“Where exactly is the mark on this floor?” I asked Aurin while trying to think of the way to cross the floor with the least likelihood of being reduced to meat paste.

  “What is it?” she asked, holding out the hastily drawn map. It was starting to get scrumpled from being folded and unfolded repeatedly, and Vivi’s attempt at drawing wasn’t all that great, to say the least.

  “I think they were using an ever-expanding, all-consuming organism to feed the personnel in an attempt to save money on food costs. Or at least that’s the only thing that made sense from the drone’s perspective. Because it was either that or someone was keeping it as a pet,” I was pretty sure the first option was more likely, but wouldn’t be surprised if it was the second with the way things worked around here.

  Come to think of it, I had been served some interesting meats that I couldn't quite identify during my stay here.

  “So how did this happen?” Aurin asked, gesturing broadly to the blood-soaked hallway.

  “It broke containment… in what I think is the kitchen. I don’t think its vascular system is fully developed, so it’s a little messy. Don’t touch any surfaces or the Cicada.” I stepped out of the elevator fully and dropped as close to the ground as I comfortably could, ensuring none of my skin made contact with the surface.

  In the blood, I could see little arteries that weren’t visible from a distance pulsing with a heartbeat. With every pulse, they would leak a few drops of blood. Seeing the arteries, I was able to access the mental conceptualization of the…

  I leaned to the side and threw up, my ears were ringing, and my eyes burned like I had spent several minutes staring into a sandstorm, then rubbed fibreglass in them for good measure.

  “Fuck, FUCK,” I gasped out as I wiped my mouth off on my sleeve. Only for the bile to vanish almost immediately as whatever force kept me from looking unwashed and disgusting came into effect.

  Aurin was saying something, but I couldn't hear her through the ringing in my ears. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on what I remembered of its mental model. The only thing I found were the barest glimpses of seemingly random sensations that didn't make any sense when put together. Alongside a hunger, an insatiable hunger.

  I only opened my eyes when I felt Aurin wiping my face with gauze. She had opened the medkit at my waist at some point, and I didn't even notice. It took me another moment to realize she was wiping blood off my face.

  Blinking tears of blood out of my eyes, I looked down at where the puddle of vomit should have been. In its place was a rapidly growing mass of flesh as the contents of my stomach were subsumed into the entity that had taken over the floor. I was very careful not to look at it through my second sight.

  The ringing in my ears was getting better. In its place, I heard what sounded like distant rumbling coming from somewhere ahead.

  “Okay, we need to move. Now. Get us to another floor, we'll have to—” The emergency lights decided at that moment to shut off, the alarm cutting out along with them. I tried tapping the close door button by feel, only for nothing to happen. “Oh fuck me.”

  “Maybe later,” Aurin said. I glowered in her direction in the pitch black. I definitely hadn't put those sorts of thoughts in her mind. In fact it shouldn’t be possible for her to think that way, with the power imbalance I had made sure of that. There were lines I couldn’t cross.

  It was probably just a joke, no need to overanalyze everything.

  Digging around in the medkit, I found the one standard-issue glowstick I was provided and cracked it, illuminating us in a dim blue light and casting harsh shadows on the walls. The meat lump that had formed from my bile was sliding down the hall, and the rumbling was getting louder. The arteries were starting to grow into the elevator as well, leaking blood all over the floor.

  “Alright, the hard route it is then,” I said as I stepped out of the elevator onto the blood-soaked floor. I at least knew the wrong route to take based on where the Cicada explored. It had basically walked straight into the maw of the beast, then back out again. I was starting to really wish I wasn’t a squishy organic, susceptible to being eaten right now.

  “Lucky bastard,” I whispered to the drone as we advanced down the hallway.

  It turned to look up at me and did its best interpretation of a shrug. Given its beetle shape, it was more of a bow, but I got what it was going for.

  The further we went, the more every surface transitioned into an organic nightmare. Instead of exposed blood vessels, we were walking on a thin layer of adipose tissue. I could smell grease in the air, which was growing warmer and damp enough that condensation was able to form on my skin, only for it to be erased from existence.

  I wondered if I was wrecking conservation of energy just by existing.

