Consciousness returned not with a gasp, but with the dull, rhythmic throbbing of a fractured jaw.

  Mike lay on his side, his cheek pressed against something cold and slick. The air was thick, heavy with the taste of ammonia, rotting organic matter, and the metallic tang of old blood. It was the smell of the bowels of the city, the places where things were thrown away to be forgotten.

  He opened his eyes. The world was dim, lit only by a circle of pale, artificial light far above.

  He tried to sit up, but his body screamed. Every muscle felt bruised, stiff from the burnout and the beating he had taken outside the shack. He ran a tongue over his teeth, the taste of copper was sharp. His jaw was swollen, likely hairline-fractured from the rifle butt, but the System’s passive regeneration was already knitting the worst of it back together, leaving behind a dull ache.

  Mike pushed himself up to a sitting position, his hands sliding in the grime. He looked down at himself.

  Gone.

  His heavy scavenger coat, with its hidden pockets and reinforced lining? Gone. His belt, with the pouches for scrap and water? Gone. His boots, the sturdy ones he had stolen, the ones that kept the rot off his skin? Gone.

  He was barefoot in the sludge. He was wearing only his thin, ragged undershirt and trousers, the fabric stained dark with the filth of the floor. They had stripped him. No shiv. No med-stims. No tools.

  He was naked in the dark.

  For a moment, panic tried to claw its way up his throat. The old instinct of the prey animal, the urge to curl up and hide, fluttered in his chest.

  But then he remembered Jory.

  He remembered the old man on his knees. He remembered the data-chit. He remembered the realization that the hand signal hadn’t been a plea for humanity.

  Loyalty is a depreciating asset.

  The panic died. It didn't fade, it was extinguished, crushed under the weight of a sudden, glacial coldness that spread from his stomach to his limbs. The heat of the betrayal had burned out, leaving behind only ash and clarity. There was no room for fear anymore. Fear was for people who had something to lose. Mike had nothing.

  Then, a different sensation pricked at the base of his skull. It wasn’t a memory, but a live wire, a tether stretching through the concrete and steel above.

  Grim.

  He could feel the familiar, jagged static of the other’s presence hovering nearby, drawn to Mike’s pain like a moth to a flame. Grim was coming for him.

  Panic flared again, but this time it was selfless. If Grim came down here, into this kill box, they would both end up as meat for the beast. Mike squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on that mental thread. He didn't pull on it, he shoved it away.

  Go, he willed, projecting the thought with desperate intensity. Stay away. Don't let them take you, too.

  He walled off the connection, forcing himself to feel alone again. It was safer that way.

  He stood up. His bare feet squelched in the refuse, finding purchase on the uneven floor.

  He was in a cylinder. The walls were curved plates of smooth, seamless alloy, rising fifty feet or more to the grate above. There were no handholds, no seams wide enough for fingers, no ladders. The walls were slick with condensation and oil, designed specifically to keep things at the bottom from ever coming back up.

  "The Pit," Mike whispered. The sound of his own voice was flat against the metal acoustics.

  Clank.

  A sound from above echoed down the shaft like a thunderclap. Mike looked up, shielding his eyes against the glare of a flashlight beam cutting through the gloom.

  "Wakey, wakey, rat," a voice called down. It was slow, thick with boredom.

  Mike didn't answer. He didn't beg. He stood still, his arms hanging loose by his sides.

  "Personally?" the guard continued, his voice echoing in the damp silo. "I’d have just put a bullet in your head and gone to lunch. Save us both the time."

  The silhouette shifted, spitting something through the grate. It landed in the sludge near Mike’s feet.

  "But Riggs? He is a greedy bastard. He knows you found something in the Dead Zone. That crystal." The guard chuckled, a dry, cruel sound. "So the order is 'Alive and Suffering' until you tell him where it is. He wants his payday, and you don't die until you give it to him."

  Mike felt a cold twist in his gut. The crystal wasn't hidden in a hole somewhere. It was gone. It had dissolved into his blood, rewriting his DNA and becoming the System itself. Riggs was chasing a ghost. He would tear Mike apart looking for something that no longer existed.

  "So we are going to soften you up," the guard said. "Make you talkative."

  The sound of a heavy motor whirred to life. A chain began to descend through the center of the shaft, swaying slightly. Attached to the end was a rusted iron cage, swinging like a pendulum.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Inside the cage, something moved.

  It was heavy. Mike could hear the weight of it shifting, the metal groaning under the stress. A low, wet growl reverberated through the silo.

  The cage hit the floor with a heavy splash, spraying sludge against Mike’s legs. He didn't flinch. He backed away slowly, putting his back against the cold curve of the wall.

  "Haven't fed him in three days," the guard called down. "Maybe when he starts chewing on your legs, you'll remember where you put that crystal."

  There was a metallic clack as the remote release triggered. The cage door swung open.

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, the beast emerged.

  It was a nightmare of muscle and tumors. Once, it might have been a dog, but the Sector 4 chem-runoff had rewritten its biology. It stood nearly as tall as Mike at the shoulder. One front leg was thicker than the other, ending in claws that looked like obsidian knives. Its jaw was distended, hanging open to reveal rows of serrated, yellow teeth, drool roping down in thick strands.

  It turned its massive head, milky, blind-looking eyes locking onto Mike.

  There was nowhere to go. The silo was a closed circle. If he ran, he would just die tired.

  The dog lunged.

  It moved with terrifying speed. Mike threw himself to the left, his bare feet slipping on a patch of oil. He hit the ground hard, rolling through a pile of sharp scrap metal that sliced his shoulder. The dog’s jaws snapped shut on the space where his neck had been a second before, a bone-breaking crack of teeth meeting teeth.

