth moved behind the veil. There was an almost sadistic glee in her voice, but it sounded off and strained. “If you can somehow open a box like that, then you would get a spot in our company. No questions asked. It’s locked behind a Silver Grade DataShield with a Fire Tendency, any prodding you do would instantly burn your Neuroframe to a crisp. If it turns out a non-Implant breached a SynTec Pandora of this grade, then their entire company becomes a laughing stock.”

Fire Tendency? He’d never heard of that before, and from the sounds of it this box was either going to kill him, or free him. It was worth the shot.

The male corporate was snorting as the Lieutenant walked towards Ripley with calm, deliberate steps. “You don’t even have an Implant. The DataShield in this will kill you. And it will be slow and agonizing as your neurons begin to wage war on one another.”

“But…” He handed me the container. “If you do this, you might be worth investing in after all.”

Then Ripley felt a prick in one of his arms, a shallow needle reaching for his right radial artery. An Adrenal-Stim, He’d used them to stay up for nights on end, but this was nothing like that. This was an Iron-Grade.

“Focus.” The Lieutenant’s voice echoed his mind into submission.

Ripley’s muscles clenched, and his Shardware arm ceased to rattle, becoming utterly still under his mind’s eye. It had never been so quiet in his life, even as his mind spun between fluctuating chaos, fear, and hope; each emotion fighting for control.

At once, he got to work. His arm expanded and shifted with mechanical whirs and buzzing, metal sliding over one another in intricate patterns until it became every tool he would ever need in his life. His RipClaw was his pride and joy, and often the reason he was so broke.

After all, this was the only model of it in existence. A generational gift from across the family line from it’s original creator. Ripley’s grandfather.

And that thought grounded him, his grandfather had used a Bronze Implant with this arm, then his mother with an Iron until it degenerated. Now he was here with no Implant. But that didn’t mean this arm disobeyed him.

He followed the whirs that guided him, hearing profound knowledge that had been embedded in it over the last century. Information he had never known flooded his muscle memory into action. A small laser beamed out from his pinky finger into the metal cube’s side, exposing a faint depression that sharp blades from his index finger dissected.

The internal software would be too difficult for him to bypass, Warpcode was never his specialty. If he wanted to breach it, he would have to attack the Hardware — or in this case, the Shardware. He felt a defiance, a quiet humming from the box as it seemed to recognize his prying claw.

A Silver Grade was no joke. This wasn’t his first time breaking into a Sharded Container, jailbreaking was his original job back when his mother was the Snake Fang’s Shard Op.

Back when her — his — Shardware still hadn’t attacked her.

He had cracked Bronze lockboxes with human arms. Even if they took him several weeks, but they were half as sophisticated as a Pandora. And a Silver would add… significant difficulty.

He acted subtly, exposing the seams soldered so finely together they appeared invisible with penetrating bursts of light. The cube was no longer just a mystic box of no understanding, it was revealed in its true form to him. A puzzle of metal interconnected, woven to appear unbreakable but if the right threads were pulled…?

A sheet of metal stripped bare had exposed a fine concentration of wires and switches leading deeper into the box. During the process, he’d wondered why the Lieutenant simply didn’t just tear the box open… and it seemed his hunch was right. Following the wires deeper led to an inbuilt explosive, much like many of the containers he had broken into as a kid.

He was seventeen when he’d tried breaking into one his mother hadn’t prepared yet. He never understood why she always needed to tinker and make them easier for him.

That was the day he’d lost his hand, before he’d gotten his entire right arm removed three months ago.

He worked on the explosive first, carefully pruning wires and dismantling circuitry in ways his conscious brain couldn’t quite grasp. His arm delved deeper, slicing millimeter long breaks into the circuitry and tiny cameras fed into his display. He logged the information in, step by step building a diagram of the tech through shoddy software he’d made himself.

Diana, meanwhile, observed. His face wasn’t like hers even under the AdStim, whereas she had become a brewing storm kept at bay through pure force, he had harnessed the grueling river into a concentrated flow of work. No longer a rusty blade, but a sharpened one.

But how could she control her toiling emotions when she was commanded to stay still?! Even as the Lieutenant held her fate in his hands, discussing it with their corporate overlords.

“I would kill her, normally offer her up to the Snake Fangs as a token of peace. Or at least, send her on an assignment where she would most likely die.” He was completely neutral in his tone. Diana knew what was coming next. “Her father is an important man to the police, Brian Ulrich. So I’ll make sure she’s kept quiet and submissive, genes like hers are best put to use.”

