Ruin Forest

  What seemed like a forest was, in reality, the graveyard of an ancient city—swallowed by towering trees and vines that treated concrete like soil.

  Greenery clung to white-dulled buildings, turning streets into shadowy tunnels. Pockets of sunlight danced around spore clusters, suspended in the air like bruises.

  Unit 7 moved through the brighter lanes with a tight, quiet rhythm.

  Liam led, with Karauro sweeping the flanks behind him, eyes fixed on pockets of fog where shapes liked to stand too still. Maverick monitored his radar for core returns, signaling with sharp hand motions.

  A low groan drifted through the haze, followed by chittering that never originated from the same place twice.

  Unclaimed gear littered the ground: a torn strap, a cracked canteen, a pack split open as if something had searched it from the inside.

  No blood. No bones.

  Just absence.

  Nera’s left cyber-eye clicked as it focused beneath her visor. Her arm-blade extended—violet plasma hissing, the air shimmering around its edge.

  Mist billowed—

  A pale arm shot toward Karauro’s shoulder.

  He reacted instinctively, slashing. Thermal claws sliced through bone and tendon. The severed hand thudded into the dirt, twitching briefly before dissolving into the fog.

  Another set of claws lunged at Cleo.

  Maverick intercepted, pinning it with his Nexon glove before slicing down. Sparks flew as black ichor hissed against the ground.

  Liam’s voice crackled over comms, urgent. “Tons of Lurkers behind the fog walls!”

  “Form up!” Nera commanded.

  Aaron clasped his fists, servos whining. “I’ll shake them up!”

  He slammed both hands into the ground.

  Crimson electricity shot through the mist in jagged arcs. Groans shifted to shrieks—thin, furious, and too near.

  “Take that, losers!” Aaron laughed—

  Then a larger silhouette loomed in the haze, outlined by the glowing arcs.

  Unit 7 fired—controlled bursts slicing through the mist.

  Bodies fell.

  Then twitched.

  Ichor stitched what should’ve remained severed back together, limbs jerking as if relearning their form.

  More Lurkers emerged—featureless faces with slits for eyes and nostrils, tendrils dangling from their chins. Limbs stretched too long, legs devouring ground.

  Nera became a violet blur, slicing them apart faster than they could regenerate. Karauro stayed close at her flank, intercepting anything slipping past her blind side.

  Riven launched an incendiary—then shot it—creating a wall of heat that forced the pack to group together.

  “Hey!” Liam yelled over the chaos. “Now I understand where your mutt got it!”

  His wire snare lashed out, ensnaring a Lurker mid-regeneration. He turned it over, pried open the mouth-slit with a second wire—teeth packed like traps—and dropped in a grenade.

  The blast didn’t just kill.

  It made the fog shudder.

  The horde diminished—charred bodies sizzling at the mist’s edge, twitching as regeneration faltered.

  For a moment, only breaths filled the comms.

  Karauro pushed off, panting, and fired a wire snare into a tree behind Nera. The line tightened, propelling him forward—

  —and every HUD flickered.

  Static crawled across their displays.

  A single ping pierced the noise.

  And the mist responded.

  Massive pale hands erupted from the fog, grabbing Karauro by the armor and yanking him back as if he were weightless.

  “Mutt!” Nera shouted, her voice warping as the comms screamed with a piercing frequency.

  Karauro vanished into the haze.

  Something else echoed back, distorted and gleeful—

  “wEE WILL MAKe you KNEEL, VERMIN.”

  ---

  He hit the ground hard, spores rushing by like dense clouds.

  The larger Lurker slammed him again, armor scraping dirt and broken concrete. Karauro activated a pulse burst to land upright, wiring the ground to halt his momentum.

  He swung his arm—thermal claws emerged from the armored gauntlet with a hiss of heat.

  The Lurker didn’t rush.

  It circled, low and cautious, talons ticking on concrete like it was testing sound.

  COre. LEFT SidE. BeLow RIBCAGE.

  Karauro’s jaw tightened. Is it really helping?

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  NOT AsSISTINg. HUNGRY.

  Tendrils snapped out—fast, precise—hooking his forearm and yanking. Not to kill. To drag.

  Karauro let it pull him half a step, then pulse-bursted onto the line. It popped loose with a wet snap, scattering spores all around.

  It wanted him to chase.

  He forced his breathing steady. Boots pushed dirt into the air. His eyes flared, tracking each feint, each stir of fog.

