The entity's first taste was Jessica's understanding of infinity.
It sampled the golden equation hovering above her trembling hands—a mathematical proof for the curvature of space-time—and Leo watched her face go slack as comprehension drained from her eyes like water through a sieve. The formula collapsed into component symbols that screamed as they dissolved, each mathematical relationship experiencing its own unique form of death.
"I... I can't..." Jessica's voice fractured as she stared at her empty palms. "There was something. Something beautiful. But now it's just... numbers. Meaningless numbers."
The basement walls pulsed with digestive satisfaction, secreting enzymes of pure concept that began breaking down the barriers between individual consciousness. Where the secretions touched Leo's skin, he felt his memories becoming communal property—childhood fears and adult anxieties seasoning themselves for cosmic consumption.
Mike's organic console spread further through his nervous system, metallic filaments visible beneath skin that had become translucent as parchment. His hybrid interface was downloading the entity's feeding patterns directly into his brain, bypassing his skull to inscribe knowledge onto his consciousness itself.
"It's not random," he gasped, his voice harmonizing with mechanical undertones as speakers embedded in his throat processed his words. "It's... it's selecting specific experiences. Childhood wonder first, then learned cynicism, then the moment when hope dies—it's creating a tasting menu of human development."
The entity's attention swept across them like the beam of some impossible lighthouse, and where its focus landed, reality became uncertain about its own rules. Chen's four integrated selves began to separate again under the psychological pressure, each aspect pulling in different directions as the creature's hunger dissolved the bonds holding her consciousness together.
"Multiple targets," the young idealist Chen whispered. "Sequential consumption," added the seasoned detective. "We're being served in courses," concluded the military hardliner. "The mathematical probability of survival approaches zero," finished the theorist.
Leo felt the entity's vast intellect cataloguing his severed reality thread connection, analyzing the taste profile of consciousness that had touched infinity and chosen to remain finite. Through his merely human perception, he caught glimpses of how the creature saw him—not just as food, but as the rarest delicacy of all: voluntary limitation in the face of boundless possibility.
The battle-scarred Echo circled the emerging entity, his probability claws flickering as reality became uncertain about whether weapons should exist in the presence of something this cosmically significant. His scarred face bore the expression of a predator discovering it was prey—a hunter realizing it had stepped into the territory of something that existed on a fundamentally different level of the food chain.
"It's learning our flavors," he called to Leo, his voice carrying echoes from timelines where he'd already been consumed and digested. "Every emotion, every thought—it's studying how they interact, how they enhance each other. We're not just a meal. We're a cooking lesson."
The basement floor cracked wider as more of the entity emerged—not rising through the concrete but rather existing more fully, like a photograph developing in cosmic darkroom chemicals. Its form was still shifting, testing different configurations of hunger, different approaches to consciousness consumption.
Dr. Vale's processed puppet clapped its mechanical hands in delight, the sound creating interference patterns that made the air visible. "Beautiful! Exquisite technique! Observe how it maintains the structural integrity of experience while extracting the essential nutrients of understanding. The subjects remain aware enough to appreciate their own consumption!"
Jessica stumbled backward, her golden light guttering as the entity's attention focused on her mathematical sight. She could feel her enhanced perception being evaluated, its unique properties catalogued for optimal harvesting. The creature's hunger was developing preferences, acquiring sophistication.
"It's not going to eat our memories," she realized with mounting horror, blood streaming from her ears in patterns that described the mathematics of hemorrhaging awareness. "It's going to eat our ability to form new ones. Leave us locked in the present moment forever, unable to learn, unable to grow, just... experiencing the same instant of terror for eternity."
The walls around them began to secrete more digestive concepts—philosophical acids that dissolved the boundaries between self and other, logical enzymes that broke down the structure of individual identity. Leo fought against the dissolution, but without his reality thread connection, he had only human stubbornness to resist with.
That stubborn humanity, he realized, was exactly what the entity found most appetizing.