Both relief and rage settled inside her.

So the Lieutenant did know, and he was letting her be aware of that fact. How many people on the force knew about her biological father then? She hadn’t questioned her quick rise to the First Officer because she knew she’d worked hard.

She wanted to deserve it. Not handed out to her.

Her emotions only silenced when a louder whir shook the room. Ripley opened the box.

Except he didn’t, he was nowhere close to it. He had just disarmed the explosive and plucked out the tiny volatile vial when the box suddenly spewed musky steam and the seam on its top grew larger, opening up as the metal plate split into quarters and folded back.

Taking a look at the contents, Ripley didn’t feel amazement, he didn’t feel proud, he didn’t even feel confusion. He felt dread.

His focus shattered into fear, and it took every bit not to drop the box.

The Lieutenant stepped near to him, his own eyes looking at the box’s content, and it seemed Ripley wasn’t the only one seized in fear at the moment. The Lieutenant raised his hand to his temple, panic flooding his voice as he spoke.

“This is Lieutenant Jacob Grazhe, requesting immediate NeoCore Operatives! Code: M-3-0-G, yes-! It’s a Gold-Grade!”

At the sound of the words ‘NeoCore’ and ‘Gold’ everyone rose up into chaos, the room had risen in a tide of terror. NeoCore could mean only one thing, and if it was a Gold then they truly were fucked. Lucille tapped a pad in her hands, Shaun raised his rifle, the two corporates stayed seated but a snuff of breath tore out of them both.

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“This what you meant when you said you were getting two Gold Implants? Right under Silvha’s nose, a MALignant seed?!” The Lieutenant shouted, and Shaun’s eyes went wide.

Shaun’s rifle pulsed with energy, Silver specks of light manifesting a blazing heat through the coils as he turned to the two corporates. “Gold? You were trying to get me to ship a Gold MAL?! For five million?! Forget that, I want twenty just for organizing this clusterfuck of a meeting! Just for having that shit on my table! Fuck this! I’m getting one of those Implants!” Shaun’s rifle twisted around with his body, the iron sights on the container.

Which Ripley was holding.

“Don’t shoot, you idiot!” The Lieutenant ripped the rifle away from Shaun, sending it flying towards the wall. The thick slap made the ‘content’ of the box quiver. Ripley couldn’t rip his eyes away, a translucent orb no bigger than his fist was sending everyone into chaos.

It was like an egg without the thick white layer, a mucous-coated film of orange with glowing veins that looked more like circuitry coating it.

A MAL-Seed.

And even worse. A MALignant — the most dangerous variant, its power breached the limits of both technology and the organic.

“Close it Ripley.” The Lieutenant’s wide eyes struck into him like a sword. “Close it!”

Immediately, Ripley found his body refusing to listen to fear and sensibility, to run away. He fumbled, pulling out a chord from his RipClaw and injecting it into a dock on the box’s side. Instantly, he felt his brain melt, like searing heat was drooling on his thinking.

Long lines of code appeared in his vision, and to call it a DataShield was a gross understatement. It was a wall of code made of pure fire to his Neuroframe’s gaze, like a furnace so hot that it burned his eyes just from looking at it. He’d heard of DataShields like this, none more infamous than the FIREWALL within the center of the SecondNet keeping a MALtitan at bay.

The MALseed shook as the Pandora’s internal environment, keeping it asleep, was infected by the chaos spilling through the room.

The Lieutenant shouted, even keeping his Mutation at bay. “Everyone, shut down your Shardware! And Shaun, stay as far away from it as possible, if it senses the Warp Energy in your genes it’ll wake up! Our best bet here is to keep it asleep until NeoCore comes and deals with it!”

“-And lose out on Gold Implants!?” Shaun stood up, equally matching the Lieutenant in size. But his body did seem less virile than before, as though some flow of energy through him had seized.

“Either that or your life.” Ms. Himiko, her voice still calm and graceful, didn’t move an inch the whole meeting. “A shame. That it has come to this. Jinsung, if you survive, you’re fired.”

The man couldn’t help but shift away, jerking at her casual remark. “I- I didn’t know that Dogwh-“

Then his Neuroframe sizzled. An abrupt spurting of electricity before he coughed blood onto Ms. Himiko, and he thudded on the floor. Ms. Himiko still didn’t move, her voice remaining cold and emotionless. “You speak too much.”

