August 21st. The Sun has released excess Odd into Earth. Next discharge in 00 days, 01 hours, 16 minutes, and 41 seconds.

Fifty-five miles an hour.

The bus sped down the corrupted underground highway. Sen sat with the seatbelt over his shoulder, staring straight ahead. To his left, Em looked into the darkness without blinking, her knuckles white against the wheel. She was pushing them faster. Faster.

They needed to get out of here.

Five minutes. It had been that long since Sen had figured out where they were. Now they sped through the arteries of a titanic Nightmare, letting the bus swerve along the winding, crimson path. The ground was slippery, now. Drenched with blood. Sen watched the macabre highway pass them by, and as the minutes passed, he saw it become more active.

The fleshy barnacles in the ceiling draped down, searching. Dozens of long, winding appendages, each tipped with a spear and a lamprey’s mouth. They slithered down from the ceiling, reacting more and more to the bus as time passed.

Below them, the bumps on the ground swelled. They pulsed outward, as if trying to hatch something from below.

Sen watched the Nightmare’s domain awaken, one second at a time.

It was trying to find them.

It was getting close.

“Go into the next uphill turn,” Sen said. His eyes flicked around, restless. Expecting an attack. He wiped a clammy palm against his pants. For a moment, he felt the lighter he looted in his pocket, along with a fresh batch of cigarettes. It was tempting to use it. To rely on it to relax.

Sen kept that urge down as he gulped.

“We need to find an exit out into the city.”

Em looked pale—as pale as he was. Her hands trembled on the wheel. “And what if there’s no exit? What if we’re just trapped here?”

“There’s an exit,” Sen whispered. Then he said it again. Louder. “There… there just has to be.”

She nodded weakly. “Y-Yeah. You’re right. We just need to find it.”

Up ahead, Sen saw an uphill turn spring up near the headlights.

“Turn that corner to the right.”

She did. The bus swiveled to the side, climbing up, and the bus made this whining, huffing sound. Em fumbled with the gear stick, shifting the engine until the noises faded into a low hum. It echoed into the gloom around them as they ascended… before the path swept into a downhill curve again.

“Fuck,” Em whispered. Sen saw her hands trembling on the wheel, gripping it so tightly that it seemed she would crush it in her fingers. She clenched her teeth. “Should we turn back?”

Sen glanced behind them, at the pulsating tunnel that came alive in their wake.

“…We can’t. We have to keep going. There’s another turn there. Take it.”

Their bus took another turn. Farther downhill; deeper, darker.

By now, the activity was tracking them. The radius of detection became larger and larger with every second. Far ahead, Sen saw the shapes in the ceiling move before the bus even drew near, actively searching for them. The lamprey’s mouths kissed and lunged at the plates on the bus—thump, thump—like little, meaty fists, trying to find a way inside.

On the ground, the little bumps burst open. And out from them came these twisted, crawling shapes. They looked like flowerheads made of thin, veiny skin, sporting mouths in the center full of serrated, yellow teeth. Suction cups undulated across their pale flesh.

They leapt from the ground as the bus passed. Sen heard them make contact with the metal—wet slaps against the steel, then the subtle latching and unlatching of suction cups against metal. Movement.

Sen unbuckled his seatbelt and stood as he headed for the murder holes on the bus.

“Keep trying to find a way out,” he said, and Em didn’t reply. She drove in complete, utter silence. Her eyes didn’t see anything but the road; she scanned over it with a deep, single-minded tension, searching for a path that would save them. Sen felt the same desperation fill him. Horror, black and icy, slithered in his gut.

He gritted his teeth and crushed it with his mind. Sen walked to the center of the bus. Their vehicle had five slits in its armor, two on each side and one on the back.

[Bone Armor].

Sen felt plates of white bone crawl out of his skin. His fingers morphed into savage, bony claws, and he reached the center of the bus. He looked around, tense, searching each one.

And then movement. On his right. Golden letters flashed.

