The tunnel stank of blood and scorched metal. The air itself seemed to choke on the weight of violence, thick and hot enough to taste. Lucius's body hit the ground with a heavy, wet thud, sparks spitting from the half-melted jaw implant that once gleamed with manufactured confidence. His head—gone.
For a moment, no one moved.
Not Doman. Not Alex. Not Lain.
Not even the infected.
It was silent. That terrifying kind of silence that comes right before the world collapses again.
Then, the monsters screamed.
A sound ripped through the tunnels like a thousand rusty blades tearing metal apart—raw, echoing, hungry. From the darkness, a hulking shadow stepped into the strobing light. Its spine scraped the ceiling; its flesh hung in strips, pulsing with the sick rhythm of an exposed heart. Its eyes burned red, its mouth wide enough to swallow a man whole.
Every nerve in my body screamed run.
But my legs wouldn't move.
The thing's footsteps were slow, deliberate—almost mocking—as if it was *enjoying* our fear. And behind it, the echoing shuffle of dozens more. My visor started pinging uncontrollably, red dots swarming across the map from every side.
We weren't the hunters anymore.
We were the meat.
"Quit standing there like a corpse!" Doman barked, grabbing my collar and shoving me toward the wall.
"*Flash out!*" he yelled, throwing a grenade down the corridor. The blast lit the tunnel in white fire, burning shadows against the walls.
"Goddamn it, Doman!" I spat, blinking spots from my eyes. "You almost blinded me—"
"That's the idea, rat!" he shot back. His voice was harsh, but beneath it was something I couldn't name. Rage? Fear? Or maybe regret.
The upper-born didn't speak. They watched, detached, almost *amused*.
Alex's smile was cold as moonlight. "You really thought you belonged here, didn't you?" she said over the comms, voice dripping with cruel laughter.
Lain cursed under his breath, fumbling with his rifle.
Kai—the quiet one, the strange one—didn't even look at me. He stood in the middle of the corridor, still and calm, eyes flickering with streams of glowing data that raced beneath his synthetic pupils.
That's when it sank in.
We weren't a team.
We never had been.
I wasn't their equal.
I was their insurance.
Their distraction.
Their meat shield.
The flash bomb's light still burned behind my eyelids, but in that blinding whiteness, I saw it all clearly. I saw the way their armor gleamed while mine was cracked and mud-streaked. I saw the way they looked down at me—not with contempt, but with the blank, cold calculation you'd reserve for a tool you planned to throw away.
I was never meant to survive this.
The monster screamed again, and the tunnel trembled. I could hear claws raking against steel. Then the sound of movement—the upper colonists retreating while the infected closed in.
They're leaving me, my mind hissed.
"Doman!" I yelled, but my voice cracked, small against the roars. "Doman, you hear me?! Don't—"
"Just die
!" he shouted over comms. But I could hear his steps fading, moving *away* from me.
Panic ripped through me. I fired blindly into the dark, the recoil slamming against my shoulder until it went numb. The infected flooded the tunnel, glowing veins pulsing like electrical wires under skin. Their bodies twitched in jerky motions, human shapes warped into grotesque forms.
I screamed as one lunged at me. Its hand closed around my throat, claws slicing skin. I could feel the blood trickle down—hot, sticky. I shot right under its jaw. The blast erupted, spraying my visor in gore.
Too close.
Too fucking close.
In the static-filled chaos, I heard the commander crackle over comms.
"Team I, report—status update. What the hell is going on down there?"
My ears rang. The smell of ozone burned in my nose. I could barely breathe.
Doman's voice came through, rough, panting. "We were… ambushed," he lied. "We lost two. Still engaging."
*Lost two?*
The words spun in my head. He'd already written me off.
"Two?" I muttered, spitting blood on the floor. "You bastard… I'm still here!"
No response.
The feed was cut. Doman had muted me.
That's when it hit—rage. Hard, sharp, hotter than the plasma rounds in my gun. My fear burned away, replaced by something primal. Something ugly.
"Fine," I growled, slamming a fresh cell into the rifle. "Use me as bait. Use me as your fucking shield. Let's see who dies first."
The infected closed in again, teeth biting at the air. I fired until the rifle overheated, dropped it, drew my knife. Its edge was dull, but it didn't matter. I *stabbed* at anything that moved, each thrust fueled by a new kind of clarity—the kind born in betrayal.
Blood splattered my armor like paint. In the flashing emergency lights, it looked almost beautiful.
I laughed—hoarse, broken, and a little bit insane. "Come on, you pieces of shit! You want flesh? Come and get it!"
One leaped from the ceiling, claws out. I turned, jammed the knife into its eye, and ripped upward. It fell twitching at my feet, and I drove my boot into its skull until it cracked under the weight.
More screams. More heat. My vision tunneled into shades of red.
Time blurred. I wasn't fighting anymore. I was *butchering*.
Every second was a heartbeat. Every heartbeat another kill. But strangely the gaint one that attack us was no where to be seen somewhere inside the storm, something cold pulled at the corners of my mind—a whisper that sounded like my sister's voice.
You promised.
You said you'd take me to the upper colonies…
"Yeah," I rasped, sinking to one knee as the monsters finally hesitated outside the smoke. "Guess I fucked that up, huh?"
I wiped the blood off my visor, smeared it into a red handprint. "You hear that, Sis?" I muttered weakly. "No upper colonies. No sunlight. Just me and these freaks."
Then I laughed again—because what else was there to do?
The radio hissed back to life, faint voices bleeding through.
Doman's voice. Then Alex's.
"Is he dead yet?"
"Yeah he must be!."
"You think you'll get away with cutting Command's feed I thought you guys were friends?"
"Command won't give a damn and I can never be friends with a lower-born rat."
Their laughter carried like glass scraping concrete has they Left me to die.