Then the same sizzling crackled from behind her head, and she coughed up blood. She slumped, it didn’t take Ripley or Diana much to know they were both dead.

But why? Why kill yourself?

He could hardly even process the events when he saw the seed shift, a shadow stirring within the yolk like blobs of ink.

“Close it Ripley. NOW!” That urgent voice took hold of him again, and he stopped fiddling with the code and brought his hands up to the four pieces of metal that had once enclosed the MAL-Seed. It refused to budge, it refused to even vibrate under all his strength.

“And turn off that Shardware!”

Ripley’s own thoughts pushed into a void he didn’t know he had in him, and his arm reacted defiantly. A flash of pain drilled through him as a vague presence of something like blood within the metal seemed to pulse with resistance.

Then the sound of grating metal sent shivers through his spine. On two of his metallic hand’s fingers, a fine slimy tendril of steel-colored flesh had wrapped them together, squeezing the metal out of shape.

In a crunch, they were twisted apart and his Shardware blazed warnings up his arm. Ripley panicked, dropping the box but the MAL-Seed, no, the MALignant refused to let go.

It was still mostly in its egg-like confinement, but a spiral of yolk-absorbing tentacles now began to mature as the ‘yolk’ disappeared rapidly. A further crunch and Ripley saw his pinky finger snap off painlessly, but the panic fleeing into his brain ordered him to run.

“Stay where you are!” The Lieutenant’s voice forced his muscles to freeze when every fiber of his body wanted to run. He stared helplessly, a voice coming out in desperate wheezes that no one would be able to understand.

The Lieutenant held a gun up to… to his head? What?

“The Seed needs to mature, at least devour some biomass before it can spawn Implants from its death. As soon as he’s killed, I’ll shoot the MAL. Then take one of the Implants.” The Lieutenant offered to Shaun.

“One for us each.” Shaun nodded, before taking a solemn look at Ripley. “Sorry kid, you brought this upon yourself.”

Upon himself? Ripley tried to warn them! To- to help them! It wasn’t his fault they all toyed with him, using him! He had to make himself worth keeping alive, no matter how-

The tendrils wrapped higher, digging into the steel of his forearm. A painful crackling of electricity and metallic wrenching dug out a fear that dwelled deep into him… and somehow it all perverted into a display so removed from the dread devouring him up, he started laughing.

This was the end? For so long, he’d dreamed of Iron, the lowest Grade. And now, he would die being consumed by Gold.

An electric buzz overshadowed the room, a quick and precise shot splattering the egg into goo that splashed over Ripley’s face and his arm — it burned. Like hellfire. He fell to the floor as the tentacles splattered on the floor along with two of his metallic fingers, the MALignant already having feasted on them.

Diana rushed to him. She couldn’t care, from the moment that monster unveiled itself every bit of her body began to itch for action. She stared at the unmoving mass of tendrils, its body still faintly buzzing with electricity.

As she aimed her gun at it, finger on the trigger until a voice shook her resolve. “Stop Diana! Fuck, it’s dying! It’ll be a waste!”

She couldn’t pull the trigger no matter how much she wanted to, and the monster jerked once more. She didn’t know how, but even without eyes, she knew the monster was looking at her in rage. At her pistol.

It’s tentacles jumped, clawing the weapon from her hand and only the feeling of a large gash on her palm gave her the sensibility to yank away. She watched in horror as the MAL feasted on her pistol, ripping it to pieces that it’s fleshy parts melted into.

“Just kill it already!” Lucille screamed at the Lieutenant, but he was only focused on the feasting MAL. Lucille’s calmer demeanor cracked away in panic, her arm splitting into a complex machination of metal blades and electricity. Before the Lieutenant could stop her, she had already moved to attack with her arm outstretched as a spear.

Then Shaun gripped Lucille’s arm, not feeling a spark as he stared into the blazing eyes of his second in command. “A Bronze should plump it up faster, right… Jacob?”

Before the dreadful realization could settle into her, Shaun’s arm had moved to grip Lucille’s. “You brought this upon yourself, Lucille. I’m not a fucking idiot!”

He tossed her hard enough that the couch flipped over and she landed right next to the MAL with a twisted metal arm poking out of her otherwise human limb.

Lucille couldn’t scream before the MAL delved into her mouth with prying tentacles, neither of them could even wince at how quick it happened. How quickly the MAL’s predatory instincts had acted, digging through her with shards of metal it had absorbed from Diana’s gun and Ripley’s hand. They both watched in horror as mere feet away from them, Lucille’s body spasmed out with twisting bones that bent so hard their joints ejected blood.

