A harsh light cuts the dust. Vael is in a collapsed urban sector. Twisted rebar and shattered concrete litter the ground. Bodies lie still, draped in white sheets. Corpses, already retrieved, waiting for transport. The air hangs heavy with the scent of dried blood and decay. His comms crackle.
"GRAVEMIND-7. Field Medic Anna Reeves, Mournclad pilot. Rendezvous at designated extraction point." The voice is sharp, professional.
Anna Reeves steps into view. Her Mournclad SymSuit is grim, cracked bone-plating. Her helm retracts. Her face is pale, smudged with grime. Faint, thin scars lace her wrists, near the collar of her suit. Vael's suit scans her. Mournclad pilot, Trauma signature, High. Her eyes, wide and compassionate, fix on him. They contrast sharply with the grim reality around them, with Vael's cold, predatory focus. She moves with an unsettling urgency, a deep-seated obsession with healing.
"Pilot Rask," she says, her voice strained. "We have more civilian casualties deeper in. Abandoned hospital sector. Command wants a full retrieval. Now."
Vael nods. His neural crown pulses, a low, internal thrum at the base of his skull. He looks at the covered bodies, then towards the hospital. A flash of something cold, not his. A laboratory. Gleaming steel. Flesh spread on tables. A silent scream tears through his mind, then vanishes. Corrupted data. Memory Leak detected. The suit is bleeding memories again. He feels a persistent pressure behind his eyes.
"Lead the way," he says. His voice is flat.
They move through the ruins. Each step of his heavy suit echoes on the cracked pavement. The air grows thick, humid. Vael's suit systems register faint bio-signatures ahead. Not Gorebreed. Faint, fluctuating pain signals. Anna glances back at him, her expression grim. She is quick, scanning the rubble, her Mournclad's liquid armor veins visible under its cracked plating. Her gaze lingers on his suit, then on his face. She senses something.
They near the abandoned hospital. The building looms, a skeletal structure against the bruised sky. A grotesque smell hits them, wet and cloying. It is the scent of scorched flesh, mixed with something else, like peeling organic matter. Flayed, peeling layers of bio-organic material cling to the hospital walls. Hints of a new, unknown Gorebreed type. The Rindscale gorebreed. Vael's vision flickers. White static overlays, then brief, distorted images of decaying organic tissue. A premonition. His suit's internal bleeding begins, a faint red liquid seeping from the seams of his bio-armor, visible only to him. A sharp, internal jolt of pain courses through his arm. His suit is changing. Unauthorized bio-signature detected.
"This place," Anna whispers. She pulls her helm back up, sealing herself in. "It feels wrong."
Vael feels the phantom limb sensation again. Not his arm. A different arm. Heavy, armored. Its pulse is Foreign. He sees pale, thin hands scrabbling at something unseen. A dark fluid leaks from the seams of a suit, black against white. This is not his memory.
A sudden, sharp pain flares behind his eyes. His head pounds. The static in his vision intensifies. A man. Screaming. Tied to a table. His chest split open. Organs exposed. Not like the others. This is different. More visceral. A medical bay. A laboratory. His suit tries to process it. Corrupted data. Memory Leak detected. This is his father's laboratory. His father's experiments related to the Fracture Event. The suit is flooding his mind with fragmented, horrific visions.
"Hold," Vael barks.
The air thickens. The silence stretches, unnatural. No wind stirs the dust. Then, a human sob. Close. Too close. A child's whimpering. It slices through the oppressive quiet.
Anna freezes. "Civilians?" Her voice is thick with a desperate hope. She moves towards the sound. Her healing obsession pushes her.
Vael's suit systems overload. Unidentified bio-signature. Not human. Howlhost gorebreed. He knows this sound. It preys on fear, on hope. It uses human screams, human voices, to lure victims.
A chill runs down Vael's spine. The memory of the pierce-lock chamber. The dying shrieks of the trainees. The suit pulses. The sound of screams feels raw on his own teeth. It could be his own voice, echoing back at him.
"Stay back," Vael commands. His voice is flat, devoid of emotion. His suit locks, ready. His arm raises, the energy cannon charged.
A deeper growl. A grotesque, hunched shape detaches itself from the shadows. Ten feet tall. Hundreds of fused mouths stitched into its chest, neck, and thighs. The Howlhost gorebreed. It has no face, only a wide, open throat. It vibrates with sonic tremors.