  Mike scrambled up, gasping. The dog skidded, turning instantly, its growl deepening into a roar.

  Mike backed up, his mind racing. He needed a weapon.

  He looked at his hands.

  He remembered the last time. He had panicked, extended his palm, and the System had taken over. It had fired a barb, a [Venom Spike], from his palm like a bullet.

  Thwip. One shot.

  If he did that now, and missed? The dog was too fast. Or if the spike hit a bone and didn't penetrate deep enough? He would be defenseless while the cooldown recharged. A projectile was a gamble.

  He didn't need a gun. He needed a knife.

  The heat was bubbling in his gut again, that familiar, oily sickness that signaled the mutation was ready. It felt like swallowing battery acid. Usually, he let it flow where it wanted. To his eyes to see in the dark. To his palm to shoot.

  But this time, Mike clamped down on the feeling.

  No, he thought, grinding his teeth. Not the palm. Not a bullet.

  He focused on his right arm. He visualized the anatomy beneath the skin, the radius, the ulna. He grabbed that volatile, boiling energy in his stomach and mentally shoved it down his arm. He forced it to stop at the wrist. He forced it to condense.

  [System Warning: Manipulation of Skill Bio-Projectile: Venom Spike detected.]

  [Warning: Structure unverified. Significant physical trauma imminent.]

  "Do it," Mike snarled in his mind.

  He squeezed his right hand into a fist, trapping the energy.

  The pain was immediate and absolute. It wasn't like the burn of magic, it was the mechanical agony of biology failing.

  Inside his forearm, the bone reacted to the pressure. It didn't just grow, it splintered. Mike fell to his knees, a scream tearing from his throat as he clutched his arm. It felt like a hot iron was being driven out through his skin from the inside.

  Crack.

  The sound was wet and sickening, echoing off the metal walls.

  A spur of calcified bone, six inches long and jagged as a shiv, erupted from the underside of his wrist. It tore through the muscle. It sliced through the skin.

  Blood sprayed, hot and dark.

  Mike gasped, dry-heaving from the shock. He looked at his arm through watering eyes.

  The spike hadn't shot out. It was fused there. A rigid, organic blade protruding from his own broken skeleton. It was white, porous, and dripping with a clear, viscous fluid that smelled like dead flowers.

  He had broken his own body to make it. He had forced the mutation to obey.

  The mastiff didn't care about his agony. It saw prey on its knees. It leaped.

  Mike didn't flinch this time. The pain had cleared his head. It grounded him.

  As the dog hit him, slamming him into the muck, Mike didn't struggle against the weight. He welcomed it. He wrapped his legs around the beast, locking his ankles behind its hips. The smell of rot and wet fur filled his nose. Jaws clamped down on his left shoulder, teeth sinking through the thin shirt, grinding against his collarbone.

  Pain exploded in Mike’s nervous system.

  But Mike didn't panic. The coldness in his mind was absolute now.

  You want to eat? Mike thought, his eyes wide and glowing with that faint, toxic green light. Then choke.

  With a guttural roar, he drove his right hand upward.

  He didn't punch with a fist. He thrust the bone-spike directly into the soft, unprotected flesh of the dog’s throat.

  It was a gruesome sensation. He felt the resistance of the tough hide, and then the sudden pop as the spike punched through. He felt the hot wash of the beast’s blood coating his own open wound, mingling in a toxic cocktail.

  He didn't pull back. He twisted his wrist. The jagged bone sawed against the animal's windpipe inside the neck.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  The dog’s jaws, locked on Mike’s shoulder, suddenly went slack. The growl died in its throat, replaced by a wet, bubbling gurgle. The massive muscles seized, trembling violently as the necrotic venom flooded its bloodstream, shutting down the nervous system just as it had done to the Cleaner.

  But this time, Mike was connected to it. He could feel the life shuddering out of the beast through the bone spur.

  The animal collapsed on top of him, a dead weight of heavy, twitching meat.

  Mike shoved it off, gasping for air. He rolled out from under the carcass, scrambling backward through the sludge until his back hit the wall.

  He held his right arm up. The spike was still extended, coated in dark red blood.

  "Retract," he whispered.

  This was the worst part.

  The heat in his gut receded, pulling back like a tide. And the bone followed.

  Mike watched, mesmerized and horrified, as the spike began to sink back into his arm. It didn't dissolve, it was pulled back inside. The sensation was nauseating, the feeling of a foreign object sliding under his skin, scraping against his natural skeleton as it realigned.

  With a wet squelch, the tip of the bone disappeared back into the wound. The skin didn't heal completely, it left a ragged, red scar that looked angry and raw, but the weapon was hidden.

  Mike gripped his wrist, his fingers digging into the bruised flesh. He could feel it in there. He could feel the extra mass of the bone, sitting alongside his radius like a sheathed knife.

  He shivered.

  [LEVEL UP!]

  [Level 9.]

  A warmth spread through his chest, a soothing balm that washed over the pain in his shoulder and the ache in his wrist. His muscles knitted, his stamina refilled. The hunger that had been gnawing at his belly for weeks seemed to recede, replaced by the humming energy of the System.

  Slowly, Mike stood up. He wiped the blood from his face, smearing it across his cheek. He looked up at the grate, fifty feet above.

  The silhouette was still there. The guard hadn't moved.

  Mike stared up at the light. He didn't shout. He didn't tell them there was no crystal to find. He just stared, his eyes burning with a green intensity that seemed to pierce the gloom.

  He wasn't the boy who had crawled into the crawlspace to save a friend anymore. That boy had died when the rifle butt hit his face.