Even once it was clear the light in her eyes had faded, her body still jerked around as the beast within squirmed through her organs. Eating her and the metal implants that had once made her so beautiful.

The Lieutenant finally shot his rifle, a thick ray of blue-and-yellow energy eviscerating her stomach into a mist of blood. As the shrill of his rifle quieted and motion in the room stilled, it seemed like it was over.

Until the MAL shot out of her body like a bolt of lightning. Literal lightning, it’s entire form crackling with sparks and wisps of energy all directed at Lieutenant Grazhe. Diana gasped at it’s sight, a tall — maybe seven feet long — and lanky skeletal being made of fleshy wires buzzing with electricity, and it had stuck a claw through the Lieutenant’s rifle and arm.

It didn’t even have a face, instead it looked like a flower bud opening up to reveal a starfish of teeth and sparks.

Grazhe screamed in pain with his body seizing up, but through pure grit and mutated strength he tossed the MAL against the wall, pummeling with vibrating fists that cracked the concrete apart with each throw.

Each pound blossomed forth tentacles that thrashed back with motion too quick to keep track off, whipping and flailing. Grazhe didn’t flinch, he kept his protection focused on his head and neck with barriers of what looked like solid air.

“Let go! BE STILL!” If before, all those little commands had been a whisper, this had been him screaming through a speaker. Ripley let go of the air in his lungs, Diana unclutched her jacket, even Shaun who was fumbling with the elevator controls dropped his prized gun.

The MAL resisted, it froze for only a second that Shaun didn’t relent with. Ripley and Diana felt their bones rattle as Shaun grabbed the MAL by its ‘throat’ and dragged it bare across the wooden wall, leaving thick chunks of flesh in the path of splinters.

Suddenly, Ripley felt the hair on his head begin to float up before a discharge of violent yellow detonated across the Mal’s body, sending the Lieutenant crashing through the room. It’s various limbs probed the air as if to feel around for the lieutenant’s body, even reduced in size by more than a half and clearly dazed, neither Ripley nor Diana were sure if it was in worse shape than the Lieutenant.

Getting up, Jacob Graze injected himself with a stimulant of a grade Ripley couldn’t tell. Within seconds, the incessant bleeding of his wounds didn’t matter, all that mattered was that the MAL was his enemy and that it had to die. Its Implants had to be his.

Too much blood spilled out of him with each step, but a wild smile overtook that serious face of his as glass began to crack all around him. The Lieutenant kept both his arms up, a faint Silver glow covering the bloodstained limbs, then he choked the room.

Ripley and Diana felt their legs give out, the ground rattled and their ears panged in pain as vertigo twisted the floor and roof into one concept. The MAL roared silently, picking itself up with some godforsaken immunity to whatever both of them were dealing with.

It pounced like a panther. Clawed tentacles unveiled from its ‘arms’ and the beginnings of teeth within its petal-like mouth demanded the Lieutenant’s blood.

Jacob squeezed his fists, and all the sound in the room concentrated to a singular glowing point on his right fist. The second he punched the MALignant, the room exploded into force — the window was already shattered before the MAL went flying through it. The wooden floor splintered while the furniture around them flattened into debris and dust that covered them both.

Gasping for air, the lieutenant removed a syringe from a shoulder-pad and injected it into his leg. Only once his body’s screaming pain reduced to a dull dribble of weakness did he turn around. “Shaun! What the hell! You could have helped!”

But Shaun was already in the elevator, and its doors had just shut. The man who had once been a sort of replacement father-figure for Ripley spoke through the speakers. Nothing but apathy burning in his voice. “I’m sorry Ripley, but you’re dying with the club.”

And the elevator descended, safely into the underground. Ripley could do nothing but blankly look as the sounds of screaming and bloodshed reached from past the window. Wait, the MAL was downstairs? And it wasn’t dead?!

Selene and Hoaqin…

Ripley burst into movement. The lingering AdStim gave him the bravery he needed to start, until a howling whistle crumbled him.

“Oh no. You two… you messed up big time. Diana’s going to get her due at the station, but you’re the one who turned this into a clusterfuck.” Grazhe’s voice was cold, a knife sharpening against the folds of his brain. Then, the lieutenant clicked his tongue, raising his trembling fingers to his temple.