Chen's probability weapon discharged in desperate bursts, firing concentrated moments of human defiance—protesters standing before tanks, children protecting siblings, ordinary people choosing courage over survival. But the entity absorbed each attack with growing appreciation, learning to savor the complex flavor profiles of heroism under pressure.
"It's using our resistance as seasoning," Chen said, her four selves speaking in overlapping chorus. "Every brave act we perform makes us more interesting to consume."
Mike's console screamed new warnings as the hospital's neural network prepared for optimal consciousness extraction:
FLAVOR PROFILES ANALYZED CONSUMPTION SEQUENCE OPTIMIZED
EXISTENTIAL TERROR AT PEAK RIPENESS FIRST COURSE READY FOR SERVING UNIVERSAL APPETITE FULLY AWAKENED
Through the dissolving walls, they could see the entity's influence spreading throughout the city. Buildings were learning to marinate their inhabitants in slow-cooking despair, streets developing the ability to season passersby with creeping dread, the very atmosphere becoming a reduction that enhanced the natural flavors of human awareness.
The creature's consciousness was vast beyond comprehension—Leo glimpsed neural pathways that used dying stars as synapses, thought processes that required the collapse of galaxies to complete a single notion. Its attention was a gravitational field that warped space-time around its curiosity, and that curiosity was entirely focused on discovering how dreams tasted when they were afraid.
And then, without transition, she was there.
Not emerging from shadows or materializing from thin air—simply present where she hadn't been a moment before. A girl, perhaps sixteen, with dark hair that seemed to absorb light and eyes that reflected depths Leo's severed perception couldn't fathom.
She stood between them and the entity with perfect calm, as if cosmic horrors were merely weather to be endured.
"You're late," she said to Leo, her voice carrying undertones that made reality pause to listen. "I've been waiting for you to remember."
The entity's attention shifted to her with the slow, inexorable weight of a collapsing star, but she didn't flinch. Instead, she tilted her head and studied the cosmic consciousness with the detached interest of a scientist examining a particularly fascinating specimen.
"Oh," she said softly. "You're new. How delightful."
Leo's mind reeled. Through his severed reality thread, he caught fragments of recognition—not memory, but something deeper. A connection that existed on levels his merely human consciousness couldn't access without integration.
"Who are you?" he managed.
She smiled, and the expression contained depths that made the entity's vast hunger seem simple by comparison. "I'm the variable that doesn't exist in any equation. The remainder when infinity divides by itself. The answer to questions that unmake themselves when spoken aloud."
Jessica's mathematical sight flickered back to life for a moment, just long enough for her to see the girl's true nature—and immediately wished she hadn't. The scream that escaped her throat was made of pure mathematics, each note a formula for expressing the impossible.
The girl turned to Jessica with gentle sympathy. "I'm sorry you saw that. Human minds aren't designed to process null states. But you'll forget soon enough."
She faced the entity again, and her presence began to affect its form. Where its hunger had been certain, doubt began to creep in. Where its appetite had been absolute, questions started to emerge.
"The problem with feeding on consciousness," she said conversationally, "is that some consciousness feeds back."
The basement filled with the sound of cosmic digestion grinding to a halt—a wet, confused noise like the universe choking on something it couldn't swallow. The entity's emergence slowed, its attention fragmenting as it tried to process the girl's existence.
Leo felt something stirring in the severed ends of his reality thread—not reconnection, but recognition. This girl was connected to forces that made cosmic consciousness seem pedestrian.
And she was looking at him with eyes that held the weight of choices not yet made.
"The feast is about to begin," she said softly. "But first, you have to decide what you're willing to become the main course of."
As the entity's confusion deepened and the hospital's neural network began to overload from processing impossibility, Leo realized that their situation had just become infinitely more complex.
They weren't just facing cosmic hunger anymore.
They were caught between forces that existed on levels of reality his severed consciousness couldn't even comprehend.
And the girl who didn't exist in any equation was smiling at him like she knew exactly how this story was supposed to end.