Movement caught his eye—a figure emerging from behind a twisted heap of metal about twenty meters away. The scavenger's movements were cautious but deliberate, clearly trying to avoid startling Blake. Smart.
"Impressive work," the scavenger called out, keeping his distance. His held the gravelly undertone common to long-term residents of the scrap fields. "Never seen someone take down a feral that clean before."
Blake turned slowly, keeping his stance relaxed but ready. The scavenger wore the patches that marked him as one of Mara's people—perimeter security detail based on his positioning. "Thanks. How's the line holding?"
"Solid enough." The man gestured at the surrounding debris field. "Got teams spaced every hundred meters in a rough circle, good sight lines on all the major approaches. Nothing bigger than vermin getting through without us spotting it."
Blake nodded, mentally overlaying the defensive positions with his own tactical assessment. "Good. The Ferroghests seem to be sticking closer to the crash site now. Shouldn't have too many more strays testing the perimeter."
The scavenger—Deren, Blake's Insight aided him in remembering from the briefing—fell into step beside him as Blake started walking toward the crater's edge.
"Yeah, noticed that. They're acting strange. More organized, like they're actually guarding something instead of just hunting."
"They are." Blake kept his tone neutral, but his fingers tightened slightly on his knife's grip. "I intend to go investigate. They can try and stop me."
Deren made a sound of agreement, then hesitated. "Listen, about that... some of the others, they've been seeing things. Weird lights down in the crater, movements that don't make much sense for the junkyard dogs. And the sounds..."
"What kind of sounds?"
"Like... singing. But wrong somehow. Makes your teeth ache just hearing it." Deren shook his head. "Most won't talk about it, but everyone's noticed."
They reached the crater's edge. Blake turned to face Deren, his back to the massive depression that housed the Leviathan's corpse. The alien sun cast long shadows across the scavenger's worried features.
"Keep your people alert," Blake said firmly. "But don't let them get creative. If anything unusual happens—anything at all—you signal Mara immediately. Clear?"
"Clear," Deren nodded, relief evident in his posture. Whatever was down there clearly had him spooked. "You really going down there alone?"
Blake's lips quirked slightly.
"Not alone, no. Not anymore." He gave Deren a brief nod. "Good hunting."
Then he leaned backward and let gravity take him over the crater's edge.
The fall was controlled and beautiful in its efficiency. Blake's abilities activated smoothly—[Unfettered Stride] creating ghostly platforms of force that he barely touched, each contact just enough to guide his descent. The crater wall blurred past as he dropped nearly thirty meters before slowing his momentum via [Telekinesis]. He landed in a perfect three-point stance that sent small clouds of rust-colored dust billowing around him.
"Show-off," Kitt's voice echoed in his mind, rich with amusement.
"It was efficient," Blake replied, though he couldn't quite keep the satisfaction from his mental tone. "Why climb down when gravity's happy to do the work?"
"Uh-huh. And the dramatic exit had nothing to do with it?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Blake straightened, scanning the area as his HUD populated with tactical data. "Let's check our supplies before we move deeper. Rather not get surprised down here."
Kitt's presence shifted, becoming more focused. "Right. You really want to go over our gear now? AFTER the 30 meter drop?"
Blake rolled his eyes and reached for their new ability.
Dimensional Cache (Apprentice)
Your increasingly developing bond with the Chimera provides access to an extradimensional storage space linked to, but functionally separate from, the natural extradimensional storage of your corebound Leviathan partner. Items stored are removed from normal spacetime, reducing encumbrance and securing possessions. Limited capacity initially. Mana expenditure required for access and retrieval. Cannot store living organisms or excessively large objects. Capacity expands with rank and tier.
"Still so convenient," Blake murmured, picturing the void-like space Kitt had described. A pocket outside of pockets. No more digging through pouches. No weight, no worry about things getting jostled loose. It was like having a personal armory in his head. "I'm mad you had something like this from the get-go."
"It pretty handy," Kitt purred in his mind. "You can admit it; you're starting to be glad we ended up together."
"Yeah, yeah. Walk me through what all we've got again?" he asked, wanting to be absolutely certain of their resources.
