Cole tried to focus. One eye tracked, the other was static and sparks. His back felt wrong. Not painful exactly. Just wrong. Like someone had replaced his spine with a hot iron bar.
"His optics are glitching," Senna's voice, somewhere behind the static. "The damage to his neural pathways is causing temporal displacement in his visual processing. He's seeing multiple timelines at once."
She was right. Cole could see dozen different versions of the van interior. His mouth moved, trying to explain what he was seeing, but his lungs weren't cooperating. Just wet breathing. Tasted copper.
"Hey, I am hurt too over here, you know," Lucius grunting from somewhere. The complaint sounded far away, like hearing through water.
"It's a damn foot, Lucius, you will get a new one you big baby," Lia shot back without looking away from Cole. Her hands were on Cole's chest. Hot. She was running heat through her forge-ports, keeping his wounds warm. Smart. Temperature shock would kill him faster than blood loss. "Cole over here has internal damage. Senna, how much longer until we are at Al's?"
"Two minutes, max," Senna shouted from the driver's seat. Through his fractured vision, Cole saw traffic lights strobing green in sequence as cars dove out of their path. Senna was hacking reality again.
His breathing was getting harder. Each exhale painted Lia's face with red mist. He wanted to apologize for bleeding on her, but his voice wasn't working.
"Cole, for God's sake, don't close your eyes!" Her hand cracked across his cheek. The impact sent electricity through his damaged nodes, causing everything to go white for a second.
"His divine connection is fluctuating," Senna reported. "If he loses consciousness, the Domain energy keeping him together might dissipate."
The van stopped hard. Cole's body tried to slide, but Lia held him down. Through the pain, he saw Al, he was wearing surgical scrubs over silk pajamas. His chrome hands were glowing UV blue. The doc's face said everything, it was the expression medics wore when they were measuring you for a body bag.
"Come on, get him inside and throw him on the table," Al shouted.
The shop smelled of antiseptic and laser-burnt tissue. A holographic display bloomed above him, showing his insides. Even through the static, he could tell it was bad. Organs were in the wrong places, light damage had spread through tissue like digital corruption.
"What the hell happened?" Al's fingers were already moving.
"Took an injury mid-refraction," Senna explained. Cole heard her jack into something. "A concentrated hard-light spear passed through his dispersed form. The photonic damage is extensive."
"Shit. He has a punctured kidney, lungs, and liver." Al's hands moved faster. "The light-based attack cauterized as it went, which is the only reason he's not already dead from blood loss. It's a miracle he’s still breathing. It's like someone tried to perform surgery with a welding torch."
Cole wanted to laugh. That's exactly what it felt like.
"His divine energy is all that's holding his insides together," Al continued. "The moment he goes under, he could crash."
"Can you save him?" Lia's voice was tight.
Al's face went cold, which was never a good sign. "I will do my best. But I'm going to need to replace a lot. Hope he's not attached to his original organs."
The plasma scalpel came out and Cole watched Al tear into his chest plating. Then auto-injectors appeared, pumping him full of something that made everything go soft at the edges.
"Lia, get out. This part's not pretty."
Lia hesitated for a second, then nodded, turning to the waiting room. She left a bloody handprint on the door frame.
Then the real work began.
Cole drifted in and out. Sometimes he was on the table, watching Al's hands inside his chest cavity. Sometimes he was floating above, seeing himself get taken apart like broken machinery. Once, he was pretty sure he died for a few seconds. Saw his mother.
He watched his organs come out. Burnt kidney, black around the edges. Collapsed lung looking like deflated balloon full of holes. His liver was just gone, replaced by some cauterized mess that Al dropped into a medical waste bin with a wet thud.
At some point, Al had both hands inside Cole's chest, manually pumping his heart while a machine rerouted his circulation. Cole watched from somewhere outside himself, fascinated by how much empty space there was inside a human body once you took out all the broken parts.
Then darkness.
When he came back, it was to the sound of Lucius complaining about his foot. Same old Lucius, Cole tried to smile but wasn't sure his face was working yet.
Al was there, wiping grease off chrome hands. Lia stood near the door like she'd been pacing, looked like Al had given her a new shoulder joint while he was out.
He noticed the charm on his wrist. Another one of Senna's four-leaf clovers.
How many did she have?
"Long time no see, Al."
Al smiled. "Just call me your fairy godmother at this point, saving your ass so much. Though fairy godmothers probably don't charge interest. Also, this wasn't free, by the way. I'm charging you after-hours emergency surgery prices. And a surcharge for having to work on Domain corrupted tissue. Do you know how hard it is to suture around divine energy?"
