The whisper echoes. Vael. Not from comms. Not from his own mind. The suit itself, a familiar voice, his father's, now haunting him. "Complete what I started." The words hang in the space behind his helmet, colder than the recycled air. Vael's jaw tightens. He registers a dull ache at the base of his skull, a thrumming that has grown constant since the last fight. It pulses, a low hum of power or pain.
"GRAVEMIND-7. Status report. You're floating."
The squad leader's voice cuts through the suit's afterimage. Vael's helmet snaps into focus. He stands in the transport bay, the ramp lowering. He was drifting, physically, for a moment. He corrects his stance. The thrumming behind his eyes intensifies.
"On station, Commander," Vael says. His voice is flat through the comms.
The leader, a Ravelin pilot, nods once. His suit is immense, obsidian slabs of armor. He points a gauntleted hand at the urban sprawl beyond the ramp. "Recon. Zone Gamma-7. Heavy decay. Veilskin gorebreed activity reported. Move fast, move quiet. Objectives: survey structural integrity, locate any lingering civilian bio-signatures, confirm Gorebreed movement patterns. Engage only if necessary. We don't want a major contact today. Understand?"
"Understood," a voice cuts in. Specialist Zara Kim. Culex pilot. Her suit is slender, all sharp angles and folded wing-blades. She moves with a quick, almost nervous energy. Vael notes the slight hesitation in her posture, a phantom shift of weight on her right leg. Wing-damage trauma. He assesses her instinctively. Asset. Possible liability for aerial maneuvering if it comes to it.
The third squad member, a Lancereed pilot, nods his silent assent. Vael doesn't know his name. Doesn't need to. Another tool in the box.
They drop onto the cracked street. Air smells of rust and decay. Buildings loom, skeletal, against a sickly yellow sky. Every shadow could hide something. This sector feels like a fresh wound.
The neural crown in Vael's skull throbs. It feels like a physical growth, a tightening under his scalp. An involuntary hardening. The suit is doing something inside his head. He pushes it down, the same way he pushes down the memory of his father's voice. The past doesn't matter here. Only the now. Only the mission.
"Formation Gamma. Zara, overwatch. Lancereed, flank right. Gravemind, lead." The squad leader's voice is crisp.
Vael moves. His suit's heavy boots crunch on shattered glass and concrete dust. The street is littered with desiccated organic matter, dark stains on the pavement. Old gore. Not recent. Still, the air feels heavy with presence.
His enhanced tactical awareness flares. The world sharpens. He sees the crumbling fire escapes as potential ambush points, the shadowed alleyways as choke points, the collapsed bus as cover. His squadmates' positions register in his mind like glowing icons on a map, their movement vectors, their approximate internal bio-signatures. It is a new sensation, this connection. Not external comms. Something more direct. Group command protocols. He sees Zara's slight favoring of her right leg as she takes to the rooftops, fluid but subtly cautious. He sees the Lancereed's weapon systems cycling on his flank. He feels a detached sense of command. This is what the suit is for.
They push deeper into the sector. Rubble chokes the narrow streets. The silence is the worst part. The silence of a dead city, broken only by the crunch of their own steps. The air grows thick. A low, unpleasant scent filters through his suit's rebreather. Something organic. Sweet and wrong.
A flicker. A fragmented image. White lab coats. A stainless steel table. A raw, pulsating mass of something wet and red. He shoves it away. Nervous feedback spikes. For a split second, the world smears with visual static. His suit flickers, the internal HUD blurring. He grunts, a raw sound of discomfort.
"Gravemind? You alright?" Zara's voice, sharp, concerned. She's perched on a leaning spire above him.
"Clear," Vael grates. He forces the suit to stabilize. The thrumming in his head intensifies, a dull ache behind his eyes. It pulls him back to the mission. Focus.
They find a pile of debris, blocking a main thoroughfare. On top, a tattered piece of cloth. A child's blanket. Vael pauses. No bio-signature. Just the smell. The sweet, cloying smell.
"Veilskin gorebreed," Vael says, his voice low. "It's been here."
The squad leader grunts. "Eyes open. They use bait."
They move around the debris. The smell grows stronger. Vael's suit scans. Heat signatures—none civilian. Only the faint, ambient warmth of decay. But something is wrong. The air is too still. Too quiet.
A sound, faint. A sob.
Vael's suit registers it. A human sound. Distant, from a collapsing apartment complex ahead.
"Civilians?" the Lancereed pilot asks. His voice tightens.
Vael's internal systems flare with the group command protocols. He processes the sound. The pattern. Too perfect. Too isolated.
"Bait," Vael states, his voice devoid of emotion. "It's a lure." He doesn't wait for confirmation. He raises his weapon, a bio-integrated forearm cannon. He sweeps the apartment complex. The sound of sobbing grows louder, closer. It sounds like a child. Or a woman.
The thrumming in his skull pulses. A raw, internal pressure. It makes him think with an almost mechanical precision. The sound waves, the echoes against the decaying structures.