Blake moved through the shadows of twisted metal, cataloging their resources with Kitt. The familiar weight of Verdict rode at his hip, freshly cleaned after the Ferroghest encounter. His new backup pistol pressed against his ankle, loaded with standard rounds rather than the specialized ammunition Kitt had crafted—well, the rounds that… were Kitt? Maybe? Also, she made it seem like she was Verdict too—so why did she name it?
He shook his head. Kitt was still a rather confusing existence.
"Body armor's holding up?" he asked, running a hand across the reinforced plates.
"Everything's green. Primary and secondary layers are intact. The spare set's ready if needed."
Blake nodded, stepping over a fallen beam. "Grenades?"
"Three flash, two frag, one thermite. Plus those salvaged plasma charges."
"Knives?"
"Primary on your belt, backup in your boot, emergency blade in the armor plate over your left upper-arm. All are at least minimally enhanced with the crystalline matrix. Don't lose Fang, though; I've put a lot of work into her."
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"I don't love that named my knife," Blake groused.
"Technically, it's a part of me, Blake."
"There we go with that again," Blake said. "If you're the knife, why name it? Same with Verdict?"
"Are you going to tell me you and your people don't have nicknames for any parts of your anatomy?" Kitt asked. "And before you answer, remember that my last host was also in the military, and I've had to overhear a lot of things in various showers and locker rooms."
Blake paused to scan the area, and definitely not to cover for his lack of response, before continuing deeper into the crater.
"So… medical supplies?" He tried pivoting.
"Full kit. Two emergency stims, biofoam, field dressings. Not sure we've got anything for embarrassment, though," Kitt replied, granting Blake his pivot while scoring one last point. "Everything's organized for quick access."
"Food and water?"
"Three days of supplies. Plus, those nutrient packs you didn't like—in case you get really desperate to snack."
"They taste like cardboard," Blake grimaced.
"Better than starving," Kitt replied. "Oh, and don't forget the grappling hook and spare power cells we picked up. Never know when we'll need to make a quick exit."
"Alright, good…" Blake said, slowing his pace as something tickled his senses.
He took a deep breath, taking in the scene before him. The crater stretched out like a massive wound in the earth, its walls layered with compressed debris from the Leviathan's impact. Ancient metal and crystalline structures jutted at odd angles, creating a labyrinth of twisted shapes that led down toward the center.
The air felt different here—heavier somehow, charged with an electric tension that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His Resonance was like a sore tooth in his spirit, something in the surrounding area causing it to feel raw and on-edge. Shadows seemed to move strangely in the corners of his vision, though his HUD showed no immediate threats.
"You feel that?" he asked Kitt quietly.
"Yeah." Her usual playful tone was subdued. "Something's definitely off about this place. Discordant."
Blake picked his way down the crater's slope, each step measured against the unstable footing. Pieces of metal groaned and shifted without wind. Dark fluid leaked upward from cracks in the ground, rolling against gravity like mercury.
"This place is wrong," Kitt whispered in his mind. "The spatial geometry doesn't match baseline reality."
Blake's jaw clenched as another wave of wrongness washed over him. His Resonance screamed at the twisted energies saturating the air. Crystalline formations sprouted from the wreckage, their surfaces reflecting fragments of scenes that couldn't exist. A child's laughter echoed from somewhere below, cut off by static that tasted like copper on his tongue.
The air grew thick with an oily mist that caught the alien sunlight in ways that hurt to look at directly. It carried scents that had no earthly equivalent—something between burning metal and rotting flowers, yet fundamentally different from either.
Movement flickered at the edge of his vision—a Ferroghest, watching from atop a twisted spire of metal. Blake's hand dropped to Verdict's grip automatically, but the creature made no aggressive moves. If anything, it seemed to shy away when he looked directly at it.
"They recognize you," Kitt noted. "Look—there are more of them."
She was right. As Blake's eyes adjusted to the strange patterns of light and shadow, he could make out several Ferroghests perched at various vantage points. All of them maintained their distance, watching with an unsettling mixture of fear and... something else. Anticipation maybe?
"They remember what happened to their alpha," Blake suggested, though something about their behavior nagged at him. This felt like more than simple recognition or fear.
"Maybe." Kitt's tone suggested she shared his doubts. "Or maybe they know something we don't about what's waiting for us down there."