Flesh Crawler – Tier 0

A blur leapt towards him. Sen whipped around towards a murder hole as something shot into the bus. A palm-sized abomination burst open like a flower, and out from each of its four arms, vicious talons burst from its suction cups. Serrated teeth bulged out from its mouth. It leapt at Sen and it latched onto his arm, biting and gnawing, unable to break past his armor. It hissed with venomous hunger.

Sen smashed it into the wall with a wet squelch. It burst. Blood splattered across his cheek. More splats. More of the crawlers latched onto the bus, scuttling towards the murder holes like a horde of spiders.

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A dozen of them swarmed inside the bus. Sen leapt for one of the handlebars.

“Em!”

She heard him. Em jerked the wheel to the side. The bus twisted. Its side smashed into the wall, crushing the creatures on the left side and knocking off the ones on the right. Sen watched the monsters inside of the bus crash into the inner wall and he leapt, rushing into the fray. Sen tore one apart with his claws. He crushed another under his foot. Three of them leapt at him and he ducked—two missed, one latched onto his back. Sen drove himself into the wall. Splat. He stomped another dead as the creatures circled him and—

Em jerked the bus again. The supplies flew through the air, the bags spilling their contents, as Sen crashed into the wall. He bounced, fell. Rolled. Seven of the crawlers remained.

They swarmed over him, climbing up his legs and biting into his calves.

Bone Armor stopped them short.

Sen clenched his fist and activated [Psionic Force]. A wave of power burst out from his body and hurled the creatures away. They hit the walls with angry hisses and snarls, spittle flying from their mouths. Sen rushed them and stomped, killing one, before—

Tchnk!

He jerked his head back. A spear stabbed through the ceiling, barely missing him, as one of the barnacles fell from above and latched onto the bus. It stabbed wildly at the steel, striking a single spot until the dents turned into massive, gaping holes. It stabbed through and tried to pull back for another strike. Sen grabbed it and pulled. It screeched as the flesh stretched and tore, but Sen only dragged it down harder, until the appendage ripped free from its pod with a sickening, wet tear.

Sen threw the slithering tongue to the side and stumbled as the bus turned again. The remaining crawlers took this chance to leap at him. They stuck. Latched. Sen felt them crawl up his back and his arms and his legs, trying to find where his armor didn’t cover as they ripped their fangs into his clothes.

He gritted his teeth and roared, “[Shatterburst]!”

Sections of his armor burst into deadly shrapnel. The crawlers exploded into ribbons of shredded gore, spraying blood across the interior, as more of the fleshy barnacles tore holes into the ceiling. Sen raised his hands at them and with a closed fist, he pulled.

Psionic force surged towards him like a thousand invisible ribbons, latching onto the monsters and dragging them inside the bus.

They crashed to the floor, scrambling, but Sen was there, waiting. He raked his claws across the monsters, eviscerating them even as their pods tried to scuttle away with tiny, centipede legs. One tried to go for Em. He ripped it to shreds. Another stabbed at him, chipping his armor, and Sen crushed its head in his hands.

He hadn’t noticed it before, fighting the Tier 1 boss, but he was powerful.

Far more so than he was before.

His body and mind moved in concert. More than they ever had in his life. He was faster, stronger, and bulkier than all his enemies. They defended, he attacked. For once since the apocalypse started, Sen saw his foes on the back foot.

But he could only do so much against a horde.

A bony spear lunged at him from a pod. He grabbed it. Snapped it off. Sen stabbed its owner with its own spear and as more of the crawlers swarmed inside, he raised his arm in their direction. Memories of the essence vampire flashed in his head—he remembered the way it treated him like a ragdoll, using its powers to blast him to and fro, keeping him unbalanced at all times.

It was a good reference for what he was about to do.

Sen’s Flow surged.

A wave of force billowed out from his arms, blasting forward down the length of the bus. It smashed into the pods and the crawlers and hurled them towards the back of the bus. They struck the wall in a writhing, hissing mass, and Sen raised an arm towards them again.

