The journey to the Southern Sprawl was a study in urban decay. They left the familiar industrial ruins around The Foundry and entered a part of the city where nature and monsters were locked in a slow, grinding war for dominance. Ivy, thick as a man's arm, pulled down the facades of office buildings. A murky, stagnant canal that had once been a six-lane highway was home to things with too many teeth that swam just beneath the surface.
Maria drove the Badger with a focused, steady hand, a stark contrast to Grunt's brute-force approach. She navigated the treacherous, debris-strewn streets with a professional respect for the machine, her eyes constantly scanning for structural weaknesses and potential ambush points. Sarah sat in the co-pilot's seat, monitoring a bio-scanner from The Foundry's tech labs, its needle twitching erratically.
Leo was in the back, watching the world through the armored viewport, his senses extended. The further south they went, the more insistent his [Sense Contamination] skill became. It wasn't the psychic residue of the daycare or the biological blight of the spore fields. This was something different. It felt… hungry. A low-level, pervasive wrongness that smelled of vinegar and rot, a scent that somehow penetrated even the Badger's advanced filtration system.
"Bio-scanner's going nuts," Sarah announced, tapping the screen. "There's a massive concentration of acidic biomass beneath us. Not just in puddles. It's... a network. Spread out over a dozen square blocks."
"The ground coming alive," Leo muttered, recalling Rostova's report. He was beginning to understand.
They reached the designated coordinates—a wide commercial street lined with abandoned storefronts. This was where Vulture Team 3 had sent their last transmission. Maria brought the Badger to a halt in the middle of the road. Through the front viewport, they could see their objective: a large, squat building with the faded logo of a "Med-Stop Pharmacy" on the wall. The building itself looked untouched.
"Looks too quiet," Maria said, her hands still on the controls.
"The scanner shows their vehicle is just around that corner," Sarah added, pointing. "No life signs. High acidity."
Leo peered at the street. The asphalt looked normal at first glance. But now, with his senses screaming at him, he could see the truth. The ground wasn't just speckled with monster ichor. The cracks in the pavement were filled with a shimmering, gelatinous substance. Faint, vein-like patterns, almost invisible, pulsed with a slow, sickly light just beneath the surface of the road.
"Don't get out," Leo said, his voice sharp with command. "The street is the monster."
He climbed into the top hatch of the Badger, popping it open just enough to peer out. The acidic smell was much stronger here. He looked at the pharmacy. It was about a hundred yards away. A hundred yards of what was essentially a living minefield.
[Lvl 11 Street-Maw (Dormant)]
[Traits: Camouflage Predator, Pressure Sense, Acidic Engulfment. A colonial organism that mimics inorganic surfaces.]
A Street-Maw. A monster that pretended to be a road. The Vulture team must have driven their truck right onto it, and the pressure of the vehicle's weight would have triggered the trap. It was a perfect ambush predator.
"So the whole block is a monster that eats whatever touches it," Maria's voice crackled over the intercom. "Lovely. Any bright ideas, boss?"
Leo's mind was already at work. How do you fight a street? You can't shoot it. You can't hit it. It was another problem that brute force couldn't solve. Grunt would be useless here. But a janitor… a janitor understands surfaces. And how to deal with them.
"The creature is dormant," Leo said. "It reacts to pressure. So, we don't put any pressure on it." He looked at the buildings lining the street. Old, brick-faced, two-story structures. Their rooftops were close together. "We don't go on the street. We go over it."
The plan was simple. Terrifying, but simple. They would use their climbing gear to get to the roof of the building they were parked beside, and then traverse from rooftop to rooftop until they were above the pharmacy. A vertical flanking maneuver.
They exited the Badger one by one, stepping not onto the street, but directly onto the crumpled hood of a wrecked car, then a dumpster, using the urban debris as stepping stones to reach the fire escape of the nearest building. The climb was easy for Leo and Maria. Sarah, her face grim with determination, followed without complaint, her fear overshadowed by her focus on the mission.
They reached the rooftop. The view gave them a clearer picture. The street below was a patchwork of normal asphalt and the Street-Maw's camouflaged hide. It was almost impossible to tell the difference. They could see the Vultures' truck, half-submerged in a now-hardened section of the Maw's body, the metal of the vehicle pitted and dissolved.
"Okay," Maria said, sizing up the gap between the first and second buildings. "It's a twelve-foot jump. I can make it. Leo, you can probably make it. Sarah..."
"I'm not an acrobat," Sarah finished for her, looking at the gap with worried eyes.
Leo was already shaking his head. "We're not jumping." He opened his pack and pulled out the gear he had requisitioned, a tool that had been sitting in the back of a maintenance locker, unused for months. A pneumatic line-launcher.
It was a bulky, rifle-shaped device designed to fire a grappling hook with a thin but strong nylon line up the side of a building for emergency access. It was powered by a compressed air cartridge.
He aimed at the solid-looking chimney on the next rooftop and fired. With a loud THWUMP, the grapple shot across the gap and hooked securely around the brickwork. He pulled the line taut and secured it. He had created another zipline, a crude but effective bridge.
"The Custodians do not jump," Leo said with a faint smile. "We create safer working conditions."
They moved from roof to roof, a slow, methodical progression. Leo would fire the line, Maria would test its anchor, and they would slide across, thirty feet above the dormant, hungry street. They were a well-oiled machine.
They finally reached the roof of the Med-Stop Pharmacy. Below them, through a series of skylights, they could see the pristine, untouched interior. And in the center of the main floor, they saw the prize: a large, insulated palette of medical supplies, clearly marked with the logo of the CDC.
But they weren't alone.
Scuttling between the aisles, almost invisible against the white linoleum floor, were small, pale white creatures. They were about the size of a cat, with long, insect-like legs and a single, oversized eye on a stalk. They moved with silent, jerky motions, seeming to patrol the cache of medicine.
[Lvl 6 Sterile Sentinel]
[Traits: Aseptic Field, Bio-Leech, Swarm Tactics. Attracted to and defensive of pure, uncontaminated materials.]
"What now?" Sarah whispered, looking down at the creatures. "They'll swarm us the second we drop in."
The Sentinels weren't a difficult enemy, but they were a complicated one. Their Aseptic Field made them resistant to contaminants and poisons. And their Bio-Leech ability meant any physical wound they inflicted would drain a victim's health at an alarming rate.
Leo looked at the pristine cache of medicine. He looked at the creatures guarding it. A thought struck him. They were guarding something pure because they were drawn to purity. They were, in their own twisted way, janitors. And how do you deal with a rival cleaning crew?
You create a bigger mess somewhere else.