From the second story of the complex, something moves. A dark shape, humanoid, draped in what looks like flayed fabric. A Veilskin gorebreed. It drags a limp, human-shaped mass behind it. Not a body. Just the skin. It wants them to come closer. To rush in for the rescue.
The sobbing abruptly cuts off.
"Engagement protocols," the squad leader barks. "Zara, target roof. Lancereed, cover ground approach. Gravemind, suppress fire."
The Veilskin gorebreed disappears into the shadows of the building. Vael's suit's targeting reticule glows red. He fires. The cannon barks, a pulse of raw kinetic force. It tears through the crumbling wall where the Gorebreed was last seen. Dust and debris explode outwards.
Zara, the Culex pilot, drops from her perch, wings flaring, a blur of motion. She lands on the apartment building's roof, her razor talons gripping the broken concrete. She moves with surprising speed, but Vael's internal map picks up the subtle jerk in her landing, the slight wince of her suit's system against a heavy impact. Her trauma, still a factor.
The Veilskin gorebreed doesn't emerge from the building. Instead, more sobbing. This time, from three different directions. Echoing. The creature is playing them.
"They're using the echoes," the squad leader says, his voice flat. "They want us to split."
Vael's suit processes the sound. Not true mimicry. Just a playback, amplified by the building's acoustics. But the intent is clear.
He activates a wider scan. His neural crown thrums harder, a sharp, cold pain that shoots through his jaw. He ignores it. He focuses. The tactical data floods him. Three distinct bio-signatures, faint, but there. Hidden. Scouting variants. They are small. Moving fast.
"Three targets, Commander," Vael transmits. "North, East, South, converging."
"Confirmed," the leader replies. "Maintain formation. They want close quarters."
Vael shifts his weight. The dull ache in his skull grows, a relentless pressure. It's accompanied by a strange, involuntary tension in his scalp, as if something beneath the helmet is hardening, pushing against the reinforced bio-plate. This is the suit changing him.
A Veilskin gorebreed lunges from a pile of rubble to Vael's left. It moves with a sickening fluidity, its exposed red flesh glistening. It holds a stretched, drying human face in one of its surgical-scalpel hands. The thing tries to drape it over Vael's helmet, a grotesque offering, a lure.
Vael doesn't hesitate. His suit moves before he consciously commands it. A blur of bio-mechanized motion. He parries the Veilskin gorebreed's claw with his forearm, the reinforced plate grinding against bone. The smell of rotting skin is overwhelming. He brings his other gauntlet up, slamming it into the creature's chest. The impact sends a jolt through his suit, but the Veilskin gorebreed is tough. It snarls, a wet, guttural sound, pulling back its skeletal arm for another strike.
But Vael has already initiated the counter. His suit's systems lock onto the creature's exposed, pulsing skull. His arm cannon fires again, a point-blank blast that vaporizes the upper half of the Veilskin gorebreed's head. The body collapses in a spray of bone fragments and black fluid. It twitches once. Then silence.
"Target down," Vael states. His voice is calm. Too calm.
Another Veilskin gorebreed appears from the shadows on their right, lunging for the Lancereed pilot. The Lancereed opens fire, his shoulder-mounted bio-rifles spitting bone-laced projectiles. The Gorebreed screams, a high, piercing shriek, and collapses, pierced through.
Zara Kim, the Culex pilot, drops from above, her razor talons extended. She's too fast. The third Veilskin gorebreed, attempting to flank the squad leader, doesn't see her coming. She slashes, her wing-blade tearing through its exposed back. The Gorebreed falls, convulsing.
The immediate threat is neutralized. The silence descends again, heavier than before.
Vael stands over the remains of the Veilskin gorebreed. His neural crown thrums, a low vibration that resonates through his entire frame. He feels a momentary sensory distortion, like a brief, jarring hallucination of twisted, organic forms overlaid on the shattered cityscape. It passes. His systems clear.
"All targets neutralized," the squad leader confirms. "Good work. No major contact. Lucky for us, they were just scouts."
Vael looks at the shredded corpse of the Veilskin gorebreed. Not luck. Calculation. The suit's cold, tactical clarity. His body pulses with an unfamiliar energy, a dull throb behind his eyes. He touches his helmet, an unconscious gesture. Beneath the hardened bio-plate, his scalp feels strangely stiff, almost rigid. Something is growing. Something is pushing through.
He hears it then. Faint. Far off. A garbled emergency comms signal. Static, then a human voice. A civilian's terrified scream. Raw. Unmistakable.
Then, silence.
And then, the sound comes again. Closer. Eerily distorted. A wet, guttural mimicking. The signature lure.
A Howlhost gorebreed.
But it's not right. The mimicry is too clear, too specific, too close. A new level of intelligence. A new proximity.
The scream fades, replaced by that grotesque, mocking echo. It's here.
The squad leader snarls. "Command, this is Ravelin Actual. We have a confirmed Howlhost signature in—"
The comms cut out, replaced by raw static. The scream echoes again, closer, distorted, hungry. Vael's suit registers the proximity, the immense bio-signature. Not a scout. Not a lure. It is here.