The doors to Harvest Spire hissed open not with hydraulics—but with breath. Living steel, curved and veined like flesh, peeled itself back as the Unaligned 4 stepped through.
The entryway pulsed, alive.
"That's… not normal," Cam muttered, scanning the walls with a wrist-mounted scanner.
"It's not a building," Speen said. "It's a body."
Derek gripped his blade tighter. The interior looked like a cathedral built by nightmares—archways made of ribs, light pulsing through stretched skin, floors wet with organic fluid. The air stank of old blood and electricity.
A voice echoed from above.
"Welcome, Unaligned Souls."
Dr. Z.
The voice of Hawkins' lead scientist. The butcher of souls. The chef of the mayor's grotesque meals.
"You've entered a place where gods are built. And broken."
Cam hacked a nearby panel—exposing a nest of nerves instead of wires. "This whole tower… it's grown from the remnants of stolen powers."
"Keep moving," Derek said. "One floor at a time."
And so they did.
The first level held creatures with wings made of bone, half-human husks that screeched and spat plasma. John tanked them, his body shifting into obsidian to absorb the blasts.
The second level pulsed with holograms of their past. Derek saw his wife. Cam saw himself on stage. Speen heard Tali laughing. But they all knew it was bait.
They kept moving.
By the third level, the lights were gone. Only the glow of Cam's suit lit the way.
That's when they heard the screaming.