  The creature slammed its massive palms down—

  Karauro fired his kinetic pulse downward, launching himself upward just in time to avoid being flattened.

  TEAR INTO IT!

  His wire snare latched onto flesh as he pulled himself closer. Claws burned with heat, cutting under the Lurker’s ribcage.

  ---

  He swung, splattering ichor with each hit. The Lurker screeched, trying to pull him off with one hand.

  It failed.

  Tendrils emerged from Karauro’s back—black, then threaded with orange—piercing the pale palms at a mere distance.

  Karauro’s tendrils tore the Lurker’s hands apart and extended over his shoulders, widening the gaping hole he had created.

  He hung there on shredded flesh, breath harsh in his helmet, and kept cutting until the inside gave.

  ---

  As he held onto the flesh flap, two of the four tendrils worked their way into the opening. They coiled around a shining organ within—

  —and yanked it free from its arteries.

  The Lurker stopped its shrieking.

  Then toppled over, dead.

  Karauro gazed at what he held, eyes shining with an intense orange hue behind the visor.

  SaViOR it… heheh.

  He pulled his left hand back from the flesh flap and pressed his gloves—stained with ichor—onto the latch of his helmet.

  Hiss—

  ---

  Monarch’s Lab

  Pistol in hand, Nera weaved through the spore walls, seeking a signal from Karauro’s private channel. Maverick and Cleo followed closely, watching their flanks.

  A shape stirred in the fog, lurching through it.

  Nera’s cyber-optics focused.

  “Karauro!” she called out.

  His red armor was soaked in ichor.

  He moved through the mist like a specter, gliding past her.

  “I’m still alive,” he stated, voice unsettlingly calm. “I faced the big cheese and eliminated it.”

  She instinctively grabbed his shoulder.

  He froze.

  He turned his head toward her.

  His eyes were entirely brown now—devoid of any orange.

  “I’ll be fine, Nera,” he said, steady.

  Aaron’s voice crackled in. “What’s the status?”

  Nera’s fingers slipped from Karauro’s. She exhaled. “He found us. We’ll meet you at the Monarch Lab.”

  Cleo glanced at his armor, caked in black ooze. “How’d you make it out alive from the Fog Mawer’s grip?”

  “It gets too full of itself—smart but stupid when something’s right in its face,” he replied, moving alongside Nera as they passed him.

  Nera’s eyes kept darting toward him.

  Why are his eyes back to normal? He’s acting like himself again.

  Her thoughts snapped back as the structure rose out of the reclaimed city like a buried tooth.

  A large tower thickly entwined with plants, obscuring a faded image of a butterfly with an eye on its thorax.

  Beneath it, the words MONARCH CORPS were inscribed in black.

  They had arrived.

  The others were already inside, waiting.

  ---

  Unit 7’s helmet lights cut thin cones through Monarch’s corridor, revealing snow dust drifting into the air. Dried disinfectant scent lingered, mixed with something else.

  Every surface was wrong in the way sterile places get when sitting abandoned for too long—partial silver metallic walls transitioning to white walls that had yellowed.

  Several metallic-studded floorings buckled out of place. Cables pulsing blue underneath them like veins held the whole facility on life support. Hissing sounds escaped from ventilation systems with fans churning.

  A mechanical door slammed shut—

  —trapping an arm marked with the Spine’s insignia in its warped armor plating.

  Blood smeared the floor, forming a sharp bend from the fingertips, suggesting the victim had been dragged away.

  “Nera to Spine,” Nera said over comms.

  Argos answered from base. “Go ahead. Did you locate our previous members?”

  “Just an arm,” Nera replied. “They might be dead. Whatever did this could still be nearby.”

  ---

  Taron powered off the door using a panel a few feet away. The mechanism groaned and released with a shudder.

  Liam gave him a nod and swept through.

  The rest of Unit 7 followed in formation, boots clanking against the narrow hallway with a sloped ramp descending ahead.

  The air thickened as they went down. Warmer. Stale. Old sterilization fighting with rot that didn’t belong in a lab.

  After some time, they managed to clear sealed mechanical doors that should’ve never opened again. With Dalton’s help, they cracked into Monarch’s lab network—barely alive nodes blinking like dying stars—enough to keep internal locks from chewing them alive.

  Then the hallway widened.

  A larger open area spread out, half stripped, half collapsed. Stainless tables. Toppled carts. Torn plastic curtains hanging like dead skin.

