The metal catwalk trembled beneath their boots as Netoshka's team crept deeper into the colossal maintenance chamber. The smell hit first—rancid, sweet, chemical rot—far worse than the fetid guts of the Vitraspawns. Genrihk gagged behind his mask.
"Something's puppeteering the corpses," he muttered.
"But… not through the Wire. This is different."
Twilla's flashlight passed over a cluster of bodies below the platform—dozens of them, arranged in a grotesque ring, heads bowed, limbs twitching in unnatural little spasms.
Zev tensed.
"Yo, why are they moving like they're… breathing?"
"They're not," Surgien said.
"Those are neural spasms. External control… probably from nearby."
Netoshka's eye twitched. Her glitching aura flickered in the low light.
"Then the controller is close."
They reached the end of the catwalk where a massive crane hook hung suspended over a hollow pit. Below, the bodies shifted, rearranging themselves as if acknowledging their presence.
Zopi whispered,
"Neto… I don't like this."
A soft thump echoed. Then another.
Then a wet dragging sound.
Something crawled out from behind the pillar of rusted machinery.
A shape… tall as a person but hunched grotesquely, uneven limbs clicking against metal. It shuddered like a dying machine—but its flesh shifted like clay.
And at the very center of its head—
One enormous eye.
Glassy, wet, milky white…
And it turned toward them.
Circe stepped back, trembling.
"What… the Hell is that thing?"
The creature's eye contracted sharply, and every corpse below suddenly snapped upright like marionettes on pulled strings.
Twilla gasped.
"It's controlling them—direct neural hijack!"
The thing rose to its full height, wobbling, its rubbery body pulsating with blue fungal veins. Then it emitted a low, vibrating cry—deep enough to shake dust off the ceiling.
Genrihk's voice cracked.
"That's it… that's the Lober."
Netoshka tilted her head.
"The what?"
"A Kraustein experiment," he said, trembling.
"He wrote about it in his private logs. A 'Lobed Operator'… a bio-symbiont designed to reanimate dead nervous systems. It sees through one eye and controls everything with… with those tendrils…"
As if on cue, slick blue tendrils slithered out of its back and into the pit below, embedding into corpses and making their bodies jerk violently.
The reanimated swarm climbed the walls toward the catwalk.
Netoshka cracked her neck.
"Alright. Kill the eye."
The Lober shrieked again, and the bodies lunged in perfect sync.
Zev opened fire, blowing holes through torsos—but the corpses didn't stop. They moved without nerves, without pain, limbs snapping and twisting to keep them standing.
Genrihk tried to pull control from them—only to flinch.
"Neto—! I can't override them! The Lober's hijacking their parasitic implants!"
"Just shoot them!" Zev yelled, smashing a corpse off the railing.
The Lober scuttled sideways along the wall, spiderlike, watching the team with its single unblinking eye. Its tendrils fed energy into the undead, making them faster—stronger.
Netoshka jumped forward, grabbing one corpse by the jaw and slamming its head against the railing until it burst like overripe fruit.
She pointed at the Lober.
"Cover me. I'm ending that thing."
Twilla launched shock rounds that forced the creature back, but the Lober flung more bodies into the team with telekinetic jerks. Zopi nearly fell off the edge until Genrihk yanked her back.
Zev snarled,
"It's protecting its damn eye—"
"Then I'll break it," Netoshka growled.
Her glitch energy flared, distorting the air around her like a cracked monitor. She dashed across the catwalk, leaping onto a suspended support beam as corpses reached for her ankles.
The Lober shrieked again—this time its voice harmonizing with the corpses, creating a vibrating wave that shook dust from the rafters.
It was afraid.
Netoshka smirked.
"Good."
She launched herself at the monster.
The Lober retaliated—one tendril whipping out like a spear. It grazed her side, tearing fabric and skin. But she pushed through the pain, landing directly in front of it.
Up close, it smelled like rotting batteries and old blood.
The single eye widened.
Netoshka drove her crackling hand into it.
The creature screamed—an unearthly, high-pitched psychic wail that made every corpse seize violently. The bodies collapsed, limbs spasming, strings cut.
The Lober staggered, twitching, dripping a glowing blue ichor.
Netoshka ripped her arm free—and with a final glitch surge, slammed her fist into its skull.
The creature toppled backward into the pit, tendrils retracting as it thrashed blindly, then finally went still.
Silence fell.
Twilla exhaled shakily.
"Good… fucking… riddance."
Zopi shivered.
"Why do things keep getting worse down here?"
Genrihk stared into the dark pit.
"Because Kraustein wasn't testing weapons… he was testing habitats. Environments where things like that could multiply."
Netoshka wiped the blue ichor from her arm.
"Then expect more. And worse."
She turned toward the far exit door.
"Move. We're not done."