Another one blasted forward. Stronger. It smashed them again, slamming them into the wall. The smaller, weaker crawlers crumpled and Sen moved to finish the rest off. As he crushed the remaining vampire spawn, he saw the outside blurring faster—fast enough that none of the smaller enemies could latch onto the bus. They bounced off the armor as they leapt, screeching.

Sixty-five miles an hour.

The wheels screeched as Em made another turn and Sen stumbled to her, clutching at anything he could grab to keep himself upright through the bus’s sudden, jerking turns. “Slow down more before you turn!” he cried. “The bus is going to tip over!”

“I can’t! It’s too dark for me to see ahead!”

“Give me the wheel!”

With a nod, Em let him grab the steering wheel. She stumbled off the chair and Sen sat, guiding the bus farther into the tunnels. They were outpacing the things chasing them with all the turns—confusing it. The Nightmare, whatever it was, was having a hard time tracking them through its own territory.

Sen glanced at the rearview mirror and saw Em fiddling with an invisible interface, tapping at random options and reading, her eyes scanning, until—

He felt the essence surge through her in a rushing wave.

She’d chosen to upgrade something.

Em looked up at him with glowing, yellow eyes, and she stared into the darkness and paled. “Step on the gas!” she screamed. Sen reacted instantly as he stomped the pedal into the floor. The engine roared. The bus shot uphill, rushing up the fleshy halls, and Sen saw it.

The walls were closing.

Up ahead, they constricted, squeezing down from all sides and trying to block their path. Sen screamed as he leaned forward in his seat, trying to get the bus to go faster.

Seventy miles an hour.

Seventy-five.

It was still too slow. The entire section of the passage ahead was shrinking, and soon, they would be trapped. Sen grit his teeth and channeled his Flow, pushing it into the entire bus.

Sen spoke a decree.

“This bus’s speed will double.”

The tires screamed. Mortal Commandment flooded the engine and pushed it beyond its limit, pushing the bus’s speed to a just over a hundred miles an hour. It wasn’t double, not with the current strength of his Ability, but it was enough. The bus surged forward. The wall closed.

They shot past it just before it went shut. The whole tunnel was rumbling, now. The walls shook and throbbed and pulsed, spraying blood and viscera as more monsters tore themselves out from their fleshy confines. Sen saw bipedal monsters with massive, hanging mouths. Then masses of tentacles and teeth, rushing, lashing at the bus. Their talon-tipped tentacles raked across the steel, dragging white scratches across the paint.

Sen rammed the bus into them. They crumpled. Died. Bones snapped and blood burst and flesh tore under the wheels as Mortal Commandment’s burst of speed wore off.

And then the engine made a sound, and the bus began to slow.

Seventy miles an hour.

Sen screamed another order into the bus. They were going up at an incline, straight ahead. They couldn’t stop here.

“The engine will not die!”

He jammed his foot into the gas. The engine sputtered, coughing and hacking, but it forced the bus up further as a part of the engine burst into flames. Smoke and flames leaked from under the bus but it moved. It persevered. Sen directed it up, swerving into monsters and dodging others, bringing them closer up.

Gunshots rang out from behind him. Em screamed.

And when Sen looked into the rearview, he found out why.

The wall that closed behind them was undulating forward, twisting into a crawling, infantile shape. A giant mockery of a human fetus dragged itself after them, and its face split open to reveal a gaping, bloody wound, every corner of it lined with razor teeth. It raised a massive arm—it morphed into a tentacle of misshapen fingers and human teeth.

The limb smashed down. Sen jerked at the wheel.

The blur passed and hit the ground with a cataclysmic crash. It tore a bleeding rift across the floor, shredding corrupted flesh as it raked across.

It missed them by inches. The bus swerved too close to the right, losing speed as it ground itself across the wall. Sen pulled it away. He urged it forward again, desperate for the engine to stay whole.

Fifty-five miles an hour.

The massive abomination chasing them screeched. It was the sound of an infant crying; of birds shrieking; of metal tearing and of bones splintering like twigs. It was a sound to rip a throat apart.

[Commander] Child of Kulv’arash – Tier 3

Sen cursed.

There was always another obstacle.