  And the floor—

  —the floor told a story.

  It had been scrubbed once… a long time ago.

  Now it was stained in layers: old disinfectant, old blood, old drag marks that bent around corners like someone had tried to pull weight that didn’t want to move.

  More bodies.

  Spine mercs.

  Not a pile—a route.

  Some were torn open at the ribs. Some were missing helmets. One had been folded against a wall like a discarded suit, insignia still visible beneath dried black.

  Maverick’s scanner ticked once, then stuttered. “Multiple tags. No life.”

  Liam raised a fist.

  Stop.

  A row of pods lined the far side of the room, half-hidden behind cracked plastic curtains. Their glass fronts were fogged with condensation.

  Inside—Nexon suits.

  Full armor.

  Sealed.

  Bodies strapped in.

  Not dead enough.

  A faint twitch ran through one pod like a reflex.

  Then another.

  Cleo lifted her rifle a fraction. “They’re moving.”

  “They’re spasming,” Riven corrected, thermal overlay flickering. “No heat spike. No charge-up.”

  Karauro took one step closer without meaning to.

  The nearest pod answered.

  The suit inside jerked—hard—like a puppet yanked by a wire. Fingers clenched. Shoulders bucked against restraints. The helmet thumped once against the glass.

  Then it stilled.

  Breath fogged the inside for half a second.

  Karauro froze.

  His HUD fuzzed at the edges—static crawling thin and sharp—then settled.

  It wasn’t attacking.

  It was reacting.

  To him.

  Nera’s voice dropped, dangerous and controlled. “Karauro. Don’t move.”

  He didn’t.

  But the pods tremored anyway—small ripples down the line, like a wave passing through submerged metal.

  A resonance.

  Not a signal.

  A recognition.

  ---

  In the background, something kept playing.

  Not music.

  A video loop.

  Old footage, grainy and too bright—recorded under surgical lamps.

  A child strapped to a chair.

  Another beside them.

  Small frames. Shaved heads. Eyes wide with a fear that had nowhere to go.

  Wires ran over their skin like vines. A Monarch emblem hung in the corner of the feed, crisp as a signature.

  Then—

  tendrils.

  Not from outside.

  From them.

  Black at first, then threaded with faint orange as they pierced through their own skin in slow, wrong pulses—like their bodies were growing hooks to pull themselves apart.

  The children didn’t thrash.

  They endured.

  Like they’d learned it didn’t matter.

  Karauro’s throat tightened so hard it hurt.

  His hand drifted toward his chest without permission.

  Nera noticed. Her posture shifted, blade hand loosening at her side.

  Liam spoke without turning his head. “Dalton. Kill the feed.”

  Dalton came back quieter than usual. “Trying. It’s not a normal node. Hardwired. Analog loop. Old-school.”

  Of course it was.

  Monarch didn’t want this erased by a simple wipe.

  ---

  Taron scanned the vast control room, his gloves marked from sifting through bodies on the floor.

  The doors were tightly sealed, except one—slightly open beyond the pods. An unsettling sense of invitation lingered, void of any struggle.

  Cables twisted through the entrance like roots, pulsating a deep blue as they vanished into a shadowy area of the facility.

  Light barely reached the darkness, swallowed by the void within.

  Taron glanced back at Nera, who nodded sharply.

  They stepped inside, their boots muted on the transition from metal to rubberized panels. The air grew warmer and more humid.

  Here, cables sprawled across the floor, thick bunches weaving into walls and ceiling vents, converging in a single room where darkness pooled like oil.

  A steady, rhythmic hum resonated from within—expectant.

  As they crossed the threshold, their helmet lights flickered, seemingly absorbed by the room.

  In the center, a figure hung suspended on a vertical rack.

  The visor dimmed to a deep crimson, creating a stark contrast.

  It was humanoid yet unsettling.

  Glass shattered from the pod row behind them—

  a sharp, wet crack that echoed through the control room like a gunshot in a coffin.

  The fogged fronts split wide, spiderwebbing, then collapsing inward.

  Inside, the armored suits jerked against their restraints.

  Not waking. Not charging.

  Just spasming—violent, mechanical convulsions that made the harnesses squeal and the racks clang.

  A scream tore out of their helmet speakers anyway—thin, distorted, wrong—like the sound was being dragged through metal teeth.

  Unit 7 snapped their barrels around.

  And in the center rack—

  the suspended figure’s optics flared to life, deep crimson, unblinking.