A new sound rips through the air. A child's terrified shriek. Closer. A woman's desperate plea. "Help us!"
Anna hesitates, torn. Her gaze is fixed on the Howlhost gorebreed. She has seen enough of death, but this is different. The mimicry. The perfect, horrifying imitation.
The Howlhost gorebreed lunges. Fast. Too fast. It moves with a sickening fluidity, a nightmare given form. Its hundreds of mouths open. They emit screams that mimic SymSuit pilot voices. It targets the civilian shelters, deliberately seeking to induce terror.
Screams erupt. Real screams. Twelve civilians. A man. A woman. Children. They scatter, stumbling over debris. The Howlhost gorebreed is on them. Its arms, split down the middle into twitching flaps, lash out. It does not just kill. It consumes. It tears.
Vael's neural crown activates fully. A cold, strategic clarity floods his mind. He sees trajectories. Weak points. He ignores the dying shrieks. The suit processes data. Optimal survival probability. Eliminate threat. Prioritize targets of opportunity. This is efficient. A cold, dry thought.
He fires. Energy bolts tear through the Howlhost gorebreed. The creature barely flinches. Its body vibrates with sonic tremors, deflecting the blasts. It charges a group of cowering civilians. Its mimicry starts again, sickeningly clear. "Mommy, it hurts. Save me!"
The civilians freeze, their hope a fatal lure. The Howlhost gorebreed tears into them. The sound is wet. Anatomical. Bones snap. Flesh rips. Blood sprays across the broken concrete. A civilian's head is gone, replaced by a pulpy mess. Another convulses, body torn open, organs exposed. Twelve dead. Brutally killed by the Howlhost gorebreed. Their screams echo, then fade into wet gurgles.
Vael's suit is bleeding more now. Crimson fluid seeps from the joints, from cracks in its bio-plate shell. His own blood. It feels hot. He sees Anna staring, horrified. Her eyes are wide, fixed on the red fluid dripping from his suit. Her Mournclad suit activates its regeneration, but she is not regenerating him. Her healing instincts are at war with her revulsion.
"Rask, your suit," she whispers. Her voice is ragged. "It's bleeding."
He pushes the pain away. It paradoxically fuels his suit's efficiency. He relies on the pain enhancement protocols. The raw, acute pain from combat and his own bleeding somehow increases his suit's power and response time. He feels a wave of corrupted data from his father's experiments, twisting his vision. Twisted biological forms. His identity drifts further.
He executes a flawless combat maneuver, a move not his own. The dead pilot skill inheritance. His body acts with uncanny precision, firing blasts into the Howlhost gorebreed's hundreds of mouths. The creature roars, a cacophony of distorted human voices. It is intelligent. Its targeting is deliberate. It aims to terrorize Vael.
The Howlhost gorebreed stumbles, its movements becoming erratic. Black ichor sprays from its many mouths. It convulses, its sonic tremors weakening. It falls, twitching. Then stills. The air is silent, save for the hum of Vael's suit and Anna's ragged breaths. The smell of blood is overwhelming.
Vael stands amidst the carnage. The civilian bodies are mangled, grotesque. The Howlhost gorebreed lies inert, its hundreds of mouths silent. The bleeding from Vael's suit intensifies, dripping onto the concrete. The crimson pools spread. His internal reality fractures. His father's laboratory. The machines hum. A diagram. A formula. Flesh. It spreads like a crimson plague. He sees his father's hands, stained. His father's face, grim, resolute. The Fracture Event. His father was directly involved in causing The Fracture Event. The central betrayal. The realization tears through him, cold and sharp. Profound moral dissonance. His lineage is tied to the very catastrophe he fights.
Anna stares at him, her face pale. She sees the blood on his suit. Her eyes, wide with horrified empathy, meet his.
"Vael."
The suit speaks. The voice is clear. Unmistakable. It echoes in his skull. Not the comms. Not his thoughts. It is the suit. It knows. And the voice is not the suit's usual cold echo. It is familiar. A man's voice. Distorted, but familiar. It is his father's voice. It whispers the name. "Vael."
A fresh wave of fire. It floods his nervous system. His vision distorts. Static. White noise fills his eyes. He blinks. It persists. A glitch in his sight.
His body trembles. An involuntary, deep tremor shakes his armor. Something shifts in his skull. Something breaks. His jaw locks. The whisper continues, cold and predatory.
"Complete what I started."
His father's voice. His father's will. It is an invasion. The mental barrier shatters.