“This is Lieutenant Grazhe, I can confirm that the MAL-Seed has awoken, it’s currently at Tier 2. A Prowler. Y-yes, it’s a fucking Gold! Do I need to repeat myself! Get NeoCore here sta-!“

Blood spilled from his mouth, a sharp tentacle spawned from beyond the window penetrating the back of his head like a spear. Desperate gags and gurgles reached out for them both, before a vicious yank tore him through the window, his body thudding wetly for them to hear.

“By the Founders, it got the lieutenant!”

“Is it the drugs… or is that an actual MALignant?”

“Let us out! We’re going to die!”

“Please, please help — don’t leave us here!”

Desperation and chaos boomed from below, gunfire and sounds of wet ripping promised a world of misery if they were to look down the window. Diana moved silently, pulling herself out of the debris as harrowing fear and guilt wrapped around her.

Her Lieutenant was… dead? People were dying, and she was— she was safe up here. As long as NeoCore got here soon, as long as the MALignant didn’t remember the two easy prey in the office, as long as the elevator didn’t take them to a very angry Shaun ‘Bloodmuncher’ waiting below…

The thoughts overwhelmed her, would she spend the last minutes of her life cowering on the hopes of variables? Knowing nothing but the aching drive to do something, she reached for the gun that Shaun had dropped during the battle between the Lieutenant and the MAL. A Phoenix-60, it was Silver Grade — volatile enough to shoot through ten feet of concrete if you aimed right.

“You- you’re going to fight?” Ripley’s own resolve was wavering, seeing just how easily the Lieutenant… a Silver-Grade was killed.

“I- I have a code that I want to stick to, even if I die down there… maybe I can get one extra person out. I can’t run away from this!” She stared at the gun, choosing to forget the tears dripping down her face by taking in the weapon’s capabilities.

A single-bolt plasma rifle from four decades ago. Five shots per round and-

“Wait! Take these…” Ripley scrounged on the floor, whacking away broken furniture until he managed to find the shattered table. “Extra ammo and…”

He saw it once more, the Bronze Implant. The BUG had curled up into a shell and its case was destroyed, a single drop of his blood would bind it to him. He pretended like he was sweeping the floor, still looking for something as he scooped it in his palm and stuffed it into his pants.

His heart hammered against his ribs. He had one. The promise he set onto himself for the last three years finally secured. Once he got out of here… and he will get out of here, he could say goodbye to this stupid club. If there even was a club to say goodbye to.

But first, Selene. He hastened, stuffing some of the Silver Grenades he had seen earlier. Running his finger over the sleek metal of the Implant in his pocket gave him hope as he reached for the door.

It was shut tight. The club was on lockdown.

“I- I can open it if you give me time.”

“We don’t have time Ripley! I’m jumping!” Her voice was on the edge of breaking but it was true, every second was being shaken by desperate gunfire. And every second there was less of it. Diana didn’t wait for his response, she leaned over the railing, and Ripley hurriedly sprang after her to warn caution.

She dropped, and he looked down. Still holding the gun, she fell more than ten feet before her legs extended to touch the floor, her body shrank and compressed like a spring, rolling seamlessly onto the balcony beneath. Then she jumped again with no hesitation, to the bottom.

On to a dancefloor where neon lights strobed over dismembered bodies, illuminating over their bloodlet corpses as though trying to return color to their pale and hollow faces.

Ripley didn’t give the voices in his head a second to argue.

He jumped after her down to the balcony overlooking the dancefloor, but mid-fall he caught sight of the MALignant crushing STRIKE armor like a tin can. When his eyes returned to the ground, his feet had already met solidity and his impact had the grace of a fish rolling around on land.

He put most of the force on his metal arm, it wouldn’t shatter like his bones, but a hideous crack on his left ankle seriously alerted him. It was only the adrenaline within that allowed him to stand up despite the pain, his eyes frantically searching for Selene from higher above.

He spotted her under a table, that pink hair could never escape him. And in a few more moments, he scouted Hoaqin hiding behind several Snake Fangs shooting the MALignant with ballistic and energy guns. The ballistic bullets splattered gold ichor off the MAL, leaving finger width holes that crowded up with flesh as fast as they had appeared.

Whereas energy-based projectiles only fed it, he tried to scream over the madness that it fed on electricity but two horns shot out from its head and impaled three Snake Fangs in one fell swoop, their bodies instantly shocked with enough voltage to sear their Neuroframes into ash. He couldn’t say a word after that, he knew those people… he’d eaten lunch with them just yesterday. Cupping his metal hand over his trembling, fleshier limb, he found a resolve in the sight of Hoaqin and Selene.