"Wouldn't expect less." Cole's voice came out rougher than expected, he probably had a tube down his throat at some point.
"Had us worried for a second there," Lucius said, his usual boisterous tone replaced by something more subdued. "Normally, we go out for drinks after a big heist, but considering you saved our lives, we can hold off so you get to be included."
Senna looked up. "We'd all be dead right now without you. Your ridiculous strategy actually worked, even if it nearly caused us all a bit of corroded wiring from the stress."
"We are glad you are alive," Lia cut through the chatter. Her voice was steady, but Cole could see she'd been worried for him.
"No biggie," Cole managed a weak smile. "Guess you guys are just lucky I am the type of idiot to jump into a fire to save people he just met."
"Not people you just met," Lia corrected quietly. "Your team."
The word hung in the air, heavy with meaning. Cole had been hired for one job. But what they'd just survived had forged something stronger than a contract.
"Cole," Al's tone shifted back to the no-nonsense surgeon. "You're going to need someone to watch over you for the rest of the night. Your new internals are stable, but your body's initial integration with foreign hardware is a delicate process. The first 24 hours are critical. We need to make sure you don't randomly flatline from a rejection cascade. I would offer, but I will be honest with you, I’m exhausted. I've been awake for thirty-six hours now, and my hands are starting to shake. Not ideal for a surgeon."
"Yeah, no, understandable. Give me a sec." Cole activated his Neuro-Link.
He first rang Jess, but the call went straight to a generic "User Unavailable" message. Her status showed she was in the Bone Pits—an underground fighting arena where signals couldn't penetrate. Probably gambling on her favorite fighter.
Then he tried Damian, but his status was set to 'Offline.' Last seen: 18 hours ago. Location: Darknet Dive Bar. He was probably unconscious in a synth-drug haze.
He let out a sigh. “Just give me some stims. I will stay up and be close by some hospital in case things turn south.”
"Stims would literally kill you right now," Al said flatly. "Your nervous system is held together with synthetic neural bridges and prayer. You hit yourself with stimulants, you'll seizure so hard you'll bite your own tongue off."
"Don't be ridiculous, Cole," Lia interrupted. "You can crash at my place. I've got medical equipment from my last surgery. Know how to spot rejection symptoms."
Cole felt his eyebrows rise. Hadn't expected that.
"It's the least I can do," she added. "End of discussion."
"Works for me. Thanks." He meant it.
"Plus," Lucius added with his usual grin, "her place has better security than most corporate black sites. If Nexus comes looking for payback, you'll have time to die from organ rejection instead of assassination."
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"So comforting," Cole managed. Still felt half-dead. Probably was, technically.
Night bled into dawn. They loaded back up into the van, the quiet hum a stark contrast to their frantic, siren-filled arrival. Cole could hear his new kidney working, a soft, mechanical whir as it filtered his blood. It was going to take getting used to. Senna dropped off Lucius first, who gave Cole a final nod before disappearing into his apartment block. "Don't die in your sleep," he called back. "We've got more jobs lined up."
Then, Senna navigated toward the city's upper spires, the van gliding silently through the pre-dawn canyons of metal and glass. They finally pulled up to a sleek residential tower that scraped the sky.
As Lia moved to help Cole out of the vehicle, Senna spoke from the driver's seat, her eyes already scanning the building's digital security overlay.
"I'll handle the client," her voice all business. "And collect our credits. They'll probably try to shortchange us. Don’t worry, I will handle everything."
With a final nod, the van door slid shut and the vehicle pulled away from the curb, disappearing into the city's circulation. Lia helped Cole hobble into the building and toward the elevator. Each step shot pain through his back, his new spinal support still calibrating to his movement patterns.
He was expecting a typical high-rise apartment. He was wrong.
Her place was a fortress, the main room stretched wide to a floor-to-ceiling armored window that looked out over the Forge-City. The view was god-like; he could see the smog curling around the towers like smoke from a candle. The glass was thick. Twelve inches. Enough, probably, to stop anything short of a tank round. One wall was a meticulously organized weapons rack, each weapon positioned at the exact angle for optimal quick-draw access.
Another held a small forge thrumming with latent heat. Thing looked like a work of art, every surface inscribed with prayers to the Forge God in languages older than the Domains themselves.
The place was obsessively clean, almost minimalist, and every piece of furniture looked bulletproof.
"Security system's biometric." Lia helped him to the couch, steadying him with one hand. "It knows you're authorized now. Try not to bleed on anything. Smart-fabric is a bitch to clean."
He sat down on her couch and stared out her window. The city below was a tapestry of light and shadow, corporate logos burning against the night like neon prayers.