Blake continued his advance, moving deeper into the crater. The debris field grew denser as he descended, the wreckage more intact. Massive panels of alien metal rose like walls, their surfaces etched with patterns that seemed to shift when viewed directly. The air grew noticeably cooler, and that strange electrical tension increased with each step.
Then the debris parted, revealing the clearing at the crater's heart.
Blake stepped forward, the soles of his boots crunching against brittle shards of crystalline debris that reflected the alien sun like jagged mirrors. His gaze lifted, and for a moment, he regretted it. The crater's center had transformed into a grotesque tableau that defied logic and reason, a scene that clawed at the edges of sanity.
The Leviathan’s hull no longer lay broken but intact, a solid ruin to mark its fall. Instead, it had been ripped apart—no, dissected. Entire sections of its structure hung suspended in defiance of gravity, each one split open like a surgeon’s morbid cross-section. Jagged edges gleamed with an unearthly sheen, their patterns fractal and shifting, as if mocking Blake’s attempt to focus. Panels spiraled into impossible geometries that led nowhere and everywhere at once, twisting and overlapping in ways that made his head throb.
His spatial senses screamed. Each fragment of the ship existed in multiple places simultaneously, layers upon layers of reality folded and compressed into this obscene display. Blake felt the distortion pressing against his awareness like invisible fingers probing his skull. The air felt thin yet stifling—wrong in ways his training couldn’t define.
Blake blinked hard, trying to shake the chaos from his mind. The mangled metal was painful to look at, hard to grasp the reality of, but it was the organic remains that were really souring his stomach.
Flesh bloomed grotesquely across the exposed remains like an infection run wild—flesh that should not have been there at all. What little organic material they’d seen on their last visit had been buried deep beneath layers of hull plating. Now it sprawled outward, dominating the scene with obscene vitality. Vast tendrils of sinewy tissue pulsed faintly as if alive—or worse—aware. Veins glowed with sickly light beneath translucent membranes stretched taut across what could only be described as tumors or growths. Each pulse sent ripples through the corrupted biomass, a synchronization so unnatural it made Blake's teeth ache.
The heat struck him next—not physical heat but something deeper, more fundamental. It radiated from the corrupted flesh in waves he could feel with his Resonance rather than his skin. The sensation was invasive and wrong—an oily pressure slithering through his core as though attempting to tune him to its own vile rhythm.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, tightening his grip on Verdict as if it could shield him from the overwhelming wrongness radiating from the site.
Kitt’s voice filtered through their connection, low and uncharacteristically subdued. “I don’t even have words for this one.”
Blake’s jaw clenched as he scanned the grotesque sprawl towering fifteen stories high—a fusion of mutilated flesh and twisted metal writhing together in impossible harmony. He couldn’t decide which was worse: the organic corruption that crawled and thrived despite its host being dead—or whatever energy hummed through it all, an oppressive drone too deep to hear but impossible not to feel.
“It’s not dead,” Blake said quietly, voice flat but taut with tension.
“No,” Kitt agreed after a pause. “It’s... something else now.”
Blake took another step forward despite every instinct telling him to retreat. The deeper into the crater he ventured, the more intensely his Resonance attribute reacted—pushing against him like a tidal current demanding he turn back. He pressed onward regardless, forcing himself to acclimate to the discomfort gnawing at him from within.
His HUD flickered erratically as they drew closer to what could only be called the core. A fleshy spire dominated the epicenter, spearing upward with grotesque majesty. Its surface churned with movement—tumorous growths swelling before bursting into sprays of ichor that congealed into new forms almost instantly. Glistening appendages coiled and uncoiled around fragments of Leviathan plating as though digesting them.
The hum grew louder—or maybe it simply pressed harder against his mind—the vibration resonating so deeply it felt like his very bones were trembling in time with it.
“Kitt…” Blake whispered without finishing his thought.
“I know,” she replied softly, her usual sarcasm absent for once.
Words felt useless here—stripped of meaning in the face of this grotesque fusion of flesh and metal, warped by forces that mocked the limits of human understanding.
"Oh," Kitt’s voice brushed against his thoughts, soft and trembling, her presence curling nearer like a wounded animal seeking shelter. "Oh, cousin… What have they done to you?"