  Turning away from the cross mark on the map, we went down a corridor towards one of the few stairways in the building, only to hit a dead end. Propped against the wall was what had been a member of the security team. Their body was reduced to a digestive goo. The only indicator that they had once been a security officer was the polyester uniform they had been wearing, which hadn’t yet fully dissolved. The uniform had been torn into shreds at some point.

  This wasn’t supposed to be a dead end, according to the map.

  “So… are we going to find another way?” Aurin asked.

  The only other path took us straight through the centre of the whole mess. But it didn’t make sense for Vivi to give me a floor plan that was just flat out wrong. Looking over it again, it definitely wasn't a mistake; there was supposed to be a corridor here.

  It was just blocked by a wall of tissue.

  “No, I don't think we'll need to. Ciccy, fetch!” I said, pointing at the security officer’s knife that was half buried in the fatty tissue.

  “Did you really name the drone?” Aurin asked.

  The drone scampered over and clamped onto it with its little graspers. With a yank and a pop, the knife came free, and the air filled with the most wretched, sickly-sweet scent that I had ever smelled, like rotting meat taken to an extreme.

  After taking a moment to gag and cover my nose with my shirt, I bent over to take the knife from the Cicada using the sleeve of my sweater to prevent direct contact with it. Then I drove that knife into the wall that was blocking our way and pulled it down, tearing through the flesh.

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  As I ripped through the wall, the floor lurched underneath me and my ears popped as the air pressure rapidly shifted. I nearly stumbled into the wall, barely catching myself at the last moment before I touched it. The rumbling sound in the background stopped completely for an instant.

  Only to resume again, this time sounding like it was getting closer a lot faster than I was comfortable with.

  Slicing into the wall with the knife, I cut a flap open, skewered the flesh and peeled it back. Only to be met with a translucent membrane with a group of people huddled on the other side. They turned to stare at us wide-eyed the moment I finished cutting open a window.

  My eyes snapped to what looked like a movie projector hooked up to a massive battery that was aimed directly at the membrane. I had seen enough sci-fi media to guess what was going on here.

  “Told you we wouldn't need another path,” I said to Aurin, then plastered a smile on my face and turned to the most important-looking person in the group.

  Their mental conceptualization was a circuit board, except the board had cracked under stress recently. Probably within the past hour, if I had to guess, just based on the fact that they were cowering behind a shield generator as an all-consuming organism ate their coworkers.

  I mouthed the word ‘wire’ at them, making sure to carefully form each syllable so they understood me. The circuit board stalled for a moment as the person being conceptualized failed to understand why I said that.

  Using the wire I placed in their mind, I connected their mind to mine, which short-circuited the output buffer of their mind. They froze in place, then jankily moved to unplug the battery.

  He was shot by the lone security guard before he managed to complete the task I gave him. The gunfire resounded as a dull thud through the barrier. By then, I was already subverting that same guard that shot the man, who was almost trivially easy to compel into doing what I wanted.

  His mental model was a watchtower with a spotlight. I just placed everyone in the room with him under the spotlight. I didn't even have to provide him with a conclusion to reach; just the paranoia that everyone but him could potentially be under my control was enough.

  He did the rest of the work for me, gunning down the rest of the Atlas personnel hiding away behind the shield. After he was done, before he had even finished processing his own actions, I drove a nail into his mind, yanked control from him, and had him open fire on the shield generator.

  By the time he had finished unloading his magazine, the wall had already fallen, and I had walked up behind him. I placed the knife I grabbed from his buddy that he left outside the shield to die into his throat. He passed away choking on his own blood.

  It was a little late for revenge, but I'm sure the pile of partially digested matter that used to be a member of the security staff would have appreciated the gesture. My mind was a little woozy from all that work I just put it through, but I was still holding it together.

  With a big grin on my face, I turned back to Aurin, only to notice her horrified expression.

  “You alright?” I asked, almost asking her if she wanted the memories removed, before thinking better of it. She deserved to know who I was. Even if she hadn’t seen this side to me before.

  Looking down at myself, I was covered in that man's blood; none of it was going away like the other grime. I wondered what that said about me.