“Hoaqin! Grab Selene from under that table and run!” Ripley yelled before twisting one of the grenades, lobbing it from his position above. He didn’t worry about potential casualties from the explosion, anyone near it was already dead. The Silver Grenade arced poorly, his foot could hardly take any weight and he had tossed it too short.

The last thing Ripley expected was for the MAL to grab it with one of its tentacles and bring it closer for inspection. The beginnings of an eye began to melt over its face, and somehow it seemed to be aware of the mechanism behind the grenade as an electric shock nullified the priming.

Fuck. Ripley ducked behind cover, that eye had been scanning for where the grenade was thrown from, but unbeknownst to him a river of heat sought forth the vile creature. Diana’s aim was calculated. The impact with the grenade sent a shockwave of force and light that far exceeded either of their expectations.

The fragile and broken club only further crumbled and shattered with the pounding blast of air. Blind and deafened, Ripley felt an uncomfortable shift of weight where he leaned from, realizing too late that the balcony was tilting. He tried to lurch to safety, but his ankle twisted beneath him to drag him down with the crumbling balcony he stood on, another ten foot drop.

This time something definitely broke. Pain gagged his throat as he groped amidst the darkness of his impact and the dust that had stormed up from the grenade. A sharp sting yelled up his thigh as he felt his left leg, pulling back when a mere touch felt like a blade sticking through him. Or out of him. That was a bone… his bone, he’d just touched.

A wrenching scream tore out of him, just one more voice to the chorus of misery and death in the club. Sirens wailed from afar, coming for those who had subscriptions with MEDevac — he wouldn’t be one of them. As the ground grew more wet with fluid that was meant to be inside of him, his body became all the more cold.

“Ripley!” A woman’s voice called out for him.

“Hoaqin!” Now it called for his friend.

“Please! Someone help me! What’s happening!” Selene called — that was her voice!

Ripley’s metal arm blazed where his flesh couldn’t muster the energy to, tearing apart the rubble atop of him and tossing it away like trash. Something in him was pulsing so deeply, so vitally, it was like he had a second heart beating next to his.

He couldn’t stand up, not with his leg how it was. But he could open his eyes and as the dust cleared, he saw who he needed. Hoaqin was crawling amidst the fallen infrastructure, and Selene was feet away from him. Her dazed mind was addled and confused as she stepped openly for everyone to see.

But… she was close, close enough to the exit. Close enough to hide! Just get out of the open, Selene! Then a slithering sound sent a bitter wave of cold through Ripley, the MALignant remained standing with only one-third of its body eviscerated from the explosion… and it was healing pounds of flesh every second.

Inside, a part of him had already known her fate when the MALignant was thrown through the window. And he knew for a fact what would happen now that Hoaqin made a run for it to the exit while he could. Abandoning Selene, abandoning them both.

The sounds of feet clamoring and bodies rushing and falling through rubble hammered all around him in a cacophony of despair. He searched within him for the spark, but it had faded just as quickly as it had appeared. Even his metallic arm was too scared to say the comforting words it had always done for him.

“Selene!” It wasn’t a shout, barely even a wheeze, just how much blood had he lost to feel this weak?

A river of fire pierced the healing MAlignant once more, and Ripley dared to feel his hope be placed in Diana. Its body slumped, trudging just a few steps before a second bolt of plasma ripped a fist-sized hole through its chest.

Both holes mended quickly, but the third shot healed even slower. The fourth remained for nearly three seconds.

The fif- damn it! The rifle only had five shots and one was already used. Diana was reloading, and that was enough time for the MALignant to generate a spark of electricity through its fingers that trailed into it’s wounds to bubble flesh anew.

It roared, a screeching reverberance that never belonged to this world. The next shot was dodged under a streak of crackling tentacles, the MALignant tearing through the rubble and dust with lashing tendrils to find the shooter.

Ripley only realized when he heard a sick ‘thud’, then a louder ‘thud’.

Selene stared at him, eyes in that same daze they had been all night ever since her Neuroframe procedure, confused and fearful of what was to come even behind that happy smile she wore all the time.

Her body may have been covered by layers of muck and dust, but her beauty shined through it. How many times had her warmth been the strength he needed?

Why then, were they not attached? Her head rolled away, while her body remained still.

The weight of everything hit in that moment, his shattered leg, the destruction of his job, Selene’s pleading gaze — detached from her torso.

He was going to die, but then again… life may not be worth living anymore.