>> Unnamed, Unknown. Unseen, Unfelt

Our guns track across the skulls and fingers of the long, long, dead. The entire skyBridge a river of mangled, skeletal, nightmares curving from horizon to horizon. Every socket bleeding soft, dark, soil that pools around the wrecks and fallen forms. Strange, glowing, fungi and unknowable vines threaded noses and eyes and holes I cannot name. Wrapping those monstrous things in festive curls of chalky colour.

As if it had devoured them. Alive. And strung them back together, like puppets.

Zipper swallows, quietly, and tips a skull with cupping toes. Revealing the huge, ragged, exit-wound burst out through the back. The jaw tumbling wide and wild in an endless, empty, scream.

"Oh Hell." I whisper. "That one's human."

“You noticing a theme here?” Kami mutters. Inclining her head at the eerie, frozen, scene.

"Y'mean all the bullet holes?" I murmur. "Or the way it ain't ever been looted? Ever?"

"Vines. Kah." Demon growls, ominously. "Bindings."

"Uh, yeah, so, like..... is it me....." Zip stutters. "....or were they, like, all running this way?"

"Yep." I murmur, grimly. "C'mon."

I hop a couple of steps, over skulls and scattered teeth, then look back. The others still poised, exactly where I left them. Guns ready. Eyes wide, and sharp. Zip and Kami sharing a look. Hers becomes a glare, and she nudges him. He nudges back, and she scowls harder. Then they both stare at Tufty, who blinks mutely.

"What?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Ten Blood says something's gonna try to eat us." Kami says, smugly.

I shake my head. "And you?"

"Well, like, I got five on who it eats first-" He grins.

"You lot are a right bloody riot." I grumble, hopping through the hole. Onto the prickly, high-traction, grit of the skyWay road. "Y'coming?"

"Fifty Blood says it's Spook." Kami not-exactly-whispers. But when I flick a look they all start to follow. First, the scratch of Demon's claws. Then Kami's boots, clattering clumsily through fallen bones. Until, at last.....

"Meww..... I wanna go home." Tufty mumbles. A shiver in his breath. A shake. But then he skitters in bounds, until he's right by my ankles. Primed, on all fours, and ready to bolt.

But here. With us.

And, I guess, that's all I can ask for.

"Freaking creepy as crap, mate." Zip whispers, nudging up on my other side. His gun fixed on a thing with five, massive, legs bound up in glowing ivy. "Like, what even happened here?"

"I got Polybius n' Theo diggin' into it." I murmur back as Kami joins us on the other side. Holding up a pair of leg-bones twisted and fused together.

"What kind of monster even is this?" She breathes. "Scans just say bone. No info."

"I'd be more worried about that ivy stuff, mate." Zip says, in a low voice. "That stuff is everywhere."

"Should we scan it?" Kami shivers, clearly not wanting to. And we all stare up at the nearest mound of nightmare-fuel.

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"Hell no." I hiss. "Don't go near it. This ain't the time to play CSI: Shithole."

"Yah, mate. Or touch it." Zip edges in. Tufty shivering horribly beside us as Demon's eyes twitch at shapes in the dark. "But like.... Like...." He almost chokes. "is it me, or...."

He points back the way we came. And I frown. "What?"

"It's moving. Mate." He says very, very, quietly. Sending tiny thrills twisting up my back.

"....what is?" I breathe, reverting to throat-mic. "How can you tell? It's behind yo-"

Zipper's bees lift off his shoulders, darting fretfully. "Mate. I can see it."

"Do we run?" Kami winces, eyes twitching across the uneven scree of bone. "Can we?"

"I still ain't sure what's movin'." I growl, though I've got a horrible idea.

"Forward or back?" Kami hisses.

"Mate. You, like, you don't g-get it...." Zipper's breaths quicken as his wild blue eyes dart to ours. "....there's no 'back'."

"Oh." Kami says, quite calmly. "Shit."

"No sudden bloody moves." I lift, slightly, onto my toes. "Keep walkin'."

We quicken, a little, eyes on the looming tower ahead. Tufty huddled right into Demon's knee, tail a brush. Gremlin stuck to his back with all her claws - hackles up, eyes wild, as we edge along the bridge. Stepping over the dead, and the ruins of their lives.

Death don’t phase me - not anymore. But all the stories written in it?

Those get me.

See that? A dad covering his family.

Over there? Last stand.

Round behind that jetBike? Didn’t see it coming.

Over here - big kids protecting littler kids. Twisted in mutant ivy. And you can see how they fell - two bigger ones knocked down. Flailing. Ripped apart. Then, behind them....

I see Badger. Tufty. Gremlin.

I look away.

And all the time, Zipper gets paler and paler. His eyes wilder. Silver threads rising from his hair.

"Offramp ahead." I hiss. It's right up inside the vast, dead, megaTower ahead. Two hundred metrics, at most, to the tower. A hundred more to the ramp. But the clutter is thickening. The vines fat and well-fed. Pulsing with dots of bright colour that speed through veins and leaves like blood. A slow creak, a rustling, right at the edge of hearing. As if something slow, and steady, and relentless, and huge were shifting into place. Too careful to be seen.

"Mate." Zip swallows. "It's closing us off-"

"RUN!" I yell, and all of as slam forward into a stumbling - leaping - run through the field of bones. Huge sail-like panes of glass flashing by above us. A dead military checkpoint ahead, its rusted guns still ready. We put on pace. Kami cursing and stumbling behind us, too slow. The GMOs on all fours and blurring for the off-ramp.

Two hundred metrics.

Kami's boot twists on a scree of skulls, and she screams. The whole mass of ivy shaking, suddenly, as if shocked by a blast of wind. Demon slams back to her. Grabs a metal arm. She curses his name, and tries to shove him off. But he grabs her again, and they hurtle back toward us. The rustle turning to a groan, and then a shriek. Metal on metal.

We cross the checkpoint by leaping the hell over it.

Fronds of ivy catching at our ankles, without ever seeming to move.

But we bowl onward. Demon full-on carrying Kami as we blow through the cathedral-high arch in the side of the megaTower. Entire trucks and colossal bone-heaps groaning and shifting around us. A stolen glance backward, and I almost fall as well.

The skulls. The monstrous, hulking, forms.....

They're looking at us.

"FORGET THE RAMP!" I scream. "SERVICE DOOR! GO! GO!"

I slam a breaching charge to the handle, and we jerk out of the way. The blast a THUMP of pressure in my insides. Felt, but hardly heard. The door itself rocked open by the force. The whole pack of us diving into the stairway. Zip on all fours, which he almost never does. Everybody else grabbing the door. Hauling it shut. Our drone-tek and [Sniper] welding the thing, solid, to its frame in seconds.

Only then do we collapse.

"I.... really.... really.... really.... miss.... my.... PAW." I pant, breath slowing almost immediately. Along with our panic.

"Mate." Zipper sighs. "Like, can I have drones with flamethrowers-"

"YES!" Everyone yells, as one.

"Just don't let Badger near em." I snort, as something bangs on the door. All of us going very quiet.

"Uh......" Zipper says, cautiously. "Y'know how that door has, like, a hole in it now?"

"Yeah. Right. Lets go. I growl. C'mon....."

We hustle up, and move. Kami limping, and last.

Which is why she sees it, and lets out a single soft gasp. "Spook."

I turn at the edge of the lightless stairway. The welded door still smoking, gently, as that strange light pours in. Casting ragged shapes, and shadows, across the bare concrete.

"Oh, Hell....." I say, very quietly, to the wisp of glowing vine poking through it. "We need to freaking run."

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