"Can I offer you anything to drink?" Lia called from the kitchen. She'd ditched her armor, wearing black clothing that somehow made her look more dangerous, not less.
"Just got a new liver." Cole shifted on the couch, testing which positions hurt least. "Think I'll give it a day to settle in."
"Right, right." Amusement crept into her voice. "Makes sense. Though technically it's a kidney, not a liver. Al had to leave your liver. Too much Domain energy integrated into it to safely remove."
"Good to know some of me is still original. Though I can feel the difference. Everything tastes metallic now."
"That fades. After my first major reconstruction, everything tasted like chalk for a month. Your brain eventually figures out how to translate the new signals."
From her window, he saw a transport shuttle begin its ascent, a silent pinprick of light climbing into the sky on a pillar of white-hot ion. One of the few approved for off-world travel. The launch window was perfect: minimal monster activity detected in the upper atmosphere. It reached the shimmering, iridescent dome of the city's protective shield, passed through it, and for a moment, it looked like it had made it. Then, in the blackness of the sky beyond the shield, it simply blinked out of existence. No explosion, no debris. Just a brief, silent flash, and then nothing. Some creature must have gotten to it.
"Skyrender," Lia noticed his gaze following the wreckage. "They hunt in the mesosphere. Probably didn't even see it coming."
"Crazy to me to see people try to escape the city when we have shields to protect us from the monsters outside. Especially when their destination is either the moon or some station up in space.”
"I think we are the monsters they are trying to escape," Lia’s voice went quiet as she came to stand beside him at the window. "Look at what we did today. We killed our own kind with powers that shouldn't exist. We're walking weapons, Cole. None of us Domain’s go up there. It makes no sense. There are no monster cores for us to collect. Up there, they have a different kind of quiet. A different kind of peace. We don't belong in it."
"Wonder how many launches make it up there.”
"72.46%, according to Senna. I asked her once. She said the chances of dying of natural causes up there for normal humans is 94%. Down here, for non-Domain’s? 61%. The math is clear. We're more dangerous than the void of space."
"So, better odds than what we have," A slight laugh came out, causing a fresh wave of pain to ripple through Cole. His diagnostic system immediately flooded his vision with warnings about elevated stress on surgical sites. "How does she know so much about that anyways?"
"Senna? Believe it or not, her family founded Space Eternal."
"Didn’t they go bankrupt?"
"Yeah. It was their head of security. He had gambling debts up to his eyes. He made a deal with a gang, disabled the estate's defenses for what was supposed to be a clean robbery. But it wasn't clean. Her parents were home. They died in the fallout. Her druggy uncle took over, ran the company straight into the ground, and left her with nothing. She swore then and there she’d never be that powerless again."
A soft, golden light began to pulse from the rune on her palm, a slow, steady rhythm like a second heartbeat.
"Sorry, give me a sec. Time for prayer."
She knelt down on the floor, her back straight, her posture perfect. The room's temperature immediately rose three degrees, her forge-ports beginning to glow even though they were inactive. Cole watched as her entire body went unnaturally still, as if she were a statue of forged steel. Not a single muscle moved.
The air around her shimmered. Cole's fractured vision caught more than it should—shadows of hammers rising and falling with her heartbeat, an anvil that didn't exist anywhere real, sparks burning in colors he didn't have names for.
Lia exhaled slowly. Heat rippled off the breath. The tension bled out of her shoulders. When she opened her eyes, there were flecks of molten gold in them that hadn't been there a minute ago.
She stood, rolling her shoulders.
"What's yours look like?" Cole asked. "Mine is some guy in a black robe, obsidian glass face that reflects, a crescent moon in the middle, and a billion eyes staring back at me."
"Charming." Lia's mouth twitched. "Mine's covered head to toe in black armor. Sharp angles, the kind that don't make sense when you look at them too long. Metal horns coming off the helmet. Four glowing slits where the face should be—bright as the heart of a forge. He's massive. Sits on a throne made of cooling stars." She paused. "Sometimes I can hear the hammering. Feel it in my bones."
"Wonder what the God of Storms is like," he mused.
"According to Senna, Lucius told her he appears as an arrogant king made of lightning and ego. Two black horns made of solidified thunder, eyes that shimmer blue with electricity, ordained in golden earrings that hang, and a cocky smile that has a punchable face." Lia continued. "Apparently, the god literally laughs at probability, finds the whole concept of 'order' hilarious."
"So basically, Lucius’s long-lost brother?" Cole shot back, letting out another pained, dry laugh. "How does she know, anyhow?"
"They share more than she probably intended, it’s an occupational hazard of working closely with someone." Lia paused, then added with a hint of a smirk, "Though I also know because Lucius is... loud. In all aspects of his life. Her unit is on the other side of the wall from mine. Trust me, I know more about their relationship than I ever wanted to."