  “Did you have to kill them all?” Aurin asked, her voice trembling slightly.

  “Yes,” I replied without a moment of hesitation. “They hurt me, they hurt you, they chose this. There was always the option to quit, to walk away. I decommissioned several people who made that decision. Those people don't have to die, the rest… Well, they chose to do this.”

  I gestured at the meat-based entity that had subsumed the entire floor.

  “It's not like you have any leg to stand on…” I continued only to immediately regret saying anything. “Let's go, it's just down the hall.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked, the Cicada turned to look up at me as she spoke. I may have taught it too much English.

  “Before I made you—”

  I was incredibly thankful when something meaty-sounding crashed against a wall from the direction we came from. The Cicada immediately spun, let out a shrill chirp and fired its microinjector, trying its absolute best to be helpful.

  “We'll continue this later,” I lied.

  Through the dim light, I could see something massive was rushing towards us. Without looking at its conceptual image, I blind fired the largest mental spike that I possibly could into it. I didn't care if it fucked my head up; I just wanted a way out. Both from here and from the conversation we were having.

  The world stuttered, and I felt like I was falling for a moment, only to land on the ground that I had already been standing on. It felt like time skipped an instant, and I found myself watching the mass of muscles that had nearly collided with us writhing on the ground.

  I just stood there staring at it, my mind moving nowhere incredibly quickly. Someone was suddenly dragging me away, but I couldn't comprehend who. As the muscles writhed, a little metal thing jumped into the tangle and made a really loud noise.

  I'm pretty sure I've never been this far gone before.

  I jumped in surprise a little bit later, the sound finally registering with my brain. A high pitched ringing sounded in my head and a wave of vertigo washed over me as my inner ear did a flip. Whoever was dragging me missed a step at some point; I wasn't sure if it was timed with the sound or not.

  I'm pretty sure I've never been this far gone before.

  We were heading down a staircase, and then we entered the door at the top of the staircase. Then we were standing in front of the pile of muscles again, and the tall, black-haired girl yelled something at me. Temporality seemingly lost reason, but I couldn't bring myself to give a fuck.

  I'm pretty sure I've never been this far gone before.

  As we travelled down the stairs, there was a crash from above us as… I wasn't sure what was actually happening. It felt like I was drifting through a dream.

  I'm pretty sure I've never been this far gone before.

  That thought looped in my mind over and over, never seeming to reach a conclusion, and my comprehension of what it meant never snapped into place.

  Glancing upwards, I saw red stuff falling down the stairs after us. I wondered if maybe it would catch us. I wondered what would happen if it did.

  This black haired girl was so sweet, helping me down the steps, but it felt like she was intentionally allowing my shins to bang against the steps. I hoped I didn't do anything to make her mad.

  It felt like I was in the stairwell forever, being carried down, then suddenly, with a bang, we were in a hallway again, this one wasn’t covered in meat.

  A shorty… wait, the proper term was little person, right? Or was I right the first time?

  Whatever, little shorty was leaning against a wall decked out in power armour like you'd see in one of those sci-fi TV shows because she wasn't wearing a helmet, even though it would be silly to avoid wearing one in combat.

  Something about her jogged my mind, but I felt myself sliding back towards the repeating thought before I could come to any kind of conclusion.

  The girl in power armour was shoving something in my mouth and massaging my throat. Then she vanished and entered what sounded like an epic battle with my nemesis, the red stuff. What felt like minutes later, the taste of the liquid hit my tongue. It tasted like peppermint.

  Suddenly, my mind snapped back into place, and all of the incoherence resolved at once. I clung to Aurin as whatever Vivi just fed me came into effect like she had just mainlined it into my system. I felt myself shake as the room was suddenly way too bright despite the only light source being the glowstick clutched in my hand.

  “What the fuck did she just give me?” I asked, then wiped the drool off that had been dripping down my face.

  “Something for your mind. She didn’t know what your ‘cost’ was, so she said she was giving you a cure-all,” Aurin replied, squeezing me back. “We almost didn’t make it.”

  Looking around, I couldn’t see the Cicada drone anywhere.

  “Where did Ciccy go?” I asked.

  Aurin didn’t reply.

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