"Really? A former CEO's daughter and... him? They seem like complete opposites."
"Like you told me when we first met, you've got to enjoy the parts of life when you can. Senna spent her whole life building walls. Making every system perfect. Predictable. Then Lucius comes along. He's not a system. He's a hurricane. He breaks every plan he touches, and it drives her absolutely crazy.” Lia smiled faintly. “But I think she's fascinated by him. He's the one thing she can't predict or control."
She continued. "Last week, I saw her spend four hours recalibrating his storm arm's energy regulators. He kept 'overclocking it with reckless abandon.' She complained about his 'total disregard for hardware integrity' the entire time. Never stopped working though."
Cole chuckled. The sound caught in his throat. He looked around the room at the clean, hard lines of the furniture, the weapons rack arranged for deadly precision, the sheer, unbreachable glass of the window. Everything in Lia's life was about control, about strength, about forging a perfect defense against the cruel world they both inhabited.
Even the air recycling system was military-grade. Regular air apparently wasn't trustworthy enough for her lungs.
"What about you, Lia? What do you do to enjoy the parts of life?"
Lia was silent for a long moment, her gaze lost in the fiery glow of the city below. The reflection in the armored glass showed a survivor, a woman who had lost her family to the very powers they now wielded.
In the reflection, Cole saw her trembling. So slight his normal vision would've missed it.
She finally turned back. "This.” Her voice now filled with a quiet weariness that felt more honest than anything he had seen from her before. "Making sure my people make it home. Making sure the idiot rookie who just saved my life doesn't die from a rejection cascade on my couch. Building something that lasts longer than a single hunt, a single score."
She paused, seeming to work with something internal. "My family's gone. But Vertex? You, Lucius, Senna? You're still here. That's what I enjoy, the parts that don't get deleted, burned, or corrupted."
Her eyes met his. The room went still. All the usual distance between them—experience, professional walls, the weight of too many jobs—just... disappeared. Leaving only two exhausted survivors in a quiet room high above a dangerous city.
Cole saw it then, in the countless reflections: the flicker of vulnerability beneath her armor, the exhaustion she never let anyone else see, the profound relief that he was still alive. In one reflection, she was crying. In another, she was walking away. In the real world, she was caught between both.
She stepped closer. For a second, Cole thought—
The forge-rune on her palm pulsed once, responding to some deep emotion. But she just put her hand on his shoulder. The weight of it was gentle. Grounding. Her forge-ports were still cooling down, made her palm warmer than it should be. Almost feverish through his shirt.
The touch stayed longer than it needed to. Her thumb moved in a small circle against the fabric, like she was making sure he was solid. Real. Still there.
Then she pulled away, continuing her path toward the door, but slower now, as if each step required consideration. She stopped at the threshold, one hand on the doorframe, and looked back over her shoulder.
"Get some rest, Cole," she said as she pulled her hand away. "Your new organs need time to sync with your divine signature. And you need to heal. The world's not going anywhere."
"Actually," she added, a slight smile returning, "try not to die in your sleep. I just had this couch cleaned."
At the doorway, she paused. "My medical scanner's on the table. It'll alarm if your vitals crash. I'm... I'm glad you made it, Cole."
Cole settled back into the couch, the pain in his body was dull now. His synthetic lungs breathed for him, and somewhere deep in his chest, his original heart kept beating. Stubborn. Human.
He looked at the data slate on the table, the one with the file for Project Chimera.
Senna had left him a message: "Payment transferred. Your cut: 150,000 credits. Don't spend it all on new organs."
He thought of Draven, of Silas, of the impossible power he had witnessed.
He had joined Vertex for the money and the chance to prove himself. But lying there, listening to Lia's forge crackling in the other room, he realized something had shifted.
He was fighting for them now.
And maybe they were fighting for him too.
As consciousness faded, his diagnostic system threw up one final message:
[INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL. WELCOME TO YOUR NEW BODY, COLE WALKER.]
He smiled through the pain. He was more machine than ever, but somehow, he'd never felt more human.
VERMIS
Quote:The docks don't give a shit about your dreams. Show up, do your work, go home.
Fischer spent years being nobody. A dock worker in Freetown—humanity's oldest Gate city—loading dimensional cargo while Sacred with reality-bending powers fly overhead.
Imprisoned, enslaved, and forced to battle endless waves of beasts, Fischer will discover that in Freetown’s endless masquerade, the most dangerous monsters are often the ones closest to home.
Genres: Body Horror ? Dark Fantasy ? Progression ? Action
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